Page 21 of The Enduring Universe (The Rages Trilogy #3)

IRAVAN

He didn’t immediately leave the solar lab. He could tell Darsh wanted to look around, though the boy said nothing. Iravan pulled away from Irshar’s group, and Darsh and Manav followed him. Darsh kept a supportive arm on the excised architect, ambling through the circular chamber. Irshar’s council had not given them leave to inspect the solar lab, but what were they going to do? Deny Iravan and his retinue now, after all the times they’d begged him to come? They knew that sungineering was the only reason Iravan was here.

He could feel their eyes darting between him and his two charges. Undoubtedly, they were wondering why he’d picked these two, but all they needed to do was ask. He might have told them.

With the bargain made with Ahilya, it was only a matter of time before the Virohi were in Iravan’s grasp. Once he found a way to destroy them, his capital desire would be finished, the path to his freedom laid bare. Iravan would have no purpose afterward. He had a vague notion of what he wanted to do then—heal with Ahilya, if the chance ever came, help her heal from her encounter with the Virohi, leave the Garden and build a home elsewhere—but he didn’t dare think of that too closely. Already he could feel the voices of his past lives infiltrating him, half-deranged, half-furious, as though to think of an afterward at all was a betrayal of his capital desire. He kept his gaze on Darsh as the boy explored the lab with Manav.

Someone would need to take Iravan’s place in the Garden once the Virohi were gone, to ensure all of Iravan’s plans were followed through. Darsh would not have been his first choice ordinarily. The boy was too young, too volatile, too angry. Yet weren’t the same things said about Iravan once? Darsh was loyal, and that alone was worth the other limitations. Iravan needed Darsh to be subservient to sungineering, and to Irshar, after it all ended. It was why he’d brought him today.

As for Manav… There was a debt owed. Manav had come to Iravan’s aid twice in the past, saving him from the falcon-yaksha. Iravan still did not know why—there was a personal link he was unable to see between Manav and himself—but it was no coincidence that the sungineers of Irshar had discovered a power similar to what Manav had used once. Iravan had excised the man, and it was a reminder of what would come to pass should Iravan fail in his endeavors with his Ecstatics. Should they choose capital desires contrary to his, Iravan would have to excise them. Could excision happen without a core tree? He would have to find a way, and live with committing such an atrocity.

The council of Irshar had not asked him, but he made no secret in the Garden that he kept both Darsh and Manav around for a reason. Darsh, an Ecstatic seeking his yaksha and primed for condition, indicating all that Iravan still needed to achieve; and Manav, an Ecstatic Iravan had excised, one who indicated all of Iravan’s failed legacy. They were both reminders of his continued responsibility, and the consequences of making a mistake. Darsh could not be allowed to have Manav’s future; Iravan—and Darsh himself—would have to lead the Garden to something better. Too much depended on this balance between the past, present and future. Too much that Iravan had set in motion already.

His preoccupation must have shown on his face. Iravan felt Ahilya in his mind, a questioning presence, but he raised his shield, backing away from her as she attempted to pull him back into the strange forest of her Etherium.

He had been shocked that she’d heard him there. Seeing her there in a place so reminiscent of an airborne ashram, she herself appearing so like the woman he had married, had nearly broken Iravan’s resolve. He’d wanted to nestle into her. Beg for her forgiveness. Tell her that the both of them should forget everything, and walk away from all of this to find some peace together, survival be damned.

It had been such a seducing, terrifying thought that Iravan had become alarmed. What could the cosmic creatures make him do, speaking from behind Ahilya? The prospect was chilling, and so he’d created a shield.

He had thought of it only during the recent discussion. If the Moment, the Deepness, and the Etherium really were the same realm in some ways, why should they not work similarly to an extent? It was a simple quality of trajection, to learn to keep the Two Visions separate, something architects learned at the start of their training. All of Iravan’s visions had merged after his subsummation of the falcon-yaksha into the evervision, but the principle still applied. He had simply forgotten that basic principle.

He exercised it now, pulling away from his own Etherium and denying Ahilya access to it too. A shield from her, but also in a manner from himself. As long as he did not enter his Etherium, she could not use it to spy on him, or to call him arbitrarily to hers in that endless forest. All he needed to do was be careful while searching for answers within his third vision.

Iravan stopped at a small table, littered with coils of neatly arranged optical fibers. From here, the conversation of the sungineers at the other end of the room was a dull mutter. He watched Dhruv and Kiana in the middle of another explanation, Airav and Chaiyya nodding every once in a while. The people Iravan did not know were finally participating as well, easier now that he had left. A woman with short-cropped hair and a heart-shaped face marched into the solar lab, said something to Ahilya making her smile, then brushed a strand of Ahilya’s hair behind her ear. The gesture was so surprising that Iravan stared.

“Eskayra,”

Naila said helpfully.

“She used to belong to Nakshar before she moved away, but of course, we’re all one ashram now, aren’t we? You know they used to court once. Before you, of course. Ahilya-ve finally seems happy, wouldn’t you say? I think Eskayra has asked her to marry her, and I think that’s a great idea. Don’t you? Though I imagine she would need to divorce you properly first. How does one go about that in the Garden, anyway?”

Iravan said nothing, but looked to the once Maze Architect. She smiled at him, a grin full of teeth.

It was absurd that this news should hurt him. That this knowledge should stab his heart in the way it did, with pain and loneliness and terrible grief, when he and Ahilya did not have a marriage anymore, not really. He ought to be happy for her, that she had found joy again, comfort surely, and perhaps love. That she had found everything she deserved, everything he had been unable to give.

And yet, all he felt was a rush of despair like he was a lovelorn adolescent. He could see the house he had built and destroyed so many times in the jungle, a house for Ahilya and the family that they would never have. A house as strong as their dream had once been for children together. A house as tragic as the way they had gone about it. He had told no one of this structure, but what if he shared such a thing with Ahilya? What if he whispered it in the forest of her Etherium? Would she wait for him? Could the both of them find a way to each other beyond their perspectives on the cosmic creatures? His hand reached for his stone blade of pure possibility, beating against his throat like a noose. He had been saving this last bit of everdust for a purpose, but even he knew it was lunacy.

Naila said nothing more, but a satisfied expression skittered across her eyes. She didn’t even bother to hide it. She was furious with him. He had never seen her like that—part-disappointed in him, part-enraged, as if he had failed her personally somehow with everything he’d done.

Absurdly, she reminded him of Bharavi, and for a brief instant, his Etherium opened up without his will and he saw his mentor, with her impatient expression and dry wit. He saw Bharavi as he threw a spiralweed leaf into her cage. Iravan slammed the Etherium shut before Ahilya could pull him again into her forest. He called out to Darsh and Manav, and the three of them left the solar lab with as little ceremony as they had arrived.

Back in the plaza, Iravan took a few deep breaths. It haunted him, that image of Ahilya and Eskayra standing together. Darsh studied him with a concerned expression, but wisely did not ask. Naila strolled slowly out of the lab and joined him, her hands in her pockets. She might as well be whistling.

“Where would you like to go?”

she asked, scratching at her short hair.

Iravan gave her a sidelong glance.

“You’re the ambassador.”

He had already visited the places he was interested in. The council chambers to look at food rations. The solar lab. The massive, splendid, unbelievable vriksh. He had examined the core tree from every side, inspecting it with the everpower, hovering above the ground until he was within its boughs, but it had given him no insight. The everpower seemed to have a strange resistance to it, as if opposing him in some way, and the vriksh belonged to Ahilya through and through. He gazed at its trunk now, an enormous thing, blotting out the sun. This core tree that had once belonged to airborne ashrams was now harboring the Virohi, become an obstacle in his way. He had destroyed life in the skies. Would he have to destroy its last legacy in the jungle too?

Naila gestured to him, and they strode silently through the plaza, winding their way past labyrinthine roots. Afternoon sunshine beat down on them, the heat of the jungle stifling here in Irshar, unable to be managed by sungineering. Dhruv’s drones had returned images of the entire ashram and how it had changed since the vriksh’s transformation. The citizens had cleared much of the rubble, but the city was speared with the vriksh’s roots, the tree enclosing it within itself. Never before had this landed ashram resembled one of its airborne predecessors so clearly.

They stopped at a low-lying building, with a courtyard of grass enclosed inside a waist-high wall. Children of different ages sat clustered under smaller trees, with adults who seemed to be lecturing them. There were no solarnote tablets. Instead old-fashioned books made of paper were being passed from one small hand to another. Roots spread here too, but several had been cut to make a sort of clearing.

A school. Iravan was looking at a school.

He had promised to make one for the Irshar he had created in the skies. These people had actually done it. Iravan saw more children through doorways, leading past the verandah into the building proper.

Darsh looked longingly at the clustered children, and Iravan almost asked him if he wanted to join them, but held his tongue. Darsh would not leave, even if Iravan asked.

“These children,”

he said instead, resting his elbows over the gate.

“They are architect children, and complete beings together?”

Naila nodded and joined him.

“Any child, regardless of their birth and ability, schools here. It was one of the council’s earliest decisions. There would be no more differentiation. That separation is not part of the society Irshar wants to build. The children don’t learn trajection either, and that was before you destroyed the Moment. They learn history mostly. Sungineering basics too. Ahilya-ve has taught here sometimes, and others in the council. This is my primary occupation.”

A bell rang somewhere, and children rose from under one of the trees. They collected their books and returned within the building, chattering the whole time. In airborne ashrams, every child went to a common school—at least until they displayed trajection abilities. After that, students who could traject were transferred to the Architects’ Academy, while the rest continued in the same place. Iravan had never liked the system—it created too much division between the children, too much animosity. With trajection come to an end, the ashram had finally obliterated the need for separate establishments.

“Does Eskayra want children too?”

he asked quietly. He had not meant to say it out loud, but the question escaped without his consent, and what did it matter anymore whether he asked it or kept it to himself.

The question seemed to surprise Naila. She watched him a long second as if to judge his sincerity, then her expression softened. “Maybe,”

she said in a low voice.

“It is easier for them. Children have been a sore subject for architects, not complete beings. I certainly never wanted them, or ever to be married—you know this already. All our attempts to make me a Senior Architect in Nakshar challenged material bonds in a more profound way than your childless seat. Still. I am beginning to think that we’ve never actually deserved them.”

Children were an essential part of survival. It was another reason they were tied to material bonds, and to airborne ashrams fleeing destruction. Iravan’s path to parenthood was forever closed; it was the price he and Ahilya had paid for stopping the cosmic creature all that time ago from breaking into an earthrage. But would more and more architects like Naila choose to close that path themselves? What would that do to the odds of survival? To rebirth and reincarnation?

Yet was it not a choice architects ought to be able to make? Had he not wanted to give them such a choice? For generations, architects had been trapped by the need for material bonds, made to marry and bear children. Now, when they knew who they were, and the reasons behind the creation of those bonds in the first place, perhaps children would be borne out of love, instead of duty. What better reason to bring a life into the world than that?

He and Naila had discussed it often, though never as openly. The both of them had thought the compulsion to bear children a barbaric need of their society. He had never told Ahilya of it—another secret he had kept from her—not wanting to muddy his desire for children. She had accused him of wanting to have children solely because of his needs as an architect, but Iravan had been unable to refute her; it would only show the council that he did not respect material bonds as he should. Back then, any indication of swerving from the council’s line would have been construed as an indication of his Ecstasy. What would have happened if he had been allowed to be honest with his wife from the very start?

Voices drifted toward them, and Iravan and Naila turned to see more people enter the courtyard, chatting quietly to each other. Parents had come to take their children home. Iravan stepped back, following Naila toward a courtyard with a few scattered benches. A shape caught his eye, sitting silently on a bench.

Iravan’s breath faltered.

Tariya.

She was studying him, her gaze unflinching. She had been sitting there a while. He had not noticed her. Without thinking, he stepped toward his sister-in-law while Darsh and Naila followed.

Tariya watched him come, her once-bright eyes dull, her beautiful face etched with deep lines of sorrow. This was the first time he had seen her since Bharavi’s funeral. Next to her, he could almost feel Bharavi. He could almost see her roll her shoulders and give him an impatient glance, as though to tell him to find his courage. The words were already forming on his tongue, to argue with his dead mentor, the way they had so often. Tears pricked Iravan’s eyes. Tariya and Arth and Kush were Ahilya’s family, but they were his family, too—more than his parents in some way. He had lived in Nakshar far longer than he had in Yeikshar. He had formed bonds.

Weaving through the moving bodies, he was almost upon her, past the crowd, when something hit him hard in the midriff.

Iravan staggered, more surprised than hurt. He looked down, and there was Kush, a fierce little boy no older than eleven, his face reminiscent of Bharavi. His hand was clenched in a fist. He looked like he was about to cry. Instinctively, Iravan dropped to his knees to capture him in a hug, but Kush reared back his fist again.

“Stay away from her,”

the boy gasped.

“You killed—you killed—”

Stunned, Iravan could form no words. Bharavi’s death flashed behind his eyes again, her pacing in her deathcage, coolly telling him he would become an Ecstatic. Movement flashed in the corner of his eyes, and then Kush was sprawled on the ground, Darsh looming over him. Manav hovered behind Darsh, evidently having followed him, but his gaze was uninterested and listless as always.

“Stay away from him,”

Darsh said coldly. His body was lit with trajection, a terrible intent in his threat, but Kush jumped back to his feet.

“He killed my mother.”

“You don’t know anything about it—”

“This has nothing to do with you—”

“Break it up, break it up,”

Naila barked.

“Both of you.”

She darted forward, putting herself between the two boys.

“Darsh, leave,”

Iravan said, finding his words. The boy shrugged and obeyed, his face expressionless, but he gave Kush a dispassionate glance, and a chill ran through Iravan. Darsh no longer was in the Deepness—his skin did not glow blue-green—but he had intended to attack Kush. The boy was prone to violence; Iravan had not forgotten how Darsh had been deeply interested when Iravan had trajected Viana unto her death. He’d have to keep a closer eye on him, but for now Iravan turned to Kush, who was brushing his clothes. Iravan extended a hand, but Kush gave him a dirty look and walked away too.

Iravan watched his nephew’s bent posture, and the fury in the lines of his body. What had life been like for the boy after Bharavi’s death? Tariya had clearly told him Iravan had killed his mother, but had she told him why? She had not moved, silently watching all this occurring. Carefully, Iravan approached her, sitting down next to her on the bench. Manav followed but remained standing. The excised architect’s eyes widened on seeing Arth, as though amazed to see a baby. Arth extended his chubby arms, reaching for Iravan, and Tariya allowed it. The baby—Bharavi’s baby—pulled at Iravan’s collar gurgling.

They sat in silence for a time. Iravan’s mind swirled with grief and confusion and heartache.

“I miss her,”

he choked out, finally.

“I miss her all the time.”

Tariya’s eyes filled with tears. He didn’t know what to do. Did he have any right to talk to her? Was he simply imposing his presence now, intimidating her with his power? He had become such a terrible monster, he could not tell anymore if he was welcome in any sincerity.

“I can leave you alone if you want,”

he began in a low voice, but Tariya shook her head, wiping her tears.

“What you did,”

she whispered.

“It was what she wanted. I know this.”

Her words were forgiving, but there was fury there, the same fury Ahilya had. Tariya was right—Bharavi had wanted to be killed. Death was a mercy that both she and Iravan had preferred over excision.

But he had betrayed Bharavi too—him and all his other lives. Behind his brows, he saw Nidhirv with Vishwam again, he saw Mohini and Askavetra and Agni with their families. If his past lives had not chosen their bonds, if they had found Ecstasy all that time ago, then perhaps they would have destroyed the Virohi long ago. Their capital desire would have manifested in a previous life, and Iravan would have remained unborn, and civilization—and life in the ashrams—would never have outlawed Ecstasy. Bharavi wouldn’t have needed to die to escape excision. Excision would never have been. The very fact that he lived now—Bharavi had died for it.

Anger curled his fingers into a tight fist. He smoothed it out, patting Arth on the back, trying to keep control of himself.

“He can traject,”

Tariya said, dully.

“He responded to the radarx, when we were still in the skies.”

Iravan contained his surprise. Not merely trajection—if Arth had responded to the radarx, he could supertraject. The baby was displaying Ecstatic energy. Perhaps like Reyla in the Garden, he had found the Deepness before the Moment, a pure Ecstatic who never needed to unlearn the limits of trajection.

Iravan tore his gaze back to Tariya.

“You and Arth and Kush,”

he said.

“You could come to the Garden. I could teach Arth. And I would take care of you—the way Bharavi would have wanted.”

“What Bharavi would have wanted,”

Tariya echoed, mirthlessly.

“You think this is what she would have done, if she were one of those Ecstatics like the ones in your Garden?”

“Bharavi would have been more powerful than anyone else,”

Iravan said, his throat raw.

“More powerful than me, her desire to change the world more potent than anything I could do. Tariya, she did amazing, powerful things that I could never do. If she were here, she would change everything about how we once lived. She would do more than I have.”

Bharavi had landed Nakshar in an earthrage to unite with her yaksha, long before he had ever known any of this was possible. He had never asked her why, or what creature it had been, but in his heart he knew it was the elephant-yaksha he and Ahilya had encountered in that terrible expedition into the jungle. Had Bharavi felt the same familiarity and fury from her split part that Iravan had once felt from the falcon? She had not gone outside in the jungle to meet it, or perhaps she had been biding her time. Perhaps she hadn’t known fully she was Ecstatically trajecting. The first few experiences are mystifying. Whatever she had endured in those early days, the Bharavi he’d confronted in the deathcage had made her choice. She had been clear about what she’d wanted. Iravan had to trust in that memory.

“I was with her in the end,”

he said.

“Bharavi wanted to recreate civilization. She wanted to raze it all to the ground and rebuild it because she knew how wrong everything was. She understood the lies that formed the foundation of our culture, even before I did.”

Tariya turned to him and swallowed.

“And would she have left me then, too? Left Arth and Kush? The way you have left Ahilya? The way you left us?”

Iravan recoiled as though slapped. He had thought to convince Tariya now of his own actions, as though seeking her forgiveness and absolution would relieve his conscience and count toward his making amends.

But her words were poison. He had never seen her like this; she had been reverent toward architects before, he’d expected her sympathy, her understanding. Had he misread her so badly all this time?

It was as if Tariya could see these thoughts on his face. She leaned forward and clutched his hand, her gaze suddenly fierce.

“You abandoned us, Iravan,”

she hissed, giving him clarity.

“Not just me and the boys and your wife. You abandoned every one of us to fend for ourselves. Do you know what I endured after the Moment shattered? How I couldn’t distinguish between nightmares and reality, watching Bharavi die over and over again, though I had begun to heal myself? Do you know I suffered in Nakshar during the Conclave, our living conditions so poor that I could barely hold together my broken family? And you have the audacity to ask me to come with you? The audacity to tell me you are doing what Bharavi intended? You are what caused this.”

Her grip was painful on Iravan’s wrist, nails digging into his skin. Kush was watching them sullenly from across the courtyard, and Iravan thought of the words Bharavi had said before he’d murdered her: I loved them, didn’t I? She had been searching for a way to balance her material bonds with Ecstasy. She had deliberately not gone out to the jungle to the yaksha because she had tried to choose Tariya. She had fought him, not wanting to die. What would her capital desire have been if she were alive? What would she have done if she was here by his side, arguing with him, mentoring him?

He remained speechless, shame, regret, and a profound loneliness throbbing in him. For an instant, the desire to destroy the Virohi wavered.

Because Tariya’s words were no manipulation of the council. Her words had no agenda. This was grief, pure and true, and it pierced him like a knife to the heart.

Iravan stood up, handing Arth back, his movements wooden.

Propelled by deep shame and chaos, he trajected, and the air around him twisted and lifted him and Manav up into flight. Darsh and Naila would follow in their own time. Perhaps it was dangerous to leave Darsh alone when he was clearly volatile. But Iravan needed to get away from Tariya now—from Kush and Arth, and the family they reminded him of. He needed to get away from this specter of his past.

Iravan fled back to the Garden, away from Tariya’s accusing eyes.

Dust swirled behind him in an echo of his cowardice.