A reddish haze swirled around me, streaming acrid smoke—my magic had burst free with a primal vengeance. Streaming from me was fire, dark as the funeral pyres upon which we burned our dead, sacrificed our pride, purged our sins—
The soldiers were tripping over themselves in their haste to retreat. I lashed forward and they cowered, but I had no mercy for those who had killed my father—
“Run!” I screamed at Nina, but it was the soldiers who obeyed my command. Carrying their wounded prince, some scrabbling backwards on their knees, they rushed around the corner and out of sight. Nina reached hesitantly for my hand.
At her touch, the flames melted back into my skin, and the world blinked back into focus. Suddenly, I was overcome by a terrible rush of fatigue—my knees buckled, and she caught me just before I hit the ground.
The soldiers were regrouping, but I could not focus on that, not as spots of sun flickered before my eyes, causing Nina’s face to shine and warp.
“Reya—Reya, come on, please get up, they’re coming back!”
I struggled to focus on Nina’s face. “Go,” I muttered. “Too tired … just leave me here … ”
She hefted me up into her arms, and next thing I knew, Nina was sitting on top of Sharati’s horse, and I was flung across the back, holding onto her shoulders like a child.
“Come on, move, horse—” Nina’s voice was desperate as she tugged the reins. With an almighty lurch, the horse began a full charge forward into the blinding light.
Right before we hit the Jungle, I caught a glimpse of the soldiers in the alley, their spears glinting like a thousand tiny suns. My gaze landed squarely on Devendra’s cold purple eyes. In spite of everything, I winked at him before I passed out.
CHAPTER FOUR
The first thing I was aware of was the rain, pelting the earth with silver needles.
I opened my eyes and saw the dappled silhouettes of leaves, framing a stormy sky. For a moment, I thought I had fallen from my mango tree, and the rain was pouring overhead once more—
As the fog cleared, I realized that I was in a jungle, sheltered from the rain by the snarled branches of a banyan tree. To my right, I caught a glimpse of long black hair.
“Nina?”
She was at my side immediately. “How are you feeling?” Nina said gently.
I flexed my fingers experimentally, making sure they still worked. “I’m not dead,” I managed.
Nina looked torn between laughing and yelling at me. Without warning, she crushed me with a hug.
“What was that for?” I said, rubbing my sore arms.
“You scared the hell out of me,” she said. “I checked your pulse. Your heart nearly stopped a few times.”
Our eyes met, and spite of everything, I laughed. She bit her lip, but then she smiled too. Because somehow, in that rainy jungle, we were both alive and together. For the moment, that was enough.
“I’ll try not to do that again,” I said. “But what happened to Devendra? Where are we?”
Nina frowned. “I don’t know. The Mage’s horse carried us out of the Raj and we were riding for hours into the Endless Jungle.”
I blinked. “Wait. We have a horse?”
Nina sighed. “It ran away—I have no idea. But Reya, how did you do that? I thought Devendra and his witch had caught us, but somehow you conjured fire to fight him off. I thought that Mages were extinct!”
It felt as though the ground had opened up beneath me, yawning like oblivion. I had somehow conjured fire and burned the soldiers. I had used illegal magic.
“I—I’m not a Mage. I’ve never even met one before. I don’t know how I did that. All I know is that they were hurting you, and …”
I trailed off at the sight of Nina’s face. She was staring me with an expression I could not place, and I instinctively felt embarrassed. Did she think I was crazy? Was the look on her face fear, shock, disgust … or was it awe?
“Well, whatever that was, it worked,” she said at last. “I can’t believe it. You’re Reya Kandhari. You’re the Bookweaver.”
I wished she hadn’t said that. After seven years in hiding, the sound of my name filled me with terror. It felt like all of my secrets had come undone, and everything I’d ever known was finally crashing down.
“Let’s get out of here first,” I said. “We need to find somewhere safe to spend the night.”
Nina nodded. “You’re right. Soldiers will be searching for us soon, if not already, and we’re only a few hours’ ride from the Raj.”
We picked ourselves up and began to walk. “Where will we go?” Nina asked.
I looked up into the rippling afternoon sky. “As far as we can make it,” I said. “We’ll find somewhere to set up camp around sunset.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Nina. “Where are we running to? We can’t hide in the Endless Jungle forever. Eventually, we’ll need to find a new home.”
She was right, of course. But the thought of my own future, vast and uncharted before me, was terrifying. It felt like peering over a cliff and seeing the dark nothingness below. It wasn’t the height of the fall that scared me: it was the fear that there was nothing below to keep me anchored.
Then I remembered what I hadn’t before.
“I have my father’s book of Kasmiri mythology!” I said. “It’s bound to have a map in it.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the book; Nina gasped when she saw it. Its gilded cover seemed to glimmer against the dark and earthy jungle.
I flipped through the pages until I found what I was looking for: the hand-painted map of Kasmira that spanned two pages. Landmarks sprang out at me—the Raj, cocooned within the Endless Forest. The city of Bharata beneath the Aharya mountains. Tahore, ensnarled by the sea. Varasi, pushing against the border with Indira.
Along the border was an inscription.
The ancient land of Kasmira is hewn from rugged jungles and mountains, bejeweled with historic cities. Its neighboring nation, Indira, has been at war with Kasmira since the beginning of the Zakir dynasty. Minor skirmishes constantly shift the border a mile east one day, two miles west the next. The border is a haven for refugees, because beyond the grip of the Zakir regime, freedom and anarchy reign.
“What do you think, Nina?”
I turned to see that Nina was staring resolutely away, her cheeks red. “Nina?”
“I can’t read,” she muttered, looking me straight in the eye as if challenging me to laugh.
I was too stunned to respond. I had forgotten that Nina, like most peasants, couldn’t read. My father had taught me to read before he taught me to walk, and it had always felt as natural as breathing. To think that nobody had ever bothered to teach Nina seemed incredibly unfair.
“I—okay,” I said, not wanting to embarrass her. “Well, I think we’re in the Endless Jungle. Here.” I pointed it out on the map. “And to the west is the border with Indira. My father says that it’s a safe place for refugees seeking shelter from the king.”
I closed the book. “Nina, how do you feel about going to Indira?”
Nina looked apprehensive. I didn’t blame her. The thought of fleeing to another country, let alone Kasmira’s sworn enemy, was dizzying.
“If it’s far away from the Zakirs, I’m in,” she said at last. “I just … I never guessed it would come to this.”
Guilt washed through me. Nina had given up everything to join me on this journey, and I was afraid that now, she was having second thoughts. It had always been instinct to me to survive, to uproot my life and detach from the past. But Nina wasn’t used to the routine of secrets, fear, and impermanence.
“It’s okay,” said Nina, as though she was reading my mind. “We’ll get through this. There’s a new life waiting for us in Indira.”
I nodded, still overcome by misgivings. “You’re right. We’ll use sunset tonight to find west, and then—”
“And then we find home,” Nina finished. She took my hand, and together we trudged
forward through the trees.
—
In the six hours that followed, I learned that hell is not burning hot or freezing cold.
It’s not located deep beneath the earth, or guarded by demons in a great abyss in space. It’s a place right here in Kasmira, thick and moist and suffocatingly green. It’s filled with blood-sucking insects, screeching monkeys, and creeping vines.
Hell is a jungle, and we were in hell.
We had barely entered the Endless Jungle, but I could already appreciate the name. The paths were dark and identical, as they had been for the past six hours. Through the trees, I caught sight of sleeping cobras, fat lizards, even a herd of wild elephants.
Still, once I grew numb to the mosquitoes, I came to the grudging realization that the jungle was beautiful. Great trees soared like ancient wooden temples, the leafy altars forming canopies overhead.
When the day neared dusk, Nina and I set up camp near a stream. While Nina waded after the tigerfish in the stream, I scaled the nearby papaya trees. By the time Nina returned with the squirming fish, my pockets were plump with fruit.
A day ago, I would have turned down Nina’s request to scoop tigerfish innards, but a single afternoon in the wild had already changed that.
“I feel like I’ve spent so long surviving,” I confessed to Nina, “that maybe I forgot how to actually live.”
Nina popped a fish gut between her fingers. “If this isn’t the good life,” she said, “I don’t know what is.” She caught my eye and laughed.
All of a sudden, I felt it.
It was almost like someone was watching me from behind—I could feel eyes on the back of my head. Except this time, somebody was watching me from within my mind: hovering at the edge of my thoughts, waiting.
My feet turned of their own accord, leading me deeper into the forest.
I heard Nina calling my name, and I could’ve easily turned back. But somehow, I knew that wherever I was going, I was meant to go. I could feel my presence all at once in a jungle full of presences as bright as mine. I would use the word spirit if I believed in that kind of thing, because something—someone—was guiding me.
I pushed aside a branch, and on the ground, I saw it.
Its majestic head was slumped to the side, as splendid in person as it had been in my father’s folktales. The airavat slowly turned its neck so that its eyes could meet mine.
The winged elephant was wounded, but it glimmered nonetheless: not with light reflected from the dying sun, but somehow created by its very skin. Its milky wings were fluttering limply, and a gash along its trunk spilled blood, like ink drops on fresh paper.
“Nina?”
I knelt down beside the airavat. My hands brushed tentatively against its elephantine forehead, but it did not shrink back at my touch. I could feel its presence exploring mine. And in that moment, memories that weren’t mine rushed through me.
It was like standing before a wave the moment before it breaks. I was overwhelmed with a staggering force, memories pulsing through me like water. Grass and moonlight. Warm summer skies, soaring through the clouds, pushing against heaven itself. Tigers, claws slashing, roaring, falling—
Nina found me a minute later, cradling the dead airavat with tears in my eyes.
“A white elephant. It’s so beautiful,” she whispered, gazing sadly at the airavat. “I thought all the mythical beasts had died out long ago. How did you find it?”
I looked away. “You’re not going to believe me if I tell you,” I said. “I felt its spirit calling me. I don’t know. It’s crazy.”
“Maybe it’s not,” said Nina in hushed tones. “You're a Mage. You unlocked your powers. Maybe you can sense magic now.”
We walked back to camp in silence as the sun’s rays dimmed into blackness, like stars sprinkled on an inky wash. We settled under an old banyan, and soon enough, Nina’s deep breathing told me that I was the only one awake.
Actually, I wasn’t.
I listened to the cries of peacocks, the splashes of tigerfish, and—maybe I was imagining it—the wingbeats of a thousand carefree airavats in the sky, and somehow, I wasn’t alone. Because when the fire had erupted, something had awoken in me, something vast and relentlessly beautiful. It was a quiet little infinity that I could only describe as magic.
—
I woke up to a golden sky.
It illuminated the rocks, the trees, the entire jungle. I imagined my father’s writing brush cascading across it, streaking new layers of watered ink.
Last night had sparked a burning desire in me to learn more about who I was. Mages had been tabooed in society for seven years; I had been sure they were extinct. Only now did I suspect that my father might have concealed just as much from me as he had from the outside world.
Maybe he couldn’t speak to me, but I still had a piece of him left. I had an opening into the world he had never shared with me.
I opened his book of mythology and began to read.
The powers of the Bookweaver were melded by the ancient Yogis, who were born as common Mages. Due to their ancestry, Bookweavers possess a rare duality of powers. The first is the power shared by all Mages: the ability to manipulate the world through magic. However, the second power belongs to only Bookweavers, created by the first Bookweaver himself. It is called vayati: the art of bringing the Bookweaver’s words to life.
Ancient laws of magic govern the art of vayati. The gods ordain that in order to perform vayati, the Bookweaver must have awakened his Yogi state. Thus, vayati requires enormous willpower and meditation, for most Bookweavers only achieve the Yogi state once in their lifetime.
Like all Mages, Bookweavers are limited by the physical toll of their magic. A spell too tremendous could cause the death of the Bookweaver. Unless that Bookweaver has produced an heir or transferred the Gift to another, this would result in a dead end in the line of Yogis, disrupting the balance of Kasmira.
My fingers shook as I closed the book.
I had nearly died practicing magic yesterday. Now I understood why.
“You look concerned.”
I turned to see that Nina had woken without my notice. I smiled at her. “How’d you sleep?”
She shrugged. “For some strange reason, whenever I closed my eyes, I kept imagining creepy Mage-ladies chasing me on horseback.” I laughed, and we started packing up our camp.
Nina set out to fill the waterskin while I cooked the remaining tigerfish, counting on the early morning mist to conceal the smoke. I could hear Nina splashing softly; it occurred to me that at some point, I was going to have to take a bath.
And then I heard it—horse hooves, thundering impossibly fast, quickening the beat of my pulse. Silently, my lips called Nina’s name.
Devendra had found us again.
CHAPTER FIVE
Somewhere deep down, my instincts must have kicked in, because within seconds, I’d grabbed our things and started running.
Adrenaline pulsed through my veins as I charged past the trees, legs pumping faster than I had ever thought possible. A sharp branch caught me across the forehead, but I barely felt it. The only sense that seemed to be working properly was my hearing, for all I could register was the crackle of leaves beneath my feet, the beat of horse hooves, the chortle of the stream where Nina was defenseless—
I raced past Nina, tripped, and crashed face-first into the river. By the sheer momentum of my still-pumping legs, I managed to stay afloat before Nina hauled me out of the water.
“Devendra,” I managed, still spluttering. “He’s here.”
It was like her instincts kicked in, too—Nina immediately tugged me towards the other side of the river. We ducked behind the overgrown reeds that clustered along the bank.
“Where is he?” Nina’s voice was almost impossible to hear. She had crouched so low in the water that only her head was visible.
“They’re all nearly at our clearing,” I breathed.
She cursed softly. “The wood. Is it st
ill burning?”
“No, thank the gods,” I whispered. “I stamped it out—but our food is still there.”
Nina groaned. “In that case,” she breathed, “our only chance is that they’ll think we’re already gone.”
I felt my adrenaline slowly ebb away, but it skyrocketed again when a voice drifted through the woods.
“The Kandhari girl has been here. Look at that tigerfish. It’s still smoking.”
Devendra’s voice, cold and stinging, sent a shiver down my spine when I remembered his fury in the Raj. We’d barely escaped him the first time. Now, I wasn’t sure that I could take him again.
“There are two sets of footprints,” he continued. “She’s still traveling with Nina Nadeer.”
Nina jolted slightly at the sound of her name.
Just then, a horse neighed impatiently. “Someone silence the horses,” Devendra demanded. There was shuffling, and the horses were silent.
“The question is, where are the girls?” said a harsh female voice. Nina and I exchanged glances of horror. Because the voice belonged to Lady Sharati, the veiled Mage who’d identified me in the Raj.
Clearly, today was not our day.
“Zakir, this is your soldiers’ fault,” snarled Sharati. “If they’d kept the horses silent, the girls wouldn’t have heard us coming. They’re probably escaping right now.” She huffed. “First your failure with Kandhari’s fire magic, and now this. It’s no wonder King Jahan nearly disowned you—”
Devendra interrupted sharply. “The imperial soldiers aren’t to blame. And don’t you dare mention my father. I will regain his favor.”
“That remains to be seen. You’ll be lucky if you’re still imperial commander after this,” Sharati said coolly.
“Shut up.” Devendra’s voice was low. “Why aren’t you using magic to find them, Mage?”
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