The Straits of Galahesh

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  He did, crossing his legs instead of kneeling as she was. Only then was he able to see the bright red burns along the right side of her face. It traveled down her neck and was lost beneath the simple white shift she wore, but he could see red skin along her right wrist as well.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, forcing him to pull his gaze away from her wounds.

  The words registered, but Nasim couldn’t comprehend her meaning.

  “The girl in Alayazhar.”

  Rabiah. She meant Rabiah.

  “Were you close to her?” she asked.

  It seemed so distant now, and it felt strange for Kaleh, a girl who barely knew him, to console him for the death of his friend, one that he loved so dearly. “Does it matter if we were close?”

  She stared at him, her face unreadable. “I suppose it doesn’t.”

  She said these words with such lack of emotion that it made Nasim’s blood boil. It felt as if she were dismissing Rabiah, dismissing what she had done in her life.

  He stood and jabbed his finger down at her. “Why are you here?”

  “I came for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ve come to believe that Muqallad is wrong.”

  “Just like that?”

  There was sadness in Kaleh’s eyes. “Sit.”

  Nasim wanted to scream at her, and he didn’t even know why. She was someone who had helped him when she stood to gain little. He looked at the burns on her face and wondered if it had been punishment of some sort. As he stood there, her ancient eyes boring into his, the anger drained from him like snow beneath the summer sun.

  When at last he managed to sit and face her, she said, “It’s not so simple as you think.”

  “Things always seem that way, but what could be so complicated about leaving a man like Muqallad?”

  “It is complicated, as you say, because he is my father.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Nasim felt the blood drain from his face. His fingers tingled and a ringing like struck crystal sounded in his ears.

  “Muqallad is your father?”

  She nodded, holding his gaze. She looked like a doe, ready to bolt.

  If Muqallad was her father, then Sariya was her mother. By the fates above, a child borne of the Al-Aqim. What power she must hold. He had seen it with his own eyes, and still the possibility seemed ludicrous. Impossible.

  “How old are you?”

  She looked down at her hands, which she wrung for several moments before speaking. “I don’t know.”

  “Sariya and Muqallad were awoken only five years ago.”

  She stopped wringing her hands long enough to stare at them as if they belonged to someone else. “My mother tells me that I’ve grown faster than a child should. She thinks it’s because of Ghayavand.” She looked up to Nasim. “Either that or the spell Khamal cast over her before I was born.”

  Nasim looked at her wounds again. They somehow seemed redder than moments ago. Angrier. “How did you get those burns?”

  Kaleh turned her cheek to hide the burns from Nasim. “I came here to find you, but my father guessed my purpose. He followed through the doorway I created and fought the Aramahn to find me. I think he hoped that you would be here as well, for he stormed through the village, searching for you. In the end, he killed three before he fled under the threat of the others who came to protect the village.”

  Nasim thought back to the men and women stationed around the village. “Will he return?”

  “Neh. He’s hampered by the bonds of Ghayavand. He can create doorways of his own, but not this far from Ghayavand, and with so many qiram warding the village, he won’t be able to break through again.”

  “He has two pieces of the Atalayina now, doesn’t he? He’s fused them.”

  “He has, which was why he was able to follow me, but even so, the bonds placed on all the Al-Aqim are strong. He will not be able to come again.”

  “I’ve dreamed of those times, when the bonds were placed on the three of them.”

  Kaleh smiled. She shifted from her kneeling position—wincing so badly Nasim cringed in sympathy—until she was sitting cross-legged like Nasim. For the first time, she seemed a child of her age. No longer were her eyes deep and ancient. Instead, they made her seem humble, as if she knew what she was about to ask was unreasonable.

  “There’s a reason I came here, of all places,” she said softly. “I had hoped to find you. I had hoped to learn more of you, more of Khamal.”

  “Why?”

  “So that we can stop my father.”

  Nasim stared. “Forgive me, Kaleh, but you have been with your father, preparing the way for the akhoz, for months and years. I know this.”

  “I have done those things.” Her eyes went far away, as if she were reliving the ritual that took place on Rafsuhan, the one that had consumed the children of the Maharraht. “But I was fooled. Tricked.”

  “Then what changed your mind?”

  “I’m no fool,” she said sharply. “I’ve read texts—books and scrolls hidden away by my father. They spoke of his desires when he came to Ghayavand. They spoke of the desire of all who came to Alayazhar—for higher learning, for raising humanity above pettiness and anger and war. They spoke of a desire to find within ourselves the capacity to welcome all that we are, and to share. Our knowledge and our love and our pain.

  “For years I was afraid to speak of these things, but months ago, I told him what I’d done. He wasn’t angry, but he told me that what we were doing was bringing the world to that higher place. I tried to believe him, but when I saw what he was doing to you that day at the celestia, it all changed. It cannot be what the fates wanted.” She shook her head. “It cannot.”

  Nasim wanted to believe her, but could not. Still, if she were able to help him find his memories, it may shed light on the key to unlocking his own potential, or at the very least removing the walls Sariya and Muqallad had placed on him.

  “How can Khamal’s memories help Muqallad?” he asked.

  “Khamal left the island and was reborn. In a way my father hopes to do the same, for even with the Atalayina, he is bound to Ghayavand.”

  “Sariya isn’t.”

  “It mightn’t seem like it, but she is. She has her tower in Alayazhar. She took another in Alekeşir, and yet another in Baressa. They are linked. They ground her to Ghayavand, but do not mistake this for her being free of it. She is bound as tightly as Muqallad is. The only difference is the way in which they pay for the small amount of freedom they’ve found. Only Khamal truly escaped.”

  He didn’t escape, Nasim thought. He died, and I was born. “Why do you want to know Khamal’s secrets?”

  “Because my father is close to doing the same thing. He hinted at it, but he refused to tell me details. He may have found what he needed from you at the celestia. But if we can find the secret too, we may be able to prevent him from escaping. We may even be able to bind him to Ghayavand forever.”

  “He is your father.”

  “Can a father do no wrong? Can he not be misguided?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then that is enough. I have been blinded, I will admit, but I will allow it no longer. Help me, Nasim. Help me to find Khamal’s secret, and together, we can stop him.”

  “I’ve tried,” Nasim said, thinking of the horror contained within that dark place inside him that he’d never been able to go. “I’ve dreamed of him many times, but never the ritual he completed to be reborn and to grant me his power.”

  “Then we will try together, but not today.” She glanced down with tired and haggard eyes at the burn on her wrist. “Perhaps not tomorrow, either.”

  “Rest,” Nasim said as he stood and backed away toward the door. “I’ll see you again soon.”

  Nasim didn’t see her again for days. He wandered the halls and paths of Mirashadal, reliving his past. He’d spent over two years here, but those first months had been confusing. He had been healed, but
after walking between the worlds for so long, being relegated to only the material world was difficult. And then, when his mind had finally acclimated to Erahm, he longed for Adhiya. He wished for ways to touch it, but it had been cut off from him, and he grew despondent. Angry. He lashed out at all of those who tried to help.

  But the Aramahn were patient, Fahroz especially so. She helped him to realize that he could touch Adhiya through others. He thought she was mistaken at first, for though they tried, he was unable to do more than sense Adhiya through the learned men and women that came to work with him. They tried and tried and tried again. And finally, it worked. The qiram acted as a conduit for him, after which he could begin to commune with the spirits, he could almost—almost—touch the stuff of Adhiya itself. For a time, he was appeased, but he still felt as though he’d been robbed of much on Oshtoyets. That anger had festered as it became clear he would never again have the ability to walk through the glorious plane of the spirit world. It had been that anger as much as his desire to mend the wounds Khamal had inflicted on the world that drove him from Mirashadal.

  Now, as he took long walks around the village, feeling the sway of the walkways, smelling the scent of the sea, he realized just how much he owed Fahroz. She had done so much for him, and all he had done was spurn her.

  He tried to speak with her during meals in the great hall, to apologize. He stood before the door of her home so that he could share these thoughts. She would like them, he thought. He even saw her once, alone, walking down the winding ballast tower path, but then, just like every other time, he had backed down, embarrassed over what he’d done.

  Four days after his arrival on Mirashadal, Kaleh found him sitting in one of the village’s many arboretums. It was a hidden place, more like a courtyard than a garden. The ground, such as it was, was a gnarled pattern of tightly packed roots. The trunks of the trees that circled the space stood side by side, with hardly a gap between them. The boughs curved up, moving amongst the other trees, until the branches reached up toward the sky, a crown of green leaves and swaying branches that made this place feel separate, hidden from the rest of Mirashadal.

  There was only one archway leading into the arboretum, and it was through this that Kaleh came. She was limping, but she looked much healthier than she had days before.

  “Good day to you,” she said, smiling.

  “Good day,” Nasim said, smiling back.

  He was sitting on a bench, another mass of roots that had been painstakingly shaped by the dhoshahezhan who had grown this village. Nasim patted the space next to him. Kaleh limped over and sat down.

  “Are you well?” he asked, motioning to her right hand.

  “Well enough. How are you?”

  “Miserable.”

  She frowned, shaking her head quizzically.

  “Never mind,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. I’d like to try, if you’re still willing.”

  Her blue eyes searched his, perhaps surprised, perhaps pleased. Perhaps both. “Where?” she asked.

  Nasim looked down at the roots beneath his feet. They looked hard and gnarled, but he knew that here in the arboretums they were soft as rabbit ears. “Here, if you don’t mind.”

  She motioned for him to lie down. “Then sleep,” she said. “Dream, and I’ll guide you.”

  He hesitated, but only for a moment. This had been a thing that he’d been dreading for too long, and it was time to be done with it. Strangely, Kaleh, even though they were not related, felt like a sister, a child born of Ghayavand, linked to it just as inextricably as he was.

  The tightness that had been inside him since seeing Mirashadal on the horizon fell away, and he smiled at her—a gesture she responded to in kind. He lay down on the roots. Kaleh chanted softly as he closed his eyes and stilled his mind. The words she spoke felt as old as the world itself, and somehow, despite his fears, he found himself falling quickly and deeply into sleep.

  Khamal walks along the edge of the water. The surf rolls over his feet, the frothing water cold against his feet and ankles. The sound of breaking waves is all that he hears. Ahead of him, two akhoz walk. They are side by side, but they do not acknowledge one another. For all he knows, they do not even know the other is there.

  Beyond the beach, beyond the shallow cliff dividing city from sea stands Alayazhar, cold and empty and haunted. He can see the telltale signs of other akhoz as they wander the city, lost.

  Lost, Khamal thinks.

  The akhoz are lost in so many ways. They anchor the city, preventing the rift from widening, but those children have been lost to this world. They are lost to the next as well. They are lost to their loved ones—their parents and sisters and brothers. They are lost to the children they might, in a different world, have borne.

  Worst, though, is the fact that they are lost to themselves. To save the city—to save the world—they had been forced to remove them from Adhiya. No longer would they travel to the world beyond, to be reborn brighter. They would live out whatever existence the fates had in store for them, and then they would die. Truly die.

  Ahead lies a massive rock, dark gray against the white beach and blue-green waters of the bay. The two akhoz stop near it, waiting obediently. Khamal approaches. The first, the one nearest the rock, is Yadhan. She was the first of the akhoz and so seemed, at least in the hour of her choosing, like the proper one for the ritual about to take place, but as he approaches, he knows that he cannot take her. He still remembers her face in the celestia as he performed that first ritual. She was brave, but within she feared. She feared like nothing her scant years on Erahm had prepared her for, and in his heart he knows that she made that sacrifice for him. She revered him. She viewed him as a savior. And he took advantage of it.

  “Go,” he says to Yadhan, more harshly than he meant to.

  She turns, her eyeless face looking up at him, her mouth pulled back in a feral grin.

  “Go!”

  She scuffles along the beach, away from him. A wave surges up and sizzles as it rolls across her feet. She bounds away from the water, looks back one last time, and then gallops toward Alayazhar. Perhaps she feels rejected, or confused. Or perhaps she feels nothing at all. Who can say what the akhoz feel?

  Khamal turns to the other. His name is Alif—the one, the lone. It is not his given name. Alif was found after the devastation of the sundering, alone and able to speak but little. He had a wound to his head and was never able to say the names of his parents. He was a simple child. Quiet. And like the name Khamal gave him, he often spent his time alone.

  Khamal is not sure why, but it is somehow easier to take this child. It shames him. Why is Alif worth less than Yadhan? It should not be, but one must be chosen, one must be sacrificed, if his plan is to have any hope.

  As he takes to the rock, he feels the sun-warmed surface and wonders how it will feel when he returns to the world.

  Stop, he tells himself. Do not think of it.

  He shuffles along the lip leading up to the top, glancing at Sariya’s tower. He wonders if she watches him, wonders if she cares. She still wants him to bring Muqallad back, to allow him to return to Alayazhar, but Khamal can’t. Not yet. Once this is done, it will be time to lift the veil he’d placed around the island that prevented Muqallad from returning.

  He reaches the flat surface at last. Alif is close behind. He cowers and looks away when Khamal motions to the center of the rock face.

  “Lie down,” Khamal says.

  Reluctantly, Alif obeys. Somehow he knows. He knows what lies ahead, and in these moments of realization, Khamal nearly changes his mind, nearly orders Alif to follow Yadhan, nearly prepares to climb down from this rock to return to the celestia to meditate on what they can do to close the rift.

  But this ritual had occurred to him years ago, and he’d been pondering it ever since, slowly coming to the realization that this was the only way. He had to break free of the bonds his people had placed on him if he were to have any hope of find
ing sway against the rift. He knows that it is not without risk. It will weaken the bonds around Ghayavand. The rifts will spread, causing havoc among the nearby islands, perhaps even the motherland. But what choice is there? The bonds would not hold forever, and if they fell when no one was prepared for them, it may well mean the destruction of the world.

  Sariya reasoned that perhaps this was what the fates had envisioned, but he could not believe that this was what they had in store for Erahm. He could not.

  And so it comes to 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 beneath the sun.

  Alif squirms as he moves away from Khamal. His mewling becomes louder, more raucous.

  “Silence!”

  Alif’s moans grow quieter. He shivers, but otherwise remains still as Khamal holds out his wrist, the Atalayina gripped tightly in one hand. He places the knife against his skin, where blood pulses in dark veins.

  Before he can change his mind, he runs the edge of the knife over his skin, stifling a groan from the pain of it. He draws on the Atalayina. He draws on himself, much as he does when creating the akhoz. As his blood drips into Alif’s open mouth, he feels himself detach from Adhiya. Slowly but surely, as his lifeblood drips away, his soul is drawn from the world beyond.

  Never to return.

  This is the most difficult part by far, knowing that once his plans are complete he will never return to Adhiya. If he succeeds in maneuvering Sariya and Muqallad, he will return, he will be reborn, but it will only be once. That child, when he dies, will be as dead as Yadhan. As dead as Alif.

  As the flow of his blood slows, he feels Adhiya slip from his grasp. It is gone, and he nearly cries from its loss.

  But he cannot. There is work to do yet.

  Gritting his jaw so hard it hurts, he takes the knife with shaking hands and raises it high.

  Alif lies below him, crimson red spattered across his face and lips and teeth. He knows what’s coming. He goes rigid, muscles tightening, frame going taut, but he does not move away. For this Khamal is proud.