The Flames of Shadam Khoreh (The Lays of Anuskaya)

by Bradley Beaulieu

  “Because I have seen it.”

  “Seen what?”

  “You and I. Linked. A child of Anuskaya and a daughter of Hael. Together we may set the world aright.”

  “But what—”

  “Enough,” she said, yanking her arm from Atiana’s grip. “There is much to do, and the Kohori do not sleep forever.”

  From her belt she retrieved something small, a tusk, perhaps. With this in hand, she slipped from her dress and let it fall to the ground. She stood naked, her thin, bony form catching the silver light of the moon. She pulled a stopper from the top of the tusk and squatted down. Something dark dripped down from the upturned tusk. Atiana thought surely it was blood, but then she realized it was glinting in the moonlight, like dust from the crushed remains of stars.

  She rubbed it over his naked form—his arms and chest, his legs and groin. She took great care around his eyes and cheeks and lips. And then she pulled a knife from her belt.

  She bent down, moving slowly back and forth, arms akimbo, knees jutting at awkward angles.

  She drew the knife along his stomach, along his rib cage, and then she plunged it deep.

  The man’s eyes shot open. His pupils were dark wells surrounded by white. He looked around feverishly. Atiana thought he would cry out, but he uttered not a sound, and he moved not at all. Except for his eyes. His ceaselessly moving eyes.

  Aelwen pulled the knife down toward his navel. The cut yawned open. Blood spilled. She reached in with her free hand. The knife followed, moving deep inside his chest, reaching up toward his heart.

  His heart, Atiana realized.

  She was cutting out his heart.

  Spit filled Atiana’s mouth. She swallowed reflexively. Her stomach felt as though a dark pit were forming beneath it.

  The man’s eyes widened further. They were filled with wonder, staring up at the gauzy veil of the heavens, as if he’d moved beyond the pain and was staring directly into the beyond. He shivered in eery silence, his whole body shaking like one does in the final days of the wasting.

  Aelwen pulled out something dark. Something dripping.

  Beneath her, the man stiffened. His shivering stopped.

  And then Atiana heard a sound. A sigh. A release of breath as deep as a canyon.

  Finally his eyes fell slack.

  The wodjan saw this not at all, however, for she was transfixed by the heart she now held in her hand. After raising it up to the crescent moon, she brought it to her mouth and took one large bite. She chewed, took another bite, chewed again, repeating this until all of it had been devoured.

  Atiana’s hands were shaking. She could not look upon this any more. She bent over, breathing deeply lest she vomit on the desert floor. She could not look upon Aelwen, and so she missed the first signs of the transformation, but the strange movements before her forced her to look up.

  Aelwen already seemed taller. The wodjan brushed her hands over her hair, again and again, and each time she did, more of it fell like sheaves of wheat from the sickle’s swipe. It changed color as well, lightening until it was the same chestnut brown of the man’s hair. It even took on the same light curl. Aelwen stretched her hands to the sky, and when she did, popping and cracking sounds rent the still desert air. She did not grow taller so much as widen, until her shoulders had become as broad as his, her hips and chest and torso. When she looked at Atiana again, she looked no different than he had, even down to his cock hiding in the dark bushy hair between his legs.

  She pulled on his clothes and dragged him toward the stand of trees a hundred yards distant. She did it with such apparent ease it made Atiana shiver with sudden and inexplicable fear. What had she done? How had she come to trust this woman in any way, this heathen of Hael?

  Aelwen returned and used her sandaled feet to brush away the blood on the desert floor. With the dirt as dark as it was here, no one would notice. No one would know that this man had been taken. No one would mourn his passing.

  “Back down.” Even her voice had changed to something resonant and scratchy. She moved to the hole in the earth and waved to the top of the ladder. “We’ll speak again in the days ahead.”

  Atiana stepped onto the ladder and began to lower herself. Before the landscape was lost from view, she looked toward the trees.

  I will mourn you.

  She knew it was a foolish notion. The Kohori were cruel. Many would not think twice about killing her. But she couldn’t help it.

  I will mourn, she said one last time as she reached the cell and stepped away from the ladder.

  Moments later, the ladder was pulled up and the door above her closed with a clatter, plunging the small space into darkness.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Atiana woke with bright light spearing down into the earth.

  “Up,” someone barked.

  The way that simple word had been spoken—like a hound with its hackles high—she knew something was wrong.

  Her hands quavered as she climbed. It was lack of food and water, she knew. She squinted as she came to the top of the ladder, momentarily blinded by the bright sun. She shaded her eyes, looking at the feet of the gathered men. There were three of them, all dressed in the dark red robes of Kohor. They stood over the place where the guardsman had fallen last night. It had been real, hadn’t it? It felt like a dream, for try as she might, she could see no sign of blood, no sign that he’d lain there dying beneath the stare of the sleepy moon.

  The closest of the men stepped toward her. As he did, a black coil of rope twisted down from his hand toward the dry desert floor. He moved quick as a cat, snaking the rope around her neck.

  “Nyet!” she called, but in a blink he was behind her, tightening the rope as she struggled to pull it away.

  She kicked at him, but it didn’t matter.

  Soon, the blue sky began to twinkle in her vision. Points of light brightened as she struggled, growing as she gasped, until at last they overwhelmed both sky and sun.

  Atiana woke to the sound of the surf. Slowly it rushed in, sighing, exhaling, until the next breath came. She smelled the salt of the sea, felt the spray against her cheeks and lips.

  And she was cold. Not the cold of the Gaji, but the cold of the islands, the cold of the north. It felt as it had on the coast of Duzol, when she’d been shot by the musket. When she’d been waiting to die.

  Was she dying now?

  The sun was on her face, but she couldn’t yet open her eyes. Her body seemed unready for it. But she could hear—more than she had even moments ago. The sound of footsteps—many of them—moving around her. They stepped over stones, shifting them, making them clack and scrape over the sound of the waves. She heard gulls as well, distant but clear.

  At last she was able to open her eyes.

  The sky above her was dark with grey clouds. The clouds of the desert had always been high and distant and uniform, painted with the flat of a knife. These clouds were tall and complicated, like the peaks and valleys of the island ranges.

  To her right stood a dozen men and women in red robes. They were near the sea, all of them clasping hands with one another, their attention focused down toward the stones upon which they stood.

  Atiana had no idea why. Nothing was happening.

  But then the stones near their feet began to melt. They collapsed like sand beneath the pounding waves of the sea. The Kohori’s boots sunk into the resulting slurry but they didn’t seem concerned by it. They merely continued to clasp hands, eyes cast downward.

  A shape rose up from the beach. It looked like little more than a peak of dark stone at first, but soon it had resolved into a wedge. More rose behind it. A ship, she realized. They were raising a ship of stone. The hull rose as if it were being lifted by the hands of giants. It was much larger than she’d thought. Much of it was hidden beneath the sea, but as the red-robed figures continued to watch, the ship lifted up and out of the white surf until the stern was floating in the water and the fore of the ship was beached, as if
it had just landed.

  A ship of stone made from rocks and pebbles of this place, this shoreline near the long line of looming mountains to the west. Suddenly she recognized it. She’d been here only two times before, on journeys along the easternmost edge of the Empire, but the Sitalyas were unmistakable, not only for the way the peaks marched into the distance, but for their sheer heights. The tallest of them—Nolokosta, distinct for its crooked white peak—could be seen for leagues in any direction.

  By the ancients, the sea on her left was the Sea of Tabriz. She was nearer to her homeland than she’d been in well over a year.

  But how? How could they have come so far in so little time?

  The Kohori, clearly. She recalled Nikandr’s stories of Nasim and how he’d been transported by Kaleh. If they’d been right, she’d done so again in taking him from the Straits of Galahesh to the mainland of Yrstanla. Such power, and it came, no doubt, from the ancient knowledge that Muqallad and Sariya had given her, knowledge the Kohori possessed as well.

  Men and women began moving things into the ship as another rose from the surf beyond it, and another beyond that.

  Atiana tried to lift her head, but the movement brought so much pain she set her head back down. A moment later, white pain blossomed in the place behind her eyes, a pain so bright and furious that it overtook her.

  She woke some time later. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been unconscious. The clouds were still grey. It seemed darker, so she guessed it was nearing dusk. To her left, a dozen ships were lined up along the beach. The surf rolled in, breaking like thunder against the ships and frothing white around the prows. Each of the ships’ hulls had intricate designs carved into them—entwined roots or branches wrapping around twinkling stars. She had no idea how they would be brought into the water, how they would navigate across the sea. It seemed impossible. Ships of stone. But here the Kohori were, loading the ships, clearly preparing to sail for Ghayavand.

  Atiana was picked up by a man. She didn’t recognize him, but he was strong, and he was chewing something that smelled of anise. He handed her to another already inside the nearest of the boats. The one who carried her into the boat was a younger man with a stubbly beard and a scar running over his milky left eye. He carried her over to a pallet on the stone deck, set her down, and continued on about his business, accepting sacks of food and rope and wooden chests from those still outside the ship.

  Atiana was able to pull herself up by the nearby gunwales and watch the other ships. There must be two hundred Kohori working at these ships. She looked for, but did not find, Safwah. Neither did she see Ushai. There were several women with veils across their faces, however. Ushai could easily be one of them and Atiana would never know it.

  Soon it was done. Everyone was loaded. At the bow of each ship stood one qiram—some of them women, some men—each with arms spread wide and their heads lifted toward the sky. Another qiram stood on the deck near each of the ships’ sterns, doing the same. Atiana managed to stand, holding tightly to the rough surface of the gunwale railing and staring out beyond the white, frothing waves.

  Beneath them, the stones of the beach shook. The air rumbled with the sound of it. Atiana could feel it through her feet. The ship was lowering as if the beach itself were desperate to be rid of them. With one large surge they were drawn away by the receding wave into deeper water. The ships turned as if an unseen hand were guiding them until the prows were facing out toward open water.

  Below the waves, large white shapes approached. They looked like massive spearheads with white cordage trailing behind. The forms thrust beneath the surface of the water, closer and closer until it seemed they were directly below the ships. Atiana’s eyes went wide as one massive white tentacle with dozens of suckers along one side rose up near Atiana’s ship. The tentacle quivered in the air, the surface of its skin turned from bright white to a grey not so different from the color of the ship itself. A second arm followed the first, the two of them latching onto the gunwales with a wet slap. They were followed by two more, then two more, until all six had latched tightly onto the prow.

  Another white creature appeared ahead of the ship to her left. And more further down. Each rose their arms up and latched onto another ship, turning a deep and mottled grey as it did so.

  Atiana could only stare in wonder.

  These were goedrun, the giants of the sea, one of the reasons travel by waterborne ship had been abandoned by the Grand Duchy long ago. The high seas beyond the shallows around each of the Grand Duchy’s islands, coupled with the threat of these and other creatures, made such travel too dangerous. Taking to the winds had been the obvious choice, especially with windwood so plentiful. But these qiram were unfazed by the dangers of the open sea. In fact, they seemed to welcome it. They would use the goedrun as their allies to tow these massive ships through the great waves.

  The goedrun pulled them beyond the shallows, fighting the waves until they were into deeper water where the waves were not so great. Then the creatures began to haul them out toward the deep blue depths. Toward Ghayavand, Atiana knew. They were headed for Ghayavand.

  In the days that followed, Atiana was asked to stay belowdecks. She was given a small, square cabin with a pallet and a chamberpot and little else save the mottled grey walls. There was no doorway, only an archway to the central passageway that ran through the ship, but a Kohori man was stationed outside to make sure she stayed where she’d been assigned.

  She had a horrible reaction to the cabin, however. It was the waves. The incessant waves. She didn’t like windborne travel, but she liked waterborne even less, for this very reason. She’d always had strong reactions to it. She began throwing up within a few hours of staying in her cabin. She could keep nothing down. Not even water, and eventually Habram came to her. He stared down at her with his piercing look, his hawklike gaze, but eventually he seemed to gain some small amount of compassion. “You may come up to deck until it passes.”

  And she did, though it still took hours for the sickness to pass. She was allowed to roam the upper deck, but was not allowed to go anywhere belowdecks except back to her cabin.

  She watched for Safwah, and for the Kohori man Aelwen had butchered before stealing his likeness, but she saw neither. She did, however, see Ushai. She hadn’t realized it at first, but Kaleh had been taken below the stone deck to the hold below, and Ushai had stayed there to tend to her. She came up one morning and spoke with Habram at the bow of the ship.

  Atiana wanted to confront Ushai and Habram about their plans, but the men that had been set to guard her kept her amidships, refusing to allow her past.

  “Do you fear to speak with me?” she called loudly.

  Habram and Ushai turned at this. Habram merely stared, as if he’d never truly given Atiana due consideration before. But Ushai glared, as if she wished Atiana had been taken on another ship, or better yet, left behind entirely.

  They finished their conversation, and Ushai returned belowdecks, while Habram went about his business.

  The rhythm of the goedrun became ingrained in her. Atiana would stand at the gunwales, staring into the depths of the blue water, watching the wide arms sweep outward and then draw in like a bellows, propelling the great beast forward, and with it, the ship. She could feel the ship tilt slightly as the prow rose and bit into the waves, and then again as the prow dipped back down.

  The goedrun were not tireless creatures. After hours on end, sometimes as long as a day, their progress would flag, and when that happened, the qiram would release it. Atiana could see it drift down into the depths as its many arms—once more the color of the frothing tips of the windswept sea—waved and were swallowed by the darkness. Another would come minutes later, spray lifting high into the air as a new set of arms grafted to the hull, and they’d be off once more.

  Like this, the goedrun drew them across the sea. On the third day, Habram came and stood at Atiana’s side as the sea drifted by them. He still wore his red robes, though the c
owl was pulled back, revealing short brown hair and golden earrings that glinted in the sun as the wind tousled his hair.

  He looked over to her, and though Atiana did not meet his eyes, she could tell that he was staring at the bruises that ringed her neck.

  “My men should not have been so forceful.”

  Atiana watched a lone bird wheeling in the distant sky as the prow cut through the waves, waiting for him to get on with it.

  Habram stared toward the horizon. “You came to find Nasim, did you not?”

  “I did.”

  “And now he is gone. Taken from you by the fates. And yet Kaleh is here. As is Sariya.”

  “What of them, Habram of Kohor?”

  He chuckled. “What of them? Do all those who live among the islands ignore the tidings of the fates?”

  “I listen to my ancestors, for they guide me.”

  “And what do they tell you?”

  “They tell me to keep my faith, for it is something that can never be taken from me, and to find a way to heal the world.”

  Habram paused. “Then they are wise. But know this, Atiana of Vostroma, our paths need not cross. We seek the same thing.”

  “And yet you think Sariya will guide you there.”

  “I do. It was written by the fates before the Tashavir ever left Ghayavand.”

  “You were not there on Galahesh. I know her mind, Habram. She wanted the world to end. She wants it still. And if your hope is that she will take the Atalayina and walk to the shoulders of Sihyaan and mend what she and the Al-Aqim tore, then you are gravely mistaken. Worse, you are a fool.”

  “When she came to Kohor,” Habram said without a hint of annoyance in his voice, “she did not at first trust us, as we did not trust her. She took our minds, something I’m told you’re familiar with, and she found where the Tashavir were buried. Only after she’d learned this did she see that some would be loyal to the Al-Aqim. She remained with us for several months, and most of that time was spent in the Vale of Stars. She found something in that place, something that changed her. I could see it in her eyes. I knew it would happen—for such were the prophecies—but it was still wondrous to behold.”