“Nasim, can you hear me?”
Nasim turned to face Nikandr. His heels were touching the sharp edge of the rock. A wave of vertigo passed over Nikandr just watching him.
“Step away, Nasim. I want to talk to you.”
The wind tugged at the simple black vest the boy wore, and played with his short brown hair.
“Where is Ashan?” Nikandr asked, taking another small step toward Nasim.
“They are near.”
“Who is?”
He looked into Nikandr’s eyes with a serious expression. “Sariya.” He glanced back over the cliff. “And Muqallad.”
“Do not be afraid, Nasim. We won’t let them harm you.”
Nasim shook his head. “I was meant to return here, to find them. But you know this, do you not?”
Nikandr nodded. “Where can we find them?”
Nasim pointed to the ridgeline to the north. “In Alayazhar.”
Moments later, the wall of plants nearby parted, and Ashan stepped out from behind a large fern, brushing off his arms as he did so. His curly hair was tousled by the wind, and his robes were rumpled and dirty, but otherwise he looked little different from the first time they’d met on the eyrie.
As Nikandr stared at him and the calm expression on his face, all the confusion-the frustration and the rage that had built over the days since leaving Khalakovo-boiled over. He stalked forward and struck Ashan across the face.
Ashan stared at Nikandr, his eyes wild with shock and pain. Nikandr stepped in and drove a punch up and into his gut. Ashan doubled over.
Nikandr allowed him to fall to the ground.“My men died for you! Udra, a woman who has caused you no harm, is dead because of you!”
“We cannot make our way to the horizon without passing through the field of heather.”
It was a common saying among the Landless-a message of focusing on the present, not the future; on the here, not the far-but it grated, and Nikandr nearly kicked him as he lay there, defenseless. “We are not heather!”
“I know this, son of Iaros,” Ashan said as he came to his feet. “I only mean to say that I feel your pain, and I wish that I might have been able to prevent it.”
“It was because of you that our ship crashed!”
“ Neh.” He wiped the back of his hand across his lips, which were bleeding. He spit a wash of red to clear his mouth. And again. “It is the island you must look to, and the arqesh who still battle for its supremacy.”
“My Lord Prince?” It was Pietr’s voice.
Ashan looked over Nikandr’s shoulder, and his eyes went wide. When Nikandr turned, he found Nasim standing at the very edge of the cliff. His arms were spread wide as the wind from far below rushed up the cliff, playing with his hair and snapping the fabric of his sleeves.
“Nasim, come,” Ashan said softly. “It is not yet time.”
“How can you be sure?” he asked without turning around.
“Because we haven’t reached the tower.”
Nasim turned and faced Ashan with a curious look on his face. “True.” He walked forward as if he were taking a stroll and then took Nikandr’s hand. “Then we had better find it.”
As Nikandr allowed himself to be pulled along, his anger drained away. It was replaced by deep shame at attacking a man who would probably never raise a hand to defend himself. Making it worse was the realization that Ashan was also someone who had done things to protect him and his men on the journey here, a journey Nikandr himself had elected to embark on.
Ashan fell into step. Pietr followed up the rear. Part of Nikandr still wanted to be angry with Ashan, but too much of their predicament felt like Nikandr’s fault, not Ashan’s.
“I saw a tower,” Nikandr said, “in my dreams.”
Ashan nodded. “Nasim has spoken of it over the months I’ve known him. In fits and starts, he’s laid out the story of his life here on Ghayavand. The tower is where he and Sariya lived, until their defenses were finally breached by Muqallad.”
“I thought all three of them were warring for control of Ghayavand.”
“They were, but Sariya and Nasim-or Khamal, as he was known then-were driven by need, a common cause against the other, Muqallad, who was far stronger than they.”
“Even together they could not overpower him?”
“He was more ruthless than they. They would not, as he would, ravage the land nor their followers who still lived a half-life existence, caught as they were between Erahm and Adhiya.”
“If this is so, then how could Sariya still live? How could there still be a struggle for this island?”
Ashan turned his gaze on Nasim, who walked ahead of them. “That is something we may find out before too long. I hoped that by bringing Nasim here he will understand the bond that lies between you, that he will be able, once and for all, to find his way fully into this world.”
“Erahm.”
Ashan nodded. “It is through you, his touchstone, that he has been able to make such progress. Believe me when I say he would not have been able to speak so lucidly were it not for the day you met him on the eyrie.”
“That tells me little of why you came here.”
“Then see for yourself.” Ashan pointed up to the sky. They had reached the ridge. The wind was stronger here. It played along the prairie in the narrow plateau on which they found themselves. Nasim was sitting among the grass, half-hidden, staring up at the sky. Nikandr looked to where Ashan had pointed and saw a swirl of cloudstuff pull away from the larger body above it. Something in his chest began to ache as the havahezhan darted to and fro like a hummingbird, but then-as if it had just spied the humans below-it shot downward. Its form, swirling tightly as it plummeted, could only be seen because it still held the mist from the clouds.
The blood drained from Nikandr’s face and he took a step forward, but he stopped when Ashan gripped his arm.
“He will not be harmed.”
The havahezhan continued to plummet.
The feeling within him, bordering on pain, began to feel more and more familiar. “Tell me,” he said, the thoughts still forming in his mind, “the hezhan that attacked me on Uyadensk, the one summoned by the Maharraht, could it be here, now, right before us?”
Ashan stared up at the havahezhan as it swirled and twisted, breaking away from its course toward Nasim. “Impossible.”
“I can feel it”-he pressed the tips of his fingers to his soulstone- “here.”
Ashan was silent as he studied the hezhan. “Do you feel as you did on the mountainside?”
He meant when Nikandr had summoned the wind to save them from the snow. “I do.”
The havahezhan dropped again. A swirl of dirt was drawn upward around Nasim. Nasim dashed forward, trying to touch the wall of air, but it moved fluidly, staying just ahead. And then Nikandr realized that he had been feeling something ever since he’d seen the spirit-even before he’d seen it. His soulstone… He looked down and found that there was the barest iridescent quality held deep within it. His chest still hurt, and it felt nothing like what it did when he was searching for his mother, or when he touched stones with someone for the first time. Those felt like a simple warmth that suffused his chest like the remembrance of a long, warm bath while lying in bed. This felt like an absence, a loneliness, as if something he had held precious within his heart had suddenly been taken away.
“How can it be, Ashan?”
“Perhaps it became attuned to you. Perhaps your proximity to Ghayavand has drawn its attention. Who can know such things?”
Nikandr watched as the havahezhan rose into the sky and vanished. In only moments, the feeling in his chest faded and was gone.
“How could it have found me?”
“Perhaps from the qualities of this place, its similarity to Uyadensk.”
Nikandr turned to regard Ashan who was staring at him calmly, with that small smile on his lips he always seemed to possess.
Ashan guessed his next question. “The rift over Uyadensk is not so different than here on Ghayavand. What began here centuries ago is now spreading.”