by J. S. Bangs
“Sister, we will live forever.”
“What you have is not life. Get away from me.”
She stepped back and bumped into Aryaji. Aryaji threw an arm around her and drew her into the shadow behind Mandhi and Kest. The Mouth of the Devourer stared at them, sorrow and disappointment on his face. He bowed his head.
“You’ll see,” he said. “I’ll keep you here until it’s done, until She walks again on the face of the earth and devours the Powers themselves. You’ll see.”
“You’ll have to keep me in chains if you want me to remain while you pursue this monstrous plan.”
“In chains, if I have to.” He turned away from them, put his hands atop the altar, and began tracing a shape in the dust that rested atop it. “Go away, now.”
Vapathi broke out of Mandhi and Kest’s arms and began running back toward the stairs. Mandhi grabbed the lamp and went after her. She heard Kest and Aryaji following.
At the top of the stairs the door opened into the courtyard. She heard Basadi’s shriek as Vapathi entered the sunlight.
Mandhi burst out the door into a moment of confusion. Vapathi was pinned to the ground beneath two of the Devoured, and Basadi shouted something incomprehensible to the others. A moment later the lamp was knocked from Mandhi’s hands and the Devoured pulled her aside and wrestled her against the wall.
Kest and Aryaji followed. No one attempted to tackle Kest, but a half-dozen Devoured bearing sharpened scythes surrounded him and Aryaji.
Basadi stalked around the four of them. “Not getting away,” she said bluntly. “The Mouth of the Devourer said none of you could get away. I’ve got plenty of people guarding this house, and we can cut you up if we have to. But the fact that you came back means that Mouth of the Devourer would rather keep you alive.”
The pounding of Mandhi’s heart slowed a little. They were not going to die right here.
“Now march up to the second floor,” Basadi said, “and I won’t have the Devoured cut you to pieces. Stay here until the Mouth of the Devourer decides what to do with you.”
Mandhi pushed herself away from the wall and shook herself free from the grip of the Devoured. “I’ll go on my own,” she growled to them.
They were herded up the stairs, the men with scythes sticking close to Kest, and pushed into one of the rooms on the second floor. Mandhi laughed when she saw where they were quartered: a wide, shallow room, floored with marble tiles and a wide window with a wooden railing across its lower half.
“This was my room,” she said. She turned and mock-bowed to the Devoured. “Thank you for bringing me back to my very own residence.”
“Quiet!” shouted Basadi from below in the courtyard.
The Devoured pushed all four of them through the door and pulled the curtain shut. Basadi began giving muttered orders in the courtyard below.
Kest went to the window. He growled. “Guards below,” he said. “Plus a decent jump.”
Mandhi snarled. “That bitch doesn’t know what she’s doing. Do you have any idea how many times I snuck out of this house when I was with Taleg?”
Kest raised an eyebrow. “Was the house surrounded by dozens of unkillable men possessed by an ancient, evil Power?”
“Not at the time, no,” Mandhi said. She went up to the window and glanced out, checking the eaves and the seams in the stone foundation where she had climbed down. “But I suspect there are ways out she doesn’t know.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Vapathi said. She had thrown herself to the ground on one of the bedrolls in the room and lay with her hands over her face. Aryaji sat beside Vapathi with a hand on her shoulder. “The Mouth of the Devourer will get us. Even if we escape, he’ll sacrifice the Uluriya that he’s captured, and then—”
“No,” Mandhi said firmly. “There is still a way. Ulaur is not bested.”
“You still put your hope in the Power your ancestors worshipped?” Vapathi stared at her with bloodshot eyes and a voice devoid of hope. “You saw what happened to your ancestors below.”
“There is still a way,” Mandhi repeated. “There has to be a way.”
She did not give voice to her fear that she was wrong.
Daladham
Daladham mouthed the words as he read them, careful not even to whisper them.
Kisyama Varuru janit.
Daratham janit.
He wouldn’t say them out loud. It was always dangerous to say sacred words aloud outside of their prescribed ritual. The voice gave them power.
And if he understood these words correctly, these words were very powerful.
Daratham janit.
Where was Bhudman? Bhudman had to know. He had performed the sacrifice yesterday—alone, as he had demanded. He had entered a darkened, unused room in Bidhra’s palace with a ram, a great jar of water, and a silver knife. He had emerged some hours later, blood on his hands, and a pained, exhausted look on his face. He hadn’t told Daladham anything about how the ritual was performed, but he had asked for Daladham’s help carrying out the jar, now with a stone cap and a seal of wax.
“Sacred,” Bhudman had whispered. “Unseal it when it is time to bless the soldiers and drive back the Devoured.”
And then he returned to the saghada’s home and collapsed into sleep.
Morning light flooded through Daladham’s window on the ground floor of the palace which Bidhra had supplied for Navran, warming the page beneath his fingers. He could smell the sea from here and hear the murmuring of the waves in the harbor. It reminded him of Tulakhanda, and how the sea—
No, no time to think about Tulakhanda. He would never return there again. He looked back at the page.
About three quarters of the hymns to Kushma from the final pages of the book were translated, and he had a pretty clear idea of what the rest would be like. The advantage of translating rituals was that they were repetitive, full of epithets and formulae, meant to be memorized and therefore easy on the tongue. He glanced over the list of sound correspondences he and Bhudman had compiled, checked his work, and looked back at the page of translation again.
The problem was these were not simple hymns to Kushma. If he was right, this was something much worse. These hymns formed a single unified rite to Kushma Ulaur, a rite which when performed—
Well, he would wait for the translation of the last quarter. Then he would talk to Bhudman.
He sharpened his stylus and turned the next page in the thikratta’s book. A few more lines to translate.
“It’s time,” a voice behind him said. His hand twitched, and he left a black scrawl across the top of his page.
“Now look what you’ve—” he started. He stopped. Caupana stood in the doorway, a grave expression on his face. “You mean?”
“Yes,” Caupana said. “They’re at the walls. Bhudman and the saghada have already left. Meet him in the square.”
Daladham stoppered the inkwell and dropped his stylus. “Right away.”
He was dressed already, his crimson bhildu draped over his shoulder. He slipped sandals on his feet, then descended to the darkened, guarded store chamber in the cellar. Here was the jar. He lifted it from its niche by the door and cradled it carefully in both arms. Caupana rejoined him outside, and they left.
The streets of Patakshar were strangely subdued. They were very crowded, every cranny of the city overrun with the refugees of Virnas, Jaitha, Ahunas, and every city and village of the south. With crowds as thick as these, the streets should have been a din, but barely anyone moved. People bowed to Daladham as he and Caupana hurried past. Otherwise, they held their breath.
Only as he approached the walls did he hear the roar.
Fire, first, sending up sheets of black smoke just outside the outer walls. Bonfires, as Navran had made in Virnas. But there was a gap—a deliberate gap this time—where the militia of Patakshar and the garrison of the Red Men were gathered, shoulder to shoulder atop the wall. They shouted down at the deathless hordes beneath the walls. And behind them, i
n a square just beneath the walls cleared of every other obstacle, was the table where Bhudman waited.
Bhudman stood in front of it, a large bundle of ephedra on the table. He looked at Daladham with relief.
Daladham set the jar down without a word. Bhudman broke the wax seal and pried the lid off.
“Just in time,” he said. He dipped his bundle of ephedra into the tincture and nodded to the commander waiting nearby.
“Go to the saghada!” the commander shouted.
The soldiers began to file by. They placed weapons on the table, and Bhudman splattered them generously with the sacred mixture. Spears, arrows, daggers, and clubs. All sprinkled with the blood-and-milk tinted water, bearing the blessing of Kushma Ulaur.
Daladham stepped back and stood next to Caupana. He was not supposed to touch the tincture. He was mildly surprised to see no saghada around—but Bhudman’s insistence on doing this alone evidently extended even to this final part of the rite. The soldiers whose arms had been blessed climbed up to the wall above and took their places waiting for the Devoured to attack. Bhudman continued to bless, constantly muttering in the saghada dialect.
These men were not Uluriya, and he doubted they understood a word. Perhaps it was better this way. Daladham’s eye roved up to the soldiers standing atop the wall, arms held at the ready, muscles tense, in grim silence.
“What are they waiting for?” Daladham asked.
“The Devoured?”
“Why haven’t they attacked yet?”
Caupana shrugged. “The alarm sounded, and they lit the fires. What the Devoured are waiting for, I don’t know.”
Bhudman stopped. The wall atop the gap in the fires was full. Every bit of bronze had been blessed. Bhudman sagged forward, holding himself up by leaning on the edge of the table.
Daladham stepped forward and took his shoulders. “Are you well?”
Bhudman shook his head. With a deep breath, he straightened. “We must wait. More will be required.
And then the Devoured attacked.
Daladham heard it as a burst of shouting atop the walls, then the hiss of bowstrings as the archers let loose blessed arrows. For a moment the soldiers atop the wall held their breath. A burst of cheering followed.
Bhudman’s head was bowed. Daladham saw his lips moving silently.
“They fall!” the commander of the defense shouted down to Bhudman. “Your blessing drives them back!”
Bhudman raised his head. “Are you sure?”
But the commander didn’t answer. His attention had returned to the battle. The archers let arrows fly as quickly as they could put them to the bowstrings. And the Devoured fired arrows of their own. Daladham could see them flying overhead, like crows in the cloudless blue sky, and falling into the lines of infantry that waited beneath the walls.
“Archers?” he asked. “There were no archers in Virnas.”
“The Red Men,” Bhudman said. “The Mouth of the Devourer has sent real soldiers against us here, to support the hordes of the Devoured.”
A soldier came up behind them. “You must move farther back,” he said urgently. “An arrow could get you here. To the far side of the square.”
Daladham lifted the half-empty jar of blessed water and carried it in his arms after the soldier. Bhudman followed with reluctant steps.
Caupana joined them in their new location. A groan sounded in Caupana’s throat. “They nearly have the wall.”
Daladham saw it a moment later: the peaks of ladders appearing on the top of the outer wall, bony arms reaching up and grasping the blades of the soldiers guarding. The soldiers hacked at the arms and hands scrambling up the wall, but the Devoured on the other side were endless.
“Ask them,” Bhudman said, nudging the soldier who stood near them. “The captain said that the blessing was effective. Ask them why the Devoured don’t fall back.”
The question passed through the ranks of infantry waiting beyond the wall, and the answer came back a moment later. The soldier bowed as he said it.
“The Devoured fall back before our arms as if pained by their touch, but they still do not die. There are too many of them.”
Bhudman grabbed Daladham’s hand. “I’m going up onto the wall. Come with me. Bring the jar.”
“What are—” Daladham began, but Bhudman was already charging ahead, elbowing aside the soldiers. He followed.
A lieutenant at the foot of the ladder tried to stop Bhudman, but the saghada slapped his hand aside.
“Let me go up and face the Devoured, if you want to live,” Bhudman said. “This may be our only chance.”
“Saghada—” the lieutenant started.
Bhudman pushed past the man. Surprise sputtered from the man’s mouth, but he did not try to stop the saghada again. Daladham followed him up the ladder, cursing softly. The brazen old man was going to get them both killed.
They reached the battlement, and in a moment Daladham understood why the men on the parapet were being pushed back. The Devoured were shoulder-to-shoulder below, with ten, twenty ladders between them. The gap in the fires opened before the most secure place in the walls, but it didn’t matter. There were too many. The striking of the blessed weapons hurled them screaming to the ground, but every time one fell, two more took its place.
It wasn’t enough.
Bhudman groaned. “Open the jar.”
Daladham took the lid off, and Bhudman thrust his ephedra into the liquid. He pushed himself forward between two defenders, right up to the edge of the parapet.
“Bhudman!” Daladham shouted. He was going to get them both killed.
Bhudman shook his bundle and sent a rain of sacred tincture down on the Devoured. A howl sounded from the far side of the wall.
“Come!” Bhudman shouted. “Another!”
Daladham glanced down. The Devoured that Bhudman had sprinkled had fallen to the ground, and they writhed as if boiling water had been poured on them. Blisters swelled on their skin. No time to watch—Bhudman lay a hand on Daladham’s wrist and thrust his ephedra into the jar again to purify the next ladder.
The men atop the wall understood what Bhudman was doing, and they began to cheer and make room for the old saghada to come through. At the touch of his water the Devoured howled and fell. They cleansed one ladder, then another, all the way to the end of the gap in the bonfires where the men were fighting.
The cheers died out. The commander touched Daladham’s shoulder.
“They’re coming back!” he shouted over the din of the battle. He pointed behind them.
The Devoured still climbed the ladders. The very same men that Bhudman had scalded and knocked to the ground were climbing ladders again, their skin scarred with the touch of the sacred water, burst blisters dripping black blood down their arms. But they returned.
Daladham turned Bhudman to see. He understood in a moment.
“We’re falling back,” the commander said. “We have done all we can here. Get down.”
A look of despair showed on Bhudman’s face. He stood motionless until Daladham grabbed his hand and began to pull him forward. The jar—still half full—was cradled against his hip.
They reached the ground, and one of the lieutenants motioned for the two priests to go into a cocoon of soldiers. The ranks of infantry behind the wall formed up into defensive lines, protecting an orderly retreat to the inner gate.
The outer city looked like an ant-hill that had been stirred by a stick. All the refugees and citizens who had sat waiting so pensively earlier were in motion, streaming toward the open gates of the inner city, a river of shouting and panicked humanity charging toward the last refuge from the Mouth of the Devourer.
“We’ll be forcing our way through,” the lieutenant said. “Keep up.”
Their escort began to march. The other ranks of infantry closed behind them and began to slice through the mobs in the street. Behind them Daladham saw the defenders and archers leaping down from atop the parapet, the first Devoured beginnin
g to climb over the stones and reach the interior of the wall. He shuddered.
Bhudman was silent. His eyes drooped with sadness and weariness, and his lips moved in silent prayers.
“We helped,” Daladham said. He doubted he could comfort the old man, but he would try.
“Not enough,” Bhudman said. He looked down at the dripping bundle of ephedra in his hand. “I bow my head… but it isn’t enough.”
In a moment they were in the midst of the mobs, soldiers shoving aside men and women with unapologetic force. They were surrounded by shouts and screaming, people pressing toward the gates of the inner city in mad panic, fists raised, feet trampling down anyone who fell. The mob pressed against their escorts like a wave of desperate flesh, and the soldiers bashed them back with shields and fists. Their jostling knocked into Daladham’s shoulders.
With violent shoves and the threat of the sword, they pressed forward. Screaming grew more intense behind them. Devoured! Devoured! echoed desperate shouts. Help us!
The soldiers didn’t stop to help anyone.
The towering pink granite of the inner wall cast its shadow over them. Here began the moat that Bidhra and Navran had built. The houses nearest the wall had been torn down and the paving stones pulled up to clear a space ten paces wide, and in that space was a channel twice the height of a man’s head. It was, for now, empty of water, and a crude bridge of bamboo poles and wooden planks connected the inner city to the outer. Soldiers guarded both ends of it, but the mob pressed against them, begging to be allowed to cross.
“—any amount of money—”
“—my son, he’s only four, silent as a mouse—”
“—Majatha-kha knew my father, please—”
But the soldiers made room for none except those that had the tokens of passage, given out by lot. When the soldiers with Daladham and Bhudman approached, they made way.
Just before they stepped onto the bridge Bhudman shouted, “Stop!”
The group stopped. Bhudman pried the lid off of the jar.
“What are—” Daladham began, but it was too late.
Bhudman had the cap off, and with the jar in both hands he poured out the contents of the jar onto the stones, splattering it far and wide. He wet the feet of the soldiers and the citizens pushing through.