Page 136 of Her Soul for a Crown
“Her rajas have been false. They have been mere masks wornby the Blood Yakka, bent on watching Anuradhapura bleed to death. They let in the Polonnaruwa Kingdom—they let you be assaulted!”
“No!” Premala shouted.
But it was too late.
Betwixt the pit now soaked with the dying tether and the enemy kingdom’s forces outside, the people of Anuradhapura saw only death. The stampede began. The guruthuma shouted for the relic, for Anula, but her voice was drowned by screaming.
Reeri’s screaming.
The bindings on his hands caught fire and sizzled into ash.
Boom.
It was not a drum nor war cry that shook the earth and rattled loose the stones. It was Heavenly thunder.
“Reeri.” A voice roared.
The elephant on Reeri’s chest shivered, the last vestiges of the tether holding on tight. He lifted his gaze not into the face of the guruthuma, but into the face of his first tormentor.
His voice shook. “Yes, my Lord?”
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A wind kicked up inside the amphitheater. It swept the skirts of the Kattadiya as they huddled closer together, bells and beads chiming. It whirled around the broken and bleeding, slamming closed the door to their only escape. The lock clicked in place.
The Maha Equinox had begun. Anula’s heart skipped a beat.
Lord Wessamony was everything the stories of old described and more. Blue flames blazed up his twisted horns, sharp teeth were set in a snarl, and sharper nails dug into the hilt of the Great Sword—the one the stories said was pure gold, as long as three men stacked together, and blessed to do Wessamony’s biding. It glowed, chasing shadows into tight corners.
The Lord of the Second Heavens snarled. Depthless eyes took in the people, the Kattadiya, and found them all lacking. The relic burned at Anula’s hip. With a snap of his fingers, Reeri lifted out of the pit, flew into the air, and slammed against a wall. Kama, Calu, and Sohon followed, their two essence offerings falling from her grip to the ground, shattering the bowl. The Great Sword flashed out of Wessamony’s hand and slid beneath the Yakkas’necks, trapping them against the stone wall. He stepped lightly toward them, a heart squelching apart beneath his feet. The Lord darkened. “Where be my Bone Blade?”
“My Lord,” Reeri breathed. Anula didn’t need to touch him to see the fear in his eyes or hear it shake his words. “We nearly—”
The sword pressed closer. Blood welled in a thin line along their throats. Anula flinched.
It was happening again. Her loved ones were being threatened. But the relic burned once more at her hip, a reminder that she was no longer that little girl. She swallowed the fear, imagining taking Reeri’s, too, and stepped forward. “Murderer!”
“Anula,” Reeri warned.
He should have known better. When had she ever heeded him before? She took another step toward the Lord of destruction. “Murderer.”
Wessamony turned, flames flickering up his horns like the tail of an irritated jungle cat. “Ah, the one who offered a soul. Leave, child, else I take that offering to the grave.”
His voice, at once booming and stern, also held the sounds of the cosmos, a tone that reverberated in her chest. It warned that he was not human, that he was not safe. Still, she clenched a fist and raised her chin. For Auntie Nirma. For Thaththa. For Amma.
For Anuradhapura.
“Why burn Eppawala? You had plenty of people willing to search for the relic before. You didn’t have to kill the entire village,” she accused.
“Anula, no,” Reeri rasped, cutting his throat deeper on the blade.
Wessamony narrowed his eyes. “Who are you?”
“Did the cosmos deny you a heart and a memory?”
A whisper began behind her. Guruthuma Hashini quickly prayed to her Divinities, one name after another spilling from herlips.
Wessamony frowned. Wind swept through the chamber like the wave of a monsoon, toppling the guruthuma over and scaring the Kattadiya into silence. “Why does the soul offering care for a village long ago destroyed?”
