Upon a Burning Throne

by Ashok K. Banker

  So from sundown to sunup, Reeda could do as she pleased. Never did she concern herself with the night terrors, the tantrums, the cranky child, the hungry child, or any other such problems. Kern was always a perfect angel, even by day, but at night he was the easiest child to care for. All he did was sleep! Twelve, fourteen, even sixteen hours at times during winter. The only times of the year when he was less than his usual sunny self was during the monsoons, when the sun often didn’t show itself all day, for days on end.

  Reeda had still to make sense of the incident with the merchant’s son and the other boys. She had always known Kern was no ordinary boy. But for a mother to know and for the world to acknowledge the fact were two entirely different things. The hearing in court, before Queen Mother Jilana and Prince Regent Vrath no less, before the Burning Throne itself, had been a startling confirmation. She was still trying to understand. Adran, on the other hand, had taken it in his stride. Then again, he spent his days in the presence of Krushan royals. He was used to the extraordinary. She had yet to wrap her mind around the possibility that her beloved Kern was . . . what exactly? A born warrior? Gifted with some innate ability? There were things in the world for which there were no exact words or names, not even in the great mother language.

  Tonight, she had been sitting on the stoop, waiting for Adran when she saw the shadows lurking at the bottom of the lane. At first she had mistaken them for children, returning from play. Then as they continued to gather, she realized they were animals. Dogs. Dozens at first, then, as they continued to gather, hundreds, and finally, an hour or so later, there were what seemed to be thousands of dogs all surrounding the hill. And all of them seemed to be looking up at her, or to be more precise, at their hut. She had no idea why, but the sight was quite chilling. All those dogs, all those lolling tongues, hanging jaws, pricked-up ears, all directed at her house. Even at that moment, she had sensed instinctively that this had something to do with Kern. The reason they were all standing or sitting at the bottom of the hill and gazing up at her house was not because of her or Adran, but because of her adopted son. She had no idea what the connection might be, but she knew it as surely as she knew that Kern would not awaken until the crack of dawn tomorrow.

  When the dogs had begun climbing the hillside, coming up the lane, just walking up the hill in an eerie unnatural silence, thousands upon thousands of pairs of canine eyes staring up in her direction, reflecting the strange reddish moonlight, she had lost her nerve. She had retreated into the house, barring the door.

  She stood there, inside the door, listening. There were cracks in the wall, and she put her eye to one of them and peered out. She could glimpse the low shapes moving outside, filling the lane that led up to the front of her hut and the other charioteers’ quarters upon this hilltop. They were out there, the hounds, milling about, surrounding the house. She had never seen or heard of so many dogs gathering in one place while remaining so silent. Not a bark, a whimper, a growl, or even a snarl. Just the tiktik of their claws on the ground, and the soft sounds they made as they brushed their brindly coats against each other. They kept coming up the hill, until there was no more room for them to move about. They sat facing the hut, tongues lolling, staring. Still not a sound. Thousands of dogs all around her, sitting, waiting. For what? She didn’t know. But it scared her. It scared the life out of her.

  She didn’t know what to do. She had thought of calling to one of her neighbors. But they were all asleep by the time the trouble started. All the charioteers were in bed, along with their wives and families. The only ones in the royal family who were out-of-doors were Shvate and Mayla, who had driven themselves to Hastinaga for one of their days-long hunting expeditions, and Vrath, who had also driven himself to Mraashk a day earlier. And Karni, who had taken Adran to the temple. Everyone else was in the palace: the princesses Ember, Umber, and Geldry; Prince Adri; Dowager Empress Jilana; and the other lesser-ranking cousins and relatives. Besides, even if she had wakened one of her neighbors, what would she ask them to do? Chase away the dogs? How did one chase away a thousand dogs? Or ten thousand? She would sooner not disturb this horde. So she had gone indoors and barred herself in. And waited.

  She was still waiting now.

  There were sounds from other parts of the city. Strange, eerie, bone-chilling sounds. There were awful things happening everywhere, she knew. Even without seeing, she knew. Something evil was abroad tonight. It was in the air, it was in the moon, in the foul stench that carried on the night breezes. She didn’t know what was happening, but she knew it was terrible and that people were getting hurt, dying, killing . . . She didn’t want to know more. Like all Krushan women, Reeda was no coward in a fight. She would fight to defend herself and her loved ones. But she was no warrior; she did not live to fight, let alone love to fight. She abhorred violence, unless it was absolutely essential. She had no desire to go out there and save anyone by risking her own life and limb. Besides, she had a son to watch over, and her sweet Kern slept like the dead. Even now, despite all the strangeness abroad in the city tonight, he had not awoken. She had checked on him every now and then, to make sure. He had stirred in his sleep a few times, and that was unusual, but she assumed he was only reacting to the same sense of unease that she herself felt. His eyes had remained firmly shut, his breathing regular, and his body limp. Fast asleep. She could hardly leave him and go out to help others, if there even were others near to help.

  Perhaps because of the dogs, or because all her neighbors were sleeping, the hilltop where the charioteer quarters were located was quieter than most of the city. There were no screams and shouts here, no sounds of violence or death. Just the soft, steady panting of several thousand dogs. She could hear them even through the closed door, through the walls of the hut. What were they waiting for? What did they want? What possessed them to act in this manner?

  She leaned her head against the wall, shutting her eyes for a moment to rest them. She was anxious about Adran now. How would he return home through that huge crowd of dogs? Would they let him pass unharmed? If there was trouble in the city, was he caught up in it? Surely he would be fine; he was with Princess Karni, after all. The royal guard would not let any harm befall her. Perhaps he had been tasked with driving her back to the palace and then decided to stay there till morning, until order was restored.

  This was what she hoped, that he would be safe in the palace. Alternatively, she hoped that even if he did choose to come home, he would use the back alley. The lane that went down the hill led directly to the chariot compound adjoining the palace. Adran was usually in the habit of coming around by the main street since he usually stopped to buy something or other from the marketplace on the way home, but at this late hour all the shops would be closed and she hoped he would make an exception and come straight home . . .

  Her thoughts were rambling now, she realized, making no sense anymore. She was anxious. She felt tears well up in her eyes and drip onto the back of her hand. She leaned against the wall and prayed for her husband’s safe return. He and Kern were all she had in this world. Like Adran, she too was an orphan, her family lost in one of the countless caste feuds that plagued their home district. That was why they had come to Hastinaga and settled here, over two decades ago. Surely they had not survived that violence at home to end their lives here?

  No, no, no, she should not be allowing herself to think like that. She wiped her cheek with her hand and took a deep breath, pushing away from the wall. She took hold of herself and opened her eyes, determined to be strong, no matter what this night might bring.

  When she saw the yellow light, her first thought was Fire!

  It was always a danger in the big city. With so many dwellings packed so close together, a small fire could quickly leap across lanes and alleys, growing into a citywide blaze. She had heard that Mraashk had burned down in a single night, although that was linked to the usurper Sanka’s cruel regime. She could not imagine Hastinaga burning. It would be a horror to beat all
horrors.

  The light was coming from behind her from inside the house. She gasped and sprang to her feet. Had she left the fire burning? That was impossible. She hadn’t been at the cookfire for hours. It couldn’t have remained alight all this while without adding charcoal. And she clearly remembered sweeping up the ashes and banking the embers before leaving the kitchen alcove.

  The light was coming from the eastern room. It had always been the storeroom, but ever since Kern came into their lives, it was where he slept as well. It was the first room to get the light of the rising sun, and even as a baby, she would wake in the morning and find that he had crawled all the way there to sleep, so finally she had made him a cot in that room, and it was there that he slept to this day.

  She gasped, thinking Kern’s room was on fire.

  She ran the short distance of a few yards, then stopped abruptly.

  There was no fire in the room.

  The light was coming from Kern himself.

  Karni

  Karni was fighting for her life, Adran beside her.

  Both of them were doing everything they could to keep the mob of maniacs at bay. The poor horse, Sreela, had long since succumbed, and now the chariot was surrounded on all sides by people. Men, women, and children, old and young, fat and thin, ailing and healthy and strong and weak—all manner of folk. The one thing, the only thing, that they all had in common was madness. Every single one of them was utterly out of their mind.

  Their eyes were dilated, bulging from their sockets, their tongues lolling, their limbs splayed, flopping in all directions like the tentacles of some sea creature rather than mammalian bipeds. They seemed to have lost all control of their limbs. Whether running or attacking, they seemingly had no means of regulating where their hands went, how their legs moved, where their eyes were looking.

  A middle-aged woman with streaks of grey in her hair was trying to climb over the well of the chariot, but backward, flailing her legs and arms as if that would enable her to get over. Karni winced as she struck the woman’s shoulder with the hilt of her sword, knocking her off balance. The woman fell back to the street and was instantly stamped on and climbed over by others seeking to get at the chariot. Disturbing to behold though it was, it was this lack of bodily control that was keeping the mob from overrunning them. Had these same people had full command of their bodies, they would easily have overwhelmed the chariot. However fiercely Karni and Adran might fight, they were no match for a hundred attackers. Or two hundred. Or however many there were surrounding them.

  Karni had lost all sense of numbers or time. Her arrows had run out a while ago, and she had picked up a sword in one hand and was using the bow like a staff in the other, striking with the hilt and the flat of the blade whenever possible. Adran was not as considerate. He was hacking and cutting down people without a second thought. She knew that she would have to start doing the same any moment now. There were just too many of these lunatics and only two of them.

  But are they really mad? Karni couldn’t quite understand how so many people could just lose their minds all of a sudden. And why were they all attacking her chariot?

  A burly man in a rich noble’s robes tried to climb onto the rear of the chariot. Adran’s face was turned for a second as he dealt with another attacker, and the man lunged at the charioteer’s back, teeth bared in a wolflike snarl.

  “Charioteer!” Karni called.

  She lashed out with the sword, catching the man’s forehead with the blunt side of the blade. A strip of skin tore free, sending blood washing down the man’s face, over his right eye. The man turned toward Karni—not even blinking his eye, despite the blood running into it—and snarled at her, lunging in her direction now. She struck out with the bow, but he snatched it and wrenched hard, twisting her wrist to breaking point; she let it fall.

  He came at her with the viciousness of a hungry wolf.

  The man was twice Karni’s height and as wide around as her arms could spread. She cried out in distress and plunged the blade into his torso out of a sense of self-preservation. The sword pierced his chest, and she felt the blade strike bone and catch. The man growled at her, teeth snapping at the hand that held the sword. Karni yanked back the weapon and swept it at his head again as he came at her once more. This time she hacked at his neck—with the edge rather than the flat of the blade—and almost severed the man’s head with the blow; he toppled sideways, his weight knocking down several others with him.

  Blood spattered across Karni, all over her hands and face and hair. But she had no time for revulsion, so she spat it out and brought the sword about to stave off a pair of young girls in nightdresses climbing over the chariot’s side, hitting one with the hilt, the other with the heel of her palm. The blow jarred her funny bone, and her hand went numb for an instant. She used the other hand with the bow to defend herself as the numb hand fell useless by her side.

  The strangest thing about the mob surrounding them was how silent they were. Not one person was speaking, or shouting, or saying anything coherent. The only noises they made were snarls, growls, and other animal sounds. It was as if they had all lost the power of speech and all other normal human faculties had been replaced with the single-minded need to attack, maim, kill, and destroy.

  “Princess!” Adran shouted. “We must break free of this mob.”

  Karni used the points of the bow to jab another pair of attackers in their faces, shaking her numb hand to try and restore circulation faster. “How do we do that?”

  Adran slashed the point of the lance across several attackers at once. Karni tried not to look at the blood spurting and the ugly gashes caused by the weapon.

  “I will draw them upon myself, while you climb over that wall,” he said, gesturing quickly with the lance before swinging it down forcefully across the neck of another assailant.

  Karni looked in the direction he had indicated; he meant the wall about three yards away. If she climbed onto the edge of the well of the chariot, she could probably climb onto the top of the wall. There were fewer attackers on that side because of the chariot’s proximity to the wall. It was a good plan, except for one thing.

  “What about you?”

  He jabbed the point of the lance into the throat of an attacker. She averted her eyes from the point of impact—it was a young woman in her bridal attire.

  “My Krushan law is to serve and protect you, my princess.”

  Karni felt the tingling pain that indicated her arm was awake again. She hefted the sword, swinging it at an old man struggling to climb over the chariot. The hilt cracked his nose, breaking it, and he toppled backward, disappearing into the mob.

  “I will not leave without you, charioteer. We fight together, we leave together.”

  Adran cursed as three attackers came at him at once. Karni wanted to go to his aid, but there were several on her side as well. Were there more of them coming now than before? It certainly seemed like it. She tried to see beyond the crowd of manic-eyed, frenzied miens lolling up at her from all directions. The entire street appeared to be moving, seething with faces and limbs. Holy Goddess Jeel! How many were there? Was all Hastinaga trying to kill her? What insanity was this?

  “Where is the city guard? The royal guard?” she asked, as she fought off attackers with both the bow and the sword. Her arms were starting to hurt now.

  Adran was sweating profusely and sucking in air in gulps between strikes. “I fear we are on our own, Princess. We must fend for ourselves.”

  But just then, a sound attracted her attention. A sound like the ocean tide.

  Karni looked up at the street ahead, the same crossroads that they had been headed toward an hour—or was it two hours?—ago, and was shocked by what she saw.

  Thousands more people were swarming down the street now. Climbing over walls. Down the side of houses. They were falling over each other, trampling one another, stampeding . . . All rushing toward the chariot.

  Coming to kill Karni.

 
She felt her heart leap in her chest. “Goddess!”

  Adran glanced up, and she saw the look of horror on his face. “Surya!”

  So dense was the crowd that it actually pushed and crushed the people who were already surrounding the chariot, pressing their bodies against the sides of the vehicle. Karni heard the sound of metal and wood cracking and crumpling, saw the sides of the chariot starting to buckle. The weight of thousands of bodies pushed down the street, cracking the bones of the vehicle. She felt the floor heave under her feet, starting to rise and crack. Her tired arms fell by her sides.

  The attackers had mostly stopped now, crushed between the horde flowing down the street and the walls of the chariot. She saw their bodies being pushed so hard, their eyes popped loose of their sockets, their shoulders dislocated, then broke, legs and hips cracked, flesh mashed into bloody pulp like grapes in a press . . .

  But Adran had stopped fighting too.

  He and Karni both looked at each other, and this time he did not suggest she escape.

  There were people coming over the wall as well, literally falling over it in their eagerness to get at the chariot. She could hear the sickening sound their bodies made as they thumped onto those already trapped between the chariot and the wall, bone striking bone, striking flesh, striking skulls. The chariot was crumbling to pieces now, and she felt as if it would collapse upon itself at any moment, smashing her and Adran into the same pulp as those poor unfortunates.