The Flames of Shadam Khoreh (The Lays of Anuskaya)

by Bradley Beaulieu

  Mileva paused, but not for long. Very well, sister. Let us see what Sariya is about.

  Atiana draws herself back. She moves down toward Kaleh, who struggles every bit as much as she had in Kohor. How she can keep this up day after day Atiana has no idea. She wonders if either of them really knows who or why they’re fighting. Perhaps they both feel trapped by the other. Perhaps they both feel like they’ve won.

  Atiana can feel Sariya now that she’s come close. Here, too, Galahesh has prepared her well. Had the two of them not been so entwined in the days and final hours before the Spar had been destroyed, she might not have known how to find Sariya, how to discern her from Kaleh, but now it’s child’s play.

  Together, Atiana and Mileva probe Kaleh’s mind. She seems deadened, a common enough thing. When people sleep and do not dream their mind is deadened like Kaleh’s is now. It’s simply a matter of finding her somewhere within the darkness and drawing her forth. When they approach and attune themselves to Kaleh’s mind, Atiana senses thoughts, and when she comes closer still, she begins to sense the edges of a dream. She smells flowers. She feels tall stalks of grass brush against her skirt. She feels the wind as it blows against a field of ivory brightbonnets.

  Atiana knows she’s being drawn into Kaleh’s dream, but she allows it. She can feel Mileva’s mind near hers. It feels like it did when they were children, when the three of them—Atiana, Mileva, and Ishkyna—shared a bed and they would hold one another’s hands to fend off fears of the darkness. As Kaleh’s dream brightens in her mind, she allows Mileva’s hand to slip through hers.

  Running through the field below her is a girl. She runs with abandon, her head turned toward the sky, her fingers touching the tips of the flowers, chasing bees from their bells.

  As Atiana walks toward her, she slows.

  Then stops.

  Then turns to regard Atiana coolly.

  She is seven, perhaps eight years old. Her face is the face of a child, full of innocence, but it is dark as she watches Atiana’s approach.

  The wind picks up. The skies darken.

  “I mean you no harm,” Atiana says.

  “I know.”

  This is Kaleh as she truly is, Atiana realizes, or at the very least as she sees herself. “Do you know why you’re here?”

  The girl takes in the landscape around them. The wind kicks up, tossing Kaleh’s light brown hair and making the brightbonnets wink as they toss to and fro.

  “Here in this place? Or on the island of Ghayavand?”

  “You know that we’ve arrived…”

  “I know much, daughter of Radia. I know why you’ve come.”

  “I was taken here.”

  “So you would not have come had the Kohori not taken you?”

  “I would have come by a different road.”

  “Yet you’ve arrived at the same place.”

  “Without allies. Without my love.”

  Kaleh’s innocent face brightens, and she begins skipping around Atiana. “Are they necessary for you to do what you must?”

  “And what is that? What must I do?”

  “Kill Sariya. Free me. Summon your Matri here. Who knows but you and the fates?” Kaleh stops and pulls up one of the brightbonnets. She begins plucking tiny petals from around the bonnet’s black eye, tossing them to the wind.

  As Atiana watches, she wonders if she should kill Sariya. She isn’t opposed to it, but she also wonders what has happened between these two. It seems important, as does the existence of this very place. It is very much like the place of Sariya’s making that Atiana was drawn into while on Galahesh. She found Nasim there, and she witnessed him liberate the third and final piece of the Atalayina.

  She draws upon the Atalayina now, and finds that she can change things here, much as Sariya and Kaleh do. She calms the wind until it is little more than a soft summer breeze. With the chill wind gone, Atiana can feel the sun kissing her skin.

  Kaleh stares up to the sky, squints at the brightness there, then regards Atiana anew. “You’ve come far,” she says, “though not nearly as far as your sister.”

  “Tell me why you’re hiding in this place.”

  Kaleh smiles wryly. “You think I’m hiding?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I’m trying to find Sariya. I’ve lost her.”

  Atiana takes in the landscape around them. “Is she stuffed into one of the bells you’re plucking? Is she hiding in the weeds?”

  Kaleh’s smile widens, and for a moment she looks much older than her apparent years. “There’s more than one way to catch a bee.”

  Atiana begins to broaden her mind, perhaps doing the very same thing Kaleh is doing. “Has she become so afraid of you, her own daughter?”

  “Neh, it isn’t me she’s afraid of. Nor is she afraid of you, or the Kohori.”

  “Then what?”

  “That is the question.” With all the tiny flowers gone, Kaleh throws the stalk away and plucks another. This she hands to Atiana, and then takes Atiana’s hand and begins leading her downhill. “You grew up on the islands?”

  “On Vostroma,” Atiana replies, confused by the sudden change in mood.

  “What was it like, growing up with two sisters and a brother?”

  Atiana shrugs. “It was…” She pauses, not because it is odd to speak to this girl of her family—though it is—and not because she doesn’t wish to share—for some reason, here in this place, she doesn’t mind—but because it strikes her just how innocent those days now seem. How much they’ve all changed. Atiana foolishly thought that none of them would take to the drowning chamber, and now all three are more powerful than any Matra in memory. They nearly lost Ishkyna—in many ways she is lost—but she has attained a freedom that she hasn’t had since childhood, when their mother gave them free reign of Galostina.

  She hopes that Ishkyna looks upon her ethereal state as a gift. She tries to ask her of it, but Ishkyna always refuses to speak of it.

  And then there is Bora. By the ancients how she misses him, misses the old Borund. He used to watch over them, but now he acts as if the three of them are little more than a burden, servants to order about as he does everyone else.

  “At the time it felt like a struggle, but now I look back and all I can think is that I wish I had it back.”

  “Do you think about dying?”

  “Of course I do.”

  The grip of Kaleh’s hand tightens. “I can think of nothing else.”

  Atiana glances down and sees tears running down Kaleh’s face. She stops and pulls Kaleh around. “What is wrong, child?”

  She looks over the field around them, stares down at Atiana’s hands that hold her own. “You know by now I age differently than you.”

  The nod Atiana gives her is a strangely difficult thing to do. It’s as if she’s condemning this girl to the fate she’s been handed.

  “It’s speeding up. I can feel it.” A tear drops onto Atiana’s hand. Its warmth fades as the tear tickles down the back of her hand. “Soon I’ll be as old as you. Then as old as your mother. And then…”

  “How has this happened?”

  The shrug Kaleh gives her is one of childish innocence. The confusion and worry in her eyes runs so deep that Atiana pulls her into a tight embrace, holds her as she continues to cry.

  “The fates work strangely, Kaleh, but you’ll return to us brighter than before.”

  When Atiana pulls away at last, the fear in Kaleh has ebbed. “You don’t believe that.”

  “I know nothing, Kaleh.” She presses her fingers against Kaleh’s chest. “Listen to your heart, and it will guide you, and perhaps one day you can come to Vostroma. I’ll show you the palotza, and introduce you to my sisters and my brother.”

  Like the rising glow of a candle, a smile comes over Kaleh, but a moment later her gaze shifts to something over Atiana’s shoulder. Like a hare that has sensed danger, her whole stance changes. “Can you feel it?”

  Atiana expands her awareness,
but feels nothing.

  “Come,” Kaleh says.

  Without ever taking her eyes from the landscape ahead, she holds Atiana’s hand and begins walking once more. They head down toward a stream and a low stone bridge that crosses it. It leads to a path on the other side that runs uphill toward a ridge. Atiana can feel something beyond it, and as they take to the bridge and cross the gurgling stream, the presence grows. “It’s Sariya, isn’t it?”

  “She’s been gone a long time. But I wonder if she’s come because of you.”

  “Why would she care if I’ve come?”

  “I wonder that myself, daughter of the islands.”

  As they climb the slope and approach the ridge, the sky darkens, and nothing Atiana does can clear the clouds away. Rain begins to fall. It seeps into her clothes, chilling her instantly.

  Before they gain the ridge, Atiana begins to suspect what she will see. And then she is sure of it.

  And yet, even knowing this, a chill sweeps over her when they gain the ridge at last and look down to the valley below.

  There, nestled in a copse of larch, is Sariya’s tower.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Nikandr woke to the sound of pounding hooves. He threw off his blanket and sat up, looking wildly about, wondering where the sound had come from, but then he realized it had all been a dream.

  The stars shed faint light across a moonless sky. The coals in the campfire cast a ruddy glow against the sleeping forms of Styophan and Mikhalai and Rodion. Styophan was asleep as well, but the patch over his right eye, which in the dim light looked like a deep and bottomless pit, made Nikandr feel as though Styophan were staring right through him.

  Soroush was sitting up with his back to an ancient yew. His black beard framed his long face in stark relief, as the golden rings in his ruined left ear glinted in the dim light. “They’re not coming,” he said in Anuskayan. He was smoking a long pipe he’d found in the saddlebag of the horse they’d taken in Alekeşir. The smell of it filled the windless night.

  “I know.” Nikandr levered himself up and stoked life back into the fire with a stick.

  Nearby, Mikhalai wheezed. He coughed a deep cough and then fell back asleep. Soroush and Nikandr eyed one another. They were all too familiar with the sound of that cough. Nikandr himself had coughed like that for months. He’d had the wasting then, years ago, when he’d first met Ashan and Nasim. How long ago those days seemed. Yet when Mikhalai wheezed, or when Nikandr saw the dark, sallow skin around his eyes, they seemed like only yesterday.

  “It’s coming on much faster than I’ve ever seen.” The firelight played over the skin of Soroush’s face. It reminded Nikandr of Datha, of the way the flames had burst forth from his mouth and eyes and had consumed his skin.

  Nikandr shrugged. “The rifts,” he said, as if that were answer enough.

  Mikhalai coughed and shifted in his sleep.

  Soroush drew on the pipe, the bowl brightening momentarily, and exhaled slowly. “Soon he will slow us down.”

  “I will not leave him behind.”

  “I don’t mean to leave him unaided. We have things of value. We can find those who would treat him kindly until he dies.”

  Nikandr wanted to say that there were those who recovered, but the words were hollow. They were words he’d used for himself, words he’d used for his sister, Victania. And they were true enough seven years ago. No longer. Now, those who fell to the wasting died, and did so much faster than they ever had before.

  Still… This…

  They were seven days out of Alekeşir, and he wasn’t sure if Mikhalai would live to see another seven.

  “I wonder what it’s like on Ghayavand,” Nikandr said.

  For a time the two of them merely stared into the low glow of the fire. Nikandr couldn’t help but think of the island. With the lines between worlds already blurred, what would it be like now?

  “Do you really think Nasim made it to Ghayavand?”

  Nikandr had suspected as much as soon as Ishkyna had told him that a rift had opened on the grounds of Kasir Irabahce. Kaleh had done the same years ago. And where would they have gone but Ghayavand? “They must have. If they didn’t, our cause is already lost.”

  Soroush was quiet for a time, his eyes searching through the darkness, and when he spoke, his voice was distant. “I wonder sometimes if the fates hadn’t meant for the world to end those many years ago during the sundering. I wonder if the failing of the Al-Aqim to bring about indaraqiram was in the eyes of the fates a failure to bring about the end of our world.”

  “So that they could what? Make it anew?”

  “It is told so, in the ancient texts, and in the songs of our grandmothers.”

  “But the fates see all, do they not?”

  “Nyet.” Soroush had been about to draw on the pipe again, but he stopped and stabbed the mouthpiece at Nikandr. “They do not. They guide us, certainly. They see into the distance, well beyond the horizon. But their concerns are not with us and us alone. They worry over Adhiya. They worry over the heavens. They set the world in motion, but they do not guide our every move.”

  “Is this the same man I spoke to on Rafsuhan?” Then, nearly two years ago now, Soroush had lectured Nikandr on the fates. He’d scoffed at Nikandr’s own beliefs in the ancients, his forebears that watched from the world beyond and sheltered both those they’d left behind and their children. And here he was now, wondering just how much the hand of the fates could really be seen in this world.

  Soroush stared into Nikandr’s eyes. “Am I to close my eyes to the world, son of Iaros? Am I to stop learning?”

  “What, then? Do you think we’re headed toward ruin? Do you think Sariya will have her way?”

  “I think the fates have seen fit to watch the world wither for three hundred years, and I suspect they’re willing to let this play out.”

  “Perhaps they tire of their place in the heavens. Perhaps, like an old man too infirm to leave his chair by the fire, they merely wish to pass.”

  The old Soroush would have taken offense at this, but the Soroush that sat beneath the centuries-old yew merely turned toward the fire and drew breath from his pipe. “Perhaps you’re right. And if that’s so, we are on our own. You. Me.” He nodded his head toward Mikhalai, who had fallen into a fitful sleep. His breathing came heavy though. It was a familiar pattern. Soon he would wake again, coughing.

  “I will not leave him behind,” Nikandr said. “He may make it home. He deserves the chance to die on the islands where he was born.”

  Soroush nodded. “I understand.”

  He didn’t agree, but he understood, and for now that was good enough.

  As they rode the next day, Nikandr couldn’t stop thinking about Mikhalai. They made decent enough time, but the following day, the broad-shouldered strelet was indeed riding more slowly. He would devolve into coughing fits and riding, of course, did nothing to help. They would stop and give him water and a bit of time to recover, and then they’d be off again, but within a few hours, sometimes less, it would start again.

  Nikandr didn’t want to consider what Soroush had said, but what sort of life was this? He had so little time left. Why use it up by riding along a road that could lead only to his death? Why not give him a day or two of comfort before he died, no matter that it made Nikandr feel like a coward?

  The next morning, Mikhalai was gone.

  Nikandr remembered waking in the middle of the night from Mikhalai’s coughs. They’d died off as Mikhalai walked away from camp, but Nikandr was so groggy he’d thought that Mikhalai had merely left to spare them the burden of listening to it. But now it was clear he’d snuck away. Strong Mikhalai. Perhaps he’d heard Soroush and Nikandr talking, or perhaps the thought had come to him on his own. Either way, he’d done what he thought best for his prince and the others.

  As Styophan and Rodion finished packing their things and mounted, they looked to Nikandr.

  “It’s better for him this way,” Nikandr said. />
  Styophan bowed his head. “Of course, My Lord Prince.”

  “He might not have finished the day’s ride,” Rodion added.

  They went on ahead, catching up with Soroush, while Nikandr mounted his own horse. Nikandr sent one last glance toward the woods where he’d heard Mikhalai coughing.

  “Go well, brave soul,” he whispered, then whipped the reins.

  Two weeks out from Alekeşir, as Nikandr coaxed a fire to life for evening camp, he felt something from his soulstone, a presence, one of the Matri, but not Ishkyna. A moment later, a rook flapped down through the winterdead trees and landed on the fallen log he was sitting on.

  By the ancients, it was Yrfa, his mother’s favorite rook.

  The bird cawed once, then clucked and pecked the soft white bark. Nikandr could only stare for a moment. This was like a memory, so long had it been since they’d spoken. And the feeling in his chest. It was like the brightness of spring after long, dark winter.

  Despite himself, a broad smile came over him. “It’s good to see you, Mother.”

  Styophan, who was nearby tending to the horses while Rodion and Soroush hunted, bowed his head and took his leave, grabbing their water skins and heading for the nearby stream.

  The feeling in Nikandr’s chest broadened as the rook looked him over, its head swiveling in twitchy movements. “Nischka,” the bird called in a long, low moan. “You’ve been gone too long, my son.”

  Too long, indeed, Nikandr thought. The war and the recovery of the islands had taken the Matri’s attention, and by then Nikandr and Atiana and the others had traveled too far. Then, the only one who could find them was Ishkyna, but she was too often needed closer to Anuskaya, and so communication had been sporadic at best.

  Years ago it would have been impossible for a Matra to have traveled this far, and even more difficult for her to assume a rook while doing so. But then the Spar on Galahesh had been built. Since then, since Muqallad and Sariya’s failed ritual, the ruined center of the bridge had been rebuilt, and the fluctuations of the aether had settled to the point that the Matri could cross. They could assume rooks and speak from distances much greater than they’d ever thought possible. Strange, Nikandr thought, to have profited from that bridge, a thing that had been created to destroy not merely the islands, but the entire world.