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I sagged miserably and moaned beneath the filthy cloth which bound my mouth.
“Of course you would. You’ll listen to anything I wish to tell you, won’t you? Where were we? Oh, yes, Zmeya was dead and resting comfortably in one hundred and forty-five satisfied stomachs…”
THE PALACE OF INDRAJIT THE TERRIBLE SLEPT peacefully that night, dreaming the blood-rich dreams of righteous murderers. But when dawn broke like a win dowpane over the steel-tooth mountains, a strange thing occurred.
The Varaahasind, bringers of death, began to go mad.
At first it was nothing anyone would notice. The soldiers, after all, had always behaved barbarically, decorating their huts with the limbs of slaughtered maidens, painting their faces with boar’s blood. Madness would have to be strong as paired oxen in them to be marked out from their usual custom.
And so it was that morning found a lieutenant at his bath, calmly shaving his ornate beard, which curved down to his collarbone like the tusks of a great pig. He was delicately cutting it with the edge of his sword, eradicating the symbol of his glorious manhood. It was against the code of the Varaahasind to shave that proud beard, the penalty death by exposure—yet this man removed it so cleanly that his face was like that
of a child, smooth as a moon.
The next week, a captain was found in an ivory tub, singing some wordless psalm full of hideous vowels—worse, the tub itself was filled to its gilt edges with wriggling green snakes, thick as a woman’s waist, which wound around the captain in reptilian ecstasy.
And finally, on the third day of the new year, the second in command of the fell troops lost his ability to speak. He spat and hissed obscenely, his body contorting with the effort of uttering even the slightest sibilant syllable. When the court physician calmed the poor man sufficiently to open his mouth, it was revealed that his tongue had become forked, a deep split through the thick flesh.
At this pass, the King and the Commander of the Varaahasind began to fear for their own minds, and called a certain magician to them, in order to divine the source of the malady.
I was young then. I had just taken the collar under Indrajit. For the first time I was not just Omir, scrabbling on a farm for roots out of the earth. I was Omir Doulios, and if others spit that word as a curse, I wore it like a crown. It meant I was more than a potato or a turnip or a beet covered in mud. Even a slave is better, even a slave handed master to master until he dies. I wore the iron collar as easily as a necklace. It clasped my throat from chin to chest, a symbol of my servitude, polished each morning to a high shine, glinting like a sword held to my neck. I was forbidden to perform magic except in the service of Indrajit, and even then not without the observation of other craftsmen, as if I were a common cobbler. But it was better than a damp parsnip and a damp wife. And so, when I was brought for the first time before the Throne of Teeth, excitement filled my blood, after long months of boredom and the waste of my talents.
“Omir Doulios, lowest of slaves, you are come before us to solve the riddle of the lunacy which plagues my men. The speed with which you accomplish this task will directly determine how long you will live once you have left our presence,” Indrajit intoned peremptorily, without waiting for the speech of introduction I had painstakingly prepared. The Tusk-Crown flashed and glowered in the torchlight, distorting my vision. Yet, I thought, perhaps this was better. For, of course, I had already deduced the root of their sickness, being the wisest of all my brothers and sisters in slavery. I had a morsel to dangle before his porcine nose, and it might purchase me that which then I most desired.
“My most noble King,” I began quickly, “I can answer your riddle for you in a moment, without consulting a book or an oracle, if you will but grant me the price I ask.”
I could see his rage flare at such impudence as mine, but his fear won some great battle within his breast and he nodded his assent, which could not be withdrawn.
“The solution is simple. You have killed and eaten a Star, which the simple-minded call gods. Her presence within you and your men is trying to assert itself, to re-form into the shape of the Great Serpent.”
“And what is it you ask in return for this simple solution?”
“My freedom, King, what else?”
Indrajit’s brow furrowed like a field after a storm, and when he answered his voice was thick and angry.
“We have given our word, and it is unbreakable. But for such a reward you must also give us the cure for this cancer, to end the malevolence of our former wife within.”
And at this I trembled, for I could not admit that such a thing was perhaps beyond my power. The stupid King had committed a crime from which he could not escape. Had he but consulted me before cannibalizing his concubine, I could have devised much more delicious tortures for her, for which none could be held culpable. Punishments have always been a specialty of mine.
I calculated quickly. The paramount thing at that moment seemed to be to give him something, anything, a path to follow. My lord Indrajit was at a loss without a clear plan, orders laid out on parchment and signed in ink made from the oil of crushed sapphires. He was never very original in his thoughts, and the only plans which made sense to him involved great amounts of blood, and never his own. Given these variables, a course presented itself, which did have some slim chance for success, but more important, would appeal to his innermost heart, engorged as it had always been on the blackest of vintages, stamped from rotted grapes.
“My most honored lord, Zmeya-within is driven in a blind passion to punish the men, the pieces of her former body separated only by a scrim of flesh. But if you were to put your sworn band to death, the sliver of her within you should sleep, become dormant, and your just and mighty reign may continue.”
For a long time the Raja said nothing at all, but seemed to slump in his great enameled throne, which was encrusted with teeth of many creatures and jewels as dark as the most secret blood of the conquered. His wide face moved unfathomably, a tectonic drift of features, as he considered the murder of so many men. I felt reasonably certain that it was not the number which troubled him, but whether or not they would submit to summary execution. These were no peasants, and only he knew by what underworld alchemy they had come to life.
Finally, he spoke, and his voice was like the closing of a marble tomb. “Send messengers, Omir Doulios, to gather the men in the Hall of Voices. I will address them at sundown.”
And, easily as that, my audience was over, and my freedom nearer to hand. I have not waited so eagerly for nightfall since I was a child in my mother’s arms, barely able to restrain my joy at the winter festivals, and the trees all strung with golden lanterns.
As nights will, the night came. One hundred and forty-four soldiers filed dutifully into the cavernous Hall of Voices, where whispers were amplified into bone-curdling screams. They came in all of their battle finery, perhaps sensing that it was a momentous evening, boars’ teeth swinging freely from muscled necks and leather breastplates, some even pierced through noses and ears. Each wore a cloak of pig’s hide, boiled and tanned until it was an ugly shade of scalded pink. They had painted their faces with grease and pitch, and combed blood into their hair. They gathered in formation before Indrajit, who stood on a dais above them, with me seated just behind, looking on their coarse faces with serenity and grace.
“Our most loyal servants, who among all our slaves have always been best beloved,” he began, holding out his arms to them in a fatherly gesture, “much has fear followed our footsteps, like a graceful hound. But a cure has been found for the madness which has stricken you, and we have come here tonight to administer it.”
I am not sure what he intended to do then, and I shall never discover it. For the men suddenly froze as though some black lightning had passed through them, their muscles locked in place, faces contorted in a hidden terror that might have been ecstasy. As one, one hundred and forty-four mouths gaped open horribly, wider than any human mouth. A terrible symphony arose as their jawbones shattered and their heads snapped back. I watched as one hundred and forty-four men spoke with one voice, one awful voice dredged from the depths of the earth, dragging mountains in its wake, echoing in the Hall like an arrow loosed.
“ONLY THE LIVING MAY BE CURED. I AM DEAD. LOOK ON ME NOW, O HUSBAND. AM I NOT BEAUTIFUL? AM I NOT STRONG?”
Indrajit could not understand, at first, but he blanched like a woman and staggered from the throne in horror. “What witchery is this, Wizard? What have you done?”
