Chapter 43 Malini #2
“And then I was saved,” she went on, quiet weight in her words.
“Saved by a priest dressed as a soldier, who worshipped not as your brethren do in Parijat itself, but as Saketans do. With no less faith, but with different effigies. With marks on their skin. And I placed my trust in his Saketan fellows—who saw me, it seemed, as I knew I should be seen: as a devoted worshipper of the mothers. As someone who wanted to save Parijatdvipa. They asked me to obey, and I obeyed. And for my piety, I was sent here, to you.” She stepped closer to him.
His gaze was steady and piercing, as all priests’ eyes were, but that did not mean she had failed to understand him and his wants.
“It can be no secret, why I’m here. I want the support of the priests of the mothers when I take my throne.
I cannot rule Parijatdvipa without you. Nor do I wish to. ”
“You would admit such vulnerability?” His voice was soft, almost kind. “I am a stranger to you, even if you are not one to me.”
“No priest of the mothers is truly a stranger to me,” Malini said in return.
“I share blood with Divyanshi, the first mother of flame. I felt her voice in me when I took up the mantle of empress. If the priests of the mothers are the hands and eyes of the mothers and serve their will, then we are almost kin, you and I.”
“Generous words,” he said. “But you are willing to kill your kin. And kill priests, also.”
“Priests of the nameless, who died willingly. Surely you will not denigrate their sacrifice by calling it murder at my hands.”
He inclined his head, accepting her words.
“I am an orphan, Divyanshi’s scion,” he said—she noted, neatly sidestepping the question of whether to call her empress or princess in the process.
“I had no one, before a temple of the faceless mother claimed me. But it was the High Priest who raised me to the position I now occupy, and he is perhaps the closest thing to a father I possess. And he supports your brother Chandra wholeheartedly.”
“And yet,” Malini said, “Here I stand.”
“Perhaps this is a trap for you,” he replied, speaking her own suspicions. “To return you to your brother’s care.”
She shook her head.
“I was given a gift,” said Malini. “A box of stone, with a bloom of magical fire inside it.”
“A good lure,” he said. “One small gift of mother-blessed fire? An easy way to lull you into trust. Did you not consider that? Surely you did.”
“I did.”
“And you brought no guards with you? No soldiers? Such unpreparedness suggests a mind ill-suited to the throne.”
“The fire itself was not the gift,” Malini said, ignoring his taunt.
She would not be lured into revealing what defenses—and weapons—she had easily to hand.
“It was its death that was your gift to me.
Priest, I held the flame on my own saber.
Felt its strength and heat. And I watched it wither and fade.
That is not how the fire the mothers died for—the fire that saved us from the yaksa—behaves.
I know every line of the Book of Mothers. I know this with utter certainty.
“The fire of the mothers could not be quenched,” she quoted. “It burned as the sun burns. It burned with blessed strength.”
“It carried in it the hearts of the mothers,” he continued, taking up the cadence of her words.
There was—she was fairly sure—a light of approval in his eyes.
“It ate and ate, burned with fury, until it swallowed all the yaksa whole, and left the people of Parijatdvipa unharmed. And with the yaksa dead, the mothers’ fire departed. ”
“You gave me the fire as a message,” Malini said, as his words died into silence.
“You know, priest, that the fire my brother has created is not the fire of the mothers. You know he is not the worthy heir to Parijatdvipa that he believes he is. That the priests of the mothers have, perhaps, long believed he is. I can only assume that you want something from me that Chandra cannot give you.”
His expression remained approving. He inclined his head.
“You are wise in your scripture,” he murmured.
“As all Parijatdvipans should be,” Malini replied.
She filled her voice with conviction. “I want to serve Parijatdvipa. I want to lead Parijatdvipa, as I know the mothers desire from me. You know what I want from you and your fellows, priest. I know you want to help me. I feel it. But we are creatures that live in the world, flawed though it may be, and we seek to protect our own. The Parijati priesthood has gained a great deal of power under my brother’s rule.
Military power. Political. I understand that remaining loyal to him may be—compelling.
So I must ask: What do you need from me that he cannot provide? ”
He was silent. Malini took a step closer still.
“All I have done, I have done for faith,” she said. “Now place your faith in me, priest. It is only fair. Only just.”
He inclined his head in agreement.
“There is a war coming,” the priest said.
“You don’t speak of my war with Chandra,” Malini murmured.
“No. Not that. Though it is the priests I have trained who serve in Chandra’s battles.”
Ah. That explained his rise in the ranks of royal priestly service, then, despite his Saketan heritage.
“Once, the priests who stand above me—the High Priest among them—believed that the fight for a better Ahiranya would be fought by its emperor, against disloyal highborn. Men who had forgotten their vows to the mothers. But I always knew that was not so.” A pause.
Then he said, “You perhaps saw things unnatural and strange in Ahiranya. Or Prince Aditya showed you visions of the nameless. Or you have seen what comes in the presence of the rot.” His voice had a steady cadence, even and sure.
“You know what I know. You know our ancient enemy comes. That is the war that lies upon the horizon. The nameless, the mothers, the faceless mother herself—they speak with the same voice. The yaksa will return. The rot heralded them. They will come, and there will be war again.”
The hair on the back of her neck rose.
The yaksa.
There was a terrible sense, within her, of things slotting into place—as what she had seen in Ahiranya, and what she had seen since, reworked into new shapes in her head and heart.
Rot flowering across the empire, and Priya’s great magic.
Rivers upended, and vines working their way through skin.
Alone these things were horrors and miracles; wound together, in one garland, they were a warning. A harbinger.
“You can’t be sure,” she said, reflexive, unwilling to believe it. But she already knew it was true. The dread had flooded through her body and settled coldly within her.
“I am sure,” he said. “If you seek Prince Aditya, he will assure you of the same. His nameless god has spoken to him as I have been spoken to. I do not doubt it. The yaksa are coming, and they will attempt to seize all of Parijatdvipa as their own once more.”
Had Aditya truly known this was coming? Why hadn’t he told her, warned her?
Had he tried, all those times he has spoken of his faith and its power—and had she simply failed to heed him?
She could not consider it further now; couldn’t allow the memory of her priest brother to distract her from the priest who stood before her.
“You would have me lead that war,” she said, even as her heart turned, even as she knew. She knew.
“I would have you win that war,” he said. “For Parijatdvipa. For your people. I would have you win it with all the merciful strength of your great ancestor.”
“You want me to agree to burn,” she said. It did not shock her as much as it should have. Even as she felt numb horror work its way through her—even as her body went colder still, and the memory of smoke filled her throat—
She had known, in her heart of hearts, that fire would come for her again.
“You want me to rise to the pyre,” she said.
“With willingness and with joy,” he agreed. Leaned forward, a softness in his mien that soothed her when it should not have. “You have the look of Divyanshi, you know,” he said.
“I have been told so,” Malini said. “Many times.”
“The High Priest seeks to make a world that is stronger and better—more true to the hopes and dreams of the mothers who burned for us. In Chandra, he saw the means to create that world. But he saw it in you too when you were a girl. You were good,” Kartik said with absolute certainty.
An intimacy in his voice that he had no right to.
“Good and dutiful. The High Priest and all the venerable priests of the imperial temple impressed upon Chandra the importance of maintaining your purity of spirit, and Chandra sought to do so. He sought to make you into what you must be. A worthy symbol of Parijatdvipa’s glory.
Divyanshi’s scion, your brother, wished for you to burn to make your purity everlasting, and Parijatdvipa’s along with it. When you refused, it hurt him sorely.”
“It was my right,” Malini said, instead of replying with the truth in its entirety—that there had been nothing pure about the fury that had led him to see her heart sisters burned; that framing a violent hatred in the flesh of faith did not make it any less brutal or monstrous.
That her hurt had been far greater, and of far more worth than whatever paltry excuse for a heart lived inside him.
“If Chandra had been a true faithful of the mothers, he would have accepted my choice. He did not.”
Kartik inclined his head in acknowledgment.
“He did not,” he agreed. “Emperor Chandra is a man of…
focus. His vision is like an arrow. Now, he has begun to understand that the war for a better Parijatdvipa will not be fought against princes and kings.
Or a sister in revolt. He understands this is the return of an ancient struggle.
But years of belief that he will face a mortal war have…
led him astray. And his mind will not be easily moved.