Queen of Slaves (The Powers of Amur Book 4)

by J. S. Bangs

  “Apurta succeeded,” Vapathi whispered. “After you devoured the first line, the second line turned against the Emperor.”

  A weak smile appeared on Kirshta’s face. “I was sure he would.”

  “Mouth of the Devourer,” Sadma said. “Should we pursue them? Can we?”

  “Pursue,” Kirshta said. He waved toward the Emperor’s banners. “Give the people a taste of battle.”

  “But the black pool. Can we cross it?”

  Kirshta looked to the west and saw, for the first time, the long hissing pool of black bile that he had created. He laughed quietly.

  “It stinks, no?”

  “Mouth of the Devourer, I’m afraid it does more than that,” Sadma said. “It eats the ground. It’ll eat our feet.”

  Kirshta shook his head. “She Who Devours rests. Now it’s little more than bilge-water.”

  The Red Men grimaced but nodded. “We follow.” He glanced at the peasants to their north and south. “At least we have shoes.”

  They advanced, leaving Vapathi and Kirshta sitting together alone. No one questioned whether the two of them would be safe. The sounds of shouting and battle barely reached them. Kirshta’s men splashed through the stinking mud toward their rear, and seeing them advance some parts of the peasant line—the Devoured, most likely—advanced after them, hollering with newfound bravery.

  Kirshta crawled a few feet away from the black pool which had been the Emperor’s Red Men. He collapsed into the dry grass and looked up at the sky.

  “You should go,” he said.

  “Go where?” Vapathi asked. “My place is here with you.”

  Kirshta shook his head and smiled. “Go find Apurta. I’ll be fine.”

  A flutter of nervous hope stirred in her breast. “Yes,” she said. “You’re right. I’ll find him.”

  She rose and looked to the west. There was some kind of battle still going on, but it seemed to have turned mostly into a rout. Most of the black liquid had sunk into the parched earth, leaving only a foul-smelling mud.

  She walked toward the Red Men. Her walk turned to a run. The mud slipped beneath her feet. Then her feet found the dry ground on the far side of the pool, the backs of the Red Men only a hundred yards away from her.

  “Apurta,” she cried. “Apurta!”

  Then she was in the midst of the Red Men, muscled and armored men all around her, spears shining above her head. The Red Men stared at her as she scrambled among them.

  “Apurta!” she cried. “Friend of the Mouth of the Devourer. Where is he?”

  “You,” one of the Emperor’s Red Men said. “You are the sister, yes?”

  “I am,” Vapathi answered. “Where is Apurta?”

  Her shouts mingled with the muttering of the Red Men. There was no battle here—it seemed the lines of battle had receded and the Red Men had stopped following. Apurta’s name muttered through the crowds. Vapathi pushed forward.

  With a stumble she came out onto the other side of the line. The standards of the Emperor had been abandoned, lying trampled in the dust of the unplanted fields, while the last of the Emperor’s Red Men retreated at a full run.

  “Where is Apurta?” Vapathi cried.

  A movement stirred the misshapen line of the Red Men. A corporal in a red kurta, now browned with dust, pushed his way through the crowd and emerged next to Vapathi.

  “You’re the woman,” the corporal said, pointing at her. “Apurta told us to expect you.”

  “You met him?” she asked. “Where is he?”

  The corporal nodded. “He was with us, but they caught him in the end.”

  “They caught him?” The flower of her hope began to fade. “What happened?”

  “Last I saw him, he was alive.” The corporal pointed to the west, to the retreating Emperor and the walls of Majasravi beyond. “But the Emperor has him.”

  Daladham

  The heart of the Majavaru Lurchatiya was even more grand than Daladham had anticipated.

  The sanctum of Lord Am in the central temple of the Majavaru Lurchatiya was forbidden to all but the Amya dhorsha. Teguri invited Daladham to join the priests of the temple for the invocation of Lord Am, but to fulfill that duty he was required to fast three days beforehand and wash himself in the temple pools, saying the prayers of purification eleven times. Such a heavy yoke of purity hadn’t been laid on him since he was first inducted into the Amya some thirty years before.

  He judged it was worth it. The day the Emperor marched out of Majasravi with all the forces of the Red Men, Daladham stood with the rest of the dhorsha at the gates and sprinkled them with blessed water and a tincture of ram’s blood, chanting for the victory of Am, with all the crowds of Majasravi around them shouting and cheering. For the first time since he had met the Mouth of the Devourer in Tulakhanda he felt like victory was sure.

  “Four days,” Teguri told the dhorsha of the Majavaru Lurchatiya when the Emperor’s procession was done. “Sadja-daridarya, whose name we say with fear and trembling, has told me that he hopes to join the Mouth of the Devourer in battle in four days. At dawn on the fourth day we begin the Imperial Litany of the Great Lord Am. Purify yourselves and be ready.”

  At the first sliver of dawn on the fourth day they began. Daladham was ready.

  They purified the temple with an exactness that Daladham had never seen before. Daladham was one of two dozen that carried silver pitchers filled with sanctified water, sprinkling every pillar and every stone underfoot. Elders with incense burners followed them, filling the air of the temple with clouds of sweet-smelling smoke. The sunrise shot yellow shafts of light through the heavy billows of incense.

  They sacrificed the first ram an hour after sunrise. Daladham was not there for it—the dhorsha were divided into eleven ranks, and each of them sanctified one ram and took turns circling the sanctum with prayers. While the inner sanctum ran with blood the outer parts of the temple resounded with the litany for the victory of Am.

  Daladham was assigned to the sixth rank, which meant that he spent six hours walking a circuit around the temple, chanting the words of the litany until the drone entered into his blood. His heart beat in time with the chant, and his lips formed the words without any help from his mind. Hours slipped by like water. The ram which his group had sanctified waited with the others on the front porch, eerily quiet.

  The sun rose in the sky. The stones of the temple porch grew scorching hot. Sweat broke out on Daladham’s forehead. The chants went on.

  Noon. The sun was high overhead. The leader of their company stopped at the front entrance of the temple. He lay his hand on the ram’s head and waved a hand censer three times over it. The censer passed through the ranks, and each of the dhorsha united their dhaur with the ram. It came to Daladham. He whispered the words of dhaur, put his hand on the ram’s head, and blessed it with incense. Then he turned toward the temple.

  It was time.

  They passed between the carved pillars toward the inner sanctum. A curtain cut off the view of the altar itself from the outside, and Daladham caught only glimpses of the altar and the great image of Am inside. He passed through the curtain. His hair stood on end. He nearly fell to his knees.

  Lord Am is in this place.

  The Amajati was here, the famed image of Am whose theft had provoked the destruction of Rajunda. It was not a great image of hammered gold and ruby eyes, as Daladham had served in Tulakhanda, but a black stone pillar with its carved hands and face nearly worn away by the centuries. Its surface was glossy with the smoke of uncountable sacrifices. But it sang.

  Daladham knew no other way to describe it. The dhorsha chanted as they came in, continuing the litany they had sung for so many hours, and with their words the image hummed, adding a drone as deep and strong as the mountains to their song. The air crackled with power. Daladham’s mind burned with images of spears and helmets, burning blades of bronze, arms sculpted with muscle and lithe with power, legs eager to run, a face burning with lust and anger.


  Lord Am is in this place.

  The ram skipped as it walked through the curtain. The humming of the Amajati rose, became almost a squeal. The animal kicked, bowed its head to Lord Am, showing its horns to the image, and stepped forward to the altar. No one broke their chants, but Daladham could see his own amazement mirrored on the faces of the other dhorsha around them.

  A brazier as wide as two men’s arms burned before the Amajati, and in front of the brazier rose the wide stone table of the altar. It was already wet with blood, the remnants of the previous sacrifices dripping from its corners into golden vessels. Two of the dhorsha stepped forward and bound the ram’s legs together, then they all put their hands on its wool and lifted it onto the stone table. They stepped back and formed a half-circle around the stone table.

  Daladham was dizzy. Five decades he had served Lord Am, and never once had he felt this Power. His breath was heavy. How could he not have known? All at once his lechery and greed, the laziness and indifference with which he had served the Lord in Tulakhanda appeared to him repulsive and contemptible. He had served the Powers, but he had never known them. The name of the Lord of the Powers had been on his lips, but he had never known who he was.

  Lord Am. He trembled.

  The chief dhorsha sprinkled the ram with purified water, then stepped back and presented the ritual knife to the leader of Daladham’s company. The man kissed the handle and passed it along the circle of dhorsha. A bolt of power passed through Daladham when he touched the hilt, and with it an image of bronze helmets and spears glowing with a fierce red light, the blessing of Am made manifest.

  The Lord of the Powers, who makes Ashti his consort and Jakhur his scribe. Their victory over the Mouth of the Devourer was assured. He had never felt more sure.

  When each of the dhorsha had kissed the bronze blade it returned to the leader of their company. He stepped forward, pressed the knife to the ram’s neck, and cut.

  And then everything went wrong.

  Daladham felt it before he saw it: a black hunger in the midst of the glory of Am. A stain on the brilliance of the Lord. He felt it as a pain in his gut, darkness and confusion spreading where a moment before had been the certainty of burnished bronze. He stumbled over the words of the chant.

  The dhorsha at the altar gasped. The blood of the ram ran black.

  Cries of dismay sounded around the gathered priests. The chant stumbled. The humming of the Amajati stopped and was replaced with a sickening whine, the gurgle of a choking throat.

  Black blood poured out of the ram and dripped into the golden vessels. It hissed as it touched the sacred blood inside. A foul-smelling steam choked out the smell of incense.

  “Don’t stop,” the chief dhorsha said, his voice on the edge of panic. “Continue the litany! Am will defeat the wicked Power of the Mouth of the Devourer!”

  His hands trembling, the dhorsha at the altar finished cutting the ram’s neck, then sliced down the ram’s breast and split its belly. A splatter of the black blood hit his hand, and he cried out in pain. The knife dropped onto the altar with a clatter. The priest’s hand blistered and bled where the oily refuse touched it.

  “Destroy it!” Daladham cried out. He stepped forward and seized the dead ram by its horns, careful not to touch the rotten-smelling blood that covered the stone table. “Put it into the fire! The blood is evil. We have to burn it.”

  The dhorsha at the altar backed slowly away, whimpering in agony as the unclean blood ate away at the flesh of his hand. The bronze knife melted atop the altar.

  One of the other dhorsha from Daladham’s group stepped forward and grabbed the ram’s rear leg. He nodded at Daladham. They heaved the body off the altar and onto the coals of the brazier.

  The blood hissed and bubbled as it met the heat of the coals. For a moment Daladham was afraid that the black liquid would put out the fire, but a few of the other dhorsha appeared and stacked dry wood around the carcass. A moment later the flames licked up around the dead body and began to burn off the corrupted flesh.

  The burning ram gave off an evil-smelling smoke that overwhelmed the perfume of incense. Black billows rose toward the crown of the temple, obscuring the Amajati, blackening the images of the Powers sculpted overhead. The dhorsha watched, hands over their noses, until the ram was consumed.

  The chant had ceased. Every notion of Am’s presence had fled. The dhorsha watched in horrified silence.

  “Bring purified water,” the chief dhorsha said at last. “The altar must be washed and purified again. New vessels as well. That blood—or whatever it is—burn it on the midden fire.”

  He shot Daladham and the other dhorsha a fierce glance of warning. “And say nothing of this to the others. The rest of the sacrifices will go as planned. The Mouth of the Devourer has not seen the end of Lord Am.”

  Daladham felt numb. His hands and feet tingled as if the blood had left them, and the stones of the temple seemed to slip under his feet. Jairatu, he thought. Consumed the same way. The same black bile, the same rotten smell.

  We have lost. Am is broken.

  The other dhorsha jostled him, and he moved with them to gather water from the temple pools, bless it with the blood of the rams, the rams who hadn’t bled evil-smelling pitch, and wash away the vile liquid from the surface of the altar. He moved like a man who had just awoken from a deep sleep, seeing but not comprehending, not saying a word. The stone face of the altar was pitted and scarred. The golden receptacles of sacrificial blood were blackened. The chief dhorsha and the others within his company whispered orders.

  Am is broken.

  He was glad his nephew had not lived to see this. Jairatu would have chastised Daladham for fear and faithlessness, would have demanded that Daladham renew his fear before the great Power. And had he not known the presence of Lord Am before the Amajati? But even in the presence of the Lord, She Who Devours made herself known.

  They were all doomed.

  When they finally finished with the altar, Daladham did not rejoin the dhorsha walking circles around the sanctum. He fled to the walls of the temple instead. He mounted the steps of the parapet, looked down at the friezes along the outer wall. The shapes of gods and men, hundreds of years old, carved into stone to take their work into eternity. The Mouth of the Devourer would destroy them all.

  He walked to the east gate of the temple along the parapet. There he collapsed against the stone and closed his eyes. He shivered. His legs were tired, his bones aching with the hours of walking and chanting. But there would be no sleep today. The heat of noon beat down on his head and baked the stones of the temple. Time crawled.

  He looked back once toward the central temple of Lord Am, saw the smoke of the sacrifices rising again, and heard very faintly the chanting of the dhorsha. The smoke was greyish white, the color of natural fire, not the noxious black vapor of the burning ram. The chants were calm and confident. He turned away, his heart beating with fear and terror, and went back to watching the city to the east.

  He was the first to see the commotion.

  There was movement at the east gate of Majasravi. The banners of the Emperor which hung beside the gate fluttered in the hot breeze, and a red-striped mass began to pour past the stone walls of the Majasravi into the city. Daladham stood.

  The street from the Majavaru Lurchatiya to the east gate was a straight, broad thoroughfare, choked normally with pilgrims and peddlers. The Red Men marched down it with the speed and sureness of a spear, pushing aside all normal traffic. But their gait was frantic, their lines disordered. They were running.

  Am is broken. The fear strengthened in Daladham.

  A flourish of sound at the east gate itself and a splash of green within the red-striped lines of the imperial guard. The Emperor had entered the city. But this was not a triumphant entrance or a march of victory. It was a retreat.

  He ran down the steps and through the east gate of the temple, past the beggars that huddled under the arch, toward the ancient banyan tre
es that guarded the entrance. The thoroughfare passed the Majavaru Lurchatiya here, and the uneven lines of the Red Men hurried past toward the Dhigvaditya.

  “What happened?” he cried.

  None of the Red Men answered. The sides of the street were crowded with people watching the Red Men enter, their faces showing various mixtures of fear and betrayal. The nearest was a woman in a turquoise sari, clutching a basket of withered ginger. He shook her shoulder. “Do you know? What happened?”

  She looked at him with alarm and shook her head. He went to the next person down the line, an old man chewing betel leaf and leaning on a mahogany cane. And on. No one could say what had happened, but they all watched the Red Men march into the city with fear in their eyes.

  He gave up. The sun was two hands above the horizon in the east, and dark would fall before the rumor successfully got into the city. Teguri’s house was not far north of here. He had to find Amabhu and Caupana.

  He left the thoroughfare and ran north. A crowd had formed alongside the imperial guards’ march, and Daladham ran against their movement. Houses and onlookers flew past him.

  Here: a yellow-painted brick home, two stories tall, with a sextet of palms in the inner courtyard peeking their heads over the roof. A ram’s head was painted in red over the top of the main entrance, marking the house as one of the Amya dhorsha’s. The two thikratta would still be inside, and Teguri’s doorman should recognize him. He pounded on the wood of the outer door.

  It swung open. Amabhu and Caupana stood there, carrying their handful of belongings.

  “You—” he began, panting.

  “We’re going,” Amabhu said. “Yes, we found out.”

  “To the Ushpanditya, if they’ll let us,” Daladham said. “The Mouth of the Devourer is coming.”

  Amabhu put a hand on Daladham’s shoulder. “We know.” He nodded toward Caupana.

  It wasn’t far from the Majavaru Lurchatiya to the Rice Gate of the Ushpanditya, and the road was nearly deserted, as all of the crowds were diverted farther to the south watching the Red Men go through the Bronze Gate. At the Rice Gate they were stopped by the imperial guard, visibly nervous and agitated, but they validated Daladham’s token and let them ascend the stairs to the entrance of the Ushpanditya.