Chapter 47 Chandra
CHANDRA
Chandra kept dreaming the same dream.
He stood upon a field. It was night, and the field was black beneath him, the ash smoldering, fractured with starlight. Around him were women dressed in bridal red, crowns of fire glowing on their skulls. They stretched off into the distance, so many women that he could not count them all.
“We are waiting for you,” one said, wreaths of smoke gathering at her feet.
Always, it was the same: relief crashing through him. Elation. He was where he was meant to be. He knew them, and they knew him.
He went to his knees.
“Mothers,” he gasped. “Mothers of flame. I am here. Tell me what you desire, and it will be done.”
“Oh, Chandra,” another said pityingly. “We are not the mothers. The mothers don’t wait to greet you with glory.
You are no one’s chosen. A tale you tell yourself is not a true thing simply because you say so.
Do the tides obey you? The waning of the moon?
No. Then why should pitiless fate garb you in glory, simply because you believe you should be glorious? ”
“You are not chosen,” said another voice. Sweet, airy. He almost knew it. Had he heard it before, in the palace, from a girl walking at his sister’s side? “Your mothers speak. The nameless speaks. And you close your ears.”
“I am chosen,” he said, and the ashen wind caught his voice and carried it away, leaving his mouth empty. “I am,” he whispered. “My faith guides me. My faith protects me.”
“Faith,” one laughs. Faith, the rest echo. “What is there to have faith in? There is only the void, Chandra.”
She loomed over him. Her crown was dripping fire like water. It poured down over her face, which was empty—nothing and everything all at once.
“We are waiting,” she said. “In the void, Chandra. We are waiting for you.”
The fire wound its way into his mouth. Burned, hot and vicious and agonizing, through his lungs, his belly, the viscera of him.
He woke with a howl.
One of his loyal lords advised him in the presence of the court that he should lead the fight against his sister. “You must go beyond the walls, Emperor,” he urged desperately. “You did not go to the Veri. But you must defend Harsinghar. Your men need you.”
“An emperor’s place is in his mahal,” Chandra snapped. “Not in the dirt of battle. I will not abandon my throne.”
“Emperor, it would not be abandonment,” the man said. “Your father led his men in battle. And his father before him—”
“Am I my father?” Chandra thundered. His vision was swimming, exhaustion and fury mingling together. “Am I an emperor who debases himself, lowers himself to the level of those who do not have Divyanshi’s blood? No.”
Silence. The lord bowed deep, lowering his gaze.
I will not leave my throne, Chandra thought wildly. It is mine, by the mothers, by destiny, by blood. There was a terrible fear in him that if he walked away from the mahal—walked from this hall, this throne, the carapace of his power—he would have nothing. He would be nothing.
“Get out of my sight,” he said. “You do not deserve to be in my presence. Go. All of you.”
The lords ran. And Chandra placed his face in his hands and wept.
He went to the temple.
Even before Hemanth had taken him under his wing, the temple had been his solace.
He had never avoided worship, as Aditya had; had never smiled and allowed the words of the Book of Mothers to slide off him like water, ignoring every entreaty from the priesthood to stay and learn and know what it meant to serve Parijatdvipa.
No, unlike his brother, he had read the Book of Mothers over and over to himself.
He had gone willingly to worship at the imperial temple, his sister arranging garlands at the altar with his mother.
He had watched them both: The slight figure of his mother laying out flowers, and his sister’s even slighter form beside her, performing piety, and thought of them burning. He’d felt something rise through him at that thought. A peace, and a rightness.
He had told his mother of it once. She had looked at him as if he were a stranger.
Hemanth had never recoiled from him. Hemanth had truly seen Chandra, and molded him into a man worthy of his name.
He had given Chandra a faith that was simple and pure, as clear as glass: The Parijati were the mothers’ chosen.
Chandra had a holy bloodline, and holy purpose.
The only rightful path for the empire lay in his heart and his hands.
Chandra sat in the gardens upon a bench. Beneath trees, in gentle sunlight. Lowered his head into his palms.
He heard Hemanth’s approach. The gentle whisper of robes. He felt Hemanth’s hand come to rest upon his forehead. Tender.
“The world,” Chandra said into the silence, “is even stranger and crueler than I imagined.”
The priest said nothing.
“You should have told me all your fears,” Chandra said. “All the things your priests had said. You should have told me a long time ago. Why didn’t you?”
“I knew,” said the High Priest, as he stroked Chandra’s hair, “that you would respond as you have. That you would fear the yaksa more than you have ever feared any mortal man. More than any subordinate king, claiming falsely to be your equal.”
“I fear nothing,” Chandra choked out, knowing it was a lie.
“You have always desired order and meaning. And I have striven to give it to you. Faith has been your armor and your guiding star. I am sorry that the sky is clouded by ill omens.”
Chandra let a breath shudder out of him. At least he had Hemanth. Even Hemanth’s loyalty was imperfect. But Hemanth loved him, and Chandra loved him in turn. Hemanth was better than any family Chandra had ever possessed. He could forgive this. He would.
“I’ll do it,” Chandra said finally. “I will tell all my men, all my warriors—capture her. Bring her to me. And then I’ll… convince her.” His voice choked on that word. Convince. Would he be expected to beg her? He would not.
“My emperor is wise,” Hemanth said. “As I always knew.”
“I dream sometimes of the women who have burned to save Parijatdvipa,” Chandra confessed. “I dream that they—they laugh at me. They tell me I will join them. That the mothers do not choose me.” He squeezed his eyes tight, holding back furious tears. “Tell me the dreams are false.”
Hemanth’s hand paused upon his hair. A beat passed, and then he resumed the motion. “The dreams are false,” he said.
“The mothers chose me, didn’t they?” Chandra said, knowing his voice sounded like a plea and not caring. “I am the one who will defeat the yaksa, am I not? I’ll fashion the empire into greatness, placing Parijat high?”
“The mothers made you,” Hemanth said. “Your faith and your idealism, your vision for a better world, and the bravery with which you seek it. Be the man they made you, Chandra. Go beyond the walls. Claim your sister.”
He thought of it. Going beyond the walls. His fire on a sword in his hands.
Like a knife strike, the image came to him again—the faceless burned woman. The laughter.
In the void, Chandra. We are waiting for you.
“I will send my men,” he said, through the dizzying feeling running through him—a feeling like the heat of a pyre. “I will meet her before the holy fire. And I will claim my fate. As the mothers intend.”