Zahir stopped, and turned. The light of lanterns flickered over his face.
“Pray with me,” he said. And when one man began immediately, stumbling through an old mantra dedicated to the Maha, Zahir shook his head. “Not to me,” he said. “Pray to the terror in the dark. Pray for it to leave us be.”
The pilgrims hesitated.
“Trust me,” he said gently. And how could they not, when he looked at them with soft, steady eyes and his palms outstretched, as if he trustedthem, utterly and completely?
The pilgrims began to pray.
They were not all Ambhan. They were from Chand, from the east and the west, from Numriha’s mountains, from Hara’s fields of gold and green. They had different prayers. Their litanies and mantras and songs jumbled together in a great cacophony of noise. Arwa squeezed one of her hands tight, nails marking her palms with grooves, and used the other to grip Eshara’s hand.
Eshara gripped back.
Their prayers grew louder and more confident, tangling together in a great river of noise, a snarl of words that melded like magic. Arwa prayed with them, words pouring from her lips. Noise, noise, rising and rising, like a storm’s howl, like a cry against the void.
This was nothing like praying alone before the nightmare’s face of vicious bones. This felt intense and fierce andpowerful. They grew louder still, and Zahir stood before them all, and met her eyes once more. And stopped.
Their prayers faded away. There was silence.
The fear remained but it was… quiet. So very quiet. Arwa thought again, of a tide against the shore, of the way a river of voices could wear a nightmare’s bones smooth, given time.
“The nightmare cannot harm us any longer,” said Zahir. Quiet, hope like light in his face. He met Arwa’s eyes. “And I thank you.”
Arwa breathed once, and again, and once more after that.
The sun was rising on the horizon.
A week passed. Arwa had begun to recognize Zahir’s followers, to know their names, even as she marveled at the strangeness of the way they looked at and listened to Zahir. They looked at him with awe—read wisdom into his every act. In turn, he was more measured, and quieter than he’d ever been in the past.
She hadn’t realized how much he usually talked—about their studies and the world around them, drinking everything in—until he stopped, and focused instead on appearing quiet and aloof and appropriately beyond reach.
Only in the early mornings, before dawn’s light woke the camp, could Zahir act more like himself. Sometimes he and Eshara would sit and talk, as she whittled the points of her arrows, or cleaned her blade. But often he would look at Arwa, and she would get up, and the two of them would walk off into the gray light, stand very close, and not think about hunger.
One of the pilgrims had a snore that carried. The noise certainly helped to stop Arwa’s mind from straying.
“You’re still so quiet,” she said to him.
He shook his head.
“I’m worried about our retinue. Taking so many people into Irinah’s capital is going to draw attention. That’s unavoidable.” He paused, then said, quietly, “I’d hoped more would leave.”
“They won’t. Not now.”
“They have a way to protect themselves.”
“That you gave them,” Arwa pointed out, as they crossed scratchy undergrowth away from the camp. There were plants with sharp thorns on the ground, interspersed with brilliant orange flowers. She walked carefully between them. “They believe in you.”
“They believe in the Maha’s heir,” said Zahir. “Well. Their version of the Maha’s heir. Certainly not the one my father hoped for. I am just the body pinned to the tale.”
He stopped and bent down. He’d crushed a flower with his boot, and he plucked it now, smoothing the bruised petals with his thumb.
“It isn’t enough,” he said abruptly. “The prayers. The rite. The curse on the Empire is spreading sofast. We need the Maha’s ash. And yet…” He swallowed. “I still do not want to be his heir, in truth.”
Leaden weight in her stomach. Her heart a knot.
“I know,” she said.
She did not want to think of the Maha’s ash, of curses and consequences, any longer. The thought of what could happen to Zahir…
