Kirill’s face went red. The sound of his gurgling filled air, barely discernible against the backdrop of the misery at the bridge.
Kirill slumped, and the burly man lowered him down, holding tight until there was no longer any movement coming from the old man.
When he was done, he stood and secreted the bag into his waist-length coat as if it had never existed.
“Quickly,” he said, motioning to his doorway, which still stood open.
Rehada and Atiana stood their ground.
“You’ll not want to be out tonight,” he said, motioning toward the pillar of smoke.
Atiana stared into Rehada’s eyes while shaking her head, the gesture barely noticeable.
“Not everyone sides with the mob,” he said. “My wife, ancients rest her soul, was Vostroman. And I served my time in the guard.” He paused as another, smaller explosion fell over the city. “But do as you wish.” He turned and left, walking through his door and taking a flight of stairs upward.
Atiana looked fearful, echoing Rehada’s own feelings. She had never seen a city in such turmoil, on the islands or anywhere else. The man was right, Rehada decided. They risked death by wandering the streets, and her own home was no longer safe.
Together, they took the stairs up to a simple two-room home. The man was sitting on a rocking chair by the window. The shades were drawn, but every so often he would move one aside and peer out into the night. He appeared to be forty. His shoulders were wide, his hands huge, and with his sleeves rolled up past his elbows, showing thick forearms, he looked like he could pick either of them up with only one arm.
A low fire burned in a fireplace along one wall. Rehada relished the warmth, wishing she could bond with a spirit here and now.
“This night of all nights, what are two women like you doing out?”
Atiana sat on a stool near the hearth, warming her shaking hands, while Rehada settled herself into a creaky wooden chair. Neither answered. They couldn’t. Any sort of answer would do him no good, and would probably put him in more danger if anyone were to find out where they had sheltered for the night.
“That’s probably best,” he said, nodding. “Sleep.” He pointed to an open door. “I’ll wake you before the sun’s up.”
“Thank you,” Atiana said.
A nod was his only reply.
In the morning, he knocked on their door, and they rose and left without ever learning his name.
CHAPTER 43
“Land ahead,” Udra said as she stared over the bow.
Nikandr scanned the horizon and saw an island-perhaps twenty leagues long-so green it looked like an emerald jewel against the sapphire glass of the sea.
“It is Ghayavand,” Nikandr said, remembering it from his dreams.
Ashan’s skiff, less than a league ahead, began to descend. The island loomed much larger now, and for a moment the skiff was lost among the darker colors of the island’s forests. Nikandr felt uncomfortable following so closely. Ashan had had his way with them, but that didn’t mean it had to be so now, here at the end.
“Take us around the island,” he said to Jahalan and Udra. “I would have a look before we see what Ashan has in store.”
Jahalan nodded and moved toward the mainmast, but before he could reach it he reeled and doubled over, grabbing his gut as he fell to the deck. The same thing happened to Udra.
Nikandr kneeled and helped Udra onto her back. “What is it?”
Jahalan was shaking his head back and forth violently, and it was then that Nikandr realized: the alabaster gem within the circlet of white gold no longer held any of the luster it had only moments ago. Somehow the bond they held with their hezhan had been cut off from them.
“My heart,” Udra said, “it’s been ripped from my chest.”
“Worse than that,” Jahalan added.
The ship began to drift downward, twisting in the wind. They were completely at the mercy of Ghayavand.
Nikandr shifted along the gunwale, keeping the island in sight.
Udra uttered a keening, a sad and empty sound in the silence of the sky. She dropped to the deck, her hands patting the surface gently. “ Neh!” she moaned.
Nikandr didn’t understand, but moments later he felt a tickle, as if insects were crawling beneath his fingers. The railing before him, its surface puckered and grayed. Small cracks ran along its length. The same was happening to the deck, to the masts, to the spars and the hull.
A cracking sound became audible. It was soft at first but soon the entire ship was alive with it. It became deafening.
An almighty snap-as if the bones of Erahm itself had just been broken-resounded through the ship. Nikandr could feel it through his boots and in his chest. Another snap came, this one just wide of his position. The masts were being sundered.
What in the name of the ancients was happening to his ship?
Another crack, louder than the others, was followed by the scream of a crewman. A sliver the size of a spearhead had pierced his chest. He fell, grasping it hopelessly and wailing from the pain. As something deep within the bowels of the ship gave way, sending a shudder through the ship, the man’s eyes rolled up into his head and he fell unconscious.
Like a blooding, the very life of the ship was being drawn from it. It remained afloat, but it would not last. At any moment it would plummet into the waves to become lost forever among the ceaseless currents of the oceans. Even if they could somehow safely reach the shores of the island, the Gorovna would never fly again.
Before Nikandr could even attempt to understand what was happening, the sounds around him fell away. His breath was drawn from him as if it were his last. His heart fluttered, and his eyelids drooped.
Somewhere far ahead, the skiff they’d been chasing for over a week has touched down.
Nasim stands upon a stone perch, an eyrie crafted in the style of the ancients. He paces its length, moving onto the rocky cliff to which it is affixed and then the wide field of grass beyond. He runs his fingers over the tips of the stalks, allowing them to tickle the palms of his hands. He can feel in that moment every part of the island, every blade of grass, every chittering insect, every breath of wind, every turn of soil. It feels as though he is looking through a window that reveals the land as it was before the Grand Duchy, before the first settlers, before even the Aramahn. It feels pristine.
And still, there is imbalance. Ghayavand is one of many islands, isolated on a shelf in the sea but connected by the water, by the roots of the earth, by the ceaseless currents of the wind. It stands out in its perfection. It has withstood the blight, but the pressure is growing. In time, it too will succumb, and he finds himself saddened.
He pulls back into himself, unable to withstand the pain, but as he does, he senses the prince, the one to whom he was bonded on Hathshava, the island the Landed call Uyadensk. This connection had felt foreign then, wrong, but now it feels right, like a warm fire after days in the cold.
There is something else, as well, a feeling that he has been here before. He is of this place, though he knows not how. The memories are at the very edges of his mind, so close but still out of reach.
Above, among the clouds and the winds, a lone havahezhan dives among the drifts and eddies of the wind. And then it is gone, returned from whence it came.
He follows.
And Nikandr woke.
Someone was screaming his name.
His stomach was churning and turning as if he’d tumbled upside down without realizing it.
He was gripping the railing for support, but it crumbled at the slightest touch. He stared at the desiccated fragments still sticking to his hands, unable to comprehend who he was, where he was. His mind was reeling, not from the physical nature of what was happening around him, but the realization of what he’d just seen. It had been Nasim somewhere on Ghayavand. But the havahezhan… Nikandr knew it-or knew of it, at least. It had been the same hezhan that the Maharraht had summoned on the cliff below Radiskoye, the same one that had attacked him on the maiden voyage of this very ship. But how?