7
On waking, her dreams teased, half-remembered. The prince, and his irritating ways chafed her. Mortals were complex, unnecessarily so, and that stemmed, perhaps, from the great tragedy that was their defining characteristic, the centre of their being and the fact at the back of their minds. It was the cause of their unreasoning fear and cruelty, but also of their fragile beauty. Ksasnaja craved simpler conquests.

On her finger was a tiger’s eye, the slit-pupilled stone watching her from an ornate band that curled like a restless serpent. She read the word upon it, and released the djinn within with an impatient tap. Waves of amber energy surged outwards, setting birds in trees to flight, and causing the king to cough up blood. In hallways courtiers in oversized hats glanced about fearfully, stalked by a saber-toothed being on the edge of sight from the back of their atavistic brains. With a purring like a dirty, oily engine, the shaitan brought itself into the world.

“I am here-” It began, but Ksasnaja cut him off.

“You saw your cousins summoned and freed, didn’t you? I know exactly what to expect from djinni.”

It bowed its horned head, its tawny mane quivering with suppressed energy and quaking bloodlust. Long, muscled arms wet with musky oils clawed the floor impatiently, and a tail flicked its barbed tip back and forth.

“Where is the Gobbler, devourer in the sky?” She asked him.

The eyes, green as the primordial jungle turned their brilliant green points on her, and the mouth, fanged like a manticore hung open. “The Gobbler? I do not know this thing.”

“The Gobbler; it will appear to your mind’s eye like a storm, fierce with electricity, with neither thunder nor meteorological cause, roaming low over the land, seeking out the abodes of men.”

The viridian eyes closed, leaving black lids like the kohl-rimmed visors of sun gods. The shaitan took deep breaths, and its large body shook periodically, its mind roaming the world swift as thought, searching out its quarry like a pack of hungry wolves. A grin broke over the leonine face. “I have it. Far, though. It is far.” Its wings, leathery and sheathed in brilliant red feathers unfolded in anticipation. “I see the kingdoms where the Virgin King and Whore Queen are locked in a war without hope of an end. Wise scientists and theologians play with clever words, manipulating concepts like fragile crystal balls passed from hand to hand and concealed like a magician’s trick. Yes… it is they the Gobbler seeks… it ravages through the countryside, sucking up the thoughts of mortals great and small to feed its appetite, leaving waste and toxic destruction. Universities it seeks, and academies where over-clever minds fat from untested knowledge will fill its empty core. It is mighty, I warn you, swollen with stolen ideas.”

Ksasnaja knew all this, and more; that deep in the core of the Gobbler was a thoughtstone, the distilled essence of its ancient quest for answers to questions it couldn’t even ask on its own, which she needed for Rshti’s spell.

“Bring to me the deadliest weapon this world knows,” commanded the ex-goddess. “Bring me armour to withstand concussion and sharp edges and the bolts of lightning. Bring me the wheeled boots of child gods. Then you are free to go.”

The demon, furred with prickles sharper than gorse chuckled deep in its flame-filled chest, and was gone. It was soon back. Ksasnaja pulled on her under-robes, and over them fitted the armour that the shaitan had brought for her. Bronze it seemed, but she know better. One-eyed giants had hammered it out in factories under the volcanoes when first the gods had fought their elders, to turn the bolts of sky fathers, the clubs of earth gods and the tridents of tritons. The crested helm turned her into an apparition of violence that excited the djinn even more.

“Here!” He intoned in his bone-shaking bass, his purring deeper than a thousand pards. “The Sidereal Edge!” He handed her a long-handled spear, elegant, the shaft bound with leather and studded for extra grip. Ribbons draped from either side, and as it passed through the air they fluttered with a beauty unsuited to its terrible purpose. “When first light from the middle earth reached the far star where dwells the Lady Who Lives in Stars, she wondered what this thing was which caused men to fall into a sleep without waking, and descending from her twinkling abode she caught a death as it pounced on a man. She passed it between her hands, examining it, shaping it to a shape she did not know but that it remembered and taught to her hands. When it was done, she saw what she had made and felt sick, leaving it behind, the perfect blade, a sherd of death utterly deadly to all things subject to finite life. That man who she rescued became a Wanderer, free from death, and that death became a weapon passed from hero to hero, claiming more lives than had been its destiny. Both were pleased with the outcome.”

Ksasnaja took the Sidereal Edge. The blade, a pure silver, crystalline in its purity, but with the grim aspect of blood-rusted iron, hissed as she took it, sensing her murderous intent and loving it.

“The boots!” She demanded, growing impatient as the metallic death whispered to her mind stories of a thousand glorious slaughters. The shaitan fitted her feet with boots, steel-soled, and then set loose in the room a pair of wheels, golden in colour, that burned as he did, and spun like catherine wheels about the room, threatening to cause fire with the sparks that flew from them. It had been a while, but once learned it is never forgotten, and Ksasnaja leapt onto them. Catching them under her feet one by one, she rode them out the window and into the air. Speed gathered, and she became giddy with borrowed power, a goddess again, glorious and armed for battle.

With a mighty bellow her demon exploded after her in a flurry of wings. His mane flattened against his head, and his cruel claws caught eagles out of the air and let them fall to earth in bloody bundles out of pure joyous spite.

“You are released!” She yelled back at him.

“I want to see this Gobbler!” He returned. “And taste its flesh!”

The continents blurred below them, and gradually great cities of white stone emerged beneath them, meticulously ordered in circles, hexagons, squares, walled fortresses with spaces set aside for work, rest and play.

“Further!” Whooped the shaitan. Fire bubbled from its throat like laughter, and it trailed black smoke. But it was unnecessary; On the horizon Ksasnaja could already see the electrical storm that signaled the presence of the Devourer in the Sky. The city below it was a mess as buildings exploded and imploded, spraying mortar and marble every which way, and masses fled, men, women and children, young and old, all order forgotten as they ran for their lives. Great tongues of lightning lapped down, drinking up their electrical thoughts and frying their mortal coils.

And above it all was the Gobbler. Grey, a mass of filthy, throbbing flesh, like a human brain swollen out of all proportion, an overfed stomach with blood pumping obscenely through oversized veins and thoughts flickering like the aurora borealis over the vast surface.

The shaitan did not wait, but with a snarl pounced on it. Blood flew as its claws began to dig into grey matter, tunneling for carnage with four legs and a hungry mouth. The Gobbler shuddered, its form trembling in the empty air. Its electrical feeders clamped onto the shaitan, filling it full of high voltage shock, but the bestial demon swallowed it up and drew it into its own energy body with a whoop as its hair stood on end. And as the Gobbler tasted the monster’s thoughts it knew it was doomed. Panic ran all over it like goose bumps, as it racked its library of stolen ideas and knowledge for a way to save itself.

Ksasnaja swooped in like a harpy, surgically cutting through cortices with the unstoppable blade, lobotomizing the Devourer so that its hemispheres could no longer communicate. The hovering monstrosity tore itself apart, the two halves each going their own way, and as the stinking flesh ripped open she could see it- the thoughtstone, encased within the brainstem. Fending off mad electrical bolts, she dived in, and cut the stone free with elegant strokes. Still the shaitan picked at the great carcass, as its thought-lights dimmed and the huge slabs of grey meat crashed into the earth and dust clouds flew.

The thoughtstone was about the size of a baby, translucent and veined like quartz, still wet from spinal fluid. As Ksasnaja tucked it under her arm a cheer went up below, and she saw a crowd of citizens, their lives saved by her and her demon. Their tongue was foreign, and as a mortal she could not understand it, but she knew that if she had not intervened they would be shriveled ash mummies, their memories devoured by a being that ravished continent after continent, that cared nothing for the value of living things. She wondered what they cried, as they kowtowed and danced like healed lepers.

“Goddess,” laughed the shaitan from close behind her. “They call you goddess!”

8
The goddess returned to the palace around midday, put away her arms, set the thoughtstone in a second chest beside the hook, and put on the name of Vrasyati. As she dressed in sarong and diaphanous veil, she reminded herself of Rshti’s commands; next she must bring the giblets of Svinvi.

In the throne-room, a long line of petitioners parted with confusion as the Princess’ guards muscled through and she followed. Their yells of indignation turned to awed silence as they caught sight of her face. Bold and furious, invincible as a killer, she marched barefoot to the throne.

“They say he has already been fed today!” She yelled at the king. He exchanged
confused glances with the vizier.

“The prince? Ahh… We couldn’t find you, when the time came. Your quarters were empty and your men would not speak.”

She stamped her foot and turned her eyes on him like swords of deep purple. He squirmed in his cushioned throne, but at that moment Trishan’s mute slave entered, and touched the Princess’ arm. She was mildly disgusting by the disfigured creature, but his meaning was clear. She followed him until they were at the foot of the tower, and there her impatience would brook no delay and she pushed ahead on long dancer’s legs up to the top. The king and courtiers hurried after, leaving a gaggle of petitioners to mill confused about the throne-room.

The prince unlocked the door and all watched as it closed behind Vrasyati.

He sat, blindfold on the bed, and she sat beside him. She touched the linen bound around his eyes and laughed softly.

‘You did not come this morning. I hoped you would.”

The Princess was surprised to feel her heart flutter slightly.

“I had business to attend to.”

More of your sorcery?” He asked grinning.

‘Yes,” she murmured. She stood, and walked to the balcony, leant on the sill and sought to pierce the northern clouds with her steady glance. “I will be going, my prince. I shall be gone for some days, perhaps weeks. I hope you will still remember me when I return.” She sighed and looked at him again. His sweet face was turned in the direction of her voice, and his head was on one side listening. “Though you have not seen my face, and will forget my voice.”

“I will remember what we have spoken of, little soul. Where are you going?”

“You recall my spell?”

“To make you immortal?”

“The same. I need a further ingredient. I shall travel north, far north to where the ice once slept. In the days when your ancestors first rode in six-horsed chariots to the land where your father now rules, the North Gods had their hall there, where the rainbow has its root. By day they battled one another, in huge and elaborate wargames where the souls of the glorious dead were their pawns. By night they feasted and orgied around great roaring fires in their halls whose roof-beams were amongst the clouds. A cow made from sky ceaselessly pumped mead from her great udders. A powerful boar, a bull, a ram and a colossal turkey all served as their meat, but they were no ordinary beasts, for they could not die, and each night the meat would regrow on their chewed bones and in the morning they would be slaughtered anew and broiled for the next feast.

“There are few torments more terrible in hell than this, to be butchered and devoured, then painfully regenerate, raw nerve and sinew by raw nerve and sinew. If a bone had been broken, or the marrow drained too eagerly, then they would awake lame and in even greater pain and fear.

“One day, as they gobbled their feed and the butcher sharpened his knives, the boar convinced his fellow beasts to stage a rebellion, and as the ram was led to the executioner’s block he gored his killer to death. They soon learned to walk on two legs, and armed themselves from the trophies held around the hall. Then when the North Gods and their undead legions returned, war weary and thirsty for flesh, their livestock ambushed them. Horrid was the carnage that day. The beasts were sorely outnumbered, a thousand to one and more, yet their flesh regrew whenever pierced, and their hearts and minds were hard and cruel from aeons of mistreatment. The turkey betrayed his cousins, promised a place in the Northern Pantheon for the capture of the Bull, but he was caught by his comrades, and tossed screaming to burn in the ever-fiery hearth whose source is in the infernal realms. The Boar himself killed the All-Father of the gods, and set His diadem on his own tufted head. With an oink to make a tiger wet itself King Svinvi declared a new age for the North Lands, a vegetarian utopia where beasts ruled and men toiled yoked in the fields. Among the chill wastes he has cultivated a tropical paradise, and the lettered fauna from all continents make their way there, to find companionship amongst hooved co-religionists.

“I need his giblets for my spell. The heart and lungs of King Svinvi. He can easily grow a new set.”

She realized she had been close to a trance as she spoke, and smelt the burnt flesh and heard the hammering of cruel steel as the animals and the gods had their ragnorok. There was a gentle smile on the prince’s bow-curved lips.

“I had never heard that legend before.”

“A legend?” She sat beside him. “You do not believe in witches or djinni or talking beasts. You believe in nothing but dull matter.”

He shook his head. “I believe in nothing. I find there is nothing to believe in. I do not know what is real.”

“I am real.” Her fingers went to his blindfold. “Look at me.”

“Seeing is not believing. It is only the play of light dancing on the surfaces, tricking the eyes. I do not trust appearances.”

Without knowing quite what she was doing she took the prince’s hands in her own, and led them to her face.

“I am real,” she repeated.

His fingers shook slightly, and she felt his heart beat faster, his breath quicken. Shyly at first his fingers traced her jaw line, brushed her cheeks and skimmed the surface of her lips. She watched him as he read her face, empty of thoughts, and realized that her own pulse was no longer so easy.

How it happened she could not explain, but in a moment an understanding passed from one to the other, a piece fell into place, and a filament of fate was caught in the spindle of the spinners. They kissed. It was a clumsy kiss, their lips meeting awkwardly at a strange angle, a flicker of tongue too late or too early. Their hearts burned, their skin was electric. They drew back, smiled and drew breath. Then tried again.

Grasping limbs bound them together, each lost in somewhere between self and other. Her eyes were shut, and when they opened she fell away, frightened by herself and by him. “I need to go.” She said, and he nodded.

“Remember me,” she said.

9
In the morning the army of Vrasyati marched out of the city. At its head were seven elephants, and on the largest rode the princess, daydreaming amid the sheets of the howdah. She thought of Trishan, his touch, his voice. She wondered why she thought of him, and why she could not stop. She felt a part of him inside her, like a tiny fish swimming in her ribcage, elusive and joyously sweet.

The jungles gave way to grassland on their way north, and among mountains their paths led, through wintry passes where they sent bandit princes fleeing with the rumour of their passing. The mountains tumbled into the steppe, and thence to great forests whose leaves never fell. Vrasyati- Ksasnaja counted the rings upon her fingers. Two djinni remained, but she would not need them. She was fearless at the head of six thousand men, tickled by first love. She could handle Svinvi on her own.

As the forests stammered before endless plains of whitest snow, Ksasnaja called a halt. Her captains rode to her.

“Go into the deeps of the forest, and find for me the fungus that grows where the moss dares not. Wrap it in cloth, and bring it to me.” They did as she ordered, and when they returned, she took one of their horses, wrapped herself in thick furs, and rode the narrow path that was scarred into the ice. The afreet-made men waited for her without complaint as the snow fell thick on them, and their breath did not heat the air.

When the snows melted, and their wet bleedings fed a thousand ferns and thick-leafed palms she knew she was in the land of the Pig-King. Exotic birds with brilliant feathers and long tails took to flight as she passed them, and she knew that they were taking report of her to their master. Where the rainforest ended in a clearing three bears waited for her, their black fur tangled with the carved vertebrae of men. In their paws were spears, built by their opposably-thumbed slaves.

“Take me to the king,” said the once goddess. The bears looked at one another, and one of them took her horse gruffly by the reins while the others led the way to the portal, marble but with vines choking the headless statues which depicted the children of the gods at play.

In the courtyard, beasts played at being men; goat-scholars paused their perusals of holy books to nibble at the pages; geese-in-waiting kicked their feet in puddles and filthied their tailored dresses. The tigers who oversaw the toiling mortal slaves silenced their whips to have their throats scratched and their bellies rubbed. But Svinvi was no fool.

“Get them out of here,” he grunted, when he saw how the humans who waited on his court made hungry stares at the strange visitor with eyes which he knew no mortal should have. “Why have you come to my land, girl? You knew me by name, so you must know my reputation. There are no womanspawn here who are not indentured in our service, and none enter my realm without putting on a slave ring. I do not know what wyrd powers you must have, amethyst-eyed Ten-finger, but I won this kingdom with my blood, and will not surrender it easily.”

Ksasnaja looked about the room, at the talking, walking things that stared at her like an abomination of nature. There were the bull and the ram, with nose-rings of gold and diadems hung with pearls. Slitty-eyed ewe-princesses fanned their fans and watched her coyly, and sly fox-pages bared their fangs in the shadows of pillars. There, in the back, toying with the hooped cross it wore at its neck, was a dog-demon from the red sands of the black land, in a kilt of white linen. She smiled when she saw it, and the last part of her scheme was fully formed. She winked at the demon, and bent her head to the ground in prostration before King Svinvi. It was strange to prostrate oneself, she thought, though not as painful as she might have imagined.

“I am an exile,” she said, rubbing her forehead in the dust. “Forsaken by my own people. I have come here seeking refuge; all I ask is that you give me a roof, a blanket and feed.”

Svinvi squinted his piggy eyes at her, and brought a dexterous trotter to his chin where braided bristles dangled as a beard. He pointed to her with his scepter. “What use are you to me? You are too slight to be a labourer, your hips too narrow to be a breeder. Your legs are long; perhaps you can be my messenger.”

“I cannot run, lord. But in my own land I was a cook, a maker of fine foods.”

Svinvi’s eyes glittered, and the dog demon grinned at his co-conspirator’s cunning (though he knew not yet what she planned), for the way to a pig’s heart is through his stomach. A grey macaque brought a sack of iron slave-rings forward, and found one that fitted onto Ksasnaja’s finger. A sparrow, flitting before her impatiently, led her down stone steps, into the earth from where heat rose in faint-inducing waves. Demons staffed the kitchens, curly-toothed oni and sheng from the far east who alone of the Boar-King’s subjects could endure the temperature. A devilish chef, his apron stained with broccoli blood and spud juice, cuffed Ksasnaja when he saw her. She reeled in pain and confusion, and for a second considered setting a djinn on him, but she recovered, and realized what a waste it would be.

“Fetch me lentils,” barked the chef, and Ksasnaja ran to obey.

Not that she knew where the lentils were. She learned how to look busy, as she scurried through the infernal ovens, how to look busy without doing anything. She gathered chopped vegetables in piles and then re-scattered them, lifted sacks of potatoes to and fro and then back from fro to to.

“Chop the chives finely! His majesty is most particular about his seasonings!” One overdemon instructed an apprentice. The knife danced like a hungry guillotine and in the background a team poured pots of steam-breathing stew into a gilded trough ready for consumption.

Intoxicating herbs and spices filled Ksasnaja’s mortal lungs, and combined with the heat made her feel violently ill. She made her way purposefully to the gilded trough and tossed the fungus she had concealed in her robes into the gourmet swill.

A pair of loin-clothed imps lugged it up the stairs, and as a team of larger fiends negotiated a load of coconuts down from the castle above, she stole back up, out of the suffocating stuffiness of the kitchen floor.

As she walked through the passageways she bowed her head, kept her eyes low and humble, her steps small and unsure. None of the beasts gave her a second glance.

In the gigantic hall an equally huge table was set up, and at every place was an animal, napkin uneasy about its throat, elbows on the tablecloth. Ksasnaja watched from the shadows while the food was set before the king and courtiers, and without pretence of decorum each gobbled up what was before him or her in a messy fountain of hot juices. Svinvi came to Ksasnaja’s fungus, and swallowed it whole without a second look, as if it were a small truffle. All were too absorbed in their own feeding to notice as, a few moments later, he choked out a squeal and fell, face forward, into his remaining mash.

It was some time before the wolf sitting next to him pulled his snout from his vodka long enough to notice the king was no longer moving. He tugged his porcine majesty from his trough by the thick black bristles that formed a mohawk along his thick back, but the eyes, open, showed no life, while his hairy jowled gob hung slack, drying spittle and half-regurgitated food dripping around gilt-capped tusks. The wolf threw his head back and let out a chilling howl, and in the chaos that followed Ksasnaja could no longer see what happened; it was all she could do to keep herself from the stampeding feet and hold her ears against the raucous braying that shook the great hall.

Some form of order was eventually established by the Bull and Ram, who beat sense into the most panicky creatures and dragged their king and brother to a make-shift bier by the throne, where a wise owl checked for a pulse and pronounced the un-killable King Svinvi dead.

While this was happening, the goddess who was now a slave located the dog alchemist, caught his eye, and motioned for him to join her in the dark shade by the doorway. The thing was taller than her by some way, long necked and elegant like a jackal, fur black and eyes like wild honey. His braided wig was of gold beads; he chewed his claws as he spoke.

“An honour to meet you again, Ksasnaja,” were his first words to her. She had not expected this. “Perhaps you remember me. I made a pilgrimage to your mountain with my master, the Opener of the Ways.”

“I remember you,” she said, though she did not.

“I suppose this is your doing,” he said, pointing with his feral eyes to where mourning sows beat their breasts and kissed Svinvi’s coldening lips.

“It is,” she said.

“How did you kill him, if you don’t mind me asking? And why?”

“He is not dead,” she replied. “I fed him the fish fungus which grows where the moss dares not. His body will remain in a state near to death for three days, and then he will return to his immortal self.”

The demons lips moved as he reasoned this to himself, and then wagged his tail in a wicked appreciation of her cunning. “But the why?” He panted hungrily.

Ksasnaja smiled sweetly, savouring her power over the chimeric canine. “I will tell you, but I need your help. You must offer to embalm the body in the manner of your people, and let me be your assistant. As the papyri instruct you are to remove his organs, and you will give to me the lungs and heart; the rest, brains, liver, kidney, spine- yours to experiment with as you please.”

“And what when Svinvi awakes?”

“He will regrow them.”

“I meant what of us?”

“What of us? I am only a slave, you merely embalmed him. His death and resurrection will remain a mystery. And should he try to find us, we will in any case be gone by then, long gone by the time he frees himself from his wraps and learns to draw breath again.” She took his gaze in her own and said seriously, “So are we agreed?”

“Yes,” said the dog, without a moment’s hesitation. He handed her the bowl from which he was lapping beer, and with the authority his unusual height and ancient dignity gave him, parted the crowds so that he could speak with the Bull and Ram. Ksasnaja watched as he employed his cunning tongue to bend the ungulates to his will. Eventually he gestured to Ksasnaja, and as the vice-kings waited he fetched her over. The sight of the corpse up close sent a shudder through her; he still seemed so powerful, with his muscles straining beneath a rough skinned hide, and broad arms ringed with gold torcs.

“Has your slave-girl never seen a corpse
before?” sneered the ram. The dog-demon chuckled in faked appreciation of his joke.

“It is important that the embalming process begins at once, before putrefaction sets in. If you make a scribe available to me I will make a list of the implements I shall need. In the meantime I will need the body removed to a room where my assistant and I can work in peace.”

The bear-guards were the ones employed to lug the king to his bedroom, the room set aside for the mummification. It was a huge chamber, above the hall, with a view over all the jungle, and the immaculate white beyond.

“Close the curtains,” requested the dog. And to the bears, “Not on the bed, on the table.” Ksasnaja closed the curtains, and though it did occur to her to disobey she remembered that she was now his assistant. He began lighting the tall beeswax candles that perched haphazard about the room, as a human scribe followed him, scratching a list of surgical tools and exotic spices on a tablet of flint. When he supposed no-one looked, the scribe stole glances at the desert-dweller’s divinely beautiful assistant. “Please remove the clothes and valuables from the body,” she was next instructed. “Every ring, every chain.” She did so, slightly spooked by the lingering warmth from the dead king. The clothes she folded as best she could, which was not very well, and put in a basket. The gold rings, crown, linked-bracelets and necklets, all these she put on top, and a she-baboon carried them away.

They were alone for a while.

“I confess I have forgotten your name,” said Ksasnaja.

“Burnt Shadow,” he said to her, and indeed he was like the scorched desert jackal, who walks under the sun like a slice of darkness.

“How long will the embalming process take, Burnt One?” She asked.

“The body should properly be left for three days before anything is begun. To dry it, it must be soaked in natron for thirty-five days and nights, and then we may wrap it in the linen bindings and encase it in stone. In all about seventy days.”

“Seventy days! He will be reborn in three!”

“I know. There are certain formalities we may dispense with, but for the drying… we must employ sorcery.”

At this Ksasnaja lowered her lids. “I cannot know explain, but circumstances forbid me from appearing here as anything but a mortal woman. I hope you can understand.”

“I see. In that case… It is possible that I may work the magic myself. But I will need to rely somewhat upon you while I prepare the spell.”

The human servitors entered the room again. A long ant-like line of them brought tall jars, sharp butcher’s knives and hooked steel, sackfulls of salt and aromatic oils and wines. Burnt Shadow shooed them all away, and when he was sure that they were all gone, lifted to himself a hammer and chisel, and with furtive movements hammered open the way between Svinvi’s nostrils into the brain cavity. With an addict’s hunger he reached his thin-wristed, long-fingered claws inside, and pulled out paws filled with stringy grey matter, and gobbled them down.

“You must speak to no-one of this,” he ordered her, his eyes rabid and fearful. “Already for what my master learned I have been banished. If He was to learn of my further crimes he would crucify me and have the Eater of Souls pick apart my flesh.” Stunned, Ksasnaja nodded in dumb assent. “Good.” He fetched a curved scalpel, and handed it to her, then took a long gold needle, and seated cross-legged on the bed, began to write hieroglyphs in blood on his forelegs. “You must do as I instruct you,” he spoke out of his trance, and she did.

First, a jar was placed by the table. With shaking hands, she cut deep into the boar-king’s side, slicing through skin and muscle, and with her hands wet with congealing blood felt inside for the lungs and heart. Cutting them free, and pulling them out was a gruesome process, and more than once she felt the bile rise from her stomach to her throat. She placed them, inexpertly eviscerated but still intact, in the jar.

“Get the next two jars. I want everything in them; kidneys, stomach, genitals, tongue, entrails…” The demon smacked his lips and she noted with disgust that saliva dribbled down his chin and dripped onto his lap where it mingled with his blood. At the same time Ksasnaja could feel the power gathering in the room, the sorceries Burnt Shadow was drawing into him making her ears buzz and the tips of her fingers numb. As she sliced through blood vessels and membranes she slit open her finger, and more entranced than horrified she watched as for the first time in a million years her vital fluids saw the light of day.

There was little light in that room, as the flickering candles shone off surfaces slick with blood. The whole room reeked of it, that and the perfumes that leaked, curling, from their bottles. Three jars were now filled, and Svinvi’s body was now hollow as a drum. The master embalmer awoke from his trance, and dragged the sacks of natron over to the table. His hair stood on end, and when he brushed by Ksasnaja she was stung by bites of static.

“Listen carefully,” he snarled at her. The ensorcellment upon him had two effects: he was in subtle, burning pain, but at the same time it buoyed his mind, making him feel invincible with power, so that the goddess before him truly was a mortal in his eyes, to be ordered about as one. “You are to fill him, cover him with the natron salt. You must be thorough. Then I will call down a desert wind, and in the course of seven hours the heat of thirty-five suns will dry him out. But this is the rub: the salt will become sodden, and when it does you must remove it and re-cover him. This must all be done swiftly, and with great care, or else it is wasted.”

“Can’t we just bind him and begone? We each have what we came for.”

He bared his fangs, and it was answer enough. So as he stretched out his black arms and called upon the gods of the underworld by name, she shoveled salt into the boar’s side, and then poured a sack over him, until he was covered, even to his long snout and piggy ears. She stood back as the coiling column of heated air was called upon the corpse. The room grew stifling hot, and Burnt Shadow’s eyes shone like burning magnesium. Seven hours passed, and Ksasnaja knew hardship as she never had before, sweating, without meat or drink, her hands burning as she shoveled natron and sobbed while replacing it with fresh salt. When it was done, she fell to her feet. Burnt Shadow had lost all of his earlier respect for her, and though he too felt wearied by their battle with time, he expertly dowsed the blackened corpse in sweet frankincense and palm wine, then with efficient speed tossed the body in white wraps bound in clever knots. It was done.

Ksasnaja took her own jar, heavy as it was, and left without a word. The room was filled again with beasts and their servants, clearing up the blood and implements, measuring the body for a sarcophagus. She found her horse, and in the chaotic interregnum that her fake murder had brought on easily made her way out of the kingdom. The guards no longer cared who came and went.

As the falling snow blinded her eyes so that she could see barely an arm’s length, and her body threatened to give in to hunger and fatigue, her steed found its way out of the ice maze. Steel-armoured guards caught her as she fell, wrapped her in warm rugs and poured clear water between her lips. When her eyes fluttered open they had a warm broth ready, and soon her strength returned. She thanked them with a sincerity that touched their almost-living hearts, and united by tenderness towards their princess that came not from magic but from her vulnerability and courage, followed her great elephant back to the land of the fisher king.