The Straits of Galahesh

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Standing next to them was a tall man wearing robes of ivory over inner robes the color of pearl. His hair and beard were black. This was Muqallad.

  And between them was a girl, twelve, perhaps older—it was difficult to tell from this distance.

  Muqallad lifted his hand and held it out as if he expected Atiana to take it.

  The Hratha turned, and they parted, creating a lane for them to ride along.

  Sihaş did not spur their pony forward. He was like a spring, tight and coiled. She could feel it in his arms and shoulders and in the set of his spine.

  “We must go,” Atiana whispered, and she knew it was so. They could no more turn around than they could summon the sun from the sky.

  Sihaş was breathing so rapidly she wondered if he would faint. But as she leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “We must go,” he flicked the reins and urged the pony forward.

  The beast complied, and slowly they moved forward, she and his soldiers.

  She glanced back to Irkadiy. Her countryman. A man who had urged her to abandon these plans.

  His look was strong—Irkadiy was nothing if not strong—but it was a thin veneer, for just below the surface was an endless well of terror. He looked as though he could barely breathe, as though he were a drowning man clutching uselessly at the surface of the water.

  Her feelings for him, so favorable only moments ago, soured the more she looked. He had tried to turn her away from this path. He had tried to betray her. Betray her! How dare he! For a mere moment, the anger building inside her like a hornet’s nest surprised her, but as she looked up to the hill, to Muqallad and Sariya, she knew she’d been a fool to trust Irkadiy. She’d been a fool to trust any of these men.

  Somewhere in the distance she heard the call of the gallows crow, but it was drowned out by the braying of the akhoz. There were more of them than Atiana had realized. Dozens of them. They’d moved beyond the Hratha to crawl along the ground as if they wished to leap upon Atiana and the soldiers and their ponies but were prevented from doing so. She looked upon the faces of these creatures, knowing they had once been children, knowing they had once been innocent.

  No longer, she thought. Now they were tools of the Al-Aqim.

  As it should be...

  They reached the hill at last. There were rough stone steps worked into it, allowing them to slip from their saddles and ascend to the top of the hill. Muqallad and Sariya watched closely, but little emotion showed on their faces. The girl, however, was different. She watched Atiana with an intensity that Atiana couldn’t understand.

  The akhoz closed in behind and followed them up the hill. By the time she and Sihaş and the rest reached the hill’s flattened summit, they were completely surrounded.

  “Come,” Muqallad said over the braying of the akhoz.

  Sariya, for some reason, did not speak. She looked pale, as if she could do little more than stand, as if even speaking would prove too much.

  In the distance there came again, barely audible, a single, sad caw.

  Atiana knew something was wrong, but she could no longer understand what. Muqallad looked at her with a fierceness that made her want to obey. Sariya licked her lips tremulously, as if behind those lips, behind those unsteady eyes, she was holding back a wave of pain she’d never before experienced. Sariya swallowed and shook her head, holding back her misery through sheer force of will.

  Atiana wanted to step forward, wanted to take Muqallad’s hand. She felt she should, but there was something else she should do. Wasn’t there?

  But then the girl stepped forward.

  And took Atiana’s hand.

  The moment she does, Atiana knows what she is doing is right.

  She walks forward and takes Muqallad’s hand, which is warm and welcoming. It nearly masks the renewed cries of the akhoz and the ululating calls of the Hratha behind her.

  She turns to find the akhoz ripping Sihaş’s men limb from limb. They are a mass of groping hands and writhing legs and gaping maws. The ground before her is little more than screams and flailing and blood.

  Even the tall one—Sihaş, she recalls—falls, though he manages to draw his sword and sever the head of an akhoz from its neck. Another he cuts deeply across the waist while fending off a third. But the fourth. The fourth has him. It clamps wiry arms around his neck. It bites with blackened teeth, with lolling tongue.

  Sihaş screams, felling yet another of these misshapen children, before he too is brought to the ground and eviscerated by creatures that seem more like teeming insects than children, ruthless and unemotional in their efficiency.

  At last it has ended. Only one is left unharmed. Her countryman. What is his name?

  No matter. He gave himself over to Muqallad’s cause the moment he passed beyond the Spar.

  Suddenly she realizes a knife is in her hand, a khanjar, placed there by Muqallad. He motions her forward, toward the soldier of Anuskaya.

  The hilt of the knife feels good against her skin. It has tasted the blood of man, and it feels ancient, as if the fates themselves have crafted it from the stuff of stars.

  She takes one halting step as the akhoz hold the man in place.

  He looks up at her, pleading with her to stop.

  His eyes implore her. Wake! Wake from this dream!

  But he is wrong. He doesn’t understand. She has been sleeping for so many years. Only through the Al-Aqim has she awoken.

  She steps forward, angered by his presumption. “Who are you to plead with me?” she says.

  And pulls the knife across his throat.

  Blood spurts from the cavernous wound, falls warm and slick onto her fingers and the backs of her hands. The akhoz holding him scream in exultation, but she hears little save the furious and heady coursing of her own blood. This feels right. It feels as it must have felt for the earliest of the Matra as they blooded the land before the spires were built. It is just, for his blood now marks this place. This place where a grand ritual is about to commence.

  It is the last of the steps needed before...

  Before what?

  She turns back and sees Muqallad holding two stones. They are a bright blue with veins of copper and silver and gold. They transfix her.

  She has held one of them. Hasn’t she?

  Muqallad brings them together, and they fit perfectly. They are one.

  Or soon will be.

  The one from Alekeşir, the Kamarisi, Hakan ül Ayeşe, is summoned forth. The akhoz bring him to his knees before Muqallad. They hold his hands out, cupped, as if he is about to accept water into them.

  The stone, the Atalayina, is set into them, and it is then that the Kamarisi’s face transforms. To now, he has gone willingly, placidly. He has accepted his fate like a lamb led to slaughter. But now it seems as though he has awoken to a reality he never thought possible. How this could be when he is helping to bring the world to its highest plane, she does not know.

  She is not saddened by his look of terror as Muqallad forces his hands to close around the Atalayina. The man arches back and screams to the skies as Muqallad holds his hands tight. She feels the power coursing through him from Adhiya.

  When Muqallad releases him at last, the akhoz skitter away, and the Lord of the Motherland, the Kamarisi of Yrstanla, falls forward and onto his forearms. He looks as though he’s praying to his fathers and his mothers, but she soon realizes her mistake. His hands are now one. They have been fused together, as if they were little more than clay, and within that grotesque mass—still barely visible—is the Atalayina. He now holds the pieces together as if his one fervent wish is to see this ancient stone healed.

  Muqallad takes his hands and drags Hakan—immaculate boots kicking and thrashing against the trampled grass, tears streaming down his face—toward the post that stands at the summit of the hill. With a strength that surprises her, Muqallad hefts him up and drives him against the post. The man goes rigid. A large iron spike erupts through his chest, through his opulent clothes of silver
silk and golden thread, and blood pours down his front as he eyes Atiana, face shaking, spittle flying from his mouth as he coughs.

  He looks down at his hands, and then back to Atiana.

  He tries to speak. His expression begs her to fix this. To make it right. To awaken from this nightmare that he and his empire might yet be saved.

  But in this he will be disappointed, for he has been fooled like so many others—so many over the course of generations. It is the grand joke, the notion that there is free will, that one can work with a collective toward a greater good, a greater purpose. The truth is that such things can never happen on their own. They must be forced.

  And the time is nearly at hand. Can he not sense it?

  Her knife still bright with blood, she steps forward and looks up into his dimming eyes. “Fear not. You have done well. Better than could have been hoped.”

  But he doesn’t listen. Blood stains his clothes, drips upon the cold ground. His eyes go distant. And finally his head slumps and his arms go slack.

  Atiana feels a hand on her elbow.

  It is the girl. She is leading her away.

  Atiana follows, moving beyond the akhoz, who form a tight circle around the post. They are warm, Atiana realizes, and becoming warmer by the second. Already, though she stands ten paces back, she can feel them. The girl pulls her further and further away.

  Until the first of them bursts into flame.

  The akhoz arch back. They release their raucous calls to the cloud-filled sky. Another ignites, and like dry kindling the effect moves from one to another around the circle until all of them are aflame.

  Muqallad watches as they twist in pain, their limbs bending at impossible angles. He watches not with satisfaction, but with sadness in his eyes. Perhaps he knows the end is near and does not relish it. Perhaps he wishes the world had arrived at this point by a different path. He turns to Atiana and regards her, as one might regard a flower or a child’s bauble. He thinks her inconsequential, and perhaps in the light of these great events he’s right.

  Sariya merely stares at the burning hill. She seems to remain standing by force of will alone, though this final step seems to have granted her some small amount of strength.

  On the hill, the body of the Kamarisi smokes. His skin blackens and then bursts into flame, as does the post he hangs upon. A moment later, the fire licking up from the akhoz pulls into a maelstrom centered on this burning man—centered on the stone he holds in his hands. The fire spins and is drawn upward like yarn from a skein. The thread thickens until a column of flame thrusts into the sky through the layer of clouds high, high above.

  It rages on and on, the akhoz shrieking and barking and mewling while the fire rages. The Hratha watch, eyes bright, jaws set grimly. They stare at the sky, faces lit by the roiling column of gold and ivory flame.

  Some time later—perhaps minutes, perhaps hours—the akhoz blacken. They still hold their twisted and pained positions, but are now little more than husks. A wind blows across the grounds, lifting the apple-sweet smell from the blackened remains. Some begin to ablate like the ash from a smoldering fire. Their forms collapse into clouds of powder, black and red and white, lifted by the updraft. More and more are consumed thus, their dark remains tainting the wavering column, which now burns amber and rust.

  And then, in a sudden lift of wind and ash and gusting fire, the column burns itself out, until at last the sky breathes a sigh of relief.

  The hill is utterly silent. Ash rains down on everyone like snow as the sun lowers in the west. Without a word being spoken, the Hratha close in around the site of the ritual.

  Muqallad and Sariya and Kaleh stride up toward the hilltop. Atiana is close behind. The ash becomes ankle deep. Atiana wades through it—the ashes are warm, but little more, as if the Atalayina had stolen as much from the akhoz as it could—and she wonders briefly who these children might have been, who their mothers and fathers were, but then they reach the center of the ash, and there they find a mound filled with larger blackened chunks that somehow remained intact.

  Muqallad sifts through the remains with his foot, until a glint of blue shines through. Atiana’s heart sings at seeing it. But she doesn’t yet know if the stone has been made whole.

  As she holds her breath, Muqallad reaches down and picks it up. He blows upon it softly. The dust and ash fall away, revealing a stone as bright as any Atiana has ever seen. It does not glow, but it has a way of catching the light from the setting sun. It twists it and reflects it back in unexpected ways. It is powerful and beautiful, both.

  Muqallad turns and holds it above his head.

  And the Hratha burst into a cheer that is long and stirring and numinous.

  Atiana, however—as caught up in these emotions she might be—remains silent.

  As she stares at the Atalayina, now whole, she can shed only tears of joy.

  For it is the most beautiful thing she has ever beheld.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

  With the crow leading the way, the streltsi brought Nasim to a building near the center of the bazaar—the Kirzan, the massive central building and one of the oldest in this section of the city.

  “Let me down,” Nasim said to the strelet, “or I won’t be responsible for what they do.”

  The soldier, who had often sent nervous looks to the akhoz that galloped in a pack behind them, nodded and pulled his pony to a stop, at which point Nasim slipped to the ground and raised his hands to the akhoz. They stopped, their skin twitching, their lungs pumping like bellows, their necks straining as if collared.

  “Rest,” Nasim said to them, meaning their minds as much as their bodies. Blood lust was upon them, and it would not do to have them remain so among allies. “Rest,” he said again, and motioned them to the empty stalls of the bazaar.

  They complied, and slowly, their jerky movements began to quell. They settled down into crouches. Some laid upon the ground in groups. Others merely stood, their gaze never veering from Nasim as their lips drew back into sickening grins.

  Nasim, as satisfied as he could be, turned and left them.

  Near the building stood a gathering of several older men with long gray cherkesskas adorned with dozens of brightly colored medals. One of them had a beard that hung partway down his chest, and in his gray hair was a nasty gash that looked only halfway healed. There was a resemblance—not striking, but unmistakable—to Nikandr. This could be none other than his father, Iaros.

  There were many streltsi surrounding these men, and they moved forward with muskets and shashkas at the ready.

  “Let him through,” Iaros called.

  The streltsi parted, watching Nasim pass with mistrustful eyes, while the hoary old men waited with grave looks on their faces. These were hardened and seasoned men; they were not cowed by the presence of the akhoz, but they couldn’t help but glance every so often to the stalls where the akhoz waited. None of them knew what he might do with them, or even if he had complete control, but to their credit neither they nor their guard seem overly phased.

  As Nasim came near, most of the military men—no doubt polkovniks in the Grand Duchy’s staaya—stepped back, allowing Iaros to approach Nasim. Iaros did not hold out his hand, as so many of the Landed seemed to do. Nor did he seem dismissive of Nasim. He merely stared as if Nasim were a curiosity he had long ago given up any hope of finding.

  “Do you know who I am?” he asked.

  “You are the Duke of Khalakovo,” Nasim said, “Iaros, son of Aleksi, son of Vasham.”

  Iaros raised his eyebrows—not so much, Nasim thought, because he was impressed that Nasim knew of him and his family, but that Nasim knew anything at all. He must have thought Nasim would be little better than the lost child he had heard so many stories about. “I thought we might never meet, you and I.”

  Nasim didn’t know what to say to this—nor did he know why the Matra had brought him here—so he remained silent.

  Iaros turned to the men behind him and waved his hand
. They all bowed their heads. One of them, however, an old, decrepit man with distrustful eyes and a long white beard, watched longer and more intensely than the others before turning and leaving.

  With them gone, Iaros waved his hand toward the immense stone building. “Join me.”

  Nasim, seeing no reason not to go, fell into step beside the duke.

  As they took the steps up, Iaros spoke. “The Matra tells me you’ve just returned, though we both wonder from where.”

  “I came from Ghayavand.”

  They stepped into the building, their footsteps echoing in the harshness of the interior. “And how did you return?”

  His final memories of Rabiah were still too close, still too dear, for him to share. “That must remain with me.”

  Iaros turned his head with a frown—perhaps wondering if he’d erred in his measure of Nasim’s character—but then the look was gone, and he motioned to a dark set of stairs leading below ground. “Fair enough,” he said as they took the stairs down.

  The way was lit by guttering whale oil lanterns. The stairwell continued on and on, deeper than Nasim would have guessed. It felt as though they were drilling into the earth, never to return.

  “Where are we going?” Nasim asked.

  “I want you to see what we’re doing, and I want you to see who’s doing it.”

  “And why do you care if I see it?”

  “Because we find ourselves at another crossroads, do we not? As we were on Khalakovo?” They took one last turn, and were greeted by a set of heavy iron doors at the base of a long set of stairs. “Except this time Anuskaya is not aligned against you. It’s important for you to know this.”

  “Do you think I would throw in my lot with Muqallad? Or the Kamarisi?”

  “I don’t know what you would do, but the ancients have seen fit to bring you here, and so I think it’s important that you know before you leave.”