Page 52 of Lost and Stolen Gods
I’d hoped that Ravi was being overly cautious and that in time…I didn’t even know what I’d been thinking. “I’m not sure I can do this…Not without Araz.”
“Ascending really matters to you, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. But probably not for the reasons you think.” I told him about my grandmother, about the thing that killed her. “She’s still inside it. Her soul is trapped. I have to find it and kill it, so I need this. I need to be a god.”
“Pishacha are vicious,” Pashim said. His gaze turned inward as if searching a memory, and a prickleran over my scalp because I got the impression that maybe his knowledge was more than academic.
“Have you seen one?”
“Once.” He shook himself out of his reverie. “They belong to the devouring force, and if one found its way into your world, it means it’s attempting to stop us reaping. No demigods mean no new Asura.” He took a breath and leveled me with a determined look. “I’ll help you until Araz finds it in his heart to take my place.”
A rush of relief left me weak. “Thank you. But I don’t think Araz ever will. I’m the reason he’s stuck here, after all. Although none of the other drohi seem to mind.Youdon’t seem to mind.”
“It’s difficult to miss what you’ve never had,” Pashim said.
“I don’t understand.”
“I was raised here. I know nothing else. But Araz is one of the few that wasn’t. He was brought to Aakaash when he was twelve summers old. This lanky, dirty, angry thing that had daggers in his eyes. He didn’t speak for months as the tantrik worked with him, to help him settle. When he finally did speak, it was to me. He is my friend, but even I cannot claim to know the heart of him. He says he doesn’t remember much about his life before, but the desire to leave, to be free of this place has never waned, even though I doubt he knows what it is he truly craves.”
“I don’t understand…He was brought here by force?”
“He’s a drohi. We belong to the gods. Our mothers agree to unions with the Danava. They agree to produce offspring to give into Asura care. They understand what’s at stake and how important their offerings are. Araz’s mother had no right to try and keep him.”
That sentence was all kinds of wrong, but he obviously believed in what he was saying, and why wouldn’t he? This was all he knew. This place. This role. But Araz…He didn’t want to be here. Probably never had, and he’d been so close to getting out when I’d happened.
I hated that I was the shackle keeping him here. If only there was a way for us both to get what we wanted.
“Come,” Pashim said. “I’ll walk you back to barracks so you can eat before afternoon session.”
“Will you stay?”
He smiled down at me. “Would you like me to?”
“Is the sky blue?”
He frowned and looked up. “I believe so.”
I bit back a laugh. “No. It’s a phrase like, you ask me something, and I throw a question back, the answer to which is obviouslyyesand then…”
He was looking at me blankly again.
“Never mind. Yes. Yes, I’d like you to stay.”
We stoodin a group on the platform above the dummy run while Guru Mihir listed the safety rules: Do not crowd any one element of the course, give your fellow potentials room, and don’t be an idiot.
There were three tracks to the dummy run, copies of each other, so three participants could run it side by side. I wasn’t sure if this would be a timed test or not. No idea how we’d be scored. But first things first—I needed to get through it without falling off or getting knocked off.
Dharma bolted forward as soon as Guru Mihir gave us the green light, and Chaya ran along the ground parallel to her, calling out encouragement and instructions.
I caught a ripple in the air to her left.
Then another farther along the track. There was something there, hidden from the eye.
The ankh? It had to be one of the invisible watchers that worked with Eben the record keeper. But hadn’t Eben said we wouldn’t be able to see them? Maybe I’d misunderstood.
Dharma made it across the rotating log and onto the platform with spikes. She watched them jut up and drop, waiting to learn the pattern. We waited with her, holding our breath as she rocked on the balls of her feet.
Finally, she broke away and ran.
