Upon a Burning Throne

by Ashok K. Banker

  Shvate wagged a finger at her. “And if he takes after you, then he will have a sense of humor as well.”

  Later, after the baby was put to bed for the night, Shvate came to her again. She was weary after the long day and night of caring for the little one. Mayla had been with her, but Mayla was more excited and curious than helpful, and Karni had had to do most of the baby tending herself, which was fine. She felt a great sense of pride and satisfaction at being able to claim the gift of her body as her own, legitimately and openly. Nothing will part this one from me.

  “He needs a sibling,” Shvate said.

  Karni frowned. “We asked for a son with all the qualities of an emperor.”

  “Exactly. And while he sits on the throne and governs the empire, he needs someone to watch out for him. Care for his well-being, his security, and protect the empire’s sovereignty as well.”

  “Can’t he do all that?”

  “He can, but it would be so much better if he had a companion.”

  Karni thought for a moment. “You mean, like yourself and Adri? One of you stays back at home to manage the affairs of the empire while the other goes to war and protects the borders and quells uprisings and so on?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. A great king needs a great right hand. Our firstborn will be better able to govern and administer if there is someone who has his back. And in the event of an unfortunate calamity, he also has someone worthy to succeed him.”

  Karni had a number of thoughts and questions about the suitability of Adri as Shvate’s successor, and all those stories of brothers warring against brothers for thrones and property, but she did not voice any of these concerns. Shvate knew all that. None of it invalidated his desire to have another child.

  “Does it have to be a sibling?” she asked. “For instance, Vida has always been loyal to you and Adri, and is an excellent administrative and legislative mind.”

  “Exactly my point,” Shvate replied. “Vida is my brother, after all. Under our law of succession he cannot inherit because his mother was only a maid, and not a wife of a Krushan, but he is still my blood. Our son needs the same reassurance: only blood can protect blood in dire times.”

  I wish I could tell you that our firstborn already has a brother. My own son, my true firstborn, a magnificent young boy born of the god Sharra, your first choice for the summoning. His name is Kern, and he lives in Hastinaga itself. All we have to do is claim him and bring him into the palace to live with us, and he can be the future emperor you desire. Or, if that is not possible, then he can be the right hand of this little one.

  She ached to tell him all, to unburden her heart, to share this deepest, most intimate secret. But she could not. Even if Shvate accepted her earlier lapse as a youthful indiscretion, there were other things she worried about. For one thing, Mayla would lay eyes on the boy and surely see the resemblance to her own dead eldest brother, Maheev, either right away or at some time in the future. Once that happened, Shvate would soon realize that not only had she used the God Mantra and lain with Sharra the sun god, but she had resurrected Mayla’s dead brother as the god’s avatar. It was before she had even met Shvate, so it could not be infidelity, but the fact that she had a son was a big secret to have kept from her husband. She had no way to be sure of how or how intensely Shvate might react if he found out now, and it was too sensitive a revelation for her to simply tell him. Too much was at stake here and now. Our lives and the future of the entire Krushan race and empire.

  Instead she pretended to be thinking deeply about his words and said only, “Yes, this is true. He must have a sibling.”

  Shvate brightened at once. “Then you agree?”

  What choice did she have? “Yes.”

  He jumped up, clapping his hands together. “This time I know the perfect god to summon.”

  Mayla

  Mayla watched Karni go into the clearing alone. When she had passed out of sight, Mayla turned to Shvate. “I should be with her. Just in case.”

  Shvate looked at her with a patient expression. “She will not be harmed. These are gods, not urrkh.”

  “But still. If she needs moral support . . .”

  Shvate shook his head. “Karni is strong. Stronger than both of us combined.”

  Mayla squinted at him, playfully. “Are you saying I’m not strong?”

  Shvate raised his eyebrows. “Mayla, my love, you are capable of besting me in a duel at least two times out of five.”

  “It would have been three, but the ground was muddy, and I slipped.”

  He didn’t argue or press the point. He was carving a length of wood and continued whittling at it.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Carving practice swords for our children.”

  “Isn’t it a bit early? I know that children of the gods are born much sooner than human ones. But even so, it’ll be months yet before they can even stand.”

  Shvate looked at her, then glanced at the cot nearby, in which their little champion lay sleeping peacefully. “Our children will be extraordinary. We must prepare them for extraordinary lives.”

  Mayla was about to say something else when suddenly a wind whipped up out of nowhere. At once, Shvate dropped the wood and the knife and went to the cot, pulling the covering over the top to keep the wind and dust out of his eyes. When he turned around, Mayla was standing with her mouth open, staring in the direction of the clearing.

  Shvate glanced that way and saw the wind churning furiously in the air above the clearing, where only a moment ago all had been still.

  A grinding sound came from above.

  They both looked up at the sky.

  A tornado was descending, a thin, tall wind funnel blurring at tremendous speed, dark as night against the clear, cloudless blue sky.

  There were no tornadoes in this part of the Burnt Empire. This was no natural phenomenon.

  The tornado touched ground precisely in the clearing.

  The wind and sound were both deafening and blinding.

  Shvate pulled at Mayla’s hand. “We have to get under cover!”

  Mayla reluctantly broke away and went with Shvate. She continued looking back as she went, all the way until she reached the safety of the hermitage, where all was quiet and peaceful.

  Karni

  Karni stood calmly in the clearing as the tornado descended. It spun even more furiously the closer it drew to land, the resulting dust and debris threatening to blind her. She had placed the edge of her garment over her face to protect her eyes and other orifices. The material was thin and transparent enough to see through. So it was through a pink veil that she viewed the tornado resolve into a man-shaped being.

  The voice of the being was the voice of the tornado itself, angry and thundering.

  Mortal woman . . . you dared summon me?

  “Lord of Wind and Bird, I am Princess Karni of Hastinaga,” she said calmly. “And indeed it was I who summoned thee, using the mantra gifted to me by the rishi Pasha’ar.”

  He was lean and long-limbed, like an elongated man. He moved with strange, fluid actions and gestures, the outlines of his body and face constantly blurred from incessant motion. Wherever he moved, the funnel of the tornado moved with him. He walked around her, examining her from head to foot as if she were an object on display in a royal viewing gallery. Then again, to the gods perhaps all mortal beings were little more than objects in a divine viewing gallery.

  I sense that you have used this mantra before . . . twice already. To summon Sharra . . . and Shima?

  At the second name, he expressed surprise, even some admiration. She glanced at the pathway, hoping Mayla and Shvate had not heard that first name. She was relieved to see no sign of them: they must have gone back to the hermitage then, as she’d suggested.

  “I have,” she said simply, knowing that the less said, the better. Besides, she hadn’t called on him to banter.

  He continued to move around her in whirling, blurring haze. She stood her g
round calmly, outwardly showing nothing, but inwardly praying she had not pushed her luck. Thrice on a mantra? It was tempting fate, was it not?

  You are bold, Karni of Hastinaga. I do not recall a time when the Mantra of Summoning was used thrice by the same person in such a short interval. And to summon Shima himself? He made a sound that could have been chuckling. It sounded like the tornado was chewing through logs of wood and splintering them to chips. It is unheard of among us higher gods.

  She offered no response. His comment appeared to require none.

  He regarded her for a moment, then abruptly appeared inches in front of her without any transition. Hence the phrase, “moves like the wind,” she thought to herself. He peered at her, and she had a sense of his gaze penetrating through her veil, through her garments, into her skin, her body, her brain, her essence. He was not ogling her; he was examining her very fiber and soul. It was an unsettling sensation, but she held still and stayed calm, or as calm as was possible for a mortal woman while being examined in such depth by a powerful god.

  You are no ordinary woman, Karni of Hastinaga. The tornado buzzed with strange sounds, like voices filtered down through a storm high, high above. She saw a flash of blinding light above and a sound like a deep subterranean reverberation under her feet. Sharra and Shima both concur. I am impressed. Any mortal woman who can summon two of the most powerful gods of all creation is one with an extraordinary destiny.

  “Thank you,” she said, not sure how else one responded to such a compliment.

  Presumably you desire a boon from me. That is customarily the reason for a summoning.

  “I do, my lord.”

  Very well, then, I am intrigued by you. Name your boon. Do you desire indomitable victory in war? The power to destroy all enemies in combat? The strength to lift a hundred Coldstone Mountains at once? Or to crush them below your little toe? What great feat do you aim to accomplish, Karni of Hastinaga?

  “The greatest feat of all, Lord of Wind. I wish to birth a child.”

  Silence, except for the whirring, blurring, grinding of the funnel. Then a strange sharp sound, the wind god’s equivalent of laughter. A jest! You are a bold one. Yes, I suppose that is true. Birthing a child is a feat as miraculous as the workings of any god, yet all mortal women possess this remarkable power. That is why Goddess Jeel often says that females of all species are gods in their own right.

  Karni began to realize that the Lord of Wind was true to his title. She decided to hasten this process along before she found herself standing here in this clearing engaged in banter for the next several thousand years. “My lord, by your grace, I would birth a child worthy of your own powers. As strong as a cyclone, as unstoppable as a tornado, as fierce as a gale, as versatile as wind, as omnipresent and loyal to family as air itself, and yet capable of being as gentle and soothing as a sea breeze when required.”

  You don’t ask for much, do you, Karni of Hastinaga? Again the same grinding laughter. But I would want my child to be worthy of my name. Your boon shall be granted.

  And without further ado, taking her completely by surprise, he took hold of her with both hands and drew her into his stormy embrace, into the whirling dervish of the funnel. Her vision blurred, and she felt her feet leave the ground as she was lifted up, up, high, the ground falling far beneath her as she flew up and the blood rushed from her head leaving her lightheaded and drunk with power.

  Mayla

  Mayla leaped up from the porch as she saw the shadow approaching through the trees. Her first instinct as always was to reach for her sword—that was something that she could no more control than she could control her need to breathe—but she knew at once from the shape of the shadow and the way it moved that it was Karni. She watched with anticipation as her sister wife reached the backyard of the hut, cradling something in her arms.

  Mayla sprang forward. “Karni!”

  She hugged her sister queen warmly, genuinely happy to see her. “You were gone so long, I imagined all kinds of things. But now you’re back.”

  She saw Karni wince. “Are you all right?”

  Karni smiled. “Never better.”

  Mayla looked down at the bundle in Karni’s arms. “You have already delivered Grrud’s child? But you were only gone one night and half a day!”

  “Time moves differently in the Lord of Wind’s realm. Much, much faster. Had he wanted, he could have returned me a year from when I left, or a decade, or even a century or a millennium later. Yet to you here on Arthaloka, it was as if I spent only a night and half a day away.”

  Mayla’s eyes shone as she stared at Karni, trying to see some difference, some sign of overnight aging. She saw nothing that was easily visible, except perhaps that look of strain on Karni’s face. “Are you sure you are well? You seem . . . strained.”

  “I would like to put her down. She is heavy.”

  “Oh. Let me take her,” Mayla said brightly, taking the baby from Karni’s arms.

  “Careful!” Karni warned, still keeping her hands on the bundle.

  Mayla had once been engaged in an argument with her brothers, one of many such arguments that girls and women faced all their lives. This particular argument was about the relative difference in strength between women and men. They had all been lifting wood blocks of increasingly larger sizes and weights to prove their superior strength. Until then, Mayla had succeeded in lifting every block her brothers had lifted. Frustrated, her brothers decided to increase the odds. They had pointed to a wood bole taller and wider than any of them, lying on its side, and demanded that she lift it to prove that women were stronger than men.

  The bole was much too heavy for any of them to lift either, but because she had made the challenge, it was up to her to try first and prove her strength. She knew they would also fail when their turn came, but she wasn’t ready to listen to their whistles and jeers as she struggled with the impossible task. So she came up with an idea.

  The bole was too broad for her to pick up in its current position. To pick it up, she needed to put her arms around it and hug it tightly, so she could use the larger of her muscles—of the legs and back. It would be the same for any of them when they tried to pick it up, she pointed out. She insisted that they help her position it first, so they could all take turns picking it up the right way so as not to injure themselves.

  They agreed, grumbling a bit, and she supervised the eight of them as they took hold of parts of the bole and raised it to a standing position.

  “There,” Mayla said, clapping loudly. “I did it.”

  How could she say that? they had exclaimed. She hadn’t even touched the bole yet!

  “Exactly,” she said, “I manipulated all you boys into picking it up for me, proving that women are stronger than men—not always in body, but definitely in mind!”

  Mayla was reminded of that incident now because the instant she tried to pick up Karni’s second child, she felt as if she had finally picked up that tree bole. She was the heaviest thing Mayla had ever lifted in her life!

  She exclaimed and would have dropped her had Karni not still been keeping her hands on the bottom of the bundle. As it was, she gasped and bent over double from the weight, forced to use the benefit of her years of fighting and training to even keep her balance. Somehow she was able to stay on her feet and not fall over, but it took every bit of her strength.

  “Let me,” Karni said, and took the child back, lifting her with a single grimace.

  Mayla stared at her. “How? I mean . . . she must weigh . . . well, a lot! How can you just lift her up like that? She’s the heaviest child ever born. She must be!”

  Karni smiled at Mayla. “I am her mother. I birthed her. I can carry her.”

  Shvate had heard their voices and emerged from the hut, holding their firstborn in his arms. His face lit up at the sight of Karni—and at her little burden.

  “Happy day!” he said.

  Karni showed him her bundle. “Our second born.”

  He k
issed the baby, and then the mother. “I am a proud father and a proud Krushan.”

  “I am a tired mother and tired Krushan,” she replied. “But happy as well as proud.”

  Mayla wagged a finger at Shvate. “Don’t try to pick her up. She’s too heavy! Karni seems to possess some kind of new maternal powers—otherwise it’s impossible!”

  Shvate looked at Karni, who smiled tiredly. “What she said is true. Let me go put her down for a minute.”

  They all went into the hut together. Karni placed the baby with an effort on the cot. Shvate placed the elder child down beside his sibling. Both of them stirred a little, then went back to sleep.

  Mayla slipped an arm around Karni as they went outside again. “What was it like? Tell me everything.”

  Karni looked back at her with her typical enigmatic smile. Mayla could tell from that smile alone that Karni wasn’t going to tell her anything. It was so unfair. She wanted to know so much.

  Shvate was staring at the sky. He had a certain look on his face, that look he got when he had been thinking about something important and had come to a conclusion.

  Mayla looked at Karni and found Karni looking back at her. Both of them arched their eyebrows in sisterly empathy. They knew what he was going to say next.

  “Karni . . .” he began slowly.

  Karni sighed. “No,” she said.

  He looked at her. “But I haven’t said anything.”

  “I know what you’re going to say.”

  “How can you know what I’m going to say before I say it?”

  “Because I’m your wife. I know you.”

  “At least let me say it before you answer.”

  “You already have my answer. No.”

  Mayla tugged at Karni’s elbow. “Sister.”

  Karni glanced at her, brow puckered. “No.”

  “What?” Mayla replied, indignant. “Don’t say you know what I’m about to say too! You’re not my wife!”