The Winds of Khalakovo - Bradley P. Beaulieu [218]
As Bersuq’s coughing begins to subside, he searches frantically for his knife. Knowing she has little time, Atiana exerts her influence over him once more. He fights, but there is little left within him that can withstand her frantic assault. He fights her every command, but still she forces him to walk to the spire. Nikandr is chained there. The muscles along Bersuq’s arms are tight as harp strings, but they obey.
Nikandr collapses to the ground, but he fails to see Soroush storming up behind him.
Atiana forces Bersuq to launch himself at Soroush. As she does the presence of the Matri coalesce around her. Her mother is chief among them.
Bersuq rails against the bonds within his mind as Atiana struggles to regain her composure. Help me, she pleads.
But they do not. They begin instead to pull her away.
Nyet! You know not what you do!
Atiana claws at them, tries to fend them off, but there are simply too many, and soon she loses her hold.
Nikandr coughed as he fell to the broken stones of the courtyard. Bersuq stood before him, his face a mixture of pain and rage and confusion.
Nikandr shielded his eyes as a bolt of lightning cracked through the air, striking the chain holding Nasim to the spire. The chains that held Nasim in place clanked as they fell to his sides.
The air was ripe with possibility, with hope. The rift was present—it was in Nikandr’s gut, in his chest—and he could feel how Nasim struggled with the place he was in, standing squarely at a fork in the path of both worlds. His face was in more pain that Nikandr had ever seen, but he did not cower. He did not flinch.
Nikandr looked down at his soulstone. It was as bright as it had been in the tower in Alayazhar. Accept him, Sariya had said. Give of yourself.
He had not known what that meant. But he understood now.
He wrenched the stone downward, breaking the chain. With Nasim watching, he held it out. It glowed brilliantly now, brighter than it ever had.
“You are sure?” Nasim asked.
“I am,”Nikandr replied, knowing that he was giving Nasim more than just a simple piece of chalcedony. This was part of him, as much as his father, his mother. His sister and brother. It was not an easy thing to surrender, but he did so gladly.
Nasim took it in his hands, staring at it for a good long moment. And then he placed it in his mouth.
But nothing happened.
Nothing.
By the ancients, what had gone wrong?
Atiana watches as Nasim consumes Nikandr’s stone. He glows whiter than he had before, but that is the only difference she can see. She can feel his pain even from this distance, even without trying to—so great has it become. How he is managing to contain it all she cannot imagine.
Soroush is raging, perhaps demanding that the Maharraht fire upon him, but Nasim raises a finger, issues a thought, and the dhoshahezhan sends a bolt of lightning through him.
The keep’s gates are shattered and ruined. Through them file a dozen streltsi led by Grigory. Several train their weapons on the Maharraht, but their weapons do not fire. A moment later they drop them as if they’ve been burned.
The Maharraht smile—Nasim, they believe, has joined them—but moments later the same happens to them, leaving everyone weaponless with an elder spirit standing in their midst.
Atiana is loosely connected to the Matri, but her mother begins to slip from her consciousness. She realizes too late that she is attempting to assume Nasim.
Nyet! Atiana pleads.
She knows what she is about, the other Matri tell her.
She does not! Atiana shouts. Do not allow her to do this.
We cannot abide this boy—
Atiana does not listen. Something else has drawn her attention. She has realized how present the walls of the aether are—they are close, as they were along the rift on Uyadensk, but they are not close enough. What Nikandr has done will not complete the cycle.