The Winds of Khalakovo - Bradley P. Beaulieu [54]
The trail they followed was bordered by a ridge on their left and the forest to their right. The ridge was rocky and clear of trees, probably from some landslide years ago. Distant but still visible beyond the tree line was the outer wall of the palotza.
Rehada was startled when ahead of her, Soroush stood from a deep crevice. She calmed her nerves as she approached.
“Have you found it?” Bersuq asked.
“It has been difficult, but I think it will be best here.”
“Be sure,” Bersuq said as he scanned the sky above them. “The location is dangerous.”
Soroush nodded. “I am sure.”
For the next hour, she, Bersuq, and Soroush trudged into the nearby woods and brought firewood, throwing it into the crevice. The pile climbed higher and higher until it stood above ground nearly as high as Rehada.
They were nearly done when Soroush darted for cover of the spruce, waving Bersuq and Rehada to follow. No sooner had they hidden themselves than a Landed brigantine sailed overhead, its pair of landward masts barely clearing the tops of the trees. Rehada thought they had been spotted, but the two men watching from the lower masts were scanning the ground further east, toward Radiskoye.
The ship sailed on, turning westward toward the eyrie, picking up altitude and cresting the ridge above them. Finally it was gone.
Rehada felt her heart pounding. It reminded her of her first days on Khalakovo, her first few times with Landed men. Her first lies. This, acting in secret against the interests of the Landed, was no different; it felt just as shaming.
“Is it wise to taunt Radiskoye?” Rehada asked.
“It is past time.”
“All for a stone?”
“Not just a stone.” Soroush returned to the pile of deadwood and used flint and steel to spark the base of it to life. Soon the pile was burning high, the heat rising. “It is a facet, one of five.”
“To what end?”
Soroush stared into the fire, as if it would pain him to look upon her. “When we have them all, we will be able to tear the rift asunder. We will give to Adhiya what it wants, a taste of life.”
Praise be, Rehada thought. Before speaking with him at Malekh’s hanging, she had felt defeated. Her anger had overflowed, but it had felt directionless. Even after speaking with him, she worried that the tide had turned against them to the point that they would never realize their goal, never avenge the deaths of her people at the hands of the Landed. But now, with Soroush so self-assured, and with them so close to achieving what they had long worked for, she was enlivened.
Soroush turned and faced her. “The ancients never used stones to create a bond, did you know this?”
She shook her head.
“They bonded, and the stone was formed. It was a manifestation of their experience, not a tool to be used to control.”
“I do not control.”
He shook his head. “You don’t think of it in that manner, but you do. The hezhan does not come willingly—or not completely so. In the early days of this world, the bond was a way to share, to learn. What is it now?”
She found herself becoming angry, but Soroush did not mean for his words to be taken as such. He was young, but he was learned; he was wise, as wise as any arqesh. She thought on what he said, and it frightened her. To use no stone to create a bond... She had never done so, and the thought of attempting it was already making her palms sweat. “How will they know I have come?”
“Go with an open heart. Do not bring fear. Do not bring anger. Bring curiosity. Bring life. Bring a yearning for the things that have always eluded you.”
There was a part of her that wanted to ask him what would happen if a hezhan did not come, but she knew the answer to that. More importantly, she knew the question could not be entertained once she stepped into the fire, and so she set it aside and steeled herself while pulling the clothes from her frame. Naked, the wind tugged at her hair, and the sound it made through the trees behind her, a howling, seemed to laugh at what she was about to do. She had had doubts before—when her master had shown her the way of qiram. She had been afraid,