The Winds of Khalakovo

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Soroush’s face becomes not angry, but filled with intent. He presses a forearm against Nasim’s throat and with his other hand tries to force the stone into Nasim’s mouth.

  Nasim resists, shaking his head back and forth.

  Soroush strikes again and again.

  It takes only one small slip, and the stone is inside.

  Spit it out, Nikandr says.

  There is a pause. Nasim stares up at the layer of clouds. Nikandr can taste the stone, taste the call of Adhiya. He can feel Nasim’s other half—the half he has been separated from since birth—resolve itself. It is now clearer than it has ever been, and there is an undeniable attraction to it.

  Nasim forgets Soroush, forgets about the hezhan that have been summoned and the one that awaits.

  Forgets Nikandr.

  Nyet! Nikandr pleads. Please, Nasim, do not do this.

  He can think of nothing save this rift—this gulf—that has defined his existence, that has caused him so much pain.

  Nasim!

  Ever so briefly, he glances over to Nikandr.

  And then he swallows the stone.

  A release of pleasure and ecstasy follows. Nasim has been fractured for so long that he doesn’t know what to do with himself now that he’s been made whole.

  So he screams.

  The earth beneath him buckles. With a sound like rolling thunder, the curtain wall cracks. The remaining door at the gate splinters with an audible snap, sending shards of wood flying. The dhoshahezhan—the final spirit—begins to resolve on the far side of the courtyard.

  Nikandr feels the world slow, or rather, feels the gears of this world and of the world beyond move as he has never felt them before. Nasim was made whole when he swallowed the final stone, but he was also granted something beyond any Aramahn before him, beyond even the hezhan themselves.

  He regards the courtyard anew. He sees the dhoshahezhan fully formed as the telltale sparks of lightning arc over its frame. It feels akin to another, and the realization of this brings Nikandr’s presence to the fore of his mind.

  A bright white flash of pain runs through Nikandr. It feels as though he has been thrown into the forge of life, to be recast as the fates see fit.

  Nearby, Soroush kneels. He clasps his hands behind his back, and raises his head to the sky while his brother, Bersuq, pulls a curved khanjar from a sheath at his belt. Nikandr is confused, but as Bersuq steps forward, knife held tightly with both hands, he begins to see.

  Bersuq is preparing to kill his brother. Just as Nasim sacrificed Pietr to open a channel for Nikandr’s return to Erahm, Soroush’s death will open a channel for Nasim to return to Adhiya. It will complete the cycle, tearing open the rift that runs through Duzol, and with it the neighboring rifts over Khalakovo and perhaps beyond.

  Nikandr draws back into his own form. He hears gunfire, the shouts of men, the shots of cannons—but it is distant, as if from a dream. He rails against his bonds, screaming for Bersuq to stop. Bersuq pauses, staring into Nikandr’s eyes, and in that one small moment, Nikandr feels her.

  Atiana.

  She is near. He knows this to be true. And can it be? She is within Bersuq. She has assumed him.

  The next moment, Bersuq has resumed his march toward Soroush, preparing to lay the blade across his exposed throat.

  Atiana! Do not let him do this!

  A moment later, in an explosion of stone and dust, the blast of a cannon shatters the center of the courtyard. Nikandr turns away, shielding his face, coughing uncontrollably, and when he turns back he can see nothing. The entire courtyard has been reduced to a thick haze of pale yellow dust.

  Atiana watches through Bersuq’s eyes as a windship drifts over the keep. In the distance, two more float free of the clouds. The Maharraht have been idle, with orders to allow the ritual to proceed without interference, but now that the enemy has discovered them, they burst into action, raising their weapons and firing the keep’s four large cannons on the nearest of the windships.

  Though she is held within Bersuq’s frame, trapped, she touches the aether still, and she can feel the shift well before the dhoshahezhan appears in the courtyard. The aether swells, pressing itself against the world as a spark of lightning materializes several paces away. The hair on Bersuq’s neck and arms rise as the spirit steps fully into the world. It is a gathering of lightning, balled up into a writhing form no taller than a man, but more powerful for it.

  Soroush kneels, baring his throat. Bersuq turns to him, pulling a khanjar from his belt. She doesn’t understand what is happening until she hears Nikandr’s voice. Atiana! Do not let him do this!

  A moment later a cannon shot gouges the earth, and Bersuq is thrown to the ground. His ears ring, and he coughs uncontrollably as dust fills his lungs.

  Nearby, the bright sparks of the dhoshahezhan shift. A white bolt of lightning flies upward and strikes one of the crewmen in the ship flying low above the keep. Through the haze, she can see it continue through one, two, three more before arcing sharply upward into the clouds. All four men fall from their perches, lifeless, two falling wide of the ship and plummeting toward the sea’s cold embrace.

  The ship’s rear cannon belches flame and the shot passes through the hezhan. The iron fouls the spirit’s next bolt, which charges through several of the Maharraht on the walls. All of them fall—one jerking spasmodically before coming to a rest.

  As Bersuq’s coughing begins to subside, he searches frantically for his knife. Knowing she has little time, Atiana exerts her influence over him once more. He fights, but there is little left within him that can withstand her frantic assault. He fights her every command, but still she forces him to walk to the spire. Nikandr is chained there. The muscles along Bersuq’s arms are tight as harp strings, but they obey.

  Nikandr collapses to the ground, but he fails to see Soroush storming up behind him.

  Atiana forces Bersuq to launch himself at Soroush. As she does the presence of the Matri coalesce around her. Her mother is chief among them.

  Bersuq rails against the bonds within his mind as Atiana struggles to regain her composure. Help me, she pleads.

  But they do not. They begin instead to pull her away.

  Nyet! You know not what you do!

  Atiana claws at them, tries to fend them off, but there are simply too many, and soon she loses her hold.

  Nikandr coughed as he fell to the broken stones of the courtyard. Bersuq stood before him, his face a mixture of pain and rage and confusion.

  Nikandr shielded his eyes as a bolt of lightning cracked through the air, striking the chain holding Nasim to the spire. The chains that held Nasim in place clanked as they fell to his sides.

  The air was ripe with possibility, with hope. The rift was present—it was in Nikandr’s gut, in his chest—and he could feel how Nasim struggled with the place he was in, standing squarely at a fork in the path of both worlds. His face was in more pain that Nikandr had ever seen, but he did not cower. He did not flinch.

  Nikandr looked down at his soulstone. It was as bright as it had been in the tower in Alayazhar. Accept him, Sariya had said. Give of yourself.

  He had not known what that meant. But he understood now.

  He wrenched the stone downward, breaking the chain. With Nasim watching, he held it out. It glowed brilliantly now, brighter than it ever had.

  “You are sure?” Nasim asked.

  “I am,”Nikandr replied, knowing that he was giving Nasim more than just a simple piece of chalcedony. This was part of him, as much as his father, his mother. His sister and brother. It was not an easy thing to surrender, but he did so gladly.

  Nasim took it in his hands, staring at it for a good long moment. And then he placed it in his mouth.

  But nothing happened.

  Nothing.

  By the ancients, what had gone wrong?

  Atiana watches as Nasim consumes Nikandr’s stone. He glows whiter than he had before, but that is the only difference she can see. She can
feel his pain even from this distance, even without trying to—so great has it become. How he is managing to contain it all she cannot imagine.

  Soroush is raging, perhaps demanding that the Maharraht fire upon him, but Nasim raises a finger, issues a thought, and the dhoshahezhan sends a bolt of lightning through him.

  The keep’s gates are shattered and ruined. Through them file a dozen streltsi led by Grigory. Several train their weapons on the Maharraht, but their weapons do not fire. A moment later they drop them as if they’ve been burned.

  The Maharraht smile—Nasim, they believe, has joined them—but moments later the same happens to them, leaving everyone weaponless with an elder spirit standing in their midst.

  Atiana is loosely connected to the Matri, but her mother begins to slip from her consciousness. She realizes too late that she is attempting to assume Nasim.

  Nyet! Atiana pleads.

  She knows what she is about, the other Matri tell her.

  She does not! Atiana shouts. Do not allow her to do this.

  We cannot abide this boy—

  Atiana does not listen. Something else has drawn her attention. She has realized how present the walls of the aether are—they are close, as they were along the rift on Uyadensk, but they are not close enough. What Nikandr has done will not complete the cycle. The walls are still too far apart for him to bridge the gap.

  She calms herself.

  As she did with the babe, as she did with Nasim before, she touches the walls, but unlike those other times she does not push them away. Instead she draws them inward.

  And they obey.

  Moments later a surge of energy courses through her.

  Nasim collapses as a storm is unleashed upon the aether. She can feel the emotions of the other Matri, but also of the Maharraht, of the streltsi, of Grigory, of Rehada somewhere outside the walls. And Nikandr.

  But she cannot feel Nasim’s.

  Or Mother’s.

  The pain grows within her until it reaches beyond the heights of the clouds, beyond even the stars.

  And she woke.

  Woke to the sound of the cold, bitter wind, her heart barely beating, her skin numb to the world.

  This cannot be, she thought sadly as she lay there, listening once again to the sad sound of the shore, to the soft breeze playing among the boughs of the pine.

  She turned her head and looked upon the trees—tall and green and proud. She stared at them a good long while, wondering where the world might take her.

  This was a good place to die, she decided—whether she was taken into the house of her ancestors or returned to Adhiya in preparation for the next life, she could be proud of what she had done.

  CHAPTER 66

  The musket shots around Rehada had stopped. The streltsi—only the sotnik and two others remained—were out of ammunition. They limped forward and placed themselves between her and the lumbering vanahezhan, protecting her, but they made no move to do the same for Ashan, who lay unconscious a dozen yards away.

  “Please,” Rehada said, “save him.”

  The sotnik, blood streaming along the side of his eye and down his cheek from a vicious cut to his forehead, looked down at her with dispassionate eyes. “I’ll not waste more lives.”

  The vanahezhan was now only a handful of strides away from Ashan.

  “He’s done his best to save you.”

  “There’s nothing we can do.”

  The vanahezhan had reached Ashan. Rehada ran forward, crying out and waving her arms, hoping to distract it, even if only for a moment. The hezhan, however, was of a singular mind. It stared down—perhaps curious over an arqesh like Ashan—but then reared up and raised its arms over its head.

  But then the ground it stood upon broke, crumbling beneath its feet. It stumbled, trying to regain its footing as more and more earth gave way. A sinkhole had opened up like some great, gaping mouth. And then, as quick and deadly as a landslide, the edges of it snapped closed with a resounding boom.

  Rehada scanned the horizon, knowing Ashan could not have done such a thing. The clouds were beginning to break apart, revealing here and there the dark blue sky. Skiffs were slipping down between them—not just a few, but dozens, then hundreds.

  The Landed caravel was still under attack. All three topsails were fluttering loose. Another broke free of the ship completely and floated on the unseen currents. She could not see the jalahezhan, but the ship suddenly began to tilt. Then the nose dipped landward. It was already low in the sky, nearing the ground, and the tilting of the forward portions of the ship caused the bowsprit to gouge a long trench into the earth.

  Rehada watched in horror as the twelve-masted ship crumbled while rolling onto its side—masts snapping and cracking in the cold wind. It slid against the snow and muddy earth for a hundred paces before finally coming to a halt.

  The jalahezhan emerged from the bowels of the ship. Perhaps sensing the newest threat, it sprayed itself against the incoming skiffs. A dozen were weighted down, and they dropped like kingfishers. Several twisted in the air like maple seeds, throwing the Aramahn within them to the fate of the winds. They plummeted and struck the earth not far from the ruined windship.

  The qiram reacted quickly. Wind was pulled from the sky to mingle with the elder. It was difficult to follow with the naked eye, but there were telltale signs of motion—sprays of blue water flowing between skiffs. A sound like the sigh of the surf drifted down from the unassuming battle, but it grew in volume until it resounded like the mighty crash of water against the cliffs below Radiskoye.

  And then, in the span of a heartbeat, the sound was gone.

  She felt someone at her shoulder. It was the younger of the two remaining streltsi, holding a cherkesska for her to wear over her naked form. She took it gladly. Even had she a bonded spirit, she was in no state to summon even a meager amount of warmth.

  She waved to the sotnik. “We must go to the keep. Quickly.”

  The sotnik paused only to retrieve a musket and to load it with ammunition retrieved from the dead. His two streltsi did likewise, and then they were off, moving as quickly as they could toward the keep.

  Off to the northwest, four large ships of the Grand Duchy had moved in and were holding position. Nearly a dozen skiffs were launched, each bearing a score of soldiers, but before they could move more than a dozen yards, they were blown back by a fierce wind.

  Rehada shaded her eyes and stared southward. This was the Aramahn’s doing. They would not allow the Landed to approach the keep—not while things were still tenuous.

  Dozens upon dozens of Aramahn skiffs were now heading toward their position. Without speaking, Rehada and Ashan and the soldiers picked up their pace—they were all eager to reach the keep’s interior before the Aramahn could do anything to prevent it.

  Inside, the fallen lay everywhere. Grigory’s men stood just inside the gates. The Maharraht were atop the wall and at the base of it. Some were clearly dead, but many were alive—lying down, eyes closed, breathing shallowly.

  “Check them,” Ashan said to the sotnik.

  The sotnik pointed for his men to check the Maharraht upon the wall. As they moved to obey, Rehada saw the sotnik pause and level a severe expression on Nasim. He seemed angry, this man, but in the end Rehada wrote it off as curiosity over the boy who had been at the center of this raging storm.

  She gave it little thought as she moved toward the spire, where Nasim lay. Nasim watched her approach, but he said nothing. She might have thought he was still in the state he’d always seemed to be in, but she knew better. His expression of pain—a nearly constant companion—had been replaced with a look of serenity. It looked strange upon him, though she was glad that he had somehow—even if it lasted only for a short time—found peace.

  Ashan looked down upon Nasim, and then to Soroush and Bersuq, who lay next to one another. Ashan seemed confused as he studied them, perhaps wondering what had come to pass within these walls.

  “Rehada?”
<
br />   She turned.

  And her breath caught.

  For long moments, she could only stare. Nikandr was standing in a doorway leading into the keep proper.

  “How?” she asked.

  He did not answer. He merely strode forward and took her into a deep embrace. It was warm, and tender, and though she felt many eyes upon them, she did nothing to stop it.

  Finally she pulled away, though it was with great reluctance. She walked with him back toward the spire and kneeled to get a closer look at Nasim. She brushed a stray lock of hair away from his eyes. “Are you here with us?”

  Nasim studied her intently with his bright brown eyes. “Atiana lies upon the beach.” He turned to look at Nikandr. “There is time yet to save her.”

  Nikandr smiled and nodded. “We will, Nasim.”

  And then Rehada heard a click.

  She spun toward the gates and found the sotnik sighting along the length of his musket. For a split second she thought he was aiming at her.

  But then she understood.

  She began moving, already knowing it would be too late. He had all the time in the world.

  She fell across Nasim as the gun roared. She felt something bite the small of her back. It burned bright white and she spasmed while holding tight to Nasim.

  “Neh!” Nasim shouted as Nikandr screamed in rage.

  Another musket was fired. Was it right above her? She could no longer tell.

  Her thigh felt warm. It had been so cold for so long she didn’t realize how badly it would tingle. She felt it along her shin as well, and then the pain became so great that she was forced to roll off Nasim and onto her back.

  She stared up at the sky. The swiftly moving clouds were continuing to break. Bits of blue could be seen, and the sun, lowering to the west, shone down upon her for the first time that day.

  Nikandr kneeled over her. He was speaking but she couldn’t tell what he was saying. Nasim was there as well. His face was not full of sorrow, as she had expected, but instead hope. She knew somewhere within herself that he was being brave for her—just as Malekh had been those many weeks ago. He had stood upon the gallows and smiled upon her. How could she not do the same for Nasim?