by J. S. Bangs
“Your ribs are broken,” Bhudman said indifferently. “Can you stand?”
“Help me,” Yavada whispered. A choked half-sob escaped his lips.
The old men bent down, and with much groaning and growls of pain they propped the tottering majakhadir to his feet. He leaned against the parapet and wrapped a bloody arm around his side, breath coming in broken gasps.
“We will carry the Heir,” Daladham said, addressing Yavada and Bhudman both. “Yavada-kha, you will have to get down by yourself.”
Yavada nodded. Daladham and Bhudman bent and picked up the still-unconscious king. Hopefully going down would be easier than going up.
Navran
Navran floated in darkness. He opened his eyes.
Water rippled around him. Still, endless depths.
He felt something brush against his hands—not the swirl of water, but the touch of something cold and firm. A long, smooth body pressed against him. His hands closed around it, and he was swimming, pulled along by the strokes of his partner.
The sun appeared as a sapphire in the darkness. Fish swam past, shining coins of silver. They rushed up, through the gloomy depths into azure water and sunlight lancing white beams through the waves. The porpoise pulled him forward, above the crowns of pink and yellow corals, fins raised to the sun in praise, through flocks of scarlet and purple fish. Then they broke through the surf, white spray dancing around them, and a beach of cream-colored sand ahead.
The porpoise clasped its hand around Navran and pulled him ahead until his feet found the soft, sandy bottom. Not a porpoise: a young woman, unclothed, with a necklace of orange and yellow shells and black hair that poured down her back to her waist. She pulled Navran to the edge of the surf, then pushed him ahead of her.
“You’ll find the way,” she said. “You’ll know them when you see them.”
Navran looked up. He wore the white saghada’s garment, now, clean and shining in the sunlight. Palms grew close together at the top of the broad, clean, beach, and between them was a narrow path to the west. The sun burned white and hot. To the west, above the path, the red star glowed, a drop of blood staining the pale blue of heaven.
At the place where the path let out onto the beach, someone was waiting for him.
Navran approached. It took him a long time to recognize the man: short and thin, skin the color of oiled leather, long gray beard and small black eyes. He was changed since the last time Navran had seen him, had become something entirely other than what he had been, but once Navran got close and saw his face, there was no doubt that it was, still, the same man.
“Gocam,” he said.
The man’s eyes lit up, and he smiled. He pressed his soft hand against Navran’s cheek. “Navran, my child. I have been waiting for you.”
“Waiting? Why?”
“All of the Powers have awaited your sacrifice. It is a fearsome moment.”
“Do the Powers know fear?”
Gocam clasped Navran’s hand in his own. “Come with me,” he said. “We have to walk a little ways before we reach him.”
The forest moved past them, palms with wide, solid leaves, mangoes heavy with fruit, and flowering vines like garlands draped over branches. As they walked, the sky’s blue deepened and turned nearly to black, but there was no darkness. The red star burned like a crimson fire in a bed of blue silk.
“You know what you are here to do,” Gocam said.
“I’m not sure I do,” Navran said. “We performed the sacrifice to Kushma Ulaur….”
“It must be completed,” Gocam said.
“I did complete it. I tasted the tincture.”
Gocam raised his hand. “You took the life of the ram. There is another life yet to take.”
Navran shuddered. The shade of a palm passed over them, and their feet hissed on the sandy path. “Why?” he whispered.
“You will understand better when you get there.”
The path ran through a lush wilderness of palms and flowers. Beyond the palms opened vast fields of rice, green and heavy with grain, then hills of somber stone that glittered with waterfalls. They crossed a great river and clambered over ice-crowned mountains. They walked the whole length of Amur and back, until they reached the center.
There was a wide, grassy plain with a banyan tree above it. A man and a woman sat beneath the tree. Navran and Gocam walked up to them.
The man was dressed in red and gold. His face was creased with the beginnings of age, but this was not what vexed him. He sweated, his skin was slack and gray, and his eyes yellow and bloodshot. A spear and a sheaf of rice lay next to him, but he was too weak to lift them. When he saw Navran approach, he dipped his head, then rested it in the lap of his consort.
The woman wore shimmering green, long black hair bound with rings of silver, her face kind and wracked with sadness. Her fingers brushed through the hair of the man before her, and her hand rested gently on his cheek. When she looked up at Navran, tears glittered in her eyes.
“You’ve come again,” she said. “We didn’t think you would need to return so soon.”
The injured man groaned. “Hopefully not too late.”
The woman lay her hand on her husband’s forehead. “We were worried that you wouldn’t arrive in time.”
“It is his duty,” Gocam said. “Once he understood what he had to do, I knew he would come.”
“She is almost ready,” the woman said. “Look.”
She reached down and lifted up the kurta which the man wore, exposing his belly. Navran took a sharp breath.
The man’s belly was black and distended, as if with some unnatural pregnancy. Livid veins crossed its surface, and in a few places the skin was dry and split, leaking blood and pus. Navran reached out to touch the wound, then jumped back. Something writhed beneath the skin.
“Do it,” the man whispered. His voice was hoarse and wracked with pain.
“She is almost ready to be born,” the woman said. “Strike now, before she has time to take shape. If she is born, she may escape, and the second blow will be worse than the first.”
Navran bowed his head. “I know. I know, but…”
He turned away and looked at Gocam in desperation. “So many will die.”
“They will,” the elder said impassively.
“But… why must I do it? It was easier to face Ruyam alone than to do this. There I gave up my own life. Now you ask me to sacrifice the lives of all Amur, thousands upon thousands, to save myself and a handful of others.”
“It is because you gave yourself up to Ruyam that you are worthy to make this sacrifice,” Gocam said. “Your battle against Ruyam was not different from your struggle against She Who Devours.”
“It seems very different to me. I would rather give myself up than ask the multitudes of Amur to die for me.”
Gocam shook his head. “There is, in the light of eternity, only one struggle in which all other struggles take part. It seems different to you, because you found yourself then atop the altar, and now you find yourself holding the knife. But this is an illusion. The one who sacrifices and the one whose blood is shed are one and the same.”
“So all battles must end this way?”
Gocam shook his head. “There is only one battle and one enemy, one sacrifice and one victory. You who live in time do not always see it, but the Powers understand the deep union, the blood shed at the foundation of time, and they themselves perform the sacrifice with fear and trembling. It is good to be afraid. But you cannot shrink back.”
Two figures emerged from the forest and walked toward them. One wore a robe of glittering yellow, a tiger striding beside him. Flames danced along his crown. The other was an old man wearing black, a white beard that reached to his knees, and a book in his hands. And behind them, a man in rags with a crow on his shoulder, a woman leading a ewe, a man holding a jar of flour. And a whole crowd of others—Navran realized the plain was full of people, some of whom he knew, and some of whom he had never seen. They s
tood in a solemn circle around the tree and watched Navran with the wounded man and his wife.
Gocam clasped Navran’s hand to his chest, then pointed back toward the tree. A stairway rose from the ground next to the tree, ascending into the air. Navran looked up, to where the top of the stairs was lost in the midnight blue of the sky. He looked at Gocam once, and the old man nodded.
“I’ll go,” Navran said.
Gocam leaned close, kissed Navran on the cheek, and withdrew.
Navran walk to the stairs and began to climb.
The tree fell away below him. He climbed through a vast blue emptiness, wider and more still than the sea through which he had ascended. The sun was on his left, and the red star burned before him. The blue of the sky faded to indigo, and beyond that to black. The stars emerged. Great white globes, brighter than the moon, higher than the sun. And they sang a vast slow song, one verse of which is as long as the age of the earth, and they danced in emerald and scarlet and blue and colors which Navran could not name.
Creatures like birds with five and seven wings flew around him and came to roost on the stairs he ascended. Flitting among the stars they looked like sparrows, but when they landed they were taller than Navran, looking down at him with faces like tigers, and they stretched out their wings to cover him.
He emerged onto the top of the stairs. There were stars above him, beside him, and below him. In front was a silence and a darkness. He fell to his knees and bowed his face to the ground.
Bloody feet moved into view before him. Navran kissed them. “My lord and king.”
A hand touched his head. He did not look up. He heard the rattling of skulls together and the shrill cries of the five-winged creatures.
“Is it time?” he asked.
The feet withdrew. Navran rose. And he saw the brazier burning before the blood-splattered figure and the spear that lay across it. The head of the spear lay in the heart of the fire, and it burned with a light brighter than the sun, as scarlet as blood.
Navran understood. He walked forward and picked up the spear. It was heavy in his hands, as if its whole length were made of star-iron, but he found he could lift it easily. When he withdrew the point of the spear from the everlasting fire its light increased, washing Navran and everything around him in blood-red luminescence. Navran walked to the edge of the stairs.
He could see down, all the way to the bottom, to where the tree sat with the two figures beneath it, and all the solemn gathered throng around them. He raised the spear to his shoulder.
The creatures along the stairs keened in a wilder, more frantic song. The shaft of the spear was long. It would reach to the earth below. And Navran could see the whole distance clearly, could see the blood seeping from the wounded belly, could see the serpent writhing within its unnatural womb and straining to break forth. The head of the spear burned with a red light.
He tightened his grip.
He struck.
Vapathi
The blood and the miry floor of the Ruin sucked at Vapathi’s ankles. Kirshta leaned heavily against her shoulder, moaning with pain. His breath was hot in her ear.
“A little farther,” she said. “A little farther.”
The dead stacked along the walls moaned. Limbs twitched, and the blood swirled. A hand reached through the water and seized Vapathi’s poisoned ankle. She shrieked and stamped it down.
“She stirs,” Kirshta said. “Her garment of flesh is ready. She only has to possess it.”
“Let’s get out of here before she’s done.”
“It’s too late,” Kirshta said. He wept hot salty tears, soaking through Vapathi’s sari and wetting her shoulder. “You can’t stop her now.”
“I’m not going to stop her,” Vapathi said. “I’m giving the others time.”
“What others? What time?”
She heaved Kirshta forward onto the lowest step of the stairs which ascended from the Ruin. His foot pawed at the stone, and Vapathi got up onto the step. Her feet pulled free of the blood.
The walls trembled. She looked back and saw the whole passage quivering. The blood drew toward the sides of the passage as if gravity had turned strange. The heaps of sacrificial victims began to move as one.
“Hurry,” she whispered.
“Hurry where?” Kirshta said. “We are doomed no matter where we go.”
“We are, but let us at least see the light when it comes down.”
His hand brushed against the wall. “There is no light. I see only darkness.”
“Can you see me?”
“No, Vapathi. I don’t see anything. I see only the inside of Her mouth. For so long I have been falling. For so long I have been hungry.”
“Quiet, Kirshta.”
“I’m so sorry, Vapathi. I wanted to help us.”
She paused to catch her breath. A sob choked in her throat. “I know,” she said. “I forgive you.” She helped him up a few more steps.
“I ruined everything,” he said.
She spoke in a whisper, her mouth touching his ear. “Yes. We are both guilty, Kirshta, and our judgement waits for us.”
The door was a few feet ahead of them. She heaved him toward it, and they collapsed across the final step and into the light. The whole building shook. The tongues of the dead behind them began to sing a hideous, maddening song.
The courtyard was filled with the bodies of the Devoured. Nakhur and Glanod lay dead on the stones. She saw no one alive—the last of the Uluriya victims had scattered. She wished them well in their last few minutes.
“I can’t see anything,” Kirshta whimpered. “Everything is dark.”
She dragged him toward the pool in the center of the courtyard. The Ruin behind them exhaled the stench of rot and sickness. They left a track of blood on the stones. At the edge of the pool she propped him up against the rim and sat down next to him.
“We said we would be together to the very end,” Vapathi said. “So here I am, Kirshta. This is the end.”
His head rocked back and forth and he whimpered. “We end in darkness, Vapathi. There is no light.”
The red star burned in the sky, brighter than the sun, surrounded by a halo of scarlet fire. She grabbed Kirshta’s jaw and turned his face toward it.
“Look,” she said. “There is a light. Do you see it?”
He blinked. His head listed to the side. Blood ran from the stitches along his neck and chest now, dripping down and mingling with the blood of the multitude he had murdered.
“I see nothing. Only blood and pain. I brought so much blood and pain, Vapathi. How can I—”
A gurgle sounded in the mouth of the Ruin. The ghastly singing of the dead grew louder, their voices melding into a single horrific shriek, speaking vile words in an unknown tongue. A blood-covered hand grasped the top stair, and Vapathi heard the squelching of a vast shape behind it.
Kirshta began to scream. “She is born! She lives! She comes!”
“No!” Vapathi shrieked. She looked up at the sky again, and turned Kirshta’s face one last time to see the burning of the light. “Look up. Do you see the light? Tell me you see the light, Kirshta. Tell me!”
For a moment his eyes were dark, unfocused. Then suddenly they grew wide.
“I see it,” he said. He began to weep great tears, mixing with the blood smeared on his cheeks. “I see it! The light Vapathi, the light!”
The light was so bright now, she could hardly see for the brilliance surrounding her. The sky was nothing but a sheet of silver ablaze with a ruby in its heart. A heavy smell wafted through the air, a whisper of incense more pure and clean than any burned in temples made by men, driving away the stench of the Ruin. The howl of the dead was swallowed by the singing of the stars. The shape about to crawl up the stairs shrank back. The Devoured dissolved into sweet-smelling dust, and the bodies of the dead Uluriya gleamed like suns.
Vapathi clasped her brother to her chest and kissed his bloody, tear-streaked cheek. With the last of his strength he wrapped
his arms around her.
The iron of heaven struck the ground. In a moment water turned to vapor, wood to ash, and stone to glowing dust. The earth was shattered. The air turned to fire. The heat of creation’s forge, light incomparably brighter than the dawn, noise no ear could hear, pressure greater than the weight of mountains.
But in the heart of the fire, for an instant more brief than a heartbeat, heaven and earth were joined in the undying flame. And in its core, like two sparks together, they burned, shot through with light, at one with the fire divine.
Mandhi
For an interminable minute, the wings enclosed the dhow. Manjur’s ring burned with starlight, casting black shadows away from Mandhi. The beating of wings and the singing of strange voices surrounded them, faces like those of tigers peeking from the welter of silver feathers, burning like forge-heated bronze.
Aside from the keening of the heavenly voices, there was no other sound. No one dared to speak.
And then, in a moment, the wings folded together, the crying ceased, and the light of the ring faded.
Far away in the west, a disk of light twenty times larger than the sun consumed the horizon. Its heat was fiercer than the brightest summer sun, and Mandhi covered her face to keep from being scorched. But its lower parts were clouded with smoke, and it was already expanding, growing dimmer, fading, and collapsing into a roil of black and orange.
As the light faded, the shore became visible. Gasps sounded across the boat.
Everything burned.
The drought-parched leaves of the palms had burst into flames in the heat of the false sun. The timbers of the larger buildings were blacked and licked with fire, while mud brick homes had slumped to the ground, ruined by an earthquake Mandhi hadn’t even felt. The grasses along the river flared with yellow and sent up thick black smoke, fire racing along them. Every boat in the harbor roared with fire. Theirs alone had been saved by the shield of the amashi’s wings.
The last of the light in the west faded and died, turning into a pillar of dust and ash rising from the dead fireball. The sunlight was as feeble as dusk, the smoke from the shore shrouding the sky in gray and turning the sun blood red.