“Are you ready, son of Dahanan?” Nasim asked Sukharam, who cowered at his feet.
Sukharam looked up and stared into Nasim’s eyes. A bit of courage seemed to spark within him at those words. “I am.”
“Then come”—he offered Sukharam his hand—“for there is much to do.”
After the barest moment’s hesitation, Sukharam stood and took it.
With Sukharam at his side, Nasim walked the cold streets of Trevitze, heading toward the city square and the hovel he’d rented beyond it. As he neared the rise that would give him a clear view of the square below, he saw a girl waving from the shadows of an alley.
“Quickly,” Rabiah said.
Nasim could hear people talking on the street. They were still hidden behind the rise, but they were coming closer. He moved quickly and quietly, pulling Sukharam by the wrist. Sukharam, thankfully, heard the urgency in Rabiah’s voice and remained silent.
They made it to the alley and hunkered down, using a fat rain barrel to hide behind. Dusk had fallen on Trevitze, but there was still enough light to see down the alley if one’s eyes were sharp.
The voices approached, and soon several men and a robed woman walked by. One of the men wore a white turban of the style that many of Yrstanla’s ruling class wore; it was large and curved, like an olive on a thumb.
It was not he that made Nasim’s heart jump. It was the woman. Her name was Ushai Kissath al Shahda, and she had been following Nasim for months. He remembered hearing her name during his short time in Iramanshah. He had heard it again several times during his stay in the floating village of Mirashadal, so when he heard it once more in the slums of Alekeşir, he had known that Fahroz had sent others to find him, to return him to her care. Nasim and Rabiah had fled the capital the very same day, and from then on, from village to village and city to city, every time Nasim thought he had lost her, Ushai would turn up again, though thankfully he or Rabiah—who had become very adept at sensing the signs of pursuit—found her, and they had fled once more.
Ushai stopped suddenly. She continued speaking with the portly man, who was very likely the khedive of the city, but she cocked her head to one side as she did, turning ever so slightly toward the alley until Nasim could see the softly glowing stone of alabaster in the circlet upon her brow. The wind was low this evening, but it kicked up, tossing Ushai’s long, dark hair around her shoulders.
Nasim’s fingers went cold. Through Rabiah, he touched Adhiya for a bare moment, but then stopped and cursed himself for a fool. Fahroz had not been unkind to him, but he knew that he could not allow her to keep him from his path. He would do what must be done, but still, he could not harm Ushai—the Aramahn did not do such things. If the fates saw fit for her to find him, he would embrace it and find another way to continue his journey.
The moment passed. Ushai and the man moved on. Their voices faded, and soon, there was little sound but the baying of a pack of dogs somewhere in the hills to the west of Trevitze.
Nasim looked to Rabiah and Sukharam. Both of them looked as nervous as he felt. They left without speaking another word.
CHAPTER TWO
Khamal walks along the edge of the water as the surf rolls up against his feet. The frothing water is cold against his feet and ankles. The sound of breaking waves is all that he hears.
Ahead of him, two creatures walk. They hunch as they shuffle along the sand. The skin of their eyes has grown over. The features of their faces have shriveled, but their mouths are wide and hinged strangely, making them look like ashen things of clay, not creatures of flesh and blood. The two of them walk side by side, but they do not acknowledge one another. For all Khamal knows, they don’t even know the other is there.
They are akhoz, creatures forged on this very island centuries ago to stop the spread of the rifts. The girl—the taller of the two—releases a call that sounds like the bleating of a goat. It is insistent and desperate.
And familiar.
Which saddens Khamal to his very core.
To Khamal’s right lies a massive rock, dark gray against the white beach and the blue-green waters of the bay. The two akhoz stop near it, waiting obediently as Khamal approaches.
“Go,” Khamal says to one of them, the girl.
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.
Khamal turns to the other akhoz—a boy whose limbs are so frail his joints look diseased—and motions him toward the rock.
As the boy begins to climb toward the flattened top of it, Khamal touches the handle of the khanjar at his belt, as if to assure himself that it is still there. “Nasim, wake.”
Nasim opened his eyes to find Rabiah kneeling over him. His clothes were drenched, and his breath came rapidly.
He swallowed, trying to clear away the feeling of cotton in his mouth, but Rabiah already had a clay mug in one hand. She held it out for him. He accepted it, feeling—as he always did upon waking from one of these episodes—like the Nasim of old, the Nasim who could control nothing, who could not differentiate the material world of Erahm from the spirit world of Adhiya. He was better now—Fahroz and the mahtar had seen to that—but he had never found a way to free himself from the shadow of Khamal. These were not dreams. They were memories. Khamal’s memories, playing as if they were his own. Some were simple, benign, but many were filled with pain and yearning and shame and a thousand other emotions that Nasim felt but did not understand. Not without more of Khamal’s memories to work with.
He knew that these were the legacy of Khamal. He had no doubt thought to pass them to Nasim, to give him the clues he would need to return to Ghayavand to heal the rifts there, but Muqallad and Sariya had ruined his plans and cursed Nasim in the same moment, just as Khamal had been passing beyond his life and toward the next.
Nasim drank from the mug, felt the cool water fill his mouth and slip down his throat to his stomach. It felt good, and he was grateful for Rabiah’s help, but he could not help but feel weak at times like this. He could not help but feel broken.
“He and I need to speak,” he said, handing the mug back to Rabiah.
By the light of the crescent moon coming in through their lone window, he saw Rabiah nod, but he also saw the look of hurt in her eyes.
“We’ll be back as soon as we’re able,” was all he could think to say.
He tapped Sukharam on the shoulder. The boy jerked his head up and looked around the room wildly. He focused on Nasim, and then looked away. This was a boy that had trouble facing his fears. It was a habit Nasim was going to have to break him of.
Assuming he came.
“Come,” Nasim said. “We have things to discuss.”
Sukharam stood without a word. He looked at Rabiah, who watched this exchange before lying down on her pallet and turning her back to them.
If Sukharam was confused by this, he said nothing of it. He followed Nasim out from their hovel, a room in the slums of Trevitze for which they had promised thrice the price for a bit of discretion. The air was chill. Their footsteps crunched softly over the frost-rimed grass. Around them were ramshackle homes, all of them dark, leaving Nasim feeling alone in the world with only Sukharam as his companion. In many ways, this was very much the way of things.
“You should know that you are free to leave. You owe me nothing.”
When Sukharam responded, his voice was tentative. Weak. “I owe you my life.”
“Your life is your own, to do with as you will.”
Sukharam did not respond, so Nasim gave him time to consider this. They turned to the east and took a narrow alley that led to a wider road. As they took this toward a bare, rocky hill, the bulk of Trevitze fell behind them, and as they rose higher along the hill, they could see more and more of the city described
by the moonlight and the occasional lantern lit within a distant window.
“Do you know of the blight?” Nasim asked.
“I know of the blight, and I know of you.”
“I was not aware the news had traveled so far.”
Sukharam shrugged. “Even at the orphanage the word of the Aramahn comes.”
“Then perhaps you’ve heard what I go to do.”
“Neh”—he sounded ashamed—“I have not.”
“I wish to heal the wound that festers in our world. Those who go to Ghayavand will be three. I am the first, Rabiah the second, and you, I hope, will be the third.”
“And yet you said I owe you nothing.”
“That is true, Sukharam. I would not press this upon you. If I did, we would be doomed before we ever left for the island.” The road became more steep, their breathing more labored. “I will tell you more, Sukharam, son of Dahanan, and then you will have a choice—to stay or to go—but I hope that whatever you decide that you will keep this between only us. Much depends on it.”
“I will,” Sukharam said quickly. “Of course I will.”
“Do not make this promise lightly.”
This time, Sukharam took longer before responding. “I do not.”
They reached the top of the hill, and Nasim paused, waving one hand to indicate their surroundings. To the west lay Trevitze, calm and quiet, and beyond it the dark and imposing peaks of the Sitalyas. To the east was the Sea of Tabriz, her waters distinguishable only by the blackness that lay beneath the subtle blanket of stars.
“If you have heard of me, then you have heard about the conflict on Khalakovo, but I wonder if you’ve heard anything close to the truth. Perhaps you’ve heard that I started the war by killing Stasa Bolgravya. Perhaps you’ve heard that I ended the war by killing Soroush Wahad al Gatha. Perhaps you’ve heard that I killed hundreds, or that I saved all.”
“I’ve heard those, and others.”
“As have I, but now you will hear the truth, or enough of it to make your decision.” Nasim paused. He had told his story only to one other, Rabiah, and it had been one of the most difficult things he’d ever done—it felt as though sharing this was giving away too much of himself—but if he were to ask so much of Sukharam, he would first grant him the truth. “Three hundred years ago there were three arqesh, as powerful and as learned as there ever were. They were known as the Al-Aqim. Do you know of them?”
“I do not.”
“The first was Khamal Cyphar al Maladhin. The others were Sariya Quljan al Vehayeh and Muqallad Bakshazhd al Dananir. The three of them had hoped to bring Erahm to indaraqiram. Do you know of this, Sukharam?”
His shoulders slumped and his gaze fell away as he answered. “I remember my mother speaking that word, but I know not what it means.”
“Surely you know of vashaqiram…”
He stood straighter at this. “It is the perfect mind. The perfect soul.”
Nasim, surprisingly, felt a flash of pride. “What vashaqiram is to our selves, indaraqiram is to the worlds, both Erahm and Adhiya. It is what every Aramahn hopes to bring about, a state of perfection not just in ourselves, but the two worlds that were split by the fates so many eons ago. The Al-Aqim tried to bring indaraqiram about using the Atalayina, a stone of immense power and insight, but the world was not ready, and they did little more than tear a rift between this world and the next. After the ritual, they became trapped on the island.”
“How? And by whom?”
In the darkness, Nasim smiled, pleased that even after his life in the orphanage there still laid within Sukharam the soul of one who questioned, who challenged. “That isn’t known, but they were left alone on the island, just the three of them, to heal what they had torn. They failed in this, but they had great hope in the beginning. They had used a stone, the Atalayina. Do you know of it?”
“I know that it was made from the tears of the Fates.”
“So some say. Others say it was used to craft Erahm from the stuff of Adhiya. Others still say it is the fourth fate, cast down by the other three as punishment for creating the world. Whatever its origins, the Al-Aqim tried to bend the Atalayina to their will. It would not, however, be used thus, and it shattered into three pieces.”
He gave Sukharam a moment to think about this. The sounds of the waves breaking on the rocks to the east was the only sound.
“We go, Sukharam, the three of us—you, me, and Rabiah—to find the pieces of the Atalayina and to make it whole.”
“Can it be made whole? The Al-Aqim must have tried.”
“They did not. They felt as though the fates were punishing them. They felt as though a riddle had been posed with the three pieces of this stone as the clues. They felt that they had to find a way, through searching themselves, through meditation, to close the rift with the broken pieces of the Atalayina the fates had seen fit to grant them.”
Sukharam thought on this for a moment, but then he turned to Nasim. He seemed severe under the pale light of the moon. “How can you know these things?”
“Because I remember them. I was Khamal, and he granted me memories of his life. He, like the others, was trapped, and he came to believe that the only way to truly be free, to escape the shackles that had been placed on them and to try again, was to leave. To retain what he had learned in his next life—my life—and return to Ghayavand.”
“He killed himself?”
“He was killed, by the others.”
“But why? If he wanted to return, if he had planned to do so, would he not simply kill himself?”
It was a taboo thing they spoke of. The Aramahn did not take lives, others or their own, and it was a credit to Sukharam that he could speak of it at all. Sadly, though, it was probably a result of the distance he’d had from his own culture since finding himself at the orphanage.
“Do you remember things from your past lives?” Nasim asked him.
“I… Of course not. Not directly. That isn’t—”
“But it might be, mightn’t it? Do we not one day hope to remember more and more, so that we can reach vashaqiram?”
“Of course, but—”
“Khamal did so. He found a way, and his fate was so entwined with the others that he needed them to send him off. He could not do it on his own.”
“So the others agreed to it?”
“They did not.”
A rustle in the grass drew Sukharam’s attention—a vole, perhaps. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” Nasim replied. “I remember some, but much is still closed to me. The ritual Khamal had hoped to complete did not go as he planned. Muqallad and Sariya, at the end, tried to stop him, and to a degree they succeeded. I was reborn halfway between Erahm and Adhiya. I could… I could see both worlds…”
Nasim stopped. Even years after the ritual on Oshtoyets, even years after Fahroz had helped him to regain himself, images of that time returned to him. The lights of Adhiya, the sounds of Erahm, the touch of a human hand and the caress of a hezhan.
“Are you well, kuadim?”
Nasim focused on that which lay around him, the wind and the high clouds, barely visible against the star-filled sky. These things grounded him, but the title Sukharam had granted him helped as well. Kuadim, Sukharam had said—teacher, mentor, father, and many more things wrapped up into one.
“I am well.” Nasim breathed deeply of the chill night air. “There are times still when I become lost. But I have long since returned to myself, and the memories of Khamal come to me, more and more.”
“What of the others, Muqallad and Sariya? Will they not be lying in wait?”
“They woke when I was brought to Ghayavand five years ago, but it is my hope that they fell back under Khamal’s spell, and that we will be able to do what we need before they awaken fully.”
“But you know not?”
“Neh, I do not,” Nasim replied.
Sukharam was silent for a time, perhaps considering the weight of Nasim’s re
quest. “What did you do to me, in the orphanage?” He said the words quickly, as if he were afraid to speak them, but once he had, he pulled himself taller. He was scared. Nasim could see it in the stiff way he stood, in the way the whites of his eyes reflected the light of the moon.
“As I said before, I was lost, but there was one who saved me. His name is Nikandr Iaroslov Khalakovo, a prince of the Grand Duchy. Five years ago he healed me on Khalakovo, but it was not complete.” Nasim reached up and placed his palm over his heart. “I can feel him still. I owe him much, but it was the way in which I was saved that keeps me grounded to this world. In fact, it grounds me so fully I cannot touch Adhiya on my own. I can see it, I can feel it, but I can’t touch it, not without the help of another qiram.”
“You cannot commune with hezhan on your own?”
“I cannot.”
“Then we are lost before we’ve begun.”
“Neh,” Nasim said. “With the Atalayina, I will find a way. Of this I am sure.”
“Perhaps we can wait, find a way to heal you before we leave.”
“I would wait, Sukharam, but the rifts have grown worse. The islands have felt it the worst, but surely you have felt it even here, and soon it will encompass the world. And so we must go. We must go to the island of Ghayavand to heal the rift that was forged on her shores. Too long has it infected Erahm, and it is time it was closed.”
Sukharam was silent and pensive for a time. “Will we return?”
Nasim shook his head sadly. “We will not. When you make your decision to come, it will be knowing that you give your life to our cause.”
“There were others, weren’t there?” Sukharam asked. “There must have been if you’ve been looking for years.”
“There have been others. I found three besides Rabiah that I thought worthy to the task.”
“And they all declined.”
“One declined,” Nasim said. “The others agreed for the wrong reasons, so I sent them away.”
This was the moment they’d been working toward. Sukharam had enough to make his decision, and there was nothing left but for Sukharam to weigh his choices. Nasim would not press. He would not manipulate. Those who would follow him would come willingly or he would have no one at all.
The Straits of Galahesh: Book Two of The Lays of Anuskaya Page 3
