“Why wouldn’t she have done so already?”
“Because-” Atiana stopped. She couldn’t because she needed Atiana’s mind to be her own. But Arvaneh had given Atiana a suggestion. She was sure of it now. The urge to control the spires. She’d done so at Arvaneh’s bidding.
“What?” Ishkyna asked, concern coming to her face for the first time.
“You’re right. She has done so already. In the aether, she put a suggestion in my mind to work the aether through the spires. And when I did, she watched. That’s what she’s wanted all along, the knowledge of how to control the spires.”
“And now she has it?”
“Perhaps not. That may be why she wants me to take the aether again.”
Ishkyna shook her head, her long blonde hair swaying against her shoulders as she did so. “You can’t be thinking of going.”
“I am. But we will not be unprepared.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
K hamal steps into the celestia. Standing along the edge in a wide circle are dozens of men and women, Aramahn one and all. They wear their robes of summer solstice, flax and lemon and gold. Outside the celestia, rain falls in sheets. The air is thick with the smell of it. The skies are dark, with lightning striking bold across the sky, the thunder soon following, raucous and fey.
By way of protest, Sariya and Muqallad have not come. The same can be said for some of their disciples, but by and large the people have been persuaded by Khamal’s words-that this is the only way.
In the center of the celestia stands a girl. Her name is Yadhan. She is thirteen, but she looks no older than ten. She, of all the children that remain in the city, seems most prepared for what Khamal is about to do.
He approaches her, motioning to the celestia floor. The girl glances toward her father, who merely nods. She stares with uncertain eyes at Khamal. Khamal smiles for her, though there is regret in doing so. He does not wish this upon her, but there is no other way, not if they are to halt the steadily marching progress of the rift.
“Lie down,” Khamal says, annoyed at the need to speak.
She does. She closes her eyes. Her nostrils flare. She swallows uncontrollably.
Her mother watches, her tear-filled eyes alternating between her daughter and Khamal.
Khamal does not acknowledge her. Doing so would give the impression that there is something wrong, that this is something to be consoled. It isn’t. This sacrifice is what Yadhan was made for-of this Khamal is sure. There is a part of him that wishes it didn’t have to be children, but they had already tried this ritual with five adults of varying ages. All of them had died. Only near the change to adulthood was it possible to create a vessel where the soul of the child and the soul of a suurahezhan, a spirit of fire, could coexist.
Khamal kneels by Yadhan’s side. When he does, twelve of the most gifted suuraqiram step forward and surround them. They begin a chant, a dirge from the Gaji that is often sung during vigil-a mourning period of three days and three nights in which a loved one’s death is honored and their procession to the life beyond is made easier.
Khamal chose this song not for himself, but because it holds meaning for Yadhan. She was born in the Gaji Desert, and so it will bring some sense of normalcy to this island and this city that has become little more than anathema to life.
As the dirge continues, Khamal takes his piece of the Atalayina from his robes. He holds it in his hand, feels its heft. He studies the delicate striations running through it and wonders once more if the fates are watching him. He has tried to do right by them. He thought-as did Sariya and Muqallad-that the world was ready. They were not so foolish as to believe everyone was ready-certainly that wasn’t the case; he did not even believe that the three of them were truly worthy-but he thought that by ushering in indaraqiram the rest of the world would follow, that they would become enlightened, as it was meant to be.
How wrong they’d been. How many had suffered.
And now there would be one more.
Yadhan watches with fearful eyes as Khamal places one hand on her chest. With the other he places the Atalayina upon her forehead.
With this she tightens. Her body rigors. Her neck muscles grow taut, and her arms and legs shake as though she’s been struck dumb.
Khamal can feel the hezhan now, the one that chose her. It is near. It’s so close it could cross the threshold into Erahm any time it chose. And yet it does not. It is drawn to Yadhan, but more than this, it is drawn to the stone. It wishes to touch it, to have it, to experience it, perhaps as it did on that night nearly one moon ago when the Al-Aqim ripped the world asunder.
Yadhan screams, shaking the stone, but Khamal keeps it in place, and though the throes of her agony seem to shake the very dome of the celestia above them, he does not yield. This is unfortunate but necessary.
A shift in the aether takes place.
The suuraqiram feel it too. Every one of them pauses momentarily before picking up the chant once more.
Yadhan goes silent. She falls slack to the stone and lies unmoving. Her breathing slows, but her eyes are moving beneath her lids, back and forth, as if she dreams. As if she’s having a nightmare.
“Leave us,” Khamal says.
The crowd stirs, but does not move.
“Leave us!”
The dirge abruptly ends, and the crowd begins to disperse.
Soon Khamal is alone with Yadhan. He watches her, but there is nothing to be seen in this manner, and so he places his hands upon her heart and head once more.
Inside, she has changed. She is no longer a soul being fed upon by the hezhan. She is something else. She is of both, and neither.
He knows that this has done more to her than simply bind her to a spirit. They have been bound to Erahm as an anchor, preventing Adhiya from approaching. It is working, but it brings Khamal little joy. This girl-her soul and the soul of the hezhan-have both been sacrificed. Truly sacrificed. Neither will return to Adhiya. Neither will resume the cycle of birth and rebirth.
They are lost, and some day, they will both be forgotten.
It is something he knew would happen, but to stare it in the face was something entirely different.
“Come,” he says.
Yadhan takes a deep breath. She releases it in a huff, not like a child, but like a winded animal.
Khamal swallows, wondering if the fates are watching him now. Wondering if they are laughing.
“Come,” he says again.
And this time the akhoz rises.
Nasim woke in their makeshift home. He stared up at the stone ceiling, covered in leafy vines.
He felt sick.
He had long tried to convince himself that he had no connection to Khamal, that he was not at fault over what happened on Ghayavand those many years ago, but as more of Khamal’s past was revealed, he felt a stronger connection, and it sickened him.
Khamal had not only been the one to come up with the idea of the akhoz, he’d been the first to transform a child into one. He had sacrificed them so that the rift might be halted, but that didn’t make up for the fact that he’d taken those children against their will. They might have agreed, but Khamal knew better. They were only putting on a brave face for their parents and for Khamal. With this ritual he was taking the soul of each child-and the soul of the hezhan that fed upon them-and sacrificing them like saplings to keep a dying fire aflame.
They would never return to Adhiya. They would never be reborn. They would simply be gone, one problem to hide another.
Nasim could no longer shy away from the fact he was Khamal and Khamal was he. Did the Aramahn not preach that one builds upon himself to make better his next life? And if that were so, then one has a responsibility for what had occurred in his prior lives. The two lives were the same, facets of the same jewel.
“Rabiah,” he said softly.
He turned over and realized she was not in the house.
He said it again, louder.
He made his way outside. The sk
y to the east held a high, thin layer of clouds, colored bright yellow with the coming dawn. He called for Rabiah, shouted for her, and still she didn’t reply.
They had returned from Shirvozeh near sunset last night. They had searched the house and, as Nasim had told her, had found no sign of Sukharam. Muqallad had taken him.
You may have the one.
Rabiah had been furious. “How could you have let Muqallad take him?” she’d spat.
“I didn’t-”
“You did! You wouldn’t allow him to join us. You brought us here for a reason, but since we’ve come you’ve been hiding behind your past. Hiding behind your fears. We are young, but we are strong, and you chose to throw that away so you could go after Ashan yourself.”
Nasim had stared at her. Rabiah had always been so protective of him, and it was unbalancing to see that same fierceness turned against him.
And what could he say? She was right. He’d failed them, and now he’d failed Ashan as well.
She rushed forward. “Stop it!” she shouted, and using both hands she pushed him backward, hard.
He fell onto the ground, staring up at her wild-eyed. “What are you doing?”
“You’re hiding, Nasim. Hiding within your own walls. You can’t do it anymore. Not this time, not when Sukharam needs you so badly.”
He’d shaken his head. “I can’t save him.”
“You must!”
“I can’t.”
She stood there, arms at her side, shivering with impotent rage. She spat at his feet and turned away, and in moments she’d stalked off, lost behind the grassy hill to the south.
A cold wind blew in off the sea that night. Nasim had gone inside the house, allowing Rabiah the time and space she’d needed. She’d returned hours later, well after the sun had gone down, well after true night had fallen over Ghayavand. He’d lain there in their stolen home, his back to her, pretending to be asleep. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how to make it better.
He was not Ashan. He was not Nikandr. He was no leader of men, to inspire with words and deeds. He was a child who had opened his eyes five years before to discover he was already eleven years old. He was an infant still. He never should have convinced them to come. He should have stayed with Fahroz and let her tell him what to do.
Eventually, his thoughts still churning but his body exhausted, he’d fallen asleep.
And now that he’d woken, Rabiah was gone. She’d abandoned him, and it was painfully clear what she’d gone to do. After gathering a few necessities, he began jogging toward Alayazhar.
And then he began to run.
His chest still heaving from the run into the city, Nasim paced the streets, moving swiftly but warily, ever closer to the tower. The wind was bitterly cold, a strange thing for Ghayavand. It seemed to be keeping the akhoz’s movement lower than it might otherwise have been, and for this he thanked the fates.
He could feel them and their movements, and he used this knowledge to wend his way forward. He realized nearly two hours into his journey that he was taking nearly the same route that he had with Ashan and Nikandr and Pietr on their way to the very same tower. The central portion of the city did not look the same, though. Then, Sariya’s enchantments had still cast a glamour over the buildings and streets nearest the tower.
Not so now.
Now the streets were broken and decayed. The stone buildings lay shattered, ghosts of their former selves.
At an intersection where three roads met, a marble statue of a woman, naked from the waist up, stared down at him. He paused, feeling as though it was one of the fates.
Beyond the statue lay a wide thoroughfare, one of the primary spokes that radiated outward from the harbor. Broken stones with weeds growing between them lined the road. Buildings on either side-mostly stone, none with surviving roofs-watched him pass. They seemed angry at Nasim’s intrusion, or perhaps they were somehow protective of the akhoz, the only residents they’d known for the past three centuries.
Here, at last, Nasim felt the one he’d been searching for.
Most of Khamal’s memories were hidden from him, but he had found that once he’d had a dream, he could not only recall it well, he could remember the days that led up to the memories that filled the dream; he could remember the days that came after. After his dream that morning, the days beyond the ritual performed beneath the celestia’s dome opened to him, and as he’d run toward the city his plan had fallen into place.
Two akhoz were somewhere ahead, perhaps in the great stone building he was headed toward. The building had housed, as near as he could tell, a bazaar, but now, despite the grandeur it had once laid claim to, it was little more than a broken shell.
A form stalked out from under the archway that stood at the center of the bazaar’s grand facade. A girl, naked and dirty. She dropped to all fours, crab-crawling along the ground, her black lips pulled back, revealing dark, broken teeth.
Nasim’s heart began to thrum. He had masked his presence, and still the akhoz caught his scent. It raised its head and released a long, sickening bleat to the sky above the city. An answering call came only a moment later, and soon after, another-this one a boy-entered the same archway.
Together they crawled toward Nasim, sniffing the air, bleating softly as they came.
And then they stood and charged.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The akhoz galloped more than ran, their long limbs loping over the ground faster than it appeared they could. Their lips were drawn back, their dark tongues hidden behind blackened teeth, making them appear vengeful and ravenous.
Nasim’s sandals scraped over the ancient stone. His nerves willed him to flee. But he would not. This girl, this very girl, was the first of the akhoz. There was little that remained of Yadhan, but he recognized her by the shape and tilt of her head, her delicate features, and the small scar at the nape of her neck.
And he’d also felt in his memories that a connection had been made to each of the akhoz that Khamal had created. In the nights that followed, Khamal had gone on to perform the ritual again and again, sacrificing more and more children to the grisly fate that awaited them. And they had held a bond with him, a loyalty. Surely part of this was borne from the piece of the Atalayina Nasim had found, but it was also a bond to Khamal, and if Nasim were right, that bond would still exist with him. It must-Khamal wouldn’t have allowed it to happen any other way-but that didn’t stop Nasim’s heart from beating like a blacksmith’s hammer.
The akhoz were nearly on him when Nasim spread his arms wide. It was a gesture of supplication that Aramahn gave to hezhan before they communed.
Both of the akhoz slowed, and when they came within four paces, they stopped. The girl, Yadhan, watched him with sightless eyes, while the other, the boy, shook his head so vigorously that Nasim wondered if he was tearing muscles.
“I have need of you, Yadhan.”
Yadhan shivered. She craned her neck back like a rook and released a bleating call into the chill morning air.
Nasim kneeled, still holding his arms out wide. “I have need.”
Yadhan pulled back her lips. Her tongue lolled like a freshly cut piece of meat.
She crawled forward.
The other, the boy, craned his head back, back, until Nasim thought his neck would break. Then brought it down hard against the stone before him. He did it again and again-black blood leaking from the many wounds he was inflicting upon himself-and it soon became clear that he was fighting against some hold Yadhan had placed on him.
Nasim could not remember the boy’s imprint, nor could he feel any sort of loyalty from him, so he wondered if this was one of Muqallad’s or Sariya’s. It must be so, but if that were true, why would it bow to Yadhan? As foreign as it seemed to him, there must be some sort of hierarchy among the akhoz. Perhaps they followed the rule of the hezhan in the world beyond, or perhaps they followed the customs of the Aramahn from centuries ago. Whatever the reason, Nasim was glad for it, for i
t seemed to be keeping the akhoz at bay for the time being.
Yadhan’s breath came sharply, quickly. She wheezed as she came to a halt at Nasim’s feet. And then she stood and faced him, crooked limbs and gaping maw. It was all Nasim could do not to retch from the stench that came with each exhaled breath.
“I go to the tower,” he said. “Will you accompany me?”
Yadhan seemed to consider these words. Her nostrils-more akin to a lizard’s than a girl’s-flared. She twisted her head around and waggled it back and forth in the direction of the tower.
And then she turned back and bowed her head ever so slightly.
The moment she did this, the other akhoz attacked.
Time slowed.
The akhoz reared back, pulling in a huge breath and releasing it toward Nasim. A great gout of fire blossomed from his mouth.
As it hurtled forward, Nasim was transfixed, rooted to the spot.
But Yadhan pushed him out of the way and stood in the path of the fire. It enveloped her-black smoke trailing up from her skin-and yet it only seemed to enrage her.
She took two loping steps forward and then leaped upon the other akhoz. The boy fought, using his arms to try to bat her away, but Yadhan was a mongrel dog, jaws snapping, teeth bared. One hand was locked on his forehead, muscles as taut as cords, while the other grabbed his wrist and pinned him. Ignoring the boy’s free arm that clawed at her face, she lunged forward and bit deeply into his neck. Skin and flesh so dark it was nearly black was pulled away. She bit again and again, and soon the other’s attempts at fending her off weakened.
And then stopped altogether.
Yadhan’s chest heaved as she straddled him. She twisted her head around at an inhuman angle. Her gruesome look beckoned Nasim, telling him it was now safe to approach.
Nasim did so, but he was forced to pull one arm across his mouth and nose to fight off the reek of rotted meat. As he kneeled next to the boy, Yadhan merely waited, her lungs working like a bellows, the wavering of heat coming from her mouth and nostrils.
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