Nikandr draws back into his own form. He hears gunfire, the shouts of men, the shots of cannons-but it is distant, as if from a dream. He rails against his bonds, screaming for Bersuq to stop. Bersuq pauses, staring into Nikandr’s eyes, and in that one small moment, Nikandr feels her.
Atiana.
She is near. He knows this to be true. And can it be? She is within Bersuq. She has assumed him.
The next moment, Bersuq has resumed his march toward Soroush, preparing to lay the blade across his exposed throat.
Atiana! Do not let him do this!
A moment later, in an explosion of stone and dust, the blast of a cannon shatters the center of the courtyard. Nikandr turns away, shielding his face, coughing uncontrollably, and when he turns back he can see nothing. The entire courtyard has been reduced to a thick haze of pale yellow dust.
Atiana watches through Bersuq’s eyes as a windship drifts over the keep. In the distance, two more float free of the clouds. The Maharraht have been idle, with orders to allow the ritual to proceed without interference, but now that the enemy has discovered them, they burst into action, raising their weapons and firing the keep’s four large cannons on the nearest of the windships.
Though she is held within Bersuq’s frame, trapped, she touches the aether still, and she can feel the shift well before the dhoshahezhan appears in the courtyard. The aether swells, pressing itself against the world as a spark of lightning materializes several paces away. The hair on Bersuq’s neck and arms rise as the spirit steps fully into the world. It is a gathering of lightning, balled up into a writhing form no taller than a man, but more powerful for it.
Soroush kneels, baring his throat. Bersuq turns to him, pulling a khanjar from his belt. She doesn’t understand what is happening until she hears Nikandr’s voice. Atiana! Do not let him do this!
A moment later a cannon shot gouges the earth, and Bersuq is thrown to the ground. His ears ring, and he coughs uncontrollably as dust fills his lungs.
Nearby, the bright sparks of the dhoshahezhan shift. A white bolt of lightning flies upward and strikes one of the crewmen in the ship flying low above the keep. Through the haze, she can see it continue through one, two, three more before arcing sharply upward into the clouds. All four men fall from their perches, lifeless, two falling wide of the ship and plummeting toward the sea’s cold embrace.
The ship’s rear cannon belches flame and the shot passes through the hezhan. The iron fouls the spirit’s next bolt, which charges through several of the Maharraht on the walls. All of them fall-one jerking spasmodically before coming to a rest.
As Bersuq’s coughing begins to subside, he searches frantically for his knife. Knowing she has little time, Atiana exerts her influence over him once more. He fights, but there is little left within him that can withstand her frantic assault. He fights her every command, but still she forces him to walk to the spire. Nikandr is chained there. The muscles along Bersuq’s arms are tight as harp strings, but they obey.
Nikandr collapses to the ground, but he fails to see Soroush storming up behind him.
Atiana forces Bersuq to launch himself at Soroush. As she does the presence of the Matri coalesce around her. Her mother is chief among them.
Bersuq rails against the bonds within his mind as Atiana struggles to regain her composure. Help me, she pleads.
But they do not. They begin instead to pull her away.
Nyet! You know not what you do!
Atiana claws at them, tries to fend them off, but there are simply too many, and soon she loses her hold.
Nikandr coughed as he fell to the broken stones of the courtyard. Bersuq stood before him, his face a mixture of pain and rage and confusion.
Nikandr shielded his eyes as a bolt of lightning cracked through the air, striking the chain holding Nasim to the spire. The chains that held Nasim in place clanked as they fell to his sides.
The air was ripe with possibility, with hope. The rift was present-it was in Nikandr’s gut, in his chest-and he could feel how Nasim struggled with the place he was in, standing squarely at a fork in the path of both worlds. His face was in more pain that Nikandr had ever seen, but he did not cower. He did not flinch.
Nikandr looked down at his soulstone. It was as bright as it had been in the tower in Alayazhar. Accept him, Sariya had said. Give of yourself.
He had not known what that meant. But he understood now.
He wrenched the stone downward, breaking the chain. With Nasim watching, he held it out. It glowed brilliantly now, brighter than it ever had.
“You are sure?” Nasim asked.
“I am,”Nikandr replied, knowing that he was giving Nasim more than just a simple piece of chalcedony. This was part of him, as much as his father, his mother. His sister and brother. It was not an easy thing to surrender, but he did so gladly.
Nasim took it in his hands, staring at it for a good long moment. And then he placed it in his mouth.
But nothing happened.
Nothing.
By the ancients, what had gone wrong?
Atiana watches as Nasim consumes Nikandr’s stone. He glows whiter than he had before, but that is the only difference she can see. She can feel his pain even from this distance, even without trying to-so great has it become. How he is managing to contain it all she cannot imagine.
Soroush is raging, perhaps demanding that the Maharraht fire upon him, but Nasim raises a finger, issues a thought, and the dhoshahezhan sends a bolt of lightning through him.
The keep’s gates are shattered and ruined. Through them file a dozen streltsi led by Grigory. Several train their weapons on the Maharraht, but their weapons do not fire. A moment later they drop them as if they’ve been burned.
The Maharraht smile-Nasim, they believe, has joined them-but moments later the same happens to them, leaving everyone weaponless with an elder spirit standing in their midst.
Atiana is loosely connected to the Matri, but her mother begins to slip from her consciousness. She realizes too late that she is attempting to assume Nasim.
Nyet! Atiana pleads.
She knows what she is about, the other Matri tell her.
She does not! Atiana shouts. Do not allow her to do this.
We cannot abide this boy-
Atiana does not listen. Something else has drawn her attention. She has realized how present the walls of the aether are-they are close, as they were along the rift on Uyadensk, but they are not close enough. What Nikandr has done will not complete the cycle. The walls are still too far apart for him to bridge the gap.
She calms herself.
As she did with the babe, as she did with Nasim before, she touches the walls, but unlike those other times she does not push them away. Instead she draws them inward.
And they obey.
Moments later a surge of energy courses through her.
Nasim collapses as a storm is unleashed upon the aether. She can feel the emotions of the other Matri, but also of the Maharraht, of the streltsi, of Grigory, of Rehada somewhere outside the walls. And Nikandr.
But she cannot feel Nasim’s.
Or Mother’s.
The pain grows within her until it reaches beyond the heights of the clouds, beyond even the stars.
And she woke.
Woke to the sound of the cold, bitter wind, her heart barely beating, her skin numb to the world.
This cannot be, she thought sadly as she lay there, listening once again to the sad sound of the shore, to the soft breeze playing among the boughs of the pine.
She turned her head and looked upon the trees-tall and green and proud. She stared at them a good long while, wondering where the world might take her.
