“Lower your foot. There, good. You likely know little of the politics of people beyond your empire’s borders,” Ehsan said mildly as he urged Rao to follow him down a steep incline. “But among our tribes, land can be gained or lost in a generation. If you are not strong enough, cunning enough to keep it, then it will be taken by wiser and stronger leaders. That is why my tribe is so reduced. My father’s and grandfather’s failures haunt us, and I… have not been able to change our fortunes.” His voice tightened on those last words, restraining feeling. “Turn to your left. There is a wall there—stone. Hold it for balance.”
“Where have you brought me?” Rao asked.
“To the heart’s shell,” Kai Ehsan said, putting a hand on Rao’s shoulder, urging him forward. “My father could not sell this knowledge, nor could it be stolen from him. No one knew it had any worth to a prince of Alor.” Amusement in Ehsan’s voice. “The location of this mine was passed to me, from father to son. It is my inheritance.”
As they descended, Rao felt the air change, growing heavier. Even without his sight, Rao was sure they were under the earth, the weight of mountains above them. He desperately wanted to peel his blindfold off, but he resisted.
“Have you heard of the philosopher Sunata, Prince Rao?”
“Everything is the void,” Rao said promptly. Ehsan chuckled.
“As Sunata espoused—we believe in the void, the greatnothingness. And we believe that the void is home to innumerable gods.” Ehsan’s hand circled his arm again, drew him onto ground that crunched underfoot, rocky and uneven—then abruptly, suddenly, as smooth as rainwashed stone. “We know of your yaksa because my ancestors feared them once too. How could they not? But they prayed to the void, to any benevolent immortal listening in the dark, and received a warning from a kind god: All magic from the void has a terrible price. All magic can only touch the world for so long before it twists the world and itself into monstrous shapes. So one of my ancestors, a great kai, made a sacrifice. He meditated, and strengthened his mind and transformed his body by sheer will alone into weapons to hold the yaksa and all dark magics at bay.”
Rao felt a tug at the back of his skull. The blindfold was removed.
Disoriented, Rao blinked until his vision adjusted to the flare of the single torch held in Ehsan’s hand. The sight in front of him made his breath stop in his throat.
Ehsan’s forefathers might have lost their vineyards and orchards, but here lay a far more powerful crop. He could see no bodily remains of a long-dead ancestor, but he could see strange stones fused into the vast walls of the cavern around him. The stones were blooming like flowers of rock—fistlike, curled shapes by the dozens, each a fragile weft of black stone.
“Heart’s shell,” said Ehsan, holding it to the light of the torch in his left hand. In the glow of his left hand one of those dark, fragile stones gleamed a liquid black as deep as blood. “It was used by my people, in the Age of Flowers. It negates the strength of the yaksa, traps them, and reduces them. Take it.”
Rao took a piece of stone.
Heart’s shell. Empty. A hollow thing, light and strange in his hand. He gazed at it and felt no magic inside himself. No light, no voice from the void. He was entirely empty. Entirely human in a way he realized he had never been in his whole life.
There were no voices inside his skull but his own.
“What proof do I have that your stone acts as you say?” Rao asked. His voice shook faintly.
“None but what you feel now,” Ehsan said. “None, but that your god guided you here, and guided me to let you live. I prayed for help. I prayed to the void, hoping something benevolent within it would answer; perhaps it was your nameless god who heard me and brought us together.” Ehsan took a step closer. “I knew we were meant to meet,” Ehsan said, hushed. “When I saw your eyes, I knew. You were my answer. And now, ah—your eyes are lightless.” Humor in his voice, and awe. “You look like a mortal man, untouched by fate.”
Rao shook his head, wordless. The nameless had never filled his eyes with light before Aditya’s death. No priest of the nameless had ever spoken of that power. The nameless’s power lay in prophecy—in names and messages that steered the heart.
It was Aditya that Rao thought of when he thought of light. Aditya and fire.
On the heels of that thought came a suspicion, a fear—what if it was not the nameless who spoke to him at all, but something else—a being of fire, of light, a being wearing Aditya’s voice?
“I… do not know,” Rao said, his voice a little raw. “Perhaps two gods work through me, or even a dozen.”
Ehsan’s mouth quirked into a smile. He thought Rao was jesting with him.
“Perhaps all the gods of the void share one cause,” Ehsan agreed. “Perhaps they seek to help us, or perhaps they seek to use us. But all that matters to me is whether you will help me, Prince Rao, in return for a supply of heart’s shell to fight your yaksa.”
“How can I help you?”
“I am tired of war, and tired of running,” Ehsan replied. “My people need peace. In return for a supply of heart’s shell, I want land for my people. I demand a place for us in the empire. A home we may keep for generations.”
“You ask a high price,” Rao said evenly, “for something we need to survive.”
“I am asking for a chance to survive in return for giving your empire the same chance,” said Ehsan. The light of his lantern painted whip marks of gold across his face. “We both know that well. And you may refuse me, of course. But I promise you, Prince Rao, you will never find the heart’s shell again. Even my own sisters do not know the way to this mine. That knowledge is passed from father to son, and only I possess it. I would die to keep it in my hands, and my hands alone. But give me what I ask for, and your empress shall have all the heart’s shell she desires. So, Prince Rao. Will you bargain on your empress’s behalf?”
Whether the nameless had brought him here, or another being in the void Sunata had once written of, there was only one answer Rao could give. He had come here to save Parijatdvipa, and to stop Malini from burning.
He carefully curled his fingers around the heart’s shell in his palm.
He would not return to Malini empty-handed.
“I can,” Rao said steadily. “Let us return to your camp, Kai Ehsan, and discuss terms. I’ll put the blindfold on myself.”
