K hamal steps out from under the celestia’s dome. It is the hour of the new day, and the stars are bright, bright enough to guide his way down from the celestia toward Alayazhar. He has not gone far before he realizes that there is someone waiting for him on the road ahead.
It is Inan, the mother of Yadhan.
“Peace to you,” Khamal says, and tries to pass her by.
He hopes that she has come to visit the celestia, to meditate upon the stars, but he knows that she has not. She falls into step alongside him, and together they make their way down toward Alayazhar. The light of the quarter moon illuminates the sea below, makes it glimmer and give shadow to the crescent bay at the edge of the broken city. Years ago the city would have danced with light. Dozens would have come to the celestia on a night like this. But now most have left. Most have abandoned the island and her Al-Aqim. Some have come to mistrust or even fear them. It is a strange position to be faced with. It has been years-since his childhood among the wastes of the Gaji-that Khamal has dealt with such.
“What is it you wish?” Khamal asks.
For a while the only sound he hears is that of their soft leather boots sighing over the low grass of the trail.
When at last Inan speaks, it is with a heavy heart. “Yadhan is lost to me, Khamal. Dozens of others have lost their children as well. And yet the rifts are beginning to grow again.”
“You knew your children would be lost.”
“ Yeh, you explained everything so well, down to the last detail.”
“I did,” Khamal says. He spoke the words harshly, much more harshly than he’d meant to. The months since the sundering have worn on him greatly, but he takes a deep breath and begins again, careful to keep his tone soft, understanding. “The rifts may grow, Inan, but not nearly as quickly as before.”
“So of course more must be taken.”
Khamal stops in his tracks and turns to Inan. By the moonlight he sees her face, the tightness there, the anger. She was once his most devout disciple. She left with his blessing and after her time on the wind-a mere two circuits of the world-she returned to him, her eyes bright, her mind sharp, ready to learn more.
How much has changed.
After the sundering, she did not offer Yadhan to him-he suspects she knew all along that her daughter would be one of the children able to become akhoz-but she accepted his request that Yadhan be given. That day in the celestia, though, when the first akhoz had been born, something inside of her broke. She lost her faith in him, lost her faith that the rifts could be closed, and she infected others. There were only a few at first, but the idea took root among his followers and grew like creeping vines.
Until they came to this: a woman who would have done anything for him now stands ready to defy, to take from him the salvation of the world.
If she thinks he will let that happen, she is mistaken.
“I know you’ve been speaking to others, Inan. I know you’ve been asking them of their will to leave.”
“You said the way was open.”
“It is-of course it is-but we have need of everyone. This is no time to abandon hope when there is time yet to save everything.”
“ Neh, Khamal. The tide has turned against us. It has turned against you. It is time to do what Yadhan’s father suggested.”
“I cannot give you your daughter back, Inan.”
Inan’s face goes hard. She spits at Khamal’s feet. “I would have my daughter back, but I know better than you that she is gone. Gone forever, lost to the world.” She spits again. “I trusted you, Khamal, but now I know you are a fool. You thought the world ready for indaraqiram. You think it’s ready still, or if not that you can force it into being. You are not enlightened, and neither are Sariya and Muqallad. You are little better than mules, braying and tugging at your tether. The world has spoken-the fates have spoken-and here you stand, telling me that there’s still time.”
Khamal feels his face flush. Nearly, nearly, he allows his confidence to slip, but he has been down this path before-not from any doubts Inan might foist upon him, but those he has placed upon himself. In this way lies ruin. He knows this. He cannot allow himself to dwell upon the question of whether he has chosen wrongly. If he does, even for a moment, it will be the ruin of them all. He must continue, and so must the others, no matter what their disciples-the men and women of Alayazhar-might say.
And then he realizes. Had he not been so tired he would have seen it before as he left the celestia.
The city. It is dark. Too dark.
He reaches out to find them, the men and women who still call Alayazhar home. They had remained after the sundering after many had died. They had remained after many more had left. They were the few that he thought surely would be able to help stem the tide of their ever growing failure. And they’ve left. All of them.
Only Inan remains.
“Go, then,” Khamal says, and resumes his walk down the path. “Follow the other children.”
“I cannot follow. And neither can you. The paths have been closed to you, Khamal.”
Khamal stops.
He feels his heart race. He opens his mind to the land beneath him, to the air above him. He feels the city below, the hills above, and the mountains beyond. He feels the bay, and the river that feeds it. He feels the trees and the grass and the voles and the goats. He feels even the rifts that run deeply through the island.
What he cannot feel is anything in the sea beyond. He feels only Ghayavand, her small sister islands, and nothing more.
“What have you done?”
“You have taken enough, Khamal. You have taken all that we have to offer, and still you ask for more.”
His heart beats madly. “It won’t work, Inan. You know it won’t.”
“It will for now. Until we have time to learn more.”
“You’re fools. All of you. The rifts cannot be chained. They will find the cracks in your walls, and when they do they will spread among the islands. They will spread to the motherland.”
“Save your breath, Khamal, and do not think that you may use your stone.”
Khamal feels for the stone, his portion of the Atalayina. It is safe where he left it in the celestia floor, but something is wrong. It feels dim, a candle in place of the sun. Inan and the others have somehow managed not only to trap the Al-Aqim, they’ve dulled the Atalayina as well.
His hands clench. His throat tightens. For the first time in ages he considers killing another.
“You cannot leave,” he realizes.
“How astute of you, Khamal.”
“Why? Why have you remained?”
“ One had to remain, Khamal. One had to ensure the walls were closed. I accepted the honor. Gladly.”
“ Neh,” he says, opening himself to the world beyond and drawing upon the spirits of fire that hover close, always close. As his hands shake with rage, he feels the fire build within him. “You stayed so you could be the one who told me.”
She smiles sadly. “I will pay for it in the next life, but you’re right. It shames me, but I’m not afraid to tell you that this is the most gratifying moment of my life.”
She speaks those words with such pride, such smugness. It burns Khamal’s ears to hear them. He finds his hands bunching into fists. Finds the muscles of his arms and chest tightening so fiercely that he shivers from it.
“Look at you.” Inan smiles, showing her perfect white teeth. “The great Khamal, humbled at last.”
Before he knows what he’s doing, he releases the power built within him, feels the suurahezhan revel in the gout of flame that flows from his fingertips. It cuts through the cold air, brightening the hillside, brightening the underside of the celestia, making it sparkle against the nighttime sky.
How long he allows it to continue he isn’t sure. He only knows that when he stops, all that remains of Inan is a blackened pile of soot on the ground above Alayazhar.
Nasim woke sweating as the hammock he slept in swayed. The room was dark, but he could see light coming through the shutters of the nearby porthole. He reached out and flicked them open. Through the small window he saw only driving white snow swirling and collecting at the window’s edges.
He rocked himself out of the hammock and onto the cold deck as Khamal’s memories faded.
He began to shiver. But of course it was not simply the cold of the ship or the dampness in his clothes. He had known that Khamal was rigid in his views. Even ruthless. What he hadn’t known was that he could be brought to murder.
As he changed into dry robes, Nasim wondered: could he be driven to such violence? He knew little of Khamal’s life before the sundering, but he knew from his time on Mirashadal and his travels around Erahm that he was revered, and it was not merely because of some perceived sacrifice on the part of the Al-Aqim. He had apparently been a man pure of heart and mind before meeting Sariya and Muqallad. His writings could still be found in the libraries of Aleke s ir and in the secret holds of the Aramahn. So what had happened? What could have driven him to this, to murder a woman who sought only to protect the world?
If there were answers, they refused to come.
He slammed the lid of his chest closed, cursing himself immediately after for his lack of control.
He needed fresh air. He always thought better when he stood among the elements.
As he left the confines of the hold and headed toward the stairs leading up to the forecastle, he realized that his dream answered at least one burning question. The Atalayina, while not powerless, had certainly been muted by the spell that kept the Al-Aqim on Ghayavand. This was surely why Muqallad was trying to leave the island. With the Atalayina muzzled as it was, he had no choice but to try the ritual elsewhere. And the only logical place to do it was Galahesh; the patterns on the floor of the celestia had shown him this much. With so much aether channeling through one place, it would allow him to complete his ritual and let the worlds do the rest. It also explained why the piece of the Atalayina he’d found in the celestia had felt so lifeless. He’d thought it a combination of its inscrutable nature and his ignorance of the stone’s nature, but now he knew the cause, and he wondered what it would feel like away from Ghayavand. What would it feel like if all three were combined?
He stopped near the small cabin Ashan had been lying in since their flight from Rafsuhan. He held his hand above the handle, willing himself to open it and look upon the kindly old arqesh. His hand remained. He gripped it, once, twice, still unable to summon the courage to look upon Ashan.
In the end, he walked on by and continued up to the forecastle deck. There, while stepping out into the driving snow, he saw Sukharam standing amidships, looking out into the storm. He turned and locked gazes with Nasim for long moments. Then he turned and began climbing the shrouds of the starward mainmast, up and up until at last he’d reached the rook’s nest, where despite the driving snow he settled himself and began to take breath. He’d done this each day they’d been on the winds since leaving Rafsuhan-nine days running.
“He does it so that he doesn’t take revenge on you.”
Nasim looked to his left along the gunwale and found Soroush standing there, watching him. White, fluffy snow fell against his beard and turban, both the color of burnt autumn leaves. He’d chosen not to wear his stone of jasper. Nasim didn’t know why, nor did he care to ask, but it was telling that he’d had it when they’d fled Ghayavand together.
“Revenge is not in him,” Nasim said softly.
“Man can be driven to many things, Nasim. Things we never thought possible.” Soroush stepped closer, but seemed to sense Nasim’s discomfort and stopped some paces away. This was the first time Soroush had spoken to him since they’d left Rafsuhan. Nasim would never have guessed it, but he seemed shamed, somehow, of their shared history, though in truth Nasim remembered little of it. “He was angry with you for leaving him in your home outside of Alayazhar, but furious when he found out what happened to the girl, Rabiah.”
“I would have come had I been able.”
“I know,” Soroush said, “and I think he knows as well, but for now, perhaps it’s best to let his anger burn itself out.”
He joined Nasim at the landward gunwale and together they looked ahead of the ship, westward, toward the Chaika. The falling snow obscured it, but they could see its silhouette, gray in a haze of white.
Nasim had thought of nothing but Rabiah since they’d left Ghayavand. He should have been more careful. He should have been more prepared. Only, it felt as though there was no time. Every day on Mirashadal had felt like one more day closer to the end. For him. For the islands. For the world. By the time he’d left he felt as though he was years behind. He had to hurry. He still had to hurry. There was no time for preparation. He simply had to do.
“Nikandr has asked to see you.”
Nasim saw no reason to answer, so he remained silent, watching the snow fall between their ship and Nikandr’s.
“Shall I send you to him?”
“Where was I found?” Nasim asked. He meant where Soroush had found him-either as a child or as a babe.
If Soroush was bothered by the change of subject, he didn’t show it. “What does that matter now?” he asked.
“I’d like to know. I think I deserve that, at least.”
“Will that somehow help you to see your way ahead?”
“Where did you find me? Was I stolen away from my mother? Was I born of the Maharraht?”
“Those things don’t matter, Nasim.”
“They matter to me!”
Soroush stared at him, his face sad but stern. The look was so paternal it made Nasim want to shout, to rage against this man that had stolen him away from some unknown shore and put him to use as a tool, as a weapon, to cause destruction to the Landed.
“You are a small man, Soroush Wahad al Gatha.”
He turned at movement among the rigging. Sukharam was making his way back down to the deck.
Soroush turned back to Nasim, his eyes still sad, but now also full of regret. “This I know,” he said, bowing his head to Nasim. “This I know.”
He stepped away as Sukharam approached.
Sukharam looked confusedly between the two of them, but when Soroush retreated below decks, he approached Nasim and seemed to steel himself.
“Where do you go?” he asked.
It was clear that he was asking out of some sense of duty. He wanted nothing to do with Nasim, but he still believed in the cause Nasim had described to him on that hillside overlooking Trevitze.
“You should return home,” Nasim replied.
“Where is home but here?” he said.
It was a phrase common among the Aramahn, but Nasim knew that his heart didn’t stand behind those words. “Return home,” Nasim said again, “or take to the winds.”
“I came,” Sukharam shot back, “because the world is torn. Is it not so?”
Nasim was taken aback by his fierceness. “It is so, but it is bigger than you or I.”
“ Neh, you were right, Nasim. You are bound to Muqallad and Sariya. You are bound to the tear that runs through Galahesh. And you must be the one to overcome it.”
Nasim wanted to dismiss him, but at that moment, he seemed wiser than his years. He reminded him more than a little bit of Rabiah, and it shamed him that another was pushing him to do what must be done.
He could feel Sukharam’s connection to Adhiya. He could feel those of the vanaqiram and dhoshaqiram who guided the ship as well. He could even feel, as weak as it was, Soroush’s, who had had his abilities burned from him by the Aramahn years ago. And yet he could not feel his own. He could not find his way to Adhiya. It had, through the misfortune of his return to this earth, been lost to him. Surely it had to do with the spells Muqallad and Sariya had cast upon Khamal in their haste to prevent him from escaping Ghayavand. Or perhaps it was his own lack of confidence, which had begun on Mirashadal but had since only grown. Or it might have been Khamal’s plan all along, his condition somehow vital to his connection to the rift or the Atalayina.
There was one more possibility that Nasim didn’t really want to consider, but consider it he did-refusing to do so would not only be cowardly, it would be a grave disservice to the world. His limitations might very well have something to do with the ritual that had saved him on Oshtoyets. He could feel Nikandr standing somewhere on the deck of the Chaika. Perhaps a piece of the puzzle lay with him. Why, after all, had he connected to him so strongly on Uyadensk? Nikandr’s broken soulstone was coincidence, but there was something there that seemed to be planned.
If only he could unravel how…
He thought of speaking with Ashan, of speaking with Fahroz, or even Nikandr, but the truth was he was sick to death of talking. It only seemed to confuse things further.
The wind gusted, twisting the ship until the pilot corrected their course.
His thoughts pushed him deeper and darker. “You should not follow me, Sukharam.”
“Why?”
“Because I know not where I go.”
After a pause-a pause that felt as long as the day-Sukharam turned and walked away.