The Flames of Shadam Khoreh (The Lays of Anuskaya) (60 page)

He looks to Sariya and Muqallad. They sense it every bit as strongly as he does—he can see it in the way Sariya’s brows pinch, the way Muqallad’s jaw grits—but there is nothing to do now but rededicate themselves and draw upon the Atalayina further.

The stone becomes colder still, the cold of the deepest winter, the cold of the frozen north seas. His hand is numb. The brightness of the stone shines red through his skin, revealing the hint of bones beneath.

Dear fates, the pain of it.

Should the fates not help? Should they not lend their strength in this time of change?

Neh
, Khamal realizes. Indaraqiram, the rising of the soul of the world, is a mortal thing, a threshold only men can cross, a goal set against the children of the fates when they were first made from the raw elements of Erahm and Adhiya. The fates will not interfere when man has nearly completed all they were meant to do.

And yet Khamal can’t help but fear that something is terribly wrong. Should the fates not rejoice when indaraqiram finally comes?

They should, and yet he feels none of this from them, only a grim determination, a feeling of release—of
release
, as if they are tired of this world, tired of the burden that they’ve borne for generations beyond count.

How long we have waited. How long we have prayed for the will of man to rise above all that assaults them.

This is wrong, Khamal realizes.

It’s all wrong.

Khamal opens his eyes as the pain from the cold stone moves further up his arm. It goes beyond his shoulder and takes him deeper into the place of pain than he has ever been.

There is a ringing in the air, a high-pitched cry, and he realizes it is his own lament, his own pain, and that of his brother and sister. The three Al-Aqim have come to this place to take the world beyond, but now they know—all three of them—that this… this tragedy… is something the fates had been hoping for. Pleading for.

As much as the fates pulled the strings of man, they did not have control over this: their own death.

They had not considered their task a burden in the early days of the world. For long ages their will was strong, but when the cycles of man rose and fell with collapses from disease, from war, from a struggle with the worlds themselves, they grew weary. And then desperate for release.

The fates are dying
, Khamal realizes.
They are dying, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

He feels them slipping away. They fade even as the worlds approach. This will not be indaraqiram. This will be the very end of the world.

He feels Sariya and Muqallad. They know. They weep as he weeps—for the fates, for the end of the world—but just as he is they are caught like flies in amber.

A guttural scream rises up inside Khamal and finds release in the thin air of the mountain at the center of the world’s destruction. It is nothing to the tearing of the world around him, but it gives him strength. He pushes the worlds away. Sariya and Muqallad feel him doing this, but they merely watch.

“Help me!” he cries.

They do not. Their hearts are broken, and the fates begin to slip away. Perhaps they go to worlds beyond. Perhaps they go to the place where those who have reached vashaqiram—true enlightenment—go. Perhaps they will simply be gone, leaving the world bereft of their guiding hand.

It is nearly too much. Khamal does not know what the world will be like after this day. It will be cast adrift. Rudderless.

It is nearly too much to bear, and yet he knows he cannot abandon it. He loves it too dearly. He pushes harder as the worlds close in. He screams, releasing his soul into this one, final effort.

And slowly, the worlds stop. They begin to recede. They take their rightful places once more.

But there is something terribly, terribly wrong.

There are tears in the aether. Tears that allow Adhiya to touch Erahm. It is not as it should be, but before he can try to heal it, the world around him begins to shake. The air above him is afire. The island itself shifts. And the spirits begin to cross through the tears between worlds.

It will not stop, he realizes, not here. It will move beyond to the rest of the islands. It will consume them, and then it will move to the mainland itself, the motherland where life itself began.

He cannot allow it, and yet he is powerless to stop it.

He feels a hand against his. Sariya. Or Muqallad. He can’t tell which. And then another joins in. At last they understand what is happening, enough to help him stop it.

Yet even as they do, they feel the faint and final notes of the fates. They slip to their final resting place, wherever that may be, and are lost to the world.

This is when the blinding white stone between them shatters.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

Atiana was sitting on the deck of the ship of stone with her back to the gunwales when one of the red-robed Kohori on deck stood and began pointing over the bow. “Land!” he called.

Atiana pulled herself up, shading her eyes against the bright sunlight as she looked to where the man was pointing. The day was bright, the sky cloudless, and in the distance was the top of an emerald island.

Ghayavand.

It was hard to believe. They’d been on the sea for nearly three weeks, one long day melding into the next, the monotony of the sea making the days seem achingly long. But here they were at last.

It’s beautiful
, Atiana thought, this place that had been the source of such pain.

Without warning, the white arms of the goedrun released the ship and slipped down into the deep blue sea. The sudden absence of the surging motion felt strange after having felt it every waking moment for the past ten days. The goedrun released the other ships as well, and soon they were all floating and drifting with the waves.

The qiram near the prow, the one who had released the goedrun from their ship, remained where she was with her arms spread wide. Habram, who was standing amidships, went to her. He waited patiently for her to drop her arms, to turn and speak with him. When they were done, he spoke orders in Kalhani. Atiana could only pick out a few words.
Many
and
qiram
and a word that sounded like the Mahndi word for
rift
.

The men and women on the ship began making preparations, many going belowdecks, others packing away food and utensils and other things that had been used during their sea journey. They were taken the rest of the way by a strong wind summoned by the Kohori. As they approached the rocky shore of Ghayavand and passed beyond a lush green promontory, Atiana saw far to the east a line of objects floating in the sky. They were clearly anchored—she could see the lines that moored them in place—but they were nothing like typical windships. They were bulbous, with the heavier end oriented toward the sea and the tapered end pointing up toward the blue sky. They reminded her of conch shells, except she could tell that they were made of some fibrous material like wood or vines. There were at least two dozen, and perhaps more beyond the curve of the island.

“What are those?” Atiana asked Habram, pointing toward the ships, if they could be called such.

Habram turned to her with a serious look, but he did not reply. Atiana looked at them again, floating on the wind at the end of their tethers. A shiver ran down her frame. She liked the look of those ships not at all.

As they approached the island, Atiana felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise and stand on end. Her skin prickled along her arms. Even without the benefit of the aether, she could feel the hezhan here. They crouched at the edge of her perception, hungering for a taste of Erahm.

They beached a short while later. Many Kohori worked to unlade the ships, but others traveled inland, including Habram and Ushai and Kaleh, who was borne on a stretcher by two Kohori men in red robes.

Atiana was allowed to remain beneath the trees. No guards were set to watch her, but she knew that there would be some deeper in the forest watching her closely. Any attempt to flee and they would soon have her back. Atiana looked for Aelwen among those who were unlading the ships of stone but didn’t find her.

An hour later, Habram returned and asked that Atiana accompany him. They traveled inland for nearly a league. The Atalayina was in a pouch at Habram’s belt. Atiana could not see it, but she could feel it, especially in this place. The Atalayina had arrived at the very site where the world had nearly been destroyed three hundred years ago, and now it felt wild, a creature alive, not some dormant remnant from the forging of the world.

They came to a clearing where many tents already stood. These were military tents, set in three long rows with one larger tent set apart from the others. From the tall central pole of the large tent flew the pennant of Yrstanla, an ivory drakhen rearing on a crimson field.

As they approached that tent, several guardsmen moved forward to meet them. They wore fitted leather armor. These were the Kiliç Şaik. Which could only mean that the Kamarisi was here. No sooner had the thought blossomed than Bahett ül Kirdhash stepped out of the tent. He was dressed in a fine silk kaftan with high boots of soft leather and a turban of gold with a large ruby brooch pinned to the center. He seemed exactly like the Bahett she remembered until she realized his right arm ended in a stump. It was bandaged heavily in silk the color of sand, as if Bahett couldn’t bear his wounds to be wrapped in poorer cloth.

“Here you are at last,” Bahett said in Yrstanlan as he came to a stop.

“What are you doing here?” was all Atiana could think to ask.

Bahett smiled, showing his perfect teeth. “Please,” he said, bowing and motioning with his good left hand. “Let us speak in peace.”

Habram was led away, while Bahett himself brought Atiana inside his tent. Rich carpets lay over the ground, and pillows were strewn over much of the center.

“Sit,” Bahett said sharply.

Atiana would normally have refused to obey such a presumptive command, but there was something about Bahett, a desperation in his gaze she couldn’t remember him ever having before. He had always been one to hide his true intent. If he had become so strained that he would allow his composure to break, she would not test him, not until she knew more. She sat in the pillows as Bahett went to an ornate chest near a simple table and chair. He retrieved from the chest a small wooden box, no larger than a closed fist, and then he came and sat a respectful distance away from her.

He set the box between them on a pillow of golden thread, but otherwise drew no further attention to it. He didn’t have to, though. Atiana could feel something inside. The aether here was terribly close—close enough to touch—but what could affect the aether in such a way that she could feel it without taking the dark? She might have said the Atalayina, but this felt different. It felt more immediate, more dangerous, like the exhilaration of seeing an old enemy.

“You’ve come a long way,” Bahett said simply.

“As have you.” Atiana couldn’t help but glance down at the stump where his right wrist used to be.

It did not go unnoticed. He glanced down as well and the space between his eyebrows pinched, as if he were reliving the event. She nearly asked him what had happened, but she thought better of it, and a moment later the look was gone and he was once again staring into her eyes with a composed, almost gentle, look.

“The trip through the Gaji was risky,” he said. “I might have called it foolish, but here you are, and Sariya has returned to me as well.”

“You sent those men to find us.”

“I did.”

“And yet you are allied with the Kohori.”

“Now,
evet
, but not then. They have come to see, as I did long ago, that Sariya will bring us peace.”

Atiana couldn’t help but laugh. She thought she would regret it, but Bahett merely shook his head and nodded to the box.

“Open it,” he said.

She took it and slid the top off of it. A golden light was revealed within. It glimmered brightly, scintillated as she turned the box this way and that. It was like the siraj stones of the Aramahn, but it was of a color and quality she’d never seen. It was small, no larger than a chickpea. And, she realized, it did not touch the blood-red cloth that lined the box; it floated at the center.

Bahett reached in and took it. He gave it a spin between them, and there it remained, floating in the very place Bahett had released it into the air.

Atiana couldn’t help but be reminded of her time in Sariya’s tower in Baressa. She’d done much the same with the piece of the Atalayina that Atiana had brought to her. The feelings of peril she’d experienced before opening the box intensified. It felt not unlike those moments in the aether when she sensed another presence. She knew someone was near without yet knowing who.

“This is Sariya’s,” Atiana said with certainty.

Bahett waggled his head, the ruby brooch glittering beneath the golden light. “Much more than that, Atiana. For all intents and purposes, this
is
Sariya.”

Atiana could hardly tear her eyes away from the spinning stone. “She nearly died on Galahesh, did you know? You and the other Matri had nearly smothered her. That, plus the unhealed wound from Ushai’s blade, which had nearly killed her once already. But she was resourceful. She still had her tower, the spire she’d had Hakan build for her in the forest, and she had placed some of herself in this stone. Sariya called to me when the bridge was destroyed. She guided me to her stone, even as she took Kaleh’s form and brought Nasim to the Gaji.
This
,” Bahett said, motioning toward the stone, “is her grounding here in this place. Her anchor to the material world. Without it, she would surely slip to the other side and be lost to us.”

“You care that she will be lost to us?”

“I do, Atiana Radieva. I do. There is a problem here among the islands. The rifts will not stop, and Sariya is the last one alive who can tame them.”

“She will not
tame
them.”

Bahett breathed in deeply as if he were trying to keep his composure. “She will, and I’ve brought you here to convince you of it.”