The Flames of Shadam Khoreh (The Lays of Anuskaya) Read Online Free PDF Page B

his feet forward. The tips of his boots were now only inches from the edge.
    There were days when he wished he’d never gone to Galahesh—days when he wished he could once again feel the touch of the havahezhan, to summon the wind with mere thought—but he knew such hopes to be foolish. Had those events not occurred, Nasim would never have been freed. He would never have been able to stop Muqallad. And the world would have ended.
    In the distance, another whirlwind lifted and twisted and fell. He knew it was foolish to think of such things, but still…
    He inched one foot forward. He settled his weight onto the other, afraid to lift it from the dry earth lest he do something foolish.
    He pulled the ghoutra from his face, pulled the headband from around his head and tossed it to the dirt behind him. With shaking hands, he spread his arms wide, tilted his head back, closed his eyes. He felt the sun upon his face, felt the wind through his hair. He breathed deeply and took in the scents of the desert—sage and baked earth and the strange spiky bushes that smelled like burning cedar.
    He could feel the wind running through his fingers, could feel it tug at his kaftan and the white cotton legs of his sirwaal.
    He recalled where his journey had begun. Before Galahesh, before Ghayavand. Before Nasim had been healed.
    Before Rehada had died.
    He had flown above his homeland, the island of Uyadensk. Soroush and his Maharraht had come to gather elemental stones for a ritual. One of them had stood at the edge of a cliff, as he stood now. He had spread his arms, looked up to the sky. And he’d leapt. He’d leapt from the cliffs, and the winds had saved him. They’d borne him upward until setting him gently down like a thrush alighting on a lonely branch.
    Nikandr had thought much on that day. That spirit, the one the man had called forth, was the one that had attached itself to him, an elder, a spirit of the wind so old, the Aramahn said, that it had been eons since it had crossed over from Erahm, preferring, for whatever reason, the world of the spirits to the world of the living. Centuries ago, the Aramahn and Maharraht had no need of stones for summoning spirits. They’d done it on their own, as Nasim and Muqallad did. But before them, when the earliest of wandering desert tribesmen were first learning how to tame the spirits, they did what that lone man on that cliff had done. They gave of themselves. They offered themselves to the spirits. They did so in small ways at first. Submerging themselves in water, covering themselves in dirt, running their hands over flames. But as their thirst for knowledge and power grew, they tried things that seemed more and more desperate. Those aligned with water would drown themselves. Those aligned with fire would burn themselves. Those aligned with earth would bury themselves.
    And those aligned with wind would offer themselves to it. They would find mountains, cliffs, gorges. They would find the highest points they could, and they would leap. They did so not hoping for a bond, but to understand the wind in a way they never had before, and it was this state of mind that the hezhan were attracted to. Many carried fear in their hearts—they were not able to wholly commit themselves—and they died. Those that leapt with complete freedom, however, were rewarded with power beyond anything the world had yet seen.
    Nikandr had not known it at the time—how could he have?—but this is what the Maharraht on that cliff had done. He had believed in what he was doing so completely that when he had leapt, an elder havahezhan had come.
    There had been times over the past many months that Nikandr had stood at the edge of a precipice like this, and he’d felt, almost, that he could touch Adhiya. It felt near enough that he could step forward and he would become part of it. It felt like it would embrace him, envelop him and protect him as it once had.
    He felt this way now. The space before him was so