It would be easy to bond with any of the hezhan that surrounded her, but Soroush had said to bond more deeply than she ever had before, so she coaxed one near the edges of her perceptions. It approached, pressing beyond the others, and Khadija realized this was no simple hezhan. It was an elder. It shook her, made her skin tingle at the thought of bonding with a spirit of such age. What might it have seen in its time? The birth of the Grand Duchy? The coming of the Landed to the shores of the islands once touched only by the Aramahn? The arrival of the first skiff on these shores? The thought of it awed her.
She did as Soroush had asked. She opened her mind. Gave of herself that the hezhan might taste of this world. And in doing so she was consumed.
She felt the hezhan as it stood in Adhiya. She felt something else as well. Never had she been able to feel the land around her as she supposed the Landed Matri did in their drowning basins, but standing there among the windwood she thought she might have. She felt the weight of the islands themselves for a moment, their immensity. She felt the ways they were connected with one another. The ley lines that guided the windships of the Grand Duchy also connected the islands in vital ways. And there was a tear in this fabric. A tear in the veil between worlds. Such creases happened from time to time—it was how hezhan could cross spontaneously—but they were never so wide. Surely it was no fleeting thing. It had been this way for some time. Weeks. Months. Perhaps even years. This is what had brought Soroush to these islands. He wished to use the rifts against the Landed. And Nasim was the key to doing so.
The dhoshahezhan was so close now she might touch it. She felt the hair on her head and the back of her neck lift. Above her, lightning arced between the boughs of the trees. A pinpoint of light formed directly above Khadija, and something tore through her. Body and soul. Something bright and white and filled with a thousand years of love and knowledge.
Khadija had birthed no daughters. But she felt as though that wondrous event might be similar to what she experienced now. The elder spirit was crossing over to Erahm, and it was using Khadija to do so. Her entire body went stiff, but she didn’t fight it—this was what Soroush had wanted, after all.
In those endless moments she felt as if she were the hezhan, and she felt another soul in those moments as well: a boy who stood nearby, drawing the elder forth. Khadija had summoned this ancient soul, she knew this, but so had Nasim—the only difference was that it had taken every ounce of will Khadija had while Nasim did this with apparent ease. She doubted he was even fully aware of it.
At last the spirit crossed. It was a flare of white light. A ball of lightning, brightening, darkening—a coruscating star that made the clearing come alive.
As Khadija’s connection to it faded and vanished altogether, the spirit became brighter and brighter.
No longer was Nasim hugging himself. No longer was he rocking back and forth. He was watching this creature with widened eyes, his arms at his side in supplication.
“Nasim!” Ashan called.
But Nasim wasn’t listening. He raised his arms higher, and the dhoshahezhan responded, brightening further.
“Nasim, don’t!” Ashan barreled into him, wrapping his arms around the boy, pressing the iron bracelets around his wrists purposefully against Nasim’s skin as he brought him to the ground.
At that very moment, the hezhan released a bolt of pure white lightning. It crashed into the dirt near Khadija’s feet. Another shot out, striking the bole of the tallest windwood tree.
There was an expectant pause—a moment when every man and woman in that clearing stared wide-eyed at the hezhan, wondering whether to run or to stand still—and then dozens more flew forth, striking those gathered around, spreading through them. Khadija watched them go rigid as the energy coursed through their bodies.
And then a bolt coursed toward Khadija herself. It struck, and her muscles all tightened at once. She felt herself collapse to the ground, shaking violently. She heard herself release a groan as the pain rose to impossible heights.
And then the world went dim.
When she woke, she had no idea how much time had passed. She pulled herself up with quivering limbs and saw that most everyone was still unconscious.
Most, except for Ashan and Nasim.
Of them there was no sign.
Soroush woke soon after, then Bersuq and many of the others. Three remained still, killed by the power that had surged through them.
Khadija was about to go to Soroush when she saw something glinting in the soil at her feet. She reached down and picked it up. A gemstone, she realized. It was opaline and roughly the size of a robin’s egg.
“What is it?” she asked Soroush when he came near.
He took it from her, examined it, as if he had hoped for this but never truly believed it would happen. He handed the stone to Bersuq, who seemed to be seething at all that had happened, but as he began turning the stone over in his hands, the lines of anger and worry on his forehead relaxed, and the grim line that was his mouth turned to something like wonder—at least, as much as a man like Bersuq would allow.
Soroush ignored Bersuq for the moment and turned to Khadija. “Tell me what you felt. Every detail.”
She did. And she held nothing back, for though Soroush was forcing himself to remain calm, she could tell he was every bit as angry as Bersuq that Ashan had managed to escape with Nasim. She told him of the hezhan and its crossing to this world. She told him how thin the aether felt here. She told him how deeply she’d bonded with the hezhan, how intimate it had been, how ancient a creature.
When she was done at last, Soroush looked to Bersuq. Bersuq, now finished with his inspection of the glittering opal, nodded to his younger brother, as if to say the stone was acceptable. It made it seem as though the stone was the very thing they’d come to this island to obtain. But that couldn’t be true, could it?
The rest of the Maharraht soon left, taking their dead with them. This left Khadija alone with Soroush and Bersuq, a fact she was suddenly and inexplicably uncomfortable with.
“When the hezhan crossed,” Soroush said, treading away from her to the spot where Ashan had tackled Nasim to the ground, “were you bonded to it still?”
She thought back. The time was a jumble of memories and disquiet and pain. “It’s difficult to remember.”
Soroush stopped and spun on his heels. “Try.”
And she did, though she could also feel their stares as she did so. “I suppose I was, though I couldn’t think well enough to make use of it.”
“Could you not?” Soroush asked.
She understood what he was hinting at. He thought that at the last moment she had done something to save Nasim and—more importantly—Ashan. She hadn’t, but that wasn’t what Soroush believed.
Khadija stepped forward until she was practically chest-to-chest with him. He was a tall man, a full head taller than she, but she squared herself and stared into his eyes. “Do you doubt my commitment?”
“They escaped, Khadija, something I doubt Ashan could have done on his own.”
“Were you not listening to me? Ashan wasn’t alone. Nasim had drawn the hezhan forth. He was communing with it in a way I never have before, with any hezhan. Nor have you, I’ll wager. It was Nasim that protected Ashan, not the other way around.”
“You summoned your kuadim here from the ends of the world. You’ve bonded with him these past months. You’ve grown closer to Ashan and Nasim, enough that I doubt you can do what needs to be done in the days and months ahead.”
“I will do what needs to be done.”
“I hear your words, Khadija Gheddesh al Fassed, but I do not believe them. Not any longer.”
“My desire to kill the Landed is unswayed, Soroush. How can you doubt this?”
“I doubt you because your goal was never to harm the Grand Duchy.”
“They killed my sister!”
“Your sister flung herself from a cliff.”
Khadija spit upon the ground. “After
she’d been tortured by them!”
Soroush’s eyes softened, as if he were saddened, as if she were someone to take pity upon. She swung her hand to slap him, but he grabbed her wrist.
“Do you want to know why I chose you to watch Nasim?”
“Because I found him.”
“Neh. I chose you because I thought it would bring you some peace, to work with a child. I thought it might bring you closer to your brothers and sisters.”
Khadija shook her head. “The Maharraht are my brothers and sisters.”
“I mean the Aramahn…” Soroush nodded to Bersuq, who stared at Khadija with contempt for a moment before nodding to Soroush and following the others. Soon enough, Khadija and Soroush were alone. “I’ve known you long years now, Khadija, and I’ve learned more than a little about what drives you. You came to me with fire in your eyes and a hand upon your knife. You told me that you came to cripple the Landed. But I’ve come to know the love you hold for your sister.”
“Five days they kept us, Soroush. Five days, and Mirilah took the worst of it. She lost her eye to their gaoler. Her leg was ruined!”
“And yet you did not join the Maharraht along with her.”
Khadija’s jaw tightened. She’d told no one this.
“She came to us months before you—”
“Stop,” Khadija said.
“—and when she returned home at last to visit her sister, she was taken by the Aramahn.”
“Stop!”
“They burned her, didn’t they? They burned her and she lost her will to live because of it.”
“Stop it!” Khadija put her hands over her ears and crouched down over her knees, trying to make Soroush’s words go away. “Stop it!”
“Hide your head if you wish, but you need look no further than your kuadim for the truth.”
She cried for a long time, crouched there, hugging her knees to her chest. She didn’t know how much time passed, but when at last the tears had faded, she looked up to find Soroush crouched by her side, stroking her hair and rubbing her back.
“The Maharraht is no place for you. I should have realized this long ago.” He kissed her head and stood. “Forgive me for not doing so.” And with that he left her there in the clearing.
She remained, listening to the wind through the trees, wondering where the Maharraht would go now that Nasim was gone, wondering when the oprichni of Rhavanki would come to find her here. Part of her hoped they would. Part of her hoped they would take her back to Kirishci and string a rope around her neck like they had the others the day Ashan had come. Or shoot her in the chest like the drowning soldier had the woman who’d been waiting to die.
But Soroush’s words haunted her. You need look no further than your kuadim. She didn’t at first understand what he’d meant, but then she realized she was hiding behind her thoughts. She’d drawn Ashan here. She’d told herself for a long time that he would never come, but a secret part of her hoped that he would. A secret part of her hoped that he would come to harm. He’d had nothing to do with Mirilah’s death, but that wasn’t what had mattered. What mattered was that for Khadija, he embodied the Aramahn people. What mattered was that the Aramahn had destroyed Mirilah, not the Landed. Not really. It had been the people she’d been born to, the people she’d loved and cared for, even while turning to the Maharraht. The people to whom Khadija had clung while Mirilah had waged her own personal war. And then they’d stolen Mirilah’s last true love. Her ability to touch Adhiya. They’d stripped her of it, and in turn it had stripped her of her will to live.
And ever since Mirilah’s death, ever since Khadija’s first steps across the threshold of the Maharraht, Khadija had been harboring, deep within her a desire to return that pain a thousandfold. On the Landed, certainly, but even more so on the Aramahn themselves.
She stood and stared at her opened hands.
By the fates above, what had she become?
She sullied her sister’s name. She sullied everything she’d ever believed in. But she would do so no longer.
Soroush would find Ashan. He would take Nasim back, for his plans hinged on that boy. What Soroush would do with him she didn’t yet understand, but she knew she couldn’t allow it.
She would never be able to repair the damage she’d caused, but she could protect Nasim. That, at least, she could do.
So she stood and made her way toward Kirishci.
As the wind gusted across the blue of open sea, Khadija bid the dhoshahezhan, the spirit of life to which she was bonded, to lift the skiff higher in the sky. Hours before dawn she had stolen the skiff from the island’s large eyrie built into the tall cliffs to the east of Kirishci. It was not a simple matter, but there were many to choose from among the dozen ships that had been berthed there. It had simply been a matter of watching and judging them carefully, choosing the one tied to the ship least guarded.
With the morning sun now high in the east, she was well out to sea. Rhavanki’s northernmost islands lay southeast of her, little more than a series of dark smudges on the horizon. She was headed west. Ashan might have taken a skiff as she had, but more than likely he had stowed aboard one of the Landed ships for another duchy. With Nasim as unpredictable as he was, Ashan would want some protection, and that meant he would hide in the relative anonymity that could be found in the holds of the Grand Duchy’s ships. Khadija had learned that the only ship departing today was headed west toward the Duchy of Khalakovo, and so she had followed, sure that Soroush would as well.
Sure enough, near midday she saw a ponderous ship flying high, catching the best winds as the havaqiram aboard it guided the ship on the kapitan’s chosen course, just as Khadija was doing now with the sail of her single-masted skiff. The ship was large, a twelve-masted barque from the look of it. Three masts ran up from the deck, three more to the landward and windward sides, and three more down toward the sea. It was large enough that it would be fitted with two, perhaps even three cannons—any more than that and the heavy iron would throw off the delicate balance needed to guide the ship along the ley lines.
Khadija drew further upon her bonded havahezhan, gathering the winds to bring her closer, and while she did she scanned the horizon carefully, looking for Maharraht ships. She knew Soroush would be coming for Nasim. It was just a matter of the time and place they would choose for their attack.
When she’d come within a league of the ship, she thought perhaps Soroush would wait until after sunset, but then she saw them, three ships flying low near the horizon. Their sails dyed a dark grey, making them more difficult to spot as low as they were flying. They were distant yet, but they were ahead of the barque and on a bearing that would allow them to intercept. Three ships Soroush had brought, and they would be filled with fine windsmen, battle-hardened. The soft merchant vessel ahead wouldn’t stand a chance against them. Not without help.
No sooner had she drawn upon her havahezhan to summon more wind than the very air around her changed. Her skin felt clammy. The sky became overcast, then a mist formed, and soon she was in a fog so thick that she lost sight of the barque ahead.
She used the ship’s last bearing as a guide, and in the still air she could hear orders being called, the ship changing course as they sensed the trap the Maharraht had laid, but she soon realized that she had misjudged the Landed crew. After a few moments she could hear nothing. With attack imminent they would have turned to hand signals to pass orders about the ship. Soon she had lost track of the ship entirely.
Khadija was trying to judge how close the Maharraht ships would be—and wondering whether she’d passed the Landed ship—when she heard a resonant boom roll across the seas. It came from above her skiff, and slightly behind. She gripped the skiff’s mast and used her dhoshahezhan to grant lift to the windwood hull, bringing her higher as more cannon-fire shook the air around her.
The wind was playing games, throwing her skiff about. She knew it was because the Maharraht qiram were foiling those aboard the Landed ship, preventing t
hem from using the wind to maneuver. Soon the barque would be a plum ripe for the picking, and the three Maharraht ships would surround it and slowly pick it apart until it surrendered.
But again the Landed crew surprised her. They were sharp and quick to battle. As two ships resolved in the fog ahead, one of them, a small ten-masted schooner, was dropping down toward the sea, its hull caved open in several places.
Khadija summoned wind to help drive the ship downward faster, but only until it was clear that the ship would strike the waves below. Then she reversed the direction of the wind, buoying the ship so that those onboard would not be killed outright and would stand a chance at survival. For many years she had been a woman used to dealing death, but she would do so no longer, not if it could be helped.
Cannons shook the heavy air, ripping into the hull of the Landed ship. A chained shot streaked in from the clipper and struck the starward foremast a third of the way down its length. The mast snapped, sending the sails and rigging crashing down and fowling many of the windward sails. The ship would be nearly impossible to maneuver; as well as the Landed crew had fought, the outcome was no longer in doubt.
Unless something changed.
Khadija asked herself if she truly wished to do this, to stop Soroush from achieving his goals. But she already knew the answer. As much as anyone, she was responsible for Nasim’s safety.
She stood and gathered the wind about her before leaping over the side of her skiff. She opened her arms wide and used the wind to carry her upward. The clipper loomed larger and larger before her and soon she had wrapped her arms around the seaward mainmast, the one that hung straight down from the ship toward the sea, the one through which an obsidian core ran, catching the ley lines and helping to orient the ship. She called upon her dhoshahezhan and worked against the qiram on the deck above her. She pushed hard, knowing that the other would quickly work against her. The windwood lost some of its buoyancy, and soon it was sinking, sinking toward the grey sea below.
Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories Page 39