The Winds of Khalakovo - Bradley P. Beaulieu [101]
But she, like nearly all Aramahn who tried such things, had been disappointed. She had been unable to feel anything more than a vague sense of otherness that emanated from the hezhan she bonded with. Her time there would often evoke memories, especially ones she had long forgotten, and some she could not remember at all—memories from prior lives, or perhaps those she had yet to live—but never had she felt like she was experiencing Adhiya.
But there in Radiskoye, while allowing the suurahezhan to occupy her consciousness, she had felt another soul. Nasim. She bid the hezhan to approach him, and when it did, she felt something so unexpected that she nearly cried. He was so miserable in the real world. But there... There, he was in rapture. He was filled with joy, with wonder, with love beyond understanding. She had often wished she could see the world beyond, to touch it and taste it. Feeling some small amount of what Nasim felt, she knew these to be foolish urges. Who needed eyes when such heights of emotion were possible? Who needed to taste, to hear, to feel, when the mind could soar high along the firmament?
She craved to bask in his light, but she knew she had to speak with him, not for Nikandr’s benefit, but her own.
Nasim, she called.
His attention shifted. It felt as if a bright star had focused its rays upon her, and though it burned, she did not care.
Nasim, it was you that day, wasn’t it? You were there when I summoned the suurahezhan.
There was no response, but she could sense that he was listening. How many others had done what she was doing now? What had Ashan spoken to him about? And what had he learned?
We hope that you will join our cause. We wish to rid these islands of the taint from the Landed. She paused, but when she heard no response, she continued. We wish you to open the rift, the same rift used to allow the suurahezhan to cross.
She repeated these thoughts many times, but Nasim only continued to watch, to wait.
Did you know that men died that day?
A flare.
Dozens, Nasim.
She felt, at last, an emotional response.
Dozens of Landed died from one hezhan. Imagine what you could do were the rift to open wide.
And then her world was pulled out from underneath her. Her awareness had been fixated, pinpointed, but now it expanded so rapidly she felt lost. She felt the island, the currents that ran through it. It was a reflection of the material world as seen from Adhiya, and it was beautiful beyond description, the currents of life, shifting, slipping, mixing, reforming into innumerable combinations.
But it was not complete. A wound ran through it, so deeply that she knew it immediately for what it was. The rift that Soroush had discovered forming on Uyadensk, the place she had called home for the last seven years. The rift moved like the slow tide of magma on the active southern volcanoes. It drew life from everything around it. It was a corruption, a tear between the worlds, and it was affecting Adhiya as much as it was Erahm.
Yeh, Rehada said, this is what we wish you to—
Pain coursed through her like a river during springtime melt. She felt the misery of the island, the pain that the rift was wreaking on its slow trek across the landscape. It poisoned everything it touched, and though she realized the rift would one day close, she also knew another would replace it, and another, until the rifts became so large, so voracious, that they would consume everything.
She pleaded for Nasim to release her, but she realized with a growing horror that Nasim had gone. He had left her to the devices of Adhiya, leaving the rift and the suurahezhan that now fed upon her to do with her what they would.
She railed, fighting the spirit with all the strength that remained. She thought surely it would take her, would draw her through the veil to Adhiya to begin her life beyond, but finally, after one last panicked surge, she felt it release her.
She had woken with Nikandr beating the flames from her clothes,