The Usurper's Crown (12 page)

What few outsiders knew was that the palace itself formed a latticework of spells with the Pearl Throne at its heart. The order of the passages, the order of the day, the patrols of the soldiers, the dances of the worshipers, all combined to continuously renew the work of the thousand sorcerers who had built this edifice long centuries ago. Spells of protection, of wisdom, of peace, of prosperity, woven over and over again. His footsteps now, treading their way toward the throne room, worked their purpose to preserve the anointed emperor, to bring him wisdom and to bring his realm stability. All that for Samudra.

The throne room itself was a lofty chamber. The ceiling was a series of high, narrow domes banded with gold, coral and crystal. Those domes were linked by ivory arches minutely carved with friezes and hymns of praise to the Mothers. The Pearl Throne waited empty atop its broad dais of ten steps of polished black marble veined with ghost white. Black pearls made up its base so it seemed to grow out of the shining stone, and black gave way to silver, to rose, to pink, to the purest shimmering white rising to frame the occupant of the golden cushions in a shining halo. Behind it, carved in the same red stone as the floor, the Seven Mothers, each one four times the size of a man, danced in bas relief, their hands holding lotus, fruits, bowls and swords, the symbols of peace, progeny, plenty, and protection.

Chandra remembered the view from the throne. The vast chamber spread out at his feet, with all the ministers and their underlings kneeling patiently on the red stone. He remembered feeling the strength of the Mothers at his back and the strength of his dynasty rooted deep into the foundations of the palace. Nothing could touch him. Nothing could even reach him.

And so it had been, until Samudra had completed his plan. Now Chandra stood level with the secretaries and ministers, even the soldiers guarding the entrances to the rooms and the gates to the women’s quarters, and he looked up, waiting for his turn to address the throne, to address his younger brother.

“The First of All Queens asks that you come sit near her now.”

Without the emperor, the First of All Queens could not appear in public. So, a series of delicately carved sandalwood screens was erected next to the dais. A bench with red cushions had been placed beside the screens, along with a table arrayed with sherbet to drink and dainties to nibble.

As a member of the imperial family, Chandra had only to bow from the waist to properly acknowledge the First of All Queens whom he had to designate as the Sister of his Heart. He saw nothing of her but shadows on the other side of the screen, and the occasional flash of gold and crimson.

“As I am commanded, so am I come, First of All Queens,” said Chandra smoothly.

“Such formality, Brother!” she exclaimed with mock surprise. “Had you business to complete, you could have sent word.”

You know I have no business. Your husband, my brother, allows me none
. “What business could I have more important than waiting on the words of the First of All Queens?”

The queen gave a sharp, impatient sigh, cut off short, and replaced by soothing words. “I expect my Brother misses his son.”

“Prince Kacha does well in the far north,” he said. “He sends his duties and his felicitations.”

“Which I am delighted to accept.” Cloth rustled, and the queen’s voice came closer. From the shadows, he thought she must have stepped nearer to the screen. “But, is it not true that you are often dull, my brother? My husband is much away and has left little business for your attention.”

“I have all I need, First of All Queens.”
My brother generously permits my lungs to breathe and my heart to beat. He values my flesh enough to barter it away for his treaties with the northern barbarians. What more could I expect?

“I do not believe that to be the truth.” The queen’s voice was solemn, but without any note of accusation. Chandra felt curiosity rising in spite of himself. Could the woman be sincerely concerned about him? Was it possible Samudra had not completely drowned her sympathies? Perhaps there was room to work here.

“You have, I think, been too much alone since your wife died.”

Anger swiftly replaced curiosity. How dared this woman speak of Bandhura? His first wife, his true confidant, his helpmate? How dare she speak of any woman to him when she was the one who deprived him of all his women? Bandhura had told him of the scene, of how this woman, who was just another woman then, had gone to the women’s innermost quarters, where the ones who waited on the imperial pleasure were lodged and announced that Samudra, and Samudra’s line, would ascend to the Pearl Throne, and that all who so desired could take their places waiting on her, and on him, now. And all of them had. All Chandra’s wives proved themselves no better than the whores. All but Bandhura, who had stayed true and loyal, who had borne him his son to be vengeance for them both.

“There is a woman of my company, Abhilasha
ayka
Aditiela. Her dower is twelve towns in the south. She is young enough to bear many more children of your line. Further, she is fair and is skilled in all the sixty-four arts and sciences.”

Chandra couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Marry? And marry one of the queen’s spies? She could not possibly believe …

“I have communicated my desire for the match at length to my husband, and he is agreeable. It shall be accomplished when the First Rain is over and the moon is again favorable. Our wedding gift to you shall be a new household complete in your capital town.”

Filled to brimming with your spies and lackeys so that I may not make any move without it being reported to you and my brother. You like not my presence in the shadow of the Pearl Throne to remind you of the wrong your husband did, so you must build me a coral prison with a wife for a jailer
.

Chandra stood abruptly, unable to remain still any longer. “Then I should compose a letter of greeting to my new bride.”

“Tell me this pleases you, Brother. I would not have it otherwise.”

Chandra forced a smile into his voice. “It pleases me to do the will of the First of All Queens.”

“It is hard, Brother, to break a mourning that has been carried for so long, but let your heart be softened toward your new wife. Let her bring you peace.”

Chandra bowed. “The First of All Queens is great in her wisdom. I will do my best.”
Probably you have found me some lowborn slut with the appetites of a cat in heat, thinking that, like my brother, I am counseled by the sheathe for my sword and will soon be lulled into complacency
.

Again the queen sighed. This time it was a reluctant, regretful sound. “You may go now, Brother, if that is your wish. We will sit together again soon and speak more of these matters.”

“I await the queen’s word.” Officially excused, he straightened up and turned politely away so that he might not catch even a glimpse of the queen’s robe as she departed. He kept his pace even, his back straight, and his hands loose as he paced across the breadth of the throne room, following the ordained path to his apartment.

Inside, Yamuna waited for him. The brown skeleton of a man disdained the pillows and couches. Instead, he stood in front of the open window, his hands folded neatly in a position of patience and meditation. He could have stood so for hours, indeed for days, Chandra knew. He had more than once seen Yamuna do just that.

Chandra cursed futilely. He had hoped to have some time to himself, so that he might come to terms with what had just happened, and decide how to respond, and how to tell his
Agnidh
, his bound-sorcerer, what had occurred. But no, of course, Yamuna had heard of it the second it happened. It was part of his endless work.

“I dismissed the slaves,” said Yamuna, lowering his hands. He wore only a white cloth wrapped about his hips. His skin stuck tight to bone and muscle, giving the impression that all of the humors had been long since drained from him. One only had to look into his eyes, however, to see all the dreadful vitality that smoldered within his shrunken frame. Ascetic practice had burned away Yamuna’s youth, but it had concentrated his soul. His right hand only was the hand of a young man. Chandra tried not to look at it. Chandra had been present at the ceremony where Yamuna traded his hand for Kacha’s, his eye for Kacha’s eye, and the memory of it still could leave Chandra cold.

“I felt you would not want negligent ears to listen while we took council,” Yamuna was saying.

“Thank you.” Chandra sank onto his cushion. “You are correct, as ever.”

“Do not speak to me as if I were your mindless brother or his strumpet wife,” snapped Yamuna. “It is not seemly.”

I am to be wed to a spy of the queen’s, and now you are come to berate me
. Chandra pressed his fingertips to his brow.
How did I fail to sever our bond when I had the Pearl Throne beneath me?

“You did not think to argue with her, I suppose.” Yamuna did not sit, or bow, as he should have. He simply stood with the whole world at his back and looked down at his charge. “Or suggest an alternate choice?”

“What choice is there? What woman could I name that she could not corrupt?”

“Then you should have told her you had decided to take an ascetic vow,” snapped Yamuna. “In order to better purify your soul before the Mothers.”

“Then I will do so now.”

“Idiot!” The word slapped against Chandra. “She will know you have spoken to me, and that this is not a true vocation. She will not accept it.”

“Then what does it profit me to speak of what I could have done? The order has been given. I am to be married and sent away, and that is the end of it.” He shook his head. “It changes nothing. The plan proceeds. Your link with Kacha is not severed.”

“So, you do remember that we are engaged in important work, and that the farther you are sent from the throne, the fainter your power grows.” Yamuna snorted. “Your son is in truth the best of you. I am glad I did not waste my right hand on such stuff as I see before me now.”

Which was finally too much to bear. Forgetting his robe and all his appearances, Chandra rose, meeting the sorcerer eye-to-eye. “You forget yourself, sorcerer, to chide me so.”

Yamuna did not flinch, did not even hesitate. “All I forget is how you signed your throne over to your younger brother because you were afraid for your own skin,” said Yamuna, and his words were as cold and hard as the marble under their feet. “Rather than face him in open battle, you sneak and skulk through the palace, looking for his bare buttock like a snake in the dark, and you force me to skulk beside you.”

“Stop!”

“And abandon my office, as you have abandoned yours?”

“I command you!”

“Then do so.” Yamuna dropped into a slave’s obeisance in front of him. “I am, after all, yours to command. Tell me what to do, master. How shall we topple your brother? How shall we rule the three empires when they tumble into our laps?” Yamuna peered up at him from his mocking crouch, prepared, to all appearances, to wait all year long for his answer.

Chandra stared down at him.
I
could strike your head off right now, old man. No one would question me. Not even Samudra. You are mine to do with as I will. I could rip your withered heart from your chest and hurl it into the rain
.

And what would he do if that heart, once ripped free, crawled obediently back to its master, as his hand once had crawled away from him? What would Yamuna do to him then?

Chandra screamed inwardly at his own impotence. How much longer would he be ordered around by those who should have obeyed his least word? He gritted his teeth and stared at the ceaseless rain.

Not long, not long
, he told himself, breathing the fresh damp deeply.
Soon, the three empires will be yours. Yamuna will require you to rule them. He thinks he sets a shadow on the Pearl Throne. But he will learn differently
.

“If the queen cannot be swayed, then this spy of hers must be convinced to turn. Her death would be too conspicuous.”

“Very good, my lord.” Yamuna rose from his mocking pose and faced Chandra with the light of approval in his burning eyes, one the eye of an ancient man, the other the eye of a hale youth. “You will permit yourself to be coaxed. The slaves and the lackeys will hear you rage and soften by turns. And then you will be turned by your bride, who shall be turned toward you. I will provide the means.”

“And if they believe I am cowed, they will pay less attention to my doings.”

“You show the beginnings of thought at last, Chandra.”

You, old man, will one day be stunned by the depths of my thought. I will enjoy seeing your face then
.

Yamuna bowed humbly and departed, backing from the chamber, not turning his face from a member of the imperial family, as if it was Prince Chandra who was finished with him, and not the other way around. When the slave closed the door between them, he straightened, turned silently on his heel and left, striding through the halls of ivory, coral and precious stone to his own chamber.

Chandra thought Yamuna did not see the hatred that blazed in his eyes, thought that Yamuna did not know the plans he harbored in his greedy and pathetic mind. Chandra thought he would one day humble Yamuna in truth. Perhaps he even thought to kill his
Agnidh
. Well, let him think it. It kept that mind occupied and let him believe he was cunning. Chandra’s vanity was as useful as his impotence.

Yamuna’s private chamber waited at the summit of one of the palace’s tall, narrow domes. A likeness of the summer sky with the phases of the moon inlaid in mother of pearl curved overhead. All the names of the Seven Mothers had been laid in ivory in the floor, so, it was said, that they might always pay attention to what happened within the chamber.

It was many years now since Yamuna had learned that was folly. The palace, so carefully designed and laid out to perpetuate its webwork of spells, was nothing more than a cage of lies. The gods were wily beings, extorting their worship. They were expert and immortal bargainers, no better than the demons who cowered under chains and treaties placed on them by the Ancients.