Markswoman (Asiana #1)(17)

Shirin Mam held out her hand. “Will you cross the bridge with me?”

Kyra stopped sobbing. Cross that cobweb bridge? There were no railings, nothing to hold it up that she could see—no beams, ropes, or abutments. What if it broke and she fell into the abyss below?

“No,” she said, her voice shaking. “Please, no.”

“As you wish.”

The light faded, leaving them in the dimness of the second-level trance. They were back where they had started. It was unbearably dull after the brief, bright glimpse into that other world, and Kyra had no wish to linger there. She surfaced from the trance and the physical senses rushed back. She raised a hand and touched her cheeks. They were wet with tears.

Shirin Mam gazed at her with compassion.

Kyra tried to speak calmly. “What was that place, Mother?”

“An aspect of Anant-kal. What the kataris chose to show us today.”

“The world as perceived by our blades?” Kyra tried to understand.

“The world changes with time,” said Shirin Mam. “But kalishium carries the memory of all that has been.”

“That was our past? The world before the Great War?”

“It was a past,” said Shirin Mam. “Does it matter?”

“Have you . . . have you seen . . . ?” Kyra choked, unable to complete the question.

But the Mahimata understood what she meant. “The Ones from the stars? No. The past is empty of life, unless you walk within living memory.”

Kyra yearned to see that city again, even as she struggled to comprehend what the Mahimata was trying to explain. She wanted to walk down its streets, climb those glittering towers, and get a closer look at the odd, disc-shaped thing hanging in the sky. Even more, she longed to see the people who had built it.

But the past was gone, destroyed by war and its toxic aftermath. The fantastic city had vanished and the people who had once lived in it were long dead, their bones crumbled to dust.

“What use is it?” said Kyra softly. “Why show this place to me?”

“There is no one else I could have shared it with,” said Shirin Mam. She looked diminished somehow, older.

Kyra sensed the deep loneliness of the most powerful woman in Ferghana. To go through life knowing something like this, and not be able to tell anyone. How had she borne it?

“You understand,” said Shirin Mam.

“Yes, I do,” whispered Kyra. On an impulse, she reached forward and did something she hadn’t done in years: she embraced Shirin Mam.

“Hush, child.” Shirin Mam’s hands stroked Kyra’s head. “It will be all right.”

And Kyra, sobbing into the Mahimata’s shoulder, had a sudden, unreasonable flaring of hope that it would.





Chapter 6

The Mark in Kalam




The Kalams were horse breeders and dwelled in the treeless, grassy highlands to the west of the Ferghana Valley, between the mountains of the Alaf Range and the wasteland known as the Barrens. Kyra and Tonar left before dawn and rode without a break, yet the sun was high in the sky before they arrived at the cluster of circular white yurts that were the homes of the people of Kalam—their temporary homes, of course, for the Kalams could dismantle them and move at an hour’s notice.

Kyra was glad to arrive, although she wasn’t looking forward to the display of Tonar’s markswomanship skills. The sooner this was over with, the better. Shirin Mam hadn’t been joking when she called it a penance. Kyra had slept little the previous night. The vision the Mahimata had shown her refused to leave her thoughts, and before she knew it, Tonar Kalam was poking her awake, telling her to be ready to leave in five minutes.

Normally, Kyra liked the short, muscular Markswoman with her square jaw and deceptively mild eyes, her blunt black fringe perpetually falling across her forehead. Tonar was gruff and straightforward, rather like Felda. She was also the Markswoman closest to Kyra in age, being but three years older.

However, she had been simply insufferable throughout the ride to Kalam. She had taken Shirin Mam’s instruction to “teach by example” to heart, and kept up her badgering until Kyra wanted to scream. It was too bad, because with different company, Kyra would have loved the ride. The Alaf Mountains were topped with snow, the foothills covered with lush pine forest. The sky was a cerulean blue, dotted with fluffy clouds, and the grass beneath their horses’ hooves was fresh and green. The scent of pine and grass filled Kyra with peace. Or it would have, if Tonar wasn’t shouting at her from horseback, explaining the difference between doing one’s duty and mere self-gratification.

“Whoever my mark today is, I will know them,” said Tonar. “It is my clan, my family. I grew up with these people. It could be a cousin, an aunt, an uncle. By the Goddess, it could be my own brother! But did I flinch when Shirin Mam gave me this mark? Did I plead with her to send someone else? No. I was proud of her trust in me. Just as you should have been proud when she offered it to you.”

Kyra rolled her eyes, but she knew in her heart that Tonar was right. She hoped, for Tonar’s sake, that the mark today—Tonar’s fourth—was not a close relative of hers. For all Tonar’s lecturing, Kyra could detect an undercurrent of nervousness in the Markswoman’s voice.

Nervousness was evident also in the people of Kalam as they stood outside their yurts, watching the Markswomen approach.