“Are you well?” Nasim asked. A foolish question, but he could feel nothing but joy that Ashan was alive and awake.
Ashan looked at him, coughed, and then sat up and pulled Nasim into an embrace—a long, tender gesture that brought tears to Nasim’s eyes. But after too long, Nasim pulled away, suddenly and inexplicably uncomfortable with it.
If Ashan was hurt by this he hid it well. He stared into Nasim’s eyes with a look that spoke of relief and gratitude and confusion. “In truth, I had hoped you would not come, but I will admit now that I’m glad you did.” He pulled himself backward, away from the water. “I’m not yet ready to see the next life.”
Nasim didn’t wish to burden him, but there was nothing gained in avoiding the truth. “Muqallad sent me here.”
Ashan started, but then he crooked his neck and stretched his jaw. “Did he?”
“He claims that you went to Sariya’s tower and that you know where her stone is hidden.”
Ashan smiled, an expression so familiar Nasim nearly cried.
“He said the same thing to me, demanding I tell him where it was hidden. It’s true that I went to the tower, and that I eventually found a way inside, but there was nothing there. For me, it was merely a gutted shell. Still, I can only assume it would not be so for Sariya. Or you.”
Nasim didn’t know. He didn’t understand the tower completely, but he knew that it was the seat of Sariya’s power. It was a place she had forged over the course of centuries, and if she had meant for those simpler than herself to see a gutted shell, then it would be so.
Ashan tried to get to his feet but fell backward instead. When Nasim moved to help him, he warded him away. “I’ll be all right in a moment.” He tried again, and though he did manage to stand, he seemed frail, like a foal newly born. “What I don’t understand is why Sariya wouldn’t deliver to him that stone.”
“She cannot find it,” Nasim said. “In the lake before I came to you I had a vision of Khamal going to Sariya’s tower. He spoke with Sariya, but only as a way to enter the tower and to hide a piece of the Atalayina.”
“Could it be that they still haven’t found it?”
“Khamal seemed doubtful that they would be able to sense it, but he was sure they wouldn’t be able to retrieve it.”
“Why?” Ashan asked. “What did he do?”
Ashan was so eager to learn more, which seemed odd having just come from the depths. “The darkness and the cold weigh on me,” Nasim replied. “Let’s find ourselves away from this place.”
“I don’t know if I’m ready for another swim,” Ashan said.
“Neither do I.” Nasim dearly wished there were another way. A small amount of warmth was returning to him, but he was also shivering so badly it felt as though it would never stop.
Together they waded into the water and swam for the shore. Things were not so urgent as before, so it took longer, but it was no less tiring. By the time they dragged themselves onto the beach of stone and sand, Nasim could barely stand. Ashan was worse. After he’d crawled out he remained on hands and knees, his breath rasping. He spit from time to time, and the sound of it was thick, as if he was spitting up blood.
“The things Muqallad has done”—Ashan came slowly to his feet, and again he wobbled—“have not been kind. But all will be well. I need only time.”
Those last words felt as if they were not meant for Nasim, but someone else.
“Come.” Nasim pulled Ashan’s arm around his shoulders and helped him walk. “Let’s go up to the light.”
They took to the stairs, though it was terribly slow going. Ashan could hardly take more than two or three stairs before he had to pause. Soon the light hovering above the center of the lake was hidden from them, and they were cloaked in darkness, but the memories of this place were as vivid as they had been before. Wherever Ashan wished to go, Nasim could take him.
“I’m worried over what’s become of the city,” Nasim said, if only to hear something in this cold, empty place. “Things feel more tentative since you and I were here last. Adhiya is so close I can practically touch it. Even the akhoz have changed. I saw one of them kill another in the city only days ago, near Sariya’s tower.”
Ashan stopped for a moment, catching his breath. “Things are worse than I thought.”
“What do you mean?”
“In the months following the sundering, the arqesh who remained realized that the children might be bonded with hezhan, not just as you and I do, but permanently. They did so first to a girl named Yadhan. The ritual made way for the hezhan to inhabit her body completely, and with this, after one dark night, the first of the akhoz was made. As you can guess, more followed, and soon the island, especially the area around Alayazhar, was protected by their influence.”
Nasim was already shaking his head. “They provide protection for the city?”
“Just so.” Ashan nodded for Nasim to help him once more, and they continued their climb. “Even now they are preventing the rift from widening. So to hear you say that some are attacking the others makes me wonder just how long things can hold here. Though perhaps this should come as no surprise. In the early years after the sundering, the akhoz were of a single mind, united. Over time, as the last of the survivors left, the akhoz fractured and became aligned with the Al-Aqim. What you saw might be caused by Muqallad or it might be because without the presence of Sariya and Khamal, they are lost and left to their own devices.”
“Why wouldn’t Muqallad simply kill them and be done with it?”
“Why would he do that?”
“So that the rifts would tear wide, once and for all.”
“Look further, Nasim. It isn’t the destruction of the world he seeks. He believes the path to indaraqiram lies through the Atalayina. He believes, in fact, that the process was begun those three hundred years ago, and that what happened then and since is merely a test of our collective will, one that he will not allow us to fail. If I’m right he is close to achieving his goals. He has at least one piece of the Atalayina, more likely two, and though the third is lost to him, I suspect he now holds the knowledge for how to merge them together once more.”
“He told you this?”
“Neh, but we’ve spoken at length. I told him much of my travels, if only to prevent him from resuming his torture, but he spoke as well. It was difficult for a man as prideful as he is not to share. He spoke of his travels before he came to Ghayavand. He’d spent nearly his entire life up to that point studying the Atalayina. He spoke of Kohor, an ancient village in the Gaji Desert. Tablets held in the archives there spoke of the Atalayina not having been found, but instead having been made—forged in some manner. He let slip that some of the guesses the writer of the tablet had put down were true, and he could only know this if he had had some success with the pieces of the Atalayina he already has.”
Nasim nearly tripped as they reached the top of the stairs. They were in the circular room that housed entrance to the lake’s stairwell. Here several passages broke off, one in particular leading to the upper passages and the way out.
The room, at least, was comparatively warm. Nasim’s heart had already lifted, as if the last few hours had all been a bad dream. But of course the truth was sobering. “He wants the final pieces of the stone, and he’s taken Rabiah to ensure that I’ll deliver them to him. We must find her, Ashan, and we must find the others as well.”
“You said he only wanted one piece of the stone.”
“He did, but there is another.”
“Which?”
“Khamal’s.”
“You know where it is?”
Nasim paused, feeling protective over this information. But a moment later, he felt foolish for it. “I found it in the celestia, where a secret compartment opened up for me. Khamal’s doing, no doubt.”
“And where is it now?”
“It’s safe.”
“Hidden?”
“Yeh,” Nasim replied. He would divulge much to Ashan, but this
didn’t feel like a place to share this information, especially since Sukharam was still alone with the stone.
Perhaps Ashan sensed this, for he fell silent for long moments. “Nasim, how many others did you bring?”
“Two.”
“Why?”
“The Al-Aqim were three, and so should we be.”
“Is that the only reason?”
“What other reason should there be?” Nasim didn’t like skirting the truth, but he didn’t like this line of questioning either. Ashan’s tone had become more aggressive, something he never remembered him doing.
“There could be many reasons,” Ashan answered. “It’s up to you to tell me the right one.”
Something was wrong. Nasim could feel it. Ashan had changed. He had never spoken to Nasim in this manner. There was a hunger behind his words, an anger barely suppressed.
Nasim took a half step back, and the moment he did, a long, hoarse bray came from the tunnel behind him. It was followed by another, this one softer. The chilling sounds echoed away until silence once more reigned.
A pinpoint of light appeared in the air before Ashan, lighting his face and the tall, peaked room. The light continued to grow, revealing a large obsidian cross to which the form of a wretched, broken man had been lashed. The man’s head hung low, his curly hair hanging over his face, preventing Nasim from seeing him clearly, but Nasim didn’t need to see his face to know who he was.
Before him, the man he had thought to be Ashan transformed. His hair grew in length, became darker. The glint of gold appeared in his lightly curled beard. And soon, the handsome face of Muqallad was staring back at him.
As this transformation unfolded, the gathered akhoz shuffled into the room. They stood at the edge of the room, forming a circle around Muqallad and Nasim.
“Do you remember now what Ashan meant to you?”
Nasim felt a lump forming in his throat. He swallowed in a vain attempt at clearing it, but it was too late. Muqallad had already seen his weakness.
“Find the stone in the tower, Khamal, and bring it to me.”
Behind Muqallad, Ashan lifted his head. His hair was matted and coppery brown and plastered against his forehead. His face was a mass of blood and bruises and cuts. He shivered from pain or cold or weakness, but unmistakable was the fact that he was pleading with Nasim to deny Muqallad his demand.
Nasim couldn’t look. He couldn’t look at Ashan and speak the words he was about to speak.
“I need Rabiah.”
Muqallad stared. He was a tall man, but Nasim was nearly of a height with him now. Muqallad weighed Nasim, weighed his words and his intent.
In the end, he motioned with one hand, turned, and walked away, his footsteps echoing away into the immensity of the room. “You may have the one,” he said as he passed beyond the akhoz.
Rabiah was dragged from beyond the circle of akhoz and thrown to Nasim’s feet. She stirred, small moans escaping her as she rolled over and tried to lift herself with her arms.
Nasim helped her to her feet as the akhoz parted, allowing them clear passage to a hallway that sloped upward. They would not, however, allow Nasim any closer to Ashan. They crowded him and Rabiah until they were forced up the hall.
As they left, Nasim looked back, trying to catch sight of Ashan, but the light was beginning to fade, and he was already shrouded in shadow.
Eventually the akhoz stopped, allowing them to continue on toward the entrance to the village. The two of them were silent, Rabiah because she was in pain, Nasim because a growing dread was settling over him.
You may have the one, Muqallad had said.
The one, as if he had another.
He meant Sukharam, Nasim realized. He’d found Sukharam. He had him now.
And the second piece of the Atalayina.
He had two of the three. Only the piece in Sariya’s tower that had been hidden so carefully by Khamal now stood in his way.
As he stepped out from the darkness of Shirvozeh’s tunnels into the blinding light of the afternoon sun, Nasim wanted to admit this to Rabiah. He wanted to admit his failure. He wanted to ask her for forgiveness, for she’d been right. He should have brought Sukharam. Or he should have done more to protect him.
But he hadn’t, and it shamed him like nothing had before in his life.
And so he couldn’t speak to her. He couldn’t face her judgment. Not yet.
So they walked together in silence toward Alayazhar, to their shelter that now lay empty as a dead man’s hand.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Nikandr sat near a fire in the woods of Rafsuhan. The sun had set and with the moon dark, the only thing Nikandr could see was what the small fire allowed: Soroush sitting on the far side of the fire, a half dozen tree trunks, the ground nearby, which was covered by larch needles. In the distance, a woodpecker rattled.
Jahalan and the girl, Kaleh, and most of the streltsi had already gone to sleep. Nikandr had elected to stay awake, at least as long as Soroush did. They would reach Ashdi en Ghat tomorrow, and for some reason he still didn’t trust Soroush, perhaps because of the proximity to the village from which Soroush had for years schemed against the Grand Duchy. Though it appeared as though Nikandr had the upper hand, they both knew it was an illusion. The truth was that Soroush held the most powerful trump cards—Nikandr needed to speak with the elders of the Maharraht, and the only way to do that was through Soroush.
As the fire snapped, Soroush unwound his turban carefully, folding it into a tight circle in his lap. That done, he pulled his dark hair over his shoulder and began brushing away the tangles with his fingers. It was a personal moment, one that he would never have thought Soroush would allow him to see.
“Do you think of her?” Soroush asked without looking up. He’d chosen to speak Anuskayan—perhaps some small indicator of his mood. Or perhaps it was a small act of apology for how he’d treated Nikandr on the Kavda.
Nikandr knew he was referring to Rehada—it was not possible to be in Soroush’s presence and not think of her. “I do.”
“And what do you think, son of Iaros?”
Nikandr tried to smile, but the truth was that his memories of Rehada were still bittersweet. “I think the fates placed her in both of our paths for a reason.”
And now Soroush did glance at Nikandr, his eyebrows raised. “So now you believe in the fates.”
Nikandr had been struggling with that very thought for years. “I no longer know what I believe.”
Soroush was staring at Nikandr’s chest. His soulstone lay hidden beneath his shirt, but upon it he could feel the weight of Soroush’s stare. “How long after Oshtoyets?”
“It began before Oshtoyets, on Verodnaya. Who knows why? Nasim, the cold, the rift, my broken stone, the wasting. Something allowed me to contact the hezhan. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I think it had been with me ever since the ritual you performed on the cliff below Radiskoye.”
Soroush’s eyes went distant, as if he were reliving those moments again, piecing together the strange sequence of events that might have led to the ways of Adhiya being open to Nikandr.
If he was angered that he might have had something to do with it, he didn’t show it. He merely seemed pensive, curious. “Do you commune with it?”
Nikandr understood the question, but the answer was not so easy. The Aramahn and the Maharraht communed with the spirits they bonded with. They believed it was a trading of breath, a trading of thoughts, a trading of their experiences of their respective worlds, a ritual that would slowly, eventually, bring the worlds closer together and lead the individual souls toward vashaqiram and the worlds toward indaraqiram.
Nikandr felt as though he touched his spirit, felt as though his spirit touched him, but he didn’t believe in vashaqiram. He didn’t believe that one could ever attain perfection, in this life or the next. He had come to believe in reincarnation—he had experienced it firsthand with Nasim—but that didn’t mean that the views of the Aramahn were correc
t in every way.
“I speak to it,” Nikandr said, not wishing to offend. “I believe it speaks back as well, though my ears are deaf to its voice.”
Soroush stared at him, perhaps measuring the sincerity in his words, but then he nodded, perhaps pleased in some small way. “Rehada spoke of you often.”
“Of course. She was spying on me.”
“That isn’t what I mean. For years we spoke in letters only, and she would write of you longer than she needed to. She wrote of your family, your likes, your dislikes, your tendencies.”
“Was that not her duty?”
“Da, but when one knows a woman as well as I knew her, one can tell the difference.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you should know.”
“You fathered a child with her.”
Soroush paused in his brushing, staring at the dry earth in front of him as the light of the fire danced across his ruddy skin. “Does that mean she could never love another? Does that mean you cannot learn of her beyond her death? That you cannot perhaps love her more?”
Nikandr took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. It felt good, knowing this, though he had trouble releasing his feelings of distrust to allow it to sink in.
“Atiana told me of the time she crossed the fires in Iramanshah.”
Soroush’s back stiffened. It was sacred, what Rehada had done, and it was something Atiana should not have shared. But she had, and it was something he felt Soroush should know.
“She spoke of your daughter, Ahya. Of how she felt she had betrayed you when she told Ahya of your love for learning.”
“Enough,” Soroush said, staring at Nikandr with cold eyes.
“I say this so you’ll understand how envious I am of you.”
For long moment Soroush studied him with his deep, piercing eyes. “Envious of what?”
“You have lost much, son of Gatha, but you had much while it lasted.”
Soroush stood, folding the cloth of his turban carefully and heading for space in the lean-to shelter they’d built from cut evergreen branches earlier in the day. “Go to sleep, son of Iaros. There’s much to do tomorrow.”
The Straits of Galahesh Page 22