The Flames of Shadam Khoreh (The Lays of Anuskaya) (37 page)

The man cried out and fell to his knees. Goeh sidestepped, maneuvering so that this man prevented the others from reaching him, and then he released a primal cry and swung his blade across the man’s neck. The warrior’s head rolled from his shoulders, thumping against the earth as the body remained frozen in place for a moment.

As it slumped to the ground, the wind picked up once more, and soon it was much more fierce than it had been before. Sand tore into Nikandr’s skin. The sound of it was like the crash of a mountain. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. His breath was taken from him every time he opened his mouth. He could do nothing, and the only consolation he had was that the Kohori men were no doubt in the same state.

Nikandr felt a hand on his. Safwah’s, or he was a fool. She placed someone else’s hand in his—perhaps Ashan’s, perhaps Soroush’s—before leading him forward. They stopped twice, and when they did, she would leave him for a moment. Sand had worked its way into the corners of his eyes, beneath his eyelids. It was bitterly painful, and it forced him to keep his eyes shut tight. As difficult as it was not to know where they were going, he had to trust Safwah for now.

They resumed walking and this time didn’t stop for a long time. Eventually they slowed and Safwah tapped his legs. “Steps!” he heard her shout. He climbed up onto what felt like stone steps, then onto wooden boards. And finally, at last, the wind died away.

He coughed, as did the others, as they entered a large space with shuttered windows. Inside it was dim as the darkest storm. The floor was covered in red dust. It was caked in their clothes and hair and their skin as well, making each of them—Ashan, Soroush, Goeh, and Safwah—seem distinctly alike, as if they’d all been sculpted from the same block of red desert stone.

“Atiana,” was all Nikandr could manage to get out.

“We will search for her.” Safwah bent over, clearly in pain. In a moment Goeh was by her side, helping her, but Safwah slapped his hands and waved him away.

“What’s happening?” Nikandr asked. “Why are you fighting amongst yourselves?”

Safwah shuffled toward the rear of the one-room home and pulled away a horsehair blanket that covered the floor there. When the dark wooden floorboards were revealed, Nikandr could see the outline of a door that he assumed led to a tunnel. After seeing the Vale of Stars in the desert, he had no doubt this would lead to a series of interconnected caverns, perhaps the very same ones.

“There’s no time to explain,” Safwah said, “not now.”

A form darkened the entryway. A Kohori man pulled a boy behind him. Sukharam. The man held weapons as well. Muskets and bandoliers and the two packs Nikandr had set on the table before rushing from the mudbrick home to find Atiana.

Sukharam was leaning on the man heavily, favoring one leg. Nikandr hadn’t seen it at first because of the red dust, but an arrow shaft was sticking out from Sukharam’s thigh. The shaft had been broken near the point of entry, but the rest was still embedded there. The bleeding, at least, seemed to be under control.

“Where’s Ushai?” Soroush asked as he took Sukharam from the Kohori.

With Soroush’s help, Sukharam hopped into the home. “I don’t know.” His voice sounded defeated, as if he felt responsible for her loss.

“We’ll find her if she’s to be found,” Safwah said. She wavered, and suddenly tipped over. Goeh was there before she fell. He caught her and laid her gently on her side. He started ripping away the cloth around the arrow wound. “Go on,” he said without looking at them. “We’ll follow in a moment.”

“We can’t leave without Atiana and Ushai,” Nikandr said.

Then Goeh did turn. His expression was fierce. “They will be found if the fates will it. Now go!”

“Come,” Soroush said as he came to Nikandr’s side. “We’ll only be in their way. Let them find our loved ones for us, or we’ll return if they’re unable to do so.”

Ashan took the ladder down in the darkness. Sukharam went next, with Ashan close at hand to help him in his descent. Soroush followed, but he paused halfway down, looking at Nikandr seriously.

Nikandr didn’t want to leave. He wanted to return to the storm, to find Atiana, just as Soroush wanted to find Ushai. But they couldn’t, either of them. There were larger things at stake now.

After one last glance to the doorway and the howling wind beyond, he nodded to Soroush, and followed him into the darkness.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

When Nikandr reached the bottom of the ladder some three stories into the earth, it was pitch black. After a few breathless minutes, someone else began climbing down. It was Goeh. Hanging from his belt and shedding light as he descended were two siraj stones—blue instead of the pink Nikandr was used to. He was carrying Safwah over one shoulder. It seemed impossible, carrying a woman while navigating the narrow wooden ladder, but Goeh made it look easy.

When he reached the bottom, he set Safwah down onto her feet. Her eyes glistened with tears, and her jaw was set grimly against the pain. “Come,” she said simply, taking one of the two siraj stones from Goeh and shuffling off into the darkness.
 

Nikandr went to help with Sukharam, but Ashan raised his hand. “He is my charge.”

Nikandr nodded as Ashan slipped Sukharam’s arm over his shoulder, and the six of them made their way through the dark and winding tunnel. They came to a fork, where Safwah led them down the leftmost one. At the next she took a right. They went lower and lower—much lower, Nikandr thought, than the Vale of Stars where he’d found Ashan and Sukharam.

“Quietly now,” Safwah whispered. “Quietly.” She glanced to one side, giving Nikandr the distinct impression she’d sensed they were no longer alone in this place.

They came to a room with many tunnels leading out from it—a dozen or more of them. Safwah didn’t hesitate, she chose one to their right and led them deeper still. Unlike the Vale of Stars, it was clear that
these
tunnels had been formed by the hand of man. There were patterns in the stone, but they were much more subtle than those of the Aramahn, more primal somehow, as if the first men had created them, not the Kohori of today.

At last they came to a cavern. It opened up before Nikandr with an immensity that after the closeness of the tunnels seemed eager to swallow him. The cavern roof was easily taller than any of the island spires, perhaps twice as tall. The gemstones looked like nothing more than stars, except they were everywhere—on the cavern walls, on the ground beneath them, even along the lakebed where pale blue light glinted up from the depths.

Nikandr had to blink away the vision, for it made him feel dizzy if he looked at it for too long, as if he were floating among the stars, lost to the world forever.

Safwah stepped to the edge of the lake, bent down, and touched the glasslike surface of the water. The water rippled but then stilled, as if it had frozen in place at her touch.

“Stay close behind,” she said. And stepped into the water.

Nyet
, Nikandr thought. She hadn’t stepped
into
the water. She’d stepped
onto
it. It was supporting her weight, without so much as a splash or a ripple.

Ashan and Sukharam followed, tentatively at first but then with growing confidence. Soroush went next, then Nikandr, and Goeh brought up the rear. It was the strangest sensation Nikandr had ever had, stepping out onto the surface of that lake. It gave ever so slightly, as if he were stepping upon the flesh of some strange, watery beast. He had the impression it would fail on the very next step, which made his gait odd and tentative, like a child stepping onto a frozen lake for the very first time.

The cavern was dead silent. The only sound he heard was the sound of their own breathing. That and the occasional echo from somewhere behind—perhaps the clink of a sword sheath as it caught against the stone of the tunnels, or the momentary rattle of arrows in a quiver.

The lake was wide—much wider than Nikandr had guessed. The largest of the hidden lakes of the islands were large indeed, but they were nothing compared to this place, this hidden reservoir in the middle of the desert.

At last they reached the far shore. They stopped along a short lip of stone that, as far as Nikandr could tell, held no form of escape. They were trapped. Perhaps Safwah merely wished to keep them here for a time while the pursuit chased them in the wrong directions, but it made Nikandr supremely uncomfortable.

When they’d all stepped onto the rocky shore, Safwah bent down and released a soft moan of pain as she touched the water’s surface. The only discernible effect Nikandr could see was the smallest ripple that caught the bare blue light, and yet, as it expanded outward, he could feel within his chest an expansion, an easing of pressure he hadn’t known was there. He breathed easier after that. Whatever she’d done, he trusted that she was keeping them safe.

They sat, all of them weary. Sukharam practically collapsed, even with Ashan supporting him.

“We’ll see to the boy first,” Safwah said. “And then I think it’s time I shared with you a tale, some of which you may already know.”

She and Ashan pulled up Sukharam’s robes while Nikandr and Soroush held the siraj stones so the entry wound could be properly inspected. The arrow shaft was deep in his thigh.

Sukharam stared into Safwah’s eyes with grim determination. He was poised—more poised than Nikandr had given him credit for—but he still glanced occasionally to his thigh and his breathing came in ever-shorter gasps.

Safwah gripped his hand in hers and spoke to him in Kalhani, “
Getham kal hiramal
.”

Sukharam visibly calmed. His breathing gained length if not steadiness, and a moment later, he licked his lips and nodded.

Safwah, as simply as if she were plucking feathers from a goose, placed one hand against his thigh and pulled the arrow out.

Sukharam did not cry out. He did not, in fact, seem to register the pain at all. If anything, he became
more
calm. Still, his forehead sweat, and his jaw was tight. He watched as Safwah set the broken arrow shaft aside and took a length of red cloth from a bag at her side and wrapped it around his leg.

Soon Safwah had finished dressing the wound. The moment she pulled his robe back down and smoothed the wrinkles, Sukharam laid his head down and fell asleep.

After leaving Sukharam to rest in peace, they sat upon the cold stone. When Goeh settled in beside her and set the siraj stones in the center of their rough circle, Nikandr realized just how much they looked alike. He thought back to the big man’s face when Safwah had fallen. His look had been one of extreme concern, not over someone he knew, but someone he’d known his whole life.

By the ancients, Safwah was Goeh’s
mother
.

The way he sat next to her now, the way he glanced at her, especially at the wound, made it seem obvious. But Safwah wouldn’t allow herself to show weakness, and once she even sent a glare at Goeh, a look that told him to calm himself and stop worrying about her.

She began to speak not long after. “In the days of the sundering, there were three Al-Aqim. You know of them. In the early days, after the devastation, there were still many upon Ghayavand, those who wished to help, those who thought they might still turn the tide against the rifts that had been torn between our world and the next. It was not to be, of course. As days turned into weeks and weeks into months, hearts grew weary, and then despondent. Some left. Others came to Ghayavand, offering what help they could, but all looked to the Al-Aqim, who were gifted like no other. They were trusted still, and many thought they would some day lead us away from the edge of ruin.

“They did not. They created the abominations, the akhoz. The qiram who remained on Ghayavand, to their great shame, agreed to it, feeling there must be sacrifice if the world is to live. And yet, they knew it was wrong, and the more children that were given to the Al-Aqim, the more turned against them. They were largely silent at first, these men and women, but then their voices grew in number and volume. The Al-Aqim began to withdraw. They hid themselves away with their pieces of the Atalayina, hoping to study them and uncover the secrets they’d failed to find before the sundering.

“But the Al-Aqim were fools. They could not hope to find the secrets of the Atalayina separately. The stone needed to be mended. It needed to be whole before such a thing could happen, but the Al-Aqim began to distrust, not only the men and women who believed in them, but one another.”

In the distance, there came a sound, so faint it was difficult to say what it might be. A rock falling. A creature stirring. A footstep. Safwah immediately went silent and all of them listened for a time. The sound was not repeated, and she went on, though quieter than before.

“There was a woman, Inan. Hers was the first of the children taken, whose name was Yadhan. The first of the akhoz. Inan gave her daughter willingly though many doubts warred with her loyalties to Khamal and the other Al-Aqim. As time went on, she became incensed—at herself, at the Al-Aqim, at even the fates—though she hid this from all, Khamal in particular, who she’d learned much from over their years together. Inan was wise. Inan had been born here, in Kohor, as had Sariya and Muqallad, and she knew much of the lore surrounding the Atalayina. She knew enough to bind it, but in order to do so, many would need to band together.

“One by one, then two by two, the qiram sided with Inan. They were known as the Tashavir—the stout, the resolute. Together they created the wards that still hold around Ghayavand. They muted the Atalayina, preventing the Al-Aqim from using it against them, and it bound the three of them to the island until such a time as the Tashavir returned to release them. Of all the qiram left on Ghayavand, Inan was the only one to stay behind so that she could deliver the news to Khamal and the others. What became of her, we do not know. We only know that she never returned to Kohor.

“But the Tashavir did return. They came to Kohor even as they spent themselves to hold the wards in place, hoping that they or others could learn enough that one day they could return to Ghayavand and close the rifts. But ideas…” Safwah was silent for a time, and Nikandr realized she was crying. She sniffed and wiped away her tears before going on. “Ideas are a strange thing. They are born of one mind but do not content themselves with this. Sometimes they spread like blooming fields of poppy—bright to look upon, and we are better for having seen them—but other times they spread like a dark plague, causing death wherever they go. The notion that had already sprouted from the Al-Aqim, that the sundering was no mistake at all, took root within some few of the Kohori, and from there it spread over time. The sundering was
meant to be
, some said, even if only to themselves. They were silent, these foolish men, these foolish women, but eventually their voices were raised. They said perhaps some should be sent to speak to the Al-Aqim, to treat with them.