Page 92 of The Enduring Universe
Surrender, Cohesion whispered, urgency across its surface.
Ahilya surrendered.
54
IRAVAN
At first, the maze was silent, innocuous, almost eerily so.
Iravan floated through it cautiously, watching images from his lives blink on the glass walls. It was like being inside the Etherium—he saw Mohini washing her hair. Himself poring over a book. Askavetra chatting to someone. Bhaskar shaving. All scenes of unremarkable instants within unremarkable lives. It was meant to lull him into safety, but surely the falcon must know he would see through it. He didn’t know the shape of the battle, but his guard was up.
Pathways opened at the end of the corridor, and Iravan took a turn at random, knowing instinctively that his task was not to find his way out of the maze. He had to get to the center, where he would finally face the worst the falcon would throw at him. Then the maze would unravel on its own, with one of them at the helm of his consciousness. Everything until then would be a distraction, a way to weaken him, soften him, to make easy pickings for the creature. This was always the falcon’s method.
Clutching the everpower, he turned a corner—
And saw himself standing there, his body riddled with silver tattoos, his eyes shining like moons.
This was a projection he’d made only a few seconds ago, before the falcon had seized it, but he could see the creature reflected in the false-Iravan’s eyes. Instantly, he understood. The falcon was going to unleash one projection after another at him for him to battle. That’s why it had taken control of them now. But to start with his own image? Did the falcon expect he would find it hard to face himself, now, after everything he’d endured? He had tried to kill Ahilya, and he still stood here. What could be worse than that?
Iravan raised his hands and said, “I don’t want to fight you,” both to the projection and the falcon-yaksha.
Controlled by the creature, the projection grinned. Its tattoos grew brilliant, blinding him. The projection moved forward, lightning-fast. Dust twisted around Iravan, and he felt the everpower slipping from him. The projection attacked with its mind, and Iravan felt it like a punch to the stomach. As his eyes closed, and he grunted in pain, he fell into the memory of—
***
Irshar.
Iravan opened his eyes and blinked. A strange sense came to him that he was not really in Irshar, that something had happened to the ashram and he existed on a different plane. But the sense was fleeting. He inhaled deeply, and the air smelt fresher than it had in days. He was in Irshar, and it was a magnificent terrifying monstrosity he had created in the skies. From his open balcony, he could see the ashrams of the Conclave peeking out of the mist. He had attached them to his construction by manipulating their core trees. It was a construction unlike any the world had seen before, a mutilation of the ashrams, but the pain of what he’d endured rushedthrough him. Only a few hours had passed since he’d rescued himself and the other Ecstatics of Nakshar from brutal experimentation. So many things had been experienced for the first time.
Next to him, Ahilya lay on the bed they had been resting on. Her body was curled in on itself. Her cheeks were marked by tears, and her breathing was erratic. She was whimpering in her sleep. Her arms wrapped her belly, and she shook her head. Dark blood pooled around her trousers.
Their child. They had lost it. Iravan felt his grief catch in his throat like a sob. He approached the basin and dampened the bandages that he’d trajected, then approached Ahilya, and undressed her carefully, making sure not to wake her. Slowly, carefully, he began to clean her.
His fingers paused—for behind his eyes, he could detect another presence, a life he had lived once—but it disappeared as soon as he tried to capture it. He shook his head to clear it, to give Ahilya the attention she had always deserved. What she had endured—what she still did—he could not imagine such horror and pain. His possibilities for fatherhood had disappeared long ago; had he been to blame for her pain then?Traject me, he heard her say.Heal me. Make it so it never happens again.
He’d refused her, not knowing the effect of such a thing—but perhaps that had been premature. Iravan raised his hand to his eyes and studied the blue-green tattoos. It was as if he was seeing himself from afar, and he shook his head again, trying to dispel that feeling.
Traject me, she’d said.
Why had he denied her this? He had lost his possibilities for fatherhood, but she was to blame for this miscarriage as much as he was, surely. She had never wanted children—not the way he had—and she had held him hostage to it. She had jumped intothe vortex when she shouldn’t have. She had told him nothing of her pregnancy when she should have.
He had her permission to change her.
He could do this. It would be easy.
The Deepness glittered, and he aimed a wire-thin jet of light toward the stars where Ahilya’s consciousness shone. Her body shifted.Traject me, she’d said.
So he did—
***
Iravan wrenched out of the memory—
He was back in the maze, and on his knees. The false-Iravan loomed over him, the smile on its face deranged, the eyes shining silver. Iravan stared up at this twisted version of himself, and saw the creature’s tattoos blink in preparation of drowning him in another such memory.
No, he thought, gasping.No, that is not how it was.The memory he was being shown was perverse. He had never thought in such a way about his wife. He had never believed it was her fault, never trajected her back then, not even on her asking. This was the falcon’s doing. Ahilya had shown him the truth. She had delved into her memories, reminded him of who he had been. Reminded him of the possibility of the man she had married. The falcon had eschewed all other lives, instead choosing to show him a version of himself—but whatever else he had forgotten, Iravan knew he had never hurt Ahilya in such a wretched way.
This is not me, he gasped, as he remembered the vision of changing her body to suit his needs.This is not me.
