Upon a Burning Throne

by Ashok K. Banker

  She felt the urge to slap him again and closed her eyes, willing the urge to pass. When she felt it was safe, she opened her eyes again. “That is not a solution. You heard Mayla’s response to your suggestion. She was willing to kill herself rather than let another man touch her. Does that work for you? What if we all three hold hands and jump together? End it all together? Will that resolve the problem of progeny?”

  He shook his head and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. His voice was hollow. “No. Of course not. But what else can I do? As you say, I have reached my wits’ end, Karni. If you have a suggestion, then say it. All I know is that we must do something! I feel responsible for my family’s future. It has been a whole year since we came into exile. There has been no child born to Adri and Geldry either in this time.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Mayla asked.

  Karni nodded. “Yes, how can you be so sure? We have had no word from Hastinaga in the past year.”

  “Exactly.” Shvate sat up, looking more animated. “Had they borne a child, word would have traveled to us. News of an heir to the Burnt Empire will spread like wildfire. The acolytes in the hermitage are constantly traveling to other ashrams. Mages from far and wide come and visit occasionally. If they do not find out, then surely Mother Jilana would send word. The only reason we have not heard from Hastinaga is because there has been no news yet. And if Adri and Geldry haven’t given the House an heir, then who else will? Everyone was counting on us. By now, we would surely have produced at least one heir, if not more.”

  Karni shook her head. “I don’t know, husband. It isn’t that simple. We have been in exile for a year, unable to have intimate relations because of the curse, but we have been married for much longer. You and I for several years, and you and Mayla for some years too. If our wombs have not quickened yet, it could mean that we might not have had a child this year as well. You can’t assume that this would have been the year we produced heirs!”

  “It would have been. I am sure of it.” Shvate took some water from the clay pot and splashed it on his face. “The past several years, we have been campaigning, at war, constantly traveling, on the move, fighting . . .”

  “None of that affected our ability to mate,” Mayla said softly. She had moved closer to them both, sitting within arm’s reach now. She gave Karni a sisterly look of support. “If anything, we were more amorous in camp than we were back home in our bedchamber.”

  “Mayla’s right,” Karni said. “You can’t just assume that this past year was the crucial one. It takes time. In the legend of the exiled prince, King Ratha and his three wives didn’t produce any heirs for several years. Finally he had to call Mage Yaranga, who presided over a special sacrificial ceremony, after which he gave the eldest queen—”

  “A sacrament to eat, and she shared it with her sister queens, because of which they all conceived. Yes, I know the story of the epic, Karni,” Shvate said. “But you do know that most scholars today regard the sacrament as being apocryphal.”

  “Meaning . . . the sacrament wasn’t real?” Mayla asked, sounding shocked.

  “Yes, Mayla,” Karni said. “It’s symbolic.”

  Mayla looked confused. “Symbolic . . . for what?”

  “Mage Yaranga was called in by King Ratha for the same reason that Seer-Mage Vessa was called in by Mother Jilana.”

  Mayla blinked several times, processing this information. “You mean . . . ?”

  “The time-honored practice of calling in a learned priest to act as surrogate father,” Karni said.

  Mayla looked at her, then made a face. “Ew! Disgusting. I’ll slap any priest who enters my bedchamber!”

  Karni laughed. She couldn’t help herself. The thought of Mayla dropkicking an old venerated priest as he entered her bedchamber was so vivid, so real, that it hit her in the gut. She laughed out loud.

  Shvate stared at her uncomprehendingly, then grinned, then laughed as well. The sound of his own laughter seemed to surprise him. He stopped, but then saw Karni continuing to laugh and laughed some more.

  Mayla stared at them both as if they had gone completely crazy, then played back her own words in her mind and understood what they were laughing at. She joined in, laughing with her own rhythm.

  For the next few minutes, all three of them laughed and laughed, while the squirrels and deer nearby listened with twitching ears at the strange sound.

  3

  Later that evening, after bathing in the river, performing their evening rituals, eating a sparse evening meal of fruits and some nuts, they sat by the riverbank to talk again.

  “Now,” Karni said, “we’re refreshed, calmer, more relaxed. Let us talk this over without any more threats or dramatic outbursts.”

  Shvate and Mayla both nodded. It was a peaceful quiet evening. They were sitting on a part of the riverbank away from the waterfall, whose sound was too loud to talk over. It grew louder if one stood, but when seated on the rocks as they were, it was muted to a dull, steady roar. Dusk had settled on the jungle, and the darkling sky was dotted with silhouettes of the last birds seeking their mates and flocks in the high trees. It was very restful here, the air moist with the spray of the river, the evening breeze cool and refreshing. Farther downriver, in the rocky shallows downwind of the humans, a mother bear and her two cubs splashed around noisily, trying to catch fish. By now, they were accustomed to seeing Shvate, Mayla, and Karni about, and because the humans stayed far from the cubs and never made any threatening gestures or sounds, the mother bear had never bothered them.

  “Mayla and I have spoken about it in private,” Karni went on. “Neither of us are willing to accept a priest as a surrogate. Our decision is final.”

  Shvate looked out at the far bank across the river. The trees there were still lit by the deep afterglow of the sun’s last light. “Then what are we to do?”

  “Must we do anything at all?” Karni asked quietly.

  Shvate looked up at her. “It is our Krushan law.”

  She wanted to argue the point, but decided to let it go. If Shvate considered it his Krushan law—or their Krushan law—then so it was. Shima was what one believed was one’s Krushan law. If you did not consider a particular task your responsibility, nothing could force you to do it. Only slavery compelled anyone to act against their will. And even with the typical imbalance between men and women in society, Krushan women were not slaves to their men. But if their husband believed they had a duty to their House to procreate for the sake of continuance, then that made it so. There was no point bickering over semantics and personal differences.

  “Very well,” she said. “Then there may be a solution.”

  Shvate frowned. She could see his forehead creasing even in the gloaming light. He had once possessed a fine head of hair, bushy and leonine, but the years of warring and traveling had taken their toll, and in the past year itself, he had lost much of his mane, while more and more of his forehead revealed itself. He was aging before his time. She could see that this existence would not sustain him for long. He was no longer the fine specimen of manhood she had married only a few short years ago; indeed he was naught but a shadow of the great conqueror who had fought so splendidly at the Battle of the Rebels and the Battle of Reygar, and achieved so many other historic victories.

  The curse and the year of exile had emasculated him, the inactivity and lack of command structure had robbed him of motivation. She wondered how long he could survive this way, compared to his expected life span had their life at Hastinaga not been so cruelly interrupted. She pushed the thought aside. They had a very big decision to consider now, and she was the only one who possessed the solution to the problem at hand.

  Are you sure you want to do this, Karni? she asked herself one last time. You know what it did to you the first time, the toll it took on you. Are you absolutely certain you’re willing to go through that again?

  And the answer came, as it had before: What choice do I have? I am a woman whose husband tried
to kill himself because of this conundrum. If I don’t do something to solve the problem, what good am I as his wife?

  Also, the afterthought, faint but persistent: What if this was the reason Pasha’ar gave me the mantra in the first place? What if he knew, with the prescience of wise sages, that this day would come someday, and the mantra would be my only means of salvation? What if that was why he came to Stonecastle, why he spent that long, endless summer, why he put me through such hell? What if he was training and preparing me for this life, this moment, this decision?

  Karni did not believe that everything in life was a foregone conclusion, that everything we said and did was decided by karma. Karma could only determine our future lives in the broadest possible shape. It was up to each of us individually to determine how to live those future lives on a day-to-day basis, the thousands of little acts performed, kind or cruel, gentle or violent, caring or uncaring. Karma could cause us to be reborn as that mother bear in the river a few hundred yards downstream, but whether Mother Bear chose to attack humans for no reason and kill them or simply to fish in the river with her cubs, then go back into the jungle to sleep, was up to her. Karma could put you down in a certain body, a life, a place and time. It didn’t give you an exact script of everything you did and said in that body, that lifetime, that place and time.

  “What solution?” Shvate asked.

  Mayla looked at her curiously too. Karni had not told her sister wife of this part; she had known that Mayla could not keep a secret for more than a moment or two—especially not from Shvate—and she wanted to be the one to tell them both, to control how the information was revealed, and what part of it remained unshared.

  Karni took a deep breath.

  “Many years ago,” she began, “a sage named Pasha’ar came to my father’s palace in Stonecastle while I was still a young girl . . .”

  It was dark when she finished. Mayla had taken a moment to light a small fire using a piece of banked charcoal. The fire was in a circle of rocks; it gave off enough heat to keep them warm despite the falling temperature, and provided enough light to see each other by. Karni saw both Mayla’s and Shvate’s faces change as she narrated the story of her time serving Pasha’ar while artfully editing out all mention of the boy with whom she’d had a relationship and the events of his death. She did not even mention her trip to Dirda, knowing that it would elicit a flurry of questions from the eternally curious Mayla, who might well put two and two together and link her visit there with the death of her elder brother in the chariot race around the same time.

  Close as she was to Mayla, she had chosen to keep the God Mantra a secret all this while only because of her earlier encounter with the sun god in his avatar as Maheev. She could hardly expect Mayla to understand that she, Karni, had lain with her dead brother and borne an illegitimate child from that union. There was also the issue of the illicit child having a claim to the thrones of all three kingdoms! Even now, as she explained her grueling months of service to the visiting Guru, she found herself glossing over any mention of her former suitor Maheev entirely. When she came to the part where Pasha’ar was leaving and gave her the mantra as a “gift,” Karni explained what it would do when recited. Both reacted. Shvate’s eyes widened, and he rose to his feet. Mayla exclaimed, and her eyes glinted, twinkling in the firelight.

  “How do you know the mantra works?” Mayla asked breathlessly. “It sounds so far-fetched! Imagine it. The power to summon gods!”

  “It works,” Karni said simply, careful not to elaborate.

  Shvate came over to sit beside her, looking at her as if she had just revealed the secret to life itself. “Karni, Karni, my Karni,” he said.

  “Yes, Shvate?” she replied.

  “Why didn’t you tell me of this earlier?”

  “I had all but forgotten about it myself,” she said. “As Mayla said, it seemed so far-fetched at the time, I scarcely believed it. I was just relieved to be free of his service. I resumed my normal everyday life, and soon I forgot about it entirely.”

  “You forgot the mantra?” Shvate asked, shocked.

  “No, not the mantra itself. I forgot about it.”

  Mayla was still staring at her, the wheels of her mind spinning like racing chariot wheels. “If I was given a mantra with the power to summon gods, I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from trying it out! I would have done it right away. I couldn’t have waited.”

  Shvate ignored Mayla. His attention was focused entirely on Karni. “My love, this is the answer to all our prayers.”

  “What were we praying for?” Karni asked.

  “Progeny!” Shvate said, then realized that Karni was teasing him. “Seriously, Karni, imagine the progeny of the gods! We would birth the greatest Krushan king ever born!”

  “Or queen,” Karni replied.

  “Of course,” Shvate admitted. “The sex of the child is less important than her or his capabilities. I always dreamed that you and I, and Mayla and I, would produce beautiful, strong children, each capable of ruling the Burnt Empire.”

  “I did too,” Karni admitted, this time quite serious. She felt a tinge of sadness at the realization that such an event would never come to pass. How ironic. How sad.

  “I would have used it that very night,” Mayla said, pacing up and down now, excited by the fire that Karni’s story had lit in her imagination. “Maybe more than once!”

  “But since we are prohibited to procreate together by the curse, this mantra could still ensure the survival of the Krushan race.” Shvate’s eyes reflected the firelight, twinkling and dancing with more enthusiasm than Karni had seen in the past year. Even his colorless face displayed two spots of mottled heat on his cheekbones, something she hadn’t seen since his drinking days. “Think of it, Karni! We could summon the greatest of gods, fathering the most powerful demigod children upon you and Mayla! Our children would rule Hastinaga with power and glory. Hastinaga would be unbeatable among all kingdoms, all nations, throughout the world. No one would dare challenge our authority. Even Jarsun himself would tremble when he heard that demigods sat upon the Burning Throne!”

  “One moment,” Karni said, frowning. “Children, plural? Demigods? Won’t one heir be sufficient?”

  “Of course, of course,” Shvate said. “One demigod would be equivalent to a hundred strong sons. A thousand!”

  They talked late into the night, with Karni increasingly wondering if she ought to have brought up the matter in the first place, but it was too late to unspeak what she had already spoken.

  Vida

  Kune moved through the Council chamber of Hastinaga like a leopard through a herd of bison.

  Conversations ended when he approached, resumed when he went by. Smiles faded, frowns deepened, anxiety levels rose, pulses skipped beats. A minor secretarial aide who was known for his gossipmongering and who had been sharing several choice anecdotes about the Geldran prince, abruptly turned pale and skittered out through a side entrance as quickly as his sandaled feet would carry him. Several councilwomen of varying ages, some married, others currently single, watched him slide through the crowd with guarded interest. The brother-in-law of Prince Adri had gained quite a reputation for his cocksmanship in the bedchamber, and some of them were curious as to whether this was gossip or based on some semblance of truth; several men looked at him with as much interest, wondering the same thing, and whether his tastes in the bedroom also included other cocksmen.

  Within moments of his entrance, the Council chamber was aflutter.

  The brother-in-law to the crown prince was an important and mysterious figure, much talked about, rarely seen. His exploits in the Northwest had preceded him. He had a reputation for several things, none of them pleasant, yet his rakish good looks belied his notoriety. In person, he looked young, devilishly handsome, with finely sculpted features and a strong perfectly balanced physique. There was a look of god to him, resembling the statuary of the Northwestern cities. His looks alone set off a round of speculat
ion about his likely ancestral influences.

  Vida watched Kune work his way through the crowd, meeting new people for the first time, greeting those with whom he had corresponded before but was now meeting in the flesh, reestablishing old connections he had built through mutual acquaintances. He was masterful to watch, a perfect specimen of charm and wit, always saying just the right things to each person, making lasting impressions and clarifying his positions in a few well-chosen words, leaving no one in doubt about his ambitions or his intentions. He was here to stay, and Hastinaga was his permanent hunting ground from now on: hear him roar.

  Shvate and Adri’s half brother, Vida, happened to be close enough to hear one such conversation, about an upcoming vote regarding an administrative matter concerning land taxes and other dry stuff—details of economics and policy that most men of action would yawn and turn away from . . . the kind that Vida was sure Vrath only pretended to listen to even on his best days. Kune, however, listened with great interest, his handsome features and piercing eyes focused intently on the speaker, an elderly councilman who was rumored to own the most mineral-rich mountain ranges in the empire, filled with enough gold and other precious metals to keep his descendants immensely rich for several lifetimes. Though the speculations about the size of his fortune were fascinating to many, the man possessed a dreadfully boring personality, yet Kune heard him out to the very end of his tedious argument, added a few choice words of approval, then surprised both the councilman—as well as Vida, who was eavesdropping discreetly—by decisively refusing to support the councilman’s tax proposal. With a flawlessly polite apology for his contrary position, smiling handsomely all the while, Kune then took his leave of the stunned councilman and moved on.

  Soon after, Vida felt a presence by his side and glanced over to see Kune standing next to him, displaying a perfect set of gleaming white teeth and a smile that could not have looked more charming on a portrait of Kr’ush himself.