lifting the flared tunic to inspect her leg. Shutting her eyes, she felt herself being sucked into the mouth of a swirling mist. Orange flames snaked from its center and using their heat, she touched the girl’s foot with the fingers of her right hand. Gaurika moaned and struggled to draw away, even as Ishvari’s fingers held tight, kneading jets of living fire into the dead tissue, massaging away the blocks. She saw the source of the illness—a clump of nerves, tangled and inert with disuse, and with fiery fingers she massaged the nerves, straightening then lengthening them, one at a time, oblivious to the squirming of the girl. A shining figure loomed over her, holding aloft a trident, serpents writhing about his neck. “By Rudra’s whip!” Ishvari heard her own ecstatic cry. “May Gaur...

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