“Why else would the rot get so much worse?” Prem asked. “I know the will of the mothers. I feel it.” He grimaced again. With a shuddering breath, he said, “What does your nameless god say? Does he disagree?”
“No theological arguments,” Rao said. “Not now.”
“I don’t know,” said Prem. “Now feels likes the perfect time.” He tried to reach out, but groaned in pain. So Rao reached for him, taking his hand.
“We need him gone, Rao,” Prem murmured. “And mothers help me, I respect your faith, strange as it is. But Prince Aditya needs to put the priesthood aside and become the emperor Parijatdvipa needs.”
Rao swallowed. Nodded. Beneath his grip, he could feel the bark on Prem’s skin, fibrous and rough.
“I didn’t stay because I hoped to save her,” Prem said. “I stayed because I knew he wouldn’t listen to any of us but you. You share his faith. You’re his dearest friend. If you tell him to return, to take his crown, to make a sacrifice of his calling…” Another cough. Then: “I had to bring you to him. I’m sorry I won’t—finish it.”
“No,” Rao said. “No.”
In the dark of a tent, on a path through a forest, so far from home that Saketa and Alor both felt like distant dreams—this was not how Prem should die.
“Tell me one thing,” said Prem. Voice wet. “Consider it a boon.”
“Anything.”
“Who are you really?” Prem asked. “What prophecy were you named with by your nameless god? What do you know of what’s coming?”
“Some prophecies are small,” Rao said.
“But yours isn’t,” said Prem.
A name should not be said until the time is right. A name should only be spoken when the fulfillment of a prophecy is at hand. And yet.
It was not like telling his name at all. A secret told to the dead is a secret still untold. And from the look in Prem’s eyes—from the profile of Lata’s turned-away face, the hunch of her shoulders—Prem did not have long.
Rao leaned forward. He whispered against Prem’s ear. Syllable after syllable.
For a moment, Prem was silent. Then he let out a choked laugh.
“No wonder you stayed for her,” said Prem. “No wonder.”
Lata was waiting outside the tent. It was light. “I can perform his last rites,” she said. Her voice was thick.
Rao swallowed. He felt as if his throat were full of glass.
“In Saketa, they don’t allow women to perform funeral rites.”
“There’s no one else.” Her voice was gentle, her expression remote.
“They don’t allow it in Srugna. Or Dwarali. Or Parijat. They don’t…”
“There’s no one else,” she repeated.
He nodded. He felt impossibly tired.
“Thank you,” he said. “For taking care of him.”
“What is the point of knowledge that isn’t used?”
The men had all waited. They listened, as Rao told them Prem was dead.
“He wouldn’t want us to return to Saketa,” one of Prem’s favorite pachisa players murmured. “We’re going to Emperor Aditya. It’s what he would have wanted.”
They buried him. There was no choice, here in the woods.
They had to keep walking. They had no choice about that either. Malini had not come, and Prem was dead.
“Tell me what it’s like in the lacquer gardens,” Rao managed to say to Lata as they trudged along.
Take me away from here, he wanted to say. Spin me a tale that allows me to leave the pain and the loss and the rot of this place for a time. Please give me that comfort.
Lata’s feet crunched down the long grass. She ran a stick along the ground ahead of them, warning any sleeping snakes that humans were passing, and it would be best to slither away and leave them be.
“I know less of the gardens than you do,” she said.
“Anything you’ve read. I know you have. Please.”
“It was a place built for the sake of a vision,” she said finally. “And like all things vision born, it is an irrational artifice.”
“You sound like you’re quoting.”
“Very perceptive. I am. The texts of my own teacher.”
“What does it mean—irrational artifice?”
She raised her head, squinting against the sun.
“You’ll see for yourself, soon enough,” she said. “Look.”
Ahead of them stood a gorge, and across it lay a bridge of root, carved between walls of mountain rock. Through the path, he could see a temple garden. A great monastery.