Leela's Star

PROLOGUE

1136 AD India

"You must delay the birth," the young man insisted. "The stars are inauspicious. The shadow of Mars and Saturn will fall upon the baby if it is born now."
Three bull drawn chariots were stopped by the dusty road. There was no sign of human habitation anywhere in the sweeping red plateau that surrounded them. There would be no help for the woman, the girl really; whose cries rent the evening calm. Except for the old mid-wife, the only one of the party that had ever seen childbirth.
"I cannot," the mid-wife said. "And I would not, even if it were in my power, for it would endanger them both. Auspicious or not, it is the child's time to be born. Now leave us, and prepare to be a father."

CHAPTER ONE - THE TRADING FLEET

1150 AD Bharuch, India

I was born under an unlucky star.
Appa knew that dark forces clouded the moment, for no one in the world studied the stars as well as he did. But he kept it from me for many years. I was fourteen, almost a woman, when I discovered it, and old enough to understand what such a horoscope meant.
"No one will marry me," I said to Amma as she combed my long dark hair that she had massaged with perfumed jasmine oil. Amma's hand faltered for a moment and then continued firmly with its rhythmic strokes.

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