by J. S. Bangs
“Mother of the Heir,” he said, with a voice full of hunger. And he came.
Navran
“Wake up,” Kirshta said.
It was like a divine command, impossible and incomprehensible. Pain assaulted him, and rising to consciousness felt like pressing into a hedge of thorns.
“Wake up. You have to go in.”
Had he fallen asleep? But he hadn’t. The burning of his limbs had pressed him into unconsciousness, to hide from the agony, to wait for death. But death didn’t find him. Human hands touched his face. They didn’t burn. They were gentle but insistent.
“Wake up,” Kirshta repeated.
Navran opened his eyes and screamed.
Kirshta kept his hands on Navran’s face, gingerly avoiding the blistered scar left by Ruyam’s touch, and a moment later the pain lessened and drained away to be merely agonizing, rather than impossible. Navran gasped for air. Kirshta pulled away from Navran panting then whimpered.
“I’m sorry. I tried to draw away your pain, but I can’t take any more than that.”
A groan escaped Navran’s throat. “What are you doing?”
“I made bandages from a shirt and wrapped your feet and hands. It won’t help with the pain much, but it will stop the bleeding. For the rest, you’ll have to use your own strength to get into the city.”
“Go into the city?”
“You have to destroy Ruyam.”
A groan creaked from his throat to express his incredulity. “What? I can’t.” And not just because of the pain, the burning of his soles or his blistered hand. Even if he could strike Ruyam, he didn’t know how.
“You can,” Kirshta said. “And you will. He has gone to find the woman carrying the next Heir, but he’s gone to his doom. The Power who keeps you Uluriya hasn’t faltered yet. If you rise, you will save your people.”
“How?”
“By getting up.” Kirshta gave him a piercing glare. He pulled Navran’s elbow to bring him to a sitting position, then wrapped his arms around Navran’s chest. With a heave, he pulled Navran upright.
The soles of Navran’s feet touched the ground, and Navran screamed. The pain shot up his legs like an axe driving through his bones. His knees were water, and he collapsed in Kirshta’s grip. But Kirshta didn’t drop him. He pulled him farther upright and tightened his grip.
“You have to stand,” he said. “Lean on me.”
“I can’t.” Navran sobbed. “My feet—”
“Listen!” He pressed his face against Navran’s unburned cheek, and when he spoke he sounded like Gocam, shot through with austere vigor and otherworldly authority. “Pain is nothing. It passes in a moment. Ruyam thought he could cripple you with pain, but you will prove him wrong. Now walk.”
He stepped forward. The pain shot splinters through his thoughts. He collapsed again, but Kirshta pulled him upright.
“Again,” Kirshta said. “Stop trying to think. You just need to move.”
He took another step. His thoughts shattered with the burning of his soles, but he didn’t need them. He stepped again. Kirshta heaved him forward, and they approached the city.
Their approach was slow and agonizing. Pain wrecked him with every pace. His breathing was sobs, and his eyes burned with tears. Kirshta held most of his weight. He didn’t look up to see how far away the city was, nor how slowly they advanced. The thought would have killed him. He walked and learned new names for agony.
The gate loomed before them. The doors were reduced to charcoal, glittering white and red with the fury of a forge blast. The guards at the gate were charred skeletons strewn across the road. Did he pity them or envy them? He stepped forward and swallowed the next wave of pain. The houses alongside the gate road were consumed in flame, torches reaching up and scarring the sky with their black smoke. Beyond the road rose rank after rank of devouring flame.
“We follow the fire,” Kirshta said. “These are Ruyam’s footprints.”
Navran nodded. The heat scorched his face, but in the torment of his other injuries it was like a warm breeze. Another pace brought more agony. He followed Kirshta.
The burning city crept past them as they ascended through the stony streets. He recognized nothing and had no mind to spare to think of where they were going. Kirshta led, and he clung to him and hobbled forward. They passed through a marble-lined doorway into a chamber filled with charred carpets and shattered pottery. Beyond it, a marble-paved courtyard smeared with ash, a broken fountain, and the smell of burning bone. Kirshta stopped and gradually lowered Navran to the ground.
“Here I stop. You have to go from here.”
“What?”
“I can’t go down. I have to save myself as well, which means I need to run. But there’s the entrance. You can crawl.”
He pointed at a doorway leaking black smoke, set humbly into an alcove in the wall. The entrance to the Ruin. They had come to Veshta’s estate, which meant that Ruyam was here.
“What am I supposed to do?” he asked.
“Walk or crawl after Ruyam.”
“When I find him?”
Kirshta smiled grimly. “I don’t know. I have to go.”
“Wait. Why did you do this? I thought you wanted Ruyam to live.”
“It’s too late for that. Remember me next time we meet. That’s all I ask.” And he turned and fled into the darkness.
For a moment Navran lay on his back and let the cool marble tiles chill his flesh. He didn’t want to move. He had to move. If he stayed there, he was dead. But if he moved…. Perhaps Kirshta was mad. But perhaps he was right. Perhaps the light of Ulaur hadn’t left the Uluriya yet.
He screamed through his gritted teeth and rolled over onto his stomach. He couldn’t walk, not without Kirshta holding him up. But on elbows and knees, he could crawl. And so he pulled himself forward over the threshold of the door and onto the first stair of the Ruin.
The descent was steep. He managed to descend a half-dozen stairs in this manner before his elbow slipped and he slid forward, then flipped over and tumbled down the stairs. Stones and lamps spun around him. The worn stones bruised his ribs and shins and scraped at his burned flesh, and when he finally stopped he emptied his lungs in a scream. But he was at the bottom.
Consider it a shortcut, then.
He heaved himself onto his knees and elbows and crawled. Here had been the catacombs, and the floor was strewn with blackened bones. Here were the old Heirs, better men than he, defiled now from their peaceful rest. He apologized to them as he passed their graves, for being unworthy to continue their legacy, for being unable to return them to their graves. The whole tunnel reeked of ash and charred remains. He did not try to count paces or remember the layout of the Ruin. He followed the trail of ash, partway through the catacombs, then to the right down a narrow side path. The air grew hot, and the smell of smoke strengthened. He kept crawling. His knees and elbows bled. But what was a little more pain? Pain is nothing. It passes in a moment.
Ahead, there was light. He increased his pace. Smoke and sparks blew past him. A wind rushed towards the fire, and the stones heated.
“Ruyam,” he whispered. His heart pounded, and a new fury kindled his blood. He had not endured this much pain for nothing. Their enemy was near, and if Ruyam wanted to destroy Navran he had better do it right this time.
And around the next corner in the tunnel, he saw it.
A black skeletal form, draped in charred muscle and fat, with a cloak of flame filling the passage where he stood. His back was to Navran, and he spoke to someone in his gasping, ashen voice, mixed with the roaring of flames.
When you study the way of weakness, Gocam had said, you will put your hand into the fire and it will not burn you. And then, how will the master of fire harm you?
He knew this with certainty: he was the weakest of the Heirs of Manjur, the least capable, the least devout. But he had one duty, and perhaps he wouldn’t fail in it. His left hand found a shard of stone, and he heaved himself forward. A p
ace away, the heat was like staring into a furnace. Navran’s skin blistered and his hair singed. It didn’t matter. He stood upright on his knees, raised the stone, and thrust it between Ruyam’s ribs.
The black form stumbled forward. The stone clattered against the ground, and Ruyam turned. His death-head’s grimace gazed at Navran.
“Navran?” he whispered. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m doing my duty,” Navran said. His hand groped for another stone.
“Gocam transformed himself into flame and couldn’t destroy me. And you assault me with rocks?” He bent with sudden swiftness and seized Navran by the throat. His fingers melted Navran’s flesh and choked Navran’s scream. Then with a heave he turned and hurled Navran farther down the tunnel. “Join your kin in doom.”
Navran landed on flesh, not on stone. He spun and scraped his burned hands against the stone and cried out. But in the agony, he heard Mandhi’s voice.
“Navran! The ring—”
Her arms closed around his chest and she pulled him sitting upright. His head lolled to the left, and he saw other dim figures cowering in fear. The furnace heat rose again, and above him the flame-crowned form of Ruyam looked directly down.
“I shouldn’t have let you live,” Ruyam said. “Now, at least, I can destroy you all together.”
Mandhi was doing something. She seized his burned hand and forced something onto his finger, prompting a scream of pain. But the ring, Manjur’s ring, felt cool on his finger, though it glowed white like metal taken from the heart of a forge. He did not deserve it, but—the response resounded in his thoughts—a gift cannot be deserved. He was not strong enough to take it, but perhaps he was weak enough to wear it.
No sooner had the ring slipped onto his finger than Ruyam’s skeletal fingers closed over Mandhi’s wrist. Mandhi screamed as Ruyam’s touch scarred her.
“A gift?” Ruyam growled. “For me or for you?”
“Both,” Navran said. He clasped his hand around Ruyam’s, touching the star-iron ring against the charred bone.
The tunnel filled with light. A sound like an ash-choked scream issued from the mouth of Ruyam. He staggered back. The light which flooded the tunnel was not the light of a fire, but a white, cold light, the light of the stars, and it etched every shadow of the tunnel in pure, unmoving white. Navran no longer felt pain. The world was him and a sphere of light, and within the sphere a smudge of ashy darkness.
You will put your hand in the fire and it will not burn you.
Ruyam stood with his hand outstretched. Sounds that were not words boiled from his mouth. Navran stepped towards him. His hand closed over Ruyam’s again. Had Ruyam seemed strong before? But his hand was only old charred bone, as soft as charcoal. Navran squeezed. Ruyam’s bones crumbled and fell to the ground as a black powder.
He thrust his hand through Ruyam’s chest. The ribs shattered like twigs pulled from a fire. His fist closed around a piece of blackened gristle which had once been Ruyam’s heart. It pulled free with a cough of smoke, and Navran threw it aside. Ruyam’s spine buckled and fell; the burnt leg bones snapped. The black outline of Ruyam’s form lingered for a moment like a shadow cast by smoke, then it dissolved into ash and was gone.
For a moment Navran stood, alone. The light of the ring lingered for a moment, then ceased as quickly as putting out a lamp. The pain returned. He fell to the ground and remembered nothing.
Mandhi
It was raining when they carried Navran out of the Ruin and into Veshta’s estate. Mandhi laid him into a bed and sent people after ointments, milk, honey, vinegar, and rags to clean and bind his wounds. Then she set next to him and stripped away the burnt tatters of his clothing.
When she reached his right hand, she saw that Manjur’s ring was bound to the charred flesh of his finger, and though she pulled at it she couldn’t dislodge it. Leave it alone, then.
“Mandhi,” someone said at the entrance to the chamber. She looked up to see Veshta leaning wearily against the frame of the door. “Sadja-dar is here. I’m going to let him in directly.”
“Fine,” Mandhi said. “But I’m not leaving Navran.”
A few moments later Sadja appeared at the door of the chamber. He nodded to his guard to remain outside then he knelt next to Mandhi.
“Is Ruyam dead?” he asked.
“Yes,” Mandhi said.
“What happened?”
“I’m not entirely sure. I’ll tell you what I saw.” And she recounted how she and Veshta’s household had fled through the tunnels until Ruyam found them, and Navran just after. Sadja looked from Navran’s burnt, disfigured form to Mandhi.
“Do you understand what happened?” he asked at last.
“Manjur’s ring acted to save the Heir,” she said. “Or I should say, Ulaur acted to save the Heir through the ring. More than that, I don’t know.”
“Do you think it’ll happen again?”
“No. Not unless it has to.”
Sadja cleared his throat and paced the room. “Perhaps,” he said, “you should let people assume that the Heir has this power to use whenever he wants. It would be useful.”
He paused then said, “From the palace, we saw a light rise from the Ruin. I watched it from high on the balcony, and from there it looked like a flock of stars spilled across the city, thousands of points of light kindled at once and spread like dust. I later heard from those in the city that the pentacles were what shone. Every pentacle etched by the Uluriya on a lintel or dangling above a door shone like a true star of heaven for a few moments. Then they all went out at once.”
Mandhi touched the ring. It was warm with the heat of Navran’s hand but nothing else. “I wouldn’t have believed it…”
“Most of us wouldn’t have. The story of the lights, along with the rain which has quenched Ruyam’s fires, has already taken the whole city. I’ll add your story to the mix. In the morning, I think we’ll find that the loyalties of Virnas have changed.”
Mandhi hung her head. “Are we already thinking of that?”
“I have to think of it immediately.” But he looked at her with pity and said, “Rest. I’ve put a guard around the estate, and I’ll deal with Thudra. You take care of Navran.”
Habdana returned with bandages and salves, and Sadja took his leave. Mandhi cared for Navran until the morning light broke through the clouds and flooded the room, and only then did she sleep.
* * *
Navran stirred. He groaned and thrashed in his bandages, and Mandhi pressed a cool rag against his forehead.
“Quiet,” she whispered. “Don’t move. You’ll only hurt yourself.”
He stilled. For a moment she thought he had gone back to sleep, but then he said, “What happened?”
“Ruyam is gone,” she said. “But you knew that. Sadja-dar holds the city. You’re safe. We’re in Veshta’s estate. You can sleep now.”
“Oh,” he said. He took a deep breath then let out a little gasp of pain.
“You were brave,” she said. “You were—”
“No,” Navran said. “I did my duty.”
Mandhi looked away from him and blinked back tears. She wondered whether she should let him sleep or speak to him now, but the weight of her conscience was too heavy. “Forgive me,” she said.
“For what?”
“You know. I sowed discord in the city. I drove you to Ruyam. I was so sure that you were inept, impure, and unqualified to lead the Uluriya that I tried to steal Manjur’s ring for my own son.”
He took another deep breath, opened his eyes, and looked at her. “You weren’t wrong,” he said. “I wasn’t fit. I only did my duty and just barely. And you must forgive me. Taleg’s death is on my head.”
“Forgiven,” she said. “We both owe a debt of blood.”
“Yes.” He closed his eyes and winced in pain. “One last thing. Ruyam’s manservant.”
“Who?”
“A young man, Kirshta. From the mountains. He helped me from the tent
to the entrance of the Ruin.”
“As far as I know, no one has seen anyone like that. If I do find him, I’ll thank him and bring him into the house with honor.”
“No. If he’s not here, you won’t find him. But I have to remember him.”
She touched an unburnt patch on Navran’s arm. “I’ll remember him as well.”
“Thank you.” He let out a long breath, and a moment later the cadence of his breathing suggested that he had fallen into sleep.
Mandhi rose and went to the window. The road in front of the estate was crowded with people, Uluriya and gentile, a mosaic of white, yellow, blue, and red fabrics, all hoping to pay homage to the new Heir. A small cheer went up when someone spotted her in the window, and she waved shyly then retreated.
She rested her hand on her stomach and thought of Taleg and Cauratha.
“Forgive me, my love,” she whispered. “Forgive me, my father. I hoped to honor you, but nearly betrayed you both in my zeal. Forgive me. Oh!”
The baby had kicked—the first time she had felt it move. Had she imagined it? No, there again, a little flutter of motion, like a fish brushing against her hand in a pool.
She smiled.
More From J.S. Bangs
Coin of Kings: Book 2 of the Powers of Amur
Navran sits upon the throne of Virnas, recognized by all as the Heir of Manjur and the rightful king of Virnas. Unfortunately, his problems are just beginning. He discovers that the kingdom is nearly bankrupt, and keeping his promises may cost him the most valuable things that he has.
Sadja schemes to become the Emperor. He forces Mandhi to come with him to Davrakhanda, robbing Navran of his most trusted advisor—but Davrakhanda has surprises for both of them.
And Kirshta, the slave and sometimes disciple of the corrupt thikratta Ruyam, begins his quest for power and enlightenment. His search will bring him to the heart of the Empire with new enemies and allies.