The Straits of Galahesh: Book Two of The Lays of Anuskaya (20 page)

Ishkyna glanced at Atiana—Atiana could tell she wanted to fire back a scathing reply—but thankfully her thoughts, and her sharp words, lay hidden behind her lips. “It isn’t common knowledge as far west as Aleke
ş
ir, but the basin requires water as cold as the northern seas, as cold as the bones of the earth. It’s no joy taking those waters, I can assure you.”

It seemed that Arvaneh could no longer hold her feelings back. The smile she wore was patronizing, which made it clear just how much contempt she harbored not just for Ishkyna, but for the entire Grand Duchy.

“Forgive me,” she said. “You have just arrived, and I have taken enough of your time. I hear we will see you at the dinner tonight.”

Atiana bowed her head.

As Arvaneh strode toward the door, Ishkyna widened her eyes at Atiana.

Atiana could only shrug.

A moment later, Arvaneh was gone, leaving in her wake a cold sense that everything they had tried to hide from her had just been laid bare.

W
hen Nasim turned the last of the switchbacks on the path leading up to the top of the ridge, and the celestia came into full view at last, he stopped, humbled. Without speaking, Rabiah and Sukharam did the same. It was so large that it seemed to take on different dimensions the closer they came, but the true immensity of it did not strike him until he approached the concentric steps that led up to the marble floor.

Before he reached the first of the steps, he stopped and merely stared. This was a wonder he would not rush. It was high noon and the sun was bright, casting much of the floor in shadow, but from six arched openings built cunningly into the center of the dome above, crepuscular rays shone down, creating six bright ovals that forced Nasim to squint when he looked upon them. Several of the fluted stone columns were overgrown with vines. They crept up and up, reaching even the exterior of the dome far above.

The vines did not, however, grow against the underside of the dome. In fact, the beautiful mosaics there looked pristine, untouched since their construction over four hundred years before. Much of it was a beautiful shade of blue, the blue of the deepest, clearest water in the ocean, but against this backdrop were constellations that Nasim could only guess were made of mother of pearl, for the stars shone like the brightest stars on the darkest of nights. He could make out the constellations of the winter solstice easily—Iteh and Almadn and Qyleh and Osht and all the others—but there was so much more than this: the smaller, lesser constellations that rested above them or between them in the firmament; major comets that graced the sky as the fates allowed; glinting lines that tracked the path of the moon at summer and winter solstice. The patterns were not just brilliant, but alive.

It nearly brought him to his knees. Little wonder that Khamal had chosen this for his demesne. The wonder was that Sariya hadn’t, choosing her tower in its place, or that Muqallad had chosen the Aramahn village built into the mountains east of Alayazhar. How they could lock themselves away from the beauty of the sky was beyond him.

Sukharam, the hem of his robes blowing in the wind, climbed the stairs and examined the dome. The fear he’d shown earlier had spiked as they reached the center of the city, and although they skirted the area that held Sariya’s tower, he had watched it with terror-filled eyes. Only when they’d gained the top of the hill and he’d seen the celestia in all its grandeur did his head lift and his shoulders unbunch. And now, he was staring wide-eyed as he walked forward.

Nasim realized just how far into the celestia Sukharam was moving. “The border, Sukharam!”

Sukharam stared down at the floor, where black inlaid stone described a vast circle several paces from the perimeter. “How could it still be active? Khamal died sixteen years ago.”

“We shouldn’t take chances.”

“I feel nothing.”

“And what would you look for?” Nasim asked. “Do you think it would be so obvious?”

Sukharam looked to Nasim, then the floor again. He shrugged, a simple, dismissive motion. As he paced around the edge of the floor, Nasim wondered if Sukharam was embarrassed and this was some attempt at regaining face. He hoped not. He needed them to be honest with one another. He couldn’t afford to have any of them hiding things for vanity’s sake. He promised himself he’d talk to Sukharam later, when the two of them were alone.

Nasim stepped to the edge of the black border and squatted, resting on the balls of his feet. He remembered standing here when he—when
Khamal
—had placed the protections over this place, allowing only himself to enter and leave, but he couldn’t recall the details. Khamal’s memories—the few that held any clarity at all—were no better than half-remembered dreams. He knew that a ward existed and that it was both complex and powerfully dangerous, but little more than that.

He walked the circle the opposite direction of Sukharam, until the two of them stood at opposite extremes.

“Stop,” he said.

Sukharam obeyed. He and Rabiah waited and watched as Nasim searched his memories.

“What is it?” Rabiah asked.

“I’ve seen this before,” Nasim replied.

“Seen what?” Sukharam asked, stepping closer to the black stones.

“Stop!”

Sukharam did, but he seemed petulant now, almost angry. “Tell us what you remember.”

“Someone was standing there, as you are now, facing Khamal, but it’s confusing. It doesn’t feel real.”

“What, the dream?” Rabiah asked.

“They’re not dreams, Rabiah. They’re memories.”

“The memory, then.”

Nasim shook his head. “The image. The person standing across from Khamal. The other person is standing on the other side, in Adhiya.”

“That can’t be,” Sukharam said.

Nasim crouched, squinting at the pattern of stones laid about the celestia’s interior. There was no immediate rhyme or reason, just darker patterns of pewter against the sandstone dominating the floor.

“Constellations?” Rabiah asked, walking along the edge and considering several of the patterns.

“
Neh
,” Nasim said.

They all studied them as a breeze blew among the tall, vine-choked columns.

“They’re meaningless,” Sukharam said.

“
Neh
,” Nasim replied, standing, understanding coming like a flash of lightning. “They’re ley lines.” The moment he said the words, he knew it was true.

Rabiah came closer as Nasim studied the lines. He could see the pattern now, not the islands themselves, but the confluence of energy that formed around them. The islands of Khalakovo stood out first. Uyadensk and Duzol and Yrlanda. Then the islands of Mirkotsk and Vostroma. To the west, the mass of Yrstanla loomed, pressing the ley lines, guiding them along the edge of the Sea of Tabriz.

The lines ran through the sea, guided by the seabeds that drew close to, but did not quite reach, the surface. The Aramahn had known since the time of the first wanderers that ley lines guided the aether, and that through these lines one could control many things. It was this knowledge that had led them to create ships with keels so that they could use them to guide windships as the rounded keel of a waterborne ship does.

Nasim studied the map closely, moving around the celestia floor as he did so, but he stopped when he noticed to the southwest the confluence of ley lines that focused on the island of Galahesh. He didn’t understand it, but the lines of power coming from the Sea of Tabriz ran not
around
Galahesh, but
through it
to the deeper well of the Sea of Khurkhan. It was the straits, Nasim realized. The straits had always been impossible for the Landed to cross with their windships, and it was because of this—the surge of power running along the straits disrupted the natural lines that ran along the land mass of Galahesh.

In the center of the map was the only representation of a land mass. Ghayavand. Where he now stood.

It made sense that the builders would have worked the sea and earth into the stone flooring. What he didn’t understand was why they would have chosen to show the ley lines. Why not the islands themselves? Why not both?

But then he realized just how much time Khamal had had on this island—more than three hundred years. As much as the tower was Sariya’s demesne, this had been Khamal’s. He could easily have reconstructed the entire celestia in that time, so recreating the flooring would have been simple. He could not have known when and in what form he would return, so he might have recreated this as a clue of sorts, something for his new incarnation to find and to open like a lockbox. But he couldn’t make it too easy—lockboxes, after all, did have locks. It would be needed to prevent others from finding its secrets.

“There’s something in the middle,” Rabiah said.

Nasim looked closer. At the center of the celestia’s floor was a circular brass plate. The plate was old, the metal discolored, which had hidden the fact that there was a bracelet resting there, a qiram’s bracelet of beaten gold that held an opal in its setting. It wasn’t the stone that mattered. It was the fact that he recognized it. He’d seen it a thousand times before.

It was Ashan’s.

Ashan was arqesh; he knew all the disciplines and had one of every stone. The one that was left here, however, was the one for the dhoshahezhan, the spirit of life and growth.

It was a message, and it wasn’t difficult to figure out who had sent it.

“Muqallad has taken Ashan,” Nasim said softly.

Rabiah looked between him and the brass plate, confused, but understanding came to her moments later. “It’s a clue, isn’t it?”

Nasim nodded and stepped forward over the black line. Rabiah was right, and the fact that Muqallad had been here and left the bracelet was a sign that some of the wards of this place had been removed.

As he crossed over the line, Nasim sensed a shift, a subtle change—in this world, or the next, or the one that lay between. He couldn’t quite place it. He’d never felt the like before, not since that day on Oshtoyets when Nikandr had saved him, when he’d been drawn from Adhiya to lie wholly in the world of Erahm. This was similar, though to a much smaller degree.

“Nasim...”

It was Rabiah’s voice, and it was full of wonder. And worry.

He felt the stones shift beneath his feet. The ley lines... They were
moving
like waves upon the water. He stepped toward the edge of the floor, feeling more calm than he’d felt in years. Sukharam and Rabiah practically ran, their eyes nervous and darting.

As the lines continued to alter, Nasim wondered if the previous view had been what the lines were like when Khamal had last been here, or perhaps how they’d been at the time of the sundering. Either way, his alarm began to grow the longer he watched.

The lines gathered tightly around Ghayavand. This was to be expected. The rifts had formed here. They had been contained by the Al-Aqim and the other qiram who had survived, but they had eventually begun to expand. When the ley lines were laid out like this, however, the rifts appeared as a confluence—a whorl or an aberration in the otherwise-orderly lines.

What was worrying was the fact that there were similar patterns being formed around the islands of Galahesh and Rafsuhan. Galahesh could perhaps be reasoned away. It was well known that the island—and the straits that divided it—acted as a channel that funneled aether from the Sea of Tabriz to the deep well in the Sea of Khurkhan. It acted as a crosswind to the aether that ran beneath the surface of the water—the shallows that ran from the Motherland, through Oramka and Galahesh and on to the islands of the Grand Duchy. But the whorls around Rafsuhan made no sense whatsoever.

It must be another rift. And a large one at that. So much was changing, he thought, and none of it for the better.

The lines finally stopped moving. The rift running through Rafsuhan was deep, but not so bad that it wouldn’t eventually close. The tightness around Galahesh, however, could not be sustained. Sooner or later, something was going to give, and he couldn’t escape the feeling that it was being done consciously, nor could he escape the fact that Sariya and Muqallad had recently found a way to break the chains that had kept them bound for so long.

“Come,” Nasim said to the others. “There’s nothing to fear any longer.”

Nasim led them to the center of the floor, and there Nasim squatted down and picked up the bracelet. The gold was heavy. The opal reflected the brightness of the day. He put it on, feeling something akin to familiarity. He remembered thinking once what it would be like to wear Ashan’s bracelets. He knew that he didn’t need such things, but it still felt good. It felt like he was one step closer to finding him.