Alisiyad

by Sarah R. Suleski

  Russ picked the knife up from the road where Leeton had dropped it. He hesitated for a moment, then tossed it into the abyss where Ricalli had disappeared, muttering, “I’m really getting sick of people trying to stab me.”

  He noticed then that the light at the hill had formed into the shape of the woman, same as before, and was watching him placidly from its eyes of light. He didn’t know how long she had been hovering there, waiting. When she saw his eyes on her, she said, “Mortals. I do not understand you. When last I saw the Gatebreaker, he bargained with me to spare the life of the red-headed girl. Now he attempts to kill her.”

  Russ glanced between the inert forms of Leeton and his daughter, and replied succinctly; “Stuff happened.”

  He thought she smiled. “You survived. I did not expect you to.”

  “I’m harder to kill than I look.” He returned her smile, faintly.

  “You are a resilient mortal. Your endurance is your strength.”

  Endurance, determination, a reason . . . or dumb luck — whatever it was that was the key to survival, Russ didn’t much care at the moment. He’d seen Liseli do what Ricalli could not; gather enough presence of mind in the Edgeworld to save herself, and he didn’t know if it was a stronger will to survive or just a trick of fate. It didn’t matter in the end, what mattered was that they were the only ones left standing.

  “I’m ready to go back, if it’s possible,” he said, remembering the danger the Gate itself presented. He wasn’t much looking forward to the eviscerating pain going through, or the puking and exhaustion as an aftereffect, but that was bearable if he could at least drag himself and Liseli through alive.

  “Yes,” said the Gate. “Leave the Gatebreaker and his daughter behind. His life is forfeit to me.”

  Russ glanced at Leeton. He had tried to kill Liseli, but he still had to think twice about leaving the man to die. “His life belongs to me,” the Gate prodded, noticing his hesitation. “Even if you attempt to bring him through with you, I will take him. It is my right. He himself knew the minute he entered this Edgeworld a second time that he would never leave.”

  “His debt to you,” Russ remembered the King’s words. “That’s why he said he was going to die soon.”

  The light pulsed a little in silent affirmation.

  Leeton stirred, then, and Russ couldn’t help but utter a little groan. He really didn’t want to resume their fight.

  But Leeton just sat up, shook the sand from his hair, and gazed at the Gate. She looked down at him, shining light over him. “My time has come,” he said, half stating, half questioning.

  “Yes.”

  The Gate said nothing more, as if all discussion and explanation had already passed between them. Leeton lowered his head for a moment, then stood. Russ took Liseli by the arm and moved away from the King, watching him closely. Leeton did not pursue them, however, instead walked over to where Alisiya lay.

  He picked her up, and looked at her as if he no longer saw the blood and death, only the child he loved. “Go then,” he said to Russ. “You may have your love, and I am left with mine.”

  Words failed Russ; he felt as if he should say something to Leeton before he left, but knew he couldn’t match the King’s eloquence. “I’m sorry,” he said, meaning he was sorry that Leeton’s life was to end like this. He’d admired the man, despite their fighting over Liseli at the end.

  Leeton looked at him and said, wearily, “Go. Go and leave us to the Gate. You have won, I am defeated. May you never know the pain of failing your child.”

  Russ simply nodded to him; there was nothing he could say to Leeton that would suffice.

  He turned toward the Gate. “I’m ready,” he said, leading Liseli up the hill toward the light. One last glance back showed him Leeton standing on the road watching them go, Alisiya in his arms. Then light swallowed everything.

  Chapter 36 ~ Return

  Liseli found herself in a meadow facing a stand of trees, the rushing sound of a waterfall at her back. She turned, confused, and recognized the Chaiorra River crashing down over the cave opening. Her hair and shirt was damp, as if she’d walked out from under the waterfall, but she didn’t remember anything between walking through the doorway of the abandoned building behind Russ, and the sight of the Alisiyan woods before her.

  “Russ?” She turned in circles, panic rising when she couldn’t see him.

  “He’s here,” a strange voice answered her, and she jumped. Then she look down and saw Russ lying on the ground, a woman seated next to him. The woman was pure white, her skin and hair the same exact shade, and she seemed to be giving off a slight glow. She was completely naked, and had an inhumanly perfect body, so she looked more like a marble statue that a living person. Liseli found it impossible to meet her eyes, which were no color and every color at the same time. But she ignored the strangeness of the situation and concentrated on what was important — dropping to her knees beside Russ she asked, “Is he . . . ?”

  “Sleeping. I think. It looks like sleep. If so, you should let him. He will need to rest.”

  Liseli could see that he was breathing, and that calmed her a little. She took the white woman’s advice, and didn’t try to rouse him, but she asked, “Who are you?”

  “My name is Adayzjia.”

  “Where did you . . . what?”

  Adayzjia smiled. “I am Adayzjia, seventh child of Azmanvalli and Zalisha. You are Liseli, parentage unknown.”

  “I know who my parents are,” Liseli objected.

  “Unknown to me.”

  “Oh. Well it’s not important. Where did you come from? I didn’t see you in the alley . . . .”

  “Let him tell you, when he wakes up,” Adayzjia said, standing. “I have a feeling I will only confuse you.”

  Liseli watched her and marveled — the woman’s long limbs seemed to go up and up as she unfolded from her seated position.

  “Now . . . I think I will go a find clothing for myself,” she said serenely. “I had forgotten, such things do not come with a body.”

  “Um . . . .” Liseli didn’t know what to say to that. But the woman didn’t seem to expect a reply; she turned and walked away, gliding across the meadow almost as if she were floating through the long grass. Liseli watched her till the last glimpse of her pale body disappeared deep in the woods, then shook her head as if rousing from a stupor.

  It’s alright now, the thought hit her. They were safe. For the time being anyway. Alisiya was dead and gone and Adayzjia — the world, that is — was left behind them on the other side of the Gate. She wondered if the strange woman who called herself Adayzjia was a danger. After all, the last person she’d known who shared her name with a world had not turned out to be the nicest of people.

  She looked down at Russ. If everything was alright, and he was only resting, why didn’t she feel any relief? Something told her now would be the time to cheer for joy and frolic around the meadow, celebrating their escape from the hellish city of stone and death. But she didn’t feel elated. She just felt tired. And thirsty.

  Liseli stood and faced the waterfall. She’d hated that river, Alisiya’s river, but now she felt nothing in particular looking at it. She stepped toward the ledge and reached out her hand, letting the cold water pour over it. Then she cupped both palms under the flow and brought them to her mouth for a drink. There was no magical tingle or rush of giddiness this time. It was just water. Cold, refreshing, non-magical, water. Alisiya was gone and whatever power the river had had was gone with her, or at least lay dormant, waiting perhaps for the next master to be born and reawaken it.

  She splashed some on her face and ran her hands through her hair, which was in dire need of a washing and a combing. She laughed to be thinking of such a thing. There was blood on her clothes, she supposed they needed a washing too. After death and horror the only thing left was snarled hair and dirty clothes, and a sudden deep, earnest desire to take a bath and crawl into bed.

  I want to go home, she thought, r
eturning to sit beside Russ. Wash grease from my clothes instead of blood. Sleep in the same place every night. Talk to people I know, who I know aren’t trying to kill me. Leona. I want to see my sister. God, I just want to go home!

  * * *

  When Russ woke up, the first thing he saw (after grass blades) was Liseli sitting next to him. She sat cross-legged, leaning over something in her lap. For a few moments he didn’t remember where he was or how he had gotten there, and was content to wonder what she was doing. She was weaving wildflowers together into a chain, twisting and tying their stems together. A finished ring was draped over her head like a crown, and she looked beautiful.

  He lifted himself to one elbow, and everything came rushing back — chiefly because he felt like he’d been run over several times by a parade of cement trucks, and he was forced to remember why. He sat up all the way, and Liseli looked at him. She smiled. “Hello, sleepyhead.”

  “Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine. You’re the one’s been out cold for hours, I—”

  He pulled her into a tight embrace, overcome with relief that they had made it back, together and alive. Liseli fell silent and hugged him back, resting her head on his shoulder. They remained still for a few moments, the he released her reluctantly and she kissed him with a smile. Her flower chain had come undone and fell over her eyes; she disentangled it from her hair and threw it aside. “So who exactly is the glowing goddess?”

  “Huh?”

  “The woman.” She motioned vaguely to the trees. “There was a woman here. An albino . . . or something like that. She said her name was Adayzjia. I asked her who she was and—”

  “What?” Russ jumped to his feet and looked around. “Adayzjia was here?”

  “Yes. She said you could explain who she was and all that,” Liseli frowned at him as she stood up, brushing grass from her clothes. “I thought maybe she was in the Gate, or something like that.”

  “She is the Gate,” Russ said. “Or was. I mean, ‘she’ isn’t a woman at all.”

  “I’m confused. She looked like a woman to me. And, um, she didn’t have any clothes on so it wasn’t too hard to tell.” Liseli crossed her arms. “She never said anything about being a Gate.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “To get clothes, she said. After that, I don’t know . . . and that was hours ago. I didn’t want to wake you. . . . What happened, Russ? After we went through the Gate?”

  Russ paused, trying to think of a simple way to put it, then just said, “A lot.”

  “A lot,” she echoed flatly, unimpressed. “Where is Leeton and Alisiya? And Ricalli? Didn’t they come through with us?”

  “They’re dead. Leeton killed Ricalli while he was weak in the Edgeworld, and . . . well I’m not sure but I think the Gate took Leeton’s life.” Russ shrugged. “Maybe that’s how she got out, eating him freed her. I don’t know how exactly it works.”

  “She ate him?”

  “In a way.” Russ spoke thoughtfully, trying to put what little he knew into words Liseli could understand, “When you go through a Gate it’s a little like that . . . they take a piece of you. It’s why I’m always so tired after going through.”

  “I know,” Liseli said unexpectedly. At his questioning look she clarified, “I mean, Leeton told me something like that while we were waiting for you here. He said that all Gates take a little of a Key’s ‘energy,’ it’s how they transition the person from one world to another . . . and how they keep themselves alive. They feed off you. But broken Gates have to take so much energy, it’s almost sure to kill. That’s what he kept telling me, insisting you’d be dead and we’d end up dead if we followed.”

  “But you followed anyway.”

  She touched his face gently. “I had nowhere else to go. And neither did he, Alisiya was gone with you.”

  “Yeah.” Russ looked down. “He tried to kill you again. In the Edgeworld. I . . . ” he let out a whoosh of air and forced the admission, “I tried to stop him but I couldn’t. You stopped him.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t remember.”

  “You slapped him.”

  “That stopped him?”

  “Well . . . no, but it gave me time to knock him out. But Liseli, if you hadn’t slapped him I’d have been too late, he could have stabbed you and it would’ve . . . I would’ve—”

  “Shh,” she kissed him silent. “It doesn’t matter what might have happened. I don’t remember anything but I know you protected me as best you could.”

  “It just wasn’t good enough.”

  She smiled, as if amused by him. “Well I’m here aren’t I? And I don’t feel dead . . . I mean I’d like to think that if this were heaven I wouldn’t have this gunk on my clothes.”

  He pulled her close again. Of course she didn’t remember, and couldn’t know the horror he had felt in that split second when Leeton had her at his mercy and Russ was just a little too slow getting back up. But he would not forget: it had felt exactly as if she had already died, and he had failed her. He had to be smarter, and quicker, and stronger. Mostly he had to be smarter. They’d stumbled into a more dangerous life, and if he wanted to live this life he was going to have to do better.

  * * *

  They left the meadow in search of Adayzjia, but she had been gone for hours and there was no trace of her in the woods. They walked down to the village, and when they arrived found that the white woman had come and gone, leaving the villagers ablaze with excitement, all wanting to tell about what they had seen. Russ and Liseli were surprised to see Pillari and Martilia there — but of course, they realized, it only made sense, the two were the patriarch and matriarch of the village. The Festival of Aysha was over and there was no reason for them to stay in Elharan any longer. But Halla, they were told, had remained behind with her husband, who was devastated by Eliasha’s death.

  Pillari and Martilia took them to their home and told them that Adayzjia had swept majestically into the village hours earlier, declaring that she was the new Queen of Alisiya. Everyone who’d seen her was a little stunned by her, and it hardly occurred to anyone to protest. She donned some clothing, though something that fit her towering frame hadn’t been easy to find, and walked out of the village with the intent of visiting Arlic in Elharan before taking her new throne in Varaneshe.

  “She said,” explained Pillari, “that it was part of Leeton’s promise to her. His life, his kingship, all hers. I didn’t know what to say to her. I still don’t know what to think. I never thought I would come face to face with one of the seven children of Azmanvalli and Zalisha.”

  Liseli supposed that, for them, it must be a little like having some Greek goddess come sashaying out of mythology in all her godlike glory and saying the world belonged to her, then asking for a pair of undies, please. Probably not the most conducive to coherent thought, much less argument. She had been flummoxed just by the sight of the “glowing goddess,” without even knowing who she was.

  She realized that she didn’t much care what Adayzjia did, or how she’d made the leap from abstract Gate — something Liseli barely understood anyway — to a walking, talking self-proclaimed Queen. If Leeton and an already dead Alisiya were the only people she had to ingest to get physical, that was no great loss. Now all Liseli cared about was getting home and leaving all this behind. Otherworlds and magic had once seemed like an exciting thing, times when she’d dreamed of escaping her mundane and unhappy life, but this week she’d seen and experienced the dark underbelly of the fairy tale and now longed for something she could understand.

  That day, all she had energy left for was to take off her bloodied clothes, sink into a warm bath, and eat supper. She wasn’t quite sure why Pillari and Martilia were being so hospitable — well, Martilia had always been nice, but she didn’t see any reason why Pillari should be so accommodating when they had done nothing good and had nothing else to offer. It was because of her that Eliasha was dead, she remember quite clearly, but no one said anything.
Probably, she decided, Adayzjia had left some kind of edict that once she and Russ showed up they should be treated like honored guests.

  She didn’t know what Russ was thinking, what he was planning on doing now that they weren’t running for their lives. She’d assumed he’d want to go home, like her, but now there was a gnawing doubt growing in her that Russ wasn’t seeing all this quite the way she was. He seemed far too interested in what Pillari and Martilia had to say about Adayzjia, as if it actually mattered to him who she was and what she planned on doing to this world. If it didn’t involve an all you can eat people buffet, Liseli didn’t see how it should affect them. They were going home.

  Chapter 36 ~ Return, part 2

  Russ woke in the middle of the night and found an empty space in the bed where Liseli had been when he fell asleep. The bedroom Martilia had set up for them had a small balcony outside the window, and that’s where Liseli was, leaning against the wooden railing, staring at the night stars. She seemed oblivious to the rather cold night air, but that chilly breeze was probably what had woken him.

  “Liseli?”

  She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Sorry, I couldn’t sleep. You don’t have to get up,” she said when he started to pull on pants.

  “Already up,” he said, smiling as he joined her outside. He wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin lightly on the top of her head, staring out at the night shrouded trees.

  “What are we doing tomorrow?” she asked after a moment.

  “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

  She made a little noise and pulled away, turning to look at him. “You actually have to ask that?”

  “Um . . . .”

  “I want to go home.”

  “Oh.”

  While he searched for something else to say, the proper way to react, she continued, “Don’t you? I mean, what exactly are we doing here? Ever since we got here we’ve been going further and further away from the Gate that’ll take us home.”