The Stone in the Skull

by Elizabeth Bear

Nizhvashiti’s head cocked to one side, the skeletal face scrunched in thought. “Aren’t you full of surprises?” Nizhvashiti said, pleasantly. “You don’t think it’s that bauble that came with the poem?”

  Ata Akhimah shook out a sigh. “That’s a stone all right, but it doesn’t fit the description. That’s another thing the Eyeless One could have been more clear about. Why send along an object—a tool?—with no instructions? She always was of the opinion that people should be able to figure out more for themselves than I ever found reasonable.”

  “Beg pardon?” Mrithuri asked. “Back up. What’s a Carbuncle?”

  Ata Akhimah’s head jerked up and down with delight, like a woman in the exuberant first flush of her blossoming. “The Carbuncle. A stone of great power and reputedly poisonous emanations. Said to have been brought to Old Erem by the Dragons of Erem, owned at one point by Sepehr the Carrion King—who used it to get a son on his wife Ysbal, it is recorded, after she was dead—and upon his downfall and overthrow by the Mother Dragon, returned with her to the Singing Towers, where it vanished quietly from history.”

  Mrithuri swallowed with wonder.

  The Dead Man shifted beside her. Much more practically, he said, “Do you think it’s still there?”

  “It doesn’t matter if it is,” Mrithuri said, almost sadly. She remembered this all from her geography lessons, which had been heavy on politics and tactics, suitable for a princess, but which had nonetheless fascinated her. “The Singing Towers are in far-off Song, east of the Steles of the Sky. And they lie in ruins now. And even if they did not, they were inhabited by dragons for millennia. They are thick with the dragon-poison, and no one could walk there and return. They say strange noises spiral from the ruined towers, and they say also, stranger lights.…”

  She trailed off, aware that everyone was looking at her. Her voice had taken on a singsong quality, and Ata Akhimah was smirking with one corner of her mouth. She recollected that she was a rajni before she accidentally apologized, and drew herself up. “I am not uneducated.”

  “No,” said the Gage. “You are most evidently not uneducated.”

  The stark brass sphere of a face and rumbling tone made it impossible to know if the Gage’s tone was arch, or admiring. Mrithuri saw her own face reflected in it and looked away.

  Ata Akhimah replaced the limp leather wallet, and dug in her capacious pocket again. She came up with a book this time, a small scroll in an ivory case with an ivory wand. She must have left it scrolled to where she wanted it, because she came forward and set it on the railing, pulling it open just about the span of her hand. The characters that marked it swam before Mrithuri’s eyes, seeming to twist into the fathomless words that adorned the backs of her serpents, but she knew they were just Song syllables marching in orderly rows down the page.

  The Wizard rested her book on the balcony but angled it up, stretched between her hands as she peered at it. “Somebody—ah.”

  This as the Dead Man discerned the cause of her distress, leaned over neatly, and plucked her half-glasses from her pocket. He slipped the spectacles over her nose and she smiled up at him. “Thank you.”

  Then she gazed farsightedly down. “This artifact, the Carbuncle. It’s said to have power over human fertility, Rajni.” She paused, and when she spoke again it was softly but as if each word were pushed out with great force. “It is recorded in this text as a mystical relic. There are … well, I would call them case histories. I do not know how a Song doctor would refer to them.”

  Mrithuri was leaning forward, trying to find her balance. “What are you saying?”

  “The Carbuncle is probably, I think, the same jewel described here as the Eye of the River. It was used in the treatment of infertility, Your Abundance. It is said here that it’s so potent that it should not be handled by virgins, lest they conceive.”

  “How does that help us?” the Dead Man asked, and Mrithuri was a little grateful to him. Not because she didn’t know the answer, but because providing it for him would leave her feeling a little more in control, a little less gobsmacked and silenced.

  “If I produced an heir,” Mrithuri said. “If I produced an heir. Even unmarried. While provably still virginal. It would be proof that the Good Mother blessed my dynasty. There’s a rajni northeast of here who’s third-sex, who might have had a very hard time of it after her raja died. There is … prejudice. She has no womb, and yet the Good Mother saw fit to bless her with a son. I understand surgery was involved in getting the child out. That kind of miracle—divine favor, an impossible birth—cements even a shaky reign at least for a little.”

  “It might give even Anuraja and Himadra pause,” Ata Akhimah agreed.

  “And it seems to be what the Eyeless One is counseling us to do. Or predicting will happen. Or whatever the hell it is that she does other than sit on her throne and rule over Messaline,” the Gage said. “The rajni sent for advice; this is the advice she was given.”

  “A virgin can get a child,” the Dead Man said, his lips pursing as he eyed the ladies present. Mrithuri suspected she knew what he was thinking.

  “Without cheating,” Ata Akhimah replied. “Without putting your seed into her with your hands, or whatever you had in mind.”

  “My seed!”

  The Wizard waved his protest away as unimportant. Seeing him flustered behind his veil, Mrithuri loved her teacher a little more than she had mere moments previously.

  “But this thing—it has not been seen since the age of Dragons,” Nizhvashiti said. “This book confirms that it is in the Singing Towers. It’s not too terribly far.”

  “It’s halfway across the world!” the Dead Man protested. He lifted his face. His eyes narrowed as the light fell across them.

  Ata Akhimah shook her head. “Close or far, no one can go there.”

  Nizhvashiti tapped the air above the scroll with one long finger. “Past the Bitter Sea, around the Steles of the Sky. Not far as such things are determined. Closer than whence you came with this message, Dead Man.”

  He subsided, folding his arms.

  The Wizard sighed. “It is in a place that was inhabited by dragons. Their sickness is there. Anyone who ventured there, who stayed for long … they would sicken, terribly, and die. Bones grow brittle; skin peels away. Cataracts blind the eyes. The dragon-sickness is real; their poison destroys as surely as does anything of Erem.”

  “Well, not entirely.”

  As the Wizard and priest had moved forward, they had left the Gage behind. Now his voice pushed through the conversation, and everyone turned.

  He shrugged. “I could go,” said the Gage. “I have no bones to crack nor skin to peel. I have no eyes to be blinded. I do not need rest. I could go today.”

  “And who will fight the invading army?” the Dead Man asked. “Me and a couple of pages? We need you here, old friend.”

  The tension stretched. Mrithuri thought it might have broken into something softer but it never had the chance. A hacking sound startled her. When she turned, she saw that the Godmade’s sudden thready cough was covered by a clean white rag, hastily produced. Lowered, it showed blood. Mrithuri was shocked, but kept her face impassive. Could not the blessed of the Good Daughter heal such a thing with ease?

  She did not know. She was a priestess too, after all. And while she could ease some pains by laying on her hands, see some truths in the eyes of those who spoke them, feel some connection with the minds of animals if she exerted herself past bearing—her gifts were not many, nor strong. Perhaps she was overestimating the power of the Godmade as others overestimated hers.

  She turned to look at the river. Mother, she thought plaintively, your daughter is too young to be alone in this world. Too young, too young, too young.

  The river rolled silently on.

  * * *

  The Song prince was throwing a fit. It was an imposing enough fit that her general, Madhukasa, had come to tell Mrithuri about it, and Mrithuri knew she ought to care. Mi Ren was a foreign dign
itary, a potential ally, somebody whose regard would be of profound assistance to her.

  He was also a tremendous pain in the ass who had already tried to order one of her servants tortured for insolence, and she couldn’t make herself care very much about an alliance with him. Still, she ought to go deal with it. The increasing weariness in her bones aside.

  You can’t eat “ought to,” Mrithuri told herself—Yavashuri’s old advice from when the rajni was a small girl. You can only eat “did.”

  She regarded Madhukasa, knowing her eyes were unreadable above her mask. He stood before the mass of her courtiers, composed and silent, a stout pillar of a man whose shoulders held up her kingdom. He wore an unfashionable beard, grizzled at the sideburns. His hair was slicked back in a wiry tail.

  She wished she’d gotten to see her father at this age. She wished, for a moment, that her father were sitting in her chair. Except he would have been on the throne behind her. And Madhukasa hadn’t been able to protect him.

  Perhaps he would have better luck this time.

  She lifted herself from her seat. Her joints ached. The edges of her nails itched. She thought longingly of the snakes, but there wasn’t time. She turned to Hnarisha, who stood beside her chair on the side opposite the vulture perch, frowning with concern. Madhukasa, still before her, had spoken in a low voice that would not carry. Her mask had left her face wet with sweat beneath it. She dropped it on her throne and used the same tone to speak to her castellan. “Send for my maid of honor, please.”

  He bowed. “I shall have her join you along the way. And clear the court.”

  Madhukasa extended his fist on an arm like a pillar, for Mrithuri to use if she chose while descending the stair. She rested a hand on it, trying to look as if she merely accepted the courtesy, but the fact was she needed the balance and the support. It was like resting her hand on a stone balustrade, and she managed to alight with every outward indication of nimbleness.

  He swept her past courtiers and servants, through the filigreed marble halls. Syama rose from her post to pad after, claws clicking.

  Mrithuri heard the hush of penitent’s slippers, the murmur of their prayers. The plainchant should have soothed her, but it lay as if a weight on her heart. Here were yet more innocents who were hers to defend, who faced any number of untold horrors if she failed them. And here she was: untried, with barely an army, unprepared for a siege at the end of the dry season when food reserves were scarce.

  Which was, of course, why her enemies came for her now, to lay a siege she was ill-prepared to resist.

  At least water was falling from the sky with the regularity of a water-clock. They would not go thirsty.

  The heat and humidity plastered her dressed hair to her skull, beaded sweat atop her cosmetics. The hall was cooler, and the pierced hallways of the palace allowed air to flow through. It did not suffice to relieve the oppression that adhered her silks to her skin. Her bare gilded feet left wet smudges on the tile, distinct toe-prints visible, outlined in golden powder.

  She was in a fine mood by the time they reached Mi Ren’s chambers—of the best, she saw, that the palace offered for visiting dignitaries. She and Madhukasa had walked over lapis and jade tiles all the way to the wing that perched overlooking the Incorruptible. It was breezy from the height and shady from terraced trees.

  Yavashuri waited, hands folded and head bowed in disingenuous servility, beside the Song prince’s door.

  “Well,” Mrithuri said, “I don’t see that we can offer him better.”

  “Turn him out to walk home.” Madhukasa huffed into his mustache with stolid gruffness. “You could even loan him a pony if you felt generous.”

  Yavashuri smiled into her hand. “He’s not here.”

  “Mother River, where’s he gone?”

  Yavashuri looked at Mrithuri pityingly. “To harass that poor caravan master into taking him to a proper port when he can get a ship home, if I understood the page properly. He was … somewhat garbled.”

  “Oh dear.” Madhukasa never swore. He looked at Mrithuri.

  She nodded.

  They went.

  Druja’s room, which he shared with his brother, was in a far less imposing portion of the palace. The Ctesifoni bride-in-waiting—Golbahar, a name which Mrithuri almost remembered having been told once Yavashuri whispered the reminder in her ear—was quartered quite close to Mi Ren. Golbahar poked her head through a door open to catch the breezes, holding her veil up with one hand.

  “Mi Ren?” Golbahar asked, in a bright, bored tone. Fearlessly, she extended a hand for Syama to sniff. Syama obliged.

  Mrithuri had not seen the lady before. The creaseless honey-brown skin around the bright hazel eyes suggested this foreign noblewoman was about her own age. Traveling, she recalled from Yavashuri’s briefing, toward an arranged marriage to a lord she’d never met.

  Mrithuri never asked how Yavashuri came by her information, but she suspected that many of the caravans that called in Sarathai-tia ferried paid informants as well as goods and news. Nevertheless, she felt a certain kinship with this woman from a far land, sold like a broodmare on account of her bloodline. Could Mrithuri be so clever-spirited in the face of such things, if she had not had the option of resisting them?

  She smiled into Lady Golbahar’s eyes and said, “I don’t suppose you’ve formed a bond with him in your travels?”

  The woman giggled. “The only bond I want to form with him is the link of a blade between hand and belly. Is he in trouble?”

  “He is trouble,” Madhukasa rumbled.

  “Oh good,” said Golbahar. “I’m bored.” She darted through the doorway, securing her veil is some quick tucking gesture that Mrithuri couldn’t quite follow. A maid tried to follow her, but the Ctesifoni lady shooed her back. “I can come to no harm with the rajni as chaperone.”

  Madhukasa reached a hand out to block her path—he wouldn’t lay hands on a lady, even a foreign one, unless she attacked the rajni—but Yavashuri shook her head. “Let her come,” the old woman said. “She might be useful.”

  As they walked, Yavashuri acquainted Mrithuri with the fact that Druja shared his room with his injured brother Prasana. It was easy to find—even though they were missing the expertise of Hnarisha, who assigned such things. It was another long walk to get to the quarters reserved for merchants and solicitors visiting the court, and here the walls, though still golden, were not pierced with grilles. The ceilings were lower, without vaults and with only minimal, marginal decoration around the molding line. The air stifled, even in the protective shade of the heavy stone roofs.

  Also, they could hear Mi Ren screaming through the panels of the closed door. The Song prince’s entourage of servants—five men—lounged about the entry in various poses of embarrassment and amusement, depending on their temperament.

  These straightened themselves as the rajni and her own entourage approached.

  Yavashuri addressed them, Madhukasa lurking behind her for emphasis. “Go back to your master’s apartments.”

  They traded glances. One seemed about to speak.

  Yavashuri cut him off with an imperious lift of her chin. “This is the rajni’s house. You exist by her grace here.”

  This was not entirely true: there were laws governing who the ruler of Sarathai-tia could order executed and when. But these men probably didn’t know it, and it seemed Mi Ren’s principality back in Song did not subscribe to such modernities as the rule of law. Whatever else you could say about how Mi Ren treated his minions, they were well-cowed before authority. And probably slightly more scared of Mi Ren than they were of Mrithuri, but Mrithuri was the one standing before them.

  The apparent ringleader held his ground until Madhukasa took a silent step forward. Once he broke, the rest scuttled after him down the hall. Mrithuri found it in her heart to feel a little bad for them. Servants were not to blame for the poor temperament of their masters.

  She moved to the door to eavesdrop. Yavashuri and Madhuka
sa stepped aside for her. Golbahar hung a foot off her left shoulder like an escorting cloud. The foreign lady smelled of almonds and saffron and something bitter: altogether a pleasant combination. Perhaps she should import a half-dozen Ctesifoni and place them around the court to sweeten the air.

  She could hear Mi Ren’s tirade through the door, and Druja making occasional placating noises. Yavashuri stiffened in concealed wrath at the abuse, confirming to Mrithuri that Druja was one of the intelligencer’s own.

  Perhaps Mrithuri should send for her Wizard, or Hnarisha, whose specialized skills came in useful at odd times. But Syama was here, and Madhukasa. There was very little in the way of physical threat that they could not handle between them.

  With her own hands, Mrithuri flung wide the door.

  It struck the stones with a crash, and rebounded. Madhukasa was there to catch it in an unflinching fist. Mrithuri strode inside, Golbahar and Yavashuri flanking, Syama at her heels.

  Mi Ren looked up—he had been glowering down at Druja, who knelt before him in the timeless gesture of placating ranting nobility. Mi Ren had one booted foot upraised as if to kick. It might not have been the first blow. Prasana lay on the bed, propped on his elbows to remonstrate with the prince. The strain showed in his face; apparently his injuries had been severe.

  Injuries that had occurred in her service, Mrithuri was now certain. Yavashuri didn’t tell her everything, but Mrithuri had gotten good at guessing.

  Mi Ren stopped mid-squawk to stare. He was a man of modest size and ascetic build, though his clothing gave the lie to any illusion of austerity. His black hair, twisted into a tight high bun, drew attention to the catlike angle of his cheekbones and eyes snapping with self-righteous fury. He was a handsome man.

  What a pity he was such a terrible creature, Mrithuri thought. She had to marry somebody. But it wasn’t going to be this thing.

  His lip curled in disdain when he turned to her, though she outranked him. She was a ruling rajni: he a mere prince. He sketched the most cursory bow possible without causing a diplomatic incident. “Where are my men?”