Page 132 of Her Soul for a Crown
Only the chanting continued.
It drew his laugh. “I am right.”
Feet shifted on stone. Unease filtered through the gathered Kattadiya at their guruthuma’s lack of answer. Mayhap they had never questioned it. Mayhap they did so silently. He would bring it to life so that she would bring him to death. Shadow freed, he would find Anula.
“It reminds me of home.” Reeri watched not the drum, but the women. “After banishment, the court of the Second Heavens became a torture chamber. Did your Divinities tell you? Yakkas’ shadows are chained to the walls. Though Wessamony does not have the pleasure of a pit.”
A chill spread down the stairs.
“This room might be a gift from the Second Heavens, not the First. After all, it was Wessamony’s anger that banished us. The Kattadiya led him to discover our treason, did they not? He must have owed a great deal to you.”
“Silence!” The guruthuma sneered. “You are a worm. A maggot that feasts on death. Your bargainers do not follow you out of faith but fear.”
Reeri smirked. “A position you know well.”
He looked to those gathered; so did the guruthuma. The air shifted, and not one of her Kattadiya dared meet her gaze. Caught betwixt fear and anger, she raised her hand to Sandani, and Reeri could nearly taste the release.
Pain, white and blinding, struck him.
Yet there had been no drumbeat. Still, strips of red flesh peeled from his body. He choked. The mehendhi was tearing itself free. But it did not fly toward Anula; it did not fly at all. It ripped from him and turned to ash.
Cursed blessings.
The tether was breaking. Anula’s bargain was timing out. The moon must be rising, the Maha Equinox beginning.
His bargain with Lord Wessamony was coming due.
49
Beads of sweat burst down Anula’s face as she fell against the rope binding her to the pyre. The tether quavered, shaking her worse than any fear of burning alive ever could. “Something’s wrong.”
“You feel Reeri,” Kama inferred.
“He’s in trouble.” Anula grunted. Nausea rose and crashed on a wave of blinding pain, and suddenly the pyre disappeared. A cave flashed into view, with a pit full of red stones glistening menacingly and Reeri heaving as his shadow stretched and his markings flared. She blinked and it was gone. “Hashini. The Kattadiya have him!”
“Your connection has grown strong,” Kama sang. “Can you speak to him? Soothe him?”
“What for?” Sohon hissed, craning his neck as the soldiers lit more torches. “Soon Anula will die, and we will all be back in the aether.”
“No.” Anula swallowed back bile. “They have a new tovil. It will tear a Yakka’s soul apart. It will end your being.”
“Mighty Heavens,” Calu cursed. “They finally figured it out.”
Anula couldn’t let them perform it. Not now, not ever. The Yakkas were hers, their tether part of her; their dedication for Anuradhapura and all its people, hers; their love—
“So the Yakkas will be returned to the Heavens upon your death,” Bithul clarified, “and the Blood Yakka will be no more?”
“Not if we save him.” Anula surged against the rope. Its rough fibers pricked and scraped her arms, all the way down to her wrists. Her sweat-slicked fingers slipped off its edge. The Polonnaruwans knew how to keep their captives in place.
“Valiant effort, but I do not think that will work,” Calu murmured.
“It’s all I can do!” she snapped. “I’m not a Yakka!”
Calu flinched, but still he did nothing.
She turned on Sohon.
“What?” he growled. “Do you want me to eat our way out?”
