Mahimata

by Rati Mehrotra

  She took first watch, and Shurik the second. The horses they had tethered to the tree were calm and relaxed. No beast came to them that night, nor had Kyra expected it to. She had confronted it once; she had earned the right to be here. And you had to be alone to encounter it. But still there was that feeling of being watched, of being judged and found wanting. She could not escape the fear that she had missed an important piece of the puzzle, that her efforts were in vain.

  And so she stayed awake, her eyes fixed on Rustan, even though Shurik tried to get her to rest. She could not sleep, not while Rustan twisted and moaned, talking in an incomprehensible language, words she could not understand. Perhaps he was talking to his monks. She hoped with all her heart that they could hear him, that they waited in their old monastery, ready to heal him with their mystic powers.

  At dawn they set off after a meager breakfast of tea and dried fruit, Kyra once more taking the lead. The trees thinned, and they emerged above the tree line into the rocky splendor of the Kunlun Shan Range. The sun shone down, melting the ice on the paths. Peaks towered above them, seeming to touch the sky.

  Rustan pointed to the highest mountain of all. “Ice Mother,” he said, his voice breaking with exhaustion. “That is where I need to go. We will have to leave the horses tethered somewhere safe.”

  Kyra squinted, shading her eyes against the glare of the sun. “That is not where the monastery is,” she said. “The monastery is halfway up a different rock face.” Not that she could see it from here, but she remembered where it was.

  Rustan hesitated. “I know. But I need to go to another building, on top of that peak. Trust me, the Sahirus are there.”

  Kyra frowned, calculating. It would take several hours to climb the highest peak, and Rustan was in bad shape. Why couldn’t the monks have been waiting in the monastery?

  “We have to climb that?” said Nineth in disbelief. “How?”

  “I can go alone from here,” said Rustan earnestly. “I will crawl, if necessary.”

  “Oh yes, you will crawl, and we will happily gallop back home on our horses,” snapped Nineth. “Like that’s happening. We may as well move along. If I die on the way, maybe you can all resuscitate me with whatever magical potions you find on top.”

  Shurik laughed—the first time Kyra had heard him laugh since they had parted ways. But Rustan looked troubled. What are you not telling me? she thought, but he did not answer, only sent her a wave of love and reassurance. With that she had to be content.

  They climbed, their mounts picking their way delicately through moss-covered rocks and stones slippery with ice-melt. In the shelter of an overhang, near an outcropping of grass, they dismounted and tied the horses. While the horses grazed, they took a short break to eat and drink, then continued on without them. Kyra hoped the horses would be safe from bears and wolves, but there was no way they could take them any farther. The way ahead was too narrow and steep.

  The path grew treacherous, as Kyra had known it would, and they were forced to proceed in single file. Rustan led the way, seeming to gain new strength the higher they climbed. Perhaps it was the proximity of the monastery that helped him. Kyra sensed when their path diverged from it, winding steeply up the side of the mountain.

  Shurik was right behind Rustan, ready to support him in case he stumbled. Then came Nineth, red-faced and panting, but with a grim expression on her face that meant she was going to do this, no matter what. Kyra was last; she still had the feeling of being watched and followed, although she could hear and see nothing. Well, whatever it was, it would have to go through her to reach her friends.

  At last, when Kyra’s limbs were trembling with fatigue, and Nineth had actually begun to groan as she heaved herself up, one step at a time, Rustan said, “We are here,” his voice breaking with emotion. And then he stumbled, and Kyra’s heart jumped in alarm, but Shurik caught him in time, and helped him up the last few feet.

  The ground leveled off, and Kyra blinked, unable to process what she was seeing.

  Nineth whistled, and Shurik said, “What in the sands is that?”

  They stood on the highest peak of the mountain range. All around, as far as the eye could see, snow-covered peaks stabbed the dark blue sky. The air was sharp and cold. Kyra took several deep breaths, trying to orient herself. Far below them, the thick green forest of Kunlun Shan hid the door that had brought them here. In the distance, a thin blue river snaked through a valley carved by glaciers.

  But it was what loomed right in front of them, on the flat summit of the peak, that took away the breath, that made the mind stutter to a halt and think: No.

  A massive oblong building with smooth, silver walls glinted in the afternoon sun. Several times larger than the Ferghana Hub, it was like no building Kyra had ever seen in Asiana. But in Anant-kal, the world beyond time, a structure similar to this had hung unsupported from the sky. Like a strange moon, she had thought then. The shape and size of the objects were somewhat different, but they were the same kind of thing. They evoked feelings of awe and fear in equal parts.

  Rustan started toward the building, and dread seized hold of Kyra. She caught his arm. “Don’t, please. It’s too dangerous.” Realizing, as she said it, that this had been his destination all along.

  Rustan pulled her to him and grasped her shoulders. His hands were fever-hot, and his entire body shook. His eyes burned into hers, and she blinked back tears. The black lines of poison had begun to spread on his face. “I love you, Kyra,” he said, touching her cheek with his fingertips, his voice raw with pain. “But this is where we must part. It’s not safe for you here. Once I go into that building, anything might happen. Promise me you will leave.”

  “You said the monks would be here,” said Kyra, hating the tremor in her voice. “You said they would heal you.” You said, you promised. She wanted to cry. Because he had promised her nothing and she had known, known ever since she met the wyr-wolf, that she would lose someone she held dear. But had that stopped her? Had anything stopped her? She had done what she had to, and now she would pay the price.

  “The monks are here,” said Rustan. “Just not in the way you imagine. And I will be healed—at least, I think so. But as to what will happen after, I cannot say.”

  “It’s a Hub, isn’t it?” said Shurik, sounding troubled.

  Rustan shook his head. “Not a Hub, no. But it is an artifact of the Ones. I don’t know more than that, only what I am meant to do. And that you cannot follow me inside.”

  Kyra’s hands curled into fists. “I’m going with you,” she said fiercely. “You cannot stop me.”

  “No,” said Rustan, exhaustion in every word, every line of his face. “But I can ask you to trust me. Only a Sahiru may enter this building. It is sealed to everyone else. I cannot go inside if you are with me. I have very little time left. Let me go, Kyra Veer. Let me go so that we may find each other again.”

  Kyra started. Rustan’s words, so close to that of the wyr-wolf’s, robbed her of all anger, leaving only a heartrending sadness. “Will you return?” she asked against the sting of tears. She could wait days, months, years even, if only she knew he was coming back.

  “I don’t think so,” he said softly. “But wherever I go, I will wait for you. Will you come find me?”

  Her stomach constricted. “You’re talking of the door to death,” she whispered.

  His hand tightened over her arm. “I am not going to die,” he said. “Doors can take us many places. Death is just one of them.”

  Shurik cleared his throat. “No doors here that I can see,” he remarked, pointedly not looking at them.

  Nineth muttered, “Idiot,” and he shot her an annoyed look.

  But Rustan didn’t turn his attention away from Kyra. “Some doors are put there for us, and some we have to make,” he said. “They go where we need them to. This is what I learned from the Sahirus.”

  He bent down and kissed her forehead, his lips warm against her cool skin. When he raised his face,
it was damp with tears. And to Kyra’s horror, the black lines of poison had reached his eyes, darkening his irises, cracking his pupils. He was falling apart, and she was selfishly preventing him from doing the one thing that might save him.

  “Go,” she said, pushing him gently, although every nerve in her screamed to hold on to him, to die with him, if that was what it took to be together. “Do what you must. I will find you again.”

  He stepped away from her, and it was like a chasm opening up at her feet, threatening to engulf her. Black spots danced before her eyes and she swayed, but Nineth was by her side, holding her up.

  Rustan stumbled to the building, and every step he took away from her was like a punch in the gut. She wanted to double over and scream, but she didn’t. She stayed upright, stayed silent, for his sake as well as her own. Nineth stood on one side of her, and Shurik on the other, and she gripped their hands, but it still felt as if she was drowning.

  * * *

  Time slowed. Every step seemed to last forever. It seemed to Rustan, as he drew one pain-filled breath after another, that he had detached from his damaged body. He watched himself approach the building, staggering as if he was drunk, his face nearly unrecognizable.

  But superimposed on that pitiful image were other, pleasanter ones.

  With the first step, he saw Shirin Mam. She held a baby in her arms, and her face was full of wonder and joy. “I love you so much,” she said, and kissed the top of the baby’s head. Then she looked up into his eyes. Her expression became tender. “I love the person you will become even more,” she said. “Go with my blessing.”

  Rustan’s eyes stung. And he took the second step.

  Now it was the Maji-khan, standing next to a gangly thirteen-year-old boy, beaming with delight. “Today we welcome a new apprentice of Khur,” he announced. “Rustan, you have earned your katari at last.” Cheers broke out among the assembled Marksmen. Barkav turned to face him. “You have worn it well,” he said somberly. “Ishtul would have been proud.”

  Rustan swallowed the lump in his throat. And he took the third step.

  And now it was a man he did not recognize, had never seen. But the contours of the face were familiar, and the lean, muscled body could almost have been his own. Rubathar. “My son,” he said, and broke into a sad smile. “You are everything a father could wish for. Everything I myself could not be. My only regret is that I died before you were born. Please forgive me.” He raised his curved sword in farewell, and Rustan took a fourth step.

  He was kissing Kyra. Her hand tangled in his hair; his mouth was on her throat. Their first kiss, back in Kashgar, two days before her duel in Sikandra. Kyra broke away from the kiss and turned her smouldering gaze on him. “I thought I loved you then,” she said. “But I was wrong. It was but a shadow of what I feel for you now.”

  Rustan’s vision blurred. He thought he wouldn’t be able to take another step, but she blew him a kiss and waved him on, even though tears gathered in her eyes.

  At the last, it was the Sahirus who stood, tiny and indomitable, waiting for him to come to them. How can he bear it? asked the Younger Sahiru. He has finally embraced life, replied the Elder. And now he will conquer death. He turned his wizened face to Rustan and broke into a toothless grin. Come.

  * * *

  When Rustan reached the building, he laid his palm upon it, and it glowed. A wordless cry escaped Nineth’s throat, but Kyra just watched, numb, as the door glimmered into existence. The door that would open only for him. The door that would take him away from her.

  Rustan turned around, and for an instant stood framed by the open door. Kyra caught a brief glimpse of a vast, white hall. Then Rustan raised his hand in farewell. Kyra smiled, although it cut her heart in two, and blew him a kiss, as if he was going on a mission for his Order and would return in a week or two.

  Then he stepped inside, and the door closed over him. The building shimmered and winked in the sun, as if it were waking up. Kyra’s knees buckled, and she sank into the snow. A keening sound split the air: her own grief made audible at last.

  Nineth slipped an arm around her shoulder, trying to soothe her, but Kyra could not hear what she was saying. Shurik frowned at the building and said something in an urgent tone. A look of alarm came on Nineth’s face as she too gazed at the building. She tried to pull Kyra up, but Kyra didn’t want to move from that spot. As long as she was still there, she could imagine, however hopelessly, that Rustan might emerge at any moment, healthy and alive.

  Then, even through her anguish, she felt it: a tremor in the earth, vibrating her body.

  The building was shaking, blurring at the edges. No.

  Nineth was screaming now, still trying to pull her to her feet.

  Rustan had said it was not safe. He had asked her to leave. She didn’t care what happened to her right now—but through the fog of her pain, she realized she could not risk Nineth and Shurik.

  Somehow, Kyra got to her feet and backed away quickly, her friends stumbling before her. Near the edge of the summit was a large rock, jutting out of the snowfield, and they dived behind it. There was no time to make a descent, and besides, whatever was happening might destabilize the snow and ice on the slopes and bury them in a landslide. They would have to wait this out.

  The ground began to thrum. They held on to one another, held on to the rock, which was the one stable thing in the blurry landscape. The Order of Kali had lived through an earthquake in the Ferghana Valley when Kyra was ten, but this didn’t feel quite like that. More as if something was shaking the earth, rather than the other way around.

  The building came to life, lines and symbols dancing over its smooth walls. Kyra stared at it, and it seemed to stare back. Rustan was inside; she had let him go into that thing. I am not going to die, he had said, but how could he have known that for certain? She rose from behind the rock, with no clear idea of what she was going to do. Touch the building and see if it would open for her, maybe. Nineth and Shurik both tried to pull her back, but she shrugged them off and began walking, her steps unsteady, her heart hammering.

  That was when it happened.

  The structure vibrated, gave a final flicker of violet light, and vanished. One moment it was there, and the next gone, just like that. Kyra froze.

  Silence returned to the summit of Kunlun Shan, and with it a sense of emptiness. A vast presence had examined her, found her wanting, and moved on, taking with it the man she loved. Or maybe it only felt that way to her. Maybe it wasn’t personal at all.

  “What?” Shurik sounded as stunned as she felt. “What?”

  Kyra ignored him; she willed herself to walk to the space the building had occupied. She knelt on the ground, at the edge of the oblong-shaped crater. Heat emanated from the earth; it hadn’t been a trick or an illusion. Something had been here, and now it wasn’t.

  “Kyra?” Nineth’s voice was shaky but calm. “We can camp here tonight. Maybe he’ll come back.”

  Kyra’s eyes blurred. “He’s not coming back,” she said. “I’ll have to go find him.”

  “We should return to our Orders,” said Shurik, his voice rough with emotion. “Maybe the elders will know what to do.”

  Kyra didn’t say anything; they all knew that the elders would not be able to help them. Shurik was grasping at straws. Perhaps he meant to comfort her. His own face was tight with suppressed grief. Rustan had been his closest friend.

  Finally, she raised her eyes to his. Whatever he saw in them made him flinch. But she rearranged her expression, made herself smile, and took his hand. “The elders won’t know what to do,” she said. “But I will.”

  Chapter 46

  The Cost of Victory

  By the time they returned to the caves of Kali, many of the Markswomen and some of the injured Marksmen had arrived there too. The rest were still in the Thar Desert, working with the Order of Valavan to repair the fabric of life torn apart by war and years of suppression under Kai Tau’s rule.

  The cost
of victory had been high. Apart from the numberless casualties on Kai Tau’s side, hundreds of loyal clansfolk had been killed or wounded. The central cavern of Kali had been converted into a sick bay. Those who hovered on the knife-edge between life and death had been given individual cells.

  Felda Seshur, the Order’s beloved mathematician, was dead. Kyra received the news, but was too numb to react. Her heart felt as if it were being squeezed in a cruel fist. Any moment now, she thought, she would see the scowling face of her favorite elder, and all would be as it was.

  But nothing would ever be the same for any of them. Ghasil, the Master of Mental Arts, was dead too—not from bullets or swords, but from overextending himself on the night of the battle. He had incapacitated hundreds of Kai Tau’s soldiers, saving countless lives in the process, but had lost his own.

  Chintil had been shot by a kalashik. It had shattered her right arm, and Navroz had amputated it to prevent the poison spreading to the rest of Chintil’s body. Now she lay gray-faced and still on a pallet in her cell, drifting in and out of consciousness, the stump on her shoulder wrapped in a blood-soaked bandage. If she survived, the Mistress of Hatha-kala would never again wield Double Katari or Empty Hands with the same level of skill. She would have to learn how to fight without her blade hand.

  The Maji-khan had suffered hundreds of wounds on his body and had lost a great deal of blood. Samant, the Master of Meditation, sat by his side, spooning medicine into his mouth, assisted by the Marksman Aram.

  The Valavians too had taken heavy losses in the fighting. Six of their number had been killed, and several wounded, among them Derla Siyal.

  Kyra put aside her own grief and threw herself into helping the others. Navroz had summoned medicine women from miles around, but she still needed every bit of assistance she could get. There were far too many wounded for her and Elena to take care of. Navroz assigned Kyra to Chintil. Shurik was put to work changing bandages and thought-shaping the injured clan warriors who lay in the central cavern moaning in agony. He had recovered a small fraction of his powers, enough to alleviate the pain of those who suffered most.