Heir of Iron (The Powers of Amur Book 1) (33 page)

“The imperial guard will withdraw from the valley, as far north as the horizon,” the red-clad emissary said. He stood at the north gate in a semicircle of Red Men with the sun above his right shoulder, facing across the stone threshold of the city at Sadja, Navran, Mandhi, and a guard of Sadja’s militia.

It was mid-morning. The smell of smoke and blood wafted from the city, and Sadja’s guard watched the inner alleys with as much apprehension as they watched the plains. A grim and pathetic spectacle greeted the emissary, and the black odors settled like a melancholy grime over Navran’s heart.

“Only Ruyam and his manservant will remain on the field before the gates of the city,” the emissary went on. “Thudra and his militia will withdraw likewise until the exchange has been made. Once the Heir is in the power of Ruyam, Ruyam and the Red Men will return to Majasravi, and Thudra will reclaim the city. Sadja and his forces will withdraw from the interior of the wall but will remain encamped on the field to ensure the agreement is respected and the Uluriya are unharmed. Is this agreeable to all?”

“The Uluriya will be held blameless,” Navran said. “By Thudra and Ruyam. After I go, there won’t be any more retaliations, purges, or punishments.”

The emissary made a dismissive gesture. “Ruyam’s hunger will be sated once he has the Heir. As for Thudra, you’ll have Sadja to watch him.”

“And Ruyam told you his hunger would be sated?”

“I heard his words with my own ears.”

Navran looked at Sadja, who nodded. Mandhi’s jaw was clenched in an impassive glare, but her eyes suggested a smile. She, at least, was getting what she wanted. And the Uluriya would survive. Even if Ruyam betrayed his word—and Navran had no confidence that Ruyam would keep it—he had gained the Uluriya extra days to flee before the Red Men would return to the city, and he had bequeathed Manjur’s ring to a new Heir. It was all he could have hoped for.

Well, he might have hoped not to die.

“I agree,” he said. That was the price, and he would pay it.

The emissary bowed. “The Red Men will begin their retreat immediately. Thudra will send a few men to guard the Heir and escort him to Ruyam, while the rest of them remove to the west field to receive the city tomorrow. Tonight, the Heir will come to Ruyam.”

The last pale streaks of sunlight died in the west. Navran huddled in the north gate and looked out across the empty field, where the fires of Ruyam and Thudra had burned the night before. A single tent waited there now like a cast-off ember, with a dim glow lighting its red fabric from within.

Sadja stood next to him, and Thudra’s guard of four men fenced them. Sadja’s expression was grim, and he kept looking down and running his hand through his hair with a heavy sigh.

“I came here to save you, not to hand you over,” Sadja said. “I can’t say that I’m happy about this.”

Navran watched the red tent. Its very loneliness was ominous, as if the darkness had claimed its victims on the field, save one. Navran shook his head to clear the thoughts. Very quietly, below the hearing of Thudra’s militia, he said, “Mandhi and her child will escape. We would have gotten less than this without your help.”

Sadja murmured. “They should be preparing now. And I need to return to them.” He set a brightly lit oil lamp into Navran’s hands and looked at the guards. “Is it time?”

Their captain shrugged. “Close enough to dark. No use waiting.”

Sadja put a hand on Navran’s shoulder and kissed his cheek. Navran murmured in surprise. His touch lingered for a moment, and he looked at Navran with a mixture of pity and admiration, then he turned and left. The guard prodded Navran forward, and they descended from the gate.

Darkness closed around them like a sheath, which Navran’s dim lamp split at with a timid yellow light. The village below the city had been deserted. The rustling stalks of the rice fields underlined the mourning of owls. Above them, the points of stars pricked through the canvas of the night’s darkness.

We bow to Ulaur, who dwells in the untouchable heavens, who snuffs out the unclean fire…

How many old fragments of the songs of Ghuptashya floated around his head these days? But unless Ulaur was ready to cast another stone from heaven to free him from Ruyam, it was too late for any help to come to him from above.
He
was the help which the Powers had given the Uluriya: he would give himself up so his countrymen could escape.

The glowing ember of Ruyam’s tent approached. Dread sat in Navran’s stomach like grease. A smell like charred flesh, stale smoke, and rancid oil filled the air. The guard escorting Navran slowed.

“I don’t want to get any closer,” one of the men said.

“That won’t be necessary,” said a shape which stepped into the circle of light provided by their lamp. Kirshta stood there with his hands folded behind his back, a stern, haughty expression etched onto his face. He jerked his head towards the west, in the direction of Thudra’s camp. “You can go. Navran will come with me.”

The soldiers looked at each other nervously then retreated from Ruyam’s tent with a sudden rush of release. When they had gone, Kirshta examined Navran with an expression of impatience and exasperation.

“What were you hoping to accomplish giving yourself up like this?” he said.

“What would I have accomplished if I had resisted?”

“About the same,” Kirshta said bitterly. “I was impressed when you took the city and hoped that you would be able to hold it. It would have given me more time.”

“Time for what?”

He shook his head. “Though Ruyam never knew it, we are both his enemies. But that does not mean we are friends. Ruyam is waiting. It will be harder if you delay. You go in alone.”

He pulled the flap of the tent aside. The interior glowed with dingy red light obscured by smoke. Navran hesitated. He could flee. Would Kirshta chase him? Would Ruyam? He could hide in the darkness of the fields, then melt away into the countryside and wash up somewhere in Patakshar or Ahunas again. He could return to Idirja and try to make good by his mother.

But what then of the rest of the city? The black oil in his stomach churned. He glanced up.

….whence comes our help.

There was no sudden surge of courage or divine valor which drove him into the tent. The dread in his gut subsided, and the sweat which had beaded on his forehead cooled. He had come this far. His duty was to Mandhi, to Manjur and the inheritance of the Heirs, and to the Uluriya. This one duty, at least, he would fulfil.

He went through the door and into the tent.

Inside he saw nothing but a confusion of smoke and shifting light. Shadows wept down the walls in chaotic blurs. He heard the quiet crackle of burning embers. The stench of blood and smoke saturated the air. The rasp of the dying fire drew itself together, and resolved itself into something like a laugh.

“Navran, Heir to Manjur,” Ruyam said. “What an ignoble end for that lineage.”

He couldn’t see Ruyam. Only shadows, embers, and smoke. The voice seemed to rise from a bed of coals.

“Did the Heirs see that they would meet their last in a drunkard, a gambler, and an idolater? Perhaps they would have ended themselves more quickly if they had known.”

Navran took in a lungful of the gasping smoke and coughed. He spat on the ground to rid his tongue of the oily taste. “You bring me here to insult me?”

“I brought you here to rid Amur of the Heirs. I insult you because it pleases me.”

Then he wouldn’t give Ruyam the pleasure of responding. He closed his eyes against the burning air.

“No, open your eyes,” Ruyam said. The crackling of embers increased, met by a moist, bloody sound that made Navran think of a knife tearing through meat. “Open your eyes and see me.”

Navran opened his eyes. In the darkness where previously he had seen only a bed of coals, he now made out a ghastly form glowing with slow-burning fire. It had once been human. Now its flesh was charred and hung in strips from blackened bones, coals glowing in its veins. He had taken it previously for the bed of a banked fire, but recognized now that it—
he
—had lain across the fire. Or perhaps he
was
the fire. His face was a skull painted with strips of raw flesh and ash, the mouth hanging open horribly and exhaling black smoke. The jaw moved, and some remnant of a tongue slithered between its teeth. The voice like crackling tinder spoke again.

“Am I not beautiful? My teacher taught me a final lesson, and it was a great one.”

“Gocam didn’t do this.” Gocam
could not
have created a demon such as this.

“Didn’t he? He condemned me with fire, and almost I perished. I think he meant to kill me. But I long ago made fire my servant, and though it consumed me, and consumes me still, it cannot destroy me.”

Ruyam raised his hand towards Navran, a mockery of blackened, withered flesh with bone flaking through where the skin had burned away. “Touch me,” he said.

Navran drew away. Horror and revulsion bubbled up his throat. “Why?”

With a swift, vicious lunge Ruyam grabbed Navran by the wrist. Navran screamed. Ruyam’s hand was as hot as an iron brand, and Navran’s skin burned and charred away in a convulsion of pain.

“Because I want to see you kneel,” Ruyam said. He grabbed Navran’s other hand and twined his burning fingers between Navran’s, forcing Navran to his knees. The pain of the burning blasted away Navran’s thoughts. A babble of screams and pleading dribbled from his mouth.

“Because you did this to me. You could have given me the Heir, but you resisted. And when your mindless comrades rescued you, you could have returned to me immediately. You didn’t.” Ruyam leaned close to Navran, pressing his skull-face into Navran’s cheek, blistering it with heat. A pitiful scream of agony gushed from Navran’s throat.

Ruyam whispered, “This is your reward.”

He threw Navran to the side. The burning stopped for a moment, and the cessation of the pain felt like a draught of sweet air. Sobs and groans bubbled from his lips. Ruyam stood over him, staring with his charred gaze. It was impossible to read any expression on that fleshless face, but his voice was heavy with contempt.

“And you still try to deceive me.”

He knelt and put a hand on Navran’s shoulder. Navran mashed his teeth together and let only an anguished groan leak out.

“Did you think the other Heir would escape my notice? Did you think you could cast the protection of the Heirs over the unborn child at your will?”

He didn’t think anything. His thoughts withered like leaves in the conflagration, going up like flakes of ash in the fire of his pain.

“But the mother is not the Heir,” he said. He stroked a finger across Navran’s cheek, leaving a charred scar. Navran screamed and jerked his head away. “And neither is the child, at least not yet. The veil which hid the Heirs from my farsight does not protect them. Still, if you hadn’t given them the ring, I might not have understood your intention. But you are, as always, a fool. And so we find that even as you attempt to give yourself nobly to save the Uluriya, you have instead betrayed them into my grasp.”

He let go of Navran’s shoulder. The pain lessened, allowing the horror and bitterness of Ruyam’s words to break through.
He knew about Mandhi.
Had she already escaped? He might at least have given them enough time.

“You lied,” he croaked.

“About our agreement? No, because you were the one who tried to deceive me. Thudra and the other kings of Amur will urge me to burn the whole city. And they will thank me for having pity on them.”

Navran tried to push himself upright. His burnt hand touched the ground and throbbed with pain. He collapsed onto his stomach. “Don’t,” he pleaded.

“Did you come here to save them?” Ruyam said and laughed with a crackling cough of smoke. “Your thoughts aren’t hard to guess. If you hoped to save the city and the Uluriya, then you failed, as with everything else you’ve tried.”

He knelt by Navran’s feet, and his hands pulled at Navran’s ankles. Navran whimpered in pain and tried to kick Ruyam’s hands away, but Ruyam’s grip seized his ankles and quenched Navran’s resistance in a cauldron of agony.

“What are you doing?” Navran gasped.

“Giving you a gift.” And he pressed his hands into the soles of Navran’s feet.

Navran screamed and writhed, but he could not escape. The brands of Ruyam’s fingers burnt away the skin on the bottoms of his feet, reduced his calluses to ash, and cooked his tendons. Navran flailed and beat his arms against the ground. A vicious, fiery blow against his cheek sent him sprawling again to the ground. Then to the other foot. Ruyam’s agonizing touch stripped away his flesh, and then finally he dropped Navran’s heel to the ground. Navran gritted his teeth and sobbed.

Ruyam backed away. “You won’t follow me, now,” he said. “You might, if you want, crawl to the entrance of the tent and watch me burn the city. Or you can sit there and weep and remember that you have failed. In the morning, if I am feeling merciful and have taken care of the woman, I will kill you.”

He pulled aside the flap of the tent’s entrance and was outlined for a moment as a pillar of ash and embers against the star-flooded sky.

“Kirshta,” he said to a shadow beside the entrance, “He won’t be able to go far, but don’t let him leave.” Kirshta murmured a response. Then Ruyam disappeared down the path, leaving a column of smoke hiding the stars in his wake.

The light of Mandhi’s lamp seemed feeble against the night, as if darkness spilled through the window and lapped at the circle of light. The contents of her pack were laid out on the table before her: two more saris and cholis, her pansha, a small pile of nose rings, earrings, chains, and jewels for ornament—or to sell, as would be likely—and the star-iron rings. Those were worth more than all the others combined but would never be sold.

She had traveled with less before, but she had always done it knowing she would return to Virnas. Tonight, she left without any such hope.

A foreboding sense of history repeating troubled her. At the fall of the Kingdom of Manjur, Kushmata, the last ruling Heir of Manjur, had fled Virnas through the tunnels beneath the city, as she was planning to. The line of the Heirs had been saved, but they never again ruled Virnas. Had Kushmata known that his would be the last name in the register of the kings, and his son would be the first Heir in exile? She felt as if there was something that she didn’t know either, and that uncertainty gnawed at her thoughts. She folded the clothes together tightly to fit them into a canvas pack, as she had done dozens of times before, but the old ritual didn’t help.

Feet shuffled at the door of her room. She looked up and saw Srithi with her face screwed up in anxiety, cradling a fussing Gapthi. “Are you ready?” she asked.

“Almost,” Mandhi said. “Do we need to hurry?”

She shrugged then blinked away tears. “I guess. Veshta says we have time. But I don’t want to leave.” And then the dam burst, and she fell into Mandhi’s shoulder sobbing.

The baby took up the cue and began crying, and Srithi made a half-hearted attempt to calm the child before giving up and collapsing on top of Mandhi’s bed. Mother and child cried together while Mandhi knelt and wrapped her arms around them. Srithi leaned forward into Mandhi’s embrace, and for a long time she lay there shaking, until her sobs weakened into whimpers.

“I don’t want to leave,” she said quietly. “I’ve never lived outside of Virnas. And I have a baby to nurse and everything.”

“It’s not so bad,” Mandhi said. “I’ve traveled all my life, and you’ll be with me.”

“Veshta says that Uskhanda is nice,” Srithi said with a flat voice that betrayed her lack of confidence. “The sea air is good.”

“Let me hold the baby,” Mandhi said. She reached over, pulled Gapthi from Srithi’s arms, and began to hush the crying child. “I was choosing what I’m bringing.” She laughed and gestured at the chest of clothes against the wall. “A silly thing, I guess, because I’ve packed for travel more than I’ve been at home. I have all of these clothes and mostly never used them, because I am always traveling.”

Srithi went over and looked at the saris that Mandhi had chosen. She fingered one, of yellow silk with blue eagles stitched on the edges. “I gave this to you as a gift after my wedding. I’m glad you’re taking it.”

Mandhi smiled. She had forgotten where the sari came from, but if by chance she had taken one that comforted Srithi, then chance was on their side.

A voice shouted from below and shattered the quiet. Mandhi couldn’t understand it at first, but the shouting repeated itself nearer to them.
Fire. Fire in the city. Fire at the east gate.

Mandhi rushed to the window and looked to the east. The buildings nearest the east gate had gone up in flames, and the fire leapt forward along the main street, devouring the palm thatch on roofs as quickly as a man could run. Black smoke rose into the sky and blotted out the stars. Dread rose up from her belly and seized her throat. Shivering, she turned away and returned the child to Srithi.

“We have to hurry,” she said. “Are you ready?” She folded her clothes into her pack.

Srithi stroked her daughter’s cheek and nodded, her eyes full of fear. “But I don’t know if I can run.”

“It’ll be fine. It’s just a fire.”

No it’s not,
whispered the doom in her belly. But she stamped down the fear. “Anyway,” Mandhi went on, “if the estate is consumed, so what? We aren’t coming back. Go to your husband, and meet me at the entrance to the Ruin. I’ll be there in a moment.”

Srithi left. Mandhi put the jewelry on the top of the canvas pack then folded the sari over them. Finally, she put her own iron ring onto her finger, then grabbed Manjur’s ring.

“Ow,” she said, pulling her hand away and dropping the ring back onto the table with a dull clank. The ring was hot to the touch, as if it had lain next to a fire. She put her hand back to it cautiously, feeling its heat then scooping it up into the palm of her hand. Now that she expected it, the heat was not too much to bear.

But why is it hot?

She held the ring in her hand and pondered. Then someone shouted from the courtyard, and she closed her fist over the ring. A mystery, but not one she had to solve now. Perhaps the ring grew hot to warn the Heirs of danger. Her father had never mentioned it, but it was easy to imagine that Ulaur had given the Heirs such a gift. But if this was a warning, it was a warning too late. With just a moment of pain, she slipped the ring onto her finger over her own ring.

A flash of bright light flooded the room, and a blast of wind like a fist knocked her to the ground. The room seemed to shake, and light scalded Mandhi’s eyes. Then, as quickly as the light had struck, it passed.

Her pulse thundered in her veins, and her breath came quickly. She pulled herself to her feet and looked at the table. Manjur’s ring had leapt off of her finger and remained on the table, now feebly glowing with a fast-fading orange light.

The ring had rebuffed her, just as it had rebuffed the thieves on the road from Ternas.

This was too curious to ignore. The ring had been perpetually inert since that moment, but now it burned again. Because Navran was gone? Because of Ruyam’s proximity?

None may touch it with evil intent.

It had been a passing remark of Gocam’s. But her intent wasn’t evil—she bore the Heir within her, and she was escaping the city to ensure that the lineage survived. She wasn’t a thief looking for marks on a mountain road. Still, it would not hurt for her to purify herself against evil thoughts. She closed her eyes and took a moment to still her heart, then repeated the
I bow my head
and the prayers of purification. And she reached for the stone.

The blast of light blinded her and threw her against the far wall. Her head rattled as if from a bolt of lightning, rendering herself immobile until the jitter passed.

“What?” she said as soon as her tongue moved again. She addressed the ring and the Powers, whoever would listen to her. “What do you want from me? Am I found wanting? Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for the Heir and for the Uluriya. I carry the Heir with me. Why can’t I take the Heir’s ring?”

He is no Heir who takes the ring by treachery.

A line from Majata’s commentary on Ghuptashya, sprouting as if the thought was planted from without her. But she had not been
treacherous
. She had spared the Uluriya from the depredations of a depraved and foolish Heir. Surely no one held her blameworthy for that. The ring was hers, and the gift was hers, far more rightly than they had ever belonged to Navran, the beer-soaked slob and traitor.

Who gave himself over to death for you and your people.

“I don’t care,” she hissed to whoever listened. She closed her eyes and picked up the box that had carried the rings, then carefully put the box over the black metal without touching it with her fingers. She slid the box to the edge of the table and fitted its lid onto it without letting a beam of light escape, then clenched the closed box in her fist. The ring within seemed to buzz and rattle, but she could hold it. She shoved it into the deepest part of the pack, put the pack over her shoulder, and left the room.

“Hurry, Mandhi,” shouted Veshta from the courtyard as soon as she exited the room. “The fire approaches.”

“I’m coming,” Mandhi said. Their escape party was small: Mandhi, Veshta, Srithi and the child, Kidri, and Habdana. Veshta had sent his mother Amashi to stay with a cousin in a different part of the city, in the hope that they would be spared and the old woman wouldn’t have to endure the journey. A few of Sadja’s troops would stay to defend the estate and the entrance to the Ruin, while Sadja and most of the rest had withdrawn to the palace to be in position for tomorrow’s surrender of the city.

At the door of the Ruin, Srithi took Mandhi’s hand. Veshta nodded to all of them. “Let’s go.”

They descended the staircase and reached the catacombs lined with the skulls of Heirs and saints past. Veshta went in front carrying an oil lamp that cast inconstant shadows across the bones. Up ahead the catacomb widened into the apse with the stone altar, but Veshta stopped and pointed to the right down a narrow, cob-webbed tunnel strewn with torn fabrics and shards of bone. “Is this the place?”

“It is,” Mandhi said. She had followed it a few days before as far as the exit and confirmed that the narrow slit in the stones still opened into daylight. Without a word, Veshta started ahead with the lamp, and the group followed into the narrow, dry defile.

Bones of mice and bats crunched under their feet. The tunnel descended for a hundred paces as the smell of mildew and rot grew stronger. The walls transitioned at some point from ancient stonework to raw rock, scratched here and there by the scars of picks which had widened or shaped the passage. The stones underfoot were uneven and sculpted by ages of water.

Mandhi’s pack felt unwieldy in her hand. Somewhere inside, Manjur’s ring rattled, and Mandhi swore that she could feel it jerking and twisting within her pack. It wanted to escape—but that was absurd. She was taking it to safety.

It was not yours to take.

She thought of Navran, going to face Ruyam alone in the darkness, with fear and resignation etched on his face. Like fallen Taleg, dying to let others escape. The pain of loss throbbed in her belly. He died to save others who were ungrateful and undeserving—her breath caught in her throat as the thought crashed over her, unbidden and impossible to refuse—as she was ungrateful, as guilty and unworthy as Navran. She stopped walking, stricken in place by the horrid realization, unable to move—

A crash echoed through the tunnel. The sound shook Mandhi from her reverie. Kidri, standing in the rear with Srithi, stopped and looked back. “What was that?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mandhi said. The narrowness and dampness of the passage made her skin crawl. She still had to escape.
I am not like Navran, and Navran is not like Taleg
, but she barely believed herself. “Keep going.”

As soon as she said it, a hot wind hurtled down the tunnel, stinging Mandhi’s eyes with the tang of smoke. She closed her eyes, but a moment later both Kidri and Habdana cried.

Mandhi opened her eyes into darkness. The lamp had been blown out.

Srithi began to whimper. “What do we do? Can we relight it?”

“Creep forward slowly,” Veshta said. “Be careful of stones on the ground. You mustn’t fall, Srithi. Not with the baby.”

“I don’t think I can,” Srithi said. Gapthi cried softly.

Mandhi felt her way backwards until she brushed up against Srithi’s form. “You have to,” she said. “You quiet the baby down, and I’ll hold your elbow. Is Kidri here?”

“I’m here,” the little girl said.

“Habdana is with me,” Veshta said from somewhere a few paces ahead of them. “Can we all creep forward?”

“Yes,” Mandhi said. “Slowly, now.”

The hot wind continued to blow as the group inched forward. The smell of smoke grew stronger, combined with the charcoal smell of burnt flesh. Mandhi looked back and saw a dim yellow light.

“Veshta,” she said cautiously. “Someone is coming.”

“Just keep moving,” Veshta said.

A few minutes of panicked, blind scraping followed as they tried to push forward in the darkness. Mandhi bashed her foot against a stone and nearly fell. Srithi whimpered over the baby’s fussing. Little Kidri was silent, but Mandhi could hear her little footsteps following Srithi’s.

She looked back again. Panic rose in her throat. Srithi looked back as well and screamed.

A figure of black enveloped in a cloak of yellow fire stalked them. Behind him was a holocaust, and before him the hot air filled with sparks and flecks of ash. Srithi shook with terror. Mandhi squeezed Srithi’s arm, but her own hands shook with fear.

“Run,” Mandhi said.

In front of them, Habdana bolted and Veshta attempted to follow him. Mandhi held Srithi’s arm to ensure that she didn’t fall, but they hadn’t traveled ten paces before Srithi’s foot twisted on a stone, and she fell to the ground. Gapthi let out an enraged squeal. Srithi curled around her baby trying to calm her, while Kidri and Mandhi attempted to pull Srithi to her feet. The burning wind roared past them as a gale now, with a heat like the exhalation of a forge. Sparks and flakes of ash flew past them. The tunnel howled.

Mandhi looked back at the demon of fire. A scream died in her throat. He was ten paces behind them. And before any of them could flee farther he raised a skeletal hand and pointed at Mandhi.

“Mother of the Heir,” he said, with a voice full of hunger. And he came.