by J. S. Bangs
The balcony grew silent. The cawing of the gulls seemed to pause for a moment, and the wind held its breath. The hair on Daladham’s neck stood up.
“Perhaps we should tread carefully uttering that name, nonetheless,” Daladham said.
“It is frightful,” Navran said. “So let the Devoured fear it.”
Bhudman turned swiftly. “Only we three have heard this. Leave it this way. I will prepare a sacrifice in the name of… of the fire of ages. Let no other saghada or dhorsha help me.”
“Not even me?”
Bhudman shook his head. “As you said, only I am of the, ah, the Kushmaya dhorsha.”
“There are hymns to Kushma Ulaur at the end of the thikratta’s book,” Daladham said. “I have translated some of them….”
Bhudman shook his head. “No, for now I will use the forms I know. We may consult the book of the Powers later, but at the moment I would prefer to stick to what’s familiar.”
Daladham nodded. He would have done the same thing in Bhudman’s position.
“You have only a few days,” Navran said. “Get ready.”
Mandhi
The gates of Virnas closed behind them with a shudder. A chill ran down Mandhi’s spine.
The holy city, the seat of Manjur, the crown of the south, and Mandhi’s home. It looked so strange and forlorn now. Most of the people were Devoured, skeletal peasants saved from the brink of starvation, or Red Men in tatters and careworn uniforms. The houses had been stripped. Their insides were empty and ruined, filled with grime and ash, food and valuables plundered or taken in the escape.
“I liked it better last time I was here,” Kest said.
A throb of sorrow passed through Mandhi’s breast. Her home, ruined and trampled by the Mouth of the Devourer. “I know,” she said.
“Navran-dar tried to hold the city, at least,” Aryaji said softly.
“The amashi told you?”
Aryaji shook her head. “I observe. The scars of fires outside the city walls—those were only a few days old. I think the inhabitants of Virnas lit them in defense.”
“Maybe the Devoured did it. We’ve seen them lighting fires for fun.”
She shook her head. “Too organized for the Devoured.”
Kest murmured in assent. “But what makes you think Navran-dar was here?”
“Who else would organize the defense?”
“I like to think that the citizens of Virnas would organize to save the city even if there were no king to tell them,” Mandhi said.
“They didn’t save it,” Kest said. “But maybe they got away.”
Navran, Veshta, Bhudman, Srithi—yes, they could have escaped. And schism or not, she would pray for the well-being of Navran and all the Uluriya of Virnas, wherever they had fled to. She would hold that hope.
“These are not all Devoured,” Vapathi’s voice behind them said.
She had taken to walking in their rear. None of them had sent her there, but she seemed reluctant to take her place among them, as if she could not trust that they were friends.
And it was true that Mandhi did not really trust her, and she was not happy to have the companionship of a slave, a concubine, and the sister of the Mouth of the Devourer. But Vapathi was an enemy of the Empress of the Devoured just as much as the rest of them, so neither was she about to cast her away.
“What do you mean?” Mandhi asked.
Vapathi pointed her head subtly to the right. “Look between the buildings.”
Mandhi watched as the next alley between the mud-brick homes of the East Quarter slipped into view. On the next street over, glimpsed for a second in the crack between homes, she saw a group of people in Uluriya garb, accompanied by a bunch of others holding makeshift weapons. The Uluriya held no weapons. They were being guarded.
Perhaps the citizens of Virnas hadn’t escaped.
Mandhi slowed and let Vapathi catch up with her. She fell into stride beside Vapathi and whispered, “Do you know what’s happening?”
Vapathi shook her head. “My brother never told me what he planned after the battle of the Amsadhu.”
Mandhi peered between the buildings for another glimpse of what was happening. But she saw nothing.
“Is this the way to the palace?” Aryaji asked her abruptly. “This is the Uluriya district.”
They passed the white-painted pillar into a region where all of the homes had a pentacle painted above the door. “The House of the Ruin is nearby,” Mandhi said with a little thrill of anticipation.
“What is the Ruin?” Vapathi asked.
“A buried remnant of the temple of Ulaur from the days of Manjur,” Mandhi said.
Vapathi nodded. She said softly, “My brother will be there. He fears Ulaur.”
“I heard that he only fears the demon Kushma.”
“Kushma, too,” Vapathi said. “But when we passed through an Uluriya village, he showed them the same treatment he gave to the images of Kushma. I think he fears Ulaur and Kushma equally.”
Mandhi murmured. “So he’s going into the temple of the one he fears?”
“He hopes to extinguish it.” She smiled cautiously. “I guess. I don’t really know.”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Mandhi said. They were going past the first of the great Uluriya estates in this quarter. The House of the Ruin was not far away.
When she saw it, her gut twisted in a blend of joy and terror. The familiar white walls, the window in the second floor where Habdana watched for visitors, the white arch with the black-painted door. The door was propped open. The Devoured herded them immediately into the green-tiled antechamber.
Devoured lounged on the cushions of the antechamber with bored indifference. The ablution chambers followed. A little flare of rage and sorrow burned in Mandhi as she saw them. The ewers were smashed, the purified water wasted, the lamps torn down. Unclean people defiling the chambers meant to protect the sanctity of the interior. Her throat burned, and she blinked away a sudden influx of tears.
When they passed into the courtyard they saw Basadi again. She had marched ahead and installed herself atop one of the rattan chairs in the courtyard, the chair where Amashi used to sit, in fact. She dangled her feet over the edge of the empty pool in the center of the yard and smiled at them as they entered.
“You finally caught up,” she said with a serpentine grin. “I was worried, Queen of Slaves, that you had tried to run away.”
Vapathi stiffened. “What do you want, Empress?”
“I’ve brought you to your brother. He’s here,” she said, making a contemptuous wave at the door in the far corner of the courtyard. “Miserable place. I’ll be at the palace once I’ve dropped you off.”
“This was my home,” Mandhi said, her voice quavering on the edge of tears.
“Really?” Basadi drummed her fingers on the edge of the rattan chair. “Charming that you get to see it again. Did you know about the crypt beneath it?”
“Of course I knew about it,” Mandhi said. She repeated through gritted teeth. “It was my home.”
“Then I’m sure you’ll love what the Mouth of the Devourer has done with it. Now be good children and go down to meet him, and do it quickly, because I can’t get out of this cheap merchant’s house and into the proper palace soon enough.”
“Fine.” Mandhi stormed past her Devoured escort, toward the open door that descended to the Ruin. She hesitated at the top. The interior was dark, and they had no lamps.
“Bring me a light,” Mandhi said.
“I thought you said you know the place,” Basadi mocked. “Just go down the stairs.”
“I’m not going to be feeling around in the dark like a blind woman,” Mandhi said. “Give me a lamp.”
Basadi rolled her eyes. She pointed to one of the Devoured, and a moment later a burning oil lamp was in Mandhi’s hands. Mandhi looked back at Kest, Aryaji, and Vapathi following her.
“You know what this place is, don’t you?” she whispered.
; “Yes,” Aryaji said, but Kest and Vapathi shook their heads.
“Follow me,” Mandhi said. “I’ll explain.” She descended the steep, narrow stairs. The lamp carved out a little hollow of light in the thick darkness. The footfalls of her companions sounded behind her. “These are the tombs of the Heirs of Manjur.” Her voice whispered over the stones of the passage, worn smooth by generations of fingers. “My father is buried here, and my grandfather, and all of the Heirs.”
“How old is this place?” Kest whispered.
“As old as Manjur. Older than the Empire. Older than the Seven Kingdoms.”
She whispered, because the interior of the Ruin was soaked in silence as black and heavy as a moonless summer night. If there were any Devoured here, Mandhi couldn’t hear them. She could only hear their feet on the ancient stones.
Her fingers brushed against Manjur’s ring on her finger. Cold and still. A flash of memory to the time when it had burned with light, when Navran had crushed Ruyam in these very halls.
They reached the bottom of the stairs and began to advance through the crypt. There used to be lamps placed at intervals in niches along the walls, back when Mandhi’s father had preformed the sacrifices of the new moon, but now there were none. Her own quivering light was the only illumination in the dry darkness.
“It smells of bones here,” Kest said. His voice was barely audible, and it creaked a little with his words. Was he afraid?
Her light lit the interior of one of the niches for a moment. She glanced into it and saw the dry stone at its back. Her breath stopped.
“The bones,” she said. “The ossuary is empty.”
Kest and Aryaji drew close to her, looking into the empty niche where the bones of the dead Heir should have been. She looked at the name etched into the stone below it: Sudran, Heir of Manjur.
Only Vapathi seemed untouched by the solemnity. She walked up to the niche and put her hand in, feeling around on all sides. “Entirely empty,” she declared. “There were bones here?”
“These niches are ossuaries,” Mandhi said. “All of them hold the bones of the Heirs of Manjur.”
Vapathi moved to the next one over, its contents hidden by the angle at which Mandhi’s lamplight hit its interior. Vapathi reached into it as well. “Empty,” she said. “I think they’re all empty.”
“Wickedness,” Kest said softly. “To move the bones of the ancestors—”
Vapathi gave him a curious stare. “Of all of the things the Mouth of the Devourer has done, this is the one that strikes you as the most wicked?”
“The living may strike back at their enemies,” Kest said firmly. “A sin against the living may be righted. But the ancestors depend on the living to avenge them.”
Vapathi stiffened for a moment. “I suppose those of you with ancestors to honor can indulge yourselves in that idea.”
“Come on,” Mandhi said. “The altar is a little farther ahead.”
Beyond a bend in the tunnel they saw light. Mandhi’s pace quickened. Another turn and the altar came into view. She stopped as soon as she saw it.
The sanctum around the altar was filled with the bones of the Heirs. Not arranged with any particular care, merely dropped in heaps, skulls and femurs and ribs in haphazard piles all the way around the altar stone, stacked halfway up to the arched and painted ceiling. Spines bent like serpents. The empty eye sockets of the dead stared up at the faded image of Manjur and the serpent.
And in the center of the scene, standing in front of the altar with his hands folded behind his back, stood the Mouth of the Devourer.
Mandhi had never seen him up close, but there was no doubt that it was he. His skin seemed almost black in the dim yellow light, but it hung off of him as limply as a man half starving. Long, wavy hair was tied with a coarse thread at the base of his neck. One of his ears had been torn off, and a bandaged wound on his side leaked black pus down his leg. His posture was crooked. He limped as he turned around.
He barely even noticed Mandhi, Kest, and Aryaji. He looked only at Vapathi.
“My sister,” he said.
“Mouth of the Devourer,” Vapathi replied. She stepped forward. “You found me.”
His face was warped with pain. He drew breath heavily and approached them. He reached out to touch Vapathi’s shoulder, but Vapathi drew back, leaving him with his hand hanging alone in the air.
“Why did you leave?” he asked.
“You killed Apurta. You were about to kill me.”
He heaved a sorrowful breath. “Apurta was a mistake.”
“A mistake,” Vapathi said bitterly. “Everything has been a mistake since the moment you took up She Who Devours.” Her voice cracked. “Do you remember what I told you after the slavers took me and Apurta up the mountain? When you were lying beside the stream wounded by the tiger?”
“My sister,” the man repeated and took another step toward her. She retreated farther.
“I begged you not to follow us. I begged you to listen to me, just once. But you didn’t.”
“I delivered us,” he said. “I never meant to hurt Apurta, you have to understand—”
“You devoured Apurta. My lover. Your only friend. And you were going to kill me.”
“Sister, I would never hurt you.”
“I wish I still believed you.”
He stood for a moment, the pain that wracked his face made more pitiful by his look of confusion and disappointment. He walked a few pained steps back toward the altar.
“What are you doing here?” Vapathi asked after a while.
“I’m putting an end to this,” the Mouth of the Devourer said.
“An end to what?”
He took a painful breath. “I cannot carry She Who Devours much longer in this body. My will is near its end. I have to give her a body of her own.”
A chill ran down Mandhi’s spine. “Is this what you’re doing with the bones of the Heirs?”
The man turned around and stared at Mandhi, as if seeing her for the first time. “Who are you?”
Mandhi gave him a defiant glare. “I am Mandhi of Virnas, daughter of the Heir of Manjur and mother of the next. These are my ancestors that you’ve defiled.”
“Ah.” He started to turn back, a bored expression on his face. He paused. “I met your brother.”
“Navran-dar?”
“He was not a king at the time. A weak man, unable to save himself from Ruyam.”
“He got better.”
The Mouth of the Devourer laughed bitterly. “Well, sister, if you’re looking for someone to blame for all of this, you might start with the Heir of Manjur. If he had resisted Ruyam in the Ushpanditya, none of this would have happened.”
“You were the one who chose to enter the Holy,” Vapathi said. “Do not deflect blame on someone else.”
“She Who Devours knows nothing about blame,” the man said flatly. “And it doesn’t matter. Here is where She Who Devours will be clothed anew in flesh.”
“Here?” Mandhi asked. “You think you can summon demons here, in Ulaur’s most sacred place?”
“Places of power may be bent many ways,” Kirshta said.
“The curses of Ulaur upon you,” Mandhi said.
Kirshta laughed, a cold, chilling sound. “You don’t even understand whose name you invoke when you say that. I myself only fully understood after I came to Virnas.”
“What are you talking about?” Vapathi said.
Kirshta shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, and I’m not about to help you by telling. But understand this. This is where She Who Devours was shorn of her body and imprisoned in restless sleep beneath the earth. This is a place of power, and you Uluriya have fed its power continually with the blood of rams for all these centuries. The spirit is heavy in this place. The Powers of the heavens and the earth touch, the elements of the unseen world are thick with potency. Here the bloodthirsty Power may be overthrown. Here the bones of the Heirs and the blood of the Uluriya will clothe Her again in fl
esh.”
A wave of nausea passed through Mandhi. She felt her legs grow weak, and her breath grew faint. She gripped Kest’s shoulder to steady herself. “You are going to devour them,” she said. “That’s why you have the Uluriya under guard.”
“Sacrificed, not devoured,” Kirshta corrected. “I’ve been finding everyone that’s still alive in the south. One man’s blood was enough to stir her from her sleep. It will take hundreds to provide the flesh to remake her body. Their blood will drip down from this altar until the ground under your feet is flooded with it.”
The bones of the Heirs seemed to shake at his words. The hair on Mandhi’s arms rose. In her mind she saw hundreds of slain Uluriya, gutted upon the sacred altar in an orgy of blasphemous sacrifice, blood and entrails filling the tunnels of the Ruin.
“And when I am done,” Kirshta said, “She Who Devours will walk the earth wearing the flesh of the unworthy, and she will make war on the Powers themselves, even as she brought down the khadir, kings, and emperors who oppressed mankind. We will be released from the spirits that demand our dhaur. We will finally, forever, be free.”
“Demon,” Kest whispered.
Kirshta turned around and looked at Vapathi with intense longing. “But you, my sister… you will be spared. I will make sure of it. Once She Who Devours is clothed in flesh of her own, I’ll no longer bear the strain of holding her. I’ll be free. You and I—”
“Demon,” Vapathi repeated.
“Why do you say that, sister?” Kirshta stepped closer to her and reached out. Vapathi flinched, but his fingertips brushed across her cheek. “I thought we would always stay together. All of this is for you.”
“I don’t believe you,” Vapathi said. “My brother has died. You are the demon that wears his face, the hunger of She Who Devours, speaking with the mouth of my brother.”
“Sister, don’t say that—”
“Why don’t you call yourself by your name, then?” Vapathi said. “You call yourself the Mouth of the Devourer. Because that is all you are.”