Naamah's Curse - Jacqueline Carey [164]
“Oh,” I said.
We gazed at one another.
“Are you really a dakini?” the Rani Amrita inquired.
I smiled. “Close your eyes, my lady.”
She obeyed.
I looked at her because it pleased me to do so, because she was beautiful, and I liked beauty. I tried to guess her age. Twenty-seven, maybe twenty-eight. Maybe younger, even. She had wed young, I thought.
I breathed the twilight deep into my lungs, took it deep into myself. I blew it out around her, around us both, as soft as a kiss.
“Open your eyes.”
“Oh!” Her eyelashes fluttered alert, her face filled with wonder. “You can do this?”
I nodded. “It is a gift of my people, meant for hiding. Here, no one else can see us.” I sighed. “If I knew the path, I could go to Kurugiri unseen. I suppose I’ll have to try,” I added reluctantly. The prospect filled me with dread, but I couldn’t see any other way.
The Rani frowned. “It would please me if you would stay for a time, Moirin. Many have sought the path to Kurugiri, and many have died trying. None have found it. You have been very sick; and the gods must have sent you to me for a reason. Wait, and grow stronger. Let us go to the temples and make offerings. Perhaps your purpose here will become clear.” She searched my face, her dark eyes touched with silvery luster in the twilight. “Will you do this for me?”
I wanted to, oh so very much.
Bracing myself for the inevitable flare of alarm from my diadh-anam, I opened my mouth to refuse with regret.
My diadh-anam was silent.
“Yes,” I said gratefully. “Yes, my lady. I will stay.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
It was the first true respite I’d known since Aleksei and I had escaped to Udinsk.
Now, as then, I knew it was only temporary. Kurugiri and its deadly maze were waiting for me; Tarik Khaga and his bedamned Spider Queen were waiting for me; to the best of my knowledge, Bao continued to languish under her spell, ensorceled by the Black Diamond of Kamadeva.
Or not; mayhap Manil Datar was right, and my stubborn peasant-boy was happy in her thrall.
I didn’t believe it, but nor did I believe Bao was in imminent danger at this point. So I was more than grateful to accept this respite, and pray that the gods revealed their will.
I offered prayers of my own to the Maghuin Dhonn Herself, and to Blessed Elua and his Companions, and most especially to Naamah.
I went with the Rani Amrita to make offerings to her gods.
There were temples to Sakyamuni the Enlightened One in Bhaktipur, but like most of her folk, my lady Amrita worshipped the gods of Bhodistan, of which there were a bewildering array further complicated by the fact that many of them existed in multiple incarnations. I have to own, I never did get all of them straight in my head.
“It does not matter, Moirin,” Amrita said kindly. “Only that you open your heart to them.”
I tried.
We went first to the temple of the goddess Durga to whom rats were sacred. She was the patron-goddess of Amrita’s husband’s family, who were descended from one of her incarnations. Rats had aided the goddess in a battle against a demon that took the form of a buffalo, nipping and harrying its heels as they fought. One of Durga’s later incarnations decreed that the spirits of her descendants would not go into the keeping of the god of the dead, but be housed in rats before being reborn.
It was very confusing.
I liked the temple, though. It made me glad to see hundreds of rats swarming over the marble floors, bright-eyed, glossy, and well fed, tame and friendly. There were tiny secret passages throughout the walls, so they darted and scurried about, emerging from unexpected nooks and crannies. The rats