Karni executed a perfect swan dive from the top of the rock, her graceful body hanging suspended in the air for just a moment before slicing the surface of the lake with barely a splash. She emerged more than a dozen yards away, smiling.
Her companions laughed and applauded. “Another perfect dive as always, Princess!”
Karni tossed back her lustrous dark hair and swam strongly across to the far bank. It was a good fifty yards away, and even the strongest swimmers in her company did not dare try to race her. Karni was in the habit of swimming one hundred breadths daily, and could still race them all home to the palace afterward. They contented themselves with playing at swimming on the shady side of the lake, the more boisterous ones splashing water at one another and squealing, the vainer ones braiding flowers into each other’s hair to make the merchants’ sons in the marketplace turn their heads as they passed.
It was a lazy afternoon, the sun slipping to the western sky, songbirds calling in the trees, flocks of geese and ducks flying overhead; butterflies flitted over the flowers, deer grazed on the soft kusa grass nearby, and at one point in the slow, indolent afternoon, a young lion crept down to the lake on the far side of the glen and drank his fill, keeping a wary but unafraid eye on the cavorting maidens, before slinking back into the shadowy depths of the jungle.
Karni was on her eighty-ninth lap when she paused in midstroke, treading water.
Something was different. It was hard to pinpoint, but there was for certain a . . . change. The lake was suddenly quiet, and likewise the songbirds were silent, and the bees had ceased buzzing, and the dragonflies that had been humming over the water were now no longer anywhere to be seen. The ducks, too, had ceased their quacking in the rushes, and even the birds flying overhead now did so silently, the angled shadow of their passing the only indication of their presence.
Across the lake, she could hear the faint sounds of her companions playing and laughing, but they too seemed to sense something was wrong, and hushed one another.
From the forest, a lion emitted a single dismayed roar, as if protesting, and then he too fell silent.
Karni turned in the water, frowning.
A shadow began to grow in the center of the lake.
The sky was clear blue, the sun dipping in the west but still half a watch from sunset. There was not a cloud in the sky to cause the shadow. Yet, as Karni watched with puzzlement, the center of the lake began to grow darker.
Could it be fish? No. The shadow was circular and concentrated in the center of the lake, not moving the way a school of fish might move.
As Karni watched, the shadow deepened, turning the sallow surface of the water black as pitch. The pitch-black circle of water then began to swirl.
Karni was closer to the far bank of the lake than to the center. But even here, a good dozen yards or more from the edge of the strange pitch-black circle, she could feel the pull of the water.
The swirling black water began to turn round on itself, swirling faster and faster. In moments, it became a churning, the water breaking and producing waves that should have been white-tipped but instead were dark. Now, Karni could feel herself being drawn in by the force of the churning, pulled toward the center of that swirling vortex.
Strong swimmer though she was, she had to strain against the pull. Grabbing hold of a willow root that dipped into the water, she wrapped the tendril firmly around her arm, standing on the muddy floor of the bank in waist-deep water, and watched with rising alarm.
The center of the lake had become a whirlpool.
The whirlpool churned and spun faster and faster, like no vortex Karni had ever seen or heard of. It was as frenzied as a whitewater rapid, roaring now with great force. Across the lake, she could see her companions standing on the shore, backing away in fright as they watched this freakish display.
Karni could not believe this was a natural phenomenon. She had been swimming in this lake with her friends ever since she first learned how, which was not long after she was able to walk. She was a young woman now, fourteen summers of age, and as such she no longer needed nurses to accompany her. Nor bodyguards, for the kingdom of Stonecastle was at peace and had been at peace for decades. The nearest neighbors, Dirda, Avant, and Hais, were not at war with Stonecastle or with each other. But for the first time in her life, she wished she had both bodyguards and a blade of her own by her side.
Yet what good would a sword do against a water demon? she wondered.
Nothing, probably. But it was all she could think of. That, and the realization that she should do as her companions had done and get away from the lake at once. Even if she ended up on the wrong side, and would have to walk all the way around the bank to get back to her companions and the pathway that led back to the palace. She had to get away from this thing, whatever it was.
Yet some part of her resisted.
She could not bring herself to turn and climb up on the bank, to run away from the churning maelstrom that was now roaring and spinning in a dervish-like frenzy, sending water spraying across the tops of the trees that surrounded the lake.
Karni watched, compelled by a fascination she could not explain. The whirlpool swirled now in a descending cone, the dark water of the lake foaming white. The roar of the water drowned out all other sounds, but at the edges of vision, she glimpsed birds flying, animals fleeing, and underfoot, she felt creatures of the under-earth scurrying away from the waterside.
Then something began to rise from the center of the maelstrom: a man.
A holy man, clad in the red-ochre garb of the forest hermits, hair matted and piled overhead, possessed of the aging, withered limbs and wasted body of the lifelong penitent engaged in bhor tapasya.
Yet there was nothing withered or aged about his eyes. They shone with a ferocity that was unnerving. Large and bulging, in a bony angular face, their irises were a unsettling grey. That penetrating gaze scanned the shore of the lake in such a way that Karni got the sense he was searching for landmarks to ascertain his exact location.
Had he come from the underworld? How did a man emerge from a whirlpool in a lake? What force was at work here, raising this man up above the water, so as to make him float in the air?
As Karni watched with open amazement, the old hermit lowered the point of his raised staff, pointing down at the whirlpool. At once, the maelstrom subsided, settling suddenly into a calm, unbroken surface. Likewise, the wind that had howled a moment earlier died away, and the ripples and waves caused by the disturbance ceased. So too did the cries of the agitated birds, the sounds of animals in the forest, and the scurrying of insects all subside.
The lake was as calm and still as it had been before this holy man’s arrival.
The hermit now stood on the surface of the lake, as comfortably as a man standing on solid ground. He began to walk across the lake, the soles of his feet dipping into the water lightly, merely breaking the skin of the water, hardly disturbing it otherwise—
Heading directly for Karni’s side of the lake.
As he neared the bank, he caught sight of Karni, seemingly registering her presence for the first time. This sent a sudden chill through her heart. All at once, the balmy summer sunshine felt icy cold. She wrapped her arms around herself, realizing how wet her garments were and how little she wore. Her outer garments lay on the other side of the lake, where her companions and she had discarded them. She wished her friends were beside her; they likely would have been screaming in alarm or excitement, but Karni was not given to outbursts of emotion. She stood her ground, remaining calm.
The hermit was almost at the shore.
He was staring straight at her now, his piercing gaze taking in her lack of proper attire, her disheveled and damp condition, her shivering posture . . . What must he think her to be? She looked far from a princess right now. As she glanced up anxiously, she saw his eyes darken visibly, turning from grey to jet-black. A darkness swirled around him like a cowl, exactly in the way the water of the lake had. A miasma enveloped his face and head; she could see his dark eyes shining from inside the miasma, directed only at her as he reached the bank at last and then stepped ashore.
For a moment, the thought struck her that this man could be a Naga, one of those denizens of the nether realms who were said to rise, at their whim, to the surface of the world and assume any form they pleased. The man who emerged from the lake could well be such a creature—a snake in a man’s body. His eyes were as fierce as any snake’s venomous gaze. The darkness of the water could be caused by his venom, Karni reasoned, and perhaps this human form was just a disguise to enable him to approach unsuspecting humans.
The hermit was still approaching, now mere yards from her.
Those piercing dark eyes continued to bore into her, his concentration intense, and as he walked, his hand gripped the wildwood staff hard enough to cause his knuckles to turn white, every aspect of his posture suggesting a predator about to attack.
Remember who you are, she told herself firmly. You are no ordinary young girl. You are Karni of the Mraashk, daughter of Karna Sura, sister to Vasurava, adopted daughter of King Stonecastle, princess and heir to the Stonecastle kingdom. You will not let yourself be intimidated by anyone—or any thing.
She released the breath she had been holding.
Gathering her errant emotions, Karni bundled them together, tied them in a tight knot, then tucked them away.
With perfect self-control, she joined her palms in a namas, bowed her head low, and intoned, “Greetings, Great One. Welcome to our humble kingdom of Stonecastle.”
“Who might you be, young doe?” the hermit said.
The intensity of his gaze seemed not to lessen even when she greeted him. His bony face and penetrating eyes remained as fierce, his posture still one of attack. Yet his voice was surprisingly pleasant, a startling contrast to his wild appearance.
Karni inclined her head. “May it please your holiness, I am the adoptive daughter of Stonecastle, king of the Stonecastle nation. I go by the name of Karni, after my birth father, Karna Sura.”
The holy man continued to regard her with the same severe scrutiny. She waited, unnerved inwardly but determined not to let it show.
He then raised his staff and strode toward her. Karni resisted the urge to flinch, cry out, back away, or run, though all these presented themselves as desirable actions. The hermit reached the spot where she stood, still dripping from the lake, and passed her by without pausing, working his way up the path.
And before long, he was gone. She could see him, striding away through the glade, his tall bony form moving through the trees. Away from the lake, away from her. Karni heaved a giant sigh of relief and all but collapsed to the ground, and there she sat, just breathing for several moments as she collected her wits.
From across the lake, she heard the faint sound of voices calling. She looked up and saw her companions on the far bank, shouting and gesturing frantically. She raised an arm, acknowledging them.
They gestured back, calling to her to come across the lake. Karni had never been so glad to see her friends, and got to her feet slowly, amazed to still be alive. When that old hermit had come striding toward her with his staff raised, she had been certain he was going to attack her. Now, of course, it seemed silly to have thought it. Why would an old hermit attack a helpless young girl?
Then again, the old man had emerged from a maelstrom in a lake, a maelstrom that he himself seemed to have caused, then walked on water. He was no ordinary itinerant holy man, that was for sure. Who knew what else he was capable of? She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the sense of dread that lingered after his passing.
Karni took two steps into the lake, then stopped in ankle-deep water. She wanted to rejoin her friends, but suddenly, she had no desire to swim. Not right now. Not today.
Perhaps not for a long while.
Perhaps never again in this particular lake.
She waved and gestured to her companions on the far bank, pointing to the west. They waved back, acknowledging that they understood.
She turned and ran around the lake, through the trees. The opposite of the route the old man had gone, the long way around. She didn’t mind running an extra mile or two, so long as she did not have to face that fierce visage again.
She covered the distance in record time, startling a pair of weasels back into their holes along the way. The forest was slowly returning to normal, the sounds and ambiance resuming now after the unnatural event at the lake.
Finally, Karni saw her friends through the trees and sprinted to meet them. They met in a clamor of cries and embraces and tears.
“—saw you in the lake and then—”
“—thought you were sucked in—”
“—what would we tell your father—”
“—the king would have our heads for—”
“—what was that thing—”
“It was a Nagdevta, wasn’t it?”
This last came from Ramyakumari, a sweet but simple daughter of a cowherding family. Ramya was terrified of snakes and prayed daily to Grrud, Lord of Birds and archenemy of all serpents.
“It was an old hermit, that’s all,” Karni told them. “He asked me who I was, then walked off down the path.”
“Did you tell him you’re the queen of this realm?” asked Jaggatpuri indignantly.
“I’m not the queen, Jaggi,” Karni replied.
“You might as well be, since King Stonecastle doesn’t have any sons.”
“Did he say who he was? I bet it was Seer-Mage Nrudam!”
“He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.” Didn’t dare ask, she added silently. She gestured past her friends. “Let’s go back. I have to collect my clothes.”
“Oh, I have them!” Sunidhi said, producing a bunched bundle she had been squeezing anxiously with both hands.
“Thanks for keeping them unwrinkled,” Karni teased as she shook out the crumpled garments. She slipped them on quickly. “Now, let’s go home. This lake makes me nervous. That old rishi could come back anytime.”
The girls chattered excitedly as they walked. Most of their speculation was about the rishi’s spectacular arrival. Karni, having seen the event up close, had a theory.
“I think he used the water of the lake to travel from another plane to this one. The water is runoff from the sacred river, after all. These old hermits have the power to ask River Goddess Jeel to transport them through other worlds, don’t they?”
“But why come here? There are no gods here to visit. What possible business could he have in our world, let alone our kingdom?”
They were still exclaiming and debating over the rishi’s identity and mission when a young man slipped suddenly through the trees behind them and began to follow. He stayed close enough to hear what they were saying but avoid being seen. His attention was rooted on Karni most particularly. He watched her every move, took in her every gesture and word, admired the way she shook her wet hair, bumped her hip against a friend’s to make a point, laughed with her head thrown back and hand raised to her chin. There was no question that he was besotted with her beauty and her personality. More than besotted, he desired her. His longing was evident in his look, the way he smiled at her laughter, the wry shakes of his head he gave when she said something tart to her companions and they squealed in delight.
This man was head over heels in love with the princess of Stonecastle.
He finally made his move a mile outside the city.
Coming upon them from behind, he fell into step barely a yard aft of Karni herself, matching pace with them.
The other girls noticed him first, their eyes widening as they saw him, then relaxing and smiling as he touched his finger to his lips to shush them. They kept his secret, but their own amusement at his presence undid them. Karni noticed their unprovoked giggling and frequent glances behind and stopped suddenly, spinning around with her hands on her hips.
“What do you think you’re doing!” Karni asked, in a convincingly indignant tone.
The young man shrugged. “I thought I was coming to the lake to bathe with you,” he said, “but you were already gone by the time I arrived. So I was coming to visit you at your father’s house.”
She cocked her head. “And what would you have done there? Marched into his court and asked him for permission to visit with his daughter?”
“Perhaps I would have asked him for permission to do more than visit,” he replied with a grin.
Her friends gasped in mock outrage at this comment.
He glanced at them with an innocent expression. “I meant I would have asked him for her hand in marriage. What were you girls thinking?”
They laughed and flapped their hands at him.
Karni relented and let her face relax in a smile. She glanced over her shoulder. Her companions teased her, and she rolled her eyes. They were accustomed to Karni and her boyfriend’s antics, and she was accustomed to their teasing.
“You girls go on ahead. I’ll catch up with you.”
“Don’t be late or we’ll tell your father the king!” they called out, then ran away laughing.
“We were supposed to have a rendezvous on the north side of the lake under the ashoka tree after you finished your swim,” he said as they walked leisurely together through the woods in the late afternoon light.
“I never finished my swim today,” she replied. “Something very strange happened.” She told him about the maelstrom and the strange snake-eyed hermit.
He stared at her. “You aren’t making fun of me, are you? This really happened?”
“I swear to you on my ancestor’s name,” she said, reaching up to touch the lower boughs of apple trees as they walked. The apples were still tiny and green at this time of year, and she was careful not to jostle or break them free.
He whistled. “Who does that? I mean, who comes out of a lake like a snake god rising from the underworld?”
She turned to him with a gleam. “That’s what I thought too! He even looked like a snake god, his eyes dark and so intense, I thought he was going to open his mouth and show a forked tongue and then—” She crooked her forearm at the elbow and thrust her hand forward like a cobra striking. “He was scary!”
“Probably just some old hermit-muni on an urgent mission to save the world,” he said. “You’ll probably never see him again. It was a good thing you didn’t get sucked into that maelstrom yourself.”
“Why? Would you have jumped in to save me if you were there?”
He grinned. “Of course. I have to protect the future mother of my future children, don’t I?”
She giggled, covering her mouth with her hand held upright. “First you joked about asking my father for my hand in marriage, now you’re talking about motherhood and children. Aren’t you forgetting one important thing before either of those things can happen?”
“What’s that?”
“I have to decide if I’m ready to get married,” she said, ticking off the first point on her finger, “then I have to decide who I’m going to marry.”
“Oh, is that all?” he asked, “Well, the second point is already decided. As for the first, how about this summer? If you could decide by then, we could be married late autumn, the perfect time of year.” He gestured northward. “The cherry blossoms will be in full bloom by then. I know how much you love cherry blossoms, Karni.”
She smiled. “I do love cherry trees in bloom, it’s true. That does sound very tempting. I will have to give it serious consideration.”
“Well, don’t consider it for too long,” he said. “Otherwise, my father might pack me off to Dirda to attend a swayamvara.”
She stopped short, hands on her hips and a frown on her face. “A swayamvara? In Dirda? Whatever for?”
“For the same reason all princes go to swayamvaras, my sweet. To compete in the contest and try to win the favor of the princess. And if she approves, then to marry her.”
“In Dirda, of all places?” Karni asked scornfully. “Those Dirda princesses are older than the mountains and more wrinkled than old prunes!”
He looked at her with a half smile on his face. “Sounds like someone’s more than a little jealous of Dirda girls.”
“Jealous? Me? Of Dirda girls? Why, I—” She realized he was laughing at her and stopped herself. “You’re teasing me, you scoundrel. You know Stonecastle and Dirda always compete with each other, so you’re just trying to make me angry.”
He laughed. “Of course I’m teasing. Mayla of Dirda is my sister! Though she is pretty, at that, I hardly think I’d be seeking her hand in marriage. On the other hand, there are other princesses in Dirda who would be worth competing for!”
She shoved him hard enough to send him sprawling. He was still laughing as she began striding purposefully toward her home.
“Hey,” he called, jumping to his feet and running backward to keep pace with her, “I was just teasing about Dirda. But I am serious about my parents. They are getting restless, and the invitations to the swayamvaras are starting to pile up. I will have to start attending a few so other kingdoms don’t start thinking that the prince of Mraashk is afraid of competing.”
“You can do as you please,” she said, walking faster. “What’s it to me?”
“Hey,” he said, “slow down. Now, don’t go off in one of your foul tempers. I did say that I intended to approach your father and ask for your hand. Not right now, not so casually, of course, but with proper protocol, in a few days.”
She slowed her pace a bit. “I don’t like to be rushed. You know that. I will make up my mind in my own way, at the right time. It could even be this summer, and then you could approach my father in the proper way, and it’s even possible we could set a date for late autumn. But it has to be my decision in my own time. I thought you understood that.”
“I do, I do,” he said, “And I know that it’s not done for the boy to seem too eager. Marriage is a woman’s decision, and it’s your right to make that choice when you please. But can I help it if I’m so madly crazy in love with you, Karni of Stonecastle, apple of my eye, that I can’t bear to wait another year, another season, or even another night, to make you my wife?”
She slowed even further, her face beaming with pleasure at his tone and his words. “I am eager too,” she said softly, almost shyly. “To make you my husband, young Baron Maheev of Mraashk.”
“Then what’s there to think about?” He stopped and spread his arms. “I love you, Karni Stonecastle. We’ve known each other since we could first talk. We played together as infants in your father’s castle in Mraashk. Our families know each other well and are good friends. Even after you left Mraashk to come live here at Stonecastle, I followed you and changed my entire life to be near you. I love everything about you, from your quick temper to your stubborn will, to the way your back arches where it meets your hip, to how you toss your hair when you walk, plus your strength, your beauty, your love for fried tapioca—”
She giggled.
“—your prowess at weapons and combat, your sense of Krushan law, your refusal to give up on any chore no matter how demanding until it is done to your satisfaction.” He then continued in this vein for several more moments, and Karni realized with a start, He loves me. He really, truly loves me. This is not mere lust or youthful infatuation. He genuinely loves me and will care for me as long as he lives. This is a man I could spend the rest of my life with and be happy.
She started to go to him, then stopped herself, realizing where they were. The spires of the palace tower were within sight, and the rumbling of wagons reminded her that they were within view of the busiest road leading out of the city. And so instead of going to him and reciprocating his expression of love right then, she pushed him away playfully. “Nice speech! Now, go home. I’ll see you tomorrow by the lake as usual.”
If he was disappointed by her failure to return his eloquent declaration, he did not show it.
“I’ll be there,” he called out. “And I’ll make sure there aren’t any Naga men stirring up the lake into a frenzy!”
Karni had already turned and begun running; she waved over her head without looking back. She could imagine the look on his face without seeing it: sweet and wistful and handsome. She laughed to herself as she ran, and allowed herself the freedom to blush deeply and rosily at the thought that she might actually be planning her own wedding in a few weeks.
That afternoon, she reached home a very happy girl.
It would be a long time before she felt as happy again.
The royal compound was abuzz with excitement, men and women rushing to and fro on various errands, the guards looking more alert than usual. Even the horses and elephants and dogs felt the excitement, whinnying, stamping their feet, and barking in their kennels.
“Princess! Your father wishes to see you at once. He has a visitor!” said Shatabdi, a round-faced palace staple who ran the royal household like it was her own fiefdom.
Karni frowned. Her mind was still filled with thoughts of an autumn wedding, and she hadn’t quite registered the hustle and bustle around. “What, why?”
Shatabdi took in Karni’s appearance with a look of horror. “You can’t go before him like that! What have you been doing?” She flapped her hands. “Never mind. Shrutakirti! Mandakini! Take the princess and get her changed into suitable attire. Now!”
The flustered maids hustled Karni away. She glanced back helplessly at her companions, who all wore worried expressions. Their gaiety after the swimming excursion had vanished completely; none of them even inquired after her rendezvous with Maheev, which was quite unlike them.
“This visitor . . .” she asked the maids as they dressed her hurriedly in her chambers.
“A very important seer-mage,” Mandakini sang out as she pulled Karni’s left arm through a sleeve, “His name is Pasha’ar. They say he’s the same one who cursed the king of the gods for letting his elephant Airavon trample a garland he had gifted him.”
Shrutakirti, who was a mite slower-witted, blinked as she fitted the last bracelet on Karni’s wrist. “He gifted a garland to an elephant?”
“No, silly, he gifted the garland to the king of the gods, Inadran. That’s why he was so angry when the god gave it to his elephant, who then trampled it.” Mandakini finished adjusting the garment and began combing Karni’s hair over an urn of smoldering sandalwood, fanning it out to catch the scented smoke.
“What was the curse?” Shrutakirti asked round-eyed. Stories of sages and their curses were a frequent topic of gossip around the palace. Such men were known for losing their temper, and for their penchant for spewing curses at those who provoked them.
“He decreed that the gods would fall from popularity, just as the sage’s garland had been allowed to fall, and that Inadran would one day become as insignificant as dust.” Karni spoke the words by rote, recalling her itihasa lessons with the royal guru. “That led to the great war between the gods and the urrkh, and the start of the eternal enmity between the two groups.”
Shrutakirti paused in the act of fixing a diamantine necklace around Karni’s throat. “Goddess save us! He is that sage? He’s supposed to be the worst of them. What if he takes offense with something in Stonecastle and curses us all to turn into asses?”
“It wouldn’t make the slightest difference to you then, would it?” Mandakini snapped. “Come on, finish up before Shatabdi curses us!”
Karni saw the younger maid’s hands were shaking. She smiled and took the necklace from Shrutakirti’s hands, fixing it around her own neck. She put a reassuring hand on the maid’s arm. “Whatever you do, don’t act nervous or scared around him. That will just make him more angry. Be calm and keep your head down, and you’ll be fine.”
Shrutakirti nodded but wrung her hands nervously as Karni turned to leave her chambers.
She soon forgot the maid and everything else as she strode quickly toward the royal hall, wanting to run but knowing it would not be proper for a princess to be seen running in the halls. She reminded herself to take her own advice. Stay calm, Karni. However terrifying the stories, he’s still just a man.
A man who had the power to travel through vortexes of air and water and had ruined the king of gods with a single uttered curse.
The royal court of Stonecastle was as silent as a tomb.
Even the court jesters, who were paid to keep people amused and entertained at all times, were uncharacteristically silent . . . because they weren’t present at all, Karni saw. Her father must have ordered them sent away, to avoid causing any offense to the sage. Many priests frowned upon court entertainers. On the other hand, some, like the frequent envoys and merchant ambassadors who traveled the several hundred miles southwestward from Hastinaga, had a taste for Stonecastle’s cultural delights, which might not be as risqué as the hedonistic excesses of the Krushan imperial court, but could be quite titillating in their own unique way. Especially the serapi and harva dances!
Her adoptive father, King Stonecastle, was seated on his throne, uncharacteristically somber. That itself was strange: she was so used to hearing either boisterous laughter or his cheerful voice in this room. But now his face was composed in a neutral expression, displaying no outward emotion. His ministers, courtiers, and nobles all imitated his example, seated around the hall like wax effigies in a display gallery. The only movement came from the servants gently fanning the sage, who was seated just beside the king’s own throne.
Karni’s first thought was that the visitor really did resemble the friezes and paintings of snake gods she had seen, as Maheev had so astutely pointed out earlier. She tried to suppress the lighthearted mood that still buoyed her heart after the earlier encounter with her beloved. It simply would not do to offend this man!
But she couldn’t help thinking that he was quite a character.
The sage’s long, angular face was set in a perpetual scowl. His bush of matted hair, overgrown eyebrows, and wild beard looked like they had never seen a comb. I bet he doesn’t scent his hair with sandalwood incense! He was seated with one leg crossed over the other, staring at nothing in particular. With his stick-thin limbs, bony torso, and long neck, he reminded Karni of a perched grasshopper. He continued to stare into the middle distance, contemplating goddess knew what. Karni felt sorry for the servants standing by with trays laden with various offerings for the guest’s refreshment. She could imagine how terrified they must be, though they stood ramrod straight and barely even blinked.
She wondered why in the world one man, any man, should have the power to terrorize so many. Just because he is a priest? It seemed so unfair.
The inequity of it outraged her sense of justice, but she sat as still and patient as the rest.
At last, the visitor raised his head.
“King Stonecastle,” he said in a voice as harsh and unconcerned with civility as his appearance, “I shall partake of your hospitality. Kindly ask your firstborn to attend me during my stay, as is customary.”
Karni saw her father’s eyes widen.
“Great One,” he replied with unctuous care, “I have no progeny of my own. However, by the grace of the stone gods, my cousin Karna Sura of Mraashk saw fit to grant me guardianship of his firstborn daughter, Karni. I have raised her as my own, and she is my sole heir. If it please you, I shall have her attend to your every need during your stay.”
Karni felt herself flush, knowing that every pair of eyes in the court turned toward her. Her parentage was no secret. If anything, it gave her a certain status: not only was she sole heir and princess of Stonecastle, but she was also sister to Vasurava, prince of Mraashk, the capital of the Yadu nation. That made her a bridge between two nations. But right now, she would have given anything to have an elder sister, a brother, a half dozen siblings, a hundred even!
She sensed the sage’s intense scrutiny on her and kept her own gaze demurely downcast.
“So be it,” said the sage Pasha’ar.
It was the only time Karni’s foster father had ever appeared nervous and uncomfortable when addressing her.
“I need you to play a more modern role,” he had said, and she had laughed at his choice of words.
“Do you wish me to perform an entertainment for the sage, Father?” she asked, making light of the hermit’s notorious dislike of such vulgar pastimes.
“Sage Pasha’ar . . .” He paused. “Is notorious for his temper. It would not do to make him irate. He is a powerful sage. A seer-mage. Stonecastle needs to please him and gain his blessings, not his curses.”
She nodded, matching his serious tone. “Say what needs to be done, and I shall see to it, father.”
“You must stand service on him yourself.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Myself?”
He rubbed his leathery face. “I am asking too much of you, daughter. You are a princess, a queen-in-waiting, not a—”
“I can be a serving woman, if that is what the good sage requires. A royal serving woman. I have seen how these sages expect to be treated during such visits. I have heard the stories, read the itihasas. I know what fury their curses can bring. Besides, I have with my own eyes seen Guru Pasha’ar’s powers at work. He is formidable. I would not want him to become irate with our good kingdom.”
He looked up at her. “Thank you, daughter. Our nation’s good name and future depend on how well you serve the sage.”
She lowered her chin, all merriment gone. “You can count on me, Father. I will make sure he has no cause for complaint.”
The following nights and days were a blur of endless chores. While the entire palace staff was kept on its toes by the presence of the venerated sage, none were worked as hard or as relentlessly as Karni. Pasha’ar would demand anything he pleased at any hour he pleased, with no thought for her need for rest, comfort, or nourishment.
In the beginning, his demands were not impossible, but were unusual and difficult.
“Go fetch me white marigolds,” he said one night at an unearthly hour.
Karni bowed her head without hesitation and sent her maids running to pluck the flowers from her own personal garden. But before the girls had left Karni’s chambers, she was summoned to the guest chambers again.
“They must be plucked by your own hands,” the sage added, “otherwise they are of no use to me.”
Karni bowed her head without argument and backed out of the guest chambers. Once out, she ran faster than her maids and fetched the choicest white marigolds from her own garden. She ran all the way back to the sage and set them before him.
He did not so much as glance at the flowers. “I desire sabudana vadas,” he said, using the local term for fried tapioca. Prepare it with your own hands and make sure it is neither too hot nor too cool when you serve it to me.”
Karni backed out of the chamber and went to the royal kitchen, where she prepared the sage’s favorite repast. She carried it in a silver dish covered with another silver dish, removing the top only when she laid it before the sage. He took a bite of one of the tapioca balls and ate it without compliment or comment.
“I also desire buttermilk flavored with mango,” he said. “I would like to partake of it the instant I have finished my snack.”
Karni’s eyes widened, but she dared not question his wishes. She backed out, and this time she sprinted to the kitchen, where she shouted at a cook to fetch her buttermilk at once from the cooling pit, while she herself ran to the fruit pantry and selected the ripest, juiciest mango she could find. She poked open a tiny hole, tasting it to make sure it was in fact ripe and juicy. She didn’t bother with slicing, instead she rolled the mango in its skin between her palms until the flesh inside was reduced to a dripping pulp. Motioning to the cook to set the silver bowl before her, she squeezed out the mango pulp through the hole, and stirred it with the handle of a wooden ladle.
She took but a moment to wipe her hands clean on a kitchen cloth, then she raced back to the guest chambers, where she slowed to a formal walk as she approached the sage. She entered the chamber just as Pasha’ar was finishing the last tapioca ball. She offered him the bowl and waited, heart still pounding, as he sipped of the treacly concoction. He made a sound that could possibly have indicated approval—or it might have just been him clearing his throat.
When he set down the bowl and she saw it was empty, she almost beamed with relief. He, on the other hand, did not communicate in any other manner that he had enjoyed the proffering. But it did not matter. The empty bowl was enough of a sign that it was a job well done.
Over the following days and nights, Sage Pasha’ar ran Karni ragged.
The worst nights were the ones where he would summon her and ask her to prepare one of his favorite items and then, after he was done eating it, sink into one of his meditative trances. She would wait in the expectation of further requests, not knowing if he would summon her again in an hour, half a watch, or even a whole watch later. She barely slept. The man seemed to spend almost all his time in chambers, either meditating or discoursing with other priests on a variety of philosophical matters.
Oftentimes, he would ask her to fetch refreshments for himself and these guests, many of whom seemed discomfited at having the royal princess herself wait on them. Pasha’ar seemed to either not notice or not care about their discomfort.
Once, he summoned Karni and asked her to wait awhile. She stood unobtrusively to one side while he and his cadre continued a discussion of some inscrutable passage in the scriptures. Suddenly, he asked for her opinion on an obscure aspect of the passage in question. “Which interpretation do you favor?” he asked.
She blinked rapidly. “Your own, Gurudev.”
“Yes, but why do you favor my reading over the excellent interpretations of these venerated priests?”
All eyes in the room were on her.
“Because of the context, Gurudev,” she replied. “It is evident that the reference to storm in this particular instance refers specifically to the king of gods, Inadran, personified as a storm.”
“It does not say so at all,” said an elder hermit, looking angry with Karni. “The language refers only to thunder, lightning, and a flash flood. There is no indication of personification at all.”
“But there is, Great One,” she said, inclining her head to show respect for a superior mind. “In the third line of the second verse of the fourteenth parva, the text specifically uses the masculine when referring to the fury of the storm and the feminine when referring to the river, which clearly indicates that the river in question must be the Jeel, since none but River Goddess Jeel could stand before the masculine arrogance of Inadran.”
Everyone stared at her. Even the elder hermit looked gobsmacked. Sage Pasha’ar leaned back with a gleam in his eye.
“Any reference to a storm would be masculine, surely,” the sage said.
“True, but in this case, the Krushan word used to describe the masculine fury of the storm is one that is associated with Inadran’s notorious tendencies. ‘With what thunderous fury does he strike . . .’ ” She quoted the rest of the verse from memory, then quoted three others that used the same phrasing to refer to the king of gods.
All the white-haired heads in the room were nodding by the time she finished the last quote.
“Hmmph!” said the sage, clearly perturbed. “I concede the point. However, on the matter of the river being the sacred Jeel, that is a highly perceptive deduction.” He turned his gaze to Karni. “You are King Stonecastle’s daughter? Commend your guru for me.”
She bowed graciously, avoiding mention of the fact that since only male warrior castes were expected to be educated, she had read and mastered the sacred texts on her own, aided in private by a like-minded group of older women—much older than she, for the most part—who believed in the maxim that if women could fight, women should also be able to write and become educated. Had she enlightened the guru on this point, he would likely have choked on his sweet potato savory.
Shortly thereafter, the guests departed. Karni waited patiently for Pasha’ar to say something, to acknowledge her contribution in some way, if not outright praise her.
But he said nothing, except to ask her to prepare more fried tapioca, this time with groundnuts.
As the days and weeks passed, this familiar pattern continued, with Pasha’ar frequently calling on her to clarify some point of controversy or to break a deadlock, but never again acknowledging her scholarship or memory. If anything, he made it a point to always ask her to perform some completely mundane chore immediately after—clean his chambers, wash his garments, fetch him a particularly difficult-to-obtain item from the far end of the city—as if to remind her of her place. Intelligent, well-read, endowed with scholarly gifts—yet still a serving girl.
She accepted all this with good grace. She toiled all hours without protest. Endured outbursts without a plaint. Yet the one thing that galled her was his stubborn refusal to permit her to handle the scrolls.
Pasha’ar frequently requested a particular text—or several texts all at once—often at a most inopportune time, such as during the evening meal or in the middle of the night. Karni was tasked with going to the priest quarters, which was situated a good five miles outside the city walls, disturbing the brahmacharya novices on night rotation—the round-the-clock verbatim “pad-a-pad” recitals—and asking one of them for the text in question. She would then wait while the novice fetched it, check that he had fetched the correct scroll (more likely than not, he had not). She would then have to accompany the novice back to the palace, bring him up to the sage’s chambers, and present Pasha’ar with the requisitioned scroll. After he finished with the text, Karni would accompany the novice back to the hermitage, and finally, of course, make the long trek back to the palace.
In between, she would of course be asked to perform her usual tasks: fetching refreshments for the sage and his guests, sweeping and swabbing his chambers, or performing other chores he asked of her. But all this she endured without complaint. As she endured the dismissive looks that even the most hairless, green-eared novices gave her when she came to collect the scrolls, asserting their superiority of sex, scholarship, and caste all in a single sneer. Knowing the import of keeping the sage happy, she said nothing.
What she could not brook was the fact that she was not permitted, at any time, or for any reason whatsoever, to so much as touch or breathe upon any of these sacred scrolls. The logic being that as a woman, subject to womanly foibles and monthly leakages, she was inherently impure and unfit to partake of the domain of Aravidya, the sacred lore of herbal and healing knowledge.
I can be as intelligent as any man, as well read as any priest, as insightful as any scholar, yet because I am a woman, I have no right to any of those things? Hmmph! River Goddess Jeel, grant your worshipper patience to endure such absurd bigotry.
On one occasion, the novice insisted (twice) at the hermitage that he had retrieved the exact text she had named—and indeed seemed incensed that Karni might question him—so Karni returned with him to the palace without double-checking the scroll. Yet when they arrived and presented the scroll to Pasha’ar, and the sage immediately fumed and raged at being given the wrong text, the novice had the audacity to immediately pin the blame on Karni. He claimed she had asked for this one and so it was the one he had brought, and of course he could hardly be blamed for an ignorant, illiterate, impure woman’s faults.
Of his words, the one that stung the most was the accurate one: that she was a woman. Yes, she was a woman and proud of it. Did this young upstart think he had emerged wholly formed out of the stone god’s egg? Did he speak to his own mother and sisters with the same tone? He knew very well that she had requested parva 231, canto 89—not parva 89, canto 231, which he brought.
She said none of these things aloud, merely bowed her head and endured the hailstorm of outrage and insults the sage heaped upon her while the novice looked on, smirking, even though her heart raged with the injustice, the unfairness, the sheer bigotry of it all.
But none of these or similar incidents were the worst.
No, the worst was yet to come.
It was a cold rainy day in the first half of winter. Stonecastle did not get snow, but it was far enough north and within blowing range of the Coldheart Mountains to get bitterly, dangerously cold. Cold enough to freeze water and deliver the occasional shower of hailstones the size of a man’s fist. And when the winter winds blew through the city, Shaiva help any unfortunate who happened to be out of walls. The daily count of travelers and drunks who froze to death from exposure was in double digits at this time of year.
Pasha’ar had been in a particularly benign mood these past days. There was a rumor that the sage was planning to take his leave shortly, a rumor perpetrated by Karni herself, based on a conversation in which the sage had been asked by another priest if he would be there in the spring. “Distinctly not,” he replied, “I must be in Uttarkashi before the winter snows set in.”
This alone had made Karni want to yell and throw her hands in the air, perform several somersaults and tumbles around the chamber, then dance a very unprincesslike caper, hooting and cheering all the while. She did in fact perform all these antics, but only much later that evening, when she was safely in the privacy of her own chambers with her friends.
“Finally, we shall be able to see you again daily as we used to,” they said happily, once the initial euphoria had died down. “We shall go swimming in the lake, picking berries, climb to the top of the rookery, and do all the happy things we used to be able to do together.”
She was about to correct them by saying that since it was winter, they could hardly do any of those things, but she realized it didn’t matter. The point was, she would be free soon. Free to resume her girlish ways and indolent, carefree life as a young princess. She would rather dive into a frozen lake than serve the sage Pasha’ar another season!
So it was with sunshine in her heart that she waited on their honored guest over the next few days. The passes to the Coldheart Mountains were generally snowed in during the third month of winter. They were already at the start of the second month. That left less than a fortnight before the sage would have to leave if he meant to reach his destination before snow closed the passes; ideally he should leave within the week.
Karni was wandering in her mind, daydreaming about resuming her sword-fighting training again. She had been so consumed with her round-the-clock duties for the sage that her fight guru—a crusty old woman veteran who had served in the Stonecastle army and trained three generations of royalty—had squirted a mouthful of betelnut juice with disgust at Karni’s irregular appearances, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and told her in her characteristically vulgar fashion to come back when she was able to extract her “head out of the elephant’s backside.” Karni missed the physical exertion of swordplay, the world reduced to just the edge of the blade, one’s opponent’s eyes, and the elegant dance of death.
The first time Pasha’ar spoke that morning, she thought she had misheard.
Karni stared blankly at the sage, not wanting to commit the sacrilege of asking him to repeat himself, yet not able to believe she had heard him correctly.
He gazed up at her patiently. He had been in a relatively less intense mood these past days. Less intense for Pasha’ar, of course, was like saying a hawk was less intense after he had eaten a full rabbit. It was not something that was easily evident to a casual observer, but Karni had learned to tell a great deal from his most minor gestures, vocal patterns, body language. One might even say that she could read Pasha’ar almost as well as she could read Krushan. Though Krushan rarely lost its temper and flew into a flaming rage if your tapioca cakes were a tad less crisp. Right now, though, he was calm, and he proved her right by doing something he rarely ever did: he repeated his request without a trace of irritation.
“I require an item fetched from Dirda.”
She stared at him without response for several heartbeats. She was too taken aback to simply bow as usual and acquiesce.
“From Dirda, Great One?” she said.
He named an item. Something so trivial that it could be found in any marketplace anywhere, or even right here in the palace itself, perhaps in this very guest wing. A paper fan, the kind that visitors from the Far Eastern kingdoms brought with them and traded for local spices or silks, the kind that Eastern women apparently held before their painted faces and smiled coyly behind.
What in the world could a celibate guru want with an Eastern woman’s paper fan? Surely not to gift to a lover! Which was what those exotic items were rumored to be most commonly used for: as gifts from rich men to their concubines. Obviously, the sage had no women in his life, so that could not be its purpose.
She dared not ask the next question, but he read it in her eyes anyway and answered it aloud. Apparently, he had learned to read Karni almost as well as she had learned to read Pasha’ar.
“It must be from Dirda, specifically,” he said, “from the shop of the merchant Gutap. It will be easy enough to find. It is the largest store in the town market, with a substantial stock of fans decorated with baby elephants and lion cubs on display at all times.”
He glanced at the window. “If you leave right now, you should be back here before the full moon.”
She was dumbstruck. She had no words. Did he realize that Dirda lay beyond the hill ranges? That this was winter, and one of the coldest winters in recent memory—the coldest since before she had been born, apparently? Even the royal couriers and courtiers ferrying information to and fro between the two neighboring kingdoms had reduced their biweekly trips to once a fortnight, and then only if the news was urgent. Wars had been postponed to avoid crossing the Dirda ranges in winter. Marriages called off. And he expected her to go all the way to Dirda now, at the start of the coldest winter in memory, to fetch a paper fan?
He was still looking at her, as if reading every thought that passed through her mind.
“Tell Merchant Gutap I send my blessings and tell him that he may send his eldest son-in-law to Hastinaga next spring, as I shall be present at the Krushan court by then, and the imperial permit he desires will be issued. I have spoken to the appropriate authorities, and they have assured me it will be done.”
She stood there, simply staring at him in utter disbelief.
He added mildly, “The message must be delivered in person by you alone. No one else must accompany you, or he will suspect betrayal. Once you deliver the message successfully, he will give you the fan. Bring it directly to me.”
Delivered in person and by her alone? And no one else must accompany her? Asking one to travel over the Dirda hills in winter, during the season of hailstorms, when the bandit gangs, the bears, and the predators virtually ruled those hills, was insanity. Even the most seasoned courtiers went with a cortege of at least eight armed guards, and no woman, princess or not, went without a full company as well as a team of elephants. Yet Pasha’ar expected Karni to ride alone, risk death by exposure, by hail, by bandits, by predators, riding day and night without halting for food or shelter, just to fetch him a paper fan? She had suspected it all along, but now she knew for certain: he was a torturer. An assassin. A murderer. A ruthless barbaric killer who cared nothing for the lives of the daughters of his hosts. He had probably left a trail of dead princesses and noblemen’s daughters in his wake, scattered across the thousand and eight kingdoms like chaff from grain.
And he asked this of her even though, as Karni herself had witnessed, he had the ability to travel from place to place through magical means, the way he had simply appeared from a maelstrom in the lake, a season and a half ago.
She wished that he had drowned in that lake, in that maelstrom of his own creation, drowned and choked and been washed up on the shore of the lake, pale, bloated, and half eaten by fishes.
She saw by his face that he had read her thoughts, or divined the gist of them at least. He read it in her pauses, her stance, her wider eyes, her clasped hands, her slightly furrowed brow. Just as she could read his every change of mood and direction of thought in the way he breathed, inclined his head, or sat.
That was when she thought, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t go on.
But then she remembered her foster father, King Stonecastle. How sad and desolate he had been when she first came to live here, broken by the loss of his wife and son in childbirth. How entranced he had been by her every word, gesture, and action—not just in those early days, which she barely remembered, but as she grew and got older as well. How he had doted on her every deed. How he lived and breathed by her. She could not bear the thought of doing him wrong.
He had spoiled her more than her birth father ever would have, or even her real grandparents. Although they had loved her dearly, King Karna Sura and Queen Padmeen were both preoccupied with matters of governance. Whatever attention Karni had received in her birth father’s house had come mostly from her brother, Vasurava. But a brother’s love was different. Vasurava was kind and gentle, but he was also mischievous and prone to teasing: he was but a boy too back then, after all, and she was his sister—and if there was one universal familial truth, it was that a brother will tease a sister.
Nothing and nobody came close to providing Karni with the warmth and affection, the lavish helpings of love and care and tenderness that King Stonecastle had showered upon her. She had quickly come to realize how precious she was to him, how much he regarded her as a gift from the gods themselves, a ray of hope in the darkness of his soul. Unlike many kings, he did not seem to care that she was a girl rather than a boy, that he had no son, that she was not actually of his blood and therefore his line would only continue through her in the most indirect way possible.
He had encouraged her every wish, however unusual, be it learning to master the sword, or learning battle strategy from the most expert general of his kingdom—and even allowed her to choose her friends without regard for class, ethnicity, caste, or social level. Karni was her own woman, and unlike many fathers, especially rajas and maharajas, he had never sought to clip her wings or make her feel that her freedom was anything less than a natural birthright. Likewise, he had been completely accepting of the old Krushan tradition of matriarchal governance, a tradition that had been mostly abandoned these days by those whom it did not benefit. No one in Stonecastle had any doubt that it was Karni who would inherit the throne and kingdom if anything were to befall her adoptive father; nor did anyone doubt her ability to rule as effectively as Stonecastle himself.
Asking Karni to attend Pasha’ar was the one and only time King Stonecastle had asked her to perform the duties of a modern, fashionable girl of high birth. She had not feared the stories she had heard of Pasha’ar’s legendary temper and terrible curses, or the power he had displayed when emerging from the maelstrom in the lake. She only knew she could not bear to break her adoptive father’s heart, or to cause distress to the people and kingdom she cared for so greatly. She loved them too much to let this awful, self-centered man throw a temper tantrum and use his powerful gifts to cause misery to innocent souls.
It was that love and concern that made her grit her teeth, bite back any reluctance, and bow as gracefully as she could manage under the circumstances.
“As you say, Great One.”
People stared at Karni when she returned from Dirda three weeks later. Nobody could believe she was Princess Karni. She looked like a ragged forest hermit, emerging from the deep woods to ask for alms.
When she paused for a moment to catch her breath, relieved to be breathing the spice-scented air of the marketplace again, a passing noble on a horse even tossed her a copper coin.
She let it lie where it fell and made her way wearily but with growing enthusiasm toward the palace.
Even the gate sentries stared with astonishment as she greeted them and passed through. She went through the kitchen and maids’ quarters to avoid causing a scandal among the courtiers. The maids and serving girls who caught sight of her gasped.
“Princess!” one exclaimed. “How—” She broke off, eyes filling with tears as she looked Karni up and down with knowing eyes. “My dear, shall I fetch the royal healer?”
Karni shook her head, throat filled with an emotion she could not name. “It is not my blood. I am well.”
That last was not entirely true. She was far from well. But it was no sickness or ailment she suffered from, nothing that Aravidic herbs and ointments could cure or treat. It was a fever of the soul. There were things in the world that could affect a young woman in ways more damaging than a physical assault or a disease contracted.
She felt a great deal better once she had bathed, partaken of some nourishment, spent some time drying out and combing her hair over a scented sandalwood brazier. She was humming to herself as she finished, unaware that she was doing so, or that the tune she was humming was the same one her mother, Padmeen, would sing to her and her brother Vasurava to put them to sleep. It put her in mind of the gentle, comforting caress of her mother, of that warm maternal embrace, the softness of her cheek upon Karni’s, the scent of her. It was hard living apart from one’s family, to be separated as a child, knowing that every one of those people—father, mother, brother, cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents—all still existed, that whole enormous circle of warmth, comfort and filial affection, but that she was now outside the circle, a satellite moon destined to live in her own lonely orbit. What did it mean? Why did such things happen? She had brought comfort, warmth, and joy to her foster father, Stonecastle. But what of her own comfort, warmth, and joy? Did she not deserve as much also?
She put these thoughts out of her mind as she finished her toilet, shook them off and breezed out of her chambers and all the way to the rishi’s apartment. Sentries, courtiers, maids, running boys, everyone who passed her by could not help but look at her twice—and some stared, others whispered—but she ignored them all. She walked tall and strong, and did not stop for any distraction.
“Gurudev,” she said, bowing to Pasha’ar.
He looked up absently from the scroll he was perusing.
She offered him the paper fan, presented upon her open palms.
He glanced at it with a frown, as if about to ask her what this object might be and why she was troubling him with it. Then he shook his head irritably and said, “Put it anywhere.”
She placed it beside other items she had fetched for him during his long stay, each of which represented some arduous effort or sacrifice on her part. None of them had been touched or moved from their original position as far as she could tell. She did not dwell on this fact but simply turned back to him and stood politely waiting until he looked up again, questioning.
“Merchant Gutap of Dirda sends his gratitude and says he will surely send his eldest son-in-law to Gajapura next spring as instructed, and will ensure that the boy does not squander this priceless opportunity.”
It was clear the sage had stopped listening halfway through her recitation. She waited for some acknowledgment, some response. Anything.
There was none.
That night, her friends came to see her, eyes wide and hands clasped to their chests with concern.
“Your face!” they said, taking her chin gently and turning her face this way and that, and then exclaiming in dismay. “Your arms, your legs, such bruises! These are purple and fresh. How did you come by them?”
Karni was silent for a long moment, emotion choking her. “Hailstorm,” she said at last. “On the road to Dirda.” She added after a moment, “And on the way back.”
They asked her a thousand questions, fussed and fretted about her like mother hens around a solitary chick. She smiled wanly at their fussing, allowed them to redo her hair, to beautify her as best as was possible with a bruise-covered appearance. They then insisted on bringing Karni her favorite savories and invited her to go to the son of the grain minister’s wedding the following evening.
She went along with everything except the last.
“I must remain here, to serve our guest.”
They made pooh-pooh noises, waving their hands in disgust. They tried their best to convince her to sneak away for a few hours at least. The handsome son of the Jamadgura war minister was expected to attend, stoking gossip about his former steamy romance with the bride-to-be. Scandal and fireworks were expected.
She heard it all as if from a great distance, viewed her friends as if she were meeting them for the first time, as if all this was strange and faraway, from another time, another Karni.
She stayed in the palace the next day, making tapioca savories and almond buttermilk for the sage, fetching scrolls, cleaning his muddy wooden cleat slippers, and performing sundry other chores. The sound of the wedding music was faintly audible from the kitchen floor, plaintive and sad as a dirge to her ears. She wondered how people did such things as dressing up in finery, wearing jewelry, and attending weddings, when the world was such a hostile place. What was the point?
She woke up that night and found her pillow soaked; she could not understand how. It occurred to her as she was drifting off into a restless asleep again: Could I have been crying?
But she didn’t remember crying.
The sage Pasha’ar left the next day. But not before he gave her a parting gift. If, that is, you could call what he gave her a “gift” at all.
“Memorize this mantra.”
Karni looked up at Pasha’ar. They were at the egress of the guest chambers, the sage about to depart.
King Stonecastle had come to touch the sage’s feet and ask for the customary blessings, which Pasha’ar gave freely. The king thanked him profusely, then hesitated before asking the traditional host’s question: “I trust everything was to your satisfaction?”
Karni had felt no trepidation during the long pause before the sage responded. She had passed the point of anxiety a while ago. During that trip to Dirda, perhaps. Or even before. It did not matter. She no longer feared Pasha’ar’s curse or anything he may say. She was long past all that.
“I have no complaints,” he said finally.
Karni was looking at her father’s face when he heard his guest respond and observed King Stonecastle’s delayed reaction: clearly he had been expecting the sage to say more. Some small words of praise perhaps. A compliment. Maybe even a lavishing of admiration for his daughter’s impressive attentiveness and diligence.
But there was nothing, of course.
Sage Pasha’ar did not praise, compliment, or lavish admiration.
That single sentence was all he had to say.
It was enough.
Coming from him, it was the equivalent of a thousand effusive praises. Many of his courtiers, noblemen, priests, and other seers would say as much to King Stonecastle in the months and years to come, expressing their admiration for his daughter’s extraordinary dedication to the most feared priest visitor. There would be an abundance of compliments later—from others. But none from Pasha’ar. Not now, not ever.
Karni waited at the egress with the customary earthen bowl of yogurt, which she offered to their departing guest, and which he partook of without comment. He returned the bowl to her palm, and she thought that he would then begin walking, and continue walking—out of the guest chambers, the palace, the city, the kingdom, her life. He could not walk fast enough.
Instead, he paused.
And said to her, “Memorize this mantra.”
Then he recited a very brief couplet.
The instruction, and the mantra that followed, were delivered quietly, barely loud enough for Karni to hear.
Nobody else was close enough to hear.
The words were intended for her ears alone.
He spoke the words, then began walking.
She stood there a moment, expressionless, holding the earthen bowl with the dregs of the yogurt upon her palm, as his wooden cleat slippers sounded on the steps leading down from the guest chambers, rang out as they crossed the stone floor to the archway, then grew softer, then muffled, then finally faded entirely as the sage left the palace complex and was gone, out of her life forever.
She never saw him again.
Her father came to her and embraced her warmly, releasing an immense sigh of relief.
“Daughter!” he cried out. “Daughter, you have done us all proud. All Stonecastle thanks you today.”
People crowded around them, smiling, laughing, moving about and talking normally again, abandoning the stiff, somber attitude they had assumed in the past several months of the sage’s visit. She saw her father’s gratitude and relief reflected in all their faces. King Stonecastle was only saying aloud what they all felt.
She knew she should smile at him, so she did. But there was no mirth in her heart. She did not see what she had done that was so special. She had been given a task, and she had completed the task to the best of her ability. Whether or not the task had been appreciated and had earned her the recognition of their guest did not matter at all. She had performed her duty, as was the modern custom.
It was what any young daughter of a decent noble household would have done.
Karni went through the rest of that month in a daze, unaware of when she ate or rested or slept or participated in the activities her friends managed to rope her into.
She did everything expected of her, said all the right words, dressed the right way, but those close to her knew she was not herself, that her heart was not into anything she did.
Her friends expressed concern for her. Her father showed sympathy for her “exhaustion” and suggested she might wish to visit her hometown, Mraashk, to recover from the ordeal she had been put through.
Everyone was sympathetic and supportive, effusive with praise, but none of this what she wanted or needed.
What did she want, then?
She did not know.
It was a whole season later, in the spring, that she woke one night, to a mercifully dry pillow this time, and remembered the sage’s parting words.
Memorize this mantra.
She had indeed memorized it. Memorizing mantras by the rote method was something little toddlers were taught to do, and something Karni had been doing her entire life. It was the way all knowledge was learned, passed on, stored over generations. Memorizing one mantra was like storing a drop in that vast ocean of knowledge.
But for the guru to call such special attention to it, the timing of his giving it to her, the solemn tone with which he had imparted it, the way he had stopped her from repeating it back to him—told her that this was no ordinary mantra.
She mused on its possible purpose. She sensed now what she had not realized at the time: that this mantra was meant to be, in some way, a reparation for all that she had endured during her long service to the guru. A payment, a reward of sorts. She had heard stories of priests imparting mantras to hosts who treated them with special grace. Gifts from the gods, they were called.
How a simple couplet of rhyming Krushan verse could be a gift, a payment, a reward, she did not know. But the stories said that reciting those mantras produced magical results. The results differed from story to story, but all concurred on the mantra being magical. The poor became rich. The sick became healthy. The lovelorn were united with their lost loves.
She stopped herself short.
She had been pacing her chamber, sweeping from end to end ceaselessly, a practice she had fallen into in the months since the guru’s departure.
It was often the only real exercise she took. Her old habits of running, swimming, horse riding, hunting, archery, swordplay, and javelin had all fallen by the wayside.
She had barely seen her friends for a whole season and a half. Two had gotten married, she had heard, and all of the others were now betrothed. Girls their age did not stay single long. Girls your age, she reminded herself. She knew her father had been showered with requests from kings and emperors, asking that she host a swayamvara and permit suitors to vie for her hand as was the custom of the land. She could still refuse them all at the end of the tourney, if none pleased her. But they all wanted a chance at impressing and catching the eye of the legendary Karni of Stonecastle, she who had served the irascible Guru Pasha’ar and kept her house safe from the ill favor of his cursing tongue. Because of that duty she had performed, she was the most desirable bride in fifty kingdoms.
Her father had reminded her, gently, that the longer she waited, the more young princes her age would find other brides, less suitable than she but still good brides nevertheless. Princes must have wives, just as princesses must have husbands. It was simply the way of the world. But she didn’t care about age or availability. Though the thought of marriage once pleased her, now it sickened her to her stomach.
King Stonecastle had sensed this, and also that somehow, her dislike of the topic of marriage was related to the sage’s visit. “Did Gurudev say something to you about your future prospects?” he asked her one day after she had staunchly refused yet another request for a swayamvara. “Did he perhaps foretell your husband-to-be and your life together?”
She frowned at her father. “He said not a word of such things.”
He blinked. “Then what is it, my child? What ails you? Do not deny it. I have seen you these past weeks. You take no pleasure in the things that once delighted you. You spend all day sequestered in the palace. You go nowhere, see no one, and have turned in against yourself. You are like the ghost of the laughing, active, happy Karni you were before the guru came here. I cannot believe that your change has nothing to do with the sage’s visit. If he said something to you that put fear into your heart, that made you dread marriage or your future husband, please, daughter, tell me now. Men such as he can often make stark pronouncements that terrify us mortals, but their intention is often to caution and help us prevent future calamities, not prevent us from living altogether.”
She shook her head slowly. “Sage Pasha’ar said nothing about such things. Or about anything to do with me personally or my future, nothing at all.”
And this was true. Guru Pasha’ar had barely paid her any heed except as a vehicle to serve his needs. Bring this, fetch that, go there, summon so-and-so. She was nothing more than a glorified servant to him. What did he care about a servant’s future prospects? All he cared about was having his needs fulfilled.
“Then what is it, daughter?” King Stonecastle asked her, his face lined with anxiety. “Something ails your heart. I see it in your every aspect. It festers like a sickness in you. It is poisoning your zest for life. Tell me what it is. If it is within my power to give you what it is you desire, I will give it to you, no matter the cost and the effort. Speak but once, and you shall have your heart’s desire.”
She hung her head in shame, for she heard the concern in her father’s voice. She knew he cared greatly for her and could not bear to see her unhappy. But even so, there was nothing he could do. “I am sorry, Father. Thank you for your concern, but there is nothing you can do.”
“There must be something!” he said, and Karni could see in his face that he flailed about mentally, searching for something to appease her. “Would you wish to go home to your father’s house? Would spending some time with your birth mother and father set your heart at ease? Is that your plaint? Does your heart ache for home? Say the word, and I shall drive you there myself in my own chariot this very day.”
“No, Father,” she said sadly. “I would love to go home someday, in the summer perhaps, when the orchards of Vrindavan are lush with fruit, and Mraashk’s markets are bustling with foreign traders after the ships return from western ports. I would love to see my beloved mother and father and my brother, Vasurava, again. But that is not what ails me.”
“Then you admit something does ail you?” he said, grasping at this dangled thread eagerly. “Tell me, then, what is this canker in your heart that robs my beloved Karni of her happiness and youth day by day? Is it some bauble? A place? A song?” He could not think of anything further to suggest and threw his hands up in the air. “Speak! I beg you.”
Karni bowed her head for a long time. “It is nothing within your power to give, Father. There is nothing I desire. I am content here in your house. You are a good father, and I bless the gods for delivering me here.”
He clenched his fist in frustration. “There must be something.”
She stood up, sighing softly. “Permit me to leave your presence. I am tired and wish to rest awhile.”
As she departed, she heard him calling, irritably, for more wine. She wished she could tell him everything, to put his mind at ease.
But she could not.
Memorize this mantra, the sage had said.
Karni paced the floor of her chambers, tracing the same route endlessly, as she went over every detail of the guru’s last instruction to her.
But what was the mantra? What did it do?
She was certain now that it did something. But how to find out what that was without actually using it. From the way the guru had stopped her from repeating it, she had understood that merely reciting the mantra aloud would achieve some result. But surely there must be a way to know what that result was before reciting it?
Surely Guru Pasha’ar would know what the mantra did, of course. But he had not told her, and she had not thought to ask at the time. All she knew was that he had intended the mantra to be some kind of gift to her—that was the tradition, after all. Her father had not thought to ask her if the guru had given her any gift in parting because he had simply been too relieved that Pasha’ar had not cursed them. The thought that the rishi had actually attempted to reward her for her services had not occurred to King Stonecastle at all.
The mantra was her secret. She had told nobody about it. She had spoken to no one about her ordeal, though many had asked. Everyone was curious and awestruck at how a princess of Stonecastle—a presumably spoiled, pampered, self-centered, rich, powerful, beautiful young woman—had served a notorious priest for so long and so arduously, enduring such hardship and deprivation, without once giving offense. It was the talk of fifty kingdoms, as evidenced by the requests from those realms for an opportunity to win her hand in marriage. There were stories and tales she had heard snippets of, most resembling the truth not even remotely; she had heard of them from the wet nurses, who had themselves been fishing for the true story. But even then, she had said nothing. The torture of those months serving the guru was locked in her heart, and she had thrown away the key. She did not intend to speak of it to anyone.
Because speaking of it would have meant speaking of the other thing as well, the thing her adoptive father had tried so desperately to pry from her. The pain of what had happened on that fateful journey to Dirda. And that pain she could not bear to speak of to anyone.
But now she thought that perhaps the mantra was the key. Perhaps the guru had given her the mantra as a means of appeasing her heart. Perhaps even, if she dared think it, the mantra would bring her that which she had lost.
Now that would be a true reward. That would serve as reparation for all the hardship Pasha’ar had caused her.
It would be a gift of the gods, truly.
Could it be possible? she wondered.
Could he really have been that insightful—and that powerful?
He was a great guru, after all. She had seen him use his powers with her own eyes, the day he had risen from the lake. Surely he could do much more than simply control nature’s elements in order to travel from one realm to another. He must wield true power.
Perhaps the mantra really was magical. Perhaps it really could set right what had gone wrong in Dirda.
Bring back what she had lost.
Repair the damage to her shattered heart.
Reward her troubled soul.
There was only one way to find out: she had to recite the mantra aloud.
She paced for hours, trying to decide, to work up the courage to actually do it, and it was late that night by the time she arrived at a decision.
The night watch had completed their rounds, and even the servants and staff had long gone to sleep. Except for the occasionally restless horse, hound, or elephant from the royal stables, the palace complex was quiet.
She stood on her balcony, breathing in the cool, bracing air of early autumn, and—at last—recited the mantra, once, carefully, enunciating each Krushan syllable perfectly, without a single error or repetition.
The night blossomed with light.
It began as a slow lightening, like the soft flush in the eastern sky at dawn, announcing the imminent arrival of the rising sun; except that it was near midnight now, and dawn was a whole watch away. The gloaming grew to a glow, and then suddenly the darkness was dispersed with a flash so bright, Karni was momentarily blinded. She felt a surge of heat so intense that she cried out, expecting to be seared to death. But the heat receded as quickly as it had arisen, reducing to the intensity of a crackling blaze in a fireplace across the room.
Her eyes were still dazzled from the flash of light. She rubbed them and blinked several times, trying to regain her vision.
When she did, she saw that there was a presence in her chamber.
She took a step back, her hip touching the stone balustrade that enclosed her balcony. There was nowhere else to go.
Karni blinked again, trying to focus her blurred vision. Yes, there was definitely someone there, and the figure—which she could now make out as a man—was the source of the intense, banked heat she felt, as powerful as any fire, that exuded from the man’s body. His face glowed, as if illumined by flame, making his features difficult to see clearly.
“Who are you?” Karni asked, hearing the tremble in her own voice. Where was her sword? She scanned the chamber frantically. It was hanging beside her bed, behind the stranger. Her eyes searched the room quickly for a more accessible weapon, as she edged sideways into the chamber.
You summoned me, the figure said.
She started. The words had come not from his lips but from . . . his being. Like a thought projected into her. She felt the heat of his mind touch her own and then dissipate at once. It felt like a tiny pinprick of intense warmth had stabbed her in the forehead. She forgot her search for a weapon and clutched at her forehead, feeling sweat break out at once. She cried out from the pain.
Have I caused you . . . discomfort? I did not intend to. I do not often assume mortal form.
The pinprick was more painful this time, the heat more searing. She cried out again, and thrashed around until she found a staff she used for stick fighting. She took hold of it and pointed it at him. “Stay back. I can call for a hundred guards in a moment.”
It is illogical of you to fear me. I am merely answering your summons.
She cried out at the sharp pain in her head, clutching her temples. Sweat was popping out across her face now, rolling down in rivulets. “Stop doing that! It hurts!”
He was silent a moment, then she sensed the heat emanating from his presence reduce in intensity, banking to a mere warm glow, like a fire that had burned down to the embers.
When he next “spoke” into her mind, the sensation was like an uncomfortable warm prickling in her brain rather than the searing, stabbing pains she’d felt initially.
Am I endurable to you now?
She wiped the sweat off her brow with the back of her hand. He had the glossy ubiquitous appearance of all the gods and goddesses depicted in statuary and art, an almost inhumanly smooth, unblemished perfection of limb, symmetry, and facial features that made it impossible to describe exactly what he looked like except that he was a perfect specimen. “Who are you? How did you appear in my chambers?”
Did you not summon me? I recognize your voice. It was you who recited the Mantra of Summoning.
The mantra. Pasha’ar’s mantra.
“Who are you?” she asked.
He gazed at her steadily. “I am known by many names in your tongue. The most commonly used one is Sharra.”
She stared at him. The intense searing emanating from him, the sudden appearance out of thin air, the ability to project thoughts into her mind. Could it really be . . . ?
“Sharra?” she asked in wonderment. “The . . . the sun god?”
He inclined his head. At your service.
At my service? “I don’t understand. Sage Pasha’ar did not explain what the mantra does. I recited it expecting . . . something else.”
What were you expecting?
She hesitated for a second, then blushed.
“A friend,” she replied.
I sense turmoil within you. You were expecting a lover. Someone dearly beloved to you but now lost . . . Am I correct?
She said nothing.
I am sorry to have disappointed you. But you did summon me specifically.
She frowned. “I did not! I was thinking of someone completely different.”
The mantra summons any god of your choosing. But yet I am here. There is a reason for that: you intended me to be the one.
“I wished for my friend Maheev of Mraashk . . .” She stopped, her throat choking at the use of his name. She shook her head. “I was a fool. I should have known my wish would not be fulfilled.”
This Maheev of Mraashk, he was dear to you. A lover, perhaps?
She shook her head. “We never consummated our friendship. Any intimacy between us was only emotional. I was resistant to the idea of a permanent bonding. He wanted marriage. The last time we saw each other, he wanted to vie for my hand in a swayamvara.”
And you did not give him this opportunity. Because you were busy serving the priest Pasha’ar at the time?
“Yes. And in the interim, to uphold tradition and family honor, he was compelled to attend the swayamvara of another princess. In Dirda. By chance, I happened to be traveling through Dirda at the very time.”
He moved across the room slowly, seeming to glide rather than walk. Why do you assume it was a matter of chance?
She had no answer to that. It was a possibility that had never occurred to her, but now that it was suggested, it seemed obvious.
Pasha’ar was the one who sent you to Dirda, was it not? And he sent you at precisely that time?
He was right. It was an odd coincidence that she happened to be dispatched to Dirda at the very time that Maheev was also there for the swayamvara. In fact, when she heard in the marketplace that the princess was hosting her swayamvara, the first thing she had thought was Maheev must be here. He could not refuse the invitation because it would reflect badly on his house. And when she went to the tourney grounds, there he was, handsome and resplendent in his golden armor on his gold-paneled chariot, as beautiful and perfect as the first day she had seen him on his first visit to her father’s palace.
“Yes, I see what you mean,” she said slowly. “It was as if Pasha’ar sent me on that pointless errand to Dirda only so that I could be there in time to watch Maheev . . .” Again she felt her throat choke, and she shut her eyes.
To watch him die competing in that chariot challenge. An unfortunate mishap when a stray arrow struck one of his horses and caused his chariot to overturn. You ran to the spot where he fell and cradled his head in your lap and cried as the light passed from his eyes.
The god’s words sparked a flaring light in the dark corner of her mind where she had buried the memory, illuminating the jagged edges of the pain she had felt when she saw it happen. She relived the shock and disbelief she had felt that day in Dirda as she saw the chariot tumble and shatter before coming to rest in a cloud of dust.
She lowered her head. The staff felt like a leaden weight in her hand. She leaned it against the wall and clutched her face in both hands. “He was broken and bleeding and beyond help. He recognized me and was happy to see me. He said he had wished to see my face one last time before he died, and there I was, a gift from the gods. He told me he loved me . . .”
And he wished you much happiness in your life ahead. Before he died in your arms.
“Yes,” she said, weeping openly now, “yes. And I told him I loved him too—but I was too late, he was already gone.” At this, Karni became overwhelmed and could not go on.
Sharra waited patiently as she cried the tears she had held back since that day, the pain she had banked and hidden from Sage Pasha’ar, her father, her friends, the wet nurses, everyone, even herself.
Finally, she could cry no more. There would be more tears tomorrow. And the day after. And for many days to come. But for now she was drained. She wiped her face with the hem of her garment.
You mortals have such brief existences. It is always sad to see you fail to achieve your desires and die unfulfilled. Maheev’s end was unfortunate. But you have a great and fulfilling life ahead of you. His dying wish is prophetic. You will achieve much happiness in your life—as well as great sorrow. Both are inevitable, I am afraid. Your place in the mortal world is a special one, your life and times extraordinary, and your sons—
“I don’t want to know,” she said brusquely. She paused and tempered her tone. “Please. Do not reveal my future. I know that as a god you have sight of all things past and future, seen and unseen. I do not wish to know what lies ahead for me. I want to live my life myself.”
He was silent for so long she thought she had offended him. But when he spoke again, there was no rancor in his voice. So be it, Karni of Stonecastle. I will speak of it no more.
“Is that why you came to me? To show me my future? Is that the purpose of the mantra?”
He smiled. She saw a flash of his teeth, which gleamed with the brightness of a rising sun. Light exuded from his eyes, his body, as he smiled, and she felt warmth emanate from him in a small wave. It passed through her with a stimulating frisson. Such power! Just from a smile.
I am not a fortuneteller, Karni of Stonecastle. I do not appear when summoned to show mortals their future. I am Sharra, Star of the Sky, Light of the World.
She smiled back despite her emotional state. There was something dangerously charming about him. Like the sun itself, you could not take your eyes off him, even though you knew that staring at him too long would burn your eyes blind. Charismatic yet deadly.
“Then why did the mantra summon you?” she asked.
He took a step toward her. He had mastered his emanations now, and she felt none of the searing heat that he had been emitting earlier. Now it was but a genial warmth that Karni found oddly comforting. His features blurred again, and she braced herself, expecting another blast of heat. But instead of the bright flash, his features rearranged themselves to form a new face, a new body, one that was so familiar, so desirable to her that she gasped involuntarily.
He smiled at her now with the face and form of her dead sweetheart, Maheev. Exact to the last detail.
The purpose of the mantra was to grant you your wish, Karni of Stonecastle. To give you the wedding night with Maheev that you desired.
The sun god paused as Karni’s beleaguered mind tried to process what he had just said. Was he truly saying what she thought he was saying? She felt herself as the memory of her last embrace with Maheev returned. He had wanted her so much, and she had denied him, as any young woman in her position would have, not because she didn’t want him with the same intensity—River Goddess, how she had wanted him!—but because she wanted to wait till they were wed. She had been so filled with the confidence of youth that death was not even a distant possibility.
She tried to speak now, but her throat was choked with emotion.
The wedding night that you were so cruelly denied. And the child that would have been produced from that union.
“No!” Karni cried out, aghast. She backed away, her heel striking something. She heard a clattering sound as the staff fell to the floor. “I did not ask for this.”
Sharra, the sun god, in the form of her dead sweetheart, Maheev, moved closer to her in the same gliding motion.
Maheev of Mraashk was of the Solar dynasty. My direct descendant. When you used the mantra to attempt to summon him, it was only natural that I, the sire of his bloodline, should appear.
She shook her head, still backing away from him. “I did not ask for you, or any god. I thought only to use the mantra in order to see Maheev again one last time, if only for a few moments, to speak to him freely, to pour my heart out and say the things I neglected to say while alive.”
To feel his touch, to press your lips against his, to hold him close and to melt in his arms . . . Do you deny that these desires were also in your heart when you uttered the mantra?
She looked down, embarrassed, but unable to lie. “We were to be wed this season, to be husband and wife. I had every right to feel those emotions, those desires.”
As you have every right to live out that desire now, with me.
She was shaking her head before he finished the sentence. “No. I cannot. It is one thing to desire, quite another to succumb. I am an unwed girl, and I am not ready to be wed yet by my own choice. Someday I will find a husband whom I believe I can love as much as I loved Maheev. I am willing to wait until then. What you are proposing is impossible.”
His eyes—Maheev’s eyes—glowed brightly for an instant, reacting to her refusal. She felt the heat emanating from him again. You are mistaken, Princess Karni. This is not an offering. This is inevitable. Once the mantra has been uttered and a god is summoned, the summoner will birth a child. The question of choice does not enter into it. The mantra compels me to instill myself within you and ensures that you will bear a child of our union. All the mantra allows one to choose is which god to summon, and what qualities one wishes the resulting child to possess in life.
She gasped, raising a hand to cover her mouth with her upright palm. “But I do not wish this! Will you assault me then? Against my will?”
Nay, Karni of Stonecastle, he said. I am a god and need not impregnate a woman in the mortal way. I do not wish to possess you by force. I am sympathetic to your situation. Your intelligence and strength of will impress me greatly. If you do not wish to accept my gift in the usual way, through the union of man and woman, then I can plant the seed in you through the force of godhead itself.
She swallowed. “What does that mean?”
He raised a hand, the palm beginning to glow at once, producing a tiny ball of heat and light, a spinning fireball the size of an almond. By passing my seed to you through the medium of my energy. Just as I engender life within the womb of Great Mother Artha, the goddess of Arthaloka, through the life-giving power of my sunlight.
She hesitated. “And if I do not want this method either? If I refuse you altogether and bid you leave this instant?”
Do not test the patience of a god, young woman. You will have more interactions with my fellow gods in your life. And your offspring—
He paused, recalling her earlier admonition.
You would do well to keep good relations with any of us. You will have need of our aid in your life to come.
She reflected on that, her heart racing. Why had she uttered that mantra at all? Sage Pasha’ar had brought her nothing but hardship and discomfort. She should have known he would never give her a simple gift. The man clearly cared nothing for anyone but himself. He had given her this mantra out of some patriarchal sense of tradition: men bestowing offspring upon women as though children were things to be given and taken, rather than mutually created expressions of one human being’s love for another. She wished now that she had put the mantra out of her mind and never used it. But it was too late: wishing would do her no good. She was a realistic woman. What was, was. What had to be, had to be.
There was also the practical matter of there being no alternative. She could not fight a god. And even if she tried and failed, what would that achieve? If what Sharra said was true, she would require the aid of the gods in her life ahead. And not just she. Your offspring, he had said. That tantalizing fragment suggested that her future children would need the aid of the gods as well. She could not act now out of pride and willfulness and risk endangering her unborn children. Besides, she had uttered the mantra, and in her heart she did indeed desire all the things Sharra had named. Maheev had been of the Suryavansha line. She had wanted one night with him, if only to give herself the satisfaction of showing him how much she loved him, expressing all that she had failed to express in life. To give him the gift of herself. To give herself the gift of him. She needed it . . . nay, she wanted it.
“I have one last question,” she said.
Sharra waited, Maheev’s handsome face set in that same wistful, longing gaze that had always won her heart.
“Will Maheev . . . wherever he may be now . . . be able to hear what I say to you?” She hesitated, trying to find the right words. “I suppose I’m asking if he will, in some way, be able to sense the feelings I express here and now? Is there some way to make that possible?”
The god did not answer her immediately. She thought she had finally crossed a line, given offense to a powerful divine entity.
But when he looked at her, it was with Maheev’s face, Maheev’s eyes, and, she could have sworn, Maheev’s spirit.
“Karni,” he said, in that same gentle, respectful tone of Maheev’s she had loved for its contrast to the loud, boisterous voices of most rich young men, “Marriage is a woman’s decision, and it’s your right to make that choice when you please. But can I help it if I’m so madly crazy in love with you, Karni of Stonecastle, apple of my eye, that I can’t bear to wait another year, another season, or even another night, to make you my wife?”
She raised her hand before her chin, shocked speechless. It was not merely a mimicking of Maheev. It was Maheev. By the grace of the gods!
The incarnation of Maheev spread his arms. “I love you, Karni Stonecastle. We’ve known each other since we could first talk. We played together as infants in your father’s castle in Mraashk. Our families know each other well and are good friends. Even after you left Mraashk to come live here at Stonecastle, I followed you and changed my entire life to be near you. I love everything about you, from your quick temper to your stubborn will, to the way your back arches where it meets your hip, to how you toss your hair when you walk, plus your strength, your beauty, your love for fried tapioca—”
Karni shook her head in amazement, tears rolling down her face again. She began to walk toward him.
“—your prowess at weapons and combat, your sense of Krushan law, your refusal to give up on any chore no matter how demanding until it is done to your satisfaction.”
She put her upright palm over his mouth, cutting off the rest.
“Maheev, oh, Maheev,” she said, her heart tearing apart and filling with unspeakable emotion both at once. “I love you, my beloved. I love you more than anything else in this world. Would that I had told you when I had the chance, that last day we met, after the lake. I wanted to tell you, but I was too proud, too stubborn, too willful, to admit that I wanted you as much as you wanted me. I was young and arrogant. I thought we had all the time in the world. I thought we had forever. I was wrong. I know now that all we have is the given moment. The here and now. There is nothing else. The future is uncertain, the past unreachable. We only have tonight. I should have told you how I felt; I should have held nothing back. Nothing would have given me more joy than to have taken you as my husband. I wanted to spend my life with you. I want to be with you, my love.”
She paused, knowing she could not stop herself now. “Tonight.”
The god opened his arms and embraced her. She crushed herself against his body and felt a rush of emotions, of love, lust, desire, sorrow, joy, that she had never felt before. For once in her life, she stopped controlling and let herself go completely. She surrendered to the given moment. The heat grew within her and took her by storm. She allowed it to consume her. It blazed through her veins like a flood of fire. She let herself catch fire and burn. And he burned with her.
Together, they gave themselves over to the blaze.