The Flames of Shadam Khoreh (The Lays of Anuskaya) (34 page)

When he thought about it, the answer was obvious. He’d been made simple with the spell Sariya had laid over him, but not only that, he’d had an innocence about him, a curiosity, but little true purpose other than to help the young woman he’d thought was Kaleh. He’d held charity in his heart.

It was no easy thing to hide things from your own mind. It was like trying to keep an image of a blue sky from your mind when someone told you not to. But in this he was uniquely gifted. The first eleven years of his life had been little more than chaos. He’d rarely been able to concentrate on any one thing—either in the physical world or the spiritual—for more than a few moments at a time. He’d grown up confused and unable to relate to those around him. But Fahroz, bless her soul, had been steadfast in her guidance. On Mirashadal, the floating village, she’d forced him to concentrate on things. Some days it was a skiff that was floating away from its eyrie. Other days it was part of the village itself—a bole of a tree trunk or a candle’s flame or the long ballast tower that hung below the byways of the village itself. He’d eventually managed to do as she asked to the point that he could consider the object, consider its nature. And then she’d moved on to concepts. When he became proud from completing the tasks she set for him, she asked him to hold on to it, to grasp it and keep it near his center. When he experienced sorrow from the passing of someone in the village, she’d asked him to focus on this as well. Even
anger
she’d asked him to grasp onto and retain for a time—not so much that it was unhealthy, but so that he could ground himself in his own body and make sense of the world around him.

And so it was that he was now able to hold tightly to the same sort of charity he’d felt days ago. He wanted to open this door. He wanted to help the person who lay within. He wanted to heal the rifts and so heal the world. These things he allowed to run through him until they filled him with light.

Only then did he reach out and touch the door with the tip of his forefinger.

A crack as thin as a trail of ink spread from where his finger touched. The crack radiated like lightning strikes until the door shattered and fell with a sound like a mason dumping a pile of bricks. Dust rose and Nasim stepped through it, summoning the flame from the suurahezhan once more. Light stretched before him, revealing a short tunnel that led to a larger room. Inside was the same sort of sarcophagus as he’d seen in the other tombs, and again, on either side stood two statues, a man and a woman, with their hands to their sides, their faces beatific in repose.

Upon the stone lid of the sarcophagus were a laurel wreath and an olive branch. Nasim tried to pick them up, to set them aside and preserve them, but he no more than touched them than they crumbled like ash. With a delicate drawing on his jalahezhan, he made the stone lid slicker than ice, such that when he pushed it, it slid off easily and fell to the floor with a resounding boom.

He looked to the entryway, as the echoes died away, and a horrible thought occurred to him. Sariya was clever. Deceitful. He needed only to look at the times he thought he’d been helping only to find later that it had been Sariya’s plan all along. Could it be she was deceiving him even now? Was the echo of Kaleh merely some ploy that would allow Sariya to get what she wanted?

Taking a deep breath, he decided it didn’t matter. He didn’t know her mind. He knew only his, and he could do only what he thought was right.

He brought the flame nearer until it floated above the open maw of the sarcophagus. Lying within, arms crossed over his chest, was the man whose likeness had been captured in the statue at the tomb’s entrance, a likeness almost impossible to discern. He was so emaciated. It seemed as though he would crumble at the merest touch. On his brow was a crown with five gemstones set within it: tourmaline for fire, jasper for earth, alabaster for air, azurite for water, and in the center, raised slightly above the others, opal for life.

The last one had awoken when the lid had been removed, but perhaps she had sensed the danger she was in, whereas this man—this qiram from another age—did not.

“Can you hear me?” Nasim called.

His eyes opened slowly. They focused on the fire above him as his chest rose. He had not breathed before this moment—of this Nasim was sure—but he took breath now. It was long and full and sibilant.

“Come, grandfather,” Nasim said, hoping that continued communication would help to bring him back from his long sleep.

That was when Nasim felt her.

Sariya. She’d reached the entrance of the tomb. And she was rushing to this place as quickly as she was able.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Nasim helped the ancient man to sit. “Quickly, grandfather.”

The man’s eyes blinked slowly. They took in the room around him with a confusion that spoke volumes. Still, there was a glimmer of recognition. Clearly he recognized this place, but his expression looked too confused for him to have gained an understanding of what had passed since he’d slept.

“Grandfather, can you hear me?” Nasim wanted to shake him, but that was his fear of Sariya speaking.

The old, jaundiced eyes met Nasim’s. He blinked once, twice, and then he uttered something from his mouth that was half croak, half moan.

“Here.” Nasim opened the stopper to his water skin and poured a small amount into his mouth.

Sariya had reached the first of the turns below, and she was now taking the winding way up to the tunnel outside this room.

The old man’s throat convulsed as he drank the water. His drawn grey skin beneath his chin waggled as a shudder ran through him. He blinked, staring ahead, but there was intelligence behind those eyes. He was piecing together the events from before he’d fallen asleep. His brow creased. His eyes became progressively more frantic. He took Nasim in anew, then looked to the door and the sarcophagus in which he lay.

He opened his mouth, and again a croak came, but this time, Nasim recognized it as a word. “
How…
”

He’d spoken the word in Kalhani, but Nasim knew enough to recognize it.

“How
what
, grandfather?”

“
How
…” He shook his head and motioned to the water skin with his shoulder. That simple movement was accompanied by a pop and a crack and a grimace that made it clear just how painful it had been. Nasim poured him more water. “
How long?
”

“Since the sundering? Three hundred years.”

The old man’s eyes searched Nasim’s. He seemed confused. Perhaps he thought Nasim was lying. But then he turned toward the entrance to the tomb. Again snapping sounds accompanied the slow movement. Again he grimaced.

“
One comes
.”

“
Yeh
,” Nasim said in Mahndi. “One comes.”

As Nasim watched, a sound came from the tunnel, a sound of earth shifting, of stone cracking. Sariya was near, and he could feel her burning intent, her will to kill this man.

Nasim could not allow it, and yet he didn’t know how to stop her. He had hope, however. There was one he could count as an ally…

He reached into the sarcophagus and lifted the old man out. He was light as a bundle of sticks, and it was no trouble at all for Nasim to walk with him. He did not notice before, but now that he was so close he saw that the gemstones in his crown not only glittered, they glowed from within. The glow was faint—as faint as this man’s grasp on life—but it was there. The mere thought of it was staggering, a man bound to five hezhan at once. This ancient qiram had done so before he’d entered this tomb, that much was clear. What was also clear was that the hezhan had remained with him the entire time. Three centuries they’d stayed. Three centuries, when today it would be difficult for most qiram to bond with a single hezhan for more than a week at a time. It had been a different time then—the world had been a different place—but this was still hard to believe.

Nasim heard footsteps outside in the tunnel. Sariya was running, but slowed as she sensed him.

Still cradling the ancient man, Nasim stepped out into the hallway—beyond the door that had crumbled at his touch. Once there, he set the old man gently down and turned to face Sariya. He sent the glowing point of flame ahead. It floated in the air between them. It was strange to see her now: Sariya, hiding behind the eyes of Kaleh. The feeling of ages long past was more present than it had been before. In the past he’d written it off to Kaleh’s heritage, but now he was surprised he hadn’t realized her true nature sooner.

“Hear me, Kaleh!” Nasim bellowed.

Sariya looked down to the Tashavir, the Atalayina held tightly in one hand. She looked haggard. She’d pushed herself for weeks, perhaps months, to arrive at this very place, and she would push herself harder still. It was this very thing, Sariya’s unquenchable desire to finish this, that Nasim was counting on.

“Hear me!” Nasim said again, the words echoing down the tunnel.

“She cannot,” Sariya said. “She may have found her way to you before, but no longer, Khamal. No longer.” She raised the Atalayina over her head, pointed the palm of her other hand toward Nasim just before releasing a blast of fire.

The fire splayed across the shield Nasim had erected. Life and fire were allied spirits, but it was through this bond that one could defend against the other.

“Kaleh!” Nasim called above the flames. “Fight her! She will never be weaker than she is now!”

He staggered back, for the heat was rising.

Sariya stepped forward, her hand still blasting flame. He pulled the stopper from the water skin at his side and called upon the jalahezhan to draw the water forth. He launched it against the flames. It did not douse them, but the entire hall flashed to steam, fogging the area they were in. Nasim then reached out with his hand, causing the stone near Sariya’s feet to soften. She sunk into the stone. Tendrils of stone snaked out from the walls and wrapped around her arms and wrists. Encompassed her hands, including the one holding the Atalayina.

The flames stopped. The stone hardened at his command.

Sariya fought against these restraints, but for the moment she was bound.

Nasim brightened his point of flame until Sariya’s eyes were drawn to it. “Kaleh, please! Fight her! There will be no other time!”

He had hoped there would be some sense of recognition in Sariya’s eyes, but they merely hardened. It wasn’t going to work. Kaleh wouldn’t, or couldn’t, fight her—not when Sariya was fully aware of her attempts to regain dominance.

The muscles along Sariya’s arms tightened like cordage. Nasim tried to strengthen the stone that bound her, but in the end she was too strong, and the stone shattered.

Nasim had slowly been returning to himself since leaving the last tomb and traveling across the plain of Shadam Khoreh to this mountain. But he hadn’t been fully aware of who he was and what he could do until this moment. He didn’t know what had triggered it—perhaps this very conflict. Whatever the case, he remembered what he had done on Mirashadal when Kaleh had murdered Fahroz, he remembered what he had done on the Spar on Galahesh.

And he does so again.

He draws the world in around him, draws it tight, until the mountain above seems to crouch and the heavens seem to stoop.

Sariya slows. The flame in the air shifts slowly, as if caught in amber.

“Kaleh,” he says. His voice sounds dead in this place.

Kaleh does not respond. Sariya still holds her tight.

He calls her name again, and now Sariya’s eyes
do
change. They soften. Her expression turns desperate, then painful, and soon she is little more than a picture of misery.

She is Sariya no longer.

Kaleh has returned.

“Can you not fight her?” he asks.

The veins stand out along her forehead and her temples. The skin along her neck beats in time as her heart pumps with a violence that makes it clear just how close she is to losing control. Her nostrils flare as she draws in a sharp breath and releases it in halting increments. She swallows hard, blinks away tears, unable to speak, and in the end merely shakes her head.

“Did she reach the tomb in the last mountain?”

Kaleh glances at the withered man lying on the floor behind Nasim and nods.

“How many are left?”

She shivers, as if she’s fighting a fever that threatens to kill.

“
How many
?” he shouts.

“Th-three.”

A sinking feeling opens up inside him, and it continues to widen, as if the world itself is preparing to consume him.

He turns and looks down at the man, at his shriveled skin, at his watering eyes. Three. Only three of the Tashavir left, and he doesn’t even know if he’ll be able to save this
one
from Sariya’s attentions.

“How, Kaleh? How can I stop her?”

She swallows and grimaces before turning her head toward her hand. That hand still holds the Atalayina, and it hasn’t moved since the world slowed around them.

“Should I take it?”

She nods.

Nasim is loath to leave the Tashavir defenseless, but he sees no choice. He steps forward until he’s face-to-face with her. He reaches up to touch the stone, but halts mere inches from it. He flexes his hands, inexplicably hesitant.

He should not be apprehensive. This is something that must be done.

“Now,” Kaleh says through gritted teeth.

He stares at the stone, at the glittering lines of gold running along its surface. He looks at the fingers of Kaleh’s hand, at the tendons, so tight they’re ready to snap.

Something is wrong. Too often Sariya has fooled him, and this feels like another trap. Why it is she wants him to touch the stone, he doesn’t know, but this time he won’t do it.

“Now, Nasim!” she screams.

His only response is to step away.

Sariya—for he is sure it is her now, if it ever
was
Kaleh—changes. Her eyes transform from pained to desperate to enraged. She straightens, and her hand relaxes on the stone.

“Begone, then,” she says.

And this time, her words echo along the tunnel.