The Winds of Khalakovo

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  The Matra’s form is dark—almost entirely black—but there is color to her still. It might say nothing about whether or not she is truly lost to the winds, however. It may be because she has so recently passed.

  The stone around the Matra’s neck is dim. Atiana moves forward, opening her mind to allow the Matra’s soul to touch hers, but there is nothing. No response. Not even a faint glimmer. Just the cold embers of a once-raging fire.

  She touches the stone, and there is the briefest of flashes. She feels a thread leading from the stone, but she is prevented from following it.

  What are you doing here, child?

  It is the Duchess Polina Mirkotsk. She is not strong in the ways of the dark, but she has always been good at speaking through it, so there is little wonder that they set her as the watchdog.

  I am trying to help the Matra, Saphia.

  Who allowed you into her chamber?

  Yvanna, now begone.

  Atiana tries to drift outward, to follow the trail leading away from Saphia, but Polina stops her.

  Polina speaks softly to the other Matri, bidding them to verify Atiana’s words. No doubt one of the others would assume one of the palotza’s rooks and ask; Atiana only hoped they didn’t ask Victania.

  I do not have time to wait, Atiana says. The Matra’s life depends on it.

  Nyet, Polina says.

  Tell whomever you wish in Radiskoye, but do not stop me in this. You know she is close to death. I am near where you are far, too far to do anything to help her. Is it not so?

  Silence.

  I can feel her, Duchess. Let me go to her, please, to do what I can.

  Polina is unsure of herself. One of the others—perhaps Lhudansk—advises caution, but Polina ignores her and her presence retreats.

  Do not betray us, Vostroma.

  Atiana says nothing in return. She turns to Saphia. She is faint, her presence distant. Atiana touches the Matra’s stone once more, feeling wind and the open sea. She keeps herself within the stone, knowing this is the key to finding the Matra, but like a single note plucked from a harp, the feeling is beginning to fade.

  Desperation pushes her toward haste, but this has never been the way with the aether. She keeps the sound of the note in her head, however faint, and allows it to carry her.

  When she opens her eyes again, she finds herself far from any island, floating on the winds like the liberated seed of a thistle. Nearby, an Aramahn skiff floats. There are only two aboard. Ashan sits at the helm, guiding the winds into the billowing sail above him. He seems at peace—a man who has come to grips with the world around him. On deck with Ashan is the boy, Nasim, and it is to him that the connection from the Matra terminates. The thread, rather than being thin, is thick and vibrant, as if the connection originates from the boy, not the other way around. Nasim is sleeping, but his head and shoulders—even his legs—jerk and twitter as if he is trying to waken but cannot quite do so.

  And then she sees them.

  Dozens of havahezhan, wind spirits, float about the skiff. They trail about in lazy arcs, always circling back. She thinks at first it must be at Ashan’s bidding, but then she realizes they are coming for the boy.

  They pause for brief moments in their circling, and it is at these times that Nasim’s body spasms. She cannot understand what is happening, but it seems as if they are feeding on him. Preying upon him. Does the boy realize it? Does he allow it? Has it been so all along?

  This seems doubtful given the scrutiny he received at the hands of the Matra. And so it seems it must be something particular to his departure from Radiskoye or his time on the wind.

  Or the tether that exists between him and the Matra.

  The thought makes her go cold.

  The hezhan are feeding, but it is the Matra’s soul—not Nasim’s—that they feed upon.

  She moves into the path of the tether, and opens herself to it. The writhing rope leading to the boy brightens, and she realizes that she has added herself to it. She senses both Nasim and the Matra, though Saphia’s terminus is very, very faint. She feels a tug at her breast as one of the havahezhan swoops in and swallows another piece of the Matra’s soul.

  Atiana rages against it, for it has taken a bit of her as well. She wonders how the Matra could have taken it for so long. It must have been this way ever since Nasim left the palotza five days ago.

  She knows not what to do. She is helpless against such things. She feels herself becoming lost, and the more she tries to direct her awareness, the tighter the hold Nasim seems to have upon her. Soon she is forced to stop altogether for fear of losing herself to the power of this boy.

  The wind spirits continue to feed. The Matra’s soul is nearly extinguished, perhaps all the quicker because the hezhan somehow sensed more meat upon the bone. They swoop in, hungrier. They take larger bites, and with each one she feels weaker.

  She tries to fend them off, but they only become more animated, and swoop in faster.

  Her chest aches. Her bones ache. She screams and tries to wake, but it is not possible. Not any longer.

  Nasim sleeps, and yet he appears to be screaming. Ashan attempts to wake him. He looks about the craft, over the water, perhaps sensing something, but there is nothing he can do. Either that or he chooses not to.

  The bites continue, and it is clear that she is lost. She is no Matra of five decades; she is a child, and she will not be able to pull herself from this no matter what she tries.

  CHAPTER 39

  When the sun rose on Nikandr’s fifth day on the wind, he saw near the horizon—as he had on the four previous mornings—the telltale sign of Ashan’s skiff. He had come to understand that Ashan was allowing himself to be followed. Three times on the first day Jahalan had summoned all the winds he dared in an attempt to catch up to the skiff, but every time they closed in, the winds would push them away. They had tried again the following day, hoping Ashan was tiring, but the same thing happened, and by this time Jahalan was nearing exhaustion. Nikandr thought they would lose the skiff, but it always stayed just on the edge of sight, a dark speck on the cloudy white horizon.

  “Are we to make another go, My Lord?”

  This came from Viggen, a spry old sailor taking a turn at the helm. Nikandr had flown with him several times. He was an able sailor. More than able. Nikandr counted himself lucky that he’d been among those helping on the eyrie, but he hadn’t counted on how superstitious the man would be. Sailors were a superstitious lot to begin with, but Viggen was worse than most. He hadn’t taken the attack by the Maharraht lightly, and he considered it unlucky to take sail with so many having just died and the ship still steaming from the fire that had only just been put out.

  Viggen and the crew grumbled about how bad it was the entire next day—never to Nikandr directly, but amongst themselves and within earshot. Their fears, it seemed, were confirmed near sundown. A twinkling along the eastern horizon had drawn Udra’s attention.

  “That is a ship,” she said simply, “or I am an old gray gull.”

  A chill went down Nikandr’s frame as Viggen and the five other men who weren’t sleeping belowdecks spit downwind over the gunwale. Somehow, despite their precautions and the relative darkness, they had been spotted leaving the island. Nikandr looked up to the Gorovna’s starward mainmast. Its sails had been burned beyond repair. Even with them gone they might have foiled the pursuit, but they were chasing Ashan, and he had kept a steady course, west by southwest. There was really no choice in direction, and the trailing ship would know this by now.

  So the chase continued.

  “We’ll make another go,” Nikandr said to Viggen, “though I doubt the outcome will be any different.”

  Viggen lowered his voice so that only Nikandr could hear. “Begging your pardon, My Lord Prince, but do you still think it’s worth it?”

  “There are grand things at work,” Nikandr said just as softly, “things neither of us understand.”

  “As you say, My Lord.”

>   Nikandr glanced toward the bow with purpose and waited until Viggen did the same. “That boy is at the center of them.” Nikandr coughed. “Better if we find the storm before it descends upon us unannounced.”

  He started to cough, hoping to stem the tide that would surely follow, but just as it had at random times over the past three days, the cough devolved into a fit that gripped his chest tightly until he felt like he could give no more. Only then did it recede, leaving him exhausted for hours on end, and just when he thought he had recovered, it would happen again.

  Udra did him a favor without knowing it. She said it was because of the fire, that it would soon pass, and Viggen agreed. “My brother was caught in a fire like that when he was a child. He coughed every day of his life until he died at fourteen.”

  Nikandr thanked him not to repeat the story. He knew, of course, that it was the wasting, but it had grown markedly worse since leaving Khalakovo. Shortly before the coughing began he would feel a constriction upon his heart. It would skip a beat, perhaps two, and the coughing would begin. As the fit progressed, he could feel the noose tightening around his heart until finally it was released. Soon after the coughing would cease.

  He pulled out his soulstone and stared into its cracked, smoky depths. He knew that the progression of the disease and the state of his stone were somehow related. He had thought for a long time that the stone was merely a canvas, painted with the events of his life, but now he knew differently. The stone, more and more over the years, was becoming a part of him—little different than his heart, his stomach, his liver. He also knew that the blight was in some way related. Things had grown progressively worse over the past decade, and this phenomenon, he had no doubt, would not have been possible in years past. The world was changing. And Nasim was the key to unlocking that riddle.

  On the sixth day, with the sun high but occasionally hidden by passing clouds, Nikandr sat on deck, his back to the gunwale, biting into the hardtack biscuits that were their only provisions besides weak ale. Jahalan had been summoning the winds, coaxing them into the right direction, perhaps attempting to feel for the location of the trailing ship, which had shown itself several hours ago, closer than it had been in the morning. Nikandr realized he could no longer see Ashan’s skiff. He took the telescope from the helm and moved to the bowsprit. He scanned the horizon, but found nothing.

  “Jahalan, where is he?”

  Jahalan opened his eyes. He was nearly sleeping on his feet. He rushed to the bow and took the telescope from Nikandr. “I don’t know,” he said after sweeping the horizon.

  They thought perhaps he was hiding among the clouds, but Ashan had never veered from his straightforward course. Had Nikandr been wrong all along? Had Ashan been toying with them in order to more easily lose them later?

  Nyet. That made no sense. Ashan was arqesh; had he wanted to he could have lost them that first night.

  Perhaps, then, he had changed his mind. Or perhaps he had finally realized that the Gorovna had been followed and it was too risky to lead Nikandr any further.

  “Ship, ho!”

  No sooner had the words come from the boatswain than the sound of a cannon broke across the stillness of the afternoon. Nikandr heard the whine of the grapeshot beneath the ship and a tight cluster of audible pops as it punctured one of the seaward sails. A moment later, the ship twisted counterclockwise, the telltale sign that the shot had ripped a sizable hole in the canvas.

  Abaft and above, exiting a thick bank of white clouds, was the Vostroman ship. How it had gained on them so much Nikandr didn’t know, but they were in for it now. Their position gave the Vostroman ship many options and the Gorovna few.

  Nikandr took over the helm’s controls. Udra was already sitting ahead of the controls, cross-legged, eyes closed and palms flat against the decking.

  “Bring us down, Udra. Quickly. Viggen, prepare the cannon. Jahalan...”

  “Da,” Jahalan said as he moved to the mainmast. Once there, he opened his arms, and the alabaster gem on his brow glowed brighter. The winds gathered strength as another cannon shot rang out. This one crashed into the hull, a poor shot—they had most likely been told to take the Gorovna intact, along with her crew.

  Nikandr tilted the ship downward. With Udra suppressing the windwood’s ability to stay afloat and Jahalan’s winds, they were already picking up considerable speed, but the trailing ship—Nikandr recognized it now as the Kavda, a swift eight-masted caravel—was already closing the distance.

  Viggen and the boatswain manned the cannon at the bow. They trained it upward, and it roared to life, but even as Nikandr heard a satisfying crunch as the shot tore into their hull, two more blasts ripped into the Gorovna’s landward mainsail.

  “Give them wind, Jahalan!”

  “They have two havaqiram.” Jahalan’s voice was calm, but his words were clipped, the muscles along his neck straining.

  The wind—heading strong two points off the bow—swirled about the ship.

  “I can’t stop them!” Jahalan said, his face becoming red, his hands bunched now into tight fists.

  The ship was slowing. The winds were too unpredictable to capture. Soon they would be dead in the wind, helpless to stop the Kavda as they lowered grappling hooks and took the Gorovna in for the kill.

  Suddenly the air began to mist, and the temperature dropped from cool to frigid. In mere moments Nikandr was drenched.

  “What are you doing?”

  “It isn’t me,” Jahalan replied.

  He thought at first it was the qiram aboard the Kavda, but their wind masters wouldn’t do such a thing—the effect would be too debilitating to their line of sight.

  A frigid gust cut windward across the ship, and then—as suddenly as it had come—it was gone. It blew again, and vanished. Nikandr could barely see Jahalan, who stood only four paces away, but he could still see the look of confusion on his face.

  “I think we are beckoned,” Nikandr said.

  “Ashan?”

  “Who else?”

  Another cannon blast cut through the fog and tore into the decking at the stern. A man screamed, the sounds cutting through the fog like a knife.

  Another shot came moments later, and Nikandr realized the Kavda was using the sound to target them.

  “All quiet!” Nikandr shouted. “Viggen, shut that man up!”

  “Aye, My Lord.”

  The gust came again, blowing in the same direction, as a cannon shot ripped through the landward foresail.

  Nikandr stared down at the levers that allowed him to guide the bearing of the ship. He knew the situation was untenable. Even with the mist, the Kavda would soon correct their speed, they would close, and it would all be over.

  His breath came slowly, and he felt his fingers tingle as he realized what the wind was telling him to do. He could release the ship’s controls. The wind would carry them northward, toward uncharted territory. It was a decision that would wrest them from the jaws of the Kavda, but it was one that could ruin them just the same. If he did this, the Gorovna would slip free of the currents that ran between the islands, the currents that had been meticulously groomed and guided by the spires and by the delicate hand of the Matri over centuries. Outside of these shipping lanes, the aether swirled and eddied as unpredictably as it did at the base of the eyrie’s cliffs. Worse—the effect was often stronger, the aether swirling into unforgiving maelstroms that would rip the ship to pieces were Nikandr to engage the ship’s controls once more.

  Once free of the stream that ran between the Khalakovan and Vostroman archipelagos, they would be forced to rely on the abilities of Jahalan to guide the ship like the Aramahn did in their tiny skiffs.

  But really, despite his fears, there was no choice in this. If he didn’t, the Kavda would have them.

  Before he could change his mind, he pushed all three levers forward until they locked into place, and the ship began to turn and drift windward.

  CHAPTER 40

  The Gorovna twiste
d in the wind, and though Nikandr had not said a word, it soon became clear to any experienced sailor what was happening.

  Viggen’s voice cut through the mist from the stern of the ship. “Kapitan?”

  “Silence on deck!” Nikandr shouted as loud as he dared.

  Several more shots rang out from the Kavda, but they were further now and the shots went wide. A short while later, soft as a memory, Nikandr heard the order to come about. Soon the Gorovna would be out of reach, and it was doubtful the Kavda would brave the currents to chase them down. If they did, they might succeed in capturing or destroying their quarry, but more likely than not they would in the process become lost to the winds as well.

  Jahalan guided them, being careful not to use too heavy a hand lest the havaqiram aboard the Kavda sense it. The mist began to recede. Nikandr could once again see the foremast clearly. The wounded crewman lay on his side at the stern, rolling his head from side to side while Viggen, kneeling over him, clamped his hand over the man’s mouth to keep him from screaming. Udra pulled a black-and-white scarf from around her neck and began binding the man’s wound. The deck around them was bloody and mangled from grapeshot.

  They continued northward, a few calls from the Kavda coming to them from within the mist. The Gorovna had now completely drifted free from it, and as the distance increased, Nikandr saw how truly immense it was. It looked like a cloud the size of an island, churning as the wind pushed them onward.

  “It must be Ashan,” Jahalan said.

  Nikandr furrowed his brow. “Or Nasim.”

  Jahalan laughed softly. “Or Nasim.”

  Nikandr studied the northern sky for any sign of the skiff, but there was none. “Is Ghayavand truly a place between worlds?”

  “Who can tell? Some doubt that it exists at all. Others say it is nothing but an island where powerful qiram once lived. Others believe a doorway once existed, but that it has since closed.”