Chapter 38 Rao
RAO
The water roared.
There was noise, crushing weight, and then—the noise of the water faded.
Rao was on the ground, smeared in earth, gasping for air.
The ground had sunk around him, as if the riverbed had swallowed it back into itself, churned it into silt.
He got his hands under himself. Dragged himself back to his feet, wild energy roaring through him.
He saw the bridge.
He stared at it, eyes wide, wondering if he’d finally gone mad. Then Sima’s hand was on his arm. Sima’s voice, as if through a thick fog, demanding he move. “She’s done her part!” Sima was yelling. Her eyes were wet. “Now do yours!”
That snapped him back into his skin. He yelled for Narayan. Called to his men to run, to ride, and the cry was taken up as they surged as one toward the strange bridge that covered the expanse of the water.
Rao swung into an empty chariot and took up the reins. “Sima,” he said. “Get up here. I’ll be your charioteer. You shoot.”
She stared at him. Wiped an arm over her eyes and clambered up. The chariot jerked, and then the horse was guiding them swiftly over the bridge, over the water. And Sima was raising her bow, and nocking an arrow, and they were crashing into the flank of the Parijatdvipan army in a wave of motion.
Chandra’s forces were crushed between Rao’s half of the army and Malini’s. Behind them stood Aloran and Saketan soldiers, garbed in their turbans and liegemarks. Before them were Parijati gleaming in their white armor, Srugani and Dwarali cavalry. They had nowhere to turn.
There was no clear ending to it. Only a moment when he was guiding the horse as Sima grimly shot a man through the chest. And then, as if darkness had descended and lifted abruptly in his mind, he found himself stumbling from his chariot.
There were bodies everywhere: men’s screams and groans as they died, and carrion birds already wheeling hopefully overhead. But it was over. It had ended. And nameless bless them, they had not lost. They had not lost.
Prince Ashutosh had survived, to Rao’s surprise.
Ashutosh’s men were huddled around him, watching as he was attended to by one of the camp physicians.
He was gray-faced, lips mottled with cold, but when he saw Rao he gave a jerky bow of his head.
Rao returned it, a strange shadow of relief blooming in his chest. He did not like Ashutosh, exactly—but he had been sure the man would die, the moment the arrows fell on the river. His survival was a small miracle.
Priya’s miracle, Rao reminded himself. He couldn’t entirely let himself recall the sight of her in the churning water, glassy waves rising up around her, unearthed roots spiraling above her.
It made him feel as if he’d been unmoored from his skin.
He breathed around the panic of it—the sense of wrongness and elation, all entangled together and impossible for him to unknot—and turned toward the ford.
He remembered the vision of the nameless that Aditya had shown him, long ago in the lacquer gardens. The way it had filled his skull with strangeness and terror. This was… possibly worse. He felt small and helpless in the face of it; painfully conscious of his mortal body and mortal bones.
He forced himself to concentrate on what was around him: the mud beneath his feet. The corpses strewn around him.
Sima, ahead of him.
Sima was striding onward without pause. It was only when she started wading into the water that he realized anything was amiss.
There was a soldier yelling at her from the bank, trying to call her back.
She was submerged to the chest: Rao could only see the shape of her shoulders, the snaking line of her braid, as she waded forward through the corpses.
Rao stepped to the water’s edge and cupped a hand to his mouth to make his voice carry.
“You don’t want to be out there!” Rao called. “Please, come back to the shore.”
Sima turned her head.
“No,” she said, her teeth chattering. “You come in here.”
“Lady Sima.”
“I told you I’m not a lady!” Her voice was wild. “My lord. Prince Rao. I need—I can’t. Don’t you see?” A tumble of words, pouring out of her. “Priya never came back. Priya is somewhere out here and I—I need to find her.”
“Sima—”
“Help me or don’t,” she said, and turned again, wading determinedly deeper.
Rao stripped down to his tunic and trousers, all padding and armor thrown to the ground.
Then he jumped into the water after her.
It was cold, fetid. He bit his tongue and waded deeper, following the figure of Sima ahead of him.
He caught up with her fast. Splashed the water beside her with his hand, in a gesture that felt childish, but also better than attempting to touch her when she was trembling with barely leashed panic.
“Go back to solid ground,” he entreated. “Sima, I’ll find her. I promise you.” Seeing doubt in her eyes, he added, “If I don’t, the empress will skin me. I’m not risking that.”
“I’m a strong swimmer,” she said. “I…”
“I’ll find her,” he told her. “Please.”
For a moment it looked as if Sima would argue. Then, still shaking, she nodded.
“Thank you,” Rao said to her.
He waited until she’d made her way back to the bank, then swam deeper.
Above him the bridge of roots arched, vast and intricately knotted, light breaking through its small perforations in bright diamonds between the shadows it threw on the water below.
He called out Priya’s name and heard his own voice fade into smallness, swallowed by the lapping of the water against bodies, against the struts of the great bridge.
“Prince Rao!” A yell from behind him. “My lord, wait!”
He turned and saw one of Ashutosh’s men following him. The man was clearly wounded, his shoulder bandaged, blood bleeding faintly through the cloth.
“Get out of the water,” Rao called back. “You’ll get your wound infected.”
“I spoke to the Ahiranyi girl,” he said, gesturing at Sima, who was standing on the bank, with oilcloth wrapped tightly around her. “I know where the other one is. Or was.”
“Show me,” Rao demanded.
He led Rao to where the islet had been. Now there was nothing.
The soldier pointed a hand to where exactly he’d last seen Priya, wincing as he pulled his shoulder, and said, “She protected us here. With that unnatural magic of hers.” The man’s mouth curled into a sneer, but it seemed more like a reflex than any true expression of disgust. Then the look faded and he hesitated momentarily, before wetting his lips and carrying on.
“I saw her collapse into the water. Right—there. And I didn’t see her come back up.
Whatever… whatever she was, my lord, she deserves a decent funeral. ”
“You think she’s dead,” Rao said, strangely numb.
“Of course, my lord. How could she not be?”
How, indeed. Any right-thinking man would know that no mortal could survive after collapsing into water. No human could survive airless, weighed down by a river. Why had Rao not considered that—not even ruminated over the possibility of Priya’s death?
Perhaps the hope that burned in him, despite all logic, was the result of a mind overfevered by battle. But Rao did not think so. Sometimes, a belief or instinct was a gift from the nameless. And this felt true: Priya was not yet dead. Not yet.
“What’s your name?” Rao asked the soldier.
“Romesh, my lord.”
“Wait here for me, Romesh.” Rao gestured at the islet, then began to swim in the direction Romesh had pointed.
Through the water he could see fronds of things that should not have been growing there: feathery leaves so green they were almost lit from the inside; flowers the rose-rust hue of blood, and then the fading white of teeth. Rot, he thought at first. And then: Priya.
She lay beneath him in the water. Face visible, hair loose around her. Eyes closed.
He reached for her immediately, hands closing over nothing as if she were a mirage—an illusion of light, a trickery of the water. He didn’t allow himself to think. Only sucked a deep breath, and dived down, the light shining through the water onto the both of them. He reached for her—
Her eyes snapped open. Black, fathomless in the dark, two points swallowing all the light around them.
She reached back.
For a moment he was entirely unmoored from his body, panicked, unable to move—and then he was… weightless. He felt as if he could breathe—or as if he did not need to breathe, as if his lungs were not struggling for air, as if he were more and less than flesh.
Worlds were revolving around them, great stars imploding and darkening into nothing as they hung suspended in darkness that rippled and lived. He felt as if a priest of the nameless had guided him into a vision and left him there; abandoned him to the maelstrom of the nameless’s voice.
A coming. An inevitable coming.
Priya’s eyes were not her own. She was holding him by the hand, mouthing words he couldn’t read or hear, great peals of song breaking like waves against his ears.
He struggled against her, trying to pull away—and then remembered himself, and reached for her instead.
He was taking her back. He had made a promise. And if he did not—if he did not—
(What would Malini do, if he did not?)
Priya, he mouthed in return. Searched for his voice. Clawed it from his throat. “Priya. Whatever this is—please. Stop this.”
She blinked. Shuddered out a breath.
And then abruptly, it was over.
Lungs heaving. Body screaming for air. Priya a dead weight in his arms. He moved her into the hold of one arm and kicked his feet against the silt, propelling them both upward.
Dragged her up, up, out of the water and heaved a ragged breath.
He turned her face to the side, trying to feel for the flutter of her breath one-handed.
He wrenched open her jaw, trying to clear her mouth of water with his clumsy fingers.
And ah, there it was—the faintest rush of air from her mouth.