Page 22 of The Enduring Universe
Until—
Silence.
She snapped back to her reality, eyes focusing on Eskayra and the architects. Her mind buzzed like she had a fever. Her breath came out in heaves.
The voices of the Virohi whispered, but it was in a manner of an aftershock, a phantom presence in her mind. She started to shiver.
Between her brows, she caught a glimpse of Iravan still floating above the ashram, head tilted back, arms spread out like wings. The feather cloak continued to flutter, and he was a picture of both stillness and motion. There was shock in his posture, a deep amazement that bordered on agony. Could he see the vriksh? It was tall enough to shelter him too. What was he thinking? Would he stop now?
The glimpse shattered, and Ahilya retched, throwing up. Eskayra bent to her. “What in rages happened?” the woman asked, frantic. “What did you do?”
I won.
“I trapped the Virohi,” Ahilya sputtered, wiping her mouth. “They’re in the vriksh now.”
She cut off, only now realizing the eerie silence surrounding her. The jungle had stopped rumbling. The storm that had begun suddenly had ended, just as abruptly. Trees were motionless again, in strange postures of pain, caught midway toward being destroyed. Sap seemed frozen, amber stuck to trunks like honey, and the earth was torn, great gaping crevasses riven with a thousand tiny streams.
But all was still, and Ahilya couldn’t believe that only a few minutes ago, she had been lamenting that stillness. It was so precious. The alternative was so much worse. She couldseehow much worse.
With Eskayra’s help, she straightened. The architects had stopped screaming. Chaiyya was still on the forest floor, but she was sitting up, half supported by Kamala and Meena, the two non-architect nurses who had evidently revived her. Other non-architects of Eskayra’s team were helping their architect comrades, but all of them looked around them at the broken jungle in deep shock and horror. Perhaps they knew how close they had come to death.
“A-Ahilya,” Chaiyya said trembling. That was all she could get out before bursting into sobs.
Eskayra pulled Ahilya aside. “What happened to them?” she asked in a low voice, gesturing with her head toward the architects.
Ahilya met her gaze. “The Moment is gone.”
Eskayra’s eyes grew wide. She tapped at her citizen ring but it did not respond. With the Moment gone, all sungineering in Irshar was dead.
“How long will it take us to get back if we go now?” Ahilya asked.
“If we don’t stop to rest at all, and with no trajection from the architects…” Eskayra considered, and Ahilya tried to make the same calculation.
It had taken them three days to find this city site, but they had meandered through the jungle, finding the path. Chaiyya had reached it in only a few hours using a trajected nest. Without architects it would take them…
“Maybe by dawn?” Eskayra said. “Or tomorrow afternoon? If we do not stop at all.”
“We won’t stop.” Ahilya said. “Gather them all, Esk. We must go.”
15
IRAVAN
He searched for her.
He had come to himself still hovering in the air above Irshar, but Iravan did not return to the Garden to check the damage there like he should have. Gathering the everpower to him like a cloak, he forced his battered body to fly back over the jungle, his heart racing with a deep, slow terror that built within him like a choked scream.
Where are you?he thought frantically.Where are you?
He tried to infiltrate her Etherium. If he could only sense her—if he only knew that she was alive—that she had been unhurt—
His attempt was futile. He’d never had any control in the third vision.
A sob built in his chest, hurtling out of him in turbulent breaths. His trembling hand grasped the blade of pure possibility hanging around his neck. He could not accept it. He would not believe it.
Had the destruction of the jungle hurt her somehow, when the Virohi had escaped Irshar—when he’d failed in his attempt to kill them? She had forced the situation in attempting to pull the cosmic creatures into Irshar again. He was certain the Virohi would nothave bounded back into the Moment with such force, precipitating its destruction, if she had not fought him. But he did not care about any of it. All he knew was that she needed to be alive. That if this had killed her, he would go mad.
The stone blade felt sharp against his fingers. He could use it now to bring her back to him. Surely possibility could be used in such a way? He had been saving this last bit of everdust for a last secret mission—secret, even from himself, for he could not afford to acknowledge what it meant. But if Ahilya was dead, the reason to save this last everdust became moot.
