“Why would you ask a question you already know the answer to?”
“Because I cannot understand why you would take up this life. How can you hope to reach your better self with blood upon your hands? All you see is red, Khadija, daughter of Gheddesh and Fassed. Red, when you might see the golden light of dawn. Darkness, when you might see the silver moon.”
“How can you protect the Landed? They hold our travels hostage, refusing us gems, refusing us access to the land that is not theirs, but everyone’s. You speak of blood. What of the blood on their hands?”
“Do you claim no responsibility for your actions then? Are you nothing more than a puppet?”
“Don’t pretend they’re blameless,” Khadija spat. “They’re cruel. Cruel even to themselves. They don’t deserve a place on the islands.”
“We were speaking of you and why you’ve turned your back on your own future.”
“This is where you’ve always been blind, Ashan. You speak of my future? My future is nothing if the Landed take and take and take! There will be nothing left for me! Or you! Or any of us! You cannot separate one from the other.”
“You cannot take responsibility for anyone but yourself.”
“Forgive me, kuadim, for you are gifted in so many ways, but in this you are a fool. I must take responsibility for everyone but myself, for you will never do it.”
“The fates see farther than the horizon. They will guide us.”
She waved to Nasim emphatically. “They already have! They guided me to Soroush’s side. They guided Nasim to me. And they will guide my hand as I slip a knife into the heart of the Landed.”
If Ashan was shocked by her words, he didn’t have time to show it, for just then several things happened at once.
Soroush stepped into the firelight, but there he stopped, staring, mouth agape.
Near the fire, Nasim was now standing, touching his fingers to the flames. Khadija made to grab for him—thinking he was merely curious—but before she could, Nasim used his fingers to coax the flame, as one might pull a tuft from a ball of wool, and it seemed to Khadija in that moment that Nasim was holding his hand out to a dear friend, offering it that they might step safely across a treacherous threshold.
The flame grew and grew, and Khadija felt something blossom within her. The world broke and gaped wider. It felt as if she’d been drawn to the other side, swallowed by the very stuff of creation. Khadija doubled over, holding her waist, and while she did a form burgeoned from the flames. An arm, a head, the vague shape of a body, roughly as tall as Nasim himself.
A suurahezhan. A spirit of fire standing before her. Ashan looked on with shock, but Soroush had recovered. He was staring at Nasim with wonder, but also with an expression she could only describe as deep satisfaction. There was a yearning that made Khadija go cold. Soroush had expected this. It was why he’d brought Nasim here. To this place in particular. And she’d felt it. The yawning sensation was still present, and it was all she could do not to fall to her knees in awe.
Acrid smoke filled the air. Nasim’s clothes…
They were burning.
“Stop it, Nasim!” For a moment Khadija didn’t know if it had been Soroush or Ashan who had said it, but then she saw Ashan move quickly and surely to wrap his hands around Nasim.
The form aflame stepped back.
Wavered and was gone.
Ashan cried out, releasing Nasim, falling back to press his arms against the cold earth. Khadija rushed to his side, checking his skin as he shivered with pain. He’d been burned badly. Nasim had been hot as glowing coals, but Ashan had smothered the flames anyway in order to send the suurahezhan back to its proper place, across the aether to Adhiya.
She realized to her shame what he’d done. He’d saved them all, for if the spirit had crossed, it would surely have killed each and every one of them.
Khadija walked through a dark tunnel holding a siraj to light her way. She came to a room where several simple beds lay, only one of which was occupied, by Ashan. A Maharraht woman in a plain blue dress sat on a stool next to him spreading a salve over his stomach and chest. His arms were bound in white bandages. When she was done applying the salve, she wrapped more bandages around Ashan’s torso. He grimaced, and yet, even with pain clearly on his face, there was also mirth. Here was a man always prepared to smile, whereas Khadija felt her mouth was set in a perpetual frown.
How Khadija wished she could be like him, but her anger was so tightly wound she’d never managed to unravel it. Not that I’ve ever tried. And she doubted she ever would. Her anger was a source of power, a source of drive. It was what kept her by Soroush’s side, working for the good of the Maharraht.
If she were ever to look too closely in her heart…
When the woman nodded to Ashan and left, Khadija sat down on the stool. “You asked me to come?”
Ashan chuckled. “Direct and to the point.”
“Just get on with it, Ashan.”
“Fair enough. Why did Soroush bring you here? Why have you come to Rhavanki?”
“I told you. He felt this place would open paths we could use to speak with Nasim.”
“And so it has.” He paused, looking more deeply into her eyes. “But there were more reasons for Soroush to bring Nasim here, weren’t there?” Although Khadija stiffened at these words, she forced herself to relax lest Ashan notice. But he’d always been an insufferably observant man. There was a cold satisfaction in his eyes when he spoke again. “You felt the hezhan. I’m sure you felt the others as well. There were dozens of them, Khadija, perhaps more. Why would that be? And why here?”
“I merely do as I’m bid.”
“As your sister did?”
Khadija’s head jerked back. “I told you not to speak of my sister.”
“You do not owe her this, Khadija. The Maharraht may fight, but you don’t need to follow them. Mirilah’s voice will still be silenced, and you’ll be the poorer for it. The world will be the poorer.”
“Mirilah may have been the reason I came to the Maharraht, but she’s not the reason I stay. I am my own woman, Ashan.”
“And yet you merely—how did you put it?—do as you are bid…”
“Soroush is wise. He sees many paths ahead that I cannot.”
“You’ve chosen not to. You’re not speaking to some fool you’ve never met, Khadija. I was your kuadim. Do you expect me to believe you’ve stopped questioning the world around you? Perhaps you’ve managed to shackle your own mind so, but believe me, Soroush has not. You saw his face as well as I did. What happened with Nasim was something he’d been waiting for since the moment Nasim arrived. He’s using the boy. I’ve known that since I came to this island. What I can’t fathom is the reason behind it.”
The truth was she hadn’t asked. She hadn’t cared what Soroush would be doing, only that she would be given a chance to deal pain to the Landed while here. She had thought that Soroush had chosen her for her connection to Nasim. Later she’d decided that, while it may have something to do with the fact that she’d found Nasim and brought him to Soroush, it was because she’d been faithful to him these past seven years. In that time she’d never once questioned his orders. And that, she realized now, was precisely why he’d chosen her to watch over Nasim. Because she bore a burning hatred for the Landed and because she knew that Soroush did as well.
But this was something different. Ashan was right. The islands of Rhavanki were home to this strange phenomenon. And Soroush had somehow deduced that. She felt foolish for not asking more questions of him. Her thirst for revenge had blinded her. But for some reason she couldn’t admit this to Ashan. How small she had become. How petty and self-serving. And yet she couldn’t muster the courage to do anything more than withdraw from Ashan’s bedside and make for the exit.
Before she turned to leave, Ashan reached up and grabbed her wrist, which from the grimace on his face caused him no small amount of pain. “Tell me, Khadija.”
She snatched her wrist
away, a spike of shame running through her at the further pain it caused him. “You are wise. Find your own answers.”
Ashan’s words trailed after her as she strode away. “If you would abandon that boy like this, then you are truly Maharraht.”
“I owe him nothing,” she said as she entered the tunnel, “nor you.”
Ashan did not respond, which for some reason was far worse than any biting reply he might have offered.
She followed the tunnel through a myriad of twists and turns before eventually hearing the call of the sea. The waves had always calmed her. She wanted nothing more than to be alone with her thoughts, but when at last she reached the shore and the white foamy waves she found someone standing on the rocks.
Nasim. He was crouched down, staring from the edge of one of the black rocks into frothing surf. How much the child he looked. How innocent and pure.
He reached down to the water and touched his forefinger to it. As he drew it back, a tendril of water followed. Like a serpent it snaked upward, following where his finger trailed, and soon there was a spiral of water around him, glinting in the afternoon sun. As easy for him as plucking a stalk of grass. He wore no stone, and yet the hezhan flocked to him at his bidding.
“Did you speak with your kuadim?”
Khadija started. She turned and found Soroush squatting on a stone ledge above the mouth of the tunnel. He held his musket across the back of his shoulders, his arms resting lazily along the length of the weapon as his long black beard swung idly in the wind.
“I did,” she said, realizing in that moment what Ashan had done. He’d asked for his message to be passed to Khadija, knowing full well the request would be passed to Soroush as well. For whatever reason, Ashan wanted Soroush to be suspicious of Khadija.
“I did,” she replied. “He asked me to stand with him, and against you.”
“Did he?” Soroush stood and leapt down from his perch. “And what was your answer?” He set the butt of the musket onto the dark stone they stood upon and held it near the muzzle with both hands. He did so absently, in a way that made it clear how intimate he was with the weapon.
“It wasn’t a serious appeal,” she said. “He did it only in hopes of catching me off-guard, in hopes of finding answers.”
“Answers to what?”
“Your purpose here.”
“Does he not know my purpose?”
“I’m sure he now suspects.”
Soroush looked to Nasim, eyes piercing, his jaw set grimly. “Because of what Nasim did?”
“Of course.”
Soroush went silent. On the rock in the surf, Nasim was using his fingers to spread the water into wide sheets that reflected the sun brightly.
When Soroush spoke again, it was to ask the question Khadija had been dreading for months. “Do we have need of Ashan still?”
With that question, her skin went cold.
The Aramahn—those still dedicated to the path of learning, in any case—were treated with reverence by the Maharraht. Much of what the Maharraht did—the violence against the Landed, the protracted war to push them from the islands—was done so that the Aramahn didn’t have to. All Maharraht knew this. They kept it at the forefront of their minds in everything they did, even Khadija, who had many reasons to hate the Aramahn. But in this Soroush would not turn a blind eye. He would not allow Ashan to leave now that he knew as much as he did.
Soroush, like all Maharraht, had come to grips with the lives they led. They would kill when the need arose, and if counted among the dead were Aramahn, the loss was grieved but considered necessary in their plans to retake the islands. But to consider killing one of the Aramahn in cold blood—murder, plain and simple—was something different. It was something she would never have considered, and before Soroush had asked his question, she would never have thought he would consider it either.
The Aramahn were revered by the Maharraht, and here was Soroush ready to press the life from one of them.
For Nasim. For Nasim and the plans Soroush had for him.
This changed everything. For Soroush to be willing to take such a step meant that the secrets within Nasim were much more significant than Khadija had suspected.
This all implied something else, however—not only that Soroush had planned to kill Ashan, but that Ashan had known it from the start. And still he’d come.
Why? Why would he have put his faith in her like this?
The sound of the surf suddenly diminished until all she could hear was her own heartbeat.
He’d done it to save her, she realized. To save her.
A fool’s quest. She would not be saved by some simple ploy from Ashan.
But neither would she allow Ashan to be murdered like a mongrel dog.
“He has use still,” Khadija said finally.
Soroush’s eyes were piercing. Weighing. “Does he?”
Khadija stared at him flatly. “Try to work with Nasim on your own if you doubt me.”
Soroush considered this. She’d been bluffing, hoping he would see how little progress he’d made with Nasim on his own, but instead he said to her, “You’re right. It’s time we learn to live with Nasim and his peculiarities.”
“What?” she asked lamely.
Soroush turned and walked back into the tunnels, but when he was nearly out of hearing he called back to her, “It’s time that boy gave us our islands back, Khadija, as the fates have decreed.”
She watched him recede into the darkness as a chill washed down her frame.
Bersuq came for her before dawn the next day. He snatched her blanket away, grunting at her, “Up!”, before moving to stand at the doorway of her room in the tunnels. After she’d slipped out of her night dress and pulled on her robes, Bersuq led her out from the tunnels and up into open air.
There, standing with two other Maharraht just outside the mouth of the tunnel, was Ashan. She walked side-by-side with him as Bersuq led the way along a path to higher land. Ashan moved stiffly, as she might well expect, but the bandages around his hands had already been removed. The skin there was red and flaky in spots, but otherwise seemed much better than she would have guessed.
Eventually they came to a copse of windwood trees that ran along the southern ridge of the waterfall vale. The morning humidity had settled in Khadija’s chest, and she coughed from time to time trying to clear it. Ashan looked at her sidelong. “Are you well?”
She ignored him, looking up through the branches bowing to the wind as the sky brightened in the east. In the center of the trees, Soroush stood with Nasim. Dozens of Maharraht had gathered here. It must be nearly everyone who had come to this island—all save a few that Soroush had stationed in Kirishci to stage the diversion for this very ritual. It wouldn’t do, after all, to go through this trouble and have the Landed drawn here before it was done.
This was an important step in Soroush’s plans. He wouldn’t have called so many if he didn’t think it would be so. It might even be the fulfillment of Soroush’s desires here on this island.
But things hadn’t gone according to plan. Soroush was angry. She could tell by his stiff stance and the way he was stroking his beard while staring at the ground. Nasim was kneeling on the dewy grass, blood pouring from a cut along his cheek, the skin around it reddened and puffy. He seemed not to notice, however. He was hugging his waist and rocking back and forth, eyes staring lifelessly at the ground. Or perhaps through it, Khadija thought, to the world beyond.
In one hand Soroush held a circlet with an opaline gem in the lone setting. He motioned Khadija to a clear space between three of the trees. “Kneel,” he said to her.
She complied, knowing that to press him now would be a foolish choice indeed. Clearly he had tried to work with Nasim and had failed miserably. His plans hinged on a boy he could not control, and it pleased him not at all.
Soroush handed her the circlet, which she set upon her head without question. He wanted her to bond with a dhoshahezhan using the opal. Many of her pe
ople could not commune with spirits at all, some could commune weakly with one or two, but Khadija was gifted—due in no small part to Ashan’s mentoring—in that she could commune strongly with three. Dhoshahezhan, the spirit of life, was among them, and it was to these spirits that she opened her mind now. It was why Soroush had chosen this place. It was often easier to attract such rare spirits among woodlands or groves of trees, especially elder windwood like these.
“What do you wish me to do?” Khadija asked.
“Give of yourself,” Soroush replied, “more deeply than you ever have before. Summon the spirit close so that Nasim has no choice but to draw it forth.”
Khadija was stunned. Spirits crossed of their own will at times, but the days of qiram summoning spirits forth from Adhiya had long since passed. “And what shall we do when it crosses?”
“I suspect Nasim will handle the rest.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then perhaps it is our time to die.”
With that he moved to stand next to Bersuq and the other men and women of the Maharraht. Ashan was kneeling next to Nasim, whispering into his ear, and it was having its intended effect. Nasim was calm now, and it made Khadija wonder, not for the first time, what Ashan was doing here. He was, in effect, helping Soroush. Even now, this was allowing Soroush to achieve his goals. The teacher she had known once would have died before doing such a thing.
But she couldn’t worry about that now. If Ashan was willing to help, then so be it.
She opened herself to the world around her. She could feel the veil of the aether that stood between Erahm and Adhiya. She touched this and moved beyond, reaching out to the spirits that lay near. And there were many, as there were when Nasim had touched the suurahezhan—so many, in fact, that it soon felt overwhelming. Somehow they had been drawn to this place. Part of it, she knew, was the state of things here on Rhavanki, but another factor was Nasim himself. This child was not merely gifted; it felt as if the fates themselves had kissed him and sent him here.
Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories Page 38