Bhagavati

Kara Dalkey continues her evocation of sixteenth-century India with Bhagavati, the concluding volume of her Blood of the Goddess trilogy. Thomas Chinnery is the young assistant to a Master Apothecary of England. He was entrusted by his master with a perilous journey into the Portuguese-controlled waters of East Africa and India to establish a direct trade in medicinal herbs. Shipwrecked, he fell into the hands of the Inquisition in the Portuguese colony of Goa. There he saved his life, but perhaps not his soul, by pretending to know the source of a seemingly magical powder, the Rasa Mahadevi, which could restore the dead to life. As the combined caravans of Portuguese blackfriars and the Moghul's expedition leave the city of Bijapur, they carry with them many secrets - murder and mutiny, divine power and temporal betrayal. Thomas Chinnery at last has a true guide to the hidden city of the Goddess, though that guide means to lead all but a few astray in the desert. Within the city of Bhagavati, the Mahadevi will walk the Earth once more, first to remind her rebellious people of her power, and then to destroy the army that is advancing. For the power of the Mahadevi is not a myth or a tale spun to cast fear into the hearts of children. As her blood can restore the dead to life, her gaze can turn an army to stone where it stands.