Those of you strong enough to survive.
Ashok had not been worried. He’d known he was strong enough, because he had looked at the carvings of the temple elders from the Age of Flowers, those men and women who had conquered the subcontinent on the yaksa’s behalf. Who had held terrible, incalculable power. He had looked and thought, I am not going to be like our elders, holding only a shadow of power, a faint echo of what once was. I won’t sit with the regent or bow to the emperor in Parijat.
I am going to be like you.
He knew—the moment he emerged from the deathless waters for the first time, gasping for air to fill his lungs, somehow both hollow and full—that he had been right. Because in his head he saw the sangam. A place of myth. A world beyond the mortal realm where cosmic rivers met; where once, the temple elders had been able to walk. That day, years before the other children began to change and grow powerful, before the temple elders realized what the children had become—before everything and everyone burned—Ashok knew. The yaksa had heard him. Ahiranya’s glory would return.
Now.
Now he stood in the confluence of rivers.
They met beneath his feet. River of soul; river of heart’s flesh, red and deep; river of immortality, bubbling the green of life and the gold of the ageless.
Rivers of the living. Rivers of the dead.
He waded in deeper, the water rising to his ankles, his knees. He closed his eyes and held his breath, then released it, slow and even. He had done this before. He knew the way of it: how a breath unspooled could lead a man’s mind from his flesh and deep into the grasp of the rivers. In Ahiranya’s forest, his body sat cross-legged, back straight and eyes fast shut, breathing just so. In the confluence of rivers—the sangam, the holiest of sites—his soul made its way to the meeting place.
She waited for him, in the same swirling water, a mere shadow of a woman. She was trembling. She always trembled, now. Around her the river was an oil slick of violet.
“You’re not well,” he told her.
“Ashok,” she murmured, lowering her head. “I’m well enough.”
“Are you?”
“I’ve almost found the way,” she said. “Almost. I’m sure.”
“Tell me everything.”
She wavered before him. The shadow of her was breaking—ink swirling into the river flow. She was not strong enough to be here. Every moment was a kind of agony.
“I can’t remain long,” she said. There was an apology in her voice, small and broken. “But I promise I—I’ll save us. I promise.”
He waded closer. He felt her then: her pain, her weakness, her love and loyalty. He held his hand out, a wisp of soul before him. Touched her cheek.
He thought of telling her to come home. He thought of telling her to return to her family, where she would be safe.
But if there was a hope—if there was a chance—
“I know what it means to be strong,” she told him. “I know everything has a price.”
So it did.
“Be strong, then,” he murmured. “And I’ll be here.”
She faded away and he remained, the sangam winding around him.
PRIYA
It was only their fourth week climbing the Hirana when they faced disaster.
Priya was at the back of the line of maidservants, halfway through the climb, when she heard a scream that cut through the blackness, followed by the clang of a lantern striking the ground. She froze. Above her, the snaking line of lanterns wavered and went still, as their bearers froze along with her.
She sucked in a slow breath. She tasted rain, or blood, or something iron-sharp that somehow resembled both. She pressed the soles of her feet down onto the damp stone, grounding herself. In her left hand the guiding rope—slippery with water—stung her already abraded palm. Wet rope was an agony on raw skin, but Priya had only clung on tighter when the rain had begun to pour halfway through their ascent, soaking the rope along with their clothes and skin and supplies. It had stopped now, but only after turning the stone of the Hirana slick and dangerously smooth. It was no wonder someone had fallen.
Behind her Meena whispered, “What happened?”
Meena was the youngest maidservant who’d volunteered to take up this role, and she was a nervous thing at the best of times. The scream had shaken her. Priya could hear how shallow her breathing was now, a panicked in-out rhythm that made Priya’s own lungs ache in sympathy.
“I don’t know,” lied Priya. She tried to sound calm, for Meena’s sake. “Are you still holding on tight?”