“I know, Shkyna.” She turned and found, by the golden light of the two small lanterns, tears welling in Ishkyna’s eyes. Had this been Mileva, she might not have been taken aback, but this was Ishkyna, a woman so unused to sharing her emotions that this was akin to a deathbed confession in its seriousness. And then Atiana realized. Ishkyna thought Atiana wouldn’t wake once she’d taken the dark.
She reached up and with the backs of her fingers brushed the tears away. “I have no plans of leaving just yet.”
“Be serious. You need to be careful.”
“And as you’ve said it thrice, there’s no longer any doubt that I shall be.”
Ishkyna held up the stone, the Atalayina. It glimmered beneath the soft light. It was usually bright, but here in the bowels of the earth it looked deep and dark and dangerous. “Use this as your anchor. Avoid the spires, for I think she’ll sense you if you do.”
Atiana nodded and took the stone. She stepped into the basin, and when she did, the cold of the water felt proper. She welcomed it, welcomed the drawing of her warmth, welcomed the icy touch as she sat and then lay back with the breathing tube in her mouth. This, she decided, this subtle strength granted in part by the Atalayina was a welcome thing.
A welcome thing indeed.
As the water enveloped her and her breathing slowed, her mind became more and more aware of the aether, so near she could nearly reach out and touch its soft, gauzy veil.
And soon… Soon…
She feels the small room. Feels the earth bearing down on it.
She searches immediately for the Atalayina. She thought it would be bright in the dark of the aether, but it isn’t. She cannot see it. She cannot even see it in her hands as she lies in the basin.
Though she tries to stop it, her awareness expands. She feels the cemetery with its rows of mausoleums. She feels her loyal men standing guard above. She feels Kasir Yalidoz and her servants within, her guardsmen and her royalty. She feels the Mount and her winding roads, her proud and ancient estates. She feels Baressa and her thousands upon thousands of children, many of them cowering from the attentions of the Kamarisi. She feels the Spar, and the ley lines being drawn through it from the spire to the north to its sister in the south.
Then, at last, she feels the Atalayina. It is just as deep and dark as it was in the chamber where she lay. It is an anchor every bit as strong as the spires. She tries to bind herself to it, but it is not easy, and she feels herself thrown by the winds. The harder she tries to stop it, the more the aether gusts around her. It draws her thin. The aether rages in her ears, in her eyes, in her mind. She is lost in a wind-tossed sea, adrift and moving further and further from shore.
She feels now not only Baressa, but the whole of Galahesh. She feels Oramka to the north and the islands of Vostroma to the south. There is familiarity among the islands of her homeland. She became a woman there. She learned to tame the aether there. She spent hours, days, carefully tending to the ley lines between the spires of the Grand Duchy.
And she knows immediately that something is horribly, horribly wrong.
The spires…
Some are missing. Ildova to the west, her sister spire to the south, on Tolvodyen. And Elykstava to the east. It is there, on Elykstava, that she feels a momentary pang of familiarity.
Nikandr… Nikandr is there. She desperately tries to reach out to him, but her mind is drawn away, tossed among the waves.
She knows she is losing herself. There were times when she was able to bring herself back from the edge of such madness, when she reined herself back once she knew that she was spreading herself too far and too thin. But this is different. She had always been able to rely on the spires, like mooring lines to anchor a windship. Not so now.
As her mind drifts outward, she remembers Ishkyna’s words: Be careful.
She had, but she hadn’t been careful enough.
The last thing she feels is the well of darkness in the distance-the Atalayina-calling to her like the sirens of the southern seas.
But it is too late, and much too far away.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
K hamal watches as the boy-the akhoz, he reminds himself-shuffles along the lip that leads to the massive rock. Below, the waves roll in, pounding against the far side, sending the spray into a blue sky. Khamal glances up at Sariya’s tower and wonders if she watches him.
At last he reaches the top of the rock. The akhoz cowers and looks away when Khamal motions to the flat surface of the rock.
“Lie down,” Khamal says, and reluctantly the akhoz obeys.
Somehow he knows. He knows what lies ahead, and in these moments of realization, Khamal nearly changes his mind, nearly orders the boy away, nearly prepares to climb down from this rock to return to the celestia to meditate on what he and Muqallad and Sariya might do to close the rift.
But there are no other paths. He knows this.
He stares down at Alif. The boy cranes his neck, releases a mewling sound like a weak and wounded calf.
“Fates forgive me,” Khamal says as he kneels.
He pulls his khanjar from its sheath at his belt. It gleams both wicked and hungry in the sun.
Alif squirms, moves away from Khamal. His mewling becomes louder, more raucous in his ears.
“Nasim!”
Nasim opened his eyes, expecting to see Rabiah kneeling over him.
But he didn’t find Rabiah. Rabiah was gone.
He found Sukharam instead. He was staring down at him with a look of concern, but not of caring, and certainly not of love.
Nasim pulled himself back along the flat bottom of the skiff and leaned against the bulwark. Sukharam moved back to his regular seat, the rearmost thwart, and began scanning the westward skies. Ashan was manning the sails. He took note of their exchange, but said nothing of it.
They were sailing the winds over the Sea of Tabriz. Nasim looked to the southern skies, shaking away the remains of the dream. This dream, the dream of the akhoz and the massive rock, was by far the most common of Khamal’s memories. He knew it was significant, he just didn’t know how.
He tried to remember more, for he knew that what happened to that boy on the top of the rock was the key to remembering the rest of Khamal’s memories, but as always what came after was lost to him, and eventually he gave up.
His thoughts turned instead to the Atalayina. He wondered where the pieces now lay. He hoped that Atiana still had the one he’d given to her. He hoped, in fact, that Sariya had been wounded in some form or another. He couldn’t quite bring himself to wish for her death, but if the fates had seen fit to do so, he wouldn’t find himself weeping.
He turned west, the direction in which they were headed.
Sukharam looked up to Ashan, who was manning the sails. “How do you know where the village will be?”
Ashan glanced down. “They won’t be far from Galahesh, and given that they were flying the Great Northern Sea only weeks ago, it makes sense that they will be found here. Somewhere.”
“We are in a place as large as Yrstanla. How can you hope to find them?”
Ashan smiled, showing his crooked teeth. “The fates will show the way, son of Dahanan.”
“That isn’t an answer,” Sukharam replied, his face sour.
But it was as much of an answer as he was going to get. Sukharam had asked much the same thing over the past four days, and received much the same answer from Ashan.
