The Winds of Khalakovo

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  “Are you prepared to continue?” Fahroz asked in Anuskayan, her voice echoing in the immensity of the room.

  “I am.” Those two simple words felt foul on her tongue. She hated that she was forced to speak in their language.

  “Then tell the Lady Vostroma what you are confessing.”

  “A hatred for the family Bolgravya.”

  Her voice echoed away slowly as Atiana stared and Fahroz paced a circle around them.

  Fahroz stopped for a moment while she was within Rehada’s periphery. “Come, Rehada...”

  “A hatred for the Grand Duchy.”

  Fahroz resumed her pacing. “For whom?”

  Rehada closed her eyes and shook her head, but she opened them again immediately. “A hatred for the Landed.”

  “And why do you hold hatred?”

  “Because of the death of my daughter.”

  “Deaths happen every day, daughter of Shineshka. Why would this one, even though it was your daughter’s, cause anger?”

  “Because she was murdered unjustly by the streltsi of Nazakhov.”

  “Murdered...”

  “Da, murdered!”

  “Tell Lady Vostroma what happened.”

  Atiana had been prepared. She had been told, as would anyone that was to play the part of the witness, to stand still, to accept what was being told as the truth, and to speak only when spoken to. But her oh-so-sympathetic face spoke volumes, and it felt as if she were scoffing at a covenant that had been in place for eons—yet another affront the Landed would someday be held accountable for.

  Rehada spoke of that day in cold terms, giving Atiana the facts, how she’d left Ahya with friends, how she’d returned to find her burning body among the wreckage of the home she’d left only hours before, but as she spoke it was not those images that played through her mind but the sights and sounds of the mountain where she had taken breath. The day had been cool, pleasant. The sky had held few clouds, but those that were present scudded across the sky, sending shadows to play over the landscape like trumpeting heralds. The wind had been brisk. It had brought a scent of Lion’s Foot—the pale, late-blooming flowers that grew along the highest ranges of the southern islands. She had felt, during those hours of meditation, as though she had come to know Nazakhov deeply, as though, like the bond between mother and daughter, she was a part of it and it was a part of her. It had been exhilarating, for this had never happened to her before. It had been something that every Aramahn hoped to find but few managed in their lifetimes.

  But here Rehada had discovered the weight of an island upon her shoulders. She wondered when she came down from that mountain whether any such thing could really happen. It seemed that it had all been a figment, a self-fulfilling delusion, a trick of the mind perpetrated consciously by the breath-stealing air of the tallest mountain in Bolgravya. It must be so, for what else could explain her apparent oneness with her environment and her complete inability to sense that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong with her child, her blood, her one and truest love?

  As she had come to rest before that house—the one that had been burned to the ground—she had stared at the burned skeleton that had been her daughter. Her precious child had been ripped from her world by the acts of the Maharraht who had been hiding there, the prevailing attitude of the Landed for the ruthless acts committed by them, but mostly—she had no doubt in her mind—by the overriding greed of the Landed aristocracy. It was a greed that had pushed them to claw for every scrap of land in the sea, and it had done so for so long that they could no longer see that their acts would one day instill and reinforce the resistance that they hoped so fervently to root out.

  Perhaps Rehada’s voice contained more venom than she had realized. She had expected Atiana to soften even further, to paste a look upon her face that would force Rehada to claw at her, if only to remove the expression from that white skin for a moment or two. But instead Atiana was nearly emotionless, and then, in increments, her face hardened, as if she condoned the actions of the streltsi that day, as if she would have ordered the very same thing had she held the gavel of fate in her hand. Strangely, this did not upset Rehada in the least. It felt as though things had returned to balance—Atiana the oppressor, she the oppressed—and it allowed Rehada to complete her story to Fahroz’s satisfaction.

  “What did you do after you discovered your daughter dead?”Atiana asked. Fahroz had prepared Atiana to ask certain questions at certain times, but still, Rehada was startled by her words.

  “I left that very night and traveled Erahm another full circuit before landing on Uyadensk.”

  “You didn’t see your daughter buried?” Atiana asked.

  Rehada smiled the way she would for a child. “She had gone. Her funeral pyre had already burned whether I liked it or not.”

  Atiana’s face pursed. “I do not question your judgment—I know the ways of the Aramahn are not my own—I only wondered why you would not grieve over your child.”

  “I grieve as I grieve!”

  Fahroz stopped near Rehada’s side, her arms across her chest. “A question was posed.”

  Rehada shook her head. “I cannot do this.”

  “You cannot even speak of your child?”

  “Not to her. Nyet.”

  Fahroz stared at her for a long time, hoping Rehada would change her mind. But she would not. “You leave me no choice.”

  Fahroz strode toward the doors to Rehada’s left. As her soft footsteps faded, a vision of Ahya leaping over the edge of a skiff came to Rehada. It had happened when they’d reached Nazakhov. Both of them had been in good spirits. Her hair trailed behind her as she ran ahead to the edge of the nearby cliff and looked down upon the ocean and the city of Bastrozna. Rehada had come to her side and held her tight to her hip as the wind tugged at their hair and their ankle-length robes.

  “Will Father meet us here?” Ahya had asked.

  Rehada had smiled. “Neh, child. Not here.”

  “Where?”

  “The next island. Or the one beyond that. I do not know.”

  “Will you teach me to touch Adhiya?”

  “You are too young, yet.”

  Ahya had looked up at her with those bright green eyes. Her face was sad, but resigned. “You are always holding me back.”

  Rehada had laughed at the notion—a child of six complaining that she could not learn as an adult. Rehada had done the same to her own mother, but the difference here was how close to right Ahya was. She was very strong. Rehada had known it for several years, ever since she had noticed the spirits with which Rehada had been communing. She had felt them as a girl of twelve would have trouble doing, and she had been only five.

  When she had come down from the mountain that day, she had decided that she would begin Ahya’s training. Perhaps not that day; perhaps not in a month; but soon.

  How had she forgotten such a thing? She had remembered Ahya’s burgeoning abilities—that had always been a thing of pride—but she had completely forgotten, until the point where Fahroz began walking away, that she had been ready to walk with her daughter toward a higher consciousness.

  The answer came almost as quickly as had the question: the pain in thinking of how her daughter’s promise had been snuffed from the world had eclipsed many things. It had been too painful to consider, and so she had buried it, hoping it would never resurface again.

  Suddenly she realized that she was on the ground, and that Atiana and Fahroz were kneeling next to her.

  There was a keening in the room—a long wail of pain, and it took her long moments of rocking slowly back and forth to realize that it came from her. No one else. Her. Cries of regret for a child so pure.

  “I did not grieve because it was something I could not face,” she said through her sobs.

  Fahroz combed her hair away from her face. “That’s right, child.” She helped Rehada to her feet, and when Rehada had composed herself to some small degree, she motioned for Atiana to take her place once
more.

  “Why did you come to Uyadensk?” Atiana asked.

  “I came because I wished to know a place—another place—as well as I had known Nazakhov.”

  “But why Uyadensk?”

  Rehada shrugged. “It is as good a place as any to know.”

  “By those standards, Nazakhov would be even better since you knew it so well already.”

  “I will never face Nazakhov again.”

  “You give it more meaning than it has,” Fahroz interrupted. “It is only an island.”

  “It is a storehouse of misery.”

  Fahroz shook her head. “That is why you have been here for so long, is it not? You hope that Uyadensk will replace Nazakhov, that it will heal those wounds that never properly closed and have been festering ever since.”

  Rehada shivered. Fahroz had come extremely close to the mark, and it was less than comforting.“I wish to know a place and to move on with my life. Moving from island to island no longer held any allure.”

  “What is the name of your daughter’s father?” Atiana asked.

  “Soroush Wahad al Gatha.”

  “He is Maharraht, is he not?”

  Rehada nodded. “He is.”

  “What do you feel toward Anuskaya?”

  “Anger, and resentment.”

  Her words echoed off into the immensity of the room. When all was silence, Fahroz stopped her pacing next to Atiana and faced Rehada. “Come, daughter of Shineshka.”

  “I know I can never have her back, but I want in my heart for the Duchy to provide that for me. In my heart of hearts I hope to dismantle the islands, one by one. I wish to watch every single Landed man, woman, and child drown in the seas, swallowed whole, for what they have done to my child.”

  “Ahya will be reborn,” Fahroz said.

  “But what will she be then? Half of what she was? Less? She could have been great.”

  “She will be. As will we all one day.”

  Rehada wanted to stalk forward and beat the knowing look from her face. “Forgive me, daughter of Lilliah, but it is difficult at times to look beyond this life. Even more so to the one beyond that.”

  “Are you Maharraht?” Atiana blurted into the ensuing silence.

  Her words echoed in the chamber—aharraht, harraht, rraht.

  Everything she had said up to this point had been the truth. All of it. And she had debated with herself nearly every moment since agreeing to come here and confess: would she reveal this secret? Much rode upon this one answer, and in truth it pained her to think of lying at a time when she was speaking of her daughter so intimately. It felt too much like betrayal, a thing she could live with in almost anyone. Anyone but Ahya.

  But the way Atiana had spoken those words. So sharp. So demanding. She wondered whether Fahroz had asked her to speak it thus. She doubted it now. Such traits were ingrained in the aristocracy of the islands from their birth onwards. Atiana could no more escape it than Rehada could her past. And so, though it was a betrayal, she lied.

  “Nyet.”

  “Are you Maharraht?” Fahroz repeated, perhaps displeased with the pause.

  “Nyet,” Rehada repeated.

  A time passed where Rehada refused to move her gaze from Atiana. She did not attempt to force a certain expression, as so many people do when they lie; she simply stared and allowed some small amount of the contempt she held for this woman to show through.

  Fahroz seemed appeased, for she asked Atiana to step closer. When they were close enough to touch, to hug, she said, “Now forgive her.”

  This was the thing she had feared ever since her daughter’s death. She had told herself that whatever happened, she would not forget what they had done. She would not allow the Landed to be free of their responsibility in this, and in forgiving Atiana, she was doing just that. But now that she had come this far she had no choice.

  “I forgive you,” Rehada said softly.

  “Again.”

  “I forgive you.”

  Fahroz stood behind Atiana and regarded Rehada.“Do you feel her words, daughter of Radia?”

  “I do not,” Atiana replied.

  “I forgive you,” Rehada said, pouring as much feeling into her voice as she could.

  “If you do not wish to forgive, Rehada, then perhaps we should stop this now.”

  “I forgive you.”

  “Hold her,” Fahroz replied.

  Rehada stepped forward and put her arms around Atiana. She tried to hug her warmly, but it was impossible. She would rather strangle her.

  “Now say it again.”

  Rehada did. Over and over, and she found herself tightening her hold of the Vostroman princess. As she did, as she called out those words, a memory came to her that she had not thought of for years—possibly since it had happened. Ahya, not quite six years old, was walking over a snow-swept field running her hands over the tips of the winterdead grass. Her head hung low, and her shoulders wracked rhythmically. Rehada had known all too well why she was crying. She had told Ahya a secret about her father, Soroush, who would in two months’ time be taking to the winds once more. Rehada had said that he was a man that found it difficult to love and that her mother would be her guardian until her fifteenth birthday, when she would be free to take the winds as she chose.

  “He doesn’t love me?”

  Rehada had smiled. “Of course he does, but perhaps not as much as he does his quest for understanding.”

  Ahya had been quiet for days after that comment, and Rehada had felt terrible about it, but she refused to leave her child unprepared for her father’s departure as she had been when she was a child.

  Ahya had confessed what she had said to Soroush, and Soroush had been deeply hurt. It became clear that he loved Ahya more than Rehada would have guessed, and her thoughts about his devotion to his daughter cut him deeply. He was a hard man, and he felt it was the best for her. It was his way of loving her, so that she would be prepared for the world to come, so that she would be ready to embrace the journey before her and move closer to vashaqiram.

  Rehada had caught up to Ahya in the field and walked beside her as the bitterly cold breeze played among the stalks of grass.

  Then suddenly Ahya had turned, tears streaming down her cheeks, and embraced her. “I’m sorry, Memma. I’m sorry.”

  As they had hugged, Rehada began to understand. Ahya thought she had driven a wedge between them by telling a secret. But in truth, there was nothing to be ashamed of. It was something she should have told Soroush herself. Her daughter had been honest where she should have been, and she was deeply embarrassed over it.

  “Child, stop your tears. There is nothing to be sorry for. Nothing.”

  Ahya had buried her head into her shoulder and said, “Please. Please forgive me.”

  Rehada had leaned her head in close to Ahya’s ear and whispered. “I forgive you.”

  Rehada came out of her dream whispering those words to Atiana. She felt her own tears creeping down her cheeks and leaking, salty and hot, into the corners of her mouth.

  “I forgive you,” she said one last time, to Ahya, not to Atiana.

  And then she felt Fahroz’s hand on her shoulder. “Enough, Rehada. It is enough.”

  She pulled away and found the older woman crying nearly as hard as was she. There were no tears in Atiana’s eyes, but there was a certain shock there, and a faint look of apology. Rehada was not, surprisingly, angry at this. She had shed too much of that emotion already this day and so she simply nodded to her.

  “Come,” Fahroz said while walking toward the doors, “let us go to the lake.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Atiana had been sure, in that small instant after Rehada had confessed that her daughter had been killed on Nazakhov, that she had somehow orchestrated the attack of the suurahezhan on Radiskoye’s eyrie. But as the questioning continued, she became less convinced, and when the Aramahn beauty had begun crying upon her shoulder, she was not at all sure that Rehada could be turned to such vi
olence... It seemed as though she had locked her emotions away for so long that it would be inconceivable for her to perform murder and still hold such feelings inside. Surely, if that had been so, they would have been released like vapors from a bottle.

  Still, the entire experience had been jarring. She hadn’t known that Rehada had been a mother, and certainly hadn’t known what sort of pain she had gone through. It was strange, once again, to be faced with a different reality than the one she had pictured for Nikandr’s lover.

  One thing bothered her about this, though. Clearly Rehada had harbored resentment for the Landed since her daughter’s regrettable death. Why, then, would she remain here in Uyadensk and flirt with the aristocracy? Why wouldn’t she simply take to the winds or stay with her own kind? Perhaps what she said was true: that she wished to know a place as she had Nazakhov. But that didn’t explain her attraction to Nikandr. It may be that she wanted to use him, to place herself in a position of power that she could achieve in no other way.

  The thoughts fled as they moved deeper into the village toward the lake. It had not been long since Atiana had taken the dark, but as always, a churning in her gut began to rise as the ritual approached.

  The lake, once they reached it, felt different. The first time, it had been a unique experience. She had known about the lakes in the villages, but she had had no idea what sort of power they held. She wondered if the Matri knew that they could be used in the same way as the drowning chambers. Surely they must, but who would use them? Only a handful of Aramahn in all the world could do such a thing; Fahroz was perhaps their most adept and still she was like a child to Atiana, who in turn was like a child to the longstanding Matri.

  Despite these assurances, the lake seemed like a weakness, something that should be dealt with. In time, if she had any say over it, she would.