she pushed her hair back, wiped her face, and cleared her throat. For many long moments, she just stood there, staring at the shrine, sighing and clearing her throat, and blinking her eyes dry.
“You can talk now,” Asha said.
“If you need to hear me say that they were wrong and you were right, then I’ll say it, because it’s true. But I know you don’t need me to say that. What do you need now?”
Asha shook her head slowly. “Nothing.” She blinked again. “I’m fine.” She heaved one last sigh and stood a little taller. “Really, I feel…better.”
“Let me do something, please.”
“Maybe a little sleep. I could use a little rest.”
“I think we can arrange that.” Priya took her by the arm and led her back toward the road, turning to the westward path. “And then some hot food and tea.”
Asha nodded. “You know, I thought if we went west far enough, then I could get away from them. But they were here. He was here. They’re everywhere.”
“Perhaps not quite everywhere,” Priya said. “Perhaps we simply didn’t go far enough. What would you say to a much longer journey into the west?”
“Into Persia?”
“Yes, into Persia.” Priya patted her hand. “Though I’ve heard that they call it Eran now.”
Asha shrugged. “I really don’t care what it’s called.”
Priya smiled. “I didn’t think you would.”
Asha smiled back, just a little.
Chapter 7
1
Asha paused at the top of the trail to look down on the valley below. The sun hung in a colorless sky, glaring down on high gray stone and low brown earth without a single glimmer of green in sight. She squinted back over her shoulder. There was a sound on the wind, something so faint and distant that it couldn’t be more than the last dying echo of some soul beyond the farthest horizon, and yet Asha heard it. A shudder in her ear. A thrum. “There’s something out there, somewhere.”
Priya shuffled up beside her, tapping the hard stone path with her bamboo rod in search of jagged cracks and loose gravel. Shaded within the folds of her flower-strewn hair, Jagdish slept on the nun’s shoulder twisted over onto his back in a precarious pose.
“Is it dark?” Priya asked.
“No. It’s noon, and there isn’t a cloud in the sky.”
“But it’s so cold.”
“I know. It’s these mountains. They remind me of home.”
Priya nodded. “You know, when I suggested that we journey into Persia, into the Empire of Eran, I was hoping to meet new people, to learn and teach and share with the strangers we would find. I don’t suppose you can see any strangers out here for us to find, can you?”
Asha sniffed. “No. But there is smoke rising from beyond the next ridge. Feel like walking a little farther?”
They descended the rocky path with the chill mountain wind whistling through the narrow ravines and crevasses gouged across the face of the slope. Small stones clattered down from time to time, but Asha never saw any other signs of life. No goats or sheep. No rabbits or mice. Only a lone vulture hovered high overhead.
“What if it isn’t real?” Priya asked.
“What?”
“Eran. Maybe it’s just a myth. Maybe when we left Rajasthan, we stepped off the map into some no-place beyond the edge of the world.”
Asha shrugged. “Maybe. But there is a path. And there is smoke.”
Priya smiled. “If you say so.” She daintily adjusted the cloth that covered her eyes.
They crossed a dry stream bed at the bottom of the valley and began climbing the far slope. Once again at the top of the trail Asha paused to survey the land ahead. She said, “I think we’ve found the edge of Eran.”
At the bottom of the next valley stood a small city of dusty brown tents clustering around large fire circles. Long latrine pits ran along the north side of the camp, and long wooden houses stood along the south side. But through the center of the camp was a strange road made of stone, wood, and metal. The bed of crushed stone rose above the level of the earth, and heavy square-ended timbers lay at regular intervals on the stones, and twin steel beams rested on the timbers. The strange road ran as straight as an arrowshot from the foot of the mountain ridge where Asha and Priya stood all the way to the western horizon.
And sleeping on the steel road bed was a dragon.
It was long and black, scaled in iron, with dozens of carriages resting on hundreds of wheels, and a thin column of white steam rising lazily from the pipe on its nose.
“What do you see?” Priya asked.
Asha shook her head. “I’m not sure. But I don’t like it.”
They descended the path toward the camp. Below them, hundreds of men trudged back and forth from the ridge carrying or dragging sacks of small stones and sledges of large stones. The sounds of shovels and picks cracking away on the hard stone echoed across the camp with the steady rhythm of falling hail, and from time to time a man would shout in an angry voice.
At the bottom of the trail Asha moved carefully through the streams of men carrying heavy stones and empty sacks. Only a few of them bothered to cast a weary glance at the tall woman in the yellow sari or the small nun in the saffron robe.
“Asha?” Priya paused. “I don’t recognize some of the languages I’m hearing. Do you?”
“Yes. I speak some Eranian. Or Persian, as they called it when I was a girl. But a lot of these men are speaking something else. Afghani, I think.”
A fresh chorus of shouts drew their attention to the row of wooden houses along the south side of the work camp. A man wearing dark green robes stood on a raised platform barking orders at several grim-faced brutes carrying whips and clubs. The man in green pointed at the two women.
“Trouble,” Asha said. Her hand went into her bag, feeling past little clay jars of ointments and paper packets of ground seeds to the steely tools at the bottom. Her fingers closed around a small scalpel.
Two of the men with whips strode toward the women. They scowled and spat as they crossed the yard, and when they came closer the tall one said, “You there! No women! No prostitutes! No women in the camp! What are you doing here? Where did you come from? No women in the camp!”
Asha held up her empty hands and spoke slowly and loudly in her best Eranian, “We are not prostitutes. I am an herbalist. A healer. This is a nun. We come from India.”
The men exchanged a look and a few muttered words, and then the shorter one jogged back to the man in green. The remaining brute ran his hand through his short beard. “A healer? From India?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you here?”
“We are traveling west to see the great Empire of Eran.”
The man frowned deeper. “You are on a pilgrimage?”
Asha glanced at Priya. “Yes. Yes, we are.”
The man nodded slowly. A moment later his short companion jogged back again and whispered in his ear. The bearded one nodded more emphatically. “The master says you must stay here and tend to our sick men.”
