Alisiyad

by Sarah R. Suleski

  She looked up in bewilderment, holding Eliasha’s head in her hands as she dropped the lifeless body to the floor. She let the head fall back, and stared at the still form. The eyes that had once twinkled at her, and glowed in the darkness, were dull and glassy. She reached out to close them, then closed her own eyes. This can’t be happening. This will change. It always changes. Eliasha’s life was all around her, in vivid red, not gray, not dreamlike, and if she opened her eyes again she would see it, but it wasn’t true, she told herself. It’s a lie. It’s a dream. It’s more gray. It’ s . . . .

  The figure moved. She heard the rustle and opened her eyes, watching it warily. It stepped around the bed and walked past the foot to stand above Liseli. A white hand emerged from the dark folds, and pushed back the hood. The darkness had a face; it was small and white as paper, with eyes so blue and pale they were clear like water reflecting blue. A shadow of black hair encircled the head; the head tilted to the side. The face looked at her. Its bluish gray lips parted: “I told you. You can’t save anyone.”

  Chapter 23 ~ Mother’s Day, part 2

  Liseli opened her mouth to spit a curse, but only uttered a strangulated cry. She lifted herself to her knees, and words came. “You killed her!”

  “Yes,” Alisiya replied, blinking as if she didn’t understand the point.

  “Why?” Liseli lifted her hands.

  “She was mine.”

  Liseli struggled to her feet, damp nightshift clinging to her legs. “She was not!”

  “Of course she was,” Alisiya answered in a placid tone, without expression. She met Liseli’s irate gaze evenly. “She drank from my river, from my waters, many times. I granted her that gift, and it made her beautiful beyond compare. She had a life of eternal springtime before her. My only price was obedience. And she failed me.”

  Liseli stepped forward, over the feet of the dead girl. She stopped short of touching Alisiya, and clenched her fists, trembling. She didn’t know what to do, or what she was going to say, but anger pulsed through her. “Failed you? How?”

  Alisiya was silent, seeming more interested in surveying Liseli than answering her question. Then she dropped her gaze to Eliasha, and her composure wavered. “I told her to drive a wedge between you and your boy. She told me that it bothered her conscience . . . and she tried to make amends for what paltry little she had started to do.” The blue lips twisted into a grimace, as if the memory was painful.

  “You killed her . . . for that?” For a moment Liseli was too stunned to feel anger. Before Alisiya could answer, though, she reached out a hand to grip her cloak. “Russ! Where is he? What have you done to him?”

  Alisiya lifted her eyes from Eliasha. “No . . . I wouldn’t have simply killed her for that. But . . . she was no longer loyal to me . . . at all. She served her conscience. Her own notions . . . .”

  “But Russ! He was dy—”

  “She was more useful to me dying than living,” Alisiya said absently, her eyes trailing back down to the floor as if she was just realizing what she had done. “But I shall miss her . . . ”

  Liseli grabbed the cloak with both hands. “Tell me he didn’t die!”

  Pale blue eyes lifted to hers again, and the color shifted darker, darker, to darkest blue to almost black. “He did,” she said, gently dislodging Liseli’s hands. “Two days ago. I told you, he bled to death. Died of his wounds. You couldn’t save him.”

  Liseli stood still, not breathing, feeling the words sink in, each like a nail. She let Alisiya hold her hands, and stared without blinking into a face she didn’t see. “I don’t believe you,” she said feebly.

  Alisiya dropped her hands, and reached up to lightly brush the hair away from Liseli’s face. “I’m sorry for you. But you knew it must happen. This is why I told you to prepare, to . . . well, you have been sleeping for two days—”

  “What? What day is it?” Liseli stared at her stupidly, feeling unable to comprehend anything.

  “Saturday. Saturday evening. You have been sleeping since Thursday, pretending to be dead. I think you wanted to be dead because you knew he had died. Poor, silly girl.” Her eyes and voice were soft, affectionate. She rested her hands on Liseli’s shoulders. “I couldn’t let you be dead, and I thought—” her voice lowered to a whisper, “—I knew, that another death would bring you back.”

  Liseli struck the hands away from her, and stumbled to the side. “No!” She would not hear that. That would not be true. She grabbed the curtains and buried her face in them, feeling her forehead strike the glass on the other side. She groped through the curtains for the handles to the door, but couldn’t find them, and in a moment couldn’t remember what she was searching for. She heard her name, but ignored it. It couldn’t be true. She drew her head back and hit the glass again, once, twice, three times before her battering ram began to hurt. It’s not real! Lies! All of it! But pain was real, very real, and that meant the glass was real. She inhaled deeply, choking on the scent of dusty old fabric, and tried to break the glass with her head.

  Hands grabbed her from behind, and the insistent voice kept saying her name as they pulled her back. Liseli hung tight to the curtain, ripping it away, bringing it falling down with her. She sunk to the floor, and hugged the curtain to herself, crying into it. After a moment she began to think, with hope, that she was only sitting in her bed holding her blanket after a nightmare, and she was only seven after all and this had all been a grand, long nightmare . . . .

  Alisiya’s face appeared before her as she tore the curtain out of her hands. She knelt in front of Liseli and said, “Stop this! Now!” She shook her by the shoulders and slapped her across the face. Liseli sobered enough to strike back blindly, but Alisiya shoved the back of her head against the bedpost and held her gaze. “Calm yourself.” She pointed a finger in Liseli’s face. “You are behaving like a child, and I am losing my patience.”

  Liseli stared at her, unblinking, mind racing. Alisiya’s fingers gripped her hair and held her head against the wood, but it was the eyes that pinned her. “Pull yourself together.”

  Liseli squeezed her eyes shut. “Let me go.”

  “Let you go. Now, now.” Alisiya chuckled, and relaxed her grip on Liseli’s hair. She opened her eyes again, reluctantly, and Alisiya patted her head. “Don’t look at me like that. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Liseli swallowed, feeling chilled. “I want . . . to see him.”

  Alisiya’s eyes wavered between colors for a moment. “You can’t. He’s been buried already. It’s been two days. And you know what he looked like after . . . .”

  “Then I want to see his grave,” Liseli sniffed, wiping her eyes and shifting away from Alisiya’s touch.

  “Liseli,” Alisiya chided in a gentle voice, shaking her head. “I told you to let him go. What will you do? Throw yourself to the ground, drape yourself over his tombstone, weeping? Don’t be silly.” She smiled.

  Liseli hissed through her teeth, words falling short. She got free of the bed and scrambled backwards to her feet, making for the door. She thought to run from the room screaming for help. But just as her fingers brushed the door handle, she lost all feeling in her legs and they crumpled beneath her.

  Alisiya rose, walking to where she’d fallen on the stones. Liseli stifled whimpers of pain, and glared. “You wanted him dead and you’ve got your way!” she dragged herself to the door and reached up. “You could have saved him, or let me help him, if you wanted to! Don’t play sympathetic with me! I know what you want and I still won’t do it.”

  “Lis—”

  “Go to hell!” Liseli banged her hand on the door, just below and out of reach of the handle.

  Alisiya bent down and grabbed her hand, yanking her away from the door. She dragged her across the floor to the side of the bed, where she sat down and looked at her prisoner. “I made your legs stop working. I can do much more.”

  Liseli tried to spit at her, but her mouth was dry.

  “Listen to me!” Alisiya
shook her like a disobedient child. “I will not allow hysterics over the ending of a night’s affair stop me from what I’ve known as my destiny since before your grandparents were even born!” She stopped and took a breath, recapturing her composure. “You are going to come with me to the Adayzjian Valley, and then to Adayzjia. What you do after that is your concern. But there’s nothing for you here, anymore.”

  “I’d rather die than do anything for you.” Liseli struggled to pull her hand free. Her wrist was still raw from Eliasha’s grip, and it throbbed in pain. Alisiya knew it, and held fast.

  “I know. You’ve proven that,” Alisiya said, with a touch of wryness. She lifted her eyebrows. “But death is not the only punishment for disobedience. I can give you pain, more pain than you can imagine. Do I have to do that?”

  “Do it.”

  “Lis—”

  “I don’t care.”

  Alisiya sighed at Liseli’s defiance. “You’ll do what I want, eventually.”

  Liseli set her jaw and waited. Alisiya didn’t move, or change expression, but Liseli felt her blood begin to prickle. She blinked rapidly and held back a gasp. It was like she imagined being electrocuted felt, only the current was slow. Her blood began to feel like it fizzed, and involuntary tears poured from her eyes as she ground her teeth together. Maybe it did fizz, she thought, and she would die just like Eliasha. Better that than give in. Pain is nothing; I feel nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing . . . .

  “You will feel,” said Alisiya. “What does it mean? Your defiance? What does it prove? You let Russ die, and you couldn’t save Eliasha. He died because he was tangled in your fate. I had to kill her because you would not wake for anything else. Do you think it matters what you do now? Why is it always about how strong you can be? Why, Liseli, why? Do you care about nothing and no one else?”

  Russ. I cared about him.

  No you didn’t, you cared about how he made you feel. That’s all you ever cared about.

  That’s not true.

  Yes it is.

  Her head pounded. She didn’t know if Alisiya spoke or she thought. She couldn’t hear anything but the blood pounding in her ears, but the blood spoke.

  You bitch. You stupid bitch. You’re so full of yourself, you think you’re important, you think you actually matter.

  No I don’t. I don’t think that. Don’t say that.

  It’s true. You didn’t love him and you didn’t care, because you don’t know what it is to feel anything that’s real, that’s not you, that does any good. Everything you’ve ever felt you’ve only felt for you.

  No.

  Yes. You’re alone now and that’s where you belong. It’s where you’ve always been.

  No.

  Yes. And besides, you didn’t do anything, anyway.

  I did!

  You thought you did, but you didn’t.

  I tried to save Russ. I tried to get help for Eliasha.

  You did that for yourself, so you could claim to have done something for them. To have felt something for them. But you didn’t do anything, in reality, just like you’ve never felt anything. You’ve never done anything for anyone else. You watched them die and you didn’t really care, not about them, only about you, what you were feeling, if you can call it feeling. Nothing about you is real. You’ve only ever pretended to feel anything.

  Why don’t you open up your eyes? Nothing you’ve ever done has mattered and nothing you ever do will matter.

  You only exist for yourself.

  You may as well not even exist.

  This defiance means nothing. You didn’t help them and you won’t help me. You won’t help anyone because no matter what you do or think you feel, in your small little heart you care only about yourself. Your anger means nothing to them, they’re dead. You hold onto it now for you alone. That’s why it does nothing, means nothing, is nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  Nothing.

  Yes, nothing.

  Like me.

  Like you.

  I wanted to die, I want to die. Let me die.

  “Enough of that.” Alisiya tilted Liseli’s head up with one finger under her chin. Liseli opened her eyes and gradually the paper white face came back into focus. “No,” she smiled, blue eyes sparkling. “I won’t let you die. I still need you to live for me.”

  The pain ebbed away, Liseli’s head stopped pounding, and she felt hollow. She felt tears streaming down her face, but Alisiya made a clucking noise and brushed them away. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You matter to me, and you mattered to Russ, before you let him die. Up with you, now.”

  “I won’t,” Liseli managed weakly, but Alisiya’s hand tightened on her chin.

  “Do you want to spend the rest of your life in that miserable place? Alone with your guilt?”

  “I won’t . . . .”

  “You will do whatever I say. When I want you to die, you will die. Make no mistake about that. But I can drive you mad long before that, and you don’t want that.”

  Liseli hissed, “You’re mad.”

  “Which is why I know you don’t want that. No one does, I never did; my father ruined me and I will ruin you if you do not do what I say . . . willingly.”

  Liseli’s shoulders shook as she cried. She didn’t know what was happening to her. She didn’t know how it could be happening to her. Why? she cried. But she had no strength left to answer, or to fight Alisiya any longer. There are no answers, and nothing to fight for. The realization was a cold slap in the face.

  Alisiya helped Liseli to her feet, and surveyed the bloody nightshift. “Put on some clothes, quickly, and we’ll leave,” she said, nodding.

  Liseli stared at her for a moment, insistent threads of pain and anger flickering through her mind. But it doesn’t matter. It never mattered.

  Her will was broken, and she did as she was told.

  Chapter 23 ~ Mother’s Day, part 3

  Liseli remembered little of the journey to the Adayzjian Valley. They left Arlic’s house in the twilight mist, walking through the quiet, gray garden till they came to the hole in the wall, where two dead guards kept watch. Outside the city one of Leeton’s huge, feral dogs waited, and Liseli balked, but Alisiya mounted the dog like a horse and made Liseli sit behind her.

  Then they took off, and Liseli closed her eyes, wishing that she could be dead to the world again. Her nightmares of death had been muted, entrancing, they didn’t hurt like being alive and awake. What had happened? It was only Saturday night. Not even a week had gone by since she’d been living safe behind the fortress of mundane routines, in a mundane world . . . . That life had been like the dreams of death, in its own way. Gray, with feelings dulled. She would give anything to be back there again, even thinking so foolishly, so naively, that she had anything to complain about.

  The dog alternately raced and walked across miles of land, going northwest across the river, through the foothills and up toward the mountains in the dark. It saw with its eerie orange eyes, glowing and blinking in the night. Alisiya let them rest only seldom, but Liseli didn’t care. She wasn’t hungry and being tired meant nothing. Once Alisiya was done with her . . . once she had done whatever incomprehensible thing Alisiya expected of her, then she would be left alone. Completely. She had no one who would care about her; the Erykumyn would not care, they had Eliasha to mourn. There was her family back home, but she didn’t know how to get home. There was nothing for her here, and nothing for her as long as she was trapped here. She didn’t know what she was going to do when Alisiya released her.

  It was beginning to get light again when Alisiya announced that they were nearing their destination. Liseli looked out at her surroundings, peering through the purple blue morning light, and found herself riding through a narrow valley. To the north across the open grass she could see buildings just being touched by the rising sun behind her, a little town nestled amongst the rocks and hardy mountain trees.

  This must be, she thought dispassionately, where Pillari and the rest came
from . . . where they were travelling from when we met them, only a few days ago. Wednesday. That was the day I kissed Russ . . . for the first time . . . .

  “ . . . Nearly a hundred years ago,” Alisiya was saying. Her dark hair blew in the breeze and tickled Liseli’s face. “They had to escape Adayzjia because of the Ricallyn. They wanted to kill my father, and use his blood for their potions and rituals. The Ricallyn were always obsessed with the idea of travelling to other worlds, so my mother’s writings say . . . . But of course, only someone who is a Key can open the Gates, and you can’t become a Key, you have to be born one. According to my father.”

  Liseli closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. She couldn’t believe Alisiya’s nerve, chatting away as if nothing was wrong. She was just about to say something, anything, to make her shut up, when Alisiya said, “Even so, the Ricallyn believe they can make themselves into Keys by drinking a Key’s blood . . . or at least, they think that will make their children born Keys. The Byzaukyn King handed my father over to them, but Arlic and the rest came to his rescue. They were so high minded,” she added bitterly.

  Liseli straightened, and even though she hated herself for talking to the beast, she asked, “A Key . . . . Is that what I am? That’s why you’ve brought me here? To be a . . . a Key?” Something about that sounded wrong.

  “Yes.” Alisiya paused. “My father is the expert on the subject,” she said dryly, “being a powerful and well traveled Key. By powerful, I mean that he could take many people and things with him through the gates. It takes strength in the gift, or well-honed abilities, to transport more than just oneself through. He could take large packs of dogs, or groups of people with him.” She sighed, noiselessly, but Liseli riding close behind her could feel it.

  “According to him, the gift often runs in families. But that’s no guarantee. Obviously. I have known all my life that I did not inherit his ability. I am . . . I am my mother’s daughter,” her voice darkened, and hardened. “I am all that is left of her.”