The Flames of Shadam Khoreh

by Bradley Beaulieu

  Only then was he able to take in his surroundings. Gone were the towering white cliffs of the straits. Gone was the tall white bridge. Gone was the falling wreckage of stone and wood and sail. Here there was a calm river with rolling grassland on either shore. From there they headed west. His travels since—their trek through the villages and cities of Yrstanla, their entrance to the Gaji and her desert wastes, their arrival in Kohor and their subsequent journey here to Shadam Khoreh—had not been led by Kaleh at all.

  It had been Sariya.

  How she could have taken Kaleh’s form he doesn’t know, but it is clear not only that she had but also that Kaleh herself had survived. She had been pushed aside, shoved to the dark recesses of her own mind—refuse, as far as Sariya was concerned.

  “It was you,” Nasim says as a new realization dawns on him. “You allowed me to remember.”

  Kaleh remains silent, a brooding shadow.

  “You hobbled her so that she couldn’t keep me down, and that in turn allowed you to surface more easily.”

  “She’ll be done with the Tashavir soon.” Her voice is exactly as he remembered the young Kaleh, the voice he’d heard on Ghayavand and Mirashadal and Galahesh. “She plans to kill you when that is done.”

  “How many?” Nasim asks. “How many remain?”

  “Five, including the one buried below this peak, but do not think of following her. She is nearly there now. You will never reach the tomb in time. Go, Nasim. Go to the next, and save one. Save two. Save as many as you can.”

  There is an urge within him, nearly undeniable, to ignore Kaleh’s warning and run through the tunnel that would lead to a sarcophagus with a defenseless soul inside, but Kaleh speaks truth. Sariya wants to murder these Tashavir—each and every one of them—and this is something he cannot allow.

  He feels no less a coward when he shoulders his pack and prepares to leave. He takes up Kaleh’s pack as well. She will not be slowed much by its loss, but any time she spends drawing water or finding food will be precious seconds he can use. He’s nearly ready to leave, but he stops and stares at Kaleh, this frail girl who lives now only in his memories.

  “How many have died?” he asks.

  He doesn’t have to tell Kaleh who he means. She knows, and she doesn’t hesitate in her response. “Fifty-five men and women followed the words of Inan. Fifty-five returned from Ghayavand to Kohor and then to the valley of Shadam Khoreh. Fifty-five were buried alive that the walls around Ghayavand would remain in place.”

  Kaleh paused, and Nasim knows why. He can feel it too. A shifting of the wind, a whisper from the earth. Far below, in a tomb made for one, a life has been lost.

  When Kaleh speaks again, her voice has grown older, more haunting. “Fifty-five flames, Nasim an Ashan, and fifty-one have now been snuffed. Only four stand before Sariya and that which she most desires. Go. Do not fail in this.”

  “And where will you go?”

  “You know better than to ask,” she says, retreating until she is little more than a shard of obsidian in a sea of black spinel.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Atiana tried to open her eyes, but the mere act caused her insides to twist and churn. She was dizzy no matter what she did—eyes open, eyes closed—so she lay still, one arm across her brow, remaining perfectly still, lengthening her breath and waiting for the dizziness to pass. As she lay there, memories began to return. A knife held in her own hand. Burning pain as she pressed the point into her skin. The pattering sound as she held her arm above the beaten copper censer and allowed it to collect. The blood bubbling as she set the censer over the coals.

  And the smoke.

  It rose in coils, lit by the faint glow of the fire and the bare light from the rising moon. She collected it with open palms, drew it over her arms, down her chest, over her head and shoulders and long blonde hair. The smell of it was pungent and foul, but she hadn’t allowed those impressions to affect her. She had welcomed the scent, had allowed it to take her.

  She remembered the feelings it had brought on. Just as the wodjan had said. Lightheadedness. A widening of her consciousness. With this, she had one toe in the aether, and it was only one small step from there to submersing herself fully.

  Instead of sliding into the aether as she did in the drowning basins, she’d been swallowed by it. She had not allowed the aether to take her; it had consumed her, as if a fire had suddenly risen up around her, and it was that reason more than any other that prevented her from remembering a single thing beyond that point. She knew she’d entered the aether. Knew she’d remained for some time. But she remembered neither her immersion nor her return. And yet the feeling within her—like a nightmare whose details she could not recall and yet still haunted her—told her that something important had happened. She’d found something, spoken with someone about something imminent. Something dangerous.

  She just had no idea what it might be.

  Eventually her eyes fell open of their own accord. Even this, mostly from the sudden bright light, threatened her tentative hold over her stomach, but she continued her breathing, gaining in confidence and control, as she’d done so often in the aether.

  Walls of red brick surrounded her. Above was a thatched roof. No one else occupied the single-room home. By the ancients, the janissaries had found them and returned them to Andakhara. But for what? To take them to Alekeşir? It must be so. Certainly Bahett or the young Kamarisi himself would want to question them.

  She tried to sit up, but found herself restrained. Belts of leather held her tight against the bed. She wanted to call out for Nikandr to help her, but she was too afraid. She didn’t know where she was, who had taken her, and she didn’t know why. As she tried to wriggle free of her restraints, the bed creaked mightily. Fear seeped through her, from her chest to her fingers and her toes, fear that she would be caught here alone, fear of what the janissaries would do once they realized she was conscious and able to answer their questions.

  She paused, waiting for her heart to calm before she tried to test the restraints again, and as she did, the sensations of this place washed over her like warm summer rain. It smelled different than Andakhara. It sounded different, too. Andakhara smelled of sage and spice and dung, and she could often hear the bleat of goats and the calls of children. The air here smelled like wood being left to dry, and the only sound she heard was a soft chiming sound, as of crystal being struck. It felt for a moment as if she were the only one left in the world, as if this place were both cradle and grave of all that ever was.

  She tried to sit up again. The leather restraints creaked and the wooden frame of the bed groaned, but this time, instead of silence, footsteps followed her efforts. A woman entered the home through the archway on the far side of the room. She was old, her face so wrinkled she looked like she’d been drying in the sun for a thousand years. In one hand she held a cloth-of-gold abaya—the outer cloak many women of the desert wore over their head and shoulders—and a length of golden thread. She set this aside and moved to the bedside. She stared down at Atiana, lips drawn as if she had no teeth. Her lips smacked wetly several times as she stared at Atiana’s restraints. Her expression betrayed no emotion, but to Atiana she seemed little more than annoyed that she’d awoken.

  “Kaht thadi ab shahn,” she said.

  The words were foreign to Atiana. There was some resemblance to Mahndi, but she suspected this was Kalhani, the mothertongue, a language she knew precious little of. The realization gave some focus to her muddled mind. She was in Kohor. She remembered none of the journey after her ritual had begun, but clearly the others had brought her here.

  The woman continued to stare with her deep-set eyes.

  “I don’t understand,” Atiana said.

  “Hahla kir obn ab shahn,” she said, motioning to the leather straps wrapped around Atiana’s chest and waist and legs. It sounded like a question, though she couldn’t be sure.

  “My mind is my own,” Atiana said. “I won’t harm you.”
>
  She smacked her lips, glanced at the restraints one last time, and then leaned over and began unbuckling them.

  This simple motion—the leather straps pressing against her, the woman’s hands brushing her—was painful in the way the body aches after a bout with the flu, but soon it was done, and the woman helped Atiana to sit up, though she was so ancient it was difficult to provide anything more than a guiding hand.

  As the woman turned away and poured Atiana a glass of water from a glazed pitcher the color of burning leaves, Atiana touched the linen bandage wrapped around her own left arm. The inside of it was dark with dried blood. The cut was deep, she knew, enough to draw blood, but not so much that it would threaten her life when she fell to the effects of the smoke coming from the censer. She lay her arm against her lap as the woman handed the glass of water to Atiana with shaking hands. Then she waited, looking Atiana up and down, judging her readiness to do anything more than sit.

  “Kaheth id shahdn vey,” she said, pointing out the doorway. Through it Atiana could see other structures, most of them homes, surely. Beyond them stood an obelisk made from stone that was closer to the color of blood than the rusty red of the Gaji.

  “Are they there?” Atiana asked.

  “Kaheth id shahdn vey,” the woman said again. She pointed to Atiana’s glass, motioning for her to drink the last of it.

  It was a lot of water at once, especially after being unconscious for so long in the desert, but it felt good to drink something. It cooled her insides, brought her more fully into her body and further from the worries that crept in the dark corners of her mind.

  The woman took the glass and set it with a thump onto the simple wooden table nearby. When she held out her hands, offering to help Atiana to her feet, Atiana saw the complex tattoos that marked the palms of her hands. They were intricate, swirling. They reminded her of the graceful embellishments the vanahezhan stone masters would add to their creations, but these seemed more primitive, more ancient.

  Atiana paused, feeling for a moment as though to take this woman’s hands was to step back into another world, a world from aeons past. It felt as though she would be leaving her own world behind forever. It was a foolish notion, and yet it was one she couldn’t shake. Even as she touched the woman’s soft palms and leaned forward until she was able to stand, she felt as though she were bidding farewell to Vostroma and the halls of Galostina, farewell to the islands and her majestic windships, farewell to her mother and her sister and the blood of her blood spread throughout the duchies.

  The woman looked carefully into Atiana’s eyes. Her lips smacked wetly, and she smiled purely for Atiana’s benefit. She motioned to the doorway, to the obelisk. Atiana nodded, and together they made their way slowly out the door and down to the dry desert ground of Kohor. They were quite a pair, the two of them, the woman so infirm she could manage no more than a shuffling pace, and Atiana in so much pain she could no more than match her. They made their way along a simple path between the homes and eventually came to the large circle where the obelisk stood.

  Nikandr stood near its base. Soroush and Ushai stood several paces behind him, but Ashan and Sukharam were missing. There must have been two hundred villagers gathered, the men and women of Kohor. Some were young, but there were no children, and in fact there were few that were old like the woman who’d brought Atiana here. The women wore light-colored shaylas and abayas of red and purple and midnight blue, and veils across their faces. The men wore kaftans the color of flax, with white sirwaal pants and ghoutras over their heads. Except for the few who stood near the obelisk, all of them knelt or sat, some fanning themselves with horsehair fans, others merely watching, their faces intent upon the conversation. They sat in a semi-circle, as they might for a poetry reading, and yet their expressions were serious, serene, as if the decisions to be made here held great weight for them.

  Goeh stood next to Nikandr. He was speaking quickly and loudly with a group of men and women—seven in all. Goeh, as tall as he was, towered over them. One older man stood only as high as Goeh’s chest, but he had a look about him—a piercing look, like a falcon watching carefully for the leaping jerboa before winging from its roost. This man’s igaal, the band that held his ghoutra in place, was golden. Among all the men, only his was this color. The rest were black or white or the darkest purple.

  The other men and women were older as well, but they looked hale despite it. One, a woman with stark grey eyes and several delicate golden chains running from her left ear to her rings on her nose, was speaking excitedly with Goeh. She spoke in Kalhani. Atiana could understand a word here and a word there, but it was the woman’s attitude that stood out most. She was agitated. Worried.

  Their number—seven—was conspicuous. Seven were the number of mahtar, the village elders, in an Aramahn village. Surely this was the same, and this was a council of sorts, a questioning of the newcomers to this secretive place.

  As Atiana walked across the village circle, many looked her way. Nikandr didn’t notice her, however. He was fixated on the conversation before him. His head turned between Goeh and the woman with the golden chains as if he understood, or wanted to understand.

  When Atiana reached Ushai’s side, her guide bowed her head and motioned her hand, as if indicating that Atiana should take part in the conversation; though whether this was what the woman really meant, Atiana had no idea.

  “What’s happening?” Atiana asked Ushai in Anuskayan.

  “Don’t,” Ushai replied quickly in Mahndi while glancing toward the Kohori council. “To speak your language would be an insult.”

  Atiana thought it was from a prejudice against the Grand Duchy—as the Maharraht would have—but then she realized it was simply a question of exclusion. Many of them would understand Yrstanlan and Mahndi, but very few would know Anuskayan, so to speak that language would be to exclude them.

  Seeing no reason to deny the request, Atiana nodded to Ushai. “Tell me,” she said in Mahndi.

  “They are the elders of Kohor. The man next to Goeh, the one with the golden ghoutra, is Habram. He is their leader. The woman Nikandr is speaking with, however, is Safwah, and it is she, not Habram, that has been asking the most questions. Nikandr told her of our travels and whom we seek to find, but Safwah never seems satisfied. And when it came to Nasim and Kaleh, she asked many questions.”

  Soroush glanced over at them with a look that told them to speak more quietly. Nikandr finally noticed her, and he stopped mid-sentence. He smiled stiffly. It wasn’t forced, exactly—he was glad to see her up and about—but the two of them had much to talk about. And then he turned back to Goeh and Safwah.

  Atiana’s mind was still muddled, but this news was a revelation. “Praise the ancients,” she said softly to Ushai. “This tells us they know of Nasim and Kaleh, that the two of them passed through Kohor.”

  Ushai’s eyes narrowed while she stared at Habram. “I’m not so sure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Safwah spent a good while asking Nikandr to describe them. Their height, their color of hair and skin and eye. Distinguishing marks like moles or scars. Even their smell.”

  “Their smell?”

  Ushai shrugged, apparently confused as Atiana was. “Then she asked of their mannerisms, what they ate, and how. How they spoke, turns of phrase, how they pronounced their names and what other names they might have used. She asked where they came from, their mothers and fathers.”

  “And how did Nikandr respond?”

  “With the truth. What else is there to say?”

  It was a discussion they’d had a dozen times as a group—just how much to reveal once they arrived. “And how did they react?”

  Without being apparent about it, Ushai glanced at the half-circle of elders. “When they heard Nasim’s origins they became animated. These people are closed, daughter of Radia. They do not let their emotions show. But I could tell. They stood straighter. Their stares, not exactly charitable, became even more se
rious, or perhaps shocked. They seemed anxious over Nasim’s rebirth. They know of the Al-Aqim, of course—all three of them have history here—and all of them, even the stoic Habram, asked many questions about Khamal.”

  “What do we know of Khamal?”

  Ushai raised her eyebrows. “You’d be surprised. Your Nikandr knows much. He and Ashan have been talking for months now, and through Nasim he lived as Khamal, if only for a short while. He gave them much of what they wanted to know.”

  Atiana’s head jerked back as if she’d been struck. She watched Nikandr as he spoke with the elders. He was telling them of their flight across the desert and the chase of the janissaries. It was no surprise that he’d spoken to Ashan about his memories of Khamal. She was surprised that he hadn’t mentioned it to her. It was clearly a part of him that meant much, and yet he’d shared so little of it with her since the events at the Spar. Khamal was a part of Nasim, and Nasim was a part of Nikandr, no matter that they’d been separated when Nasim had thrust his khanjar through Nikandr’s heart.

  Despite these feelings of distance, she was struck by how majestic he seemed just then. As he told their story, not a shred of his weakness from the loss of his hezhan showed, nor did he bow over his chest wound—the place where Nasim had driven the khanjar—as he so often did when he thought overly long about his inability to touch Adhiya. He stood tall and he spoke with a tone in his voice that sounded like what Atiana imagined the dukes of old would have sounded like, the ones that had forged a new power in the world from the bitterly cold islands they called home.

  “And when they learned of Kaleh’s past?” Atiana asked.

  “This was strange, daughter of Radia. Strange indeed. When they learned that she was a daughter of the Al-Aqim, they became still, so still there was not one of them that moved. They sat and watched as Nikandr told them what we know of her, which isn’t much.” Ushai’s voice became distant, and pensive. “They seemed more worried over her than Nasim, which is strange since his story seems more improbable. But I tell you this, it makes me nervous. They’re secretive, these people. They protect Kohor ruthlessly, refusing to let even the forces of Yrstanla within their borders except for a select few days of the year. You may not remember, but the janissaries chased us to the very edge of this valley. And when they did, the Kohori rose up and shot them with arrows. They protect their secrets carefully, and if that is so, what would they do if they fear that some have been taken from them?”