Atiana and Irkadiy hid among the shadows and watched as five men rode into the circle. They bore lanterns, and they shone them on the crow, making it seem as though they’d been following it for some time. The crow took wing, flying not away from Atiana, but toward her. It flew straight to their position and landed not five paces away.
The ponies approached.
The light from the lanterns darted toward them like hawks.
The crow hopped closer. It stood just before them now.
The desire to stand and run was overpowering, as was the desire to take a knife to the gallows crow.
“There!” one of the men called.
They pulled swords, and three kicked their ponies into action. All were well trained. The ponies had them surrounded in moments.
“My Lady Princess,” one of the men called in Anuskayan. “Please come with us.”
“Siha s?” Atiana asked, holding her hand up and squinting against the light of the lanterns.
“ Da, My Lady.”
Before Atiana could wonder why he would have been sent to find her, the gallows crow flapped its wings and hopped and cawed.
All eyes turned toward the spectacle. The bird swung its head back and forth in rhythmic patterns that seemed both painful and uncontrollable.
After one more caw, a single word escaped the bird’s throat.
“Hakan.”
No one moved. A chill ran down Atiana’s already-numb skin.
“Leave us,” Siha s said in Yrstanlan.
“My Lord,” one of his men replied.
“Go to the far side of the circle,” Siha s said, more insistently. “I’ll call you when needed.”
They complied, but Atiana could see by the grisly light shining against their faces that they were not pleased.
Siha s swung a leg over his saddle and dropped down to the cobbled street. “What is this about?” he said to Atiana while motioning to the bird.
It was the crow that responded, however. “Hakan is not yet freed.”
“What do you mean?” Atiana asked.
It seemed so distraught, so in pain, that Atiana crouched down in order to touch the crow. It deftly avoided her touch, however, and hopped away. “He is still under Sariya’s spell.”
Atiana stood.
She looked to Siha s, whose face was every bit as shocked as hers. But his look was calculating as well. He had placed much on the notion that Hakan-once Sariya had been wounded and subsequently disappeared-was once again whole. His loyalty to Yrstanla, and even Hakan, had driven him to act against the wishes of the Kamarisi. No doubt he had been relieved when Sariya had fled. But now, if what the crow was saying was correct, he might still have to act against his lord in order to protect his empire.
“There’s more,” the crow said. It cawed once, sadly, and its eye never seemed to leave Atiana.
“What?” Atiana asked.
“You…” The crow cawed several times and twisted its head and flapped its wings. It hopped away, and Atiana thought it was going to take wing and leave them. But it didn’t. It recovered and approached once more, eyeing Atiana carefully.
Atiana stared at the bird, fearful of what it would say when it spoke once more. She swallowed. Something large and raw was caught in her throat, and nothing she did seemed to clear it.
“What about me?” she finally managed to ask.
“You’re caught as well.” The crow pecked the cobblestone near Atiana’s foot. “You have been from the moment you entered her tower.”
Atiana began to shiver. First her arms and shoulders, then her entire body.
“Who are you?” Her words were swallowed by the night.
The crow opened its beak and its tongue lolled out. It shook its head and shivered violently. One long, mournful sound escaped its throat, and though Atiana knew it was trying to speak, it sounded more like the sad, soulful cry of a little lost girl.
It tried once more, and then with a noisy flutter of wings lofted itself into the sky. In mere moments, the dark shades of its wings had faded into the night.
Irkadiy and Siha s stared at Atiana with confused looks. They didn’t know who had assumed the bird’s form. But Atiana did. The crow hadn’t needed to say.
As the last of hints of its wings were lost over the buildings beyond the circle, Atiana whispered her name.
“Ishkyna…”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
N asim walked down an empty street toward the center of Alayazhar. He was near the top of a long sloping hill. The empty shells of the buildings cast long shadows beneath the golden light of the lowering sun, and in the distance he could see Sariya’s tower.
How had he come to be here? It must be a dream, he thought. It must be.
Yet when he turned to his right, he realized he was holding hands with Muqallad. As he had when he stood within the cavern near the towering white cliffs of Galahesh.
He had realized something in that cavern just before Muqallad had entered.
“He’s waking.”
This had come from the voice of a woman.
He looked to his left and found her. Sariya. She walked with a hitch, blood still leaking through her robes, but she was also strong. Her will was driving her to finish what she’d started.
At this, a spark of memory came.
In the cavern within the cliffs of Galahesh, with the light shining down on his face, he had looked into Sariya’s eyes.
And he’d remembered the tower. Her tower. The spire in the forest, linked to the tower here on Ghayavand. He had entered, and from that moment on had been under her spell.
“It need only hold until the sun sets.”
“He’s strong, Muqallad.” Her voice was strained, desperate.
“You will overcome,” was all Muqallad said in return.
They continued down through the city, walking along the empty thoroughfare. Strangely, they turned off the street well before Sariya’s tower. Nasim didn’t understand why, but he did understand that they were avoiding the tall, white tower itself.
Nasim tried to work it through, but his mind wouldn’t allow it. All he could focus on were the broken stones of the street and the utter silence that greeted them throughout their long walk down to the sea.
They passed beyond the city proper and took a set of stairs carved into the dark gray slabs of stone that lined the sandy beach. The sound of the surf rose. Ahead, he saw a massive black rock. The incoming waves splashed against it high into the air, catching the light against the distant clouds of the dying day. This was the stone he’d seen in so many of his dreams. Khamal had come to this stone. He’d brought Yadhan and Alif-unsure, perhaps, which he would use to free his soul from this place.
In the end he had chosen Alif. Khamal had cut his own hand and spilled his lifeblood into the opened mouth of that forgotten boy, linking the two of them, and then he had driven a knife deep into his chest, severing his ties to Ghayavand once and for all.
And all it had cost him was his future lives.
Save one, Nasim thought. He was the last. And now Muqallad had come to do the same.
He looked down to Muqallad’s belt and saw a khanjar. Khamal’s knife. The one Muqallad and Sariya had used to slay Khamal at the top of Sariya’s tower.
The one they would use to slay Nasim.
Muqallad glanced down, and then returned his attention to the road ahead, as if acknowledging the weapon would acknowledge not only the atrocities he’d committed, but the one he was about to commit. To Muqallad this sacrifice was necessary. Khamal had trapped them. He had murdered Alif and then forced the Al-Aqim to slay him, but in those last moments Muqallad had realized what Khamal was about to do, and he had foiled, at least partially, Khamal’s plans. Nasim had been linked to them from that point on, and it felt as if every step he’d taken had been leading toward this: this dark stone and this sighing sea and this bright blade.