Page 42 of The Prince Without Sorrow

Chapter Forty-One

Ashoka

T HANK THE SPIRITS, N AYANI WAS NOT COMPLETELY incapacitated.

The group of mayakari had halted their chanting when Nayani fell and Ashoka fought Kosala, tending to her injuries. One had ripped fabric from her skirt and tied it around Nayani’s leg to create pressure and halt the bleeding.

Dropping to one knee in front of her, Ashoka assessed the mayakari in concern. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

Wincing, Nayani nodded. ‘I’ll survive, Prince Ashoka,’ she said. Her eyes flickered somewhere behind him. ‘Will you?’

He didn’t turn, didn’t want to turn. Otherwise, Kosala’s dead body would greet him.

He responded with a one-armed shrug. ‘I suppose I can halt the mayakari killings without opposition, now,’ he replied, then glanced up at the statue. ‘Are you able to continue?’

Stretching her lips into a thin line, Nayani nodded. Using Naila’s arm for assistance, she hauled herself up. ‘Injury won’t stop me,’ she said, releasing a heavy breath. ‘Let’s return to formation.’

The mayakari followed her instructions and repositioned themselves around his father’s statue.

Ashoka watched them. He smelled sandalwood and metal and knew instinctively who had approached.

‘You took a life,’ Rahil said, coming to stand beside him. There was an emotion there that Ashoka could not identify. What was it – anger? Surprise? Disappointment?

But why?

‘Did you not think I could?’ Ashoka responded. ‘I trained under your watch. If you had no faith in me, I would have no faith in myself.’

‘This isn’t about faith, Ashoka,’ Rahil said. ‘I only worry.’

Before Ashoka could ask Rahil what he meant by his comment, the mayakari resumed their chanting. Smog emanated from the statue once more. A gentle rumble from the earth caught him off-guard as the statue began to glow.

Rubble on the ground skittered and bounced, stones clattered, and dust kicked up into the air as a bluish-white glow emanated from the greenery beyond the wasteland. One by one, giant spectral faces began to appear through the trees. A single-tusked elephant spirit, a tiger with dangerously elongated fangs, a leopard with eyes of rubies.

The Great Spirits.

With each heavy step, the wind whooshed around them, fast and then faster still. Like they did before, the spirits circled the statue, careful not to come near, careful not to get in the way of the mayakari chanting their horrific melody. Ashoka watched the spirits, breathless and transfixed, as they howled and groaned in their miserable song, until suddenly, the pressure dropped, and he found it difficult to breathe.

‘Spirits help me,’ Ashoka whispered to himself.

The being that emerged from Emperor Adil’s statue was some sort of hybrid monstrosity. It held both the black eyes and oblong shape of a nature spirit at peace, and the enlarged, gaunt features of a mutated tiger, glowing an eerie reddish white under the dying daylight. The mayakari kept chanting, their eyes fixated on the newly awakened spirit as it stumbled outside like a newborn lamb on its thick legs.

Around them, the parade of nature spirits ceased their wailing, quietening down as the hybrid spirit let out a rusted, sorrowful moan.

The mayakari shifted from the cursed tongue to the language of the spirits. Their voices created a wondrous, harmonic melody as the air around them seemed to soften. The newly emerged nature spirit cocked its head like a dog listening to a master’s command before it made a vigorous swipe with its paw. The first swipe sliced the head of Emperor Adil’s statue clean off, dropping it to the ground with a loud metallic thunk . The second attack was harder, more forceful. It toppled the statue onto the mud and dirt where it rightfully belonged.

The spirit shook itself, as if awakening from a dream. In that moment, it was beautiful, a majestic creature of the natural world; a phenomenon. But thanks to his father, thanks to the useless governor – its voice had been trampled for years without so much as a scream allowed out.

Ashoka understood then that humanity was a horror beyond anything else he could imagine, and the nature spirits suffered because of it.

The creature’s pitiful wails dulled, ceased, and mutated into the gentle birdlike song that was typical of a passive nature spirit until it sauntered towards its brethren. Lamentations shifted into song, much like the silent peace of the aftermath after a monsoon flood. As they had done every night before, the Great Spirits ambled back into the forest, but with a lighter air in their step. The freed spirit followed behind like the runt of the litter, but not before it turned its strange little head towards the mayakari, cooing out their unintelligible language, and disappeared.

It was over.

Ashoka stared in alarm at the mayakari who broke their formation, all in various degrees of spent. Nayani held a hand to her chest while Naila’s shoulders were strung tight as she fought to regain control of her breath.

‘It’s gone!’ a voice behind them shouted.

Ashoka and the mayakari turned around, the witches visibly shocked at the sight of a mass of townspeople gathered around the edges of the razed lands. They had seen the mayakari banish the spirits – good. He could barely hear the hushed whispers and murmurs that were carried by the wind but didn’t have time to guess their assumptions. Instead, he strode forward purposefully towards them, watching with some amount of satisfaction as they bowed when they noticed him. Others, however, had their attention on the bodies of the slain soldiers and the governor. Alarm tore through the crowd, their voices getting louder as he approached.

‘ That’s the governor .’

‘ Spirits, he’s dead? Those witches... ’

‘... death magic. Cursed him too, I bet .’

‘ Isu, is that... the prince? ’

More bows. More murmurs. More stares.

‘The nature spirits will rampage this land no more,’ Ashoka shouted out, forcing his voice to sound louder and bolder in the silence. He’d never found himself speaking to a crowd of this size. ‘I planned to right Taksila in my governorship, and this has been one of the many steps that I’ve intended to take. The nature spirits have destroyed this township out of anger and sorrow. They had lost one of their own, and tonight, it has been found.’

Hushed whispers ran like wildfire through the large throng.

Feeling emboldened, Ashoka spurred himself on. ‘My father may have conquered Taksila, but he made many grave mistakes,’ he continued. ‘His prejudice was what caused the spirit to be trapped inside his statue, and it was his greed that destroyed this community. But tonight, the destruction is gone. And tonight, I’ve been aided by the unlikeliest of sources. Sources that you’ve been told are far too dangerous to live.’ He gestured towards the mayakari with a flourish, hearing the buzzing of conversation grow louder with every passing moment.

‘You might call them curses, but I call them heroes.’ Ashoka caught Nayani’s impressed eye. ‘Remember who it was who saved you from the nature spirits and their ruin.’

Belatedly, he hoped they wouldn’t remember how the Great Spirits started to destroy the communities in the first place. That would only set him back a thousand steps, and he had neither the time nor the patience to regain that ground.

He had one last thing to say. ‘You see the governor,’ he said boldly. ‘He attempted to stop me. Attempted to stop the Great Spirits from being pacified. Understand that I will do anything to see Taksila at peace once more, and he stood in my way. And under my governorship, there will be no more mayakari killings conducted. Anyone who aids and abets in the murder of the mayakari will be dealt with, because understand this – as long as I govern Taksila, innocents will not suffer.’

The crowd didn’t clap, but he hadn’t expected any sort of standing ovation. All Ashoka wanted was for the seeds of doubt to be sowed against his father’s propaganda that had been ingrained into their minds for years.

‘Guards,’ he called his soldiers forward. ‘Disperse the crowds without force.’

As he watched the soldiers move the horde along, he felt a firm hand on his shoulder. Nayani.

‘Quite the bold play,’ she told him. ‘Trying to change their minds in a matter of minutes. I’m afraid it’ll take some time to undo.’

‘As expected,’ Ashoka said. ‘Change arrives when we’re sick and tired of waiting for it.’

Even as he said it, doubt plagued him. Taksila could be changed, yes, but temporarily. Banning mayakari killings would only hold for so long before Arush intervened.

The governor was the root of Taksila’s problem, but not the empire’s. You know who is responsible for that, don’t you?

An intrusive thought struck him again, crawling out like an earthworm from the ground. Images came, of his father, riding atop a leopard, the ground burning blue. Of his brother, young and reckless, failing to create a legacy but continuing a trail of carnage. Of his sister, taking that destruction and astutely multiplying it tenfold.

Your family is not your enemy, foolish boy.

Correct. They were not his enemy, but they were a hindrance. A barrier against peace.

I would do it better , he thought. I can be better than them. This change isn’t enough; I need more.

Something in him felt different, then. Assuredness, perhaps, he couldn’t quite tell, but he felt convinced. Determined. Realistically, what could he have achieved by leading the war council? How often would he have had to compromise with his brother’s ideas? That was not change. That would continue to perpetuate violence.

Change in this empire could only come from revolution. From power.

And where else does that change begin but from the Obsidian Throne?