Naamah's Curse - Jacqueline Carey [157]
I forced my gaze to focus. Hidden in the high peaks and crags was a man-made structure, towers and crenellations challenging the sky. Humans dwelled there. The steep slope that led to the eyrie was a complex labyrinth of fissures and moraines, unnavigable to the eye at a distance, and doubtless even more confusing at close range. I remembered picking our way through the Stone Forest in Ch’in, and how we would have been hopelessly lost without the dragon’s guidance. This looked much, much worse—and infinitely more dangerous.
Nonetheless, my diadh-anam blazed in exultation.
“Bao!” I whispered.
“So it’s true,” a neutral voice remarked. Manil Datar had come alongside me without my realizing it. When I reached for the twilight in unthinking panic, he raised one hand in a peaceable gesture. “Do not curse me. I mean no harm. You are god-touched. I did not know, or I would not have taken you as a passenger.”
I was confused. “Why?”
He shrugged. “It is bad business when gods fight.” He jerked his chin at the distant peak. “Kurugiri, eh?”
I echoed the word. “Kurugiri.”
Manil Datar glanced at me sidelong. “You mean to pit your magic against hers, Lady Dakini?” He made the term a subtle insult. “Against the Spider Queen Jagrati?”
I shrugged, too. “Maybe.”
His mouth hardened. “Bad luck for you. You have some tricks, yes. She has powerful magic.”
“What do you know of her?” I asked him. I didn’t want to be beholden to the man, but all knowledge was worth having.
Datar gestured. “She comes from the south, far south. She has stolen a great treasure there, and come to the one place where no one dares take it from her. With this treasure, she has bewitched the Falconer into marrying her even though it is forbidden, bewitched the men who serve him.”
“What is this treasure?”
He lowered his voice. “It is the kaalahiira that Lord Shiva made from the ashes of Kamadeva.”
“What is kaalahiira and kamadeva?” I knew Lord Shiva was one of the many gods of Bhodistan, but I didn’t know the other words.
Manil Datar gave me a disgusted look. “You do not know the story? How can your gods send someone so ignorant?”
I touched his sleeve. “Please?”
He snorted, but he relented. “Kamadeva is the god of desire. When he disturbed Lord Shiva at his meditation, Lord Shiva burned him to ashes with his third eye. When Lord Shiva heard the grieving of Kamadeva’s widow, Rati, and learned that Kamadeva was trying to awaken him to fight against a demon, he squeezed the ashes, so.” He made a fist. “To make a hiiraka, the gem-stone that shines like ice. Only it was black because of the ashes, so it is called a kaalahiira.”
“A diamond,” I murmured to myself. “A black diamond.”
“It makes desire come, very strong desire.” Datar pointed toward the peak of Kurugiri. “So. The Falconer rules his nest, but the Spider Queen rules him.” He shook his head. “You are beautiful, yes, but no match for the kaalahiira of Kamadeva.”
To be sure, I didn’t feel like it in my current state. “How did Jagrati steal it?”
Manil Datar turned his head and spat. “She was nobody, a no-caste nothing, a collector of night-soil. One night, she profaned the temple where the kaalahiira was kept and took it. I do not know how.”
Shivering beneath the bright sun, I stared at the stronghold. It was a harsh place, and I couldn’t imagine much grew there. “How do they live up there?”
He shrugged. “I do not know. The Falconer demands tribute for the services of his assassins.” He pointed again. “You cannot see it from so far, but there is a great pot that hangs on a chain from that plateau. People who wish to hire his falcons to kill someone put messages and tributes in it. So.” He gave me a mirthless smile. “Do you wish to go to Kurugiri? I will show you the way. You can send the Falconer a message or try your luck in his maze.”
“No.” I shivered again. If I were a great heroine from the days of yore like Phèdre nó Delaunay,