When her work day was done, Laksha and the other painters cleaned their tools and stored the pigments for use the next day. It had taken Tanysh and the others a while to settle back into their work after returning from viewing the Concord Jewel, and Laksha was thankful when Nuruddin had walked silently through the room, stilling their chatter so she could focus. She'd regrettably effaced Gurkani's extraneous wyvern tail from her painting, but she was already giving thought to what else she might be able to sneak into her work without Alim Nuruddin noticing. Last out of the painting room, she headed through the kitabkhana and crossed the building's courtyard to reach the door to the living quarters. The fountain in the center bubbled gently into the pool below in half shadow from the declining sun.
Laksha worked her way through the halls towards her own room, where she had planned to read for a bit by the fading light through her window before heading to the masjid for the Ash Prayer. She reached her small cell, containing little more than a bed, a small table, and a trunk, and opened the door. Entering the room, her old instincts at once kicked in – someone had been in the room. To the casual eye, nothing appeared out of order. Her coverlet was still neatly pulled up on her pallet. Her trunk was closed and unmoved. The items on her small table – inkwell and stylus, some loose parchment, her comb and personal items – were precisely as she placed them each morning before leaving. But the center cushion of the three on her pallet – the one embroidered with a lotus flower opening – was upside down. She would never have set it in place so carelessly.
Still standing in the open door, she scanned the room more closely. When nothing else appeared out of order, she closed the door and slid the bolt into place so she would not be disturbed. Only the pillow had been touched or moved, so she walked over to the pallet. With a cautious hand, she flipped it lightly over to fall on the coverlet, revealing a tiny piece of paper with one word on it.
"Now."
She put the paper into her mouth and drew forth saliva to moisten it before swallowing it down her throat. She wondered, as she had many times before, who it was that was leaving these messages, because she knew it wasn't him. He would never dare to enter the fort.
A quick glance out her small window told her that she'd have about an hour before the sun began to set and the Ash Prayer was called. She didn't want to go, but she had little choice in the matter. She knew the cost of disobeying him. With the sun still out and people moving around the fort, it would be difficult for her to get outside the walls without being spotted, and she didn't want anyone to have an inkling of where she was going.
She would have to cast. If she could find a secluded spot near the fort's eastern gate, she could cast at the last moment possible to give her more time. She slipped out of her room and navigated through the building to the east. The traffic around imperial hammam as people cleansed before the evening prayer gave her some cover as she headed that way. At the last moment, she veered into the temple of Deneir. She passed through the exterior columns into the cool shade of the temple, finding it empty at this hour. Candles burned around the brightly-painted statue of the god, light flickering off the six arms that radiated out from his body. Each hand held a symbol of his domain: a brush, a stylus, a book, a scroll, an inkpot, and paper. Though she was Muwahhid, she lit a candle to the Pradani god of writing, who was revered, if not worshiped, by many at the kitabkhana.
Certain that she had a few moments alone, Laksha shaped her hands to perform the mudra as she said the mantra that would change her shape. Deep wrinkles formed in the weathering skin of her face, which became darker. Her back bowed from age, and her hands curled and became knobby from labor. Slight jowls developed at her jaw line, and a few of her teeth disappeared. The blue color faded from her hijab, leaving it a worn, brown color, and her kameez billowed to become a dull beige abaya. She was careful that her face was still visible – she wanted the people to see that she was an elderly auntie, not Laksha the painter.
The illusion complete, she left the temple and made her way down the stairs, unchallenged by the guards at the gate. From the top of the steps, she had a breathtaking view of the mahal and charbagh being built for the tomb of Tasneem Tayyib, the emperor whose murder and raising as a ghul by his eldest child sparked the civil war. The quadrilateral garden filled a space larger than the chowk constructed for the Concord Jewel, and already bright green grasses filled the lawns. Young trees lined the borders, and water channels cut the space into four quadrants. At its center, the elegant sandstone tomb itself was little more than a foundation, but each day it rose a little higher as carefully carved stones built up its walls. Tasneem would be the first Tayyib emperor not buried in the Himilbad Necropolis on the Northern Plateau, his mahal becoming a memorial to those fallen in the war and an emblem of the new peace brought about by his daughter Firuzeh. The mahal for the empress's mother, Bothara, also killed by Musa Tayyib, was rising at the end of the charbagh closest to the fort. It was much smaller in scale, but the heavily sculpted exterior reflected the Jharodani style of her heritage.
The serene charbagh was surrounded on all sides by the dense city of Qaragarh, and it was to the cover of those busy streets that Laksha made her way. She moved quickly and purposefully for an apparently old woman, but she had little time before the spell would dissipate. Throughout the city, decorations were already going up for the two holidays coming in a month – the Muwahhid new year celebration of Pehli Sabah and the Pradani festival Chamakutsav, which were falling on the same day this year. Ropes of flowers and beads draped between buildings, and it seemed anywhere a lantern could be hung held one. Though the sun had not yet set, a pale full moon floated ghostly through the sky.
Her path took her past a madrasa, shops, and rows of houses and across the main road of the bazaar, then down increasingly narrow streets with few people making their way. Because speed was important, she was forced to pass by the Aanandamay Gharana and the Temple of Adhanari Entwined. Not that Suraj would recognize her if she were spotted, given the illusion she bore. Laksha didn't want to chance seeing Suraj, the boy a few years older than her who had taken her under his wing when she'd been ensnared in Salim's den of urchins. He'd shown her the ways of thievery, taught her a few simple prarthanas, including the mage hand she had quickly mastered, and protected her from Salim. And then abandoned her for a position in the Aanandamay Gharana without a word.
Ducking down an alley shaded by almost touching neighboring roofs and passing a series of low doors made of reclaimed ragged planks of wood, she slipped inside an alcove in one of the buildings. With years of familiarity, her hand flipped the trigger that would open the concealed doorway, and she stepped inside. She expected the dagger that was instantly at her throat, so she didn't flinch. The hand that held the blade belonged to a young man that was little more than a child but was still larger than her. Everyone was larger than her. Hunger hollowed his cheeks and distrust filled his eyes. A bruise yellowed around his jaw. She had once been him. At her password, he lowered the dagger so she could proceed.
The short hall opened up into a large room filled with scavenged furniture, rumpled pallets covered in filthy blankets, and scraps of cast-off clothing. The sun would set soon, so most of the urchin thieves had left to take their positions for their night work, but a few remained, likely too hungry or sick to venture out. The room smelled of unwashed youths and the remains of old food. That it smelled like home to Laksha turned her stomach.
It had changed little in the two years since she'd been pulled from the streets and taken to the kitabkhana to begin her new life. The old pallet she had shared with Suraj by the west wall was still there, but the coverlet was different. She didn't recognize any of the young people in the room – the ones she had known had all grown and moved on to other lives. Or died. But the looks on their faces, the bitterness in their hearts, and the abuse of their bodies was the same in these young people as she had known in the urchins of her time here.
The youth with the dagger knocked on a door across the room and backed away. After a moment, the door was yanked open, and Salim walked out.
"What?" he barked.
Salim belied his surroundings. His dark hair was neatly trimmed, as was his bushy beard. Even his thick eyebrows were tamed with a bit of shiny oil. The cotton of his ochre shalwar was trimmed with threads of silver, and the polished buttons of his russet sherwani gleamed in the low light of the room. He looked every bit the refined gentleman of the city with a successful shop of fine goods that fronted his thievery. Instinct made Laksha take a step back when his eyes fell on her, but she gathered herself and stepped towards him, her head high.
"What is this old woman doing here?" Salim rasped at the young man who had knocked on his door.
"You beckoned me," Laksha answered.
Salim peered at her closely. Then he raised his eyebrows in surprise, a slow smile spreading on his lips. "Ah, I didn't teach you that prarthana. Nicely done."
She waved his compliment away with the wrinkled hand that was not her own. "Just tell me the job."
Instead of answering, he stepped aside from his door and gestured for her to join him inside. He offered her a seat, but Laksha remained standing.
"I don't have the time or inclination for pleasantries."
Salim rolled his dark eyes. "'Inclination for pleasantries.' My dear Chhote Haath, how Darwapur Shukri has changed you."
"I am not your Chhote Haath," she spat. "What do you want?"
"A little thing, really," Salim shrugged. "A trinket. You were always so good at retrieving trinkets for me, even in the most…difficult of situations."
The wazir, in his haveli. Salim wanted that memory from her youth forefront in her mind. He needn't have bothered – that memory was always present with her, especially when she thought of Salim.
"Send another, if it's such a small thing."
He went to his writing table and picked up a piece of paper as if it saddened him. "I do wish I could, but you see, it's within the walls of the fort, and none of the poor younglings in my care can get inside. You, however, already are." He held the paper close to his chest. "Do be a dear and retrieve it for me. As a favor for your old master. To whom you owe so much of your present comfort."
The veiled threat was clear enough, but for added effect, Salim casually fingered the jeweled pendant he wore around his neck. The "trinket" she'd taken from the wazir. Wordlessly, helpless, Laksha held out her hand for the paper and looked at it. It was a drawing of a sort of metal rod, with a balled claw at each end. Scrollwork drawn vaguely traced its length, winding around encrusted gemstones.
"What is it?" she asked.
He waved dismissively. "It doesn't really matter, does it?"
She folded the paper. "Where is it?"
"Somewhere inside the haveli of the subahdar of Bazikwahi," he said offhandedly.
"Sameer bin Nabeel?" she blurted, stunned. "Are you insane?! No, find someone else." She threw the piece of paper to the floor and spun to leave.
"I'll give you the pendant," he said to her back.
She froze midstep. "And the dagger?"
"And the dagger. If you bring this trinket to me within five days."
"And then we are done with each other? Forever?"
"Though it wounds my heart, Laksha," he pouted.
"There is no such organ in your body." Without looking at Salim, she retrieved the paper and slipped it into her abaya and left.
Once outside the stinking den, she took a deep breath to fill her lungs with clean air. The sun had neared the horizon so she had little time left to make it back to the fort before the spell wore off. Defying her elderly appearance, she all but ran through the alleys and streets of Qaragarh, past Tasneem's charbagh, back toward the eastern gate. The drums beat their invitation for the Ash Prayer from the minars throughout the city, their slow cadence a counterpoint to the slap of her sandals on the stone street. She didn't have the luxury of letting herself think about how she was going to steal from the fort home of the second most powerful person in the Tayyib Empire. Once she was back in her room at the kitabkhana, she would begin to puzzle it out. The only thought that she gave her mind over to was that she could finally be free of Salim's clutches. He was a thief and cruel to his urchins, but he kept his word.
Laksha slowed as she neared the steps up to the high gate of the fort so she would not draw any attention to herself. Her gait became more shuffling as she looked for a group that was making its way toward the steps to attend the Ash Prayer, and she noticed a small group turning from the street of the bazaar onto her road, headed to the fort. Ahead and behind walked urdubegis, their long braided hair falling about the leather of their armor and a spear held upright in their hands. Between them walked strangers to the land – a dwarf in a broad-brimmed hat, a woman with iridescent scales, and a man with dark skin bearing a gold-tipped staff. Delegates from the Radiant Citadel.
She maintained her shuffling step so that they would catch up with her, and when the man with the staff was just behind and beside her, she feigned a stumble. She felt a quick hand at her elbow to steady her.
"Are you alright?" the man with the staff asked her in a deep, rich voice.
"What a kind young man," she croaked through her missing teeth. "Would you help an old woman up the stairs to her prayers?"
"Of course," he assured her. But he looked to the two urdubegis for their approval, which they gave with a curt nod.
Laksha let him support her up the steps, secretly marveling at this strange man and his companion. They were from another land – no, another world altogether. She patted the man's hand kindly and thanked him when they reached the top of the stairs. When they were gone, she ducked back into Deneir's temple and let the prarthana dissipate, taking her own form once again, and raced to the masjid for the service. She had so many prayers she needed to make.
By the time Ruqaiya and Vikrim reached the top of the last hill before the temple, the sun had set, leaving the full moon alone low on the horizon. Laying flat in the lee of a boulder, they saw the temple rise below them, suffused in that greenish bluish light, illuminating its base but casting shadows on the spires that rose above. In the cratered land around the long temple, pools of water shimmered in opalescent colors of sickly hue, and waves of heat distorted the air above them. Steaming hot, the pools kept all life and greenery far from their edges.
The temple was old and roughly carved, with a low-roofed ardhamandapa supported by rounded columns, two of which had collapsed, making the forecourt of the temple impassable. The larger mandapa still stood, as did the garbhagriha, though whatever god had dwelt there seemed to have long since departed. The light that emanated through the columns of the main hall flickered orange and yellow as from torches or lamps, letting them know that someone was in there.
The temple stood alone in the cratered, uneven landscape, surrounded by only the pools, with a path leading to the steps up to the temple platform. There was no help for it – they would be exposed to sight if they tried to approach.
"We can't wait long," Vikrim prodded his companion. "The ghûls will smell us soon." He sniffed himself. "Especially me."
"I wasn't going to say anything," she smirked. "Maybe when we're done you could slip into one of those pools."
Ruqiaya pushed herself up to start down the hill but Vikrim pulled her back down.
"We need the Celebrant alive, little one," he cautioned her. "Please don't kill him."
Her lips drew into a thin line, but she nodded her head.
A scream rang out of the temple, a short burst of terror and pain, the scream of a living man.
Ruqaiya bolted to her feet. "They're turning someone. Let's go."
She headed down stealthily and Vikrim lumbered behind her, their steps nonetheless covered by the punctuated cries of pain. Oil lamp light revealed the grim scene as they crouched low on the steps leading up to the platform. Surrounding a long table in the center of the hall, one man in simple gray and silver sherwani held down the legs of a man stretched across it, while two other gray-garbed men pulled back each of the victims arms. In a purple sherwani, his head wrapped in a purple pagri, the Risen Celebrant stood beside the table, a bloody knife in his hand.
The victim was the fourth man they had been following. His gray sherwani, similar to what the other Reapers wore, was open and several deep but not yet lethal slashes crossed his chest. A deep gash across his belly exposed his bloodied and mucusy innards, the wound he had received in the attack on the village. Pain-wracked and terrified, he heaved his chest with the rapid breaths of panic.
"Go with joy," the Celebrant said, placing a comforting hand on the forehead of the victim. "Be at peace, for you leave this life to enter unlife. I had wished that you might live to serve longer, Sangrit, but the wound is too severe. Once you are dead, we will stitch it up, so that you are presentable in your unlife." He raised his hand holding the dagger high in the air, light from the lamps shining off the rounded black stone in its pommel.
Vikrim started forward but Ruqaiya used both hands to pull his large arm and draw him back, ignoring the startled look he shot her.
Almost compassionately, the Celebrant placed his palm over the man's eyes to shield them, a cruel grace, as the victim had already witnessed the rise of the weapon. Then the Celebrant plunged the dagger into the man's chest.
The victim's last breath escaped his mouth silently, and a stream of blackness rose like the smoke of a snuffed candle past his lips, lazily growing and spreading upward. The tension of terror that had seized the victim's muscles collapsed, and his body settled. The Celebrant lifted his hands from the victim's face, revealing open eyes that slowly blackened into charcoals glowing in the starless night of their sockets.
"Now," Ruqaiya hissed.
"Alive!" Vikrim called after her.
In a bound, she breached the first row of columns of the mandapa in three steps, headed straight for the Celebrant. Stunned only for a moment by her appearance, the Celebrant managed to loudly bark a command in a strange tongue before Ruqaiya vaulted over the bloody altar, her hands finding purchase next to the dead body. Her outstretched feet punched him in the chest, and he flew back against the column behind him and collapsed to the ground.
She spun to find Vikrim swinging his mighty mace in an arc and down against the skull of the Reaper who had held the feet of the victim. Bare moments had passed, yet enough time for the remaining two Reapers to draw their short curved blades. Only steps away, Ruqaiya saw the free hand of the Reaper nearest to her rise to shape a mudra, his lips moving with harshly whispered words. She sprang back behind a column, but could not completely evade the flames that descended down where she had been standing. The cotton of her sleeve came alive with its flicking tongues, burning the flesh of her forearm before she could drop her talwar and grab the pagri from her head to beat out the fire.
And then she ducked as the Reaper's blade swung to sever her head, leaving it to clang futilely against the stone of the column. She rolled away, dashed behind another column, her sword lying where she had dropped it.
Vikrim's Reaper knew at once he was outmatched by the orcish behemoth and cravenly circled the sacrificial table, just out of reach of Vikrim's mace whooshing through the empty air.
"Please put down the sword," Vikrim advised the darting Reaper. "I'd prefer to not hurt you. And I don't want to chase you. You're simply wasting both of our time."
"Not my time," the Reaper gloated, looking past Vikrim's bulky frame. "Just yours."
Vikrim spun around, his giant mace already swinging, and caught the first of the six or seven ghûls racing up the platform behind him in the head, smashing the foul figure aside to crumple in an unmoving heap. With his other hand, he unsheathed his sword, beheading the next creature with the arc of the motion.
"Ghûls!" he shouted to Ruqaiya in warning.
"Burning!" she shouted back to him, dodging another stream of fire that rained down on the spot she had been sheltering in. "Need a minute!"
The ravenous creatures came on, their flesh blue and bloodless, their eyes black as soot, the claws on their unnaturally long fingers poised to slash and rend. The stench of death reeked from the clambering monstrosities. Vikrim was backed against the altar and surrounded, his sword and his swinging mace keeping him out of their deadly reach as they slavered to overwhelm him. Somewhere behind him was the Reaper, shouting commands to the ghûls, ordering them to kill the interloper. Vikrim could not spare a moment to deal with him.
Ruqaiya unsheathed her sharp katar and blocked out the noise of the blows and clangs from Vikrim and the ghûls and focused on the sound of footsteps. Her stalker was moving carefully through the shadows cast by the columns from the lamps, warily seeking his prey. She couldn't see him, but she could hear his steps. She moved as he moved, keeping to the shadow herself, until she was behind the thick column he was in front of. Her short blade raised to her ear, she waited for the Reaper's movement and then stepped around the column to face him.
The ready words of his mantra were instantly on his lips but his hand was too slow to call down the fire. With a quick jab of the katar, Ruqaiya pierced the palm of his hand, disempowering his words. The shock and pain in his eyes froze on his face as his death mask as the blade of her katar found his heart.
With a wide sweep of his mace followed by a returning arc of his sword, Vikrim gained a hair's breadth to jump onto the altar, straddling the body atop it. It wasn't a haven, as the creatures surged forward to reach for his legs, but it allowed him to jump down on the other side, taking a missing swipe at the Reaper who stumbled away from him.
"Where are you?" he called out to Ruqaiya as he backed deeper into the mandapa, his blade swinging to ward off the advancing ghûls.
The columns constricted the ghûls' advance, but they also separated them, shuttling the creatures into different paths, blocking one or two from his sight for moments.
"Ruqaiya!" Vikrim called out.
"I'm here," she shouted behind him.
Vikrim half-turned to look for her. Instead, he stared into the endlessly black eyes of a ghûl, the sharp teeth of its open mouth poised to sink into his flesh, its gangrel claws reaching out to rake the skin from his body.
And then the fetid head was gone, sliced clean from the creature by a shining blade, and Ruqaiya toppled its body with a kick.
Renewed by her return, Vikrim roared at the remaining creatures and plowed toward them, smashing the chest of one with his mace, slicing another in half at the waist with the strength of his sword arm. Ruqaiya grabbed the lamp hanging from the column as she jumped past Vikrim and, with a spinning throw, smashed it into the last of the ghûls. Oil splattered the shreds of the creature's clothes, and the flames raced across the fabric. Heedless of pain, the ghûl nevertheless succumbed to the fire, though it crawled towards Ruqaiya when it was brought to its knees, then tried to drag itself to her when it collapsed utterly.
Ruqaiya leapt over the burning abomination, Vikrim only a step behind her, to see if the Celebrant still lay unconscious by the altar. Careless in her haste, she cried out as the last Reaper grasped her as she passed a column and spun her to the ground. But even as the Reaper knelt to end her with this blade, he was lifted by the huge hand of Vikrim and pinned high against a column, his feet kicked uselessly a foot above the ground.
The man struggled briefly, but then slumped. "Let me Rise," he pleaded. "Kill me if you must, but I beg you to let me Rise."
Vikrim met the man's desperate eyes with sadness and pity in his own. "You misunderstand me. I only kill the dead," he explained. Gently, he lowered the Reaper until the man's feet found the ground, his back still to the column. And then he released the Reaper from his grasp. "I do not kill the living."
"But I do." Ruqaiya's blade slid silently across the votary's throat, leaving at first a clean line that slowly turned red, then gushed with his blood. Clutching his neck, he fell to his knees, and then to oblivion.
Vikrim knelt down to the purple-garbed Celebrant, unmoving and still crumpled by the altar. "He's alive," he announced in mock surprise, his tusky wide smile turning up to Ruqaiya.
"You said," she shrugged.
Vikrim rose so that she could kneel beside the Reaper. From her pack, Ruqaiya removed the aardiz taqdis – the temporary hand cages that the Taarik wore – and placed them over the man's hands, straightening his fingers into each of the metal frames to lock them into position. With a snick of metal at the wrist, each cage locked firmly into place, immobilizing the Celebrant's hands to prevent any mudras. Then she slipped the leather gag into the man's mouth and latched it behind his head. When she rose from her work, she found Vikrim standing by the altar and looking down at the body.
"Why did you stop me," he asked when she joined him. "We could have saved him from this."
"To kill again?"
"I have likely taken more lives than he has."
"In battle," she countered.
"Does that matter?"
"Yes," she asserted. "This is evil, this is wrong."
With his thick fingers, Vikrim brushed back the man's hair from his face. "He was a man. He was someone's child once. He deserved better than this."
"His victims deserved better. Besides," she pointed with her katar at the nasty gash in the man's belly, "he was going to die anyway from that wound."
Vikrim sighed a great resigned sigh. "I suppose," he said at last.
Ruqaiya raised her sword up. "We should do it."
Vikrim placed a hand on her blade to forestall it. "Not yet. He is not yet unliving. For the moment, he is still just dead. Let him be dead a moment more."
Only their breath and the crackle of flames broke the silence of their wait, and their separate thoughts as they gazed down at the transforming body. The fingers elongated into sharp claws, the skin took on a sickly blue hue, and the mouth widened, filling with sharp teeth. When the spark of undeath kindled in the creature's eyes, Vikrim swung his mighty sword down and severed its head.
Ruqaiya unraveled her charred pagri and ripped off a piece. Cradling it in her hand, she wrapped it around the hilt of the necrodagger still protruding from the splayed body, covering the shiny black onyx on its pommel and the silver of its handle. She carefully extracted it from the body and continued wrapping it in the remnant of her pagri until it was completely encased. Then she sheathed it in a leather pouch and stowed it in her pack.
Vikrim had headed into the garbhagriha to see what he could find. The sanctuary was filled with pallets and the few personal belongings of the Risen members who had made it their home. Rudely whitewashed on the back wall was the figure of a man with the wings and talon of an owl, with lions crouching at his feet. Je found a book filled with handwriting stashed in a leather satchel, along with a couple pieces of parchment with broken seals. He slipped the satchel into his much larger pack and returned to Ruqaiya.
They had not expected to find the sanctuary of a Risen cell, let alone capture a Celebrant alive. They had crossed the Undra River from Basti Sadiq because of word that ghûls had been spotted on that side of the river. Following the trail of woe from village to village, hearing stories of locals attacked and ravaged by the undead, they had expected only to find the ghûls and put them to their rest. It was a mission of mercy for Vikrim and Ruqaiya, for many of those creatures had–while living – fought alongside or against them in the Battle of Sherpatta before succumbing to death, only to be Raised again in unlife, to continue a damned existence consuming the flesh of others. Many still wore the tattered remains of the war gear they had worn in their final moments, fighting on the side of one of the Tayyib siblings: Musa, Khusrau, Nekuzam, or Firuzeh. Even in their contorted, tormented faces, Ruqaiya and Vikrim could sometimes recognize someone who was once a friend, a colleague, an acquaintance. They were owed a final death. Death for the dead.
Only a few of the Risen enclaves had been rooted out from where they had taken refuge after the destruction of their temple in Sherpatta. Vikrim and Ruqaiya had not anticipated stumbling upon one in such a remote and empty land.
What did that bode for the rest of Suristhanam, if such outposts might establish themselves like a disease in the unnoticed regions of the empire? It would take two days to reach even Basti Sadiq, and it was five days west across Ganraala to reach the Neela Sea. How many cells might hide in these sparse lands? In the open fields between Alipeta and Sikra? Or the great farmlands leading from Ahadi down to Rangampor? They could kill ghûls in legions, but only by eradicating this twisted faith could they end its terror.
"We have to take him to the Ulema in Qaragarh," Ruqaiya spat. "They'll deal with him, and whatever information is in that satchel."
"The nearest Door is in Bijabad." Vikrim scratched the rough skin of his chin. "Maybe three days from here. Will he be able to walk?"
Ruqaiya directed Vikrim's eyes to the figure now sitting upright with his back against the column. His hands caged, his wrists bound, and the leather gag blocking his mouth, the Celebrant could do nothing more than glare at them both in righteous anger. A trickle of blood ran from his nose over his hairless lip and chin.
"He can walk," Ruqaiya said more to the Celebrant than to Vikrim.
The gruesome, corpse strewn mandapa was no place to spend the night. They decided to head east back through the hills for a bit to put the temple behind them and encamp until the morning. Ruqaiya prodded the Celebrant with her talwar to rise and precede them, stepping over the bodies of the ghûls Vikrim had dispatched.
The pale aquamarine light of the steaming pools lit the path east into darkness and stars. They slowed when the large pool ahead on their right brightened and the water at its center began to seethe. Ripples became waves, waves became boiling. Ruqaiya grabbed the Celebrant by the back of his jacket to stay him as they looked in wonder at the roiling luminescent pool.
A head arose from the center of the pool, a woman's face, the same milky blue-green as the water, surrounded by long black hair, pulled into a thick braid that hung over the shoulder. She continued to rise, young and beautiful and terrible, and curiously dry, until only her ankles remained submerged in the shallow water. The heat of the waters radiated from the aqua skin of her arms exposed by her loose water-colored sari. The woman took in the three, looking carefully at the gag of the Celebrant's mouth and his bound hands. The Celebrant gave a muffled cry and tried to pull away from Ruqaiya, his eyes wide in terror.
"My thanks to you, Gayakutani" the woman said to Virkim, her voice melodic and rich like the strum of a sitar. "And your companion," she passingly acknowledged Ruqaiya. "I will kill him now that you have captured him," her words filled with retribution.
"No," Ruqaiya pulled the resisting Celebrant back a few steps.
"Devi Ganraala," Vikrim bowed over his joined hands, "you honor us. He will be punished but we need him alive."
Ganraala splashed through the water toward them on her bare feet. "Do not refuse me, Gayakutan. These abominations must be eradicated before they can seize anymore of my people!"
From the swirling steam, Ganraala realized a sword of shining silver as she bore down on them, and the Celebrant wrenched himself out of Ruqaiya's grasp. As the devi's deadly blade descended towards the man's head, it struck the iron shaft of Vikrim's mace, raised to interpose. With a leap, Ruqaiya tackled the fleeing Celebrant.
"He will die, Devi, but not yet!" Vikrim challenged the luminescent figure. "He has information we need to extract if we are to end the Risen."
Her sword still pressing down on Vikrim's raised mace, Ganraala stretched out a hand to touch his tusked, rough face. Her fingers, like warm water, ran across the deep furrows of his brow. "Like a banked fire, you rage deep within. Yet there is a tranquility without. You are…curious," she observed. "What of your companion?"
From the ground where she pressed down upon the frantically struggling Celebrant, Ruqaiya called over her shoulder. "His companion is curious as well. Vikrim, do you know her? Who is this woman?"
Ganraala released her sword to return to mist, and Vikrim gratefully lowered his mace. "She is Devi Ganraala. She is the celestial spirit who dwells in this temple and gave the land its name. She is transcendent."
Ruqaiya rose, yanking the Celebrant up with her as the delicate, dangerous devi approached. Her crystalline eyes fixed on those of the terrified priest. "It wasn't this one," she said, examining his features. "Still, he must die."
"'It wasn't this one' who what?" Ruqaiya prodded.
She was standing in the presence of a devi, a being of legendary power, an ancient spirit of Suristhanam. She could feel the strength of the woman radiating outward, pressing up against her, and yet she resisted.
Ganraala raised a hand to Ruqaiya's face as she had Vikrim's, but the ghazi instinctively pulled away. "Do not fear me, Muwahhid," the devi soothed her. "Your people have not done this harm to mine."
Rebuffed, Ganraala returned to the Celebrant. Shaking in fear, the man cried mutely against the gag as her hand brushed his brow. "Sleep."
The Celebrant collapsed against Ruqaiya, and she let him fall to the ground. "We just got him to wake up," she explained, frustrated.
"He is not the one that imprisoned me," Ganraala went on, speaking almost to herself, heedless of Ruqaiya's complaint. "It was another such Risen Celebrant that summoned me two years ago to a place in the east near your city of Sherpatta, to a cavern far below the surface, and there entrapped me with his enchantments. For more than a year, men and women such as he encircled me, chanting their binding at every moment to keep me contained, always chanting to the being they worship, whose power fed them, to Ereshkigal. To what end I do not know, and for how long I could not conjecture. Forever? Their forever is not the forever of the devi, but time passes painfully slowly in confinement, and it felt like a piece of forever." She lost herself in the memory of that seemingly endless bondage.
"You broke free," Vikrim prodded her to continue.
"They fled," Ganraala said, returning to herself. "Your war, your pathetic, tragic war that undid so much of what my people had restored over your generations," she rebuked them. "You cannot overcome your impulse for division and hatred, you cannot let beauty and magnificence flourish. You make offerings for our blessings and then you trample what you have been blessed with. Even now, the earth is poisoned – do you not feel it spreading?" she said looking to the northeast. "It rumbles in protest, and its waters are sickened."
The devi's words pricked Ruqaiya and she didn't know what poison the woman spoke of. "Then help us, do something."
Haughty and aloof, Ganraala pointed to the Risen Celebrant still unconscious on the ground. "They are your fever, and they must be burned out. We will wait until they have passed. I was not the only deva ensnared near Sherpatta, there were several others. We are vulnerable to their enchantments, and therefore we have retreated. You," she said, taking in Vikrim with her glance, "must purge them. Then we will help you restore the land."
Frustrated, Ruqaiya toed the mediary to wake him. "Then can we go?"
"Ai," Vikrim shushed her.
"She's not going to help us."
"I will give you this aid," the devi said.
Ganraala again raised her hand to Ruqaiya's head, so quickly that the ghazi could not evade her touch. A wave of vertigo swept over her, a stillness in her mind that sounded louder than the raging winds. Disoriented for only a moment, she steadied herself, but felt no difference.
"What did you do to me?" she demanded of the devi.
"I have helped you." Ganraala walked back into the luminescent pool, somehow descending deeper into the shallow basin with each step.
Ruqaiya examined herself and saw no change. "Some wings would have been nice," she called to the departing devi. "Or some enchanted horses."
The devi's head sunk below the still water and disappeared. With a shake of his head at his companion, Vikrim lifted the senseless Celebrant onto his huge shoulders.
"Shall we continue, god-mocker?" he teased her.
"I think she liked me. She gave me a gift, after all, whatever it is. Did she give you a gift?"
"Yes," he laughed into the starry night, "she did not kill you."