It felt as though the earth itself had chosen all that Nikandr could see-not just the design, but the structure of the village.
Eventually they came to a massive room, and within it were scattered hundreds of cots, nearly all of them occupied. The cots held both the young and the old. Each of them looked to be sick-perhaps, Nikandr realized, too sick to be transported by ship. These people were the last remnants of the Maharraht in the north. The rift had all but wiped them out or chased them away, something the Grand Duchy had been trying to do ever since they’d dug in on this and the nearby islands.
There was a part of Nikandr that felt relief-relief that they no longer had the strength to attack Khalakovo and her neighboring duchies. But this also smelled foul, as if it would take but little before the same sort of scene played out on Mirkotsk or Rhavanki or, ancients forbid, Khalakovo.
“It will take time, but I will try,” Nikandr said.
“ Neh,” Bersuq replied. “This is not the worst of it.”
He led them deeper into the village, down, lower and lower. Nikandr realized they were heading to the lake, something he didn’t think would exist in a village of the Maharraht, but of course the roots of Ashdi en Ghat dug much deeper than this splinter group of the Aramahn. Of course the village would have a lake, otherwise it would have been abandoned, even by these militant people.
Eventually they came to a stairwell that spiraled down into the earth. The sound of moaning-from many- traveled up from somewhere down below. The stairwell opened up into a cavern that swallowed the light of the siraj stones the Maharraht soldiers carried.
At the foot of the stairs, which ended in bedrock, more stones, fixed to posts that were fitted into the red- hued stone, cast a brighter light than they were now used to. It illuminated not only the black and utterly still surface of the lake, it illuminated the source of the moaning. Lying upon the hard stone bed at the edge of the lake were a score of children, all of them naked, all of them shivering, though none of them seemed of a mind to do anything about it.
Two women, both of them some years younger than Nikandr, chanted softly, their arms wide as if to encompass the children that lay before them. One wore a circlet with a stone of alabaster. The other wore a stone of azurite in a brooch pinned to her head scarf. Air and water, the spirits that stood in opposition to fire. If the same held true as it had on Ghayavand, the akhoz would be spirits of fire. Why this was Nikandr didn’t know. Even Ashan hadn’t known. But here it was again.
“How long have they been here?” Nikandr asked.
“Some only a few days. Some weeks. But the worst of them will turn soon.” Bersuq turned to face Nikandr squarely. “If your offer of help is real, they may yet live. They may yet be returned to the arms of their mothers-not whole, perhaps, but alive. Can you do this, Nikandr Iaroslov? Can you heal these children?”
By the ancients, Nikandr thought, what was he to do now? He had hoped to learn of the rift, learn how to close it if he was lucky. But this… How was he to combat something even the wisest of the Aramahn had no answers for?
“I can try,” he said weakly.
Bersuq walked past Nikandr and took once more to the stairs. “You have three days,” he said, his words echoing and dying away as Nikandr stared at the moaning child at his feet.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“W hy children?” Nikandr asked.
Jahalan, who kneeled next to him on the cold stone near the lake, shook his head. “Not children. Adolescents.” Before them was a sleeping boy of thirteen, a boy who was early yet in his symptoms. He slept often, and when he woke he complained of aches and pains in his joints. The others-nearly two dozen in all-lay nearby, some moaning, some crying in pain, but most of them sleeping fitfully. “They are young men and women now. It is an important time in our lives. Most can now open themselves to Adhiya but few have learned which of the elements they most align with. They are, at this moment, open to all of them.”
“Then why fire? Why are the akhoz all aligned in the same way?”
“Under normal circumstances, fire is rare among the hezhan, and so one of the least common among the qiram. But the rift may create conditions where the suurahezhan are the ones that come nearest to Erahm. For these youths, there may be no other hezhan with which to commune.”
Nikandr reached for his spirit. This far below the earth, it was difficult, but he could still sense it. “There are other hezhan.”
Jahalan shook his head, his gaunt face angry in the shadows thrown by the siraj stones. “You misunderstand me. Suurahezhan may be the only ones who approach such children. They may, in fact, force the issue. Normally this is a mutual decision. Our young choose their hezhan, and their hezhan choose them. One cannot happen without the other. But perhaps among the rifts, the conditions are right for the suurahezhan to choose in such a way that there is no choice for the children.”
“Or perhaps it isn’t that the suurahezhan become aggressive. Perhaps the other spirits become meek.”
“This I doubt.”
“Why?”
“Because none of the hezhan are meek. They all thirst for life. They all wish to experience Erahm through our shared bond.”
Nikandr frowned while wiping the boy’s forehead with a damp cloth. “Have you considered that we have the relationship wrong? Might it not be the children who search out the suurahezhan, ignoring the rest?”
Jahalan seemed disturbed by this thought. He studied the boy, and then looked around the shore of the lake as if seeing it again for the first time. “I will have to think on it”-something over Nikandr’s shoulder caught Jahalan’s attention-“but for now, you had better prepare yourself.”
Nikandr turned and saw two women approaching. One was Nikandr’s age, perhaps a bit older. She assisted the other, who seemed as old as the cavern that housed them. They wore stones of azurite. The Maharraht qiram- the few that remained on the island-had tried to commune with their spirits, had tried to fend off the suurahezhan from these children, but Nikandr and Jahalan had both reasoned that it made sense for them to try together. They would represent air, and the others would represent water, and hopefully they would be able to heal the boy who had been affected most recently, or, failing that, learn something that might help them in the future.
Bersuq had agreed, though grudgingly.
The four of them kneeled on opposite sides of the blankets upon which the boy slept-Nikandr above his head, Jahalan at his feet, the two women at his sides. The younger woman did not meet Nikandr’s eye, but the elder watched him carefully, her gaze appraising. They all held hands and closed their eyes, the women singing a song. It sounded ancient to Nikandr’s untrained ear, melodic and complex. He tried to allow the song to fill him, tried to commune with his hezhan in order to feel the world of Adhiya and through that contact the boy, but found that he could not. Perhaps it was the threat that hung over them-two of the three days Bersuq had granted them had already passed-or perhaps it was the sense that what was happening was preordained and nothing Nikandr could do would change it. He knew not what, but all too soon they had all woken from their trance and the women were kneeling, staring at him with hardened expressions on their faces. Even Jahalan looked grim, no doubt wondering if Nikandr could deliver on his promise.
“I need time. Time alone.”
Without speaking, the women stood and made their way to a girl-one of the worst off. “Always more time,” the young woman said to the other under her breath. The old woman glanced back, her face pinched, disappointed.
Jahalan hadn’t moved. He still watched expectantly near the boy’s feet.
“You may as well find food,” Nikandr said.
Jahalan paused, but he had already given Nikandr plenty of warnings of how short their time was running. He nodded and stood, making his way over to the women and the moaning girl.
Nikandr scooted along the floor of the cavern until he could look upon the boy’s face. He brushed away his hair. He felt how heated his skin was. It was a fever that never broke. How the children could live in this state for
