Priya took it.
Once, long ago, a new elder would be initiated in fine clothes—robes of silk, their hair a loose river perfumed with oil, jewels and gold upon their throats and wrists. There would have been hymns sung, and offerings made to the yaksa. Pilgrims, risen to the Hirana, would have been given flowers and fruit and vials of deathless water, bound with ribbons of silver.
This rising was performed with ramshackle reverence.
They crossed the triveni.
Bhumika rose, with due gravity, to the zenith of the plinth. Priya rose with her. They stood, the two of them, beneath an opening that let in the sky, and looked at one another.
Kritika crossed the room. Bowed her head.
“Elders,” she said. “It’s time.”
In her hands, on a bed of cloth, lay a crown mask.
Priya reached down. Touched it, bare-fingered.
“It doesn’t burn,” she murmured.
Good, thought Bhumika, with some relief, as Priya lifted the crown mask and held it. She met Bhumika’s eyes.
They had spoken of this before rising. Spoken of how the elders had always been led by one of their own—the strongest, the wisest, the oldest of them. They were only two now. Only two.
But Bhumika would not underestimate herself again.
She gave Priya a nod. Drew the sling, gently, to shroud Padma’s face, as Priya nodded in return, a slight twist of grief to her lips.
“You were always meant to rule,” Priya said. And she placed the mask upon Bhumika’s face.
It should have burned her. Should have shorn away her skin. But she was thrice-born, blessed soul-deep with the power of the waters, and she felt the strength of it fill her like a glowing light—bright and powerful and beautiful.
They held hands with one another. And in that moment, they were in the sangam and on the triveni at the same time. Bhumika could feel all Ahiranya gleaming inside her, every river and pool of water, every root of every tree. She could see Priya in the sangam, a thing not of shadow now, but of bark and leaf and winding flowers, dark as night.
“Ready?” Bhumika asked. Her voice was a rasp.
“Yes.” Priya’s voice was full of determination—and wonder. “I am.”
They breathed in. Out.
And felt everything.
They felt Ahiranya, from end to end. They felt the forest, the branches of those great trees, the green sentience of the soil, the power of venomous crop, of leaf, of vine.
They reached farther than they ever had, and knew that if any army invaded Ahiranya they could splinter it upon their thorns.
Their hands separated, but the knowledge and the power remained between them still, in the waters that fed both of their strengths.
“Bhumika, Elder of Ahiranya,” said a voice. Another. A song of voices. An exultation.
“Priya, Elder of Ahiranya.”
“Elders. Elders of Ahiranya!”
Bhumika removed the crown mask from her face and realized she was weeping. And smiling. And that Priya’s face was a reflection of her own.
MALINI
The true name of an Aloran prince was no small thing. She did not think any highborn present failed to understand the importance of what was happening before them. Even the soldiers had fallen deathly silent.
“What,” she said, “has your name to do with me?”
He released a breath, as if she had struck him.
“Everything, Princess Malini,” he said. “Everything.”
He stared at the ground. Closed his eyes in pain and reverence, and when he spoke, it was in Aloran. Ancient, archaic Aloran, a melodic language that even Malini had never learned. But Aditya knew it, and she judged the weight of the prophecy by the way her brother’s face paled, and his eyes closed, and his head tipped back to the bleeding dusk.
“When she is crowned in jasmine, in needle-flower, in smoke and in fire, he will kneel before her and name her,” repeated Rao, in common Zaban. And suddenly Malini was shivering, every inch of her afire with a mad elation that rose up, up in her blood. “He will give the princess of Parijat her fate: He will say…” He swallowed. Raised his eyes, which were fierce and wet. “Name who shall sit upon the throne, princess. Name the flower of empire. Name the head that shall reign beneath a crown of poison. Name the hand that lit the pyre.” The silence was deep; a drumming tense silence, drawn taught as a bowstring. “He will name her thus,” finished Rao. “And she will know.”
Malini could not feel her feet beneath her. It was as if she were floating in her own skin, on a wave of something that wasn’t quite fear or quite joy but burned in her, headier than liquor, more potent than needle-flower.