I thought of Sameera’s severed fingers lying on the storeroom floor, of the shifting fires of Kamadeva’s diamond, and Jagrati’s terrible beauty; and I shivered, too. I held Amrita closer, breathing in the flowers-and-spice scent of her skin, and kissed her hair.
If I failed her in Kurugiri, I would never, ever forgive myself.
“I pray so, too, my lady,” I murmured. “I pray so, too.”
SIXTY-NINE
Three days later, we departed for Kurugiri.
Although he had wept at their first parting, this time Ravindra was dry-eyed and grave, every inch the solemn young prince once more. The gravity of the situation had become all too real to him, and I think he understood that if his mother didn’t return, he would be called upon to rule their people in a time of fear. He stooped to touch our feet in a gesture of respect, and embraced us all in turn.
“You will do your best to keep my mother safe, Bao-ji?” he asked.
“I will, highness.” Bao pressed his palms together and bowed. “Moirin will, too,” he added. “She is as skilled an archer as your Arjuna, you know.”
It won the faintest of smiles from the boy. “Although I do not believe it, it is good to hear anyway.”
Last of all, Ravindra embraced his mother. Amrita held him tenderly, whispering in his ear. When she turned away, there were tears in her eyes.
I closed mine, whispering a soft prayer to the Maghuin Dhonn Herself to grant me strength.
I would need a very great deal of it.
Once more, we set out in procession through the streets of Bhaktipur. This time the mood was altogether somber. We were riding to war, not to a parley. There was no hidden gambit to give us the upper hand. So much of our plan hinged on my ability to summon the twilight and hold it for a very long time, to use it to kill with stealth in the deadly maze, praying all the while that the Maghuin Dhonn Herself did not withdraw Her gift from me for using it thusly. If She did, I would be useless when we reached Kurugiri.
My lady Amrita had teased me once about carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders, and today it felt like it.
Folk in the street bowed as we passed, low and deep. Some went to their knees, pressing their brows to the ground. Many of them had been afraid for their much-loved Rani the first time.
This time, all of them were.
Beside me, Bao breathed the Five Styles as he rode, his expression at once fierce and calm. His diadh-anam burned as bright and clear as a bonfire within him, calling to mine. I took heart from it. Surely, if the Maghuin Dhonn Herself disapproved of what we meant to do, Her spark would not shine so brightly.
Although we hadn’t done anything yet.
Retracing our steps, we made camp in the same meadow the first evening. I could not help but remember the last time we had been there, all of us defeated and dispirited in the wake of our failure, and me racked with unholy desire, shuddering to the marrow of my bones with it, Jagrati’s predatory face swimming before my eyes.
I was afraid of her, and afraid of myself, too.
In the privacy of the tent I shared with my lady Amrita and Bao, I prayed to Naamah, begging her to have mercy on her errant daughter, begging her to let me keep her gift a blessing, and not a curse.
“I have tried to use it well, brightest of ladies,” I whispered. “I know I have not always been wise or strong, but I have always tried. I am still trying. Please, help me.”
In response, I had a sense of Naamah’s grace enveloping me like a cloak, filled with warmth and love and desire; but there was regret in it, too. Her gift was a double-edged sword that cut both ways. Not even she could make it otherwise.
But there was another offer the bright lady Naamah could make, and I felt it, words rising through my consciousness like bubbles from the eddies of a clear-running stream, each one perfect and glistening.
One by one, the words were strung together to form a single, terrifying query, spoken as clearly to me as Naamah had ever spoken through me.
Do you wish me to take it from you?
I caught my breath, my skin prickling with awe. Tears stung my eyes; and whether they were tears of terror or relief, I couldn’t have said. There was sorrow and curiosity behind the offer, but it was genuine.
Naamah could withdraw her gift from me.
My heart ached at the thought, and my diadh-anam flared in alarm. The Maghuin Dhonn Herself did not wish it so.
Neither did I.
I gazed at Bao, at his familiar face with its high, wide cheekbones, dark eyes glittering above them. And at my lovely lady Amrita, who gazed back at me with worried perplexity. I thought about all the people in my life I had loved and desired, from my lost Cillian slain too soon to my sweet boy Aleksei—and all that lay between them. Even the ill-advised but compelling Raphael de Mereliot with his healer’s hands, and, of course, my beautiful, mercurial lady Jehanne. My valiant princess Snow Tiger, trusting me enough to reveal an unexpected playful streak that had delighted me so.
I could not betray those memories. And for whatever reason Naamah had seen fit to grant her gift to a child of the Maghuin Dhonn when she called my father to my mother, there must be some purpose in it.
“No,” I murmured. “No. Please, do not take it away from me, goddess.”
Naamah did not. I felt her presence fade, leaving her gift intact.
I sighed with profound relief.
“Moirin, who in the world were you talking to?” Bao inquired.
“Naamah,” I said honestly. “I think….. I think she offered to take her gift away from me. And I refused.” I swallowed hard. “I hope that was not a very bad mistake.”
Bao came over and put his strong arms around me, holding me hard. I leaned against him, feeling the steady beat of his heart, the bright flame of his diadh-anam entwining with mine. “Moirin without her eternal and perplexing desires would not be Moirin,” he whispered against my hair. “You did the right thing.”
“I think so, too,” Amrita said firmly. “It is never wise to refuse a true gift of the gods. Moirin….. do your gods often speak to you?”
“No.” I searched for words, and found there weren’t any big enough. All I could do was clear my throat. “No, my lady. Not like this.”
She smiled a little. “Still, you are quite special to them, I think. I knew it the moment I saw you protecting that girl in the street. You were shaking with fever and you could barely sit up straight in the saddle, but you were not going to let those men harm her. And as sick as you were, you still looked like you’d stepped out of an ancient tale from when gods and goddesses roamed the earth.”
It made me smile, too. “You are very kind, my lady.”
Amrita laid one hand on Bao’s shoulder and leaned in to kiss my cheek. “And you are very frightened, dear one. But you are stronger than you know. You will be strong enough to face Jagrati, I am sure of it.”
I prayed she was right.
All of us slept uneasily that night, the camp on high alert, ringed about with anxious sentries. Bao positioned himself before the flap of the tent and passed the night in a restless doze. Twice, there were shouts in the night that brought him to his feet, his staff at the ready, while I reached desperately for the twilight, flinging it around myself and Amrita. But they were false alarms sounded by our uneasy guards.
There was no attack. Kurugiri, it seemed, had gone on the defensive.
The next day, we passed through the meadow where we had held our parley. As a precaution, Hasan Dar sent a company of scouts ahead to sweep through the spruce copse where our ambush had hidden, but it was empty. We filed past the Sleeping Calf Rock and began to ascend higher into the mountains, the air growing thinner and colder, pockets of snow in the windswept crags.
I breathed the Breath of Embers Glowing to warm myself, and the Breath of Earth’s Pulse to center myself, letting my awareness expand as we navigated the narrow paths. I didn’t sense anyone ahead of us, but I wasn’t certain.
That night, we made camp on an arid plateau where the ground was so hard it took all the men’s strength to pound the tent-pegs in place. Amrita was shivering in the cold, her teeth chattering. Although she didn’t utter a word of complaint, she was unused to such hardship. Beneath thick woolen blankets, I did my best to warm her while Bao slept stretched before the tent-flap.
On the following day, we reached the base of Kurugiri.
The mountain seemed taller and more foreboding than I remembered, jutting into the icy blue sky. The southern face of it was sheer; indeed, only the eastern face with its complicated labyrinth was scalable. We worked our way toward it, feeling the shadow of Kurugiri looming over us. From this perspective, the fortress itself wasn’t even visible, but every one of us knew it was there.
Dusk was falling by the time we passed the hanging cauldron of petition on its endless chain and reached the entrance to the maze, shadows slanting over the fissured slope. There must have been almost a dozen potential paths emerging from the maze, but Bao went unerringly toward the fifth one we encountered.
“Here.” He pointed to a faint mark etched into the stone, as high as a man could reach, then pushed up his right sleeve. The same intricate symbol of curlicues and strokes was tattooed above the crook of his elbow, beginning the zig-zag path. “See?”
Hasan Dar nodded. “We’ll have to camp here as best we can,” he said. “Set out at dawn. You’re sure it can be climbed in a day?”
Bao leaned on his staff. “I’m sure it can be done, yes. Whether or not we can do it is another matter. Depends on what we find in there.”
“I am sure of it,” Amrita said in a decisive tone, shivering. “Anything to get out of this cold!”
It made the guards smile, which I daresay was her intention; and it was the last cause anyone had to smile, for it was a truly miserable night. Due to the rocky terrain, we were unable to erect the tents and had to sleep in the open air, and it was perishing cold. But even worse was the menacing maze stretching above us, filled with possible assassins who might slip through under cover of night. Not wanting to take any chances, Hasan Dar posted sentries along every egress.
Although they were brave and loyal fellows, it was a frightening duty; and the mountain seemed like a living thing in the darkness, determined to heighten our fears. Every time a pebble shifted, someone raised an alarm. All of us slept fitfully, Bao and I with my lady Amrita between us, sharing our warmth with her, feeling horribly exposed and vulnerable all throughout the night.
Still, there was no attack.
Kurugiri was waiting.
In the dim light of predawn, I felt tired and bleary-eyed, and not at all heroic. Gazing at the deep, narrow channels etched into the mountainside, I reminded myself that I had done such a thing before in the Stone Forest.
But that had been a gentle, lovely place compared to this stark maze, and we had been able to draw our enemies away. We had had myriad paths to choose from, and a dragon to guide us.
Here, there was only one path that would not lead us astray, and we would be trapped within its confines with assassins waiting for us.
While Hasan Dar ordered his men into line, I sat cross-legged and breathed the cycle of the Five Styles. Bao sat beside me and did the same, his knee brushing against mine. I expanded my senses and drew strength from earth’s pulse, from trees growing, from the memory of ocean’s rolling waves, from embers glowing, and the wind’s sigh.
I thought about Master Lo Feng, who had taught us both. What Master Lo had taught me had made me stronger and wiser, better able to focus the gift of the Maghuin Dhonn Herself, using it as it was meant to be used.
I felt his loss keenly, and wished he were here to counsel us, to tell me that I had done the right thing in refusing Naamah’s offer.
Too soon, all was in readiness. Bao and I would take the lead, a handful of guards behind us, followed by the fellows carrying the battering ram. Hasan Dar had placed the Rani in the middle of the line lest we find ourselves ambushed from behind, and he would guard her himself, commanding from the center. Every man under his command had a copy of the map we had drawn based on Bao’s tattooed arms.
“Are you ready?” Hasan Dar asked, his handsome face taut with apprehension.
Bao’s gaze slid sideways toward me, his staff held loosely in his hands. “Moirin?”
I took a deep breath and stood. “Aye, I’m ready.” I strode toward my mount Lady, and swung myself astride.
Bao followed suit, thrusting his bamboo staff through a thong strapped across his back. I checked my yew-wood bow and quiver, testing the draw before slinging it over my shoulder. I glanced behind us, seeing the long line of guards, the Rani Amrita looking small and cold and determined in their midst. Faint streaks of pink were emerging on the eastern horizon, making the scudding clouds blush.
I looked at Bao, my stubborn, irrepressible peasant-boy with the vast heart. “I love you, you know.”
“Uh-huh.” He flashed his battle-grin at me. “I love you, too, Moirin,” he said, adding a familiar warning. “So try not to get yourself killed, huh?”
I smiled back at him. “You, too. Once was enough.”
At my word, Hasan Dar ordered his men to avert their gazes so that I might summon the twilight to hide us from all eyes. I took another deep breath and called it, wrapping it around Bao and me.
The world turned soft and silver-dim. Behind us, there were cries of wonder at finding us vanished. In the distant heights, I felt the flicker of Kamadeva’s diamond calling to me.
I ignored it, focusing on the path before us. “Let’s go.”
SEVENTY
The path was so narrow we were forced to ride single file, and its walls were steep and high. I’d never felt so claustrophobic in a natural place before, painfully aware of the fact that we were trapped here, that if I lost my grip on the twilight, Bao and I would be the first targets. With a hundred men behind us, there was no chance of escape.