The Flames of Shadam Khoreh (The Lays of Anuskaya) (13 page)

CHAPTER NINE

Atiana’s body feels distant, like a memory, or a long-forgotten wish. She hardly feels the powerful strides of the ab-sair as it gallops through the night. She is vaguely aware—and grateful—that Nikandr is seated behind her in the saddle, for if she were alone, she would surely fall off.

She can still feel the woman in the compound over a league behind, but as they ride away beyond the caravanserai and into the desert, the feeling of the wodjan, the Haelish witch, begins to recede. Even so, Atiana can still see her, a diaphanous white against the midnight blue of the aether. The wodjan recovers her censer that had been spilled when Sukharam entered the home. She sets it on the glowing red coals. A blackened remnant of the blood she burned still rests within the censer. She hunches over the fire pit, drawing the rising smoke from her own burning blood toward her as if it is her sole link to life.

Atiana is disgusted, but she knows that this ritual, the burning of the wodjan’s own blood, is the thing that both drew her into the aether and allowed her to remain there. She felt it in the room shortly before Goeh arrived, a sudden and undeniable pull toward the aether. She thought it was Ishkyna, her sister, returned from the warfront—for who else could it be?—but it hadn’t felt like Ishkyna, nor Mileva, nor any of the Matri. It had felt foreign and raw, not so different than her first time in the drowning chamber those many years ago.

And it had
smelled
wrong. She knows now that it was the blood. It had filled her senses, an acrid smell that even now sickens her.

She slips in the saddle, nearly falling from the charging beast as Nikandr reins it westward along a dry desert path. Nikandr pulls her back up and shouts into her ear, “Atiana, please wake up!”

She can hear the alarm in his voice, but strangely, she does not wish to wake—she must learn all she can about this woman—but soon the woman begins to drift away. The delicate balance the aether demands becomes harder and harder to maintain.

Then it is too much, and she releases a pent-up cry of frustration as she’s thrown from the aether altogether.

The sudden shift to the reality of the physical world made Atiana’s stomach churn. She leaned forward and retched while Nikandr held her firmly in place.

He spoke calmly, softly, into her ear. “It’s all right.”

She took deep breaths of the cool night air and tried to draw herself fully into the here and now, but her mind was sluggish. She yearned for the aether, even more so than when she left the drowning basins of Galostina. Why this might be she had no idea. Perhaps because finding herself in the aether here, a place so foreign from the islands, made her yearn for what she missed the most. She also had to admit that it felt freeing to touch the aether without so much preparation and ritual. She had done the same near the Spar, but she had written that off as nothing more than an effect of Sariya’s power and the confluence of aether running through Galahesh.

Finally they slowed their pace, giving their mounts some much-needed rest. Nikandr continued to hold her tight. “Can you hear me?”

She nodded, still not trusting herself to speak. If she opened her mouth, she feared her confusion and yearning would be released in one long, uncontrollable wail.

“It’s all right,” Nikandr said again, and he kissed her cheek.

It felt good, that kiss. It felt not only tender, but genuine, something that had been missing from their lives of late.

That one small gesture pulled her fully into this new reality. She heard the rhythmic canter of their ab-sair over the desert floor, smelled the desert sage, saw the blanket of stars that hung over them, guiding their way.

“Are they safe?” she asked Nikandr.

“They’re safe, though Ushai is hurt.”

Soroush held Ushai as Nikandr held Atiana—with great care. She wondered, though, whether this was only the heat of the moment speaking in Nikandr. She wondered whether in a day or two he’d return to his distant ways. She hoped not, but she had no reason to think otherwise. He was still broken, somehow, and she had no idea how to fix him.

Two mounts trailed the four they were riding. They held what looked to be a wholly insufficient amount of water for them to make their way across the desert to Kohor. The caravanserais along this route had long fallen into disuse. Too few traveled these paths now. Why, she had never learned. All she knew was that the people of Kohor were secretive and that they disliked strangers who came to their lands. Even Ashan, in all his travels, had never been to Kohor.

But Ushai had. Which was why it was vitally important, despite Atiana’s misgivings about her effect on Sukharam, that she be present when they reached that hidden place.

They continued riding through the night. They watched and listened carefully for signs of pursuit. After the moon set in the west, they all felt as though they needed to put more distance between them and the men that were sure to follow, so they continued on, allowing the ab-sair to pick their path through the night with their excellent eyesight.

They stopped every so often to listen for the sound of hooves upon the earth. “I can feel for them,” Sukharam offered at one such stop, meaning he could use a hezhan to search for them coming over the desert floor.

“Do not,” Ashan replied. “It’s best we take ourselves far away before calling upon the hezhan once again. The Haelish woman’s magic. I know it not well at all, but she may be able to sense us if we do.”

Atiana shivered, and not from the cold. Bahett’s men would follow. With the Haelish woman guiding them with her foul magic, the janissaries had already found their trail once; there was no reason to think they couldn’t do so again.

“Is there no way to stop her?” Atiana asked.

Ashan turned in his saddle to look at her. “Other than killing her, you mean?”

“
Yeh
,” she said, “other than killing her.”

“None that I know of.”

When the coming of dawn brightened the eastern horizon, they picked up their pace once more. They were exhausted after the chase from Andakhara, but none of them felt safe stopping so soon, so they continued on as the sun rose behind them. They sipped at their water as the heat sapped what little energy they had. Nikandr had found four large bags of water in the stables, but that would only last the six of them two days, perhaps three if they were careful. Finding jalahezhan here in the desert was difficult. Even Sukharam had trouble bonding with them; they were simply too few, and even when he managed it he was unable to use them to draw much water. The best he could do was to draw sap from plants or the occasional acacia, but the process was too slow to try with pursuit so close on their heels. Better to push for the mountains and lose them there.

Atiana only hoped they could make it that far.

As midday neared and the heat became stifling they came to a small, abandoned caravanserai. They were all bleary eyed, and Ushai, sitting in the saddle in front of Soroush, looked ready to collapse. Dried blood matted her hair and marked her left cheek and stained her flax-colored robes. She had trouble keeping her eyes open, but just then she met Atiana’s gaze. She did not smile—such was not her way—but when Atiana
did
smile and nod to her, Ushai nodded back, telling Atiana she’d be well.

The ground here offered a clear view of the land eastward, so they decided to rest before continuing on. The caravanserai had three abandoned mudbrick buildings and a dry well. They hid themselves in the largest of the buildings, a place that had surely acted as a communal sleeping room decades ago when the caravanserai had been active.

Soroush said he would have trouble sleeping and asked to take watch as everyone rested. Atiana could tell he was lying. He was embarrassed that he’d been taken hostage in Andakhara, and he wanted to prove to everyone that he was still valuable.

“I can’t sleep either,” Atiana said. This was no act. She couldn’t shake her memories of the woman breathing in the smell of burnt blood.

She sat in the shade of the small mudbrick shed as the sun continued its march. Soroush rested his musket against the wall of the shed and stood, watching stoically. He wore his double robes and an almond-shaped turban, as he always had. The turban’s tail hung down and swung lightly in the breeze. She still hadn’t gotten used to him wearing one that was white. His black turban had seemed so much a part of him. Somehow, the change to the white one—even though she knew it was because of the sun’s heat—made him seem changed. Not impotent, but less threatening.

“You can sit,” Atiana said.

He stroked his long, square-cut beard while watching the horizon. “I know.”

“Then why don’t you?”

He glanced down at her, his serious face cracking a grudging smile, accentuating the ragged scar that ran along the ruin of his left ear and down his neck. “I have burns from those beasts I’ll not regale you with now. Suffice it to say I’d rather stand.”

He pulled a cloth from the bag at his side and unfolded it. He bent down and held the salt-cured meat within it for her to take. In the past she’d always refused, never having cared for the taste or texture, but today it seemed important that she accept, and so she did.

“Thank you,” she said in Mahndi.

“You are welcome,” he replied in Anuskayan.

She chewed off a piece from the flat, russet-colored meat. As her mouth watered, she noticed the gamey taste of the boar beyond the layers of peppercorn and fennel and salt.

“How was your Prince while I was gone?” He meant Nikandr’s feelings of incompleteness. Of his distance from her and everyone else.

“He went to watch the path you took to Andakhara from our campsite. On top of the ridge.” She suddenly found herself unable to swallow the meat around the quickly growing lump in her throat. “Ashan said he found him standing at the very edge of the drop-off. Ashan wouldn’t say it, but I think he was ready to jump, to see if a havahezhan would bond with him, as the Aramahn of old once did.”

Neither one of them made mention of the time when Soroush’s comrade leapt from the cliffs below Radiskoye, but they both knew that the same had been done then, to great effect. It had been on Nikandr’s mind ever since Nasim had severed their bond at the Spar, the bridge that stood over the Straits of Galahesh. Suddenly, she felt dizzy. The floor of the desert wavered in the heat. She stood and breathed deeply, hoping the effect would pass, but instead it grew worse.

“What is it?” Soroush asked.

And then she smelled the smoke. It was distant, like the scent of a wood fire carried leagues on the wind. Even as faint as it was she recognized it immediately, the scent of burning blood. The Haelish witch was searching for them again. And already, just as she had the previous night, she felt herself being drawn toward it.

Soroush came to her side. He leaned over, as if he were afraid she would collapse, but stopped just short of touching her. “Shall I get Nikandr?”

She refused to allow herself to be drawn into the aether again, and she fought to remain in place, but in that moment, as she stood halfway in and halfway out of the aether, she felt something, a presence to the south, someone coming toward the caravanserai from out of the desert. A man. A soldier. He felt familiar; surely one of the janissaries from Andakhara.

Atiana managed to pull herself taller, and by taking short, sharp breaths was able to stave off the overwhelming feeling of the aether. She pointed to her right, where a rise hid much of the southern plain. “Someone’s coming.”

In a blur of movement Soroush snatched up his musket and led Atiana around the corner of the low shed so that they were hidden from view from the southern approach. After making sure she was safe, he pulled the hammer of his musket to full cock, pulled the weapon to his shoulder, and leaned around the corner.

His eyes were alive as he sighted along the barrel. “How many?”

He thought she was still in the aether, as she had been during his rescue. She wished she was. She desperately wanted to know if there were more than just the one man. Surely they would have sent a dozen or more. Perhaps the others were coming from different directions, hoping to surround the caravanserai and cut off any hope of escape, but she had no idea if that were true.

“How
many
?”

“I don’t know.”

Atiana could smell the smoke. The bloody burnt smell. She
tried
to enter the aether, but of course this was the perfectly wrong way to do it. Both times she’d been drawn in with no effort on her part, so she relaxed, as she did in the drowning basins.

“There’s only one,” Soroush whispered. “He’s walking alone. He doesn’t even have a mount.”

Atiana couldn’t do it. The smoke was too faint, or she was too tense. But the feeling of familiarity in this man remained. She knew him, and he was no janissary.

She heard Soroush take a deep breath, as Nikandr often did before he fired.

“Stop!” she shouted while pushing him away.

The musket fired. White smoke filled the air as Atiana rounded the corner and saw, sixty paces away, a man crouched with a cloud of dirt dissipating in the distance behind him.

She heard the others waking from within the large building.

Soroush reached for his pistol, but Atiana grabbed his wrist. “His name is Goeh, and he helped us to find you. He helped us escape.”

Soroush glanced at her over his shoulder, skeptical, but then he nodded and took his hand away from his weapon.

Atiana strode toward Goeh, raising her hands and mimicking the gesture he was giving as he walked forward to meet her. His eyes alternated between her, Soroush, and the communal building, from which the others were just now exiting.

“Why have you come?” Atiana asked him as the others caught up with her.

At last Goeh relaxed and pointed eastward. “They’re coming. Fifty or more.” He pointed beyond the dry well, where the ab-sair were tied. “You’ll never make it to Kohor with just those, and you’ll run out of water tomorrow unless you come with me.”

“And why would we do that?”

“Because I was sent to watch for you. There are those in Kohor who would speak with you.”