Karni threw herself after Shvate.
He was already at the edge of the cliff when she had emerged from the trees. She had taken in the scene in a single glance and sprinted forward without thought or hesitation. He was already stepping off the edge when she ran out onto the ledge, the rough stone pricking and hurting her bare feet. She saw him step off and saw his body falling as she threw herself at the lip. She might well have slid right off the edge and gone falling after him, and she would not have regretted that. Better that she die than let him die without even attempting to save him.
She felt the stony ledge rise and strike her in the chest, the ribs, the hip with stunning force. She gasped and cried out involuntarily. Her chin struck a slightly raised spot, and her teeth snapped together, her jaw cracking audibly. She saw stars in the afternoon sky, the world swirled, and the forest darkened. She knew she was about to pass out from the blow and bit her lip hard, hard enough to draw a spurt of blood. The pain revived her and kept her from unconsciousness.
She lay there on the stony, uneven ledge, her entire body still vibrating from the shock of the fall, and looked over the edge.
Her arms were outstretched, reaching over the lip into empty air, as if trying to grab hold of the sky itself, of emptiness, of hope, of life.
She had something in her fists. It was not sky, or emptiness, or hope.
It was life.
She felt the strain on her wrists, her fingers, her elbows, her shoulder joints, her back.
And she felt her body starting to slide, pulled toward the edge, toward the emptiness.
“Mayla,” she groaned, her voice choked out of her.
She turned her head, rubbing her cheek harshly against the ledge, and tried again.
“MAYLA!”
She heard footsteps come running behind her. Mayla could not have been far behind. She was a better, faster runner than Karni. But on this occasion, Karni had taken a lead on her. The instant Mayla had told Karni about Shvate’s state of mind that morning, about some of the things he had said to her, the thoughts he had voiced, she had risen from the stoop of their hut and begun running. She had run all the way to the cliff, because it was their favorite spot at this time of day, and because it was the place she herself had often stood and contemplated dying: how easy it would be here to simply step off the ledge and let Goddess Artha, the Great Mother, claim her in her heavy embrace. If Shvate had not been here, she would have gone to the glade, or down to the waterfall, but she had felt instinctively that this was the place he would if he were to think of killing himself.
“MAYLA!” she screamed now, feeling her body slide toward the ledge. She was already at the thinnest part, the very tip, and she could see the valley on either side of the tapering lip of rock, yawning darkly below. In another moment, she would slide all the way over, and then she would know at last what it felt like to simply let go, to abdicate her claim to life, to love, to everything. She could feel Great Mother Artha calling to her, whispering like the sound of the insects at dusk. Come, she was saying, come to me, child. I will take you into my heart and keep you safe. No more worry, no more cares, no more responsibilities. Only cool, blessed darkness. Eternal sleep.
She felt her eyes starting to tear, from the pain of the impact, the jarring blow to her ribs and hip, but also from the realization that she was close to the end now, the end of everything. This must be how Siya had felt when Artha had opened her arms and invited her in. When she had preferred to return to her mother’s womb rather than accept the dominance of a broken god.
Mayla’s hands grasped her ankles. “I have you!” Mayla cried hoarsely. “I have you, sister! I will not let you fall!”
Karni squeezed the tears out of her eyes and forced them open again, blinking rapidly to clear them. She was at the very edge now, her arms stretched over the emptiness up to the elbows.
“Pull me back, Mayla,” she said, speaking slowly and clearly. “Whatever you do, do not let go. Pull me back inch by inch, and make sure you are well anchored and do not slip. There is gravel on the ledge, take care.”
She felt Mayla look around her, getting her bearings, then felt the younger woman’s hands grasp her ankles even more tightly and start to pull. Karni’s bruised ribs bounced against the uneven ledge, and she wanted to cry out with the pain, but she bit her lip again and suppressed the cry. She did not want to distract Mayla. Right now, Mayla was all that stood between Karni and certain death. And widowhood.
As she slid backward, she saw her forearms retreat onto the ledge, then saw her hands come into view, bent with the weight of their burden. Her knuckles were white with strain, fists bunched tightly as manacles around two pale white wrists.
Shvate’s wrists.
She had him.
She had her husband in her hands.
He was her life, and she held her life in her hands. She was not going to let go, for anything in the world.
She felt with her feet and found a protruding lip of rock, sufficient for her to hook one foot over, giving her some leverage.
“Mayla, stop pulling me,” she said, “I am far enough back now. Now come here and lie next to me, face-down. We must both help Shvate climb back over the top.”
As Mayla moved to comply, Karni saw Shvate’s head lift up. The top of Shvate’s face came into view, contorted with the effort of being held and with something else, some emotion she had never seen before on his face. His eyes found her eyes, and she saw the desolation in them. He could not speak, but his eyes spoke to her eyes, and she knew exactly what he was saying.
“Why?” Shvate asked.
They were sitting in the shadow of a tree near the cliffside where Karni and Mayla had just pulled him back up over the edge. Karni could see the cliff from where she sat and shuddered at the thought of how close she had come to losing her husband. Her ribs, her hip—her whole body—throbbed and ached. Her lip, too, felt swollen, and a patch of skin on her cheek was abraded. She had contusions and bruises all over the front of her body. Her ankles ached from the force with which Mayla had gripped them. Half a toenail had been torn off, and the toe was now encrusted with dried blood.
Mayla had fetched them some water, and Karni had taken a small sip but left the rest for Shvate to drink, knowing he needed it more than she. They were all three sitting on the cool grass beneath the tree, facing each other. Both she and Mayla were alert and watchful, unable to take their eyes off Shvate for more than an instant, as if fearful that he might get up and run for the cliff and jump again. She knew he would not do that; Shvate could be driven by emotion to do foolish things at times, but he was not cruel.
He had been looking at her since he had asked the question, still awaiting an answer.
“What do you mean, ‘Why?’ ” she asked fiercely. “You are my husband. I didn’t want you to die. What other answer could there possibly be?”
He looked at her then, in a way that broke her heart. Hopeless, lost, desolate. It was the same look she had seen in his eyes when she had held on to him, as he had hung over the ledge, on the cusp of death. She had never seen such a look in his eyes before. It was the look of a man who was at his life’s end, as if nothing anyone did or said would ever matter again to him, as if something within him was already dead.
“You don’t understand,” he said softly, his voice barely audible over the omnipresent sounds of the jungle. “After I was gone, you could both have returned to Hastinaga, rejoined the family.”
Karni looked at Mayla, then back at Shvate. “With you gone, Shvate? What life would we have had?”
“I would have jumped after you,” Mayla said matter-of-factly. Tears spilled from her eyes, but she brushed them away roughly, almost surprised by them. “I wouldn’t have been able to live a single day without you.”
Shvate shook his head. He was sitting with his knees raised and his arms clasped over them. “You could have gone back. Everyone would have accepted you with open arms. The curse would have been lifted. Once I was gone, there would have been no stricture on either of you marrying again, bearing children.”
They exchanged another glance, then looked at him as if he was insane. “What?” Karni asked, shocked that he could even contemplate such a thing.
“Don’t you see, Karni, Mayla? The sage’s curse was for me. It predicted that if I lay with my wife, then we would both die. At the time I knew he only meant Mayla, since only she was with me. But if it did extend to you as well, as my wife, it would still have to terminate with my demise. He did not forbid my wife to mate again. Only us together. So you both could have gone on to marry again and bear heirs to the dynasty.”
“And this is why you tried to kill yourself?” Karni asked. “So that we would return to Hastinaga and marry again and bear heirs to the Krushan dynasty?”
Shvate looked at her sadly.
“I . . . I want to come over there and slap you,” she said, gritting her teeth to control herself from actually doing it. “I want to punch you and pummel you for daring to suggest such a thing. Let me tell you clearly, Shvate of Hastinaga. If you die, I am not going back to Hastinaga! Not even if they tie me to a rope and drag me behind a chariot! I would rather die here in the jungle than go back and become a baby bearer for your dynasty. That is not why I married you. I chose you as my husband because I loved you, and I love you still. Not to rent out my womb as a surrogate for any Krushan man to seed for the continuation of the lineage!”
“I would kill myself rather than let another man touch me,” Mayla said, staring at Shvate with such hostility that Karni thought she might actually attack him next. “I would die within a minute of you dying. I would kill myself by any means possible. Do you hear me, Shvate?”
Shvate raised both his hands, trying to calm the two women shouting at him. “Very well, very well. I hear you both. I understand your pain, and your loyalty. But don’t you see? I am in pain too. I have a loyalty as well. Not only to you both, but to my family, to my House, to my people.”
“To hell with your House and your people,” Mayla said. She picked up a stone and threw it at a fallen tree trunk, striking it hard enough that some bark was chipped off. “If you care so much about them, then fight like a man. Don’t jump off a cliff and kill yourself. That’s just another kind of running away!”
Shvate nodded his head. “Perhaps. But it is the only way left. I have thought it through, and there are no other options. This is the only way to circumvent the curse and compensate for the dishonor I have brought upon my family.”
“Then I will jump from that cliff right now!” Mayla said, getting to her feet. “You only care about the honor of your family? What about the honor of your wives? If that is your final word, then I will go and leap off that cliff to my death this very instant!”
Karni saw that Mayla was out of control. She was much more closely attached to Shvate because of their greater physical intimacy; they were soul partners. She was afraid that Mayla might actually do what she threatened, and then Shvate would be irrevocably lost.
“Mayla,” she said strongly, grabbing her sister wife’s arm. “Sit down.”
Eyes flashing, for a moment Mayla looked like she would say something back, but then she saw the determined look on Karni’s face and subsided. Without another word, she slumped down again in a heap.
“There will be no more talk of jumping from cliffs,” Karni said firmly but gently to Mayla.
Mayla’s eyes glared up at Karni, but she said nothing.
Karni turned and looked at Shvate. “That goes for you as well, Shvate.”
Shvate sighed. “What good am I to you two? What use am I to anyone? I am a burden on this world. Better I rid you both of my presence.”
Karni raised her hand, wanting so badly to slap her husband. To hit him hard enough to rock his head back, the way Siya had slapped Amara—thrice, if she recalled correctly—when he had been in a similar state, saying that he would go into exile alone because it was not fair to deprive Siya of her comfortable life as a princess in Aranya. But she restrained herself. Shvate was not Amara, and she was not Siya. They were already in exile together. Shvate’s ego needed to be boosted, not corrected.
“Enough,” she said, pointing a finger in warning. “There will be no more talk of that kind. Do you hear me? No more talk of suicide and futility from either of you.”
Shvate glanced up at her, saw her withering look, and shrugged. He said nothing. She took that as acceptance. Men could be so weak at times. Correction: all the time. That was why they built their muscles, wore their armor, engaged in all that bluster and man talk. Because inside they were just little boys quivering and scared of everything.
“We don’t threaten to kill ourselves. We don’t act as if we have no other choice but suicide. Since when is taking one’s own life a solution to any problem? Is not our battle cry ‘We are Krushan! We fight!’?” Have you forgotten that, and all your training, and the teachings of your gurus, and the wisdom of your mentors? Is this what Mother Jilana and Vrath raised you for, to throw yourself off a cliff and end your life? Surely there enough enemies out there who want all of the sons and daughters of Krushan dead. Are you now aiding and abetting your enemies by giving them what they want? Wake up, Shvate. Wake up and accept the reality of our lives. This is all we have, we are all we have. Each other. This jungle, you, Mayla, myself—that’s our entire world. We need one another more than ever now. How dare you presume to absolve yourself of your responsibility as a husband, as a man?”
Shvate held his head in his hands, listening to Karni. He said in a mournful, pleading tone, “What would you have me do, wife? Do you not understand how impotent, how useless I feel? Can you not see my pain?”
She sank to her knees, lowering her voice, gentling her tone. “Of course I do, my love. You are a strong, proud man. A prince of Krushan. For you to want to take your own life must mean are at your wits’ end. But you can’t give up hope. You can’t just end your life. It will not solve anything.”
“It will solve one problem at least. The problem of progeny.”
She felt the urge to slap him again and closed her eyes, willing the urge to pass. When she felt it was safe, she opened her eyes again. “That is not a solution. You heard Mayla’s response to your suggestion. She was willing to kill herself rather than let another man touch her. Does that work for you? What if we all three hold hands and jump together? End it all together? Will that resolve the problem of progeny?”
He shook his head and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. His voice was hollow. “No. Of course not. But what else can I do? As you say, I have reached my wits’ end, Karni. If you have a suggestion, then say it. All I know is that we must do something! I feel responsible for my family’s future. It has been a whole year since we came into exile. There has been no child born to Adri and Geldry either in this time.”
“How can you be so sure?” Mayla asked.
Karni nodded. “Yes, how can you be so sure? We have had no word from Hastinaga in the past year.”
“Exactly.” Shvate sat up, looking more animated. “Had they borne a child, word would have traveled to us. News of an heir to the Burnt Empire will spread like wildfire. The acolytes in the hermitage are constantly traveling to other ashrams. Mages from far and wide come and visit occasionally. If they do not find out, then surely Mother Jilana would send word. The only reason we have not heard from Hastinaga is because there has been no news yet. And if Adri and Geldry haven’t given the House an heir, then who else will? Everyone was counting on us. By now, we would surely have produced at least one heir, if not more.”
Karni shook her head. “I don’t know, husband. It isn’t that simple. We have been in exile for a year, unable to have intimate relations because of the curse, but we have been married for much longer. You and I for several years, and you and Mayla for some years too. If our wombs have not quickened yet, it could mean that we might not have had a child this year as well. You can’t assume that this would have been the year we produced heirs!”
“It would have been. I am sure of it.” Shvate took some water from the clay pot and splashed it on his face. “The past several years, we have been campaigning, at war, constantly traveling, on the move, fighting . . .”
“None of that affected our ability to mate,” Mayla said softly. She had moved closer to them both, sitting within arm’s reach now. She gave Karni a sisterly look of support. “If anything, we were more amorous in camp than we were back home in our bedchamber.”
“Mayla’s right,” Karni said. “You can’t just assume that this past year was the crucial one. It takes time. In the legend of the exiled prince, King Ratha and his three wives didn’t produce any heirs for several years. Finally he had to call Mage Yaranga, who presided over a special sacrificial ceremony, after which he gave the eldest queen—”
“A sacrament to eat, and she shared it with her sister queens, because of which they all conceived. Yes, I know the story of the epic, Karni,” Shvate said. “But you do know that most scholars today regard the sacrament as being apocryphal.”
“Meaning . . . the sacrament wasn’t real?” Mayla asked, sounding shocked.
“Yes, Mayla,” Karni said. “It’s symbolic.”
Mayla looked confused. “Symbolic . . . for what?”
“Mage Yaranga was called in by King Ratha for the same reason that Seer-Mage Vessa was called in by Mother Jilana.”
Mayla blinked several times, processing this information. “You mean . . . ?”
“The time-honored practice of calling in a learned priest to act as surrogate father,” Karni said.
Mayla looked at her, then made a face. “Ew! Disgusting. I’ll slap any priest who enters my bedchamber!”
Karni laughed. She couldn’t help herself. The thought of Mayla dropkicking an old venerated priest as he entered her bedchamber was so vivid, so real, that it hit her in the gut. She laughed out loud.
Shvate stared at her uncomprehendingly, then grinned, then laughed as well. The sound of his own laughter seemed to surprise him. He stopped, but then saw Karni continuing to laugh and laughed some more.
Mayla stared at them both as if they had gone completely crazy, then played back her own words in her mind and understood what they were laughing at. She joined in, laughing with her own rhythm.
For the next few minutes, all three of them laughed and laughed, while the squirrels and deer nearby listened with twitching ears at the strange sound.
Later that evening, after bathing in the river, performing their evening rituals, eating a sparse evening meal of fruits and some nuts, they sat by the riverbank to talk again.
“Now,” Karni said, “we’re refreshed, calmer, more relaxed. Let us talk this over without any more threats or dramatic outbursts.”
Shvate and Mayla both nodded. It was a peaceful quiet evening. They were sitting on a part of the riverbank away from the waterfall, whose sound was too loud to talk over. It grew louder if one stood, but when seated on the rocks as they were, it was muted to a dull, steady roar. Dusk had settled on the jungle, and the darkling sky was dotted with silhouettes of the last birds seeking their mates and flocks in the high trees. It was very restful here, the air moist with the spray of the river, the evening breeze cool and refreshing. Farther downriver, in the rocky shallows downwind of the humans, a mother bear and her two cubs splashed around noisily, trying to catch fish. By now, they were accustomed to seeing Shvate, Mayla, and Karni about, and because the humans stayed far from the cubs and never made any threatening gestures or sounds, the mother bear had never bothered them.
“Mayla and I have spoken about it in private,” Karni went on. “Neither of us are willing to accept a priest as a surrogate. Our decision is final.”
Shvate looked out at the far bank across the river. The trees there were still lit by the deep afterglow of the sun’s last light. “Then what are we to do?”
“Must we do anything at all?” Karni asked quietly.
Shvate looked up at her. “It is our Krushan law.”
She wanted to argue the point, but decided to let it go. If Shvate considered it his Krushan law—or their Krushan law—then so it was. Shima was what one believed was one’s Krushan law. If you did not consider a particular task your responsibility, nothing could force you to do it. Only slavery compelled anyone to act against their will. And even with the typical imbalance between men and women in society, Krushan women were not slaves to their men. But if their husband believed they had a duty to their House to procreate for the sake of continuance, then that made it so. There was no point bickering over semantics and personal differences.
“Very well,” she said. “Then there may be a solution.”
Shvate frowned. She could see his forehead creasing even in the gloaming light. He had once possessed a fine head of hair, bushy and leonine, but the years of warring and traveling had taken their toll, and in the past year itself, he had lost much of his mane, while more and more of his forehead revealed itself. He was aging before his time. She could see that this existence would not sustain him for long. He was no longer the fine specimen of manhood she had married only a few short years ago; indeed he was naught but a shadow of the great conqueror who had fought so splendidly at the Battle of the Rebels and the Battle of Reygar, and achieved so many other historic victories.
The curse and the year of exile had emasculated him, the inactivity and lack of command structure had robbed him of motivation. She wondered how long he could survive this way, compared to his expected life span had their life at Hastinaga not been so cruelly interrupted. She pushed the thought aside. They had a very big decision to consider now, and she was the only one who possessed the solution to the problem at hand.
Are you sure you want to do this, Karni? she asked herself one last time. You know what it did to you the first time, the toll it took on you. Are you absolutely certain you’re willing to go through that again?
And the answer came, as it had before: What choice do I have? I am a woman whose husband tried to kill himself because of this conundrum. If I don’t do something to solve the problem, what good am I as his wife?
Also, the afterthought, faint but persistent: What if this was the reason Pasha’ar gave me the mantra in the first place? What if he knew, with the prescience of wise sages, that this day would come someday, and the mantra would be my only means of salvation? What if that was why he came to Stonecastle, why he spent that long, endless summer, why he put me through such hell? What if he was training and preparing me for this life, this moment, this decision?
Karni did not believe that everything in life was a foregone conclusion, that everything we said and did was decided by karma. Karma could only determine our future lives in the broadest possible shape. It was up to each of us individually to determine how to live those future lives on a day-to-day basis, the thousands of little acts performed, kind or cruel, gentle or violent, caring or uncaring. Karma could cause us to be reborn as that mother bear in the river a few hundred yards downstream, but whether Mother Bear chose to attack humans for no reason and kill them or simply to fish in the river with her cubs, then go back into the jungle to sleep, was up to her. Karma could put you down in a certain body, a life, a place and time. It didn’t give you an exact script of everything you did and said in that body, that lifetime, that place and time.
“What solution?” Shvate asked.
Mayla looked at her curiously too. Karni had not told her sister wife of this part; she had known that Mayla could not keep a secret for more than a moment or two—especially not from Shvate—and she wanted to be the one to tell them both, to control how the information was revealed, and what part of it remained unshared.
Karni took a deep breath.
“Many years ago,” she began, “a sage named Pasha’ar came to my father’s palace in Stonecastle while I was still a young girl . . .”
It was dark when she finished. Mayla had taken a moment to light a small fire using a piece of banked charcoal. The fire was in a circle of rocks; it gave off enough heat to keep them warm despite the falling temperature, and provided enough light to see each other by. Karni saw both Mayla’s and Shvate’s faces change as she narrated the story of her time serving Pasha’ar while artfully editing out all mention of the boy with whom she’d had a relationship and the events of his death. She did not even mention her trip to Dirda, knowing that it would elicit a flurry of questions from the eternally curious Mayla, who might well put two and two together and link her visit there with the death of her elder brother in the chariot race around the same time.
Close as she was to Mayla, she had chosen to keep the God Mantra a secret all this while only because of her earlier encounter with the sun god in his avatar as Maheev. She could hardly expect Mayla to understand that she, Karni, had lain with her dead brother and borne an illegitimate child from that union. There was also the issue of the illicit child having a claim to the thrones of all three kingdoms! Even now, as she explained her grueling months of service to the visiting Guru, she found herself glossing over any mention of her former suitor Maheev entirely. When she came to the part where Pasha’ar was leaving and gave her the mantra as a “gift,” Karni explained what it would do when recited. Both reacted. Shvate’s eyes widened, and he rose to his feet. Mayla exclaimed, and her eyes glinted, twinkling in the firelight.
“How do you know the mantra works?” Mayla asked breathlessly. “It sounds so far-fetched! Imagine it. The power to summon gods!”
“It works,” Karni said simply, careful not to elaborate.
Shvate came over to sit beside her, looking at her as if she had just revealed the secret to life itself. “Karni, Karni, my Karni,” he said.
“Yes, Shvate?” she replied.
“Why didn’t you tell me of this earlier?”
“I had all but forgotten about it myself,” she said. “As Mayla said, it seemed so far-fetched at the time, I scarcely believed it. I was just relieved to be free of his service. I resumed my normal everyday life, and soon I forgot about it entirely.”
“You forgot the mantra?” Shvate asked, shocked.
“No, not the mantra itself. I forgot about it.”
Mayla was still staring at her, the wheels of her mind spinning like racing chariot wheels. “If I was given a mantra with the power to summon gods, I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from trying it out! I would have done it right away. I couldn’t have waited.”
Shvate ignored Mayla. His attention was focused entirely on Karni. “My love, this is the answer to all our prayers.”
“What were we praying for?” Karni asked.
“Progeny!” Shvate said, then realized that Karni was teasing him. “Seriously, Karni, imagine the progeny of the gods! We would birth the greatest Krushan king ever born!”
“Or queen,” Karni replied.
“Of course,” Shvate admitted. “The sex of the child is less important than her or his capabilities. I always dreamed that you and I, and Mayla and I, would produce beautiful, strong children, each capable of ruling the Burnt Empire.”
“I did too,” Karni admitted, this time quite serious. She felt a tinge of sadness at the realization that such an event would never come to pass. How ironic. How sad.
“I would have used it that very night,” Mayla said, pacing up and down now, excited by the fire that Karni’s story had lit in her imagination. “Maybe more than once!”
“But since we are prohibited to procreate together by the curse, this mantra could still ensure the survival of the Krushan race.” Shvate’s eyes reflected the firelight, twinkling and dancing with more enthusiasm than Karni had seen in the past year. Even his colorless face displayed two spots of mottled heat on his cheekbones, something she hadn’t seen since his drinking days. “Think of it, Karni! We could summon the greatest of gods, fathering the most powerful demigod children upon you and Mayla! Our children would rule Hastinaga with power and glory. Hastinaga would be unbeatable among all kingdoms, all nations, throughout the world. No one would dare challenge our authority. Even Jarsun himself would tremble when he heard that demigods sat upon the Burning Throne!”
“One moment,” Karni said, frowning. “Children, plural? Demigods? Won’t one heir be sufficient?”
“Of course, of course,” Shvate said. “One demigod would be equivalent to a hundred strong sons. A thousand!”
They talked late into the night, with Karni increasingly wondering if she ought to have brought up the matter in the first place, but it was too late to unspeak what she had already spoken.