Chapter 26
CHAPTER 26
I stop when I see shapes clustered in the clearing where I sat with Shiva. Nanda and I are hidden from view, still behind the trees. I hesitate as voices murmur and rise.
At first, I cannot see who is talking. The sheer magic of the clearing overwhelms me.
It is startling in its intensity. Vivid colors smash into me, blurring everything into a swirling mass of many-hued waves, battling one another. I have to close my eyes so the force of it mutes.
My other senses flare as soon as my eyes shut. Different rhythms ebb and rise in my ears, like the same note being repeated in several different octaves. Scents share the same base but manifest as different aromas. Mortal or immortal, all magic is really the same, part of the same universal song. These are auras I’m sensing, crystal clear for the first time, after my own conversation with myself.
Goose bumps erupt on my skin. Never before have auras revealed themselves to me in this fashion, as though I can see their connection to all of the universes and realms. Vaguely I question what auras really are. I have no true understanding of them, but Kaushika would know.
I try not to think of him. I breathe in slowly, trying to capture the freedom and power of my dance. Then I approach, careful not to make a sound. Nanda follows me silently, her footfalls even more practiced in subterfuge than my own.
The closer we get, the more I can distinguish each flavor of magic. This one feels like a long-held breath. This one crackles like fire over wet earth. Some are fleeting, too fluid to catch. Others flicker, in a whiff of perfume. All of them are familiar. Friends or foes?
Another few steps, and the voices become clearer.
“—has to be here,” a man murmurs.
Anirudh , I think, as I glimpse him through the trees. His aura burns silver-bright, his fast fingers creating runes in the air. The rune of confusion, of fear, of cowardliness, of defeat. He is muttering what can only be mantras under his breath. The chants are deeply powerful; his aura whiplashes like mercury, trying to keep up with his magic. He is calling the raw and potent power of the celestials themselves, of devas like Surya, Vayu, and even Indra in their most natural forms. He is preparing to attack and weaken an enemy. Am I that enemy?
My other mortal friends array behind him, but they don’t move. Parasara, Eka, even Romasha—
My breath catches. Kalyani is among them. Her round face looks wan, and though she needs to be supported by Eka, her expression is resolute and mutinous. A sharp grief burrows within me, seeking my shame. She must hate me. I have lied to all of them, but most of all to her. With a pang I realize that Kaushika is not with this group. If he sent them here to destroy me, then he could not have picked a stronger team. My friends from the hermitage are formidable in their own right.
I am wondering whether I should reveal myself at all when shadows and foliage rustle ahead of the mortals. They turn abruptly, raising their hands to unleash their magic.
Rambha emerges, all alone, and leans casually on a tree.
The effect is immediate.
My mortal friends blink, and all their gazes move to her.
She is lovelier and more deadly than I’ve ever seen. Her kohllined eyes are flecked with gold. Her hair is tied in an intricate braid that falls well below her waist, night jasmines threaded through it, intoxicating. The dark green sari wrapped around her is deceptively simple, with gold and diamond embroidery so subtle it is as though she is wearing the stars themselves. It tightens around her waist and chest as she moves. The gold dusting of her skin sparkles from the jewels woven into her clothes. She wears no ornaments, not even a nose pin, but Amaravati’s power shines from her clothes. This isn’t apsara raiment. This is battle armor. The blouse she wears is sheer enough that she might as well not be wearing anything at all. It hugs her breasts, an illusion in itself, the same color as her skin, shimmering.
Nanda stirs next to me, recognizing her danger too, and I quieten her with a touch. I watch as Anirudh’s eyes grow wide. He blinks and shakes his head as though to clear it. Romasha’s mouth falls open. Rambha smiles, radiant, and her wrists move like a melody, fingers lightly tapping the air.
Her eyes are cold. Calculating. Watchful. A shiver climbs my spine as it hits me how lethal she really is. I’m not sure how I can tell—perhaps it is the clarity I have gained from Shiva—but I know this is the real Rambha, not Indra in disguise again.
“No one needs to get hurt,” she says, soft and seductive. Lazily, her wrists curl vapor into the air. It takes the form of a doe. “Just tell me where she is and what he has done with her. I sensed a surge of power. I know she is here.”
“ She ,” Anirudh says, blinking, “was betrayed by Indra. Are you here to finally kill her?”
I can scarcely believe Anirudh would speak to her that way, that he is not already bewitched. Suddenly I do not know who will win in this standoff.
Rambha smiles a slow smile. Kalyani leans forward, her face serious. Parasara straightens, resigned, and Romasha and Eka begin to spin fire.
Enough , I think.
I hurry from behind the trees, in full view. “Stop,” I command.
A dozen eyes swivel to me and Nanda, magic and illusions aimed toward us, ready to be unleashed. Everyone’s mouths fall open.
Rambha is the first to recover. She leaps forward, grace and poise forgotten. “Meneka!”
I am engulfed in her arms. I don’t return her embrace, and behind her the others exchange glances but do not stop their mantras and runes from pointing at me even as Rambha turns to Nanda, nearly sobbing in relief. The two apsaras grip each other, shuddering, Rambha stroking Nanda’s hair over and over again while Nanda assures her in murmurs that she is unhurt. Rambha is already inquiring about the other missing apsaras, but Anirudh stares at me.
“ Are you Meneka?” he says. “I almost think we should ask you to prove it.”
Rambha swivels, frowning at him as though to indicate she would know me from an imposter. I flinch, remembering how easily I was taken in when Indra was pretending to be her.
“Would you like me to make an imperfect rune,” I ask dryly. “You can deny me any knowledge of Kaushika, then, and it will be just like old times.”
At that, Anirudh grins. Behind him there is a murmur as the rest of the mortals relax too. They drop their magic, their half-formed mantras slowly dying, the tension receding. Smiles grow on their faces. Kalyani opens her mouth, glancing from me to Rambha to Nanda, no doubt noticing the same patterns in our beauty.
I nod in understanding. “Perhaps we better sit down. I think we need to explain.”
R AMBHA SITS CLOSE TO ME .
She doesn’t touch me, but she is there, just a breath away. She fills the corner of my vision. Her magic, her delicate perfume, swim in my head. I see us on the brink of my mission, Rambha brushing her soft lips against mine, and my urge to pull her to me, free her hair with my hand, kiss her senseless. The memory tosses in my head, a dead fruit, the heat and passion of it gone. I do not know if it was Rambha all those times when I made my report or if it was always Indra—but I do know it was her when the two of us walked out of the lord’s throne room before I left for my mission. The Rambha then and the one now … It is hard to reconcile how far away from each other we have drifted, though we sit beside each other now, for all purposes finally on the same side.
I try to keep my thoughts lucid. I must learn certain things from her. Until then I cannot allow myself to get distracted. I don’t look at her, not even when her fingers graze my arm accidentally.
No accidents with her, I remind myself. She is the best of apsaras. She knows exactly what she is doing. Her voice echoes in my head from before.
You are too young. Too inexperienced. Too na?ve.
Not that na?ve anymore , I think. The thought makes me cold.
Perhaps she senses my mood. Her aura stutters, subduing. Staranise decays and quietens. She diminishes in the corner of my vision, a result of her own heartache. I take no pleasure from it; it saddens me. She is responding to my power now. This is not what I wanted, but I will take it regardless.
The others sit down haphazardly, though the mortals and the apsaras keep their distance. Someone builds a fire resistant to the rain. Suspicion still hovers heavy over us all, and the mortals look from me to Rambha and Nanda, their bodies still on alert. But Kalyani settles on the other side of me, her brows furrowed in concern. Unlike Rambha, who has quietly been asking for attention, Kalyani merely gazes at me.
I give her a watery smile, and she returns it. Relief bursts in me at her response, and her health. She seems weak, but no longer in danger. I saw Shiva take the halahala. Maybe that healed Kalyani too. Did Kaushika even register it happening, concerned as he was with what to do with the poison?
Though I do not touch her, I lean forward to ask her how she is. Rambha speaks first.
“Indra is coming,” she says softly. “He detected the surge of power here too. This is where the lord will bring his battle.” There is an iron edge to her voice, and she doesn’t look at me. She stares at the ground in front of her, the dust and earth muddying her beautiful clothes.
Mortals and celestials all look at the sky. Thunder rumbles and lightning flashes again. The night darkens further, the drizzle continuing to lash. It is the slow anger of the gods, and Nanda murmurs in worry. She recognizes it.
Only I don’t study the heavens. I finally turn to Rambha, the shape of her next to me, the curve of her body, the shell-like ear. Loose strands from her braid wave in the slight breeze, and an urge grows in me to tuck them behind her ear. I don’t move.
Does she know what I endured? Does she understand how much of a part she played in it?
“Coming for me?” I ask, a foolish question.
“And Kaushika.” Rambha looks at me then, and real pain flickers in her eyes. It reminds me of the woman I once loved. I wonder if she is remembering it too, the possibility we had before the choices she made. Before the ones I did.
The mortals from the hermitage exchange uncomfortable glances. It is the perfect opening to ask about Kaushika and where he is, but I cannot bring myself to take it. His absence lingers heavy, filled with the gravity of a hundred planets. It stares at me, and my own power flashes in retaliation and pain. I wrap my arms around myself and look away from Rambha into the fire.
“He is at the meadow,” Anirudh says quietly. “Readying his army. Meneka, he will come here too—I am certain he felt the same surge of celestial magic we did.”
Sadness pierces me, tinged with regret and slow horror. Of course.
“He is at the meadow, preparing,” I say. “Yet you are here?”
“Yes,” Nanda says, speaking for the first time. “Why are you here?”
Anirudh throws her a cautious glance. She smiles, a charming, guileless grin, and I stiffen. The mortals do not know it, but there is rage in her smile, and the promise of retribution. I reach out a hand to still her, shaking my head subtly. These mortals are not her enemies, as much as I can understand her fury.
It is Kalyani who answers. “He told us who you are, Meneka. An apsara.”
I have been waiting for this, and I flinch out of expectation, but there is no heat or anger in her voice. Only curiosity. Still, I close my eyes. I imagine the conversation. Kaushika leaving me by the pond, walking away. Making his way to the hermitage, and to the meadow. Telling everyone who and what I am and how I was sent to seduce him. How I lay with him, loved him, lied to him.
“What did he say?” I whisper.
I open my eyes to see my mortal friends exchange a bewildered glance. “Just that,” Anirudh says. “That you are an apsara.”
“But you said I was betrayed by Indra …”
“It’s what he told us,” Romasha says softly. I tremble, remembering how she caught me and Kaushika in a compromising position mere nights ago. Kaushika was unashamed then. Have I shamed him now? “He said that by sending you to the hermitage, Indra betrayed your devotion in him. He said that about the other apsara who was sent for him too. We know what he did to her now, but it was not rage or revenge that made him curse her. Kaushika could have killed her had he wanted to. He just wanted to convince Indra to stop.”
“And I should feel grateful that he did not, should I?” Nanda answers coldly. “What a heroic figure he is, indeed. To be so kind as to simply curse me for ten thousand years instead of outright killing me.”
She makes a disgusted sound in her throat, her fingers sizzling with gold dust that is close to being unleashed. Romasha blanches, realizing finally that it was Nanda herself trapped in stone. I can see the question on her face, wondering how Nanda is free, but Romasha withdraws into herself and averts her gaze.
I say nothing, my mind whirling. Anger still courses through me at Kaushika’s dismissal of me, but what Romasha said about Indra betraying me is too true to deny. The lord has punished his own devotees before. I have been the harbinger of that punishment. Does this mean Kaushika has forgiven me? Or simply that he pities me?
“You still haven’t explained why you’re here,” Rambha says to the mortals.
“Neither have you,” Kalyani snaps. “Did Indra send you?”
“Please,” I say quietly, strained. There is no love lost between the mortals and celestials, especially after the damage Amaravati has undoubtedly already suffered and the events in Thumri and with the halahala. But I cannot have these people fight now, not when war itself looms between our realms. I give my friends from the hermitage a desperate glance, and Kalyani throws up her hands like it’s the most obvious answer in the world.
“Why do you think, Meneka?” she says, exasperated. “We came here because we care about you. We were worried!”
“But I am an apsara. Mortals despise my kind. I—I deceived you.”
“Did you?” she says, shrugging. “I think you were completely yourself when you were with us. Even if we didn’t know you were a celestial. Your defense of Indra, for one thing … It should have tipped your hand, but of course, you could do rune magic. We didn’t think it could be so.”
“How can you do rune magic?” Parasara asks, leaning forward. “As an immortal, it should not be possible.”
I shake my head. I owe them an explanation, but it is not safe to share with anyone yet. I always wondered if the wild prana was my own, unlocked by my own tapasya. I never considered that Amaravati’s power had been my own too. Even though Indra cut me off from both of those, he could not deny me what is mine. He has been hoarding the city’s magic, having us believe it is him we rely on. He has been keeping wild prana hostage, too, from all the celestials, likely for millennia. He must have considered me a threat from the time Rambha reported my rune-making to him; perhaps he sought to cut me off from both the magics, even then. If I shared the return of my magic, it would create a riot, swarga itself falling apart even as the Vajrayudh approaches. I cannot let such dangerous information out, not even to my friends, not when it can destroy my city. So even though my actions inevitably protect Indra’s secret, I hold the explanation within.
“Power is power,” I say simply, a line I have heard often enough at the hermitage. “When the rune magic came to me, it surprised me too. I did not mean to deceive you.”
Parasara’s forehead crinkles. I wonder if even that hint is enough for him; he has always been the wisest when it comes to understanding how magic works.
“It should not have been possible,” Anirudh says, nodding, “though you have always been strong in magic. Yet we have magic too, Meneka. You would never have found yogis easy prey. Kalyani is right—we believe you showed us as much of yourself as you could, no matter the mission you were sent on. Kaushika left you in the forest, never to return to the hermitage, but Kalyani fought with him over it, censuring him for his callous actions—that he could simply abandon you even though he acknowledges it was Indra who betrayed you. It was because of her that we are here, for no matter what he thinks, we agree that Kaushika behaved thoughtlessly. What kind of friends would we be to him—to you— if we let you both drift away when we can see how you empower each other? We have been searching for days, but we have not been able to track you. We thought you returned to Amaravati, but when we sensed the magic here …” He shrugs. “We are here. We found you. You are not alone.”
I am so taken aback by this little speech that tears flood my eyes. They argued with Kaushika for me. They came to find me, despite his power and hold over them. Despite the beliefs they shared with him and their loyalty to him. Despite the fact that I am a celestial who lied to them about who I was.
Kaushika may have forsaken me, but my friends did not.
I turn to Kalyani and she smiles at me, and there is such love and loyalty and understanding in her look that tears finally trickle down my cheeks. She shakes her head and envelops me in her arms, and I utter a half laugh and cling to her, desperately relieved that she is here, that she is all right, and she has not abandoned me.
“I thought you were going to die,” I whisper, and my shoulders shake with all the terror I have held on to since her poisoning. “I thought—I thought—”
“Shh,” she says softly, and her own voice shudders. “I am fine, my friend. I owe you more than my life, yet that is not why I am here. Oh, Meneka. No matter who you pretended to be, I cannot hold it against you. You taught me so much. Before you, I questioned little of what my teachers would tell me to do, but you taught me to be brave, to stand up for what I believe to be right. And in this quarrel between you and Kaushika, you are right. That is why I am here.”
I can say nothing to that. I only hug her tighter.
When we release each other, she has tears in her eyes too. She laughs ruefully and brushes them away, and I give her a small smile. She pats my hand and the two of us turn back to the others, composing ourselves.
I take a deep breath, trying to sort my emotions. I look at Rambha. “Does Indra know you’re here?”
She glances at the sky and grimaces when a drop of rain plonks on her nose. “I did not tell him when I came to investigate the surge of power. But he has been raving in his court for days, working himself up into a frenzy. Only Surya and Agni have managed to stay his hand in doing something he would regret. Queen Shachi is furious with the lord. She has not forgiven him for sending you on this mission, but that has only made him angrier, with you and with Kaushika. Indra has wished to destroy the sage for some time now. With what you told him about the army … The Vajrayudh is still some months away, and the lord is too strong. He is going to annihilate any who oppose him.”
“Kaushika is ready too,” Anirudh says in turn. “When Indra arrives, Kaushika will be able to sense it. He will open a portal to the deva king, and his army will pour out. The deva king should not underestimate Kaushika or his army.”
“He has placed wards around the hermitage,” Romasha adds. “And he will bring battle far away from it.”
“A battle that you once supported,” I remind her softly. I trust my mortal friends, I must , but there are still things to clear up, and I will not move forward unless I understand all of it.
Romasha’s gaze does not waver from mine. “Yes,” she says dispassionately. “It was a battle we once supported. Anirudh and I have known about the meadow, and what it really is. But never before has Kaushika acted out of sheer rage. Oh, he has been angry but there has always been a righteous reason behind it. His abandonment of you now, however, shows he has a wounded heart. It is affecting his choices.” Romasha shrugs, and though the gesture is casual, I detect pain and grief in it. “This war is an action of a spoiled prince, not a wise sage, and one must question if everything thus far has been guided by a similar sentiment.” Romasha meets my eyes, and I see no lies in them. “The sages of the Mahasabha always did say that Kaushika was bound by his past karma. Perhaps we have been wrong to follow him so blindly. Perhaps he never would have chosen the peaceful path. You have revealed to us … a different side of him.”
My brows rise. One by one the other mortals nod, agreeing with Romasha’s words, and I think back to what they said after Thumri, and how they behaved at the Mahasabha. How Kaushika himself considered Anirudh and Romasha his most loyal followers.
“Do you no longer think Indra needs to be taught a lesson?” I ask softly.
“The storm lord has much to answer for,” Romasha says. “But war …” She shakes her head, once, tightly. “We must think of another way.”
My gaze takes in the other yogis huddled together. Under their brave expressions, their fear ripples. I realize how the words spoken by them before were always bold words, easy words. Which one of us save Rambha has ever experienced war ? We only know the stories, and even Rambha does not speak of it, ugly as it is.
These mortals rebelled against Kaushika to come for me, but perhaps my disappearance broke them out of an enchantment they didn’t know they were under. Kaushika would not have done so deliberately, but his very intensity and charisma collected a whole army. My mortal friends absorbed his anger for Indra as their own. They were bewitched by Kaushika’s power. Seduced .
A bone-deep tiredness threads through me with this realization. How curious that I was sent here to seduce Kaushika, but what I’ve done instead is break the others from his seduction. He and Indra are so similar, out for blood and war, in the name of loyalty and power. Yet I am the one who has somehow betrayed them both. Is this where I belong—fighting between each of their pulls on me?
No .
I refuse.
I stand up. “Indra is coming, and so is Kaushika. Soon this forest will become a battleground. We need to stop this battle we are all being manipulated into.”
“How?” Nanda asks.
I pause, looking to the others for suggestions.
Anirudh comes to my rescue. “We can begin with creating wards here. Anything to prevent bloodshed. Anything to incite peace.” He cracks his fingers together, then draws a few runes in the air. Harmony. Tolerance. Prayer.
They begin planning then, the mortals from the hermitage and Nanda, a move that surprises me, given they were nearly at arms earlier. Nanda begins to sing as she casts her illusions. Eka and Parasara murmur to each other, their mantras melding with her song. Magic ripples out from all of them, golden from Amaravati, and a thousand earthy hues from the mortals, blending and weaving, unleashed into the forest beyond the clearing.
I move to help, but Rambha is next to me, reaching out a hand.
“Please, Meneka,” she says. “Let us talk.”
I hesitate. I don’t know what I will say to her.
Her eyes are large and liquid. She doesn’t ask again. I glance at Anirudh and Kalyani, who are busy with the other mortals, and I think of how they came for me even though I deceived them. Do I not owe Rambha the same?
Sighing, I nod. Rambha leads us away from the clearing toward the clifftop.