The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3)

Chapter 76 Bhumika

BHUMIKA

They climbed the Hirana with the yaksa.

It was a high, unnatural mountain—covered in carvings, serpents and fanged teeth. Bhumika’s body knew it, though, knew how to climb. And absurdly, she felt as if the Hirana knew her in return. It welcomed her as easily as the forest had.

She watched the yaksa as she climbed. The long fronds of his hair. His pale, inhuman eyes.

He wore the face of one of her watchers, though her watcher was just a boy. He wore that face older and harder, wrought strange by wood and leaves. Or perhaps her ghost wore his.

They are both false , she thought. Both echoes of someone I lost.

There were people huddled everywhere, on the Hirana’s zenith. And also four who were not people, but something else entirely.

“Nandi,” the yaksa murmured, gesturing. “Sanjana. Sendhil. Chandni. That is what you called them.”

“Not their true names, then,” Bhumika said in return.

“No,” he said. “You may call me Arahli Ara.”

That was a true name. Strange, that he denied her the false one.

“Kneel,” said the one he had called Chandni. “Show respect.”

In their faces she saw pain of the living. She saw it in the exhausted look in Sanjana’s eyes, and the smell of sickness rising from her skin. In the way Sendhil stood over Sanjana, protective, aware of the illness upon her. In the inwardness of the yaksa child Nandi, his head bowed, all the pointed bones of his upper spine curved. The more they sacrificed, and the more the world changed, the more human they grew. It had to terrify them.

“Bhumika,” Nandi said. “Do you come to fight for us? Or to fight us?”

“I come,” she said, “to see these people to safety. To ask you to open a path for them out of Ahiranya.”

“You want us to burn alone,” Sanjana said. She sounded petulant. “Well, we do not want to burn at all.”

Then you should never have come to this world , Bhumika thought. She did not say it. There was animal terror working its way up her spine. Sima was steel-eyed beside her. Jeevan was calm, visibly calm. She held on to his calm and Sima’s steel like an anchor.

A boy, gangling, growing into his strength, walked determinedly toward her. His face was full of light.

“Lady Bhumika,” he said. “Is it—is it really you?”

She did not know him, but she knew what to say.

“Yes,” she said.

“Her daughter,” Sima said abruptly. “Rukh, where is she?”

“Sima!” The boy’s mouth gaped and suddenly shaped a shaky smile. “Sima, you—”

“ Rukh. Is Padma all right? Is she here?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, yes she is. She’s with Khalida. Khalida?” He turned, craning his neck.

A woman—Khalida—stood and walked toward them. She was carrying something—someone—in her arms, swaddled in cloth, hidden carefully by her shawl. The small figure moved, the shawl and blanket alike sliding back.

And after that, she could not think of anything but the child before her.

I know you , she thought. It struck her like lightning. She hadn’t expected it—had expected grief and alienness, and had braced herself for it. But she saw that small face, those wide eyes, and something in her heart flowered—something that had hurt in her, constantly, abruptly eased.

I know you.

There was wonder in those large eyes—a forgetting and a knowing in the child’s gaze, as there surely was in hers. And yet Bhumika’s hands twitched at her sides, and then her arms reached out, and she did not know if she would flinch if the child, her child, recoiled, but she had to try anyway.

Her daughter fit easily into her arms. Squirming and heavy, too large to be held like this. It was perfect.

“Elder Bhumika.” A quiet voice. She turned.

Arahli Ara stood before her.

“Bhumika,” Sendhil said, his voice determined. “Dear one. Will you remember?”

Arahli Ara’s gaze was steady. “I can give you yourself back, now you are here,” he said.

“And what would be the price?” Bhumika asked. “Loyalty?”

“When you are one with us again, and know yourself,” he said, “you serve us. Your sister will soon be one with Mani Ara. We will need people like you when our mother is among us again.”

“No,” said Bhumika. “I’m afraid I’ll do no such thing. You’re dying, yaksa,” she said. “Dying here, with fire beneath us, and still refusing to do what is right for Ahiranya.”

“We are not dying,” Sendhil snapped. Chandni looked away.

“We fight for Ahiranya still. Our loyal worshippers walk the forest, empowered by our waters,” Nandi said. “The forest will always be ours.”

“Fighting is not what Ahiranya needs from you,” said Bhumika. “It needs your death.”

Sendhil strode toward her. He reached for her, a grasping hand, sharp-taloned. She did not know if he wanted to hurt her, but her heart thumped, her blood ran cold. Bhumika clutched her daughter tighter, turning to shield her with her back. The air thickened. Jeevan’s saber was drawn.

Sima got there first.

A heart’s-shell knife slid through the yaksa’s chest. He staggered.

Red blood poured from his wound. The sound he made was wet, guttural with horror.

“You’re dying already,” Bhumika repeated, with a great calm she did not feel. “At least make it a death worthy of you.” She met Arahli Ara’s eyes. “Leave the Hirana. Go, and face your fate. You know you must.”