“Then we will try together, but not today.” She glanced down with tired and haggard eyes at the burn on her wrist. “Perhaps not tomorrow, either.”
“Rest,” Nasim said as he stood and backed away toward the door. “I’ll see you again soon.”
Nasim didn’t see her again for days. He wandered the halls and paths of Mirashadal, reliving his past. He’d spent over two years here, but those first months had been confusing. He had been healed, but after walking between the worlds for so long, being relegated to only the material world was difficult. And then, when his mind had finally acclimated to Erahm, he longed for Adhiya. He wished for ways to touch it, but it had been cut off from him, and he grew despondent. Angry. He lashed out at all of those who tried to help.
But the Aramahn were patient, Fahroz especially so. She helped him to realize that he could touch Adhiya through others. He thought she was mistaken at first, for though they tried, he was unable to do more than sense Adhiya through the learned men and women that came to work with him. They tried and tried and tried again. And finally, it worked. The qiram acted as a conduit for him, after which he could begin to commune with the spirits, he could almost-almost-touch the stuff of Adhiya itself. For a time, he was appeased, but he still felt as though he’d been robbed of much on Oshtoyets. That anger had festered as it became clear he would never again have the ability to walk through the glorious plane of the spirit world. It had been that anger as much as his desire to mend the wounds Khamal had inflicted on the world that drove him from Mirashadal.
Now, as he took long walks around the village, feeling the sway of the walkways, smelling the scent of the sea, he realized just how much he owed Fahroz. She had done so much for him, and all he had done was spurn her.
He tried to speak with her during meals in the great hall, to apologize. He stood before the door of her home so that he could share these thoughts. She would like them, he thought. He even saw her once, alone, walking down the winding ballast tower path, but then, just like every other time, he had backed down, embarrassed over what he’d done.
Four days after his arrival on Mirashadal, Kaleh found him sitting in one of the village’s many arboretums. It was a hidden place, more like a courtyard than a garden. The ground, such as it was, was a gnarled pattern of tightly packed roots. The trunks of the trees that circled the space stood side by side, with hardly a gap between them. The boughs curved up, moving amongst the other trees, until the branches reached up toward the sky, a crown of green leaves and swaying branches that made this place feel separate, hidden from the rest of Mirashadal.
There was only one archway leading into the arboretum, and it was through this that Kaleh came. She was limping, but she looked much healthier than she had days before.
“Good day to you,” she said, smiling.
“Good day,” Nasim said, smiling back.
He was sitting on a bench, another mass of roots that had been painstakingly shaped by the dhoshahezhan who had grown this village. Nasim patted the space next to him. Kaleh limped over and sat down.
“Are you well?” he asked, motioning to her right hand.
“Well enough. How are you?”
“Miserable.”
She frowned, shaking her head quizzically.
“Never mind,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. I’d like to try, if you’re still willing.”
Her blue eyes searched his, perhaps surprised, perhaps pleased. Perhaps both. “Where?” she asked.
Nasim looked down at the roots beneath his feet. They looked hard and gnarled, but he knew that here in the arboretums they were soft as rabbit ears. “Here, if you don’t mind.”
She motioned for him to lie down. “Then sleep,” she said. “Dream, and I’ll guide you.”
He hesitated, but only for a moment. This had been a thing that he’d been dreading for too long, and it was time to be done with it. Strangely, Kaleh, even though they were not related, felt like a sister, a child born of Ghayavand, linked to it just as inextricably as he was.
The tightness that had been inside him since seeing Mirashadal on the horizon fell away, and he smiled at her-a gesture she responded to in kind. He lay down on the roots. Kaleh chanted softly as he closed his eyes and stilled his mind. The words she spoke felt as old as the world itself, and somehow, despite his fears, he found himself falling quickly and deeply into sleep.
Khamal walks along the edge of the water. The surf rolls over his feet, the frothing water cold against his feet and ankles. The sound of breaking waves is all that he hears. Ahead of him, two akhoz walk. They are side by side, but they do not acknowledge one another. For all he knows, they do not even know the other is there.
Beyond the beach, beyond the shallow cliff dividing city from sea stands Alayazhar, cold and empty and haunted. He can see the telltale signs of other akhoz as they wander the city, lost.
Lost, Khamal thinks.
The akhoz are lost in so many ways. They anchor the city, preventing the rift from widening, but those children have been lost to this world. They are lost to the next as well. They are lost to their loved ones-their parents and sisters and brothers. They are lost to the children they might, in a different world, have borne.
Worst, though, is the fact that they are lost to themselves. To save the city-to save the world-they had been forced to remove them from Adhiya. No longer would they travel to the world beyond, to be reborn brighter. They would live out whatever existence the fates had in store for them, and then they would die. Truly die.
Ahead lies a massive rock, dark gray against the white beach and blue-green waters of the bay. The two akhoz stop near it, waiting obediently. Khamal approaches. The first, the one nearest the rock, is Yadhan. She was the first of the akhoz and so seemed, at least in the hour of her choosing, like the proper one for the ritual about to take place, but as he approaches, he knows that he cannot take her. He still remembers her face in the celestia as he performed that first ritual. She was brave, but within she feared. She feared like nothing her scant years on Erahm had prepared her for, and in his heart he knows that she made that sacrifice for him. She revered him. She viewed him as a savior. And he took advantage of it.
“Go,” he says to Yadhan, more harshly than he meant to.
She turns, her eyeless face looking up at him, her mouth pulled back in a feral grin.
“Go!”
She scuffles along the beach, away from him. A wave surges up and sizzles as it rolls across her feet. She bounds away from the water, looks back one last time, and then gallops toward Alayazhar. Perhaps she feels rejected, or confused. Or perhaps she feels nothing at all. Who can say what the akhoz feel?
Khamal turns to the other. His name is Alif-the one, the lone. It is not his given name. Alif was found after the devastation of the sundering, alone and able to speak but little. He had a wound to his head and was never able to say the names of his parents. He was a simple child. Quiet. And like the name Khamal gave him, he often spent his time alone.
Khamal is not sure why, but it is somehow easier to take this child. It shames him. Why is Alif worth less than Yadhan? It should not be, but one must be chosen, one must be sacrificed, if his plan is to have any hope.
As he takes to the rock, he feels the sun-warmed surface and wonders how it will feel when he returns to the world.
Stop, he tells himself. Do not think of it.
He shuffles along the lip leading up to the top, glancing at Sariya’s tower. He wonders if she watches him, wonders if she cares. She still wants him to bring Muqallad back, to allow him to return to Alayazhar, but Khamal can’t. Not yet. Once this is done, it will be time to lift the veil he’d placed around the island that prevented Muqallad from returning.
He reaches the flat surface at last. Alif is close behind. He cowers and looks away when Khamal motions to the center of the rock face.
“Lie down,” Khamal says.
Reluctantly, Alif obeys. Somehow he knows. He knows what lies ahead, and in these moments of realization, Khamal nearly changes his mind, nearly orders Alif to follow Yadhan, nearly prepares to climb down from this rock to return to the celestia to meditate on what they can do to close the rift.
But this ritual had occurred to him years ago, and he’d been pondering it ever since, slowly coming to the realization that this was the only way. He had to break free of the bonds his people had placed on him if he were to have any hope of finding sway against the rift. He knows that it is not without risk. It will weaken the bonds around
