Portals & Paths: The Nine Gems

Chapter 2: SEEDA

Orange light rolled over the wet green hills east of Ayutaya as the morning’s first rays snuck through the final remnants of a storm limping after the night. The new sun struck the peak of the King’s Tower where Phra Ram diligently edited and reedited the plans for the Great Gathering as he had done for the previous three fulmoons. Sweeping layered roofs with gold gilding and upturned corners reflected the light into beams crisscrossing the palace compound. Outside the walls, morning mist covering Kandala’s capital city coalesced into warm dewdrops, and the inhabitants slowly emerged from their cool slumber to the heat of the Yellow Lands’ shores.

The young Kandali king reviewed the security measures and mumbled aloud whether his forces were sufficient for the impressive influx of peoples, entourages, animals and certainly countless unforeseen disruptions or worse, from the Distant, and especially Foreign, Lands.

“What did you say?” Seeda rose from an abundant chair stuffed with yak hair and upholstered in glimmering shades of green. Centered on the back in brocaded yellow and gold silk thread was an image of the ten-petaled Manipura. The queen noticed a bead of sweat slide down her husband’s temple as he lorded over the map table. She knew the drop’s origins ran deeper than the heat of morning now pushing through the windows and filling the room.

“Same questions. Same failures.” He sighed like it was his last breath of air before admitting defeat in battle. Ram stared through the West window, keeping the new light at his back. The vastness of the Blue Samudra cooled his eyes and settled his mind, as it had since his childhood when he and his brother Lak would race sampans before morning meals. The surface of the water appeared as dark blue silk spread loosely over a loom. He knew rising winds from the heat of day and boats navigating sand bars and the Narika-Matsi would soon disrupt the stillness of the waters. The quiet reflections to which he often retreated would be lost to more powerful mental intrusions. Ram sighed again.

Seeda sidled next to her husband at the window. “Your sighs weigh more than the elephants that carry you to temple.” She touched his shoulder. “If there are no answers, are you asking the right questions?”

Ram quietly permitted himself to be amused and amazed by his wife’s insightful nature, the trait that first lit his heart. She could see in his eyes that his thoughts hung tightly on her words. Ram remembered the day they met and smiled. But the mood melted into the heaviness of the study as quickly as the cool night air liquified into the sea. “Has my brother arrived?”

“The boats from Malaya shored shortly after sunset. Phra Lak is in his royal quarters. The Golden Guard is housed in the Sun Gate barracks.”

“Did you see him?” The words barely left his lips.

“Yes.” Nang Seeda knew what her husband was asking.

“And?”

She turned around and pointed to the opposite window and stared into the early morning. “Does the sun not rise in the East each morning offering the hope of a new day?” Rays of bright light and humid warmth now filled Phra Ram’s study, a large space containing a commodious teak desk inlaid with jade and silver where a single fat candle still smoldered while the others had long died in faint wisps of gray smoke, a round table with bone-, jade- and ivory-carved figurines holding down parchments with curling edges, plush chairs edging the walls for the Bhikkhus who always sat in contrived contemplation, and a short bench with a basin of orchid-infused water and linen handcloth. Ancient tomes sat on wooden shelves hanging randomly on the wall, emitting scents of dust and death. Judging the Boy King with historical impunity, ink-on-silk paintings depicting forlorn faces of prior kings, his forebears, filled the empty spaces remaining between the books and windows. The room felt heavy as ghosts of arrogant kings, bellicose generals and sycophantic advisors swam through the air and infused the furniture leaving Ram no hidden niche for solace.

The king sifted his long, straight, sun-soaked hair with his fingers. “True.” He paused. “And is it not true the ox always runs away from the storm when it approaches.”

They exchanged looks with the same love as they did on their wedding day until broken by a determined knock.

Seeda opened the heavy door to the study, revealing a heavier, stunted man in extravagant blue robes and silver chains draped over his shoulders. The privy, already wet with the morning heat and climb, snaked into the room on golden piked shoes leaving no sound despite his imposing weight.

“Welcome, Phra Chakri.” Seeda bowed.

“Always a sight, Nang Seeda.” Chakri neither bowed nor regarded the queen.

Ram shifted his attention from the shimmering blue mass outside the window to the one deliberately crossing his study. “You are earlier than expected, Phra Chakri. I assumed I would see you at the morning meal for baramuni, curried glass noodles and fried egg. I understand you have a fondness for that fish.”

Phra Chakri snubbed the king’s pleasantry, his bulging eyes pinned on Ram. “Yes, my Lord. This couldn’t wait. This was given to me last night from...” He paused and appeared as a large boat stalled on a windless lake. Chakri glared at Seeda from the corner of his squinted eye. If not for being a regular target of his sneers, Seeda may have admired the privi’s talent of communicating intense displeasure without words. From his robes, Phra Chakri removed a roll of parchment sealed with a red yinh. A trembling palm held the paper like it contained the orders for his own execution.

Ram recognized the impression on the crimson beeswax seal.

“I will see to the preparations. I would not want any delays in Phra Charki’s morning meal.” Seeda bowed, again, to the Bhikkhu and left the study. When the iron latch clicked into place, she finally stood and straightened her body. “More than darkness hides in that man’s shadow.”

Seeda quietly descended the circular stone steps to the Royal Hall. Black smoke rose from hanging bronze lamps burning timi fat infused with lemongrass. The memory of her first visit to the tower five seasons prior dropped in her mind like a stone in a still pond.

*****

When Seeda first ascended the tower, the young bride had been engaged in a game of hunt and find with a pack of Bengali tiger cubs gifted from Mahārājda Aatish, the king of Anakir, for her wedding to Prince Ram. The orange- and black-striped ruffians scurried on large, awkward paws through the Royal Hall with rancorous yelping. Seeda laughed with a still-youthful giddiness as she slid on the polished jatoba floor inciting the spirited cubs to further mayhem. The four young pups pranced and bounced after her as she glided past sentries who remained stoic and unamused. She had spent the morning attempting to corral the younglings in her new royal residence without success. So, she had devised a plan to trap them in the King’s study, a room without escape at the top of a tower exceeded in height only by Wat Phra Athit.

The dual pairs of guards exchanged silent words of disapproval as the wild animals growled their way past their post, playfully chasing after the beautiful girl. Despite her new husband and royal title, Seeda still burned with the expected reprimand from guards who were, post-marriage, bound to obey her as queen. Leaping in spurts and huffs, the tigerlings snipped at the queen’s heels. Lamps burning oil lit the way as the quintuplet raced up the steps until reaching the heavy door at the top of the tower. Seeda leaned on the iron lever until the massive slab of golden teak creaked open. Stale, dry air spilled out, wrinkling four noses already wet with excitement. In the few fulmoons since her arrival in Ayutaya, she had attended a funeral, a coronation and, ultimately, her wedding in a dizzying array of pomp, pageantry and an abundance of all manner of tears. She spent those lonely days at the palace being dressed, undressed and dressed again for meals both melancholy and celebratory, rituals presided by Bhikkhus or buffalo, assemblies with tedious advisors who possessed the ability to never cease speaking, and greetings with flamboyantly bejeweled guests from all seven nations of the Siandalir before she had time to learn the names of her new family.

From the smell and dust in the circular room, she concluded the study had sat unused for longer than her brief residence in court. Seeda jumped on an oversized chair with her new nation’s golden mandala intricately stitched into the back. Three pups jumped on her lap while the fourth sniffed under the king’s desk hunting a mysterious prey. She scratched the tigers’ necks. “I believe you are now old enough to receive your names. What should I call you?” The pups squirmed.

She picked up the smallest pup. “You are easy, little one. I will call you Kirata.” Content with his new name, the runt pawed the queen’s face. “And you, little girl, will be Pichiya!” she directed to the orange pup whose stripes had yet to emerge. The third cub on her lap eyed Seeda as if anticipating his naming. She rubbed the soft, short fur on his back. He purred. “Apta!” she erupted. The cub turned up the corners of his mouth before hopping to the floor.

The last cub had squirmed her way under the desk, and Seeda could only see a sniffling nose and large striped paws with black nubs of sprouting claws poking out from under the heavy wood. “Shakti!” Seeda nearly yelled. The tiny tigress emerged from the desk and in a single bound leapt onto Seeda’s lap, crowding her remaining siblings to the floor. “Yes. Definitely, Shakti.”

Suddenly she felt the moist warmth of breath on her neck and quickly turned. Shakti stiffened in response. The dead eyes of Phra Dashratha, her new husband’s father and the cause of her current condition, glared down at the new queen from his motionless perch permanently affixed to the dry, stone wall. Seeda stared at the marriage-father she had never met. His near-gray skin hung with premature folds off a spiritless face. High cheek bones pressed shut dark brown eyes closely set and split by a long, thin nose. Broad, knotty eyebrows and a long forehead below disheveled hair unbefitting a king offered little foundation for familial attachment, and none for love. The queen winced with gratitude that he bore no resemblance to her husband. “So many dead faces. So many dead things in this room.” She spoke to Shakti who pricked her ears, alerted by the queen’s words. “Good, girl. I don’t like this place either. The odor of death hangs in here. It feels darker than the rest of the palace.”

Seeda rose from the chair and stood at the North window while the cubs wrestled on the floor snipping at noses, ears and tails in a game that Shakti seemed to be winning. She held her chest and gasped. From the tower’s height Seeda’s previous world crashed to the ground, and she bent with the weight of her new life. The previous king had arranged his eldest son’s wedding secretly and shortly before his mysterious death. But Seeda had become legend long before her arranged marriage to Phra Ram and imposed title of Nang. From her unknown origin and arrival floating on an upturned tortoise shell to her solitary childhood raised by the hermits of Lichen Hollow, the new queen’s story, riddled with rumor and worse, was known throughout the seven nations of Siandalir.

From the window she heard the dull crashing of waves on the golden shores of the Kandali coast. She could see the inhabitants of Ayutaya sparkling across valleys and hills like the sun sparkled in spray off the Blue Samudra. Fish mongers, goldsmiths, silk loomers and rice farmers living in modest bamboo huts pockmarked the landscape like the back of the ginibug. Bright yellow faces with light brown eyes, sun-soaked hair and smiles spreading to the horizons traveled on roads like an army of productive ants diligently engaged in the orderly routines of their day.

“I wish we could go back to the hollow. I miss the elephants,” Seeda lamented to Kirata who was rubbing his cheeks on her ankles. The runt looked up at his queen with bright, simple eyes. “There are so many people here, bowing before me, giving me gifts and telling me how beautiful I am. And calling me Nang Seeda! And surely it’s only out of obligation! How am I supposed to have any friends here?” Kirata wagged his rear end. “Other than you, of course.” She smiled as all four tigerlings sat at her feet staring at the new queen like tiny soldiers in orange uniforms awaiting orders.

“I think it’s time for us to go.” Without further instruction the tiger cubs exited the stodgy study in tow behind Seeda.

Before closing the door behind her, Seeda looked at the portrait of Ram’s father and for a moment thought she saw her husband’s eyes gazing back at her.

*****

Two large oil lamps scented with lemongrass framed the entry to the Royal Hall. The room swirled with motion as Queen Seeda passed the sentries without a turn of her head. Five seasons grown, her tigers were roaming the Northern Palace and pushing chaos into the grounds keep. She missed Kirata snipping at his larger, stronger siblings when he felt left out or Shakti suddenly appearing at the queen’s feet whenever she was worried or frightened.

“May I help you, Nang Seeda” asked a young girl wearing all black robes who had suddenly appeared.

“Oh, yes. I mean, no.” Seeda pulled her head from thoughts of tigerlings. “I’m fine, thank you. Please, Mia.” The queen motioned the girl to rise.

“The morning meal is prepared. Guests are arriving. And, Phra Lak is waiting for you.”

“Wonderful, Mia. I will meet him shortly. Is the baramuni prepared as explained?”

“As explained, my lady.”

“Wonderful.”