Blood and Lotuses Read online

  The laywoman nodded like a puppet, and when she spoke her voice was as oddly flat as her companion’s. “Old habits die hard. Avoid him and all the men. Now follow me to the dormitory.”

  Anchali followed without saying a word, mulling over in silence what she had just witnessed.

  She could feel their hearts opening as she spoke of the imaginary dead children and of the love that could not bear their weight—opening and then closing abruptly so they presented a smooth, gray surface. It wasn’t as if the two women had realized they were skirting the rules by being a little too chatty, listening a bit too sympathetically to Anchali’s story, and suddenly put up a sterner front to avoid reprimand. A Chosen of Pichitra—or a trained courtesan, for that matter—could recognize the telltale signs of the social lie, the heartbeat or so of awkwardness while the liar settled into her deception. But this was different, as if an external force had shut down the women’s natural curiosity and compassion.

  Anchali was sure that meant something. An idea was forming, but it hovered just outside her grasp. If only she could talk to Thanom. Between the two of them, she was sure they could figure it out.

  *

  Anchali lived quietly among the women for a couple of days, making an impression with her piety and the amount of time spent in prayer in the temple, even when no one else was at their devotions.

  She spent that time of “private contemplation,” in fact, searching every nook and cranny of the sanctuary, and any other spot she could seemingly bumble into, for clues for the roots of Iana’s madness, the black magic that had taken hold here. She found much evidence of the madness: many places, especially in the temple’s heart, that were colder than they should be, darker than they should be, with a faint scent of ashes and dust instead of the vibrant smells that could not help but leak in to the austere interior from the outside.

  When she wasn’t pretending to pray—or really praying, to Pichitra and the true, hidden Jananya, for wisdom—she was more often than not trying to find a second or two she could spend with Thanom, apart from the others, or, failing that, even to see him across the courtyard and reassure herself he was safe. When had he become so precious to her that a mere glimpse made her smile under her veil and a few swiftly whispered words—nothing intimate, even, just sharing what they’d learned—restored her hope?

  In a few short days, Anchali had impressed the acolytes so with her piety that when she shyly asked for an opportunity for them to attend one of the vow ceremonies presided over by Iana herself, it was permitted.

  *

  Under the cover of her robes, Anchali clenched and unclenched her fists throughout the ceremony, sick with rage. They made it seem a beautiful, holy thing when they gelded a man, when they removed a woman’s pearl of pleasure and sewed shut Pichitra’s gateway, but she knew it for the defilement it was.

  Defilement that, based on what she had seen, must be fueling black sorcery.

  At first the combination of blood, pain, and unholy ecstasy, as well as the veiling that hid the High Chosen’s face, made it impossible for Anchali to get any reading from the older woman. But then a supplicant stepped forward, an infant in her arms. “I conceived him… before I heard the truth,” the supplicant said weakly. “I have repented and have come forth to be purified. But I’m too weak. I don’t want my baby to die because I made a mistake before I knew better. He is the fruit of my sin, but I can’t help loving him. I can’t give his life back to Jananya.”

  “Of course not,” Iana said in a sonorous voice, not unkindly. “That is a gift for the unborn, so they never have to live in this ugly world. We have another way to save a child this young. This little one is the fruit of sin, but he is innocent himself, and you have repented of your folly, so Jananya will make him Her own. Lay him on the altar.”

  The mother, trembling, did as she was told.

  And as Iana walked forward, Anchali, a prayer in her heart, stepped into the half-world, using the energy of the ritual and the memory of Iana’s plea for help in the half-world, to put herself into a place shared with the fallen Chosen. She made herself a small, parasitic presence, her energy damped down enough that with luck and Pichitra’s grace, she might not be noticed.

  She had expected to enter the gray place of her dream-visit to the half-world, or perhaps a charnel house. Instead, it was black and white and smelled of nothing at all. It was all abstracts: absence and cold and a sense that Pichitra and all her gifts were far away. Not a place she dared stay—probably not a place she should have ventured at all.

  But the risk she took justified itself the instant she saw the strings running from Iana, puppet strings that shone with the unhealthy luminescence of things rotting in a swamp. Iana did not walk, but rather was walked, like a puppet for a shadow-play.

  A shadow-play indeed. The puppeteer, though, was the shadow, an indistinct yet horrid presence hovering over Iana.

  As the Chosen laid her old hands on the baby, the shadow coalesced into something tall and smooth and white as bone, something with the general shape of a human but smooth as stone, without nipples, without genitals, without even a navel. It had a dozen eyes—disturbingly beautiful eyes of many shades of gray—and a mouth like a lamprey’s.

  This creature, not the woman, laid hands on the baby.

  In the half-world, Anchali, expecting blood, winced, but forced herself to watch.

  There was no blood. There was no death.

  But there was power, cold, brutal power, a terrible magic that didn’t seem to fit what little Anchali knew of dark sorcery and that certainly was not the blessings of Jananya, coolly combining knowledge, wisdom, and compassion to fuel its power.

  A voice spoke, in the way one speaks in the half-world, an echoing in Anchali’s spirit. It was cold—not cool, but cold—and sterile, and echoing. Not dirty, but clean in a way that nothing natural should be clean, the clean of something that had been dipped in acid until all that was important had been etched away. Dry as bone, smooth as bone, sharp as a blade, and a blade you will become in my hands. Neutered and angry and alone.

  Although the magic was targeted at the baby, it brushed against Anchali as well, and she felt her body changing, her breasts shrinking, her sex, already dry and tight with fear, closing.

  But in Anchali, the spell found a wall.

  A wall of heat and delight, a wall that seemed yielding, but blocked the spell out; a wall erected hastily, but with the skill of long study, from Pichitra’s promises and Anchali’s own lush store of joyous memories. Rounded and firm, moist and fecund, full of passion, full of love, I let reach me only what means me well and ban all malice.

  It worked only for her, though. In the odd way of the half-world, she could see the steel gray magic reaching out to surround the baby.

  I have lived. He has not. Cast your protection over him, she prayed, and visualized the shield extending over the baby.

  An amber glow surrounded the little one, and Pichitra’s blessings lit up the half-world like a beacon that smelled of perfume on skin warmed by lovemaking. A smell of lotus and ylang-ylang, sandalwood and rain, filled the painfully dry air.

  It wasn’t enough to block the spell.

  But it was enough to attract the creature's attention.

  The being wheeled around, its dozen eyes each looking in a slightly different direction. Feelers extended from its body as it groped to find the intruder.

  Anchali dove back into her body.

  Her eyes refocused on time to see the puppet-Iana hold up to the crowd a baby that resembled the creature. It still wriggled plump little limbs. But its torso was entirely smooth: no nipples, no navel, no penis. And while it had cried before, it no longer did, for it no longer had a mouth or eyes. Its nose looked startlingly large in its otherwise blank face.

  A competent apprentice sorcerer could have created such an illusion, but Anchali, still attuned to the half-world, would have been able to see through it.

  This was a new, horrifying reality.
>
  “Praise be to Jananya who purifies all,” intoned all but one of the worshippers in the temple.

  No, all but two, for Anchali looked over to the men’s side of the temple and found Thanom—she couldn’t see his face but knew his eyes and the soldierly way he carried himself even when he was trying to be a humble convert—and knew he shared her horror.

  “So too shall I become,” said the High Chosen, “when there is no more need for my voice to lead you, so my mouth may never lead me to the temptation of gluttony or lust. So you too shall become, without need for the knife, when the world is made pure. The Goddess will give sustenance of the spirit, and food of the earth will no longer be needed.”

  As the crowd in the temple intoned prayers of thanksgiving, quivering with eagerness for their own negation, several pieces of the puzzle clicked together in Anchali’s head.

  The only question was what to do about it.

  But she had an idea.

  After the service, Anchali humbly asked one of the acolytes if she could help tidy up the temple library. “You Chosen have more important things to do,” she said, her voice fading to a near-whisper, “and I like books. Can’t read but a few words, but I know books are gifts of Jananya and maybe I can learn proper now I’m here.” And with that, the acolyte blessed her, offered to teach her when she had time, and handed her a duster with such speed that Anchali knew the other woman had just gotten out of a despised chore.

  Luckily the library was never allowed to get very dirty, because Anchali spent most of the time she was alone there looking through the collection.

  As she’d suspected, the scholarly Chosen of Jananya, even under a possessed leader, had been less willing to destroy Pichitra’s books than Her temples or even Her followers. There was a fine collection of antique scrolls, at least as large as the one at the burned temple, and Anchali had to admit, better organized.

  And in one of them, she found what she’d been looking for, an actual description of one of Pichitra’s almost-forgotten greater magics. It lacked details, and one portion of the scroll was faded to illegibility, but that was all right. No Chosen of Pichitra ever performed something exactly the same way twice. One of the goddess’s realms, after all, was the creative arts, and She would not be amused by one of Her Chosen slavishly following tradition. An idea of what had worked in the past, though, was what Anchali had sought, but had not actually expected to find. (Writing things down in clear narrative form—as opposed to a poem or song—was not a strong point of Pichitra’s Chosen.)

  Mostly the scroll served to confirm what Anchali had thought, or hoped, or prayed. The demon-dispelling Chosen of legend had conquered their foes with Pichitra’s usual tools of compassion, understanding, and love. Desire hadn’t been mentioned, but it was one of Pichitra’s most powerful gifts, if you had an appropriate target that might somehow be weakened by the strength of desire.

  And it seemed they did.

  How better to attack something that hated life than with the force of life itself?

  Chapter 9

  When Anchali finally managed to drag Thanom off to a dogleg alley far from the temple, he cut her off as soon as he heard the word demon. “I feared we faced something of that nature. Now we know so. Time to get out of here and get to the Lord Commander, soon as we can.”

  “We can fight this thing. We need to fight it.” Fear clenched in his gut at her words, but she kept talking over his attempts to interrupt. “I know the Lord Commander must be informed. We need to get word to him, at least. I’m afraid we’ll need the army to deal with the humans involved and to create some order in the city. But we have the best chance of defeating the demon, you and I.”

  Thanom forced himself to produce a bitter laugh. “Listen, I’m the warrior here. I fought at Darnjali when Anupap unleashed a demon against the Lord Commander’s forces. It took white sorcery and three Chosen of the Red God with blessed weapons to bring it down.” He didn’t say anything about what the demon had managed to do before it was slain: the gouts of fire, the rending claws, and worst, the officer and the Chosen he’d seen transformed into something not of this earth, but with their human eyes staring panic-stricken out of fishlike faces. They’d had to kill those men afterward, as a mercy.

  “We don’t need to destroy it that way, because it’s not entirely in this world. It’s still weak here. Forcing it out of the half-world and back to its own otherworld is much easier.”

  She sounded so calm, so sure of herself. Didn’t she know she was talking about certain death, or worse? He grabbed her by the shoulders and just barely resisted the urge to shake her, stopping himself because he knew better than to act roughly to a woman or a Chosen (at least one who wasn’t possessed by a demon and killing people). “What weapon do we possibly have against a demon?”

  “Us. We are the perfect weapon.”

  “You’ve gone as crazy as everyone else in this town, just in a happier, prettier way. I like the sound of your fantasy world, but I’m an ordinary man, Anchali. Nothing magic, nothing special, just a soldier who tried to retire once and would like to live to retire again.”

  The astonishment he felt hearing the last bit come out his mouth—and realizing he meant it, that he wanted to survive, and survive, if possible, with her—let her get a word in edgewise.

  Five words, actually. “Not so ordinary to me.”

  She glanced around the alleyway, confirming that they were alone and that there were no windows facing down on the alley.

  Then she lifted her hood and his, and kissed him.

  Thanom felt himself blush; a boy again, faced with the mysteries of the female. Their lovemaking in the marsh seemed like a dream to him, something out of time and space, glorious and healing but never to be repeated. Living in the temple, not even able to see her face, he thought he’d managed to put it in perspective.

  He’d been wrong. Being so close to her, yet apart, had only made him realize what he felt for her was far more than lust and a comrade’s affection.

  “You can do that again any time,” he said, trying to sound calmer than he felt, “but I still don’t understand how we’re weapons.”

  Anchali blushed herself then, and not a tidy, rosy glow that he might have thought a product of her training, but a heat that mottled her complexion, making her look awkward, yet more real. Like any woman who’d just kissed a man she fancied and would like to do more than that.

  “Because the strongest weapons we could possibly muster against this particular demon are love and desire. At the very least, you want me. It doesn’t take a Chosen’s gifts to tell that. And I…I love you.”

  The words took a while to register, to worm their way through the thick walls Thanom had built around his heart.

  He felt something growing inside him, something tentative and delicate as a green shoot, but like that shoot, ready to grow madly with the slightest encouragement from sun and rain.

  Sua, he thought, trying to use her as a shield. Whether he was trying to shield himself or Anchali, he couldn’t have said.

  But the Sua his mind conjured up laughed her big, hearty laugh and stepped aside. He could almost hear her saying, “I’ll not be used to keep you from living, sweetheart. You won’t forget me. She won’t let you.”

  The tender shoot grew stronger, sent out branches.

  But Sua…

  He had spent the entire journey watching Anchali, listening to Anchali, breathing her scent of amber and lotuses. He had admitted to himself a long while ago the promptings his traitor body gave him, more troubling in their way than the nightmares in which he tried and failed to save Sua. Finally lying with her had been a relief and a release, and he had hoped it would take him back to sanity. Knowing it was one time, a healing gesture on her part, Chosen to his sorrowing petitioner, doing what she needed to do to give him light.

  Or so he’d thought.

  But Anchali loved him. Loved the broken soldier, the widower who’d let his wife and child be murdered, the man
whose goddess had failed him.

  Like as not she doesn’t mean love-love, he tried to tell himself. Not like Sua. Anchali’s a Chosen of Pichitra. She’s supposed to love everyone, and desire those who need that particular one of Pichitra’s gifts, like I did by the river that day. That’s all she means. Women like her don’t fall in love with bitter old soldiers like me.

  But her face, her posture, said otherwise.

  When they’d lain together on the river bank, she’d been working some of Pichitra’s magic. She’d glowed, her beauty transfigured by the goddess as she released a little of his pain and let his heart start healing. This face, though, was different. There was a glow to it—not a holy, magical glow, but the light he’d seen in Sua’s face when they were first in love.

  Maybe, given whose Chosen Anchali was, it was as holy and magical as the other, just in a different way.

  Lady, help me figure this out, he thought, not sure whether he meant his own favored goddess or hers. I think she does love me, for real, and I’m not sure what that means.

  And I love her.

  He loved Anchali.

  She was going to get herself killed trying to fight this demon with only the power of love—and if he couldn’t talk her out of it, he’d be at her side until the end.

  This time, he was the one to initiate the kiss. They didn’t let each other go for a long time.

  “But what are we actually going to do?” he asked afterward, when they had put their veils back on and were desperately trying to look inconspicuous.

  “Leave here. Get word to Lord Rak. Prepare. And then come back, just ahead of the army, and force the demon back to the otherworld.”

  Thanom shook his head. He’d rarely been accused of being thick, but in this unfamiliar situation, he felt it. “That’s the part I don’t get. How do you cast out a demon with sex?”