Rabiah stopped walking. “Nasim…”
He refused to slow. She was just being stubborn.
“Nasim!”
Her voice was so full of emotion that he stopped and turned. She stepped forward tentatively while staring into his eyes, perhaps trying to see into his soul. “You’re so protective of him,” she said. “Why not me?”
He couldn’t speak for a moment. He looked around, at the dry, mountainous landscape, at the overcast sky and the blue gap in the clouds far to the north. “Because I need you.”
She blinked. He saw her swallow, as if she were suddenly nervous, and when she spoke again, her voice was quiet. “You say it as if it’s obvious.”
“Isn’t it?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but then seemed to think better of it. She smiled and squeezed his shoulders. “You do need me, Nasim. But you need Sukharam as well. We all need each other.”
He wanted to tell her that there was more. He wanted to tell her that he didn’t just need her-there was so much more trying to bubble up from deep inside him-but the words, like so many times before, refused to come. It wasn’t the right time.
It was never the right time.
“Come,” he finally said. “We’re already here. If Ashan was taken, then Muqallad would have brought him to Shirvozeh. I need to know if it’s so.”
He could tell that she didn’t want to drop the topic, but she nodded anyway, and they continued.
They hiked down slope until they came to the edge of a sheer cliff. From this vantage they could see to their left a bridge that spanned the chasm below. The bridge’s sand-colored columns rose up from the base of the valley hundreds of feet, arching gracefully to meet the supports to either side. In a handful of places the stones along the bridge’s roadway had given way-from this distance it looked as if it had been chewed away by rats. By and large, though, the bridge was sound.
Suddenly, Rabiah clutched his arm, pointing southward.
Nasim scanned the far side of the chasm. And then he caught movement. It was a good distance away-an eighth-league or more-but he could see the form of a vanahezhan plodding through the scrub pine. Every few steps, some of its leg would ablate. It would then pause, glance down, and the leg would reform, but then a few steps later it would happen again.
As it grabbed for an old, misshapen acacia, pulling itself upslope, it fell and shattered against the ground. Rocks slid downward, clacking and clattering, spraying the hillside in the pattern of a candle’s flame.
“Did it return to Adhiya?” Rabiah asked.
“It must have. When I came here with Ashan, there were hezhan all over the island. They had seemed a part of this place. Permanent, somehow.” Nasim waved to the site of the vanahezhan’s crossing, where dust still rose. “It might have been weak, one more likely to be drawn back to Adhiya, but somehow I doubt it. Things have changed.”
Rabiah touched her chest, over her heart. “It feels unstable. The hezhan can cross easily, but it feels like we could step into Adhiya as well.”
Nasim felt a mixture of pride and melancholy swirling inside him. It was a sign of her ability that she could sense this. “You’re becoming attuned to the island.”
She looked to him, her eyes bright and hopeful. “Is that good or bad?”
“A bit of both, I’m afraid.” He pointed to their right. “Come, the trail head isn’t far.”
They soon found it, a thin trail hidden among the growth. They began taking it downward, watching the bridge constantly, but when they approached the halfway mark and still saw nothing, their nerves began to calm.
Far below, the rush of water could be heard, and they soon came to an overlook-the top of a massive fist of rock lodged into the otherwise loose soil. They rested there, looking down at the frothing rush of water.
“Where is it?” Rabiah asked.
In truth Nasim didn’t know. He studied the landscape, hoping he would recognize landmarks now that he was here.
And then he spotted it. Near a shallow inlet of crystal-clear water in a patina-colored bed was a curving wall of red rock with flowering vegetation clinging to its sheer face.
“Beneath the vines,” he said, pointing to it.
“Where?”
“Hiding beneath the overhang.”
Rabiah studied the wall closely, but Nasim’s attention was drawn by movement on the bridge far above. Rabiah began to speak, but he grabbed her arm and squeezed, willing her to silence. Rabiah looked up immediately and drew in a sharp breath.
There, in a staggered line, were a dozen akhoz heading toward the village. Nasim remained frozen, hoping they were too far from the akhoz for them to smell their scent on the wind, but then he realized that they weren’t all akhoz.
A woman followed at the rear of the line. With the distance he might not have recognized her as such had she not been walking upright, her hair flowing in the wind. The longer he watched, though, the more he realized she might not be a woman after all. She seemed young-perhaps twelve or thirteen, certainly no older than he and Rabiah-and her gait was not one of confidence, but of self-consciousness. She was out of place here, and she felt it.
Then, as one, he and Rabiah were drawn by more movement much closer to them.
At the top of the trail, shuffling along the ground on all fours, was a single akhoz. It sniffed the ground, moved a few paces, then sniffed again. It stopped, its mouth open as if it were tasting the wind. It remained there motionless for so long that Nasim thought it might not have sensed them, that soon it would return to the others, but then it arched its neck, bared its blackened gums and teeth to the sky, and shuffled toward them.
“By the fates, it’s found us,” Nasim said, pulling her by her arm.
They sprinted down the trail.
As steep as the hill was it was difficult to control their pace. Rabiah nearly slid off a curve in the trail and down the steep slope toward the water below, but Nasim caught her wrist, and they skidded along the dry, rocky soil to slow themselves.
Above, the akhoz was gaining ground. They could hear its breathing, snuffing and huffing, which sounded more like a wounded boar than a child. It hunkered down near a tree that hugged the side of the trail and sniffed, then it reared its head back and released a howl that made Nasim’s stomach churn.
It continued, on and on it went until Nasim was forced to stop, to lean over and take deep breaths to keep himself from vomiting. A line of drool slipped from his mouth and fell upon the dry red soil
Rabiah was no better. Her face was white, and her lip quivered as she stared into Nasim’s eyes. The veins along her forehead stood out, her pulse galloping.
“Draw upon a dhoshahezhan,” he said. “Use it to shield us.”
After coughing and pulling herself upright, she did. The walls of Adhiya were thin here. He could feel the hunger of the hezhan-dozens of them-to enter this world. Rabiah was forced to slow the amount of energy she was drawing in order to prevent its crossing.
But already her face was turning red. Spittle leaked from her mouth to fall upon the front of her red robes, and she tightened her fists so hard that the whites of her knuckles and the tendons of her hands stood out. He reached out to calm her, but she slapped his hand away. She pushed as hard as she dared.
The hair on his head and the back of his neck stood on end. A crackle sizzled through the air above them, signaling the crossing of a dhoshahezhan.
But then the long call of the akhoz abruptly ended.
Instead of using the trail, it charged down the slope, heedless of the scrapes along its legs and torso it received from the dry growth.
Nasim could feel the hezhan’s hunger. It was angry, yearning more than ever to enter the material world. Rabiah eased her hold on it, but didn’t release it completely. She kept it near in case they needed it once more.
Nasim took her by the arm and dragged her along the trail. They were nearly at the bottom, but the akhoz was gaining. With Rabiah as weakened as she was, Nasim thought of drawing on another hezhan. Whatever might happen to Rabiah, he could use one to protect them from the akhoz, but in the end he decided it was simply too dangerous. The veil was impossibly thin here; any serious bonding with the hezhan would draw them across, and that was something they could not afford.