The Straits of Galahesh: Book Two of The Lays of Anuskaya (48 page)

Arvaneh and Hakan were the last to be seated. As soon as they were, the woman at the center of the room—Ebru, Bahett’s second wife—struck the bell one last time. With her higher vantage, Atiana could see that there were no tables where Ebru stood; they had been cleared in a circle around her. She wore a beautiful, formfitting dress of red. Her fingers bore rings that sparkled under the light of the chandeliers. Dozens of bracelets circled her wrists. She stood, back straight, chin high—the pose of a dancer—and brought the mallet high above her head, ready to strike. As she snapped her arm into place, the bracelets made a sound like the rattle of coins, and when she did, others around the room did the same. Bahett’s other wives, now free of their trays, had bracelets as well, and they had brought their arms high in time with Ebru.

Small gasps of pleasure came from the room as the guests looked around them, understanding at last what was happening.

Ebru struck the bell—it rang more faintly than before and yet still filled the room—and then she snapped her arm to the ready position. The others snapped their arms in response, taking a long, sinuous stride forward.

Again the bell was struck, and again the women strode. As they moved in unison toward the center, more servants, all of them men, wound through the tables, bringing the first course—an intoxicating mixture of sugared sage and salted pear. As the head table began to eat, Atiana leaned in and spoke low to Siha
ş
. “I know it was you who came to me by the willow.”

The sounds of forks clinking against plates, of the bell and the
shink
of the dancers’ arms, came to Atiana clearly, almost dreamlike, as she waited for Siha
ş
to respond.

When he did not, she spoke again, “I know it was—”

“I would not say that so loudly if I were you.”

Atiana had made sure that those to her right and to Siha
ş
’s left were engaged in conversation. “If I speak too softly, good Siha
ş
, it will attract
more
attention.”

Siha
ş
seemed suddenly disinterested in his meal. He merely pushed it around his plate with his fork. “I know what you plan to do tomorrow night as well.”

“Then you also know a trap has been laid for me.”

His silence was telling.

“You were willing to let me walk into it,” Atiana said.

“I wish you no harm, but there is more to consider.”

“Such as?”

“We must know Arvaneh’s plans. It was decided that you would be allowed to go, and that we would watch.”

“With no intervention from those who claim to be mindful of Hakan’s true purpose.”

Bahett’s wives had reached the center of the room. There, they began a slow but complex ritual, moving around one another, hooking arms and spinning about, as men standing at the corners of the room beat large skin drums. The beat was thunderous at times and subtle, almost tender at others. It was a rhythm that felt deep as the ocean or light as summer rain, and the dancers echoed it well.

“In truth, I hope that you will come to no harm, but there are casualties in war, My Lady.”

“This is why we need to speak, Siha
ş
. I will not offer myself as a sacrifice.”

“I cannot help you in the dark.”

At those words, Atiana glanced over to the head table, the same point at which the drumbeat quickened and the intensity of the dancing increased. Arvaneh seemed transfixed by it.

“That isn’t the sort of help I require,” Atiana continued.

“Then what?”

“I need protection, both during and once it’s done.”

“You have your streltsi.”

“Hakan has allowed few enough in the kasir, Siha
ş
. You know this. We need
others
to watch over us as we study Arvaneh.”

“If you do it in secret, there will be no need.”

“It will hardly be in secret. In all likelihood Arvaneh will know we have come.”

“It is not the time for boldness, My Lady.”

“It is, My Lord. My father has arrived on these shores, and there is something afoot. I can smell it. And Arvaneh is the key. Isn’t this what you’ve been searching for as well?”

“
Evet
, but we are not ready. Hakan has begun to fear those close to him. He sent a kaymakam away from the kasir two days ago, and we found out this morning that he has been lost on the road to Ramina. He was one of our most careful, and still Hakan found him out.”

The beat of the drum had become frenetic, even ardent. The dancers swung about, dresses flaring, legs arcing. They had surrounded Ebru in her red dress, she with the bell and the rings of gold. They began to lean in and scratch at her. Only one or two at first, but as Ebru tried to escape the circle, the others pulled her back in and more began to feed upon her. She fought, rising above the tide, but there were too many, and she was drawn back down. She fell to the floor, and as she did, the men, who had been beating their drums furiously, raised their mallets up and struck once. The note reverberated around the room. All eyes were fixed on the dance.

“You must
be
ready,” Atiana said. “There is no time to wait.”

The drums beat again, and one of the remaining women—the women in white—fell to the floor.

“Two more days, My Lady Princess. That’s all I ask.”

Another beat, and another woman fell.

“I cannot delay. We go tomorrow night.”

The drumbeats continued. Each one, each collapse of a dancer, felt like a heartbeat, like blood dripping upon the floor, like her last chance was slipping from her grasp.

“Then you go alone.”

Atiana stared at the floor, where not a single dancer remained standing. “So be it.”

N
asim stares into Sariya’s deep blue eyes.

“Why would you not think to find me here?” she asks.

“Because you were not on Ghayavand.”

She motions to the forest, and Nasim falls into step alongside her. Unlike Sariya, who moves like a bee over a field of wildflowers, the going is difficult for him. He trudges, the deep snow thumping as each footstep breaks the surface.

She glances down—no more than this—and Nasim’s steps are light upon the snow. Yadhan, however, continues to struggle, and she appears more and more uncomfortable with this exchange. Sariya pays so little attention to her that Nasim wonders if Sariya knows she’s there.

With a simple but elegant motion, Sariya sweeps the air with one hand, as if to indicate the entirety of this place they walk within. “Does the aether stop at the borders of Ghayavand? Is it bound by land or sea?”

Nasim takes in the terrain once more. He thought this a place that Sariya carved from her dreams, made real by her will over the course of centuries and the peculiarities of the aether that Sariya had managed to uncover, but now that he looks, he realizes how similar it is to the land of dreams that embraced him in his younger years. The aether is the land of dreams, after all, the place where Adhiya and Erahm touch. If Sariya tried hard enough, could she not have unraveled its secrets?

“Where are you?”

“Why, do you wish to join me?”

“I don’t know where I wish to go.”

Sariya smiled. “Then come.”

They continue into the woods. They pass well into the trees before Nasim realizes Yadhan has not followed. She watches from the edge of the forest, ducking beneath the lowest branches to watch him, unwilling to take even a single step into the trees.

Nasim doesn’t want to continue alone, but he cannot allow Sariya to sense his worry. If she senses weakness, all will be lost.

They come to a rise, and soon the trees part, revealing a white monolith standing tall and proud, as if it considers itself the lord of all it surveys. It is taller than any of the trees that stand outside the clearing.

Sariya considers the stone, for the time being ignoring Nasim.

And then Nasim realizes.

The stone. The piece of the Atalayina. The one he’d hidden in Sariya’s tower. He feels it within the strata of rock that forms the monolith, and he is sure that Sariya feels the same. He is confused, for his memories tell a different story. Khamal dropped it onto the floor of Sariya’s bedroom within her tower. How, then, had it become trapped within the monolith that stands before him?

But of course, this place, its nature… He stands in the aether, true, but he also stands in a place of Sariya’s making. This is her demesne. By Sariya’s hand it would have been formed and reformed until—as improbable as it seems—the tower and everything within it would have expanded, bringing into being all that surrounds him, including this monolith.

Now it is a riddle to be solved. Sariya has isolated the Atalayina, separated it from the rest, giving her time to remove the stone without damaging it. Surely she sensed the stone in the weeks after her awakening. Had she the power, she would already have retrieved it, making it clear she hasn’t yet unraveled Khamal’s spell. This is why she brought him here, to retrieve the Atalayina for her.

But of course, this is also a trap. Sariya will not let him have it. “I must return the stone to Ghayavand,” Nasim says.

“Ghayavand is Muqallad’s now. Take the stone and come with me to Galahesh.”

Nasim turns in the snow and looks back through the trees the way they’d come. “There are those on Ghayavand who need me.”

“Ashan?”

“Among others.”

“You may think him a bright star, Khamal, but had he been alive when we were at our height, he would have shined no brighter than a wisp.”

“I am not Khamal,” Nasim says sharply, “and you may all have been bright—you may be bright still—but look at what has come from your radiance.”

She smiles, the expression calming, so much so that Nasim grows afraid. “We can return to our greatness,” she says. She isn’t merely implying that they
could
return, but that they will. “But if you feel the path lies through Ghayavand”—she bows her head and motions to the monolith—“then so be it.”

With that she turns and walks through the woods. As she passes between two larch, their branches part and the snow upon them falls soft and forgiving to the blanket of white beneath. And then she is gone, leaving Nasim alone with the wind and the tall white stone.

He waits a long time, thinking surely she watches from afar, but try as he might he cannot sense her.

With his feet still floating upon the snow, he steps forward and touches the stone’s white surface. It is not cold, but warm, like a slab of obsidian at sunset.

He thought that when he found this piece of the Atalayina that it would reveal itself to him, that it would be granted when he came near. Did not Khamal plan for this, after all? He hid the stone mere days before his plans came to fruition, when Sariya and Muqallad together drove the khanjar into his chest, so why would he not have made it such that the stone would be revealed upon his return?

But of course it couldn’t be as simple as that. The easier it was for him, the easier it would be for Sariya and Muqallad to retrieve it.

In the end he decides that more likely than not Khamal never meant for him to inherit any sort of key to pry the Atalayina away from its hiding place. Passing this knowledge on is difficult, but more than this, whatever he did might have been altered by the other two arqesh. For good or ill, Khamal expected that Nasim would be able to rely on the abilities he would inherit. What he hadn’t anticipated was Muqallad’s final spell, the one that crippled Nasim upon his birth.

The notion of being on his own—unable to rely on anything from Khamal—is freeing in a way that Nasim hadn’t expected. Through his dreams and the history of the time of the sundering, he had felt responsible for Khamal, responsible for his legacy. To now be left to his own devices made it feel as though the future, at least some small part of it, now lay wholly in his hands. Not Khamal’s. Not Ashan’s or Nikandr’s. Not even Soroush’s. His own.

He touches the stone gently. The warmth after so long in the cold makes his fingers tingle. For a long time he merely listens, waits for it to tell him something—anything—of its nature, but when this proves unfruitful he tries to sense the structure of the monolith: whether the Atalayina is high or low, whether it is truly within the stone or whether this is all some ruse on Sariya’s part to draw information from him. The presence of the Atalayina is strong and distinct. It is exactly as he remembered. The feeling sits deep within him, like an animal eager to leave its den. It is worry and satisfaction and hope. It is substantial, as if something weighty forms within him. It is the feeling one gets when standing on the edge of a precipice—the wonder and fear and exhilaration. These things are the Atalayina, and there is no mistaking it.