But she, like nearly all Aramahn who tried such things, had been disappointed. She had been unable to feel anything more than a vague sense of otherness that emanated from the hezhan she bonded with. Her time there would often evoke memories, especially ones she had long forgotten, and some she could not remember at all—memories from prior lives, or perhaps those she had yet to live—but never had she felt like she was experiencing Adhiya.
But there in Radiskoye, while allowing the suurahezhan to occupy her consciousness, she had felt another soul. Nasim. She bid the hezhan to approach him, and when it did, she felt something so unexpected that she nearly cried. He was so miserable in the real world. But there... There, he was in rapture. He was filled with joy, with wonder, with love beyond understanding. She had often wished she could see the world beyond, to touch it and taste it. Feeling some small amount of what Nasim felt, she knew these to be foolish urges. Who needed eyes when such heights of emotion were possible? Who needed to taste, to hear, to feel, when the mind could soar high along the firmament?
She craved to bask in his light, but she knew she had to speak with him, not for Nikandr’s benefit, but her own.
Nasim, she called.
His attention shifted. It felt as if a bright star had focused its rays upon her, and though it burned, she did not care.
Nasim, it was you that day, wasn’t it? You were there when I summoned the suurahezhan.
There was no response, but she could sense that he was listening. How many others had done what she was doing now? What had Ashan spoken to him about? And what had he learned?
We hope that you will join our cause. We wish to rid these islands of the taint from the Landed. She paused, but when she heard no response, she continued. We wish you to open the rift, the same rift used to allow the suurahezhan to cross.
She repeated these thoughts many times, but Nasim only continued to watch, to wait.
Did you know that men died that day?
A flare.
Dozens, Nasim.
She felt, at last, an emotional response.
Dozens of Landed died from one hezhan. Imagine what you could do were the rift to open wide.
And then her world was pulled out from underneath her. Her awareness had been fixated, pinpointed, but now it expanded so rapidly she felt lost. She felt the island, the currents that ran through it. It was a reflection of the material world as seen from Adhiya, and it was beautiful beyond description, the currents of life, shifting, slipping, mixing, reforming into innumerable combinations.
But it was not complete. A wound ran through it, so deeply that she knew it immediately for what it was. The rift that Soroush had discovered forming on Uyadensk, the place she had called home for the last seven years. The rift moved like the slow tide of magma on the active southern volcanoes. It drew life from everything around it. It was a corruption, a tear between the worlds, and it was affecting Adhiya as much as it was Erahm.
Yeh, Rehada said, this is what we wish you to—
Pain coursed through her like a river during springtime melt. She felt the misery of the island, the pain that the rift was wreaking on its slow trek across the landscape. It poisoned everything it touched, and though she realized the rift would one day close, she also knew another would replace it, and another, until the rifts became so large, so voracious, that they would consume everything.
She pleaded for Nasim to release her, but she realized with a growing horror that Nasim had gone. He had left her to the devices of Adhiya, leaving the rift and the suurahezhan that now fed upon her to do with her what they would.
She railed, fighting the spirit with all the strength that remained. She thought surely it would take her, would draw her through the veil to Adhiya to begin her life beyond, but finally, after one last panicked surge, she felt it release her.
She had woken with Nikandr beating the flames from her clothes, staring at her with wild eyes. The stench of burned wool filled the air. The dying madness was at odds with Nasim, who sat emotionless on the floor nearby.
She had left Radiskoye with feelings of inadequacy and smallness in the face of what she had seen. She’d had terrible dreams, visions of Ahya being burned alive, of Gierten’s baby girl being swallowed by the earth, and when morning had finally arrived, she had known she would come to remove the stone she had placed beneath Evina. It was a small thing, she knew—Soroush would merely take another if not this one—but it was all she could think to do.
She pulled several of the small opals attached to the inside of the hull off, placing them in a bag affixed to the mast. As the skiff descended, she maneuvered it toward the water, landing it in a clearing between the trees. She headed off toward Gierten’s home. She could hear the sound of the surf to the south. The wind was pleasant, and it brought with it not only the loamy smell of the forest but also memories of the times she had spent with Ahya in places like this, running through the trees and laughing.
She reached the home a short while later. It was squat, with a thatched roof and a gravel path that led from the shoreline to the front of the home. She stepped onto the porch and squinted into the dim interior. With the sun directly overhead it was difficult to see into the room that had only a small window set high in the wall, but she could still see a hearth, a small table, and a rocking chair. “Privyet?” she called.
When no one answered, she walked around to the rear and found Gierten kneeling on a piece of wood, tending to a sickly patch of garden twice the size of their modest home.
Beyond the garden was a well-tended graveyard bordered with a low stone wall. Inside were a dozen cairns, each of them marked with a tall piece of obsidian shaped like Radiskoye’s spire. They held no words of remembrance, but they had a small, uncut chalcedony stone near the top.
Gierten wore a skirt and a man’s shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled up beyond the elbows, revealing grossly thin arms. She was using a wood-handled trowel to pull the weeds among the potatoes and onions. Every so often she gathered enough of the weeds that she would toss them behind her onto a large pile.
Gierten was alone; Evina’s basket was nowhere to be seen.
The cairns... One of them was small, and the earth beneath it was dark, fresh. By the fates, she had come too late.
Rehada began backing away, hoping Gierten wouldn’t notice. She moved one step. Two.
And then a voice spoke from behind Rehada. “What’s this?”
She turned and found a man, perhaps forty, staring at her. His name was Ruslan, and he was Gierten’s husband. She had seen him at the midsummer festivals in Izhny. He wore simple peasant clothes, and a string of small blue mackerel hung over his shoulder.
Gierten turned and wiped her brow with the back of a grimy hand, regarding Rehada with a wholly uncharitable look. Her cheeks were sunken. Her eyes had dark bags beneath them. “What are you doing here?” Her voice was listless and gray.
“I merely came to see how Evina has been faring.” She tried to make it sound as if she didn’t already know that Evina was dead, but she knew it sounded unconvincing.
“She brought the necklace?” Ruslan said to his wife, though he stared hard at Rehada.
Gierten nodded.
Rehada willed herself not to look at it, but she could see a fisherman’s knife within a sheath at his belt. “I’ve made a mistake. Please, I’ll leave. I won’t trouble you again.”
She made for the path, but he stepped in her way. Her heart was pumping madly, and she was just touching the aether to summon her bonded spirit when Gierten grabbed the circlet from around her brow. Instantly her connection was broken, leaving her stomach lurching from the loss of contact.
She felt instantly cold, and her skin prickled along her legs and arms.
Ruslan pointed to the circlet. “It’s forbidden to use them against us.”
“I would not have. I swear to you.”
“You were. It was glowing.”
“I should leave.” She backed away, ready to run. The
circlet and the gem could be replaced. “I’m sorry to have caused any trouble.”
She stopped when she heard footsteps coming from behind. A balding man with damp white hair hanging down in loose curls stood by the corner of the house. “You had something to do with my granddaughter, didn’t you, you filthy Motherless wretch?”
“Nyet, I—”
Rehada turned to run, but Ruslan grabbed her around the neck.
She tried to scream, but the only thing that came out was a muffled caw, like a diseased and dying gull. She kicked, but the older man stepped in and punched her in the gut. The air rushed from her lungs as pain blossomed in her stomach and ribs. She fought for air, to no avail. Nothing was coming, and the man’s hold prevented her from breathing. They dragged her toward the house. She kicked viciously, catching the old man off guard. Her heel connected hard with the left side of his face. He shouted and doubled over, holding his ear.
Ruslan threw her to the ground and pulled the thin boning knife from its sheath. He grabbed for her hair. She recoiled, kicking at his legs, but the other man had recovered, and he moved around behind her and grabbed her shoulders.
“Let her go,” Gierten said, still holding the circlet tightly in both hands.
“Get yourself down to the shore,” Ruslan said. “I’ll get you when we’re done.”
“She’s been kind... She wouldn’t have harmed Evina...”
Before she could say anything else, Ruslan stalked forward and slapped her across the face. “Get yourself down to the shore!”
Gierten held her cheek, a frightened look on her face. She glanced at Rehada, saying nothing, and then she turned and walked down the gravel path.
“Please don’t leave—”
The old man struck Rehada, hammering her ear so hard it began to ring.
“That’s for the kick. Now stop fighting or it won’t go well at all.”
Rehada didn’t listen. She kicked and thrashed,spun around on the ground, trying to loosen their grip on her. She screamed.
Ruslan managed to lay himself over her legs and climb up until he was straddling her waist. His father pinned her arms over her head.
“Please don’t do this. You don’t know who I am.”
“Don’t I?” He reached down with the knife. “You’re Landless. You’re nothing.”
“She is Maharraht—”
Gierten’s husband looked up just in time to see Soroush rushing forward with a khanjar gripped tightly in one hand.
“—and she is worth more than you and all your ancestors.”
CHAPTER 29
Soroush drove the khanjar deep into the fisherman’s gut while fending off a hurried counterattack. Ruslan’s eyes went impossibly wide. His face reddened. The knife fell from his grip and thumped softly against the earth. He grabbed at Soroush’s wrist, trying to pull the khanjar free, but Soroush was strong, and the man was already beginning to weaken.
The older man had been too shocked to move, but then he dove for his son’s knife. He never reached it. He was pulled backward and off of Rehada by Bersuq.
Rehada scrabbled away and reached her feet.
Bersuq was nearly fifty, but still he grabbed the other man around the waist and flipped him to the ground as if he were felling a lamb. He drew his own khanjar—a curving blade with runes worked along its length—and brought it down hard into the old man’s chest.
A ragged inhalation of breath accompanied the man’s panicked attempts at removing the blade, but mere moments later he fell back, lifeless. Rehada, breathing heavily, her fingers tingling, studied his face as she approached. As Bersuq pulled the knife free and stood, she reached his side, seeing details in the man she hadn’t noticed before—the deep lines in his tanned face; the spots along his brow from his days on the sea; his rough, gnarled hands; the scars that ran through the light white stubble covering his chin and neck.
His soul, even now, was crossing over to Adhiya, to join the hezhan until such a time as the fates decided he should return. She wondered if he would be reborn as Aramahn or Landed. There were those among her people, especially the Maharraht, that believed Landed returned as Landed, Aramahn as Aramahn. It was foolishness—an attempt to further divide the peoples of the world—and as it always did when she saw the loss of life, it reminded her of her daughter’s passing, of the day she would pass, of how much had changed for her people over the last few generations.
As always, death was making her question the choices she had made, her decision to join the Maharraht and their thirst to reclaim a thing that was said to be owned by no one: the land itself. If anything, the land owned you. She questioned whether or not she could continue with such willful hatred.
But then she remembered her daughter’s blackened skin in the smoking wreckage of the house—her clawed hands and curled-up form. She had been told of the streltsi, how they had chased a pair of Maharraht to a simple home on the outskirts of a village not unlike Izhny. The Maharraht had taken refuge and had refused to leave. The couple that lived there—a couple Rehada knew well—had been watching Ahya while Rehada took breath on the tallest mountain on Nazakhov. Hoping to protect both Ahya and the Maharraht, they had shut the doors to Bolgravya’s soldiers and refused to open them. Rather than force their way in, the soldiers had secured the doors and set the structure ablaze. The windows were too small to crawl from. They had no chance to escape.
Rehada had returned hours later from a time of extreme peace. She had felt, before being told what had happened, like she had made great strides toward an understanding of this island. It was exhilarating. So many of her experiences had combined on that mountaintop, and she felt as though the road had been paved for even more in coming travels. But then she had found the blackened ruins of a home where her daughter had been trapped by the soldiers.
Rehada’s stomach turned while the memories of that day played within her mind. She knew she had lost lifetimes of progress on her way toward vashaqiram with the decision she had made—along with Soroush—to join the Maharraht. But the ways of the Landed could not continue. She was glad she could do this, that her brothers and sisters might be spared; she was glad to sacrifice so that the entirety of her people would not have to suffer the same.
Soroush released a short, piercing whistle. Bersuq scanned the ground over Rehada’s shoulder.
Rehada turned and found Gierten standing near the corner of the cottage, training a musket on Soroush. Soroush darted to one side while Bersuq sprinted toward her, releasing a melodic war cry as he went.
She changed her mind, aiming for Bersuq. She squeezed the trigger, but nothing happened. She looked incredulously at the musket, as if it had betrayed her, and then she threw it at Bersuq, who dodged easily and grabbed her by the hair. In one quick motion, he was behind her, his arm locked around her throat. Bersuq tightened his hold. Gierten’s face went bright red. Mere moments later, her eyes closed and she went limp. Bersuq lowered her to the ground, where she remained, unconscious, the musket lying just next to her.
As Bersuq began dragging Gierten toward the trees, Soroush rounded on Rehada. “A pretty hole you’ve dug for us,” he said in Mahndi. “What were you doing?”
Rehada stared down at the men, shaking her head. More and more to atone for, she thought to herself. “We should leave.”
“Answer my question.”
“I hoped to secure the stone,” she lied, “to leave no evidence behind.”
“You should have left it to us.”
“I have been careful to construct a life here, Soroush, a life free of suspicion. I would not wish it to unravel in a matter of days.”
“Your life here is nearly at an end, Rehada.”
“Think well on this, Soroush. All of this could still fall around our ears. I still have Nikandr’s trust. Would you throw that away for nothing?”
He paused, breathing heavily, glancing eastward toward Radiskoye. “That will not matter after tonight.”
“Why?”
“We
are taking Nasim back.”
She paused. Things were moving so quickly. She did not trust Nasim, but she wasn’t yet sure she wanted him in Soroush’s hands. “You are sure?”
“I am sure.”
Bersuq had returned after dragging the men’s bodies into the forest. He motioned to Soroush. “Toward the westward shore.”
Soroush glanced in that direction, and then faced Rehada squarely. “Return to Volgorod. Wait for word.”
They left, trudging through the forest undergrowth carrying two shovels and a pick. When the two of them could no longer be seen, Rehada stepped inside Gierten’s simple home. A wooden table and chairs occupied one corner, a potbelly stove another. The hearth was made from rounded stone and aged mortar. The mantel held several pieces of carved bone, a hobby of Ruslan’s, perhaps. A hand-woven rug covered the floor nearby, and a rocking chair sat by the window near the front door.
An entire home, wiped away in an instant. What had they done to deserve it?
They’d done nothing. They had had the misfortune, as Soroush had put it, of being born Landed. When would all of this end, she wondered. And what would come of the rift? If Soroush had his way, Nasim would be back in his hands soon. Would he wipe away the life on Khalakovo as he’d done in this simple fisherman’s home? Would they return enlightened? Or would it continue the cycle of discontent that seemed to have gripped the world?
She took a deep breath, readying to leave, when she noticed movement among the trees. A woman dressed in Landed riding clothes was moving stealthily through the forest. She moved with a certain grace, but she was no woodsman, and her raiment was fine. Fine enough for royalty.
It struck her all of a sudden. This woman was strikingly similar to the pale, blonde-haired beauty she’d seen in the halls of Radiskoye. And for good reason. This was no other than Atiana Vostroma. What would she be doing here, and what would have possessed her to follow two Maharraht?
The Winds of Khalakovo Page 24
