“I will need a way off this island as well.”
She shakes her head. “The fates saw fit to bring you here; they can see your way home.”
He tightens his jaw, takes a deep breath, and nods. “Ask.”
She steps back from the window and motions to it. “What draws near?”
Outside, the city has completed itself. Down one of the main thoroughfares comes a man wearing an ornate robe of bright blue cloth with a ragged hem. He has a limp, and it grows worse as he approaches the tower.
Eventually he stops and looks down at his feet, or perhaps at his ankles, and then behind, as if confused at how this could have come to pass.
The Aramahn enjoy games of words, and it is clear that this will follow those ancient traditions. The question was not what can be seen by the naked eye, but what the scene represents. They stood at the northern window, the same window at which the woman was standing when he arrived, and so he thinks these must all be related to the nature of the directions. The Aramahn equate north with water, but also with winter. And the man, though still hale, appears to have his best days behind him.
“Winter,” he answers. “Winter draws near.”
She smiles a smile that says how much she is enjoying their game. He notices for the first time wrinkles at the corners of her eyes; they lend her a sagacious quality but also a sense of mortality he hadn’t expected. Perhaps she notices, for her smile fades and she slips to the eastern window.
“What will she reap?”
The scene in the window is not of the city at all. It is of an open field with a girl running across it. A boy chases after, and together they drop among the tall stalks of grass and begin pulling the clothes from their bodies, kissing one another fiercely. Soon they are naked and making love, the boy on top thrusting as she holds him close.
Surely they are sowing the seeds of a child. That must be the answer, and it hangs on his lips for long seconds, but east is the direction of autumn, and autumn is a time of dying, of preparation for the long winter ahead. The answer cannot be so simple.
When they are done, the boy pulls on his clothes and leaves. The girl, after he is gone, puts her head between her knees and begins to cry. Making love had been a ploy-an attempt, perhaps, to make him love her when she knows that he will not.
What else can such a thing reap? Whether she has a child or not, she will never be happy until she lets him go.
“Misery,” he says, which he realizes belatedly is another meaning of east for the Aramahn.
The woman smiles again, but this time it seems forced, as if she has underestimated him and has now vowed to correct her mistake. She moves to the southern window and motions to it.
“When will he find what he seeks?”
The scene outside the window is of an old Landed man in a boat. His grizzled and pockmarked face holds an expression of savage concentration as he uses scarred hands to secure an ebony-skinned cod onto a hook. He throws the fish-now attached to a line which in turn is attached to a pole resting in a sleeve on the gunwale-into the water and repeats the process on another line, and another, until he has four lines in. And then he waits, staring at the sea as he rests his chin upon his hands. Every so often he touches the tips of his fingers to one of the poles, perhaps praying to his fathers for a catch that might never come.
The window faces south, the direction of summer, of heat, of willfulness. That he uses such large bait gives clue to what he is searching for-a large catch. Too large. It speaks of a man who will not give up even though what he searches for is clearly beyond his means. This man has pride and a lifetime on the water to guide him, but he also has a desperation that says he will never get what he wants, that even if he does it will not be enough.
“Never,” comes the answer from his mouth, though it is with a sense of sadness, for he has known men like this.
She looks into his eyes with respect and a touch of anger. Her jaw is set grimly, as if she wishes this game to be over and done with. When she moves to the western window, she crosses her arms over her chest.
“Who will she become?”
The image-Nikandr draws in breath without meaning to-is of Rehada. She is younger than when they had first met, perhaps only twenty years old. She is standing before the burnt, smoking remains of a house, and she is staring at a blackened skeleton, its posture locked in the rigor of what must surely have been a very gruesome and painful death.
Others talk around her, and to her, but she pays them no mind. She has eyes only for the body, and he suddenly realizes the ironic joke that is being played on him. Here is he, gazing through the window of spring, of birth and growth, as Rehada looks upon what must surely have been her child. The look upon her face is one of cold surety, of ruthless calculation, and it wars with what he knows of her. She has always been warm, has in fact been open about her life around the islands and her decision to live upon Uyadensk… But she has never once mentioned a child. What else, then, has she lied about?
Who will she become?
He has seen such looks before, upon the faces of the enemy, of those who will not rest until the Landed have been pushed from the islands, and it suddenly strikes him the meaning of the word Maharraht. Its primary meaning is the forgotten, the shunned, but it stems from a beautiful desert flower that only blooms in spring, and in the ancient language of Kalhani-a language that the woman questioning him surely knows-it is akin to spring and rebirth.
“I know who she becomes,” he finally answers, a knot forming in his throat.
“Then say it.”
He swallows. Once. Twice. “Do not make me.”
“What is in a word?”
“A word can weigh heavier than stone.”
“Say it,” she says, her voice hard.
“Maharraht.”
Her smile is one of pleasure, as though a grand plan has just come together. She walks to the center of the room and stands near the bed. She spreads her arms wide and the views through all four windows change. He does not look, however. His mind is preoccupied with a woman he thought he loved, but he is forced to focus himself once more when she speaks her final question.
“How are they related?”
The scenes in the window show different people at different times in their lives. Two men, one woman, and a girl. There is nothing he can see that connects them-not their clothes, not their surroundings, not their mannerisms. He inspects each one closely, watching for any sign that might give him a clue, but he finds nothing, and his heart begins to beat heavily. He has come so far… He cannot come this close only to fail.
There is nothing of the smile Sariya had when this game first began. In fact, she seems sad as she watches him. Sad and lonely.
He realizes that she stands near the bed in the center of the room. The center for the Aramahn is no one direction; it is all directions. It is the cycle of life; it is rebirth. It is what has come before and what has yet to come. These images can be no other than her previous lives, and suddenly he realizes that she misses them. Somehow she has become trapped in this place. She is Ghayavand-part and parcel of this island-but it was not always so. She wants to be free from it, and if that cannot happen, she wants him to join her.
“They are you,” he says.
She runs her fingers over the sheets on the bed while stepping closer to him. She is stunning. The curve of her jaw, the line of her neck, skin soft and smooth, arms that might hold him forever.
“The things you might see.” The very words from her lips sing. “They would astound you. I will share all of it if you would remain.”
When he doesn’t open his mouth-he cannot for fear of acceding-she deems it a refusal and steps away from the bed. She approaches him with graceful steps until they are chest to chest. He feels the warmth coming from her, the swell of her breasts pressing against his ribs, the tickle of her hair as she leans in and nestles against his neck. The faint smell of jasmine taints the air as she places one warm kiss at the base of his neck, and as her arms wrap around him and caress his back, he feels himself harden.