The Straits of Galahesh

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” she said.

  He smiled at her awkwardly. “On this—” He cleared his throat. “On this day, My Lady Princess, I am proud to be Vostroman.”

  She took his hand and waited for him to look her in the eye. “I’m sorry I didn’t say something when Sihaş spoke ill of your family.”

  “Think nothing of it.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t dismiss my words. I was thinking the same things as he was.” She waited for her words to settle, and indeed, as she’d known would happen, his eyes looked at her in shock, in pain. “But your family was nothing short of heroic for what they did for us. They saved us, and I will never forget it.”

  His eyes softened, and he smiled. A handsome man indeed was Irkadiy. “Thank you, My Lady Princess.”

  Atiana stepped in and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you.”

  Ishkyna watched as Irkadiy and the streltsi left, their tall black boots clopping against the stone stairs at they spiraled their way up.

  “You were right, you know,” Ishkyna said once their bootsteps had faded.

  “About what?”

  “His family probably did alert the Kamarisi.”

  “The family his cousin married into is large. Perhaps one was tempted to speak to the guard, but the rest were loyal and brave. Had they not been, we would have been found before the sun had set on that first day.”

  Ishkyna shook her head. “You’re too sentimental, Atiana. It’s going to be the death of you one day.”

  “You’re not sentimental enough, Ishkyna. You’re going to die rigid and lonely and lost to the world.”

  Ishkyna’s face was not angry at these words. It was instead thoughtful, as if she’d been thinking the very same thing, and Atiana’s words had merely reinforced the idea. “Best we begin,” she said at last, motioning to the basin.

  Atiana undressed and with Ishkyna’s help began rubbing the rendered goat fat over her body.

  “Be careful,” Ishkyna said as she worked Atiana’s back. “There’s no telling what’s become of the aether now that the Spar is complete.”

  “I know.”

  “Sariya had a plan, and there’s little doubt it included the Matri.”

  “I know, Shkyna.” She turned and found, by the golden light of the two small lanterns, tears welling in Ishkyna’s eyes. Had this been Mileva, she might not have been taken aback, but this was Ishkyna, a woman so unused to sharing her emotions that this was akin to a deathbed confession in its seriousness. And then Atiana realized. Ishkyna thought Atiana wouldn’t wake once she’d taken the dark.

  She reached up and with the backs of her fingers brushed the tears away. “I have no plans of leaving just yet.”

  “Be serious. You need to be careful.”

  “And as you’ve said it thrice, there’s no longer any doubt that I shall be.”

  Ishkyna held up the stone, the Atalayina. It glimmered beneath the soft light. It was usually bright, but here in the bowels of the earth it looked deep and dark and dangerous. “Use this as your anchor. Avoid the spires, for I think she’ll sense you if you do.”

  Atiana nodded and took the stone. She stepped into the basin, and when she did, the cold of the water felt proper. She welcomed it, welcomed the drawing of her warmth, welcomed the icy touch as she sat and then lay back with the breathing tube in her mouth. This, she decided, this subtle strength granted in part by the Atalayina was a welcome thing.

  A welcome thing indeed.

  As the water enveloped her and her breathing slowed, her mind became more and more aware of the aether, so near she could nearly reach out and touch its soft, gauzy veil.

  And soon… Soon…

  She feels the small room. Feels the earth bearing down on it.

  She searches immediately for the Atalayina. She thought it would be bright in the dark of the aether, but it isn’t. She cannot see it. She cannot even see it in her hands as she lies in the basin.

  Though she tries to stop it, her awareness expands. She feels the cemetery with its rows of mausoleums. She feels her loyal men standing guard above. She feels Kasir Yalidoz and her servants within, her guardsmen and her royalty. She feels the Mount and her winding roads, her proud and ancient estates. She feels Baressa and her thousands upon thousands of children, many of them cowering from the attentions of the Kamarisi. She feels the Spar, and the ley lines being drawn through it from the spire to the north to its sister in the south.

  Then, at last, she feels the Atalayina. It is just as deep and dark as it was in the chamber where she lay. It is an anchor every bit as strong as the spires. She tries to bind herself to it, but it is not easy, and she feels herself thrown by the winds. The harder she tries to stop it, the more the aether gusts around her. It draws her thin. The aether rages in her ears, in her eyes, in her mind. She is lost in a wind-tossed sea, adrift and moving further and further from shore.

  She feels now not only Baressa, but the whole of Galahesh. She feels Oramka to the north and the islands of Vostroma to the south. There is familiarity among the islands of her homeland. She became a woman there. She learned to tame the aether there. She spent hours, days, carefully tending to the ley lines between the spires of the Grand Duchy.

  And she knows immediately that something is horribly, horribly wrong.

  The spires…

  Some are missing. Ildova to the west, her sister spire to the south, on Tolvodyen. And Elykstava to the east. It is there, on Elykstava, that she feels a momentary pang of familiarity.

  Nikandr… Nikandr is there. She desperately tries to reach out to him, but her mind is drawn away, tossed among the waves.

  She knows she is losing herself. There were times when she was able to bring herself back from the edge of such madness, when she reined herself back once she knew that she was spreading herself too far and too thin. But this is different. She had always been able to rely on the spires, like mooring lines to anchor a windship. Not so now.

  As her mind drifts outward, she remembers Ishkyna’s words: Be careful.

  She had, but she hadn’t been careful enough.

  The last thing she feels is the well of darkness in the distance—the Atalayina—calling to her like the sirens of the southern seas.

  But it is too late, and much too far away.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Khamal watches as the boy—the akhoz, he reminds himself—shuffles along the lip that leads to the massive rock. Below, the waves roll in, pounding against the far side, sending the spray into a blue sky. Khamal glances up at Sariya’s tower and wonders if she watches him.

  At last he reaches the top of the rock. The akhoz cowers and looks away when Khamal motions to the flat surface of the rock.

  “Lie down,” Khamal says, and reluctantly the akhoz obeys.

  Somehow he knows. He knows what lies ahead, and in these moments of realization, Khamal nearly changes his mind, nearly orders the boy away, nearly prepares to climb down from this rock to return to the celestia to meditate on what he and Muqallad and Sariya might do to close the rift.

  But there are no other paths. He knows this.

  He stares down at Alif. The boy cranes his neck, releases a mewling sound like a weak and wounded calf.

  “Fates forgive me,” Khamal says as he kneels.

  He pulls his khanjar from its sheath at his belt. It gleams both wicked and hungry in the sun.

  Alif squirms, moves away from Khamal. His mewling becomes louder, more raucous in his ears.

  “Nasim!”

  Nasim opened his eyes, expecting to see Rabiah kneeling over him.

  But he didn’t find Rabiah. Rabiah was gone.

  He found Sukharam instead. He was staring down at him with a look of concern, but not of caring, and certainly not of love.

  Nasim pulled himself back along the flat bottom of the skiff and leaned against the bulwark. Sukharam moved back to his regular seat, the rearmost thwart, and began scanning the westward skies. Ashan was mann
ing the sails. He took note of their exchange, but said nothing of it.

  They were sailing the winds over the Sea of Tabriz. Nasim looked to the southern skies, shaking away the remains of the dream. This dream, the dream of the akhoz and the massive rock, was by far the most common of Khamal’s memories. He knew it was significant, he just didn’t know how.

  He tried to remember more, for he knew that what happened to that boy on the top of the rock was the key to remembering the rest of Khamal’s memories, but as always what came after was lost to him, and eventually he gave up.

  His thoughts turned instead to the Atalayina. He wondered where the pieces now lay. He hoped that Atiana still had the one he’d given to her. He hoped, in fact, that Sariya had been wounded in some form or another. He couldn’t quite bring himself to wish for her death, but if the fates had seen fit to do so, he wouldn’t find himself weeping.

  He turned west, the direction in which they were headed.

  Sukharam looked up to Ashan, who was manning the sails. “How do you know where the village will be?”

  Ashan glanced down. “They won’t be far from Galahesh, and given that they were flying the Great Northern Sea only weeks ago, it makes sense that they will be found here. Somewhere.”

  “We are in a place as large as Yrstanla. How can you hope to find them?”

  Ashan smiled, showing his crooked teeth. “The fates will show the way, son of Dahanan.”

  “That isn’t an answer,” Sukharam replied, his face sour.

  But it was as much of an answer as he was going to get. Sukharam had asked much the same thing over the past four days, and received much the same answer from Ashan.

  “Leave it be,” Nasim said. “If he says we’ll find Mirashadal, then it will be so.”

  Sukharam twisted in his seat to face Nasim. “If his foresight is no better than yours, then I’ll have my answer.”

  “There are ways,” Ashan said, interrupting them, “to sense the movement of other hezhan through the bond with your own.”

  Though his face was still angry, Sukharam went silent. He was gifted, but still callow in the ways of the Aramahn; this wasn’t something he’d been formally taught. No doubt he was already trying to do the very thing Ashan had spoken of. Nasim could feel him touching Adhiya, communing with a havahezhan. As Sukharam’s anger faded, Nasim could feel him reaching out to the skies around them, waiting for the telltale sign of shifting winds. He scanned westward, then southward, and then westward again. The moment he felt it, Nasim did too—like a shifting of one’s attention in the moments following the snap of a branch in a dark forest. Moments later, as if it were a hezhan summoned from Adhiya, Mirashadal floated out from a massive white cloud far in the distance.

  It had been nearly three years since Nasim had seen Mirashadal. He had thought that it would have little effect on him were he ever to see it again, but as it neared, he found that an anxious feeling had settled within his chest, and it was getting worse by the moment.

  “They won’t eat you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  Nasim looked up at Ashan. “I know.”

  Ashan laughed. “Do you?”

  They continued, and the bulk of the village was revealed. They were below it, which gave visibility to the ballast, the long tower-shaped limb that hung from the center of the concentric rings of the village proper. The windwood glowed brightly under the sun, making it look like one of the iconic paintings of the Landed. As they floated upward and came even with the perches built into the outer ring, Nasim saw smoke rising from the far side of the village. Above it, rain was falling, though it resolved from the very air over the village. No doubt jalaqiram—those who could bond with spirits of water—were summoning the rain to douse the fire, but that didn’t explain the fire itself.

  He also noticed women, dozens of them, wearing double robes of white and yellow, each with a stone in the circlets upon their brows. They stood on the perches circling Mirashadal. Each had eyes closed and arms spread wide as if they were welcoming the wind, but their stones were opals, not the alabaster of havaqiram, and strangely, they were all facing inward, as if the singular focus of their attention was the tower that stood at the center of the village.

  Why would dhoshaqiram, masters of life, be communing in this way around the perimeter of the village? They must be guarding the village, though from what, and why, Nasim had no idea. He looked up to Ashan, but the face of the old arqesh was confused as well, his brow furrowed with thought and worry.

  When they came at last to the perches built into the outer ring, Fahroz was already there. She and several others—some of whom Nasim recognized, but many he did not—greeted them as they disembarked.

  “The fates work in strange ways,” Fahroz said to Ashan as she stepped in and gave him a hug.

  “Indeed,” Ashan replied, “but please, is all well?”

  Fahroz turned and glanced back at the steam and smoke rising in the distance. “Well enough, son of Ahrumea, but we’ll have time to discuss that soon.” The implication was that she wished to speak with Ashan alone, away from the ears of children—or from Nasim’s ears in particular.

  Fahroz greeted Sukharam, hugging him deeply and welcoming him to Mirashadal. And then she turned to Nasim. She stared at him, maintaining a respectful distance. They were near enough to reach out and hold one another’s hands, and yet the gulf between them seemed impossibly wide. There was hurt in Fahroz’s eyes, and disappointment, but there was also surprise. Perhaps she thought never to see him again. Perhaps she was surprised he’d gone to Ghayavand and found his way back again. Whatever the reason, Nasim couldn’t help but feel like a son to this woman. Even though he had resented her for taking him here to Mirashadal, she had done so with love in her heart—love for him and love for the world.

  He stepped forward and took her into a tight embrace. “You were right to give me shelter.” He said the words softly, so that only she could hear.

  “And perhaps you were right to leave. In the end, we must all follow our hearts.” She pulled him away, holding his shoulders and staring deeply into his eyes. “Is it not so?”

  Nasim smiled weakly. It was all he could manage, because for reasons he could not quite define, he was on the verge of tears.

  Fahroz motioned to the perch, and together, with the other Aramahn that had come to greet them, they made their way toward the center of the floating village. “There is someone who’s come,” Fahroz said to Nasim as she walked by his side. “She wishes to speak with you.”

  “Who?”

  Fahroz studied him. She used to do this often. She was weighing just how much information she should give him, weighing how much he could handle. His instinct was to look away, as Sukharam was so apt to do, but he was a boy no longer. He would not shy away from such things.

  “Tell me who’s come,” Nasim said.

  “You’ll see soon enough.”

  They passed over several arching bridges, through narrow walkways bounded by trellises and boughs and houses, all made of living windwood. They came to the center of the village, where a tower with a winding staircase stood. At the top, upon a platform, stood dozens of men wearing white and yellow robes and stones of alabaster. They were facing outward, each a mate of sorts to the women who stood at the edges of the village.

  Fahroz caught his eye. She knew he was wondering just what had happened, but she seemed content to let the answers go unsaid, so he kept his questions to himself.

  They took a set of stairs down and finally came to a round structure with oval windows set into it. He couldn’t see inside; the windows were covered by drapes the color of coriander. They came to a door, and Fahroz stopped. She motioned to it. “You can speak with her alone for a time if you like. Or you can join us.” She pointed to another, similar structure further along the path they were following.

  Nasim nodded and the rest continued on, leaving him alone. He turned to the door, feeling suddenly anxious. Who could be here waiting for h
im?

  He reached out, his hand hovering above the simple wooden handle.

  Foolish, Nasim told himself. You’re being foolish.

  He pushed the handle to one side. It struck home with a hollow thud, and he opened the door.

  Inside was a room with carpets upon the floor and two small lamps upon the wall shedding the barest amount of golden light. He could not see anyone yet in the dimness, so he stepped inside. Only then did he see the form of a girl at the rear of the room. She was sitting, facing him, but his eyes had not yet adjusted to the darkness, so he could not see her features.

  He closed the door and at last recognized her.

  By the fates… It was Kaleh, the girl from Ghayavand, the girl who had helped him escape.

  She was kneeling on the richly colored carpets, hands on her knees, eyes closed. Ages seemed to pass before she finished drawing breath, ages more before she finished her exhalation. She was young, perhaps only eleven, but there was something in her—especially now that she was tranquil and unmoving—that seemed ancient.

  Nasim watched her for a time. She was taking breath, a ritual he had never managed to find peace with. It brought only memories of his younger years, when everything was confusion, everything was chaos. He envied those that had mastered it. It seemed to bring them such peace, a peace he hoped to one day find, but in the years since leaving Mirashadal, he had begun to wonder if he ever would.

  “It’s taken you time to reach the village.”

  Her voice made him jump. “What are you doing here?”

  She opened her eyes slowly—as though she didn’t wish to disturb her own breathing—and gazed upon Nasim with emotionless eyes. “I’ve come to find you.”

  For a moment, Nasim could not find words, and when he did, he could only manage one. “Why?”

  “Sit,” she said, motioning with one hand.