“You and her?” Diya said, looking between Arwa and Zahir. “A widow can’t be alone with a man, oh great one,” Diya added, striding forward determinedly. “We will accompany you in order to protect her honor.”
“I’m already there to do that,” Eshara said dryly.
“There’s strength in numbers.”
“Sister,” said Arwa, “my honor isn’t at stake.”
“Well, we’re coming anyway,” said Diya.
When Zahir gave Eshara a helpless look, she shrugged and said, “They know the risks. They’ve come here to see the place where the Maha died, but I suppose they’ll settle for watching you perform a miracle.”
“It won’t be an impressive miracle,” Zahir said, looking hunted.
“I’ll make them keep their distance,” Eshara said, amused.
They walked out onto the sand.
True to her word, Eshara kept the watchers a respectful distance back. Zahir and Arwa made their way down into a valley in the sand, a basin surrounded on all sides by faint outcroppings of rock and vague, wizened trees. It felt like an appropriate place to begin.
Zahir kneeled down to start a fire. He began setting it in place. Paused.
“Arwa,” he said. “Look down.”
She looked.
The sand had flared out around them, gleaming like it was full of jewel-toned flame. They stared down at it in awe. She kneeled beside him and pressed her hands into the sand, sifting it between her fingers. It fell like an outpouring of light.
“Gods,” she breathed. She felt shaky. He was staring at the earth, eyes wide and wondering.
She touched her hand to his. Felt the blood roots, distant, ash-blooded, pulsing between them.
“Start the fire,” she said. “I have my dagger.”
She removed her dagger from her sash. It was the dagger her sister had given her so long ago, when she was just a girl. She made a cut, adding her blood to the flames. He did the same.
Here in Irinah—the desert where the worlds of the living, dead, and immortal touched—they placed their blood in the flames. It took no more than that. The realm of ash dragged them in.
And it was nothing like it had ever been before.
The realm unfurled around them, melding with the mortal world. The sand lost its color, fading to rich silver. The sky darkened further, ink black, pricked with glaring white stars. This was Arwa’s path of ash and the true desert of Irinah entwined into one. In snatches she saw the storm of her path, carving the air with winds that turned like white blades in the air. Around them she saw Zahir’s ink-black trees unfurl, their great grace of branches curling against the air.
Irinah was a gate binding three worlds. Arwa should not have been surprised by the sharpness of the realm around her—the sheer richness of it, as if it were a place of flesh and not echoes. But she was.
She looked at Zahir’s face. All the hewn, glittering edges of it, the way it tilted toward her.
He offered his hand. She took it.
“Let’s find the Maha,” he said.
They stepped away from the flames. Their flesh remained where it was, slumped by the fire. But their souls walked. Beneath their feet the sand shivered and settled and turned, as if it lived and breathed, marking the way in rippling waves before them.
“I think this is my path.” He paused, silent for a moment, then said, “I suppose we follow it.”
Arwa squeezed his hand.
“Lead the way,” she said.
They walked and walked, through the shadows of trees that sprouted from nowhere, through the strangely real hills and eddies of the desert. They walked a familiar path, passing the shadows of the dead, the stars stitched upon a ceiling, the ink of lost books.
They walked through Arwa’s own dead. She felt the roiling thud of her own heart and stomach, a deep reflexive grief, but this time she didn’t let go of Zahir’s hand, and she didn’t look down.
“Do you feel any pain?” Zahir asked.
“No.” She felt as if she could walk forever here, in a place that was mortal ash and immortal dreaming both, walk until the end of time, until she’d forgotten her flesh and her self entirely. The idea was both exhilarating and terrifying. “Do you?”
“No,” he said. He was staring forward. Through his glass skin, she could see the dark of the night, and glow of the sand, far brighter than it should have been, and far too alive. Through his skin, she saw the shadows of the dead. “But I think we’re nearly there. I can feel him.”
They took a step forward. Another.
And there he was.
The Maha’s ash stood at the end of his desert of dead. Beyond him was nothing but howling darkness, a storm without color, as if dreamfire had thrown a great shadow across the realm. But the Maha’s ash glowed despite the dark, as if each inch of it were suffused with the desert, drunk with the magic of Irinah.
The lamp of truth, Arwa thought. Ah, how bitter truth could be. Awe and love and grief welled up in her, unbidden and unwanted.
Where the past figures of ash they’d seen in the realm had been fractured, only partial shadows of the people who had left them behind, the Maha’s ash was eerily perfect. He was not unusually tall or broad, and not as old as she had thought he would be. His face was unremarkable, austere. His eyes were closed.
Zahir walked toward him. Arwa held tighter to his roots and her own, and followed.
The sand moved beneath them, wavering like water in the wind’s hands, like a pale and cold fire. They crossed it. And Zahir stopped before the Maha and looked into his face.
They were the same height, he and the Maha. They had the same sharp bones. Everyone had told Zahir that he had his mother’s look, but standing before the Maha’s ash, it was as if Zahir stood before a dark mirror. His reflection, carved by the smoke of the dead.
Zahir reached his free hand out, nearly touching the Maha’s. But not quite. Not yet.
“We look alike,” Zahir said shakily. “I’d hoped we wouldn’t.”
“You look nothing alike,” Arwa managed to say.
“Thank you,” said Zahir, “for lying. I appreciate it.”
His hand moved up, tracing the air around the Maha’s ash. His arm. His shoulder. His close-eyed face.
“Here,” he whispered. “Here at last.”
He steeled himself, his face as resolute as it had been on the day he thought his father would strike him dead. Then, abruptly, he crumpled to his knees.
His head was bowed.
“Zahir,” she said, alarmed. She kneeled down with him, their roots a great slash of red across the desert floor.
“I can do it,” he gritted out. “I can. I am only afraid.” Then he shook his head. “No. Not afraid.” He looked at her, face fierce with feeling. “I told you, to fix a broken tool you must understand the intent of its maker. But he built with the purpose of breaking the natural balance for his own ends. He built with an unforgivable intent by unforgivable means. What can I take from his ash, but another way to break the world? But how can I leave his ash here, and say that balance is enough, and let the people of the Empire suffer and die?”
“You need not do this now,” she told him. “We can stay in Irinah and consider what to do… or. Or we can try to find another way.”