The Flames of Shadam Khoreh (The Lays of Anuskaya) (58 page)

All around there came the cries of men, barely louder than the crumbling of the world.

Nikandr managed to stand. “To me!” He limped forward, low to the ground, squinting against the fine dust in the air. “To me, men of Anuskaya!”

“Here, My Lord Prince.” It was Styophan.

The ground continued to buck as he moved forward. He was thrown to the ground several times, but he warded with his hands and kept moving. He found Soroush, who was helping Styophan to his feet. Their horses were gone, and both men were bleeding.

“To me!” Nikandr called again as he helped Soroush with Styophan.

Slowly, the rumbling started to die away, but another building crashed somewhere back toward the chariot. The cries of misery mixed with the sound of crashing stone, and Nikandr wondered idly whether Bahett had just been killed.

It matters little now
, he thought. They had failed, but now they must escape.

Slowly they gathered horses. There were enough, for they found only two other men. A mere five had survived from the eighteen they had started with.

“By my father, I’ve made a mess of things,” Nikandr said as they led their horses tentatively away. They passed several janissaries, some fallen, others helping their brothers in arms, but none made a move to stop them. They simply peered through the settling dust, eyes wide in wonder and fear at the world around them.

They mounted once the rumbling had stopped and rode hard northward, planning to head back to the Kasir to find Ashan and Nasim if they could be found, but when they came to a bridge that led over a canal filled with brown water and detritus, he saw a gallows crow standing on the edge of it. It fidgeted as they approached, as if Ishkyna were having difficulty maintaining control.

“East,” the crow said before cawing several times. “You must head east.”

“Nasim and the others—”

“Gone, Nischka. They’re all gone.”

“Gone where?”

“I don’t know, but I felt them, moments before the quake. They entered a rift at the kasir, and then I felt them no more.” It cawed again and flapped into the air before turning round and alighting onto the same spot it had been only moments ago. “Flee, Nikandr. This place is not safe. The rift they opened has already widened, and it will quickly grow worse.”

And then the crow launched itself into the air and winged down the canal toward the mighty Vünkal. He could barely see the muddy river through the dust that had drifted over the city like a pall.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

Sukharam was returned to Nasim’s room after darkness fell. He was still in his manacles. He sat and looked over to Tohrab as the door was locked and the guard’s footsteps faded away.

Tohrab sat on his bed, his back against the cold stone wall, staring eastward. It was a grim stare, as if he feared he hadn’t the strength for what lay ahead, but it was also determined. This was a man—if he could still be called such—that had withstood the forces of the rifts for centuries. True, he’d had his brothers and sisters to help him, and clearly every single day that passed cost him dearly, but he had strength yet. Such was the power of the men of old.

“Where did they take you?” Nasim asked Sukharam.

“To the Great Hall. Bahett wished to speak with me.” He said these words in a voice that was distant, as if he too were thinking about another place and another time.

“What about?”

Sukharam lifted his head and regarded Nasim. “What do you think? He wanted to know of our plans. Of Sariya. Where I thought she was now. He wanted to know of the Atalayina, whether Sariya had managed to unlock its secrets.”

“And what did you tell him?”

Sukharam’s face became harder, which in the moonlight made his skin look like marble. “There was little harm in telling him the truth.”

“Was there not?”

“You would rather I suffered before telling him? Or have you adopted the ways of the Landed?”

“The Landed… Listen to yourself. Are you Maharraht to speak of them so?”

Sukharam opened his mouth to speak, his face dark and angry, but then he calmed himself and lay down facing the wall. “Go to sleep.”

“Sukharam?” When he didn’t turn around, Nasim continued. “Why were you afraid when we were speaking of the fates?”

“Nasim, I’m more tired than I’ve ever been.”

“This is important.”

“Many things are important.”

“
Yeh
, but this—”

“We can speak of it in the morning. For now, just leave me be.”

Nasim waited, hoping Sukharam would change his mind. He wanted to press, but that would only make Sukharam angrier. “Very well,” Nasim said as he lay down. “We’ll speak in the morning.”

Nasim tried to fall asleep, but couldn’t. His mind was filled with everything around him. Tohrab’s suffering. Sukharam’s secrets. But more than anything, the uncertainty over their future.

Finally, near dawn, he did manage to close his eyes.

And when he opened them again, Sukharam was gone.

The sun was already high. He’d slept for hours, and Sukharam’s bed was empty. His manacles lay upon the rough grey blanket, broken.

“Tohrab,” Nasim called.

Tohrab was still sitting where he had been when Nasim had nodded off. His lips pressed tight. His eyes fixed on the far wall.

Nasim shook his shoulder. “Tohrab! Sukharam is gone.”

Tohrab met Nasim’s gaze, but his eyes were glazed, and he didn’t speak. He merely stared, as if he no longer had the ability to do anything beyond holding the last shreds of the wards together.

“Did you hear me? Sukharam is gone.”

When Tohrab spoke, the words came slowly. “Did I not tell you it would be so?” He was clearly in pain. Nasim wished there was some way he could share the burden, but he didn’t know the first thing about the wards, and Tohrab could most likely spare neither the attention nor the strength to teach him.

Nasim picked up the manacles, which looked to have been melted along a thin line near the lock. “He burned his way out. A suurahezhan, through iron. How, Tohrab? How did he do it?”

For the first time, Tohrab seemed truly present. He stared at the manacles, then took in the room around him, and finally he looked up to Nasim with a look of clarity he hadn’t seen since Shadam Khoreh. “Bonding through iron is difficult, but not impossible.”

“How, then?” Outside the cell door, Nasim heard sounds, perhaps from the level below them. “Tohrab, we have to stop him.”

“The chains,” Tohrab said. “They bind you to this place, to the earth. It is there that you can find your way to Adhiya. A suurahezhan can reach you through such a link. Find one, Nasim. Find one and use it as Sukharam has.”

Nasim stared at the black iron around his wrists. He’d never considered that it might be defeated, and so had never tried. He felt for the link Tohrab spoke of, but sensed nothing whatsoever. The chains were an anchor, dragging him down, rooting him in place, deadening the way to Adhiya.

“You feel the heat, Nasim. You see the wavering in the air. Look beyond, and you will see the flames.”

Nasim shook his head, spread his feet wider. He felt the stone of the tower beneath him. Felt the earth below it, solid and deep. When he focused on the chains, any sense of this vanished. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He spread his hands wide at his side and tried again.

This time, he felt not only the tower, not only the earth below, he felt the other buildings in the kasir. He felt the long curtain wall that surrounded it. He felt the stones set into the roads of the city and the thousands of buildings that made up Alekeşir. If he had allowed it, this expanding awareness would have continued to the landscape beyond, toward the mountains to the east and the desert to the south, to the hills of the Haelish that lay westward or the cold wastes of the north. But he reined his awareness in. He drew it toward the tower, and when he did, he felt the ways in which he was rooted by the iron chains. And with that understanding he also felt its weakness: narrow veins where the iron was imperfectly forged. It was there, through those narrow openings, that Adhiya could be found.

He touched that part of him that was aligned with fire, hoping the suurahezhan would find him through these narrowest of openings. It took time, but eventually he sensed one. The smell of cardamom came to him as he beckoned it forth, and eventually a bond as tentative as a butterfly’s kiss was forged through the gaps in the chain. He gave of himself while asking the suurahezhan to heat the chains. This did little at first, and Nasim could barely feel it feeding on him. But the heat the hezhan granted to the chains made the gaps widen, which allowed him to draw more heat. A sensation grew within him. It was unlike the nausea he’d felt so often when he was young. Those days were gone; Nikandr’s taint had been removed from him on the Spar of Galahesh. It was more like an exuberance that also enfeebled, like walking along the heights of an impossibly tall mountain.

He’d been freed of his bond with Nikandr for years, but only recently had his mind been wrested from Sariya so that he could
feel
a bond with a hezhan. It was … wonderful. Had he truly never felt this way before? He could remember nothing but discomfort, nothing but pain and confusion and disorientation. He’d wondered in the dark days of his childhood how men like Ashan could willingly bond with hezhan, but he wouldn’t have questioned their actions had he known how
good
it felt.

“Nasim!”

The world around him went cold.

He looked down to his hands and saw glowing metal melt and fall away. Some of it pooled in his hands. He lifted them and stared at the glowing, molten metal. He allowed it to fall to the floor of the tower as he felt the suurahezhan—an ancient creature, indeed—slip back toward the aether to the world beyond. He kept it close, however. He was not yet ready to release it, no matter that he’d been weakened by its touch.

He stared down. At his feet was a pile of slag—the color of it glowing red, then burnt rose, then charred grey—and around it, smaller spatters of dull grey metal, the very same color the manacles had been moments ago.

“Nasim.”

Nasim looked over at Tohrab, who even through his pain was staring at him with eyes of wonder.

Outside, the sun was higher still.

By the fates, how much time had passed?

“I must ask you to do so again,” Tohrab said, holding up his own manacles.

Nasim drew on the suurahezhan once again and grasped Tohrab’s chains, but as he did, he felt another suurahezhan slipping across the aether even then, bonding with a nearby qiram.

It was Sukharam, and Nasim knew with certainty the reason. Sukharam was readying his passage to Ghayavand.

Tohrab’s eyes said that he felt it too. They begged him to move faster.

Nasim bent his will to the iron chains. The magic of the suurahezhan again slipped over them like water on oiled canvas. But this metal was of poor quality, and he knew now how to foil such stuff. He was careful that he didn’t burn Tohrab, so it took time, but soon enough the manacles split and fell away.

The lock to the door, he found, had been melted, but it was simply a matter of melting it again. This time, he moved as quickly as he could. In moments, the wood of the door was smoking and the glowing, molten metal was pouring from the hole where the lock once was. Then he and Tohrab were out and navigating the steps down. He wanted to free Ashan and Nikandr and the others, but he could spare no time. He had to stop Sukharam. Once that was done, he could return to free them.

They left through the door at the tower’s base and headed across the snow-covered yard toward the southeast portion of the kasir’s grounds. That was where Sukharam was. He had bonded with another hezhan, this one a vanahezhan, a spirit of the earth, and even now he was drawing forth another.

Five, Nasim thought. He was going to bond with five of them.

Sukharam must have known he was coming, for Nasim felt him speed up his process. He bonded with a spirit of life, and then a water spirit, and finally a havahezhan, a spirit of wind.

Nasim wanted to run, but Tohrab was already flagging. He staggered forward until Nasim put Tohrab’s arm around his shoulders and helped him forward.

He’d not gone ten strides when something opened up inside him. He knew immediately what it was. Years ago, when Kaleh had done the same thing, he’d had no idea what to look for. But now it was as intimate as an itch beneath the skin. Sukharam had just opened a hole in the earth, one that would lead him to Ghayavand.

He would have to summon spirits as Sukharam had. It might make things worse here, but he couldn’t allow Sukharam to reach Ghayavand’s shores alone.

Luckily, such a thing was child’s play. There were so many hezhan near that he need only call and he found many willing to bond. He chose carefully, taking only those powerful enough to do his bidding, but not so powerful that they would widen the rift any further—or worse, cross over to Erahm.

Fire he had already. Earth was next, then water and air, and finally a spirit of life. The feeling was heady and eerily similar to what he’d experienced on Oshtoyets years ago when Soroush had fed him the elder elemental stones.

Tohrab was still leaning on him for support, but he seemed to find some inner reserve. His breath came in long rasping wheezes, but they moved with speed, a shambling run, toward the orchards. They came to a clearing with a pond at its center and a hillock on the far side. Sukharam stood near the top of this, hands wide, face turned up toward the sky. Near his feet was an open maw, a tear that exposed dark earth and mottled stone. It was still widening as Nasim and Tohrab approached, but he’d no sooner stepped onto the gravel path that lined the pond than Sukharam stopped and turned.

He raised his hand and a wind buffeted Nasim. It roared in his ears and pushed him backward. It came on so fiercely and so quickly that he didn’t have time to do anything but raise his arms and ward his face against the hail of rocks that lifted from the path and struck him. Finally he was able to draw upon his havahezhan to quell the winds. Sukharam tried over and over to lift the wind once more, but Nasim stopped him at every turn.