The Winds of Khalakovo - Bradley P. Beaulieu [95]
“My Lord Prince!” the guard stood at Nikandr’s side.
Realizing where he was and what had happened, Nikandr waved him away and stood. Thankfully the pain was already beginning to subside.
“My Lord?” He was staring at Nikandr’s chest.
Nikandr looked down. Something was glowing beneath his shirt. He pulled out his stone, and found it to be glowing just as brightly as the light from within Nasim’s living sculpture.
“Leave us,” Nikandr said to the guard. “And speak of this to no one.”
“Of course, My Lord.”
When the guard had stepped into the hall and closed the door, Nikandr met Nasim’s eyes. There was an awareness Nikandr hadn’t seen in him before, an awareness that spoke of a clear grounding in reality.
“That was you, wasn’t it? You were Khamal.”
Nasim’s face became tortured, and Nikandr felt fortunate that he couldn’t remember the things that seemed to haunt the boy so. “I was many people.”
“Do you remember them all?”
Nasim shook his head. “Not all.” He smiled, a fleeting thing. “Not yet.”
“Does Ashan know these things?”
“He may. He is wise. Wiser than I have ever been, I fear.” Nasim pulled his knees up to his chest, the position now eerily familiar. “Will you kill him?”
Nikandr was confused at first, but quickly came to understand that he meant Ashan. “I would not wish it.”
“But it is not in your hands.”
He debated lying to Nasim, if only to calm him. This sudden clarity in the boy was an opportunity he did not want to waste. But the Aramahn valued honesty above almost everything—excepting perhaps the sanctity of life—and the boy seemed to know much more than Nikandr would have guessed only minutes ago.
The light within the living sculpture, which had been sparkling white, shifted so that red was mixed in, and the fronds seemed to quiver rather than wave.
“It could be. I need only discover what happened when the suurahezhan crossed to this world. Can you tell me about that day?”
Nasim blinked several times. He looked lost in thought, perhaps recalling the events in his mind.
“Please,” Nikandr urged. “Tell me what happened. Was it you that summoned the suurahezhan?”
He was shaking his head, but he wasn’t sure if it was because of some growing discomfort or if it was in answer to his question. “She was there.”
“Who was there?”
Nasim’s face transformed from a boy deep in thought to the expression he’d worn so often since coming to the palotza, a blank expression that told Nikandr that this moment of lucidity had passed.
“Nasim?”
Nearby, the delicate structure of stone crashed to the ground. As the cords struck the floor, they shattered into hundreds of pieces. His soulstone dimmed until it was just as it had been before its sudden resurgence.
“Nasim?” Nikandr prompted. “Nasim, can you hear me?”
He tried for long minutes, but Nasim had gone back to whatever place so occupied his mind, and Nikandr, for the life of him, couldn’t figure out what any of this meant.
He touched his chest—the pain still fading—and felt his flask. A numbness spread through him, the kind one feels when struck with something so certain that it didn’t seem possible.
The elixir...
He had used it each time he’d felt a connection with Nasim. The eyrie.
The cliff. The frozen lake. Here in the donjon of Radiskoye. It had to be the reason, though why that could be he had no idea.
Nikandr rode next to Borund on a well-worn trail along the southern border of Khalakovo’s largest forest. The ground tapered slowly down to the sea. The day was bright if not warm, and it was good to feel fresh wind upon his face again.
The storm that had been raging over the island abated during the night. Nikandr suspected that it had had something to do with Nasim, but Mother said that she had felt no connection from him to a hezhan. With a storm the size of the one that had gripped the island for the past week, it would take a very ancient spirit indeed to sustain it, and though Mother said that she didn’t believe the boy capable of such a thing, Nikandr