Shadowed by Demons, Book 3 of the Death Wizard Chronicles (39 page)

The battle continued. Betrayed by their own rage, all four witches transformed into their hideous selves, and rather than coordinate, as they had in the beginning, they acted as individuals and lashed out wildly, making it easier for Rati to avoid their attacks. Three more Mogols fell—with just three strokes.

He leapt onto one of the wagons, destroyed all six barrels, and then fought his way to another. The witches’ chaotic assaults began to work against them, their own magic blowing several barrels apart. Only one wagon remained, but the surviving Mogols climbed into its bed to defend it. The witches joined them and formed a wall in front of the wagon, knowing that its precious contents were all that was left of their original cargo.

“‘Come, Asēkha,’ their leader squealed. ‘We await youuuu,’” Rati said to Tāseti, “And then, before my eyes, they all transformed to their beautiful selves, as if that would somehow seduce me. Though their artificial loveliness had no effect, their magic did. The wounds I had suffered from their earlier strikes began to fester, and dizziness overcame me. I was like a rodent bitten by a viper—and suddenly realized that I was beaten. My only hope was to escape and tell my story to others.

“Instead of attacking, I ran toward Ogha and cast myself into its currents, where I was tossed to-and-fro until darkness overtook me. When I woke, it was morning. I had somehow become entangled in the roots of a great oak that had fallen into the river. For this reason only was my life spared, for the oak had held my head above the water, but my
uttara
and other weapons were gone, as if the river had taken them as payment for my life.”

“And how did you come to be here?” Tāseti said.

“With great effort I reached the bank, but I was wrought with fever. For days afterward, I wandered in the plains, hoping somehow to reach Nissaya—or at least, come upon a friendly face. In that regard, I succeeded.”

“And the last barrels?”

“I can only assume their contents were dumped into the Ogha. The citizens of Senasana are in peril, but I was too sickened to warn them.”

“Once the remaining barrels were dumped into the river, the damage was done,” Tāseti said. “The
undines
multiply so quickly. The entire lower half of the river could have become contaminated in just a few hours. Ten thousand people live along its banks and many more that number in the city itself. You could have warned a bare fraction. Going to the city would have done you no good then, and it will do us no good now. We have no choice but to continue on our way.”

“My mission failed.”

Tāseti lifted Rati’s right hand and kissed his palm. “Only The Torgon himself might have prevailed against such foes,” she said. “Do not despair.”

Rati smiled wanly. Then his face grew puzzled. “The odd thing is, in the tumult of the river I lost all my weapons, but my skin remained attached to my belt, though it was loosely tied. When I refilled it, it didn’t even leak. How can something so delicate survive, while something so strong does not?”

“Such is the way of the world,” Tāseti said.

AFTER RECOUNTING his tale, Rati slept some more. Tāseti waited until noon before waking him. The Asēkha stood shakily, took a few steps, and then sat back down. Chieftain loomed over both of them, neighing with a sense of urgency.

Finally Tāseti leaned over Rati and said to him what Kusala had dreaded to say to her. “You are too weak to continue on to Nissaya by yourself. Instead, you must accompany me to Anna.”

To her relief, Rati did not protest. After taking a long swig from his skin, he stood on his own and climbed onto Chieftain’s back. “I will ride, and you will walk,” Rati said. Then he collapsed upon the gelding’s neck and fell asleep again.

Though they moved slowly throughout the day, the trio managed to cover another seven leagues before dusk. Chieftain had been bred for endurance and was capable of traveling long distances day after day, as long as the pace was reasonable and he was watered and well-fed. Rati dozed fitfully, sometimes crying out and startling the good-tempered gelding. Despite the Asēkha’s erratic behavior, the horse never bolted, but he did appear to give Rati what Tāseti perceived to be dirty looks. She couldn’t help but chuckle. Sometime during the afternoon, she made the decision to keep the horse as a personal pet.

When they finally camped, they were within ten leagues of the northwestern shore of Keo, the second largest freshwater lake in the known world. Chieftain led them to a spring hidden at the base of a hollow. A trio of large cats—called Lyons by the wild men of Kolankold—noticed their approach and scampered off. The horse would have made an excellent meal for the enormous predators, but they were obviously wary of Tāseti. Still, Chieftain was nervous and huddled near the Asēkhas, refusing to wander more than a few paces to graze.

Rati crawled on hands and knees to the spring and plunged his face into the water. Though there were many animal tracks in the vicinity, the spring was constantly replenished from deep beneath the ground and so remained potable. Rati drank until his stomach bulged, but rather than make him even more sluggish, it seemed to perk him up. After Tāseti rubbed fresh salve into his wounds, he sat up until midnight, drinking even more water from the spring and eating salted beef, brown bread, and raw carrots from Tāseti’s pack.

She was relieved. The ill effects of the injuries and poisons from his battle with the witches seemed to be losing their grip on the powerful warrior. When he finally slept, his breathing was steady.

The next morning, they left without bothering to fill their skins, knowing that water would be plentiful over the next leg of their journey. Rati seemed as strong as when she had last seen him by Lake Ti-ratana. He even offered to walk, and though she refused at first, he insisted, saying that he needed the exercise. The pair ended up walking together. They spoke long about Anna’s role in the war, and what they would do to defend the Tent City if both Nissaya and Jivita fell.

Eventually, they picked up the pace and broke into a jog. Chieftain joined the game, galloping far past, waiting for them to catch up, and then racing by them again. Tāseti and Rati laughed so hard they had to stop and slap their knees.

By late afternoon they were within a stone’s throw of Lake Keo. Though trees were sparse throughout most of the Gray Plains, a mile-wide band of woodlands—mostly cypress, birch, poplars, and a few longleaf pines—surrounded the banks of Keo. The poplars were in spring bloom, coating broad portions of the grassy ground with pollen.

A young deer wandered within their range of vision. Rati borrowed Tāseti’s sling and brought the doe down with a single bead. They built a fire by the water’s edge and roasted the loins, fearing no assault. The nearest danger was the wild men of Kolankold, who lived in the eastern foothills more than twenty leagues away. Tāseti broke her fast and ate a little of the meat, but Rati devoured several times his normal portion, as if ravenous. Then he drank enough water from the lake for both of them. Afterward, he was chatty again before falling into another deep sleep.

They ate more of the deer for breakfast and then roped it to Chieftain’s back, though the gelding didn’t like that at all. For the next part of their march, the terrain was friendly. The woodlands came to a sudden halt about fifty paces from the lake, and the grassy banks sloped gently to the water’s edge. They made good time again, covering almost twelve leagues by nightfall. After camping, they roasted more of the deer and slept well.

The next morning, Chieftain would not allow them to strap what remained of the doe to his back. Neither of them wanted to carry it, so they abandoned the carcass by the water’s edge, where it would serve as a meal for a wandering bear or Lyon. By noon, they had come to the southernmost point of Lake Keo. Five leagues farther south lay the havens where the Asēkhas had sequestered the noble ones the previous summer.

A small band of Tugars had remained with the noble ones as guardians. Tāseti looked forward to seeing these warriors. Along with Rati, their presence would make the long journey from the havens to Anna far more tolerable. But the noble ones tended to move slowly, seeming to have no concept of what it meant to hurry. They would stop to examine anything that caught their eye: wildflowers, butterflies, termite mounds, even Buffelo dung. Their behavior endlessly fascinated The Torgon, but Tāseti found it annoying. She did not share her lord’s wisdom or patience. He was beyond her. And so were the noble ones, apparently.

After Tāseti filled her skin, they continued on. Less than a mile south of the lake, Rati cursed himself for forgetting to do the same. His skin was about a fourth full, but the water had become old and bitter. He hadn’t bothered to drink from it in quite a while, and there had been no need to refill it during their march along Keo.

“Should we go back? There’s no more water between here and the havens.”

“We’ll be there before sunset,” Tāseti said. “My skin has plenty for both of us. And Chieftain carries his own water. We’ll be fine.”

And so they were. In the late afternoon, a Tugarian scout greeted the trio enthusiastically. Even as Tāseti was clasping forearms with the large male warrior, she felt a strange rumble, as if the land was announcing their arrival. By dusk, the havens were within sight. Soon Tāseti would be face to face with Sister Tathagata.

“Kusala, I curse thee,” she said out loud. “It’s bad enough that I’m going to miss the battle at Nissaya. But making me put up with Tathagata all the way to Anna? I’ll never forgive for this.”

THE TERRAIN SOUTH of Dibbu-Loka was craggy and awkward. Even the stunted grass of the Gray Plains, which dominated an area larger than the forests of Dhutanga, Kincara, and Java combined, surrendered to the somber crumble of dust and rock. Limestone cliffs sprang from the ground with stunning suddenness. There were nooks within nooks and crannies within crannies—most too miserable to explore. It was a terrible place to live, but a clever place to hide.

Tāseti, Rati, and the Tugar scout marched southward along the ancient road that eventually plunged toward lands unknown even to the
Kantaara Yodhas
. They encountered little in the way of life, except for a pair of ostriches, a small herd of oryxes, and circling vultures, ever present. Otherwise silence surrounded them. They approached a towering escarpment, its sheer side speckled with scattered patches of vegetation. Slabs of rock lay about its base, long ago fallen and now dark with age.

They came upon a secret place known only to the Tugars. A curled lip of rock concealed a narrow crevice. From the outside, the crevice appeared to end abruptly just a stone’s throw away. In reality, it angled sharply to the right and plunged into the thick wall before ascending to a rounded tunnel with a sand floor.

Tāseti went first, then Rati. The scout did not follow. Instead, he climbed onto the gelding and rode farther south to a pen shaded by a rock overhang, but not before the second in command told him to take especially good care of Chieftain. The warrior laughed heartily at the name.

Tāseti and Rati crawled through the tunnel for a distance of one hundred paces, eventually spilling into a torchlit chamber tall enough even for a Tugar to stand. Two more desert warriors greeted them, bowing low to their Asēkha superiors and then grasping forearms.

Tāseti and Rati continued down a wide passageway, also lighted by torches, before finally arriving at a cavern as large as the inside of a castle.

A dozen more Tugars trotted forward and bowed. The defenders of the haven had been hard at work, preparing another meal for their guests. Since Torg’s encounter with Mala at Dibbu-Loka the previous summer, the five hundred monks and nuns of the holy city had called this cavern their home, sharing it with their Tugarian guardians as well as a few rats, scorpions, and rattlesnakes. Almost anyone but the noble ones would have gone stir crazy, but they saw it as just another opportunity to learn the value of patience.

The floor, walls, and ceiling of the cavern were smooth and polished. In the center of the main chamber stood three long stone tables set low to the floor. Next to these tables lay an unquenchable spring that rose from the bedrock, only thirty paces in circumference but immeasurably deep. Rati knelt down, pursed his lips, and drank his fill. After that, he rinsed out the stale contents of his skin and refilled it with fresh water.

Dozens of other chambers fed off the main one, some as large as houses, others as small as bedrooms. From many of the ceilings, natural shafts wound their way to the high plateau that formed the roof of the haven. In one large room, the shaft vented enough air to enable the Tugars to cook with fire.

“Where are they now?” Tāseti said to a Tugar warrior known as Appam.

“They are meditating in the darkest cave they can find. Other than eat, sleep, bathe, and relieve themselves, meditation is all they do. We even feed them and clean their robes. They’re not the greatest at pitching in with the chores, but otherwise they are easy to shepherd. I’ve heard not a single complaint, and I’ve been here since you and the Asēkhas first brought them in the wagons.”

“And where is
she
?”

“Sister Tathagata leads them in meditation,” Appam said. Then he chuckled. “I would rather be in Nissaya or Jivita, but I must admit that being here with her has not been as bad as I expected. My own meditation has never been as peaceful, and my thoughts never as clear. It’s enough to make you want to cast down your sword. The
Perfect One
, as they like to call her, has little use for violence. And she has ways of winning you over.”

“I’ve listened to her lectures,” Tāseti said. “Lord Torgon adores them, but they always make me feel guilty. What’s the use of warrior training if the skills you acquire are considered harmful? It’s not as though Tugars seek violence for its own sake. But neither do we shy from it. She would have us lay down our arms and surrender to Invictus? Bow our heads and allow them to be separated from our bodies? No matter how hard I try, I cannot see the wisdom in that.”

“She seeks
Abhisambodhi
in this lifetime,” the warrior said. “Nothing else, or I should say, anything less holds little interest for her. She says, ‘
Jaati pariyaadinnaa. Me kato aakankhito. N’atthi punaagamano.
(Birth is exhausted. I have done what was needed. There is nothing more).’”

Tāseti started to respond, but Rati came forward and interrupted. “What’s for dinner?” he said, his hair dripping wet.

Tāseti looked at Appam. “Does the
Perfect One
permit us to dine?”

“The High Nun will not eat the flesh of animals,” Appam said. “She and her noble ones survive on cholla berries, ground mesquite, flower buds, seedpods, and cactus juice. That must be how they stay so slender.”

Tāseti snorted. “As my Vasi master used to say, ‘Tugars cannot live on bread alone.’”

“Shhhh!” Rati said harshly. “They come.” And then in a whisper, “She leads.”

Tāseti cursed Kusala under her breath before turning and forcing a smile.

WHILE RATI and the Tugar guardians sat at their own table and feasted on the carcass of a roasted pronghorn antelope, protocol of rank forced Tāseti to join Sister Tathagata at one of the long tables. The noble ones always ate in silence, paying mindful attention to every morsel of food, even counting how many times they chewed.

Tāseti had a warrior’s habit of devouring all her meals in a hurry, as if the enemy might attack at any moment. But she had to admit that eating slowly did increase her pleasure. Mesquite bread had never tasted so good, and the tang of the cactus juice made her tongue tingle. Though she was uncomfortable in the sister’s presence, she enjoyed the meal, even without roasted meat as the main course.

Afterward, the Tugars gave them herbal tea and biscuits made of ground wheat and honey. Tāseti allowed herself the luxury of service—a reward for being the only one sitting with Tathagata. When the meal was completed, the sister stood and grasped the Asēkha’s muscular bicep with her slender fingers. Then she dragged her toward the haven’s exit.

“Dark caves are excellent for meditation,” she said to Tāseti, “but fresh air’s better for talking. Walk with me beneath the stars.”

“Of course, High Nun,” Tāseti said uncomfortably.

“No need to be so formal,” Tathagata said. “Call me Sister. In fact, just call me Sis.” Then she laughed. Lord Torgon often spoke about how much he loved the High Nun’s laugh, and it surprised Tāseti to find that she also found it pleasant.

The crescent moon had not yet risen, but the clear sky was ablaze with stars. The last time Tāseti remembered rain was the night she and the Asēkhas attacked the enemy camp in the Gap of Gamana.

Just two weeks ago
.
It feels like two months
.

“Where are your thoughts?” the High Nun said, startling Tāseti, who wasn’t used to being startled.

“I was thinking about rain. This time of year, we get so little east of the mountains
 . . .
especially in the heart of Tējo, where it rarely rains except in early winter.”

“A person of my attainment isn’t supposed to become attached to things. But in this instance, at least, I can’t seem to help it. I love rain. In a past life, I must have lived somewhere where it was always wet. Dibbu-Loka and this place”—she pointed in the direction of the haven—“are too parched for my tastes.”