She tries to smile, and fails, but her eyes regain their sharpness. “The answer is there,” she says, motioning with one hand toward his chest.
His stone is glowing as brightly as it had in the donjon below Radiskoye. He shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”
“He calls to you.”
“What can I do?”
Outside, the sky has gone deep red. “Accept him. Give of yourself to him.”
“How?”
She motions to the windows. “Muqallad has awoken. He will come for Khamal, and for you.”
“Tell me how to reach him!”
She shakes her head.
Nikandr feels something deep within his chest, akin to the ache of the havahezhan. It has become familiar now, and more than that, it feels proper, even with the pain.
Sariya gazes at his chest. She reaches out, as if to touch his stone, but he pulls away.
“It has been with you for a long time.”
Nikandr nods, feeling something important in her words. “Since it crossed on Hathshava.”
She glances toward the windows. They have darkened further, leaving only the deepest of reds. The light coming from Nikandr’s stone casts Sariya in ghastly relief.
“It was with you well before then.”
Nikandr stares at her, confused. She must be confused, he thinks, but there is a depth of understanding in those beautiful blue eyes, an understanding that comes not in a fleeting handful of years on this mortal plane, but lifetimes, centuries. He knows that she is right. The hezhan has been with him since before Soroush summoned it. It had been with him since he’d had the wasting. Nyet. It was the cause of the wasting. It had been feeding on him, draining him through the aether, always there, always drawing from him like a reservoir no matter how meager its gain might be.
“I can rid you of it.”
“How?”
She steps forward. “You need but ask.”
He takes a step of his own, ready to accept. “Please.”
She smiles and places her hand over his heart, over his stone. “There is a cost. Your bond with Nasim will be broken.”
He shakes his head, confused.
“It is how he has come to find you, Hathshava. It is how your bond has remained intact over all this time, over all these leagues.”
Like a flower closing as dusk approaches, the elation inside him diminishes. He stares down at her hand. All he need do is ask. He can still find Nasim, can still find a way to reach him and to help Ashan heal the blight over Khalakovo…
A vision of Nasim comes to him. That young boy holding himself tightly about the chest, rocking himself from the pain. There are times when Nikandr is able to take that away, and if Sariya is right, he might be able to heal him completely.
He cannot accept her offer, not if it means abandoning Nasim.
He takes her wrist and pulls it away from his chest.
Sariya nods, a rueful smile on her face. “You must hurry,” Sariya says. She turns and walks toward the nearest window, toward winter.
And then she is gone.
He starts toward the far side of the room, ready to take the stairs down, to find Nasim and to run, to digest what Sariya has told him, but there are no stairs.
“Sariya!”
Winds tear at the tower. The windows rattle. A low rumbling thrums through the structure and up through his feet.
He stares at his stone again, knowing the only way out now is to listen to her words. Accept him. Give of yourself.
He holds the stone tight in his hand and closes his eyes. He casts himself outward, as he does with his mother.
I am here! I am here, Nasim!
A stone breaks from the wall and falls to the floor. Fine powder sifts downward from the ancient wooden planks above. A presence forms beyond the walls of the tower. It approaches, more curious than anything, but soon a sense of anger and revenge is palpable.
Accept him.
“Please, Nasim,” he whispers.
He opens his heart to this boy who seems lost among the world, but who also is at the center of the storm. So much depends on him, and yet he is nearly incapable of action, given only to those rare moments of lucidity.
Doubts begin to form as a crack is torn in the wall. The tower shifts and groans.
This cannot be what Sariya meant. He must accept Nasim for who he was. Must welcome him.
He does so, giving merely love, nothing else.
He feels the most tentative of touches, as he does before his mother finds him.
And his world goes dark.
Nikandr woke, lying on the ground with Pietr just next to him on the moss-covered cobbles. Nasim, kneeling between them, had one hand over Nikandr’s heart, the other over Pietr’s. Moments after Nikandr began to stir, he pulled his hands away and hugged himself tightly-a more familiar position. He refused to meet Nikandr’s eye. He only rocked back and forth while staring at Pietr with a grieved expression on his young face. Tears fell from his clenched eyes, and finally he fell forward across Pietr’s chest. “Forgive me!” he cried. “I’m so sorry! Please, forgive me!”
Nikandr stood, failing to understand why Pietr had been lying next to him until he realized Pietr’s chest was not rising with breath.
“He asked Nasim to do it.”
Nikandr looked up to find Ashan standing nearby. He had a look of pity on his face.
Ashan pointed to Nikandr’s chest. “He knew, at least a little, what that meant.”
Nikandr looked down and saw his soulstone. Under the bright light of sunset, the chalcedony stone glowed as brilliantly as it had inside the tower, but the feelings of ache, of being drawn slowly outward, remained. The havahezhan, the creature bound to him on the far side of the aether, was still there, preying upon him.
Nikandr kneeled next to Pietr. He stared into the older man’s face, at the light scars that ran though the black stubble on his chin and cheeks. He was unmoving, breathless, and yet in that moment he seemed full of life, so much had he granted to Nikandr. “Go safely,” he whispered, “and may the ancients protect you.” He leaned forward and kissed his cheeks, and then, knowing time was growing short, he stood. “We must hurry. Muqallad has awoken, and we have precious little time.”
Ashan glanced at the tower, a look of worry and recognition on his face, as if he saw for the first time what it might mean to confront Muqallad directly.
Then they were running through the streets, Nasim in tow. The boy was silent, his face streaked with tears.
“Nasim, can you hear me?” Nikandr asked.
Nasim didn’t respond. Other than his outburst of emotion over Pietr he seemed little different than before. Nikandr had hoped there would be some sort of catharsis, an awakening. Surely Nikandr would feel something as well-were they not linked, after all? — but Nasim, despite allowing them to rush him through the streets, seemed to have the same distant expression, the same lack of awareness of his surroundings, the same inability to communicate. It hadn’t been Nikandr’s appeal, then, that had saved him from the tower. It had been Pietr’s sacrifice.
All this way, all this time, lost lives and injury, and they’d failed.
