Upon a Burning Throne

by Ashok K. Banker

  This evil force is afoot in the city tonight. It means to cause you grave harm. Already, it is poisoning hearts and minds, sowing the seeds of evil in a thousand unfortunate victims. It has chosen its time astutely. It waited until it knew my son Vrath would be away.

  The water that formed the goddess’s face churned, revealing the currents of anger that underlay her words, and Karni pressed a hand against her chest, releasing a small gasp. Of course! Vrath was away in Mraashk on an important matter concerning her own brother. She had wanted to accompany him, but both he and Mother Jilana had refused firmly, saying it was too dangerous in Mraashk. Her heart was in turmoil from all the terrible news she had been receiving from her homeland of late: some of it was horrendous, particularly the stories of the usurper Sanka’s cruelties. But she knew that they were right to stop her from going: the moment she set foot on Mraashk soil, she would immediately become a potential pawn in the larger political game. The usurper Sanka would like nothing better than to take her hostage and blackmail her adoptive father into ending Stonecastle’s resistance to his misrule, as well as to torment her birth parents by holding her captive. She had agreed only for these reasons, but a part of her wanted to pick up a sword and go fight alongside her people who were suffering under the yoke of Sanka’s tyranny. It was partly the reason why she had come here tonight, to seek Jeel’s blessings and ask her to help end the terror in Mraashk soon.

  Vrath is one of only two individuals who possess the power to stop this demon tonight, but even if I summon him from Mraashk and assist him in a speedy return, he cannot reach Hastinaga in time.

  One of only two . . . ? Had Karni misheard, or had the goddess implied there was another demigod in Hastinaga? Everyone knew that Vrath was the son of Jeel, possessed of incredible superhuman powers. But who was this other celestial being?

  Perhaps it is too soon. He is very young to confront this artful demon. I hesitate to ask him to shoulder such a responsibility. If he were my son, I would not think twice, but he is not.

  Karni frowned. She was having a hard time following Jeel Ma’s line of thought here. She sensed that the goddess was looking at her now, her watery features more composed, though the tide continued to swirl behind her. What was it the goddess expected of her?

  Karni . . .

  The word was as soft as water, as delicate as dew. The living waters susurrated, gurgling and churning. Karni sensed that the goddess was trying to find the right words to express herself. Why a goddess would be cautious about choosing her words when speaking to a mere human, Karni had no idea.

  Sometimes we must sacrifice that which is dearest to our hearts to ensure the survival of those we govern. It is the burden of queenship, just as it is the burden of godliness. I loved Vrath’s father dearly, more than anything else in the world, yet I had to abandon Sha’ant when the time came. Later, I had to surrender my only begotten son, Vrath himself, to fulfill my promise to Sha’ant and the people of Hastinaga. I set my son to protect this kingdom, and he continues to fulfill his solemn duty, devoting himself completely to the task. He has even forsworn the joy of love and all physical pleasures, committing to lifelong celibacy. What mortal could sacrifice and serve as he has?

  That is what it means to be a god or a demigod. All this power, and yet when the time comes, we must use it in service of our devotees; otherwise, what use are we as gods? This is what distinguishes us from demons. They too have great powers, often greater than our own, yet they use them only in service to their own selfish ends. They use them to dominate, torment, tyrannize, torture, murder, commit genocide, perpetrate unspeakable cruelties.

  The urrkh that walks the streets of Hastinaga tonight, perpetrating atrocities and evil mischief, is the vilest of the vile, a master of destruction, a bringer of chaos. He means to uproot the very heart of the kingdom, to lay waste to all the good that the Krushan dynasty has done over the years. To poison the well of mortalkind itself. To sow war, rebellion, pestilence, disease, famine, drought, toxic airs and fluids—and these are only his most visible weapons. It is those unseen that are the most insidious. He uses evil methods tonight that cannot be easily stopped or undone except by the most extreme means possible. He is poisoning the very heart of Hastinaga.

  And. He. Must. Be. Stopped.

  These last five words resounded throughout the underground temple, setting every bell vibrating, jarring even the innermost crevices of Karni’s hearing, drenching her with a mist of pure rage. She kept her head lowered and hands joined, but she trembled nonetheless. She didn’t fully understand: was the goddess angry with her somehow? These were awful, terrible revelations. Far more than she could have ever wanted to know. Why was the goddess sharing these truths with her? What could she, Karni, possibly do against an urrkh so powerful and dreadful? She kept her head bowed and trembled in helpless confusion.

  Karni!

  The word resounded like a slap across her face. It assaulted Karni’s ears and penetrated into her deepest core. She shivered, feeling the glacial anger of Mother River seep into her heart.

  Do what must be done. Mothers, queens, goddesses must surrender their sons for the greater good. You must sacrifice your most precious creation, as did I. Do it before it is too late and the damage is irreversible. Do it now to save Hastinaga and ensure the safety of your own future offspring. It is the only way.

  And as suddenly as she had appeared, the goddess began to dissipate, her watery form dissolving into a torrent that bled away into the nooks and crannies and crevices of the rock itself, melting away into the black stone, disappearing from sight and sound. Yet even as the goddess vanished, she called out one last time, whispering a final missive:

  When he has done his part, call on me, and I shall come to cleanse the city.

  And once again, Karni was left alone in the temple of Goddess Jeel, her garments drenched, her body icy cold and shivering, her senses reeling with the sheer weight of the knowledge and responsibility that had been thrust upon her.

  Adri

  Adri was awakened by a sensual caress.

  From the silence of the hour and the stillness in his bedchamber, he knew that it was still night—hours before dawn, for there was not even the faintest sound of birds chirping in anticipation.

  In the distance, he could hear faint sounds from the city: strange, unusual sounds. Was that screaming? It was too far away to tell. He assumed it was some disturbance in the lower city; there was always trouble happening there, and the city guard would handle it if required. Or, if it turned out to be a symptom of some larger problem, Mother Jilana would take note of it, and Vrath would see to it when he returned.

  Adri didn’t concern himself with matters of administration and city affairs. He was more interested in the larger issues of politics: the complex web of alliances, loyalties, rivalries, enmities, feuds—some going back thousands of years, a twisted, intricately interwoven network that kept growing even as one attempted to unravel its myriad strands. Like a gigantic spiderweb that was constantly being added to by countless chitinous spinnerets. Adri had never actually seen a spiderweb, of course, but he had brushed against a few in his youth, especially during his days in the forest gurukul, and he still remembered the terror and disgust he felt as his fingers and face were caught in the thick sticky threads.

  He saw the complexity of politics as a huge battlefield, with himself in the center, and factions on all sides engaging at once in a deafening cacophony of emotions and violence—yet underlying it all, a thread of unifying strategy.

  He had never felt more alive, more present in his senses than when he himself had been on the battlefield, and he felt the same thrill, the same sense of peril, the same sense of camaraderie, the same threat of violence and death when he listened to the intense, complex discussions of Krushan politics in the sabha. He knew from Vrath’s laconic, rare responses that the prince regent did not care for politics, though he possessed a mind brilliant enough to comprehend it well and recall every detail with st
artling accuracy. Shvate cared for it even less, preferring to actually be in battle rather than in the royal court listening to men talk. And Mother Jilana could not even bear to endure it an instant more than was necessary, leaving it to Vrath and the very able ministers to handle such matters.

  But Adri had a fascination for politics. A passion, even. It was, he had come to realize recently, the one way in which he could govern an empire as vast and complicated as Hastinaga without ever needing to sit on a horse, drive a chariot, fight a battle or a duel, or even leave the palace. If he knew and used his knowledge of politics, he could govern the empire. He could rule. And that, he had begun to think of late, was what he truly aspired to do. What he could do and do well—better than Shvate, better than Mother Jilana, better than even the ministers. Not better than Vrath, but unlike the elder, Adri actually liked politics. Surely that gave him an edge.

  But right now, it was not politics that had awoken him, or even the distant sounds of disturbances in the city—

  It was the sensual caress on his body.

  He lay in bed, wondering what had possessed Geldry. She was a passionate woman; he had known that since the first night of marriage. But she had never actually gone as far as to wake him asking to be loved.

  He was flattered. It made him feel wanted. Too many times—especially as of late—he felt that there was a divide between them, a gap that he was increasingly unable to bridge. It was not just the difference of sightedness. Even though she wore an eyeband in solidarity, the fact was that she was not truly blind. She could never know what it meant to have never seen, to be completely unaware of what a sunrise looked like, or what the source of some unusual or disturbing noise actually was (the worst being the awful cries from soldiers wounded in battle).

  But there was also the difference in culture, in language, in customs and habits, food and clothing, festivals and traditions, beliefs and values. Geera was not Hastinaga, and Geldry’s ideas on many things were definitely not Adri’s ideas. They differed on many significant points of belief. At times, especially after a particularly frustrating argument, Adri had wondered why she had ever married him—apart from the obvious reasons of court.

  There had been one disagreement, after Shvate had returned from his campaign with all those wagonloads of bounty, and offered them to Adri. Naturally, Shvate was not obliged to offer them to his brother, since Shvate was the elder of the two and hence the senior in line of succession. And just as naturally, Adri was expected to refuse and insist that the bounty be offered to Vrath, since he was senior to them both, and the actual prince regent of the empire. Adri had tried to explain to Geldry that the offering of the bounty was symbolic, not literal. That Shvate was only obliged to offer it to his elders in the line of succession and it had to go to Vrath as the eldermost, and Vrath in turn had to accept it formally and turn it over to the imperial coffers for use in the administration of the empire. It was not personal bounty to be used at any one person’s whim! He had tried to explain to her how the empire would descend into chaos if every prince, princess, queen, or king simply appropriated all tithes and bounties for their personal consumption; there would be a mass uprising and widespread rebellion.

  But Geldry had refused to see sense. She had pretended to agree with him, but he knew from her breathing—the little noises of anger, disgust, and frustration she made, along with the constant sighing—and the scratching of her fingernails on the wooden arm of her chair, the shifting of her feet, and other various signs that he recognized so well as her way of throwing a controlled but furious tantrum.

  Things had changed after that day, he knew. He had tried repeatedly to talk to her about it but she would not speak about it honestly or calmly. That was another major point of difference: Geldrans abhorred talk. They favored action. Talk, especially political talk, was the ultimate sign of weakness in her culture. He heard the faint contempt in her attitude even as he struggled to breach the growing abyss, but knew it was hopeless. She had turned away from him, and nothing he did could bring her back.

  Now, all of a sudden, in the middle of the night, she had begun caressing him erotically. What did it mean? He lay still and enjoyed the experience. It was pleasant, of course—more than pleasant; much more. Touch was a powerful sense for Adri, having been blind from birth. The primary ways he “saw” people were through sound and touch and, to a much lesser extent, by smell. For him, Geldry was the woman he touched—every day at first, in those intense, passionate nights after marriage. He had touched her at all times, whenever possible. He knew the shape of her head, the swell of her skull, the narrow forehead below the hairline, the large, prominent aquiline nose; the high, strong cheekbones; the inward slope of her cheeks; the sharp point of her chin; the hard lines of her jaw; the large ears pressed back close to her head. He loved her slender neck; her wide, strong shoulders; the sharp inward curve of her waist; the flare of her hips and thighs . . . Her skin was not soft, but it had a texture that was both pleasing and erotic to him. In those early nights, he would lie beside her, propped up on one elbow, stroking her naked body with the tips of his fingers, barely touching her, brushing so lightly across the surface of her skin that it felt like his fingers were dancing over the sloping curves and valleys and swells of her femininity. The smooth, soft parts, the warmer hidden crevices, the deep moist place between her thighs . . . He had learned to read these more thoroughly than any scholar could read a treasured scripture. He knew every letter in the alphabet of her anatomy, the language of her body, the secret code of her arousal, the soft poetry of her passion, the raging heat of her climax. Geldry was the one person he felt he truly “saw.” He was never more fully alive than when he was with her at such times. She was the secret knowledge he had craved without knowing that it had a name, or that it could be embodied in a person. She was his world and his heart, and he would do anything for her.

  We often become the very things that we are perceived to be, even if they are not entirely true. People spoke of Adri’s blindness as if it were a curse, a failing, a diminishment of his value as a person. To him it was simply the way he was, nothing more, nothing less. Does a man born with two hands feel diminished because he does not possess four hands—or six, or eight? Darkness was not fearful to him as it was to the sighted; it was the way the world was, all the time. Yet because people displayed ignorant prejudice against him every day of his life, treating the blind as somehow different, diminished, less than human, he had come to think of himself as being these things. So he felt an imbalance between himself and Geldry from the outset. She was sighted, he was blind. (It did not matter that she covered her eyes, just as a person picking up something with only one hand cannot understand what it is like to go through life with only one arm.) If anything, her eagerness to share his condition suggested that she felt sorry for him, and that itself aggrieved him. He did not say so to her because she had the right to show her love for him in any manner she wished, but he felt it only confirmed the difference between them. The imbalance of their births.

  But in bed, he felt that imbalance reduced to the minimum. In bed, they met not as a sighted person and a blind person, but as two lovers, naked and entwined, erotically engaged, sensual and charged. Touch was sight to a lover. A finger mattered more than an eye. Skin was the primary sensory organ, texture and contact the most eloquent vocabulary. And in bed, Adri found his element; he mastered Geldry and was mastered in turn by her. He conquered her more decisively than any king could conquer another in a real battle and was conquered himself by her passion and desire. He brought her whimpering to the point of ecstasy, held her there on the brink for as long as he thought she could bear, before allowing her to plunge into the deep, cool waters of bliss, then raising her up again, and yet again and again. She responded in turn, and manipulated him just as masterfully. They both clashed on the battlefield of love. And yielded to one another, completely and unequivocally. Here in bed, there was no argument, no disagreement, no misunderstanding, no con
fusion between cultures or value systems, words, and gestures. It was all pleasure, all joining, all passion.

  But now, the balance was gone. No more was this an equal contest. She had gained the upper hand.

  The movement of her hands, and now her body, across his own, arousing, titillating, teasing . . . He found himself raised up the highest point of pleasure. He felt her mouth on his, her hot breath scalding him, then felt the heat of her nether mouth, and wondered at the fever of her passion. She felt like she had never felt before, like a being made of pure heat and passion. Even her body felt different, stronger, more commanding, dominating even his masculine strength. He groaned, succumbing to her assault. And together they rose to the peak of ecstasy before he exploded in a burst of relief so intense that for a moment, he could see the being mounted above him the way sighted people spoke of seeing things—a sunrise, a furnace, an eclipse at noonday. He wept with pleasure and surrendered to her completely.

  Jilana

  Jilana woke from restless dreams. A breeze was blowing through her chambers, an unseasonably warm breeze. Not just warm, but hot. The curtains on her verandah were billowing, turning, and twisting, tormented by the wind. A peculiar odor carried on the breeze. The smell of hot sand, unwashed animal fur, and riper odors, the scents of death and war, carcasses rotting in the sun, other unspeakable stenches. It smelled of the desert. But that was impossible. The desert was a thousand miles away.

  She sat up in bed, feeling feverish, her vision hazy. She felt as if she might vomit up the contents of her belly at any time. Yet when she had lain down to sleep only hours earlier, she had felt perfectly well. She was not one of those people easily troubled by digestion, and she had eaten nothing amiss for supper. Only fish, and fish was her staple food. The unease in her belly was caused by something else, some feeling of extreme unease. She put a hand to her head and was not surprised to find her forehead burning. So, a fever—perhaps some minor ailment. She rarely summoned the royal healers, preferring to fight minor ailments without the aid of arcane remedies and treatments, but tonight she felt the need for some comfort.