Upon a Burning Throne

by Ashok K. Banker

  To watch him die competing in that chariot challenge. An unfortunate mishap when a stray arrow struck one of his horses and caused his chariot to overturn. You ran to the spot where he fell and cradled his head in your lap and cried as the light passed from his eyes.

  The god’s words sparked a flaring light in the dark corner of her mind where she had buried the memory, illuminating the jagged edges of the pain she had felt when she saw it happen. She relived the shock and disbelief she had felt that day in Dirda as she saw the chariot tumble and shatter before coming to rest in a cloud of dust.

  She lowered her head. The staff felt like a leaden weight in her hand. She leaned it against the wall and clutched her face in both hands. “He was broken and bleeding and beyond help. He recognized me and was happy to see me. He said he had wished to see my face one last time before he died, and there I was, a gift from the gods. He told me he loved me . . .”

  And he wished you much happiness in your life ahead. Before he died in your arms.

  “Yes,” she said, weeping openly now, “yes. And I told him I loved him too—but I was too late, he was already gone.” At this, Karni became overwhelmed and could not go on.

  Sharra waited patiently as she cried the tears she had held back since that day, the pain she had banked and hidden from Sage Pasha’ar, her father, her friends, the wet nurses, everyone, even herself.

  Finally, she could cry no more. There would be more tears tomorrow. And the day after. And for many days to come. But for now she was drained. She wiped her face with the hem of her garment.

  You mortals have such brief existences. It is always sad to see you fail to achieve your desires and die unfulfilled. Maheev’s end was unfortunate. But you have a great and fulfilling life ahead of you. His dying wish is prophetic. You will achieve much happiness in your life—as well as great sorrow. Both are inevitable, I am afraid. Your place in the mortal world is a special one, your life and times extraordinary, and your sons—

  “I don’t want to know,” she said brusquely. She paused and tempered her tone. “Please. Do not reveal my future. I know that as a god you have sight of all things past and future, seen and unseen. I do not wish to know what lies ahead for me. I want to live my life myself.”

  He was silent for so long she thought she had offended him. But when he spoke again, there was no rancor in his voice. So be it, Karni of Stonecastle. I will speak of it no more.

  “Is that why you came to me? To show me my future? Is that the purpose of the mantra?”

  He smiled. She saw a flash of his teeth, which gleamed with the brightness of a rising sun. Light exuded from his eyes, his body, as he smiled, and she felt warmth emanate from him in a small wave. It passed through her with a stimulating frisson. Such power! Just from a smile.

  I am not a fortuneteller, Karni of Stonecastle. I do not appear when summoned to show mortals their future. I am Sharra, Star of the Sky, Light of the World.

  She smiled back despite her emotional state. There was something dangerously charming about him. Like the sun itself, you could not take your eyes off him, even though you knew that staring at him too long would burn your eyes blind. Charismatic yet deadly.

  “Then why did the mantra summon you?” she asked.

  He took a step toward her. He had mastered his emanations now, and she felt none of the searing heat that he had been emitting earlier. Now it was but a genial warmth that Karni found oddly comforting. His features blurred again, and she braced herself, expecting another blast of heat. But instead of the bright flash, his features rearranged themselves to form a new face, a new body, one that was so familiar, so desirable to her that she gasped involuntarily.

  He smiled at her now with the face and form of her dead sweetheart, Maheev. Exact to the last detail.

  The purpose of the mantra was to grant you your wish, Karni of Stonecastle. To give you the wedding night with Maheev that you desired.

  The sun god paused as Karni’s beleaguered mind tried to process what he had just said. Was he truly saying what she thought he was saying? She felt herself as the memory of her last embrace with Maheev returned. He had wanted her so much, and she had denied him, as any young woman in her position would have, not because she didn’t want him with the same intensity—River Goddess, how she had wanted him!—but because she wanted to wait till they were wed. She had been so filled with the confidence of youth that death was not even a distant possibility.

  She tried to speak now, but her throat was choked with emotion.

  The wedding night that you were so cruelly denied. And the child that would have been produced from that union.

  18

  “No!” Karni cried out, aghast. She backed away, her heel striking something. She heard a clattering sound as the staff fell to the floor. “I did not ask for this.”

  Sharra, the sun god, in the form of her dead sweetheart, Maheev, moved closer to her in the same gliding motion.

  Maheev of Mraashk was of the Solar dynasty. My direct descendant. When you used the mantra to attempt to summon him, it was only natural that I, the sire of his bloodline, should appear.

  She shook her head, still backing away from him. “I did not ask for you, or any god. I thought only to use the mantra in order to see Maheev again one last time, if only for a few moments, to speak to him freely, to pour my heart out and say the things I neglected to say while alive.”

  To feel his touch, to press your lips against his, to hold him close and to melt in his arms . . . Do you deny that these desires were also in your heart when you uttered the mantra?

  She looked down, embarrassed, but unable to lie. “We were to be wed this season, to be husband and wife. I had every right to feel those emotions, those desires.”

  As you have every right to live out that desire now, with me.

  She was shaking her head before he finished the sentence. “No. I cannot. It is one thing to desire, quite another to succumb. I am an unwed girl, and I am not ready to be wed yet by my own choice. Someday I will find a husband whom I believe I can love as much as I loved Maheev. I am willing to wait until then. What you are proposing is impossible.”

  His eyes—Maheev’s eyes—glowed brightly for an instant, reacting to her refusal. She felt the heat emanating from him again. You are mistaken, Princess Karni. This is not an offering. This is inevitable. Once the mantra has been uttered and a god is summoned, the summoner will birth a child. The question of choice does not enter into it. The mantra compels me to instill myself within you and ensures that you will bear a child of our union. All the mantra allows one to choose is which god to summon, and what qualities one wishes the resulting child to possess in life.

  She gasped, raising a hand to cover her mouth with her upright palm. “But I do not wish this! Will you assault me then? Against my will?”

  Nay, Karni of Stonecastle, he said. I am a god and need not impregnate a woman in the mortal way. I do not wish to possess you by force. I am sympathetic to your situation. Your intelligence and strength of will impress me greatly. If you do not wish to accept my gift in the usual way, through the union of man and woman, then I can plant the seed in you through the force of godhead itself.

  She swallowed. “What does that mean?”

  He raised a hand, the palm beginning to glow at once, producing a tiny ball of heat and light, a spinning fireball the size of an almond. By passing my seed to you through the medium of my energy. Just as I engender life within the womb of Great Mother Artha, the goddess of Arthaloka, through the life-giving power of my sunlight.

  She hesitated. “And if I do not want this method either? If I refuse you altogether and bid you leave this instant?”

  Do not test the patience of a god, young woman. You will have more interactions with my fellow gods in your life. And your offspring—

  He paused, recalling her earlier admonition.

  You would do well to keep good relations with any of us. You will have need of our aid in your life to come.

&nb
sp; She reflected on that, her heart racing. Why had she uttered that mantra at all? Sage Pasha’ar had brought her nothing but hardship and discomfort. She should have known he would never give her a simple gift. The man clearly cared nothing for anyone but himself. He had given her this mantra out of some patriarchal sense of tradition: men bestowing offspring upon women as though children were things to be given and taken, rather than mutually created expressions of one human being’s love for another. She wished now that she had put the mantra out of her mind and never used it. But it was too late: wishing would do her no good. She was a realistic woman. What was, was. What had to be, had to be.

  There was also the practical matter of there being no alternative. She could not fight a god. And even if she tried and failed, what would that achieve? If what Sharra said was true, she would require the aid of the gods in her life ahead. And not just she. Your offspring, he had said. That tantalizing fragment suggested that her future children would need the aid of the gods as well. She could not act now out of pride and willfulness and risk endangering her unborn children. Besides, she had uttered the mantra, and in her heart she did indeed desire all the things Sharra had named. Maheev had been of the Suryavansha line. She had wanted one night with him, if only to give herself the satisfaction of showing him how much she loved him, expressing all that she had failed to express in life. To give him the gift of herself. To give herself the gift of him. She needed it . . . nay, she wanted it.

  “I have one last question,” she said.

  Sharra waited, Maheev’s handsome face set in that same wistful, longing gaze that had always won her heart.

  “Will Maheev . . . wherever he may be now . . . be able to hear what I say to you?” She hesitated, trying to find the right words. “I suppose I’m asking if he will, in some way, be able to sense the feelings I express here and now? Is there some way to make that possible?”

  The god did not answer her immediately. She thought she had finally crossed a line, given offense to a powerful divine entity.

  But when he looked at her, it was with Maheev’s face, Maheev’s eyes, and, she could have sworn, Maheev’s spirit.

  “Karni,” he said, in that same gentle, respectful tone of Maheev’s she had loved for its contrast to the loud, boisterous voices of most rich young men, “Marriage is a woman’s decision, and it’s your right to make that choice when you please. But can I help it if I’m so madly crazy in love with you, Karni of Stonecastle, apple of my eye, that I can’t bear to wait another year, another season, or even another night, to make you my wife?”

  She raised her hand before her chin, shocked speechless. It was not merely a mimicking of Maheev. It was Maheev. By the grace of the gods!

  The incarnation of Maheev spread his arms. “I love you, Karni Stonecastle. We’ve known each other since we could first talk. We played together as infants in your father’s castle in Mraashk. Our families know each other well and are good friends. Even after you left Mraashk to come live here at Stonecastle, I followed you and changed my entire life to be near you. I love everything about you, from your quick temper to your stubborn will, to the way your back arches where it meets your hip, to how you toss your hair when you walk, plus your strength, your beauty, your love for fried tapioca—”

  Karni shook her head in amazement, tears rolling down her face again. She began to walk toward him.

  “—your prowess at weapons and combat, your sense of Krushan law, your refusal to give up on any chore no matter how demanding until it is done to your satisfaction.”

  She put her upright palm over his mouth, cutting off the rest.

  “Maheev, oh, Maheev,” she said, her heart tearing apart and filling with unspeakable emotion both at once. “I love you, my beloved. I love you more than anything else in this world. Would that I had told you when I had the chance, that last day we met, after the lake. I wanted to tell you, but I was too proud, too stubborn, too willful, to admit that I wanted you as much as you wanted me. I was young and arrogant. I thought we had all the time in the world. I thought we had forever. I was wrong. I know now that all we have is the given moment. The here and now. There is nothing else. The future is uncertain, the past unreachable. We only have tonight. I should have told you how I felt; I should have held nothing back. Nothing would have given me more joy than to have taken you as my husband. I wanted to spend my life with you. I want to be with you, my love.”

  She paused, knowing she could not stop herself now. “Tonight.”

  The god opened his arms and embraced her. She crushed herself against his body and felt a rush of emotions, of love, lust, desire, sorrow, joy, that she had never felt before. For once in her life, she stopped controlling and let herself go completely. She surrendered to the given moment. The heat grew within her and took her by storm. She allowed it to consume her. It blazed through her veins like a flood of fire. She let herself catch fire and burn. And he burned with her.

  Together, they gave themselves over to the blaze.

  Part Four

  * * *

  Shvate

  1

  Shvate looked up at the city of Reygar and felt his heart sink. How could he hope to defeat such a mighty place? How could anyone? Surely all the armies of Hastinaga could not accomplish this task. His first impulse was to turn the whole army around and ride back home to the blessed leaf-shaded palace of his ancestors, where he could spend even the hottest summer afternoons basking in honeyed splendor with his two beautiful wives. What madness had possessed him to invade Reygistan? Look at their capital city! Nothing he had ever seen, studied, heard, or experienced had prepared him for such a sight.

  The city rose in layers, tier upon tier rising up so high that even when he craned his neck, he could not see the peak of it. He had carefully approached the city from the west in order to have this one glimpse before sundown. The sun was behind him, and his men were diligent in keeping the canopy above his head, keeping his sensitive skin out of direct sunlight at all times. But it was not his albino sensitivity to bright sunlight that was causing him distress. It was the sheer scale and height of what lay before him.

  Reygar was gargantuan.

  The city was like nothing else he had ever seen. Built into the side of a granite mountain, the grand metropolis comprised levels upon levels, not a few dozens or a score, but hundreds upon hundreds of levels ranging from the height of a man to ten times the height of a man, with no discernible pattern or uniformity. The whole was a densely packed mass of housing and humanity that rose hundreds of yards high. Reygar was a mountain, and the mountain was the city. The two were one and the same, and the whole was formidable.

  “How does it all stand?” he heard himself whisper, awed.

  “The mountain supports it,” the man standing beside him said. “The shelves of rock you see jutting into the city act as beams and pillars of support, holding it up. It is carefully engineered to lean into the mountain, even if struck by an earthquake or the strongest of desert windstorms. That is why it has stood so long without mishap. So long as the mountain stands, Reygar stands. Do you see those shelves of granite and basalt rock jutting through the layered masses of human construction? The city’s vishwakarmas carved out the mountain itself, cutting away the softest parts, leaving the hardest, most indestructible shelves and spurs of hard rock. Then, they built human platforms, houses upon houses, mansions upon mansions, castles upon castles, all piled in a maze of incredible complexity, myriad materials and substances intermingling until it was all one endless mosaic of brick, stone, wood, fired clay, marble, even shaped metal and raw ore. This occurred over centuries, piling layer upon layer of houses, streets, aqueducts, bridges, chutes, and other complex constructs that are unique to Reygar. It’s quite extraordinary. There’s nothing like it anywhere else in Reygistan, let alone the rest of the civilized world. Though I have heard of a city named Petrak in the West . . . but that’s quite different, being cut out of the rock itself. Reygar is like no other city that I know of
.”

  Shvate turned to look at the man who had spoken. The great seer-mage Vessa, who had fathered Shvate and his half brother Adri upon the princesses Umber and Ember respectively, had also given his gift of seed to their maid, whom they had sent in their stead in a misguided attempt to avoid lying with the uncomely sage themselves. The progeny of that maid and Vessa was Vida, and because of his mother’s social stature, or rather her lack thereof, he was not considered part of the imperial lineage.

  Shvate had been slightly resentful when Vrath had insisted he take Vida along on this campaign, but over the course of the long journey to Reygistan, Shvate had come to appreciate having Vida by his side. The young man had a keen mind, an alert eye, and an ability to analyze and anticipate that was quite exceptional. He was already Shvate’s favorite minister, a far sight more useful than any of the tiresome gurus who sat and argued all night in the war tent about how great emperor Sha’ant or great emperor Shapaar or some other great king of the Krushan would have done this or that. When Vida looked at a situation, he gave crisp, pertinent suggestions on what Shvate could or could not do. One of these suggestions had saved them half a day’s march through the waterless wasteland of a desert, and many of his other pieces of information had proved very useful to Shvate. That was why he had asked Vida to come along on this scouting trip, leaving everyone else behind.

  “How do you know all this of Reygar?” Shvate asked.

  Vida, who had been gazing up at the great mountain city, turned and faced Shvate. His features were perfectly aligned, perfectly formed, yet despite that symmetry and balance, he was neither handsome nor remarkable to look upon, merely plain and ordinary. His physique was the same: neither tall nor short, not fat nor thin, not muscular nor skinny. He was plain, ordinary, average. But his mind? His mind was extraordinary. That average, ordinary appearance concealed what Shvate now believed to be a genius intellect. His capacity to acquire, store, and process information was unparalleled. Shvate had heard stories around the palace of Vida winning debates with the gurus, but had always assumed these were exaggerations or that the “debates” in question were nothing more than meaningless displays of rote recitations. He now knew that everything he had heard was true. Vida was a genius thinker and analyst, and having his prodigious memory by your side was like having a hundred priest scribes available at your beck and call, ready to recite whatever fact or statistic was required, at a moment’s notice. Shvate now found that he depended completely on his half brother’s vast store of knowledge.