As the dirge continues, Khamal takes his piece of the Atalayina from his robes. He holds it in his hand, feels its heft. He studies the delicate striations running through it and wonders once more if the fates are watching him. He has tried to do right by them. He thought-as did Sariya and Muqallad-that the world was ready. They were not so foolish as to believe everyone was ready-certainly that wasn’t the case; he did not even believe that the three of them were truly worthy-but he thought that by ushering in indaraqiram the rest of the world would follow, that they would become enlightened, as it was meant to be.
How wrong they’d been. How many had suffered.
And now there would be one more.
Yadhan watches with fearful eyes as Khamal places one hand on her chest. With the other he places the Atalayina upon her forehead.
With this she tightens. Her body rigors. Her neck muscles grow taut, and her arms and legs shake as though she’s been struck dumb.
Khamal can feel the hezhan now, the one that chose her. It is near. It’s so close it could cross the threshold into Erahm any time it chose. And yet it does not. It is drawn to Yadhan, but more than this, it is drawn to the stone. It wishes to touch it, to have it, to experience it, perhaps as it did on that night nearly one moon ago when the Al-Aqim ripped the world asunder.
Yadhan screams, shaking the stone, but Khamal keeps it in place, and though the throes of her agony seem to shake the very dome of the celestia above them, he does not yield. This is unfortunate but necessary.
A shift in the aether takes place.
The suuraqiram feel it too. Every one of them pauses momentarily before picking up the chant once more.
Yadhan goes silent. She falls slack to the stone and lies unmoving. Her breathing slows, but her eyes are moving beneath her lids, back and forth, as if she dreams. As if she’s having a nightmare.
“Leave us,” Khamal says.
The crowd stirs, but does not move.
“Leave us!”
The dirge abruptly ends, and the crowd begins to disperse.
Soon Khamal is alone with Yadhan. He watches her, but there is nothing to be seen in this manner, and so he places his hands upon her heart and head once more.
Inside, she has changed. She is no longer a soul being fed upon by the hezhan. She is something else. She is of both, and neither.
He knows that this has done more to her than simply bind her to a spirit. They have been bound to Erahm as an anchor, preventing Adhiya from approaching. It is working, but it brings Khamal little joy. This girl-her soul and the soul of the hezhan-have both been sacrificed. Truly sacrificed. Neither will return to Adhiya. Neither will resume the cycle of birth and rebirth.
They are lost, and some day, they will both be forgotten.
It is something he knew would happen, but to stare it in the face was something entirely different.
“Come,” he says.
Yadhan takes a deep breath. She releases it in a huff, not like a child, but like a winded animal.
Khamal swallows, wondering if the fates are watching him now. Wondering if they are laughing.
“Come,” he says again.
And this time the akhoz rises.
Nasim woke in their makeshift home. He stared up at the stone ceiling, covered in leafy vines.
He felt sick.
He had long tried to convince himself that he had no connection to Khamal, that he was not at fault over what happened on Ghayavand those many years ago, but as more of Khamal’s past was revealed, he felt a stronger connection, and it sickened him.
Khamal had not only been the one to come up with the idea of the akhoz, he’d been the first to transform a child into one. He had sacrificed them so that the rift might be halted, but that didn’t make up for the fact that he’d taken those children against their will. They might have agreed, but Khamal knew better. They were only putting on a brave face for their parents and for Khamal. With this ritual he was taking the soul of each child-and the soul of the hezhan that fed upon them-and sacrificing them like saplings to keep a dying fire aflame.
They would never return to Adhiya. They would never be reborn. They would simply be gone, one problem to hide another.
Nasim could no longer shy away from the fact he was Khamal and Khamal was he. Did the Aramahn not preach that one builds upon himself to make better his next life? And if that were so, then one has a responsibility for what had occurred in his prior lives. The two lives were the same, facets of the same jewel.
“Rabiah,” he said softly.
He turned over and realized she was not in the house.
He said it again, louder.
He made his way outside. The sky to the east held a high, thin layer of clouds, colored bright yellow with the coming dawn. He called for Rabiah, shouted for her, and still she didn’t reply.
They had returned from Shirvozeh near sunset last night. They had searched the house and, as Nasim had told her, had found no sign of Sukharam. Muqallad had taken him.
You may have the one.
Rabiah had been furious. “How could you have let Muqallad take him?” she’d spat.
“I didn’t-”
“You did! You wouldn’t allow him to join us. You brought us here for a reason, but since we’ve come you’ve been hiding behind your past. Hiding behind your fears. We are young, but we are strong, and you chose to throw that away so you could go after Ashan yourself.”
Nasim had stared at her. Rabiah had always been so protective of him, and it was unbalancing to see that same fierceness turned against him.
And what could he say? She was right. He’d failed them, and now he’d failed Ashan as well.
She rushed forward. “Stop it!” she shouted, and using both hands she pushed him backward, hard.
He fell onto the ground, staring up at her wild-eyed. “What are you doing?”
“You’re hiding, Nasim. Hiding within your own walls. You can’t do it anymore. Not this time, not when Sukharam needs you so badly.”
He’d shaken his head. “I can’t save him.”
“You must!”
“I can’t.”
She stood there, arms at her side, shivering with impotent rage. She spat at his feet and turned away, and in moments she’d stalked off, lost behind the grassy hill to the south.
A cold wind blew in off the sea that night. Nasim had gone inside the house, allowing Rabiah the time and space she’d needed. She’d returned hours later, well after the sun had gone down, well after true night had fallen over Ghayavand. He’d lain there in their stolen home, his back to her, pretending to be asleep. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how to make it better.
He was not Ashan. He was not Nikandr. He was no leader of men, to inspire with words and deeds. He was a child who had opened his eyes five years before to discover he was already eleven years old. He was an infant still. He never should have convinced them to come. He should have stayed with Fahroz and let her tell him what to do.
Eventually, his thoughts still churning but his body exhausted, he’d fallen asleep.
And now that he’d woken, Rabiah was gone. She’d abandoned him, and it was painfully clear what she’d gone to do. After gathering a few necessities, he began jogging toward Alayazhar.
And then he began to run.
His chest still heaving from the run into the city, Nasim paced the streets, moving swiftly but warily, ever closer to the tower. The wind was bitterly cold, a strange thing for Ghayavand. It seemed to be keeping the akhoz’s movement lower than it might otherwise have been, and for this he thanked the fates.
He could feel them and their movements, and he used this knowledge to wend his way forward. He realized nearly two hours into his journey that he was taking nearly the same route that he had with Ashan and Nikandr and
