The Star-Touched Queen Page 9

  “In this fate, the boy becomes a mercenary. The king never raises him. Instead, he must fight to survive. But the peace he fought so hard for in the other life is much more easily accomplished in this outcome.”

  I closed my eyes, watching this version of the boy’s life unwind behind my eyes. Instead of words to unite a kingdom, he used war. He had his peace, but it was a fragile thing, born of blood and at the cost of an entire country’s legacy.

  “And his mother?”

  “She slips into the Otherworld a mere year later.”

  “Why isn’t there an option where she avoids the Otherworld altogether?”

  “There are some pulls of fate that no one can alter,” said Amar, his voice worn. “While our kingdom has great power, some fates are fixed. All we can do is move in the spaces left ambiguous. Thankfully, fate leaves most things ambiguous.”

  The village fire heated my face and I turned away from the flames.

  “Get me away from here,” I said hoarsely.

  My throat tightened. So this is what maintaining the borders of the realms meant. It was a cruel duty. Amar’s cloak fell across my eyes. I breathed deeply, letting the black silk cut off my sight.

  When I opened my eyes, we were standing in the throne room. Amar drew the cloak away slowly, his fingers grazing my arms so lightly it might have been unintentional. That familiar warmth jolted in my stomach and I stepped back.

  Beside me, the tapestry was dormant. Although it unfurled into beautiful pictures of the sky, sea and land, my eyes kept returning to its torn seam. It looked like a wound.

  “What happened there?” I asked, pointing at the tear.

  He stilled, refusing to turn in the tear’s direction. Finally, he spoke.

  “Sometimes, a great trauma in the worlds can untether the threads. Hopefully, the tear will never concern us again.” His voice was quiet, dream-like, as if the tapestry were a sleeping thing he couldn’t bear to awaken. “But enough of that. Only one of the boy’s thread outcomes may survive. It is your decision.”

  “Does the mother die when she enters the Otherworld?”

  I pictured the Dharma Raja, the lord of justice in the Afterlife, riding toward the boy’s mother, swinging his noose to collect her soul and taking her to his bleak kingdom to await reincarnation.

  Amar’s lips pressed into a thin line. “No one really dies. Death is just another state of life.”

  “What’s the boy’s name?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” I said. “Each thread has a color and each color belongs to a person. If I’m going to make such a decision, I don’t want a nameless person on my conscience.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier keep your victim faceless?”

  I shuddered. “Not a victim.”

  “What else do you call one hemmed in by fate?”

  “Human,” I said, bitterness creeping into my voice.

  “What about guilt, then? Why open yourself to pain?”

  “Guilt is what makes you accountable.”

  Amar smiled and I sensed that I had passed some test. “His name is Vikram.” I repeated the name in my head. “You need not make your decisions now. That moment takes practice. But if the time comes and you cannot perform—”

  “No,” I said, a little too quickly. This was what I had wanted all these years, hadn’t I? The chance to demonstrate that I was worthy of power? I couldn’t back down now. “I can do it.”

  “I never doubted you.”

  My anger wilted.

  “Last night, I told you I would test you,” said Amar, stretching his hands. “Consider this our first lesson.”

  11

  A BLOOM OF MARBLE

  He walked to the center of the room, his hand hovering over the marble tiles. The space around him shimmered. Enchantment suffused the room. The floor trembled and in the next instant, a dusky pillar shot out from the ground. Its column ended in a delicate marble bud fashioned like an unopened flower bloom. He lay one hand against the bloom of stone, tapping his fingers against it expectantly.

  “Ruling Akaran is a strange task. In many ways, it is like balancing an illusion. You must separate the illusion of what you see and the reality of its consequences,” he said. “Tell me, my queen, are you ready to play with fate?”

  The light in the room dimmed so that the tapestry’s glittering threads were all but faint shimmers.

  “Is that necessary?” I asked, waving my hand around the darkened room.

  “You will learn to appreciate the shadows here. Better that you become accustomed to them now. The dark is more than just the absence of light. Think of it as a space for your thoughts.”

  “My thoughts prefer sunlit spaces.”

  “Then your thoughts need an education,” said Amar. “Allow me to enlighten them.”

  He thudded his palm against the stone blossom. With a quiver, the marble petals uncurled. At the center crouched a marble bird. Amar tapped the bird once and it trembled, shaking its wings of stone and turning its head to glare at me. A small chain wrapped around its claws, rooting it to the slab.

  “How did you—” I started, stretching a finger toward the animated bird when I felt a sudden heaviness in my arm. I turned to see a long sword in my grip. A flash of cold shot through me.

  “Go on,” said Amar, gesturing at the stone bird in a bored voice. “It is a mere illusion of marble. Use your sword.”

  “And do what with it?”

  “What do you think swords are used for?” he asked drily.

  I glanced between the bird and the sword. His words were as good as an execution. I cringed. Even though it was stone, a sense of wrongness crept through me. It looked so alive.

  “How is this a test?”

  “That remains to be seen. Now do as you will.” Amar unfolded his arms and his voice was a dark purr in my ear. “What’s this, my queen? All your vicious speech and you are moved to mercy by a stone bird?”

  My grip tightened on the stone. The stone bird hopped a pace. Heat coursed through my veins. I didn’t even feel the weight of the sword in my arm. I raised it over my head and brought it down. Metal crunched into stone and bile rose into my throat. I dropped the sword, shaking. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the remains of the stone bird, but I glimpsed it from the corner of my eye—shards of marble like bone slivers.

  “There,” I bit out. “I performed your test.”

  Amar considered me for a moment, arms crossed, lips pursed into a thin line.

  “No. You failed my test. You sacrificed an innocent thing.”

  Nausea roiled in my stomach. “But you said it was an illusion.”

  “It is.” He picked up a piece of what once was the stone bird. “Nothing more than stone.” He snapped his fingers and the bird reappeared—whole and animated. Its wings shivered behind its body and it fixed an irritated gaze on me.

  “The bird was not the innocent thing. It’s the feeling,” said Amar, dusting his palms. “Preservation is an innocent desire. And you let arrogance compromise that.”

  “Arrogance?” I returned, my cheeks burning. “I was showing strength. Strength that I could be—”

  “—merciless and thoughtless?” returned Amar. He flashed a vulpine grin. “Kill, if you must. String a garland of severed heads around your waist if you want. I would take you in my arms if you were drenched in blood or dressed in rubies … but think. Impulsiveness is a dangerous thing.”

  “You gave me no choice—”

  “I merely gave a command. ‘Use your sword.’ You were the one who thought there was only one choice.”

  “When I asked what you wanted me to do with it, you … you asked me what swords are for…” I finished quietly. He hadn’t actually said what to do.

  Amar picked up the sword from the ground and twirled it against the marble.

  “Swords could also be used for freeing. You could’ve cut through the chain around the bird’s foot and set it free. Swords could be used
for killing. But it needn’t be the bird. Wouldn’t the more merciful choice have been to use the sword against the oppressor?”

  “So run the sword through you?”

  “Why not? Everything is a matter of interpretation. And that is how you will rule,” he said, before handing the sword’s hilt to me. “Think on what you’ve seen today. But do not let me influence you. Your will is yours alone.”

  I stared at the sword in my hand, still gleaming despite the dark. “I can promise you I won’t forget.”

  Amar paused, his voice soft. “Memory is a riddled thing. I would caution you from making promises you cannot keep.”

  I moved toward the door, but Amar stopped me with a shake of his head. “Gupta will arrive in a moment to escort you.” He straightened the cuffs of his sherwani jacket. “I myself have a number of duties to attend to, so I must leave.”

  Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “Why?”

  He paused and took a step to me. Darkness, soft-edged and heavy, clung to the room. In the shadows, his smile held all the lazy grace of a cat.

  “Would you miss me?”

  “Curiosity inspired my question. Nothing more,” I said, but even my voice was unconvinced.

  “Even so, there’s no greater temptation than to stay by your side.”

  The door swung open and a chorus of voices trickled into the room—silvery and indistinct, like whispers released through clenched teeth. Amar lingered for a moment, his lips tight as though he wanted to say something.

  Then, he cupped his palms together and blew into them. When he opened his hands, a bloom of light shaped like an unopened flower bud lifted off his palm and floated into the room. Brightness drenched away the shadows.

  “I will never leave you in the dark.”

  And with that, he left.

  * * *

  I waited for the door to shut before I sank against the throne. I buried my face in my hands, squeezing my eyes shut. When Amar promised me the power of a hundred kings, this wasn’t what I had in mind. It felt wrong. My duty was to tweak people’s fortunes like they were designs gone awry instead of lives filled with dreams, quirks and ambitions. A knock at the door pulled me out of my thoughts.

  “Are you ready to change for dinner?” asked Gupta.

  I frowned, turning to the windows of the throne room. When I had stepped inside, I was sure it had been broad daylight. Now, wispy clouds like ghost skins streaked a crimson sky.

  “Yes,” I called back, still trying to work out the time I had lost.

  Gupta said nothing as he led me from the throne room back to the bedroom, but there was nothing stiff or awkward in his silence. He was grinning to himself and every now and then when he caught my eye, he beamed.

  “I will wait for you out here.”

  “There’s no need, I remember my way back to the dining room.”

  Gupta shook his head. “I insist.”

  “If you insist,” I said stiffly, annoyance prickling inside.

  I entered the room and immediately noticed a new sari folded delicately on the bed—yards of dove-gray silk strewn with pearls. I dressed quickly before meeting Gupta outside and we walked through the halls. The mirror portals paneling the walls glittered strange reflections. Lush hills carpeted in small blue flowers, a forest tangled with lights and a bone white temple balanced between the tips of a craggy mountainside flashed past me. But something else caught my eye, tucked away in a corner of the hall that I hadn’t seen before: a door, charred at the edges, lengths of iron wrapping it round and round.

  Something about the door twisted my heart. A voice, a mere scratch in the silence, began to sing:

  I’ve never tasted dreams so sweet

  Such pearly flesh and tender meat

  Oh queen, if you only knew

  You’d gladly rip your heart in two

  I stopped. “Gupta, what door is that?”

  He frowned. “Door? What door?” He turned around and then asked sharply, “What did it look like?”

  I hesitated. Mother Dhina’s words echoed … keep some secrets for yourself. The words caught in my throat. This secret, just this one, I would keep to myself until I understood it. I had barely been in Akaran for a day. I couldn’t let my guard down entirely. And that voice … it felt like it had been sung to me alone.

  “I can’t remember,” I lied.

  Gupta shrugged. As we walked, I kept turning around, half expecting a door strung with chains to glitter just out of sight. But it never appeared.

  The dining room had changed since yesterday. Today its rug showed a herd of elephants moving through the jungle. And instead of golden platters piled high with food and saffron cushions placed around the table, there were silver platters and mother-of-pearl cushions. Akaran’s riches lay unfurled at my feet. But even with all that wonder, I sensed a chill in the room. I pulled my sari closer. There was something else here. I could feel it like breath against my neck.

  Amar was nowhere in sight. Instead, Gupta pulled out a chair for me.

  “Please, have a seat,” he said. “Amar won’t be able to dine with you this evening.”

  “Oh.” A twinge of disappointment ran through me. “Why not?”

  “He had to attend to an urgent matter of retrieval.”

  “Retrieval of what?”

  Gupta stiffened and his voice came out in a wheeze. When he caught his breath, he merely pointed to the night sky, where the moon was a ghostly crescent.

  “Right,” I said, deflating a little. I kept forgetting the rules of the Otherworld. Not a word could be spoken about Akaran’s secrets until the new moon.

  I glared at the moon.

  Gupta shook his head apologetically and pointed at the food. “Please, eat.”

  As I ate, I watched Gupta from the corner of my eye. He was writing furiously, quill rapping against the wood as he filled the page with line after line of ink.

  “What are you doing?”

  He looked up, quill half suspended in the air before he tapped the scroll. “Record keeping. Nothing is certain until the ink dries.”

  “What’s not certain?”

  “Life,” said Gupta matter-of-factly.

  The half-eaten platters of food stared back at me glumly. I was, against all experience, strangely without an appetite.

  “When you finish, you have the evening to yourself,” said Gupta, scrutinizing the scrolls before him. “I would be happy to show you my collection of record keeping on the distribution of leaves per branch. It’s one of my more noteworthy accomplishments.”

  I glanced down the halls. Again, that voice from the charred door rustled against me. The air prickled with invisible heat and magic. Gupta continued talking, but his voice ebbed in and out, splashing against a rhyme I couldn’t catch no matter how hard I strained—

  Oh, the treacherous moon, dear queen, please—

  “Did I ever tell you about the time I interviewed a mollusk? Fascinating—”

  —free me, find me, hidden in the tree, if you—

  “—hungry more often than naught, which is—”

  My pulse slowed. A sharp pain turned the colors bright and sickening. I couldn’t even feel the rugs beneath my feet. My toes felt like they were sinking into damp, gritty sand. Water lapping at my ankles. A name crouched in my throat. A name I should have been screaming, but couldn’t recall. The voice from the charred door was a plea and all I knew was that I had to leave this room. I had to find the door.

  I stood up, knocking my chair over behind me.

  Whatever spell of pain had clung to me broke instantly. I looked down and saw the silk rug. Gupta stared, a little confused. I needed to get out. I needed to distract him.

  “Why don’t we play a game of riddles?” I said suddenly. “I’ll stand outside and let you think. When you’re ready, call my name. Yes?”

  Gupta sat up straighter, his head tilting bird-like to one side. “What riddle?”

  “I’ll give you three. You seem like you’d
be very good at them.”

  Gupta beamed. “I have been known—”

  “Excellent,” I said quickly. “I am a nightmare to most, and a dream for the broken; who am I? Next riddle. I am your future, who am I?”

  Gupta silently repeated them. “And the last?”

  “I hide the stars but am frightened by the sun. I am not the night, who am I?”

  “Delightful!” said Gupta, clapping his hands. “You’ll stay outside?”

  I smiled. “Of course.”

  He gave a distracted nod, and I slipped out of the dining room.

  Curiosity sharp as frissons of heat ran up my spine. I tried calling out to the voice, but there was nothing. Alone, I was beginning to think it was nothing more than the palace’s quirks. Both Amar and Gupta had said the palace would test me. Perhaps this was nothing more.

  I looked around. The great corridors of Akaran unfurled before me like a stone maze and I took off down one of the paths, fingers trailing along the walls and murals. Moonlight flooded the palace, wiping away its solemnity and filling it with a cold, twinkling beauty.

  Gupta had been right yesterday. I did mind the silence. It felt too controlled. When he spoke of the palace, he made it sound like it was a sentient being, something that could hop and shuffle, talk back and frown. I hadn’t believed him, but I was beginning to. Everything about the palace felt deliberate.

  Some of the mirrors around me were lit up with life. A few of the cities inside them were deep in sleep, with a slim moon keeping vigil over their slumber. And then there were the mirrors with darker scenes …

  Wars and flags of countries I didn’t recognize. A burning smell, as if it could stretch through the silvery portals and spill into Akaran. I never saw anyone in these reflections; the portals were like a bird’s-eye view looking down. But I still saw the fires. I still saw the horses pounding the ground beneath them, moving out of sight, far beyond the edges of the mirrors.

  Up ahead, the white marble floors of the palace had given way to shiny lacquered wood. I walked forward, sure that I could hear Gupta’s voice if he called. Unlike the bare stone walls of the throne room or main hallways, these walls were giant mirrors, darkened with time and peeling to reveal the silver beneath them.