Ramashi sat up straighter, his eyes wide. “Pashim is back?”
I nodded. “Yes, he is.”
“Trust him to cheat death.” He looked over at his mother, Bhartina. “I guess the stories you told me about Aunt Waleena were true.”
“Of course they’re true,” Bhartina said with a good-natured frown. “Your aunt was a formidable warrior and stubborn to boot.”
Waleena…Pashim’s mother. Had she lived here? Had he ever met her? Had he ever been stationed here? “Where is she now?”
“I do not know. She was amongst the warriors protecting the djinn in their pilgrimage to the new lands.”
“The new lands?”
“Far across the oceans. A promised land. The Asura gifted it to us as part of the pact to provide drohi for their war against the devouring force.”
“But you stayed here?”
Bhartina smiled. “I do not possess my sister’s adventurous spirit, and I had Ramashi to care for, but she…”
“She gave her child to the Asura.”
Bhatina nodded slowly. “Yes. She was chosen to bear a drohi, and she did her duty, but giving up her child broke something in her.”
“She never met him when he was grown, did she?”
Bhartina shook her head, her eyes filled with memories. “Waleena carries the warrior spirit of our father Thomelin. He died in the before wars. The ones shrouded in the confusion of old history. There have been many.” She sighed. “But enough about the past. Tell me what is happening now.”
I filed away what she’d told me about Waleena and continued recounting what had happened. How the settlement we’d traveled to in hopes of finding a portway had simply vanished. I told them everything, and they listened without interruption. When I finished, the only sound was the howl and whine of the wind and the hammering of shards of ice and pellets of water on the roof.
“The djinn from the camp should have arrived here days ago,” C’ael said softly. “The fact that they didn’t…”
“You believe they were eliminated by the primordial force,” Ramashi said. “Maybe unmade like the settlement?”
Unmade…yes, that’s what it had looked like. “I believe so.” It hurt to say it. To think it. My friends…all those people. I exhaled. “I have to stop him.”
“You have a plan?”
“I did. The obelisk in the Shahee Kshetra can call back the Deva. I wanted to activate it, get them to come back and stop the primordial evil. The plan was to gather allies and find a way into Aakash Sansaar. Maybe by activating one of the portways that lead to the sky domains. But the evil bastard is unmaking all the settlements, which means the portways are being destroyed. Pashim, Ravi, and Kalani are working on the allies issue, but Araz called us here.”
Jasha stepped forward. “How? You said he was under the evil’s control.”
I looked to C’ael. “C’ael is connected to Araz. They spoke in a dream. Araz told him to come here. To the flame in the temple. We need to go there now.”
“The Iblees flame,” Ramashi said, his voice low with reverence. “Araz is Iblees…”
Silence fell as this revelation fully settled.
Bhartina was the first to break it. “You can’t make the trip up the mountain in this storm. It’s much too dangerous.”
“This is no ordinary storm, Leela,” Ramashi added. “It’s seasonal. It will rage and ebb and rage again for many weeks. We’ve learned that even we, the water and air djinn, cannot tame it.”
“We can’t wait a week,” C’ael said. “We’re running out of time as it is.” His brows came together in a frown, and I could almost see the cogs in his brain turning.
“What are you thinking, C’ael?”
He pressed his lips together and exhaled through his nose. “I can’t transport you there, but Icanshield us to some extent on the journey.”
Of course, he could teleport up the mountain if he wanted. It was gettingmeup there that was the issue. “No shielding. The last time you did that, I lost you for days. We’ve got to do this the old-fashioned way.”
