The Flames of Shadam Khoreh (The Lays of Anuskaya)

by Bradley Beaulieu

  As she often did, Atiana rode beside him. He could feel her stare. He turned and saw a look upon her face that on the surface was pleasant, but there was that look of concern. She knew what he was feeling.

  “If I continue at this plodding pace for another minute,” he told her, “I’ll go mad.” He motioned down to the long, narrow valley on their right. “I’m going to ride hard for a while.” He reined his ab-sair closer and leaned in to kiss her. “I’ll meet you at the far end.”

  She held his hand, refusing to let go for a moment. “Be careful. Goeh said we’d be coming close to Kohor today. And the janissaries may not be far behind.”

  “We’ve seen no sign of them for over a week,” he said. “We’re making good time, and with any luck, they’ve given up the chase.”

  “Or they’re pushing to move ahead of us.”

  He squeezed her hand back. “Then I’m doubly safe for now.”

  Just then a gust blew Atiana’s left sleeve up, revealing a bandage with dried red blood on the inside of her forearm. Atiana pulled her sleeve back in place quickly, as if she were embarrassed over it.

  “What’s that?” Nikandr asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “It looks serious.”

  “It’s nothing. I only scraped myself on a thorn.”

  Atiana had been leaving the camp last night—to try to find Ishkyna, she’d said. “You shouldn’t leave the camp for so long.”

  “We have to find her,” Atiana replied easily. “She can tell us much, but she may have lost her way to us. I can’t find her with so many of you near.” Before he could say anything further, she pointed to the valley below. “Go. Breathe.” And with that she kicked her mount to a faster pace, leaving him behind as she rode toward Goeh at the head of the line.

  He thought of catching up to her and pressing her on it, but there was no point. They were distant enough without him pushing her to speak of things she clearly didn’t wish to speak of, so he pulled his ab-sair to a stop and waited for the rest of them to pass. Ashan and Soroush gave him concerned but understanding looks—they knew, at least to a degree, what he was going through. Ushai barely acknowledged him, and Sukharam merely rode on obliviously, either too lost in thought or caring little what became of Nikandr. When Nikandr had lost sight of them, he pulled at the reins. The beast snorted, champing at its bit and shaking its head, but then it complied.

  When he reached the valley floor, the tightness in his chest eased. He was alone, or as alone as he was going to get in this place of wide valleys and dried grass. The way ahead was clear and flat. On either side of him were gently sloping hills covered with grey-green sage and red-brown dirt.

  He took out his soulstone and kissed it. “I’m sorry,” he whispered to it. In the months since Galahesh, he’d felt more and more as though he had betrayed his past by allowing himself to touch the hezhan. Whether or not he’d had any choice in the matter wasn’t the point. He’d done it, and he’d become a pariah everywhere except Khalakovo, and even there, many looked on him with cold and mistrustful eyes when once they would have hailed him, invited him to their homes for warmed vodka and fresh bread.

  He felt as though he’d betrayed his heritage by touching Adhiya, and yet he couldn’t help but try again, for such was the allure of touching the wind, of opening himself to the sky and its many-faceted currents.

  He dropped the reins of his ab-sair, letting it run as it would. It seemed to feel the wind as well, for it fell into a gallop that felt as though it was eager to fly like the vulture that wheeled lazily in the sky ahead. After spreading his arms wide, Nikandr tipped his head back and breathed deeply. He drew in the dry desert air and expanded his mind, at least as far as he was able. He reached for Adhiya, as he’d done so many times in the past, but he did not reach for the same spirit, the same hezhan. He knew that spirit was lost to him, and he would need to find another if he was ever to commune with a havahezhan again.

  He wondered if he should try to commune with other spirits, but Ashan had told him that whatever inability he had with touching Adhiya now, he was clearly one who would find it easiest to bond with spirits of the wind. Indeed, he’d tried to feel the earth beneath him, the water running over his hands at a stream, the life held within the leaves of an acacia, but this made him feel more distant from the spirit realm, not closer. And there was no denying that he was drawn inexorably, at the strangest times, to the sky and the wind and the way in which it touched everything, be it a light caress or a rude shove.

  His arms flounced in time with the ab-sair’s gait, and soon he realized it was also in time with his heart. He wondered for a moment if the beast’s heart was drumming the same rhythm, but he stopped this line of thinking and merely experienced the moment, for it was grand—the closest he’d come to those feelings of old in quite some time.

  Without knowing why, he pulled himself up in his saddle. He stood on the seat, holding himself still, crouching there as his mount galloped lazily forward. He reacquainted himself with the timing of its gait and then stood, placing his feet onto the beast’s wide shoulders. Again he paused in a half-crouch, but he already knew he could ride like this as long as the ab-sair would take him. Then, at last, he stood and spread his arms wide. He closed his eyes, feeling more in tune with the world than he’d felt in months. No longer was he at war with it, but neither was he its master. He was simply a part of it, and it a part of him.

  He thought perhaps it had to do with the release he’d felt after Atiana had confronted him, pleaded with him to return to her. He didn’t know if that was true. He only knew it was beautiful, this feeling, and for a moment—a moment only—it felt like it had just before the walls of Adhiya came down and he was able to commune with his spirit. For a moment he simply lived in his skin, feeling these precipitous feelings, urging himself to simply be.

  But soon his heart yearned for more, and he found himself calling, reaching outward, hoping a spirit would find him.

  That was when the ab-sair slowed its gait.

  Nikandr tried to crouch down, to regain his balance, but the beast slowed too quickly and he found himself flying over its head. He managed to dive to one side, or he would have been trampled. He fell and dropped into a roll, his shoulder crashing against the earth. After skidding unceremoniously to a stop, he remained still for a moment, counting his wounds, testing his aching shoulder for soundness. “Stupid,” he said as he stood and limped after the ab-sair, which had slowed to a walk and finally stopped at a clutch of adwas to nibble at the bright yellow flowers.

  “You’ll find it difficult to reach it from here.”

  Nikandr spun and found Sukharam sitting on his own ab-sair, watching with curious eyes.

  “Reach what?” Nikandr asked.

  “Adhiya. That’s what you’re searching for, isn’t it?”

  Nikandr swung up into his saddle in one fluid, if painful, motion. “Why would it be difficult to reach here?”

  The two of them urged their mounts into an easy pace, Sukharam coming alongside him as if they were two old friends. Except they weren’t old friends. Sukharam despised his presence here. Or at the very least thought it unwise.

  “This place,” Sukharam said. “For the past few days, Adhiya has felt further and further from reach, to the point that Ashan and I are finding it difficult to commune with spirits. He lost one of his bonded spirits yesterday, and now he’s released the rest, feeling it improper to keep them bound if Erahm sees fit to deny him.”

  “It’s difficult even for you?”

  Sukharam laughed. “Am I not a man? Am I not bound by the worlds as Ashan is?”

  “You are gifted.”

  “Some days it doesn’t feel that way, son of Iaros.”

  They rode in silence for a time. They’d never seen eye-to-eye. For long months Sukharam had seemed like an impudent child, to the point that Nikandr had found himself questioning Nasim’s choice—Sukharam so often railed against Ashan’s tutelage; he would sulk and he would
brood—but then Nikandr recognized, as gifted as this boy was, he was still just a boy. And Sukharam had grown in the time since. He’d begun to accept Ashan’s teachings. He’d accepted Soroush’s as well, and he spoke often with Ushai, who openly spoke of the ways of the Maharraht, which made Nikandr uncomfortable. Sukharam was impressionable, and he’d started talking as if he truly believed that violence might, at times, be the path to peace.

  Were Sukharam not so wrapped up with the fate of the Atalayina and the rifts, Nikandr might have urged Ashan to find another gifted child who might help them, but Sukharam was wrapped up with the fate of the stone, more so than Nikandr himself was, more even than Ashan. Much like Nasim, Sukharam was a boy that had a certain weight to him, and it often made Nikandr wonder if their past lives were similar. Who might Sukharam have been? Had he known Khamal in his past life? Had they met in previous lives? Perhaps they’d met many times, their souls meeting again and again in each incarnation.

  “Do you think you were meant to touch that spirit?” Sukharam asked as they passed a gnarled tree with winding branches that looked older than the hills they rode through.

  “Who can say?”

  “You can say,” Sukharam replied.

  “How would I know? It feels like an accident. Nothing more.”

  “The will of the fates is not always clear, son of Iaros.”

  For some reason, Sukharam’s use of his father’s name only served to remind Nikandr how much he missed him. He didn’t react that way when Ashan used it, or Soroush. Perhaps it was because Sukharam was so young, and to hear someone speak of someone now gone only reminded Nikandr of his own mortality.

  “When I bonded with that spirit,” Nikandr said, “I felt free. I felt as if I were the hezhan, not that I was merely bonding with one.”

  “Do you think it felt the same of you?”

  “Again, who can know?”

  Sukharam turned in his saddle and regarded Nikandr with a look, not of disdain, but certainly disappointment. “You can know. Do you think that the Aramahn bond with spirits without considering these things? Do you not think that we share of ourselves even as we accept from the other? It is at those times that we are one, and it is then, in those moments, that we act as mirror for the other, that we are able to take steps forward in our understanding, small as they may be.”

  He meant steps toward vashaqiram, the state of oneness for the individual. “Do the hezhan also look for vashaqiram?”

  Sukharam turned his attention back to the way ahead. They were coming closer to the end of the valley, and soon they’d forge a trail up to find the others. “They must,” he said at last.

  “How can you be sure? We hardly know them. We hardly know their world, and they hardly know ours.”

  “They are us, and we are them. It can be no other way.”

  “Did you ever speak to Nasim of it?”

  “What would Nasim know of this?”

  “He is gifted, as you are. And he walked between worlds.”

  “You’re assuming, of course, that he’s still alive at all, that he still has gifts, as you call them.”

  “He is alive.”

  Sukharam shifted in his saddle. “I know you must tell yourself this, that he is still alive, and perhaps he is, but I tell you this, son of Iaros—if he has gifts, they are wasted.”

  “I don’t see that.”

  “Do you not? He, of all the children in the world, is the closest to his prior self. And yet he learned almost nothing until he was freed by you. He could have done so much, but instead what are we left with? Thoughts of what could have been and a world so broken we’ve nearly reached the end of days.”

  For a moment Nikandr could only stare. He’d known there had been friction between Sukharam and Nasim, but he never would have guessed that Sukharam harbored such resentment. “It wasn’t Nasim’s fault that he was lost.”

  “Perhaps he didn’t have the courage to overcome it.”

  “And that would place the blame on him?”

  “Whether or not the blame is his isn’t the point. He had failings, and he has them still.”

  “And yet we go to find him.”

  “You go to find him. I go to find the Atalayina.”

  “He is part of the Atalayina. Their fates are bound together.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Nikandr Iaroslov. That’s the failing of you and Ashan and everyone that’s surrounded Nasim for so long. He is no savior. He is someone who stands in the way of the healing of the world.”

  Nikandr spurred his ab-sair until it was in front of Sukharam’s, and then he reined his mount over, forcing Sukharam to stop. Sukharam stared into Nikandr’s eyes, unflinching.

  “Nasim saved us. Without him, we all would have died at the straits.”

  “That’s to be commended, but that doesn’t qualify him to hold the Atalayina. That is only for the pure of heart, the pure of mind.”

  “And you are qualified?”

  “Yeh. As much as anyone alive is.” Sukharam paused but only for the briefest of moments. “I don’t blame Nasim for his failings. He isn’t malicious.” He pulled at the reins and kicked his ab-sair, moving past Nikandr toward the wash leading up the hill. “He’s merely unfit.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Late that night, Goeh left the camp to scout to the east. The hills became treacherous around Kohor and the valley that housed it, and he didn’t want to risk riding through the night, not unless it was absolutely necessary.

  The rest set up their blankets in the lee of an outcropping of hard red rock. The rock shielded them from the east, so they thought it safe to build a small fire. Nikandr, surprisingly, felt at peace with himself. Even though he’d failed to make any major breakthrough while he’d been riding, it had done him good to simply be away from the others; but more than this, it was his conversation with Sukharam that had drawn his mind toward other things.

  After a meager meal of water and dried cardamom bread and tart green berries Goeh had gathered on their ride that day, Soroush filled a pipe with tabbaq and lit it using a brand from the fire. “Alas,” he said, holding the smoking pipe high for a moment, “the last I brought from Rafsuhan.”

  Atiana looked around at all of them and then stood, brushing her skirt as if she were overly conscious of the mere act of standing. “I’d better go now.”

  “Stay until Goeh returns,” Ashan said, smiling gently, the breeze tugging at his curly brown hair. “I’d feel better were he to tell us that the path behind us is clear.”

  “The time feels right,” Atiana replied, a bit sharply. “If I hope to find Ishkyna, it must be now.”

  Soroush offered Ushai his pipe. Ushai, using her good right hand, took it from him. “Let me come with you,” she said to Atiana, “and I’ll help as I can.” She took a long pull. The light from the tabbaq lit her eyes with a mischievous glint as if she knew Atiana would decline and yet wanted to press her anyway.

  Atiana stared bitterly back. “You would only get in the way.”

  Ushai handed the pipe back to Soroush, who took it and drew breath from it as well, though not so deeply as Ushai had. He watched the exchange with cautious concern. Even Sukharam seemed to like it not at all, for he snorted and stood, leaving to climb the rocks which sheltered them.

  “Why would I get in the way?” Ushai asked. “Because I’m not Landed?”

  “Because you are not my sister, and your presence is invasive.”

  “Invasive…” She turned to Soroush. “She says that I’m invasive.”

  Soroush looked at her easily, the golden rings in his ruined left ear glinting under the firelight. “Perhaps you are.”

  Ushai seemed upset by this comment at first, but then she turned introspective and regarded Atiana anew. “Perhaps I am. Go then, Atiana Radieva, and tell us what you learn.”

  “I don’t need your permission to go, daughter of Shahda.” Atiana turned and walked away, but not before calling over her shoulder, “And I keep my own c
ounsel.”

  Soroush leaned over the fire and offered the pipe to Nikandr. He accepted it and took a breath of his own, drawing on the sweet smoke. He held it for long moments, the scents of loam and leather and hay coming to him the longer he held it. He breathed it out slowly, handing the pipe back to Soroush.

  For a spell, they simply smoked and listened to the sound of the fire and felt the cold breeze blow across their camp. But Nikandr was still bothered by what Sukharam had said in the valley. He’d wanted to speak to Ashan alone, but here at the end of the day, he felt less guarded, and he saw no reason not to get the opinion of Soroush and Ushai as well. “Sukharam tells me he no longer believes in Nasim.”

  “I’m not sure he ever believed,” Ashan replied.

  “But Nasim found him,” Nikandr replied, feeling a touch lightheaded. He’d smoked tabbaq in Andakhara, and it was good, but nothing like this. Soroush had a nose for strong and complex leaf. He prized it above food, and rooted out the best sources wherever they traveled. Nikandr didn’t mind at all, because Soroush was generous with it, though he had to be careful. If he smoked too much his stomach would turn and his mind would be cloudy for too long after.

  “He did,” Ashan replied, crossing his legs and staring up at the starry sky, “but I don’t know that he ever believed in Nasim. Even in those early days, Nasim was not able to share all that he knew. He tried, but he was a boy that had lost his childhood to the choices Khamal had made for him. Fahroz did well bringing to Nasim a sense of normalcy so that he could go on about his life, but Nasim was unprepared for that which followed. And,” Ashan went on, “Sukharam was not ready to learn. He was a boy who’d been sheltered from what he might have been by the path the fates had laid before him.”

  “Do you not believe Nasim is the key to unlocking the riddle of the Atalayina? That he’s the key to closing the rifts?”