After a moment’s pause, she could feel the sotnik’s kindjal against the rope at her wrist. An instant later, her hands were free. She pulled the mask off of her face and by the dim light of the quarter moon found the grim-faced sotnik rummaging through a burlap sack at his feet. He pulled her circlet out, but it dropped as the boat tilted sharply upward and he grabbed the gunwales for balance.
Rehada snatched up her circlet, but had already noticed that the stone was dark. Even before she placed it upon her head she knew the truth of it: the suurahezhan she had bonded with had abandoned her, leaving her utterly defenseless. It may have been because of the trip over the water, it may have simply been its time, but something told her it was yet another manifestation of the rift, the rift that Soroush was ready to rip wide open if given the chance.
The streltsi shifted aft, ready to hack at the massive tentacle that had grabbed the boat. As they searched the water, shashkas raised, an arm of the goedrun whipped up out of the water and wrapped around two of them before they had a chance to duck out of its path.
One was able to pull away, but the other was wrapped up tight and was pulled off the boat in a blink, splashing into the dark waves before the shock could even register upon his face.
“Give me your gunpowder,” Rehada said to the sotnik.
He complied without question, unfastening and handing her one of the wooden cartridges hanging from leather cords along the front of his bandolier.
“All of them,” she said while pouring the contents into her lap.
He handed the cartridges as quickly as he could, and Rehada added their contents-ten cartridges’ worth-to the one in her lap, hoping it would be enough.
“A spark,” Rehada said.
From a small leather bag on his bandolier he pulled out a piece of flint and held out his kindjal. “Run the knife-”
“I know,” she snapped, snatching both of them away as the boat tipped upward. There were no tentacles above the water, but by the silver light of the moon she could see many-two dozen or more-floating alongside the boat.
“Behind me, quickly.”
The sotnik complied as Rehada closed her eyes and focused her mind upon the stone set within her circlet. Through it she could feel, barely, Adhiya, though she could not yet feel a hezhan waiting for her. She began to chant, forcing away the danger of the moment, the closeness of the streltsi, utter strangers to this ritual. She forced away the cold, the wind, the spray of the water against her face and instead focused on herself and the stone. She willed herself into it, asking a spirit to hear her plea, asking it to bond with her.
She promised it life, a view of the world it had left, the world it would one day return to. She promised it a bond that would last as long as it wished. She would feed it as she could, and it in turn would feed her.
The rocking of the boat, the screaming of the men, invaded her senses for a moment, but she blocked them out once more.
Take me, she called. Take me, and you will be rewarded.
And she felt it. The barest touch of a suurahezhan, the only form of spirit-ever since she was young-she had ever been able to bond with.
She called it closer, allowing it to see her more clearly, to hear, to touch.
And when it did, she ran the knife, hard and quick, down the length of the flint.
Her world went white.
She heard a sound like a hurricane blowing through a forest. She smelled burnt wool. She felt heat, though it was not, she knew, the heat from the gunpowder; it was the heat of the suurahezhan filling her. It suffused every pore, every bit of bone and muscle, every drop of blood. She was aflame. She was fire itself.
It felt good and true, and when she opened her eyes there was a strange moment of reorientation-along with the realization that she was in the material world and not, sadly, the land beyond.
The circlet upon her brow was lit with a pale orange flame. She willed fire to course from her hand to the tentacles wrapped around the ship and two of the soldiers. One whipped up and arced back into the water, splashing loudly. The other had been wrapped around the thigh of a strelet, and when it pulled back, the man came with him, falling hard against the bottom of the boat and then pulled sharply out and away. A heavy thud was accompanied by a sharp crack as the man’s head snapped backward as it struck the gunwale. He did not shout as he flew limply through the air. Then the tentacle shot under the surface of the dark water, and he was gone.
Over a dozen dark cords flew into the night sky, and Rehada could see in the water a bare silhouette of the white creature lying only a few paces beneath the surface of the water. She could see its body shaped like the head of a spear; she could see the darkened and moving orb that must be its eye.
As the tentacles descended she focused all of her energy tightly, and like the gunpowder she had used to attract the suurahezhan, released it upward and outward in a spray of bright white fire that burned emerald green at the edges. Many of the tentacles were burned outright, their withered ends falling into the ship, twitching and curling, the pincers underneath still biting the streltsi.
The tentacles slapped below the water. In a great heave the beast drew them inward while shooting downward. In moments it was lost from sight.
The sotnik ordered the boat cleared as he moved toward the fore of the boat and pulled off his bandolier and then his cherkesska. As the men began removing tentacles and flicking them overboard with booted feet or the tips of their knives, the sotnik offered Rehada his coat, turning his eyes away as he did so. Only then did she realize that her clothes had been burned away. Only some scraps at her wrists remained, and some cloth-her skirt-that had pooled around her feet. She took the coat and pulled it on quickly, suddenly feeling very exposed out on the sea among these men. Soon the boat was clear, and all of them were breathing heavily as the wind howled over the waves.
The sotnik returned to his previous position, looking up at Rehada with a look of relief and gratitude. He motioned to the thwart in front of him and waited patiently as Rehada sat.
“My thanks go to you-all of our thanks-but I must have your circlet if we’re to continue.”
Rehada stared at him levelly. “You will not have it.” She was still full with the feeling of the suurahezhan running through her; she would not give up the spirit so shortly after summoning it.
“I have my orders.”
“I saved your lives.”
He bowed his head. “And I am grateful, but there was no question as to how you’d be entering the palotza.”
“You will take me as I am…”
He looked at her, then to the men behind her, who had taken up the oars once more-now four strong instead of six-and were waiting for orders. “Turn ’round, men. Turn ’round.”
The streltsi did as they were ordered, dipping the starboard oars into the water and pulling hard.
“Stop,” Rehada said, but they did not listen. “Stop!” Only when she had pulled off the circlet did the sotnik nod and the streltsi pull their oars from the water. It felt like betrayal-another in a long list of them-but she could not abandon her cause. Not now. She handed the circlet to the sotnik and waited as he tied the blindfold around her head.
The boat turned and began moving steadily. The rocking had never ceased, but it was more marked now, and Rehada once again found herself fighting off nausea as they continued through the night.
They reached a cave of some kind. She could tell because the wind dropped, as did the waves, and the sound of the oars slapping in the water-as well as the grunting of the men-began to echo. The effect deepened the further they went, and eventually they ran aground.
Rehada was led out of the boat and along a short, sandy stretch. The sand turned to stone, and then Rehada was pulled to a stop. Footsteps receded, a low conversation was held somewhere up ahead, too soft to hear and too difficult to understand with the echoing.