Realm of Ash Read online

“Your blood must enter the fire. A drop will do.”

  “Is the blade clean?”

  “Yes.”

  She took the blade from him.

  “Blood is a sacrifice I am familiar with providing.” She made a swift cut. With great care, she held her thumb over the fire vessel and allowed a bead of blood to fall.

  Zahir looked at her briefly. Said nothing. She handed him the dagger, and he added his own sacrifice to the fire vessel, making a shallow cut to the turn of his wrist and holding it close to the flame.

  “By combining our blood, we enter the realm together,” he explained, in response to her questioning look.

  “And now?”

  “The tea contains opium,” he told her. “It will help you sleep, if you require it. I am sorry you do not have a more comfortable place to rest.”

  “It’s no trouble,” she said swiftly. She was glad he had not offered his own bed, and did not want him to consider doing so. It felt far too intimate.

  Tired as she was, Arwa knew she and sleep were not always on the best of terms. She adjusted her veil and drank the tea. Then she lowered the cup back to the tray. Zahir did the same.

  They both lay down at opposite ends of the room. It took a long moment for the haze of the opium to settle over her. Arwa curled and uncurled her fingers. She had never tried to sleep with her veil on, and its weight—combined with the smoke of the fire—was distinctly uncomfortable.

  “What was it like,” she asked Zahir, attempting to distract herself, “when you last attempted to enter the realm?”

  “Beyond words,” he said softly. There was a slur to his speech that had not been there before. He was lying flat, staring at the ceiling. “I am glad you are here, Lady Arwa. The realm shouldn’t be entered alone.”

  She turned away from him. She could not say she was glad in return. It was death that had brought her here, after all.

  “Promise me something, Lady Arwa.”

  His voice came out of the smoke and dark. She breathed in the sound of it.

  “Yes.”

  She felt strange. The moon was black. The fire burning.

  “Please. If you forget all the rest: Do not let go of your roots.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Arwa closed her eyes. Opened them.

  A strange sensation came over her: a sense of being split in two halves, when she had previously been one whole creature. In the place where her body slept, wreathed in perfumed smoke beneath moonlight, her eyes remained stubbornly closed, weighed down by laced tea and sleep.

  In the realm of ash her eyes opened. Her soul—a thing she had never been conscious of—gazed out at the realm of ash with eyes it should not have had. Sucked in a breath with the mirage of lungs. And yet her soul’s eyes, its skin, felt real, and the sense of doubleness, of being two instead of one, was disorienting beyond belief.

  It took her a moment to see through her internal turmoil to the world around her. Around her there was no sign of the tomb enclosure where her flesh slept. There was no ornate garden. No sky above her. There was only a storm. It was no storm of dreamfire, but a whirl of gray and white, ash and the bitterest snow. Carefully, she rose up on her elbows.

  Ah. Her elbows.

  With fascination and dread both, she stared down at her own arms. Her skin, here, was not a sand-warm brown. Instead it had no color at all. Clear as glass, faceted by the curl of her fingers and the jut of her elbows and wrists, it gleamed. She thought absurdly of the marble of the palace, so pure that light could pour through it nearly unhindered.

  When she pressed her hand to the ground in an effort to raise herself up, something moved beneath her. A sudden burst of flowering red. It coiled around her wrist. When dread overtook fascination, when she tried to wrench herself free, she felt the strangest sensation: a sharp racing of her body’s heart. An intake of breath from her body’s lungs.

  Ah. This is terrible, Arwa thought, squeezing her eyes shut. Opening them again. She was still split in two, no more awake or unconscious than she had been moments before.

  “Lady Arwa.” Zahir’s voice. An echo through the storm. She turned to the sound of him. Saw him: a blurred figure, like a shadow distorted by water, kneeling upon the ground a fair distance from her. “Please. Be calm. Sit up slowly. Don’t stand yet.”

  She had told him she would obey him. She did so, clambering up onto her knees. The red, wisps as fine as a string of rubies, or a weft of lace, followed the rise of her hands and her arms. Like an infant prone to mouth anything, poison or sweet alike, she touched the back of her wrist to her mouth, and tasted bitterness and grief. The blood of memory.

  “The red,” his voice said urgently, “is your roots. The bond between you and your flesh. Don’t try to remove yourself from it.”

  Arwa shuddered and lowered her arm.

  “What would happen,” she replied, “if I did?”

  “Nothing positive, my lady.”

  “You should have warned me,” she said. “Of the roots, and—my skin, it—”

  “I warned you not to let go of them.”

  “More context would have been helpful,” she gritted out.

  “I’ll remember that in the future.”

  She saw his shadow stand, and mimicked him, drawing herself to her feet. The roots spun about her fingers and her ankles, gossamer but unyielding. She did not think she would have been able to pull free from them, even if she had tried.

  “I am sorry.” Zahir’s voice once more. It had the sound of real regret in it—and awe, also. “In truth, I didn’t expect this. I did not think we would have so much time. You must understand, when I entered briefly in the past I was aware for mere minutes at most. It was… vaguer. Hazier. You have made this place whole, Lady Arwa. Your blood has accomplished a miracle.”

  She looked about her, at the howling lightless wind surrounding her, shapeless and ragged. Whole and miracle did not entirely seem to apply.

  “And what of the storm?” asked Arwa. “I am not sure I can move through it.”

  “Ah,” said Zahir. There was a moment of silence. Then he said, “I assume you can see no forest?”

  “What?”

  “One moment,” he replied.

  Arwa watched his shadow grow closer. As he drew near her, the liquid blur of him solidified. There was a moment when the air seemed to—rip—and then Zahir was through the storm, holding a hand out to her, his gaze clear in a face of hewn glass. He was unworldly and strange, roots wound about his arms, and yet the most familiar thing she had seen so far. She took his hand without complaint, and if she gripped him far too tight, he was kind enough not to say so.

  “Thank you,” he said, exhaling as her grip tightened. Perhaps he, too, was grateful for the familiar.

  He looked around, the facets of his face—sharp as mirror-glass—narrowing with consideration.

  “If you enter the realm naturally, you can only walk your own path. Mystical orders used to enter the realm together in order to allow exploration of a richer landscape than offered by their own blood. This storm is part of your path. Your realm of ash, shaped by your own dreams and those of your ancestors. My path is—rather different.”

  “If you must seek the Maha, then I imagine you need to return to it,” said Arwa.

  She did not say, Please don’t leave me here. She was no green girl, to be afraid of the howling of her own heart. But when he said, “Come with me,” she was relieved regardless.

  “Tell me what to be aware of,” she said. “My lord, now would be an ideal time to give your guidance context.”

  “We will be moving farther and farther from the mortal realm,” he said promptly. “Losing your grip upon your roots means you may lose yourself here. But—you’re familiar with grave-tokens? The weaving of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “When you wind the green together, you gain a stronger material. When you wind blood roots together, mine to yours, they hold you faster to your flesh.”

  Her distant lun
gs inhaled. Exhaled.

  “Show me,” she said.

  His hand moved around her own.

  As she watched, their roots coiled together about their joined hands. Winding into a whole, like coils of rope or strands of vegetation lashed together to make a stronger whole. Just as he’d told her.

  She did not ask him what greater numbers provided protection from. Howling, strange, laden with the dead—a better question would have been to ask what was safe within this realm. Instead she said, “Show me the way, my lord. I am your obedient apprentice.”

  They walked. She felt a moment of dizziness, as if her roots were trying to hold her fast. She felt the tug of another time and place: of lungs rising and falling, of a heart racing. Her body. That was her body.

  Abruptly the storm faded. They were beyond the barrier that had previously separated their paths. Here, trees rose around the both of them. Great leaves the color of bird wings; ashen roots and trees, tangling with the ruby gleam of his own roots.

  Arwa looked back. Her roots formed an equally tangled path behind her. Body and soul still bound together. She shuddered again, and looked away.

  He was looking at her.

  “I would like to continue, Lady Arwa.” There was hesitation in his voice, in the clouded marble of his eyes. “But if you wish to turn back, try again on another occasion…”

  Arwa shook her head. She did not allow herself to think of an alternative. To consider fear, when adventure lay before her.

  “Although I wish you had warned me, my lord, I want to continue.”

  He nodded.

  “Don’t let go,” he said. “Please.”

  “I won’t,” she told him.

  They walked farther. There was no sound but their own voices. Not even breath. Where her—path, he had called it—had been all wildness and fury, his was a deathly place, thick with its own growth and silence. In slivers, she saw more trees hidden by the skeletons of the closest: great old banyans, peepal and ashoka, all of them ink dark, incongruously entwined. And between them…

  People, she thought. Those are people.

  She stumbled, and felt her heart again, a dreamlike flutter. He gripped her hand tighter.

  “What happened?” he asked, eyes wide.

  It was only then—curse it—that she realized he was meeting her eyes. That he was looking at her bare of any veil—bare of even the protective carapace of her own body. If she looked anything like he did, she resembled herself, but was more glass than woman, more shadow and marble than skin. Still, it was not to be borne.

  “Do not look at my face,” she snapped.

  He lowered his eyes sharply.

  “I—”

  “Please,” she said. “No apologies. Explain the people. Among the trees.”

  He hesitated. Thinking of his books, no doubt. Searching for answers experience could not give him.

  “Most likely my dead,” he said. “On your path, you have your own.”

  “Will you look for the Maha among them?”

  “He will be far deeper in the realm,” he said. “Not here. Not so close.”

  As they walked, the path and the forest around them began to change. The trees grew lush, then withered once more. Shadowy figures moved closer, fingers curled around branches, eyes lambent—and then vanished entirely, behind a mist so thick that it burnished the air a blinding white.

  They finally stopped when their path—Zahir’s path—was barred. The trees had formed together before them into an arch. Beyond it lay no forest. Instead the ground beyond the arch was covered in a sumptuous carpet, heavily embellished with birds and flowers, but curiously devoid of the rich colors Arwa would have expected of such an artful masterpiece. But there was barely any color here, and the floor was as much a mirage of ash as everything else that surrounded them.

  Zahir stared ahead. He did not move.

  “Tests,” he said slowly. “Everything must be tested. The Maha is not here, not in this place, but I believe another ancestor’s memory lies beyond the bough.” There was a pause. “Somewhere my heart is beating very quickly. Do you feel the same, Lady Arwa?”

  “Of course,” she whispered. “How could I not?”

  “Of course,” he echoed. He looked at their joined hands. “Two ropes twined together are harder to break than one,” he said. She had the sense he was repeating the claim for confidence. “Together, we are less likely to lose ourselves to the path. Lady Arwa, no matter what you see, do not let go of me.”

  “What will I see?”

  He frowned, the expression forming a luminous crescent on the glass of his brow.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Ah. Well then, my lord. I suppose we learn together.”

  Without allowing herself another thought, she stepped over the threshold, drawing Zahir with her.

  They were in a room surrounded by lattice and silk, shawl discarded in a heap of silver embroidery upon the floor cushions. A large divan stood at the room’s center, strewn with pillows. Flowers sat in bowls of water, to sweeten the air.

  “This is not a man’s room, I think, my lord,” said Arwa.

  “No.” Zahir was looking up, a waver in his voice. Arwa followed his eyes.

  The ceiling was covered in stars, tessellated silver-gold. Cloth, she realized, had been pinned to the domed roof, giving the large chamber unusual warmth and intimacy. As Arwa watched, the stars wavered. Moved.

  “Are they—?”

  “An aspect of dreaming,” said Zahir. “Nothing remains exactly as it should. We do not dream perfectly, as Gods do.”

  He stepped forward. Once. Twice.

  “She is by the window,” he said softly. “Come.”

  Across the room stood the silhouette of a woman. Arwa could not think of her as a woman whole. Even from here, the absences were apparent: no fully formed legs, to shape the hollow curl of her skirt; no face upon that turned head. Her skin was nothing but ash. She was a barely real thing, a scrap of memory carved into limbs and the turn of a head, a soft fall of ash-white hair, bound into a thin braid.

  Zahir moved closer to her first—held a hand out toward her, his roots strange and bright, his eyes hollows of feeling.

  She heard him whisper a prayer, a mantra spoken at funerals, with grief and love for the dead. Then he curled his fingers, touched a hand to the woman’s ash—and shattered her.

  No more woman. Just ash—great gouts of it, swirling about Zahir, about the both of them. Arwa yelped and gripped Zahir tighter. Somewhere, distantly, her jaw was grinding, her hands balling into fists as she slept. But here she only held on to him as the ash surrounded his head in a corona, as ash seeped into his eyes and his ears, as it filled his mouth, consuming him.

  Do not eat the ash.

  So he had written and yet he was consuming it now, before her eyes. Suddenly, his soul’s skin was burnished with the luster of embers still hot from the fire, of ashes cooling to chalk and amber. Suddenly Arwa’s own head was full of facets of memory, as fragmented as her own unnatural skin. Her hand (not her hand) holding a needle, fine muslin upon her lap; her grandson (not her, not her) pressing his cheek to her knee.

  Arwa cursed, revolted, but did not let go, even as the smoke of strange memories coiled around her own head. She felt the distant shudder of her own body, turning upon the ground; smoke in her true lungs, as the fire in its vessel began to gutter and die.

  In the realm of ash, Zahir turned his gaze upon her face once more. Holding her hand, he turned to the roots tangled between them, turned and wrenched—

  Arwa woke. She scrambled onto her elbows, back bowed, turned her head to the side, pushing her veil askew so she could breathe, simply breathe, great gouts of true air, barely tainted by fire. Her eyes were wet.

  She could hear Zahir retching.

  “What was that?” she asked him. “What did you do?”

  His hands on stone. The sound of his palms sliding. She drew her veil back into place. Turned her head to look at him. Hi
s head was pressed to the ground, the back of his tunic damp with sweat.

  “I remember.” His voice a gasp. “Cold grapes in a silver bowl, and learning to taste citrus and salt. I remember—the fine bone needle, my favorite—her favorite—I remember—I am not myself. I… who am I?”

  She did not choose to stand up. It was simply a thing that happened. The same was true of the way her hand found its way to his jaw, drawing his face up to the moonlight seeping through the grate.

  “Lord Zahir. What do you need?”

  He blinked hard. Some semblance of awareness returned to his eyes. “Water,” he forced out. “There is a carafe. By the second shelf. Other room.”

  Thank the Emperor’s grace that the room was orderly. She found the carafe and returned to his side. Kneeling by him, she offered him the water, which he took with trembling hands. He drank it fast, gratefully, then lowered the carafe to the ground.

  “I apologize. That was a great deal… more. Than I expected.”

  “I gathered,” Arwa said. “As your apprentice, I am going to require access to your other books. I don’t enjoy being so surprised, my lord.”

  “Anything,” said Zahir. He sat up carefully, with a wince.

  “You wrote that the ash should not be eaten, my lord.”

  “You should not consume it certainly. Gods be thanked, you have no cause to do so. To access an ancestor’s knowledge, to eat their ash… it is not an act without price. It’s a dangerous thing, Lady Arwa. It can consume you whole, if you are not tethered to the strength of your roots.” A faint smile. “Or so I have gathered.”

  “From your books.”

  “Partly. And also from our experiment today. Sometimes books have curious gaps. Theories are flawed. I have not been able to consume ash before, Lady Arwa. Not when I entered with a tutor. Not when I entered alone. But with your help…” His voice faded. Faraway eyes. “We accomplished so much. I believe we can seek the Maha’s ash after all. My hope finally has flesh.”

  Arwa closed her eyes. In the dark she saw it again: a place entirely strange. A place where she felt as if her very nature had been flayed open, exposing more than her heart or her skin to the light.