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.
“Sukharam, 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.
And then Sukharam and Nasim and Ashan were left staring at one another, wondering what had happened.
But Nasim already knew. Her touch was unmistakable.
He looked down the slope, past Ashan.
A woman strode forward with men in red robes trailing behind her. He was surprised to see, however, not Kaleh but Ushai, holding the glowing Atalayina in her good right hand.
He knew this wasn’t Ushai, however.
This was Sariya. And she’d come to finish things.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
A cold rain fell hard and relentless as Nikandr, holding tight to the sail lines of a skiff that bucked in the heavy winds, flew over the Sea of Tabriz. The skiff could hold twenty, but instead held only three others: Soroush, Borund, and Sayyed, Vostroma’s most skilled dhoshaqiram. Soroush and Sayyed both wore the woolen robes of the Aramahn while Nikandr and Borund wore heavily oiled cherkesskas.
Despite the objections from the others, Nikandr stood while summoning the wind. “Conserve your strength,” Sayyed had told him. But the lines in Nikandr’s hands were the only things keeping him awake. Were he to sit on one of the thwarts he would surely fall asleep, and that was something they could not afford. Not now that they were so close to the end of their journey.
Nikandr spotted something in the seas far ahead. At first he thought it was nothing. A low, black cloud. A patch of rain. But then he recognized it for what it was. With skies the color of ash and a sea of solid pewter, the gloomy hint of an island could be seen through the rain. It was Ghayavand, where all of this had begun, where it would end as well, one way or another. The mere sight of the island made his heart speed up, but it was the burgeoning feeling in his chest that made his eyes lose their heaviness, that made him feel real hope for the first time in days. Is it truly you? He took his soulstone out from inside his shirt and held it in one hand. They were still leagues from Ghayavand’s shores, and already he could feel her presence. He’d abandoned Atiana in Kohor, yet here she was, so close he wanted nothing more than to guide the skiff straight to her.
But he couldn’t. Not yet. Hear me, my love. He gripped the stone tighter. I’m on my way.
“The island’s ahead,” Nikandr said, pointing to it. “Just there.”
Borund scanned the skies around the island with a leather-and-brass spyglass as rain pelted down against his brown hair and curly beard. He held the glass with fingers that had once been fat, but were no longer. His time at the warfront had seen him lose two stones at the least. “If they’re there, the rain’s too thick to see them.”
To the fore of the skiff, and windward, the sky was dark and angry. “They must be close,” Nikandr said. “Perhaps the storm’s delayed them.”
Borund took his eye away from the spyglass long enough to look to Sayyed. “What say you? Can you feel anything?”
The old Aramahn, dressed in robes of orange and copper, shook his head. “I feel too much.” His sodden grey beard waggled as he spoke, but he didn’t seem bothered by the weather, nor had he been since they’d taken to the winds. “It’s become difficult to control the dhoshahezhan.” He glanced up beyond Nikandr, to the sky above. “You must feel the same.”
Nikandr shook his head. “I do not.” It felt strange to say so, knowing how difficult it was for Sayyed, how difficult it should be for him, but the truth was that it wasn’t. He was still bonded with the very same havahezhan he’d found on the plains of Yrstanla.
Just then Nikandr felt something spread across the sea. His bones ached from it, just as they had in Shadam Khoreh when the wards had fallen. The same was happening now. The inner wards, he realized. They’d finally given way, which meant that nothing now stood between Sariya and her ultimate goal.
“Give me the glass,” Nikandr said.
Borund handed it over.
Nikandr scanned the skies ahead, and for long minutes saw nothing, but then, as the rain lightened, his heart sank. Dozens of windships, small as blackbirds, were sailing the wind near the island. He could tell by the very shape of them that they were ships of the Grand Duchy. Despite the sleepless nights of flying, despite pushing themselves to the very edge of exhaustion, they’d arrived too late.
As he watched, the distant thunder of cannons came to him. The battle was beginning in earnest.
Nikandr handed the spyglass to Borund, who took it and scanned ahead, his lips set in a grim line. “What shall we do?”
“We go on,” Nikandr said, his heart beating harder and harder. “There may yet be time to call a retreat.”
Borund nodded.
They moved as quickly as they were able. In their patch of sea, the rain lessened and then ceased altogether, the water collecting and draining through the holes in the bottom of the skiff. The wind that Nikandr called forth bore them forward with speed, driving them like an appleseed through pinched fingers. They were hit with one last downpour of rain, but when they were through, they were near the island at last.
The weather was kinder here. The clouds were not so dark, and the sky was clear of the heaviest rains. The ships of the Grand Duchy were arrayed in force, but standing opposite them were things he’d never seen before. He’d been told about them, though. Hi
s mother had warned him about them. As she had said, they were shaped vaguely like spearheads, but they were massive. Thick branches radiated out from the base and swirled up about one another to the top of the queer, floating vessels. They were smaller than ships of war, but not by much. The branches near the tops were delicate, almost vine-like, but the boughs near the base looked stout indeed.
The cannons of several Grand Duchy ships were concentrating fire on one of them. Though branches shattered with each shot that blasted into it, the structure remained strong, protecting whatever lay cocooned within.
In a flurry, dozens of cannons released their shots simultaneously, part of some orchestrated attack on the part of the Grand Duchy’s commander. Branch by branch, the closest of the tree-ships was torn apart. Enough of the limbs were blasted away that it revealed a hollow interior, where a red-robed qiram stood with arms held wide. It was a gesture that seemed so familiar, but it looked foreign on the man from the desert wastes of the Gaji. More shots struck home until the craft could no longer sustain its loft. It plummeted down toward the seas near Ghayavand, the branches unfurling as it went. The qiram’s robes fluttered about his frame and his arms flapped like a grouse shot through the heart. Soon the tree crashed into the sea, and the Kohori was taken down into the water by the ceaseless, churning waves.
That the forces of the Grand Duchy were taking their time Nikandr could understand. They had strong crews that fired crisply and accurately. They could afford to wait and pick apart the enemy ships. The forces of the Kohori were a completely different story. They gained nothing by waiting.
“They’ve been ordered to wait,” Nikandr said. “They’re waiting for a signal. I must go to Sihyaan, Borund, but first”—he pointed to the largest of the Grand Duchy’s ships, a sixteen-masted galleon—“we must bring you there.”
Borund nodded, and Nikandr drew the wind to carry them there, but just then, over the tall mountain of Sihyaan, clouds began to swirl. Moments later a blue light shot straight upward and pierced the clouds. It was brilliant and difficult to look on directly. It shined blue, like threads of pure moonlight that had been woven into a tight, bright beam.
That was when the first of the tree-ships began flying toward the ships of Anuskaya. It took salvo after salvo from a dozen ships but the stout lower branches moved and twisted so that they stood in the line of fire. Musketry was brought to bear as well, the combination of the two shattering branches, their remains fluttering downward like flocks of starlings. Yet as the branches shattered, more grew from the base, taking their place, providing protection.
As the tree-ship continued on its course toward the galleon, more Kohori ships followed, each toward a different Grand Duchy windship.
“Retreat,” Nikandr called to the wind, dearly wishing they could hear him. “Retreat!”
But it was too late.
When the first had come within a hundred paces of the galleon, the branches unfurled and grew at an alarming rate. Thin vines wrapped around the galleon’s bowsprit, then the foredeck, and then they reached the rigging with a speed that made Nikandr and every other man on the skiff draw breath. The vines thickened as they crept over the ship, grabbing men and pinning them in place.
Nikandr heard their cries among the sound of cannon-fire—men shouting in alarm, then screaming in pain until their cries were eventually cut short.
By the ancients, the life is being squeezed from them. They’re all going to die.
Sariya, in Ushai’s form, stepped up the mountain. Nasim tried to bond with another hezhan—there were so many near—but the Atalayina prevented him. It prevented Sukharam as well. His face grew angry and red. He released a primal cry into the air, the pent-up frustration of a young man who could do nothing against the forces arrayed against him. And then he charged Sariya.
“Neh!” Nasim cried.
Sukharam ignored him. He hadn’t taken three strides when a bolt of blue-white lightning shot out from the Atalayina and struck him in the chest.
Sukharam was driven to the ground.
Nasim ran and dropped to his side. The smell of burned cloth, of singed flesh, filled the air. His robes at the center of his chest were charred and smoking. Sukharam’s mouth was open, his jaw slack. His eyes stared unseeing into the cloudy sky. Nasim took Sukharam’s hand in his and checked for his heartbeat, feeling nothing.
“Wake, Sukharam!”
He squeezed Sukharam’s hand, pressed his ear against Sukharam’s chest, and there, faintly, heard his heart beat. His chest rose as the blood thrummed. Thanks be to all that was good, he yet lived, but his pulse was weak and his breath was terribly shallow.
“Sukharam, wake.” Nasim shook him, first gently and then vigorously, and finally slapped him across the cheek. “Wake!”
Sukharam’s eyes fluttered open.
He stared into Nasim’s eyes with a confused expression. And then his eyes softened. “Has the end come?”
Nasim shook his head, nearly laughing from nervousness and joy. “Not yet.”
Sariya strode past them. One of the red-robed men of Kohor grabbed Nasim. Another other pulled Sukharam upright and held his arms tightly behind his back. The men faced Nasim and Sukharam toward Sariya, as if insisting they watch. The rest of the Kohori fanned out, circling around the obsidian pedestal, and when they came to a rest, they faced Sariya.
Sariya stood at the pedestal, the Atalayina held above it with a steady hand. Only when the last of the Kohori were in place did she set the Atalayina on the pedestal. She breathed deeply, spread her arms wide with her palms lifted toward the sky. Above, the clouds churned and swirled. The Atalayina glowed a brilliant blue, so bright it was difficult to look upon.
Sariya, who was using Ushai’s body as a vessel, went rigid. Her whole frame shook. Nasim and Sukharam and the Kohori all stared in awe as a beam of light shot upward toward the clouds. Where the beam touched the clouds, they parted, but instead of showing the blue sky beyond, a blackened sky was revealed, a sky dark as the dead of night. The beam continued up and up and up until at last it was swallowed by the darkness.
In the distance, the sounds of cannon-fire grew. Muskets joined in, distant snaps of gunfire among the boom of the cannons. The windships of Anuskaya had closed with the living ships of the Kohori. Men were dying now. Many of them. And it made a certain sort of sense as Nasim felt the worlds close in. Adhiya drew near, at least in this one place. The aether as well. It felt as though the three were now one. Three facets of the same jewel.
Neh. Not merely three. There were other facets as well. The heavens beyond. Nasim could feel those as well, for the Atalayina was opening a pathway to them. Sariya was reaching up to touch the very heavens, as he’d known she would. He’d realized it on the bridge outside of Shirvozeh. The fates had abandoned the heavens in preparation for others to take their place, and Sariya was now fulfilling that promise, a promise made three hundred years before.
Sariya didn’t want to destroy the worlds.
She wanted to replace the fates.
With the Atalayina and with the knowledge she’d gained in Kohor and elsewhere, she was the only one who could open the pathway to the heavens where the fates once lived.
She was not quite there, however. The path was not wide enough for her to ascend. But then souls of the fighting men of Anuskaya began to slip through from Erahm to Adhiya. More and more fell, their undying spirits slipping over to the world beyond, and it widened the gateway above.
The deaths were unfortunate, Nasim thought, but necessary, for the pathways had to open. There was no other way for Sariya to take her place in the heavens.
Atiana sits cross-legged in the grass below the shoulder of Sihyaan.
Kaleh stands nearby, watching. The young woman will go with Styophan and the streltsi of Khalakovo, who stand at the ready nearby. She might stay to help protect Atiana, but truly, her place is with Nasim and Sukharam.
Aelwen busies herself with a fire. What she’s doing, or why, Atiana no long
er cares.
“Go,” Atiana tells the streltsi.
Styophan nods to his men, and they begin marching at the double, muskets at their sides, all of them wary-eyed, all of them in awe of what’s happening around them. Styophan pauses, however, staring down at her with his one good eye, as if he’s unsure of her orders.
“I will give you a sign if I can,” she tells him, “but use your best judgment.” He nods, but before he can follow his men, she speaks on. “You have been a good soldier, Styophan Andrashayev. A good son of Khalakovo.”
This makes him pause. His nostrils flare for a moment. The veins on his forehead stand out. His eye searches hers, perhaps weighing the sincerity in her words. And then he is off, following his men. Kaleh takes one last look, and then pads off as well, trailing quietly behind the men of war.
No sooner have they left than a bright blue light streaks up and into the billowing clouds over Sihyaan, parting them and revealing a darkness that is nothing like the aether. It is not the midnight blue she has always seen. It is black—a depthless black—and wider than the worlds. It feels as though it will widen like some unspeakable maw until it swallows them all.
She begins to float upward toward it without even realizing it’s happening. She fights to remain in place, but soon she is flailing, trying ineffectually to keep from being drawn toward it.
Sister! Atiana, you must regain yourself!
Atiana hears the words, but can think of little but the blackened sky and the hole between worlds. It is like nothing she’s ever sensed. It is not of Adhiya, nor Erahm, nor the aether itself. It is of something other, though what, she cannot guess.
You are a Matra of the Grand Duchy!
Atiana knows this voice, but cannot place it. It is too distant, her mind too fixated on the depths of the darkness above her. But then an earthy scent of incense comes to her. It fills her mind and grounds her, pulls her back and away from the gateway. It is Aelwen, she realizes. She’s burning something to keep Atiana grounded. How Aelwen might have known of the danger Atiana has no idea, but she has since given up on trying to understand the ways of the wodjana.
The Flames of Shadam Khoreh Page 57
