The Winds of Khalakovo Read online

  Atiana stood there, cold and perfectly unwilling to become colder, but also out of reasons not to. “Very well,” she finally said.

  Atiana knew she was no fledgling needing protection from the cold, but the abilities of the drowning basin to steal warmth was something even the stoutest of women could not prepare for, and so when she stripped she was—despite the nearby fire—already shivering, and as the servant woman spread the rendered goat’s fat over her arms and breasts and stomach, it grew worse.

  “Control yourself,” Saphia snapped, “or you’ll fail before you’ve dipped one toe into the basin. The storms have been strong of late, but if you keep to the spires, they will guide you.”

  Atiana nodded.

  “And remember what you see, Atiana Radieva. It is important.”

  And with those words came some amount of control. Nerves calmed. Muscles relaxed. Blood flowed more freely, and finally she was able to control the shivering to a degree.

  She stepped to the edge of the basin—now empty—as the servant woman pulled a lever on the wall. Water from the mountain’s internal streams flowed through a channel and began filling the basin. The water rose slowly. It was all Atiana could do to control her breathing. She managed to only by telling herself that once she entered the dark her body would become a faint memory.

  Until she woke...

  But she would deal with that when the time came.

  The basin full, Atiana stepped inside. The cold clawed at her feet and ankles and calves. She knew it was foolish to enter the basin in slow increments, so she laid back until it was up to her neck. She grew rigid from it, her muscles rigoring painfully. Her left foot began to cramp. She flexed her toes against the pain as the breathing tube was pressed into her mouth. She drew in desperate lungfuls of air through the tube as her body screamed at her to rise from the basin, to extricate herself from the water’s iron grip.

  But she could not allow such thoughts to control her. She was Vostroman.

  She would not bend.

  She slowed her breathing, relaxed muscles so tense they were nearing the breaking point. Her skin became numb, and at the same time—as it had so many years ago—the aether began to suffuse her frame, providing a subtle warmth that was not unlike those first sips of mulled vodka after hours in the howling winter wind.

  Her body lost its tension, lending her a confidence that had been lacking, but she knew this was the time she had to be most careful, for before she knew it—

  Her eyes, clenched tightly, lose the telltale signs of light. Her stomach sinks. She hears nothing save the low susurrus of the aether and the currents of the dark. She sees one bright light among the endless sea of midnight blue surrounding her. It is Saphia, the Matra, still strong, still caressing the dark as if she could submerge herself at any time she chose. There is a weariness in her, a fatigue that cannot come from mere sleeplessness. It is a wonder she can function at all, much less enter the dark and guide the flow of its currents.

  Atiana leaves the Matra, not wishing to tax her unnecessarily—indeed, not wishing to touch the physical world so soon after leaving it. Such a thing can be dangerous, especially for one such as her.

  She expands her sphere of awareness and senses the servant woman, though only vaguely, as one knows that someone is near upon waking. She sees the rook on its perch clearly, and if she so chose she could assume its form, but she has not done so in years and there are risks with even a small thing such as this. She senses the roots of the spire, which run deep beneath the obelisk, and then the spire itself, towering above Radiskoye like a stern and overprotective parent. The aether licks at the spire as if it were curious over its existence, but like a ship too bold for its own good, it is caught in the maelstrom and pulled down into the depths of the mountain.

  She sees the people spread throughout the palotza, all of them small, meaningless, like flies buzzing over fruit. She senses the dogs in their kennels, the ponies in their stalls, the rats running through the walls of the palotza, even the bitterly cold trees and grasses that blanket the island. The city of Volgorod and the Landless village of Iramanshah enter her consciousness like dim candles in a misty bog filled with countless, twinkling wisps. The island itself, now that her mind has expanded, has an ebb and flow. It has life, little different from the body floating in the drowning basin deep beneath the spire.

  When her awareness expands to the sea, she recalls the warnings of her mother. A realization grows. She is granting too much to the aether, but the will to heed those warnings begins to wane, while the desire to lose herself in the vibrant currents grows.

  The ocean teems with life. Fish and coral and mollusks and the great white goedrun that make long sea voyages so difficult. And the air. Though the sun has yet to rise, and the winds are high, there are thousands of gulls swooping along the southern cliffs, diving for fish. Grouse are sleeping in their nests. Owls continue to hunt.

  She knows that she is becoming lost, that she is coming ever closer to the point where she will no longer be able to return to her body, but she has lost the will to care. The life and death surrounding her is too beautiful for her to willingly turn her eyes away.

  And then a note—the pluck of a single harp string—calls to her. She senses, among the chaos, the minds of the other Matri. She feels them supporting her, willing her return. They are too distant to offer much beyond this, but the realization that they are there is enough. She draws herself inward, focusing more closely on the spire.

  Returning to the lessons drummed into her so many years ago, she attunes herself with the spire. Her soul reverberates against its power. It drives her. She feels the whorls and eddies around the island. They are strong, but it is not so difficult to amplify them, to focus it southwest toward the spire on Duzol, and the two beyond that on Grakhosk and Yfa, and eastward to the other islands in Khalakovo. Soon, like a spider on her web, she is in tune with all seven spires, strengthening them, guiding the currents of aether among them. It is something that Saphia does without thinking, but for Atiana, it takes minutes, hours.

  Some time later—she knows not how long—a whorl appears.

  So lost is she in her task that she doesn’t recognize the source, but soon she comes to realize it is not so far from where she lies, nearly frozen, deep beneath the palotza.

  She propels herself southwest of Volgorod, along the coast, beyond the eyrie and toward the shifting currents. She hovers outside a home sitting near the shoreline, hidden in a strip of forest. It is nearly black among the thin currents of the aether, and inside there is a woman, bright blue, nearly white. She kneels before a cradle, staring down at the babe lying within it. Though Atiana can hear no sounds, it is clear the tiny girl is crying—her mouth wide open, her eyes puffy, no doubt from the sheer intensity and duration of her fit. The babe’s imprint in the aether, like her mother’s, like all creatures of this plane, is blue, but there is a tinge of yellow, lending her a greenish tint.

  Curious, Atiana floats closer, sensing a hunger from the child, a hatred. She has no idea how this could be, or why, but she does know one thing.

  As surely as the wind blows, this child is dying.

  CHAPTER 23

  Though the child is dying, Atiana is powerless to prevent it.

  The woman picks up the child and holds her against her bared breast, but the child will have nothing to do with it. The mother holds the babe tight and rocks her, shushes at her ear, but it helps not at all.

  Mother, she calls. Mother, please hear me.

  There is no response. She tries to reach Saphia, but she is asleep and will remain so for hours, perhaps even a day or more.

  Currents swirl around the darkening babe. She is tainted blue still, and a tinge of green remains, but she is fading to midnight, the color of the stout brick walls or the thick pine beams running along the ceiling.

  Pressure builds around Atiana. She feels tight, crowded. She is new to the currents of the dark. She knows this. But she knows that this shou
ld not be. The aether, though it stands between the worlds, is not bounded in such ways. Adhiya’s presence can be seen, but it cannot be felt. The same is true of Erahm. What then, could be pressing in on her so?

  The pressure becomes worse. She feels constricted, choked, feels as though the breath is being pressed from her slowly but surely.

  And then, as the light from the babe fades altogether, the feeling is gone.

  She is unable to focus on these feelings, for she is too caught up with the emotions that are clear on the face of the mother.

  Though she may not realize it yet, she holds a dead child. It is all Atiana can do not to call out. She might try to touch the woman, to give her some indication of what has happened, but before she can the woman realizes. She shakes the babe—not violently, but enough to wake a sleeping child. She begins to cry, and she shakes her daughter harder. She holds her up, listening for signs of life.

  Then she leans her head back and unleashes her pain to the fates. She hugs the babe to her chest, tenderly yet fiercely, her whole body wracking from the realization.

  Atiana feels ashamed that she cannot share in the woman’s grief. She watches for a long time, wishing she could have helped in some small way, but in the end she can no longer stomach the limitations of the aether, and she pulls away.

  When Atiana woke, it was not like waking after a full night’s sleep, nor was it like stirring from a lazy daydream—it was more like those dreams she had had as a child where she was standing at the edge of the tall black cliffs near Vostroma’s palotza, staring down at the churning sea, her stomach bubbling with a mixture of excitement and fear. She was convinced in those dreams she could fly, though it would still take her long minutes to summon the courage to leap into the air like the wide-winged gulls flying far below her. Her stomach would lift as she plummeted, and she would wake with a gut-churning jolt to find herself sitting stock upright, breathing deeply in the cold air of the bedroom she shared with her sisters.

  So it was now as she sat upright in the drowning chamber, frigid water splashing around her. She fully expected to find herself in the darkness of Galostina, but of course she did not. She was somewhere else entirely.

  The light of the nearby fire was low, yet she was forced to clench her eyes in order to bear it. It took Atiana long moments—her eyes tearing and blinking involuntarily—until she realized Victania was sitting on a chair close to the fireplace. She was watching Atiana, silent, her face devoid of emotion.

  And then the past came rushing back. The Matra’s summons. Her request. Atiana’s eventual capitulation.

  Already her time in the dark was fading, a dream that only moment ago had been reality. As she had been taught, she began reliving the moments backwards, so that one link in the chain would reveal the next, and the next. It worked to a degree, but she was unable to remember everything. There was something crucial missing. Something terribly disturbing.

  Her eyes began to acclimate.

  “Do you require help?” Victania asked, her voice echoing against the harsh stone walls.

  It was insulting, what Victania had just done. She knew as well as any that those who had just surfaced from the dark required help. Her question was an attempt to make Atiana feel small.

  Atiana shook her head while struggling to gain her feet. The water dripped noisily from her arms and hair and breasts as she steadied herself on the basin’s stone walls. Her legs could hardly support her weight and her arms were little better. She stepped out onto the granite floor, and her knee buckled. She fell to the floor, her head crashing hard against the stone.

  Victania was at her side in a moment, helping her to her feet. As Atiana steadied herself, Victania held out a handtowel, a brief look of regret on her face. When Atiana did not accept it, she motioned with it toward Atiana’s head. “You’re bleeding.”

  Atiana took it, wincing as she pressed it against the lump that was already forming. Victania, using a large white cloth, scrubbed the goat’s fat economically from Atiana’s naked frame. Then she helped Atiana into a thick woolen robe.

  It was warm—almost too warm after the bottomless cold of the water. Atiana’s skin began to prickle, but she let it, for it was a welcome tether to reality.

  Victania motioned to the Matra’s padded chair, then made her way to the hearth, where a kettle hung from an iron hook. Using a thick woolen mitt, she poured steaming tea into the lone cup that waited on a wooden table. She raised one eyebrow when she realized Atiana hadn’t moved to take the offered seat. “She gave her permission if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  It felt presumptuous to even consider taking Saphia’s chair, but she didn’t have it in her to do battle in her weakened state, so she sat and accepted the tea that Victania offered her.

  Victania resumed her seat. She sat rigidly upright, as if it pained her to lean back in the chair. Atiana wondered if there were any position that would offer her comfort. She looked haunted from the wasting. Saphia might seem frail, but there was a silent strength to her, while Victania looked as if she were being eaten from the inside, as if her inner structure was now hollow and the next thing to go would be her thin and crumbling shell. One small bout with a cold, Atiana thought, and she would not be long for this world. She would have felt sorry if Victania didn’t lord herself over Atiana at every opportunity.

  “You were gone quite a long time,” Victania said.

  Atiana sipped from the sweet tea. The warmth of the liquid trailed down into her gut. It was too much, too soon, and her stomach rebelled. “How long?” She asked, setting the cup down.

  “You’ve been under for well over a day.”

  Atiana shook her head. It didn’t seem possible. “More than a day?”

  “Da. A passable length of time.” Was there a bit of envy in her voice? “What did you find?”

  Atiana opened her mouth to speak, but she found that she could remember nothing. Her memories had already been muddled the moment she woke, but the shock of finding Victania here, the pressure of being questioned after her awakening, had caused her to forget.

  “I don’t remember,” she admitted.

  Victania took her in, from her bare feet to her head, a prim look of disgust on her face. “Think.”

  She tried. She recalled the last few moments in the aether, as well as a strong feeling of discomfort, of grief, but the more she tried to pin the memories down, the more focused she became on the simple act of wakening.

  “My mother, the Matra, asked you here to take the dark. Did they teach you so little—”

  “Stop,” Atiana said. That one word, mother, had brought about the glimmer of memories.

  “—the first thing you do—”

  “Silence!”

  Atiana glanced around the room, struggling to hold on to the faint memory of a mother holding her child. “There was a babe”—her words were practically a whisper—“in Volgorod.”

  Victania watched carefully, but held her tongue.

  Atiana shivered. Her eyes watered. She had not known the woman, but the aether made things seem more personal and emotional than they would have been under the light of the sun. She had felt, not that she was the woman, but that she had as much at stake in that child as the mother did. It was personal, and stepping out from under the aether’s spell had done nothing to lessen the feelings.

  She told Victania the story, slowly, for the words came in fits and starts, and she feared if she spoke too quickly, it would all come out in one tearful gout. When she was done, she was finally able to meet Victania’s eyes. There was no shock in Victania’s expression, no sense that anything Atiana had said was new information.

  “You know of this...” Atiana said softly.

  “It has been happening for months.”

  “To babes?”

  “Nyet. To the old, to the sick. It was only a matter of time before the young were affected too. Children will be next. And then...”

  Victania didn’t have to finish. They both
knew what was at stake. The blight had started by affecting the health of their crops, their game. Why wouldn’t it move on to the very people that inhabited the islands?

  “Does my mother know this?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then why hasn’t she told me?”

  “Because this news cannot be spread. The people look to us for protection.

  There are already weekly disturbances in Volgorod, and scattered incidents in Tuyal and Erotsk and Izhny. How long do you think it would be before there are riots in the streets? How long before they march on Radiskoye to demand that we shelter them?”

  Not long at all, Atiana thought, but it still hurt to be marked as an untrustworthy by her own mother. Then again, she had never shown the least bit of interest in taking the dark, nor in matters of politics—why would Mother trust her with the information?

  Why would Saphia?

  It was a clear sign of just how desperate things had become when the Matra of Khalakovo had been forced into depending on Atiana for the protection of her Duchy.

  “There must be something we can do,” Atiana said.

  Victania shook her head. “There is nothing, nothing save coming here to lend us your strength, to continue to give the Matra her needed rest during these troubled times.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Nikandr trudged up the stairs, fighting off another yawn, as crisp footsteps rose in volume behind him. “You didn’t think you’d be allowed to lay your head down, did you?”

  Nikandr turned and found Ranos on the stairs below him. He looked to his left, to his room near the end of the long hall, dearly wishing he could just ignore his brother and get some sleep. The last few days felt jumbled, like all the minutes of all the hours spent in the donjon with Ashan and Nasim were piled on top of one another, none of them distinguishable from the others. It didn’t help that he and Jahalan had made no real progress. Ashan claimed that Nasim couldn’t have been involved in the summoning of the suurahezhan, though he also admitted that he hadn’t been there when it happened. Nikandr’s focus had been to find ways to reach Nasim, to find out what might have happened that day, and though Ashan was forthcoming about the tricks he used to reach Nasim, none of them had so far worked. Nasim was more cipher than boy.