Page 84 of The Enduring Universe
Pillars that were engraved with carvings of airborne ashrams. Gleaming marble walls etched with yakshas, painted in careful colors. Stained windows made of ice, but that were warm to the touch somehow, radiating with sunlight. Tapestries of moving foliage where glorious, fragrant flowers changed shape constantly to showpictures of the crashed Conclave, then the Garden, then a solar lab from some forgotten ashram. Above this magnificence—this temple of humanity and all that it had once been—the sky glimmered with incandescent light. In the distance, shapes appeared, citizens of Irshar arrived here as part of their migration. Ahilya stared at the city, speechless.
Humility unlike anything before filled Iravan.
“Ahilya,” he whispered, and she turned to him. “Ahilya-ve,” he amended.
She who had control of the core tree now. She who embodied both the alien and the familiar, the other and the intimate. She who was humanity in all its shapes.
Iravan took a step back and knelt at her feet, his head bowed. Tears filled his eyes.
He felt her surprise, and her hand hovered over him, and he cocked his head to see the shock on her face. The blade of pure possibility pulsed against his skin, and he thought in wretched clarity,Too late. I have seen you too late.
Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.
Iravan stood up abruptly, and stepped back. Wind whirled around him, and he launched into the sky to finally do better.
51
AHILYA
She stood immobile for long seconds, staring after Iravan, until something nudged her feet. Ahilya looked down to see a tree root jutting out of the soil. She was certain it had not been there before, but she felt its pressure against her again as if it were telling her to move.
Still, she hesitated. Here, on this patch of ground, she had excised Iravan. Here, he had ascended to the skies again, in a final task that she had set him. Ahilya-ve, he had called her, and for once the suffix did not embarrass her. No, she felt a strange sense pour into her, something akin to honor.
She blinked, knowing she had no time to think this through. Iravan had already left to do what they all needed him to do, and she had to prepare the others.
Ahilya climbed down the hill in a daze, tree roots breaking through the earth, nudging her on until she could see the migration from Irshar clearly. The citizens poured in thick crowds, a wave of humanity appearing out of the jungle. So many, so fast? How had all of them come here so quickly? She could not distinguishthe faces of the refugees, but she could see them traveling down roads, coming from many different directions. She could see the towering trees of the jungle waving all around the city, and it did not make sense.
Why so many roads, why so many inlets? She knew her mind was trying to distract her from the horror of what had happened, and Ahilya clutched at these inane questions like a branch within a flood, keeping her from sinking into grief. She could not fathom it yet, everything she and her husband had undergone.
There would be time later, if they survived this. She was not alone in her suffering. Whatever was happening here in the jungle and the new city was clearly an effect of everything that had transpired between her and her husband. She and Iravan had used the memories of humanity as weapons against each other. Ahilya could imagine memories ripped away from individuals, a pain that was physical and deep like a cut, yet buried deep. Humanity would feel the loss, if not immediately then gravely, and for the tree, it would manifest as a wild recoiling of branches, a closing to protect itself while it felt the loss of all those memories. Perhaps it had already happened, confusing and alarming all the citizens. There was worse yet to come.
Here and there, Ahilya saw black-clad Ecstatics trudging with the others. As a part of Iravan’s Garden, most had been aloof and arrogant, feeding on his resentment—but the merging with Irshar seemed to have wrought a change. Reunited with their citizen kin, they moved through the gathering stopping often to assist those who fell, those who lingered. No one seemed to be in charge of them anymore, but they had fallen back into known roles as architects, meant to protect humanity.
Did they have any power left with Iravan gone? Were they no longer seeking their yakshas? The council had claimed noEcstatic could traject, and Ahilya did not think her battle with Iravan had changed the Deepness to allow for it again, though the extradimensional realms were merging. Yet Iravan had subsumed all the yakshas. From what Dhruv had said, Pranav had evidently fainted. Surely the Ecstatics must have felt a loss within themselves—and perhaps it was this loss that was motivating them to seek the familiarity of their friends and family that they’d disdained not too long ago. The architects Iravan had sent to Irshar to make amends had opened that gate, and recent events had swept the others back into the embrace of their material bonds.
It was a startling thought, to consider material bonds still a factor in their civilization when so much had changed, when she’d seen the corruption of a capital desire, and the redemption her bond to Iravan had offered the both of them. But what were material bonds if not compassion and care? What were they if not love? Ahilya herself had tied her life to her sister, to Iravan, and ultimately to the Virohi, in a strange bond no one could have conceived. If all that a material bond was meant to be was humanity at its most human self, then perhaps there was still a chance the future she intended could be balanced. She needed all of them now—architects, non-architects, Ecstatics, citizens of Irshar and those of the new city. No one could be left out of this war now.
A shape detached from one of the waves entering the city, approaching her—Eskayra perhaps, or Chaiyya, or Naila. Ahilya’s earpiece was lost in the rubble below, but her sungineering had started working again, so Dhruv would have known of her arrival. She braced herself to hold strong to her decision, no matter what her friends said, yet as the shape became clearer, Ahilya paused. Of all the people to approach her, she had not expected her sister.
Her long hair tied behind her in a messy tail, Tariya climbed the hill slowly. Ahilya’s sister had never been one to exert herselfphysically, her body prone to severe tiredness, her limbs shivery. After Bharavi’s execution, she had only grown more fragile. Still, Ahilya knew better than to ask about her welfare now—her sister would only disdain her questions. She hurried to catch up to Tariya, then the both of them began to climb down to the center of the city wordlessly.
There was a lightness to Tariya’s steps at odds with the grief that still breathed under her skin. Some of her sister’s beauty had returned, as if she had come to accept her grief, letting it shape her instead of fighting it.
Ahilya did not know what to make of her presence. She could feel her like a tug in her mind. If she tried, she would be able to hear her sister’s memories—but Ahilya held the current at a distance. It was only a matter of time it swept her away. She was prepared, but the others were not. She would not go into it without warning them.
Tariya stumbled, and Ahilya went to help instinctively, but before she could Tariya straightened. Her sister arched an eyebrow.
“You left Irshar?” Ahilya asked, to cover up her move. “I thought you hated the idea.”
“I still do,” Tariya replied dryly. “But this is Irshar.”
Surprised, Ahilya paused to study the city. In the distance she could see the vriksh, but what she had considered a trick of the light was occurring in real time. The vriksh was growing again, ever larger, its canopy blooming high, its boughs stretching to shelter the new city. As she watched, spires and towers came under its deep shade, entering an artificial nightfall. The same strange dust that had hovered around the Garden and Irshar before trickling into the new city.
We didn’t get to decide a name, Ahilya thought in slow wonder. After today, they might not need to.Theymight not be. It was a sobering thought.
Ahilya had deliberately not been paying attention to her Etherium, but watching the tree expand to cover the new city was too big to ignore. She sensed the leaves fluttering over her face in the third vision, and it was all she could do not to sink into their embrace. Perhaps the tree recognized this city as part of its own self. A sibling territory. A sister-ashram. Wrought as part of another habitat, one long lost.
“What is going on down there with the citizens?” Ahilya asked. “What do people make of all this?”
