The Winds of Khalakovo - Bradley P. Beaulieu [196]
She promised it life, a view of the world it had left, the world it would one day return to. She promised it a bond that would last as long as it wished. She would feed it as she could, and it in turn would feed her.
The rocking of the boat, the screaming of the men, invaded her senses for a moment, but she blocked them out once more.
Take me, she called. Take me, and you will be rewarded.
And she felt it. The barest touch of a suurahezhan, the only form of spirit—ever since she was young—she had ever been able to bond with.
She called it closer, allowing it to see her more clearly, to hear, to touch.
And when it did, she ran the knife, hard and quick, down the length of the flint.
Her world went white.
She heard a sound like a hurricane blowing through a forest. She smelled burnt wool. She felt heat, though it was not, she knew, the heat from the gunpowder; it was the heat of the suurahezhan filling her. It suffused every pore, every bit of bone and muscle, every drop of blood. She was aflame. She was fire itself.
It felt good and true, and when she opened her eyes there was a strange moment of reorientation—along with the realization that she was in the material world and not, sadly, the land beyond.
The circlet upon her brow was lit with a pale orange flame. She willed fire to course from her hand to the tentacles wrapped around the ship and two of the soldiers. One whipped up and arced back into the water, splashing loudly. The other had been wrapped around the thigh of a strelet, and when it pulled back, the man came with him, falling hard against the bottom of the boat and then pulled sharply out and away. A heavy thud was accompanied by a sharp crack as the man’s head snapped backward as it struck the gunwale. He did not shout as he flew limply through the air. Then the tentacle shot under the surface of the dark water, and he was gone.
Over a dozen dark cords flew into the night sky, and Rehada could see in the water a bare silhouette of the white creature lying only a few paces beneath the surface of the water. She could see its body shaped like the head of a spear; she could see the darkened and moving orb that must be its eye.
As the tentacles descended she focused all of her energy tightly, and like the gunpowder she had used to attract the suurahezhan, released it upward and outward in a spray of bright white fire that burned emerald green at the edges. Many of the tentacles were burned outright, their withered ends falling into the ship, twitching and curling, the pincers underneath still biting the streltsi.
The tentacles slapped below the water. In a great heave the beast drew them inward while shooting downward. In moments it was lost from sight.
The sotnik ordered the boat cleared as he moved toward the fore of the boat and pulled off his bandolier and then his cherkesska. As the men began removing tentacles and flicking them overboard with booted feet or the tips of their knives, the sotnik offered Rehada his coat, turning his eyes away as he did so. Only then did she realize that her clothes had been burned away. Only some scraps at her wrists remained, and some cloth—her skirt—that had pooled around her feet. She took the coat and pulled it on quickly, suddenly feeling very exposed out on the sea among these men. Soon the boat was clear, and all of them were breathing heavily as the wind howled over the waves.
The sotnik returned to his previous position, looking up at Rehada with a look of relief and gratitude. He motioned to the thwart in front of him and waited patiently as Rehada sat.
“My thanks go to you—all of our thanks—but I must have your circlet if we’re to continue.”
Rehada stared at him levelly. “You will not have it.” She was still full with the feeling of the suurahezhan running through her; she would not give up the spirit so shortly after summoning it.
“I have my