The Winds of Khalakovo - Bradley P. Beaulieu [142]
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