The stairs lead to a room on the highest level. An ornate bed lies at its center. The bedding is pooled to one side, as if its owner had only just risen.
Like the cardinal directions of the compass rose, four windows are set into the stone walls; at one of these stands a woman. She has long golden hair that runs down past the small of her back and she wears not the robes of the Aramahn, nor the dresses of the Grand Duchy, but a simple yet elegant gown of roughspun silk. He notes that she is gazing north, the direction of winter, of water, indicating, perhaps, that she is a woman who owns a cool temperament. It could also mean that she hides her feelings, that her intentions would be difficult to discern.
She turns her head to look upon him. Golden hair and bright blue eyes. She is timeless. Ageless. She is beauty itself.
She returns her attention to the city. If she is concerned over his arrival she does not show it.
“Come,” she says.
He sees no gem upon her brow, though such things feel meaningless here. Gems are for the Aramahn. They are used to create a bond between human and hezhan, a link from Erahm to Adhiya. Who would say what such a thing would look like here? He was not even convinced he was still in Erahm.
Seeing no reason to deny her command, he joins her at the window. Through the clear but imperfect glass he can see the sprawling city as it climbs the long slope toward the valley walls. Wide thoroughfares as straight as arrows run from the tower outward, and they are lined by buildings that vary in style and color but add to the aesthetic appeal of the layout. Beyond the tower itself and the nearest of the buildings, the city is as broken as he knew it to be.
When she speaks again, she sounds as old as the island itself. “You have come from Hathshava,” she says.
It was the ancient name for Khalakovo—the island of Uyadensk in particular—and it was discarded once the Aramahn ceded the archipelago to the Landed. Suddenly, he feels conscious of his family’s role in displacing so many—he does not feel ashamed, only aware of the history as never before.
“I have,” he replies.
“And before that?” She looks upon him with a familiarity that cannot be explained until he realizes who she thinks he is. She believes she is looking upon the face of Khamal—or at least who Khamal had become when he was reborn.
“Before that... Alastra.”
“And before that?”
He shrugs. “I cannot remember.”
She turns to him, face pinched in annoyance. “You cannot?”
Outside, more of the buildings have become whole. It is as if she is waking and as she does more and more of the city is granted its previous glory. He wonders whether her memories, her perceptions, include the people who once lived here. Perhaps they will emerge from their homes, on their way to the shore or the hills to meditate upon their lives. Then again, perhaps when the city is complete she will remember what happened. Perhaps he will be lost here with her, caught within the trap Khamal had laid for her upon his death.
“Why have you come?” she asks.
“I’ve come for Nasim.”
She looks down, and though he can see nothing in the pristine courtyard below he wonders whether she is seeing something completely different, whether in her eyes Nasim and Ashan and Pietr were in that decrepit courtyard, searching for him.
When she speaks again, there is curiosity in her voice, and longing. “He is strange, this one.”
“He is.”
She turns suddenly, and stares fiercely at his stone.
Nikandr holds it in one hand, more conscious of it than he’s been since it cracked on the deck of his ship. “Nasim dimmed it on Hathshava.”
She smiles. For the life of him he cannot remember seeing a more beautiful face. “It was not dimmed at all.”
“It was.”
She looks up at him. Her eyes are the blue of the ocean deeps.“It became brighter than you could know. He did not spurn you that day. He did not harm you. He chose you.”
“Chose me for what?”
She reaches out, her fingers stopping just short of touching the smooth surface of the stone. “Perhaps he senses what is to come. Perhaps he feels you kindred. Perhaps he wishes to ground himself deeper in Erahm, so lost is he on the other side.”
“I am no more kindred to him than I am to you.”
This seems to startle her. She looks up, a frown complicating her features. “Then perhaps you did not come for him. Perhaps you came for me.”
“I did not know you existed before today.”
She smiles. “The fates care little about what you know. What matters is thatyou are here now, and that I have awoken. You wish for something. You hope to find a way to this boy. And I? I wish for something as well.”
“Tell me.”
“I wish to live... If you can answer me five questions, you can have the solution to your problem.”
“What sort of questions?”
“The sort you can answer, to be sure, but it will take insight, Hathshava. It will take insight.”
“And if I can’t answer them?”
She smiles. Her beauty, despite the peril, stirs fires deep within. “Then you will stay.”
“And if I refuse?”
She shrugs. “You know the way out.”
Doubt runs thick within him. He does not know what sort of questions she might ask, and he worries that she will trick him. But what is there to do? If he leaves, they might never get a chance to learn the true nature of Nasim. They might never learn how to heal the blight that is destroying the islands. The gains, he decides, outweigh the risks many times over.
“I will need a way off this island as well.”
She shakes her head. “The fates saw fit to bring you here; they can see your way home.”
He tightens his jaw, takes a deep breath, and nods. “Ask.”
She steps back from the window and motions to it. “What draws near?”
Outside, the city has completed itself. Down one of the main thoroughfares comes a man wearing an ornate robe of bright blue cloth with a ragged hem. He has a limp, and it grows worse as he approaches the tower.
Eventually he stops and looks down at his feet, or perhaps at his ankles, and then behind, as if confused at how this could have come to pass.
The Aramahn enjoy games of words, and it is clear that this will follow those ancient traditions. The question was not what can be seen by the naked eye, but what the scene represents. They stood at the northern window, the same window at which the woman was standing when he arrived, and so he thinks these must all be related to the nature of the directions. The Aramahn equate north with water, but also with winter. And the man, though still hale, appears to have his best days behind him.
“Winter,” he answers. “Winter draws near.”
She smiles a smile that says how much she is enjoying their game. He notices for the first time wrinkles at the corners of her eyes; they lend her a sagacious quality but also a sense of mortality he hadn’t expected. Perhaps she notices, for her smile fades and she slips to the eastern window.
“What will she reap?”
The scene in the window is not of the city at all. It is of an open field with a girl running across it. A boy chases after, and together they drop among the tall stalks of grass and begin pulling the clothes from their bodies, kissing one another fiercely. Soon they are naked and making love, the boy on top thrusting as she holds him close.
Surely they are sowing the seeds of a child. That must be the answer, and it hangs on his lips for long seconds, but east is the direction of autumn, and autumn is a time of dying, of preparation for the long winter ahead. The answer cannot be so simple.
When they are done, the boy pulls on his clothes and leaves. The girl, after he is gone, puts her head between her knees and begins to cry. Making love had been a ploy—an attempt, perhaps, to make him love her when she knows that he will not.
What else can such a thing reap? Whether she has a child or not, she will never be h
appy until she lets him go.
“Misery,” he says, which he realizes belatedly is another meaning of east for the Aramahn.
The woman smiles again, but this time it seems forced, as if she has underestimated him and has now vowed to correct her mistake. She moves to the southern window and motions to it.
“When will he find what he seeks?”
The scene outside the window is of an old Landed man in a boat. His grizzled and pockmarked face holds an expression of savage concentration as he uses scarred hands to secure an ebony-skinned cod onto a hook. He throws the fish—now attached to a line which in turn is attached to a pole resting in a sleeve on the gunwale—into the water and repeats the process on another line, and another, until he has four lines in. And then he waits, staring at the sea as he rests his chin upon his hands. Every so often he touches the tips of his fingers to one of the poles, perhaps praying to his fathers for a catch that might never come.
The window faces south, the direction of summer, of heat, of willfulness. That he uses such large bait gives clue to what he is searching for—a large catch. Too large. It speaks of a man who will not give up even though what he searches for is clearly beyond his means. This man has pride and a lifetime on the water to guide him, but he also has a desperation that says he will never get what he wants, that even if he does it will not be enough.
“Never,” comes the answer from his mouth, though it is with a sense of sadness, for he has known men like this.
She looks into his eyes with respect and a touch of anger. Her jaw is set grimly, as if she wishes this game to be over and done with. When she moves to the western window, she crosses her arms over her chest.
“Who will she become?”
The image—Nikandr draws in breath without meaning to—is of Rehada. She is younger than when they had first met, perhaps only twenty years old. She is standing before the burnt, smoking remains of a house, and she is staring at a blackened skeleton, its posture locked in the rigor of what must surely have been a very gruesome and painful death.
Others talk around her, and to her, but she pays them no mind. She has eyes only for the body, and he suddenly realizes the ironic joke that is being played on him. Here is he, gazing through the window of spring, of birth and growth, as Rehada looks upon what must surely have been her child. The look upon her face is one of cold surety, of ruthless calculation, and it wars with what he knows of her. She has always been warm, has in fact been open about her life around the islands and her decision to live upon Uyadensk... But she has never once mentioned a child. What else, then, has she lied about?
Who will she become?
He has seen such looks before, upon the faces of the enemy, of those who will not rest until the Landed have been pushed from the islands, and it suddenly strikes him the meaning of the word Maharraht. Its primary meaning is the forgotten, the shunned, but it stems from a beautiful desert flower that only blooms in spring, and in the ancient language of Kalhani—a language that the woman questioning him surely knows—it is akin to spring and rebirth.
“I know who she becomes,” he finally answers, a knot forming in his throat.
“Then say it.”
He swallows. Once. Twice. “Do not make me.”
“What is in a word?”
“A word can weigh heavier than stone.”
“Say it,” she says, her voice hard.
“Maharraht.”
Her smile is one of pleasure, as though a grand plan has just come together. She walks to the center of the room and stands near the bed. She spreads her arms wide and the views through all four windows change. He does not look, however. His mind is preoccupied with a woman he thought he loved, but he is forced to focus himself once more when she speaks her final question.
“How are they related?”
The scenes in the window show different people at different times in their lives. Two men, one woman, and a girl. There is nothing he can see that connects them—not their clothes, not their surroundings, not their mannerisms. He inspects each one closely, watching for any sign that might give him a clue, but he finds nothing, and his heart begins to beat heavily. He has come so far... He cannot come this close only to fail.
There is nothing of the smile Sariya had when this game first began. In fact, she seems sad as she watches him. Sad and lonely.
He realizes that she stands near the bed in the center of the room. The center for the Aramahn is no one direction; it is all directions. It is the cycle of life; it is rebirth. It is what has come before and what has yet to come. These images can be no other than her previous lives, and suddenly he realizes that she misses them. Somehow she has become trapped in this place. She is Ghayavand—part and parcel of this island—but it was not always so. She wants to be free from it, and if that cannot happen, she wants him to join her.
“They are you,” he says.
She runs her fingers over the sheets on the bed while stepping closer to him. She is stunning. The curve of her jaw, the line of her neck, skin soft and smooth, arms that might hold him forever.
“The things you might see.” The very words from her lips sing. “They would astound you. I will share all of it if you would remain.”
When he doesn’t open his mouth—he cannot for fear of acceding—she deems it a refusal and steps away from the bed. She approaches him with graceful steps until they are chest to chest. He feels the warmth coming from her, the swell of her breasts pressing against his ribs, the tickle of her hair as she leans in and nestles against his neck. The faint smell of jasmine taints the air as she places one warm kiss at the base of his neck, and as her arms wrap around him and caress his back, he feels himself harden.
“We would be one. Forever.”
He realizes as she speaks these words that he would not mind such a thing. He is young, but life on the islands has been hard. They would rule this place and no one would stand against them. No one.
CHAPTER 52
He leans down and kisses her. Her lips are moist and hot. He takes her in his arms and holds her tight as their kiss deepens, and soon he realizes that they are moving toward the bed. He removes his clothes as she slips the dress from her shoulders and allows it to pool about her feet. He picks her up and together they fall into the bed. He runs down the length of her, pressing kiss after kiss against her neck, her breasts, her stomach, and finally her thighs. She spreads her legs at the merest touch, and when he runs his tongue near her lips, she sucks in breath.
When he can stand it no more, he runs his chest along her stomach and breasts and kisses her once more, ready to enter her.
As he waits, prolonging the pleasure to the point of ache, something strikes him—he cannot feel her heartbeat. He can feel his own, which is beating madly, but he cannot feel hers. He leans down and kisses her cheek and ear, if only to gain a bit more time.
He knows not how, but it is true—no blood runs through her veins. And he realizes with a start where he is, who this woman is, his purpose here.
Where, he wonders with a growing sense of desperation, are Ashan and Nasim and Pietr?
“Come,” she whispers, reaching between her legs and stroking him with her hand.
He resists, and feels her tense beneath him.
Her grip tightens. “Come.”
He tries to pull away but she grabs the back of his neck and with a strength that belies her frame pulls him down until their lips are once again locked.
He twists away and falls from the bed. “Nyet!”
She pauses, her expression no longer one of anger, but shock. She slips from the bed and stands over him. “What did you say?”
“I said, nyet.”
Her eyes thin. “Khamal?”
“I am Nikandr Iaroslov Khalakovo. Khamal is the man you betrayed for Muqallad.”
She stands taller, but somehow it only makes her seem frail. She draws her arms in, glances through the nearby windows. “Has it been so long?”
“It has, and Nasim has
done nothing to you. Give me the knowledge to reach him. To make him whole.”
She tries to smile, and fails, but her eyes regain their sharpness. “The answer is there,” she says, motioning with one hand toward his chest.
His stone is glowing as brightly as it had in the donjon below Radiskoye. He shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”
“He calls to you.”
“What can I do?”
Outside, the sky has gone deep red. “Accept him. Give of yourself to him.”
“How?”
She motions to the windows. “Muqallad has awoken. He will come for Khamal, and for you.”
“Tell me how to reach him!”
She shakes her head.
Nikandr feels something deep within his chest, akin to the ache of the havahezhan. It has become familiar now, and more than that, it feels proper, even with the pain.
Sariya gazes at his chest. She reaches out, as if to touch his stone, but he pulls away.
“It has been with you for a long time.”
Nikandr nods, feeling something important in her words. “Since it crossed on Hathshava.”
She glances toward the windows. They have darkened further, leaving only the deepest of reds. The light coming from Nikandr’s stone casts Sariya in ghastly relief.
“It was with you well before then.”
Nikandr stares at her, confused. She must be confused, he thinks, but there is a depth of understanding in those beautiful blue eyes, an understanding that comes not in a fleeting handful of years on this mortal plane, but lifetimes, centuries. He knows that she is right. The hezhan has been with him since before Soroush summoned it. It had been with him since he’d had the wasting. Nyet. It was the cause of the wasting. It had been feeding on him, draining him through the aether, always there, always drawing from him like a reservoir no matter how meager its gain might be.
The Winds of Khalakovo Page 40