Page 7 of The Enduring Universe
What would occur to civilization then? Everything Iravan had achieved could be erased away. Ecstasy could be outlawed once more, years from now. Or perhaps architects would rise again, returning to what they once had been. Perhaps they would be imprisoned, the very power of trajection disdained, and all architects become slaves.
It did not take too much imagination to consider the many paths civilization could take if a few people continued to have incredible power. Whether oppressors or the oppressed, nothing would really change for the architects, their destinies controlled by the power they were born with.
Iravan could not allow that. The only way to ensure equity was to take the power away once and for all, and give architects the hope of one day becoming complete beings.
The architects of the Garden were counting on this. They had joined him to learn to unite with their yakshas. The fact that the Garden was the only place they could traject anymore was important not because of trajection, but because without the power they could not release the raga that would signal their presence to their yakshas.
But the yakshas were missing. Iravan had not seen any for months. The last time he had seen any was when several aerial yakshas joined the falcon—the falcon that he had subsumed. Is that why the other yakshas eluded him? Because he had absorbed their leader? He needed to find them, and he had been lucky that Darsh of all people felt an inkling of a presence in the Deepness. Sincethe boy had told him of it, Iravan had visited the jungle with him as often as he could to track the creatures down, hoping to be led by the boy’s signal.
“Tell me again what you experienced in the Deepness,” he said.
Darsh made a face. Iravan had asked him this already several times, and the boy’s tone grew annoyed, though he did not refuse to answer.
“When Reyla and I were trajecting, I sensed a presence in the Deepness. A fluid one, and only briefly, and the both of us saw it. It was unfamiliar to her, but I felt like I’d seen it before. We followed it to the Moment and I could see it there too, though Reyla couldn’t. That’s when we told you about it.”
It was very similar to Iravan’s experience. Only he had been able to see the falcon in the Moment; that was how he knew Darsh was witnessing his own yaksha. Since then, Darsh had received impressions of different parts of the jungle in his Etherium, in the same way that Iravan had once because of the falcon. Of course,hehadn’t known back then what was happening, but these Ecstatics would receive the benefit of his experience. Iravan understood the boy’s yaksha was likely leading him into the jungle to unite.
In reality, his problems were not finding the yakshas or assisting other architects in completing themselves. Those were minor aspects of his capital desire. His task was to end the Virohi—the source of all ill. Ahilya had embraced the cosmic creatures, and it was already affecting her. In time, they would affect all the other citizens of Irshar, in ways none of them could comprehend. He needed to axe the root of the tree, wrench it from its depths and remove all presence of it. Only Ahilya stood in his way.
In desperation, he sought the Etherium within his eversion for a clue again. The darkness between his brows flared. His many forms cycled in front of him, weaving in and out of his vision. Iravanflitted between them: he swept his spouse, Mara, into a dance; he became Agni who beat the drums in their ashram in celebration; he was Mohini, and he—she—was asleep between her spouses, Taruin and Radha; he kissed Vishwam, tasting his husband, the slight dryness of his lips, no, not his husband,Nidhirv’s, the man who he had once been in another lifetime. And even as that thought occurred, Iravan became aware that he was sitting differently, his shoulder sunken like Nidhirv’s, the muscles moving in unfamiliar memorable ways.
Iravan held this awareness, as if to fix the image of Nidhirv even though he knew he had no control in the Etherium. Ever since he’d subsumed the falcon-yaksha, the memories of his past lives had become more easily accessible to him, to a point where he could reach out and submerge in one of their lives for long hours, understanding who they were. It was a dangerous balance—to not lose himself within them. Iravan had finally found a method to separate his past lives enough to study them. Everpower swirled within him and dust rose, leaves churning in the shape of a man, a memory.
The shape coalesced on the forest floor like a ghost. Nidhirv appeared made of wind and tree bark and dust. Unlike in the Etherium, the projection’s eyes glowed silver. He looked more real than the wisp in Iravan’s mind, but more feral too.
Nidhirv stalked forward, a strange smile on his face, his silvery eyes flashing, and Iravan thought,What are you trying to tell me?
Had he been alone, Iravan would have strengthened the projection, trying to understand the edges of his capital desire. But Darsh’s mouth fell open. The boy staggered back from Nidhirv, tripping over himself. Iravan knew he was scaring the child. He dropped his sight in the third vision, and Nidhirv disappeared in a huff of leaves, inches from Darsh.
The shape drifted away, carried by the breeze. Iravan clenchedhis fist then released it. Frustration was futile. He would not learn secrets from them today, and did it matter at all? He had learned to work with what he had.
Iravan turned to Darsh. “When you call your yaksha now, are you trajecting the same pattern as when you saw it before?”
Darsh shook his head, confused. “No. You said all trajection releases Nakshar’s Constant, so I didn’t think it mattered what or how I trajected.”
“It shouldn’t,” Iravan confirmed. “But if the yaksha is being so elusive, then it won’t hurt to try what you did before again.” He gestured to Darsh to enter the Deepness. “Traject that pattern,” he said. “Let’s see if we can lure your yaksha out.”
3
AHILYA
The sun had set by the time Chaiyya arrived.
The Senior Architect appeared in a rustle of leaves, brushing twigs off her hair and clothes as she entered the clearing the builders had made. Her dark skin shone with the light of trajection, but though Chaiyya was now an Ecstatic, she still worked only in the Moment. Ahilya knew Chaiyya had never been curious about Ecstasy, and her encounter with Deepness had been unnatural.
Chaiyya smiled tightly at Ahilya as she picked her way through Eskayra’s team toward her. Two other healers accompanied her, Kamala and Meena, both of them non-architect nurses. They had both been studying the mind, a nascent field in the airborne ashrams, at least with non-architects as the mind had always been the purview of consciousness-experts like Iravan.
Now, when people couldn’t trust architects, when Irshar barely had any left, these nurses had become more important than ever, helping people with their grief and loss. Kamala and Meena were specifically assigned to Ahilya, assisting Chaiyya in guiding her through the interaction with the Virohi.
While Meena went to work on arranging a delicate medical instrument, Kamala greeted Ahilya with a nod. A young woman, perhaps Naila’s age, her long angular face cut by apple-cheeks, and a certain cold wariness in her eyes, Kamala had once belonged to Nakshar. She had perhaps known Oam who had been a nurse studying the mind. If he were alive, Ahilya’s case would have been handled by him, but perhaps if he was here, Ahilya wouldn’t have found herself in this situation. It was such a circular thought that Ahilya choked, unable to follow it.
Under Chaiyya’s supervision, the two nurses began to sort the medical instruments, uncoiling thin glass tubes, and tinkling sungineering equipment. Chaiyya trajected the seeds around her wrists and neck to power the equipment but, if the slow blinks on the devices were any indication, she was having trouble in the jungle, just like the team of Eskayra’s architects.
Perhaps it would have been wiser to return to Irshar, but all they had were bad choices. Ahilya suppressed a wince as Kamala inserted an intravenous line, strapping a few bands around Ahilya’s wrists and chest to read her vitals. Another line infused saline and herbal medicine directly into Ahilya’s bloodstream. A surge of clarity rushed through her, and the jungle became brighter, more present. Chaiyya and the others sharpened, as her own Etherium receded. Ahilya breathed a sigh of relief.
Encounters with the Virohi always fatigued her. This was why for the past three days, she had been instructed by Irshar’s council not to attempt the persuasion, no matter the call from the Virohi. To do so without her team of healers was practically suicidal—not just for her but for all of Irshar.
It had not always been this way, of course. In the early days after the Conclave had crashed, Ahilya had entered the Etherium to conduct the persuasion easily, following her instincts. The Virohihad appeared as smoky forms then. Ahilya spent hours in the mirrored chambers, showing them a life in the ashram, conjuring images of her sister Tariya and her nephews, Arth and Kush, feeding Virohi parts of her memory. Laughter and love, pain and joy, grief and regret—she gave the Virohi everything. They listened at first. She thought that would be the extent of her interaction with them.
