Realm of Ash

by Tasha Suri

  It reminded her of the fear they’d felt when they’d found the cart of corpses, an echo that turned her knees to water and made her stomach roil. Perhaps a nightmare had passed through these trees. Perhaps a little farther into the jungle lay bodies gone cold. Still, the ghost of it remained, setting its claws insidiously into their skulls.

  Zahir stopped, and turned. The light of lanterns flickered over his face.

  “Pray with me,” he said. And when one man began immediately, stumbling through an old mantra dedicated to the Maha, Zahir shook his head. “Not to me,” he said. “Pray to the terror in the dark. Pray for it to leave us be.”

  The pilgrims hesitated.

  “Trust me,” he said gently. And how could they not, when he looked at them with soft, steady eyes and his palms outstretched, as if he trusted them, utterly and completely?

  The pilgrims began to pray.

  They were not all Ambhan. They were from Chand, from the east and the west, from Numriha’s mountains, from Hara’s fields of gold and green. They had different prayers. Their litanies and mantras and songs jumbled together in a great cacophony of noise. Arwa squeezed one of her hands tight, nails marking her palms with grooves, and used the other to grip Eshara’s hand.

  Eshara gripped back.

  Their prayers grew louder and more confident, tangling together in a great river of noise, a snarl of words that melded like magic. Arwa prayed with them, words pouring from her lips. Noise, noise, rising and rising, like a storm’s howl, like a cry against the void.

  This was nothing like praying alone before the nightmare’s face of vicious bones. This felt intense and fierce and powerful. They grew louder still, and Zahir stood before them all, and met her eyes once more. And stopped.

  Their prayers faded away. There was silence.

  The fear remained but it was… quiet. So very quiet. Arwa thought again, of a tide against the shore, of the way a river of voices could wear a nightmare’s bones smooth, given time.

  “The nightmare cannot harm us any longer,” said Zahir. Quiet, hope like light in his face. He met Arwa’s eyes. “And I thank you.”

  Arwa breathed once, and again, and once more after that.

  The sun was rising on the horizon.

  A week passed. Arwa had begun to recognize Zahir’s followers, to know their names, even as she marveled at the strangeness of the way they looked at and listened to Zahir. They looked at him with awe—read wisdom into his every act. In turn, he was more measured, and quieter than he’d ever been in the past.

  She hadn’t realized how much he usually talked—about their studies and the world around them, drinking everything in—until he stopped, and focused instead on appearing quiet and aloof and appropriately beyond reach.

  Only in the early mornings, before dawn’s light woke the camp, could Zahir act more like himself. Sometimes he and Eshara would sit and talk, as she whittled the points of her arrows, or cleaned her blade. But often he would look at Arwa, and she would get up, and the two of them would walk off into the gray light, stand very close, and not think about hunger.

  One of the pilgrims had a snore that carried. The noise certainly helped to stop Arwa’s mind from straying.

  “You’re still so quiet,” she said to him.

  He shook his head.

  “I’m worried about our retinue. Taking so many people into Irinah’s capital is going to draw attention. That’s unavoidable.” He paused, then said, quietly, “I’d hoped more would leave.”

  “They won’t. Not now.”

  “They have a way to protect themselves.”

  “That you gave them,” Arwa pointed out, as they crossed scratchy undergrowth away from the camp. There were plants with sharp thorns on the ground, interspersed with brilliant orange flowers. She walked carefully between them. “They believe in you.”

  “They believe in the Maha’s heir,” said Zahir. “Well. Their version of the Maha’s heir. Certainly not the one my father hoped for. I am just the body pinned to the tale.”

  He stopped and bent down. He’d crushed a flower with his boot, and he plucked it now, smoothing the bruised petals with his thumb.

  “It isn’t enough,” he said abruptly. “The prayers. The rite. The curse on the Empire is spreading so fast. We need the Maha’s ash. And yet…” He swallowed. “I still do not want to be his heir, in truth.”

  Leaden weight in her stomach. Her heart a knot.

  “I know,” she said.

  She did not want to think of the Maha’s ash, of curses and consequences, any longer. The thought of what could happen to Zahir…

  Her insides felt sharp with it.

  To distract herself, she took the flower from his hands. Soft petals, but it was still whole. She placed it behind his ear. She combed her fingers gently through his hair. She felt the curve of his skull under her palm, the warmth of him as he pressed his cheek to her arm, trusting her utterly.

  “There,” she said. “No one will mistake you for the Maha’s heir now. I doubt he ever wore flowers behind his ears.”

  “Perhaps if you make me a crown of them the pilgrims will be convinced,” said Zahir.

  She looked up at his face, the tentative smile that curled his mouth. She ignored the ash falling through the dawn-gray sky behind him; ignored the tug of the realm of ash, winding sinuous through her own skull. Instead she brushed the hair back from his face, and said, “Let’s get back before the others wake.”

  One of the pilgrims had a mule, a soft-eyed thing that was much more obedient than its kind usually were. He offered it to Zahir—for the widow’s sake, he’d said—and Zahir had accepted on her behalf. Although she found that riding on a mule made her nearly as sick as riding in a palanquin once had, she appreciated the rest it gave her weary legs.

  Sohal often left his fellow soldier and led her mule for her—an act she appreciated, as she was unused to traveling on a mule’s back, and didn’t know how to direct the damnable thing.

  “I’m good with animals,” Sohal told her, early on, guiding the mule gently. “My parents were farmers, in Chand.”

  As they grew nearer to Irinah the days grew even warmer, until the heat was blistering.

  “Your head will burn,” said Arwa. “At least wear a robe.”

  “I don’t have anything of that sort,” said Sohal.

  If Zahir asked the pilgrims for one, no doubt Sohal would have an array to select from. But Zahir asked for nothing; he was maintaining his aura of holiness through the judicious use of silence and far-eyed stares.

  “Share my shawl, then,” she said, and draped the long end over his head.

  “But—”

  “Just the edge of it,” she said. “You won’t be exposing me, don’t fear. And don’t argue, I can see you thinking of it.”

  He laughed—a shy, awkward thing—but shared it with her as they continued moving.

  Time passed. Nauseous, Arwa climbed down from the mule, and walked alongside it with Sohal for a time, drawing her shawl fully back over her head and her shoulders.

  “I’m not following for his sake,” said Sohal, eventually. “I thought you should know.”

  She looked at him, his bare head, his hunched shoulders.

  “Why are you here, then?” she asked. “Leaving your captain I can understand. But you could have returned to Demet Fort.”

  “Likely the commander would have executed us. Argeb led us very astray.” Sohal swallowed. “Our patrol was only meant to pass through the Grand Caravanserai, as usual. But he told us to stay and we did. We were… afraid. Of the evil in the air, of the Empire’s curse. Of Argeb. It’s no excuse, but it’s true.”

  You killed people on his command, thought Arwa. She didn’t say so. That, after all, was what soldiers did.

  Her husband had done the same.

  In a very quiet voice—so quiet she realized even before she understood his words, that he feared being heard—he said, “Were they the cause? Of what happened in the caravanserai? The�
�� daiva?”

  She froze then, stumbling to a stop.

  Sohal gave her a tremulous smile. “I’d hoped you’d understand. When I saw your eyes, I thought—that widow. Whatever she is, she isn’t entirely human.”

  “I am human,” Arwa said. “Entirely, utterly.”

  Sohal nodded, but he didn’t look convinced.

  “My great-grandmother,” said Sohal. “She was from Irinah. But she… well. She wasn’t Irin. You understand? You can be honest with me.”

  She did. Oh, she did.

  Sohal was Amrithi. A part of him, at least.

  “I’d visit the House, when we passed through. Take the widows offerings. I thought I imagined them the first time, but later I was sure that the dark was… not simply dark.” He shook his head. “I thought they were there for me. For—family. But now I wonder if they were just there to curse us. Were they?”

  He was Amrithi enough that he’d recognized the daiva, in the dark of the House of Tears. Enough that he’d looked into her ash-blown eyes and not thought of witchcraft or of heresy, but of daiva, and of people with immortality in their blood.

  He was as Amrithi as she was.

  And yet he looked as much part of the Ambhan Empire as she did.

  She felt strangely shaken.

  “No,” she said. “They were trying to save us.”

  “Ah.” He breathed out. “That’s good, then.”

  She looked ahead, at all the pilgrims—young and old—following a foolish hope. At the turn of Zahir’s head, in the distance—the way he looked back at her, searching for her face.

  “Sohal,” she said. “We’re alike. At least in this.”

  “I thought so,” he said, and there was something eager and lonely in his voice. “Hoped so, maybe.”

  “How much do you know of being Amrithi?” she asked him, a strange yearning in her belly. “Do you know of—rites? Sigils?”

  He shook his head.

  “Food? Or—traditions?”

  “My family didn’t want me to know anything,” he said. He spoke the words as if they shamed him. “They thought the less I knew, the less likely it was that anyone would ever know the truth. But sometimes my grandfather would speak about his own mother and his childhood and I listened.” There was yearning in his voice.

  “My mother hoped the same. But I know—a little—of what being Amrithi means. I have a little knowledge of rites and sigils, and history. And yet…”

  She stopped, abruptly. And yet.

  She could not articulate it, could not put into words how not having something nonetheless left a void with a history inside it—a void that reshaped the rest of her, all the Ambhan parts of her that were incomplete without the lost pieces of her that would have made her feel whole.

  She recognized the yearning now. It was hunger for a thing she had never had.

  Sohal was nodding. There was recognition in the shape of his mouth, the tilt of his head. “I know,” he said. “It is hard, knowing other Ambhans would hate you for the Amrithi blood in you. Knowing you’ve forgotten something of who you are. Isn’t it?”

  She nodded in return, wordlessly.

  “The other pilgrims follow him now because of what the widows said. Because they think he is the Maha’s heir, or failing that, that he has power to keep them safe.” Sohal hesitated. Looked up at her. The sound of the mule’s hooves clipped the air. “But me, I follow because of you.”

  “Oh,” she breathed. She did not know what to say to that. “And your friend?”

  “He follows because I follow. Because we shouldn’t have obeyed, in the caravanserai.” Sohal looked away. Swallowed. “I think Aran is looking for the Maha’s forgiveness.”

  Arwa did not know if such forgiveness existed. So she merely nodded once more in acknowledgment, and listened to the huff of the mule, the chattering of pilgrims’ voices.

  There had to be others like both of them in the world. Others with Amrithi blood, denied anything but fractures of part of their lineage; others with a gift often named a curse hidden within them.

  Sohal had little knowledge of being Amrithi. Arwa had once been in the same position. But now she had one thing he did not: a mind full of ash and memories, a fractured knowledge dredged up from the dead.

  And she had the Rite of the Cage.

  She was no longer ignorant, she realized. No longer a woman shaped only by the emptiness within her history. She had her ash, and the knowledge it gave her was a gift.

  “I have something more than prayer,” she said. “If you’re willing to learn from me, then I can teach you a rite. A way to hold the nightmare at bay for a time, if you encounter it again. If you feel that fear again, Gods forbid—if you sense it clawing at your skull too swift for shared prayers to quell it—the rite may save you. It will be swifter than prayer alone, and allow you time to flee.”

  He gave her a wide-eyed look.

  “You would teach me that?” he said wonderingly. “Me?”

  “It is yours by right,” she said gently. “Just as much as it is mine.”

  “Then yes,” he said. “Yes. I want to learn. Please, teach me. Can we begin now? Or—no. We can’t begin now. We’re walking.”

  “We can begin now,” she said. She would have to teach him the movements later: the steady stances of the rite, hands to sky, feet ground to the earth. The sigils that would shape his hands and draw the daiva to his bidding.

  But for now she would rely on words, simple and unvarnished words. She would give him a piece of himself back.

  “We can start with history. This rite is called the Rite of the Cage,” she said. “And once, our Amrithi ancestors used it to keep people without the blood of daiva in them safe…”

  Arwa saw the great city of Jah Irinah and realized that they must have been in Irinah for hours. Strange. She’d thought she would feel it, somehow know it, when they entered the desert province of her birth. But the sun was still hot, the ground still parched, and nothing had changed but the sight on the horizon.

  She saw small households and settlements, set against the edges of the city. Within it, she knew, were grand havelis of honeyed sandstone, and mosaic-lacquered fountains along the roads that ran between the houses of the wealthy. She also saw, towering above it all, the Governor’s palace. The place where she’d lived the first nine years of her life.

  She walked by Zahir’s side this time, Eshara to the left of him. Now that they were rejoining the larger throng of travelers, Eshara was on the alert, her hand moving constantly to check the hilt of her blade. But Arwa could not be so alert. She was afraid, certainly—she had a great deal to dread about their arrival in Irinah—but she was also home.

  “The last time I saw that palace I was a small girl,” said Arwa to the both of them. “My sister watched me go. From there.” She pointed a finger to the roof. “She stood there. My mother thought I wasn’t looking. But I was.”

  “What a lovely childhood home,” Eshara said, in a voice that was only mildly acerbic. “So many rooms to run about in, I imagine. Was it in better condition when you lived in it?”

  Arwa squinted through the sunlight up at the Governor’s palace. Even from here she could see the decay of the walls. Great chunks had been removed. One of the gates was splintered.

  “Yes,” she said slowly. “It was.”

  Jah Irinah was a city abandoned.

  Not abandoned by people. No, the streets were still full of stalls and hawkers and houses of widowhood and houses of prayer. The sandstone havelis were open-doored, full of people. But the roads had not been cared for, and rubbish and human waste were gathered in dark corners, where people did a good job of ignoring them. The fine fountains were bone dry. Most of the tiles had been ripped away from them, leaving them gray-white and bare and useless. The havelis were houses of prayers and shops, now. Arwa looked into one and saw a statue of the Maha, wreathed in incense. She looked away.

  Even as the mourners and pilgrims had claimed it, the Empire had aban
doned Irinah.

  “There are boarding houses where we can stay tonight,” said Eshara.

  “Entering the realm is better done at night,” Zahir said. “But Arwa needs time to recover. Best if we find a place.”

  “I don’t need to recover,” Arwa said. She was not entirely lying—the realm of ash was with her always now, and she was not convinced that was going to change. “Besides, do we have money for proper rooms?”

  “Aliye’s money is running short,” Eshara acknowledged. “But one of the pilgrims offered to pay.”

  “And you think we should accept?” Zahir said, incredulous.

  “I’d like a real bed,” said Eshara. “Besides, what else are they good for? Go and offer them your blessings, Zahir. They’ll think that’s a fair exchange.”

  Zahir gave her a complicated frown, and walked off.

  “You probably shouldn’t share with Zahir,” said Eshara, after he was gone, “even though you no doubt want to. It would tarnish his image, and then we’ll have no one to pay for our beds.”

  Arwa gave her a sharp look.

  “Of course, it would tarnish your image much more than his,” Eshara added. “In fact, they’d probably forgive him and insist we leave you behind. But when he refused we’d end up in the same mess, so what it does matter?”

  “Eshara.”

  “I’m not stupid,” Eshara said. “And you two have never hidden your feelings well. But this won’t end well, Arwa.”

  “I think we have greater things to concern ourselves with than this,” Arwa said.

  “Oh, we do,” said Eshara. “But that doesn’t make either of you less foolish.”

  Arwa knew they were foolish. She was a widow. He was a blessed. They had no future, and only a thin scrap of hope to sustain them.

  But he was hers. And she was—

  “Let’s find this boarding house,” Arwa said. “And never speak of this again. Does that bargain suit you?”

  “That’s not a bargain of any kind,” said Eshara, rolling her eyes. “But fine.”

  A pilgrim paid for rooms in a boarding house, in the end. When their companions fell swiftly into sleep, Arwa took Zahir’s hand and said, “Do you think there’s a way onto the roof?”