Mahimata

by Rati Mehrotra

  Someone thrust a brand into the mouth of the tube and a deafening roar split the night.

  Kyra stood rooted to the spot, watching in fascinated horror as a giant fireball arced through the air toward her.

  A huge body knocked her aside, sending her sprawling to the ground. Menadin. His eyes locked with hers, his mouth open in a red snarl. Firelight framed his face and then they were burning, and Kyra gasped for air but there was none; all the oxygen had been sucked out of the world and this was how they would die, locked together, eye-to-eye, none of the promises fulfilled.

  Reality returned with a distant boom. Menadin slumped over her, crushing her beneath his weight. Kyra’s eardrums popped; she took a deep breath of smoky air and coughed. She pushed aside the wyr-wolf’s massive body with an effort and stood. Her chest burned with every breath. Deadly flowers of fire sprouted around her. Menadin did not move. Her eyes stung from smoke, and from something more painful, but she must not think about him right now. She ran instead, dodging the projectiles that whistled about her, leaping over fires, ignoring the heat searing her face and limbs.

  Through the smoke, the weapon came into view, the hellish black snout pointed toward her, men pumping frantically to deliver another charge. But she was close now, close enough to count six men, three women. She threw the bonds of Inner Speech at the nearest two, freezing their limbs. Her katari got a third, toppling him to the ground. And then she was upon them and it was the dance of Empty Hands, and was that not the most beautiful, purest dance of all? She whirled in the middle of the frenzied, diminished group. One of them landed a blow to her shoulders, and she almost doubled over with pain. She recovered and threw a kick to the side of his skull, feeling the sick crunch of bone beneath the bridge of her foot.

  How long did it last? Kyra had no memory later of the last minute or two of the fight. But she must have killed or maimed them all, for when the Valavian battle cry sounded to the rear of the camp, she stood alone in the midst of a heap of unmoving bodies. The catapult, or whatever it was, stood unattended. She brought her blade down on the elongated tube mounted on the cart, and the awful clang of metal on metal jarred her whole body.

  But nothing could resist kalishium. Kyra brought her blade down again and again, until her jaw ached and every bone screamed in protest. Finally, the tube was reduced to a mess of distorted parts that were fit only for melting.

  Valavians poured through the camp, cutting down the outlaws who were still fighting or attempting to flee. Kyra retrieved her bag with the kalashik and went hunting for the remaining one, ignoring the chaos around her. The Valavians would deal with the surviving outlaws. The most important thing was to find the second death-stick.

  Something butted her from behind, and she almost fell. It was a wyr-wolf, the one that had playfully nipped Menadin’s ears, the one Kyra had thought might be his mate. From somewhere, a name came to her, like a gift: Sudali.

  “Where is the other kalashik?” she asked, urgent.

  The wyr-wolf loped ahead of her, leaping over fallen bodies and the fires that sprouted all over the battlefield. Kyra followed as best she could. Sudali led her deeper into the camp. Had the kalashik been passed from hand to hand, retreating ever farther as defeat became imminent?

  At last Sudali stopped in front of a heap of burned and broken corpses. Her ears flattened, and she growled.

  The air stank of metal and smoke and burning flesh. Kyra swallowed hard. There was something here that belonged to her, and she would take it.

  Goddess make me strong, so I can do what needs to be done. She reached down and began to move aside limbs and torsos, trying not to be sick. Most of the men and women had died from bullet wounds; a few had been hacked apart by swords. They had turned on each other—why?

  The answer lay cradled in an arm at the bottom of that distressing heap—an arm without a body attached to it. The gun gleamed dark and bright, unsullied by the human blood and brains that stained the ground and Kyra’s own hands.

  At last you are here, and we shall both be free.

  Kyra clutched her blade, but it was no good; this time the voice was stronger—amplified, perhaps, by the blood it had shed.

  Take me, Markswoman. I will lead you to the man who killed your family. You need me, you want me, you know you do.

  The voice so seductive; the words so cold and true. As in a dream, Kyra saw herself reach for the dark weapon.

  Razor-sharp teeth caught hold of her hand, and she yelped in pain. The wyr-wolf. The seductive tones of the death-stick vanished, replaced by fury.

  Kill it. Kill the dog that dares stand between us.

  Kyra trembled at the onslaught of that voice. She looked at the katari in her free hand, and the wyr-wolf, still hanging on grimly to the other. Blood trickled out of Sudali’s mouth. Her blood. At least she hadn’t snapped off Kyra’s hand. She was probably being as gentle as she knew how.

  “You can let go now,” said Kyra. “Please, Sudali,” she added.

  The wyr-wolf released her hand and backed away, wary.

  “Thank you,” Kyra muttered, wiping her hand on her robe and trying not to wince. She opened her bag and kicked the gun in. Its voice rose in a protesting screech, but somehow it had no more power over her.

  “I’m going to get rid of you all,” she said, tying the bag closed. “Forever. Prepare for oblivion, you evil thing, because that’s where you’re going.”

  Then, and only then, did she retrace her footsteps to Menadin. Sudali followed her, and the other wyr-wolves fell in step behind them, until they arrived at the place where their leader had fallen.

  Chapter 30

  The Gun in His Hand

  Rustan walked behind Faran Lashail, relying on the glow of his mother’s blade to light his way. The wyr-wolves ran ahead of them, occasionally stopping to glance back, impatient for the humans to catch up. Odd, how calm he was before the battle. But Shirin Mam’s katari was warm in his hand, her letter tucked safely in his robe, and both were talismans that would hold the worst at bay.

  He had read Shirin Mam’s letter several times, even though the words were burned in his mind, indelible. Every time he read it, a fresh question rose, demanding to be answered.

  But there would be no more answers from his mother, no secret missives waiting to be found. Her life and her death remained a mystery to him—almost as much of a mystery as the man called Rubathar. Rustan could not think of him as his father, not yet.

  To what end had she lived, and to what end had she brought him into being? Shirin Mam, the most powerful woman of Asiana, had done a foretelling, and what she had seen had made her go against the Kanun of Ture-asa.

  Beware of Kyra Veer, she had warned, but the words came too late to make any difference. Whether the betrayal she spoke of was Kyra’s breaking the law and stealing the kalishium, or whether it was some other betrayal that waited in his future, Rustan did not know. What he knew was that his fate was entwined with hers, as long as he lived, and he could no more have separated himself from her than he could have severed his own limbs.

  When Rustan climbed down the mountain and took the door to Kunlun Shan, Kyra’s trail burned bright for him. Even three days on, he could see the afterglow of her blade as he moved down the Transport corridor. When he caught up with her at the Temple of Valavan, the feeling of rightness returned to his world. Even through the duel, even through his own pain and hers. This was where he needed to be: fighting the outlaws by her side. Barkav would have approved.

  And Shirin Mam? Surely she would have approved as well. She had loved Kyra. While love could be blind to imperfections, a Mahimata’s love was not given lightly.

  He believed Kyra would defeat the outlaws and return peace to Asiana. And he, Rustan, would help her in this mission, paying back in some small measure the blood debt his Order had incurred when Kai Tau turned renegade and killed Kyra’s family. Kai Tau, after all, had once been a Marksman of Khur.

  The Sahirus too would have understood. H
e owed them his life and his sanity, but they had known from the beginning that different loyalties tugged at him. And did it make him any less of a Sahiru, that he was a Marksman too? Did it make him any less of a Marksman, that he was a man too?

  Twigs crackled underfoot, and Faran shot him a warning glance. No one spoke, but Rustan could sense the thoughts and emotions of the Markswomen around him. Anger, fear, outrage—and overriding them all, an unwavering determination to punish the men and women who had attacked the villages surrounding the temple and desecrated their sacred groves. There would be killing tonight, plenty of it, and Rustan was unsurprised to find distaste growing within him in anticipation of what he would witness—of what he would be forced to do.

  The kalashiks, he reminded himself. Once those were secured, the outlaws wouldn’t be able to harm them, and could, perhaps, be reasoned with. But would the Markswomen be willing to negotiate a surrender? Somehow, he doubted it. The outlaws had killed one of the Valavians, and the light of vengeance was in all their eyes, Faran’s words in their hearts. Will we let them live? she had asked. Death to the intruders, they had answered.

  Faran halted and made a sign for everyone to stop. The wyr-wolves sprang ahead, and the rest waited, tense. Rustan felt the cold brush of inevitability, and his skin prickled. Death will come, but not by my hand, not if I can help it.

  Howls pierced the silence of the night and Faran shouted, “Come on!”

  They ran through the forest, and as the trees thinned, fires danced into view, burning fitfully before the tents that rose from the ground like tumorous growths. Gunshots rang through the air; a bullet whistled past Rustan and struck a tree, dislodging a branch.

  “Watch out,” shouted Faran. “They are still armed!”

  On cue, the Markswomen spread out far and wide, keeping to the shelter of the trees, careful not to break cover. As another bullet ricocheted off a massive tree trunk and nearly grazed his cheek, anger welled up inside Rustan. Whatever ancient knowledge had created these weapons, it was dead and gone; only its offspring remained to work their evil upon Asiana.

  Faran had reached the edge of the clearing, where the forest gave way to stumps—the trees had been hacked by the men for firewood. To Rustan’s astonishment, two men walked up to her, weaving between the tree stumps, helpless terror on their faces. And then he realized she had used every ounce of the Mental Arts in her power to draw them to her over the distance. But to what end?

  He soon found out.

  The men broke into a run, away across the open ground, moving together diagonally in perfect synchrony, shielding Faran Lashail behind them.

  She was using them as human shields. Bullets tore into the men and they fell to the ground, spurting blood, but by then Faran had already reached the camp. The man who held the kalashik stood on a cart-like machine, protected from the wyr-wolves by a thick knot of men and women armed with spears and swords. Many lay dead, their throats gouged out by the snarling wyr-wolves, but as many, Rustan guessed, took their place from the ranks of the fighters spilling out of the tents.

  And then the man with the kalashik turned and began to fire on his own people. Rustan watched, sickened, as dozens died in mere seconds, bodies disintegrating into bits of flesh and bone before his eyes.

  He sprinted out of tree cover to join Faran, who crouched a few yards away from the man with the kalashik. The other Markswomen fanned out, careful to stay out of the path of the bullets.

  “Stop,” said Rustan. “It is over. They are running away.”

  Faran’s face was beaded with sweat, her fierce eyes turned inward with concentration. The man with the kalashik continued to shoot at his fleeing, wailing companions.

  Rustan summoned the Inner Speech. “Stop now,” he said, and Faran collapsed against him, shaking.

  Rustan laid her down and ran to where the man now stood alone, surrounded by a heap of dead bodies, staring at the kalashik as if he did not know what to do with it.

  Then he turned, saw Rustan, and raised his gun, awareness returning to his eyes.

  Rustan flung Shirin Mam’s blade, and it lodged itself deep in the man’s forehead. Incredibly, the hand holding the gun did not falter. Rustan watched in horror as it pulled the trigger and a single shot rang out, deafening at this proximity, before the man toppled over.

  Rustan blinked. He raised his hand and touched the side of his stinging face. His fingers came away covered with blood.

  “Damn fool thing to do,” said Faran next to him, making him jump.

  Rustan took a deep breath, trying to calm his pounding heart. “A small flesh wound, nothing more.” He was lucky the bullet had only grazed him. “And you, are you all right?”

  “Of course,” said Faran. “Time to mop up.” She jerked her chin and her Markswomen moved forward, slow and deliberate.

  Rustan went to the dead gun-bearer and pulled out Shirin Mam’s blade from his forehead. It came out with ease, leaving a sticky mess of bone and tissue behind. Rustan’s guts churned and he turned away. Someone’s brother, someone’s son. What could this man have become, if not for Kai Tau?

  The death-stick had fallen from the dead man’s hand onto the ground. It gleamed, not with light but with an intense blackness that drew the eyes and demanded attention. Rustan picked it up, studying its shape, puzzling over its contours. The bullets, he had heard, were self-replicating, the gun taking power from its handlers and the surroundings to replenish itself.

  “Put down the dark weapon. Are you mad?” Faran cried out.

  Rustan looked up, bewildered. “I am just observing it. What is the matter?”

  “What is the matter, he says.” Faran summoned the Inner Speech. “PUT IT DOWN. Now.”

  Rustan frowned. He could have tried to resist the command, but the other Markswomen had gathered behind Faran and were looking at him with equal parts horror and fear. Moreover, he could discern, just at the edge of his hearing, a faint, high-pitched voice emanating from the weapon. It was disquieting, to say the least. He laid the death-stick down on the ground and opened his palms.

  “There you go. Satisfied?” To his relief, the voice faded away.

  Eyeing him as she would a venomous snake, Faran edged over and used her booted foot to kick the gun into a bag. Only when it was securely tied did her shoulders slump with relief. “Never let a dark weapon touch your skin,” she told him. “It can take over your mind. We are protected by our kataris, but not even they can help us if we fall under a kalashik’s spell. Did you not know this?”

  Yes, he did know it, but he had ignored that knowledge. Why?

  Rustan examined himself and realized, with stomach-clenching clarity, that the gun had made him forget how dangerous it was.

  But there its influence had ended. “It couldn’t reach me,” he said. “It was able to make me pick it up, but it was unable to make me listen to its voice.”

  “Praise all the gods and goddesses,” remarked Faran. “Or we would all be dead, and so would half of Asiana. I wonder,” she added, “what protected you?”

  He shrugged, uncomfortable. “Shirin Mam’s blade?”

  “Powerful as it may be, it is still only a katari,” said Faran.

  “And I am only a Marksman,” said Rustan.

  “Are you?” she said, and flashed her teeth. “When this is all over, if we are both still alive, I would welcome an . . . exchange. One of my Markswomen can visit your Order to learn what she can from your people. And you can stay with us and learn what you can.”

  An invitation to live and learn with the Order of Valavan? Barkav would be delighted. This would do much to lessen the isolation of the Order of Khur. “I thank you on behalf of my Maji-khan,” said Rustan, and he bowed.

  Perhaps it was the act of bowing, or perhaps it was a delayed reaction to the loss of blood, but as he bent forward, darkness fogged his mind and he toppled over.

  Chapter 31

  The Name of the Blade

  Menadin was dying. Kyra knew it as soon as
she crouched beside him and heard his labored breathing. His eyes were closed, his entire back burned raw. But it was a deeper hurt inside that was killing him.

  “Hang on,” she whispered. “I’ll take you to Navroz Lan; she’s the best healer in all of Asiana. You’ll soon be up and running again.” Knowing, even as she said it, how empty of meaning her words were.

  Menadin’s eyes opened, and his tongue flicked out. Wyr-wolf venom, he had once told her, could transpose someone to Wyr-mandil.

  “Later,” she said, desperate, slipping her arms around his shaggy neck. “First, we have to treat those burns, get you some medicine . . .”

  Menadin snarled at her with a return of his old fire and thrust his snout into her face. She gasped at the cold, prickly sensation of his tongue, and squeezed her eyes shut. If this is what you truly want in the last minutes of your life, so be it.

  When she opened her eyes again, she was in Anant-kal. She sat in a garden, her back against a stone wall, the sun caressing her cheeks. Around the garden, the tall towers and familiar domes of the Shining City pierced the blue sky. Lounging in front of her was Menadin, an easy grin on his feral face, his back straight, unharmed, alive.

  “Menadin!” she cried, and leaped to her feet. She wanted to run and hug him, but she checked herself. “You’re okay? You’re going to be all right?”

  “Look around,” said Menadin, instead of answering her question. “Observe. Tell me what you see.”

  Kyra frowned. She took in her surroundings: the lush garden, the fountain in the distance, the towers of the city, the disc-shaped structure hanging unsupported in the sky.

  And then it hit her. “It’s not fading in and out anymore,” she said, and relief rushed through her. “It’s just as it used to be.”