As Atiana began to undress, the woman opened the crates. Inside were fist-sized blocks of ice nestled within a thick layer of hay. She took all of the blocks from the first crate and dropped them into the water, then she took half of them from the second and dropped them in as well, until the surface of the water was covered like a frozen pond succumbing to the early warmth of summer.
Atiana took a deep breath as she folded her small clothes and placed them onto the shelf. Ishkyna helped her to spread the rendered goat fat over her body. The chill of it was welcome. She had too long been away from the aether, and she would welcome its embrace.
As she stepped into the tub, the cold water chilled her feet and shins. And when she sat down, she shivered for the first time, though she was able to quell this quickly. Several paces from the tub was an inlaid wooden door set into the wall opposite from the stairs. For some reason, as she stared at the door, she had the distinct impression that this tomb was connected to others—a maze of them interconnected deep beneath the kasir like an Aramahn village.
She took the breathing tube from Ishkyna.
“Dreams of honey,” Ishkyna said.
It was something they used to say to one another as children before they went to bed in their shared room in Galostina. Atiana tried to smile, failed, and lay down in the tub, the ice parting and returning to place with dull clacking sounds. The water was cold, but there was something about it. It didn’t have the bone-numbing chill that the water from the depths of Galostina or Radiskoye had. Perhaps it was the temperature, or the source of the water, or some quality of the water itself...
She stopped herself. She would never be able to take the dark if she allowed these doubts to fester. She had to accept the situation. She had to believe the water would hold her, would cradle her as she wandered through the aether.
She breathed through the tube, feeling suddenly self-conscious—like a girl taking the dark for the first time—but then she relaxed, forcing her breath to release more slowly, drawing it in with the pace of an achingly slow breeze, releasing once more, until inhalation and exhalation were equally measured.
Like the tides, she thought.
Like the measure of night and day.
Like the turn of the seasons.
And soon... Soon...
She floats through the aether. Already she feels drawn toward the straits. It tugs at her like a piece of flotsam among the waves.
She fights, realizing that it will mean her ruin if she is drawn to its center, the place the maelstrom was the strongest and most unpredictable. But try as she might, she cannot fight it. With the straits so near, so strong, she is pulled slowly but surely toward the gap in the island.
Knowing she cannot fight it—remembering as well the first tenet of life in the dark, that of submission—she allows herself to be pulled; she moves with it, faster and faster, until she whips past the straits, feeling the depth and power of the confluence below. How strong it is. How fearsome.
And how truly beautiful.
In the aether the tall cliffs are bright, blinding white. Chromatic whorls form and diffuse in moments. The water is dark as midnight, but above it the currents of the aether clash, driving their power high into the air. Lines of power arc over the straits as well. They shimmer and scintillate, towering high above Galahesh, glowing like the chromatic lights of the Great Northern Sea.
She remembers her purpose here.
Arvaneh. The tower.
She is on the northern side of the straits. As she drifts southward she once again finds herself at odds with the currents of the aether. They fight her every step, threaten to draw her downward. So she turns, using that movement to catch the whorls that are left in its wake. She slips like a salmon through a frothing white river.
At last, she approaches the tower. Arvaneh’s tower. She feels threatened, as though touching its stones would mean the death of her. But this is one of Arvaneh’s powers—fear, plain and simple—and Atiana will have none of it.
She crosses the walls.
And everything changes.
The typical silence of the aether is replaced by a low susurrus. The lights of the aether are dim, as if she’s lost her ability to see in the dark.
She does not sense Arvaneh, but she senses another, someone like her, waiting and listening in the dark.
Who’s there?
She receives no reply, but she feels them retreat.
It is not one of the Matri. Her mind is foreign, her movements clumsy.
Atiana moves quickly toward it. She catches up, and now she can sense the tendril that leads back east through the city, across the acres of towers and markets and homes, toward a hovel set among the battered remains of the Shattering.
She sees there a woman lying in a stone pool set into the earth. A feeling wells up inside her as she stares, wondering how this could be. The woman’s form is the diaphanous white of all living things in the aether’s midnight blue, but there are tinges of yellow and red and green. Most of all there is black. It is difficult to see against the aether’s dark hue, but it is there. This woman is clearly a qiram. She may even be arqesh, one who has mastered every discipline.
And yet this woman has managed to enter the aether, a skill that has been the domain of the Landed alone for centuries. Of the Aramahn, only Fahroz has ever been known to take the dark, and yet here is another.
Atiana seizes the woman. She can feel her surprise. She doesn’t know she’s been followed, and she is weak, defenseless against such an attack.
I asked you who you were.
Still there is no response. She could force the woman from the aether now if she so chose, but why? She needs to learn more.
She tightens her hold, feels the woman squirm beneath her grasp.
Ushai!
Atiana eases her hold.
My name is Ushai. Ushai Kissath al Shahda.
Atiana remembers her. She was a servant of Fahroz. She was the one who’d led her from the lake deep below the village of Iramanshah. It made sense, then. If Fahroz knew how to take the dark, surely she would have taught others. It is something she’d have to give more thought to.
Why have you come, Ushai?
I’ve come for the same reason as you, I suspect, daughter of Radia.
And why is that?
To study her.
Arvaneh?
Sariya. The Scourge of Ghayavand.
Atiana feels her body jerk in the basin. It cannot be, she says. Sariya is trapped.
Trapped no longer, and better you become aware of it now before her plans are unleashed.
You’re lying.
Arvaneh means “one of three” in Kalhani. She broke free of her bonds years ago, and when she did she returned to the desert where we believe she was born. From there she arranged to be purchased by one of the Kamarisi’s men. After moving to Alekeşir to join his harem, she spent months watching him, creeping her way into his mind, and now she has taken him. She came with little, but now she has the resources of an Empire at her beck and call. It is her. Do not doubt these words. Now please, release me.
Atiana realizes that the hold she had on her would be painful. She releases her completely, confident she can find her should she choose to flee. I would—
Atiana feels a disturbance in the currents, a pressure that fills her, not with pain, but something akin to it.
I would speak with you. Face to face.
Ushai pauses. What’s happening?
The pressure increases. Atiana expands her awareness, allowing it to encompass more of the ruins, more of Baressa. She knows it must be coming from the straits, but it doesn’t feel like a simple disturbance or a clash of currents. It feels as though part of her is tearing, as though a part of her has begun to burn.
Memories and emotions come to her unbidden. Running through the halls of Galostina, bright with excitement. Unbridled fear while staring down for the first time from the gunwales of a windship. The drip of water in the drowning chamber. Th
e earthy smell of rendered goat fat. Father staring sternly down at her, his sad eyes filled with disappointment. A candle that she touched with the tips of her fingers, heating them to the point of pain before yanking them away.
And on and on. She is in this moment completely and utterly at their mercy.
I do not—
And then the pain increases sharply, and her world goes white.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The air around Nasim was chill and damp, but it had a mineral sharpness that did much to keep him alert. The tunnels seemed only big enough for the sound of their climbing, plus the occasional drip of water. Neither he nor Rabiah had spoken since heading out from the collapse at the entrance. They hadn’t felt the need, and to speak felt as though they would give away their position—to whom, Nasim didn’t know; it simply seemed wise to talk as little as possible.
The tunnel was complete darkness, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t move through it. Nasim taught Rabiah how to draw upon her vanahezhan to feel her way along the tunnels. Nasim thought of drawing upon the vanahezhan as well, but Rabiah was weak, and only one of them needed sight, so he followed her closely and obeyed her instructions when she gave them. If he was blinded in the meantime, he didn’t mind. He had taken too many liberties with Rabiah already, no matter that it had been to protect them; allowing her to have sight and lead them both somehow felt proper.
Her earth sight was fouled when they came across water, even a trace amount of it. The first time it happened they heard only a trickle. The second time they heard nothing. The walls of the tunnel were damp—that was all. Nasim assumed there was a hidden stream within the earth, yet still it was enough to rob her of her newfound sight. They scrabbled, low to the ground, warding their hands in front of them to make their way beyond the deadening effects of the water.
They might have drawn upon a jalahezhan, but they were loath to do so. There were plenty around, but they might be drawn through the veil with even the smallest of contacts. The vanahezhan, however, seemed to be drawn to the collapse of the cavern, which now laid far behind them, leaving Nasim and Rabiah to choose from the lesser of them, the ones less likely to cross in this strange place where the worlds practically touched.
Nasim was somehow uncomfortable with the growing realization that he remembered this place. He could not recall Khamal walking these tunnels and warrens, and yet he knew with uncanny accuracy the path they needed to follow in order to reach the upper levels of the village, where the girl and the akhoz had surely been headed.
“Who do you think she was?” Nasim asked, growing tired of the silence. His voice echoed off into the distance.
“Someone Ashan brought to the island? A disciple?”
“Perhaps, but she was with the akhoz, going willingly.”
Rabiah was silent for a time. “Do you think we’ll find him?”
She meant Ashan. Nasim, shrouded in darkness, could only shrug. “Who can say? I had to try.”
In the distance they heard a small splash. They stopped for a moment, but the sound wasn’t repeated, so they continued on.
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Rabiah said. “You said you thought Ashan knew you’d come here. That he had come in order to protect you.”
“What of it?”
“Well, why would he do so alone? You said yourself that we needed to work together. That only in realizing our potential as arqesh could we close the rift here on Ghayavand. Neither of us believes the girl we saw has anything to do with Ashan. So what did he hope to accomplish?”
“I don’t know. He may have come simply to prepare the way. Perhaps he hoped to discover more before coming to find me. Perhaps he planned to find a piece of the Atalayina, or even all three. Who can say?”
“You can. You knew him well, did you not?”
Nasim wanted to laugh, but somehow that didn’t feel right in this place. “In truth I hardly knew him at all. I will love him always, but to know someone is to speak with them, to live with them, to cry and laugh with them. I did none of those things with Ashan. I was lost. He was a beacon—that much is true—but it’s also true that from where I stood he was little more than a light in the distance. I know perhaps his heart, but little more than that.”
“Then what is in his heart?”
“Care for the world that has come before. Care for the world that is yet to be. Care for that which has been lost and what might yet be gained.” Nasim searched his mind for more, but as hard as he tried, he could only think of one more trait that had any bearing. “And kindness,” he said. “These are the things that drive Ashan. These and little else. He is a selfless man, caring for others before himself.”
“Then why did you not enlist his help?”
There was bitterness in her words. He didn’t mind, though. He had asked this same question of himself many times, feeling that same bitterness sitting deep in his heart like a hardening cyst. But there was really only one answer to this question. “He has already done enough. This is my path to follow.”
“Not just yours… Ours.”
She meant herself and Sukharam. “Yeh, Rabiah. Yours as well.”
They entered a cavern where the slow drip of water could be heard, and here the darkness was no longer absolute. Pale pink light suffused the cavern from veins of softly glowing stone in the ceilings and walls and floors. It was not so bright that they could see the natural features clearly, but it was bright enough to allow them to see a set of natural stairs that let up to another, higher tunnel.
In this place, lost among the hidden warrens of the earth, Nasim could not help but think about his time with Ashan. He’d been little more than a prisoner within the shell of his own body. He could remember the feeling he’d had around Ashan, even down to the individual stones he wore in his circlet and on his wrists and ankles, but as they took to the stairs, he realized that these were not memories. He could feel them now, and they were growing stronger.
“He’s here,” Nasim said, surprised at the realization. “I can feel him.” It would be good—despite all his words of confidence of the need to come alone—to have Ashan at his side once more.
Rabiah said nothing, but he felt her prepare herself, felt her touch the walls of Adhiya.
“Be careful,” he said. “Draw upon them only at great need. We’ll not be so lucky as we were at the entrance to the tunnels.”
They continued up, the light in the tunnels sometimes granting them some small amount of light by which to navigate, sometimes leaving them in complete darkness once more. The tunnels changed from the natural caverns to ones that were clearly formed by the hand of man. These had been hewn—or at the very least widened—by dozens of vanaqiram over the course of years and decades. Such was the care they had taken, for the detail—the intricacy of the traceries built into the walls—was immaculate.
And then they came to a space that was immense. He could feel it more than he could see, for it was pitch black except for the single siraj stone that was glowing far away on the opposite side of the cavern. It looked like it went on for a league, or more, though Nasim was sure this was a trick of the darkness and the odd dimensions of this place. Staring at it more critically, he guessed the stone was several hundred paces away, and as they walked toward it, he realized that the stone was sitting on a table of some sort.
The table was long, though even as long as it was it felt incongruous in such an immense space. Why was it here? Why had the siraj been placed on it?
And why were Ashan’s stones sitting next to it?
“Can you feel them?” Rabiah whispered, clearly sensing the same thing.
“I can.”
“I like this not at all,” she said.
“Neither do I.”
As they came closer, Nasim saw them. Sitting near the siraj stone was a circlet with a stone of alabaster set into it. The stone was dark, lifeless. Inside the circlet were a bracelet and two anklets, their stones similarly dark.
And in
the darkness beyond—
Nasim shivered. How could he not have noticed?
—there was a shape. A man, sitting in a chair.
Muqallad.
Nasim had not sensed him on their approach. Neither had he seen or heard him, and he was unable to sense him in the aether.
Muqallad, his face lit in ghastly relief by the siraj, was possessed of a strong and imposing form. He had long black hair and ruddy skin. Rings of gold ornamented the braids of his long black beard. Like a wolf in the night, everything about him was striking, but it was his eyes, more than anything, that somehow pierced. They stared right through Nasim, ignoring Rabiah as if she didn’t exist.
“Welcome, Khamal.”
Muqallad’s words were still echoing about the chill room when Rabiah shouted and fell to the floor in a flurry of hair and limbs. The sound of her head striking the stone made Nasim cry out. He dropped to his knees and felt for her pulse, for her breathing. Other than a welt and a cut on her forehead that trickled blood, she seemed well enough.
He stood and faced Muqallad, willing his fear not to show. “I am not Khamal.”
Muqallad, nearly swallowed by the darkness of the room, smiled. “You may not feel so, but believe me, you are here because you planned it, even down to your forgotten memories.”
Nasim could only stare. Khamal had planned this? All of it?
Neh, Nasim thought. Muqallad was lying. And yet the words had the ring of truth to them.
At the edge of his awareness, Nasim realized he could feel akhoz—many of them—approaching.
Muqallad motioned to Ashan’s effects. “Do you know who these belong to?”
“They belong to my kuadim.”
“Your kuadim…” Muqallad reared back and laughed, the sounds echoing off into the immensity of the room. The laugh was healthy and long, and it burned Nasim’s ears to hear it. “You have the relationship backward, Khamal. It was you who taught him. And yet I will admit that he is learned. He could not have gained the island if he was not. He could not have dismantled the defenses around this village if he was not. He could not have learned that one of the stones had been hidden in the white tower if he was not.”
The Straits of Galahesh: Book Two of The Lays of Anuskaya Page 20