longer see the road they’d taken, either, making Nasim feel as if they were alone on an island untouched by the hand of man.
As their footsteps shushed over the wiry grass, Rabiah stared at the hills ahead with a nervous expression. “We should have brought Sukharam.”
Nasim motioned to their left, to the ridge that stood between them and Alayazhar. The celestia was barely visible in the distance. “You saw how he was at the celestia. He’s too unsure of himself, Rabiah. Too tentative.”
“He was only trying to prove himself to you.”
“That may be, but where we go is dangerous. Too dangerous for him.”
“We need his help,” Rabiah said.
“We need him safe. This isn’t why he was brought here.”
“Things have changed, Nasim. We must change with them.”
For a time, they walked in silence.
When Nasim had finally found it in himself to leave Mirashadal and the care of Fahroz, he’d been terribly lonely. He’d nearly gone to Khalakovo to find news of Nikandr, but he knew that such a thing would be foolish. No matter what Nikandr might think, the Landed had not changed their ways. This resolve, the resolve to choose his own path, had taught him something. Trust. Trust in himself-for that, in the end, was all he could do. He could not trust Nikandr. He could not trust Sukharam. He could not even place his full faith in Rabiah, whom he trusted most aside from Ashan.
Trust was a luxury he couldn’t afford. It was simply too dangerous. He needed to be sure that their path was the right one, and the only way to do that was to choose it himself.
“Perhaps we do need to change,” Nasim said to her. “But not now. Sukharam must learn more.”
Rabiah stopped walking. “Nasim…”
He refused to slow. She was just being stubborn.
“Nasim!”
Her voice was so full of emotion that he stopped and turned. She stepped forward tentatively while staring into his eyes, perhaps trying to see into his soul. “You’re so protective of him,” she said. “Why not me?”
He couldn’t speak for a moment. He looked around, at the dry, mountainous landscape, at the overcast sky and the blue gap in the clouds far to the north. “Because I need you.”
She blinked. He saw her swallow, as if she were suddenly nervous, and when she spoke again, her voice was quiet. “You say it as if it’s obvious.”
“Isn’t it?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but then seemed to think better of it. She smiled and squeezed his shoulders. “You do need me, Nasim. But you need Sukharam as well. We all need each other.”
He wanted to tell her that there was more. He wanted to tell her that he didn’t just need her-there was so much more trying to bubble up from deep inside him-but the words, like so many times before, refused to come. It wasn’t the right time.
It was never the right time.
“Come,” he finally said. “We’re already here. If Ashan was taken, then Muqallad would have brought him to Shirvozeh. I need to know if it’s so.”
He could tell that she didn’t want to drop the topic, but she nodded anyway, and they continued.
They hiked down slope until they came to the edge of a sheer cliff. From this vantage they could see to their left a bridge that spanned the chasm below. The bridge’s sand-colored columns rose up from the base of the valley hundreds of feet, arching gracefully to meet the supports to either side. In a handful of places the stones along the bridge’s roadway had given way-from this distance it looked as if it had been chewed away by rats. By and large, though, the bridge was sound.
Suddenly, Rabiah clutched his arm, pointing southward.
Nasim scanned the far side of the chasm. And then he caught movement. It was a good distance away-an eighth-league or more-but he could see the form of a vanahezhan plodding through the scrub pine. Every few steps, some of its leg would ablate. It would then pause, glance down, and the leg would reform, but then a few steps later it would happen again.
As it grabbed for an old, misshapen acacia, pulling itself upslope, it fell and shattered against the ground. Rocks slid downward, clacking and clattering, spraying the hillside in the pattern of a candle’s flame.
“Did it return to Adhiya?” Rabiah asked.
“It must have. When I came here with Ashan, there were hezhan all over the island. They had seemed a part of this place. Permanent, somehow.” Nasim waved to the site of the vanahezhan’s crossing, where dust still rose. “It might have been weak, one more likely to be drawn back to Adhiya, but somehow I doubt it. Things have changed.”
Rabiah touched her chest, over her heart. “It feels unstable. The hezhan can cross easily, but it feels like we could step into Adhiya as well.”
Nasim felt a mixture of pride and melancholy swirling inside him. It was a sign of her ability that she could sense this. “You’re becoming attuned to the island.”
She looked to him, her eyes bright and hopeful. “Is that good or bad?”
“A bit of both, I’m afraid.” He pointed to their right. “Come, the trail head isn’t far.”
They soon found it, a thin trail hidden among the growth. They began taking it downward, watching the bridge constantly, but when they approached the halfway mark and still saw nothing, their nerves began to calm.
Far below, the rush of water could be heard, and they soon came to an overlook-the top of a massive fist of rock lodged into the otherwise loose soil. They rested there, looking down at the frothing rush of water.
“Where is it?” Rabiah asked.
In truth Nasim didn’t know. He studied the landscape, hoping he would recognize landmarks now that he was here.
And then he spotted it. Near a shallow inlet of crystal-clear water in a patina-colored bed was a curving wall of red rock with flowering vegetation clinging to its sheer face.
“Beneath the vines,” he said, pointing to it.
“Where?”
“Hiding beneath the overhang.”
Rabiah studied the wall closely, but Nasim’s attention was drawn by movement on the bridge far above. Rabiah began to speak, but he grabbed her arm and squeezed, willing her to silence. Rabiah looked up immediately and drew in a sharp breath.
There, in a staggered line, were a dozen akhoz heading toward the village. Nasim remained frozen, hoping they were too far from the akhoz for them to smell their scent on the wind, but then he realized that they weren’t all akhoz.
A woman followed at the rear of the line. With the distance he might not have recognized her as such had she not been walking upright, her hair flowing in the wind. The longer he watched, though, the more he realized she might not be a woman after all. She seemed young-perhaps twelve or thirteen, certainly no older than he and Rabiah-and her gait was not one of confidence, but of self-consciousness. She was out of place here, and she felt it.
Then, as one, he and Rabiah were drawn by more movement much closer to them.
At the top of the trail, shuffling along the ground on all fours, was a single akhoz. It sniffed the ground, moved a few paces, then sniffed again. It stopped, its mouth open as if it were tasting the wind. It remained there motionless for so long that Nasim thought it might not have sensed them, that soon it would return to the others, but then it arched its neck, bared its blackened gums and teeth to the sky, and shuffled toward them.
“By the fates, it’s found us,” Nasim said, pulling her by her arm.
They sprinted down the trail.
As steep as the hill was it was difficult to control their pace. Rabiah nearly slid off a curve in the trail and down the steep slope toward the water below, but Nasim caught her wrist, and they skidded along the dry, rocky soil to slow themselves.
Above, the akhoz was gaining ground. They could hear its breathing, snuffing and huffing, which sounded
