Practical. Logical. Obvious, once he explained it. I'd never had occasion to conceal a body before. I'd surrounded myself with very practical-and clearly very experienced-murderers.
"We have to talk soon, Narayan."
He grinned that grin. He'd tell me some truth when he did.
We slipped back into camp and parted company.
I slept well. There were dreams but they weren't filled with gloom and doom. In one a beautiful black woman came and held me and caressed me and called me her daughter and told me I'd done well. I wakened feeling refreshed and as vigorous as if I'd had a full night's sleep. It was a beautiful morning. The world seemed painted in especially vivid colors.
My exercises with my talent went very well.
Chapter Nineteen
The disappearance, without trace, of the high priest Jahamaraj Jah, so trivial an opponent that I recall him only as a faded caricature of a man, stunned the thousands cluttering the region around the Ghoja ford. A whisper went around saying he had schemed against the Radisha and myself and that had sealed his fate. I wasn't responsible for the rumor. Narayan denied having said anything to anybody. Two days after we buried Jah everybody was convinced I'd eliminated him. Nobody knew how.
They were scared.
The possibility had a big impact on Blade. I got the feeling he thought I'd gone through some rite of passage and he could now devote himself to my cause. I was pleased but had to wonder about a man so devoutly antagonistic toward priests.
I had Narayan spread word that I still needed recruits, especially skilled horsemen. Another two hundred Shadar enlisted. Likewise nearly five hundred survivors of the Dejagore battle, though many just wanted regular meals or the comfort of a known place in the hierarchy. Taglian caste systems encourage dependence upon hierarchy. The chaos at the ford provided none of the benefits of social rigidity, only the handicaps.
I told Narayan to think about expanding the camp. Soon we'd be overcrowded. I told Blade to look for likely leaders. We'd never have enough of those.
The Taglians continued to amaze me. They remained pacifistic in their thinking, yet admired what they thought was the direct and casual way I disposed of enemies. The bigger the violence, the more they would applaud. As long as they were not threatened personally.
The Radisha sent for me the third morning after Jah's death. It was a brief interview, of no consequence except that I left convinced that Smoke was more than a fakir. He'd penetrated the veil of time well enough to assure himself that I'd had a hand in Jah's disappearance. He was more frazzled than ever. For the first time the Radisha was rattled.
She saw her control slipping.
That night she and Smoke and a few followers slipped over the Main and headed north. She left Swan and Mather to pretend she was secluded in the fortress. That deceit was useless. Narayan told me what was happening before the Radisha hit the water.
The day was noteworthy, too, because we enlisted our first nonveterans. There were just three of them. Two were friends of Narayan's friends. But their arrival was a sign that word was spreading and there were Taglians willing to join the cause.
Drills and training continued, as intense as I could make them, always designed to strip each man of all loyalties but those to his comrades and commander.
Former slaves had become the most plentiful volunteers-and best students. They had nothing else. The Shadowmasters had destroyed their world. I thought it might be a good idea to send trusted men to roam the lands below the Main in search of more men without strong ties to Taglios.
Narayan and Sindhu told me the Radisha was doing her sneak. I listened, then said, "Sit. The time has come."
They understood. They didn't look as distressed as I'd expected. They had talked it over and had agreed to open up. "Who are you? What are you doing?"
Narayan took a deep breath. He did not look me in the eye. "Mistress, we are Deceivers. Followers of the goddess Kina, who has many names and many guises but whose only truth is death." He went into a long-winded explanation about the goddess and how she related to the gods of Taglios and its neighbors. It was an improbable mishmash like that surrounding the genesis and attributes of most dark gods. Narayan plainly had not thought much about the doctrine. His explanation didn't tell me much except that he and Sindhu were devoted to their goddess.
It took some pressure but they admitted they worshipped Kina, in part, by committing murder.
Sindhu volunteered, "Narayan, jamadar of the Changlor band, is famous among us, Mistress." Evidently he broke the silence because it wasn't good form for a man to brag about his own accomplishments. "He has given the gift of paradise to more than a hundred souls."
"One hundred fifty-three," Narayan said. That, apparently, was not considered braggery.
"Paradise? You want to explain that?"
"Those whose lives are taken for the goddess are freed from the Wheel of Life and ascend to paradise immediately."
The Wheel of Life was a Gunni concept. You kept going around and around, rebirth after rebirth, till the good you did sufficiently outweighed the evil. Then you were allowed escape. But not to paradise. Paradise was not a Gunni concept. The Gunni who escaped the Wheel became one with the generative force that had created the Lords of Light, the gods, who were its champions in the endless struggle with Shadow, which would be defeated only when the generative force had absorbed so many good souls it filled the universe. Shadow, of course, fought back by leading men to evil.
Paradise is a Vehdna notion, something originally imagined by adolescent males and dirty old men. It is stocked with all the comforts a male from a hard world could lust after. In particular it is infested with eager virgins of both sexes so the elevated will have something with which to while away eternity.
The Vehdna paradise gives no gate passes to women. The Vehdna say women have no souls. The gods created them to bear children, serve the lusts of men, and work themselves into early graves.
The Vehdna doctrine is the most perniciously anti-female of Taglios' cults but the most flexible as well. They have their female saints and heroines, and the Vehdna amongst my soldiers adapted to my command more easily than did the Shadar or Gunni. They just cast me in the role of their warrior saints Esmalla (three of the same name, from the same lineage, scattered over a century about eight hundred years back) and concentrated on doing their jobs.
The religions in my end of the world had not made more sense. I did not criticize Taglian beliefs. But I did ask questions. Understanding is an important tool.
Narayan insisted his beliefs were not derivative. He claimed Kina worship antedated all other religions. What I saw were echoes of its primal influence. "Mistress, it is said the Books record the histories of the Children of Kina back to the most ancient times, when men first received the gift of letters. It is said some are in tongues no man has spoken in ten thousand years."
"What books are these? Where are they?"
"The Books of the Dead, they're sometimes called.
They are lost now, I think. There was a very bad time for the Children of Kina a long time ago. A great warlord, Rhadreynak, forged a vast empire. He insulted Kina. She visited vengeance upon his house, but by chance he was spared. He launched a crusade without mercy. The keepers of the Books fled into a hidden place. All who knew where they had gone were devoured by Rhadreynak's wrath before the sainted Mahtnahan dan Jakel broke his neck with the silver rumel."
Sindhu said something in cant, softly, the way men of other paths would say "Praise God" or "Blessed be His Name."