Read Online The Straits of Galahesh: Book Two of The Lays of Anuskaya by Bradley P. Beaulieu - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Bradley P. Beaulieu
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the summer sun. The muscles along the bottoms of her feet cramped until she was able to calm herself at last. She was thinking too much about Bahett and Nikandr and not about the task at hand. She forced her muscles to relax and she took in one long breath before accepting the breathing tube offered by her young handmaid, Yalessa. When she sat in the water, she was in control, and the drowning chamber once more felt like an old friend.
“Tea?” Yalessa asked. Her hair was plaited in a circle around her head, making it look like a crown of auburn hair and bright yellow ribbon. As a handmaid, Yalessa was attentive, but she was too free with her thoughts, a habit Atiana had been trying to rid her of.
“Rosehip, I think.”
Yalessa smiled, shivering in the cold of the stone room far below the lowest levels of Palotza Galostina. “Ovolla is making her squash biscuits. Would you like some?”
Atiana smiled, shivering and lowering herself further into the water. How she used to love those biscuits. “The tea will do.”
Yalessa was a good girl, and she thought she was helping, offering Atiana something to comfort her when she returned to the world, but in reality it was dispiriting. Atiana had avoided the dark when she was young, thinking she would never come to love it, but in the years since she’d become a Matra, in name and spirit both. She had come to love the aether, and the tea upon awakening, however grounding it might be, was also a reminder of how long she would be away from the aether once more.
She lowered herself completely, allowing the water to rush over her. She did not enjoy this transition—her body still stiffened to the point of pain—but she had long since grown accustomed to it, and she had learned how to relax herself once completely submerged.
She exhaled through the tube, releasing all the breath she could manage before drawing air with a slow, measured pace. After her lungs were full near to bursting, she exhaled again and drew breath with a pace that was slower still. She repeated this several times, breathing in and out, in and out, and soon... Soon...
She drifts. Drifts from her body in the basin. Allows the currents of the aether to take her. She watches Yalessa as she frets about the room, but the souls of those scattered around the palotza, especially those she touched stones with recently, draw her upward, outward, until the entirety of the palotza—even nearby structures—fills her mind. They dance blue in the black of the aether.
The currents shift. It feels distant, however, and ancient, as if the bones of the earth are calling her from some hidden, faraway vale.
Like a spider along its web, she shifts her perception, moves subtly and swiftly toward the disturbance. Soon she finds Sayyesh, her father’s most trusted qiram, adjusting the winds to drive a skiff toward the palotza’s small, northern eyrie.
As she looks upon him, his drawing of the winds causes tufts of white smoke to drift against the deep, dark blue of the aether. The color is a telltale sign of a havaqiram. The disturbance she felt must have been him, but it didn’t feel that way.
But she can no longer sense it. Only Sayyesh.
It must have been him, she thinks.
She pulls herself away, expanding her mind and drawing upon the currents that run toward and away from the spire. She aligns herself with the spire’s tone, its pitch. Like pulling a rope taut she strengthens it, aligns the currents with the other islands in the archipelago and even beyond, to Nodhvyansk, to Dhalingrad, to Khalakovo. And to the spire at the southern end of Galahesh.
Her tasks take hours, and when she is done, she is tired, but there is time now to wander, to watch. She pulls her consciousness home, dragging herself away from the immensity of the islands. It is discomforting—such is the lure of the aether—but the aether is no child to be trifled with. She cannot linger when her mind is spread so wide. If she does she risks
“Tea?” Yalessa asked. Her hair was plaited in a circle around her head, making it look like a crown of auburn hair and bright yellow ribbon. As a handmaid, Yalessa was attentive, but she was too free with her thoughts, a habit Atiana had been trying to rid her of.
“Rosehip, I think.”
Yalessa smiled, shivering in the cold of the stone room far below the lowest levels of Palotza Galostina. “Ovolla is making her squash biscuits. Would you like some?”
Atiana smiled, shivering and lowering herself further into the water. How she used to love those biscuits. “The tea will do.”
Yalessa was a good girl, and she thought she was helping, offering Atiana something to comfort her when she returned to the world, but in reality it was dispiriting. Atiana had avoided the dark when she was young, thinking she would never come to love it, but in the years since she’d become a Matra, in name and spirit both. She had come to love the aether, and the tea upon awakening, however grounding it might be, was also a reminder of how long she would be away from the aether once more.
She lowered herself completely, allowing the water to rush over her. She did not enjoy this transition—her body still stiffened to the point of pain—but she had long since grown accustomed to it, and she had learned how to relax herself once completely submerged.
She exhaled through the tube, releasing all the breath she could manage before drawing air with a slow, measured pace. After her lungs were full near to bursting, she exhaled again and drew breath with a pace that was slower still. She repeated this several times, breathing in and out, in and out, and soon... Soon...
She drifts. Drifts from her body in the basin. Allows the currents of the aether to take her. She watches Yalessa as she frets about the room, but the souls of those scattered around the palotza, especially those she touched stones with recently, draw her upward, outward, until the entirety of the palotza—even nearby structures—fills her mind. They dance blue in the black of the aether.
The currents shift. It feels distant, however, and ancient, as if the bones of the earth are calling her from some hidden, faraway vale.
Like a spider along its web, she shifts her perception, moves subtly and swiftly toward the disturbance. Soon she finds Sayyesh, her father’s most trusted qiram, adjusting the winds to drive a skiff toward the palotza’s small, northern eyrie.
As she looks upon him, his drawing of the winds causes tufts of white smoke to drift against the deep, dark blue of the aether. The color is a telltale sign of a havaqiram. The disturbance she felt must have been him, but it didn’t feel that way.
But she can no longer sense it. Only Sayyesh.
It must have been him, she thinks.
She pulls herself away, expanding her mind and drawing upon the currents that run toward and away from the spire. She aligns herself with the spire’s tone, its pitch. Like pulling a rope taut she strengthens it, aligns the currents with the other islands in the archipelago and even beyond, to Nodhvyansk, to Dhalingrad, to Khalakovo. And to the spire at the southern end of Galahesh.
Her tasks take hours, and when she is done, she is tired, but there is time now to wander, to watch. She pulls her consciousness home, dragging herself away from the immensity of the islands. It is discomforting—such is the lure of the aether—but the aether is no child to be trifled with. She cannot linger when her mind is spread so wide. If she does she risks
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