The Winds of Khalakovo (24 page)

CHAPTER 31

“Into the water,” Rehada said, her voice tight.

Atiana could do little but obey. The vanahezhan was already pounding its way toward them. Steam rose from the hissing rocks, covering their retreat. They had gone a dozen paces into the surf when Rehada said, “Swim.” She yanked Atiana’s arm, pulling her off balance. “Do not allow your feet to touch the seabed.”

Through gritted teeth Atiana sucked in a lungful of breath as the icy water enveloped her. She swam backward as the vanahezhan reached the edge of the water and stopped. It swayed its head back and forth like a bloodhound. Then it raised its four arms up high and brought them down together against the beach. A great plume of water and rock and mud rose up into the sky.

The fog around them was thick, and soon they lost sight of the hezhan entirely.

“It will not find us as long as we don’t touch the rock,” Rehada said.

“Grand. Then all we need do is swim to Duzol and we’ll be safe.”

“It will leave soon enough.”

“How do you know?”

“They know they have been discovered. When they do not find us, they will hide.”

“How can you be so sure they won’t find us?”

“I can’t.” Rehada leaned into the water and began to swim in a direction parallel to the shoreline.

Atiana was forced to decide whether she would follow, but there was little choice, and she soon began swimming after Rehada. The water was numbing, drawing away her energy, but she was still high with fear, and so they were able to go quite a long distance. The fog finally dissipated. As they swam beyond it, it rose up behind them white and thick while the way ahead was clear and bright under a cloudless sky. They headed for land after seeing no one on the shore, and by the time they dragged themselves out of the heavy surf, Atiana’s arms and legs were leaden. She kissed her soulstone, not particularly willing to show weakness in front of Rehada but even less willing to ignore her ancestors, who had clearly been watching over her this day.

“Come,” Rehada said, “this is no time to rest.” And then she was off toward the trees.

Atiana gritted her teeth against the pain throbbing up her left leg and limped after her. They moved as quickly as they could, Atiana often looking behind them to see if anyone was following.

“That was Soroush, wasn’t it?”

Rehada ignored her.

Atiana grabbed Rehada’s arm and turned her around. “What was the leader of the Maharraht doing here?”

The Landless woman jerked her arm free and stared down at Atiana. Atiana hadn’t realized how tall she was until just then.

She resumed walking, forcing Atiana to keep pace. “You were foolish to follow them.”

Atiana’s mind swam with questions. “How did you come to be there on the shore?”

“I followed you.”

“From Volgorod?”

“From the eyrie. I was taking breath in the hills above it.”

Taking breath was the Aramahn term for meditation. It was possible that she had met newcomers on the eyrie—the Aramahn often did so to acclimate those who had arrived—but something in her story smelled foul.

“I was nowhere near the eyrie.”

“You were near enough.”

“I saw no one.”

“Nevertheless, I saw you.”

“Then tell me why you followed me.”

They had nearly reached the house. Rehada stopped and faced Atiana after taking a good long look behind for signs of pursuit.

“You know who I am.” She stated it flatly, barely a question at all.

Atiana nodded.

“I was curious.”

“Curious...”

Rehada swallowed. This tall, beautiful woman was somehow cowed. “I should not be speaking of this.”

Atiana remained silent, a demand that Rehada continue.

“Your husband has spoken of you, and... I know my place in the world.

I know it is not with Nikandr. He will be with you. But I was curious to see the one who would take him away from me.”

It felt strange hearing these words from a woman who had bedded the man who would be her husband. If anyone had asked her the day before how she would have reacted, she would have said she’d have the woman’s eyes put out. But here, standing before her, there was a strange sense of camaraderie that she would never in a thousand years have predicted. She could not be angry with a woman who was jealous of her. But neither could she speak to her of Nikandr—it made her stomach feel queasy just thinking about it.

“We should go.”

Rehada agreed. In little time they had reached the wagon trail that led from the house to the short pier. Atiana made to go after her pony, but Rehada stopped her.

“Leave it. We cannot remain on the ground, not when they could still find us, perhaps with reinforcements.”

“Then how—”Atiana stopped, for she had just realized how Rehada had spotted her, and how she hadn’t known. She had been on a skiff, the smaller windships the Landless use to fly between islands and ferry themselves from Volgorod to Iramanshah.

Once they had reached a thick copse of trees near the beach, Atiana saw it: a craft shaped like an overturned turtle with a single mast in its center. They entered, and once Rehada had placed several opals into the small brass fittings worked into the hull, the vessel lifted into the sky.

“Where will we go?” Atiana asked.

Rehada wore leather gloves. She used them—already looking completely at home—to hold the two ropes tied to the lower corners of the simple, triangular sail that billowed ahead of them. “I will take you to Iramanshah. A healer will look at your leg, and you can arrange transportation to Volgorod.”

As long as it was alone, Atiana thought.

Her earlier acceptance of Rehada was starting to wear thin; she wanted, at the moment, to be anywhere Rehada was not.

She tried to study the landscape for signs of pursuit, but the winds were playing with the ship, making her stomach turn, and so she kept her eyes on the horizon until the skiff had settled into the wind. The currents were easterly here, and they grew stronger the higher they rose into the sky, but the sail and the ship’s keel were guiding the ship northward.

The house was soon lost from view, but Atiana could see the beach where she and Rehada had fought with the vanahezhan.

“Why wouldn’t they follow in a skiff of their own?”

Rehada stared down at Atiana coldly. “I would think that was obvious.”

Atiana stared back, shivering. The wind was strong, especially this high up, and her clothes were still wet. She realized they were growing warm, and then she realized why.

“
Nyet
!”she shouted, refusing to allow this woman to warm her. She would freeze to death first.

Rehada, the tourmaline gem upon her brow still glowing, shrugged and returned her attention to the sails.

Immediately, the temperature plummeted.

“If they didn’t want to attract attention from the Matra,” Atiana said after a time, shivering once more, “they wouldn’t have summoned a vanahezhan on her doorstep.”

“That was different.”

“Why?”

“The place where it was summoned marked, I believe, a location where a vanahezhan had left this world.”

“You mean entered it.”

“
Nyet
. Left. The spirits are tied to this world as surely as we are tied to theirs. They hunger when they’ve been too long without it, and when they finally get a chance to experience it, it lingers with them, and they remain near the place where they exited our world and returned to theirs.”

“But how could a vanahezhan have entered our world?”

Rehada stared toward the horizon. “I do not know.”

The wind began to whistle louder in Atiana’s ears. She knew why the raiders had come. She knew how the vanahezhan had created a crease in the aether.

Rehada was pulled forward, nearly against the mast, but she regained her footing as the skiff tumbled through the air.

“Do the spirits hunger for us?” Atiana asked.

Rehada frowned. “Hunger?”

“For life, for our souls.”

“They thirst for a
taste
of this life, not for any particular part of it.”

“Perhaps they’ve changed.”

“Why would they?”

“The blight... It’s changed everything. Why not the spirits as well?”

“
Nyet
,” Rehada said flatly. “Hezhan do not do this. There is an imbalance, but it will heal.”

“That house back there”—Atiana motioned outside the skiff, back the way they had come—“I saw a babe two nights ago, taken by a vanahezhan.”

“
You
have taken the dark?” She said it as if she didn’t believe Atiana could do so in a hundred years.

“I did,” Atiana said, pulling herself upright.

Rehada’s eyes thinned. “Then you were mistaken.”

“I was not. I was there in that woman’s home when the vanahezhan drew the life from the wailing babe she held in her arms.”

“Was the babe sick?”

“I don’t know.”

Rehada pulled a strand of hair from her mouth. “Perhaps the hezhan was simply curious. Perhaps the babe was near death and was close to crossing the aether to reach their world. Perhaps that’s what drew it to the babe and not some ridiculous explanation such as yours.”

Atiana wanted to bark back a reply, but what Rehada was saying made sense. Perhaps the babe
had
been sick. Perhaps, in those moments before its death, it had attracted the notice of the hezhan and had given it the crease it needed to enter this world.

But it seemed strange after what had happened on the eyrie. Physical manifestations of spirits were once common among the qiram, but now they were so rare that even the wisest among the Landless knew little of them. And here, on Khalakovo, there had now been three in the span of a fortnight.

The shore was distant, and the place where she’d turned off the road to Izhny was barely visible, but she thought she could see—though she could not say for certain—two men standing among the trunks of the birch and alder.

Perhaps they were watching them leave.

When Atiana turned back, she found Rehada looking as well. One moment, there was a look of profound worry on her face, but then it was gone.

A violent shiver ran through Atiana, not only from the cold.

After the incessant cold of the skiff, the frigid air within the village was unwelcome. Atiana had been pacing the length of a small room deep within Iramanshah for nearly an hour. After Rehada had landed the skiff, a mahtar named Fahroz had taken Rehada away while Atiana had been led into the heart of the mountain.

The only light present in the room was a glowing blue gemstone. She could see through the doorway to the far side of the stone corridor, but beyond a scant few paces, all was darkness.

An Aramahn man stood outside her room, not to force her to stay, but to prevent her from becoming lost in the darkness should she try to leave. She wouldn’t have in any case—she needed their help. Radiskoye needed to know what she’d seen.

But who will you inform?
she asked herself.
Your family or Nikandr’s?
She struggled with that question for a long time. In the end, instead of answering it, she stalked out into the hallway and faced the Aramahn.

“I would speak with Fahroz,” she said.

He turned to her, his brown eyes placid. “And Fahroz dearly wishes to speak with you.”

“Then take me to her.”

“I cannot.”

She tried to walk past him, but he motioned to the room behind her. “Please, she begs your patience.”

“I am a daughter of Vostroma!”

“Then I would have credited you,” said a voice behind her, “with more composure.”

Atiana turned to find Fahroz—a mature but vibrant woman—walking toward her with a glowing stone, a siraj, in her hand. She wore a black shawl with intricate tracery running through it. Unlike many of those who rose to the rank of mahtar, she wore no stone. Instead, a gold chain with a medallion hanging from it was strung across her brow.

“Where is Rehada?” Atiana asked, seeing two Aramahn women she’d never met before standing behind Fahroz.

“She has left.”

Atiana paused, feeling small and alone. That such feelings were caused by Nikandr’s lover made her doubly angry over it. “Why?”

“That, I’m afraid, will remain between me and her. There are more pressing matters, are there not?”

Atiana pulled herself higher. “I need to return to Radiskoye. They are in danger, which I’m sure you’re well aware of by now.”

“Radiskoye has little reason to expect favors from Iramanshah.”

“They must be warned.”

“Is that so?”

Atiana stared into Fahroz’s eyes, knowing that she had been the one to take up the cause of the Aramahn. From the accounts, she had stood faceto-face with Iaros Khalakovo—no simple feat—and demanded the return of the mysterious boy and the arqesh.

In the end, it was Atiana who flinched first.

Fahroz turned and began walking away. “Are you coming?”

The two women parted, allowing Atiana to follow. They made several turns, passing rooms both large and small, but rarely did Atiana see another light. Iramanshah, like all of the villages, had dwindled in population if not in grandeur. She had been to the one on Vostroma only once, and it had seemed like a sad reflection of what it once was, but also somehow proper, as if the fading of the Aramahn were a necessary part of the rise of the Grand Duchy. She had been young, then. Now, she was not so naïve as to think that the Grand Duchy could live without the Aramahn—they needed one another, as surely as wildflowers needed bees.

Fahroz took them down a long, curving set of stairs. It felt strangely familiar, though for a long time she couldn’t place why.

It struck her as they neared the bottom. “Where are we going?”

“You said you needed to warn Radiskoye.”

“I do.”

They reached the landing and took the single tunnel that led out from it. The tunnel, which was carved as the rest of the corridors had been, became rough, natural. Soon after, they reached the first of a set of wide, rough steps that seemed to be hewn by hand instead of guided by the skills of a vanaqiram. Shortly after, the tunnel opened up into a massive cavern. Atiana could see the rough stone wall on her left and the stairs ahead of her, but the space to her right was fathomless and black. The roof of the cavern, which had provided some small amount of grounding, faded from view the further they went.