Atiana felt a beating upon her chest. Lips pressed to hers and air filled her lungs. She coughed. The beating ceased.
She was dying. She knew this in her heart.
She tried several times to open her eyes, but they wouldn’t respond. Neither would her voice comply when she willed it to speak. A simple word would do, any word, so that she could ground herself more fully in this reality.
And yet, despite the vague sense that she should be struggling for her own survival, it felt so peaceful that she no longer cared what the outcome might be. She would let death take her. She would welcome it with open arms.
She fell into herself, hoping it would be so if only to make the pain go away.
Then silence…
Followed by a single note, fading in and out of her consciousness.
Then a string of syllables, more song than voice.
Someone was speaking-who, she couldn’t guess.
They were speaking another language.
Mahndi.
She was still among them. She hadn’t died.
Her eyes finally fluttered open.
She licked her lips once… twice… still unable to speak.
“What…” The word came out in a croak. “What happened?”
The voices stopped. A face moved into her field of vision.
Fahroz.
“You nearly crossed to the other side, Atiana Radieva.” Her voice carried with it a completely unexpected note of concern.
Atiana’s bones ached. It felt as if someone were driving a spike through her hips as the Aramahn women levered her up. They forced upon her several sips from a steaming earthenware mug. She felt the mulled wine drift down her throat, down her chest, and it was the most wonderful feeling she could ever remember experiencing, except that its warmth suddenly made her fingers and toes feel deathly cold.
She began to shiver uncontrollably. “It is… painful.”
“That is to be expected,” Fahroz said, wrapping a new, dry blanket around her shoulders. “Come. We will take you to a place where you can rest.”
She was allowed to pull on her clothes, but immediately after they left the great cavern and reentered the rounded hallways of Iramanshah. She could remember little of her time in the dark, but one thing was clear.
“I f-found no rift,” she said, her teeth chattering.
“We can discuss that once you’ve rested.”
Atiana nodded, but more and more of her voyage was coming back to her. Her time in Radiskoye, her search while feeling the island.
Atiana sucked in a deep breath.
Fahroz tightened her grip on Atiana’s shoulders. “What is it?”
She could not answer, for she had remembered her battle with her mother and the other Matri. The ships allied with Father were ready to attack. Tonight. She had to get back to Radiskoye before it was too late. But she couldn’t tell Fahroz. There was no telling if they would allow her to leave, not with an attack imminent.
“The time in these tunnels weighs heavily on me.” She hoped Fahroz couldn’t hear the lie in her voice. “I can barely breathe from the weight of it. Please, I wish to be in clean air. Take me outside.”
“You shouldn’t go-”
“You will lead me from this mountain!”
They walked in silence for several paces, but finally Fahroz nodded. “Ushai will escort you. When you feel well enough, come inside and warm yourself.”
Fahroz and one of the women stopped. There was a bit of silence as, perhaps, they watched Atiana continue on with Ushai, and then she heard their footsteps receding.
The village was a labyrinth of maddening proportions. Every time Atiana thought she recognized a hallway, a room, a stair, she turned out to be wrong. When they finally reached the main gates and stepped outside into the valley that housed the entrance to the village, she released a breath of air she hadn’t realized had been pent up.
The sun was setting in the west, spreading golden light across the top of the valley’s ridge. In the stone-lined court that lay at the foot of the entrance’s stairs, a fountain bubbled. Several women stood in the water, chatting and washing clothes while their children played stones near its base. As was true for most Aramahn villages, several buildings were positioned near the entrance: a granary, a mill, several large animal pens, and the place Atiana needed the most, the stables.
“Might I walk for a time? Alone?” Atiana asked.
Ushai was not much older than Atiana. She stared at Atiana severely. Finally, she nodded and moved to the fountain and began scolding one of the children in Mahndi.
Atiana strolled around the fountain, holding the blanket tight around her frame. She was still chilled to the bone, and what she was about to do brought her no comfort in that regard. The ride to Radiskoye was going to be long and miserable.
And dangerous.
She had no choice, though. There was no way to warn them other than to ride there. So ride she would, setting sun be damned.
She bided her time, acting as if her walk was aimless. Finally Ushai began talking with the other women, and Atiana knew it was time. She made her way toward the stables, and when she reached it, she stayed a while-becoming, she hoped, part of the background.
When she thought it was safe, she ducked inside.
She had chosen her pony well. It attacked the inclining slope not with impressive pace but with a steadfastness that would hopefully get her to the palotza in time. She felt her stomach flutter as she glanced at the western sky. Little light remained, and that would be gone in less than an hour.
Now that she was out of the valley, and pursuit was hopefully far behind, she pulled the pony to a stop. She gripped her soulstone and tried desperately to reach Saphia. She felt nothing in return.
Her pony shivered her mane and stomped her forehooves.
“Be good”-Atiana patted the pony’s neck soothingly-“and take me home.”
And then she kicked her into a full gallop.
She rode like she had never ridden before. She rode until the night had robbed the western sky of all but an indigo swath. She was forced to slow to a trot, the stars giving barely enough light to keep her on the trail. She urged the pony into a faster pace as the moon rose in the cloudless sky. Her stomach churned as she came closer. She was sure she would arrive too late.
She crested the ridge running the full length of the island. She would be only an hour or more away now. She reached the spur in the road that led to the eyrie, then Volgorod itself, and still she rode, her pony’s breath coming hard and heavy.
By the time she reached the road leading up to Radiskoye, she saw it. She slowed her frantic pace, tears coming to her eyes. By her ancestors, she was too late.
A fire rose in Radiskoye, tainting the clouds high above a tender shade of yellow.