The Straits of Galahesh

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  They continued on, and the feeling of being watched grew until Atiana’s skin itched from it. In more and more homes she thought she saw faces, or watching eyes, and though she came to understand they were merely hallucinations brought on by too little sleep, it didn’t make her terror any less real.

  For seven days they’d been in this city, being woken at all hours, slipping from one section of the city to another, all in hopes of staying one step ahead of the Kamarisi’s men.

  Twenty minutes into their walk, one of Sihaş’s sentries returned to tell them that the guardsmen had come to the room they’d just left and were questioning the mason who owned it. Atiana prayed to the ancients that they would be spared. So far, the people that had sheltered them had come to no harm, but it was only a matter of time before one of them was taken to the city square at the base of the Mount and hung.

  In time they came to a servant’s home behind a large house in a section of Baressa that had once been affluent. Hard times had come and some of the buildings had fallen into disuse.

  Ishkyna dropped into a chair covered by a sheet and leaned back, closing her eyes immediately. Ushai sat on the floor, crossed her legs, and took long, measured breaths. Meditating. Again. It had begun to grow on Atiana’s nerves.

  Unable to watch her any longer, Atiana investigated the small home. It was bare, but she could tell it had once been quaint, a place she would have been pleased to have tea in, to visit relatives in. Now it seemed lost and forgotten among the immensity of Baressa.

  They could not stay here, she knew—this had been planned only as a temporary hiding place—but she hoped it could shelter them for a few days at least. They were running out of places to go. The Shattering was off-limits to them now; it had been from the moment Sariya had discovered that they’d been hiding there, that they’d used it to attack her. Since then, they’d been wandering the neighborhoods of Baressa, never staying in one place for more than a night, biding their time until Sihaş found a way to reunite them with his countrymen.

  The days after the keystone ceremony on the bridge had been brutal and bloody. Hakan had made examples of those he thought had been plotting against him. In some cases, he’d been right; in others, Sihaş had said, he’d merely been using it as an excuse to right a wrong that had been festering in Hakan’s mind for years. And once Hakan’s bloodlust had taken hold of the Lords of Galahesh, it had spread like wildfire. Hangings and shootings had been commonplace in the days after the attack.

  Only after the fifth day of terror, when Hakan had lined seventy-two men and women along the tallest section of the kasir’s curtain wall and pushed them to their death one by one, had the killing subsided. For the past several days, things had been quiet, though whether this was due to a natural bleeding of tension or a simple dearth of anyone else to accuse and summarily hang Atiana didn’t know.

  Irkadiy and Sihaş stood by the window, watching the empty row outside. There were no guardsmen visible, but the sentries Sihaş had posted were good. They would have warning should the guard find them again.

  “Where will we go?” Atiana asked.

  Irkadiy turned to Atiana, his face haggard under the light of the lone lamp on the far side of the room. “My cousin has found a new home.”

  “We won’t be going there,” Sihaş said.

  “We will,” Irkadiy said.

  “We will not. The homes your cousin finds have received too much attention.”

  “My cousin is worthy of our trust. I’d stake my life on it. I already have.”

  “That may be,” Sihaş said, walking away and gathering up his woolen coat, cut long and straight in the style of Yrstanla, “but anyone he speaks to might sell our location to the guard.”

  “They wouldn’t do such a thing. Not for Hakan.”

  “They will if they think overly long on the bounty on our heads.”

  “I said”—Irkadiy took two long steps toward Sihaş, squaring himself before he spoke again—“they would not.”

  “Then you’re a fool.”

  Irkadiy bristled, but before he could do anything foolish, Atiana put her hand on his chest. He looked angry enough to slap her hand away, but he did not, and slowly his anger drained. “Forgive me, My Lady Princess. The days…”

  “Have been long. And difficult, I know. Speak no more of it.” She turned to Sihaş. “Where would you have us go?”

  “To the village.”

  This came not from Sihaş, but Ushai, who still sat cross-legged on the floor. There was a village of the Aramahn deep beneath Baressa, near the straits. In fact, the northernmost ends of the tunnels—dozens of them—ended abruptly at the sheer cliffs. They looked down on the churning water, and gave an impressive view of the opposite cliff face. Ushai said they’d been little used in the last century, but there were still some that came there to study and to rest for a time before the winds took them elsewhere.

  Atiana sat in another chair. Dust rose from it, irritating her nose. She pulled from her coat the stone that had been given to her by Nasim. A piece of the Atalayina, a stone—Ushai had told her—that had been used by the Al-Aqim to open the rifts on Ghayavand.

  She looked up to Sihaş, who still watched by the window. They had discussed the possibility of going to the village in the days following the battle. It had seemed like a foolish place to go. The wiser course of action had seemed to be to hide among the throngs of the people of Baressa so as to make it more difficult for Sariya to find them, but now—she held the heavy blue stone in her hands—it was becoming clear that they had to act. And soon. With no resistance, Sariya would have free reign to do as she would, and that was something that couldn’t be allowed.

  As she twirled the stone, it caught what little light there was and brightened it, made it glint.

  “We will go to the village,” she said.

  Within an artfully carved room of stone deep beneath the city of Baressa, Atiana sat with three Aramahn, the mahtar of this village, such as it was. There were less than thirty here now. Most Aramahn had stopped coming to Baressa, preferring to move on to the villages of the Grand Duchy and then westward on their journeys around the world. Those that did come spoke of discomfort in this place. When asked, they couldn’t say why—only that it felt as though the land here was not proper, as if it were a place that had somehow gone overlooked by the fates for too long. Some came here for that very reason. They chose to study not those things that brought peace, but those that brought pain or anguish. Such was the case with the two men and one woman that sat at the table, looking at the wondrous stone Atiana had given them.

  They had discussed its history, from its legendary history with the Al-Aqim and backward to its origin. In many things they disagreed heartily, one saying it had come from the wastes of the Gaji, another saying it had fallen from the heavens, the third saying it had been left behind when the first of the Aramahn—the first truly gifted in the ways of communion—passed from this world to the next.

  In the end, Atiana left them to discuss it unobstructed. She spoke Mahndi fairly well, but their rapid speech, using old terms she had trouble keeping up with, was beginning to give her a headache. And also, she felt that they were holding back because of who she was, and she would rather they discuss the stone without fearing what she might think.

  As she left to walk the halls of the village, she had a passing thought that the mahtar might work against her to keep the stone, to make sure it made it into the proper hands, but she rejected this out of hand. When she had brought the stone to them, and when they’d finally come to grips that it may indeed be one piece of the stone that had brought about the sundering, it was clear that they thought the fates had given it to her for a reason. Theirs was now to play their part in the stone’s history: to help Atiana along the path the fates had set for her. And so she left it with them to do so.

  She walked for a long while, and grew lost, but she didn’t care. It felt good to be in a place she’d never been before. It made her fee
l as though what was going on above in Baressa wasn’t really going on at all, and for a little while at least, that was a very comforting thing.

  She came to the sun-brightened end of a tunnel. It stopped at a short ledge—a natural ledge—that overlooked the straits. To the east towered the bulk of the Spar, stretching its way across the great expanse between the two tall cliffs that faced one another like enemies waging some long-forgotten war. At the center of the bridge were the wooden cranes that were used to drop the keystones to the centermost arch. It was the place where Father had met the Kamarisi, where he’d been betrayed.

  Where he’d been killed.

  She still didn’t know what had happened to the rest. Some said everyone from Anuskaya had been slaughtered on the Spar. Others said they had fled, but had been found shortly after and shot by the janissaries in the streets. Others reported hangings in the high gardens of the Mount. The most likely story, however, was the one that had been repeated most often—that Father’s retinue had been taken to the Mount after a short but bloody skirmish. Surely many of the streltsi in attendance had been killed by the Kamarisi’s guard, but beyond this it would be foolish to kill men that would be invaluable as bargaining chips.

  With Father now gone, who would the Grand Duchy rely on? Borund might be able to fill the void, but the other dukes would speak through the Matri to find a stand-in among those who held scepters, not a regent like Borund. So who? Certainly not Iaros Khalakovo. Despite working himself to a place of honor at her father’s side, too many in the south distrusted him, especially Leonid Dhalingrad. Most likely it would go to Leonid, if only for his age, though she hoped it wouldn’t be so. Among all the dukes, he was the most bellicose by far. He would have the Grand Duchy throw its resources against the might of Yrstanla, odds be damned.

  Atiana was pulled from her thoughts by the tunnels at the far side of the straits. There were more like the one in which she was standing. They were easy to see; the late morning sun was striking them brightly. In one of the dark tunnels she saw a figure robed in white. She wondered how many were on the far side. Probably no more than those on this side, but it still felt strange, a stark contrast, as if the far side were still visited by the Aramahn—alive, not dead like this side of the straits.

  A line of wagons making their way across the Spar drew her attention away from the cliffs, and by the time she turned her gaze back to those distant tunnels, the figure was gone.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  When Atiana returned to the room with the mahtar, only Ushai remained. She sat at the long table in the cavernous room, studying Atiana as she entered. Atiana sat on the opposite side of the table so that the piece of the Atalayina lay between them.

  “What have you learned?” Atiana asked in Mahndi.

  “Much.” Ushai stared into the depths of the stone. “And little.” She smiled sadly, as if she didn’t really want to speak on the subject. “We discussed the origin of the stone at some length. As you may have already guessed, there is much that lies in the past that may now never be recovered.”

  “Is there no one who knows?”

  Ushai shrugged. “There may be some in the Gaji who know more, but the tribes there are secretive. In the Towers of Tulandan, or the libraries of Alekeşir or Thend or Kahosh, you might find more, but even then all you will find are pieces of recorded conversation buried among hundreds and thousands of texts. The people who would know the most, though, are the Al-Aqim.”

  Atiana smiled. “Perhaps they can spare a moment of their time.”

  Ushai, instead of showing amusement, stared into Atiana’s eyes with a look of fierceness that she’d rarely seen on the face of an Aramahn. “I doubt you would like their demands for doing so.”

  “You’re too serious, Ushai.”

  “You’re not serious enough.”

  “Then tell me”—Atiana picked up the stone, felt its weight in her hand—“what shall we do? Sariya wants this for a reason.”

  “Yeh, to hand it to Muqallad.”

  Atiana shook her head. “I’ve wondered over that. Why is Muqallad to the east, with the Maharraht, while Sariya is here?”

  “It only makes sense. They divide their efforts, and we’re forced to divide ours as well…”

  Atiana rubbed the smooth surface of the stone. “Why not remain together and overwhelm the Grand Duchy before focusing on the Maharraht?”

  Ushai seemed amused by this. “Do you have the sense that things have gone beyond Sariya’s control?”

  “Neh. Which brings me back to my question. What shall we do?”

  “The stone,” Ushai said. “While we may not know its history to our satisfaction, its history on Ghayavand has not been lost. It is said that the Al-Aqim used it in an attempt to bring about indaraqiram. They failed, and at that moment—as the first of the rifts was created over the island—the stone broke into three pieces. If what your Nikandr says about Muqallad is true, he now has two of the three pieces. I suspect they will try to fuse the stone, to make it one so that they can finish what they began three hundred years ago.” She pointed to the stone. “Even broken, it will have strong powers. Were you gifted in the ways of the hezhan, you would no doubt be able to use it to great advantage, communing with elder hezhan, perhaps even summoning one to this plane. Your gifts lie elsewhere, but I suspect it will enable you to touch the aether like you never have before. In this lies our greatest chance.”

  “To stop Sariya?” Atiana scoffed. “How?”

  “I’ve heard the story from Fahroz of how Nasim, when he was taken beneath Radiskoye, drew upon Saphia Khalakovo’s soul. He nearly killed her.”

  Atiana shivered at the memory. Nasim had done the same to her, as if she were nothing more than water to be poured from an urn. “He did.”

  “Can you do the same?”

  “To Sariya?”

  “Would that bother you?”

  In truth it would not. What shocked her was the fact that one of the Aramahn had suggested it. And not just any Aramahn; Ushai had been a disciple of Fahroz herself. Which raised the question: would Fahroz condone such a thing? The Aramahn had always been peace-loving, had always stood aside and waited for the fates to intervene on their behalf, but Fahroz had taken a stand on Oshtoyets, inserting herself and the Aramahn of Iramanshah into the affairs of the Landed and the Maharraht, and now here was Ushai, not merely suggesting, but condoning murder.

  “Don’t be so surprised,” Ushai said. “There are those of us who have come to believe that we are all of us tools of the fates, and that where we know their purpose, we should use whatever is at our disposal to achieve it.”

  “You claim to know their purpose?”

  “How can I not? The fates would not wish the end of the world in this manner. Of that we can be sure.” Ushai’s eyes were deadly serious, her expression fervent. It sent a chill down Atiana’s frame, but she could not deny the wisdom in her words. With this stone—Atiana hefted it, felt its weight in her hand—she might be rid of Sariya, and then, perhaps, the tide might be turned against Hakan and Muqallad.

  “Is there a lake within the village?” Atiana asked.

  “Neh, and we can’t go back to the Shattering.”

  Atiana knew there was little choice, then, as to where they would have to go. Taking the dark was not a simple matter of submerging oneself in cold water. The water itself had to have a certain quality. It had to be connected in some way to the earth, as it was in the drowning chambers of the Grand Duchy’s palotzas, as it was in the Shattering within the deep wells Ushai had found.

  As it was in the cemetery, in the mausoleum Bahett had prepared for her.

  She wondered whether they would suspect her return. If so, they might have dismantled the fountain.

  She hoped not, because if so, their plan would be ruined. But there was really no choice in the matter.

  She had to take the dark.

  And she had to kill Sariya.

  Irkadiy was the first one over the cemetery
wall. Four streltsi in black cherkesskas and kolpaks followed. After a soft whistle, Sihaş approached with ten of his men. They brought a rope ladder, which they flung over to the other side. After his men had weighted it down with two men and Irkadiy had done the same on the other side, Atiana climbed the ladder with Ishkyna following right behind.

  They were along the far eastern end of the massive cemetery, a place few traveled save the caretakers. They wound their way through the rows, moving up toward the hill where the mausoleum they needed lay. The morning was bitterly cold, but that only helped. The royalty of Baressa liked to visit the graves of their forebears, but on a day like today fewer would be out.

  As they walked, Ishkyna fell into step beside her and took her hand. Atiana nearly thought it was in jest, but when she glanced over, Ishkyna was staring straight ahead, refusing—for the moment at least—to look at Atiana. Atiana did not smile. The day was too grim for this. But she felt her heart lighten at this rare show of solidarity from her sister.

  “Be careful,” Ishkyna whispered.

  “I shall,” Atiana whispered back.

  They reached the mausoleum without incident, though the kasir on the Mount—less than a quarter-league away from their position—looked like a sleeping beast. It felt, as Atiana gave it one last glance before entering the tomb, as though it would wake at any moment, and when it did, all would be lost.

  The mausoleum had felt so foreign the first two times she’d come, but she had been here on Galahesh for some time, and now—the small rooms, the trickling fountain, the strangely shaped basin—it all felt familiar. It felt as though it were an old friend, this room deep below the earth, and she just hadn’t recognized it before. It was a comforting thought, but she didn’t allow it to lull her into any sense of security. What she was about to do was dangerous, and there was a good chance she would never again take to these steps to return to the light.

  Irkadiy and the streltsi accompanied her down to the lower rooms. In the closeness, the sound of their muskets rattling, their bandoliers clacking, was loud. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Irkadiy inspected the rooms carefully, much more carefully than he needed to, and then he stood before Atiana, asking her with a nod, one last time, whether she was ready.