Upon a Burning Throne

by Ashok K. Banker

  “Perhaps you overestimate Jarsun. The so-called God-Emperor has had his run. His end is in sight now, with the might of Hastinaga camped outside his capital city. I wager even he is thinking of running at a time like this.”

  Shvate didn’t agree with her but decided not to say so. Mayla could be trenchant with her opinions, and he didn’t want to get into an argument. On the other hand, she did make a good point. Even glancing back over his shoulder, he could see his camped army sprawled for tens of miles, tens of thousands of tents encircling the mountain that rose in the middle of the desert. Vrath had insisted he bring the whole of their main force into play, to make a point.

  Shvate had command of just over two million fighting soldiers, divided into the usual four cadres: elephant, chariot, horse, and foot. The smell of unwashed horse, human, elephant, and dog must carry all the way up to the mountain city, stinking up Jarsun’s nostrils. The sight of such a vast force, almost twice the size of Reygistan’s entire army, must drive some fear into even that megalomaniac’s brain. Or so Shvate hoped. But he had learned enough about Jarsun’s past exploits from Vida and other informed sources to know better. It was unlikely that the God-Emperor would be quailing in his boots before even a single arrow had been loosed. And this business of Reygistani fleeing from a besieged city just didn’t make sense. He felt the familiar unease of intuition curling inside his belly like a serpent. Something was off here.

  And with an urrkh like Jarsun, that could mean anything. Shvate still recalled the Battle of the Rebels with less than pleasant emotions. It was frightening to witness anyone take on Vrath and do to him the things that Jarsun had done at that battle. And that was in enemy territory; this was Jarsun’s home ground—the Heavenly Capital of his Divine Empire as he called it; who knew what forces he might unleash to defend his home?

  Shvate saw the cluster of silhouettes as they approached. The site was unlit, but there was more than enough starlight to see by. There were more than he expected. At least a full company of his own soldiers, with a general in command. The general was also the quartermaster of the camp, Prishata of Panchala, an old veteran and staunch supporter of the Krushan. Vrath had appointed him personally, and Shvate was glad to have him in charge of what was a very large and unwieldy army, leaving Shvate free to think strategically without worrying about day-to-day operational issues. The large grey-haired head turned to watch Mayla and Shvate approaching.

  Prishata inclined his head respectfully. “Princess Mayla, Prince Shvate, apologies for interrupting your respite.”

  Shvate bowed to the senior man. “Time enough to sleep in Swarga, General. Pray tell, what brings us out in the desert at this late hour?”

  Prishata’s long grey mustaches bristled as he glanced back over his shoulder. The elder warrior’s face never revealed any emotion, but Shvate sensed something in that backward glance and in the prickling of those whiskers. Whatever it was, it was enough to worry Prishata.

  “I have never seen anything of this ilk.” Prishata shook his head. “Damned urrkh maya . . .”

  Shvate and Mayla glanced at each other. “What is it, General?”

  “I thought it best to send for you so you could see for yourself and form your own opinions.” Prishata glanced at the cluster of Krushan soldiers. “This way, please.”

  Shvate and Mayla followed the much taller man as he led them through the lines of soldiers. The soldiers parted to let them pass through, then closed ranks again. Shvate noted that they were standing in a shield formation, except that the shield was turned inward. From a distance, he had assumed they were simply guarding the captives. Now he saw they were actually guarding a declination in the desert floor itself. The smooth, flat, sandy ground suddenly yielded here in a curiously circular pattern, somewhat like a spiral staircase, except that these were steps seemingly cut into the sand itself, leading . . . where?

  Prishata stood at the top of the decline, looking down. “I had been receiving reports of Reygistani approaching from the east and the south, apparently coming toward the camp, but always disappearing before they reached us. I put special scouting parties to watch for the next group, and they finally spotted several stray individuals coming across the desert at irregular intervals. It took longer to discover them because they were all creeping and crawling.”

  Shvate saw Mayla’s head swivel toward the general. “Creeping and crawling? Across the desert?”

  General Prishata looked at Mayla. “Yes. Even at the height of the afternoon heat, when the sun is hot enough to scald and scour the skin right off the body.”

  Shvate said nothing. He was trying to imagine what could possess anyone, even a soldier, to crawl across open desert for hours or presumably days . . . And at what cost?

  When neither of them said anything, Prishata went on. “They keep coming, through the night and day. Based on my observations of the past few hours, I estimate that a few dozen arrive each hour, and they all converge at this site and two other similar sites further east and south, all of them along the perimeter.” Prishata pointed to indicate both.

  Shvate glanced down. “I don’t understand. These Reygistani, they come crawling across the desert and do . . . what exactly?”

  Prishata grimaced. “They go down these ingress points. These steps lead to some kind of a tunnel that travels beneath the desert, right under our camps, and all the way to the base of the city. At least they appear to be going in that direction. I cannot say with certainty because I have not been able to send any scouts down the tunnel to test that hypothesis.”

  Shvate frowned. “Why not?”

  “It is best if you see for yourself, Prince Shvate. It is difficult to describe.”

  Shvate studied the elderly man’s face for a moment, then looked down at the steps cut into the sand, a pattern as neat and perfect as stairs shaped out of iron. He failed to see how steps could be cut into sand at all, or how they could retain their shape and solidity. Even the desert dunes shifted constantly, and any footprints one left in the sand would disappear within the hour. Yet these steps appeared to be as solid as metal or stone stairs.

  Mayla was also examining the strange stairwell, then glanced up just in time to catch Shvate’s eyes. He exchanged an unspoken agreement with her: Let’s go see for ourselves what all the fuss is about.

  Mayla moved before he could, putting her foot onto the first step, then the next. Her feet left no impressions in the sand, and even after she stepped off each stair, the pattern remained as perfect and solid as before. He followed, marveling at how solid and perfect the steps felt under his bare feet. Yet they still felt like sand, gritty, grainy, coarse.

  The steps led down much deeper than he expected. He counted several score steps, then a hundred, then a few more . . . At precisely 107 steps, the spiral staircase ended in a flat, even surface.

  Mayla glanced over her shoulder, eyes flashing in the darkness. Shvate nodded, acknowledging what she had also noted. The auspicious number for such things was 108. To stop a single digit before that auspicious number was not an accident. Someone had deliberately flaunted the auspicious 108 and stopped at 107, which meant a total sum of eight instead of nine. And eight was the number of urrkh, just as nine was the number of divinity.

  Whatever these sand steps were, they were no natural formation. Someone had carved exactly 107 of them with a singular purpose.

  Prishata descended the steps behind Shvate and Mayla with a torch in his hand. The torchlight flickered and flared as he descended, disturbed by the desert wind, but when he reached the bottom, the flame somehow rose vertically and then stood still. The general’s face remained as expressionless as ever, but Shvate saw his beard bristling again and sensed his unease. Shvate shared his discomfort. Something about this place made him wish to be elsewhere.

  “The tunnel proceeds all the way under our camps,” Prishata said, indicating the darkness ahead. The torchlight threw about thirty or forty yards into view, and as far as Shvate could see, there was no
thing there. Just a perfectly cut tunnel some seven or eight yards in height, and as many feet wide.

  Eight yards. It will be precisely eight yards in height as well as width.

  “We need not go all the way. Only up to . . .” The general left the sentence unfinished. He was not the kind of man who left a sentence unfinished or lacked a word to express himself. He began walking, holding the torch by his side as the ceiling was only a foot above the top of his head.

  Shvate and Mayla followed him.

  For the first hundred yards or so, there was nothing to see or hear. Just the smooth, immaculately cut sand walls, floor, and ceiling. Shvate reached out and touched the walls and saw Mayla do the same: a few grains of sand came off between his fingers if he pinched, proving that it was indeed sand, and not sandstone or something similar. How could a tunnel carved out of sand maintain its integrity? He could see no pillars or beams, no other means of support. Yet the tunnel was a perfect square cut into the ground. He shook his head. There were more important things to focus on than architecture of this strange tunnel.

  After another hundred yards or so, he began to sense a change.

  First, there was a smell. A familiar odor.

  Shvate recognized it at once.

  It was the charnel house stench of corpses. The battlefield stink of freshly butchered human bodies cut open, eviscerated, and slowly putrefying.

  He breathed through his mouth as the stench grew worse.

  Mingled with the battlefield stench was the even more familiar army camp stink of living flesh—sweating, oozing oils and acids, and the residue of whatever foods and drink the bodies had consumed. But there was a sourness to this odor, an underlying layer of some bilious smell that was neither human nor animal. The mixture of odors made for a sickening, gut-churning cocktail. Shvate felt the remains of the haunch of meat and the watered-down wine he had consumed hours earlier stir uneasily in his belly. He resisted the urge to cover his mouth, knowing it would not staunch the smell. He suddenly experienced a powerful urge to turn and run back down the tunnel, out into the open desert air, away from whatever horror lay ahead at the end of this dark descent.

  “It would be best to stop shortly,” Prishata’s voice said, giving Shvate a measure of reassurance. “I would not advise going much further. I have lost a few men already to the . . . phenomenon.”

  The phenomenon.

  Shvate was watching the general when he slowed to a complete halt, the tall man’s body mostly blocking his view of the tunnel ahead. But once he stopped, General Prishata moved to one side to allow Shvate and Mayla a better view, holding the torch out to light the way ahead.

  Shvate drew in a breath through his mouth and dared to look at what lay in the tunnel.

  3

  The light of the torch washed over the thing that lay in the tunnel ahead, illuminating it well enough for the first several yards, then dimming the detail as it progressed, until, around a hundred or two hundred yards ahead, it faded into a featureless mass. The thing writhed and moved restlessly.

  Mayla had remained a step or two ahead of Shvate, and she turned now to look back at him. Her face was lit fully by the light from the senapati’s torch, and her eyes glittered with confusion and a mix of other emotions.

  “How . . . ?” she said, then was unable to complete the question.

  Shvate could not even begin to form a question.

  He stared at the monstrosity in the tunnel and felt all words, language, reason, leave him, fleeing as rapidly as he wanted to flee back up the length of the tunnel. He had no desire to be here, in this dark, cool tunnel shaped by invisible mysterious forces underneath the desert, in the middle of the last watch of the night, staring at something that was an affront to nature and creation, at something that could not possibly exist, and yet did exist, writhing and wriggling in front of his very eyes.

  People.

  The thing was made up of people.

  Reygistani, he guessed, though it hardly mattered what nation or tribe they were from.

  It was made of people who had apparently been drawn in from all points of the compass, all ends of the Reygistani Empire, to converge on the capital city, Reygar. Crawling across the desert on their bellies, using their hands and knees to cross the searing hot sand in the height of summer. Once they reached the mouth of this tunnel, they presumably crawled inside, up the tunnel, until they reached . . . this. Whatever you called such a thing.

  “The one you see at the end there,” General Prishata said, his voice echoing eerily in the enclosed space, “is the most recent arrival. As you can make out, he has yet to be assimilated fully. The two others arrived a few hours ago, they appeared to be mother and son.”

  The man he was referring to was the figure at the extreme end of the thing. His body was still recognizably human. Shvate could make out his legs and lower body, still more or less intact. His upper body, though, had already started to merge with the monstrosity. From Shvate’s perspective, it looked like the man had crawled up to the thing and pressed his head into the back of the woman who had immediately preceded him. From farther up the tunnel, some kind of whitish ichor was seeping down continually, like sap oozing from the bark of a tree. This ichor was probably acidic to some extent, because it seemed to be dissolving the bodies of the people who inserted themselves into the abomination. In this case, the head of the man had begun to meld with the back and torso of the woman in front, to the point where it was impossible to tell where his skull ended and her spine began. The man’s hair and features had dissolved, melted really, and the flesh of his face and neck had merged with the flesh of the woman’s back and shoulders. At other places, wherever the man’s body touched the bodies of those in front of him, the whitish ichor had seeped in and filled the cracks and crevices between the bodies, melding them together, like ants glued together by sap oozing down the trunk of a tree. But sap would only swallow and cover the insects; this ichor dissolved and joined them together, flesh and hair and bone and organs all fusing to form a living continuum.

  Shvate allowed his eyes to travel up the length of the thing, past the man, the woman, the child, then to the other people who had come before, then further up . . .

  “Hundreds,” he said, startled at the hoarse sound of his own voice in the tunnel. “There must be hundreds, thousands even . . .”

  “Nay, Prince Shvate,” General Prishata said. “What you see here is only a few hundred yards. This tunnel travels for at least fifteen miles as far as we can tell, then turns upward to enter the underside of Reygar Mountain and the city itself. Surely, there would be thousands in this tunnel, perhaps even tens of thousands. But remember that there are probably dozens of such tunnels all around the desert. We do not claim to know how many exactly. Even if you assume threescore or fourscore such tunnels, each filled with two- or threescore thousand hapless souls, that would make . . .”

  “Hundreds of thousands, even millions,” Shvate said, shocked.

  Mayla turned to stare again at Shvate. “But how . . . ? How can such a thing be done? And by whom?”

  “He is not called God-Emperor for nothing, Princess,” the general said. “We know he is an urrkh, a demonlord of the highest order. I have heard many tales, including a few from a prince of Mraashk himself. But I have never heard of anything like this. It is something new. Something never seen or heard of before, even in the annals of urrkh history. This is urrkh maya on a gigantic scale.”

  “These are truly people?” Mayla said. “People joined together . . . to form . . . what? What is the purpose of it, this thing, this worm or snake or whatever it is?”

  Worm and snake were apt names to call the monstrosity. It writhed and squirmed just like a gigantic sandworm or python. Except that the individual people who made up the whole were still not wholly melded or digested by the whitish ichor, and their arms, legs, heads, and assorted body parts stuck out unevenly along the squirming length. And each of those individual body parts also squirmed and writhed
, and appeared to retain some independent volition.

  “I don’t know,” Shvate said grimly, “but I have a feeling we will find out soon.”

  Mayla’s face distorted with an expression he knew well. She was disgusted by the sight. “It is inhuman, monstrous,” she said. “I cannot bear the sight of it.”

  Shvate understood just how she felt. He was disgusted as well—any right-thinking person would be. The writhing mass of melded bodies in the tunnel—coated with that sickly whitish ichor and hair and bone and organ, with faces joined to stomachs, legs jutting out of throats, torsos intertwined with thighs and buttocks, a nightmarish, writhing horror—was an abomination, an affront to Great Mother Artha and all her creatures, an insult to the stone god and the Priapratis, a slap on the face of creation itself. People were not meant to be treated thus. Human beings were not ants or bugs. They were not slaughter beasts to be stitched together through use of urrkh maya into a slimy length of flesh and bone, gristle and sinew. Whatever vile purpose Jarsun intended for these Reygistani, it was inhumane and torturous to the living people he was abusing to serve his ends. These Reygistani, no matter how patriotic or loyal to their emperor they might have been, could not have voluntarily agreed to serve his cause in this manner. They had to have been mesmerized or brainwashed somehow, by his evil sorcery, and forced to crawl across the desert, into these tunnels, to join this awful experiment. It was the people Mayla was feeling sorry for, their plight that disgusted and horrified her, and Shvate agreed.

  “I have to do something, Shvate,” she said. “I cannot stand aside and watch.”

  He nodded slowly. “Neither can I.”

  He took a step forward, forcing himself to walk toward the horror in the tunnel. The first two or three steps were very difficult, his mind resisting his command to approach that terrifying sight. But once he was moving, it became a little easier. Momentum carried him forward, determination caused him to reach for the sword at his waist, and a cold hatred of injustice made him draw the shastra and raise it.