Siha s guided them through the empty streets of Vihrosh. It was not a large city, however, and they soon came to a gate with tall minarets on either side. The massive iron portcullis was drawn up. Beyond, Atiana could already see dozens, perhaps hundreds of men standing, staring at something Atiana could not yet see from her vantage.
And then Atiana heard a sound that sent chills along her spine. It was like the braying of an animal, or the fearful crying of a child-a child faced with something they could not comprehend, allowing only the most urgent of fears to burst from their lungs.
Siha s stiffened as another call came, this one louder than the first, and nearer.
“By the ancients,” Atiana said, “I’ve never heard something so tragic.”
Siha s said nothing, but she felt him shiver. His pony slowed instinctually, and when Siha s kicked its flanks, the beast became skittish and began to tug at the bridle.
As they passed through the gate, the scene beyond the Galaheshi soldiers was revealed. Hundreds of men and women wearing robes of black and gray and umber stood around a hill. These were the Hratha, Atiana knew, the sect of the Maharraht that had overthrown Soroush and his brother, Bersuq. They had been waging a protracted war against her own Duchy, and the Duchies of Bolgravya and Nodhvyansk, for decades.
And yet, it was not their presence that bothered her most.
At the top of the hill were dozens of children.
Nyet, Atiana thought. Not children. She had seen them in the aether, on Ghayavand and Rafsuhan. These were the akhoz, and they were now on Galahesh.
Sariya stood upon the hill’s summit near a tall post. She was facing the gate as if she had expected them to walk through at that very moment. Hakan ul Aye s e, the Kamarisi of Yrstanla stood next to her, his face calm, emotionless, barely registering that a princess of Anuskaya and the kapitan of his personal guard had arrived.
Standing next to them was a tall man wearing robes of ivory over inner robes the color of pearl. His hair and beard were black. This was Muqallad.
And between them was a girl, twelve, perhaps older-it was difficult to tell from this distance.
Muqallad lifted his hand and held it out as if he expected Atiana to take it.
The Hratha turned, and they parted, creating a lane for them to ride along.
Siha s did not spur their pony forward. He was like a spring, tight and coiled. She could feel it in his arms and shoulders and in the set of his spine.
“We must go,” Atiana whispered, and she knew it was so. They could no more turn around than they could summon the sun from the sky.
Siha s was breathing so rapidly she wondered if he would faint. But as she leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “We must go,” he flicked the reins and urged the pony forward.
The beast complied, and slowly they moved forward, she and his soldiers.
She glanced back to Irkadiy. Her countryman. A man who had urged her to abandon these plans.
His look was strong-Irkadiy was nothing if not strong-but it was a thin veneer, for just below the surface was an endless well of terror. He looked as though he could barely breathe, as though he were a drowning man clutching uselessly at the surface of the water.
Her feelings for him, so favorable only moments ago, soured the more she looked. He had tried to turn her away from this path. He had tried to betray her. Betray her! How dare he! For a mere moment, the anger building inside her like a hornet’s nest surprised her, but as she looked up to the hill, to Muqallad and Sariya, she knew she’d been a fool to trust Irkadiy. She’d been a fool to trust any of these men.
Somewhere in the distance she heard the call of the gallows crow, but it was drowned out by the braying of the akhoz. There were more of them than Atiana had realized. Dozens of them. They’d moved beyond the Hratha to crawl along the ground as if they wished to leap upon Atiana and the soldiers and their ponies but were prevented from doing so. She looked upon the faces of these creatures, knowing they had once been children, knowing they had once been innocent.
No longer, she thought. Now they were tools of the Al-Aqim.
As it should be…
They reached the hill at last. There were rough stone steps worked into it, allowing them to slip from their saddles and ascend to the top of the hill. Muqallad and Sariya watched closely, but little emotion showed on their faces. The girl, however, was different. She watched Atiana with an intensity that Atiana couldn’t understand.
The akhoz closed in behind and followed them up the hill. By the time she and Siha s and the rest reached the hill’s flattened summit, they were completely surrounded.
“Come,” Muqallad said over the braying of the akhoz.
Sariya, for some reason, did not speak. She looked pale, as if she could do little more than stand, as if even speaking would prove too much.
In the distance there came again, barely audible, a single, sad caw.
Atiana knew something was wrong, but she could no longer understand what. Muqallad looked at her with a fierceness that made her want to obey. Sariya licked her lips tremulously, as if behind those lips, behind those unsteady eyes, she was holding back a wave of pain she’d never before experienced. Sariya swallowed and shook her head, holding back her misery through sheer force of will.
Atiana wanted to step forward, wanted to take Muqallad’s hand. She felt she should, but there was something else she should do. Wasn’t there?
But then the girl stepped forward.
And took Atiana’s hand.
The moment she does, Atiana knows what she is doing is right.
She walks forward and takes Muqallad’s hand, which is warm and welcoming. It nearly masks the renewed cries of the akhoz and the ululating calls of the Hratha behind her.
She turns to find the akhoz ripping Siha s ’s men limb from limb. They are a mass of groping hands and writhing legs and gaping maws. The ground before her is little more than screams and flailing and blood.
Even the tall one-Siha s, she recalls-falls, though he manages to draw his sword and sever the head of an akhoz from its neck. Another he cuts deeply across the waist while fending off a third. But the fourth. The fourth has him. It clamps wiry arms around his neck. It bites with blackened teeth, with lolling tongue.
Siha s screams, felling yet another of these misshapen children, before he too is brought to the ground and eviscerated by creatures that seem more like teeming insects than children, ruthless and unemotional in their efficiency.
At last it has ended. Only one is left unharmed. Her countryman. What is his name?
No matter. He gave himself over to Muqallad’s cause the moment he passed beyond the Spar.
Suddenly she realizes a knife is in her hand, a khanjar, placed there by Muqallad. He motions her forward, toward the soldier of Anuskaya.
The hilt of the knife feels good against her skin. It has tasted the blood of man, and it feels ancient, as if the fates themselves have crafted it from the stuff of stars.
She takes one halting step as the akhoz hold the man in place.
He looks up at her, pleading with her to stop.
His eyes implore her. Wake! Wake from this dream!
But he is wrong. He doesn’t understand. She has been sleeping for so many years. Only through the Al-Aqim has she awoken.
She steps forward, angered by his presumption. “Who are you to plead with me?” she says.
And pulls the knife across his throat.
Blood spurts from the cavernous wound, falls warm and slick onto her fingers and the backs of her hands. The akhoz holding him scream in exultation, but she hears little save the furious and heady coursing of her own blood. This feels right. It feels as it must have felt for the earliest of the Matra as they blooded the land before the spires were built. It is just, for his blood now marks this place. This place where a grand ritual is about to commence.