The Straits of Galahesh loa-2

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  And then the crow leaned out and winged above the tall snowy grass and out over the straits, cawing all the while.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

  I t felt strange to return to the streets of Baressa so soon after leaving them, but it was a different day, and it felt like a different time. The battle to the south of the city grew and by the time midday had struck, it had grown until it sounded like it had encompassed a good half of the city. She saw no battles, but she could hear it, cannons and the cries of men. She could smell the gunpowder on the wind.

  As transfixed as they were by the battle to the southeast, Atiana often found herself looking westward, toward Nikandr. Part of her wished she had her soulstone, if only to grasp it and to ask the ancients to spare him.

  Siha s set a course toward the Spar. The streets were nearly empty. Only once in a great while did they see old men or women, or sometimes children, peek at them from behind corners or from the insides of their darkened homes. They came eventually to a line of men who were setting up hastily constructed barricades of rough stone, but Siha s, showing his ring of office, was allowed to pass with little more than a cross look from the Galaheshi soldier who’d stopped them.

  Shortly after passing, a whistle alerted them. Another four men on ponies waved to Siha s. They were dressed in the same uniform as Siha s, red janissary coats with unadorned black turbans, boar tusk cartridges on their bandoliers and gleaming swords at their sides. They rode with an ease that made it clear these were seasoned men, and from the way they greeted Siha s and the rest of his men, she knew they were part of the Kamarisi’s personal guard. They met and moved further away from the Galaheshi soldiers to speak in peace.

  “Where is the Kamarisi?” Siha s asked.

  “He left the kasir early this morning with handpicked janissaries. They rode across the bridge and haven’t been seen since.”

  “Then that is where we go.”

  The soldier, a man ten years Siha s ’s senior, smiled and bowed his head. “As you say, My Lord.”

  When they reached the Spar, foot soldiers hailed them. “We were told to find you,” one of them said. He was a heavyset man with a limp, and he stared at them all as if assessing them, as one might an enemy.

  “They know,” Atiana whispered to Siha s.

  He heard, for she felt him stiffen, but he did not turn his head away from the soldier standing in their way. “Where are they?” Siha s called to him.

  He pointed to the far side of the straits. The city of Vihrosh, her stone buildings and red-tile roofs, were brightly lit by the noontime sun. “The Kamarisi and the Kaymakam of Galahesh wait for you at the gate to the old city.”

  Siha s nodded, spurring his pony on.

  The nine of them rode over the bridge, the hooves of their ponies clopping loudly in the relative silence. The smell of the sea grew stronger. The winds blew upward, swirling over the bridge, chilling them as they distanced themselves from the soldiers who eyed their passing with altogether too much interest.

  “I don’t like this,” Atiana said.

  “This is the way to Sariya.”

  “They know we’re coming.”

  “Did you think we could hide from the Al-Aqim forever?”

  They reached the center of the bridge, where two squat stone towers sat, one on either side of the road. There, upon the central keystones, was the marking of blood that Atiana had seen only in the dark of the aether. It was dark brown, almost black. She could feel her nostrils flare, feel her gut churn at the memory of watching her father’s cold-blooded execution.

  Again, as it had so often before, the image of the sword swinging down against his neck came to her. I will avenge you, she said to him, hoping he was near, hoping he could hear her. She could feel the touch of the aether, but could not sense her father. It made her feel as cold as a grave in a long-forgotten cemetery.

  She looked to Irkadiy, who rode behind one of the other men. He nodded, granting her some small amount of strength. She wanted to turn back, to find another way that wouldn’t allow their enemies to take them as they wanted, but she could think of no other path. She had to get to Sariya. She would simply have to trust Ishkyna once they did. She nodded back to Irkadiy, telling him they would go on. He tried to smile, but he managed only a nervous twitching of his lips that reminded her of a much younger man-a callow youth holding a musket for the first time, a soldier new to the cough of the cannon-but then he swallowed, and the look was gone.

  They continued on across the great bridge. Far below, the straits seethed, frothing white. The Spar was wide, but not so wide that Atiana felt safe on a pony with the wind as strong as it was, and so she was glad when at last they reached the other side. As they passed, the janissaries that held this side of the Spar merely touched their fingers to their foreheads and bowed, as if news of their arrival had already been passed to every soldier in Galahesh.

  Siha s guided them through the empty streets of Vihrosh. It was not a large city, however, and they soon came to a gate with tall minarets on either side. The massive iron portcullis was drawn up. Beyond, Atiana could already see dozens, perhaps hundreds of men standing, staring at something Atiana could not yet see from her vantage.

  And then Atiana heard a sound that sent chills along her spine. It was like the braying of an animal, or the fearful crying of a child-a child faced with something they could not comprehend, allowing only the most urgent of fears to burst from their lungs.

  Siha s stiffened as another call came, this one louder than the first, and nearer.

  “By the ancients,” Atiana said, “I’ve never heard something so tragic.”

  Siha s said nothing, but she felt him shiver. His pony slowed instinctually, and when Siha s kicked its flanks, the beast became skittish and began to tug at the bridle.

  As they passed through the gate, the scene beyond the Galaheshi soldiers was revealed. Hundreds of men and women wearing robes of black and gray and umber stood around a hill. These were the Hratha, Atiana knew, the sect of the Maharraht that had overthrown Soroush and his brother, Bersuq. They had been waging a protracted war against her own Duchy, and the Duchies of Bolgravya and Nodhvyansk, for decades.

  And yet, it was not their presence that bothered her most.

  At the top of the hill were dozens of children.

  Nyet, Atiana thought. Not children. She had seen them in the aether, on Ghayavand and Rafsuhan. These were the akhoz, and they were now on Galahesh.

  Sariya stood upon the hill’s summit near a tall post. She was facing the gate as if she had expected them to walk through at that very moment. Hakan ul Aye s e, the Kamarisi of Yrstanla stood next to her, his face calm, emotionless, barely registering that a princess of Anuskaya and the kapitan of his personal guard had arrived.

  Standing next to them was a tall man wearing robes of ivory over inner robes the color of pearl. His hair and beard were black. This was Muqallad.

  And between them was a girl, twelve, perhaps older-it was difficult to tell from this distance.

  Muqallad lifted his hand and held it out as if he expected Atiana to take it.

  The Hratha turned, and they parted, creating a lane for them to ride along.

  Siha s did not spur their pony forward. He was like a spring, tight and coiled. She could feel it in his arms and shoulders and in the set of his spine.

  “We must go,” Atiana whispered, and she knew it was so. They could no more turn around than they could summon the sun from the sky.

  Siha s was breathing so rapidly she wondered if he would faint. But as she leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “We must go,” he flicked the reins and urged the pony forward.

  The beast complied, and slowly they moved forward, she and his soldiers.

  She glanced back to Irkadiy. Her countryman. A man who had urged her to abandon these plans.

  His look was strong-Irkadiy was nothing if not strong-but it was a thin veneer, for just below the surface was an endless well of terror. He looked as
though he could barely breathe, as though he were a drowning man clutching uselessly at the surface of the water.

  Her feelings for him, so favorable only moments ago, soured the more she looked. He had tried to turn her away from this path. He had tried to betray her. Betray her! How dare he! For a mere moment, the anger building inside her like a hornet’s nest surprised her, but as she looked up to the hill, to Muqallad and Sariya, she knew she’d been a fool to trust Irkadiy. She’d been a fool to trust any of these men.

  Somewhere in the distance she heard the call of the gallows crow, but it was drowned out by the braying of the akhoz. There were more of them than Atiana had realized. Dozens of them. They’d moved beyond the Hratha to crawl along the ground as if they wished to leap upon Atiana and the soldiers and their ponies but were prevented from doing so. She looked upon the faces of these creatures, knowing they had once been children, knowing they had once been innocent.

  No longer, she thought. Now they were tools of the Al-Aqim.

  As it should be…

  They reached the hill at last. There were rough stone steps worked into it, allowing them to slip from their saddles and ascend to the top of the hill. Muqallad and Sariya watched closely, but little emotion showed on their faces. The girl, however, was different. She watched Atiana with an intensity that Atiana couldn’t understand.

  The akhoz closed in behind and followed them up the hill. By the time she and Siha s and the rest reached the hill’s flattened summit, they were completely surrounded.

  “Come,” Muqallad said over the braying of the akhoz.

  Sariya, for some reason, did not speak. She looked pale, as if she could do little more than stand, as if even speaking would prove too much.

  In the distance there came again, barely audible, a single, sad caw.

  Atiana knew something was wrong, but she could no longer understand what. Muqallad looked at her with a fierceness that made her want to obey. Sariya licked her lips tremulously, as if behind those lips, behind those unsteady eyes, she was holding back a wave of pain she’d never before experienced. Sariya swallowed and shook her head, holding back her misery through sheer force of will.

  Atiana wanted to step forward, wanted to take Muqallad’s hand. She felt she should, but there was something else she should do. Wasn’t there?

  But then the girl stepped forward.

  And took Atiana’s hand.

  The moment she does, Atiana knows what she is doing is right.

  She walks forward and takes Muqallad’s hand, which is warm and welcoming. It nearly masks the renewed cries of the akhoz and the ululating calls of the Hratha behind her.

  She turns to find the akhoz ripping Siha s ’s men limb from limb. They are a mass of groping hands and writhing legs and gaping maws. The ground before her is little more than screams and flailing and blood.

  Even the tall one-Siha s, she recalls-falls, though he manages to draw his sword and sever the head of an akhoz from its neck. Another he cuts deeply across the waist while fending off a third. But the fourth. The fourth has him. It clamps wiry arms around his neck. It bites with blackened teeth, with lolling tongue.

  Siha s screams, felling yet another of these misshapen children, before he too is brought to the ground and eviscerated by creatures that seem more like teeming insects than children, ruthless and unemotional in their efficiency.

  At last it has ended. Only one is left unharmed. Her countryman. What is his name?

  No matter. He gave himself over to Muqallad’s cause the moment he passed beyond the Spar.

  Suddenly she realizes a knife is in her hand, a khanjar, placed there by Muqallad. He motions her forward, toward the soldier of Anuskaya.

  The hilt of the knife feels good against her skin. It has tasted the blood of man, and it feels ancient, as if the fates themselves have crafted it from the stuff of stars.

  She takes one halting step as the akhoz hold the man in place.

  He looks up at her, pleading with her to stop.

  His eyes implore her. Wake! Wake from this dream!

  But he is wrong. He doesn’t understand. She has been sleeping for so many years. Only through the Al-Aqim has she awoken.

  She steps forward, angered by his presumption. “Who are you to plead with me?” she says.

  And pulls the knife across his throat.

  Blood spurts from the cavernous wound, falls warm and slick onto her fingers and the backs of her hands. The akhoz holding him scream in exultation, but she hears little save the furious and heady coursing of her own blood. This feels right. It feels as it must have felt for the earliest of the Matra as they blooded the land before the spires were built. It is just, for his blood now marks this place. This place where a grand ritual is about to commence.

  It is the last of the steps needed before…

  Before what?

  She turns back and sees Muqallad holding two stones. They are a bright blue with veins of copper and silver and gold. They transfix her.

  She has held one of them. Hasn’t she?

  Muqallad brings them together, and they fit perfectly. They are one.

  Or soon will be.

  The one from Aleke s ir, the Kamarisi, Hakan ul Aye s e, is summoned forth. The akhoz bring him to his knees before Muqallad. They hold his hands out, cupped, as if he is about to accept water into them.

  The stone, the Atalayina, is set into them, and it is then that the Kamarisi’s face transforms. To now, he has gone willingly, placidly. He has accepted his fate like a lamb led to slaughter. But now it seems as though he has awoken to a reality he never thought possible. How this could be when he is helping to bring the world to its highest plane, she does not know.

  She is not saddened by his look of terror as Muqallad forces his hands to close around the Atalayina. The man arches back and screams to the skies as Muqallad holds his hands tight. She feels the power coursing through him from Adhiya.

  When Muqallad releases him at last, the akhoz skitter away, and the Lord of the Motherland, the Kamarisi of Yrstanla, falls forward and onto his forearms. He looks as though he’s praying to his fathers and his mothers, but she soon realizes her mistake. His hands are now one. They have been fused together, as if they were little more than clay, and within that grotesque mass-still barely visible-is the Atalayina. He now holds the pieces together as if his one fervent wish is to see this ancient stone healed.

  Muqallad takes his hands and drags Hakan-immaculate boots kicking and thrashing against the trampled grass, tears streaming down his face-toward the post that stands at the summit of the hill. With a strength that surprises her, Muqallad hefts him up and drives him against the post. The man goes rigid. A large iron spike erupts through his chest, through his opulent clothes of silver silk and golden thread, and blood pours down his front as he eyes Atiana, face shaking, spittle flying from his mouth as he coughs.

  He looks down at his hands, and then back to Atiana.

  He tries to speak. His expression begs her to fix this. To make it right. To awaken from this nightmare that he and his empire might yet be saved.

  But in this he will be disappointed, for he has been fooled like so many others-so many over the course of generations. It is the grand joke, the notion that there is free will, that one can work with a collective toward a greater good, a greater purpose. The truth is that such things can never happen on their own. They must be forced.

  And the time is nearly at hand. Can he not sense it?

  Her knife still bright with blood, she steps forward and looks up into his dimming eyes. “Fear not. You have done well. Better than could have been hoped.”

  But he doesn’t listen. Blood stains his clothes, drips upon the cold ground. His eyes go distant. And finally his head slumps and his arms go slack.

  Atiana feels a hand on her elbow.

  It is the girl. She is leading her away.

  Atiana follows, moving beyond the akhoz, who form a tight circle around the post. They are warm, Atiana realizes
, and becoming warmer by the second. Already, though she stands ten paces back, she can feel them. The girl pulls her further and further away.

  Until the first of them bursts into flame.

  The akhoz arch back. They release their raucous calls to the cloud-filled sky. Another ignites, and like dry kindling the effect moves from one to another around the circle until all of them are aflame.

  Muqallad watches as they twist in pain, their limbs bending at impossible angles. He watches not with satisfaction, but with sadness in his eyes. Perhaps he knows the end is near and does not relish it. Perhaps he wishes the world had arrived at this point by a different path. He turns to Atiana and regards her, as one might regard a flower or a child’s bauble. He thinks her inconsequential, and perhaps in the light of these great events he’s right.

  Sariya merely stares at the burning hill. She seems to remain standing by force of will alone, though this final step seems to have granted her some small amount of strength.

  On the hill, the body of the Kamarisi smokes. His skin blackens and then bursts into flame, as does the post he hangs upon. A moment later, the fire licking up from the akhoz pulls into a maelstrom centered on this burning man-centered on the stone he holds in his hands. The fire spins and is drawn upward like yarn from a skein. The thread thickens until a column of flame thrusts into the sky through the layer of clouds high, high above.

  It rages on and on, the akhoz shrieking and barking and mewling while the fire rages. The Hratha watch, eyes bright, jaws set grimly. They stare at the sky, faces lit by the roiling column of gold and ivory flame.

  Some time later-perhaps minutes, perhaps hours-the akhoz blacken. They still hold their twisted and pained positions, but are now little more than husks. A wind blows across the grounds, lifting the apple-sweet smell from the blackened remains. Some begin to ablate like the ash from a smoldering fire. Their forms collapse into clouds of powder, black and red and white, lifted by the updraft. More and more are consumed thus, their dark remains tainting the wavering column, which now burns amber and rust.