As the ship continued to rotate, the hull groaned. A crewman plummeted from the starward foremast and was caught in one of the windward shrouds. He screamed in pain, his left arm hanging uselessly above his head at an unnatural angle.
Gravlos, who had been forced to maneuver himself onto the cabinet that housed the helm’s levers, was pulling frantically on the one that controlled the roll, but it was having no effect.
Suddenly Nikandr realized what was happening. “Gravlos, release the controls!”
Gravlos’s eyes grew wide. “ Nyet, My Lord!”
“Now, Gravlos!”
The ship had tilted nearly to the point where the starward masts were pointing toward the horizon.
Gravlos’s eyes locked onto Nikandr, his face filled with fear. He swallowed and began pulling upward on the lever he had been working so hard to maneuver.
Nikandr stared in disbelief as the lever refused to budge. Gravlos wasn’t going to be able to release it on his own. Nikandr slid along the bulwark until he was positioned directly below the helm. Borund, sensing his plan, leaned against the now-vertical deck and interlaced his hands. Once Nikandr had placed a foot into them, Borund heaved the lighter man upward.
Nikandr grabbed onto the helm and pulled hard on the lever along with Gravlos. They tried again and again, but it refused to budge. He feared it would never give, but then finally it came free with a hollow thud. They moved quickly and did the same to the other two.
For long moments the ship hung in the air, tilted on its side as the wind howled. Nikandr’s heart beat madly. He had thought that freeing the ship’s keels from the effects of the unpredictable aether would allow it to return to a state of equilibrium. Though the tilt was no longer getting worse, it wasn’t getting better, either. Several of the crew shouted warnings.
Nikandr looked up. His eyes widened, and his skin began to tingle.
Reeling among the sails was a vortex of wind and moisture. It looked like the waterspouts that sometimes came with spring weather, only smaller. Jahalan had said plainly that a havahezhan, a spirit of the wind, had been summoned, but Nikandr had never seen one with his own eyes.
“The dousing rods!” Nikandr called to the men.
He doubted anyone had heard him above the terrible roar caused by the hezhan, but even if they had, the rods would be nearly impossible to reach, stored as they were belowdecks.
The nausea that had struck him moments ago intensified, and then, like a dog hunting grouse among the bushes, the hezhan twisted closer and closer. The crew retreated, moving nimbly along the bulwarks and rigging. But then the hezhan seemed to find what it was looking for.
It headed straight for Nikandr.
Nikandr leapt from the helm down to the bulwarks in an attempt to evade the creature, but it was on him in moments.
The wind tore at his skin like hail, forcing him to bury his head between his arms. A deafening roar assaulted him. The breath was sucked from his lungs. Among the madness he saw, inside his shirt, his soulstone glowing bright white, though he had no time to wonder why this might be.
He fell to his knees and crawled along the bulwark, but the spirit hounded him. Stars danced behind his eyelids. His arms began to weaken.
And then he felt something thump against his chest.
The hole that had opened up inside him filled. The feeling of a yawning, bottomless pit vanished in a moment. The wind began to die. The sound faded, and eventually, he could breathe again. He retched several times, but thankfully nothing came up. It would have been understandable-to vomit after such a strange encounter-but he didn’t care for the entire crew, plus Borund, to see him in that state; it would bring too many unwelcome questions.
Moments later he was finally able to stand. When he opened his eyes, a final gust buffeted him, and then all was calm. He scanned the rigging and sky for any telltale signs of the hezhan, but it was clear the creature was gone, and he could only thank the ancients that they had somehow watched over him.
He pulled out the heavy gold chain that held his soulstone, knowing now that it had been the source of the strange sensation against his chest. He stared at it, dumbfounded.
The stone was smoky and gray and somewhat transparent, whereas before it had been cloudy and white with a low radiance to it. He polished the surface against his coat, thinking it had become dirty. But he soon came to realize that the encounter with the hezhan had altered it, perhaps for good. Why had it shone so brightly when the hezhan had been close? Had the stone somehow destroyed the spirit? Had it been damaged while doing so?
Seeing Borund watching him, Nikandr kissed the stone as though he were thanking the ancients and stuffed it back inside his shirt.
The Gorovna eased back into balance as the breeze bore them southward like a seed upon the wind. The crew, seeming to realize the danger had passed all at once, cheered and whipped their woolen hats in circles over their heads. Even Borund appeared to be caught up in the emotion as he rushed forward and took Nikandr in a bear hug, lifting him from the deck.
“Let go of me, you big ox!”
“Ha ha!” Borund twirled him around several times before finally setting him back down. “How did you do it?” he asked with a grin as wide as the seas.
Nikandr could only shrug. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Then you’re the luckiest man I know, Nischka!” Borund picked Nikandr up and twirled him around again, laughing the whole time.
“Enough!” Nikandr said.
Borund set him down as the cheering finally began to subside.
“Set sails, men. Let’s go home.”
The crew did so, and though at first they did not sail smartly, the master soon brought them in line with his booming voice while Gravlos steered for the shipyard.
Nikandr, meanwhile, moved to the gunwale and scanned the island below for some small sign of the skiff. There could be no doubt that they had been Maharraht. What wasn’t clear was the purpose behind their attack. The Gorovna might have represented a juicy prize had they been able to take it-even juicier with Nikandr and Borund aboard-but in attacking they had also announced their presence. Why settle for two princes when Council was upon them? Why not wait for the ships of the incoming dukes?
Nikandr continued searching for a long while-both for the answers to his questions and for the escaped men-but as he had feared, he found neither.
High within Palotza Radiskoye, the setting sun angled in through deeply recessed windows. It fell upon a tall black rook, which unlike the golden band around its ankle or the silver perch upon which it stood, seemed to absorb the light completely, making it black as night in the dying light of day. It did not preen nor move along its perch, but instead studied Nikandr with an intelligent gleam in its eye. It was Mother’s favorite, Yrfa, the one she inhabited most often, though whether this was due to some form of affinity or because the bird happened to be the easiest to assume, he didn’t know.
“You sensed nothing?” Nikandr asked.
“Nothing,” the rook replied, “until the hezhan had entered this world.” The words, though spoken through a primitive tool, had the cadence and inflection of his mother’s voice.
A gold chain swung lazily from Nikandr’s hand in time with the beating of his heart. Hanging from the end of the chain was his soulstone pendant-still darkened, an effect that had proved all too permanent. He pressed his fingers to his chest, recalling the sharp pressure as he was blacking out. “How could they have done such a thing?”
“There was a similar occurrence when I was still young to the ways of the aether. Four years into the Great Drought, a havahezhan crossed. It was two days after the equinox, and harvest was still in full celebration in Izhny. It headed straight for the festival grounds. It ripped three children limb from limb before vanishing.”
Nikandr shivered, wondering if the hezhan had been about to do the same to him. He rubbed the smooth surface of the stone, barely able to sense the cracks. It had been given to him at birth; since his blooding day he had never been parted from it. It had held the tale of his life, his essence; now, he didn’t know whether his legacy had been tarnished, or worse, wiped away altogether. Even damaged as it was, the stone would one day be placed in the family’s mausoleum beneath the palotza. It was something he-like any member of a royal family-looked forward to leaving behind when he died. He had imagined it would be a grand stone, one that would outshine all of those around it, but now… Now he would be leaving behind a shadow, a silhouette, and it shamed him that he had allowed such a thing to happen.
There was one small consolation-he had feared that the stone and the abilities it granted had been permanently damaged, but when he had returned to Radiskoye he found that he could sense Saphia, his mother, and she in turn could sense him. He had no doubts, however, that when he traveled beyond a certain distance their mutual bond would attenuate and then vanish altogether.
“Why only children?” Nikandr asked.
“I cannot say. The hezhan are drawn to certain people, perhaps as they are drawn to the Aramahn. But that spirit, even though it had fully crossed, appeared dim to me, as if I were looking through a pane of dusty glass. The hezhan that crossed today, I saw it as bright as a full moon against the midnight sky.”
“You were young then. Inexperienced.”
The rook’s head dipped and craned upward. “ Da, but I do not think that was the cause. Things have been strange these last few years, Nischka. The fishing, the fields, the game-all struck by the blight longer and harder than we could have imagined. And at the same time the wasting grows worse. Perhaps this crossing is but another facet of the same jewel.”
Nikandr stared levelly at the rook, wondering if she had guessed his mind. He suspected that the hezhan attacked him because of the disease. After all, there were others on the ship with soulstones. Why not them? He alone had the wasting, and his symptoms had intensified the moment the hezhan had been summoned. There must be some sort of connection. But he could not voice his concerns no matter how burning they might be. His shame at hiding the disease for so long was too great.
The door opened, and in stepped his father, Iaros. He wore an embroidered kaftan the color of emeralds that ran down to his ankles. The tips of his silk slippers poked out from beneath the hem. His beard hung down to his chest and, like his hair, had only a token amount of the brown color that had not long ago been dominant. His soulstone, glowing faintly beneath his beard, seemed mocking.
Father nodded in greeting and paced over to the perch, holding out one finger. The rook ran its beak along his finger several times, and then he smoothed down the rook’s breast feathers.
These signs of affection were reserved for Mother; there were none for Nikandr as he stared down gravely. “The ship is in bad shape, Nischka.”
“There was nothing I could have done.”
“You could have stayed the course given to you.”
“I told you-”
“ Da, Borund requested that you shorten the tour, no doubt so you could go drinking in Volgorod. Council is being held on Khalakovo, if you’ll recall, and the Gorovna is still our property until your wedding day.”
“We might not have found the Maharraht.”
“You confuse the relationship. It was they that found you.”
“How could they have known?”
“Stop being so naive, Nikandr. They have spies, here and everywhere else. The Gorovna’s maiden voyage has been common knowledge in two duchies for more than a season. Now Gravlos tells me it will be weeks before repairs are completed.”
“I don’t think they were spies.” Nikandr stood and looked out through the nearby windows to the cloudy sky beyond. To the west, less than a league away from where he stood, one of Khalakovo’s most powerful warships, watching for the Maharraht, slid into a low bank of clouds and was lost from view. In the forest below, Jahalan was at the site of the hezhan’s crossing, examining it for any evidence that might prove useful. “I think they chose the location for a particular reason.”
“What reason might that be?”
Nikandr shrugged. “That’s what I mean to find out.” He pulled the necklace over his head and made to leave.
“Do not show that stone openly.”
“Why?” Nikandr asked, disliking the way he had said that stone.
“Zhabyn is ready to bolt at the first sign of weakness. He’s looking for excuses to demand more out of your wedding or to call it off. We can afford neither.”
“I have always worn my stone openly.”
“And there are plenty who don’t. I trust you’ll be able to explain it away to anyone bold enough to speak of it. Now go. Your mother and I have much to discuss.”
Nikandr left, feeling like a boy dismissed from dinner. There was sense in his father’s words, but when he tucked the pendant inside his shirt and felt the chain tickle his skin as it settled into place, the stone felt weighty, obscene, as if the sign of a coward had now been hung around his neck.