He knew Constance cared about him, but he was just Stuffy to her—Ellie’s stick-in-the-mud brother with his nose stuck in books and his head full of dead languages.
And if he gave voice to this reeling, dizzying epiphany welling up inside of him, who would he be then?
Just another person demanding more from Constance than she wanted to give.
I can’t, he thought desperately.I won’t.
Constance had moved to one of the pillars beside Hanuman, oblivious to the tumult silently raging through Neil’s heart.Her brow furrowed thoughtfully.“Hold on.Isn’t this Shabari?”
“Shabari?”The word came out in a croak.
“Here—look.”
She tugged him over by his sleeve.In the carvings on the column, Neil identified the figure of Rama by the noble lines of his face and the mala necklace draped over his bare chest.He could feel the hero’s stoic endurance across the thousand years since the artist had set his chisel to the stone.
A woman knelt beside him, her face weathered with her advanced years.She held an offering out to Rama in humble hands, her head bowed with reverence.
Constance brushed her finger over the aged figure.“This one happened while he was on his quest to save Sita after she was kidnapped by Ravana.You can see Shabari here giving Rama berries, but Lakshmana tells Rama not to take them.He says the berries are tainted because Shabari had tasted them—she’d done that to make sure that she only gave him the ones that were sweetest.Only Rama accepts them anyway because they’ve been offered with love.”She shook Neil’s arm with excitement.“Neil, Shabari was a low-caste woman.She would have been considered…”
“Untouchable,” Neil filled in.“Where nobility of spirit is never untouchable.You’re right, Connie.You found it.”
Constance frowned irritably.“Only I have poked all over this carving, and not one bit of it serves as a trigger to open a secret tunnel.”
Subhas’s voice sounded from behind them.“Secret tunnel?”
Neil turned to see the Adrija leader watching them wryly from the other side of the well.
“There aren’t any secret tunnels,” Constance complained.“But we did find the next clue.”
Subhas circled the gallery to join them.He studied the carving thoughtfully.“It’s damaged.”
He was right.A fragment of the pillar had sheared off, lost to an ancient fault in the material.A pair of carved mountains framed whatever piece of the story had fallen away.
“Maybe the carving itself is the clue, telling us where to go next,” Constance mused.“But does that mean the path to the astra isn’t here anymore?”
“That might be for the best.”Subhas met Neil’s astonished look.“If the clue is gone, Borthwick can’t find it.This artifact of yours could just stay hidden forever.”
Subhas was probably right.Maybe it was for the best if the secret of the Brahmastra remained hidden forever… even if Neil’s heart ached at the sense of a mystery only half unfolded.
A subtle sound broke through his thoughts, soft as a whisper.
Tap.
Neil looked up.The sparrow he had startled earlier was perched on the upper gallery.It blinked down at him, head cocked, and returned to pecking at the stone.
Tap.Tap.Tap.
The sound changed in Neil’s awareness, shifting in tone and location.
He thought of tiny chips of stone dusting the ground at the base of the pillar.The notion was whimsical, entirely out of context with what was going on around him, but it struck him with a particular itching intensity… one that Neil was starting to recognize.
His gaze swung back to the carving of Rama and the Untouchable woman, snagging on the blank space above their heads where the pillar had been damaged.
The itch turned into a buzz like a hundred boxed-up bees.
“Something changed,” Neil blurted.
The sparrow pecked at the upper gallery again.Neil heard the sound like the snap of a chisel against stone.
