Realm of Ash

by Tasha Suri

  “It would be easier, perhaps, to work by daylight.” A beat. “My lord.”

  “Yes,” said Zahir, which was no response at all. He looked at her then, fingers paused upon the shelf. “But I doubt your veil helps your vision.”

  “I will not remove it,” Arwa said swiftly. “I will not compromise my honor.”

  “I have not asked you to,” he said, just as swiftly.

  He crossed the room and placed a new book in front of her. This one was far larger than the thin book of poetry still in her hands. She placed her poetry carefully to the side. She opened the new tome. The pages were heavy in her hands.

  “The next page,” said Zahir. “Please, Lady Arwa.”

  Arwa turned the page. Her breath stopped.

  In front of her was a lustrous image, so heavy with color and detail that it near breathed with its own life: a world carved into fragments by a great chariot wheel, spoked and lacquered in gold. Between the first set of spokes sat a familiar world, of lush forests and white-blue mountains and pale gold desert. Between the next set of spokes, tangled with the edges of the desert…

  “It is—”

  “A storm,” whispered Arwa. “Dreamfire.”

  She propped the book against the table. She traced the pages with her eyes, hungry, her heart wild and seething in her chest. Flames burnished across a desert sky. Flames of rose and indigo and umber.

  “I saw dreamfire in Irinah,” she murmured. “When I was a small girl.”

  He looked startled for a moment. Then his expression smoothed.

  “Of course. You grew up in Irinah.”

  “Yes.”

  She had watched the dreamfire from her bedroom window, once, as a girl of only nine. Not long before her mother had spirited her away to Hara.

  But ah, she’d been so young. Her heart had turned so easily then, liquid, easily biddable. At first she’d been afraid of the dreamfire—terrified, in fact. But then she had stared at it, night long, through her window lattice. And those flames…

  Well, to claim she had become less afraid would have been false. But the terror had alchemized with time: sharpened to a joy all the sweeter and deeper for the fear. She had felt something akin to it, when she had chased a daiva and embedded a bloodied dagger into its flesh. When she had offered herself up for this task, unknowing and uncaring about her unknowingness, the bitterness of blood on her tongue.

  “I cannot describe it,” said Arwa. You would think me mad. Monstrous. “I am no poet, my lord. It was a sight that marked me, but I did not understand what it was. I still do not.” She stared, longer, at the image before her. “I have long considered it a part of the cursed nature of Irinah’s desert.”

  “Cursed?”

  She looked at him. His head was slightly tilted, his eyes intent.

  Ah. It was a real question.

  “Where else,” she said slowly, “has daiva and Amrithi both, and storms of fire—and is the site of the Maha’s death?”

  “The Maha could only die in one place. But as to the rest…”

  She had no time to consider whether he was calling her a fool—the Maha could only die in one place? Ah, Gods, how barbed this boy was—before he leaned forward, across the cups of steaming tea, and touched one long finger to the turn of the wheel.

  “This wheel is a representation—one theory alone—of the shape of reality.” He touched a fingertip lightly to the forests and deserts, nestled between the spokes, emerald green and dusty gold. “Here lies the world in which we live. A world of flesh and blood.” His finger moved from the green and gold of the forest to the deep blue and rose of the storm. “And here, where you see the dreamfire, lies the realm of where the Gods sleep, dreaming our world into being.

  “Dreamfire is a sign of Irinah’s nature, but not a sign that the desert is cursed, Lady Arwa. Instead, it reveals that Irinah is a threshold, a bridge where our two worlds touch. The world of their sleep and the world of our waking. The Gods dream…” He touched the spoke of the wheel that held their world and the one of the Gods apart. “And in Irinah, mortals have the honor of beholding it.”

  “I did not know,” Arwa whispered. “Any of it.”

  “You had no reason to know heresy.”

  The illustration contained within the next spokes of the wheel was drab, a spill of gray-black ink. But…

  Arwa looked at it more closely. Between clouds of gray and black were figures of whittled bone. She felt suddenly quite cold.

  “And this?” she asked. She touched her own fingers lightly to the darkness, then drew them back. “What place is this?”

  “The realm of ash,” he said. “And the locus of our study.”

  He traced the place upon the page where the dreamfire and desert merged with a fingertip once more, voice soft and liquid with reverence. “Just as the Gods dream in another realm, so do mortals. We enter it naturally, in sleep. It is a shadow place. It lives in our dreams. In the quiet of our minds. It is a place both of flesh and beyond flesh.”

  “And what lies in this place, this realm of ash?” Arwa asked.

  “The dead,” he said.

  She thought of her sister. She thought of Darez Fort. She thought of Kamran, her husband, and the taste of iron rose in her mouth.

  “Ah,” she whispered. She could not say anything else.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, voice softer now, in a mimicry of her own. “I should be more precise. It is not the dead that lie in the realm, but echoes of their dreams, their memories, their knowledge. Their ash.” He tapped the spoke of the wheel where the mortal world met darkness. “Sleep is a bridge of a kind. Just as the dreams of the Gods touch the world in Irinah, molding it, in sleep the dreams of our ancestors shape us.

  “There were ancient mystical orders—orders that existed long before mystics joined the service of the Maha—who carefully studied what could be found in the realm, and through their study, they discovered that if one can enter the realm conscious, in a waking dream… a mortal can access the knowledge of their ancestors, the accumulated knowledge of all their dead.” A beat. “You must see, my lady, the great value of that.”

  In that moment she could not. Her thoughts were a hum like a hive of insects in her skull.

  “How can you know this?” she asked faintly.

  “I am a scholar,” he said. “I have many, many books.”

  “Please,” said Arwa. “My lord, do not mock me.”

  “I don’t,” he said with a frown. “I really do have many books. Few are so lucky. You cannot gain knowledge of a thing without sources of information to shape your study.”

  For a man who had seen through her like paper on their first meeting and focused his occult studies upon the nature of reality and the soul, he was distressingly literal. There was an exactness to him that made his whole nature an indiscriminate blade that cut deep through the surface to the bone truth of things: be it to the truth of a widow’s furious heart seeking martyrdom, or the dull necessities of scholarship.

  There was a pulse beating fiercely in her jaw. She ground down her teeth hard, then forced the tension to loosen so that she could pry her own words from her lips.

  “Your books—they have truly led you to believe that we are no more than soil shaped by the dead? You have placed your faith in a great heresy, my lord. Our souls are in the keeping of the Maha and Emperor. Their nature is not our concern beyond that. We must have faith, and think no further on that matter.”

  “I know,” he said. His voice low, soft. A liquid thing. “I know, Lady Arwa. I do not forget it. But I take comfort in knowing my faith remains with the Maha and my Emperor father still. It is not faith that guides me in this. Dozens—thousands—of mystics before me studied the realm and theorized upon it, and tested their theories, then tested them again for good measure, until they could say with some assurance that this is the truth: We are shaped in part by the dreams of the dead, molded by an echo of their griefs and joys and pain. Whatever I may believe, Lady Arwa, wha
tever the shape of my faith, I know this. As far as anyone may know a thing. And if my knowing is at odds with my faith—well. I accept that burden.”

  His voice was lilting, compelling. Given enough time, he could perhaps convince her this knowledge was no evil thing, but a force entirely separate from the powerful strictures of faith.

  Arwa wanted to be convinced. More fool her.

  Instead she shook her head. Leaned back from the table, and clasped her hands before her.

  “Even the smallest application of reason would shatter the distinction you have made, my lord, between faith and knowing. But it was kind of you to seek to assuage the fears of this humble widow. Although I abhor it, I will face heresy with you, my lord. For the Empire’s sake, as I told you when we first met.”

  “Perhaps it is not your fears I seek to ease,” murmured Zahir. He smiled to himself—a small, curiously bitter curl of his lips. Then he said, “I am the Emperor’s blood and through him, the Maha’s also. His knowledge was fathomless, his power endless. His death was our ruin.”

  Arwa nodded. She did not doubt it. The Maha had founded the Empire. The Maha lived for centuries and brought the Empire its glory, its fortune, its God-touched blessed status. Everything had been lost, upon his death.

  “If I can walk the realm of ash,” Zahir continued. “If I can sift through countless generations of my blood and find the Maha’s ash, I can access the Maha’s centuries of memories. Perhaps I can find the knowledge to save us all. I can only hope, Lady Arwa.”

  Arwa closed her eyes. The effigy of the Maha and the Emperor loomed beneath the closed lids of her eyes, a spill of faceless white against ink dark.

  “When you walk upon the path of ash, child of my blood, you walk upon your ghosts / Do not look where you tread / My dreams will feed you grief as honey.”

  Zahir looked startled.

  “You read the book after all.”

  “I may have little knowledge of heresy, my lord, but I am not uneducated. I often assisted my husband in his work; a good memory was a necessary tool for me to cultivate.”

  “Tell me what you remember of my notes.”

  “Do not eat the ash. Something of roots.”

  “Do not let go of your roots,” he corrected.

  There was so much she could not do, it seemed, and very little instruction as to what she could.

  “You also wrote of blood carrying answers,” Arwa said. “I understand that now, I think.”

  “I learned my first lessons of the realm from that book,” he said. “The poetry was intended to capture the feel, the sensation of the realm, by those who had walked it. My notes were intended as clarification.”

  “I did not understand them, my lord.” She had intended her words to sound like an apology. Instead, they came out hard, as a kind of challenge. His gaze fixed upon her clasped hands, as if he could read something of her feelings in them; then, once more, he raised his head to her veiled face.

  “You will when we enter the realm,” he promised. “But you must remember those lessons, when we proceed. And you must obey my instructions, as any apprentice would, for the safety of both of us.”

  “Why do you need me at all, my lord? You have the knowledge of mystics. You have your own blood. What need have you of mine?”

  “The bridge of sleep is a fragile one. With it, we can only travel so far into the realm of our dead. To reach the Maha’s ash I need a greater bridge. And your blood…” He hesitated. “I have a theory, concerning your blood, and its power. But I require your willing assistance within the realm to test it.”

  She thought of worlds—realms—bound together. She thought of daiva, and of her own nightmares—of the dangers that haunted her nights and her blood both.

  She thought of being useful.

  “You know you have it,” she said. “Anything for the Empire.”

  He nodded in acknowledgment.

  “Enough for tonight,” he said. “You cannot take this book with you, but I have one which contains a fair copy of the wheel. Let me retrieve it for you, and you may leave.”

  He stood, and lifted the book from the table, closing it gently and returning it to the shelves.

  It would have been sensible to leave, as he had offered. Sensible to feel more than foreboding. Zahir had upended her understanding of the world, and made ghosts rise within her heart. She should have abhorred the heresy of the evening, and approached the task he offered her with dutiful reluctance. She should have been afraid.

  And she was afraid. She was.

  “Show me,” she whispered. There was a thrill running through her blood. It felt like holding a bow. Like piercing a daiva’s skin. Fear and joy both, tangled together as wholly as soul and flesh. “Show me this realm. Show me how I can help you, Lord Zahir.”

  He gave her a sidelong look.

  “I thought you would want time to consider what I have told you.”

  “No, my lord. I do not.”

  There was a pause. His face was in shadow.

  “I suppose that isn’t your way,” he said finally. “But it isn’t a simple task, Lady Arwa. I have tried to enter the realm of ash before. On my own, and with a tutor, when I was a boy. It was a fraught experience. It is not… entirely safe. I cannot promise this will be pleasant for you.”

  “I understand,” said Arwa. “Still, I am prepared.”

  “You are not prepared. It is impossible to be truly prepared.”

  “Nonetheless, my lord, I am ready.” She filled her voice with certainty, iron and sure. “I promise you. Please.”

  She thought he would dismiss her plea outright. Despite the hungry beat of her heart, she expected it. But he did not. He was silent. He stepped toward her once more, lantern light on his face. His eyes were narrowed. He was looking, she realized, at her hands once again, which were pressed flat to the table, fingers fanned out and pressed hard into the grooves within the wood.

  “Well then,” he said. “What can I say? Follow me, Lady Arwa. Please, bring the tea.”

  She balanced the tray carefully in her hands, as she followed him from his ill-lit library to the second room of the enclosure.

  Tomb enclosures were often multichambered, built to accommodate entire departed families beneath the press of the earth. This room was smaller than the first, and equally empty of the dead. Arwa counted that as a blessing. Its ceiling was partially open at its center, perforated by a circular grate that was visibly stained with soot. Beneath it sat a fire vessel: a deep high-walled container of blackened copper, used for holding flame.

  On one side of the grate was bedding. There was a pile of books by its side. They were not scattered on the floor—that would have been utterly disrespectful—but were neatly set on a wooden book rest, its two feet holding the books safely away from the earth. Arwa spied ink also, and a scrap of paper, covered in words she could not read from a distance in the weak light.

  That answered the question, at least, of where Zahir slept.

  As Arwa watched, Zahir lifted a blanket—thin, soft cotton—from the bedding and took it to the opposite end of the room. He laid it out upon the ground. Then he kneeled by the vessel at the center of the room and began preparing a fire.

  “Place the tea wherever you like,” he said. “And sit. Please.”

  Arwa placed the tray upon the floor and—after a moment of hesitation—sat on the blanket cross-legged. Closer now, she could see that the vessel was marked with symbols so old and faded that they were nearly unreadable.

  Zahir filled the vessel with fuel: wood and clarified butter and resinous, sweet perfume.

  “To enter the realm of ash consciously, scholars realized that they need a bridge akin to Irinah. In order to widen the bridge of sleep, we use these.” He gestured at the wood, the resin, the perfume, then began to set it alight. “All of this has been sourced from Irinah because it is—hopefully—imbued with some of Irinah’s nature.”

  “And the fire?” Arwa asked. “What is its purpose?”


  “Why do we have prayer flames?” Zahir asked. “Fire is power. It is a light in the dark. It is alchemy, turning one thing to another, a bridge between states. The old orders utilized it. My pyre knows / the shape of light born from flame / the lamp in the dark / the lamp of truth.”

  “The Hidden One was a mystic, then?”

  “It was a shared moniker. But of course.” Hint of a smile around his mouth. “A very fine one.”

  He murmured a soft prayer as the flames grew.

  He was still tending to the flames. Adding wood to the fire. Arwa could feel the heat of those flames. Beneath her veil, her face was warm.

  “The bridge that this ritual offers is still narrow,” he added, eventually. “And I’ve long considered what other theories to put to the test. Some books speak of the power of graveyards and how consumption of the bodies of the dead can build a bridge. Others speak of intense meditation, of fasting until the body is near death. And some speak of the Amrithi: of blood that is shaped by the Gods, by Irinah and by the mortal world. A natural—and powerful—bridge. I would have tested any theory. But there you were, in my sister’s grasp. And now you are here.” A beat. “Though I must say I am relieved to avoid cannibalism.”

  “I imagine you are,” Arwa said, pushing away an all too familiar nausea.

  Her Amrithi blood. She had taught herself not to be Amrithi in any way beyond her blood, which could not be altered. She had assured Gulshera that she was not. And yet she had yearned as a foolish girl to be the Amrithi woman she was not allowed to be. She knew exactly the shape of that shadow Arwa who had never been allowed to live: knew her fierceness, her hunger, her magic. And she carried a tangle of memories too, sharp within her as a shard of glass: a memory of her sister dancing an Amrithi rite, her feet whispering against marble; a memory of a gold-eyed daiva, sitting upon Arwa’s windowsill; a fresher nightmare, of a daiva taking her trembling hand. Just…

  “What must I do with my blood?”

  He drew a blade from his sash and offered it to her, hilt first.