Upon a Burning Throne

by Ashok K. Banker

  Now she was just Karni, wife of Prince Shvate. Daughter-in-law of the House of Krushan. Princess of Hastinaga and the Burnt Empire. To millions of people, she was a symbol rather than a person. And with the one person to whom she should have been close enough to confide her secrets, she shared a warm but not intimate relationship. She liked Shvate a lot, perhaps she even loved him. She had liked him well enough to have chosen him from among several score suitors at the swayamvara in Stonecastle three years ago, but she had only agreed to the swayamvara because she had given up on relationships and no longer expected or desired to meet a man she liked enough to spend the rest of her life with.

  Her father had been concerned—anxious, really—about her growing older and staying unmarried, and she had given in at last because it simply didn’t matter anymore: nothing seemed to matter anymore. All the joy, the pleasure had gone out of life after the death of her first love, and those miserable months serving Guru Pasha’ar. The accident of her unwanted pregnancy and abandoning her child had left her in a fog of depression and self-recrimination from which she had never recovered entirely. She had agreed to a swayamvara as a compromise between her principles, which still saw arranged marriage as backward and barbaric, and choosing her own life mate, which she no longer had any real interest in anymore.

  The late afternoon sun was warm on her back and face and arms as she swam steadily. She was more than halfway across already, and the current was strongest here, pushing her farther downriver than she would have wanted. She was going to miss her picnic spot. She could see the maids looking around anxiously, concerned about her long absence now. There were sentries also looking for her, scanning the river upstream and downstream intently, but for some reason, none of them were looking at the point where she was now. She thought of waving and yelling, but the river was so loud and choppy she doubted they would hear her, and if she stopped swimming for even a moment, the river would bear her even farther off course.

  With each yard she swam, she was being pushed three or four yards downriver. At this rate, she would reach the other bank a good half mile away. Oh, well. She could run the distance in a few minutes, and it would still be daylight for another hour yet. Let the maids and sentries worry; it was their job.

  Karni concentrated on swimming strongly, feeling muscles and tendons that she hadn’t used in years starting to ache. This was a good thing. She ought to come here to swim more often. She liked the sense of freedom, the open, clear landscape, the cool water and warm sunshine, the large flocks of birds sweeping overhead, calling out, the sounds of animals in the woods, the raw, earthy odor of river and grass and flowers and dirt. It made her feel closer to her body, more rooted in her own self. And the emotional confession to Mother Jeel had helped. She felt purged and cleansed. And hungry. Goddess, she felt hungrier than she had felt in years! She would send her maids to Adri and Geldry’s picnic and ask them to bring back some roast meats; it had been a while since she had felt such a craving for some spicy roasted flesh. Swimming had always given her an appetite, and it seemed, so did crying.

  She continued to make her way toward the shore, and when she felt the first tug at her ankle, she assumed it was just the current. The second tug was hard enough that she went under for a moment, water flooding her nose and mouth. She emerged, choking and gasping, and struck out again. She had experienced strong currents before while swimming, and had always been able to break free of their grip by changing her angle.

  But it was not the current; there was something actually grasping her ankle and tugging it downward.

  She scanned the bank ahead. It was less than two hundred yards away, but she was now several hundred yards downriver from her campsite, and none of the maids or sentries were even looking for her this far down—not yet anyway. Besides, shouting or waving now would be pointless. There was a strong wind blowing from the west, and her yells would only be blown back in her own face.

  The strange thing was that she was still moving downriver, even though her ankle was snagged. As if whatever her foot had caught on was also moving with the current. An underwater plant that had been ripped loose, maybe?

  She took a quick deep breath and dove down to see what it was. She had to double over, like somersaulting. She bent over, straining to see what was snagging her ankle. The water, through relatively clean, was cloudy from the sheer force of its current, and she could barely make out a murky shadow that floated deep down, reaching up a long tendril-like appendage which ended in her foot. A weed of some kind? She dove down further, forcing her head down against the current, trying to see the thing itself but the water kept pushing her upper body aside. The force of the current was so intense, it buffeted her face hard enough to feel like someone was kneading the flesh, making it impossible to focus her vision.

  All she could make out was that the thing arresting her movement was very long and thin. From the way it felt around her ankle, it was soft but firm, like a tubular plant. A weed, then, or a clump of weeds. What else could it be? But why was it not moving now? If it had been ripped from its roots, the current ought to be pushing it along. She tried swimming downriver, under the water, kicking her legs and spanning her arms as hard as she could, but the grip on her ankle tightened further, until she felt her right foot starting to go numb.

  She emerged at the surface, gasping for breath. The daylight was fading fast, the sun already near the horizon. In a very short while it would set. The maids and sentries must be searching frantically now. Even Adri and Geldry must have been alerted. But somehow during her efforts to pull free of the weed, she had drifted downriver to a place where a rocky outcrop blocked her completely from view of the north bank. Unless someone climbed that rock and leaned over the river precariously, they would never spot her. The river was louder here too: a roaring torrent that drowned out the cries of the cranes flying overhead.

  She started to realize she could be in real trouble soon. The current was buffeting her to and fro now that she was anchored to the weeds, and the strain was starting to hurt her left leg. She could feel the nerves pulled tight and the circulation around the area almost at a standstill. Treading water with just her right foot was awkward and tiring. Once her left leg went numb and her right foot tired or cramped, she would not be able to keep her head above the surface. Ridiculous as it seemed, there was a real possibility she could drown here, within a few hundred yards of threescore royal guards and a score of maids and servants. And how fitting that would be: to end up in the same river into which she had lowered the basket six years ago.

  Except that she had never meant for her baby boy to die. Only to float downriver far enough to be well away from Stonecastle, where he would hopefully find some kind soul to adopt and care for him. He was the son of a god after all; surely, he had not drowned in the waters of Goddess Jeel?

  Could it be Goddess Jeel herself doing this to Karni? To reprimand her for abandoning her son? To make her experience the fate her son could have suffered? But surely he hadn’t suffered such a fate. Her little armored sun god couldn’t have drowned in the Jeel.

  “Is that it, Mata?” she said. “Are you punishing me because he died? Tell me that isn’t what happened!”

  And what if it was? What if he had drowned in the river? It would be her fault. Perhaps that was the only way a demigod could be killed, by drowning in the Jeel. What did she know of such things, after all? She had used the God Mantra, as she now thought of the Mantra of Summoning to summon Goddess Jeel and had been intimidated when the river rose up like a statue carved from water. Karni had offered her newborn babe to the river goddess, beseeching her to take him and give him to a family that would cherish and raise him as their own. Karni had been unable to think of anything else at the time. And Jeel had taken him, wrapping him in a bubble of air and carrying him away downriver. Karni had cried with remorse and regret, but knew she had no choice at the time.

  But now, with the hindsight of time and experience, she felt a pang of guilt. What if
she had condemned him to a watery death, and now, six years later, by stepping into the Jeel for an afternoon dip, she had condemned herself to the same fate? She imagined her little babe floundering in this rushing torrent, his tiny lungs filling with the pure blessed water, his little heart slowing, his little arms and legs hanging limply as he floated in the water, face-down, lifeless. Had she murdered her baby?

  “If I did cause his death, then I deserve to die,” she said, her words echoing in her own head over the sound of rushing water. “If that is my crime, then I surrender to your sentence, Jeel Mata. Take me and do with me what you will. I deserve the worst fate you mete out.”

  There was an instant when the river seemed to grow still. She felt the current slow, then halt completely, the rushing torrent fall silent, she could hear the cranes calling to their family to come home for the night, the sparrows chirping, the crows cawing, elephants trumpeting in the distance, even the faint sound of human voices calling out . . . calling her title and her name: “Princess Karni!”

  Princess Karni. What use were titles and kingdoms when you had failed your most fundamental Krushan law? Yes, she deserved to die, to be pulled deep into the murky depths of the Jeel, taken to the bosom of the river and held there forever, as sentence for the crime of infanticide.

  She felt the grip on her ankle tighten further, the pressure growing unbearably, and the weeds yanked her down suddenly. She gasped in time, instinct causing her to take one final breath. Then she went under the surface completely.

  Something took hold of her other ankle, the right one, and pulled hard at that one too. With both her ankles caught, she was completely trapped. Her feet were pulled downward suddenly, the force startling. How could weeds pull her down so quickly? She saw the surface rise above her head, the sky fading, blurring, then disappearing completely. Down she went, the force on her legs too strong to even think of resisting. If someone had tied ropes to her ankles and had a horse pull the other end of the rope, she couldn’t have gone faster. She was several yards down now, perhaps twenty or more, and descending very quickly. How deep was the Jeel here? Thirty yards? Deeper? She tried to turn her head, to see if there was something she could grab hold of, use to stop her downward descent. But there was nothing except water and the occasional fish. There were plenty of fish here, deep below the surface, fish of all sizes and colorings. Even river eels swimming in a group, undulating as they crept through the water. She saw a huge turtle the size of a chariot floating tilted at an angle, as if riding a current. She thought she saw the large silver shapes of porpoises, but surely there were no porpoises this far downriver. They lived in the colder heights of the Jeel, far higher than Stonecastle even.

  Thirty yards now, and still no ground in sight. Her lungs were emptying of air quickly, soon she would be unable to breathe. She had barely gasped enough air for a short dive. The force with which she was being dragged down was incredible. It felt like not just one horse, but a whole team of horses was pulling her. Her body was stretched out vertically, her arms thrown up above her head by the sheer force of her descent. She felt as if she were being stretched out. Her body arched and undulated like a fish as the force pulling her veered in a slightly more upriver direction. She wondered how it was that weeds could adjust their descent, yet she already knew that it was truly no clump of weeds that had hold of her; there was something sentient about the things that had gripped her ankles, a sense of great strength clutching her tightly, strong enough to snap her feet like dry twigs if it desired, but careful to use only as much force as was necessary to pull her without actually causing her harm.

  Out of breath, she felt herself starting to black out, and her vision began to blur. The bottom was in sight now, about twenty yards further down, a small forest of vegetation, weeds, underwater flowers. There were river crabs there, scrabbling over the bottom. An entire school of turtles, marching along slowly together as if on a mission. Large shoals of tiny silver fish darting between tall weeds and plants. Brightly colored fish traveling in precise underwater patterns, crisscrossing underneath and over each other. An entire world of different underwater fauna and flora spread out before her, as rich and diverse as any jungle aboveground.

  The water was cold here, colder than she could have imagined. A deep, penetrating cold, down in these murky depths where sunlight never reached and hot-blooded two-legged creatures did not belong.

  She summoned the last of her reserves of energy and forced her neck down, pushing her face down as well, and tried to see directly below her feet.

  She saw it then. The thing that had taken hold of her and was dragging her down to the river’s bottom: it was not human, but it was not aquatic either; it was neither of the land nor the river. The shock of seeing it was intense: whatever she might have expected, this was not it. This was not Mother Jeel’s doing. This was not Karni being punished for abandoning her newborn child. It was something else entirely.

  Everything was going dark around her, like her bedchamber in Hastinaga when she told the maids not to relight the lamps after they went out, and she just lay there in the darkness, listening to the sounds of the palace and the city, the constant thrum and throb of a jungle of humanity, all those lives and lusts, ambitions and dreams, hopes and desires, conflicting and intersecting, like chariots clashing at night on a dark plain. She liked it when Shvate came to her at such times and would accept his embraces more willingly than at the unexpected moments when he became amorous in the middle of the day or early morning. She liked dusk, and the soft, easy light at that hour, the way she felt, soft, languorous, the cares and responsibilities of the day past, the night of respite ahead, these hours of peaceful solitude all to herself to do with as she pleased.

  She felt herself slipping into unconsciousness as her descent reached its end. The muddy bottom of the river, teeming with life, an underwater metropolis no less populated and busy than great Hastinaga, rushed up to greet her. But just as she thought she would surely collide with the floor of the riverbed, something opened beneath her—a portal of some kind—and through it she went, and her descent continued.

  She was barely conscious as she looked up and saw the portal closing above her, the river and the distant, remote light of the upper world far above her now, just a pinprick of memory in the fading sunset of her mind, and then she was embraced by a darkness more than night and welcomed by oblivion.

  Shvate

  1

  Getting in was the easy part.

  Though the city of Reygar stood on its living tentacles of flesh, when it was at rest, its lowest extremities sagged only a few yards above the desert floor.

  Shvate ordered a company of the tallest elephants in his command to cluster beneath the city. It took some effort and much coaxing by the mahouts to make the great beasts move so close to the unnatural phenomenon, but once they were gathered together, it was possible for the three adventurers to climb onto their backs and, from there, clamber onto the base of the city.

  The city had uprooted itself from a foundation of bedrock, tearing a large chunk of the rock with it. It was onto this rock that Shvate, Mayla, and Vida climbed. From here, they made their way up to the base of the city itself. It was not unlike climbing a rock face, and while Shvate and Mayla were both strong climbers, Vida had some trouble. Credit to his spirit, he managed the climb, and a short while after deciding on their plan, the three stood on a street strewn with rubble. Cracks ran zigzaggedly along the ground, up the sides of the houses. The scene resembled a city that had experienced an earthquake of the highest magnitude, which in a sense, was what had actually happened. Except that after the earthquake, the city had gone for a drunken stroll!

  The thing that was notably absent was any human presence. There were no people anywhere in sight. Shvate and Mayla searched the houses on the street quickly, swords drawn. Vida was handy with a bow and kept an arrow nocked at all times, but no target presented itself. After combing through a half dozen deserted houses, they returned to the
main street no wiser than when they had begun.

  “Where could they go?” Mayla asked. “People can’t just disappear.”

  “We know where some of them are.” Shvate pointed down to the tentacles that extended from under the city to curl onto the desert floor. The three Krushan were currently about a hundred yards above the ground. Even from here, they could see the living faces and limbs of the people who had sacrificed themselves to form the grotesque human chains. The tentacles undulated and stirred from time to time but did not move from their places. Was it too much to hope that it had exhausted itself and could not continue the battle? That would be expecting too much. “Perhaps that is the entire population?”

  “That doesn’t make sense.” Vida was emphatic. “Reygar is home to over one hundred thousand people, but what about the armies of Reygistan? We know that they number over a million strong. A substantial portion of that is certainly deployed at the far borders of the empire, fighting rebellions and even our own carefully timed attacks designed to divert their attention, but at least a third that number ought to be here in the capital city. That is the information I received from our spies, and it was on the basis of that information that we marched from Hastinaga with two million.” Vida pointed at the tentacles below. “I attempted an estimate of how many poor souls were sacrificed to create those living chains. Those terrible things, all told, could not number more than fifty thousand. And we know that most of those definitely came from outside Reygar, climbing in through the tunnels.”

  Shvate shook his head impatiently. “Never mind the count. Where are they? Hundreds of thousands of men cannot simply disappear.”

  “Who knows what Jarsun is capable of?” Mayla said. “If he could make those things . . .”