And then the telltale sign of something old, something familiar, alerts her. It is in the tower, in the aether. Sariya approaches and finds Nasim, and the Atalayina. This is unexpected. The stone has never been key to her plans, but she can’t pass up the opportunity to gain it, to prevent Muqallad from attaining it.
She pushes, hoping to retrieve it if only Nasim can reveal where it was hidden. Nasim does, but he is stronger than she would have guessed, and he has help from the woman, the Matra from Vostroma. In the end she pushes too hard-she allows her emotions to overcome her-and she is lost in the aether. It is a mistake she won’t make again.
These memories fade, and Atiana realizes just how strong Sariya is becoming. She tries to retreat, but Sariya pins her down, prevents her from returning to her body deep in the bowels of the cemetery. Atiana fights, but Sariya will not be swayed. She drives Atiana so deep that Atiana begins to fear that she’ll never be able to return.
And then she feels the stone. She holds it in her hands. Part of it is smooth, the inner faces rough. It is just as cold as the numbing water that surrounds her, but there is life within it, a well of power that waits to be tapped.
She has gained some of Sariya’s knowledge of the Atalayina, and she draws upon it for the first time. She uses it now to push Sariya away.
Sariya tries to fight, but for the moment she is too weakened from her ordeal. She releases Atiana, and then her presence is simply gone.
Atiana knows she has resurfaced. She has regained consciousness in her tower, and there’s no telling what she’ll do now that she knows where Atiana lays.
Atiana swims toward the surface, tries to return to her physical self.
She moves slowly…
But eventually she returns.
When Atiana woke, spluttering in the basin, she was numb. Her hands would not respond when she willed them to move. All she could do was to curl like an infant and shiver while cold water dripped from her hair.
Ishkyna was there, but she was sleeping.
Atiana tried to speak, but her mouth refused her commands.
“Shkee-” she eventually managed to say.
Ishkyna did not wake.
“Shkyna…”
Ishkyna opened her eyes, wild and confused. Her gaze finally settled on Atiana.
“H-how long?”
It took some time as Ishkyna looked toward the next chamber, toward the stairs, but she finally seemed to understand. There was a sound coming from above, something like the pop of a campfire filled with unseasoned wood. She stood and moved over to the basin, preparing to help Atiana out. “Nearly two full days.”
“N-not yet,” Atiana said, knowing that to pull her out now would cause her joints to flare in pain.
Ignoring her, Ishkyna slipped her hands under Atiana’s arms and began pulling her up. Even this small movement was excruciatingly painful.
“Not yet!”
“Can you not hear it?” Ishkyna asked.
The sound was louder now. It wasn’t the snap of burning wood, but the report of musket fire.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“I’ll wager you know a good deal more about it than I do, Tiana.”
Atiana grunted, stifling the pain as best she could, as Ishkyna pulled her out and onto the stairs that surrounded the basin. While Ishkyna used soft cloth to dry her off, Atiana tried to piece it all together. She remembered entering the crypt, remembered becoming lost in the winds of the aether, but little else.
Until she felt the stone in her hands.
With shaking arms she raised the Atalayina up. She stared at it. She felt, in the darkness beneath the earth, as though she could look through the stone, as if it were a window that gave her view of the aether. Indeed, she could feel Ishkyna much as she could in the aether. She could feel Irkadiy far above them, his men as well. She could feel the soldiers advancing through the cemetery toward them, firing their muskets as they began to outflank them on two sides.
“Sariya,” Atiana said.
Ishkyna helped her to pull on her clothes. “What of her?”
“She’s awoken.”
“She was asleep?”
Atiana shook her head. “She was lost. We need to get to the surface.”
“ Nyet. Not until the fighting is over. Irkadiy will lead them away.”
Atiana warded away her sister’s attempts to pull a coat over her frame and stumbled toward the stairs.
“Atiana!”
She ignored her calls as she took the winding staircase up toward the surface. Her knees and ankles and hips screamed from the abuse, but she pushed on, knowing there was little time left. She wouldn’t let them die, not these loyal men.
As she wound her way up, higher and higher, the sound of musket fire came clearer. She heard men screaming, others shouting orders.
At last she came to the cold metal doors. She unhinged the latch and pushed them open with a mighty heave.
“Stop!” she shouted in Yrstanlan. “I’m here!”
She stood in a row of mausoleums similar to hers. Snow was falling and drifting. Men wearing the uniform of the Kamarisi’s personal guard stood nearby, aiming weapons past the mausoleum entrance where she now stood, but at her shouts they all turned to her, several of them leveling muskets at her chest.
A musket shot cracked against the marble column of a mausoleum across from her.
“Irkadiy!” she shouted in Anuskayan. “Drop your weapons! Go with them peaceably!”
At last the firing stopped.
One of the Kamarisi’s guardsmen, the one wearing a dark brown turban, stepped forward and took a knee before Atiana. “My Lady Princess,” he said in heavily accented Anuskayan, “Arvaneh um Shalahihd would speak with you.”
Atiana stared at these hardened men, confused by the silence around her.
But then she understood.
“Take me to her,” she said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
W ith the snow still falling and the bitter wind gusting, Atiana was led by twenty janissaries across the cobblestone expanse surrounding Sariya’s tower. The tower stood at the foot of the Mount. Ancient stone buildings created a ring around the tower. They stood shoulder to shoulder, frowning down at Atiana, as if they blamed her for what had befallen their city.
Atiana had forbidden Ishkyna and Irkadiy from accompanying her. She doubted the guardsmen would have allowed it in any case, but there had still been something about this meeting that felt as though it should be shared only between the two of them-Sariya, as strange as it seemed, felt like a sister of the aether, a Matra of sorts.
They came to the base of the tower. It felt odd to be here at last, a place that had occupied her mind both here in the material world and within the dark. She realized that this was not the same tower that she had built while on Ghayavand, but by the same token she knew that this tower, the physical tower that stood before her, had changed since Sariya’s arrival. It had been transformed-not only in Erahm but in the aether as well-into the seat of Sariya’s power.
As the guards knocked thrice and the doors were opened from within, Atiana wondered if there was an echo of this tower in Adhiya. Surely there was. Surely Sariya had found a way for it to reach into the spirit realm as well.
She stepped inside and found a wide room every bit as opulent as the kasir. There were granite floors and marble columns, gilded furniture, and rich portraits hanging from the curving interior wall. She was led to a set of stairs that climbed up into the cavernous darkness. As the doors boomed shut behind her, the guards motioned for her to continue up. Only after Atiana had taken the stairs did she realize that the guards would remain here.