Between them, sitting on an obsidian pedestal, was the Atalayina. It was whole, pristine, impossible to look upon without feeling like one stood at the center of all creation. By the fates, it was beautiful. He wanted to hide this memory away, to return to it when he was more prepared, but it quickly began to fade. More of Khamal’s life came to him, some things he could remember dreaming before, some things he could not.
Faster they came, until, like the lives of Sukharam, he remembered more of his own lives. Khamal’s memories overshadow the others at first, but this feeling recedes, and soon these lives, his past lives, are little more than links in a chain that drift into the dim and distant past.
He feels nothing of his future, however. Nasim knew that he would die-truly die-when he faded from this world, but to see it like this, so stark in comparison to the fate of Sukharam, makes him feel small, makes him feel powerless to affect the world.
As bleak as this realization is, it sheds light on his prior life, and more importantly, his connection to it. For the first time he can feel the spell of Muqallad weighing down on him like a stone. It presses against him like the depths of a hidden lake, preventing him from touching Adhiya.
There is another link as well. This one he recognizes immediately. His link to Nikandr, still strong after all these years.
As he reflects upon this a realization comes to him, one he never would have expected. By the fates who weave, the link to Nikandr acts in opposition to Muqallad’s. It saved him on Oshtoyets. Nasim knows this. What strikes him like a thunderclap is the fact that it has been doing so ever since. Every minute he doesn’t slip back into madness is due to his link to Nikandr. He acts like a length of driftwood, preventing Nasim from sinking beneath the waves.
This bond had always felt like something he should be ashamed of-partially because Nikandr was Landed, but also because it had felt like it was keeping Nasim from standing on his own two feet. His shame is like a glowing brand, and it grows brighter as he thinks not just how he treated Nikandr, but Ashan and Sukharam and Fahroz and nearly everyone he’d come to know. Everyone except Rabiah. And Rabiah is now dead.
He focuses on Muqallad’s spell, tugs at its threads, which are tied around him so tightly that the effort feels futile. As he pulls the threads away, new ones form like spider silk. He tries harder, becomes desperate to rid himself of Muqallad’s taint, but soon his efforts bring pain-they disturb the delicate balance he’s found-and he retreats.
He is about to pull away, buoyed in defeat by the notion that he’d finally found the source of his inability to touch Adhiya, when he feels something in the village far below where he stands now.
In the ballast tower, near the place where Soroush and Bersuq were kept prisoner for long months and years.
Fahroz is there. She lies on the floor of the room.
And Kaleh stands over her.
A knife gripped tightly in one hand.
Nasim woke.
He stood immediately and began running for the nearest of the paths. “We must go! Fahroz is in trouble!”
Ashan looked like Nasim had scared him nearly to death. “What did you see?”
“Send help to the lowest section of the ballast tower!”
“Wait!” Ashan called.
Nasim heard them chasing after him. The paths here were not familiar, but he soon found some that were. In little time he was bolting through the village’s warrens, heading ever lower. On a wooden deck, a qiram kneeling with her young disciples stood as he ran past. She looked worried, even angry, when she heard the calls behind him, but Nasim moved on before she could react.
He reached one of the lower entrances to the tower. He took the spiraling staircase downward, moving as fast as he dared.
He came at last, breathless, to the room he’d seen in his dream, a dark place no longer used as a prison. A lone siraj lit the room. It cast deep shadows against Kaleh, who kneeled above Fahroz with the khanjar held over her chest.
Nasim froze in the doorway. “Please, Kaleh! Stop!”
Kaleh looked to him, her expression resolute.
Then she turned back and thrust the knife into Fahroz’s chest.
“ Neh!” Nasim screamed.
Fahroz jerked. Her eyes went wide, but she made no sound, as if she’d just been awoken from a vivid and horrifying dream.
Kaleh turned back to him. Nasim shivered at the emotionless expression on her face.
“Why?” Nasim asked, his hands shaking in front of him.
The answer came moments later.
The wall behind her, made from some of the stoutest, thickest wood in the entire village, opened like a wound. It yawned, wider and wider, until it was large enough for her to step into. He knew then that she’d killed Fahroz so she could open this portal. She was fleeing Mirashadal, and the qiram at the edge of the village had surely prevented her from doing so.
Despite her words the day before, she was returning to Muqallad. That much was clear.
Kaleh stood and squared herself, as if she thought he might attack. She glanced over his shoulder. She could hear-as Nasim could-others coming down the stairs. “Goodbye, Nasim an Ashan.”
She took a step toward the gap in the wood, but the notion that she would leave after what she’d done so incensed him that he felt the blood pounding through his veins. His heart beat powerfully. Madly. An anger welled up inside him-an anger so intense it threatened to blind him with white rage.
As Kaleh took another step, the world around him slowed.
Her movements decelerated until they matched the pace of the tides, the pace of the seasons.
Kaleh halts short of the opening. A shimmering curtain surrounds them, contains them.
Nasim takes one stride forward. And another. Soon he stands just short of her.
She holds in her left hand the knife, the blade still slick with blood. He reaches out to take it. Her hands are cold and stiff.
As he touches them, he feels a stirring within her.
Whether it is because of his touch, or because she’s learned what he’s done to her, he does not know, but her motion accelerates. Like a hare in spring, she is rousing from Nasim’s spell.
He has an urge to back away, to protect himself, but it is distant and small. Much larger is the desire to plunge the khanjar deep into her chest, doing the same to her as she did to Fahroz.
And then he realizes. The khanjar… He’s seen it before.
By the fates above, it’s the same knife that Muqallad and Sariya used to murder Khamal.
“Will you kill me?” she asks. She turns slowly, ever so slowly, toward him.
Nasim stares into her eyes. “Why would you follow him?”
“I follow him because he is right.”
“He brings us to ruin.”
“He brings us to our better lives.”
“You’re a fool if you believe that.”
Kaleh’s eyes soften. She looks upon him with pity-with pity, as if he is the one who will never understand.
“I had hoped you could join me, but when I saw what happened to Khamal-saw your reaction to it-I knew that you were not ready.” She stares down at the khanjar. “Kill me if you would.”
Nasim grips the handle, feels the braided metal dig into his skin. He feels the weight of it, and a part of him-a part he is only distantly aware of-feels the keenness of the blade.
Were he to use the blade, he would kill her. She would die and would never deliver the knowledge she’d gained to Muqallad.
He considers this. He actually considers killing another. Is he so like Khamal that he could be brought to such a thing? Killing in cold blood? It triggers a memory of Khamal when he hid the piece of the Atalayina in Sariya’s tower, when the two of them had made love.
And Kaleh… Nasim looks at her anew.