The mausoleum had felt so foreign the first two times she’d come, but she had been here on Galahesh for some time, and now-the small rooms, the trickling fountain, the strangely shaped basin-it all felt familiar. It felt as though it were an old friend, this room deep below the earth, and she just hadn’t recognized it before. It was a comforting thought, but she didn’t allow it to lull her into any sense of security. What she was about to do was dangerous, and there was a good chance she would never again take to these steps to return to the light.
Irkadiy and the streltsi accompanied her down to the lower rooms. In the closeness, the sound of their muskets rattling, their bandoliers clacking, was loud. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Irkadiy inspected the rooms carefully, much more carefully than he needed to, and then he stood before Atiana, asking her with a nod, one last time, whether she was ready.
“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” she said.
He smiled at her awkwardly. “On this-” He cleared his throat. “On this day, My Lady Princess, I am proud to be Vostroman.”
She took his hand and waited for him to look her in the eye. “I’m sorry I didn’t say something when Siha s spoke ill of your family.”
“Think nothing of it.”
She shook her head. “Don’t dismiss my words. I was thinking the same things as he was.” She waited for her words to settle, and indeed, as she’d known would happen, his eyes looked at her in shock, in pain. “But your family was nothing short of heroic for what they did for us. They saved us, and I will never forget it.”
His eyes softened, and he smiled. A handsome man indeed was Irkadiy. “Thank you, My Lady Princess.”
Atiana stepped in and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you.”
Ishkyna watched as Irkadiy and the streltsi left, their tall black boots clopping against the stone stairs at they spiraled their way up.
“You were right, you know,” Ishkyna said once their bootsteps had faded.
“About what?”
“His family probably did alert the Kamarisi.”
“The family his cousin married into is large. Perhaps one was tempted to speak to the guard, but the rest were loyal and brave. Had they not been, we would have been found before the sun had set on that first day.”
Ishkyna shook her head. “You’re too sentimental, Atiana. It’s going to be the death of you one day.”
“You’re not sentimental enough, Ishkyna. You’re going to die rigid and lonely and lost to the world.”
Ishkyna’s face was not angry at these words. It was instead thoughtful, as if she’d been thinking the very same thing, and Atiana’s words had merely reinforced the idea. “Best we begin,” she said at last, motioning to the basin.
Atiana undressed and with Ishkyna’s help began rubbing the rendered goat fat over her body.
“Be careful,” Ishkyna said as she worked Atiana’s back. “There’s no telling what’s become of the aether now that the Spar is complete.”
“I know.”
“Sariya had a plan, and there’s little doubt it included the Matri.”
“I know, Shkyna.” She turned and found, by the golden light of the two small lanterns, tears welling in Ishkyna’s eyes. Had this been Mileva, she might not have been taken aback, but this was Ishkyna, a woman so unused to sharing her emotions that this was akin to a deathbed confession in its seriousness. And then Atiana realized. Ishkyna thought Atiana wouldn’t wake once she’d taken the dark.
She reached up and with the backs of her fingers brushed the tears away. “I have no plans of leaving just yet.”
“Be serious. You need to be careful.”
“And as you’ve said it thrice, there’s no longer any doubt that I shall be.”
Ishkyna held up the stone, the Atalayina. It glimmered beneath the soft light. It was usually bright, but here in the bowels of the earth it looked deep and dark and dangerous. “Use this as your anchor. Avoid the spires, for I think she’ll sense you if you do.”
Atiana nodded and took the stone. She stepped into the basin, and when she did, the cold of the water felt proper. She welcomed it, welcomed the drawing of her warmth, welcomed the icy touch as she sat and then lay back with the breathing tube in her mouth. This, she decided, this subtle strength granted in part by the Atalayina was a welcome thing.
A welcome thing indeed.
As the water enveloped her and her breathing slowed, her mind became more and more aware of the aether, so near she could nearly reach out and touch its soft, gauzy veil.
And soon… Soon…
She feels the small room. Feels the earth bearing down on it.
She searches immediately for the Atalayina. She thought it would be bright in the dark of the aether, but it isn’t. She cannot see it. She cannot even see it in her hands as she lies in the basin.
Though she tries to stop it, her awareness expands. She feels the cemetery with its rows of mausoleums. She feels her loyal men standing guard above. She feels Kasir Yalidoz and her servants within, her guardsmen and her royalty. She feels the Mount and her winding roads, her proud and ancient estates. She feels Baressa and her thousands upon thousands of children, many of them cowering from the attentions of the Kamarisi. She feels the Spar, and the ley lines being drawn through it from the spire to the north to its sister in the south.
Then, at last, she feels the Atalayina. It is just as deep and dark as it was in the chamber where she lay. It is an anchor every bit as strong as the spires. She tries to bind herself to it, but it is not easy, and she feels herself thrown by the winds. The harder she tries to stop it, the more the aether gusts around her. It draws her thin. The aether rages in her ears, in her eyes, in her mind. She is lost in a wind-tossed sea, adrift and moving further and further from shore.
She feels now not only Baressa, but the whole of Galahesh. She feels Oramka to the north and the islands of Vostroma to the south. There is familiarity among the islands of her homeland. She became a woman there. She learned to tame the aether there. She spent hours, days, carefully tending to the ley lines between the spires of the Grand Duchy.
And she knows immediately that something is horribly, horribly wrong.
The spires…
Some are missing. Ildova to the west, her sister spire to the south, on Tolvodyen. And Elykstava to the east. It is there, on Elykstava, that she feels a momentary pang of familiarity.
Nikandr… Nikandr is there. She desperately tries to reach out to him, but her mind is drawn away, tossed among the waves.
She knows she is losing herself. There were times when she was able to bring herself back from the edge of such madness, when she reined herself back once she knew that she was spreading herself too far and too thin. But this is different. She had always been able to rely on the spires, like mooring lines to anchor a windship. Not so now.
As her mind drifts outward, she remembers Ishkyna’s words: Be careful.
She had, but she hadn’t been careful enough.
The last thing she feels is the well of darkness in the distance-the Atalayina-calling to her like the sirens of the southern seas.
But it is too late, and much too far away.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
K hamal watches as the boy-the akhoz, he reminds himself-shuffles along the lip that leads to the massive rock. Below, the waves roll in, pounding against the far side, sending the spray into a blue sky. Khamal glances up at Sariya’s tower and wonders if she watches him.
At last he reaches the top of the rock. The akhoz cowers and looks away when Khamal motions to the flat surface of the rock.
“Lie down,” Khamal says, and reluctantly the akhoz obeys.
Somehow he knows. He knows what lies ahead, and in these moments of realization, Khamal nearly changes his mind, nearly orders the boy away, nearly prepares to climb down from this rock to return to the celestia to meditate on what he and Muqallad and Sariya might do to close the rift.