And soon… Soon…
Atiana drifts in the dark. Before her is her own body, still rhythmically drawing smoke over her frame. She is white against a field of midnight blue, as are most things when viewed in the dark of the aether. Ushai stands near, watching, waiting.
And there is Kaleh.
She lies on the stone slab like an offering. She’s outlined in white, but within her, subtler hues shift along her frame like sunlight against the bed of a shoal in calm seas. It’s been six full seasons since Atiana saw her last, but she immediately recognizes Sariya’s presence. It would be impossible not to. The two of them had seen one another’s thoughts. They had warred against one another. Sariya had overtaken her with her subtle ways, making Atiana believe that Sariya’s thoughts had been her own.
Atiana approaches, then stops short, shocked, for drifting from the wound on Kaleh’s shoulder is a faint whiff of smoke. Like the dying breath of a snuffed candle the smoke rises and dissipates. Unlike the bright outline of Kaleh’s form, it is darker than the near blackness of the aether’s deep ocean blue. It flows from Kaleh’s wound toward the Atalayina, and from there it is lost, drawn into some world known only to that ancient stone.
Never in all her years in the aether has she seen such a thing. She wonders if it was something she merely overlooked—its subtle nature would make it difficult to sense—but she has seen many wounded, and with more grievous wounds than Kaleh has now. It might be the nature of the Atalayina, a stone whose hidden powers are difficult to define, but she thinks not. More likely it’s due to the ritual she performed to enter this place; the drawing of her own blood perhaps makes her more attuned to such things.
She approaches the Atalayina, hoping to learn more. Here, as well as outside the aether, the stone feels bottomless. There have been times when the aether pulled her consciousness wide that she felt similar things. The ocean depths, especially those to the north of Galahesh, brought on similar feelings, but the Atalayina is so much more. It feels as though the merest touch would draw her in, where she would fall until the end of time.
She will not be cowed, however. The stone is wondrous and intricate, but she refuses to bend to the fear that grips the center of her being.
She reaches out, brushes it.
And the moment she does, it embraces her. Unlike when she’d touched the stone before taking the dark, she feels not life, not Adhiya and Erahm, but the vastness of the aether. This does not cause her fear. She is instead awestruck by the immensity of it, the completeness of the void. Never has she felt so foreign a thing as this, and she wonders if this is how Ishkyna feels when she traverses the currents of the aether.
She rejects the notion as soon as it surfaces. Ishkyna felt life. Always life. She’d told Atiana this many times. This felt like the aether might have existed before Erahm itself was created. Before Adhiya was created.
It was like this, she thought, as the fates came into being.
Where then were they? It felt as though she should be able to, if not commune with them, at least sense them. But there was nothing. This was a void so complete that she wondered how anything could have come from it.
Slowly, reluctantly, she draws herself inward. She drifts away from the stone and returns to herself.
In this exact moment, Atiana’s world goes white. It feels as though she’s been laid over someone’s palm, her skin slit open from chin to groin, fingers picking through the viscera within. She rigors so tightly that her bones must be breaking, her tendons tearing and ripping from joints that sear with pain. She wants to scream, but in some disconnected way she knows that she cannot. She is no longer tied to her body. She has been set aside as another pushes her way past.
Sariya.
She knows it is Sariya.
And she can do nothing to stop her. Nothing. All this time, and she is still powerless against her.
But there is another.
She is so near, so linked with Sariya, that it is hard to discern her form, to sense her presence at all, and yet even through the pain Atiana can see her like a deeper shadow lying within another.
There is no doubt that this is Kaleh. She pulls at Sariya, claws at her, draws her back toward Kaleh’s own body. Sariya clings to Atiana, plunging her into a pain like being set afire. Only in those failing moments does she feel the burning pain along her wrist.
The small cut. She feels this, and her wrist and her hand. She senses the smoke that still drifts upward. There is something raw in this, something that taps the center of her soul, and it is this that she uses now. The smoke around her provides protection, for it is made of her own blood. It is of her. Sariya tries to prevent it, but Atiana retreats behind this barrier, and soon the battle has turned. Sariya is drawn further and further down by Kaleh, back into the sleeping form of the strange young woman on the stone slab.
Soon her presence is gone, locked away behind the trembling eyes, and Atiana is left alone in the aether, which now seems wider and deeper than it ever has before. She doesn’t want to admit failure—there would be much to learn from Kaleh, or even Sariya—but she cannot hope to attempt such a thing. Not now. Not as exhausted as she is.
Atiana woke, coughing not from smoke but the crippling pain her body was experiencing. For a moment the pain was every bit as deep as it had been while in the aether, except now it felt much more a part of her, a reality upon waking from a dream.
She collapsed to the floor, stared up at the glittering ceiling above. The hole in the roof looked as though the sun had been broken into a thousand pieces, shattering into stars that splayed across the swath of the heavens.
Footsteps approached. Ushai stared down at her with disappointed eyes. She’d hoped that Atiana would draw Sariya forth.
Ushai leaned down, offering her good hand to Atiana.
Atiana slapped it away and stood on her own. “You used me. You wanted to deliver Sariya to the Kohori.”
“That is what the Kohori wanted”—Ushai shrugged, glancing over to Kaleh—“but in truth I don’t know which I hoped for. They are linked—mother and daughter—and I wonder if even the fates themselves foresaw this.”
“You doubt that they did?”
“Years ago I never would have doubted the vision of the fates. Today, I am not so sure.”
A low voice came from behind Atiana. “Can she control the child?”
Atiana turned and found a man standing at the entrance to the building. The last time she’d seen him near the obelisk shortly after waking in this village, his raiment had been fine, much finer than the rest of the other Kohori. Now, though, he wore a robe of deep red with thick black stripes at the sleeves, near his wrists, and along the hem near his ankles. This was Habram, the leader of the Kohori.
Those many days ago he had looked intense, but not cruel, not unkind.
Not so, now.
Now he looked angry at the mere presence of Atiana. His dark eyes stared into hers with a look that was not unlike those she’d seen on the faces of the Maharraht, especially those that had been captured and sentenced, except Habram’s look was even more intense, as if he held Atiana accountable for all that had ever happened to his people.
The question he’d asked—can she control the child?—had been asked of Ushai. Atiana understood exactly what he’d meant. They’d wanted Atiana to control Kaleh so that Sariya might surface. But Atiana couldn’t—at least not yet—and Ushai knew it.
Ushai shook her head to Habram, after which Habram snapped his fingers twice. It sounded like the click a musket hammer made when it was pulled into place. Moments later two men in red robes entered. They approached her, and Atiana was sure they meant to kill her. She couldn’t understand why, but there was no mistaking the cold look in their eyes.
She backed away, but the moment she did, they sprinted forward.
“Help me!” Atiana called to Ushai.
But Ushai merely stared.
The first of them snatched Atiana’s wrist. She managed to pull it away,
but he grabbed her again. Atiana used the palm of her hand to strike him on the nose. He seemed surprised, for he staggered back for a moment, but then the other man grabbed her, and together they led her away out of the building, through the village, and back to the deep cell where she’d been kept these last few days.
The sun was now high, and the heat of the desert was up. The landscape wavered in the distance like a dream. Beyond the hole the landscape was largely flat, but there was a small copse of trees in a depression in the land perhaps one hundred paces beyond, and it was here that Atiana’s gaze was drawn. Something there had moved, she was sure of it, but now that she looked, she could see nothing.
The taller of the two men pulled back the wooden door over the cell and pointed to it. She refused him, however, hoping to get another look at the stand of small, withered trees.
“Go,” the shorter one said, the one she’d struck. “Go, or I throw you in.”
She took to the ladder, her eyes widening as she took in the landscape one last time. She continued down into the darkness, the chill of the space overtaking her as she did so. When she got to the bottom, the ladder was drawn up and the lid replaced, plunging this cold, lonely place into darkness once more.
As she sat there in the darkness, the scene of the desert played before her eyes. There, peeking out from a shadowed crook where two boughs met, was a woman.
The wodjan, Atiana knew. The woman from Hael. The one who’d come to her in the Gaji as they’d fled toward Kohor.
CHAPTER FORTY
Styophan strode with Rodion down the widest thoroughfare in Alekeşir. Thousands of people on horses and carts and walking on foot flowed through the city, its lifeblood. In a city he was familiar with—like Volgorod—the people would be faceless, something he knew, something he was comfortable with. Here he was aware of so much more: the weapons the janissaries wore as they rode two by two down the city street, the children wearing cut-up blankets for winter boots who watched from the ends of alleys, the mistrustful stares of the people they passed. Styophan knew he was imagining much of the danger around him, but it would only take one—one person alerting the janissaries or the guardsmen of Kasir Irabahce—and all would be lost.
He and Rodion crossed a high, curving bridge over the Vünkal and continued deeper into the city, toward the kasir. The buildings here were tall stone edifices with wide steps and fat columns carved with rearing drakhen and falcons and horses ridden by men with tall spears. These buildings stood straight, shoulders squared, watching one another as if the people milling below were nothing they need concern themselves with. Ahead, the road met a circle bigger than some villages Styophan had been to. It connected the eight major arteries of the central city, and inside of it, at the center of a large green lawn, was a dome with stout fluted columns.
Styophan nudged Rodion, who walked next to him. “You see?” he asked in Yrstanlan.
Rodion looked ahead, confused at first, but then he eyed the open space within the dome. Standing there was a bronze statue of a man holding a spear in one hand and a sword in the other. The man stared outward toward the horizon, his face serene and confident, secure in the belief that none would dare challenge him. The afternoon sun against the white buildings around the circle made the bronze gleam. It was new, this statue, erected in Hakan’s image after he’d died on Galahesh. He’d been taken by Muqallad and driven against an iron spike to forge the Atalayina anew. Quite a difference from the scene that stood before him.
Rodion rolled his eyes. “A bit grandiose, isn’t it?”
“Hakan was grandiose. They’re all grandiose.”
“They say it’s rebuilt each time a kamarisi dies.”
Styophan nodded. “They take every last dram of bronze and build a new statue from the old.”
“Subtle.”
Styophan laughed. The Empire was nothing if not confident and full of symbolism. You may draw our blood, the statue said, but Yrstanla will survive.
As they came closer, Styophan could see the workmen behind the stout iron chains that barred traffic from reaching the green lawn around the dome. They were cleaning the steps with buckets and brushes. Several were running cloths along a set of steps near the very edge of the dome’s floor that led to a podium. The podium itself was ornamented by stone and two men were painting it carefully in bright, gold paint.
“There,” Styophan said softly.
Rodion stared at the podium, and then began taking in his surroundings, the streets leading in, the buildings that surrounded the circle. “He’ll be difficult to reach.”
This was the place where the Kamarisi came, twice per year, to address his people. He would do so two days hence, and it was the best chance they’d have to take him. If he managed to find his way back to Kasir Irabahce, it would be nearly impossible to reach him. It had to be here.
Still, it would not be easy. The Kamarisi was nothing if not concerned with imagery, with presence. It was said that the circle was filled with hundreds of janissaries, and most if not all of the Kiliç Şaik.
How they would reach the Kamarisi he had no idea. The words of the Haelish queen still haunted him.
When you go to Alekeşir, Elean had said, the path will lead to your graves.
A hulking wagon with a cage at the back rolled past Styophan, blocking his view momentarily. From within the cage, men and women with vacant eyes stared. All except a small girl with shorn hair and bright green eyes. Many wore clothing of fine weave. The girl herself wore a dress of rich silk. She could have been no more than six, and she was near to tears as she watched the city pass by around her. She locked eyes with Styophan, staring at his good eye, then his patch, then his good eye again. She pleaded with him to do something, anything, but moments later the wagon had continued around the circle, and she was lost from view. It left Styophan feeling like a coward.
“A cruel place is Yrstanla,” Rodion said.
Styophan leaned over and spit. “Cruel, indeed.”
He surveyed the lawn as a dozen janissaries rode by. It would be easy enough for Styophan and his men to position themselves among the crowd when the Kamarisi came to address the people of Alekeşir. The Haelish were another matter. They were tall and muscular. They’d stand out no matter where they were stationed.
“They’ll have to be hidden,” Rodion said, echoing Styophan’s own thoughts.
Styophan stared across the grand circle, to the place where the wagon with the girl was now turning. The beginnings of a plan were forming. There would be many men here. Hundreds of soldiers, well trained, all bent on protecting the Kamarisi at all costs. But this was a place that hadn’t been attacked in centuries. One Kamarisi had been murdered at this very place, but that had been generations ago, and it had been a betrayal from within, not an attack from an enemy of the state. They could not count on the Kamarisi’s men being lax—they would all be well prepared—but if Styophan could attack to the fore, forcing the Kamarisi to retreat down one of these wide avenues, they might be caught in a place where they least expected an attack.
Two days, Styophan thought. They had two days to scout the surrounding area and make preparations.
Styophan and Rodion took the time to walk the entirety of the circle. Rodion stopped and bought two apples from a cart using a few of the Empire’s coins they’d been given by Datha. He handed one out for Styophan, but Styophan wasn’t hungry. He was too worried. Rodion shrugged and took a loud bite of his apple.
“I’m beginning to think those crones were wrong,” Rodion said as he crunched on his apple.
“About what?”
Rodion leaned in and spoke more quietly. “With so many tall men at our side, and the Kamarisi here”—pointed with his apple toward the massive dome—“we may just pull this off.”
“Have you already forgotten about Edik?”
Rodion shook his head. “I loved Edik like a brother, Styopha. You know this. But, ancients preserve him, he never knew when to keep his mouth shut.”
&n
bsp; They stopped as a palanquin borne by eight stout men shuttled past them and down a narrow street that curved as badly as the mighty Vünkal.
“I hope you’re right,” Styophan said.
They continued until they’d reached the very place from which they’d begun. Styophan was watching a vendor standing behind with a cart filled with sugared pistachios and almonds and some strange bone-white nut Styophan had never seen before. Styophan had seen him when they’d arrived at the circle, but now he was staring at the two of them and Styophan wasn’t sure if he was suspicious or if he just wanted them to come closer to his cart.
“Styopha…”
Styophan was just about to walk over, to buy something if only to find out what he was about, when Rodion elbowed him in the small of his back.
Styophan turned toward the circle.
More janissaries were riding past, twenty in all. Unlike the ones that had ridden past earlier, these were dressed in full regalia, and they rode tall black horses, beasts whose coats gleamed under the high sun. These were men from the kasir or he was a miller’s daughter.
Rodion, however, wasn’t staring at the janissaries. He was staring to the rear of their line. Behind them came a wagon, and behind it were twenty more janissaries. Quite a guard for a few slaves or prisoners, but it was notable since the people in the cage were clearly being taken to Irabahce.
Styophan was just about to ask Rodion what he’d seen when the people in the cage registered.
Something black and bottomless opened up inside his chest and widened until it felt as though Styophan would fall inside.
How? he thought. How could they have arrived here?
At the front of the cage, holding the bars as the wagon rolled on, were two young men, both dressed in the robes of the Aramahn. One was Nasim, the boy who’d nearly caused the destruction of Khalakovo seven years ago. He’d seen him on the ship he and Nikandr had taken from Rafsuhan back to Khalakovo after Muqallad had fused two pieces of the Atalayina together. The other was Sukharam, the boy Nasim had brought back with him from Ghayavand.
The Flames of Shadam Khoreh Page 35