The Flames of Shadam Khoreh (The Lays of Anuskaya)

by Bradley Beaulieu

  One of Nasim’s rare memories from childhood is of kneeling at a hillock, staring into a burrow, wondering what lay within. His curiosity was so strong that he reached inside, childlike, to find out. Stronger than those feelings of curiosity was the deep-seated fear that accompanied the simple act. He has the same sort of fear now as he peers into the darkness, hoping to peel it away to see who might be waiting for him inside that crevice. By the time he’s within a few paces, his feet respond to his will to move forward by inching across the needle-strewn ground.

  He finds that the crevice isn’t deep at all. Were he to reach in, he could touch the opposite side. To his relief—and his profound disappointment—he discovers that there is nothing within that place. Nothing at all. He turns and scans the trees. He stares along the wall, wondering if he’d stalked toward the wrong hiding place. But no. There is nowhere else along this wall where one could hide. It has to have been here.

  He tries to think of who it might have been. Rabiah, the gifted Aramahn girl he brought with him to Galahesh to help him heal the rifts, is the first person that jumps to mind, but only because she’s one of the few girls he’s ever truly known. The trouble is this girl doesn’t remind him of Rabiah at all. Her shape is wrong, and the way she runs… It just isn’t like her.

  He finds no answers, nor does he find any new sign of her after searching for long minutes, so he treks back through the forest toward camp. He thinks of continuing beyond it, of walking out from this hidden vale and to the desert beyond to find help among the islands or from the floating village of Mirashadal, but these are fleeting thoughts, things that flutter through his mind and depart as quickly as they’d come. Kaleh’s hold on him is not so weak as that.

  When he returns to their camp, the embers of the fire glow softly still. Kaleh is asleep, facing away from him, which he sees a favorable sign after the frustrating chase he’s just led. He sees her pack resting by her head. She has always kept it thus, trusting that Nasim would be unable to free himself of the bonds she’d placed on him.

  He cannot sense the Atalayina—it has a unique way of shedding the attention of man and hezhan alike—but he knows it is there. He creeps forward and kneels by her pack. He pulls back the canvas flap and reaches into it, rummaging along the bottom until he finds it. After unwrapping it carefully from the lambskin that holds it, he cradles it, staring deeply into its depths. The Atalayina is heavy. And even under the bare light of the stars and the nearby embers, it glints as if it accepts what it’s given and amplifies it in some way, or alters it so that it becomes more striking to the eye. It is unapologetic, the Atalayina. It has caused untold pain and suffering—it may yet lead to the destruction of the world—and yet it seems coldly indifferent.

  The way it acts like a lens, focusing light, is important. It is this, more than any of its other attributes, that allowed the Al-Aqim to use it to create the first rift on Ghayavand. He recalls Khamal hefting this same stone before placing it on the obsidian pedestal at the top of Sihyaan, the tallest mountain on Ghayavand. He recalls Khamal opening himself to the stone, and in doing so opening himself to the other two who stood nearby—Sariya and Muqallad. The three of them were as powerful as any Aramahn had ever been, and still they were humbled before the might of the Atalayina, and the power that the stone in turn opened up for them. It was like pulling back a curtain to see Adhiya in its natural state. But more than this, it opened Erahm as well, and the aether between. All three worlds were brought together by this stone, and Nasim can see for the first time how it might be done again on Ghayavand, except this time it would be to heal the rifts once and for all.

  As he stares at this stone, a thought occurs to him. He sits upon the ground, raking his fingers through his hair as the implications sweep over him. Khamal planned his own death. Nasim thought he’d planned for Nasim to return as a normal, if gifted, boy. He thought that surely Khamal wanted him to retain Khamal’s memories so that he could go to Ghayavand and there heal the rift that Khamal had a hand in making.

  But now—

  Nasim pulls his knees up to his chest and rests his head against them.

  —he wonders if he’s been wrong all along.

  What if Khamal planned for Nasim to walk between worlds? What if it had been in preparation for Nasim’s eventual return to Ghayavand? Might not walking in Adhiya and Erahm, might not straddling the aether, prepare him for holding this stone? Prepare him for understanding it?

  If that were true, it could only mean that Khamal had wanted Nasim to return so that he alone could heal the rift. He’d never meant for Nasim to find others. But Nasim had. He’d found Sukharam and Rabiah, and Rabiah had died because of it. He knew not what might have happened to Sukharam after the events at the Spar. He might be dead. Or he might have taken to the wind—to learn what he could on his own as Nasim had done. In all likelihood, he is lost to Nasim.

  Nasim feels dizzy. Sick to his stomach. Part of him wants to drop this stone, for it feels as though it controls him, has always controlled him, and this is something he cannot abide.

  He tightens his jaw, refusing to give in to such feelings. He cannot give the stone more power than it has. He must remain grounded. He must remain resolute. For only in doing this will he have any chance of overthrowing Kaleh’s hold on him.

  He is just preparing to open his mind to the Atalayina once more when he feels a weight upon him. He knows immediately what it is.

  Slowly, he turns toward Kaleh.

  And finds her staring at him.

  Even in the dim light, she looks fierce. Kaleh has aged unnaturally fast, but never has she looked more like her mother, Sariya.

  Before he knows what’s happening he finds himself on the ground, writhing in searing white pain. He can think of nothing else. Only the pain. His entire body is alive with it, a burning agony so fierce he twists and writhes on the dry ground. He feels himself roll into the fire, but he has no idea if it was his idea or a command from Kaleh.

  The coals burn his back and shoulder. He screams from it, twisting away reflexively, but Kaleh forces him to roll back and he’s burned again, this time along his hip and thigh.

  He cries out. Pushes away again, and this time he’s allowed to remain out of the fire. But the blinding white pain does not ebb.

  “Please!” he screams to the night sky. “Please stop!”

  Kaleh stares on dispassionately. So much of her emotion has drained that she looks, strangely, not so different from the stone, as if the pain he’s feeling has nothing to do with her and is instead a thing completely of his own making.

  How long it goes on he is not sure, but finally it ends, and he is left to sob into the bed of needles on the ground beneath him. He lies there for some time. Hears sounds, but cannot understand what they are, not until his cries subside.

  It is the sound of preparation, of gathering up the camp. Kaleh is readying them, and even though he finds it difficult to think, he knows exactly what this means.

  “Come,” she says when it’s done.

  And there is no choice but to obey. It is a much stronger command than any had been over the last several days. He doesn’t understand what happened, but he knows that Kaleh has somehow revitalized herself. Perhaps it is from her anger. Perhaps it is from the sleep she’d managed to find. Whatever the reason, he is held in thrall as they walk down, past the pool and into the shadowed area where Nasim is sure the tunnel lies.

  Indeed, when they enter the tall, narrow cave, Kaleh uses the Atalayina to light their way, and ahead, similar to the last tomb, there is a man carved into the stone. His arms are not across his chest, as the woman’s were at the last; instead they’re at his side, and his hands are balled into fists. His eyes and face, however, project that same feeling of sorrow. Perhaps it has been the same with every tomb they’d come to; he can’t remember.

  He doesn’t know how many are left but has the distinct feeling that the end is near. Kaleh is coming closer and closer to reaching her goals, whateve
r they may be. He cannot allow her to reach them. He knows this. He just has no idea how to stop her.

  Kaleh touches the stone with the Atalayina raised in her opposite hand, and the stone crumbles. It collapses. One large piece falls against Kaleh’s leg, cutting her. She stares down only for a moment as blood pools along the length of the cut and runs down her leg.

  Holding the Atalayina high, she steps over the stones and walks down the tunnel. Nasim follows without thinking. There is a part of him that wishes to disobey, but like a butterfly the thought is there one moment and gone the next. They move along the cold tunnel, which spirals upward and upward. For hours they climb until at last they come to a door with another sculpture. Here is the man once more, but instead of his hands tight to his side, they are spread wide, as if he’s welcoming the morning breeze after a long and listless night.

  Kaleh steps to one side and motions to the door. “Open it.”

  He does. He walks forward, driven like an ox beneath the whip. He accepts the Atalayina. Places his hand on the door, though while he’s doing this, he wonders why Kaleh hasn’t simply done this very same thing each time they came to a tomb. Why has she resorted to tricking him? She must have played a ruse on him in their previous tombs they’d visited. Why would she do this when she had complete control over his mind?

  And then he understood.

  As the door crumbles before him, filling the hall with sound and kicking up dust, he knows it is because it costs her. She is already fatigued mentally, no doubt from holding him under her spell for so long. He feels no particular struggle going on within her, but that is probably because she still retained control, but he wonders what it must be like for her. It would be a struggle both night and day to keep someone’s free will suppressed as she’s doing now. And it would be more difficult over time as her mind began to weaken, to tire. Surely fooling him into doing as she wished was easier than this.

  He needs only to look at her face to know the truth of it. She is willful, even angry, but also haggard. The effort she’s putting forth is already taking its toll. How soon before she is unable to do this any longer? How long before he can wake from this dream to control his own destiny once more?

  When he gives the Atalayina back to her, he has his answer. The load upon her lightens. She draws strength from the stone. The effort weighs upon her, and it’s clear that she cannot do this forever, but it will be enough, and Kaleh knows it too. There are only so many tombs, and something within Nasim tells him that they are nearing the end. After only a few more, she will have what she desires: all of these strange, hidden-away souls will be dead. And what then? Most likely she will cast Nasim aside. Kill him and be done with it so that she can be on her way to finish what her mother started.

  Despite this burning desire to stop her, he can do nothing but watch as Kaleh steps inside the tomb. He watches, impotent, as the lid slides away from the sarcophagus and the sheaf of wheat lying on the top falls to the cold tomb floor.

  This man wears a circlet of gold, five stones set within it. His hair and beard are long and curly. It reminds Nasim so much of Ashan that tears form and slide down his cheeks.

  As a blast of fire flows from Kaleh’s upturned palm, he lifts an emaciated hand and presses it against the flame. The fire splays where it strikes his hand, flows outward, licking against the low ceiling or the sides of the sarcophagus. The hoary skin of his face is pulled back in concentration. His deeply sunken eyes flare with pain or rage or fear. Kaleh’s face becomes more intense as well.

  Please, Nasim pleads to the fates, let him win.

  But that battle is over as soon as it began. As powerful as this man might have once been, he has been sleeping for generations, for eons. How can he stand against Kaleh, a gifted young woman who holds the Atalayina in her hand?

  He cannot.

  And so the flames envelop his hand, then his wrist, and then his arm. Soon it has wrapped itself around him completely. His hair lights yellow, a contrast to the orange flames that surround him. He screams in pain, a sound so sad and forlorn it fills Nasim’s heart with bits of broken glass. When the man falls to the floor of the tomb, a black, broken husk, Nasim stares, raging inside while his body refuses to move. His tears slip wet and warm along his cheek. He feels them patter against his hand, but he cannot look at them, those hands that allowed entrance to this place.

  When Kaleh steps from the room, her face is resolute. Emotionless. “Insa,” she says as she passes him.

  And indeed, he forgets, as he did the last time. And the time before that.

  As Kaleh marches down the hall, expecting to be followed, Nasim takes one last look into the tomb, and there he sees, cowering behind the sarcophagus, the dim outline of a girl. He peers into the darkness, but the light of the Atalayina is already too far, and he can see nothing but shadows within the room.

  He knows not who the girl might be, but the sight of her sparks a memory. And that in turn sparks more. He’s confused as to why he’s here in this place. Confused where they might now be headed. But he knows who he is—Nasim—and he knows that the young woman walking down the tunnel is Kaleh, daughter of Sariya and Khamal, and he knows that many answers lie within the glowing stone she carries.

  This isn’t much, this pittance of knowledge.

  But it is a start.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Atiana stared into the campfire as Soroush leaned against a rock smoking his pipe while Goeh sprinkled salt over two freshly dressed desert hares. He skewered them with iron spits and set them onto the makeshift rotisserie he’d made from the fresh-cut branches off a nearby bush.

  “Can you turn them?” he asked Soroush.

  Soroush nodded as Goeh left to scout the trail behind them, as he did every night they camped. Soroush wore the double-robes of the Aramahn, inner robes of grey and outer robes of sage green. He had not yet taken off his white turban, which he often did at sunset. He was the only one with her at the fire now. Ushai was washing at a small stream at the center of the valley. Sukharam and Ashan were taking breath in a small cave Goeh had shown them.

  And Nikandr…

  Nikandr was riding ahead to check the way they’d take tomorrow. Atiana knew he was becoming overwhelmed by his urges again—she could see it in his eyes and the way he bowed in the saddle when he’d ridden away—but she had not tried to stop him. She had merely waved when he left. There was nothing else to say. Not anymore. She could no more fix him of this malady than she could summon a hezhan for him.

  Soroush blew smoke into the air and turned the hares over absently. The sun was setting, but the sky was unnaturally overcast. The clouds were so uniformly grey that it reminded her of the islands. And that, of course, reminded her of the palotzas, the drowning chambers, entering the aether and expanding her mind as she’d done so many times in the past. She’d been away from it for well over a year. She’d missed it terribly at first, but she found that the desire had faded over time to a dull but persistent ache.

  The wodjan had changed everything, however.

  Now Atiana thought about it every waking moment. It was especially strong when she woke each morning. Those first few moments from sleep felt like waking from the drowning chamber, and when she realized she hadn’t been in the aether, she became despondent.

  “Are you off with Nikandr?”

  Atiana started, pulling her gaze from the flickering fire as Soroush turned the skewers. The smell of the hares cooking, the sound of the fat dripping and sizzling against the burning wood, reminded her of the grand dinners she and Mileva and Ishkyna—especially Ishkyna—had all loved so much. She managed to give Soroush a smile.

  “Thinking of home.” She stared eastward, toward the Grand Duchy. “I miss it terribly.”

  “What do you miss?”

  She shrugged. “Many things. The people. The music. The dancing. But most of all, I miss taking the dark.”

  Perhaps she shouldn’t have told him the truth—she didn’t want anyone to know ab
out her thoughts of the aether and the wodjan—but it seemed like the right thing to do. The Aramahn tended to be brutally honest, and it seemed wrong, somehow, to lie to one of them, even Soroush, who she still thought of as Maharraht more than Aramahn.

  He took a long pull from his pipe. “What do you miss about the aether?”

  She thought about it for a moment. It was difficult to articulate. “Everything,” she finally said.

  “Strange”—smoke trailed from his nostrils and mouth as he smiled wistfully—“when years ago you were petrified of it.”

  “Petrified?” Atiana laughed. “Perhaps I was. But once you overcome your fears, it is a wondrous place. It connects this world to the one beyond. It runs through all things. I cannot help but marvel at its beauty every time I enter, and when I’m gone from it, a yearning builds within me.”

  Soroush turned the skewers and adjusted the flaming logs below them with a spare stick. “You’ve been gone from the islands for eighteen months, and you’ve been here in the Gaji for nearly a year.” He glanced eastward himself. “Why now?”

  He was coming dangerously close to the very thing she’d been trying to hide since the wodjan had come to their camp two nights ago.

  “I like the Gaji,” she said after a pause. “It holds a stark beauty I hadn’t expected. But we’re coming closer to reaching our goal now. I can feel it. And it makes me wonder if I’ll ever see the islands again.”

  Soroush furrowed his brow and pursed his lips. “You’ll see them again.”

  “Is that so?”

  He smiled for her, a wide thing that was strangely infectious from such a reticent man. “I’m sure of it.”

  She returned the smile. “Then I’m glad.”

  Ushai returned soon after, and Goeh came an hour after that. They ate in fits and starts, hoping the others would return so they could all eat together. Ushai did not eat of the hare. She merely chewed the bark from a tree that Goeh said would stave off hunger. She did so with her right hand. Her left, a scarred ruin from her time in Sariya’s tower on Galahesh, sat cradled in her lap. Ushai, after stabbing Sariya, had tried to grasp one of the broken pieces of the Atalayina, and the ward Sariya had set to protect it burned her badly.