Alesya forced her to the gunwale. Far below, there were two skiffs, barely visible. They were lost among the currents of snow a moment later.
“Nikandr is on one of the skiffs, along with a score of streltsi.”
“Prepare the skiffs!” Grigory shouted. “Quickly.”
“ Nyet. Let them go.” Alesya stared downward, into the swirling snow. “Allow Nikandr to think that he hasn’t been seen.” She turned back to Grigory. “ Then we’ll fill our skiffs and send them hunting.”
Nikandr watched as the streltsi spread out in rows of four and began marching forward, muskets at the ready. The snow was falling so heavily he could see little more than white. The snow was already a foot deep and getting deeper by the moment, making the going slow and arduous.
The site of the suurahezhan’s crossing was less than a mile ahead. So far there had been no sign of the Maharraht, but the sounds of the battle for the eyrie and Radiskoye had shown no signs of letting up.
Then he heard it. Chanting, from a single voice. He signaled to the sotnik to slow the men, and to spread them out. They obeyed silently, all except the sotnik and his two desyatni.
The snowfall had eased. They could see dozens of yards ahead of them. The ground was white except for the blackened face of a small outcropping of rock and the handful of scrub brush that dotted the terrain.
Nikandr turned to Ashan, whose forehead was pinched in concentration. He looked to Nikandr and shook his head. There was nothing, apparently, he could do to help.
If Ashan were powerless, Nikandr wondered if it had more to do with the rift than the Maharraht.
He waved for the men to lower themselves to the ground. They did so, crawling through the deep snow until they saw a depression in the terrain. A man sat in the middle of it. His eyes were closed, and he was chanting softly. He wore a black turban dusted with snow. Upon his brow was a brown gem of jasper, sparkling brightly despite the relatively dim light.
The sotnik turned to Nikandr and pointed his finger at the Maharraht, cocking his thumb like a musket.
Nikandr shook his head. He didn’t want to do anything rash. They had no idea where Nasim might be, and he refused to jeopardize him needlessly. He turned to Rehada, who was studying the man with a piercing stare. She was conflicted-sadness and doubt clearly warring within her.
Nikandr moved to her side and whispered to her, “Who is he?”
He never heard her response.
A series of sharp cracks resonated beneath him. He could feel it running along his hands and knees.
“Back up!” he shouted.
Before any of them could react, the ground erupted.
Nikandr felt himself lifted and thrown through the air like dust on the wind. He fell softly onto his back in the deep snow, his knee burning from the awkward angle at which he’d landed. Several yards away, standing tall as two men, was a mound of snow-covered earth not unlike the vanahezhan he had seen on Ghayavand. It stalked toward Ashan as the sotnik fired his musket. The flash from the pan was dimmed by the burlap sack protecting it against the snow. The musket ball struck the beast’s head as two more shots tore into it. Nearly all of the streltsi discharged their firearms into the hezhan.
Mere moments later, a cry rose up behind them.
Nikandr turned, recognizing the trap well too late.
It was the Maharraht-at least a score of them-advancing through the drifts. They trained their muskets as they advanced. A split second later, they stopped and released a clatter of musket fire.
Nikandr’s men cried out in pain as musket shots tore into them. Four dropped to the snow. Ashan spread his arms wide, and gazed to the sky. A musket shot pierced his pale yellow robes just below one arm, tugging at the fabric like a child trying to gain his attention.
“Ashan, beware!” Nikandr shouted as he backed away, but Ashan didn’t listen.
The vanahezhan pounded through the snow, but before it could come within striking distance its feet were caught as if it had stepped into deep, sucking mud. Its momentum carried it forward. Loud snaps broke above the din of battle. The beast’s body tumbled to the ground, and though its arms caught it, they were held by the same effect. The thing struggled like a collared wolf against the restraints holding it.
As one, the streltsi began retreating toward the depression where the vanaqiram had been only moments ago.
The Maharraht pressed their advantage, but then several of their muskets discharged before they were ready. Rehada’s doing.
“Something is wrong,” Rehada told Nikandr as she knelt down beside him.
“You noticed?”
Rehada shook her head. “I mean this doesn’t feel right. Soroush should be here, and so should Nasim.”
“Behind!” the sotnik yelled.
Nikandr glanced back while reloading his own musket. Several dozen yards up, firing from the top of a small knoll, were more Maharraht. Another strelet and the burly desyatnik were felled as the sotnik ordered half of them to return fire.
After one volley, as his men were reloading their weapons, the Maharraht charged.
Nikandr stared at them, knowing they were severely outnumbered, knowing they would most likely die whatever they did.
That may be true, Nikandr thought, but he would not go easily.
He drew his shashka and held it high over his head. “Charge!” he yelled as he sprinted forward.
Atiana watched in horror as Bolgravya’s streltsi unloaded from the skiffs. They marched forward, muskets at the ready. She could feel Alesya’s growing desire to have this done with and to rid herself of Atiana-she was growing increasingly disgusted by her nearness to Atiana’s emotions and thoughts.
Meanwhile, Atiana’s awareness of the rift had been growing like the coming light of dawn. There was a distinct feeling of familiarity to it that she could only attribute to her discovery of it within the aether. It lay wide open, a gaping maw in the fabric of the world, and through it she could feel the touch of Adhiya. She could feel warmth and earth and water, even air.
And running through it all was the scent of life.
But there was something else, the feeling that this place-the rift-was like one of any number of threads that ran through the fabric of Erahm-as if the filaments of Adhiya were spread throughout the world like thistledown. The nearest was the one on Duzol, all the more familiar since she had just come from there, and it felt-as it had within the aether-ripe.
Alesya paid little attention to these thoughts because the sounds of battle had broken out. And it was close.
Very close.
The shouts of Duchy men could be heard, as well as the high calls of the Maharraht. The crack of musket fire pattered like the first heavy raindrops of a terrible summer storm. Flashes of white were seen through the curtain of snow.
Grigory raised his fist, a signal that was quickly passed down the line. The men halted.
“Can you feel the boy?” Grigory asked.
Alesya forced Atiana to shake her head. “ Nyet. There is nothing.”
“Where is he?”
“She does not know.”
And then Nikandr’s voice filtered through the cries.
Grigory’s face hardened.
He motioned for the men to fan out to his left, to converge on the sounds of the musket fire that lay between them and Nikandr. They stalked forward, but one of the Maharraht called out a warning. Many of them turned and fired, as Grigory’s men laid into them.
It was then, with several Maharraht dropping their muskets and charging with wickedly curved shamshirs drawn, that Atiana realized why Duzol felt so near. Why it felt ripe.
The rift here on Uyadensk was not the place where Nasim could be used. It never had been. Ashan had been wrong in the beginning, and she had been wrong in the end. Like a jeweler calculating the perfect angle with which to strike the uncut stone, the Maharraht had understood that the key was not the rift on Uyadensk, but the one on Duzol-not because it was the largest, but because by ripping
it wider it would cause a chain of events that would lead to the destruction they hoped to wreak.
“Grigory, stop!” Alesya yelled through Atiana’s voice. “Stop!”
Grigory didn’t listen. He couldn’t. He was locked in swordplay, parrying the fierce slashes from a tall Maharraht warrior.
That was when it struck.
A musket ball.
Without warning.
Straight through Atiana’s chest.
The enemy on the knoll had inexplicably pulled away, leaving Nikandr’s men free to face the Maharraht to the rear. The two forces crashed together. Men shouted as steel fell upon steel. In moments, their line was complete chaos. Blood fell upon the snow as soldiers dropped on both sides.
Nikandr parried the attacks of a warrior with a long black mustache. He retreated, keeping his parries slow, baiting the other man. When he finally overextended his advantage, Nikandr sidestepped quickly and drove his shashka through the man’s gut. He withdrew quickly and slashed the man across the throat before he could attempt a dying stroke.
His men were in disarray. There were less than a dozen left against twenty Maharraht. It would be over in moments.
But then a cry rose from beyond the knoll. Nearly two dozen streltsi came running over the hill.
“Hold, men! Hold!”
They did, and soon after the other group of streltsi fell upon the Maharraht. None of the enemy withdrew, however. None turned to run. They fought to the death, the last cutting four streltsi down before he took a musket shot at point-blank range through his chest, and even then he grabbed the end of the unfortunate soldier’s musket and swung his shamshir high over his head and swept it across the other man’s neck. The strelet’s head fell against the beaten and bloody snow, emitting a sound like a fallen gourd.
The Maharraht tried to fight on, but he fell to his knees while stumbling against the uneven, blood-matted snow. He blinked several times before the streltsi nearby fell upon him, unleashing their fury, their swords rising and falling and cutting him into barely recognizable pieces.
And then Nikandr saw the commander of the streltsi.
It was Grigory.
And he was pointing a musket directly at Nikandr’s chest. “Lay down arms, Khalakovo.”
Nikandr stood there, blood trickling across his elbow and along his forearm. He shook his head and allowed his shashka to fall to the trampled snow at his feet. They were in no position to disobey, and he would not sacrifice his men for one last, meaningless gasp. “Lower your arms.”
“My Lord Prince,” a Bolgravy and esyatnik called from the top of the knoll. “It’s Lady Vostroma. She says we are not in the right place.”
“I can spare no time for her now.”
“She is calling for you. She’s been shot.”
Nikandr’s breath fell away.
Grigory’s face went white. He turned and with two of his men and a havaqiram ran toward the top of the rise.
Nikandr tried to follow but was stopped by Grigory’s men. He railed against them. “Let me pass!” he shouted. But they would not.
Grigory turned, pausing to stare at Nikandr with a look on his face like he was considering allowing him to come. He looked-in that one brief moment-like a boy who was having trouble with the mantle that had fallen into his lap. It looked like he desperately wanted help, even from a man he called an enemy. But then his expression hardened, and he motioned for the streltsi to lead Nikandr back toward his men.
Rehada was being held closely, her circlet gone. Of Nikandr’s men less than twenty remained. They stood there, haggard, and it was then that Nikandr realized that Ashan was missing. He scanned the bodies of the fallen, becoming frantic when he didn’t see Ashan among them, but when the wind began to blow across the battlefield, he knew that the arqesh had managed to slip away.
The wind gained in intensity, lifting new waves of snow from the ground and pushing men back who were unprepared. It ebbed for one moment, giving everyone a chance to regain their footing, but then, as if the brief pause had been an inhalation, the wind howled with the force of a gale. It sounded like a great, ravenous beast ready to devour them all.
Nikandr fell to the ground as men were swept from their feet. Their kolpak hats flew off their heads as wet snow and dirt pelted them. One man even fired his musket in the direction of the wind, perhaps seeing something he thought was the enemy. The next moment, he toppled backwards and was lost in a rain of white.
The wind cut fiercely against the Vostroman soldiers, pushing them from the lip of the knoll, and Nikandr understood what Ashan was trying to do.
“This way!” he shouted from hands and knees. He dare not stand up lest he be blown about like the men standing only a few paces away. In fact, the intensity increased even more, forcing him to drop to the ground and lay prone.
He didn’t know if his men had heard his order, but when he was able to rise, the sotnik was at his elbow, pulling him up and helping him stumble toward the opposite side of the hill.
Rehada and Ashan caught up with the group just as they reached the place where Grigory’s men had huddled. There was a wide swath of matted snow and a fair amount of blood, but it was otherwise empty.
They quickly chased after using the trail they had left behind. They found a skiff, its sails cut to shreds, and an imprint in the snow of another that had recently left.
“What do we do, My Lord?” the sotnik asked.
“I don’t know,” Nikandr said listlessly. “I have no idea where they would go.”
“I know,” Rehada said. “They go to Duzol.”
CHAPTER 63
Atiana realized she was in the air again. She felt light, not only because she was flying through the stormy weather in the bottom of a skiff but because she felt wholly unencumbered by her mortal frame. She felt, in fact, like a havahezhan must: free and ethereal.
She fell unconscious. When she woke again, it was to a jostling of the skiff. They had landed, and someone was standing over her, asking her where they needed to go. He looked familiar, but for the life of her she couldn’t place him.
“The spire on the fort,” she said weakly.
“You are sure?” he asked.
It was a man she didn’t care for-she knew this much-but she saw no reason to withhold the information.
“I am.” It felt like each word weighed ten stone.
He looked down on her, ungracious.
“We go,” he said, though she understood it was not to her.
“And the Lady Princess?”
A pause.
“Leave her.”
Flakes of snow fell upon her face, soft touches of ice upon deadened skin.
The sound of footsteps through snow were all around her, but then they faded, leaving only the nearby waves and the wind as it whistled through the trees. She could see neither of these things, but she realized with a growing certainty that she could feel them. The snow beneath her fingers, the grass beneath the snow, the earth through which the grass extended its roots, and the bedrock of the island beneath the soft, pliable earth. She felt all of this and more.
And soon… Soon…
She hears the call of a lonely heron, hears its mate over a mile away. She feels the weight of a nearby copse of trees upon the earth, small in comparison to its larger sister to the south. She feels the wind as it brushes against the evergreen branches, the pine cones as they are tugged free to fall against the snow, the rabbits as they huddle in their warrens, waiting for the storm to pass.
Her awareness spreads to the entire island, and there is one thing that is glaringly out of place.
The rift.
It glows against her senses like a brand, though it does not feel warm. Nor does it feel cold. It feels… wrong. It feels like an insult to this place, an injustice that must be righted, for surely it is a wound that will never heal on its own. The festering must be purged. Only then can the land begin to heal.
She moves in toward the strongest presence of the r
ift on the island. The spire. It is a mere branch in comparison to the massive trunk that towers above Radiskoye. She is certain that it is the weakest link on the archipelago. Tear it down and Radiskoye’s goes with it, and if Radiskoye’s goes, then so will all the others-the entire chain will devolve into little more than a gaping maw that leads directly to Adhiya. And then the spirits will avail themselves of anything they wish.
Like a ship in a gale, she finds it difficult to navigate. Her mind is thrown about by the aether, the currents as unpredictable as a cornered lynx. They pull at her, drawing her attention not to one place, but to everything. Du-zol-and the entire archipelago beyond it-feels more alive and also closer to death than she had thought possible.
It is the taint of the world beyond, she knows, yet still she finds it difficult to focus her attention, until she senses him.
Nasim.
He is chained to the spire. A spike has been driven into it. From this, manacles hang down and entrap his wrists. The spire itself is bright white against the backdrop of satin black. Most would be a dark blue, even against the spire, but Nasim is nearly as white. He does not fight; he does not scream. Every so often a shiver runs the length of his body, and his eyes move spasmodically beneath closed lids.
Men in ragged lengths of robes circle the spire, which stands in the courtyard of the keep. There are no men of the Duchy to be seen. She assumes they have been killed or are being kept in the donjon of Oshtoyets.
She recognizes two of the Maharraht-Bersuq and Soroush-the same two that raised the vanahezhan on the beach near Izhny.
Soroush approaches Nasim. In his hands he holds five stones, one for each of the aspects: jasper for earth, alabaster for air, tourmaline for fire, azurite for water, and opal for the raw stuff of life. All of them glow as brightly as the spire and Nasim.
The Maharraht are chanting, though she can hear no words. Soroush steps close to Nasim and presses the gem of tourmaline into his mouth. Water is forced down Nasim’s throat, and soon it is clear he has swallowed it, for he glows brighter.
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