The Stone in the Skull

by Elizabeth Bear

  Ümmühan shook her head. But she strode forward with a high head and the bearing of one entrusted to a great and ceremonious office. She called out. As she was facing away from Sayeh, and she did have somewhat of an accent, her words were unintelligible to the rajni. But her voice was like a lash.

  The cutting tones of a court poet long trained to declaim in vast, crowded, echoing spaces clove the bright night, and had as much effect on the mounted men as if they had run into a wall.

  From her chair, resolutely sitting with her spine untwisted and her hands relaxed in her lap, Sayeh could only see from the corner of her eye. But that glimpse was enough.

  She did not think the men had chosen to stop at Ümmühan’s challenge. But they were mounted, and the moment of hesitation and uncertainty they had felt when she stood up to them boldly and in challenge had been sensed by their horses, which now pawed and stepped in place. The gray mare alone seemed more watchful than restive. She was a war horse, Sayeh now understood, and it was her place to be calm and certain when all around her shuddered with their fear of what was coming.

  Having broken the advance, Ümmühan made her own now. And such was her charisma that she swept the disarrayed recruits into her wake. They found their courage, that this woman as old as their great-grandmothers stepped up and raised the flat of her hand to two dozen mounted warriors.

  “Who approaches the rajni’s seat?” Ümmühan asked. Now Sayeh heard her clearly, for she need not compete with the clatter of hooves.

  Sayeh allowed herself to turn her head when the answer was slow in coming. She made sure it was imperious—a lifted chin and a glance down the nose beneath lashes—and because of that she witnessed a hasty consultation between the man she knew as Himadra and the man who rode at his left.

  The man—tall and well-formed, with a warrior’s red rectangular wrap trimmed in wolf fur thrown carelessly around his shoulders—seemed to be arguing with his lord, though softly. His horse sidled with his vehemence, and his hand gestures were sharp and abbreviated. His saddlecloth was a tiger skin. Himadra sat and listened peaceably enough. But then he shook his head. The other man seemed inclined to argue. Himadra pinned him with a glance as imperturbable as that of his mare, and that was the end of it.

  Sayeh felt a moment of spiking envy for that power of command. She was as good a leader as any man: she knew it. She gave more and cared more about her people and was better at juggling logistics, tactics, strategies.

  But she did not have that charisma, that effortless force of command. And right now, she sorely coveted it.

  Himadra raised a hand, gesturing his men back. And they stayed, to a one, as he reined his gray forward without any gesture so gross it would be visible to her across the courtyard. She took two gliding steps and hesitated again, then made a little bow at some command Sayeh could not discern. “I am Himadra,” he said in a clear and cultivated voice. “Raja of Chandranath. I wish leave to approach the rajni and with her share a word in confidence.”

  “You alone,” Ümmühan said, with a glance at Sayeh to see what she wanted.

  Himadra touched his bright felt cap. He gestured to his body, shrunken and strange. “Will you deny a cripple his gentle mare? I assure you, my Velvet will do no harm to anyone.”

  Not unless you command it, Sayeh thought, but allowed Ümmühan a slight nod. If Himadra wished to kill her now, no geriatric poetess was going to prevent him, no matter how otherworldly the force of the woman’s personality.

  “You may go forward mounted, then,” Ümmühan agreed, without the slightest hint that she in any particular disagreed with Sayeh’s decision. “You, Your Competence, and you alone.”

  He smiled—quite dazzling, really. For all his formidable reputation of brilliance as a war leader, Sayeh realized—or remembered—Himadra was only a little more than half her own age.

  The mare glided around in a soft circle, her pale hooves barely clicking as she set them down on the still-wet cobblestones. Himadra stopped her before Sayeh’s chair, some dozen steps respectfully back, and doffed his own cap while he made the mare perform an even deeper and more elaborate bow.

  “Sayeh Rajni,” he said, when the mare had straightened herself up once more with a lash of her bannery tail. “Royal cousin. I am sorry my visit comes at such an inconvenient time.”

  Sayeh did her best to forget her disarray, her frizzed and knotted hair, her haphazard clothing. She smiled and said, “Perhaps if we had received proper notice of a state visit, we would have waited to remodel the palace until we had offered you proper hospitality.”

  He smiled, and with his crooked thumb indicated the man with the wolf-trimmed cloak. “My ally Ravana and I come to offer assistance, royal cousin. I witnessed the earthquake from the hill road. Understanding that your people must be suffering, I took the fastest of my vanguard, leaving all the rest behind, and rode hard through the day and most of the night to reach Ansh-Sahal. Tell us how we can be of help? My men are hardy, hardened warriors, and will not scruple to sleep on the earth or labor hard to rescue such subjects of yours as may be trapped in the rubble of their homes.”

  That, translated, meant that an army was at his heels, as she had suspected. And that there was very little way she could refuse his assistance, thereby becoming beholden to him. A debt, no doubt, that could be discharged by a marriage or some other dynastic concession.

  He laid his cap across his saddlebow. Looking up at him was giving her a pain in the neck, but she would not offer him the smallest hint of it.

  Especially not when he, having waited a few seconds to see if she might speak, took another breath and continued, “Your heir, royal cousin. My young cousin Prince Drupada. I hope he is well?”

  If he wasn’t, that was one more reason, after all, for her to marry. She did not think the Good Mother would bless her again: to carry a child to term was rare enough for one such as her. To give birth and live, even rarer. She had Tsering-la’s skill to thank for that.

  And if she allowed herself to be coerced into marrying Himadra … well, it was said that the Boneless was impotent. And even if he were not, could he father a child that lived? That mattered little, however, as he had several brothers, some much younger. Perhaps he had her in mind for one of them.

  She did not imagine an heir of her body with no connection to Himadra’s blood would long survive any dynastic marriage she might offer to the house of Chandranath. All those brothers … Himadra must be eager indeed to secure an extra kingdom or two to divide up and pass on to them, or to their sons.

  How ironic that it was the scion of the Alchemical Emperor’s line with the poorest patrimony that had borne the most abundant fruit.

  “My son is well, Cousin,” she said lightly. “Thank you for your concern. We were lucky: the palace withstood the first shock, and most successfully evacuated before the second began to bring the roof down. And even that damage was only in places. My household and men-at-arms are intact. I assure you.”

  “Very intact,” said a welcome voice from nearby. Sayeh’s focus had narrowed so completely onto her charming enemy that she had not even noticed Vidhya’s return, or that he came along with Tsering-la and ten mounted men-at-arms. One of those dissolving recruits had apparently managed to think on his feet after all and send for help without Sayeh noticing.

  Sayeh heaved one soft sigh, and allowed herself to relax back against the cushions slightly, though she kept her posture queenly. Guang Bao spread his wings to shade her, framing her tumbled hair in such glory as no crown could emulate. If Himadra had managed to bring his entire army to her broken gates, then nothing they did could have stopped him. But he had only two dozen men. And she had, albeit wounded, a city entire.

  Tsering-la had allowed a bit of witchlight to creep out of the crevices between his fingers. Just enough that though it was not very bright and that soft shade of mauve, it made the stained and tattered fabric of his Wizard’s coat seem unfathomably black. Vidhya stretched his wrists casually, showing a
s if by accident scarred bracers.

  Himadra glanced at his men. One touched his nose with a fingertip. It might have been a signal, or perhaps it was just an itch. Whatever the case, Himadra looked back at Sayeh and nodded. “Madam,” he said, “my men have ridden a day and a night to come here. We and our horses are tired. May we camp beyond your walls, and begin assisting in shifts with the rescue?”

  There was no gracious way to refuse.

  * * *

  Tsering-la brought the news that the guard who had been with Drupada and the temporary nurse had been found dead in the pavilion erected as a makeshift nursery a little before nightfall of the next day, when all was darkest and most cold. Sayeh, who had not slept, but who at least had managed to bathe in cold water and who had been found some plain but suitable clothing, stared at him as he stammered and explained that the nurse—and the boy—were missing.

  “Himadra,” she snarled, rising to her feet. She ignored the shock of pain from swollen flesh. Despite Tsering-la’s arts, there were infections. Due to Tsering-la and Ümmühan, however, those infections were unlikely to kill her. Or even lose her feet for her.

  “His camp—” Ümmühan started. She stopped. She looked to Tsering-la for support.

  Sayeh snarled wordless rage. If she were queenly then, she did not know it. She felt a mother’s fury, sharp and hard.

  “Where is my son?” she cried. “Where is Drupada?”

  “The camp is empty,” Tsering-la said. “They deserted tents, cookfires, and even a few horses—enough to make it look inhabited at a distant glance. Himadra and all his men are gone.”

  * * *

  She was rajni, and no one could restrain her. Tsering-la might even have endured her blows, but when she seemed ready to turn her fists on Ümmühan, or anyone who would come close to her, he wrapped everyone around her in a bubble of soft light that did not let her come close. At last, it was Nazia—Nazia, already condemned—who calmed her by throwing a bucket of cold salt water on her.

  Plain water, as it happened. Not the burning, bitter sort.

  Her rage spent, she gave chase to her son’s kidnappers herself. She would not be prevented. Vidhya tried to keep her from the saddle, and she looked at him and said, “If I were his father, would you try to stop me?”

  The captain of her guard, the companion of her youth, met her gaze without flinching before he stepped aside.

  He held the reins himself while she mounted.

  She could not take too many men. They were needed in the palace. They were needed in the city. She took Vidhya and a handpicked few of his soldiers—five in all, shamefully little to bring against twenty-odd warriors. She took Nazia, because Nazia was not afraid of her, even in this mood, and anyway she was now an apprentice Wizard and fit to any use. She took Tsering-la because he was her Wizard, and she took Ümmühan for advice.

  And she took Guang Bao, too, because there was nowhere to leave him. And because he comforted her.

  They took remounts, at least, because there was no reason to leave behind horses that were not draft animals, broken to harness and trained to pull. Some of the remounts were those Himadra himself had left behind, an irony that gave Sayeh a small, bitter pleasure.

  They rode as if the rising river itself, wrathful and swollen, were at their heels. They rode as if the moon were burning, as if the Heavenly River were cascading down upon their heads. They rode to reach Drupada and his kidnappers before those kidnappers reached Himadra’s army, because at that moment he would be lost to them forever, and that, every one of them knew.

  They rode, and every one of them pretended not to be searching the verge of the highway for a tiny, shattered corpse with every stride.

  That they found no such object was a comfort and a torment both. A comfort, because it meant there was a chance that Drupada was still alive. If Himadra had merely wanted him dead, he could have killed him with the guard instead of snatching him up nurse and all. A torment, because so long as they found no body, they must ride.

  The stirrups—a technology borrowed from the tribesmen beyond the Steles of the Sky within Sayeh’s lifetime—goaded her lacerated feet.

  Vidhya, following the tracks of their dozens of horses in the muddied road, said that Sayeh’s smaller group on their fresh horses were gaining. But slowly, too slowly. Whether they caught the invaders or not had a great deal to do with where, exactly, the army was.

  Sayeh took Guang Bao up from his perch on the saddlebow and whispered in the phoenix’s ear: fly low, be safe. Beware of archers. But fly ahead and see how far we have yet to ride.

  When he had been gone for a tenth part of the day, she began to fret anew—that he had flown off, that she had sent him to his death. He was a clever bird. But he was a bird, and not clever as humans are clever.

  Finally he returned as it began to rain again, bedraggled with wet but unharmed. “Found prince,” he croaked in his cracked old voice. “Came back.”

  “Did you see the army?”

  “Not yet,” the bird said. “No army.”

  The phoenix flew much faster than a horse could gallop. Sayeh tried some calculations in her head, sighed, and gave it up. Tsering said, “They are a dozen li ahead or more.”

  Sayeh cursed and punched herself in the thigh hard enough to make her mare sidle. “How do they ride so fast?”

  “They had a head start,” Vidhya said. “Let us change saddles to our remounts and ride on.”

  * * *

  They rode on. They were climbing the foothills now, the Razorbacks rising in heavy tiers of ridges before them. The hills deserved their name. They were sharp-topped and angled, steeper on one side than the other, so in profile they resembled enormous sand dunes. Thankfully, they were not, however, sandy. Instead they were made of heavy bands of clay in shades of ochre, white, and dusky violet. The spiky plants that grew on their more gentle slopes were unusually verdant now, with the help of the rains. And the clay of the rising and falling roadbed was thick and slick, slippery and treacherous.

  It slowed the horses greatly; they struggled and slid in the slop, and a fall could have meant skidding down the precipitous slope between the knife-sharp broken faces of flint boulders that jutted from the banks of the clay.

  They had come so far from the Bitter Sea that they could not smell it, though gulls still circled and keened on the wind.

  There were other scents. Some were the smells of the rain, of the broken resinous twigs of the scrub near the road. Some were unsettling ones, so rank that even though their presence was faint they still tainted the air. Brimstone and char, so that Sayeh thought of gunpowder. The thought made her rein her horse aside and retch, though her stomach was empty. Nazia urged her to drink some broth, some rice gruel. Merely holding the cup before her mouth sufficed to make her gag.

  They pushed on to exhaustion and beyond. None of them had been at their best to begin with. And now, Sayeh grudged dismounting the horses even to answer a call of nature.

  Half asleep, dozing in the saddle despite being too anxious to rest more than that, Sayeh wondered how long it would be before Tsering-la and Vidhya revolted and forced a stop. They were drenched, worn out. Chafed from wet clothes rubbing between legs and saddles. Injured in various small ways. And yet, she could not admit defeat. She could not stop.

  As her gelding’s hooves splashed muddy water up her calves, she thought that if he bore her up to the ring of the army encampment itself and Drupada was not yet in her arms, she would ride right through it and surrender herself to Himadra. If she was his prisoner, as his royal cousin, she could expect to be treated gently. And allowed to see her son.

  And all it would cost was her kingdom and her freedom. A price that at the moment seemed like no price at all.

  The blow that struck her came so long before the sound of the explosion that she almost did not hear the massive thundering that followed. The narrow red ribbon of the wet road, clay slick in the rain, seemed to jump up beneath her gelding’s hooves and twi
st him off, as if it were suddenly animated into an angry snake. He fell, and Sayeh shrieked, clutched his mane, and fell with him.

  The impact knocked the breath from her body, and she heard her scream cut short. Around her, a confusion of slipping horses and shouting women and men. The heavy beat of Guang Bao’s gilded wings as he broke his own fall above her: he must have instinctively released his grip on the saddlebow.

  The earth heaved again. That was when the sound came, so vast that it was more a physical object that she found herself in the center of. Pain now, loose and quick in the leg that was pinned under her mount. The horse tried to heave himself up, failed, panicked and began to thrash and scream—horrible noises attenuated through the sudden dullness in her ears. Sayeh found herself sliding with him toward the dropoff at the outer edge of the road. Her head dangled over the edge. She could not breathe; she could not shriek for help. Her leg beneath the gelding felt as if it were being pulled in two.

  Someone was there, grabbing her, holding her shoulders and head. No, it was light, mauve and dusty rose, Tsering’s magic keeping her from falling. The horse gave one last terrible heave and fell silent, limp. Sayeh caught a glimpse of Vidhya standing from a crouch beside its head with his dagger streaming red.

  Poor Star, she thought. Everything seemed far away, even the shouting, even the pain. Tsering was beside her for real now, holding her with his own hands. Someone was lifting the poor gelding’s body and she screamed again, she thought, as she was drawn free.

  In a just world, she would have fainted. If the Good Daughter were more merciful than dutiful, she might have spiraled away into darkness and relief. Instead, as they lifted her, she opened her eyes.

  She saw a plume of ash and dust, a horrid roil of steam. The whole horizon was gray and white with it, the distant sea lost behind its veil. It was a wall as tall and broad as the vault of sky above, billowing and glittering and faintly translucent in the light of the heavens.