Page 50 of The Enduring Universe
Eskayra turned to her, a question on her face. An image formed in Ahilya’s mind, rising from her heart and flowering into her brain like a plant. The vriksh pulled at her, calling, calling.
She fled, responding to its summons.
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IRAVAN
Iravan fought gravity. The air dragged him down, clawing at his limbs like a thousand hands. He breathed fitfully, as though inhaling mud. Was he ascending? The ground was still so close, chasing him. His eyes drew upward, to the slash of distorting trees, the snatch of blue skies, a streak of clouds. The everpower rushed through him, and he unleashed a burst of speed to try to break away, as rocks shot up toward him like arrows, slicing into his cloak.
The consciousness meld tried to suck him in. He could hear them, Ahilya, Dhruv, Airav, and the citizens of Irshar murmuring in his ears all together past sanity. Unable to pull up his shield, Iravan fell into his Etherium, his past lives cycling. He seized the first one he saw.
Isanya crept inside him like a set of bones. She flipped mid-air, and Iravan felt her curiosity and wonder bloom in his heart, just for an instant, before they were the same. He cried out as she brought up their arms in a straight line, shooting into the sky. Trees streaked past, rocks pelting them, scoring Iravan’s limbs, and Isanya burst through the cover, into free air. Iravan didn’t trust them to lookback. He kept them pointed upward, Isanya rising them ever higher until it grew harder to breathe.
He spun around, facing the jungle again.
It astonished him how normal the terrain looked, the day bright and clear, the jungle as motionless as he’d left it.
Then the planet shook, filling his eyes. A massive orb that writhed restlessly in his vision, cracking into two, blowing into smithereens.
The vision lasted only for a second. When he blinked again, Iravan saw the jungle just as still as it had been. He clutched Isanya, not understanding, and the planet shook again, shrieking, a high-pitched whine in his ears.
Trees undulated in the wind. Through the stillness, Iravan saw giant tree trunks from the forest rise, then hurtle toward him like spears. The evervision shivered, the power of the three realms weakening. Isanya took over, turning them again, flying faster.
The planet followed.
27
AHILYA
She stumbled through the doorway, the voices of the Virohi filling her ears. Her vision swam, one step on the rubbly pathway of the courtyard—
The next on a gnarled root of the vriksh, her hand on its trunk.
She was here already. How?
The question was fleeting. She was here. It was all that mattered.
Ahilya put her forehead on the tree.Let me in.
The Etherium opened like a door between her brows.
A glimpse of the mirrored chambers—then she dropped within the forest.
Ridges and wrinkles in brown surrounded her, bark that was atrophying in front of her eyes, each sliver a window into a life. The scent of wood infiltrated her, but she could not place it. It reminded her of her childhood, a brief vision of laughter and regret. Leaves curled around her protectively, nestling her within her memory, and she heard the Virohi whisper,We are here / Where is here?Fear permeated her, but it was not hers, it was the suppressed fear of athousand lives and memories, filtering through to her, because she was now in the vriksh, shewasthe vriksh.
In some part of her mind, Ahilya knew that she was not within the core tree of Irshar. That though she was touching it with her hands and head, she had fallen to her knees at its base, her eyes closed. But she was inside the tree too—and the world swirled around her in rings and loops, time cascading from one memory into another.
She lived and relived.
Waves came to her, drowning her before she resurfaced. Airav on the healbranch chair, Tariya’s scream when they told her of Bharavi’s death, Chaiyya’s horror on learning of her Ecstasy. Ahilya trembled, one wave crashing as another receded, not knowing where she was.
When she breathed it was the breath of the tree, and she felt a compression, as Iravan turned her and all her siblings into a single creature—the assimilation of the core trees in the sky while the Conclave dropped into the earthrage. The trees had always shaped their citizens as much as they had been shaped. Their memory, their pain, sorrow and joy sparked within her body, burning to the tips of her fingers, to the space between her knuckles, to her lungs and her stomach, sifting, resolving, embedding in the same way the core trees had to the desires of airborne citizens for a thousand years. The pain of holding so much memory was excruciating, and the falling leaves of memories turned into thorns. Razor sharp, each of them with tiny, serrated edges, the thorns rained down on her, impaling her. The tree converted its memories into these vicious points, and plunged each thorn into her skin.
Ahilya screamed, horrified, as more thorns rained down on her, pinning her.
In a corner of her mind, she felt Iravan. The pain was excruciating, and she realized she was chanting his name.Please, she thought.Please. She—and the tree she was now—turned toward him, pleading.
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