“Subodh lived a long life, child. He was ready to die, whether you like it or not. If not today, then he would have died by the end of this month after transferring so much of his living energy to the peri.”
I want to insist that she’s lying. That Subodh could have survived. But even as the argument rises in my head, I realize how wrong it sounds.
“Remember,” the goddess says. “You must be a leader when all hope is lost. Subodh gave you hope, Gul. If you lose confidence in yourself, your Legion will, too. Use the powers you’ve been given to save them. You have enough within you—both of you—for that.”
Both of you.
“Cavas,” I whisper. “I need to find Cavas.”
The sky goddess smiles. “I wish you luck, my daughter.”
It’s the last thing I hear before the goddess disappears and I’m plunged again into chaos.
A cold hand grips me by the arm. I react on instinct but only slice through air instead of flesh.
“It’s me, girl.” Latif’s voice registers as I realize no one is standing next to me. “I’ve made you invisible for now. You need to get out of here. All of you do. It’s too dangerous to fight in these conditions!”
“No!” I say. “If we retreat now, they will chase us outside, killing our other troops as well!” I may not be a seasoned soldier, but this much is obvious to me. “I need to find Cavas!”
I won’t be able to fight this army on my own. But with Cavas’s powers, we may be able to buy everyone more time.
“Send a message to Raja Amar that we need reinforcements,” I tell Latif. “On no account must Amar enter the fight himself. You will stop him if he tries.”
“But, Gul—”
“Hurry!” I snap.
I’m not sure if he listens to me. But I can’t waste any more time. I sneak away from the fighting, into an empty alley, where I close my eyes and go inward, deeper and deeper into the recesses of my mind, until I find myself in the quiet sanctuary of a shadowy temple.
“Cavas!” I call out. “Cavas, where are you?”
I’m almost sure I can see his features begin to take shape, when my skull vibrates, pain blurring my eyes. Overhead, a man wearing black removes the mask from his face. His features swim into one another, white teeth flashing what might be a smile. I’m supposed to do something. To move. To fight. To push off the foot crushing my ribs, pinning me to the ground. But the mercenary’s blade glows red and a hundred knives are now sinking into my skin, drawing screams that turn my throat raw.
My right arm pulses with heat, the magic within slowing. Fading.
Then, the shadowy figure spews a curse in the Common Tongue—something about living specters and killing the dead again if he could.
The world around me glows brilliantly blue. And then it turns black.
47
CAVAS
Cavas, where are you?
Gul’s voice makes me spin in the dark, nearly crashing into the person walking behind me—Juhi, whose shield sends a shock up my arms.
“By the goddess!” she says. “Do you want me to kill you by accident?”
“It’s Gul. She’s in trouble.” Panic festers like a wound in my gut. “She also feels … close. The last time I heard her voice so clearly, we were in Tavan, battling Sky Warriors.”
Juhi says something under her breath and waves a hand, instructing me to step back. As I do, an orange shield erupts from her talwar, cutting through the dark of this strange solar eclipse in a way lightorbs and lanterns do not. A shield spell was the first bit of magic Juhi performed when the sky fell dark, explaining how soldiers from Samudra also used a magical eclipse to try to win against Ambar during the Three-Year War. “A big mistake,” Juhi told us, without elaborating further.
Now, she frowns at me in the light of the shield, ignoring the questions rising from the army behind her. In the dim light, I see a few specters floating overhead, my mother among them, watching me with bemused looks on their faces.
“I need to meditate,” I say.
“Here? Now?” Juhi demands.
“Gul and I have trained together before and also communicated over long distances. If I meditate, I know I’ll find her,” I insist.
“Juhi Didi, maybe you should let him try,” Amira says, her dark eyes meeting mine.
“Very well,” Juhi says after a pause. “Go on, Cavas. Meditate.”
I close my eyes and begin breathing the way Subodh taught me. In and out, slow and deep. Slower and slower, Sant Javer flickering in the corners of my mind. This time, however, instead of the saint, I hear another voice speak, a woman:
“Open your eyes, child.”
I hesitate. Each time I’ve ever attempted opening my eyes during meditation, I’ve lost concentration, eventually losing the thread that always connects me to Gul.
“It won’t happen,” the voice says, her words reassuring. “I won’t let it.”
I open my eyes, and instead of the darkened temple in Tavan, I find myself somewhere on the main thoroughfare in Ambarvadi, darkened havelis casting long, rectangular shadows across its surface.
“What’s happening?” I hear someone ask. Amira. “What’s that glow around him?”
“Where are you?” I ask the voice, forcing myself to ignore the murmurs that break out behind me. “Are you nearby?”
“I’m always close, yet never close enough, Xerxes-putra Cavas. Today, however, by calling on this eclipse, your world’s magic has strangely shifted in my favor.”
As she speaks, a form takes shape: a woman dressed in a sari the color of newly minted swarnas, her long black braid wrapped like a rope around her full hips. Silvery birthmarks patch over the luminous brown skin of her face and arms, the nebulous designs shifting with every movement like shadow and light. Though my heart belongs to Gul, it skips a beat now, heat flushing my cheeks. Aware of the effect she has on me, the woman smiles kindly, her quicksilver eyes gleaming.
“Follow me,” she says. “You will never get lost.”
Follow Sunheri and you will never get lost.
Papa’s words echo in my head, and the question tumbles to the tip of my tongue.
“Are you—”
“Hurry, child. I feel her slipping away.”
Without waiting for a response, the woman—the moon goddess, Sunheri—turns and begins gliding down the road.
“Follow me!” I call out to the others. “I think they’re this way.”
“Follow you where?” a man shouts from behind. “What exactly are we following? What’s that light—” Smack. “Ayye! What was that for?”
“You can play detective, later, Faramroz Bhai!” I hear Amira snap. “There’s magic at play here and it’s dangerous.”
She’s right, of course. Despite the earthly manifestation of the moon goddess guiding us, I feel the air’s malevolence, see spirits that I’ve come across only in my dreams. A snarling mass of light and shadow comes at us from the side, only to be stopped by Roda, who leaps into the air and kicks it to the curb, where it whimpers like a wounded dog.
“Unfulfilled desires are nasty things,” the specter says, nodding grimly. “Don’t worry. We’ll protect you.”
The specters do protect us, forming a barrier against the spirits as the goddess in gold leads us farther south, to where the battle is taking place. It’s hard to not cringe on spotting a dead body or to avoid stepping on the blood-soaked ground.
“Not far now,” Sunheri says, her silver eyes bright. Her skin, already luminous, begins to emit a strange glow—one that hurts my eyes if I look at it too long. She seems oblivious to the screams surrounding us, the corpses on the ground, or the circle of laughing men surrounding three women struggling to hold them off.
“Kali!” Amira shouts. “I’m going!” She streaks off, Roda following her close behind.
“You go and find Gul,” Juhi tells me. Her eyes narrow, evaluating the scene before us. “We’ll deal with the mercenaries. Soldiers, are you ready to dance?”
“Charge!” Juhi cries out.
A specter detaches from the throng—my mother—following me and Sunheri away from the battle, to a side alley, where a body lies prone on the ground.
“Gul!” I shout, rushing to her side. Gul, bloodied and bruised, the skin on her arms and forehead clammy in a way that fills me with dread.
“She’s still alive, child,” another voice says. “The mercenary leader caught her by surprise and attempted to drain her magic. Luckily the specter Latif managed to distract the man and draw him back to the battlefield.”
I look up, noticing for the first time that Gul isn’t alone. A young woman sits next to her, wearing a sari the color of sapphires. She bears the same kind of birthmarks as Sunheri does, only her skin isn’t brown, but the color of midnight, and she emits a radiant blue glow.
The moon goddess, Neel, I think. It has to be.
Unlike Sunheri, whose eyes are like liquid silver, Neel’s eyes are the purest gold—so bright that it’s difficult to look in them for too long. She gives me a gentle smile. “You recognize us.”
“He does,” Sunheri says. She places a hand on Neel’s shoulder, instantly looking brighter, more beautiful than before. “Go on, child. Reach out to her.”
“How? I don’t…” I feel my voice break. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Take her hand,” Neel tells me. “Let your heart guide you. Don’t worry. You are under our protection right now. No one will be able to see or hurt you in this moment.”
I clasp Gul’s cold hand in mine, focusing on everything I remember about her—from our first meeting and kiss to the numerous times we argued and fought, the first time she made us both invisible to our sleepless, love-filled nights in Tavan. A web of silver light materializes before me, and at its center a beating golden heart.
I’m here, I tell Gul. Let me in.
Her heartbeats quicken, grow stronger, louder, syncing with my own. Blood rushes through my veins, hard and fast, with the force of a river during a storm. The magic throws me off balance and I wake to find myself lying on the ground, my mother’s cold hands patting my hot cheeks.
“G-Gul,” I stutter. “Is she…”
“She will wake soon,” a gentle voice says. Sunheri. “You did well, child.”
The two moon goddesses give me nearly identical smiles.
“I … I don’t know how I can thank you.”
“There is no need,” Neel says. “In fact, we should thank you, Cavas. You and Gul. You see, earlier this year, during the moon festival in Ambarvadi, Sunheri and I took a chance. We saw a magus girl and a half magus boy kissing at the bazaar, and we decided unanimously to gift them with the power of being complements. We did not know if our magic would take hold. The gods may meddle as much as they wish when the world is in disarray—our godmother, the sky goddess, certainly does! But human will is equally, if not more, powerful. If either you or Gul chose to abandon the other, the magic we gifted you would have eventually withered, unused. It is our—and Ambar’s—good fortune that you both chose to protect each other time and time again. And that makes your magic as complements more powerful.”
Her gold eyes look into my stunned ones and, within them, I see other planets, other moons, other blue and gold complements, spinning so quick that they make me dizzy.
“We must go now,” Sunheri says. “When we disappear, the eclipse will end and so will our protection. Do not look at the sun. Save yourselves from its wrath or you will be blinded.”
Overhead, sunlight presses against black clouds, marbling them with gold. Neel takes Sunheri’s hand, and they slowly disappear in the presence of the sun’s growing yellow light.
Ma and I help Gul sit up, wait for her eyes to flicker open. They grow wide on taking me in. “C-Cavas? You’re h-here?”
“I’m here,” I whisper reassuringly. “No, stop—don’t look directly at the sun! It will blind you otherwise.”
She nods. To my surprise, a tear rolls down her cheek.
“Hey.” I gently take her face in my hands and wipe away the tear with a thumb. “It’s okay. I’m here now.”
“Subodh is dead,” she says, her voice raw. “The leader of the mercenaries killed him in battle.”
I swear loudly, the bleak statement hitting me harder than I expect it to. “He … Raja Subodh was so strong.”
“Even the strong can die,” Ma says in her gentle voice. “Death does not discriminate in that way. Only luck does.”
“Must be,” Gul murmurs. Her eyes are still wet, but no tears spill forth. “Luck is the only reason I survived so far.”
“Luck, Latif, and the moon goddesses,” I say.
“What?” As expected, this captures her attention, drying her eyes completely.
Good, I think. She needs to be strong right now.
“No time to explain in detail, but Sunheri led me to you while Neel kept watch. It’s a complement thing.”
She stares at me for a moment. Then, without warning, her lips are on mine, her fingers woven tight through my hair. I hold on to her as fiercely, knowing—no, sensing, through the strange, spectacular bond we share—that this kiss is different. There is no flirtation here, no lust. Only a brief respite from the perpetual grief and trepidation that haunts us—that will continue to haunt us when we go back.
When we part, Gul’s eyes blaze into mine. In case I don’t see you again, I hear her think, the unspoken words ringing clear in my head.
“Come, you two,” Ma says. “Gul, are your daggers still on you? Good. We must warn everyone not to look directly at the sun.”
Gazes shielded by our hands, we cautiously make our way out of the alley and toward the main square, where a battle is still raging. An army wearing the colors of sand fights with men in red turbans and armor the color of midnight—Faramroz Bhai’s merchant army—mixed in with non-magi and small groups of women and men wearing pale-blue tunics and trousers—Legion warriors.
“Who are they?” I whisper. “Those men in brown?”
“Mercenaries,” Gul replies, looking around for someone. “They’re being led by—oh goddess!”
A giant shadow plunges from the skies—a bird, no a peri, I realize, shocked. A fully grown peri with giant wings, grabbing hold of a mercenary and rising with him in the air, silencing his screams.
Wails rise from around us, the mercenaries making wild slashes at the air, clawing at their eyes. Already, I can tell from the way our side is moving that my mother’s message about the sun has reached them—their gazes remain lowered, their spears aiming for torsos and feet rather than hearts. The only thing that draws our attention again is a fight at the doorstep to the temple.
Amira with her atashban, fighting a man dressed completely in black, unlike the other mercenaries, a man who moves like no other.
“That’s him!” Gul says. “The mercenary leader!”
“Wait!” I grab hold of her arm, holding her back. “He’s fighting Amira, remember?”
“That’s Amira? Goddess, what have they…” Gul’s voice trails off and for the first time I find myself seeing Amira the way Gul must see her—the too-sharp cheekbones, the shorn head, the still-healing burns on her bronze skin. Gul’s gaze flickers over to the atashban burn on my forehead, her mouth hardening.
“Well,” she says finally. “If anyone can beat that meditating bastard at his own game, it’s Amira.”
And it is. Only moments into the fight, I see that the mercenary leader is tiring. Amira leaps into the air, her atashban aimed right at his heart. Red light cracks through his burgeoning shield, the force of Amira’s death magic throwing him several feet away, near a group of his own blinded soldiers.
His death has barely registered when a body falls from the sky, right on top of a dead mercenary. It’s a peri with long black hair, lashes still fluttering over gold eyes.
“Peri Arma
iti!” Gul cries out, rushing to her.
The peri’s mouth gurgles black with blood. Instead of speaking, she grips hold of Gul’s arm, her gold eyes turning startlingly white. Gul’s face freezes, her eyes taking on a similar glow.
Then, with a final shudder, the peri closes her eyes, collapsing to death.
Gul quietly withdraws her hand, gently turning Armaiti’s palm so that it faces the sky instead of the earth.
“What is it?” I ask urgently.
“She whispered to me that more troops are on the way.” Gul licks her chapped lips. “Over a hundred—perhaps two hundred—Ambari infantry led by twenty or more Sky Warriors. Behind them, two elephants are pulling maha-atashbans to shoot down the peri from the sky. The peri can withstand the blinding magic of the eclipse, but the giant atashbans will kill them.”
As she speaks, fresh war horns sound in the distance. Boots trample the paved ground, the sound akin to a thunderstorm brought to earth.
The Legion, spent from an entire morning of fighting mercenaries, look at us in despair. A pair of makara approach Armaiti’s dead form, making sounds that crawl under my skin. Ducking balls of red fire, the remaining peri swoop down to earth, hunching their shoulders, their faces clearly terrified.
“Get ready to die, princess,” someone behind us says. It’s Amira, her dark eyes bleaker than I’ve ever seen them. “There’s no hope for us now.”
48
GUL
There’s no hope for us now.
My bones are aching. My face and body burn with wounds. But what comes out of my mouth in response to Amira’s pronouncement is pure habit, a retort based on years of trading insults and arguments with her:
“There is always hope, Amira.”
The words fill my heart, envelop me in a warmth that only my parents once brought. I think of my father and his rumbling laugh, the press of his bearded cheek to mine. I remember my mother holding me in her arms when I cried, telling me everything would be all right. As bleak as everything appears at the moment, my instincts tell me that we haven’t yet lost this battle.
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