The Straits of Galahesh loa-2

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  “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.”

  Nasim tried to hide his reaction, but clearly he’d been unsuccessful, for Muqallad smiled. “You knew this already. Did you send him here?” He paused. “ Neh, I see that you did not. He came then-what? — to find the stones for you? To prevent you from ever finding them? Tell me your thoughts.”

  “I haven’t seen Ashan for five years.”

  “But you knew him well, and certainly he knows you well. What did he hope to accomplish with a third of the Atalayina?”

  “I would imagine he merely wished to keep it from you.”

  Muqallad’s eyes narrowed, and he smiled. “You may be right.” He pushed back his chair and stood. The akhoz steadily approached.

  “You came for Ashan, and you found me, and it makes me wonder whether the fates placed us here together. We all thought that we had failed those many years ago, that the fates had frowned upon our efforts. But I wonder now. I wonder if they truly thought this. I wonder if, rather than being disappointed in our goals, if they were instead disappointed in our failure. The fate of Ghayavand since the sundering has consumed me, Khamal. We came close-you and I and Sariya. We came very close, and I wonder why, after centuries, the rift has not been closed. If the fates did not shine upon us that day, why then have they not seen fit to close the rift once more?”

  “To see if we have learned.”

  “Then you think it a lesson, a test of sorts, to see what we will do with our goals still within arm’s reach.”

  “We cannot know their minds.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Khamal. It’s where you’ve always been wrong. The fates are mighty, that is true, but they are not so different from you and me. And if that is so, then we can know their minds. It has been not only your failing, but all of ours, for generations beyond count: our inability to come to grips with the fact that the fates are neither all knowing nor all powerful. The knowledge is liberating. It allows me to ponder things I would never have considered before, such as completing our work despite the apparent displeasure of the fates.”

  Nasim could not yet see the akhoz, but they were close. He could hear their feet slapping against the stone floor at the edge of the room.

  “I have a simple trade for you to consider.” He glanced to one side of the room, then the other. “Speak to Ashan. Ask him where the stone in the white tower has been hidden. If you can find it, you may have both the girl and Ashan back.”

  The akhoz crept in. They seemed strangely fearful of the light coming from the siraj. They covered their lidle
ss faces and crouched forward, crawling like crabs over the floor. One reached for Rabiah, but Nasim stepped forward and batted away its hand. Another came, ducking away from his strike and snatching Rabiah’s robes.

  “Leave her!” Nasim shouted. He kicked at the akhoz who had a hold of her, and the creature hissed like a mountain cat.

  More crept in, a dozen or more.

  “Leave her!” Nasim tried to call upon a vanahezhan through Rabiah, but found that he could not. He no longer sensed it at all. In fact, he could no longer sense Adhiya. It was simply gone.

  One of the akhoz tilted its head back and bleated. Another joined in, and another, until all of them were sounding the same call, which made Nasim’s stomach twist and churn. His mouth watered and he became dizzy, so much so that he fell to the floor.

  The bleating stopped, but the effect did not, and he found himself unable to raise his head without a swooning effect storming in and forcing him to lie back again.

  Footsteps approached. “Find the stone, Khamal.”

  Rabiah was lifted from the floor. The footsteps resumed and began to fade away.

  “Find it, and we can finish what we started.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Hours passed before Nasim’s dizziness faded. With a groan, he pushed himself off the cold stone floor onto his hands and knees. He breathed deeply, clearing his head, before standing and looking about the room. The akhoz were gone. Muqallad was gone.

  Rabiah was gone.

  He stood in the darkness, hands bunched into fists, fighting the urge to scream because he saw no point in it. In the end, though, he gave in. He released an unending lament for his foolishness, for his presumption, until his throat was raw.

  He had brought them here on a fool’s errand. He had hoped that through his renewed understanding of the island, and his teachings, that they would find the stones and enough knowledge to be able to close the rifts, something that the three arqesh who had torn it wide had been unable to do in the centuries following the devastation of the sundering.

  Why? Why had he thought he could teach? Why had he thought he knew enough to overcome such obstacles?

  Because he was foolish. Worse, he had valued their lives too poorly. Neither Rabiah nor Sukharam had had the best of lives before he’d found them, but that hadn’t given him the right to uproot them, take them where he would. Better if he had let them choose their own path, or seen to it that they found their way into the hands of trusted Aramahn.

  Such as Fahroz…

  Who had only been trying to protect him. Who had only been trying to teach him the ways of the world, a world he still did not truly comprehend. Would that he had listened to her, stayed in Mirashadal until the time was right.

  The only trouble was that the time may never have seemed right. He was terrified then of what he had to do, and by the time he’d stolen away from the floating village, he’d known that he would never overcome that fear, not without simply facing it.

  And so he had gone. He had left, and he had traveled the world, and he had found two children that, given time, given the right sort of knowledge and insight, would have become great. But now he-not the fates, and not their cruel masters-had cut their lives short.

  “Stop!” he bellowed into the darkness.

  The words came back to him, softer and softer, until silence reigned once more.

  “Stop,” he said again.

  He had to get a hold of himself. He had to make a plan. He had to find Ashan.

  But where? Muqallad hadn’t said. Which meant, of course, that he expected Nasim to piece together the clues in order to find him.

  When he thought about it, though, the answer was simple.

  He moved to the edge of the room, warding with his hands. He was blinded now, not only by the light but by his inability to call upon a hezhan. It was something that disturbed him-disturbed him deeply-but he couldn’t afford to let his mind wander down those paths, and so he stepped forward, trusting to his memories.

  Indeed, as he found the tunnel that led to the eastern reaches of the village, he had no trouble at all remembering the way to the lake. It was ingrained in him, infinitely brighter than the memories of his distant and oh-so-hazy childhood. As he wended his way through tunnel after tunnel, a fear took seed and grew within him, and soon the fear had turned into a certainty. Ashan was at the lake. He knew it. But what had Muqallad done to him? What tortures had he endured?

  He shuffled forward, mindful of the darkness. Then he began to jog, and then run while touching his hands to the stone walls to guide him.

  As he went, memories flooded over him, memories of walking through this village as Khamal. And they didn’t feel like memories from dreams, they felt real, they felt like his memories. This had happened several times in the past several years-moments of lucidity of Khamal’s life-but they had always been ephemeral and disjointed, and when he tried to guide them toward answers-what Khamal had done, how he had planned to pass his knowledge to Nasim-the memories had drifted away like dreams on the edge of waking.

  This time felt different, however. The memories felt stronger, perhaps because of his return to the village, or perhaps because of his encounter with Muqallad. He coaxed the memories toward Sariya, toward the piece of the Atalayina Muqallad had mentioned. And more came to him. He remembered strolling the beach, climbing the rocks to the city proper. He remembered stepping up to the tall white tower. Sariya’s tower. He remembered putting his hand on the black iron gate.

  But there his memories faded, and the more he tried, the more distant they became, even those things that moments ago had been so clear.

  He continued through the village, moving with foolish haste. He came to a stairwell and flew along the steps, heedless of the danger. At last the cavern opened up before him and a pinpoint of light shone in the distance. It was coming from the center of the lake. He continued down to the shore, and finally, his breath coming in ragged gasps, he stopped.

  A trickle of water fell somewhere in the distance. The air was chill, and it smelled of copper. He stared toward the light, unable to see anything but the stone and the isle upon which it rested.

  “Ashan?” he called. His name echoed into the distance.

  There was no reply.

  He waded into the water. It was frigid, but nothing like it had been centuries ago. Ghayavand had warmed since then.

  He swam, feeling watched. He grew tired but pushed on, and as he did the water became colder and colder until he was numb from it.

  When he gained the isle at last, he dragged himself onto it and stared at the source of light. It was no siraj. It was a pinpoint of light hanging in the air.

  He turned to the water, scanning carefully beneath its surface. He found nothing. Ashan wasn’t here. He despaired. This was the place. It must be.

  He was nearly ready to give up when he saw something deep beneath the surface-something little more than a lighter shade of black.

  The thought of returning to the water brought him no joy, but he had to be sure…

  He dove beneath the surface, swimming in broad strokes, lower, lower, until he was able to feel for the shadow he’d seen.

  He felt cloth. Then a limb. And a shoulder.

  And then he touched skin.

  And the world shifted.

  Khamal swims below the surface of the bay, clearing his mind of the troubles that lay ahead. His long strokes pull him onward as the cold waves first tug, then push.

  He breaks the surface. Far ahead stands the tower. Sariya’s tower.

  He swims toward it, seeing no further need to delay. When at last he reaches land, the sensation of the waves and the fluidity of the water fade like autumn rain, and he is left with the weight of the land beneath, the hardness of it, its brittle nature. It isn’t jarring as it was so many years ago; it feels right, as if all the parts of the world are a part of him and he a part of them. Would that he had known as much before he had touched the surface of that deep blue stone
.

  Khamal steps toward the tower, he slips past the guards Sariya placed. Had her mind been with her in the tower above, she might have sensed him, but she is far afield, as she often is. As he touches the stone, he feels a sense of regret, not only for what he is about to do, but for allowing Sariya to see what he can now do. This too saddens him-the simple fact that the three of them have come to distrust one another to the point that they would hide information. At one time they had shared everything, all in the hopes of repairing what they had broken, but as the years had worn on, they had begun to form their own opinions on how that wound might be healed.

  The stone he touches fills him. His skin hardens. His sight dims. A mineral scent assaults him. He does not feel himself move upward; rather, he feels the world move around him, and for a moment-a moment only-he is the center of all things. When he steps away from this state, it is with regret. He has come to love stone and earth more than any other.

  He is within a room, standing on a red-and-umber carpet of the finest weave. Four windows set into the walls in the cardinal directions allow him to look upon the city and the land around it.

  Sariya-

  Sariya is here.

  She lays upon a bed at the center of the circular room. Her hair is splayed over the rich blanket, making her look as if she has taken her final slumber.

  But then his foot shifts in only the slightest degree.

  And she wakes.

  She sits up immediately, facing him with a confused and cross expression. She stares at the wall behind him, perhaps trying to determine its nature and whether Khamal has weakened it to allow him future entrance.

  And then the stone hardens. He can feel it in his bones and in the core of his chest. She has altered the tower so that he cannot leave, and he fears that nothing within his power will be able to undo what she has just done.

  She has learned.

  And hidden.

  Her blue eyes burn with anger. “Why have you come?”