Portals & Paths: The Nine Gems

Chapter 4: LAK

The temple’s double doors, large enough for a parade of howdah-adorned gharjja elephants to enter, opened like broken jaws and groaned upon exhale. The teakwood, plated in etched gold, depicted the sun god, Phra Athit, ascending heavenward on the backs of turtles amid a fanfare of fairies and sprites. A pair of fang-bared, monkey head-shaped silver pulls growled guard as bodies swathed in silks and sweat spilled out in a rainbow waterfall. Wat Phra Athit sat center on the palace grounds like an old, reposed god after a deep lament, gilded robes still glowing under the sun but draping only withered, shadowy arms whose reach had long receded into myth. Phra Ayuttia had constructed the temple before the monkeys had retreated to the northern forests, with seven spires as symbols of hope for the seven new nations rising from the foam of the Blue Samudra. As Ram exited the temple dedicated to the Siandali god of the sun, the Kandali ten-petaled Manipura blazoned above the doors quietly wept shame and sadness, misting the congregation in a yawning hunger. Only Ram, and Seeda, felt the pain.

The Meeting of the Seven had concluded its final deliberations and assignments on the preparations for the Great Gathering. In addition to Ram, only Mahārājda Aatish of Bengalir and Phra Lak, Steward of Malayir and Ram’s brother, participated personally at the administerial conference. The leaders of the four remaining nations relegated their duties to miserable, dull-headed emissaries who prodded, nodded and, to Ram’s bewilderment, ultimately assented to their assigned roles for the coming celebration.

“Well prepared and presented, Phra Ram. I expect much success when the day finally arrives. Ayutaya will shine, as always, like a jewel in the sun. As will your people.” Aatish spoke with a flourish of his arm and the enthusiasm of a child suddenly released from chores.

Ram dried his tongue, his only thought held on the desire that his wife had attended the summit, had sat next to him, and had even spoken for him when he felt a slap on his back.

“Brother! Fine oration. If that doesn’t arouse the Sevens may their gods send the winds of …”

“Gods, Lak?” the rotund Bhikkhu chided. Chakri attempted to insert his huffing mass of flesh between Ram and his brother in a rare failure of intentions, settling instead for scurrying behind the young king.

Ram accelerated his glide down the steps of the wat with his gaze focused on the expanse of the Samudra in the distance, sensing only what felt like the pecks of a hundred sea herons competing for the best slabs of his skin.

“Hai!” Lak laughed, straining and swaying to keep up with the other dignitaries. His toes had begun the shadow walk, feeling like boiled yams seeping into the points of his slippers. The fingers would be next, he knew, vibrating his many bejeweled rings to a sonorous song. The shadow would course through his arms and legs, stealing their ability to ambulate. His breath would shorten and his vision darken until the shadow consumed his thoughts and purged his misery. More time, Lak accidentally announced, knowing he needed more time but wanted less.

“What’s that? You’re not implying tea will be delayed?” Chakri gurgled from a soft, jiggling chin.

Lak brushed the question aside as Ram quickened his pace, attempting to distance himself from the prattle nibbling at his ears and body. The setting sun threw amber ashes across a darkening blue sky, and the sea-winds swelled, evaporating the sweat off his face.

“I doubt there are any delays with Seeda overseeing the affairs of food.” Aatish pulled the violet kahmerband tight around his achtan, sewn in the deep, earthy greens of his nation’s mandala, hoping the frays and fading weren’t noticeable, but his attempted display of militaristic prowess had failed. Deep furrows crossed his short brow and cascaded over empty cheeks mottled by purple patches of dying skin. His dark eyes bore witness to nearly a lifetime as the leader of an occupied nation.

“Hai! Seeda sets a bounteous table! Milkfish poached with onion, petai beans and the greenest kangku you’ve ever seen. And all these delights, direct from Malayir, await you down the path where everything is ready,” Lak interjected proudly and assuredly. He had been present during the day’s preparations, burdening Seeda more than aiding. “Our boats arrived yesterday full of varied cuisine for your deepest enjoyment.” Lak feigned humility. “And you are correct, Phra Aatish, I never eat so well as in the company of my dear brother and marriage-sister. The queen always impresses.” Lak smiled wryly. “I may never leave the Golden City. It suits me.”

“Is not Malayir to your liking, Phra Lak? You’ve been steward now for five seasons, is it?” Aatish asked turning to Lak, the pair appearing as tired temperaments lost in the wrong physical realm.

“Hai! Stewardship? More like enslavement,” Lak responded openly, knowing Ram was now out of listening range and without regard for Aatish’s current political predicament. “Each day presents another tedium of balancing petty tribal chieftains ever imbalanced toward war. The heat bites worse than the mosquitos that bite every piece of exposed skin. Linens are covered in mildew. Breads are soggy. Sleep is infrequent to impossible due to the crashing waves. Or worse! The nightly laments of prisoners carrying over the straight from Karipa scare more than children. When the wind blows right, it’s enough to make a person want to join them.” Then, trailing to the side, “Or put them out of their misery.”

Phra Chakri eyed Lak as a father would reprimand an erring, disobedient son. “Perhaps you should be grateful for the appointment, Lak. You weren’t even…”

“Do you ever remove those silver chains?” Lak stared at the fat man in blue robes. The shadow was moving faster. His body suddenly spoke a language that he couldn’t understand. Lak struggled to hold his thoughts. He knew Chakri was not a man to be played with, but Lak’s body wanted to challenge the privy.

“Do you ever remove your pride?” Chakri returned undisturbed as Ram neared the palace doors far ahead of the jawing trio who had all paused, standing to the side of the procession.

“Gâu, gâu!” Lak began to bark in the Bhikkhu’s fat face, incoherent guttural bursts uttered by a dark, angry shadow residing deep in his mind. He stared at the ground with lost curiosity as the moss growing on the stone steps morphed into turtles gliding and spinning in white foamy waters. His feet had long melted into his slippers, but Lak has long learned to walk without the sensation of feeling the ground. A skill he had repeated with his hands, but his tongue never did. “Gâu, gâu!”

Chakri refused to nip at the meat.

“Provided the Golden Guard are as vocal as you, Phra Lak, security won’t be an issue.” Aatish spoke hoping to redirect the darkening energy but lacked the energetic authority.

“And what do you know of a military?” Lak, straining to pull himself back from the edge, redirected the shadow at Aatish. Spit flew and landed onto the mahārājda’s jacket, creating tiny, dark green islands that resembled The Stepping Stones. “You’re a eunuch of a king with no army! Despite your dress!” Lak partially regretted his words. The part that was still holding to sanity. The light was losing, and the shadow was taking over.

Aatish thought of his people. An unseen tear fell from the corner of his eye. The deposed king of Bengalir slowed his pace until swallowed by the burgeoning parade of attendees spilling out of the wat.

*****

Seeda stood beneath the Royal Arch, the public gate to the palace proper. Her long loose hair blew freely in the quickening breeze from the cool Samudra. White foamy crests rose and fell on the dark expanse as waves crossed the sandbars separating Longkipa Island and the Kandali coastline. A thousand Kandali fishing boats with their single, triangular whitecloth sails hanging off down-sloped crossbars were returning home, dragging nets only half-heavy with feather fish, some baramuni and the increasingly rare, yellow godfish. From a distance, the brightly colored boat hulls skipped and bounced on the sea. Closer inspection, Seeda knew, revealed cracked and chipping skincovers, split planking and rust-covered bracings. If not for the well-known and weather-worn faces pulling the lines, she may have believed that leaf-shaped, Longkan spirits were traversing across the sea for a silent invasion of Ayutaya. Perhaps, they knew Kandalir’s surreptitious secret and sought an advantage.

Seeda closed her eyes and breathed deeply, letting her thoughts turn to mist and be carried in the winds. Lak had ferried nearly all the food for the Meeting of the Seven from Malayir, a point on which he relentlessly reveled. She also knew Lak had been, unbeknownst to all except a few advisors, providing most of the palace food for almost three seasons. One bright morning as she was playing with her tiger pups on the palace grounds, Seeda had overhead her husband and his brother arguing in the king’s reception room. The Samudra, South Malayisian and even Black Bay played prominently in their debate. Warmer waters and colder waters were tossed around as if they meant the same thing. Ram wanted the fish kept with the public stores which would require assistance from Lak’s stewardship. Warring tribal chiefs, maintaining the armada—for Ram’s convenience, he had repeated on multiple interjections—briberies to keep the peace and ‘personal suffering beyond that which any Kandali, leave be a prince, should ever suffer,’ comprised Lak’s mumbling counter arguments.

Not many fulmoons prior, the flotilla of fishermen returned from a day on the sea with sagging sails and empty nets, sparking a mild disturbance in the Golden City about angry gods and changing times. Ram had successfully mollified his subjects with stories of winds, currents and, against Phra Chakri’s emphatic entreaties, an offering to their water goddess. Fortune delivered. Nang Varuna had blessed the following day’s catch with nearly full nets, an occurrence met with celebrations as raucous as the complaints the previous day. Phra Chakri had quietly and quickly left for a sudden summit of Bhikkhus before midday. The hauls, however, continued to dwindle, and the fishermen continued to doubt. Now, the previous night’s storm and chorus of primal wailing from the deep northern forests had reignited talk of omens. This last thought trembled through Seeda’s body. She started to see a white light.

“Nang Seeda?” Mia interjected with heavy breath and a light bow. “The conference has ended, and your guests are exiting the temple. So sorry, I’ve been looking for you.” The young servant wearing a plain set of black hemp pants, a blouse and hair pulled tightly back had served the new queen since the royal wedding, tasked as a personal aide to help the new queen adjust to the Royal Palace.

Seeda looked to the west. Help me, Phra Athit, she quietly spoke to the setting sun, eyes painfully fixed on the expansive sea. “Yes, Mia. Let’s see to the preparations.”

“All the food is plated, and staff are lined and ready to serve. We need only meet the king and his entourage as they enter the dining hall.”

“All these seasons and I still don’t know how I would manage without you.” Seeda allowed herself to smile a smile that Chariya would have returned with the reed.

“My lady is too kind.” Mia bowed again as Seeda began to walk through the Way of Colors. The long passageway connected the main gate to the Royal Hall, a commodious reception area for palace guests. Seeda had spent countless sweat-filled days in the hall receiving instructions from Nang Chariya, an ancient apparition of a women with endless wisdoms as well as endless reprimands from a twig Seeda swore was cut from something far sturdier than pond grass. “Lower!” Slap. “Straighter!” Slap. “Tighter” Slap. Seeda had learned to walk so her chadah would stay on her head, how to breath properly during the nine Wai bows, and how to angle her wrists to keep a hundred heavy gold and bronze bracelets from sliding off and clanging on the hard palace floors.

Mia walked briskly just in front of the queen, as if pulling a current of air to whisk her queen past the mandalas of the Seven Nations. This habit, employed by seemingly all her servants in the palace, annoyed Seeda. They reached the dining salon just as Ram was entering from the gardens. Seeda recognized the expression on his face. Mia scurried to the kitchens.

“Sawasdhi.” Seeda spoke as she performed the seventh Wai, barely tilting her head to her husband and pressing her palms together in front of her heart. They met in front of more white-coated servants than colorful guests still spilling out of the temple. Ram had ordered the display and most had only been trained in the past few days. Seeda prayed for success.

“Sawasdhi, my love,” Ram replied with the same bow and gesture of his hands. He knew the question on his wife’s face. “All was accepted without argument. It looks as if the nations are ready to provide as requested for the Great Gathering.” The royal pair walked side by side toward their seats along the east wall.

“Then all that worrying was for nothing.” Seeda knew this statement was false. The polite game of marital politics was wearing her down. She feared that her resolve to prop up her husband’s spirit was waning.

“The worrying is worse now. Such ease of acceptance is not good fortune. The Anaki contingent never even spoke a word. If it weren’t for Chakri, the meeting would have been a complete failure.”

Seeda dried her tongue and fixed her focus. The elephantine privy was still outside the dinning salon, in stark discussions with Lak as swarms of only a few principal advisors, who seem to have missed the turn toward the salon, but full retinues of courtiers, sycophants, heralds, servants and not a few generals began to sit. Seeda witnessed the lack of royalty. The staff in white hemp coats shifted from stoically poised to cleanly frenzied in the blink of an eye. Seeda had done her job. The room rang with the echoing chatter of a hundred voices and clanking ceramic dishes. Lemongrass, bawaang and basil rode the odorous emanations of fried fish, steamed buns, vinegar noodles and charred kiuk bird coming from the kitchen. Seeda found her senses reeling.

She eyed Chakri, who was huffing hard enough for her to almost hear the clinking of his silver chains as they slid over two large mounds of soft flesh creating an odorous river of perspiration. She could not hear the words the privy was sputtering at Lak. But her marriage-brother’s ashy yellow face seemed to be dripping off his skull in fear. Seeda knew what was coursing through the king’s brother. She could see it emanating through his robes, the dark gray misty cloud of the shadow.

“Blessings to Phra Chakri. I should thank him.” Seeda knew she could coddle her husband’s need for the religious zealot beyond any marital skill taught by Nang Chariya. This was a talent the young queen had learned from the hermits.

“I couldn’t be king without him,” Ram let slip from his tongue, an acknowledgement he hoped his wife hadn’t heard. She did. And her heart cried as she ignored the insult.

The pair stood behind a long table as if carved from jade, lifeless figurines. Phra Chakri entered and took a seat next to Ram, still sweating. Lak had turned back toward his quarters. His lanky body swayed as if he were balancing on a boat. The remaining guests sat. The white coated attendants stood behind them like glowing guards. Ram took his wife’s hand and began to welcome his guests.