Blood and Lotuses Read online

  Before she began to write, she used the bed coverings to make an approximation of the garments Jananya had revealed to her.

  *

  When the sky in the east-facing window started to take on the colors of dawn, the acolyte Seya knocked and entered Iana’s chamber to help her to the sanctuary for dawn services. She did this every morning, but this day, however, she was followed by three people who were not part of the normal morning routine: a shaven-headed, rough-looking man, his coarse cotton loincloth soaked with blood; and a wide-eyed, shaken boy and girl in the colorful, scanty rags of whores.

  “Chosen, they insisted on following me, with some wild tale of a miracle…” Seya stopped talking and stared, apparently transfixed by Iana’s makeshift hood—a piece of bed sheet with eyeholes draped over her head—and enveloping blanket-robe.

  “I already know, Seya.” Behind the layer of white cotton sheet, Iana’s voice was calm, steady. “The man is Beyun, who heard the voice of Jananya last night while he was befouling his soul in a child-brothel. The two youngsters are…I believe it is Alaka and Lan, and they have also seen the power of Jananya, Lan rather dramatically.”

  “He died, mistress,” the girl Alaka exclaimed. “And then he…that is, Beyun…brought him back.”

  Iana nodded. “I know about your visions, Beyun. About the knife, and how it went astray when you meant merely to hit the doorframe. And how by severing the seat of your wicked ways, you were able to restore Lan to life.”

  The rough-looking man nodded. One hand brushed his bloodied crotch, seemingly involuntarily. That he was conscious at all was a miracle, Iana thought. He must have lost a great deal of blood. He looked pale under layers of grime and tan, and understandably shaky, but surprisingly composed for all that.

  “I too had visions in the night, visions of how this city can become a cleaner, better place. Beyun, you will be at my right hand during this time of change, for you too have been touched by Jananya. We must go to the sanctuary now and proclaim the will of the Goddess! But first you must all cover yourselves. Jananya knows how sinful we are. From now everyone must go veiled and modestly dressed, lest we provoke lust in one another. And that is only the beginning of the revelations.” The High Chosen pointed to a pile of fabric on the end of the writing table.

  Seya nodded, put on the makeshift hood with an unquestioning grace that came from practicing obedience since she was a small girl, then offered her arm to the High Chosen.

  Iana rose with one graceful movement, shrugged off the offer of assistance, and strode for the door, walking with a strength and energy that had left her legs before Seya was toddling. Seya trotted in her wake.

  Whispers of miracles seemingly flew ahead of them. If one was bloody and scandalous in the details, that only seemed to make the crowd in the sanctuary more receptive to High Chosen Iana’s calls for cleansing and redemption.

  As she spoke, she felt warmth in her heart, a renewed sense of the presence that had been with her on and off ever since she had woken full of purpose and free of pain. Jananya’s presence, the Chosen was sure, and that presence seemed to look most favorably upon her.

  Many people, she realized in a flash of clarity, could not be brought to Jananya’s grace by Jananya’s own graces. Unless one were already in Her beautiful, terrible light, calm, reasoned discourse and good example might not be enough to make an impression.

  But Beyun’s story might. If a man like him, a genuinely bad man, could be shocked into virtue and could even raise a child from the dead with the blood of his repentance, others, others who were not as evil as he had been, but who had not been ready to believe before, would hear and take Jananya into their hearts. And it would start in this congregation, with the people who heard, but did not truly listen; who believed, but did not act.

  *

  When Beyun showed the wounds of his repentance, terrible to look at, but miraculously starting to heal over, several were moved to pull out their knives and follow his example, right there in the temple.

  Iana began to pray as they did so. A glow passed from her hands to Beyun and the other men who had castrated themselves, and they were healed, smooth as children’s dolls.

  “We approach the end of the world we have known,” Iana proclaimed, “and the beginning of Jananya’s paradise of light and order. To prepare for this time, we must live as brother and sister, without lust. There must be no more marriages, no more children. We must enter this new world clean. This will be difficult for many, but we shall help one another to break the chains of carnal attachment. The ways of Pichitra served us well for thousands of years, but Her time is past. Soon Her worship will fall away of its own accord, but we must help this along.”

  When Iana proclaimed that both men and women must cover their faces and wear loose robes of wool in neutral colors, instead of the light, colorful, body-baring, wrapped pa shin skirts traditional in the city, there were murmurs of approval.

  And when she decreed that the brothels, both child and adult, must be shut down at all costs, a mob was ready to form.

  All she had to do was to turn them loose upon the lower city.

  Chapter 4

  Six months later

  “You don’t have to do this, Anchali,” Thanom said, not for the first time. “Dakura’s no place for the Chosen of Pichitra now.” It was raining hard, one of the relatively short but soaking downpours to be expected in the western parts of Kalynga province at this time of year, and they’d found shelter inside the hollow of a huge, fallen tree—a decent enough shelter, if rather cramped, forcing them to be a little closer together than was truly good for Thanom’s peace of mind.

  It was as good a time as any, he figured, to have this argument again, not that he thought it was any more likely to change her mind than it had been before.

  “And if the Chosen of Pichitra do not fight those would destroy all Pichitra stands for, who will?”

  “Lord Commander Rak’s army, maybe?” Thanom tried to smile as he said it, but he could tell the smile wasn’t reaching his eyes. “Fighting’s more our line than yours. And why should you risk your life for Lord Rak and Baragarm anyway? I was born in Baragarm, and I served under Lord Rak for years. It made sense for me to go back there after…after there was nothing to keep me in Dakura. But why should you help your own city fall to Lord Rak?”

  “Dakura has already fallen. The Negus has betrayed Dakura and all Benire, joining Iana’s cult. Iana’s cult has claimed half the city, and fear has paralyzed the other half.” Anchali gestured with her hands as she spoke. Her breasts bobbed.

  The movement distracted Thanom more than it should have. Anyone would think he was a tribal lad come down out of the mountains on the northern border with Pandak, where women bundled up in colorful layered ikat jackets to keep the chill at bay, instead of a city man, a man of the world.

  But there was being worldly and sophisticated, and then there were the graceful lines of Anchali’s body, and the nipples still ornamented with henna as a mark of being Chosen by Pichitra. The beauty of her body wasn’t something you’d see every day, even in a great city like Baragarm or Dakura. Fortunately, he managed to look away before he lost the thread of the conversation altogether.

  “Lord Rak is a decent man,” Anchali continued, “a man who honors Pichitra and Jananya and the Red God as well. He’s been a good Lord Commander of the armies and he’s done a good job as governor of Baragarm. He can only do a better job with the country than a mad Negus, and if he can free Dakura from this madness, I’d far rather see my city, and the whole of Benire, in his hands.”

  Well, at least they agreed on that point. Unfortunately, that wasn’t a good thing for his argument. If she had the slightest doubt about Lord Rak’s integrity, he might have been able to persuade her to give up this spy mission.

  He’d been raised not to argue with Chosen, taught they were wiser than he was—whether they were those of Jananya, his principle deity, or another—but in this case, he was willing to make
an exception. Taking her into this situation was nothing short of lunacy.

  She was young, both in years and in experience, at least in comparison to his ten years as a fighting man. It went against her holy vows to use weapons. And it wasn’t like she had anything in her past that would help her in a pinch. She’d been training to be a courtesan when Pichitra called her, a girl of sixteen who’d dedicated most of her short life to learning gentle elegance, the arts, and the ways of love. She’d gone from the home of the senior courtesan who was her mentor into a temple.

  Anchali was lovely, lively, radiant with sensuality. Her walk was like a dance, her voice still a courtesan’s low, sultry music.

  “Anchali,” he said, deciding bluntness might be his best weapon, “you’re the last person in Benire who ought to go into Dakura now. They kill people like you on sight. No one could possibly see you and not know you were a Chosen of Pichitra, a courtesan, or both.” Or just too beautiful. If her beauty puts me in awe, how much would she terrify someone who hates the flesh?

  “I won’t go in looking like this.” She gestured, a dancer’s gesture sweeping down from her face and the damp silk of her hair past her bare breasts down to her heavy green-and-yellow-striped cotton skirt. “I’ll cover myself like a farm girl until I can get some of the cult’s ugly robes. And it isn’t as if I’m going in alone.”

  Of course not. She was depending on his protection. That thought didn’t put him at ease, not at all. He wasn’t sure he could protect himself anymore, let alone anyone else. Wasn’t sure he wanted to. Wasn’t sure, at bottom, whether what he hoped to find in Dakura was justice or revenge or the oblivion of death.

  He was sure about very little of late. He’d lost one future with Sua and their unborn child, then found another, darker one, one that he hoped might end with him cutting out Iana’s heart or dying in the attempt to do so. Now even that seemed to be shifting in this woman’s small hands, hennaed with the pattern of Pichitra’s lotus.

  Demons take them all! Lord Rak was supposed to send him into Dakura alone.

  At least that had been his own plan, although of course he’d never expressed it to Lord Rak. The one time he’d actually had occasion to speak to Lord Rak—on the occasion when the Lord Commander had condescended to explain the mission directly to him and Anchali (an honor that let Thanom know their chances of survival were fairly slim), he had said very little except “Yes, Lord Commander” or, when appropriate, “No, Lord Commander.”

  Oh, he’d planned to offer his services as an assassin, get rid of Iana and her evil, and maybe solve the problem with one stroke. He’d planned out the whole brave speech, had rehearsed it to a betel tree, a corral full of unimpressed elephants, and the deaf old woman who ran his favorite noodle shop, but when the time came, when he actually was escorted into Lord Rak’s silk tent, Thanom’s nerve failed him.

  This was not a man you questioned, or offered alternate plans of your own. This, he’d thought at the time, was a man you could follow into certain death and feel reasonably confident it wouldn’t actually be certain death, a man you could trust with your beloved, beleaguered adopted city. But this was a man to whom you—assuming you were a common soldier like Thanom and not another noble, or maybe a very highly ranked Chosen with the power of your deity to give you authority—deferred, and said yes, thank you, my lord, and swallowed any objections to details of the plan presented to you, such as including a courageous, but unarmed and vulnerable, woman in it.

  Anchali wasn’t military. She was a Chosen of Pichitra, and while she had volunteered for this job, she wouldn’t be a deserter if she realized she’d been mad to have done so. No elephant-trampling for her, no flogging even, maybe not even a scolding. The military types would probably be relieved to know she’d come to her senses, because nobody wanted more civilian deaths. So Thanom kept trying to talk some sense into her head. There was no way he was leading her into grave danger, not even danger she chose for herself.

  And no way he was going to let a gentle soul like Anchali witness whatever bloody ending lay in Dakura for the tragedy of Thanom and his beloved Sua and a child who never even drew breath.

  “You should go back to Baragarm,” he urged. “Help ease the waiting for the soldiers, then once the fighting starts, minister to the folks who’ll be waiting for them to come home. I’m an old hand at scouting, and if there’s danger—and there will be—I can handle it better than you.”

  “Only if you see it coming. Can you read hearts as I can?”

  “I can judge people better than most. I’ve been around long enough to figure out who’s a threat.” He shrugged as if he really believed that was all she was talking about.

  He preferred believing that to believing she could actually read hearts and minds, for a host of reasons. He didn’t like thinking about that particular rumored talent of the Chosen of Pichitra, not with the darkness he was carrying around in his heart.

  Anchali wasn’t fooled. Then again, she wouldn’t be, would she, if she could do what she claimed? “Don’t fear, Thanom. I will not look into your heart without your permission. I have found out enough of your nature from watching you, and from asking among the soldiers back in Baragarm, to know you’re a good man, one I can trust. I don’t need to peer in and see all the secrets and sorrows of your heart.” She put her hand on top of his. “I know you have them, Thanom. I can see it in your eyes. Should you wish to talk, I will listen and do what I can to ease you.”

  Her hand looked so small on top of his, felt so soft. Sua had been a big woman with the sturdy bones of her mountain-tribe ancestors, her hands as callused as his own and almost as strong. By comparison, Anchali’s hand seemed almost like that of a young child.

  At least, he told himself that, firmly, and stamped down on the way the heat seemed to radiate from that small hand up his arm and to his heart.

  “My thanks,” he murmured, and looked up. In the dimness of the hollow tree, the Chosen’s pupils were huge, the blackness swallowing up the deep violet irises. Thanom could almost pretend her eyes were dark brown, ordinary, undisturbing. “But there’s nothing to say, nothing that I could tell that you could change. Jananya teaches that trouble comes into each life, and that we should accept it with a calm heart and move on.”

  “Exactly, my friend. When you are ready to accept and move on, you will come to me and I shall help you.” Her hand, he thought, might feel like a child’s, but her voice then was old, old and wise and assured beyond her years.

  A Chosen of Pichitra, doing what she had been called to do.

  And a distractingly lovely woman, paying him far more heed than such a beauty ever had before. He had adored Sua, but Sua had the beauty of a fine horse or something else that was strong and useful as well as lovely, where Anchali had the beauty of a butterfly or a delicate orchid, something that could be damaged by a careless touch. And even sturdy Sua had been fragile in reality, too fragile for him to keep safe. How could he protect someone as frail and innocent as Anchali?

  Their hollow-tree refuge seemed close, confining. Even through the rain, the day’s heat was building, and Thanom was starting to feel like a dumpling in a steamer. The earthy smell of decaying wood and the green smells of the jungle were getting stronger as the heat rose, but other notes wove through them: a perfume of flowers, sandalwood, and musk or amber, and the scent of Anchali’s body, warm and sweaty and undeniably female.

  He wondered, insanely, how he smelled to her. They’d been washing as often as they could—Anchali, especially, was compulsive about it—but he doubted he smelled anywhere near as pleasant as she did.

  He made himself peer out the opening of the log at the rain and the dim, green, outside world. “It’s letting up,” he said. “Just a mist now. Maybe we’d best get moving; it’ll be cooler, at least.”

  Anchali nodded.

  Thanom made a point of crawling out first into the rain, as thankful to get out of that too-cozy shelter as he’d ever been to get away from a battlefield sa
fely.

  He turned to help Anchali stand from the awkward frog-crouch necessitated by getting out of the log, but she rocked back on her heels and stood easily, gracefully.

  He was somehow relieved to see mud on her skirt. It made her seem more human.

  *

  Somewhere in a corner of the half-world, one so shadowy that it was almost a not-place, the demon Nshlic trembled. It seemed two more mortal scraps strove against it, two mortal scraps who intruded on its consciousness like few of the others had.

  Why was it disturbing him so? Logically, they would end as had the others who’d tried to oppose him and his human tools: either dead and burned or cowed and converted.

  One was a Chosen of Pichitra and could move in the half-world, and both had great faith, but that alone was not enough to be fearsome. A quarter of the heads decorating the gates of Dakura once belonged to humans of faith who could walk the half-world. They died screaming like anyone else once someone knocked them back into their bodies.

  These two were braver than most, but that shouldn’t have bothered Nshlic, either. Courage was a mixed blessing for the mortals who strove against its puppets in the mortal world. Bravery made them stronger, but also more reckless, more likely to get caught.

  There was something special about these two, though. They shouldn’t have intruded on Nshlic’s notice at all. They were still far from the city Nshlic was taking over. And two humans presented such a petty problem in the great scheme of things; its fleshly allies could certainly take care of such a threat without any help from Nshlic.

  But there was something different about them, some strength or power Nshlic could not recognize.

  And that, Nshlic did need to fear.

  Chapter 5

  Anchali and Thanom had reached Dakura province. They were still several days from the city itself, but the intense humidity and dense growth of the jungle were beginning to give way to the drier climate and more human-groomed landscape of the coastal province. This close to Dakura, they had changed into the simple cotton pa shin skirts of peasants, worn with loose blouses that kept stinging insects and scratchy crops at bay. So far, such outfits, modest yet comfortable, were more common than the itchy robes insisted on by Iana’s followers.