She turned to who’d drunk the waters—Ruchi—and said, “Go and find them. Tie them up.” She swallowed, battling with herself. “Somewhere they’ll be found eventually.”
Ruchi nodded sharply, then raced after them, light on her feet. Next to Priya, Ganam murmured, “Good.”
“Sometimes,” Priya said, “I like to pretend I’m still a good person.” Then she started striding forward again.
Obediently, her people followed her.
Shewas following a thread. A fine root, wending its way through Srugna’s soil. She could feel the yaksa waking, a restless thing.
It was dreaming, somewhere. Waiting to be reborn. It was Priya’s job to find them.
The trees around them grew larger. Thicker and taller, with roots that snarled the ground in knots of latticework. Priya stepped over them lightly; the roots moved around her, an awakening, a shudder of motion that greeted her like an old beast rising from sleep.
“These are ancient trees,” Ganam observed. “Older even than the Age of Flowers. That’s my bet.”
“We’d have to cut one open to know for sure,” Priya replied. “Count the rings inside them.” Then she stopped and raised a hand to her lips. The mask-keepers went quiet.
She could hear the wind. A high, keening whistle.
It sounded like the wind upon the Hirana.
“Ganam, with me,” she said. “The rest of you—create a perimeter. If anyone comes, yell for us.”
Murmurs of understanding. Her people fanned out. And she and Ganam walked through the cover of trees out into an open clearing.
It was vast. A stretch of land baked brown by the sun. But it was far from empty. On its surface stood vast pillars, so high that she had to crane her neck to view the full length of them. The noise she’d heard was the wind moving between them. On the ground, it was oddly cold, and Priya felt small and insignificant, overawed.
“This was a special place once,” she said to Ganam as he came to stand beside her. “I’m sure of it.”
She walked forward and kneeled at the base of one pillar. She pressed a hand to it.
She’d thought from a distance that they were stone. But the pillar before her was fossilized wood. Inside it would be too many rings to count, preserved in amber, but she did not need to see inside them to know that once yaksa had walked here, and in thetime since the Age of Flowers, the Srugani had deliberately chosen to forget.
“They’ve allowed nothing to grow here,” said Ganam, when she told him so. “You can see signs.” He pointed at the ground—at a place scarred and tilled. “They’ve burned the soil. Over and over.”
“Then they remember,” Priya said. She pressed a hand deep into the soil. Beneath it, she felt that familiar thrum. An awakening thing.
“There’s something I must do,” she said. “To make this new yaksa welcome. Ganam, will you check on the others?”
“They’ll be fine.”
“I’m not convinced. The Srugani have to know about this place. Would they really leave it unprotected?”
He frowned. Then he said, “Maybe you shouldn’t do this now, then.”
A laugh cracked out of her. “What do you think the yaksa will do if I don’t? I do this now, or it doesn’t get done.”
“Then I’ll stay and protect you.”
She shook her head impatiently.
“Do I look like I need coddling? Go.”
He rolled his eyes and walked away.
And Priya closed her eyes. Breathed. Reached for her power.
Calling the rot was a rush of strangeness through her. The green in her blood and skin coiled and withered and flourished in recognition, cycling through its lifespan as the smell of iron and blood seeped from her hand, as the ground softened and changed, thickening like flesh. As rot worked its way through the soil.
