Page 75 of The Enduring Universe
“Ahilya,” he said, too quietly. “Why is it always the children who die?”
44
AHILYA
She did not know how to reply, or whether an answer was expected. Iravan’s Etherium opened to her for the briefest of instants, and his memory took her over in a forest of falling leaves.
The falcon lifting a wing, slashing Darsh down.
Iravan trying to yoke Darsh’s capital desire.
Viana shattering into a million bones.
His grief at their lost pregnancy.
Ahilya flinched, shirking back. The ground in front of them churned, and the slabs of rock cracked in loud rumbles of earth. All the murals shattered, the casual violence of it chilling her. The ground absorbed the debris instantaneously, and everything glimmered for one instant before the entire chamber was lost to shadow with the loss of the phosphorescence. The only light came from Iravan now, and ashes flew in front of Ahilya, tasting like her husband.
Here in this new place, away from everyone else, Iravan flooded her mind. Different though this cavern was, it reminded Ahilya all too much of the habitat when the both of them had discovered everything that had led them down this path. His body wasunmoving next to hers, and she stared at him, meeting his silvery gaze. Her Etherium opened wider, and she called out to her husband in a whisper. He appeared, parting the leaves to kneel next to her on the forest floor, though this man’s eyes were a familiar dark.
Her visions wobbled, and the Iravan in the forest and the one in the cave merged, so that it was suddenly impossible to tell one from the other. The cracks in the cave floor resembled the roots of the vriksh. The light leaching from Iravan in front of her intertwined with the shadowy dusk of the Etherium. She blinked, trying to separate the two Iravans, but it was as if she had drunk the most potent rasa. In this great influx of information, Ahilya felt everything from her husband, his confusion, his rage, his grief and terror—and his alien stillness too, as though something terrible that he could not control lurked within his body. What had happened to him? Who had he become?
Ahilya slipped her hand inside his, feeling his cold skin, trying to anchor in his physicality. How long had he been sitting there? Did his feather cloak not warm him anymore?
“Iravan,” she said, and her voice was small. “Come home.”
In the Etherium, she heard his soft sob.
“Darsh’s parents,” he asked. “Do they know?”
“Yes.” Ahilya had seen them briefly in Irshar’s infirmary, being tended to by the nurses. She’d seen their stricken faces, heard the awful shrieking of Darsh’s mother. The sound echoed in the forest, manifesting in Ahilya’s memories, and Iravan closed his eyes, his face crumpling.
“No parent should have to endure that,” he whispered.
His grief pounded at her, leaves falling around her within the Etherium as the two sat in stillness in the cave. In each leaf she saw him from a lifetime ago. The two of them on their wedding day exchanging garlands of promise. Lying on a rooftop withinNakshar, their legs entwined as they theorized survival. Preparing his research before he became a Senior Architect. On and on the onslaught came, surrounding Ahilya with his emotion. He caressed her face in one. He walked away from her in another. They stood against each other, bodies shaking after a fight. He held her in his arms, as she bled from their lost pregnancy.
Iravan’s hand shook convulsively in hers as he watched the same images, and his loss felt as real as if it had occurred yesterday. He had always wanted children—but the Virohi had erased his possibility of fatherhood. She could feel the cosmic creatures inside her, watching this, grieving with her—and Iravan sensed them too.
You should not have come, he whispered in the forest.Leave, Ahilya. Please, I’m begging you.
She stared at him, confused, unsure if he had spoken or if she’d imagined this. What he was showing her, what he was saying—why were these things important now? She tried to coalesce her vision into one, attempting to bring herself back to the cave, the only reality she was certain of, but it was like trying to keep her balance on a narrow beam that shook the more she tried to grip it.
“Those carvings you made,” she said, her voice hoarse. “What—what were they?”
“Did you like them?” he whispered. “I made them for you. Lives lived and forgotten, and at their heart always the material bonds. I did not make one showing our life together, I didn’t think you would like to see it after everything we’ve endured, but you already know—you were the best of them all. I have been so fortunate.”
Ahilya recoiled, taken aback. His words were soft, and in another time, they would have sounded loving, but she discerned a strange turmoil in him. There was a reason he had made the murals for her. Not as a gift, but as… a test? A reminder? Was he trying to tell her that she had won? That her material bond to him was honored,honoring all the others too? He said she was the best of them, but he did not trust her anymore. A dozen questions flooded her mouth, but she spoke the most important one.
“Why are you here, Iravan?” she asked.
“I found them,” he answered.
He stood up slowly, pulling her with him. Where Darsh’s body had disappeared, the earth began to move, opening into a crevasse. Pinpricks of silver light covered his skin, and the staircase they had been sitting on rippled forward into the chasm. Iravan tucked her arm inside his and they began descending. Ahilya kept her eyes on the steps, blinking in the deeper darkness. At the bottom, the air smelled surprisingly fresh, but there was something else here, a strange presence.
“Iravan?” Ahilya asked.
Light poured out of him, shooting across the chasm. Shapes materialized out of the darkness. Huge shapes. Massive eyes. Tusks that curved. Paws the size of her head.
“Yakshas,” she breathed, and heard Dhruv’s soft gasp in her ears. She had almost forgotten the sungineer was privy to this conversation. “They’ve been here all along,” Ahilya whispered.
