The Winds of Khalakovo - Bradley P. Beaulieu [32]
And she hated herself for it, even more so now that Soroush had returned. She felt weak, as if she’d allowed the vines to creep between the mortar of her resolve, until the wall she’d thought so impregnable years ago was ready to crumble before her very eyes. What was worse was the fact that—even knowing how weak it was—she was unsure whether she wanted to repair it. Soroush had ordered her to come two days hence, surely to work against the interests of the Grand Duchy—or at the very least of Radiskoye—and she would go, but she found herself, more and more often, wishing that the fates would resolve these disputes so that her people might move closer to their destiny. So that she might.
After removing her robe, folding it carefully, and setting it on the carpet nearby, she retrieved the small leather bag Nikandr had placed on the mantel. Inside were a dozen tourmaline stones—the price they had agreed upon long ago. The stones would keep her for a season, perhaps more, and though it was relieving to have her supply doubled, it was still galling to find herself at the mercy of the Landed, even though she was also in a position to use them.
She released her bonded suurahezhan, an act as simple as a sigh. Like most of the Aramahn gifted with the ability to commune with spirits, she could not keep them for weeks or months at a time. She needed to release her bond after several days or a week, lest it grow too hungry and begin feeding off of her unnaturally.
After removing the old stone and fixing a new one into the hinged setting of her circlet, she sat before the fire and opened her mind to Adhiya, the world beyond. She ran her hands over the fire, giving herself to the flame to lure a hezhan closer. For a long time, she felt nothing except pain as the flames licked her skin, but eventually she felt a keening, a yearning for life that she coaxed toward her. It took time—it always did—but eventually the suurahezhan came close enough for her to offer herself to it.
It readily agreed, allowing itself to be bonded so that it could taste life. Erahm was the place from which it had come, the place to which it would one day return; it thirsted for the stuff of life that it was otherwise deprived of. As the bond was forged, the flames in the fireplace lost their hold on her until they felt like little more than the kiss of the sun on a warm, windless day.
The ritual was complete, but she did not stand. There was still work to be done.
She created a bond between herself and the fire, allowed it to run the length of her body, allowed the heat to lick her thighs, her stomach, her breasts, her lips. It suffused her frame, some of it pooling in the place between her thighs at the mere remembrance of Nikandr. She grit her jaw, angry over her lack of will, and lay down close enough to the fire so that she could feel the heat not only through her tourmaline, but through her natural senses as well.
When her mind was once more clear, she placed her feet into the flames. “I give of myself,” she said, “that I might be cleansed.”
And with that she lay back and closed her eyes. At first, she felt only gentle warmth on the soles of her feet, but like the sun upon the obsidian shores of the north the heat built steadily, her link to the fire preventing her flesh from burning. It created a self-feeding cycle that made the pain more intense than if her feet had begun to burn.
Her body went rigid, but she forced herself to relax. She recalled all of the impure thoughts she’d had since her last cleansing a week before: joy when she’d heard of a fishing ship lost at sea, rapture when she’d learned of a small family that had succumbed to the famine, jealousy when an old
friend had taken the wind for further shores.
Lust for a man she knew she could never have.
She shook the thoughts of him away and instead focused on the pain. It washed over her and intensified as she fed it with renewed energy, and though the heat