Khamal stops, forcing Muqallad to do the same. “I cannot give her the stone back.”
Muqallad squares himself to Khamal. His chin rises. His jaw juts ever so slightly. “None of us can be allowed to keep two pieces.”
“You spoke to me of taking all three, Muqallad.”
“I spoke not of taking them, but of working together.”
“To widen the rift. To bring about indaraqiram.”
Muqallad raises his hands, as if to forestall the argument. “I told you. I’ve thought better of such things.”
“Forgive me if I doubt your words.”
“I speak the truth, but I wouldn’t ask you to trust me.” He motions to Sihyaan with a look over his shoulder and a wave of his hand. “I ask you to trust Sariya.”
“She’s become too close to you.”
“She hasn’t,” Muqallad said.
“She visits you often, and you visit her.”
“She’s been trying to dissuade me, Khamal. And she’s succeeded. We will meditate, as we have. We will learn. We will heal what has been torn. It’s time we began to work together again. It’s time we trusted one another. And that begins with her stone.”
Muqallad steps in and hugs Khamal. The gesture is surprising, but also tender. They haven’t done so in years. Decades.
“Don’t believe me,” Muqallad says as he pulls away and grasps Khamal by his shoulders. “Believe her. Go to her when she returns and speak to her of it. It’s time we voiced our fears and brought them into the light of day. Only then can we move forward.”
Khamal doesn’t know what to say, but he can’t deny that he wishes to speak to Sariya as they used to. He also wants to believe that Muqallad speaks the truth, but he knows that these are lies spilling from his mouth. It’s why Khamal stole Sariya’s stone in the first place. She and Muqallad had already begun making plans against him. But they need that stone, and they don’t know where it is. They cannot risk forcing the issue, not while there’s a chance he’ll give it up willingly.
Khamal had hoped that he would be able to find a way to get Muqallad’s stone as well. But it’s too late for that. He needs to find a place to hide the stone so that they won’t find it, at least until his own plans bear fruit.
“I’ll speak with her,” Khamal says at last.
“Good,” Muqallad says. “That is good.”
Nasim woke, sweating.
The room was dark, and he could sense more than see Rabiah kneeling over him.
“It’s all right,” Rabiah said, stroking his hair.
It felt good, her tender touch, but it came so close on the heels of the bitter emotions he’d borne witness to that he pushed her hand away.
“It’s all right…”
He could hear the hurt in her voice, but there was nothing he could do about it. Not now.
“I’m here,” he said simply, giving her an indication that he was once more in command of his surroundings.
“Khamal?” she asked.
“Who else?”
“What did you see?”
He shook his head against the floor, feeling powerless. He pulled himself upright and shuffled along the floor until his back was against the wall of the small house the three of them shared. They’d found it on their long walk back from the celestia. It felt strange, sleeping in a home as ancient as this one, but they had needed something besides the skiff, so they’d taken it for their own.
He could make out Sukharam’s outline, and could tell he wasn’t breathing heavily, so he assumed he was awake. A part of him wished Sukharam wasn’t here-he wished he was alone with Rabiah-but he knew that such thoughts were foolish, selfish. He needed help, and what’s more, he needed to spread the knowledge that he gained to those he could trust. There was a strong likelihood that he wouldn’t make it out of this alive, and he couldn’t risk passing beyond the veil again without unlocking the riddles of the rift running through Ghayavand.
“Nasim?”
His gaze shot to Rabiah. He’d nearly forgotten she was there. He’d nearly forgotten where he was. Again. It was such an easy thing to do. Especially when he was afraid.
“Nasim, what did you see?” Rabiah asked, more forcefully this time.
“Khamal,” he said, swallowing to clear his throat. “Muqallad came to him in the celestia and confronted him. He’d stolen Sariya’s stone.”
“The one we found?”
Nasim shrugged. “Perhaps. It might be why I’m not able to feel it and Sukharam is.”
“Is that what has you upset?”
“ Neh.” He paused, simply breathing, trying to put words to his thoughts. “It’s their nature. At one time they were thought to be akin to the fates. But that’s not how they were. They squabbled. They plotted. In the end, they murdered. What could have made them do such things?”
Rabiah took up the hem of her robe and picked at it. “I’m disappointed as well. If it could happen to them…”
“It can happen to anyone. Exactly. And if they could fall to such madness, because of the island, the Atalayina-”
“Then it could happen to us.”
Nasim shrugged. “I guess that’s how I feel. That, and I…”
“What?”
“I feel responsible.”
“For what Khamal did?”
“For what he did… For what he didn’t do…”
“He couldn’t stop them by himself.”
“I don’t know, Rabiah, but maybe he didn’t want to.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ghayavand had become a prison for them. Every hour of every day they were faced with their grandest failure. It ate at Khamal, as I’m sure it did the others. As he was planning to escape, he felt eager.”
“He wanted to return so he could heal the rift.”
“Maybe, but there was also a sense that he would be free. Free of the shackles that bound him here. In his heart of hearts, he wanted to leave it all behind.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
Nasim stared at the floor. “I don’t know.”
“It was three hundred years, Nasim. Anyone would grow weary of this place in that amount of time. But you’re not him. You’re not Khamal. You didn’t make those decisions. He did. Live up to your own promise, and your own promises.”
From a pocket sewn into his inner robe he retrieved the piece of the Atalayina they’d liberated from the celestia two days before. He spun it between his thumb and index finger. He could feel its power, but it was distant, unreachable, as it had been since he’d found it. He’d taken breath while holding it in his hands. He’d stared into its depths. He’d sat with the others with the stone between them, hoping to unlock its secrets, to no avail.
Rabiah reached out and touched his arm. “We don’t have to go to Shirvozeh today, Nasim. We can wait. We can prepare.”
“It’s time for us to go. Ashan is there. Somewhere.”
“We can take breath. We can-”
“We will go!”
Sukharam shifted. For no good reason, it infuriated him, though he had no one to blame but himself.
“Come,” he said, noting that the sky was beginning to lighten. “We’d best get ready.”
“As you say.” Rabiah nodded, holding the gesture in the manner of an Aramahn disciple. This, too, angered him, though he wasn’t sure why.
He handed the Atalayina to Sukharam and began his preparations for their journey to Shirvozeh, the Aramahn village in the hills to the east of Alayazhar. As he and Rabiah were leaving, Sukharam stepped out from their home and called to him.
“I wish to go, kuadim,” Sukharam said.
“We spoke of this,” Nasim replied. “Stay. Take breath.”
“I should be with you.”
“I cannot allow it, Sukharam. This is too dangerous.”
“I knew it was dangerous when I agreed to come.”
“That may be true, but you do not yet know how to protect yourself, or us. Not against Muqallad.”
“A
nd you do?”
Sukharam’s entire frame had tightened. He was embarrassed by this, but Nasim would not relent. He calmed himself and took two steps toward Sukharam until they were face-to-face. “Are you my disciple or are you not?”
“I’m not useless,” Sukharam said.
“I know you’re not.”
“I’m no wilting flower.”
“I know this as well. We go only to search for clues. If we find them, we will return. I promise you this.” After a deep breath, Nasim took Sukharam’s hand that held the Atalayina. “You are the only one of us who has a connection to it. Do as we agreed. Take breath with the stone. Learn from it.”
As the wind tugged at his dark hair, Sukharam’s eyes widened. He tightened his grip on the stone, and then he regarded Nasim with a look of calm purpose. “I will,” he said, bowing his head. “I will try…”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
T he village of Shirvozeh lay east of Alayazhar. The road leading up to it was paved in stone, crafted by dozens of vanaqiram masons centuries ago. It was cracked and decayed, but much of it was still intact, including the designs, which were made to look like the flow of water over a riverbed. Well before reaching the bridge near the village’s entrance, Nasim guided Rabiah off the path and headed through the swaying grass and copses of short, twisted acacias, steadily making their way toward a cliff. Soon they could no longer see Alayazhar; they could no longer see the road they’d taken, either, making Nasim feel as if they were alone on an island untouched by the hand of man.
As their footsteps shushed over the wiry grass, Rabiah stared at the hills ahead with a nervous expression. “We should have brought Sukharam.”
Nasim motioned to their left, to the ridge that stood between them and Alayazhar. The celestia was barely visible in the distance. “You saw how he was at the celestia. He’s too unsure of himself, Rabiah. Too tentative.”
“He was only trying to prove himself to you.”
“That may be, but where we go is dangerous. Too dangerous for him.”
“We need his help,” Rabiah said.
“We need him safe. This isn’t why he was brought here.”
“Things have changed, Nasim. We must change with them.”
For a time, they walked in silence.
When Nasim had finally found it in himself to leave Mirashadal and the care of Fahroz, he’d been terribly lonely. He’d nearly gone to Khalakovo to find news of Nikandr, but he knew that such a thing would be foolish. No matter what Nikandr might think, the Landed had not changed their ways. This resolve, the resolve to choose his own path, had taught him something. Trust. Trust in himself-for that, in the end, was all he could do. He could not trust Nikandr. He could not trust Sukharam. He could not even place his full faith in Rabiah, whom he trusted most aside from Ashan.
Trust was a luxury he couldn’t afford. It was simply too dangerous. He needed to be sure that their path was the right one, and the only way to do that was to choose it himself.
“Perhaps we do need to change,” Nasim said to her. “But not now. Sukharam must learn more.”
Rabiah stopped walking. “Nasim…”
He refused to slow. She was just being stubborn.
“Nasim!”
Her voice was so full of emotion that he stopped and turned. She stepped forward tentatively while staring into his eyes, perhaps trying to see into his soul. “You’re so protective of him,” she said. “Why not me?”
He couldn’t speak for a moment. He looked around, at the dry, mountainous landscape, at the overcast sky and the blue gap in the clouds far to the north. “Because I need you.”
She blinked. He saw her swallow, as if she were suddenly nervous, and when she spoke again, her voice was quiet. “You say it as if it’s obvious.”
“Isn’t it?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but then seemed to think better of it. She smiled and squeezed his shoulders. “You do need me, Nasim. But you need Sukharam as well. We all need each other.”
He wanted to tell her that there was more. He wanted to tell her that he didn’t just need her-there was so much more trying to bubble up from deep inside him-but the words, like so many times before, refused to come. It wasn’t the right time.
It was never the right time.
“Come,” he finally said. “We’re already here. If Ashan was taken, then Muqallad would have brought him to Shirvozeh. I need to know if it’s so.”
He could tell that she didn’t want to drop the topic, but she nodded anyway, and they continued.
They hiked down slope until they came to the edge of a sheer cliff. From this vantage they could see to their left a bridge that spanned the chasm below. The bridge’s sand-colored columns rose up from the base of the valley hundreds of feet, arching gracefully to meet the supports to either side. In a handful of places the stones along the bridge’s roadway had given way-from this distance it looked as if it had been chewed away by rats. By and large, though, the bridge was sound.
Suddenly, Rabiah clutched his arm, pointing southward.
Nasim scanned the far side of the chasm. And then he caught movement. It was a good distance away-an eighth-league or more-but he could see the form of a vanahezhan plodding through the scrub pine. Every few steps, some of its leg would ablate. It would then pause, glance down, and the leg would reform, but then a few steps later it would happen again.
As it grabbed for an old, misshapen acacia, pulling itself upslope, it fell and shattered against the ground. Rocks slid downward, clacking and clattering, spraying the hillside in the pattern of a candle’s flame.
“Did it return to Adhiya?” Rabiah asked.
“It must have. When I came here with Ashan, there were hezhan all over the island. They had seemed a part of this place. Permanent, somehow.” Nasim waved to the site of the vanahezhan’s crossing, where dust still rose. “It might have been weak, one more likely to be drawn back to Adhiya, but somehow I doubt it. Things have changed.”
Rabiah touched her chest, over her heart. “It feels unstable. The hezhan can cross easily, but it feels like we could step into Adhiya as well.”
Nasim felt a mixture of pride and melancholy swirling inside him. It was a sign of her ability that she could sense this. “You’re becoming attuned to the island.”
She looked to him, her eyes bright and hopeful. “Is that good or bad?”
“A bit of both, I’m afraid.” He pointed to their right. “Come, the trail head isn’t far.”
They soon found it, a thin trail hidden among the growth. They began taking it downward, watching the bridge constantly, but when they approached the halfway mark and still saw nothing, their nerves began to calm.
Far below, the rush of water could be heard, and they soon came to an overlook-the top of a massive fist of rock lodged into the otherwise loose soil. They rested there, looking down at the frothing rush of water.
“Where is it?” Rabiah asked.
In truth Nasim didn’t know. He studied the landscape, hoping he would recognize landmarks now that he was here.
And then he spotted it. Near a shallow inlet of crystal-clear water in a patina-colored bed was a curving wall of red rock with flowering vegetation clinging to its sheer face.
“Beneath the vines,” he said, pointing to it.
“Where?”
“Hiding beneath the overhang.”
Rabiah studied the wall closely, but Nasim’s attention was drawn by movement on the bridge far above. Rabiah began to speak, but he grabbed her arm and squeezed, willing her to silence. Rabiah looked up immediately and drew in a sharp breath.
There, in a staggered line, were a dozen akhoz heading toward the village. Nasim remained frozen, hoping they were too far from the akhoz for them to smell their scent on the wind, but then he realized that they weren’t all akhoz.
A woman followed at the rear of the line. With the distance he might not have recognized her as such had she not been walking upright, her hair flowing in the win
d. The longer he watched, though, the more he realized she might not be a woman after all. She seemed young-perhaps twelve or thirteen, certainly no older than he and Rabiah-and her gait was not one of confidence, but of self-consciousness. She was out of place here, and she felt it.
Then, as one, he and Rabiah were drawn by more movement much closer to them.
At the top of the trail, shuffling along the ground on all fours, was a single akhoz. It sniffed the ground, moved a few paces, then sniffed again. It stopped, its mouth open as if it were tasting the wind. It remained there motionless for so long that Nasim thought it might not have sensed them, that soon it would return to the others, but then it arched its neck, bared its blackened gums and teeth to the sky, and shuffled toward them.
“By the fates, it’s found us,” Nasim said, pulling her by her arm.
They sprinted down the trail.
As steep as the hill was it was difficult to control their pace. Rabiah nearly slid off a curve in the trail and down the steep slope toward the water below, but Nasim caught her wrist, and they skidded along the dry, rocky soil to slow themselves.
Above, the akhoz was gaining ground. They could hear its breathing, snuffing and huffing, which sounded more like a wounded boar than a child. It hunkered down near a tree that hugged the side of the trail and sniffed, then it reared its head back and released a howl that made Nasim’s stomach churn.
It continued, on and on it went until Nasim was forced to stop, to lean over and take deep breaths to keep himself from vomiting. A line of drool slipped from his mouth and fell upon the dry red soil
Rabiah was no better. Her face was white, and her lip quivered as she stared into Nasim’s eyes. The veins along her forehead stood out, her pulse galloping.
“Draw upon a dhoshahezhan,” he said. “Use it to shield us.”
After coughing and pulling herself upright, she did. The walls of Adhiya were thin here. He could feel the hunger of the hezhan-dozens of them-to enter this world. Rabiah was forced to slow the amount of energy she was drawing in order to prevent its crossing.
But already her face was turning red. Spittle leaked from her mouth to fall upon the front of her red robes, and she tightened her fists so hard that the whites of her knuckles and the tendons of her hands stood out. He reached out to calm her, but she slapped his hand away. She pushed as hard as she dared.
The Straits of Galahesh loa-2 Page 14
