The Flames of Shadam Khoreh (The Lays of Anuskaya) (5 page)

Behind Nikandr was a vale with a meager stream running through it. They’d timed their entrance to the desert to take advantage of the spring rains, but the gentle weather wouldn’t last much longer. It made it all the more important for them to get into the Gaji and out before it became too dry.

His breath had returned. There was part of him that didn’t want to complete this climb. He knew what would happen at the top. It scared him, and yet he was unable to deny the urge to go there, to look upon the desert below from such a height, so he took to the path once more. His breathing became labored halfway up, but he pushed now that he was so close. Near the top the slope was not so brutal, but he still found it impossible to catch his breath. Eventually, however, he came to a narrow ridge.

The wind here was cooler. It blew more fiercely than below. Ahead of him, the red desert floor opened up. It went on forever, flat as could be. Who would have guessed that so much land could be amassed in one place? He was so used to the islands, so used to the span of the sea, that he never thought what it would be like to see something so grand and humbling as this. It was a dangerous place, but beautiful, perhaps more so
because
of the danger.

He stared at the edge of the cliff ahead. The ridge was wide in places, but this was its highest point, and also its narrowest. Only a score of paces separated him from the edge.

He stepped forward, feeling the wind against his fingertips.

He took another step, felt the soles of his boots scrape.

He had hoped, in the days that had followed the events at the bridge on Galahesh, that his sense of the wind would return to him. He had hoped that he could once more feel the touch of the havahezhan. He had hoped he could summon the wind as he once had. But the days had turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, and still he felt nothing. He had tried from the towers of Galostina, and later, Radiskoye. He had tried from the mountains of Uyadensk. He had tried from the perches of the eyrie and the decks of windships. But each and every time, he’d felt nothing.

As was true now.

He took another step forward.

The wind gusted, tugging at his clothes.

He breathed deep, swallowing the spit that filled his mouth now that he was so very near the edge.

The desert yawned wider and wider, and yet it was not this he was most aware of, but the sheer height of this vantage.

With one more long step he reached the edge. The wind howled for a moment along the face of the cliff below. The desert seemed as wide as the sky. The ground was rocky, the vegetation sparse. The red floor of the dry plain ahead felt limitless. In the distance, below the cloudless blue sky, was a line of dark mountains, but it didn’t feel like they encompassed the desert, or even obstructed it in any way. It felt as if the mountains were merely one small obstacle, and that the desert continued on and on, eating more of the world as it went.

In those mountains was a village named Kohor, an ancient place where they could learn more of the Gaji and the secretive tribes that had for centuries remained hidden from the world. Closer, much closer, was a caravanserai, little more than a few dozen red-stone buildings with a well and a thousand-year-old trade route running through it. It was another stop on their journey toward the mountains, and the place Soroush and Ushai had gone the day before to secure them passage with a caravan.

Nikandr’s eyes were drawn to the base of the cliff where a whirlwind rose and twisted on the wind before spinning away into nothingness. Nikandr knew it was a havahezhan slipping momentarily into the world of Erahm, playing with the wind before being drawn back to Adhiya.

He often noticed such things. He didn’t want to; he simply did, and it made him painfully aware of the weight around his neck. For weeks after the events on Galahesh, he’d reached for his soulstone and gripped it tightly in his hand, hoping to feel the wind spirit—the havahezhan—he’d been bonded to ever since seeing Soroush on the cliffs below Palotza Radiskoye six years ago. He would eventually release his grip, for he felt nothing, and knew that he never would. His bond to that spirit had been broken the moment Nasim had driven the khanjar into his chest.

He scraped his feet forward. The tips of his boots were now only inches from the edge.

There were days when he wished he’d never gone to Galahesh—days when he wished he could once again feel the touch of the havahezhan, to summon the wind with mere thought—but he knew such hopes to be foolish. Had those events not occurred, Nasim would never have been freed. He would never have been able to stop Muqallad. And the world would have ended.

In the distance, another whirlwind lifted and twisted and fell. He knew it was foolish to think of such things, but still…

He inched one foot forward. He settled his weight onto the other, afraid to lift it from the dry earth lest he do something foolish.

He pulled the ghoutra from his face, pulled the headband from around his head and tossed it to the dirt behind him. With shaking hands, he spread his arms wide, tilted his head back, closed his eyes. He felt the sun upon his face, felt the wind through his hair. He breathed deeply and took in the scents of the desert—sage and baked earth and the strange spiky bushes that smelled like burning cedar.

He could feel the wind running through his fingers, could feel it tug at his kaftan and the white cotton legs of his sirwaal.

He recalled where his journey had begun. Before Galahesh, before Ghayavand. Before Nasim had been healed.

Before Rehada had died.

He had flown above his homeland, the island of Uyadensk. Soroush and his Maharraht had come to gather elemental stones for a ritual. One of them had stood at the edge of a cliff, as he stood now. He had spread his arms, looked up to the sky. And he’d leapt. He’d leapt from the cliffs, and the winds had saved him. They’d borne him upward until setting him gently down like a thrush alighting on a lonely branch.

Nikandr had thought much on that day. That spirit, the one the man had called forth, was the one that had attached itself to him, an elder, a spirit of the wind so old, the Aramahn said, that it had been eons since it had crossed over from Erahm, preferring, for whatever reason, the world of the spirits to the world of the living. Centuries ago, the Aramahn and Maharraht had no need of stones for summoning spirits. They’d done it on their own, as Nasim and Muqallad did. But before them, when the earliest of wandering desert tribesmen were first learning how to tame the spirits, they did what that lone man on that cliff had done. They gave of themselves. They
offered
themselves to the spirits. They did so in small ways at first. Submerging themselves in water, covering themselves in dirt, running their hands over flames. But as their thirst for knowledge and power grew, they tried things that seemed more and more desperate. Those aligned with water would drown themselves. Those aligned with fire would burn themselves. Those aligned with earth would bury themselves.

And those aligned with wind would offer themselves to it. They would find mountains, cliffs, gorges. They would find the highest points they could, and they would leap. They did so not hoping for a bond, but to
understand
the wind in a way they never had before, and it was this state of mind that the hezhan were attracted to. Many carried fear in their hearts—they were not able to wholly commit themselves—and they died. Those that leapt with complete freedom, however, were rewarded with power beyond anything the world had yet seen.

Nikandr had not known it at the time—how could he have?—but this is what the Maharraht on that cliff had done. He had believed in what he was doing so completely that when he had leapt, an elder havahezhan had come.

There had been times over the past many months that Nikandr had stood at the edge of a precipice like this, and he’d felt, almost, that he could touch Adhiya. It felt near enough that he could step forward and he would become part of it. It felt like it would embrace him, envelop him and protect him as it once had.

He felt this way now. The space before him was so large, so deep and so wide, that it beckoned him.

His feet shifted. He heard the skitter of stones as they fell over the edge and slipped down along the face of the cliff, but he didn’t care. Stones might fall, but he would not.

The scuff of leather against stone came to him. The crunch of footsteps on gravel.

Nikandr opened his eyes.

Looked down.

Saw the height from which he now stood, and wondered what it would be like to crash against the stones below.

The footsteps came closer.

He licked his lips. They were dry. So dry. How long had he been up here?

He looked to the western horizon. The sun was lowering. Already it was approaching the distant line of dark mountains.

He’d been here for hours, he realized. Hours. How could time have passed so quickly?

“Nikandr?”

He stepped back. One step, then two. And then he turned around.

Ashan stood some ten paces away, alternating glances between Nikandr and the edge of the cliff a long stride behind him. “You’ve been gone a long time.”

“So has Soroush.”

“So he has.” Ashan studied Nikandr’s face. He sidestepped along the rocky ground toward the edge, always keeping himself square to Nikandr. Only when he’d reached the edge did he look down at the outpost, Andakhara.

Ashan looked old. He looked old and weary. Much had been taken from him on the island of Ghayavand. He still managed to smile—he hadn’t lost that—but it seemed to tax him, whereas before it had always been effortless, a spring of good will flowing up from inside him.

“Come,” Ashan said, putting his arm around Nikandr’s shoulders. “Soroush and Ushai will return in the morning.”

Nikandr allowed himself to be led away from the edge and toward the trail. He hoped Ashan was right. The Gaji was a dangerous place. And not only because those who failed to give her respect died.

CHAPTER TWO

Atiana left her tent when she heard footsteps approaching. She wore a shayla, a dress cut in the style of the desert tribes, patterned red and white with tiny silver bells at the hem that jingled as she walked. She wore a veil across her face with a delicate chain hanging down from the ivory outer cloak she wore to keep the sun away. It protected her from the ever-present sand and dust, but more importantly, it did much to hide her origins here in the desert.

She looked toward the trail leading down from the steep ridge above their campsite and saw Ashan and Nikandr walking together. She busied herself at the fire, forming the dough she’d made hours earlier into a circle and setting it onto the stone that had been sitting above the coals to gather heat. She sprinkled the dough with cumin and cardamom and flax, the scent of it filling the dry, desert air as the flatbread cooked. Next to the bread she placed lengths of eggplant. She waited while they cooked, keeping her gaze from Nikandr but seeing him approach from the corner of her eye.

Ashan squatted next to the fire. He rested on his heels and rocked slowly back and forth. It was a position Atiana had never gotten the hang of, but for him seemed every bit as comfortable as lying down.

Without looking at her, without giving any word as to why he’d been gone for so long, Nikandr retreated to the tent he shared with Atiana.

Ashan rested his chin on his knees and stared at the flatbread. “He’s only worried about Soroush.”

What a strange thing to hear. Years ago, Nikandr might have hung Soroush before speaking to him. Now there was still a certain distance that separated them, but one would be a fool not to think of them as friends. It was telling as well that Ashan had referred only to Soroush and not Ushai. Nikandr would not have wished her to come with them to the desert. Neither would Atiana. Ushai had been Maharraht. Atiana supposed she was still, but like Soroush, she had set aside her hatred of the Grand Duchy while they searched for Kaleh and Nasim in this vast desert. Despite their misgivings, Soroush had fought bitterly for her place in their party. It went beyond the fact that the two of them were lovers. Ushai had roots in the Gaji. Her father was from Kohor. She’d taken to the winds with her mother, who was Aramahn, when she was only eight, but she still remembered it in bits and glimpses. In the end, they’d agreed that her blood ties to that place could prove useful.

Atiana could hear Nikandr rooting around the tent, no doubt for a mouthful of vodka. Whatever truth there was in Ashan’s words—she had no doubt he
was
worried about Soroush—there was more bothering him. One could not be near him and not know of it. It was his link to Adhiya. A year and a half had passed since the events at the Spar on Galahesh, and a day didn’t go by when Nikandr didn’t seem maudlin or reticent. She tried to find ways to reach him, to pull him from his doldrums—and indeed, there were times when he seemed to brighten, giving her hope—but then a day would pass, perhaps two, and he would return to his yearning.

“How long do we wait for them?” Atiana asked, referring to Soroush and Ushai.

“If they’re not back by morning, we’ll continue as planned, and hopefully find them at the caravanserai.”

Footsteps crunched over the ground toward them. It was Sukharam, the boy Nasim had found and brought to Ghayavand with him. He was gifted—as gifted as Nasim, if Ashan was to be believed—but that wasn’t why Ashan had insisted he be brought.
His fate is entwined with Nasim’s
, Ashan had said before the journey had begun.
We can no more forget about him than we can Kaleh, or the Atalayina.

Sukharam was a grown young man of sixteen now. He pulled up the hem of his flax-colored robes and knelt between her and Ashan. He reached for the flatbreads, perhaps to test them, perhaps to steal a bite, but Atiana slapped his hand away. He scowled, but Atiana paid him no mind. She quickly flipped the flatbreads over, each landing on the cookstone with a sizzle.

“I don’t like the feel of this,” Sukharam said. “Any of it.”

Ashan watched Sukharam intently. “There’s no reason to think that anything’s gone amiss.”