A flash of an image lanced through his mind: a mortal body. Tendrils of blue and green fading into blood red, grasping its throat, its wrist. Its mind and heart. Bhumika’s fingertips against paper, tracing words that blurred like smeared ink in his mind’s eye.
The memory ran into him like water into well—it drifted into all that he was, consumed, as much part of him as everything else that lay within him.
Roots, he thought, in a voice that wasn’t his own. Old. A creaking, lightning-struck wood of a void.We’re all bound together. We fed the world and the people those waters, and now they carry us within them. And just as we consume them, they may drink in return—
There was something. Something on the edge of his memory and his consciousness. Something so large it threatened to obliterate his fragile self. He…
A rustle in the leaves behind him.
He turned.
Nandi stood there. He looked as serene as ever, the moonlight glancing strangely off his eyes, the rows of teeth in his mouth when he parted his lips. “I found someone watching you,” he said. And shoved someone forward.
The boy gave a yelp as he fell. He was maybe ten, eleven years. If Nandi had been mortal, he would never have been able to hold him. The boy was all limbs, with rot bristling on him. He rose swiftly to his feet but did not attempt to run. Wise of him. Ashok would have stopped him, and he would not have made it pleasant.
“I’m sorry for disturbing you,” the boy said stiffly.
“You’re not as afraid of me as you used to be,” Ashok observed, dusting the dirt from his own tunic. “And not as full of admiration, either.”
The boy watched him with guarded, wary eyes.
“You remember me,” the boy said.
“I do, Rukh,” Ashok said pleasantly, baring his teeth in a smile. He leaned back against the tree. “You’ve been a fool, boy. As you always are.”
“I…” The boy’s voice faltered. “I did not think you thought of me enough to—to think me a fool.”
“I have the measure of you. It didn’t take long in my first life, and hasn’t in this one either. You’re the same.” He gave Rukh a sidelong look. “The yaksa know you’ve been watching them. You’re a good spy. But not good enough.”
“Everyone watches them,” the boy said thinly. “We’re… we’re admiring them. Worshipping.”
“How did I send you to spy on my sister when you’re so bad at lying?” Ashok marveled. He took a step closer. The rot on the boy felt strange. The rot…
“My sister froze it in you, didn’t she? Choked it to stillness.”
Rukh didn’t move. Didn’t even seem to breathe, as he watched Ashok, who watched him in return.
“How was it done?” The boy was silent. How had he forced words from throats, before his death? “Tell me or I’ll do something,” said Ashok. “Break your arm, maybe.”
Apparently that was a realistic threat, because Rukh said, “I don’t know how she did it. However the yaksa do it, I suppose.”
Ashok held out a hand. Palm up, fingers slightly curled. Beckoning.
“Come here,” he said. “I want to feel it for myself.”
Ashok had always known how to scent fear—how to use it to coax loyalty or obedience or cowering surrender from an enemy. He’d made plenty of grown men snivel and beg before ending their lives. And this one was only a boy—guarded and stiff, staring somewhere over his shoulder. He could be manipulated.
He wouldn’t run.
“I wish you could see the way the roots grow from you,” Ashok murmured. He took a step forward. “Boy. Give me your hand.”
Rukh didn’t move, so Ashok reached out.
He took Rukh’s rigid, unwilling hand into his own. Turned the palm over and then back, then raised the entire limb up to the light.
He felt the magic winding through the boy’s body. Yaksa magic.
“I could rip this from you,” he said. “I could set you free. But our magic is bound up in you, and I don’t know what would be left behind.”
