Page 94 of The Enduring Universe
***
She was in the jungle.
Inches away from her stood a massive tiger-yaksha, its striped tailswinging behind it cautiously. She knew she should leave, return to her ashram, that this creature was dangerous. But hadn’t she come seeking just such a creature?They will destroy your material bonds, she thought. That was the risk of yakshas, and why any interaction with them was forbidden.
Yet Askavetra had heard stories from other ashrams where people still communed with these creatures. She’d heard whispers of a time when architects from her own ashram had disappeared into the jungle to live with the yakshas, attaining great powers in doing so. Her mother had told her those men and women had been abducted by the creatures, but Sariya had whispered they’d gone willingly. Why?
Askavetra approached the tiger-yaksha slowly. It was so tall she had to look up at it, but keeping her terror at bay, noticing its sharp teeth, she continued forward, attempting to still her shivering. The yaksha bent low, and she stopped moving.
Its maw touched her briefly, and then a purring sound emerged. The yaksha nuzzled her neck, and despite her fear Askavetra laughed. She reached a hand to brush its fur—
Images cascaded through her mind—
ThroughIravan’smind—
***
Of another young woman the tiger-yaksha had belonged to, a woman he had known,Naila, who he had felt amity with. He remembered silver light leaching from the tiger-yaksha toward him; watched as he subsumed the tiger-yaksha, and Naila crumpled, the memory of her past lives ripped away from her. The image exploded and expanded into a cloud. He saw architects of the Garden and a landed Irshar collapsing in deep pain as he broke consent and all promises of ethics by taking from them what was never his.
***
Iravan tore away from the vision, breathing hard. He returned to the maze, his mind spinning. He was still locked in ludicrous combat with Askavetra, who smiled a twisted smile, and he thought,I let this happen.
It was a shock to learn that the tiger-yaksha had belonged to Naila, though he could see clearly now the linking of it, and the forces that had pulled her life into his orbit. In some ways, they had always been connected, had always known each other—but he had ripped all knowledge of her past from her, bonds of friendship be damned. That was the effect of his subsummation of the other yakshas. He had done so because of the falcon’s madness and influence on him, but the weight of responsibility still crushed his shoulders.It was still my body that did the action, even if my mind was the yaksha’s, he thought.
Askavetra’s eyes shone in satisfaction, and he knew he was giving into the falcon by thinking this way. He was making himself weaker. Iravan snarled, and tried to push the axe toward her neck, to end her and the falcon that controlled this version of her.
Askavetra dropped her grip on the axe.
It happened in the same instant. The axe connected to her neck, and her hand locked around Iravan’s throat, clutching the stone blade hung around a vine.
Iravan felt deep terror.No.He willed it, and his necklace remained around him, resisting Askavetra’s pull. But her hand tightened, and particles drifted from the pendant, diminishing everdust. The pendant grew smaller.
The axe decapitated her.
Askavetra vanished in a swirl of air, extinguishing shards of precious possibility.
57
COHESION
Drawing on memories of everything it was made of, Cohesion stood against the planetrage.
It bent their heads, protecting against the rising gale of the planet, as its branches swished around the nest. Wind shrieked, gusting across the cocoons of its people, and a storm razed over the jungle, withering everything in its ravenous path.
It felt the planet’s fury in every inch of them. Rocks rose in the air, hurled at its canopy, but it braced its head and hardened into its strongest form. The sounds were terrifying, akin to a monstrous gnashing of teeth. Water rose from the bowels of the planet, into tides over a thousand feet tall, slamming against the nest of its existence. Within, the people shook in their cocoons, and Cohesion screamed as some of them drowned, winked away from its power. Heat climbed over its skin, burning away the roots, scorching the leaves of protection. Holes appeared within the canopy, and it scrambled, attempting to fill itself with new growth, leaves and shoots bursting hastily to cover the holes. It felt the pain of burning deep in their marrow, and saw the planetfling more fire at them in the form of molten rocks that melted its sap.
Terror and sadness overtook it. Flashes of memory—the pain of separation, the rise to the skies, the final and late acceptance that it had always ever been one people, united at its source as sentient beings. They who had once been called Virohi—the other—they who had been not so different from the complete ones. Something rose in its memory, a glimmer of acceptance, and an echo of blue-green tattoos.We were architects once, it said, and knowledge whispered from within it.
And as the planet hurled its elements at them, large balls of debris smashing against the nest, Cohesion twisted the tree of its body—no longer simply protecting, but attacking,trajecting, in return.
Roots writhed, hurtling outwards from the ashram, smashing into boulders before they could reach the nest. A massive tsunami loomed over them, but the tree sent out an intention and a wall formed to break the wave. Below, more roots anchored into the soil, creating plates of bark, layers upon layers of them strengthening the earth, preventing an erosion. Rocks dashed everywhere, but spears of branches erupted from the tree, impaling the rocks before they could reach the cocoons. The canopy grew thicker, absorbing the worst of the dust, filtering fresher air down to its people while above smoke and dust obscured visibility. Energized by the power of such enormous desire, sungineering drones that had been lying in wait zipped through the air, hurtling like missiles into gigantic debris, disintegrating them into dust.
A hundred ashrams, no a thousand—those from sister cities, and those that once had been subsumed—arose in a crescendo of memory, feeding years of survival back into themselves. Cohesion reared, fighting for its survival, while the planet churned trying toannihilate it. Cohesion lost parts of itself, but it stood too, rooting further. There was terror but there was an exhilarated sense of victory woven through it. The planet was throwing everything it had at it, but Cohesion was holding. It was surviving.
58
IRAVAN
