They neared the wrought-iron fence surrounding the tower. The akhoz—dozens of them now—became more animated. When Nasim touched the gate, several of them opened their mouths and released their sickening call.
Nasim grit his jaw. He pushed open the gate. The hinges squealed, and more of the akhoz shook their heads violently. One even attacked another, but many more moved in and subdued the one who had attacked.
Yadhan stepped inside the gate, at which point Nasim closed it. Immediately the akhoz outside calmed. Their bleating ceased. And some of them began to wander away. Many did not, however, and Nasim wondered whether they would still be here when he returned.
He walked to the large wooden door set into the imposing gray stone of the tower wall. The handle was dark iron as well—black, rusted, threatening in a way he couldn’t define. He flexed his fingers before reaching out, and even then he was unable to complete this one simple motion.
He breathed deeply, flexed his hand once more, and then touched the handle.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
He stands alone in a field blanketed in snow. He turns, scanning the land around him. The fields go on and on beneath an overcast sky, gray and oppressive. Only on the horizon is there any change in the terrain. Dark mountains loom with black clouds above.
He sees nothing else, and he is nearly of a mind to begin walking for the mountains when the sound of footsteps breaking through the ice-rimed snow comes to him. When he turns, he finds a girl and a boy trudging over the top of a shallow rise toward him. Their footsteps mar the otherwise perfect layer of snow. This seems like an affront—though to whom, and why, he is not sure.
Nasim shivers as they approach. Rarely does he feel cold, even in the wind, but here somehow the chill sinks beneath his skin, draws the warmth from his bones.
The girl is young, perhaps only twelve. Her hair is light brown, almost golden, and she is fair of face, and if she cannot be considered beautiful now it is only because there is still so much youth in her features. One day not far from now, she will blossom, and men will look upon her with awe. The boy watches Nasim from behind unkempt hair. He is dark of expression, as if he has come against his will.
It takes him time, but he realizes that the girl is Yadhan, as she was before she was sacrificed—or perhaps how she might have been; he is unsure. And the boy is the other akhoz, the one who fell to Yadhan.
When at last they stand before him, Yadhan holds out her hand.
He does not take it, and she stares at him, her expression turning severe. And then her gaze is drawn downward to the place where the hearts of the akhoz lie beneath his shirt. She frowns, and Nasim becomes conscious of their weight. He can feel, as the wind blows softly over the snow, a telltale pulsing. They are not in time; somehow this is more disturbing than the fact that they are beating at all.
Nasim takes her hand, and together the three of them head toward the rise, except now the footprints are gone, and they are trudging through virgin snow.
The going is slow and arduous, for the snow is deep, but they continue until they reach the ridge. Below them rests a lake, its surface frozen over. Though the surface is marred by cuts of white, the water beneath is dark and foreboding. Nasim stops, feeling suddenly worried over what he might find should he continue. The boy turns and walks back toward him with grim intention until the girl steps in his path. The boy stares at Nasim over her shoulder, but then he lowers his head and stills. Only then does Yadhan turn to him and take his hand.
She is warm, warmer than she was only moments ago.
She seems to notice, for she meets his gaze and smiles, as if to console him. What is happening he doesn’t understand, but he knows they have little time left together.
The three of them continue toward the lake, slipping down the slope, which becomes steep closer to the lake’s edge, and soon they are out among the ice, the snow dancing in circles as the wind plays. Nasim feels something at the center of the lake. There is an aberration there among the dark undersurface of the ice.
He drops Yadhan’s hand and begins to run. He knows what he will see, but he is still horrified when he slides to his knees over Rabiah’s form. She rests beneath the surface, her eyes open, her hands splayed against the underside of the ice, hoping for release while knowing it cannot be.
Yadhan steps beside him. The boy is near but seems reluctant to approach.
“How do we free her?” Nasim asks Yadhan.
Her eyes are drawn to the horizon.
“How do we free her?” he yells, and at last she pulls her gaze downward. She kneels next to him and places her hands on the surface of the ice. It melts at her touch, but then, as if in response, a hissing and cracking sound comes. She jerks her hands away. Shards of ice fly from where her hands once were. In moments, all signs of her presence are wiped away as the surface freezes over once more.
As it has always been since his awakening, Nasim feels Adhiya. He feels the hezhan who stand just beyond the veil. They would come willingly if he only could pierce the thin shroud that separates them. But try as he might, he cannot. As always, there is something that holds him back.
He slams the surface of the ice, hoping it will yield. He beats his fists raw, and still there is no change.
Rabiah stares at him. Her eyes take in the sky and the girl next to him, and as she spreads her hands wider, the weight of the ice, the immensity of it, seems to dawn on her, and she becomes frantic. She claws at the ice. She pounds at it, but her movements are slowed, a fly caught in sap.
Nasim stands and stomps upon the ice. A surge of fear wells up inside him. Rabiah came at his bidding—his choice, not hers—and now she sits below him, separated by ice as thick as the world itself.
“Help her!” Nasim screams.
Yadhan tries. She places her hands against the ice once more. It melts in an area much wider than it had the first time. She sinks until her knees and shins and feet and hands are below the water. Her strength flags, and the ice begins to encroach. It moves quickly, the entire surface of the lake cracking as the water solidifies around her limbs. She pulls one arm free, but she is becoming trapped.
The boy stands by, staring only at the horizon.
Nasim moves to him, slipping on the slick ice. He grabs the boy’s robes, shakes him and points to the girl. “You must help!”
The boy turns his head and stares vacantly at Nasim’s hand upon his shoulder, and then he looks to Yadhan, who has begun to whimper from the cold. In response to Nasim’s plea, he merely returns his longing gaze toward that which lies beyond.
Nasim slides back to Rabiah, who has sunk lower beneath the surface.
Yadhan pulls at her arm. She is losing what strength she has left.
Nasim shivers with rage, but he realizes in his moment of panic that he can feel Adhiya. He can feel it through Rabiah. He coaxes the feeling, and it grows. It seizes his gut, and soon it is all he can do to remain standing. He grabs his midsection and curls inward, a gesture he’s intimately familiar with.
The aether, so present moments ago, vanishes, and he feels as though here in this one place the world is not divided. There are not two worlds. Only one.
He can touch the hezhan. They are not separate from him. They are part and parcel of his existence, and he of theirs. He does not bid them to come. He does not demand. It is they, it seems, who voice a call to action, and it is he that responds.
The place that lies at the center of him begins to warm. The feeling grows as the landscape around him brightens. The sun, which had been cold and cheerless, is now bright in the sky, piercing. The feeling swells until the blue sky peels away and all that is left is a searing brightness that fills him and the land around him.
Suddenly the world falls away.
He plunges into water.
The darkness of the lake surrounds him, as does the suffocating water.
He sinks, searching for Rabiah, as the surface above begins to mend, threatening to trap him here. He swims downward, and
sees her reaching up toward him. He grabs her arm—giving her some small amount of the fires that rage within him still—and propels them both up toward the surface.
The ice has closed over, but he will not be denied. He breaks it with his fist, and soon he is at the edge, pulling Rabiah up and into the air.
She gasps, coughing and retching, but she is here, alive.
Yadhan helps them out from the lake. They gain the solidity of the ice as Nasim releases much of the heat within him. He does not, however, release it completely. He is afraid to. If he cannot retain his hold on it, he will lose it once more—of this he is sure.
Rabiah stares at him, unsure of herself, unsure of this place. Nasim knows she cannot stay. There is work to do yet, but she will die if she goes on.
“Take her back,” Nasim says.
Yadhan, her face serene and inscrutable, looks to Rabiah, and then she goes to the boy and guides him to Rabiah’s side. The boy seems surprised that Rabiah is here, but after a moment this passes, and he takes her hand.
“Go,” Nasim says. “I will find you.”
Rabiah does not argue, and as the boy leads her away, shivering and shaking, she nods.
Soon, they are lost behind the nearby ridge.
Nasim already knows that the boy will travel to the horizon after he returns Rabiah to Erahm. He will go, and it will not be to Adhiya. He will be lost to the world, lost to the next—and not just him, but the soul of the hezhan that had occupied him for so long. In a way it is a blessing—the two of them locked together, struggling with one another for so long, was cruel and inhuman—but in another it is sad. Profoundly sad. They will not learn or grow or teach. They will not be reborn to learn from their mistakes. They will never reach their higher plane.
Yadhan waits. She was able to lead Nasim here, but now she doesn’t know where to go. Neither does Nasim, but it seems probable that the stone would lie ahead, so they go on, to the far side of the lake and up the hill. When they reach the top, a plain lies before them and beyond it a forest, much of it towering spruce and larch blanketed in snow.
As he walks toward the forest, there is a hint of movement near its edge. A woman steps from behind the trees and walks through the snow, though as she comes nearer it is clear that she is not hampered by the snow’s depth as Nasim and Yadhan are. Instead the snow bears her as if she weighs nothing. Her feet draw from its surface only a dusting of snow, which swirls in her wake.
Her golden hair flows, and as she comes close, her blue eyes shine, bright against white fields and gray sky.
Nasim is worried at first, but when the woman smiles, his worries seem to melt.
“You are Nasim,” she says as she comes to a halt. Her eyes are for Nasim only; she does not glance at Yadhan, who, so brave before, now hides behind Nasim.
“Sariya,” Nasim says into the silence. His breath, soft and white, is taken upon the wind. “I didn’t think to find you here.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
When Nikandr finally reached the entrance to the village and stepped outside, they squinted against the morning light. Even though it was early, and the sun little more than a wash of pale yellow in the east, it was still almost unbearably bright after being underground for so long. Jahalan stepped next to him and stretched, breathing deeply of the chill air.
There were often guards stationed near the entrance, but today there were none. Nikandr thought this a favorable sign, but before he’d gone ten paces he realized he was wrong. From the shadows of another doorway came four men, all of them wearing dark robes and turbans the color of night. They did not bear muskets, but each of them wore a curved shamshir and a khanjar at their belt, and they wore these weapons easily, as if they were old friends.
At the lead was Rahid. He stepped into Nikandr’s way, much as he had Bersuq’s the other day, and waited, his hand on the hilt of his sword. “And where does the man from Khalakovo think to go?”
Nikandr came to a halt. Jahalan, so often a man of calm, stood stiffly, his eyes watching Rahid and the other Hratha closely.
“We will return, if that is your fear,” Nikandr said.
The rings in Rahid’s nose glinted as he sniffed in a short, sharp breath. “Do the Landed find it so difficult to answer questions?”
“Bersuq gave us leave to go as we would.”
“Bersuq is not the only voice in Ashdi en Ghat.”
“What does that mean to me?”
“It should mean much.” Rahid took a step forward. If he drew his sword now, he could easily cut with it. Rahid looked him up and down, as if he was still offended at having to suffer a man such as Nikandr in the village, but Nikandr knew he was just trying to bait him.
“Speak your troubles to Bersuq.” Nikandr made to walk past him. “We have work to do.”
Nikandr didn’t wish to provoke, but he could not give a man like Rahid the upper hand. Men like him were ruthless, but they were also simple. Push them hard enough and they would often back down.
Rahid stepped back and drew his sword. He was fast, Nikandr realized. Very fast.
Rahid’s men drew their swords as well as Rahid leveled the tip at Nikandr’s chest.
“Enough, Rahid.”
Nikandr turned and squinted into the darkness of the tunnel, unable to find the source of the voice. A moment later Soroush stepped out and into the light, limping badly. His left forearm was bandaged. The area above his left eye had an angry red wound still scabbing over, and it was surrounded by a mass of bruises.
Soroush stepped in front of Nikandr, placing himself between him and Rahid. “Lower your weapon.”
Slowly, Rahid complied, his gaze alternating between Nikandr and Soroush. “Thabash will not be pleased, Soroush.”
Thabash was a name he’d only heard in reference to the attacks on the southernmost duchies, most often organized from Behnda al Tib, the Hratha stronghold. Nikandr shouldn’t be surprised to hear his name, but he was. Why had so many of the men from the south come to Rafsuhan? And why now?
Soroush merely nodded and guided Nikandr and Jahalan away. “Tell me when Thabash is pleased, and that will be a new day.”
Rahid stepped forward and placed his hand on Jahalan’s chest. “One will remain here.”
Jahalan began to protest, but Soroush held up his hand. “Don’t worry, son of Mitra”—he stared down at Jahalan’s wooden leg—“I will go with Nikandr.”
Jahalan looked abashed, even angry. His leg, and the troubles it caused him, was one of the few things that got Jahalan’s blood moving quickly. Nikandr wanted his old friend with him, but he could already tell that the Maharraht would not bend. “Stay,” Nikandr said to him. “Work with the children, and I will share anything we learn when I return.”
Jahalan finally relented, and Nikandr left with Soroush, who brought with him a musket and a bandolier. They left the confines of the valley and headed down the trail back toward the forest in which they’d hidden before coming to Ashdi en Ghat. Nikandr felt strange, walking in silence this way, a certain trust now implicit between them where only months ago each had considered the other an enemy. It was not merely the war they were waging—albeit in different ways—against the changes in the world. That merely gave them understanding of one another. They were bound instead by Wahad, Soroush’s son, the boy Nikandr had sworn to protect.
“What interest has Thabash in the north?” Nikandr asked.
“You can ask him when he arrives.”
“Thabash will most likely let Rahid do what he will with me, which means I’ll be taken to the nearest cliff and shot in the back.”
“Then best you hurry.”
“Are the Maharraht fighting?”
Soroush was silent as they walked, the only sounds their steps over the narrow trail they were following and the morning calls of the nearby thrushes. “Where do we go, son of Iaros?”
“Soroush, the lives of my men are at stake.”
Soroush whirled and stabbed his finger at Nikandr. “The live
s of my people are at stake. You’ve seen the sick. You’ve seen the children.”
“Yeh, and I’ve seen your son.”
Soroush bit back his reply. He walked in silence, but his stride seemed to ease, as if he were thinking wistfully over the pleasant memories of his son. The Maharraht were strange this way—with the people of Anuskaya, Nikandr knew how they would react about death, but with the Maharraht, or any of the Aramahn, it was simply impossible.
“How is he?” Soroush asked.
“Not well, but I’m hopeful. Jahalan and I are doing what we can.”
“You see them, then. You see them, and still you would cast them aside so that your men would be safe.”
By see, he meant seeing them as real people. And he was right. Nikandr was beginning to do just that. “I do not cast them aside, Soroush. But I will do little good if Thabash—or worse, Rahid—runs a length of steel through my chest. We could take them away. We could try this elsewhere.”
“It would never be allowed.”
“It might…”
“Neh,” Soroush spat back. “Have you not guessed why the bulk of the Hratha left the island?”
“I assumed to return with those who left the island.”
“Not to return with them. To kill them. To make an example out of them.”
Nikandr worked this through. “They would kill their own sons and daughters, their brothers and sisters, because they seek a better life?”
“In the eyes of the Hratha, they’re spurning their old life. That is what cannot be allowed.”
Nikandr felt sick to his stomach. “Bersuq would listen to you if you asked.”
Soroush laughed. “Who do you think gave me these wounds?”
“What? Why would he do such a thing?”
The Straits of Galahesh Page 28
