The Flames of Shadam Khoreh

by Bradley Beaulieu

  “You’re taking us into ruin,” he finally says, “and I won’t allow it.”

  “You won’t allow it? You’re the very one who led us to this place.”

  “If you believe that, you’re as blind as you are brash.”

  “It’s clear to anyone who considers what you’ve done, where you’ve been, and with whom.” He waves his hand around him. “And there’s this.”

  “This? This is a gift from the ancients, who sent Nasim to us to protect us. They sent Ashan as well. And Soroush.” Nikandr waves behind him toward Soroush, who is still coughing on the windswept ground. “You cannot have him. He will come with me. And you will be voted down. The tide has turned against you, as you well know. We will call off the fleet, and I will go to Ghayavand to see if there is still time to heal the world.”

  Leonid laughs. “You can’t call the fleet away. They’re filled with my men, Khalakovo. Mine… Your mother, or the three sisters, or Radia… Send all the rooks you wish. None of them will force the ships to turn course.” He laughs harder. The wrinkles around his eyes deepen as he squints in genuine amusement. It makes him look like a wizened apple. “The ships left Galahesh days ago. They will reach Ghayavand soon, and when they do, they will lay the Kohori to waste.”

  Nikandr feels his heart drop within his chest. “You must stop them. You must call them away.”

  Leonid, wind whipping his white beard in the air around him, raises his chin. “Never.”

  With that word, something inside Nikandr snaps. All of the effort he and the others have put forth in trying to save what they could, the emotions Nikandr buried in order to prevent himself from drawing steel against Leonid. All of it comes bubbling up in a fount of seething anger.

  The wind at the center of the storm rises, becomes a gale, becomes a tempest. The air itself turns atavistic and hungry. It steals breath, steals life, Nikandr’s included, but he’s prepared for it.

  Leonid is not.

  This wicked, pathetic little man wards with his arms, trying to bat away some unseen foe. He stumbles, rises again, tries to break for the edge of the howling wind, but he doesn’t make it two steps before the wind throws him backward.

  He falls, slipping in the mud and slush. He claws at the ground, clutches at the trampled grass. For long moments he writhes, unable to breathe, and then, at last, he falls still.

  And the wind dies away.

  Nikandr was so taken by the visage of Grand Duke Leonid lying dead on the ground before him that it took him long moments to realize the havahezhan had retreated. Not left, but retreated. It was close enough to call, and Nikandr would when the time was right.

  The lack of wind felt strange, as if a friend with whom he’d been holding hands was suddenly and inexplicably gone. He looked around him, took in the devastation. As far as the eye could see the camp was ruined. Tents fallen. Gear scattered. Ponies running wild in the distance.

  And streltsi. Hundreds. Thousands. Watching him with naked fear.

  The dukes watched him with wary expressions on their faces. They took him in—he and Leonid—but none approached. None but Vadim, but he was tackled as Soroush bulled into him from behind and restrained him.

  None moved to help.

  Slowly, Borund approached. Others closed in behind him. The circle of men that was once so wide was now closing in around Nikandr like a fist.

  Nikandr was sure they were going to take him, place him in chains and bring him back to the islands or elsewhere to await a trial, but when Borund spoke, he spoke these words, “What do you need, Nischka?”

  Confused beyond reason, Nikandr shook his head. “What?”

  “What do you need, to take you to Ghayavand?”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  Styophan pulled the spyglass up to his good eye, his left, and peered down its length. He stared out over the expanse of the sea to the island of Ghayavand, a virescent gem against a bed of blue. The Zhostova ran low to the waves, the seaward mainmast mere yards above the churning sea. Styophan scanned the island carefully, but so far there was no sign that they’d been seen.

  Which was well and good, for yesterday, he’d spotted the ships on Ghayavand’s northern shore. Luckily the day had been cloudy and dark, and they’d not been spotted themselves. There had been strange ships in the distance. They looked like living things shaped like the tips of spears, and yet they had floated in the air like windships. He knew not what they were, but he knew enough to avoid them.

  “You plan to moor near Alayazhar?”

  Styophan brought the spyglass down and turned. It was Anahid, one of the two qiram that had joined him on this journey. As the wind played with her long black hair, throwing it across the shoulders of her coral-colored robes, an opaline gem glowed softly in the circlet she wore over her brow.

  “I do,” Styophan said. “From what we know, Sihyaan is the place they will be focused on, not the city, which now lies dead.”

  “There is dead and there is dead,” Anahid replied.

  She’d warned him of going there several times already, but he’d already made up his mind. “You’ve become superstitious.”

  Anahid stared out over the water. Against the surrounding green landscape Alayazhar and the gutted white shells of buildings stood out like bones upon new summer grass. “I merely respect the power of that place. It is the source of much of our misery.”

  “You sound like you hate it.”

  Styophan expected her to deny it, but instead she glanced up at him and for the first time in memory was unable to hold his gaze. “It is our people’s darkest stain.”

  “It happened three hundred years ago.”

  “It was yesterday,” she shot back. “We inherit the sins of our former selves.”

  “You inherit their virtues as well.”

  She tried to smile. “Sometimes I wonder.”

  Styophan took her hand and squeezed it. “You do.”

  Her smile faded, and she took her hand back from him, but not before giving his hand a squeeze back. “We’re getting close,” she said, glancing out over the water.

  A short, uncomfortable silence followed, but when Styophan ordered the ship brought down, all returned to normal.

  They moored on the beach beneath the city. He’d chosen this location not only because it hid their approach, but because the beach was low enough that the ship would be hidden from much of the nearby landscape.

  He and three sotni—thirty men in all—treaded across the beach. The tide was low. Mossy green rocks lay beneath the sun as crabs scuttled among them. They were headed toward the trail that led up to the city proper, but before they’d gone a hundred paces, Styophan saw movement. On a massive rock near the shoreline, cloth fluttered. He couldn’t see what or who was atop the rock, but it looked strange indeed.

  He called a halt and climbed to the top of the stone, and there he found the desiccated creature Nasim had saved in the Gaji. Tohrab, Nikandr had named him. He was staring up toward the sky, his breath coming slowly as the wind tugged at his robe and made it flutter.

  “Are you well?” Styophan felt the fool for asking such a thing, but he didn’t know what else to say.

  Tohrab didn’t move, didn’t speak.

  In the center of his chest Styophan could feel a thrumming. The rock below him seemed to shudder with it. It made the very waves of the sea and the air around him seem alive.

  Styophan came closer and crouched down. He shook Tohrab’s shoulder. “Are you well?” he asked, louder than before. Tohrab’s skin was so white, so thin. It looked like rain-drenched paper left in the sun to bleach. How this miserable soul had made it this far he had no idea.

  Slowly, Tohrab’s wrinkled eyes opened. He regarded Styophan with a look of profound confusion and pain. But in his eyes there was a timelessness, and a determination the likes of which Styophan had never seen. In those eyes Styophan could believe that he alone was holding the final wards together. It would take an immense reserve of will and power, but if what
Nikandr had said was true, one of the Tashavir would have it.

  “How can I help, grandfather?” Styophan asked.

  “Who are you?” the Tashavir said, his voice reed thin.

  “A friend.”

  Tohrab slowly and with obvious pain pulled himself to a sitting position. “You cannot help.”

  “Where is Sukharam? Where are Ashan and Nasim?”

  Tohrab’s eyes went distant. “The time has nearly come. She approaches.”

  Styophan turned and followed Tohrab’s gaze toward the city. Nothing had changed, however, and he saw no one approaching.

  “Who is coming?”

  As the water below drew back, Tohrab drew in breath with a slow wheezing sound, and when the waves crashed against the rocky beach, he released it again.

  Styophan shook him, and still Tohrab didn’t answer. “Tohrab, who is coming?”

  “Styopha?”

  Styophan turned. Rodion was staring toward the base of the cliff below the city. Many people were hiking down a trail that led from the city down to the sand. At the head was a woman. Dozens followed her, men dressed in red robes and flowing scarves that covered their faces.

  “She comes for me.” With great effort, Tohrab pushed himself up off the stone. “Do not fight her. Go to the city. There is another that needs your help.”

  “Who?”

  Tohrab’s lips were pulled back into a grim line. He drew breath, released it with the sound of the waves. “They will not harm you. Not if you give them wide berth.”

  “I’ve come to help you.”

  “You cannot help me. The time has finally come. What the world will do, it will do. Now go.”

  “I cannot. My Lord Prince has sent me here to find you, you and the others.”

  Tohrab did not speak again—he did not so much as glance his way—but just then a wind picked up and pushed Styophan so hard he was forced to the very edge of the dark stone. He tried to remain in place, but the wind shoved him off. He fell hard to the beach, rolled and came to his feet, but by then the wind was picking up, sending sand and pebbles against him and his men. Despite the men baring their muskets before them to ward the magic of the hezhan away, they were forced, step by step, away from the stone and toward the cliffs. Tohrab was doing this, he knew. He thought he was fated to die, but Styophan still didn’t understand why he wouldn’t allow them to help.

  By now the woman in white and the men in red had closed the distance. The woman was near enough now that Styophan recognized her. It was Ushai, the woman who’d betrayed Soroush and Nikandr and the others in the heart of the Gaji. Her left hand hung useless and scarred at her side. Her right hand gripped the Atalayina. Styophan had never seen it himself, but he’d heard the stories. Even through the haze of the biting dust and stone it glowed blue under the sun, and it glittered like gold.

  Ushai stared directly at Styophan. Her face was emotionless, but there was threat in her eyes. Approach, they said, and I will kill you.

  Tohrab had known this, of course. He’d known the odds were too much against them. Part of him still wanted to raise his pistol and fire on Ushai. Part of him felt cowardly for not doing so.

  As if Tohrab had heard his thoughts, the wind picked up, driving saltwater and pea-sized rocks against them.

  “To the city!” Styophan shouted.

  If the miserable creature on that stone wanted to die, there was nothing he could do about it. Not any longer.

  They marched as well as they were able, ducking their heads as they went, and soon they’d lost all sense of unity and they started running as quickly as they could toward Alayazhar. Finally, as they reached the path toward the city, the wind eased, but the sand still swirled high above the water, enough that he could see little but a hint of the darkened stone.

  They marched to the top of the path. No sooner had Styophan stepped foot on the level ground near the buildings of Alayazhar than a howl reverberated over the island. Styophan felt it through the soles of his boots as it rang through air and land itself. Down on the beach, the sand had begun to settle. The howl faded until the only thing he could hear was the patter of rocks and sand below. The world around them had suddenly become as still as the making of the world.

  On the beach, the sand drew inward toward the rock. And then it blasted outward.

  “Away!” Styophan called. “Away from the cliff!”

  The land around the black rock undulated as if it were made of so much water. The wave expanded, eating the distance between the shore and the cliffs. The ground below Styophan shifted and buckled. Part of the cliff—including the pathway—fell away, taking men with it. They cried out not in pain but in shock.

  The voices died away as his men fell, surely to their deaths.

  Styophan was thrown to the ground. He scrabbled away from the edge, but more and more of the cliff began to ablate like a fortress of sand built by the hand of a child. Those who had managed to remain standing helped the others to regain their feet.

  Slowly the sound died away, and the rumbling beneath him quieted. The edge of the crumbing cliff stopped only paces away from where he stood. Styophan’s mind and heart told him not to approach the edge, but he forced himself to go step by tentative step to search for his fallen men. His heart pounded like a skin drum as he inched to the edge and looked down. There was no sign of his men. Nor was there any sign of Ushai. Or the men in red robes.

  But Tohrab, he could see. As the sea churned white waves around him, he lay on the rock, unmoving. He’d found his peace at last, but his death meant the last of the wards had probably fallen.

  It won’t be long now, he thought.

  “Styopha.” It was Rodion, and there was confusion in his voice.

  Styophan turned and found three women approaching.

  By the ancients, one of them was Atiana Vostroma.

  She was walking toward him with a Haelish wodjan on one side and an Aramahn on the other, neither of whom he recognized. Atiana’s blonde hair was pulled back into a ragged tail, and the shayla dress she wore was dirty and threadbare, but there was a determination in her eyes that Styophan could feel in his chest. It reminded him of Nikandr.

  “My Lady Princess,” Styophan stammered, “how did you find us?” She had only to wave at the beach for the ridiculousness of the question to hit him. “I mean, how have you come to be here?”

  “I could ask you the same, but there isn’t time. You saw Ushai, did you not?”

  Styophan glanced back toward the beach, still half expecting the ground beneath him to give way and swallow them. “She found Tohrab on the beach below. She killed him. Or rather, he allowed himself to be killed.” He paused, feeling wholly inadequate before this Princess of Vostroma. “We could do nothing against them.”

  “I came too late myself,” she replied. She looked over his men. “But I believe the ancients have watched over us all. You’ve done well to reach these shores, and I have great need of you now that you’re here.”

  Styophan snapped his heels and bowed his head. “You have only to name it.”

  “Ushai goes to the mountain.” She raised her arm and pointed southwest. “To Sihyaan. We cannot allow her to reach it, Styophan Andrashayev, or we will be lost, not merely those on this island, or even those in the Grand Duchy, but everyone, everywhere.”

  Even as Atiana spoke these words, Styophan saw the strange, spear-shaped ships rising into the sky. Only a few at first, but then more and more. And then he saw the reason why. Far to the southwest, he could see incoming warships.

  Nikandr had failed, he realized. The ships of the Grand Duchy were coming.

  “Best we hurry,” Styophan said in Anuskayan.

  “Best we hurry,” Atiana replied.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  The darkness around Nasim was impenetrable, and yet his mind was consumed by a white flash, a shattering stone.

  The moment he’d seen it—when he’d remembered that it had happened—a bottomless pit had opened up inside hi
m. Down it went, deeper than the darkness between the stars.

  The knowledge of what had truly happened that day washed over him like a dark and hungry wave.

  He screamed. Screamed until his throat was raw. His fingers curled into fists, nails cutting skin, and body tightening until he shivered from the pain.

  That one moment consumed him. It wasn’t the shattering stone, nor the blinding white flash, but the utter emptiness he’d felt in the space of a blink beforehand.

  He wanted to tell himself that these were Khamal’s memories, that he needn’t accept them as his own, but he knew this to be foolish, utterly foolish, and he refused to deceive himself any longer. These memories were his as well.

  He was Khamal, and Khamal was he.

  It was something he should have reconciled with long ago. Perhaps he would have saved himself a lot of pain.

  As his cries subsided, and his body began to unclench, part of him wanted to immerse himself in the pain. Part of him hoped this would go on until he could no longer feel the pain. But he knew that would never happen. He would feel this until his dying day. And then, at last, he would be gone, forever. Khamal had seen to that when he’d sacrificed the akhoz, young Alif. It had allowed Khamal to escape the island and the wards of the Tashavir, but in doing so, it had committed his undying soul to this one, final life. It had grounded Nasim to the material world. He would never again return to Adhiya. He would never reach vashaqiram, one’s own state of enlightenment, nor would he see the world reach its higher plane of existence: indaraqiram.

  But this?

  A white flash.

  The breaking of the Atalayina.

  How could anyone go on toward enlightenment, whether they believed in the ways of the Aramahn or not?

  Nasim felt a tender hand stroking his hair. It was such a familiar gesture. Ashan had done it for him over and over again after he’d rescued Nasim from the Maharraht. In those days it had merely allowed him to slip back into a state of directionless confusion. He’d been caught between Adhiya and Erahm, unable to distinguish between the two.