The Blind King's Wrath, page 5
“There are many forces abroad in Hastinaga,” the intruder said. He was walking about the bedchamber now, pacing slowly. “And they are all aligned against you, emperor of the Burnt Empire.”
Adri’s pulse quickened. To buy himself a moment of thought, he replied by quoting almost verbatim from an old aphorism he had heard bandied about in court. “Forces are always aligned against the Burning Throne, yet no reigning Krushan will ever be unseated. Stonefire will not permit such sacrilege.”
As if on cue, the living rock spoke from two floors below, responding with tongues of fire, lighting up the ceiling and the corners of the room. Adri could still feel the heat from above and around him. He heard draperies catch fire and metal objets d’art melt instantly beneath the searing heat of the alien flames. Yet he—and the visitor—remained unharmed by its supernatural power. Yes, there was no doubting it, the visitor was Krushan.
2
The visitor hissed in amusement. “You are a wily one indeed, Adrishya. But as the Krushan saying goes, even stonefire cannot protect a family from the enemies within. The court gossips always repeat that old saying like a mantra, and there is truth in it. For all our glories and accomplishments, we Krushan are a cursed lineage. Look back at your own life, for instance.”
“My life?” Adri said, surprised at the sudden personal inference. His anger subsided, and with it, the flickering flames of stonefire. A few small fires burned in the corners and cornices. The chambers would require remodeling: not that such things mattered to an emperor who could not see.
“Born blind at birth, a few scant moments after your brother Shvate. Your mother disowned you, your peers shunned you, other children of the family teased and mocked and taunted you. Life was unbearable until your brother took it upon himself to become your keeper. You took his actions as love and brotherhood. Whereas he was likely just carrying you closer to the cliff from which he himself intended to drop you. Indeed, he threw you off that cliff when you needed him most: at gurukul. In that inhospitable forest hermitage, entrusted to the care of uncaring priests and unkind gurus, hemmed in on all sides by a deadly jungle filled with savage beasts, you learned the skills necessary to survive. Still, you harbored the hope that when the ultimate challenge befell you, Shvate would come to your aid. You clung to the dream that someday you would both battle foes as one warrior force, reign as one emperor. That was the lie that had been hammered into your skull from birth, the lie perpetuated by Dowager Empress Jilana and Prince Regent Vrath.
“It was a lie that had held the patchwork quilt of warring factions that made up the Burnt Empire together for another generation. What else could Jilana and Vrath have done when they were delivered two disabled heirs, neither fit to reign under Krushan law? They bent the letter of the law to suit their purpose. Their deception was understandable. Had they acknowledged the birthright of the true heir to the throne, they would have lost control of this vast empire, never to reach such lofty eminence again in their wretched lives. So they wove a lie and stitched it into the fabric of history. They brainwashed you two boys into believing that your only hope lay in sticking together through thick and thin.
“Yet what happened at the Battle of the Rebels? When your chariot was surrounded by a veritable sea of enemies, did your brother Shvate come to your aid? By doing so, he could have strengthened your hand. Together, you two could have fought on to triumph, securing a victory despite your disabilities and proving that battles are won by the spirit, not by the sword.
“Instead, what did he do? He abandoned you, abandoned his own forces, and left the Hastinaga armies at the mercy of the enemy.”
Adri cleared his throat hoarsely. “He was undone by the heat of the noonday sun. It is his weakness. His albino skin—”
“Enough!” The voice thundered through the empty chambers. Not for the first time since the intrusion, Adri wondered why none of this long, strange visit had attracted the attention of his sentries. He suspected that the reason was because they all lay dead in the hallways. The visitor had taken precautions before making his presence felt. If he intended to cause harm to Adri’s person, there would be nothing to stop him.
Except stonefire.
Surely the Burning Throne would not let anyone harm Adri in his own bedchambers? Even another Krushan?
Adri hoped never to have to test that assumption.
The visitor continued: “Too long have you been a silent witness to the unmaking and erosion of your own life and powers. Too long you have been marginalized by those who claim to have your well-being at heart. Too long have you been leashed by your own filial bonds from taking action. When your brother Shvate abandoned you on the battlefield and went on to pursue his own career as a military hero, you said nothing. When Dowager Empress Jilana and Prince Regent Vrath showered him with honors, parades, praises, you remained silent. When all Hastinaga and the Burnt Empire bowed and scraped before Prince Shvate, you applauded along with the rest. Yet it was your legacy he encroached upon. Your share of glory he claimed. The promise the elders of the Krushan dynasty made to the people at your birth was that two monarchs would rule the Burnt Empire jointly. Jointly and equally. Neither was to have more power than the other. Yet in the years before your brother Shvate’s demise, it was he and he alone who appeared as the true heir. You were sidelined, reduced to the role of ‘the emperor’s blind brother.’”
“Shvate is dead,” Adri said softly. Into the silence that followed, he repeated this again: “My brother is dead.”
The pain of his brother’s passing, he felt even now, as a prickling of needles in his unseeing eyes. He had loved his brother, despite his betrayal and distancing in the past several years. He had loved him as he had loved only one other person in his entire life. The news of Shvate’s sudden death had unsettled him, shaken him to his core.
“And how was he killed?” asked the voice, just as softly, as if cognizant of Adri’s emotions.
“Murdered by his own birth father. Our birth father. The seer-mage Vessa.”
“Ask yourself, then—why?”
Adri had wrestled with this very question ever since Vida had brought the shocking news. Vida’s later reappearance, and denial of his earlier visit, had confused him somewhat, but even Vida did not deny the underlying facts—that Shvate had been suddenly and brutally murdered by their own birth father, Vessa. Why had Vessa done such a thing? The question remained suspended in the air, sending shock waves through the city and palace. The elders had not spoken of it to him as yet, but he knew they were equally stunned.
“On the face of it,” the voice continued, “it makes no sense. Vessa is a forest-dwelling hermit, far removed from the politics and cares of mortal governance. He fathered you and your brother, at his own birth mother Jilana’s request, upon the two sister princesses, Amber and Umber, after their husbands, the sons of the last Emperor Sha’ant, expired without progeny. His mother’s request fulfilled, Vessa retired to the forest. He is a pathetic, pitiful old man, living celibate and isolated in the deepest jungles, focused only on his devotion to Auma, the sacred source of all knowledge, wisdom, and spiritual strength. Yet, for some reason, he emerged from his reclusive existence to assassinate one of his own biological sons, the entitled heir to the Burnt Empire, in a shocking, senseless act of violence. Why?”
Why indeed. The question had haunted Adri night and day since he had heard the news. “I mean to ask him that question when he appears before my court next.”
“And when might that be? I know you have petitioned your grandmother to summon him urgently, and to consider it an official summons before the imperial court. If she chose to do so, she could summon him in an instant. Weeks have passed. He has not yet appeared before you. You well know that she has chosen to defy you. She flaunts your imperial authority and prevents the assassin of your brother, a lawful heir to the Burning Throne, from being brought to justice. No, Adri, Vessa will not simply saunter into Hastinaga and offer himself up on a platter. He will abscond, obfuscate, dissemble, and use every wily ruse in his canny mind to evade accountability.”
Adri thought there was something inconsistent in that argument. Was Vessa a pathetic, pitiful old man focused only on Auma, or was he a canny dissembler who was wily enough to evade justice? But he did not voice that thought aloud.
Instead he said, “Vessa’s attack on Shvate is a shocking transgression. I mean to address that. I will order Grandmother Jilana once again to summon him as well as issue an imperial order instructing all outposts and forward troops to scour the jungles. But what I cannot find in my heart to truly believe is what Vida said about Shvate’s widow Karni and my own wife, Geldry, and her brother Kune.”
“You speak of their conspiracy and plot against your own person, executed in the form of the attack at Riverdell, and the abduction of your beloved companion Sauvali, mother-to-be of your unborn child.”
Adri knew he should no longer be surprised at anything his visitor knew or said, but he still felt a surge of emotion at the mention of Sauvali’s name and her condition. “You know of this too?”
“Of course. As I said, Adrishya Krushan, I am your uncle and well-wisher. If I am not physically present by your side, it is only on account of your grandmother Jilana’s and uncle Vrath’s conspiracy to deny me of my rightful place in House Krushan. Yet I have watched over you from afar all your waking days. I have watched you being treated unfairly, deprived of your own lawful right to be acknowledged as the sole heir to the throne, given barely a fraction of the adulation and respect that was granted your brother, mistreated by your own wife and her politicking brother, for far too long. As if her own infidelity were not enough, Geldry neglected you, treated you with loathing, driving you into the arms of the lovely young Sauvali.”
“Infidelity?” Adri asked. “Geldry was unfaithful, then?”
A soft chuckle with a faint hissing aftersound. “A hundred and one children born of one woman at one time? Is that usual among mortals, even if the father is Krushan?”
“No, but . . .” Adri trailed off. He had no other alternative to offer. The birth of the Hundred and One was the great unspoken scandal of his House. No one dared speak of it openly, but it was evident there was some unnatural agency involved. Geldry had delivered not a kicking, bawling baby but simply a large lump.
Like an egg formed of solid flesh . . .
He had heard the words whispered by an unknown servant in passing, one of the wet nurses who had been present when Vessa had been called in to intervene at the delivery, an unheard-of event in a culture where men were not permitted to be present while women gave birth. Others had heard the words, and the wet nurse and her family had vanished overnight, never to be seen or heard of again. Dowager Empress Jilana had made it known that no gossip about the royal family would be tolerated, not even among the citizenry, on pain of death.
The unwritten edict been taken seriously, as all Krushan diktats were, but it had not prevented the awkward pauses, the odd glances—these, he had sensed rather than noted—and overall sense of unease by the servants who had been close to the children of Geldry over the years.
There was also the fact that the children had not been shown to the people of Hastinaga or presented before visiting foreign and domestic dignitaries, an unprecedented departure from Krushan tradition.
“They shall be presented when the time is right,” Jilana would say when asked at first, and over time, people had ceased to ask whether the time would ever be right.
“You have heard the whispers at night, the murmurs in your conscience, the fear in people’s voices. You know that the world does not see the children—your children—as mortal children.”
“They are Krushan,” Adri said defensively.
Another soft chuckle. “As are you and I. As are all those of this House. Yet you are regarded with awe, respect, adoration, even fear at times. But never as unnatural, alien, foul get of demons, spawn of—”
“Enough!” Adri’s voice rang out sharply in the midnight silence, the tone imperial for the first time since this strange dialogue had begun.
More hissing: this time it sounded pleased. “Your tone betrays your true feelings. So you admit it, then?”
“I admit it,” Adri said harshly, rising from the bed on steady feet. He sensed the visitor close by his bed in the way that he sensed a cooler patch on a hot day, like the shadow of a pillar cutting a swath of sunlight. To his right, about two yards away. He addressed that direction. “I have heard the whispers and murmurs, I have harbored suspicions myself . . . If you have something to confirm or deny these, speak it now. Or . . .”
“Or what, nephew? You will confront Geldry? It would be to no avail. She would only repeat the truth as she knows it: that you fathered the Hundred and One upon her and any unusual characteristics they may possess are entirely the fruit of your loins!”
Adri raised his face toward Jarsun, searching for some subtle subtext he might have missed. “I don’t understand what you are saying. Are they my get or not? Speak plainly, Uncle. If uncle indeed you are.”
Jarsun laughed a throaty laugh. “Indeed I am your uncle Jarsun Krushan. And indeed it is confusing, I know. Come, then. It is time you knew the truth at last. Far too long have you been kept in the dark. And I mean that not in jest, but quite literally. For it was one man’s curse that caused your lack of vision at birth, just as his curse caused your late brother, Shvate, to be born albino and susceptible to sunlight. This same being also led your Geldry astray.”
Adri’s face wrinkled in a frown. “You speak in riddles now. Who is this being or man you speak of?”
“Why, is it not as plain as the nose on your face? Who else have we been speaking of all this while? I speak of Vessa, of course. He is the chief architect of all your sorrows.”
Adri’s head swam now. “I thought you said my brother Shvate . . . no, my sister-in-law Karni . . . my grandmother Jilana . . .”
“They are all part of it, truly. But behind all these pieces upon the board of chaupat, there is a great hand that moves them in accordance with a strategy only he sees. To him, it is a great game. He does not care that this game involves the use—and destruction—of real, living, flesh-and-blood people. People such as your beloved Sauvali, your unborn son . . .”
“Vessa is behind it all? Is that what you are saying?”
Jarsun chuckled yet again. “I am done speaking. It is time I showed you. For only when you see with your own two eyes will you know the truth about your birth father, and the web of evil he has spun over the past decades. Come with me.”
Adri sensed that Jarsun was holding a hand out to him. He ignored it.
“Why do you jest about a blind man’s disability? You well know I cannot see with these two eyes.”
“Surely, you cannot in this realm. But where I am about to take you, you will be able to see as well as any sighted person. Come with me, Jarsun Krushan. Rise up to your feet, take my hand, and let me lead you to the truth.”
Adri hesitated again, but finally decided he must know what Jarsun meant. If what he was implying was true, then Adri had truly been blind, not just in the literal sense, but also in the mind and heart. He was emperor of the Burnt Empire, ruler of the greater part of Arthaloka, master of the world. To be deceived and duped in his own house, by his own family . . . to be cuckolded . . . betrayed . . . these were unacceptable transgressions.
He must know.
He already knew that if Jarsun had meant to kill him, he could have done so without speaking a word. He could simply have struck in the dark, silent and deadly as a serpent in the night, and disappeared whence he had come. Adri did not trust the visitor, this uncle he had not known until today, but he had heard of Jarsun Krushan; he had studied Krushan history as a boy and delved into it further as a prince, and knew of the Banished One, the Desolate One, and all the other names by which his exiled uncle was known. He was more than intrigued now. And the promise of being able to see was an unexpected, yet provocative one. He was provoked and incited, and agitated.
He must know.
He rose to his feet, took hold of the hand that was offered, and let it lead him across the room. He heard a sibilant murmur, caught a smattering of High Krushan mantras recited, and heard as well as felt and smelled the explosion of power that followed. A powerful wind began to blow, carrying with it strange, exotic odors and scents he could not easily identify. Despite his blindness, he sensed a brilliant light suffusing the room. Even through unseeing eyes, it suffused his being, bathed him in a saturation of sensation such as he had never before experienced. It continued to the point of being almost painful.
The hand guiding him led him forward, through the light and past it, into a greater darkness than any he had ever experienced.
Jarsun
JARSUN WATCHED MRAASHK BURN as he waited for his assassin to attack.
People were rioting in the streets, fighting with swords in the markets, turning over the handcarts of street vendors, setting fire to wagons and shops and houses. In the high neighborhoods, the rich and powerful cowered within their palatial mansions as mobs slaughtered sentries and bodyguards, hacked down doors, pulled down iron gates, and surged inside. After the pillaging and looting—and far worse, judging from the screams and sounds—the inhabitants were dragged into the streets, paraded naked to the central courtyard, there to be trussed up and bound to stakes for the crowds to do with as they pleased before they were run through or set aflame.
