Realm of Ash

by Tasha Suri

  Zahir lowered his head and made a gesture of respect.

  “You have our gratitude,” he said. “My apologies for intruding.”

  Eshara didn’t bother with such niceties. She gave the door a critical look and said, “Do you have any more wood? Any more brooms like that one?” She gestured at the broken wooden shaft in one woman’s hands.

  “Yes,” the woman said cautiously. “Some.”

  “Bring it here, then,” said Eshara. “We’re going to strengthen this door.”

  As a few of the women moved to obey, Arwa crossed the room. Aunt Madhu was seated in the corner, wrapped in a thick shawl. Her mouth was pursed. Diya stood beside her, arms crossed. She gave Arwa a curt nod.

  “Aunt,” said Arwa. “Thank you for giving us sanctuary.”

  Aunt Madhu snorted. “What else could we say to all that groveling?” She turned her gaze on Eshara. “Your friend. Can she really protect us?”

  Arwa could hear Eshara ordering the widows about.

  “She’ll certainly try,” said Arwa. “She told no lies.”

  “And the man. Can he fight?” A frown. “He’s pretty enough, but he doesn’t look like much.”

  Arwa thought of the night at the imperial palace when Zahir had cut a man’s throat. Absurdly, she found herself smiling.

  “Oh, he can,” she said.

  “And you,” one of the widows said shortly. “What good are you?”

  “I do what I can,” Arwa said.

  She helped Eshara and Zahir and the widows try to secure the door, but it was a futile task. The House of Tears was far more ramshackle than Arwa had realized on her first visit, when it had been cloaked in careful candlelit darkness. Without the careful veil of shadow and oil lamps, under the blaze of fully lit lanterns, the state of disrepair the grief-house was in was readily apparent.

  She and Diya stood together under a hole in the roof. When Arwa tilted her head just so, she could see the sky.

  “This may be a problem,” Arwa said.

  “We do well here,” Diya said defensively. “But we cannot afford better than we have. Besides.” Voice lowered. “I’m not convinced the door will protect us. I think your friend is merely trying to make us feel better.”

  Arwa had thought the same. But she didn’t want to say so.

  “You must have had more generous donors, once,” she said instead. “You may yet again.”

  Diya snorted. “No. Why on earth would you think that?”

  “Your grave-tokens. Clay and lacquered—”

  The widow waved a dismissive hand. “Prayers from visitors, no more. We prefer coin. It’s truly the hawkers who benefit from selling them, preying on pilgrims and mourners. If anything, we should be the ones selling such things…”

  As she spoke, Arwa felt a terrible pressure build behind her eyes. This was not the unnatural, clawed thing resting at the base of her skull. No. It was only natural, dawning understanding, and terrible for it.

  “Your holy effigy,” she said haltingly.

  “What of it?”

  “It is expensive. Isn’t it? Marble or—ivory.”

  Diya gave her a perplexed look, frown line forming between her eyebrows.

  “It is wood, girl. Plain wood. Your eyes must have deceived you.”

  Flesh like white bone. A faceless thing. No, Arwa’s eyes hadn’t been deceived. Not at all.

  She swallowed. Said, “Diya. Sister. Why are all sitting up here? Why is nobody hiding in the prayer room?”

  Diya gave her an odd look. Blinked, as if confused. Then haltingly she said, “I… I don’t know.”

  Arwa nodded. She rose to her feet, walked over to Zahir, and placed her hand on his shoulder. He looked at her.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  “Please come with me,” she said. “I know where the nightmare is.”

  They left Eshara behind to watch the widows—and the door.

  “If you’re not back soon, Zahir,” Eshara said, voice low, “I’ll follow. The fact you’re leaving me here…”

  “I know,” he said. “But needs must, Eshara.”

  She gave him a narrow-eyed look, but said nothing more.

  They walked down the stairs, a lamp in Zahir’s hands. The prayer room was not entirely dark. Some of the clay lamps on the floor were still giving off a faint light. But the dark around the light was somehow too rich, and far too alive.

  “It feels wrong here,” Zahir murmured. “The air is too heavy. My skin… my body knows something isn’t right. And yet, I’m not as afraid as I was, beyond the grief-house’s walls.”

  “Please don’t tell me you find this fascinating,” Arwa murmured in return.

  “I won’t, if that’s what you wish.”

  “But you do. Don’t you?”

  “Fear and curiosity can coexist,” he said. “You know that very well.”

  He raised the lamp. In the flickering light, the effigy was clearly visible. Its surface was still smooth ivory, inhumanly pale. It remained faceless, palm upraised with the world grasped inside it. Awe flickered to life inside her. She resisted the urge to fall once again to her knees.

  “Strange,” whispered Zahir. He lowered the lamp carefully to the floor, and moved to stand beside her.

  “Do you feel it?” she asked. “The—awe?”

  “Of course.”

  She released a breath. Steadied herself, grounding herself as if she were beginning a rite. Held her hands before her. Stopped.

  “What is it?” Zahir asked. He turned to her, shadow and light reflecting in his eyes.

  “There are daiva here,” said Arwa. She swept one hand through the air. “Look.”

  The rich darkness—too rich, too complete, she’d been right to think it was—was moving. Eyes flickered in and out of sight, mingling with the light of the lamps. They were not bird-spirits, nothing akin to animals. They were amorphous darkness.

  The effigy glowed all the brighter between them.

  Her hands were shaking. She lowered them.

  She could think of nothing but the spirit she’d seen at Darez Fort. Cloaked in shadow. Darkness peeling away to reveal its face of white bone.

  “Ah, Gods,” she whispered. Shaking. She’d thought herself prepared for this, willing to be brave, to try, no matter the consequences. She’d thought she knew what she was facing. But of course, she did not.

  “Nightmare,” she said. “I know you. One of your kind nearly murdered me. I can’t witness this again.” A pause. She heard the gentle, measured cadence of Zahir’s breath. “As a fellow daughter of an immortal lineage, as kin of a kind, I ask you—please. End this.”

  The air shuddered, light rippling like liquid.

  The statue didn’t change. Nonetheless, the nightmare moved.

  Arwa heard something within her skull, her hindbrain—a scraping, screaming thing, noiseless and yet furiously loud. She saw Zahir clutch the back of his head, swearing. The fear poured through her again with a sudden vengeance. The awe was gone. The clarity of her mind was shattered. There was nothing but fear in her now, pure and clean and thick with rising blood.

  The shadows clasped closer to the effigy, crawling across its surface. The nightmare was unmoving, was still faceless, still a hollow simulacrum of holiness. Arwa shaped a sigil on trembling hands, demanding its name. It did not flinch. Did not respond. In fact, it showed no recognition at all.

  Around it the darkness of the daiva moved, shifting in understanding. But it wasn’t enough.

  Fear had a way of stripping everything from a person. It denied even dignity. She could feel her eyes, her nose, streaming. Blinked hard. She could not move. Could not think. She could barely remember her own name.

  As the fear wiped her clean, she felt something rise to fill the void. The taste of ash filled her mouth, clouded her skull.

  The realm of ash was here. Just beyond her skin.

  She leaned into the feel of it, ash rising ferociously through her mind. When she did so, the light altered.
She saw the nightmare’s blank face shift.

  Saw the serrated curl of lips. Teeth.

  In the realm of ash, the nightmare wore a face. In the ash, where the dead lived, it walked. And somewhere, deep within the storm waiting upon her path, she heard its voice, a cool and terrible thing.

  You called me. Kin.

  She touched her hand to Zahir’s. He took it. But the touch of his skin didn’t make the presence of the realm fade. The ash surrounded her still, formless white air, a rain of dark dust. It was calling to her, unmooring her from her skin.

  “Can you see it?” she asked.

  Zahir gripped her hand tighter. Looked at her. She could see his struggle to remain calm and conscious. His jaw was tight; thoughts flickered across his face like winged things.

  “I can see the—nightmare,” he said carefully. “The daiva. I can feel the fear. Is there anything I’m missing?”

  She wet her lips. “The realm of ash,” she said. “Its voice. I can hear it in the realm. I think if I enter I can… communicate with it.”

  He stared at her.

  “Arwa,” he said. “No.”

  There was a crashing noise from above them. A sharp breath. Arwa turned. There were women on the stairs; Eshara behind them, face gray.

  “What—” choked out Diya.

  “Don’t let them come down here,” snapped Zahir. He hadn’t looked away from Arwa. “It isn’t safe. Eshara.”

  “I won’t,” she said thickly. Raised her voice. “Step back. Now!”

  The nightmare shifted forward. The shadows of daiva whirled around the nightmare like a great cloak, following it, coiling around it. One of the women shrieked, and together they stumbled back.

  “I can feel it,” Arwa said. “The realm.”

  “You’ll lose yourself,” Zahir said urgently. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “I need to understand it,” she said. “I need to stop it.”

  “It doesn’t have to be you.”

  She swallowed. Throat dry.

  “I think it does.”

  “I have flame,” he said. “I have a dagger. At least let us go together. Let us do this properly.”

  “Nothing to make you sleep, though,” she said. “And it’s here. It’s here now.” Her voice wavered. “Zahir, I was not lying. I can’t live through such death again.”

  “Arwa,” he said. Eyes wide, his face an open book. “Please don’t.”

  She did not need a fire, an opiate, a sleeping mind, a closed set of eyes. She had been carrying the realm of ash since the moment she leaped from the dovecote tower, the daiva’s great wings around her. It rested in her eyes; it was in her skin. It had been waiting for her patiently. It was time to meet it.

  She felt Zahir’s hand on her wrist, heard him bite out her name, all sharp edges to its usual soft syllables.

  “Arwa, don’t—”

  She released a breath and—fell.

  She opened her eyes.

  She was still in the House of Tears, slumped over, Zahir whispering her name desperately as he held her and lowered her carefully to the floor. But she was also in the realm of ash. The clay lanterns flickered on the floor before her, even as the world unfurled, vast and gray. Memories swam about her. Great forests carved of shadow. Lakes of pearlescent black. A familiar desert roiled beneath her feet as a storm howled over her head.

  She rose from the bed of her blood roots, and looked at none of it.

  The nightmare stood before her.

  It was all sharp skeletal lines, white and brittle. Its eyes were silver, flat and inhuman. It was no longer faceless, and it was no longer still: its head was all shifting angles. Curve of a jaw, sharp knife of a nose. Bones likes blades. Around it moved a sea of daiva, silent, clinging to its flesh.

  She heard its whisper again. Sibilant. Soft.

  Kin. How pleasing, to speak to someone worthy of my voice.

  Her dreamed flesh shuddered. Her true flesh recoiled, distant echo of her racing heart, her tense limbs.

  “I hear you in my skull,” said Arwa.

  Fear belongs to the flesh and soul both.

  It did not walk toward her. Instead, the realm seemed to… contract. It was suddenly before her, loping around her, its footsteps the sound of snapping limbs. She felt her distant lungs expand and contract. The nightmare circled Zahir as he held her body, as he controlled his own breath. Fear belonged, too, to the worlds of the living and the dead. She saw that now.

  Breathe. Breathe. Just so.

  The daiva know your blood.

  “I am Amrithi,” said Arwa, even though it felt far from the full truth. “Old one, I am Amrithi through my birth mother. That is why the daiva recognize in me.”

  No. It is your blood the daiva know. They broke oaths upon it. They remember.

  “Broke oaths,” she echoed.

  It smiled. The surface of its face was a dozen fragments, moving unevenly, scraping against one another. She saw teeth like points of light.

  The one who holds you has old blood of the Empire. His bloodline know a great deal of oaths. Shall we speak to him of it?

  “You don’t touch him,” Arwa said sharply. “He is mine.”

  The nightmare cocked its head.

  Yours.

  “Mine,” Arwa said firmly, feeling the burn of the words distantly, the hunger in them, and the fear of them too.

  I suppose I cannot take what belongs to my kin. Wet, strange curl of its mouth, pale flesh peeling into a simulacrum of lips. So, kin: Shall I tell you what you could be? Shall I tell you the tale your fear spins?

  “As you told Captain Argeb? No, old one.”

  It placed the cold points of limbs against her dreamed flesh. Its face shifted once more, forming into something almost human.

  You fling yourself into fears, it crooned. Death. Service. Your Amrithi blood.

  “I am not afraid of such things.”

  The nightmare’s face, for a glimmer of a moment, was her mother’s—fierce and furious, ashamed. Then it was broken once more.

  You can’t lie to your own dark blood. You are always afraid. And yet you throw yourself into the things you fear. As if choosing the knife will make the pain less. So, my kin, let me tell you the truth.

  Its face changed once more. Mehr’s face. Throat oozing great black pearls of blood.

  It doesn’t, said the thing wearing her sister as a mask.

  She was frozen. Her insides were ice. She could not even weep.

  “No,” she managed.

  Her sister’s face, wrought in ivory and bone, smiled once more.

  She held her courage close. She forced herself to ignore her sister’s face, the awful whisper of the nightmare’s voice reaching into her skull. She met its flat silver eyes and said, “How can I convince you to let this caravanserai live?”

  I have done nothing, it said. You have no need to convince me.

  “What has been done to the captain’s mind is not nothing,” Arwa said, clinging to the dregs of her strength. “What has been done to pilgrims he calls heretics is not nothing.”

  That was done by men.

  “You whispered in the captain’s ears.”

  That is merely my nature. Your bird-spirits fly. Your death-spirits kill. I am part of the balance, my kin. I speak, and sometimes mortals listen.

  Argeb. Hungry for purity and purpose. He must have been easily swayed.

  Arwa swallowed.

  “Everyone died, at Darez Fort.”

  Ah.

  The daiva whirled around the nightmare like a crown. Her sister’s face peeled at the edges; she saw the bones of a jaw, shaped into a permanent smile.

  The daiva control us. Bind us. Slow, they say. The world must change slowly or it will shatter. But sometimes…

  The face peeled away. All bone again.

  Sometimes they lose their grip, and we are entirely free.

  “You are a curse,” Arwa whispered.

  It laughed. She had not expected it to be capable o
f such a noise.

  We are not a curse, it said. We are balance. You think your Empire’s glory was natural? Built upon the backs of the dead? No. Your Empire is a blight. But now the Maha is dead, the dreams he crushed using Amrithi gifts are free. Ill dreams. Death. Disaster. Ruin. They must shape the world, as they always should have.

  “Darez Fort wasn’t right,” she said, sickened. “No matter what the Maha did, Darez Fort wasn’t balance. It wasn’t just.”

  Justice is the business of mortals. It is no concern to us.

  “How can I beg you to set this place free?” Arwa asked again, knowing her voice was pleading, knowing she was full to the brim not with nameless fear, but with true, solid terror, shaped by the knowledge of what was happening within the caravanserai’s walls.

  You cannot. We are like the tide. Slow. The daiva make us slow, but we will reach the shore of all mortal minds eventually, all the same. That is our purpose. The fear. The knife in a mortal’s hands. The pleasure of blood.

  “I understand.” Her voice did not shake. “I saw what was happening beyond the walls of this grief-house. I saw your hands upon those minds. But please, my kin, help me understand this: Why do the widows not turn on one another? Why are they less afraid here, nearly in your grasp, than those out in the open and far from you?”

  The nightmare tilted its head. She heard the click of its vertebrae. She followed the turn of its head. Looked down.

  She was staring at the grave-tokens.

  They showed us respect. As the daiva are shown. As the Gods are shown.

  They worshipped us.

  No. They had worshipped the Maha. But by accident or design, the daiva had trapped the nightmare within the Maha’s effigy, where all unwitting the widows had offered it grave-tokens and flowers and prayers and soft awe, bloody and heart-sweet. And in return, they stood in the House of Tears above the trapped nightmare, and did not flay one another alive.

  Arwa shuddered, and kneeled.

  “Then let me worship you also,” she whispered. She pressed her face to the sand of her desert, glittering and cold. “Let me pray that you will leave the people of this caravanserai unharmed and untouched. That you will not ask for the knife or the pleasure of blood. Please.”