Heir of Iron (The Powers of Amur Book 1)

by J. S. Bangs

  That night, Mandhi tried to offer him water, and again he spat it back. His skin was dry, free of sweat, and limp as a leaf without water.

  * * *

  When they woke on the third day, Mandhi spoke to Bhargasa.

  “He won’t make it another two days,” she said. “The wound still bleeds. He vomits back the water I give him. With no blood and no water in him, he’ll die.”

  Bhargasa closed his eyes and bowed his head. “There may be nothing we can do.”

  “What if we stopped in a guest-house in one of these villages and called the surgeon to us? Lying in a still bed would be easier for him than lying in the drag-cradle.”

  “That would take twice as long. Do you really think that getting off the road will make the difference?”

  She clenched her hands into fists. “You don’t understand. We have to get him to safety. We have to.”

  “Lady Mandhi, if your guard dies—”

  “He is not my guard! Don’t you understand anything?” Then, though her judgement warned her against it, the exhaustion and sorrow of the last three days broke through, and she could not stop herself from saying, “He is my husband.” She pressed her fists into her eyes and shook with sobs.

  Bhargasa only watched her humiliation for a moment. Then he called to his men, “Take up the straps of the cradle. Today we march for the garrison in Chakurta, even if we wear out the soles of our sandals. And when we get there, you will rest, and I will command other soldiers to take up the cradle and bring Taleg the rest of the way to Davrakhanda. Tonight.”

  The soldiers shouted their assent. Mandhi stilled her crying, wiped the dust from her hands, and rose. “Thank you,” she said.

  “I hope you have the energy to make it,” Bhargasa said.

  She thought that their march had been difficult the previous two days, but Bhargasa pressed them forward that day at a pitiless pace. The men all but ran, and Mandhi was forced to jog for long stretches to match their speed. Taleg jostled and groaned as the cradle dragged through the dust behind them. Earlier, Mandhi might have worried that the movement reopened the wound. But now, what did that matter? Either they reached Davrakhanda in time, or they didn’t. She doubted that their gentleness would make the difference.

  They did not stop to eat or drink. They took labored bites of roti between heavy breaths and sips of water whenever they could. Bhargasa took a turn in the traces, the leather strap digging into his shoulder. The callus on Mandhi’s heel, which she had thought was impermeable, began to split from the violence of her sandal slapping it. Every step became painful, and she relished it. It gave her something else to think about.

  Nightfall came after a day that felt like it lasted the whole dry season. Mandhi stopped to dribble more water into Taleg’s mouth, in the vain hope that some of it would reach his stomach. He still breathed. That was all that mattered.

  Bhargasa lit a torch. “A few more hours, and we reach Chakurta,” he said. “Just a few more hours.”

  Darkness inked the sky. The waxing sliver of the moon seemed to breathe cool air on them. They marched through hamlet after hamlet, earning curious and disapproving stares from the villagers that saw them. The stars glittered overhead. Mandhi repeated the prayers over and over again. She thought of the pain in her foot. She thought of anything except Taleg dying next to her.

  Ahead, a black square loomed in the star-speckled blue of the night sky. Torches were lit on the corners, and soldiers stood for the night watches at the entrance. Bhargasa barked orders as they approached. Chakurta.

  The gates opened, and they dragged Taleg into the open courtyard in the center of the garrison. The soldiers who had carried him collapsed to hands and knees as soon as they halted, panting and darkening the dust with the sweat dripping off their brow. Mandhi knelt next to Taleg and rested her head for a moment on his chest. His lips were cracked, and his tongue was as dry and hard as a stone. But his heart still beat.

  “… looks like he’ll die any minute,” a voice was saying. “I’m not giving you four men to carry a corpse to Davrakhanda in the middle of the night.”

  Bhargasa barked back. “Sadja-dar wants him in Davrakhanda. Either you give me the men, or you answer to him.”

  The commander of the garrison grumbled and spat. “At least let me give you a palanquin. I have a spare which we sometimes use when the king visits. Easier to carry than a drag-cradle. And do you want me to get lodging for the woman?”

  “Yes. I don’t think she’ll make it to Davrakhanda tonight.”

  Mandhi rose to her feet. “I’ll make it,” she said.

  Bhargasa looked her over and nodded. “Take some roti. If you slow us down—”

  “I won’t slow you down.”

  Within a few moments the palanquin was secured with a contingent of grumbling soldiers to carry it. Mandhi checked the wound one last time. It still seeped black, half-clotted blood, but she cleaned what she could and retied the gauze around it.

  With a lot of grunting and shouting, the men levered Taleg into the curtained palanquin and lifted it to their shoulders. Taleg’s feet dangled over the edge of the platform. Immediately they began to groan about his weight, but a shout from Bhargasa put a stop to their whining. A moment later they were on the road.

  The last hours of travel to Davrakhanda were a blind monotony. All Mandhi saw was the oval of light from Bhargasa’s torch, and the sweating, swearing soldiers bearing up her husband’s body. Villages and palm trees passed them as mute shadows against the backdrop of the stars. The only thing that mattered was the road in front of them and the next step. This was the whole world, and Taleg was the center of it.

  She could not look at Taleg while he lay in the palanquin, and they could not stop to let her examine him. And so a quiet certainty of doom began to steal over her. It began like the throbbing in her feet, a deadening pain which did not cease but could not be ignored. They would reach Davrakhanda, but they would reach it too late. Taleg would be dead when they arrived. She saw herself bending over the palanquin, parting the silk curtains, and finding no breath in Taleg’s nostrils. They would travel through the night, and deliver a dead man to Sadja’s doorstep.

  At some point during the night, her prayer changed from the prayer for healing to the prayer for the dead. The stars burned overhead. The stars, the purified souls of the dead. And Taleg would burn with them tonight. The pain throbbed. But she kept walking.

  The road descended. Overhead, she heard the cawing of a gull. They continued to march. And the eastern sky lightened, casting a gray dawn at last over the white stone towers of Davrakhanda and the turquoise water gleaming in its harbor.

  The gates of the city opened to Bhargasa’s shouts. He gave an order to the men, which Mandhi could not understand—her ability to understand speech had fled some time in the night, and all she knew was that Bhargasa ran off ahead of them, alone, while the other soldiers continued their march through the streets. She could only follow, unable to remember anything about Davrakhanda. People gawked at them as they passed.

  And then they reached the wall of a vast palace, its doors thrown open. People moved about furiously within, shouting words beyond her comprehension. They entered. The soldiers lowered the palanquin to the ground.

  And just as she had pictured it, she bent over the palanquin, parted the silk curtains, and put her hand at Taleg’s nostrils to feel for his breath.

  He lived.

  Hands grabbed her shoulders. Bhargasa was there. A bald middle-aged man shouted orders to the soldiers and the servants, and they raised the palanquin again and disappeared deeper into the estate. Mandhi rose to follow, but a servant girl tugged at her hand.

  “That is the surgeon,” the girl said. “He will take care of your guard.”

  “Oh,” Mandhi said. The curtain fell closed behind them, cutting off the palanquin from sight. She stood mutely, unable to comprehend anything other than walking down the road and waiting for Taleg to die.

  “Come with
me, please, lady. Your room is prepared.” The girl pulled her ahead. Then there was a jumble of servant girls and water and oil applied to her feet, a small room of white stone, and then she lay against a pillow and slept.

  8

  She awoke in a room with stone walls and a tall narrow window cut in the far wall. A bowl of clean water rested near the foot of the bed, and a new sari was folded on the table beneath the window. Her muscles creaked and complained as she rose, but the splash of water against her face was worth it.

  She stripped off the dust and sweat-stained sari that she had worn on the road and performed a full ablution. This was not an Uluriya household, she was not obliged to cleanse—but by the stars it felt good. When she was done she wrapped herself in the new sari and leaned against windowsill.

  The window looked out from a height of two or three storeys over the city of Davrakhanda. From this height, it appeared as a mosaic of white stone walls and baked clay paths, perched on a series of terraces that descended like stairs from the inland to the sea. A massive temple with walls painted in yellow and green designs sprawled near the docks, the sunlight glinting off its gold dome to rival the glitter of waves in the sea. The harbor beyond the wharves was protected on two sides by a crook of white rock, and a stone seawall with a narrow exit covered the third side, protecting a blue thumbnail of water. The harbor was crowded with fishing scows and trade junks. For a moment she let the salty breeze ruffle her hair and admired the afternoon light, breathing deeply and trying not to think of what came next. But her fingers tightened on the sill, and she turned away.

  Time to find Taleg. To see if her hopes in Sadja’s surgeon had been betrayed.

  A man in blue silken salwar kameez was passing in the hallway when she parted her curtain. He started in surprise. “Are you Mandhi?”

  The servants must all have heard her name. She nodded and said, “Do you know where Taleg is? My companion, a large Kaleksha. He came in early this morning.”

  The man nodded, attempting to hide a smile. “Follow me.”

  They passed a series of apartments similar to her own, broad windows breaking into the hallway at intervals. “Have you been to Davrakhanda before?” the servant asked.

  “Once,” Mandhi said. One of her father’s errands had brought her here, carrying a missive to the saghada of the city. It had been years ago, and she didn’t remember it well.

  “You see the Ashtyavarunda there,” the servant said, gesturing to the gold-domed temple which dominated the waterfront. “Will you visit it? All who sail from Davrakhanda do.”

  She considered her answer. Uluriya were few in Davrakhanda, but not unknown, and perhaps the man didn’t know what she was. There was no point taking offense. “I am not going to sail,” she said simply.

  “Perhaps the shrine to Khaldi, then. That one isn’t a great temple, but those of us who live in Davrakhanda love it the more.”

  “Khaldi?” Mandhi pursed her lips. “I don’t believe I’ve heard that name.”

  “Eh? Perhaps she’s not as well known outside the city.”

  They exited onto a stone-paved courtyard where the other servants bowed and gave them a wide berth. The servant led her alongside the stone crenellation overlooking the harbor and pointed as they walked. “The shrine is the little black crack in the east cliff.” His voice took on the sing-song cadence of telling a familiar story. “In the days of Rajunda there was an order of thikratta here, and a woman named Khaldi sought to gain entrance in order to learn the secrets of the Powers. But the order allowed only men, and the lama would not admit her. So she disguised herself as a man, joined the thikratta, and soon exceeded all of the others in her feats of fasting, her mastery of the elements, and her clarity of farsight. When she was very old, she began to grow transparent, and she became as light as a gull’s feather. Then she called together the other members of the order and revealed herself to them as a woman. While they watched her amazed, she rose and walked across the surface of the water to the east, until she could no longer be seen in the light of the waves. And then the thikratta of the order declared that Khaldi had ascended and become one of the Powers, and they made a shrine to her which is worshipped to this day.”

  They had crossed the courtyard and entered another set of white stone halls carpeted in red and green. The servant looked from the corner of his eye, as if to gauge Mandhi’s reaction.

  “An interesting story,” Mandhi said truthfully, though she doubted its veracity. “Do the dhorsha service the shrine?”

  “Oh, no,” the servant said, “and there are no more thikratta here in Davrakhanda. But the people leave shells and feathers for Khaldi at her shrine, and the women write prayers on palm leaves and tie them with a knot of white thread and throw them into the water.”

  “I thought that Ashti was the Power of Davrakhanda.”

  “Ashti is the Power of the city,” the man said with a sly grin. “You’ll find other surprises in this city. In any case, we’ve arrived.”

  They passed through an arched stone doorway and entered into the infirmary. The first chamber smelled of alkaline salts and vinegar and was crowded with jars of unguents and bundles of herbs. Just beyond it was a dim room with six bed-rolls against its walls, only one of which was occupied by a great gray shadow. Taleg.

  She forgot the servant. In a breath she was at his side, raised his hand to her lips, and kissed it. He slept, but his lips were moist, and his breathing regular. He was alive.

  “A close thing,” a voice from the entrance to the infirmary said. The bald middle-aged man she had seen that morning was there, wiping his hands on the edge of his kurta. “In another hour or so, it would probably have been too late. But I got him to keep down vinegar and sugar water, and once he wasn’t going to die of thirst, I could treat the wound.”

  He bowed deeply to the servant standing behind Mandhi then walked up to the bedroll. He pulled away the gauze at Taleg’s side to reveal a dozen maggots writhing in the wound. Mandhi recoiled with a shriek.

  “Not what you think, dear lady,” the surgeon said. “They eat the rot, and then I take them out. Once they’re done I can stitch it shut properly, but not beforehand. Tomorrow night, perhaps.”

  Mandhi put her hand on her chest to calm the pounding of her heart. “When do you think he’ll wake up?”

  “When he’s ready. Tonight, maybe. Tomorrow morning.”

  “Send someone for me when he does.”

  The surgeon glanced from Mandhi to the servant then nodded. “Whatever you’d like.” He reapplied the gauze and left.

  Mandhi rested her hand on Taleg’s chest. The mantra of thanksgiving floated to her lips.

  “He is more than your companion,” the servant said.

  “He is my husband,” Mandhi answered. For a moment, she considered if she should hide this. She was here as a representative of her father, after all, and implicitly of all the Uluriya. But Bhargasa already knew, and the story would spread by rumor if she didn’t admit to it herself.

  “Not what I expected. But very little has been as I expected.”

  Mandhi turned to him, taking in again the blue silk in which he was dressed and his rigid, comfortable Cane posture, the posture used for military attention. “Forgive me, but who are you?”

  The man laughed. “My name is Sadja-dar. I believe you received my invitation.”

  Mandhi gasped. She snapped to her feet and bowed deeply, her cheeks burning in humiliation. “Forgive me, Sadja-dar. I didn’t know.”

  “Don’t apologize. I realized that you didn’t know me as soon as we met outside your apartment and thought better than to tell you. How was your chamber?”

  “Flawless. Your servants treated me kindly and provided me everything I needed last night.”

  “Good. In preparation for your arrival, I also had the room cleansed according to your customs. I called upon one of your saghada to purify the kitchen as well, and to oversee the cooks for the duration of your stay. So you may eat and drink here w
ithout compunction.”

  “Sadja-dar, that is…. You far exceed my expectations for your hospitality.”

  Sadja smiled slightly. “I wish you to be comfortable. And what about him? Your…. Your husband? He too is Uluriya?”

  “Yes. And our marriage is legal under our customs. It was blessed by a saghada.”

  “I didn’t think that your cult had reached Kalignas.”

  “He came here as a young man and converted.”

  Sadja raised his eyebrows. “Your story gets stranger at every turn. I foresaw that three would come to me: you, Navran, and this Kaleksha. I didn’t imagine that the third was your husband.”

  Her lips stiffened. “Most people don’t.”

  “Ah.” He studied her for a long time. He had large, swift-moving eyes that seemed to look for something in her like a hawk seeking a mouse in the grass. “Interesting. We have a lot to discuss, beginning with the reason that Navran is not here and ending with the Emperor of Amur. This is not the time. I hope you understand why I examine you, though. I need to understand who you are before I confide in you.”

  Mandhi crossed her arms. “Do I get to understand who you are, my lord and king?”

  His expression didn’t change, but he inclined his head a little to her. “The time for that conversation isn’t now, either.” He turned to leave. “I’ll send food up to your room. You can eat at your leisure.”

  “Thank you again.”

  He nodded and marched from the room.

  * * *

  Mandhi collapsed into sleep early in the afternoon and slept until morning. A bowl of warm rice and baked lentils waited for her when she awoke, and she ate, washed, and went to visit Taleg again. Color had returned to his face, but he didn’t wake, and Mandhi didn’t try to rouse him. When she returned to her chamber a servant—an actual servant, rather than the king unrecognized—brought her a message from Sadja: she was to dine with the king of Davrakhanda that evening.