Naamah's Curse - Jacqueline Carey [142]
“Pemba says he heard that the Spider Queen Jagrati was born to the lowest of the low among her people,” Dorje said in a hushed whisper. “She is what the Bhodistani call an untouchable.”
I was confused. “I don’t understand.”
He studied me gravely. “You know nothing of Bhodistani society and religion?” I shook my head. “It is all very complicated. Everyone is born into a caste that determines their role in life, based on the life they lived before this one. The priests are the highest. Second are the rulers and warriors, and merchants are third. Fourth come the workers, who toil to serve the higher castes. The lowest of the low, the untouchables, they do not even have a caste. They perform tasks that are unclean.”
The word unclean stirred an uneasy memory of the Patriarch and his creamy smile within my memories. “Such as?”
“Such as handling corpses and gathering night-soil. Tasks so unclean that even the shadow of an untouchable can pollute one’s food, so it must be discarded.” Dorje stretched out his hands and regarded them. “That is not the belief of those of us who follow the Path of Dharma and Sakyamuni’s teaching. But it is the belief in Bhodistan, where they worship many different gods.”
It was enough to make my head spin.
Stone and sea, the folk of the world hold a great many peculiar beliefs! That night, I was glad when Unegen bade us in an irritable voice to cease our yammering, extinguish the coals, and take to our bedrolls.
And in the morning…
More desert.
More dust.
“What about the Lady of Rats?” I asked Dorje on the second night into our journey. “Can you put a name to her?”
“Rats?” he echoed in an inquiring tone.
I nodded. “I was told she is the Falconer’s enemy. Tarik Khaga’s enemy,” I said in clarification. “He sought to acquire her, and her husband refused. He was killed by Khaga’s assassins—and yet she remains to defy him.”
A heated discussion ensued among the Tufani.
“Yes,” Dorje said at length. “There is such a woman, a widow. The Rani of Bhaktipur, who rules in the valley kingdom below the Falconer’s eyrie. The Raja hid her away when the Falconer sent for her. The Falconer’s assassins slew him, but they did not succeed in taking his widow.” He shuddered a little. “Why, no one knows for sure, except that the men who guard her are also fiercely loyal. And there is a temple there, a very famous temple among the Bhodistani, where rats are worshipped as an aspect of one of their goddesses.”
“So it is true,” I mused. “Rats.”
He nodded. “Rats.”
It was a long journey. Over the course of weeks, I must have heard a hundred tales of the Falconer and the Spider Queen, of his acquisitive nature, of her unholy wiles. Of the myriad assassins they employed, and the myriad ways in which they dispatched their targets. Dash listened to them with a boy’s morbid delight, contributing details he had heard. Unegen shook his head in disapproval, but he held his tongue more often than not.
I tried to sort through it all and cling to what was real.
The Falconer was real; so be it. He had a name, Tarik Khaga. He lived in a place, a real place, called Kurugiri.
The Spider Queen…
Well, at least she had one name. Jagrati. Where she came from and what mysterious thrall she wielded were much in debate.
The fact that she did wield a mysterious thrall, wasn’t.
FIFTY
Midway through the journey, I saw the mountain range on the horizon.
The Abode of the Gods.
It stretched east and west as far as the eye could see, but at first glance, I didn’t think its snow-capped peaks seemed all that imposing. In a few days’ journey, I thought, we would reach the base.
I was wrong.
It took us two more weeks of slogging across the barren desert, the mountains remaining tantalizingly distant. By the time we were travelling beneath their shadow, I was well and properly in awe of their scale.
I was also profoundly grateful that I hadn’t had sufficient coin to book Unegen’s caravan for an exclusive passage across the desert. I’d grown fond of the good-natured Tufani traders, and Dorje had seen fit to