But there are no other paths. He knows this.
He stares down at Alif. The boy cranes his neck, releases a mewling sound like a weak and wounded calf.
“Fates forgive me,” Khamal says as he kneels.
He pulls his khanjar from its sheath at his belt. It gleams both wicked and hungry in the sun.
Alif squirms, moves away from Khamal. His mewling becomes louder, more raucous in his ears.
“Nasim!”
Nasim opened his eyes, expecting to see Rabiah kneeling over him.
But he didn’t find Rabiah. Rabiah was gone.
He found Sukharam instead. He was staring down at him with a look of concern, but not of caring, and certainly not of love.
Nasim pulled himself back along the flat bottom of the skiff and leaned against the bulwark. Sukharam moved back to his regular seat, the rearmost thwart, and began scanning the westward skies. Ashan was manning the sails. He took note of their exchange, but said nothing of it.
They were sailing the winds over the Sea of Tabriz. Nasim looked to the southern skies, shaking away the remains of the dream. This dream, the dream of the akhoz and the massive rock, was by far the most common of Khamal’s memories. He knew it was significant, he just didn’t know how.
He tried to remember more, for he knew that what happened to that boy on the top of the rock was the key to remembering the rest of Khamal’s memories, but as always what came after was lost to him, and eventually he gave up.
His thoughts turned instead to the Atalayina. He wondered where the pieces now lay. He hoped that Atiana still had the one he’d given to her. He hoped, in fact, that Sariya had been wounded in some form or another. He couldn’t quite bring himself to wish for her death, but if the fates had seen fit to do so, he wouldn’t find himself weeping.
He turned west, the direction in which they were headed.
Sukharam looked up to Ashan, who was manning the sails. “How do you know where the village will be?”
Ashan glanced down. “They won’t be far from Galahesh, and given that they were flying the Great Northern Sea only weeks ago, it makes sense that they will be found here. Somewhere.”
“We are in a place as large as Yrstanla. How can you hope to find them?”
Ashan smiled, showing his crooked teeth. “The fates will show the way, son of Dahanan.”
“That isn’t an answer,” Sukharam replied, his face sour.
But it was as much of an answer as he was going to get. Sukharam had asked much the same thing over the past four days, and received much the same answer from Ashan.
“Leave it be,” Nasim said. “If he says we’ll find Mirashadal, then it will be so.”
Sukharam twisted in his seat to face Nasim. “If his foresight is no better than yours, then I’ll have my answer.”
“There are ways,” Ashan said, interrupting them, “to sense the movement of other hezhan through the bond with your own.”
Though his face was still angry, Sukharam went silent. He was gifted, but still callow in the ways of the Aramahn; this wasn’t something he’d been formally taught. No doubt he was already trying to do the very thing Ashan had spoken of. Nasim could feel him touching Adhiya, communing with a havahezhan. As Sukharam’s anger faded, Nasim could feel him reaching out to the skies around them, waiting for the telltale sign of shifting winds. He scanned westward, then southward, and then westward again. The moment he felt it, Nasim did too-like a shifting of one’s attention in the moments following the snap of a branch in a dark forest. Moments later, as if it were a hezhan summoned from Adhiya, Mirashadal floated out from a massive white cloud far in the distance.
It had been nearly three years since Nasim had seen Mirashadal. He had thought that it would have little effect on him were he ever to see it again, but as it neared, he found that an anxious feeling had settled within his chest, and it was getting worse by the moment.
“They won’t eat you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Nasim looked up at Ashan. “I know.”
Ashan laughed. “Do you?”
They continued, and the bulk of the village was revealed. They were below it, which gave visibility to the ballast, the long tower-shaped limb that hung from the center of the concentric rings of the village proper. The windwood glowed brightly under the sun, making it look like one of the iconic paintings of the Landed. As they floated upward and came even with the perches built into the outer ring, Nasim saw smoke rising from the far side of the village. Above it, rain was falling, though it resolved from the very air over the village. No doubt jalaqiram-those who could bond with spirits of water-were summoning the rain to douse the fire, but that didn’t explain the fire itself.
He also noticed women, dozens of them, wearing double robes of white and yellow, each with a stone in the circlets upon their brows. They stood on the perches circling Mirashadal. Each had eyes closed and arms spread wide as if they were welcoming the wind, but their stones were opals, not the alabaster of havaqiram, and strangely, they were all facing inward, as if the singular focus of their attention was the tower that stood at the center of the village.
Why would dhoshaqiram, masters of life, be communing in this way around the perimeter of the village? They must be guarding the village, though from what, and why, Nasim had no idea. He looked up to Ashan, but the face of the old arqesh was confused as well, his brow furrowed with thought and worry.
When they came at last to the perches built into the outer ring, Fahroz was already there. She and several others-some of whom Nasim recognized, but many he did not-greeted them as they disembarked.
“The fates work in strange ways,” Fahroz said to Ashan as she stepped in and gave him a hug.
“Indeed,” Ashan replied, “but please, is all well?”
Fahroz turned and glanced back at the steam and smoke rising in the distance. “Well enough, son of Ahrumea, but we’ll have time to discuss that soon.” The implication was that she wished to speak with Ashan alone, away from the ears of children-or from Nasim’s ears in particular.
Fahroz greeted Sukharam, hugging him deeply and welcoming him to Mirashadal. And then she turned to Nasim. She stared at him, maintaining a respectful distance. They were near enough to reach out and hold one another’s hands, and yet the gulf between them seemed impossibly wide. There was hurt in Fahroz’s eyes, and disappointment, but there was also surprise. Perhaps she thought never to see him again. Perhaps she was surprised he’d gone to Ghayavand and found his way back again. Whatever the reason, Nasim couldn’t help but feel like a son to this woman. Even though he had resented her for taking him here to Mirashadal, she had done so with love in her heart-love for him and love for the world.
He stepped forward and took her into a tight embrace. “You were right to give me shelter.” He said the words softly, so that only she could hear.
“And perhaps you were right to leave. In the end, we must all follow our hearts.” She pulled him away, holding his shoulders and staring deeply into his eyes. “Is it not so?”
Nasim smiled weakly. It was all he could manage, because for reasons he could not quite define, he was on the verge of tears.
Fahroz motioned to the perch, and together, with the other Aramahn that had come to greet them, they made their way toward the center of the floating village. “There is someone who’s come,” Fahroz said to Nasim as she walked by his side. “She wishes to speak with you.”
“Who?”
Fahroz studied him. She used to do this often. She was weighing just how much information she should give him, weighing how much he could handle. His instinct was to look away, as Sukharam was so apt to do, but he was a boy no longer. He would not shy away from such things.
“Tell me who’s come,” Nasim said.
“You’ll see soon enough.”
They passed over several arching bridges, through narrow walkways bounded by trellises and boughs and houses, all made of living windwood. They came to the center of the village, where a tower with a winding staircase stood. At the top, upon a platform, stood dozens of men wearing white and yellow robes and stones of alabaster. They were facing outward, each a mate of sorts to the women who stood at the edges of the village.