“Pardon?” Nikandr said, still facing the door.
“The Kamarisi sent fifty-seven ships.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
As Atiana floats in the darkness of the aether, the storm rages around her. She doesn’t know how long it’s been. It feels like lifetimes, especially when she’s tossed by the hidden currents. The loss of the spires has made the aether more unpredictable than she’s ever seen, so much so that she can hardly control her thoughts. She feels the currents in the Sea of Khurkhan, feels the wind sighing through the meadows of Kiravashya, feels the roots of the oldest spruce on Galahesh. She feels the fear of a winds-man on the deck of his ship as he and his comrades fly toward battle, feels the hopelessness of a mother as she holds her frail, sickened child, feels the building of a man toward release as he clutches his lover’s hair and thrusts desperately into her.
But then, like the tides that drive the water through the Straits of Galahesh, time slows. The images of the world around her fade, and like honey on the steps of winter, time moves so slowly she wonders whether it will stop altogether.
She knows that this is a time most dangerous. It is a time when she runs the risk of becoming so attuned to the world-the islands, the water, the air itself-that she might soon release her hold on her body and float freely through the paths of the aether. She wonders whether her soul will cross the veil to Adhiya, or perhaps it will remain, forever trapped. Is this what happened to the Matri who became lost? Will she find them when her soul slips free? Will it take only moments to do so, or will it take years or centuries or eons? Perhaps when she returns they’ll be so foreign to her that she’ll never even sense them.
Her mind begins to dull. She feels the weight of the earth and little else. It presses down on her, forces her-slowly but with ever growing strength-to succumb, to leave the world she once knew behind. It tempts her. She recalls vaguely that she has a body, that blood runs through her veins, but she doesn’t care. She would rather feel the stone as it rests in layers, slowly shifting, supporting the weight of the world.
It is here, in this torpid state, that she first feels the signs of another. A woman. Her scent is immediately familiar, and she thinks that perhaps another of the women from the islands-she forgets their names-has been taken. But as the presence coalesces, she thinks not. This one is old-not as old as the earth, but certainly older than the children that have spread themselves throughout the islands.
The woman is not aware of her until she reaches out, and then, like a taper set to the wick of a candle, she brightens. It is through this act-the creation of light in another-that she is illuminated as well.
She remembers herself.
Atiana…
Atiana Radieva Vostroma.
She is a child of the islands, a child of the Grand Duchy, and she lies now in the bowels of the earth on the island of Galahesh.
She remembers the other as well.
Sariya, who once called herself Arvaneh.
Sariya Quljan al Vehayeh.
She is one of the Al-Aqim, a child of the desert wastes of the Gaji, and she lies now in her tower in the city of Baressa.
This realization strikes Atiana as strange.
She lies in her tower…
When Atiana last took the dark, she saw Nasim destroy another tower, a tower Sariya had built for herself in her years of exile on Ghayavand. And now, here she is, lost among the aether as Atiana is.
Was it the destruction of the tower that laid her low? Or was it the destruction of the spires?
Does it even matter?
Nyet. What matters is that she is lost.
And yet, in that glimpse she had of her only moments ago, Atiana saw something else. A plan. Sariya wishes to destroy the spires, not in preparation for Muqallad, but in defiance of him.
In defiance.
Why?
It is a question that needs answering.
She calls to Sariya, and receives nothing in return. She reaches out, feels for her. She finds her and draws her closer.
Sariya is weak, but she finally responds, and slowly the two of them buttress one another. The weight of the earth begins to recede. The islands come into focus, as does the sea, the air. And the life within it.
Only then does her sense of purpose return to her. For so long she had been little more than her senses, little more than the life that runs through this world and to the one beyond. She remembers now. She remembers that she was here not to help Sariya, but to murder her. These thoughts return to her, as does the feeling of desperation she had when she entered the cemetery.
Yet in remembering this, Sariya knows as well-they are too closely linked for it to be otherwise-and it sparks in Sariya memories of her own. She remembers the unfolding of her plans, and through their bond, Atiana remembers them too.
As Sariya waits in the dark of the aether, the last stones of the Spar are lowered into place. She assumes the form of a rook. She is new to such things, but she’s watched the Matri of the islands closely, and she’s learned from them how to control the simple beasts. She tells the windships lying in wait to the north-nearly three score in all-that it’s time. They approach the straits, the kapitans fearing what’s to come, but as she told them, they pass beyond the white cliffs with little more trouble than they’d have approaching the cliffs of an eyrie.
And then the telltale sign of something old, something familiar, alerts her. It is in the tower, in the aether. Sariya approaches and finds Nasim, and the Atalayina. This is unexpected. The stone has never been key to her plans, but she can’t pass up the opportunity to gain it, to prevent Muqallad from attaining it.
She pushes, hoping to retrieve it if only Nasim can reveal where it was hidden. Nasim does, but he is stronger than she would have guessed, and he has help from the woman, the Matra from Vostroma. In the end she pushes too hard-she allows her emotions to overcome her-and she is lost in the aether. It is a mistake she won’t make again.
These memories fade, and Atiana realizes just how strong Sariya is becoming. She tries to retreat, but Sariya pins her down, prevents her from returning to her body deep in the bowels of the cemetery. Atiana fights, but Sariya will not be swayed. She drives Atiana so deep that Atiana begins to fear that she’ll never be able to return.
And then she feels the stone. She holds it in her hands. Part of it is smooth, the inner faces rough. It is just as cold as the numbing water that surrounds her, but there is life within it, a well of power that waits to be tapped.
She has gained some of Sariya’s knowledge of the Atalayina, and she draws upon it for the first time. She uses it now to push Sariya away.
Sariya tries to fight, but for the moment she is too weakened from her ordeal. She releases Atiana, and then her presence is simply gone.
Atiana knows she has resurfaced. She has regained consciousness in her tower, and there’s no telling what she’ll do now that she knows where Atiana lays.
Atiana swims toward the surface, tries to return to her physical self.
She moves slowly…
But eventually she returns.
When Atiana woke, spluttering in the basin, she was numb. Her hands would not respond when she willed them to move. All she could do was to curl like an infant and shiver while cold water dripped from her hair.
Ishkyna was there, but she was sleeping.
Atiana tried to speak, but her mouth refused her commands.
“Shkee-” she eventually managed to say.
Ishkyna did not wake.
“Shkyna…”
Ishkyna opened her eyes, wild and confused. Her gaze finally settled on Atiana.
“H-how long?”
It took some time as Ishkyna looked toward the next chamber, toward the stairs, but she finally seemed to understand. There was a sound coming from above, something like the pop of a campfire filled with unseasoned wood. She stood and moved over to the basin, preparing to help Atiana out. “Nearly two full days.”
“N-not yet,” Atiana
said, knowing that to pull her out now would cause her joints to flare in pain.
Ignoring her, Ishkyna slipped her hands under Atiana’s arms and began pulling her up. Even this small movement was excruciatingly painful.
“Not yet!”
“Can you not hear it?” Ishkyna asked.
The sound was louder now. It wasn’t the snap of burning wood, but the report of musket fire.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“I’ll wager you know a good deal more about it than I do, Tiana.”
Atiana grunted, stifling the pain as best she could, as Ishkyna pulled her out and onto the stairs that surrounded the basin. While Ishkyna used soft cloth to dry her off, Atiana tried to piece it all together. She remembered entering the crypt, remembered becoming lost in the winds of the aether, but little else.
Until she felt the stone in her hands.
With shaking arms she raised the Atalayina up. She stared at it. She felt, in the darkness beneath the earth, as though she could look through the stone, as if it were a window that gave her view of the aether. Indeed, she could feel Ishkyna much as she could in the aether. She could feel Irkadiy far above them, his men as well. She could feel the soldiers advancing through the cemetery toward them, firing their muskets as they began to outflank them on two sides.
“Sariya,” Atiana said.
Ishkyna helped her to pull on her clothes. “What of her?”
“She’s awoken.”
“She was asleep?”
Atiana shook her head. “She was lost. We need to get to the surface.”
“ Nyet. Not until the fighting is over. Irkadiy will lead them away.”
Atiana warded away her sister’s attempts to pull a coat over her frame and stumbled toward the stairs.
“Atiana!”
She ignored her calls as she took the winding staircase up toward the surface. Her knees and ankles and hips screamed from the abuse, but she pushed on, knowing there was little time left. She wouldn’t let them die, not these loyal men.
As she wound her way up, higher and higher, the sound of musket fire came clearer. She heard men screaming, others shouting orders.
At last she came to the cold metal doors. She unhinged the latch and pushed them open with a mighty heave.
“Stop!” she shouted in Yrstanlan. “I’m here!”
She stood in a row of mausoleums similar to hers. Snow was falling and drifting. Men wearing the uniform of the Kamarisi’s personal guard stood nearby, aiming weapons past the mausoleum entrance where she now stood, but at her shouts they all turned to her, several of them leveling muskets at her chest.
A musket shot cracked against the marble column of a mausoleum across from her.
“Irkadiy!” she shouted in Anuskayan. “Drop your weapons! Go with them peaceably!”
At last the firing stopped.
One of the Kamarisi’s guardsmen, the one wearing a dark brown turban, stepped forward and took a knee before Atiana. “My Lady Princess,” he said in heavily accented Anuskayan, “Arvaneh um Shalahihd would speak with you.”
Atiana stared at these hardened men, confused by the silence around her.
But then she understood.
“Take me to her,” she said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
W ith the snow still falling and the bitter wind gusting, Atiana was led by twenty janissaries across the cobblestone expanse surrounding Sariya’s tower. The tower stood at the foot of the Mount. Ancient stone buildings created a ring around the tower. They stood shoulder to shoulder, frowning down at Atiana, as if they blamed her for what had befallen their city.
Atiana had forbidden Ishkyna and Irkadiy from accompanying her. She doubted the guardsmen would have allowed it in any case, but there had still been something about this meeting that felt as though it should be shared only between the two of them-Sariya, as strange as it seemed, felt like a sister of the aether, a Matra of sorts.
They came to the base of the tower. It felt odd to be here at last, a place that had occupied her mind both here in the material world and within the dark. She realized that this was not the same tower that she had built while on Ghayavand, but by the same token she knew that this tower, the physical tower that stood before her, had changed since Sariya’s arrival. It had been transformed-not only in Erahm but in the aether as well-into the seat of Sariya’s power.
As the guards knocked thrice and the doors were opened from within, Atiana wondered if there was an echo of this tower in Adhiya. Surely there was. Surely Sariya had found a way for it to reach into the spirit realm as well.
She stepped inside and found a wide room every bit as opulent as the kasir. There were granite floors and marble columns, gilded furniture, and rich portraits hanging from the curving interior wall. She was led to a set of stairs that climbed up into the cavernous darkness. As the doors boomed shut behind her, the guards motioned for her to continue up. Only after Atiana had taken the stairs did she realize that the guards would remain here.
The room on the second level was richly appointed, but not nearly so rich as the room below. The next several floors were simpler still, but the sixth was the one that startled Atiana. It had little more than patterned carpets upon the floor and ironwork trees that held siraj stones to light the dim interior. It felt as if she were in an Aramahn village.
She continued up to the seventh floor, and here she found a circular room with four windows set into it. When she saw the windows and the bed and the carpeting, she knew that she was no longer in a tower within the city of Baressa. She had entered another place entirely-a place of Sariya’s making. Nikandr had spoken of the tower he had entered in Alayazhar, and surely what she saw before her was little different from what he’d seen. She wondered about the tower’s nature, whether it was something that granted her strength or whether it was something else entirely. Perhaps it was necessary. Perhaps Sariya could no longer exist without such a thing.
Sariya stood by one of the windows, the one facing east. When she turned, Atiana was struck once again by her beauty. Her long golden hair swayed with her movement. Her blue eyes fixed on Atiana. Her expression was not one of amusement or thinly veiled disgust-as it had been when Atiana had first arrived in Baressa-but was instead something like respect or admiration.
“It’s interesting, is it not?” Sariya asked. “No matter how carefully we lay our plans, the fates toy with us.”
She meant, perhaps, how she’d become lost in the aether after years of planning. Atiana didn’t know how to respond, so she remained silent.
“Interesting as well how greed can be our undoing.” As she said these words, she glanced at Atiana’s belt, at the purse that hung by her left hip. It was where Atiana had placed the Atalayina.
Seeing no reason to keep it hidden, Atiana took it out and held it up for Sariya to see.
Sariya underwent an interesting transformation as she stared. She had been calm since Atiana’s arrival, but also reserved-perhaps guarded, unsure how the coming conversation would unfold-but as she stared at the glittering blue stone, a subtle fierceness overcame her, like an owl at dusk.
“May I hold it?” she asked.
Atiana was loath to do this, but she had known this request would come, or if it didn’t, that the stone would be taken by force. She nodded and held the stone out. When Sariya stepped forward, Atiana could smell the scent of cardamom.
“Do you know,” she asked, taking the stone from Atiana’s palm, “what Muqallad hopes to do with this?”
Her words implied that she was not part of Muqallad’s plans. Atiana still worried that this was simply not true, but she had felt Sariya’s mind. She had, for however short a time, become a part of Sariya-just as Sariya had been a part of her-and there was no denying that her fears were unfounded.
“He wishes to create more akhoz,” Atiana replied.
“The akhoz had nothing to do with the stone,” Sariya said. “They acted as sacrifices only, providing him with a way to he
al the stone. Neh, he wishes to bring about indaraqiram. Do you know what this is?”
“It’s the end of the world.”
Sariya could not seem to prevent herself from giving Atiana a patronizing smile. “In one sense it is the end of the world, but in another it is the beginning. We hope, through our efforts on this mortal plane, to learn, to attain higher wisdom, to become as perfect as we can be so that one day we might achieve vashaqiram-a perfect state of enlightenment. And if we can do this, we can teach others, so that they might do the same. And if enough can do so, we can bring the world to its next stage.”
“You sound as though you pray for his success.”
Sariya did not seem perturbed by this comment, but rather, thoughtful. “Any brightness in my eyes, daughter of Radia, stems from the hope that we can one day achieve indaraqiram. I do not, however, believe that Muqallad can deliver us to this goal. He hopes to force it, as if this world and the next can be bent to his will. It cannot, but there is a desperation that comes from standing face to face with your greatest failure for three hundred years.”
“And what of you?” Atiana asked. “You were in the same position as Muqallad and Khamal. What would you hope to do?”
“I?” Sariya stepped to the window and beckoned Atiana closer. “I merely hope to set the world right, so that I can leave it in some semblance of peace. I yearn for the other world. I desire it deeply. So deeply I dream of it. Some days I feel as though Adhiya touches my skin. I smell it on the wind and sense it in the skies. There are days where I swear I can taste it.”
Atiana approached the window. “Then why not go?”
To suggest suicide to an Aramahn was a grave insult-they believed that even in the lowest circumstances there are things to be learned, knowledge to be gained-but she needed to know this woman better if she were to have any hope of judging her.
Sariya’s face turned cross. “I stay because Erahm has need of me, and I would give her those things I have to offer, regardless of the pains I may suffer.”
Atiana reached the window. Outside stood the straits and the massive white arches of the Spar. The sun shone brightly upon much of it, but the far side and the city of Vihrosh were caught in a light fog that glowed brightly, as if the ancients themselves were shining down upon them. The scene was beatific, until Atiana noticed the wagons moving across the span of the bridge. They were supply wagons, she realized. Dozens of them. Those nearing the southern edge of the Spar bore munitions, and behind them were teams and teams of ponies pulling canons.
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