Sword of the Deceiver (20 page)

She stayed kneeling. She was not sure she could stand. Her blood now seemed like dust in her veins.

“Not yet.” He bent down close. “First you will listen to me and you will listen with care. I want one thing from you, Hamsa, and one thing only. It should be easy for you. You will assist your master in all things. He is doing exactly as he should, and I would have him continue. You will support him in every way possible, and you will remember that my eye is on you. If I see you try to dissuade him from his chosen course, I myself will level your doom. Do you hear me, little one? Do you understand?”

“Why are you doing this? I came here …”

“I did not ask that. I asked do you understand?”

“I understand.”

Yamuna held out her staff and she accepted it, laying it down and then pressing her forehead to the floor. Then, hearing him return to his seat, she dared to stand, dared to turn, and made herself walk away.

She walked down the corridor and down the stairs, back to the women’s quarters, back to her own rooms. She found the way by instinct, rather than by conscious thought. Her servants fussed as she entered the room, but she waved them both away. Alone, she knelt before the small shrine where Mother Jalaja and Mother Daya, the Queen of Earth, danced. It was only then, under the protective gaze of the goddesses, that her mind seemed willing to dare thought again.

Yamuna was mad. That was what three hundred years of service had done. It had driven reason from his mind and replaced it with the illusion of power so great he thought he could topple the Mothers themselves.

But was his measure of his own power only illusion? The blasphemous thought made Hamsa tremble, but she could not escape it. No one knew how great Yamuna’s workings were, or how many secrets he hoarded in his jars and boxes. And what he had said was true. The emperor had no rival. Samudra had always been too loyal, too honorable to take that role. Bandhura did rule the small domain, even though Queen Prishi still lived. And the Mothers had chosen Divakesh.

Hamsa remembered when the old high priest had died. He had been a mild man much given to study and to prayer, and seldom seen outside the temple confines. This had suited Chandra and Samudra’s father well. When his ashes had been given to the sacred river, the other priests had lit the great fire in the inner temple. Only the imperial family and the bound sorcerers had been in attendance. Hamsa had knelt behind the boy Samudra while his mother tried to keep him from fidgeting. There, the priests had begun to dance. It was a great dance, leaping and whirling, stooping to kiss the floor before each of the Mothers and leaping up again to turn and throw up their arms in praise of the creation, in wonder and delight at the gifts of Heaven that the Mothers showered on them all.

They danced until their feet bled. They danced until they began to falter. They danced until they fell. The last one who remained standing before the mothers, perfect in body and devotion, would become the high priest. None had been surprised that it was Divakesh, who was so strong and so sure of himself that even as the last rival fell beside him, utterly spent, he had not missed a beat but only stepped over the man’s fainting form to stand before Mother Jalaja and meet her gaze.

She thought there was nothing but pure love and devotion that could make such a display.

But what if there was something else? Hamsa straightened up. Magic could sustain strength. A spell, properly worked, could give an exhausted man the extra breath and will to carry on with his task.

Could Yamuna, who thought himself such a maker of kings, have perverted the ritual by which the high priest was chosen?

Then, slowly, another cold thought stole into her mind.

If he dared subvert so holy a rite, what else has he done?

Hamsa bit her lip. She needed to know what Yamuna had done, to Samudra, to the emperor. He would never tell her. She would have to try to take what she needed from the past itself.

Hamsa had a second chamber, curtained off from her living quarters. A sorceress needed a workroom. Hers was spare. The low tables were clean. The chests were plain and unlocked. She had no great trove, like Yamuna. She had not had time or leisure to craft lasting tools for her own use.

Time, leisure, or skill
. She knelt in front of one of her plain chests. Inside were lengths of cloth and rolls of brightly colored ribbons. She selected a red ribbon, a blue one, and one that was pure white. She filled a simple clay bowl with water from the ewer in her sleeping chamber and brought it back to set before her shrine.

She knelt, and took several deep breaths to calm herself and focus her mind. Then, she picked up the ribbons and laid them across her palm. Carefully, tentatively, for it had been a long time, she reached both within herself and without, to draw the magic down, to draw it up, to bring it to her, to shape and to bind.

She knotted the three ribbons together and swiftly began to braid them with a delicate touch. They could not be too tight or the vision would not pass between them. She breathed over the braid she formed, letting it trap the exhalation, the words, the wish she formed.

Show me the workings of Yamuna. Show me what he has done that touches upon the prince, Samudra. Show me
.

Show me
.

Gently she looped the braid around the clay bowl. Earth, air, water, future, past, she tied the ends of the braid together to bind them all.

Show me
.

Show me
.

Hamsa gazed into the bowl, seeing the flicker of the rain-filtered light in the pure, clear water. Water compassed the world. Water always was and always would be. Water fell from Heaven and welled up from Earth. Nothing could be hidden from water.

Show me
.

Hamsa gazed deeply, focusing her mind and her power. She breathed, full and deep. She looked at the clear water and felt the thrum of her power, and she saw …

Nothing.

Hamsa blinked. She looked again, and she saw … nothing. Nothing at all. She held herself, her mind open wide. She focused her breath, stilled all thought. There was only the working, the weaving. She felt the magic pulse in her blood and her sinews. It was all. There was nothing else.

There was nothing. Nothing at all.

Hamsa’s concentration wavered, and then it shattered, and there was nothing in front of her but a braid of ribbon and a clay bowl of water.

Slowly, Hamsa stood. Her legs were perfectly steady. Like a woman in a dream, she walked from her chamber into Samudra’s. The prince had a private terrace, open to the sky and the rains. She pushed back the doors and walked out onto the terrace. The rains drenched her at once. Their roar filled her ears. There in the rain, Hamsa buried her face in her hands and wept, loudly, fully. No one would hear. No one would listen to her.

Why me!
She lifted her face to Heaven, letting the rain mix with her tears.
Mother Jalaja, do you care so little for your son that you must send him a sorcerer without power? You who oversee all the work that we do, why can you not tell me what my purpose is!

Rain filled her eyes, nose, and mouth, until Hamsa coughed and realized she could drown.
I should drown. I should throw myself from the cliffs
.

But she could not. Cowardice or pathetic courage, she did not know which it was that took her back indoors. Her woman clucked and fussed and dried her off. Hamsa suffered her ministrations in silence. Then, when she was dressed and dry, she stretched out on her bed. She stared at the remains of her spell on the floor. The world was drifting away. She could not move. She closed her eyes and let exhaustion take her.

Hamsa dreamed.

She dreamed she walked through her home village, past the low hovels on paths of packed dirt. The cows looked up at her, swishing their tails. Goats bleated. But there were no people. She was the only human being. The rest were monkeys.

Monkeys quarreled on the roofs of the houses. Monkeys groomed each other in the doorways. Monkeys chittered in the trees, eating fruits and nuts, and dropping the rinds down to the dirt with soft smacks.

Hamsa stared at all this, her feet walking without her mind giving them any direction. The monkeys who looked up at her with their wrinkled faces and black, beady eyes did not scamper away. They screeched at her, as if to say, “What are you doing here? This place is ours!”

She found herself at the temple, the one building of stone in the village. She mounted the steps, certain she must pray for understanding. But when she mounted the steps, she saw that the image of Mother Harsha, the Queen of Increase, to whom the village was dedicated, was not there. Instead there was a gnarled wooden throne, and on it sat a great monkey, a black creature with a white beard and bright, terrible eyes.

The monkey drew back his lips, exposing his teeth in a horrible, yellow grin. “So, you come here. You think to come back you will find the way forward?”

“I … don’t know,” stammered Hamsa.

“Don’t know! Don’t know! Don’t want to know! Don’t believe!”

“I do believe!”

“But what? Eh?” The monkey stretched out his long arms, the black hair bristling. “This is what you believe! Belief in emptiness and chattering! Belief that Hamsa is alone, all alone!” He threw back his head and laughed, a high, shrieking noise that pierced her ears like arrows.

Hamsa wavered. She wanted to kneel, but something told her it was important she remain standing. “Where do I go?” she whispered.

She did not think the monkey could have possibly heard her, and yet it did and the shrieks of laughter fell away. The creature leaned forward, its wrinkled hands grasping the arms of the throne. “It is not for you, the middle way, little sorceress. You have lost that chance. If you wish to truly be able to aid your prince, it is only the last sacrifice that will bring the blessing you need.”

Lost?

“Lost!” The monkey leapt to his feet. “Lost! Lost! All lost!” He jumped up and down, thumping against the wooden throne. “Lost in tears and in wailing. Lost in the helplessness you believe in so deeply.”

Hamsa bowed her head before his anger. “It is too late then.”

“Eaaagh!” screamed the monkey. “You do not listen!” He pounded the arms of the throne with his black fists. “She listens only to the blackness in her head. Who put that blackness there?” The monkey swung down from its high seat and scampered up to her, leaning down, putting its leathery, bearded face so close to hers she could see nothing else. “Who doused the sacred fire inside you,
Agnidh
? Hmmm?”

“I don’t …”

But that was not right either. The monkey swung away, throwing himself back onto the throne. “Take this one away! If she will not hear, what is the good of speaking!”

All at once, Hamsa was surrounded by a throng of monkeys, black, brown, white, crawling with lice and fleas, all screeching, jabbering, hooting. They lunged at her, grabbing her, pinching her. They pulled her hair and laughed as she screamed. The weight of their bodies toppled her to the floor, and all she could do was scream and scream and scream …

Screaming, she woke. She pushed herself upright, panting. She was sweating, her heart pounded, and her throat was raw. Her room was dark except for the light of a single wick burning in the oil lamp that hung overhead. All around, she could hear the rush of the rains, but in her mind she heard the echo of the monkeys laughing and screaming in her dream.

And of their great king speaking to her
. You do not listen! She listens only to the blackness in her head. Who put that blackness there?

Still gasping for air, Hamsa rose. She lit a second lamp and with trembling steps she walked back to her workroom. There were the bowl and the brightly colored braid as she had left them before the shrine of the Mothers. Hamsa knelt. She set down the lamp. Its light flickered, turning the clear water golden. She touched the braid, tracing it with her fingers.

Lost. Lost in the helplessness you believe in so deeply
.

Hamsa swallowed the voice of nightmare, and drew her magic up. She drew it down from the air, out from the rain, and up from the earth. She touched the braid, reweaving it in her mind, breathing out the voice, the omen of the dream that still filled her head and trembled in her soul.

What has he done to me? What has he done to me?

There was nothing. Nothing but the reflection of gold light on water. There never would be anything else for her.

Hamsa gritted her teeth.
No! I will not be made blind to myself. I will see! I will!
She reached, stretching mind and soul until she felt they would break.

On the water, the light stretched out, becoming a net of threads, like a spider’s fallen web. The shining threads wove together, binding to become colors, to become images. And Hamsa saw.

She saw Yamuna alone in his chamber, surrounded by his vessels of secrets and of power. He sat cross-legged on the floor, one simple red clay jar open before him. His eyes were closed and his skin was slick with sweat. His lips moved, shaping and reshaping words she could not hear.

Through the wall flew the shape of a bird, a great brown vulture with a thick, curved beak in which was held the shape of a child. The vulture landed before Yamuna, and carefully it set the child down. Neither vulture nor child cast any shadow. These were not flesh. These were shadows, essences. The vulture bowed his great head and faded away like smoke, leaving the child shape alone before the sorcerer.

The child was a thin girl in country clothes, and Hamsa knew her at once. She could not look on her own self, her own spirit, and not know her.

Slowly, as if it gave him great pain, Yamuna opened his eyes. He looked on the shape of the girl, and smiled. He said something else. The child Hamsa had been made obeisance to the sorcerer, turned, knelt, and crawled into the jar.

Quickly, Yamuna’s hand reached out and slapped on the lid. His clever fingers molded a ring of red wax around it, sealing it tight.

“NO!” screamed Hamsa, and spell and vision shattered and she was in her own darkened workroom again. She turned away from the gazing bowl and was abruptly and violently sick.