The Valley of Mourning

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. Though it was rumored to be their sacred birthplace, where the first of their species were born of the goddess Arijita’s blood, the Valley of Mourning evidently held little to tempt them back. Even after a new layer of vegetation grew over the scarred site of the bloodiest battle in Khrayun history, the dragons’ avoidance prompted whispers that it still held for them the scent of rancid death with which priests’ enchanted braziers warned them away from the waystations along major trade routes. When a dragon did visit the Valley, the priests all agreed it was an omen – though they fiercely argued whether it was one of good or ill. The laymen only scoffed, calling it desperation for new hunting grounds as human settlements grew and expanded into the wilderness.

Jai had overheard countless arguments in the temple of Shantum over the three rumored sightings in the last half-year, two lone dragons in the bitter days of dying winter and a whole hoard of three or four in the first scorching week of summer. The initiate hoped desperately that none would appear now as his fingers dug into the tiny hand of the too-silent little girl beside him, leaving harsh white furrows where their brown skin met. He pulled her up the rocky pass into the Valley without complaint, biting his tongue against the prayers that wanted to escape. He could not call on Arijita; it was she who needed his help now. His own god had made it clear that he could offer no further aid lest he draw the wrathful eye of Ishani, the Queen of the Gods, who would smite Jai and his charge – and probably banish Shantum as she had Arijita – if she could find them. Jai had been given to the temple as an infant, but it would be years yet before he qualified as a priest – assuming he survived that long. He was just a boy, with little learning and less experience, and he was alone against men and gods – well, alone but for the child at his side, whose stubby little legs took two quick strides for every one of his.

“Come on,” he said, filling the silence to soothe his own nerves as they crested the rise between two peaks and looked down on the thankfully empty valley below, “It’s not much farther now.”

The only sign the child gave that she had heard his words was the briefest tightening of her tiny hand around his own. Jai hadn’t heard her speak once in the fortnight they’d been traveling together. She’d hardly reacted to anything, in fact, since he’d seen her crying tears of blood, curled up in a cage in the courtyard of Ishani’s temple, still covered in the acrid ashes of her home. Jai shuddered at the memory, chilled despite the sweat trickling down behind his right ear as the sun sank toward the western horizon.

Ankita, they called her, The Marked One. And, though he knew what she was marked for, he couldn’t see it in the short frame that barely reached his hip nor in the baby fat still clinging to her sun-stained cheeks, nor even in the sorrowful black eyes that carried grief beyond their years. Whatever evil might come lay in the future, glimpsed only in the darkness of the night, beneath the angry glow of the cursed star in which Ishani had bound Arijita’s power seven centuries before.

“Here it is. The Valley of Mourning. Did you know we’re more likely to be struck by lightning than to meet a dragon here? Actually, it’s rare for dragons to attack people anywhere,” Jai rambled, desperately trying to keep his mind off the exceptions to the statistics he had memorized. “Their natural prey is the elephant, and maybe the odd river worm. It’s bold to target Ishani’s sacred animal like that, but I suppose, if the dragons really were born here at Arijita’s banishment, she might have endowed them with a rather large store of resentment. And no other creature seems brave enough to eat an elephant, unless we’re counting scavengers, which really don’t count because it isn’t like they kill the elephants, so maybe it’s part of the cosmic balance, to keep the population in check. My mentor, Rahia, talks a lot about balance. It’s why she thought the dragons seen in the Valley this year, the leaking from the Star, all of it – she was convinced they were all good omens, that Arijita’s return will be a good thing. The other priests were skeptical, but the High Priest seemed to agree with her, even if he couldn’t say it outright. You’d love Rahia. I wish she were here instead of me.”

Jai’s arm pulled uncomfortably behind him, and he looked back to see Ankita tug her hand out of his grasp, her matted black hair hiding the expression on her face as she turned away from him.

It took a moment for Jai’s mind to catch up to his mouth, but when it did, he could have kicked himself.

“Hey, hey, no,” he said, walking around to face Ankita, but she simply pivoted away again.

He crouched down and placed a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off, and he sighed.

“Ankita, I didn’t mean it like that. I only meant that she’d know what to do. She always knows what to do. You’ve been through a lot, and you deserve someone who can help you, and all you’ve got is me. I’m just…” Jai trailed off with a despairing little laugh before admitting, “Shantum literally chose me because some two-bit initiate isn’t worth the other gods’ notice. But I swear to you, Ankita, I will do everything in my power to keep you safe. For whatever that’s worth.”

Slowly, Ankita turned to face him, and he sighed in relief, offering his best attempt at a reassuring smile. Her own face remained serious, but she extended her hand once more, and Jai took it as he stood.

“Alright,” he said, “It’s all downhill from here. Most people are too superstitious to follow us into the Valley, and we only need to lay low for two more weeks. We’re halfway there, right?”

In all honesty, Jai wasn’t sure what would happen when the cursed star finally burst. But Arijita’s power had been leaking from its cracked seal for months, staining the night sky with a bloody haze, and the priests of Ishani had said that the only way to destroy the goddess was to kill Ankita before the last of her power returned. After that, Jai suspected that she wouldn’t need his protection.

The girl gave a slow nod, and they began picking their way down the mountainside. Jai let his free hand brush along the rocks that walled them into the narrow pass. When his hand fell through the mountain, he had only a second to glance up and spot the runes carved into the rock above his head before a hand closed around his wrist with bruising strength and yanked him through the illusion. Jai tumbled into the dark cave, Ankita’s hand slipping through his surprise-slackened grasp, while men in black armor flooded silently into the pass.

A steel vambrace pressed into Jai’s throat, pushing him against the jagged stone wall of the cave. Jai’s hands scrabbled ineffectually at the arm, desperate to relieve the crushing force that was cutting off his breath. He kicked weakly at his captor’s legs, but the soldier remained silent and still as the mountain beneath them. Of course he did. Jai recognized the black armor of the men rushing out of the cave to surround Arijita.

These were the royal forces of legend, the Hand of Death. Their existence was an unconfirmed myth to the common people, but even the lowliest of initiates knew which rumors were true – including the haunting whisper that the secret elites had their tongues cut out to keep their work silent as the graves they filled. Jai knew that the Rajik, the supreme ruler of Khrayu by the will of Ishani, lent the Hand to the gods’ servants, upon request.

So, while his vision began to cloud with suffocation even before his eyes had fully adjusted to the cave, Jai knew that the voice in the darkness didn’t belong to a soldier.

“Did you really think you could outrun the gods? It wasn’t hard to guess you’d bring her to her place of power.”

The voice was male, but Jai didn’t recognize it beyond that. Not a priest of Shantum, then – his temple was too small for anonymity.

“What I don’t understand is why a servant of the god of peace would go so far to preserve the goddess of war.”

Jai forced his racing thoughts to focus. If the priest gave him a chance to breathe, to answer, he’d have a split second to act. What was in reach? He tightened his grip on the vambrace slowly crushing his throat in an effort to ground himself, and one finger slipped off the sweat-slick metal to brush against the thin, ivory handle of a hidden knife protruding from the soldier’s sleeve.

“Ah, well,” the unknown priest drawled. “Too bad for you I can live with curiosity.”

Doubting he could keep it for long but lacking both better ideas and air, Jai snatched the knife. Before either he or the soldier could act further, a high-pitched scream sounded from the corridor of rock outside the cave. The pockmarked stone pressing into Jai’s back trembled as the ground lurched beneath his feet. Pebbles rained from the ceiling as the pressure disappeared from his throat. He coughed and heaved in a painful breath of air, doubled over so that his nose almost bumped right into the powder bag strapped to the soldier’s waist. Pushing himself to act before his attacker could regain his own footing, Jai struck out with the stolen knife, slashing the rune for fire into the powder bag and throwing himself toward the cave’s gaping mouth as it exploded in the collapsing cavern behind him.

A flash of heat against his back accompanied the rocks tumbling down toward his head as he lurched out into the pass, dodging the last few boulders running down the mountainsides to crush the assassins that had surrounded Ankita. Jai clambered over the settling rocks in search of the child, his stomach clenching uneasily at the still limbs he saw peeking out from stony crevices.

“A-ch,” Jai started calling for the child only to trail off into wracking coughs.

He sucked a few more burning gasps of air down his swollen throat, then tried again.

“Ankita? Ankita!”

A stone slipped audibly behind him, and he whipped around, losing his footing in the process and landing hard on his back as he looked up at the black silhouette looming against the darkening sky above. The soldier raised his blade, and Jai closed his eyes, instinctively avoiding the sight of its fall towards his defenseless body. A sickening gasp followed by a skittering sound and a light thud sent his eyelids fluttering back open.

The soldier had fallen to his knees, his sword rattling against the uneven rocks beside him. With one last, squelching gasp, he fell completely prone, his torso sliding off the bloodstained hand that had impaled him from behind. Jai’s widened eyes followed the dripping appendage up the little arm, shoulder, and neck that led to Ankita’s face, her eyes reflecting the bloodred halo of power leaking from the cursed star that had risen above the last red rays of the dying sun.

His racing heart pounded wildly in his ears. A moment later, he noticed a slower, steadier beat alongside it and shivered in a sudden gust of icy wind. The darkness deepened as a huge shadow swept across the star-speckled sky above, and Jai tore his eyes away from Ankita’s bloody form to see a swathe of scales reflecting the same eerie glow of her eyes and the cursed star. The dragon’s wings fell silent as it dove, shaking the ground with its landing. Jai held his breath as it bowed its massive head, pressing its snout into Ankita’s hair.