Throne of Blood by Elena May

Author:Elena May [May, Elena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-11-14T10:32:33+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Six

Light Reborn

Bengal, Maurya Empire, 222 BC

Jyoti kept her eyes on the skies. Heavy black clouds hid the moon, threatening to burst open and drown the earth, bringing death to anyone on this path. She prayed they would do just that.

Her kidnapper pulled the rope wrapped around her wrists, making her stumble. Jyoti tried to break her fall with her bound hands but crashed to the ground, bruising her bare knees against the tree roots emerging like veins from the muddy path. The other two captives stopped and knelt by her side.

Nisha touched Jyoti’s shoulder with her bound hands. “Are you hurt?”

Nisha’s face always brought her comfort. She looked so lovely, her large hazel eyes outlined with black kajal, lips blood-red with betel leaf, a bindi painted with red ochre paste between her eyebrows to mark her third eye chakra. Her gaze was soft and kind, as if she cared about the well-being of every creature in the universe, from the smallest plum-headed parakeet to the largest elephant.

“Careful not to damage yourselves,” one of the men said in a hushed voice. “She wants you whole.”

The three young women exchanged a glance. Who was she?

The man pulled at the rope once again, forcing Jyoti to stand up and follow. She moved her bound hands, adjusting the piece of red cotton cloth wrapped around her shoulders and hips, and the glass beads hanging from her belt jiggled. Her captor raised a bony hand to chase away a cloud of brown nocturnal dragonflies rising from the mangrove swamps around them, but it was in vain. Thousands of the large insects saturated the hot and humid air as if they were raindrops during a monsoon.

Jyoti’s knees hurt, and the mud she had collected when she had fallen clung uncomfortably to her bare legs and arms, but now was not the time to think about pain. She focused on her captors, examining them under the feeble lantern light. Who were they?

The man pulling her rope was a head taller than her and so skinny that the outlines of his bones were visible through his dark skin. His only piece of clothing was a dhoti of undyed cotton, wrapped around his waist and legs. Long locks of matted hair, like those of Lord Shiva, were twisted around his head in a large, messy heap. Perhaps a sadhu, who had renounced worldly pleasures to focus on his spirit? But such men were simple ascetics, leading a life of discipline and abstention from indulgence, not kidnapping girls.

He turned back to hiss another command, and her eyes slid over his long beard—the black streaked with white—and over the mark on his forehead. Three horizontal lines of white sacramental ash. A dot of red sandalwood in the middle. A Shaivite? But what did he want with her and her friends?

The girls had tried to run, to fight, to resist. But four men walked in front of them, and three behind them. They had been overpowered until they had no strength or will left.

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