Nayyan, perhaps noting how strangely his words had come out, furrowed her brow at him, but thankfully her eyes drifted down to his goblet. Better she thought it was the araq than the real reason.
“Yes,” Ibrahim said, “but I saw little enough. A sleigh being dragged toward Adzin’s old sloop. A few men and women speaking Qaimiran. My drink-addled mind was convinced it was Queen Meryam, but truth be told, I’m not certain.”
“Then why did you spin a tale about a Qaimiri Queen?” The pain in Ihsan’s mouth had mercifully eased to a dull ache.
Ibrahim’s toothy smile was like a west end tenement, hastily constructed and likely to crumble. “A man has to earn a living.”
“Do you speak Qaimiran, Ibrahim?” Ihsan asked in the Qaimiri tongue. Ibrahim didn’t even need to reply. The fact that he looked suddenly nervous gave Ihsan his answer. “Tell me what they said,” he went on, switching back to Sharakhan. “Tell me what she has planned.”
Ibrahim’s eyes turned haunted. “I’m but a humble storyteller, my good King.” His voice was thin as a wight’s wail. “This is all too big for me.”
“What harm is there in saying it when there’s only us”—Ihsan waved to the desert—“and the Great Shangazi to hear it?”
“Don’t you see? She’ll come for me.”
“She doesn’t know you’re here.”
“She’s a blood mage.”
“No longer. Her power was burned from her.”
“Not if she succeeds in her goals. Then she’ll have all that and more.”
“What do you mean?”
Ibrahim stared into the fire. He took up his empty goblet and held it out. Ihsan was debating on whether to give him any when Ransaneh began to writhe. She cried until she released a bit of gas with the sort of wet sound that made parents wince at the changing that awaited them. From a cloth bag beside her, Nayyan took out a fresh diaper and changed her with efficient ease.
Ibrahim watched as Ransaneh returned to silent slumber. Ibrahim lowered his goblet. His expression faltered, as if he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. He settled on an earnest smile, though tears were gathering in his eyes. He blinked them away and regarded Nayyan, then Ihsan, and his smile became a look of calm acceptance. “What do you know of Ashael the Fallen?”
Ihsan’s fingers began to tingle. He felt his ears turn red. He’d witnessed the passing of four centuries in the Great Shangazi. Empires had come and gone in that time. Cities had burned. New ones had risen from their ashes. He’d played the great game and played it well. He’d bargained with gods and lived to tell the tale. There was little left that could strike fear in his heart, but the name Ashael did.
Nayyan looked confused. “Who is Ashael the Fallen?”
“One of the elder gods,” Ihsan said. “Legends say he was struck down and left behind when the others departed this world for the next.”
Ibrahim nodded. “His name is rarely mentioned in the old texts. When they mention him at all, it’s usually to say how wicked he was, how reviled, especially by his fellow elders.”
Nayyan shook her head, confused. “Why are you bringing up a myth?”
“Because Meryam spoke his name. And the body on the sleigh was Goezhen’s, slain by Nalamae in the desert. She said she planned to use it to reach Ashael, to awaken him”—Ibrahim paused—“as the goddess meant for her to do.”
“The goddess . . .” Nayyan echoed. “Which one?”
Ibrahim shrugged. “Meryam didn’t say.”
Ihsan, staring into the fire, was already working through the implications. “It certainly wasn’t Nalamae, and whether it was Tulathan or Rhia is immaterial. The fact is they’re using Meryam to raise Ashael.”
“But why?” Nayyan asked.
Ihsan peered into the darkness beyond the fire. “What do you suppose Ashael’s overriding emotion will be once he’s risen?”
“Anger,” Nayyan replied easily.
“Precisely,” said Ihsan. “He will feel, much as the young gods do, that he was robbed of the world beyond, that he’s been kept from it unfairly. He will widen the gateway. He will step through to the world beyond and seek his revenge, or remake it in his image, or do whatever it is an elder god does when he gains a place long denied him. That is the moment the young gods maneuver toward. They plan to follow in his wake, the world they leave behind be damned.”
Ibrahim looked stunned, as if he were on a collision course with what he’d been trying to avoid.
Nayyan looked shocked as well, but she’d always been a pragmatic woman. “Where are they going?” she said to Ibrahim a moment later.
He shrugged. “They were looking for a place named the Hollow.”
Nayyan shook her head. “What’s that?”
“It’s a pit in the desert,” Ihsan replied, “surrounded by a circle of ancient standing stones.”
“You know it?”
“The Kings have known about it for centuries,” Ihsan replied. “Word came years ago that Adzin was using it, attracting useful demons from its depths.”
“And you never looked into it?”
Ihsan shook his head. “It was more Sukru’s province than mine. And the things Adzin was doing seemed innocent enough. I recall Sukru thought him more madman than mage.”
Nayyan asked, “Do you know where it is, this Hollow?”
“Roughly. It may take a bit of finding.” Were the wind up, Ihsan would have ordered them to sail that very moment, but it wasn’t. “We’ll sail for it in the morning.”
It was with a distinct feeling of unease that they retired to the Miscreant. Unsurprisingly, Ihsan couldn’t sleep. He left the ship and wandered the desert for a time. He stared at the stars, stared at Tulathan and Rhia as they trekked across the sky. He wondered if the twin goddesses were staring down at him, laughing. “You won’t win,” he said to the chill night air. “I refuse to allow it.”
A short while later, Ihsan heard footsteps. He thought it was Nayyan, but it was Yndris. “My Lord King,” she said in greeting.
For a time, Yndris merely stood with him and stared at the star-filled sky, but Ihsan could tell she was working up to something.
“Is there something you wish to say, Maiden?”
Yndris had become more circumspect since her father Cahil’s death. Her brashness still raised its ugly head from time to time, but more and more she thought before she spoke, which Ihsan gave her credit for—any amount of introspection would be more than her father had ever managed. Ihsan thought she might have come to talk about Meryam or Ashael, so it surprised him when she cleared her throat and said, “I don’t mean to involve myself in your personal life, Your Excellence.”
“But . . . ?”
“But I think you might want to speak to your Queen.”
Ihsan spun to face her. “About what?”
“About whatever it is that might concern her.”
For a moment, Ihsan had no idea what to say. “Is she worried about Ransaneh?”
“Yes, but not for the reasons you might think.”
“What then?”
Yndris took a deep breath. “It really would be better if you talked to her, Your Highness.” With that she turned and headed for the ship.
Left in her wake was the sort of cold unease that grew the longer it went unaddressed. It was with heavy steps that Ihsan returned to the Miscreant, and to the cabin he shared with Nayyan. In the bunk, Nayyan was curled on her side while Ransaneh fed at her breast.
Her soft smile faded as he stood there stiffly. “What’s wrong?”
“Yndris said I should talk to you.” It was an inelegant opening at best, but he couldn’t help it. Yndris’s refusal to speak plainly had set an indescribable fear gnawing at his insides.
Nayyan kissed the top of Ransaneh’s head, pointedly ignoring Ihsan, which only made matters worse. “I tol
d her not to bother you with it.”
“Bother me with what?”
She looked up, her eyes red and glistening. The silence between them yawned wider and wider.
“Nayyan, what is it?”
She beckoned Ihsan. He moved closer, but the fear inside him was threatening to consume him. When she flicked her fingers at his hand, he froze, unable to take this final step. He was terrified of the truth. But after seeing his own terror echoed in Nayyan’s eyes, he named himself a coward and held his hand out for her to take. She did, and pressed it against her belly. She moved his fingers to various places and pressed hard.
Breath of the desert, there was something unnatural below the skin. It wasn’t apparent to the casual touch, but with her pressing so hard he could feel it, a growth of some sort. It felt so alien Ihsan recoiled from it, but then he relaxed and let Nayyan guide his fingers along the extent of it. It went from her pelvis to her rib cage, and was nearly wide as her hips. It was lumpy and hard, like a demon growing inside her.
Nayyan’s tears flowed freely now. “The black mould,” she said. “The physic confirmed it. She examined my birth canal as well. The flesh there is dark. Malignant. It’s growing, Ihsan, and quickly.”
“There must be something we can do. The elixirs . . .” He stopped himself, suddenly cold. Her insistence that they not give an elixir to Ransaneh now made perfect sense. “It was the elixirs,” he said numbly, “they caused the mould.”
“I wasn’t sure at first,” she replied, “but yes, I think so.”
Ihsan felt like he was falling down a bottomless well. He went to the chest where they kept the vials of elixirs.
“They’re gone, Ihsan. I woke late in the night after visiting the physic, after I’d fainted. I emptied them all and buried the vials.”
He opened the chest anyway, to find them missing. A terrible thought dawned on Ihsan, and his eyes drifted to Ransaneh, who was feeding at Nayyan’s teat. Without saying a word, he reached down and snatched their daughter from her breast.
“What?” Nayyan looked shocked, but then she stared down at her bared breast, then her belly. “Oh, gods, no!”
Ihsan wanted to console her, but how could he? Mothers passed many things to their children through their milk. Their temperament, their fortune, their health or lack thereof. Ihsan saw his fears echoed in Nayyan’s tortured eyes.
That their folly, their desire to live forever and rule the desert alone, had been doomed from the start was bad enough. It was made infinitely worse by the realization that their efforts could deliver their daughter to the grave. They inspected Ransaneh carefully, checking her belly, her chest, her throat, and her limbs, looking for any signs of similar lumps. The fates be praised, they found none.
“She’s young,” Ihsan said. “She’s strong. And we don’t know that your milk will have passed the disease to her.”
But Nayyan was inconsolable. Ihsan lay with them both long into the night, until Nayyan fell asleep at last. He’d hidden his fears—Nayyan had enough to worry about—but now they were returning, stronger than ever.
From a desk drawer he took out a mirror. He held the lantern up and adjusted the mirror until he could see inside his mouth. Then he lifted his tongue. There, on the underside, was a misshapen brown spot. Moving his tongue around, he saw another, then a third along his inner jaw. He probed the largest of them with one finger. It was lumpy underneath. Hard.
Part of him had known the moment he’d felt the lump in Nayyan’s belly. She wasn’t the only one who’d been doomed when they’d created their elixir of life. He had been too.
The vision he and Nayyan had read in the Blue Journal, just before Queen Alansal’s surprise attack, was suddenly fresh in his mind. A grinning demon invades, Yusam’s passage read, making straight for one of the falcons—the one with the faltering call, the one who’s meant to die.
The faltering call was an obvious reference to him—the power of his voice had been unreliable since Cahil had helped regrow his tongue—but he’d thought the last part of the passage, the one who’s meant to die, was referring to the orders Alansal had given the qirin warrior. He would surely have been told to take Ihsan and Husamettín’s lives if he could.
Now Ihsan understood the truth. The passage was a harbinger of his death. It had been referring obliquely, not to the sudden attack by the qirin warrior, but to the black mould.
Ihsan knew he should wake Nayyan and tell her. But he couldn’t. Not just then.
Instead, he blew out the lamp, lay by her side in the darkness, with Ransaneh between them. And wept.
Chapter 25
Çeda blinked fiercely as she returned to herself. The valley’s imposing mountains stood in a ring around her. Before her, the acacia swayed in the breeze. Gods, it was already near evening. The others were all there in the circle. Sümeya was speaking in low tones with Kameyl, Shal’alara, and Dardzada. Emre was staring at her with a look of concern. Leorah smiled in the supportive way great-grandmothers did. Frail Lemi was walking away, probably to find food.
“You’re back?” Sümeya asked as she broke away from Kameyl.
“Yes,” Çeda said, with no real confidence.
“Good,” Sümeya replied, “because you have to concentrate. Memories of your mother may be alluring, but they aren’t what you need to find. You’re letting regret over her death, maybe even guilt, guide you.”
Çeda had no idea what she was talking about at first. But then it all came rushing back. Sharakhai cloaked in darkness. Her mother finding her gone, then rushing to the western harbor to save her.
Çeda waved impotently to the acacia. “It won’t give me what I want.”
“Because you aren’t trying hard enough.”
“I am.”
“No, you’re not.” She crouched and stared directly into Çeda’s eyes, then spoke softly, so that only Çeda could hear. “Everything rides on this, Çeda. Zaghran came by a short while ago. He moved the heavens to win you the morning, so you have until then, no longer. The tribunal votes on Hamid’s proposal to sail on Sharakhai at high sun.” She paused. “Visions of your mother are intoxicating, no doubt, but you can’t give in to them. You need to focus, as you did with the asirim. You must guide the tree, not the other way around.”
She felt like such a failure. She’d promised them she would expose Hamid’s crimes and bring him to justice. “I’ll try harder,” she said. “I’ll find a way.”
“If you’d only let me help you,” Sümeya said.
Sümeya had made the offer before, but Çeda had been convinced, was still convinced, that it would only muddy the waters.
“Thank you,” Çeda said, “but I can’t add another mind to mine. I need to find the way alone or I’ll never find it.”
Çeda stood and stretched. Frail Lemi returned with a massive platter of flatbread, hummus, and spicy olives. They ate and quenched their thirst with lemon-laced water. As before, Rasime stared down from the walls of the fort. Others watched from the shores of the lake. And in the meantime, the talks in the pavilion continued.
They were just starting another session, likely their last before being forced to sleep and to present what they could to the tribunal in the morning, when Leorah tottered toward her.
Gods, how frail you look, grandmother.
The tremors that plagued her seemed to be getting worse. The glint in her eyes, though, was strong, seemingly eternal. “I believe in you, child.” She waved to the tree with a trembling hand. “Search your heart and find the truth. Find that truth and the tree will listen.”
“But there are many truths, grandmother.”
Leorah smiled as she took Çeda’s hand and squeezed. “And the tree knows them all.”
The words sounded like nonsense, the ravings of an old woman, but they also felt true.
Beyond the tree, at the far end of the lake, children s
wam while their mothers and fathers conversed on the bank. High above, thin white clouds passed one another, some compressing into solid-looking shapes, others attenuating like spindrift. All around her were the sounds of her tribe—conversation lifting, the acacia’s leaves blown by the wind, water lapping at the lake shore. It made her acutely aware of the tree and the power within it. She felt as if she were standing at the very nexus of past and future, countless threads behind her leading to countless threads ahead.
It made her intimately aware of how integral past and future were. An event in the here and now was born of innumerable decisions and actions from the past, and would lead to innumerable futures. The notion was dizzying, but also clarifying.
“Come,” she said to the others. “I would see the end of my mother’s tale.”
Sümeya frowned. “Çeda—”
She stopped when Çeda held up a hand. “The tree chose it for a reason. Let’s see what it is.”
Sümeya’s gaze shifted to the pavilion. “You risk everything.”
“I must see where the trail leads.”
Sümeya looked like she wanted to argue, but in the end she only stared up at the tree. At the glass chimes. “Very well,” she said, and took her position in the circle.
Soon they were all seated, their eyes closed. With but a reach toward the tree, they descended into darkness.
* * *
The twin moons were full, bright lamps in a star-filled sky. The asirim wailed as Ahya searched among the rocks. She moved carefully from one to the next, wary of the asirim but doubly alert for any sign of Çeda.
Ahead of her came the crunch of sand. She drew her sword as a dark shadow came rushing toward her. The silhouette was slender and shorter than most asirim but she was still wary—there were children among those tortured souls, and they could wreak as much havoc as the adults. But she could see it wasn’t moving like an asir. It was weaving from rock to rock, scanning the way behind for signs of pursuit.
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