Page 34 of The Enduring Universe
Iravan blinked.
Shapes called out to him, and suddenly she was there, staring at him past thick leaves. His heart raced as he approached her.
He saw her mouth drop open.
Before he could move, the Etherium collapsed, and abruptly Iravan came to himself.
For a long instant, he stayed still, his vision spinning.
He was in his room in the Garden. All around him was stillness, though if he focused he could hear the quiet hoot of a night bird roosting somewhere in the cross-beams of the ceiling. Hours had passed since he’d retired to his bedroom to attempt to sleep, knowing full well rest would elude him. This was the chamber he had lived in ever since he’d expanded the Garden to accommodate all the architects, but the chamber looked like a strange amalgamation of all the homes that he had lived in with Ahilya.
The balcony resembled the very first one they’d had after being wed. The bed was like the one after an anomalously long lull. Therushes were half-flowers, half-clover like he’d always trajected for her so her feet would be cushioned. Everything here reminded him of her, and clearly he had begun hallucinating, overwhelmed by tiredness. What had that image of her been? Had that really been her, caught inside a forest? Was it a memory?
His breath grew uneven.
He had been circling through his past lives, hoping to find answers to the destruction of the Virohi. Hidden amidst so much mundane life, Iravan had finally found a useful memory, but before he could study it, the Etherium had twisted. He’d found himself hurtling into a forest, staring at his wife.
Iravan searched his mind for the forest again, but could no longer detect Ahilya. Whatever that glimpse had been, it had gone as fast as it had come. He pressed his hand to his eyes, squeezing his lids with a forefinger and thumb.I’m losing my mind, he thought.I have descended into darkness.
He arose from his bed. Slowly, Iravan walked over to the stone basin at one corner of the room. Cool water waited in a jug, and he splashed some over his face, resting his palms over the basin. He stared at his face in the glass mirror above the stone.
The mirror was a luxury, a remnant of what Dhruv had salvaged from the Conclave’s crashing. It was just a shard, only big enough to reflect part of his face from this angle. The shard was useless to Dhruv, but it was enough to show Iravan how much he’d aged.
Haunted dark eyes, graying stubble, hair that was completely silver. Had he always looked this terrible? How old was he now? Forty? Older? He had lost count, and whatever number he thought felt too young.
It was hard to look at himself when behind his eyes all he saw were images of his past selves. Of Bhaskar, who had died in a freak trajecting accident, and Nidhirv, who had been surrounded by hisloved ones, and Askavetra, whose death was a mystery to him. Their moments of death were fleeting in his memory, yet their lives were easily recalled. Each of them had chosen their material bonds, but he sensed their revulsion with themselves within him for making that choice, and it was his own.
It was not always this way. Iravan could remember vestiges of something else, a time when his past lives had not sought vengeance against the Virohi. Surely Nidhirv had known of the Virohi—in his time, Ecstasy was encouraged and legal. He had simply chosen not to pursue it. Instead, the man chose to live with Vishwam, wanting to be born again, to find the same kind of love he shared with his husband again. Then how could it be that Iravan’s capital desire had manifested into this? How could it be that he felt such disdain from the man’s memory about his own choices made in love, as if Nidhirv himself had changed?Couldthe past change? Iravan had seen himself through Nidhirv’s eyes, and the eyes of his other past lives, back when he and the falcon had fought to subsume one another—but he had always thought that a twisted vision of his own fears. If the past itself could alter in some way, he had descended into true meaninglessness. He could count on nothing and no one, not even the knowledge gained by everything he had been through.
It was so convoluted. He was fighting the very same people he was meant to protect. What was he doing fighting Ahilya? Why did his past lives suddenly view her as an enemy, when it was their task to make amends to her and those of her kind? He had left her in the jungle, his past lives telling him not to find her even unto knowing if she were alive. If they had sought their material bonds always, why did they push him away from her? It was so wrong.
The answer came to him on the heels of the question.Because I am their last chance. I am all of our last chance.
Each time he watched Nidhirv and Vishwam together in his mind, each time he saw Mohini with her children, or Askavetra with her daughter, all Iravan saw was how they had succumbed to architect society. Tied themselves in bonds of marriage, borne children, tethered themselves to trajection, and never found Ecstasy or their yaksha. He—they—had once had so many opportunities. And they had all ignored the call. Now it lay up to him, the last life of this consciousness. Amends or not, complete being or not, Ahilya was still his wife—and that meant a material bond, the thing that had trapped him forever. He had to separate her identities, if he had any hope of getting through this with his mind intact. Ahilya, his wife, was his enemy. Ahilya, the complete being, was his salvation. He could not afford to conflate the two.
He felt the clarity of this thought, but a growl escaped him, and Iravan gripped the stone basin tight to keep from shaking. The stone blade of possibility dangled from his throat and he stared at it, resentment shooting from him, making his body itch. A part of him could not believe what he was doing—dissecting his wife’s personality and motivations so minutely, walking on a tightrope with every intent, hoping to maintain control over himself while functioning in the world with his mind such a maze. He had only been in the jungle building a house for her a few days ago. All of his other lives had gotten what they wished, but what about whathewanted? Children, a family, domesticity. He wanted to rail against the unfairness of it, of the fact thathehad to sacrifice everything while his past lives could walk away freely, but the thought was such a betrayal of his capital desire that he physically choked, his body rebelling against it.
We could have been better, he thought, staring into his eyes, but seeing Mohini behind them within the Etherium. She laughed as she wrote something in a scroll.We could have been so much better.We had the choice. The opportunity. The power. The rest of you could have done this before. Why didn’t you?
It was a foolish question. He knew why. With all his knowledge, he still found himself wanting to return to Ahilya. Of course, his other past lives would not have had that chance—most of them had lived in a time when Ecstasy was prohibited, when material bonds were sacrosanct. It was Iravan’s destiny, his treasure and his misfortune, that he had learned so much in his lifetime.
He had been born to become a hero, trained as a savior of humanity, as a Senior Architect of an airborne ashram. When he’d finally confronted his own past, he had seen his shameful history. What else would be his path, except to find a way to make amends, no matter that it meant fighting the very people he wanted to make amends to? Ahilya—as much as she wished to deny it—was a creature of an architect-ruled world. They all were, conditioned into it, unable to see past the prisons of thousands of years of culture.
Only Iravan had gained clarity. It was why he disdained the rules of that culture now. Why he could not afford to be weak, like his past lives. He ought to be grateful that his body knew the truth of this even if his mind conspired to seed doubts. It should be a relief that now, finally, his past lives were giving him the strength he needed to tear Ahilya from his life. He should not question why they took him over each time he wished to show her consideration. He should rejoice in the help he was finally getting.
The architects were raised in a culture of supremacy, their entire lives considered a responsibility, to be sacrificed for in a duty of care. He was finally living those principles. Darsh was wrong. He was not motivated by rage. He was motivated by disappointment and clarity, warped now into this thing he had become.
Shaking hard, Iravan looked up again. A grimness entered him. The mirror reflected his eyes, gray like the falcon. His past livesonly showed him fleeting images of material bonds. But it was the falcon-yaksha that had always been clear-eyed. The falcon-yaksha was within him now, and it was helping him in its subsummation as it never had in reality. It was orienting all of his consciousness, past, present, and future, toward the only thing that mattered.
Destroy, it whispered from a lifetime ago. And Iravan thought,Yes.
Yes.
20
AHILYA
Irshar’s solar lab glittered with whispers and shadows. Ahilya moved through the chamber like a ghost.
