Page 130 of The Burning Mountain
In the background, he heard an inhuman scream. He spared a minute’s glance and found Virat clutching his chest.
The magic seemed to have ricocheted back on him. The same deadly wound as Chandra’s sprouted on his chest, bleeding a thick, viscous blood. His spear, now back to a magical staff, fell to the ground, and he stumbled back, striking the railing. His arms windmilled as he overbalanced and went over it.
Veer didn’t know if he fell into the molten lava or managed to land on one of the rocky islands. He neither knew nor cared.
Only one thought rang in his head, loud enough to drown even the pounding of his heart. The yaksha’s dire predictions. And that the healing stones were not meant for mortal wounds.
Chandra’s eyes were closing, and he quickly got her on Vihari and flew toward Rajgarh.
PART V
AFTERMATH
62
HIS DYING OTHER HALF
“I’ve come. Like you foresaw. Please let us in.” Veer’s raw shout swelled and echoed, met the barrier of the trees, and was swallowed.
The Dandakaranya stood silent and still, apart from the distant calls of birds and animals. Veer managed to come to the same spot where the banyan tree stood—the last known place where the magical part of the forest took them in.
He shifted his wife’s barely alive form in his arms.
“I’m begging you, Yaksha,” he called again to the mysterious entity. “Please help us. If you can’t bring yourself to help me, then please do it for her. Isn’t she important to you? Won’t you show mercy? You predicted this and asked me to bring her back, and so I have.”
The trees waved in the wind, but the forest offered no other solution.
His eyes burned with exhaustion; every muscle in his body felt sore, even the slight brush of wind across his skin hurt. His heart, that atrophied organ in his chest, beat sluggishly as it counted the beats until he, too, would cease to exist.
He didn’t allow anyone else to carry her. After spending the entire morning on his feet, demanding the yaksha’s help, he finally relented and sat at the base of a hollow, dead tree, allowing himself that brief rest when he started swaying and feared dropping her limp body.
Everyone probably thought him a mad man. In truth, he wasn’t so sure that he hadn’t lost his mind. The passage of days and nights took on a strange quality of being in limbo. The only thing he was sure about was that his wife lay in his arms. Near death, but still alive for the time being. And so, he held on to that truth and trudged through each moment.
After Chandra plunged the bone knife into herself, he took her back to Rajgarh. He still remembered his hands slick with her blood as he hoisted her onto Vihari. She was fighting to stay conscious, but he remembered the last words she spoke to him.
“You’re a good person,Veer, and you’re going to be a great emperor of the Saptavarsha. I believe you,” she had said, her voice faint and straining from effort. She pushed the Lotus Key to his chest. “You will safeguard it from falling into the wrong hands.”
“Don’t you dare talk like that. As if this is the end,” Veer said in a shaky voice, as he urged Vihari to fly faster. “Rajgarh has many great physicians, my sister included. We’ll put you to rights in no time. You must be there beside me to make sure I toe the line. Or I swear I’ll throw the Lotus Key out of the topmost window of the palace if you aren’t there to stop me.”
Her mouth curved in an approximation of a smile and then she slumped against his chest, and despite his cajoling, begging, and threats…she didn’t wake up again.
He sat by Chandra’s side, her cold hand in his, listening to the whispers of the physicians with half an ear.
“I can’t judge how deep the wound goes. There’s too much blood pouring out. Why won’t the bleeding stop?” A familiar feminine voice had asked that question.
“All the way to her heart,” he whispered, staring at Chandra’s unnaturally pale face.
“What? What did you say?”
Veer blearily identified his sister and answered.
“The wound. It goes all the way into her heart,” he repeated.
“How would you know that, Brother?” Vireni asked, with a concerned frown.
“Because that’s how she was able to break his hold,” he said. His mind supplying the words he would never be able to forget.
Stab the bone knife into Veer like I ordered.
