“No,” she bit out. She looked around for an escape. But Malini, clever Malini, had her trapped already.
“You made this so simple,” Malini said. “I thought you would try harder.”
The soldiers drew in closer.
Priya hadn’t felt their approach. The stone they carried—the stone around her throat—had concealed them from her magic. Just like it had concealed Malini. She tried to jerk away, but Malini’s hand did not relent—and her other hand was rising, holding a blade by the hilt.
Holding the blade to Priya’s throat.
“I know you don’t need your gifts to fight,” Malini whispered. “Move, and I cut. So, my love. Will you come with me?”
The only answer was yes.
BHUMIKA
The villagers were not invited into the monastery until morning, which left them to a night of worry and speculation. They sat in groups in the grain store and waited for dawn and for judgment.
Manjeet took the wait stoically, but Bidisha was furious. She said nothing to Bhumika, but her glare was ferocious, and her whispers to the other women weren’t subtle. She blamed Bhumika for their plight. Bhumika had encouraged them to break village taboos; Bhumika had brought herself and her Ahiranyi blood to their village, and what had followed in her wake? Strange paths, and rot, and displacement from their home. Nothing but wreckage and grief.
Bhumika knew breaking taboos had not brought the village to ruin, but she still wondered if Bidisha was correct for blaming her for their ill fortune. Perhaps Bhumika’s presence alone had been enough. She held her silence through the night, Jeevan’s body a warm and solid comfort at her side.
When Prince Rao arrived once more, guards from the monastery behind him, the villagers scrambled to their feet. Their fear was palpable.
The priest Ishan stepped forward, holding his hands up in a placating manner.
“Come with us,” Ishan urged. “I promise no harm will come to you.”
After a brief hesitation, the villagers gathered their courage and followed him.
Beyond the grain stores, the forest had grown even more rot-riven. Bhumika could smell the faint stench of meat. The distant trees, hazy in the light, were mottled like cold flesh.
There was a thunderous crack of noise. The trees bent and swayed above them, although there was no wind to move them. The ground shook.
Bhumika’s knees buckled. She caught herself just in time, finding her balance even as her vision swayed violently.
She felt the yaksa under the earth, waking, its eyes of sap peeling open, its mouth open on a rattling scream. And she felt something else. Something had touched her for a moment—a dizzying image of a younger woman with pin-straight hair and a crooked smile turning to her, and a yaksa with a mouth of thorns, and then abruptly nothing. It was as if a great presence had brushed against both her and the newborn yaksa, then vanished.
“She was close,” a watcher whispered. A girl, water dripping from the long braid of her hair. Yearning in her voice.
“Who?” Bhumika asked. She did not think her ghost spoke of the yaksa. Jeevan looked at her sharply.
The watcher shook her head, then faded into morning mist.
Bhumika took a fortifying breath and straightened up. “The yaksa,” she said to him. “We have no more time. It wakes.”
The ground shook again. Prince Rao took an abrupt step toward her.
“Can you stop this?” he demanded. “As an Elder—”
“She does not remember herself,” Jeevan said sharply, cutting through Prince Rao’s words. “My lady can give you the knowledge of how to kill the yaksa, but beyond that she owes you nothing.”
“I made a sacrifice of myself for this knowledge,” Bhumika said. Her vision was beginning to settle, nausea in its wake. “Any power I had, I no longer have. You seem angry at me, Prince Rao. I am sorry for it. But any debts I owe you, I cannot pay.” She held her palms open. “In many ways, what you see before you is a ghost.”
He looked stricken for a moment. Then the look passed, settling into something far more determined and focused, and devoid of softness.
“Move quickly,” he barked. “All of you.”
Quicklywas difficult, with elderly and small children in their group. But they soon shuffled up the stairs of the monastery and into its gray-stoned corridors. Flickering torchlight guided them to a doorway. An older priest was waiting.
