Chapter 17 Priya
PRIYA
At first, Yogesh had struck Priya as a nervous man.
But it didn’t take her long to realize he was simply nervous of her.
As they rode their horses along the winding dirt tracks and roads that led to Saketa, she saw him touching the prayer stones he wore around his neck.
Each stone grasped, one by one, between his fingers as he mouthed the names of the mothers of flame to himself.
As if that had the strength to ward away Priya’s monstrousness.
She would have been irritated by it, normally. But she was too worried to think long on Yogesh.
“I can’t reach Bhumika,” she confided to Sima on the first evening.
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t—you know.” She made a vague gesture, trying to encompass everything the sangam was without talking about it in front of Parijatdvipan strangers. “I don’t know why.”
Sima gave her a wide-eyed look. She understood, just as Priya did, how serious it was that Priya could not reach Ahiranya.
“We can send one of our men back,” Sima said. They didn’t have many to begin with. “Karan, maybe. Or Nitin?”
They couldn’t afford to make their retinue even smaller. They were already a sorry group: a mere handful of Ahiranyi soldiers, Sima in her plain sari with her bow, and Priya dressed in temple elder whites that had already seen a few too many encounters with dust.
She hadn’t thought she would need another way to contact Bhumika.
She’d felt a pang when she’d left everyone behind, but she had thought it would be, in a way, just like any time she had traveled through Ahiranya to deal with the rot.
Difficult, certainly, and lonely. But Bhumika would be there, waiting for her in the sangam.
Waiting to advise and scold and stop Priya from doing anything impulsive that would land everyone who mattered to her in a pile of shit.
Now Priya was on her own.
“Karan,” Priya said reluctantly. “We’ll send him.”
“I’m sure everything’s fine, Pri,” Sima said. “Your sister will send someone after us, too. The second she realizes she can’t speak to you.”
What if she doesn’t send anyone? Priya thought. What if something has happened?
She looked at the path behind them. The dust of the road and the wizened trees, and Ahiranya already so far behind them that she could not see the Hirana at all.
“We could go back,” Sima said after a moment.
Priya swallowed, conflicted.
“Let’s give it a day,” Priya said. “Either someone will come from Bhumika, or someone won’t. And then…” She couldn’t continue. Worry was pooling coldly in her belly.
“Someone will come,” Sima said.
Ah, spirits, how long would it take for a fast rider to reach them from Ahiranya, when they were still on the move?
Could a rider catch up with them? How long should Priya wait before she turned back?
“A few more days,” she amended, settling on vagueness.
When the worry became too much to stand, well—that would make her decision for her.
Her soreness and exhaustion soon distracted her.
Priya wasn’t a natural rider. Jeevan had insisted on giving her a handful of lessons, alongside some guidance on handling scythe and saber.
But her body ached that night when they lay down to rest, and despite her worries her sleep was deep and dreamless.
It wasn’t until the morning that she realized the reason for her easy sleep.
She could not hear the green.
No sangam, and no green. The disquiet grew in her, setting roots right through her, tightening her lungs. She couldn’t pretend any longer that everything was well.
Perhaps everyone in Ahiranya was safe. Perhaps Priya was the problem: her magic fading out of her as swiftly as water through a cracked pot. Perhaps she had no strength beyond Ahiranya’s borders, far from the gleaming blue of the deathless waters that had given her gifts to begin with.
But that hadn’t been the way of it in the Birch Bark Mantras. The elders of old had possessed power no matter where they went; had conquered the subcontinent alongside the yaksa in the Age of Flowers with that magic.
I am not an elder of old, Priya reminded herself, her stomach in knots. She held her face in her hands. I am something new. And maybe this was a terrible mistake.
She was ready to shake Sima awake and tell her they needed to turn back when she suddenly felt something lance through her.
Something sharp and green, a dart arrowing through her blood, its hum settling in the back of her skull.
She stood up sharply and scrambled out of her tent.
Around her, the sleeping camp fumbled awake, the men on guard reaching instinctually for their weapons.
“There’s something,” she said to the others. “Beyond the trees.”
Immediately, her own men reached for their weapons, and the soldiers attending Yogesh drew their sabers. Priya swiftly shook her head. “Not like that,” she said. “No—no enemies or bandits. Look there’s no need for your swords. Give me a moment—”
“Priya,” Sima said. “What—”
“I can feel something,” Priya said quickly, crossing the dusty ground.
Ignoring Sima’s protests and Yogesh’s murmured cautions, she walked through the trees.
They grew close together here, slender branches twining into arches and webs around her.
The scent of leaf sap and wet earth filled her nose at first, deep and lustrous and damp, then gave way quickly to something more pungent: decay.
Rot.
She stopped. A few of the men had followed her, and now they gazed silently at the village that lay hidden between the trees, in a modest clearing.
It was clearly abandoned. The buildings were overgrown, small wood and stone houses caving in beneath the pressure of strangling roots, flowering bushes.
All of the trees looked slightly wrong, in a way that Priya had grown very familiar with.
Their trunks appeared almost—soft. The wood too forgiving.
Where the bark had stripped or the surface splintered, the trees were the deep color of exposed flesh, marbled with the white fat.
She swallowed back nausea.
“None of you should touch it,” she said to the men.
“Elder Priya,” Yogesh said, clearing his throat. He sounded fairly nauseated himself. “We should not—the empress would not want anyone to be risked. The business of burning the trees can be left to the local villagers.”
“What villagers?” Priya asked. “There’s no one here. They’re all long gone.”
Yogesh’s soldiers made uneasy noises. But they soon melted back, returning to the path, leaving her alone with the trees.
“I’m staying,” said Sima quietly.
“Sima. It’s not… it won’t be interesting.”
“Someone has to keep an eye on you.” She crossed her arms.
There was no point arguing, and Priya didn’t want to remain here, smelling the stink of rotting meat, any longer than she had to. As she stepped closer, the call of green and life inside her grew stronger. Her limbs felt steadier, some weakness she hadn’t even been aware of seeping out of them.
Priya closed her eyes. Reached—and finally, blessedly, felt the green reaching back. She pushed herself through the green, through the sangam, through cosmic rivers and the deathless waters that ran through her blood—and grasped the rot. Froze it to stillness. It would grow no further, now.
When she returned to herself, she was gasping, lungs heaving, and Sima was holding her up. They were both leaning back against a healthy tree, still alone. It couldn’t have been long, then.
“I told you that you needed someone to keep an eye on you,” Sima said, voice a little shaky.
Priya managed a laugh.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Come on. We’d better head back.”
They straightened up and returned to the soldiers. Behind them, the trees had settled. Nearly alive again, the ground around them resting easy, the sweet scent of fresh grass now the only smell in the air.
“Did you know there was rot this far from home?” Sima asked, voice a whisper.
“No,” Priya whispered in return. Her blood still hummed and sang distractingly, warm with relief. She wasn’t broken after all.
But she didn’t know why her magic had faded to begin with. And that… that worried her.
That night, lying on a mat on the ground with Sima beside her, she tried to reach for Bhumika again.
It felt like she was learning how to walk a familiar path with her eyes closed. It could be done: Her feet knew this particular soil, the way this path curved and dipped. But she’d always had her eyes to rely on before, and now she had only her skin.
She closed her—real, not metaphorical—eyes and breathed deep, slow.
Deep, slow. She sank under her skin, an old and practiced motion, seeking the sangam.
If she could reach Bhumika, she could at least reassure her sister that Priya was safe and sound.
And she could reassure herself that everyone in Ahiranya was safe, too.
Maybe then she could continue on this journey without fear for what lay behind her.
The waters opened up to her. Radiant darkness. Waves lapping around her, as stars slipped their perches to whirl at her feet.
“Priya.” Bhumika was kneeling in the waters. Three rivers swirled around her. She was smiling—a fixed, even smile that looked strange on her shadow of a face. “You’re finally here.”
“Did I worry you? Of course I did. I’m sorry. I couldn’t get here. I…” She shrugged helplessly, relief pouring through her. “Honestly, Bhumika, I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get here again, so let me tell you everything I can.”
She spoke of the journey—the rot—the fear in Yogesh’s wary eyes, his prayer stones, his watchful men. The strangeness of feeling distant and disconnected from the power she’d possessed in Ahiranya. And Bhumika listened to all of it wordlessly, fixed and still.
“Why are you still smiling?” Priya asked, eventually. “Are you really that happy to have me gone? Weren’t you worried at all? I’m going to start feeling insulted.”