The Winds of Khalakovo - Bradley P. Beaulieu [168]
Doubts begin to form as a crack is torn in the wall. The tower shifts and groans.
This cannot be what Sariya meant. He must accept Nasim for who he was. Must welcome him.
He does so, giving merely love, nothing else.
He feels the most tentative of touches, as he does before his mother finds him.
And his world goes dark.
Nikandr woke, lying on the ground with Pietr just next to him on the moss-covered cobbles. Nasim, kneeling between them, had one hand over Nikandr’s heart, the other over Pietr’s. Moments after Nikandr began to stir, he pulled his hands away and hugged himself tightly—a more familiar position. He refused to meet Nikandr’s eye. He only rocked back and forth while staring at Pietr with a grieved expression on his young face. Tears fell from his clenched eyes, and finally he fell forward across Pietr’s chest. “Forgive me!” he cried. “I’m so sorry! Please, forgive me!”
Nikandr stood, failing to understand why Pietr had been lying next to him until he realized Pietr’s chest was not rising with breath.
“He asked Nasim to do it.”
Nikandr looked up to find Ashan standing nearby. He had a look of pity on his face.
Ashan pointed to Nikandr’s chest. “He knew, at least a little, what that meant.”
Nikandr looked down and saw his soulstone. Under the bright light of sunset, the chalcedony stone glowed as brilliantly as it had inside the tower, but the feelings of ache, of being drawn slowly outward, remained. The havahezhan, the creature bound to him on the far side of the aether, was still there, preying upon him.
Nikandr kneeled next to Pietr. He stared into the older man’s face, at the light scars that ran though the black stubble on his chin and cheeks. He was unmoving, breathless, and yet in that moment he seemed full of life, so much had he granted to Nikandr. “Go safely,” he whispered, “and may the ancients protect you.” He leaned forward and kissed his cheeks, and then, knowing time was growing short, he stood. “We must hurry. Muqallad has awoken, and we have precious little time.”
Ashan glanced at the tower, a look of worry and recognition on his face, as if he saw for the first time what it might mean to confront Muqallad directly.
Then they were running through the streets, Nasim in tow. The boy was silent, his face streaked with tears.
“Nasim, can you hear me?” Nikandr asked.
Nasim didn’t respond. Other than his outburst of emotion over Pietr he seemed little different than before. Nikandr had hoped there would be some sort of catharsis, an awakening. Surely Nikandr would feel something as well—were they not linked, after all?—but Nasim, despite allowing them to rush him through the streets, seemed to have the same distant expression, the same lack of awareness of his surroundings, the same inability to communicate. It hadn’t been Nikandr’s appeal, then, that had saved him from the tower. It had been Pietr’s sacrifice.
All this way, all this time, lost lives and injury, and they’d failed.
They took the same path from the city they’d taken on their way in. Before they’d gone halfway toward the outskirts, however, the animal sounds of the akhoz rent the chill air. The call of one was echoed by many others, several chillingly close.
The sounds of their footsteps slapping the stone streets came nearer. Their panting—akin to that of a winded horse, heavy and long and wet—came louder.
Nikandr held Nasim’s hand, trying to force him to run faster, but he would not. In fact, his pace was beginning to slow. His tears were gone, but his look of regret remained.
And then he tripped.
Nikandr lost his grip, and Nasim fell heavily to the ground.
Nikandr stopped, looking at his soulstone and then Nasim. He could feel him now, through the stone, as surely as he’d ever felt anything.
And then movement caught his attention. Beyond Nasim, from behind a broken building of blond stone, came the misshapen