Chapter 24
I DIDN’T ASK FOR THIS GIFT, BUT I’LL TAKE IT
PASHIM
Time moves oddly here, passing in a blink one moment and stretching out into an endless loop in the next.
I’m not sure how to measure its passage except to live in each moment and experience it.
The future, when I think of it, feels as if it doesn’t exist, and the past is entwined with the present, so I’m not sure how long we stay at the waystation.
I don’t recall sleeping, even though Priti assures me that I did.
But I’m glad to be moving once again because moving means we’re headed toward something. Toward a future. And having a future…it matters.
The terrain shifts from dustlands to grasslands and then to mountains.
I recognize the landscape here. It’s familiar in a way that makes my stomach tighten.
This road, the mountain pass ahead, the gorge…
“I have been here before. I was with…with Leela. That’s the gorge that holds the restless dead.
” The sky darkens suddenly, starlight replacing midday sun. “What’s happening?”
“We’re getting close,” Priti says.
“What is this place?”
“An imprint. A memory. One that is shared by enough souls to have become a part of this landscape.”
“What do you mean, enough souls? Do you mean people who visited this place when alive but who are now dead?”
She looks across at me with a sad smile and shakes her head. “No, Pashim. I’m saying people who died violently nearby.”
My breath snags in my lungs as the world tilts, and when it rights itself, I’m in the gorge, Priti beside me.
The silence is so loud it might as well be a scream, and when Priti speaks, her voice is a blade, slicing through the viscous quiet.
“Come forward,” she says. “I mean you no harm.”
A low, whistling sound fills my ears, and the wind picks up my hair, rifling chilly fingers through it to caress my scalp. The space around us shimmers, and several spectral forms manifest. Tall, powerfully built males with fire in their eyes. I recognize them. Not who they are but what they are.
Djinn.
A collective voice rises around us. “If you have come to lead us home, then abandon your quest. We must stay.”
Priti holds up her hand. “I’m not here to convince you to do anything, but may I ask why you must stay?”
A long silence stretches. “We do not know.”
“Okay, wanna know why I’m here?”
“We are curious, yes.”
“To ask you to help your kin.” She indicates me. “A soul who was taken before his time and who has a destiny yet to fulfill.”
All eyes turn to me, glowing brighter, as if seeing me for the first time. “He is us, and yet…not of us.”
“Yes, much changed after the war.”
“But we won, did we not?”
Priti presses her lips together. “You won peace…for a short time. But your king was betrayed, and the peace of your people was stolen. Even now those souls that remain on the other side lament that betrayal, thirsty for vengeance. Desperate for a chance to right the wrong that was done.”
“How much time has passed?” the specters ask in unison.
“Eons.”
“And our people?”
“Enslaved,” Priti says. “Their blood entwined with those of your oppressors.”
A soft wail rises around us, a lament that claws at my soul. One of the specters shifts and appears right in front of me, his fiery gaze boring into me.
“I sense the air in you, wild and untamed,” he says. “A storm waiting to rage, to put right the wrong that was done to us. Will you accept the mantle?”
I look to Priti, unsure what this mantle is.
She nods slightly. I trust her to lead me in this. I trust my instincts, so I focus on the specter, look into his glowing eyes, and speak. “I accept the mantle.”
A collective sigh fills the air around us. “Then so be it.”
All the specters fly toward me, a shock of energy rushes through me, and a fizzing and crackling sensation arches my back.
My eyes snap wide open as a ball of flame coalesces behind my sternum.
A scream bubbles up my throat. It burns and sears, eating at me, and yet the scream refuses to break free, vibrating in my throat like a trapped bird.
If I were not already dead, I would fear that the agony would end me.
But in the next breath, the inferno dims. The fire sinks into me, becoming something quiet. Present but no longer active.
The specters drift toward Priti.
“We know now why we could not leave,” they say. “But it is time. We are ready.”
Priti raises her hand, and a staff appears. Thick gnarled wood with a bulbous top, it exudes power. “Then allow me to take you home, my brave warriors.”
The specters dissolve to mist and pour into the staff in silvery streams of energy. The staff vanishes, and Priti’s attention drops to my chest. “It worked. They gave it to you.”
I track her gaze, my pulse quickening at the sight of a golden spiral spinning at my breastbone. “What is that?”
“It is the spiral of remembrance,” Priti says. “You’ll need it soon enough.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will. In time.” She smiles with her eyes.
“Who were those djinn? You mentioned a war, and…are they connected to the hungry specters that live in the gorge in the land of the living?”
“How about we walk and talk. Because I don’t know about you, but I’m more than ready to get the fuck out of this place. The exit is on the other side of this gorge. Are you ready?”
All my questions suddenly mean nothing. The exit is close. The way back to Leela is within reach, and that’s all that matters. “I’m ready.”