Page 132 of The Surviving Sky
In his second vision of Ecstasy, Iravan hovered in the darkness of the Deepness. He summoned the Moment, and it appeared, a dewdrop-like globule containing an infinity of stars. Already he could feel comfort in the Deepness as though he had been exploring it his entire life. Had his visions been split without his notice?
“You’ve been glowing all this while,” Ahilya confirmed quietly.
“How long?” he asked, still naked.
She made a sound in her throat, half-disbelief, half-amusement, like his question made no sense. “Since the last time we were together in Nakshar. Do you remember anything?”
“Too much,” he replied. Very slowly, Iravan pulled on his own kurta and trousers. The familiarity of his second vision within the Deepness was almost eerie. “I remember us in Nakshar. The ashram tearing apart. Andthe…falcon-yaksha. What happened to the ashram?”
She tilted her head, considering her answer. Then, her gaze steady on him, clearly watching for his reaction, she told him about the scorched and shrunken rudra tree, about the deal she had made with Airav, about her flight through the earthrage and the consequences of that action. “They could all be dead by now,” she said softly. “There’s no way to know. Or perhaps Reikshar made it to them in time. I hope it did.”
“They’re not dead,” he said. “I sawthem—allof the sister ashrams, struggling. They have only days left. Hours, for some of them.”
She didn’t ask him how he knew. She almost looked indifferent to his news. Ahilya had always been stubborn, always beenbrave—farmore than he could be, but she had never been ruthless.All this has remade you, he thought,into something terrible and wonderful at the same time. “You came looking for me,” he said quietly.
“You told me not to leave you.”
“I asked you to stay back.”
“Yes,” Ahilya answered, her gaze on his. “And I chose to ignore that.”
Iravan smiled despite himself.
She pulled one of his sleeves back, her fingers feather-light on his arm. “Your trajection tattoos back inNakshar…they were different. Not the vines and leaves of normal architects. They lookedlike…wings. Why did they change?”
Iravan stood there, staring at the glimmers on his dark skin, but he stood at the crossroads to the mountain peak too. And with Ahilya’s question, a deep rumbling grew on the mountain path like the beginnings of an avalanche.
“They’re connected to the yaksha somehow,” he said.
“This whole place is, I imagine,” she replied dryly. “And yet I haven’t seen a single one.”
“They’rehere—veryclose. I don’t think they wish to be seen yet.”
Ahilya’s glance was curious. “You know so much suddenly. Is this because of Ecstasy?”
He swallowed. “Yes. I think so. I have memoriesnow—ofa time long before, of lives lived before. And what I know oftrajection…”He took a deep breath. “Beyond the Moment lies a place called the Deepness. I can summon the Momentthere—almostas though it were a suspended drop of water within a never-space. I know where every star is within the Moment, where every possibility is. I think this intimate knowledge of theMoment…it is a feature of Ecstasy.”
“Then we can never return to Nakshar?”
“No—Idon’t think I can.”
Neither his admission of Ecstasy nor the idea of abandoning the ashram seemed to faze Ahilya. She nodded; she had known this already, and his words had been mere confirmation. A deep wellspring of love bubbled within Iravan, filling his heart. In the back of his mind, he remembered Vishwam and Radha and Taruin, all the husbands and wives and partners he had ever had; they flickered like the green dust he stood in. Almost all had been born with the ability to traject. Had any of them been as remarkable as Ahilya?
She didn’t notice his wonder. Instead, her hands continued to pull his sleeves back to study his arms, to where his skin was lightest. “This isn’t like Bharavi’s Ecstasy.”
“They’ve never truly understood Ecstasy in the ashrams. They put an end to Ecstatics before it got too far.”
“But there must be measures. Limits. Some indicators to the power.”
“The most irrefutable indication is if an architect breaks the known and studied limits of trajection.”
“Which are?”
“Innumerable. They’re observations of impossibility, studied and revisited, and thus understood as a tenet. Like changing permissions that are nurtured within core trees. Like being powerful enough to manipulate plants against the combined trajection of the Maze Architects. Like being able to traject a higher being.”
Ahilya nodded, still studying his arm. “That explains how you healed. You must have used Ecstasy on yourself. You trajected yourself, a higher being.”
“Yes. There’s a physical connection between our bodies and trajection. Something that causes the trajection tattoos and residual scars, something that can cause incineration of veins if an architect overdoes it. Chaiyya has been studying this field for years, but I think the true answers lie in Ecstasy. I think that’s how Bharavi healed herself.”
