Page 30 of The Prince Without Sorrow

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Ashoka

Prince Ashoka,

You may thank me – I have fulfilled your request. Crown Prince Ryu has accepted the proposal to send a troop of his best soldiers to Taksila. I hope that this small victory helps to push your plan forward.

In even better news, Rahil has left for the Golden City. He will return to you in a few days. Unfortunately, I will not.

For your request to be granted, I have made an agreement with the crown prince. There is a perplexing issue regarding the sudden disappearances of the mayakari in Makon and he has asked for my help. Why he needs a Ran advisor is beyond me, but I have decided to stay to uphold my end of the bargain. Before you worry, I beg you not to. My safety has been guaranteed. I will return to Taksila once the matter in the Makon is resolved – do try not to flounder in my absence.

Yours,

Sau

S AU’S LETTER INITIALLY FILLED A SHOKA WITH HOPE. Then excitement, then confusion before being replaced by worry despite Sau’s advice. He wondered the same as she did: what sort of problem required a Ran advisor to stay behind in a foreign kingdom? Sau did not have to agree to such terms, but she had. For him.

Ashoka found himself torn in two. For one, Rahil was to return. His heartbeat doubled at the thought of his friend beside him once more, but Sau would not be here. His mother’s request that they work together was still paused for the time being. He could only hope that Sau kept herself out of trouble as best as she could before departing for the Golden City. There were wins today but also losses. Temporary losses, he hoped.

Right now, he had more pressing concerns. In Taksila, he’d returned to the starting line. Under Kosala’s threat to inform Arush, he’d been forced to reverse his initial proposal to halt ironwood logging. Doing so had made him feel ridiculous, like he was a rambunctious child without forethought. No doubt the people of Taksila would see him as the same.

Perhaps because of that, and despite his strict orders to ban mayakari killings under the guise of preventing harm against human women, soldiers beholden to the governor refused to listen. They harassed any woman who so much as stopped to pick a wilted flower from the street. It reminded him of something Sau had told him many years ago as they had sat together and observed the dark forestland from his balcony.

‘I love the night, Prince Ashoka,’ she had said. ‘But the night does not love me.’

These soldiers seemed intent on going against him. Prejudice clouded their actions to an unhealthy degree. In fact, he could almost hear his father laughing at him. Attempt your useless ways , his voice crooned. But can you see now that they do not work?

Useless ways. Ashoka was determined to prove a dead man wrong.

Two hours past midnight, when he was sure his guards stopped checking on him, Ashoka stole out onto the balcony. Peering over the rails, he spotted three soldiers standing guard below, their backs turned, staring out into the placid night. They were far away enough that he could just swing himself over the balcony and drop to the ground to hide among the foliage below.

Ashoka pulled himself over the balustrade, hands first holding the handrail before he crouched like a langur to grip the base rail. He dropped his feet so he was left dangling over the edge, arms supporting his body weight. Letting himself swing to gain momentum, Ashoka let go of his hands and landed on the grass without a sound.

Hiding behind the ground foliage, he adjusted his cloak. Underneath, he wore plain civilian clothes that Harini had procured for him. At his side, his dagger seemed to bear the same weight as a boulder.

‘Prince Ashoka?’

He jumped and turned around. Another cloaked figure emerged from the dark. Its features were barely visible, but he knew the voice without question.

‘Harini,’ he greeted.

‘I watched your escape, Prince Ashoka,’ Harini replied in a whisper. It sounded like she was trying to smother her laughter. ‘You looked like a leaf monkey.’

‘Glad to provide some hilarity,’ he said. ‘I thought I would be meeting you outside the staff quarters?’

Harini shook her head. ‘Some of the soldiers ventured into the kitchens for food and drink after their shift,’ she replied. ‘I wouldn’t suggest it.’

He swore under his breath. What he wouldn’t do to be a common man.

‘Lucky you came here, then,’ he replied. ‘We should leave; there are only so many hours in the night left.’

Harini was accompanying him to the razed lands where he had left Naila to bury her friend’s body. Mayakari were difficult to find in the city, what with the risk of their lives being forfeit upon discovery. If the resistance were to have a base of operations at all, it would be deep into forestland. With Harini present, he could have her ask a minor spirit to guide them in the direction of other witches. His plans were reasonable enough. The only problem was just how he could leave the royal estate without being seen.

Rāga was not a feasible option since she would need to exit through the front gates. It left Sahry who, thankfully enough, no one approached out of sheer fright. Since his arrival, he’d kept her in a large enclosure that was built far away from the leopards. At home, he had to keep the serpent bound, but here, he left her unchained. Unless threatened, winged serpents did not attack humans; they abstained from flying into populated areas. They were more active at night, and with Taksila’s densely forested, seemingly endless mountain ranges, it gave Sahry more area to fly in. Like a domesticated cat, she always returned before the sun rose. A few times, Ashoka had visited her in the morning to find the bloodied body of an animal, usually so mangled that it was hard for him to identify.

It took little time to reach the enclosure where Sahry was kept. Green eyes turned their attention on him and Harini as they approached. She was awake, tongue flicking against his skin lazily as a way of greeting.

Ashoka saddled Sahry with uncanny speed. Once both were secure on the serpent’s back, he had her rise into the sky and fly towards the razed lands.

The night was cold. Down below, lantern lights dotted the landscape, demarcating streets and waterways. North-west of the impoverished district, the razed lands spread out like an ocean, dead and flat, before they blurred into wild forestland once more. Everything there was destroyed except a giant gold-plated statue of his father, which perplexed everyone. He’d been told that it was something of a phenomenon among the Taksilan people – the indestructible figure that withstood the onslaught of the Great Spirits. It made his father seem more powerful, more omniscient.

He spotted it as they flew closer, a dark statue standing intact around rubble. Part of him was curious to see it, why it resisted damage. Beneath the gold layer was bronze, a common alloy.

There’s nothing special about it, so why...

‘Hold onto me,’ he told Harini as he tugged Sahry’s reins, commanding her to descend.

To his surprise, Sahry refused.

She bucked and instead rose higher. Grunting, Ashoka tried to wrestle back control. What was wrong with her?

‘She’s nervous, Prince Ashoka,’ Harini called out behind him.

‘Of what?’ he asked. ‘Sahry, down .’

‘I...’ the mayakari’s voice petered off as she let out a gasp. He spotted the cause of her amazement quickly: a bright glow emitting from the forestland.

Thud .

Suddenly, he heard a deep rumble. Even up here, the air around them seemed electrified, as if in tense anticipation. He managed to get Sahry closer to the ground, a comfortable distance away from the unusual light that continued to turn brighter, grow larger. A chill crept up Ashoka’s spine.

Harini’s voice was reverent. ‘ Spirits ,’ she said.

Thud .

Ashoka had never seen ones so impossibly large.

They came out like dancers in a procession: enormous tigers and leopards, elephants and snakes, both concrete and transparent at the same time. They weren’t the usual small, undefined oblong shapes he had seen in the Golden City. Those were harmless minor spirits. These were Great Spirits that towered taller than Na trees, bodies coloured in translucent blues, reds, and yellows. Fuelled by anger, their forms had changed and evolved. Their faces were horrific; dissimilar to the animals they presented as. Blood-red eyes, demonic faces, and elongated canines dripped a sleek black liquid that turned into mist the moment it touched the ground.

Their footsteps made the ground tremble like a miniature earthquake as they stomped and crushed, destroying what was already destroyed.

The nature spirits circled his father’s statue as if they had no intent to destroy it. As if they couldn’t destroy it, Ashoka realized. Their pitiful wailing, intermingled with the howling of the wind, created a melancholic, funereal orchestration that sent shivers down his spine.

‘What are they saying?’ he yelled out.

His ears strained to hear Harini above the din. ‘I can’t understand them, Prince Ashoka,’ she replied. ‘Their voices are unintelligible.’

Ashoka could only watch and listen as the tigers and leopards and elephants continued to parade around his father’s statue. Their screams went on for long enough that he started to hear them as sepulchral lamentations, like those of a parent without their child. No longer did it sound like a war cry, but the sad melody of a lost soul. They never approached the statue in their march, not even once. It was as if they feared it.

An eternity seemed to pass before the spirits finally ceased and returned to the forest one by one, their howls vanishing like smoke into the night.

With the creatures gone, he was finally able to have Sahry land by the statue.

Harini jumped down first. ‘I’ve never seen anything like that,’ she said, shock colouring her voice. ‘You only ever hear the stories about angered Great Spirits, but that ... their voices are lost, Prince Ashoka. What cruelty, to inflict pain upon them.’

Ashoka thought back to their demeanour, their song and dance. It was reminiscent of the pale green minor spirit in the royal estate. Both radiated distressed energies, and were not the calm, tranquil creatures he had thought them to be. Loss of land would do that, he supposed, since the natural world was an extension of a spirit; much like an arm to the torso. But intuition told him this was something else.

He glanced up at the statue of his father, begrudgingly noticing the impressiveness of the way the carver had captured Adil’s usual expression of sophisticated distaste and duplicitous benignity.

This is your fault, father , he thought, but what did you do?

The thought was left answered when a furious shout rang across the desolate landscape:

‘You there – step away before I curse you both!’