up before him. He leapt over it, and a branch swung in his way, forcing him to run wide.
Soroush grunted as the bough of a young tree struck him. He slid along the slick slope, but regained his footing.
“Stop!” Nikandr yelled in Mahndi. “We only wish to speak.”
She kept moving and began to widen the distance. Nikandr increased his pace, but the moment he did a sapling bent nearly in two and struck him across his face and chest. He fell to the ground, slipping on the damp layer of autumn leaves.
Soroush fell as a thick, knotty root rose up and caught his ankle. He shouted in pain as his ankle twisted on it and he fell face-first to the ground.
The sound of Kaleh’s flight faded as Nikandr pulled himself up, his face and chest throbbing, and made his way over to Soroush. Soroush flipped over, holding his ankle for long seconds as Nikandr waited. “It’s unwise to chase after a deer,” he finally said, holding out his hand.
Nikandr took it and pulled Soroush up to his feet.
“Shall we track her?” Nikandr said.
“With this ”-Soroush nodded meaningfully to his injured ankle-“I couldn’t hope to outrun a hedgehog. Let’s return to the cleft and see what she dropped into it.”
Nikandr nodded and they made their way slowly back. They easily found the place where the cleft had opened. Digging a hole, however, was much more problematic. Nikandr broke a thick branch of deadwood in half and the two of them used the relatively sharp ends to dig into the ground, but the earth seemed whole, compact, which was more than strange since it had lain open only minutes ago.
Still, they made progress, and as they came to the depth where they thought the object might lie, they moved more slowly, took greater care.
“There,” Nikandr said, seeing movement.
As he watched, one spot in the dark, loamy earth pulsed like a thing alive. He kneeled down and carefully scraped the dirt away. Slowly, more and more of it was revealed.
“Ancients preserve us,” Nikandr said as he stared at it. He reached in and took it up. Though the urge to drop it back into the hole was great, he held it up for Soroush to see.
It was small and misshapen, looking more like a walnut than anything else, but there was no mistaking it. It was a heart. A blackened, beating heart.
Soroush swallowed once before reaching out and taking it. As he examined it, the thing seemed to beat more heavily. “What under the dark heavens is she trying to do?”
Nikandr looked around the forest. “I don’t know, but is there any doubt it has something to do with the fire?”
“That was no fire, son of Iaros.” He was shaking his head, staring at the beating heart with naked revulsion. “That was a sacrifice.”
The more Nikandr stared at the heart, the sicker he felt. He thought at first it was mere disgust, the same as Soroush, but it soon became clear that it was something else entirely. Much as he could feel Nasim those many years ago, he felt this heart. It was as if a soul were still attached to it. It was a notion that seemed foolish at first, but the more he thought about it, the more sense it made.
“What do we do with it?” Nikandr asked.
Soroush stared at it for a moment, considering, then he dropped it onto the ground and kneeled. He took from its sheath at his belt his khanjar. It was a curved blade that had seen its share of use, but it gleamed under the overcast sky as he set the tip against the heart and pressed downward with all his weight.
Nikandr felt a sharp pain within his chest. His own heart could feel the knife slicing through the dark, inhuman flesh of this shriveled and blackened thing. He bent over, clutching his chest, holding himself up by propping one arm against his knee. And then the pain lessened, and the heart began to beat slower, until at last it had stopped altogether and the pain had gone away.
“You felt it,” Soroush said. It was a statement, not a question.
“I did.”
“If there was one, there will be more.”
His meaning was clear. He wished Nikandr to help him. “I will try,” he replied. “We’re less than a league from Siafyan. We should continue in a circle, and perhaps we’ll find more.”
A light rain had begun to fall against the canopy. It was soft, the raindrops striking lightly against the forest around him, and yet it felt ominous.
Soroush wiped his knife against the pine needles that blanketed the ground. As he stood and sheathed it, he looked to Nikandr with a mixture of gratitude and confusion. “Why do you stay, Nikandr Iaroslov? Why do you help your enemy?”
“Are we enemies?”
“We are.”
Soroush spoke the words with conviction, and yet there was a softness in his eyes that spoke of hope-hope for a better future, perhaps, hope for a world that did not contain such complications-and yet both of them knew such a world could never exist, not while the Grand Duchy and the Maharraht fought for the same land.
“Come,” Nikandr said, striking a path northward. “We have a long walk ahead.”
They had been traveling northward for the better part of an hour when the feeling returned. It was faint at first, but he was becoming attuned to it. They continued until the feeling faded, at which point they backtracked and took a path through a section of wood that was marked for the tall white birch that dominated the area. They came to a place that looked nothing like the previous mound to the south. It was simply a piece of ground, indistinguishable from the area around it. After clearing away the layer of yellow and brown leaves, there were no obvious signs of it having been opened. There was even a light covering of moss beneath the leaves that appeared completely undisturbed.
But Nikandr could feel it, that same discomfort. As the two of them began to dig with their makeshift shovels, he began to feel it beat, and shortly after that he realized that it was falling in time with his own heart.
“Faster,” he told Soroush, wanting this to be over and done with.
How many might have been buried like this? And for what purpose? Perhaps Muqallad wished to widen the rift, though why he would do this he had no idea. He had some memories of Muqallad through Khamal’s dreams, but it had always seemed as though Muqallad searched for what all three of them had hoped and for centuries failed to do-to close the rift over Ghayavand. Why then would he come here, to a place thousands of leagues from Ghayavand? What was it about Rafsuhan that made it so valuable to him? It could not merely be the rift.
Perhaps, Nikandr thought, it was the people. The Maharraht. Were they not a resource, something Muqallad could use to his benefit? But in what way? And what would the fire have to do with it?
As they dug deeper, Nikandr could feel the heart more fully now. Even Soroush looked uncomfortable.
“You can feel it as well?”
He nodded. “It is-”
He never finished his thought, for just then the beating of the heart changed. It became stronger, more pronounced. Nikandr coughed. He felt lightheaded for a moment. Soroush seemed even worse, blinking his eyes and staring at Nikandr as if he didn’t know who he was.
“Get away from it,” Nikandr said.
Soroush did not respond.
Nikandr pulled him away. The effect lessened but was still present as he guided Soroush along a wash in the sloping land that led to a creek below. The heartbeat quickened, and Nikandr suddenly felt another presence, far beyond where the heart lay buried.
Soroush must have felt it as well, for he was staring northeast, the same direction as Nikandr. They slid to their right until they were hidden behind a thicket that gave them a good view of the land in that direction. Nothing lay before them, however, save the white trunks of the birch and their golden leaves upon the ground.
From beyond the trees a tall man strode. He was muscular, and his light robes were more suited to summer than they were the chill days of autumn. Even at this distance, and even though it had been five years since he’d seen him, Nikandr knew it was Muqallad.
A girl followed, speaking to him. Kaleh.
And then came the akhoz.
