Sword of the Deceiver (40 page)

“Yes, wherever that may be.” Samudra laid his bowl aside. “Hamsa, we have had no news for days. What can you tell us of how things now stand between Hastinapura and Sindhu?”
While I have fled down the sacred river and been the guest of the Mothers, what has my brother done?

Hamsa crossed her legs and sipped at a cup of tea. “Some of this I heard from your soldiers, Samudra. Some … I came to understand through other means. Great magic was worked here across many years.” Her gaze grew dim. “Some is here still. The rest … it has left echoes.”

She told them of the preparations for war, of Divakesh’s manic insistence that the fight go forward despite those who whispered that he, Samudra, was wrongly accused and that Hamsa’s disappearance was an omen. She told them that Makul had died ensuring her escape and Samudra wept unashamed at this hard news.

Then she told them the story that had come to her during the slow, patient dreaming of her other form; how the monks had gathered all the people of Sindhu together and walked them beyond the borders of the world so they might be safe from the war to come.

“It is a thing I never heard of, even in legend,” whispered Hamsa, clearly awestruck. “To walk even one divided soul … one who is not a sorcerer through the Land of Death and Shadow is a monumental task. To take thousands … it is a miracle.”

“They are there now?”

Hamsa nodded. “And safe as if they slept in their own beds.”

“Is my family with them?” asked Natharie. She had clenched her hands together until her knuckles turned white.

Hamsa only shook her head. “I do not know. I’m sorry.”

“Where is the army now?” asked Samudra quickly. Neither of them had the time for sorrow anymore.

“They are in Sindhu,” said Hamsa without hesitation. It was strange to hear so much certainty from her and yet it lifted Samudra’s heart almost as much as the prospect of action. “More than that, I cannot say.”

This time it was Samudra who hesitated. Ordinarily, he would not have considered asking such a question, but there had been so many miracles in the past few days, what was one more? “Is there a way you can send me to them?”

The sorceress considered for a long moment. “No. Not as you would wish. I fear, my prince, I must save my strength.”

“For what?” cried Samudra, surprised, and a little irritated.

“For Yamuna,” she answered. “Do you want to end this fight, Samudra? We must draw Yamuna from the battlefield.”

“You are certain?”

Hamsa nodded. “Yes.”

She was watching him closely, waiting to see if he remembered his earlier words. How could he forget, when this utterly transformed Hamsa sat in front of him speaking with a confidence that he was used to in great generals?

He said none of this. He only asked, “How may it be done?”

“Easily enough.” Hamsa smiled grimly. “I will let him know where I am.” Samudra opened his mouth to ask how that could be enough, but Hamsa anticipated his question. “I dared to crack his plans in two. In his mind there is no greater sin. He will come as soon as I call, and then …”

“Then what?” asked Natharie.

“Then we will see whether I have truly understood the way of things or not.” Hamsa’s eyes went distant, seeing something invisible to him. “But you cannot be here when this happens,” she went on and she unfolded her legs. “Come. We will go ask Liyoni if she will speed you on your way.”

Samudra glanced at Natharie, and together they stood and followed Hamsa down to the dock. She stood at the end of the pier and raised her hands. She called out three words that Samudra did not understand, and then she stood still, close enough to touch and yet a thousand leagues away. Moments passed away and all the morning went still. Not even a mosquito sang.

“Get in the boat,” said Hamsa, not looking at either of them. “She will carry you.”

Natharie did not question, but climbed aboard and slipped the rope at once. Samudra stepped in beside her, but turned back.

“Hamsa …” he began.

“This is my fight, my prince,” she answered. The new light in her eye grew briefly dangerous, and for the first time in his life, Samudra felt his skin shiver as he looked upon his sorceress. “You must go to your own.”

Samudra made the salute of trust to Hamsa, and then picked up the pole and pushed the boat into the current. It caught them up immediately, swiftly bearing them away.

Hamsa stood on the long pier and watched Samudra and Natharie’s little boat riding on Liyoni’s great current until she could see them no more. Then she turned and walked back toward the monastery. She was tired. She wanted rest, but there was no time. This was the fight she had wished for, she could not refuse it.

She did miss her walking stick.

She reached the open gates and turned. The air was still and heavy with the scents of the forest. The insects chirruped lazily and the birds could not be bothered to call out at all.

Hamsa lifted her face. “Yamuna? Yamuna, where are you?”

As she spoke his name, in her mind’s eye she saw him. He was in the emperor’s pavilion, crouched beside the emperor’s throne. No one heeded him, least of all his master, who was watching the high priest in front of him with his lazy, dangerous gaze. Hamsa felt the emperor’s hate and fear of Divakesh vibrating through the world almost as strong as Yamuna’s working. The sorcerer hunched over a square of white silk drawn with inks, earths, and bloods. Beside him waited a jar of black glass. Her name had been woven into the circle nine times. Some of the earth was ash from things belonging to her burnt in special fires. The blood was his own. He sought her with every iota of his strength. His eyes burned with this intent and no other, and only the lingering protections of the monastery kept his malice from her.

“It is time, Yamuna,” said Hamsa. “You want me. Here I am.”

With those words, the invisible gates flew open wide. Away in that pavilion, Yamuna’s head jerked up. He saw her now, with the eyes of his own mind. He knew just where she was and he leapt to his feet, triumph blazing through him. He snatched up the glittering black bottle. Without stopping to consult priest or emperor, he strode out into the open air. While soldiers stared and shrank away, he cast the bottle to the ground. It shattered and countless pieces of night flew in every direction, but they did not fall. They whirled together like a swarm of black flies, buzzing and cutting through the wind. They swirled around Yamuna, lifting him up into the sky, making the wind visible with their shining blackness, and they bore the grinning sorcerer away.

Her inner vision faded. The wind blew gently through her ragged hair. Hamsa turned and walked back into the deserted gardens to wait.

Pravan stared out at the the rice fields that surrounded Sindhu’s capital city. The land was so flat that by standing in his stirrups, Pravan could see the sacred river snaking through the countyside a quarter league away. The rice was green and waving in its flooded paddies, and these fields were as abandoned as all the others had been. The city walls were massive wooden palisades atop earthen banks rising up five times a man’s height, their battlements painted red, green, and gold. They looked sound, but the stout gates hung open, and beyond them Pravan saw no smoke rising. He heard none of the sounds that must come from a large city, no voices human or animal, no sound of cart or foot. Whatever had taken away the people of Sindhu had not spared this place.

“Was it plague, Captain?” murmured his lieutenant, Vikas, who brought his horse up beside him.

“I wish it was,” he said softly.
If it was plague we could turn around and even Divakesh could not contradict us
. “Is there word from the outriders yet?” He’d sent men into the forest, and into the fields, to search for ambush, for cowering farmers, for someone, anyone, who could tell them what was happening in this ghost of a place.

Vikas, forgetful of proper respect, only shook his head, and Pravan could not find it in him to rebuke the man. “We will need to send others,” he said, his eyes scanning the country around them again, and again. “See to it.”

And if they do not come back? We should turn around. We should go all the way back to the Pearl Throne
. He pictured himself trying to say this to the emperor, and his whole being curdled with fear and revulsion. They had to find some witness to what happened here. It was the only way the emperor might hear reason.

“They say,” Vikas began, then he stopped, looking around to make sure no one overheard. “Sindhu’s Awakened One is really a sorcerer and that he lifted them all into Heaven. They say he is even now readying an army of demons to rain down on us.”

“Worry about the Huni, Vikas, not demons,” Pravan snapped with more confidence than he felt. He wheeled his horse around. “We will halt here while I get our orders from the emperor!” he shouted to the officers behind him. “I want good watch kept! Now is not the time to be caught napping!”
Not with open gates and an empty city before us and the forest behind
. “And when the outriders come back see they are brought to me at once!”

Pravan gathered his nerve and rode back to where the imperial chariot waited.

Divakesh, however, had beaten him to the emperor’s chariot. The man had walked all the way to Sindhu, like the lowliest foot soldier, preparing the way for the image of the Mother carried on her golden palanquin behind him.

“Here comes Captain Pravan,” the emperor was saying as he approached. “You can ask him.”

Pravan dismounted at once, making the salute of trust.

“Why have we stopped, Captain?” demanded Divakesh. “Why do we not seize this city and carry Mother Indu to its heart?”

Pravan licked his lips and prayed to Mother Vimala, who oversaw traders and others who lived by their tongues, to send him persuasive words. “The city may appear empty, Lord Divakesh, but this may yet be a trap. It may be the Sindishi and their allies have all withdrawn to some hidden spot within the walls and they are waiting for us to walk in. Caution will lose us but a few hours, perhaps as much as a day, but may gain us the victory.”

“How dare you!” Divakesh stalked forward, his chin quivering with the force of his rage. Behind him, Pravan saw the emperor smile his lazy smile, and the fear he had been keeping at bay bit deep into his heart. “How dare you suggest the Mothers have not brought us victory!” shouted Divakesh. “How dare you suggest we have done wrong in their names!”

Pravan took a step backward. “My lord, I did not suggest wrong, only caution.” All the rumors that he had heard about the high priest, the rumors which had cost men their lives, came flooding back to him now.

“Caution!” roared the priest. “Cowardice! The Queen of Heaven has commanded this war and it is our duty to follow Her without hesitation or question!”

“Divakesh,” said the emperor quietly.

Divakesh turned in place, and for a moment Pravan thought the priest meant to rebuke the emperor for interrupting him. Emperor Chandra handed his spear to one of his personal army of attendants, then lifted off his crown and gave it to another. He scratched his scalp vigorously and swung his arms over his head, stretching, and all the time watching the walls of the city.

“You tell us it is the Mothers who created this victory, my lord Divakesh,” the emperor said at last. “Is it not then right and proper that you should take Mother Indu into the city and consecrate it to her before any of us enters? Would that not purify the confines and render them fit for the First Son of the Mothers?”

Pravan felt himself tensing to hear what
Agnidh
Yamuna would say about all this, but the sorcerer was gone already and none knew where. Some said he fled in the face of a bad omen, and the men were growing more nervous because of it. Pravan tried to accept the story that Yamuna had gone to root out whatever curse emptied the country and hid the enemy, but his heart did not believe.

Divakesh’s eyes gleamed. “It will be as you say, my emperor,” he bowed. “I will take my priests and a hundred of the soldiers, with trumpeters and drummers. The Mother of War must have a worthy escort.” Without waiting for Pravan to give counsel, let alone permission, the high priest strode off, bellowing his orders to whoever was nearest. Men scattered out of his path, to hurry to obey him, or just to get out of his way, Pravan could not tell.

Beside him, the emperor whispered, “So now, you old devil, now we will see. If you truly know the will of the Mothers, you should have no trouble doing this thing.”

“My emperor …” began Pravan carefully.

“No, Pravan.” The emperor shook his head, his attention all on the city walls before them. “We must wait now and see.”

“Yes, my emperor.” A hundred men.
It won’t matter
, he told himself. Even if the Sindishi had somehow managed to bring every Huni out of the mountains, the Hastinapurans still would outnumber them three to one. “But … should we not withdraw, just in case?”

Emperor Chandra reclaimed his crown, settling it back on his head to cover his oiled curls. “In case the high priest Lord Divakesh is mistaken about the holy will of the Mothers?”

“Forgive me, I meant no …”

“But you did.” The emperor gestured for the attendant to hand him his gilt-tipped spear, which he cradled in the crook of his arm. He measured the city walls with his gaze once more. “Yes. We will withdraw until we hear the priest’s bells ring out joyfully over the city.”

Pravan gave the salute of trust. A rush of relief flooded through him. He reclaimed his mount and returned to his officers to give his own orders. Slowly, as it did all things, the great army gathered itself, turned, and began to back away, withdrawing toward the treeline. All except Divakesh’s priests and his hundred men. They marched in a neat double column through the rice paddies, on the narrow raised roads that ran between the pools thick with tall, green grain, across the arched bridges over the irrigation canals, carrying Mother Indu on her palanquin. The great drums thundered, the conchs and ivory horns blared, and the little troop marched through the city gates.

Pravan stood in his stirrups, shading his eyes. He imagined Divakesh’s eyes blazing in triumph, his priests carrying Mother Indu directly to Sindhu’s royal palace where the main temple of Anidita surely lay. Would he stop and behead all the images of the Awakened One on the way? Pravan wondered idly. Or would he save that exercise for later, once the city was reconsecrated?

A distant flash caught his eye, but it was gone before Pravan could focus his attention on it. Then, there came another. It arched up from the rice paddies and fell inside the city walls. It was followed by another.

Pravan stood in his stirrups “The fields!” he shouted. “To the fields!”

Runners scattered. Men surged forward. Pravan kicked his horse’s ribs and the beast leapt onto the road, galloping full-speed to the nearest dike.

Before him, the Huni rose up, water sluicing from their black, lacquered armor. Their spears and axes were bright and their orders were clearly given, because they stepped onto the roads and the bridges.

Behind them, the first flames rose up in the city, and Pravan heard the war horns blow behind. Wheeling his horse in a tight circle, Pravan looked about him wildly, to see the army of the Sindishi pouring from the forest straight into the still disordered camp.

They were trapped. Burning city and enemy before, river to the right, and yet more enemy behind.

I was right
, thought Pravan ridiculously.
This once, I was right
.

It didn’t matter, for he was also dead. There was nothing to do. Pravan raised his sword and cried out, madly, wordlessly, and charged.

And so the rout began.