The Usurper's Crown (43 page)

In this new world, the wheels that had been beneath his feet turned freely in the golden light of the sun. All that drove mortal destiny was visible. Each of the figures danced within its own sphere, the gods at their wars and their justice, the symbols turning like the wheels themselves, pausing to point this way, then that, to bestow fortune or tragedy to the immortal dramas unfolding around them.

As a vapor, Yamuna wafted calmly over the turning wheels, until one of the turning symbols stilled before him. It was an empty throne. It pulled at him, airy being that he was, and he saw himself sitting in it. The gods crowded around his feet, ready to greet him as great among them. His left hand held a lotus, his right held a sword, and he knew himself to be powerful, even as the immortal reckon power. He tossed up the lotus and as it fell, he sliced it neatly in two with his sword and the petals rained down upon the old gods who lifted their hands to catch them, accepting his bounty, and he knew that beyond the range of his golden vision, the Seven Mothers saw all this, and grew unquiet.

Yamuna drifted closer to this vision, this turn of the wheel that promised him all he sought, and he saw that around his neck was a golden collar, and from the collar dangled the severed end of a golden chain. His broken oath, his freedom from Chandra brought him to this throne. Yamuna saw all this and rejoiced.

But the wheels kept turning. The throne turned under Yamuna, the sword turned, the severed lotus turned, and all the dances moved, but Yamuna did not move, and their turning toppled him from his seat, and lotus and sword fell, and pierced his side. Yamuna saw himself sprawled at the feet of the gods, impaled upon his own sword, covered in the petals of the lotus, his hand stretching out toward the other end of his chain as if seeking to join the two together again.

The wheels turned and the world turned, and their current caught up the vapor that was Yamuna and spun it wildly around until all became a blur of red and gold, heat and heady perfume, senseless, swirling, spinning ever faster until the force of its fury cast Yamuna out, back into his flesh, falling hard against the unmoving stone wheel where he had begun.

Yamuna tasted blood where he had bitten his tongue. More blood trickled down his split chin onto the carved wheels where he sprawled, darkening and hardening quickly in the baking sun. He felt as parched as a stone himself, but he could not move. All force of will and strength of body had been wrung from him, and he had no choice but to lie unsheltered in the sun until they returned to him.

But he had seen what he needed to see. If he severed his chain, if he allowed his vow to be annulled, it would bring his destruction.

So, my little Prince Chandra, it would appear I need you yet awhile longer
.

At last, burning from the heat of the sun above and the heat of the stone below, Yamuna made himself move. He crawled one painful inch at a time back toward the fountain. The sound of the cool, trickling water sent tremors through his frame. The monkeys, chased away by his magics, had returned now, and they hooted and screamed at him. Aware that he was much weakened, perhaps even dying, they grew bold and scampered close to shriek at him before running back to the safety of their niches. He crawled forward, concentrating only on moving arms and legs. At last, he fell into the fountain’s shallow trough. Water cascaded over him like the blessings of paradise. He lay in the fresh water, drinking with his mouth and with his pores, until the burning lessened and he was able to stand without shaking, and reclaim the meager clothes that he had laid beside his pouch and staff.

Dressed again, but feeling only a little stronger, Yamuna knelt in the shadow cast by the nearby temple. He opened his pouch and took a little bread to eat with fresh drafts from the fountain. Then, he brought out another bottle. This one was a squat, ungainly jar of red clay, the exact color of the stone around him. Yamuna had made the vessel from clay from a spring close to Devang, and with his own hands he had carved the weaving patterns that covered its sides. More red clay, carved with a representation of the sun wheel at his feet, sealed the jar tightly.

Yamuna took a deep breath. This would not take much strength, which was fortunate, as he did not have much to give, but it would require a show of strength. He crossed his legs, stiffened his spine so that he sat up straight and fixed his face in a stern attitude.

Then, he swiftly cracked the seal and cast the jar away.

The air above the jar blurred and warped. Opaque figures formed slowly, as if they pulled their constituent elements from the surrounding ether. They grew red and gold, like the surrounding sun-baked stone. They lengthened and separated into a crowd of four, all standing on sinewy legs, with taloned feet. Torsos, armored and chained, thickened and sprouted terrible arms that ended in clawed hands clutching spears and curved swords. Fangs as curved as those blades protruded from gaping lips. Sail-shaped ears hung with gold turned in Yamuna’s direction, as did the terribly alert, round, yellow eyes. Wings, heavy with feathers the color of old blood, spread from their shoulders.

The first among them, the tallest, with the most terrible eyes, roared out a wordless challenge and rushed toward Yamuna, shaking his weapons and raising his wings to blot out the sun so that all Yamuna could see was a shadow in the shape of a nightmare. He did not permit himself to flinch, even as the demon stabbed his spear down at his heart and his eyes, at his hands and his private parts. The demon could not harm him. The invisible bonds that restrained it were too well forged.

At last, the demon seemed to have vented its immediate rage and it retired, snarling, to its fellows.

“Why have you called us?” demanded the demon, its voice heavy with hatred.

“Because I have need of your eyes and your wings,” Yamuna replied calmly. “I need you to see Avanasy Finorasyn Goriainavin.”

“What if we do see?” growled the first of the demons.

“Then you will tell me what you see.”

“And if we do not see?”

Yamuna narrowed his eyes just a little. “You will see.”
You will see because I can’t find the little straying cow. But she will have recalled her teacher, and where he is, she will be
.

The first of the demons snarled. He turned west, away from Yamuna and his fellows. His wide, yellow eyes stared steadily out through Devang’s gate, searching, Yamuna knew, the whole world beyond.

“The man Avanasy Finorasyn Goriainavin sails south down the coast of Isavalta,” said the demon slowly. “He stands on the deck of a small boat. There is a woman at the tiller.”

“Who is the woman?” snapped Yamuna.

The demon squinted. “She has no name in this world. I know her not.”

“What else?”

“He is waiting for something. He speaks to the woman of it.” The demon’s sail-shaped ear twitched. “He waits for a crow. The bird is a messenger for him to his man in Isavalta. He hopes it will find them before they reach the Heart of the World.” The demon’s wings shook themselves restlessly. “That is what I see.”

The Heart of the World! The little cow had taken shelter with the Nine Elders? Yamuna considered. It was not so foolish a move as it might first appear. The Heart of the World was well protected against both force and magic. She could not be readily reached there, and she could warn the Nine Elders and their emperor somewhat at least of what came toward them, removing the advantage of surprise. It might, in fact, be a swifter way to gain aid for her cause than sending her messengers hither and thither about her provinces trying to determine who was still loyal to her, especially if she had trusted spies still in Isavalta who could do that for her.

Well, well, there is a brain in that head after all
. Yamuna permitted a small nod in deference to the child’s scramblings. She would fail in the end, but at least she would put up a fight.

“You will allow that crow to meet with this man in Isavalta, and then you will bring it to me along with whatever message it carries,” said Yamuna to the demons. “You will also find the sorcerer Avanasy, and kill him and all who are with him.” There would be little Medeoan could do if she were cut off from her aides and information, and now that they knew where she was, they could watch movement down the coast all the more carefully. As soon as his strength was restored, he must send a message to Kacha.

The demons growled, a long, low noise that he felt trembling through his torso.

“You ask too much of us, man,” said the first of them. “Take what we have seen and be content.”

Worry rippled through Yamuna’s blood. If the demons challenged him now, it was possible they might break free from his grip. The spell was strong, but he was weak, and he did not know how much of the working he could call on. He could not let it come to that.

“I still hold your chains,” he said coldly. “I could at this moment bury you deep in the earth and you would not be able to move until I so ordered. But I am not such a master. You will do as I say because if you do not, you will suffer, and you know this.” His mouth twitched, as though he were about to smile. “You remember other times you have suffered.”

The first of the demons shrank back. Yamuna held himself very still. Like most of their kind, these four were inherently cowards. Terrible, powerful cowards, but cowards all the same. When Yamuna had first bound them to him, he had not done so out of immediate need, but because need might arise. He had driven them deep into the earth first, and left them there, snarling and howling. When he had finally pulled them forth, they were firmly his, cowed by fear of imprisonment in an element that was no part of their being, and so gave them no succor, only pain.

They remembered that imprisonment now. He saw it in their eyes, and in the way they pulled their heavy wings close about themselves.

“We will do as you say,” the first demon told him.

“Good.” Yamuna nodded. “Then go.”

The four demons raised their arms, and rose from the ground in a rattling flurry of wings and hot wind. In a heartbeat, they were gone and Yamuna was left alone with his exhaustion and a stark sense of relief.

It had almost been too much. He had almost failed.

It does not matter
, he told himself, taking a long breath to purge the tremors beginning again in his limbs.
I did not fail, and now I know not only that I must stay bound to Chandra for this little while longer. I know where the Isavaltan empress has hidden herself, and I can turn her shelter into her prison
.

Yamuna moved his gaze to the stone wheel again.
What does it matter that I am bound for a while longer? Only the gods are truly free, and once I have that freedom for myself, nothing else will matter. Nothing at all
.

Eliisa paid off the canal boat’s pilot with the three copper coins she had carefully counted out from her stash the night before. Thankfully, he took them without comment, slipping them into his sash, and nodding her farewell. The night before he’d suggested a way she might save the fee, and she’d been afraid she’d have to fight him off before the trip was over. But it had not come to that, and now she was safe in Camaracost.

If safe was the word for it. Even thinking the name brought a sour taste to her mouth. Camaracost was a market town, a port town. Anything could be bought here, be it a passage to Hung Tse, or a girl for the kitchens of a fine house.

She wondered for a moment if Mother or Father still lived inside the city walls. She dismissed the idea. She could not idle here. If she was lucky it was a market day, and she could see who was about doing the buying and the selling.

The streets by the canals were warrens of warehouses and storage barns. The best could be told the by the hired guards standing alert at the doors in their clean kaftans and broad sashes. The worst slouched in the shadows near the open drains, either unattended, or watched over by greasy men with greasy eyes that glided over her as she strode past.

Noise and distant memory guided Eliisa’s feet. Soon, she found herself in better, if more crowded, streets. Wooden houses, some two and three stories high, with brightly painted doors and roofs, crowded up to the cobbles. They left barely enough room for three grown men to walk abreast, let alone for the carts and mule trains that tried to squeeze through the streets.

Finally, the narrow thoroughfares opened onto the public square. The city’s gilded god house shined in its center, and around it flocked all the crowds, noise, and smell of a bustling market. Stalls and tents filled the square the way the merchant’s voices filled the air. Eliisa plunged into the crowd without hesitation. Housewives and husbandmen jostled shoulders with servants and agents for the noble houses. Men in the bright silks of Hastinapura haggled over baskets of nuts and bags of spices. Moneychangers weighed and counted. Scribes recorded bargains and set the lord master’s seal upon bills of goods and sales to show that the taxes had been duly paid. There were even men of Hung Tse here, in long coats of plain, undyed cotton with jet buttons, pacing quietly through the throng, their sharp eyes darting this way and that.

They might be just who she wanted. If they were not, perhaps they could lead her to the ones she did.

As in all other transactions, however, appearing eager was a sure way to get cheated. Eliisa wished she had a basket so that she would look more like she was on an errand for some mistress. But, as it was, she kept most of her attention on the stalls she passed, fingering grains and dried beans. Sniffing suspiciously at the summer’s first fruits, she was able to see the two men of Hung Tse arguing with a seller from Hastinapura over sacks of cinnamon and peppercorns, judging by the smell the wind brought her. Eliisa bought herself a portion of black bread and liver sausage from a sharp-eyed biddy and squeezed into a corner between a stall and a house to eat it. The foreigners argued, haggled, and dickered in a mix of languages, with much waving of hands and beating of breasts. At last, though, they bowed to each other, each in the fashion of his own country, and the shorter of the two men from Hung Tse left his partner to write up the contract of sale and see to the proper seals while he stepped back into the stream of the crowd.