Naamah's Curse (69 page)

The gods use their chosen hard.

It was true.

It was mid-day when I sensed a second living presence in the maze ahead of us, and called softly to Bao, ordering a second halt.

This time, the path was too narrow to admit us both on horseback. Bao and I dismounted, stealing around the corner together on foot. He caught his breath in a hiss at the sight of the man awaiting us.

My throat tightened. “One of the good ones?” I asked unnecessarily. This fellow was young, younger than Bao, with delicate features. His face was filled with transcendent determination, but even I could see that he held the long pike he wielded in a tentative, inexpert grip.

“Uh-huh.” Bao glanced at me. “Sudhakar. I used to try to protect him.”

My
diadh-anam
flickered. “We can’t just kill him.”

“No.” He sighed. “Let him see us.”

I released the twilight.

The boy yelped with alarm at the sudden sight of us, his eyes stretched wide. I nocked an arrow and trained it on him. He leveled his long pike, swinging the tip back and forth between us in an agony of indecision.

“Sudhakar, it’s me,” Bao said in a soothing tone, his staff tucked under one arm. “You don’t want to fight, do you?”

“Our lady wills it!” His voice trembled.

“Our lady wills a great many things, none of them good,” Bao said calmly. “Think, Sudhakar. She’s not here now. Kamadeva’s diamond is not here.” He tapped his chest. “Look into your heart. You don’t want to do this. Lay down your weapon and surrender, and we will take care of you, good care of you. The Rani of Bhaktipur is a good lady, a very good lady. I promise, you will be safe among us.”

The boy hesitated, and I thought for a moment that Bao had reached him, but I was wrong. Jagrati and Kamadeva’s diamond might not be here, but they were not far enough away, either.

“No!” young Sudhakar cried in a high-pitched voice, shaking his head frantically. “No, no, no! I am loyal to
her
!”

Pike leveled, he charged at Bao.

Despite the narrow confines, Bao spun out of his way with effortless grace, his staff lashing out to connect with the back of the boy’s head as he passed. Sudhakar fell forward and measured his length on the rocky path, lying motionless.

I winced. “Dead?”

“Unconscious.” Bao rolled the boy over, testing his pulse. “Broken nose, chipped front teeth. He’ll live if we let him.”

“Let him,” I said.

Bao nodded and called for Pradeep, who procured a long length of sturdy rope from somewhere in our supply train. Together, they trussed the boy Sudhakar securely and dragged him into one of the blind alleys. Gods willing, we would retrieve him on our return journey.

“Two down,” I said. “Seven to go, plus the Falconer. Do you suppose there are more in the maze ahead of us?”

“Yes,” Bao said soberly. “At least one. They wouldn’t have left a half-trained lad like Sudhakar as the last line of defense in here.”

He was right.

For two more hours, we climbed uneventfully, the call of Kamadeva’s diamond growing ever stronger. I struggled to ignore it, struggled to maintain my hold on the twilight, trying not to think about the offer Naamah had made to me, trying not to let myself get distracted by the fear that I had chosen unwisely. Nearing yet another hairpin turn, I barely sensed the presence ahead of us in time to order Pradeep to halt.

It was narrow, very narrow. Once again, Bao and I dismounted and went to investigate on foot, me with an arrow nocked.

As strained and mentally weary as I was, I couldn’t make sense of the vision before me. For the space of a few seconds, I thought I was seeing one of Bhodistan’s strange gods with two heads and four arms.

Then it resolved into the image of two men crowded into the narrow space together. One gestured silently to the other, who cupped his hands together. The first man put his foot in the other’s cupped hands, and the other tossed him upward with a powerful heave. The fellow soared into the air, catching the ledge of the steep wall and pulling himself to his feet.

Behind us, shouts of alarm came as the assassin appeared above us; and I lost my grip on the twilight.

The fellow before us gave a hoarse cry of surprise, plucking a pair of short-handled battle-axes from his belt.

Bao shouldered past me. “The Rani, Moirin!” he shouted. “Get the other one! He’s after Amrita!”

I whirled and took aim, but the fellow was already in motion, racing along the top of the deep crevasse, sure-footed and swift. He had a row of silver quoits like razor-edged bangles along one arm, plucking them free with his other hand and hurling them with deadly force as he ran. Cries of agony arose in his wake.

I shot at him and missed; and by the time I had a second arrow nocked, he was around the hairpin turn, the high walls blocking him from me. With fifty men between me and my lady Amrita, there was nothing further I could do to protect her.

Sick with fear, I turned back, only to find Bao faring poorly in his battle.

Like the archer, the axe-man had picked his spot well. The path was too narrow here for Bao to wield his long bamboo staff effectively, forcing him to parry with awkward diagonal moves, essaying cautious jabs and retreating step by step.

And step by step, the assassin advanced, the narrow space suited to his short-handled weapons, which he wielded with fearful ease, describing complex patterns in the air as they crossed and uncrossed, spun and slashed. A death’s-head grin stretched his lips from his teeth, and there was a manic gleam in his eyes.

Although I had an arrow nocked, with Bao between us, I couldn’t shoot the fellow, either.

“Moirin!” Bao yelled. “Call your magic!”

There was too much shouting, too much fear, too much chaos altogether. I tried and found I couldn’t do it, couldn’t summon the concentration.

“I
can’t
!” I yelled back at him, furious and helpless. In a surge of desperate inspiration, I switched to the Shuntian scholars’ tongue. “Bao, when I count to three,
duck
!”

He gave a sharp nod.

I counted. “One… two… three!”

Bao dropped like a stone into a deep crouch, ducking his head and raising his staff at a steep angle above it in a last effort to ward off the descending battle-axes. The assassin’s eyes shone.

Aiming high, I loosed my bow.

The arrow caught the fellow in the throat, piercing it clean through. He staggered backward, the battle-axes falling forgotten from his hands, which rose to feel at the feathered shaft. His face softened into that bewildered look that comes when death takes a man unaware, and he sat down hard on the trail, his breath gurgling wetly in his throat.

Once again, I swallowed against a rising tide of bile.

Bao was on his feet, bending over the fellow. I looked away as he ripped the arrow free from his throat.

The sound the man made as he died was dreadful.

Bao met my gaze. “The Rani?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

Word travelled up and down the long, twisting line of our company. One man was dead, and a half dozen more seriously injured. The Rani Amrita was alive and safe. Hasan Dar had protected her with his own body, throwing himself from the saddle. He had suffered a grievous injury in the process, one of the razor-edged quoits lodged between his ribs.

He might live—or not.

The second assassin was dead, brought down at last by our own archers. Four down altogether; five left to go, plus the Falconer.

Kurugiri was still awaiting us.

“Moirin.” Bao touched my arm. “Can you continue?”

I gazed at the corpse of the axe-wielding assassin, remembering a story the trader Dorje had told me. “I think I’ve heard of this one, or at least one like him,” I murmured. “I think he stole a Tufani yak-herder’s daughter and slaughtered her family. Does that tale sound familiar to you?”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “It does.”

“I thought so.” I remembered the weight of the prayer-urns as I turned them outside the temple of Sakyamuni in Rasa, the light touch of the boy-monk’s slender fingers on my tear-stained cheeks as he sought to comfort me, the dense, fragrant scent of incense all around us. His face blurred in my memory with Ravindra’s, with the boy Dash from the caravan; his fingers blurred in memory with the image of my lady Amrita’s graceful hands forming a
mudra
, with Sameera’s severed fingers discarded on the storeroom floor.

Kamadeva’s diamond sang to me.

I shook my head, willing it clear. I could continue because I
had
to continue.

“Moirin?” Bao nudged me.

“Aye?”

He flashed his incorrigible grin. “Marry me if we live through this?”

My heart gave an unexpected jolt, but I managed to raise my brows at him. “You already have a wife, my Tatar prince.”

“Nah.” Bao’s grin widened. “The Great Khan dissolved our union. So?”

“Oh, fine!” I took a deep breath, drawing the twilight into my lungs, spinning it softly around us both, finding new reserves of strength. “Yes.”

Bao kissed me. “Good.”

H
ours later, we gained the summit.

There had been no further assassins awaiting us in the maze, and none awaited us atop the peak of Kurugiri. Only the fortress itself, stark, solid, and forbidding.

One by one by one, members of our company straggled out of the narrow paths—or at least most of us. One dead, another half dozen injured, Hasan Dar among them. We had been forced to leave them behind, swaddled in blankets against the cold.

I dismounted and found my lady Amrita surrounded by anxious guards, and embraced her with relief. “You’re well?”

She shivered. “Well enough, young goddess. Hasan—”

“I know,” I said. “I pray he survives.”

Amrita laid one ice-cold hand against my cheek, shuddering uncontrollably in the thin air. “Let us make an end to this, shall we?”

I nodded. “Yes, my lady.”

“Moirin has agreed to wed me if we survive,” Bao informed her.

Despite everything, it made her smile, made her tired, lustrous eyes sparkle with gladness. “Well, then, we shall have to make sure of it, eh? All this effort and sacrifice must not be made in vain.”

The sun was beginning to sink low in the west, streaking the horizon in tones of gold and saffron. The snow-topped mountain peaks glowed. In the valleys and deep crevasses, the shadows of night were already gathering. Taking the place of his injured commander, Pradeep rallied his troops, assigning them their duties.

The men who had worked so hard to carry the battering ram up the twisting maze gave way gratefully to a fresh crew of guards. The new men wrapped the ropes that bound it around their hands, taking firm stances. On a count of three, they surged forward, swinging the bronze-capped ram.

The sound boomed and echoed over the peaks; but the tall wooden doors held.

“Again!” Pradeep called.

Again and again, they assailed the entrance, until the doors began to bow inward, the bar that held them shut straining. At last, the bar gave way altogether with a creaking, splintery groan, and the doors crashed open. The fellows manning the battering ram backed away hastily, but no one emerged. Although the place seemed almost deserted, the flicker of lamplight within its walls told us otherwise.

Somewhere in the depths of Kurugiri, Kamadeva’s diamond called to me.

Cloaked in the twilight, Bao and I made a careful survey of the entryway and found it empty. “Can you sense them?” he asked me.

I shook my head. “It doesn’t work as well in man-made places. But I know where Kamadeva’s diamond is.” I pointed. “That way.”

“The throne room,” Bao said with satisfaction. “I was right.”

My skin was beginning to feel warm, the call of the diamond like a caress. “Where are all the others? Surely there must be servants.”

“Hiding,” he said briefly. “And like as not praying we succeed.”

We returned to report to Pradeep that the way was clear, and our apprehensive company filed through the doors.