Page 11 of The Enduring Universe
“It is because of Irshar, isn’t it?”
Darsh frowned, but did not reply. He hardly needed to. Iravan knew he’d guessed right.
When they’d left the Garden to come to the jungle today, they’d passed Irshar. Ordinarily, Iravan would not have picked that way, but it was the fastest path to get to this part of the jungle. He’d noticed Darsh’s lingering gaze on the ashram, noticed the tightening of the boy’s mouth. It was hard for Darsh, this alienation of the Garden from Irshar, this renunciation of material bonds. Irshar was meant to have been a sanctuary for Ecstatics, but ever since the Conclave Darsh’s world had turned upside down. Iravan had caught him looking wistfully toward Irshar more than once, as though hoping to return there. After all,Irsharwas where Iravan had promised Darsh a new life, safe within an ashram-like society, the only society the boy had ever known.
In the ever-cycling vision of the Etherium, Iravan saw Mohini pick up her child, and nuzzle the baby to her.
“Everything we’re doing,” Iravan said softly. “From finding our yakshas, to training in the Deepness, to the war with the Virohi… it is all for those we love. For those whom we disagree with, and those who are left behind while we forge a new world in the Garden. Because even if they don’t see,wedo.Weknow what is right. I know it is not easy.”
Darsh’s mouth trembled, and his gaze fell. “My parents,” he said haltingly. “They will never be convinced.”
Iravan wanted to pull the boy into a hug. Darsh’s parents werearchitects of Nakshar. They’d written him off when he was found an Ecstatic. They’d supported the council’s imprisonment of him in a deathcage with the intention of excising him. Even the events since the Conclave’s crash hadn’t changed their minds. They had refused Iravan’s personal invitation to join him in the Garden, and though they had been civil enough their politeness had been forced, intimidated by his power. Even if they hated the Virohi, they likely blamed Iravan and his Ecstatics for it all. They weren’t the only people.
“I’m sorry,” Iravan said. “Is that why you cannot retain control? I can speak to them again, convince them to come—”
“Don’t,” Darsh snapped. “They’re as good as dead to me.”
That kind of thing was so much easier to say than to live. If theyhaddied, Darsh would have blamed himself, and Iravan too—though there was no telling the boy’s reaction. He changed from grief to anger to moodiness like quicksilver, emotions hurtling through him in the throes of adolescence. Iravan had been around too many angsty teenagers in Nakshar’s Academy, teaching them about their role in survival, to expect any different. Combined with everything Darsh had endured, it was no surprise the boy retained fleeting control.
Or perhaps it was the boy’s yaksha. Darsh was more unpredictable since feeling his counterpart. The falcon had madeIravanmore prone to emotional outbursts, a full-grown adult and a Senior Architect. It had slipped past his self-awareness to embed him with its emotion. He didn’t understand it fully on his first unity with the falcon, but through the subsequent months it became more and more apparent that the lines separating him from the creature were blurred. He was always an angry man, but the falcon had ripped apart any veneer of calm, infecting him with its thousand-year-old simmering rage.
Even now, he could feel its form in the Deepness replacing his. Here, Iravanwasthe falcon, his wings glittering in magnificent fury. Here, he acquiesced to the yaksha’s superiority, for this realm had always belonged to the creature. Here, the falcon’s rage was indistinguishable from his own, for the falcon showed him just how much there was to rage about. In a way, it was like Ahilya. They both awoke something in him he had been unaware of. In his head, he could hear the falcon’s laughter. He had subsumed the creature, but Ahilya had warned him that all he had done was absorb the creature’s hate. What she didn’t understand was that they had always been inseparable.
As though in summons, his Etherium flickered. Ahilya flashed between his brows. She had opened their connection again and he saw through her eyes, architects staring, and a short-haired woman shaking her head, while Ahilya argued, horrified.
The connection ceased.
Sudden silence loomed over Iravan. Ahilya hadn’t opened the connection to him deliberately, but her sheer horror and panic… What had caused it?
His heart raced as his eyes traveled to the beads looping around Darsh’s wrists.
Darsh understood. They had both rendered their beads inactive in order for the communion with the yaksha to remain uninterrupted, but now they tapped at their sets together. A burst of static greeted them, before a hologram formed over Iravan’s wrists: Dhruv’s face barking out commands, sungineers working around him. Over Darsh’s wrist, another image flickered: Irshar wobbling, making ready for another change, viewed through the drones Dhruv had floating over the ashram.
“Dhruv,” Iravan said. “What is going on?”
“Finally!” The sungineer turned to face him, his face now clearer.“For fuck’s sake, Iravan, you can’t just up and leave whenever you want to. We’ve been trying to reach you. You have responsibilities, and you’ve given me no leave to act on your behalf. Especially in a moment like this—”
“What,” Iravan asked again, injecting calm into his voice, “is going on?”
Dhruv’s voice thrummed with suppressed anger. “It appears Irshar is collapsing. We can’t tell from the Garden, but we’ve been hearing screams from all directions. And the architecture—we can see shapes and movements. Pranav thinks the Virohi are coming alive.”
Images from the drones replaced the sungineer’s face. Iravan watched as the sprawling ashram within the jungle shook like a water droplet. Roads and alleys, buildings and playgrounds, shivered as if they were little more than toy structures before an approaching hurricane. The last city of humanity, this oasis of massive proportions spreading out for miles and miles, caved, hollowing out from the inside. Buildings crumpled like paper, arches collapsed, and a substance leached out of the city like dark smoke. It took the shape of half-formed limbs, of hands outstretched, and faces with features eerily like Ahilya’s.
The sungineer’s words reverberated in the jungle. Iravan bent his head, his breath coming out in shallow heaves. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Darsh freeze.
Ahilya had finally failed, after months of resisting. This was it then. The end of it all.
A dozen thoughts chased him. He had anticipated this. Irshar’s construction was flawed. Ahilya, despite her strength, would never have been able to hold it together. That she had done it for three months was beyond astonishing; the Virohi had destroyed whole planets in the pursuit of immortality.
Had she suffered through those months? Had she lost bits of herself like he had?
He would relieve her now, but the thought of fulfilling his capital desire after so many lifetimes brought tears to his eyes. Would she see he did it to make amends? That he did it for her as much as himself? Would she understand? Would she forgive? It had always been about saving her. From the very beginning, even during the earthrage that had swallowed Oam, Iravan had done everything he could to protect Ahilya. This was no different. His fingers tightened over the blade around his neck, and its smooth texture was like touching Ahilya’s skin.
“What do we do?” Darsh whispered.
Iravan raised his head, his grief giving him purpose. “Ready the architects and the sungineers,” he told Dhruv. “I’m on my way.”
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