Naamah's Curse - Jacqueline Carey [178]
“The priests—”
“I spit on the priests!” Jagrati spat on the ground. “I spit on the gods, too! I have chosen my own destiny.”
“You are only dooming yourself, Jagrati,” Amrita said in a sorrowful voice.
“Ah, no.” Her predatory smile returned. “I am taking quite a few others with me. Now, I shall take your oh so pretty dakini, and perhaps a few of your men, too. Your captain’s a handsome fellow.” She beckoned to Hasan Dar. “Come here.”
He stepped forward obediently, the silver pipe around his neck glinting in the afternoon sunlight.
The pipe that would summon our ambush…
I couldn’t move. The best I could manage was a faint, broken whisper. “The pipe! My lady Amrita… blow the pipe.”
She moved without hesitation to intercept Hasan Dar, raising one hand in a gesture that halted him in his tracks. He blinked in perplexity, but he didn’t protest when Amrita reached for the pipe and blew a long, shrill blast on it.
Shouts came from the copse behind us. I prayed silently that Kamadeva’s diamond wasn’t powerful enough to transfix fifty men charging on horseback all at once.
It seemed it wasn’t, for Jagrati hissed with fury, her stark face transformed into ugliness once more.
The Falconer stirred like a man waking from a dream. “Ambush!” he shouted. “Ride!” He cast a scathing glance at Amrita as he scrambled into the saddle, jerking his mount’s head around. “You will pay for this, little Rani.”
She smiled grimly. “You had better ride fast, Falcon King.”
“Bao!” I called his name in a choked voice. “Don’t go, please!”
He looked briefly at me, and I felt his diadh-anam flicker again; but then Jagrati leaned over in the saddle and spoke to him, and he turned away from me.
They fled before the onslaught of our archers, who came thundering out of hiding, sweeping across the meadow, parting to pass us by. I held my breath, fearful for Bao, unsure whether to pray for success or failure.
Beneath the shadow of Sleeping Calf Rock, at the base of the path that led higher into the mountains, two of the Falconer’s men turned back, sowing confusion in the ranks of their pursuers. The air was filled with the twang of bowstrings and the hum of arrows in flight, and sparkling with the glint of throwing daggers and other hidden weapons.
Hasan Dar shook himself, dropping to one knee before the Rani and lowering his head. “My lady, forgive me,” he said in a hoarse voice. “I failed you.”
Amrita laid one hand on his head. “Not yet, my friend. Go after them, I beg you, and see this finished. Your men will look after me. And…” She glanced at me. “Try not to kill the young man from Ch’in, please.”
He nodded and sprang to his feet, striding toward his mount.
I shivered. “Thank you, my lady.”
She caught my hand and squeezed it, her dark, lustrous gaze searching my face. “Are you all right, Moirin?”
“No,” I said honestly. “Not even close.”
SIXTY-THREE
We passed the night in the hidden encampment in the spruce copse.
I was a wreck.
It had all gone wrong, so very wrong. It had been a good plan, but it was a plan largely conceived by a ten-year-old boy who had not taken into account the possibility that Kamadeva’s diamond would be set in play, rendering ten grown men and one highly susceptible daughter of Naamah’s line vulnerable to desire.
Desire that would not go away.
Ah, gods! It was all entangled and complicated, my diadh-anam and Naamah’s gifts warring against one another, my heart’s yearning for Bao and the unholy wanting that Kamadeva’s diamond had loosed in me doing battle. It gripped me like a fever.
Jagrati.
Her face swam before me in my dreams, gaunt, high-boned, and compelling. Although I did not trust her for an instant, some of the things she had said rang true to me. It was a cruel, unfair world that had given shape to her hatred.
Bao.
My heart ached.
I had come close, so very close, to reaching him. Now, again and again, I reached for him, reached for his diadh-anam, willing that faint flicker of uncertainty to kindle