The Flames of Shadam Khoreh (The Lays of Anuskaya)

by Bradley Beaulieu

  Ashan stared deeply into Nasim’s eyes, a parent suddenly embarrassed by his son. “You’re wrong,” he said. His voice was resolute, but his hands shook; his eyes quavered with indecision.

  “I am not.”

  “There was much happening. The Atalayina shattered. This is known.”

  “The Atalayina shattered not from the ritual, as we’d always assumed. It shattered from the passing of the fates.”

  Ashan’s face grew angrier by the moment. “You are viewing this through the memories of a man that has been dead for decades. And even then, his memories of the event were centuries old. Centuries, Nasim!”

  “Those moments are as clear to me as this conversation is now. The fates are dead, Ashan.”

  Ashan took a step forward. They were of a height, but he still towered darkly over Nasim. “You’ve no idea what you’re saying!”

  “The fates are dead!”

  Before Nasim knew it, Ashan’s arm flew up and struck him across the face. Pain flared along his cheek and jaw. The darkness blossomed with stars. He worked his jaw, tasted blood from the cut on the inside of his cheek, but he did not cower. He turned back to Ashan and faced him, as resolute as the mountain above him.

  Ashan struck him again, but this time it was weak. Nasim could easily have blocked it, but he let the blow fall. Ashan’s lips trembled. He swallowed uncontrollably, his eyes tearing as they searched Nasim’s face, searched the darkness beyond.

  “You are wrong.” The words echoed in the cavern as Ashan shoved Nasim away and stumbled into the darkness toward the stairs.

  Nasim let him go. This was a difficult thing, especially for one who believed in the fates as strongly as Ashan did. It was no less so for Nasim, but it was a puzzle over which his mind had been working for months, even years. For Ashan it would be like dropping into the frigid waters of the Great Northern Sea, something impossible to prepare for. Strangely, to have someone else react so strongly to this news gave Nasim a sense of grounding. Having someone else to explain it to—even if he didn’t fully understand it himself—give it form.

  He waited for a time near the lake. He wanted to give Ashan the time he needed, but he also needed to do something while he was still here in this place of power. He reached out to Adhiya. It was close enough to touch, and through this bond he could feel the outlines of the aether, a gauze as thin as a burial shroud. From there, with these realms in hand, he reached up toward the fourth. The heavens. The place where the fates reside.

  Or did reside.

  This had been what Khamal and the other Al-Aqim had done. He remembered how euphoric it had made Khamal feel. What Nasim felt now was wholly different. He felt only emptiness and despair. These were things he remembered now from his childhood. He had known, even then, but he hadn’t understood. How could he have? He’d had no context, no true understanding of his prior life. His soul had felt it, though, and it had been part of the pain and anguish he’d experienced nearly every moment of every day.

  As painful as this was, as alone as it made him feel, he held tightly to it. This was the true state of things. At last, he understood. It was why the rifts had continued to spread, no matter what the Al-Aqim did, no matter what the collected arqesh had tried to do. Even the akhoz, and the wards, desperate attempts at stemming the tide, had only delayed the inevitable. It was clear now that they would never succeed. The Atalayina may find its way here to Ghayavand. He and Sukharam might wield it. But what would they do then? The rifts would never remain closed. Never.

  Perhaps this was why the Al-Aqim had fought, why they’d been driven mad. It hadn’t been in their waking thoughts, but it must have been there in the small places of the mind where one hides his secret shames. That was why the three greatest arqesh the world had ever known had been reduced to squabbling. It had perhaps been why Muqallad and Sariya had been so driven to end the world on Galahesh. Their disgrace had resurfaced in ugly and destructive ways. This had been true even of Khamal, whom Nasim had defended too often.

  But what now?

  What could he do?

  Nasim picked up the siraj.

  What was there to do?

  The Atalayina was powerful. It was powerful indeed. They might try to mend the rifts. It might hold for a year, perhaps two? Wasn’t that time precious? Wasn’t that better than giving the world over to annihilation?

  He trekked up through the empty halls and corridors of the village, his soft footsteps echoing in the utter silence. When he reached the entrance and stepped out into the light he found Ashan standing on the dilapidated bridge, staring down toward the chasm below. Nasim moved to stand beside him. So often Ashan had felt like his father. Not now, though. Now he seemed like a wayward orphan in need of Nasim’s help. He seemed small and confused and—for the first time since Nasim had met him—lost. Their roles had suddenly reversed, and for a moment it was discomforting.

  But all have times when help is needed. Ashan was no different, and if he needed someone to lean on, Nasim would be there for him.

  Nasim traced Ashan’s gaze to the gorge below. He was staring at the very place Nasim and Rabiah had climbed down years ago when the akhoz had chased them. It all seemed so inconsequential now.

  But it hadn’t been, he realized with sudden clarity.

  It had been supremely important.

  Nasim felt himself go cold.

  It had been one step in a chain of events that had led Nasim here. If Rabiah had not died, who knows what might have happened? Perhaps he never would have been able to enter Sariya’s tower, not without Rabiah going first. Not without Sariya becoming distracted by her presence.

  His fingers and toes began to tingle.

  This impossibly long chain of events… It could mean only one thing. He was no longer willing to entertain the possibility that the fates simply wished to pass, that they’d abandoned the world, for in that lay desperation and hopelessness.

  He stared up toward the pewter sky, wishing he could look beyond the clouds to the heavens beyond.

  Ashan looked over at him. “Nasim, what is it?”

  Nasim barely heard him. He took in the land around him. Looked toward the northern horizon where he could see the deep blue of the sea between two tall hills. It all looked so different now. Down by the lake it had felt as if nothing mattered, as if it had all been sacrificed the moment the fates had moved on, but now it felt like all of it mattered. Every single piece.

  What else could explain everything that had happened since the sundering? It would be like releasing a dandelion seed to the wind, to have it travel the world and return to you. It would be like stacking a thousand sticks end-on-end to build a tower of them. The impossibility of it all made him wonder if he was wrong, but it was his very reality—that he’d made it here, that the Atalayina had been fused, that the world itself had still not fallen to the rifts—that made him realize that he must be right.

  “Nasim, tell me.”

  “Come, Ashan.” Nasim began walking along the bridge, his mind alive with possibility. “We must find Sukharam.”

  Ashan hurried to catch up. “Where?”

  Nasim pointed to the tall black mountain near the center of the island. “Sihyaan,” he answered. “We will find him on Sihyaan.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  Nasim hiked up the slope of Sihyaan. Ashan came behind as the wind blew fiercely, blowing the tops of the trees, knocking branches and even trees down across their path. Eventually they left the trees, and the bulk of Sihyaan—from here little more than an angry black beast—stood before them, but it felt as though the mountain itself would soon rise and walk the earth and crush the world that stood before it.

  A strange scent laced the air. It was something he hadn’t experienced in years, not since before Soroush had awoken the elders through his ritual on Duzol seven years ago.

  Had it been so long already? There were days it felt so near, and others where it felt like lifetimes.

  The scent was one of brine and
blood and the bitter smell of a lightning strike. It was the smell of ache and yearning and anger. It was the smell of Adhiya. It was wrapped up with the life of the boy he’d been, a boy trapped between worlds. A boy of both, and of neither. He couldn’t remember ever recognizing the scent in a conscious way—it had been the air he’d breathed from the moment he’d been born—but now, smelling it again, it made his heart race. Made his breathing quicken like a frightened hare. He found himself glancing downslope to his right, or upslope to his left, wary of he knew not what.

  “Can you smell it?” he asked Ashan.

  Ashan was tight and wary. “What is it?”

  “The world beyond. We’re close enough now to touch it.”

  To his right, beyond the forest, beyond the grassy foothills, beyond the white city of Alayazhar, a storm raged, a dark cloud the color of granite rising and swirling into the sky like an elder wind spirit.

  They continued, much faster than before.

  Far ahead, near the southern shoreline, strange shapes began to lift into the sky. From this distance they looked like dark teardrops floating against a slate-grey sky. They looked not like windships that had been framed by the hand of man, but like things grown. Surely the Kohori had had a hand in their making.

  “That bodes ill,” Ashan said, pointing beyond the shapes.

  Nasim looked closer. On the horizon were dark marks. Windships approaching from the south. They were ships of the Grand Duchy, sent, no doubt, by the bellicose Grand Duke that sat the throne of Anuskaya. “Sariya planned for this.”

  “Without a doubt,” Ashan replied, “but why?”

  Nasim could only shake his head. He had no idea.

  They continued hiking uphill as fast as they were able. The slope was not yet steep, but it made Nasim’s lungs burn and his legs feel twice their size. Ashan was breathing so hard Nasim worried over him. He was about to call for a rest when they came across a body, a man’s, shriveled and blackened so badly it was clear he’d been burned. His arms and legs were pulled tightly to his chest, like a shivering child. There was a golden circlet on his brow with five stones set into it.

  Nasim reached down and pried the circlet from around his head. It came only as the skin beneath it crumbled in charred chunks. There was a feel about this, a certain scent in the very air around this place. “What could have made him do it?” Nasim asked as he wiped the soot from the stones.

  “Sukharam?” Ashan asked. “You’re sure?”

  “I am. He’s become desperate.” Nasim set the circlet gently on the burned man’s chest. “I wonder if it’s too late now to reach him.” He had hoped to find Sukharam, to convince him to help, but now Nasim wasn’t at all sure that was the right course. As much as Sukharam doubted Nasim’s place on Sihyaan, Nasim now doubted his. He was powerful, true, but brash. Too brash.

  “Come,” Ashan said, still breathing hard. “Time grows short.”

  They pressed harder after this, attacking the hill with a desperation that matched their fear. But soon Ashan could no longer keep up.

  “Go on,” Ashan said. “Find him.”

  Nasim nodded, outdistancing Ashan quickly. But he stopped when he reached the second body, another dressed in the red robes of the Kohori. He was not burned. The ground was trampled nearby, and beyond that, near a stand of trees, were three skiffs. Nasim wondered vaguely how the man had died, but his thoughts were interrupted by the third body, and the fourth and the fifth. From there he found more and more—dozens, he realized, lying in the grass like the forgotten baubles of a child.

  Nasim was ready to collapse, but he couldn’t stop now. He drew on a dhoshahezhan to speed himself along. As he did, however, he felt a shift in the aether. It was Sukharam. He could feel him over the rise ahead. What shocked him was the sheer breadth of Sukharam’s power. It felt as if the entire island had come alive, and it struck within him one of Khamal’s memories. When the Al-Aqim had come to this place, it had felt the same way.

  He found Sukharam over the next rise standing a hundred paces away. He had both hands pressed against the top of an obsidian pillar. It was the pillar, the one the Al-Aqim had used to break the world. Sukharam’s head was tilted toward the sky, his eyes pressed tight, as if he were having a nightmare.

  Then, around Sukharam and the pillar, the tall grass flattened. The effect spread like a growing wave from a pebble in a pond. When it passed Nasim, he felt something deep within him, a lament that made him cower and fall to his knees. In that moment, he could feel what Sukharam was feeling. He was reaching toward the heavens. He was searching them, looking desperately for the fates.

  He would not find them, however, for they were dead. The fates had chosen to move on. Whether it was their choice or some collective will of the world, Nasim didn’t know, but they were well and truly gone.

  Sukharam’s body went rigid. He shivered with rage and fear. He released a cry that seemed to rend the world.

  Nasim approached, hoping Sukharam could be brought back from the edge of pain. “Sukharam.”

  When he came within a dozen paces of the pillar, Sukharam’s eyes shot open. He fixed them on Nasim. His face was red. His hands were at his sides, balled into fists. In that moment, he looked like nothing more than the boy Nasim had found in Trevitze.

  Nasim raised his hands. “Sukharam—”

  “You did this. You and Sariya and Muqallad.”

  “We did.”

  For a moment, Sukharam seemed surprised by Nasim’s candor, but then his face hardened once more. “You brought the very fates down from their place in the firmament.”

  “How? How could we have done it, Sukharam? Had the fates willed it”—Nasim motioned to the pillar—“the Al-Aqim would never have reached this place. I remember more of that time now. Khamal touched the fates. He felt their desire. They wanted to leave.”

  Sukharam took one long step toward Nasim, thrusting his finger like a knife. “Liar!”

  “I do not lie. They left. They arranged for it to be so. But listen to me, Sukharam. All may not be lost. We can find Kaleh. We can find the Atalayina—”

  Before he could finish, Sukharam raised his hand above him and drew fire around it. The flames roiled around his hand. It was all Nasim could do to draw upon a vanahezhan to lift the earth between them as a bolt of flame shot toward him. The flame baked the earthen wall, the grass sizzling as smoke and ash burst upward in a fan.

  “Sukharam, don’t!”

  Again flame shot forward, and again Nasim blocked it.

  A gale of wind roared and knocked Nasim off his feet. He tried to stand, but the wind kept him down.

  Nasim drew more heavily on the vanahezhan, lifting more of the solid earth. The wind flagged for a moment, but then shot in from another direction. Nasim opened the earth below Sukharam’s feet, wide enough to swallow him, but not enough to kill. He needed Sukharam to see beyond his rage.

  The wind lifted one final swirl of black earth before going still.

  Nasim came to his feet only to find the grass sprouting around his ankles and shins and knees. Nasim tried to slow the growth with a dhoshahezhan of his own, but Sukharam’s bonded spirit was already too near, and it was powerful.

  Spirits were gathering now, drawn by the battle and the qiram that called for them. They crowded around, sensing a crease through which they could slip into the material world.

  “Can’t you feel them?” Nasim shouted. “You’re going to tear open a rift!”

  The ground shook. Movement like a serpent slithered beneath the earth. The ground lifted, cracked like brittle skin, and Nasim was thrown. He flew through the sky, landing heavily on one shoulder. His arm went numb for a moment as he rolled over and reached his feet.

  In the place he’d stood only moments ago stood a vanahezhan. It towered over Nasim, its blackened face with glinting eyes staring down at him. Its four arms unfurled and spread wide as it stalked forward, all as Nasim tried desperately to send it back from whence it came.

  “Sukh
aram, don’t do this!”

  But already another hezhan was lifting beyond the first, and another further down the hill.

  The wind picked up the dark earth from the passage of the vanahezhan. It swirled in the sky above, just as a twinkling of light coalesced above it.

  “Sukharam! Too many are crossing!”

  Sukharam, however, was content to let them come, perhaps embracing this final end. But Nasim did feel one who was helping him. As the vanahezhan bore down on him, as Nasim scrambled away, he felt Ashan commanding the vanahezhan. He could not force it back—Adhiya was simply too close to do that now that it had crossed—but he could bond with it.

  And he did.

  The vanahezhan turned just as a complex structure of shifting white light, slid downward. The vanahezhan lifted two of its arms, blocking the blinding streak of lightning that unfolded down toward Nasim. The coruscating lightning forked and drilled into the vanahezhan’s arms, which burst, unable to absorb the sheer power being released. The debris struck Nasim across his chest and face. A bitter clay smell filled the air.

  Nasim retreated as the vanahezhan’s arms reformed. Earth extended outward—an oozing mud that hardened when the arms had taken shape once more.

  Ashan was bonding with more of the hezhan that were crossing: a suurahezhan, its flaming form lifting into a shape that made it look as though it were taking breath; a dhoshahezhan, one that was just crossing over above Nasim; a jalahezhan, its watery form taking shape from further down the slope. Nasim did the same—bonding with the dhoshahezhan that had attacked him, and the havahezhan near it—but it wouldn’t be enough. There were already too many spirits crossing, and more were coming closer every moment. Soon, dozens would cross, and then all would be lost.

  That was when Nasim felt a drifting of the worlds. In this place, the aether widened, making it more and more difficult for the spirits to cross. Fewer and fewer crossed, and soon, the hezhan, no matter how eager they might be, could no longer reach the material world. A long moment paused, a moment of relative silence. The divide grew so wide that the hezhan began slipping back across to Adhiya. The dhoshahezhan winked out of existence. The havahezhan gave one last curl of wind that rose higher into the sky, and then was gone. The suurahezhan consumed itself, the bright heat falling against Nasim’s skin to the point of pain before it vanished in a cough of smoke. The dhoshahezhan crumbled into heaps of black earth and grass, and the jalahezhan lost form, the water splashing noisily against the earth below them.