A Desert Torn Asunder

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Reckoning the figure was a boy, she stood and held her hands up to forestall him. It was Tariq, she realized. He screamed bloody murder and slipped on the sand while trying to avoid her, then scampered away, shouting all the while.

  Ahya leapt on top of him and clamped one hand over his fool mouth. “Be quiet!” When he didn’t, she cuffed him. “It’s Ahya, you bloody idiot. Çeda’s mother!”

  He finally calmed, but now his eyes were everywhere but on her. Perhaps realizing how much noise he’d made, he was peering beyond the nearest stones with a terrified expression.

  Seizing his lower jaw, Ahya forced him to look at her. “Tell me where my daughter is.” When he remained silent, she set the blade of her shamshir across his throat and leaned in until their eyes were locked on one another. “Can you feel the chill of my blade, Tariq?”

  He nodded slowly.

  “Good, now tell me where my daughter is before I run the edge across your useless, thieving throat.”

  He lifted one hand and pointed deeper into the desert. “She went farther than the rest of us. We told her not to. She didn’t have to go so far, but she did anyway.”

  Tariq pointed to a dense litter of rocks, as a fearful yipping rose up from that direction. Another followed, this one pained, bordering on a squeal. Then a chorus of howls. Dear gods, there were dozens more asirim coming in from the west.

  “Where?” Ahya asked Tariq.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.” He pointed again. “That way. I lost sight of her.”

  By the gods who breathe, how she wanted to strangle him for his stupidity, for the part he’d played in putting Çeda in danger. Instead, she let her sword drop from his throat. “Go. Stay low until you reach the wharfs, then hide on a ship.”

  Tariq nodded and rushed away in a half crouch. Ahya, meanwhile, turned on hearing a whimper. She’d spoken too loudly. Fifty paces distant, a form scuffled closer, an asir moving from rock to rock, coming ever nearer to her position.

  Suddenly the asir’s head shot up. It tracked Tariq’s movement. Releasing a long bay, it sprinted after him.

  Tariq sent one wild glance back, then abandoned all pretense of stealth and sprinted headlong for the nearest wharf some two hundred paces distant. He was never going to make it. The asir was already galloping like an akhala, sand kicking up as it drove toward him in powerful strides.

  Hunkered low behind a rock, Ahya waited. She controlled her breathing lest it give her away, and when the sound of the asir’s galloping stride came near, she leapt out and swung her shamshir across the asir’s path. The power of the swing combined with the asir’s own momentum allowed the sword to cut through skin and bone. The blade lodged deep in its chest, cutting the wretched creature’s surprised squeal short.

  The asir fell, but the sheer violence of the blow twisted Ahya’s shamshir from her grip. Black blood flew and sand kicked up as the asir came to a rolling, loose-limbed halt. Ahya picked up her blade and stood over its twitching form. The asir had been a girl once, no older than Çeda when she’d been cursed by the desert gods.

  Ahya crouched down until the two of them were eye-to-eye. “I’m sorry,” she said to the poor, lost soul. “You didn’t deserve this.” The asir’s eyes began to glaze. “You didn’t deserve any of this.”

  When she fell slack, Ahya wiped the blade on the asir’s tattered clothes and moved on in the direction Tariq had indicated. By the time she was nearing the cluster of rocks, the yips and howls of the larger group of asirim were loud and getting louder. She scanned the rocks for any sign of movement.

  “Çeda,” she hissed. She worried that any noise would attract the asirim, but if Çeda was hidden in the rocks, she’d likely be silent, curled up tight, hiding from the asirim to prove to the boys she wasn’t afraid. “Çeda, there’s nothing left to prove. The boys have all gone.” Hearing no reply, she went on. “You’re the last one. You outlasted them all.”

  Not far away, a large group of asirim approached the rocks. Their leader wove among them, moving with no great haste. The two behind it dropped to all fours and sniffed the sand like hounds.

  “You have to call out to me, girl.” She waited for several long breaths, worried Çeda’s reply would be spoken too softly to hear. “Çeda, you have to call to me.”

  The asirim approached. Goezhen’s sweet kiss, there were a score of them roaming the rocks.

  “Çeda, hear me!”

  Several heartbeats later, a small voice called back. “I’m here.”

  Ahya ran toward the sound and found her hiding in the lee of a tilted boulder. She held Çeda tight as tears streamed down her cheeks. Çeda trembled like a lamb before the slaughter. “It’s all right,” Ahya whispered softly. “Memma’s here.”

  As Çeda held her tight, her shivering grew more pronounced. “It was stupid, memma. I shouldn’t have come.”

  “Shhhh. Everything’s fine now.”

  It was a lie, but Ahya would say the words a thousand times over if it would quell Çeda’s fears. She’d been a hard mother. She’d come to Sharakhai with a mission, a mission filled with righteous purpose, but she should have been home today. She should have been more aware of what her child was up to, who she was friends with. If she had, she would have caught Çeda before she left on some foolish dare, and neither of them would have been in danger.

  Instead, both their lives were at risk, and she had no idea how to make it better.

  The sounds of the asirim’s snuffling grew louder. One passed a tall, thin rock to Ahya’s left. Another scuttled across the ground like a scarab to her right. A third howled so loudly it rattled Ahya’s bones. Çeda whimpered by her side as a tall, thin asir with lanky hair and yellow eyes rounded the rock they were hiding behind. Another, this one missing an arm, approached from the opposite side. More followed, like a pack of black laughers who’d stumbled upon their next kill.

  Ahya positioned herself in front of Çeda as the asirim closed in. The nearest of them, the one with only one arm, was low, practically crawling. It sniffed the air, moving steadily toward the hem of Ahya’s fighting dress. A soft mewling sound escaped it, while a low growl came from the tall one beside it.

  It was the blood, Ahya realized. They smelled the blood of the asir she’d killed.

  Instead of drawing her shamshir, she drew her knife and ran the edge across the palm of her opposite hand. She held it up to them. “I am blood of your blood!” She waved it before the tall one, then the one crawling low. “We are both blood of your blood!”

  They paused. She was convinced the words meant nothing to them, that they would tear her and Çeda limb from limb for killing one of their own. But then the hatred in their jaundiced eyes faded. Their aggressive stances eased. They shrank before her eyes, as if the presence of two of their descendants somehow shamed them.

  They scuttled backward. They turned away. As they headed en masse toward Sharakhai to fulfill their duty, they released a long, combined keening, a lament for the cursed lives they were forced to live by the will of the gods and the Sharakhani Kings.

  As they left and the sounds of their passage faded, Ahya held Çeda close, and the two of them wept.

  * * *

  Çeda woke to the soft rustle of leaves. Above her, the acacia swayed. The sky was a brilliant salmon pink, but the sun was behind the mountains and the valley itself lay in shadow. As had been true of the other visions, hours had passed.

  She realized she felt a yearning of sorts, a pull toward the past. At first it felt as though it were coming from all directions, tearing her apart, but the more she became aware of the valley around her, the more she realized it was coming from the acacia.

  Around her, the others were waking as well. Emre looked dumbstruck. Dardzada was pensive, as if he were comparing the vision to his memories of that earlier time. Frail Lemi was bawling, his chest wracking in great heaves. The rest seemed unsure w
hat to think of what they’d just witnessed.

  Leorah was the first to recover. “I’ll make some tea,” she said, and shuffled off toward a nearby campfire.

  Emre, meanwhile looked confused. “You told me you and your mother hid in the stones. That you weren’t discovered.”

  Çeda felt as if she’d betrayed Emre by hiding the truth, but there was a simple reason behind it. “She told me never to speak of it.”

  “Well, you could have told me.”

  “I’m sorry, Emre, but I couldn’t. I owed her that much. She saved me.”

  Emre looked wounded, but a moment later, he nodded. “You’re right.”

  Just then dozens began to file out from within the pavilion. Many of the shaikhs and their vizirs glanced toward the tree. Hamid and Rasime looked smug. Shaikh Zaghran looked dour. Many of the others did as well, none more so than Aríz.

  “Given how long you were taking,” Aríz said when he came near, “Hamid pressed to advance our talks.”

  “And?” Emre asked.

  “Enough agreed that we spoke of our collective plans for Sharakhai. I must tell you, most have already made up their minds about Hamid, and whether or not to sail on Sharakhai.”

  “Hamid deserves death,” Çeda said.

  “I agree,” Aríz said calmly, “but he’s been convincing. He’s given up concessions. Sharakhai will be given notice. They’ll be allowed to flee to neighboring lands, should they so choose.” Çeda began to argue, but he talked over her. “You’re only going to have one chance to change their minds.”

  “One chance is all I’ll need,” she said firmly. The vision of her mother and that harrowing night had revealed not only how to delve into the past, but how to share it.

  “You’re certain?” Aríz asked. “Because—”

  “I’m certain.”

  Aríz seemed relieved. “Then you should try tonight. I can call the council—”

  “No,” Çeda said firmly. “I’m too tired. We need to do this right.”

  Aríz finally relented, and the valley quieted. Exhausted, Çeda soon found herself beneath a blanket with Emre. She worried over many things that night, but her mastery over the tree wasn’t one of them.

  In little time, she’d fallen into a deep, deep sleep.

  * * *

  She woke what felt like moments later to a thunderous sound. Another came a moment later, then another—a cascade of explosions accompanied by flashes of yellow light against the tent’s canvas roof. Gods, it sounded like the mountain was falling down.

  She and the others were up in a flash. They rushed from the tent as the largest explosion yet shook the earth.

  Çeda gasped at the sight before her. The acacia was broken, blackened. Several large boughs had fallen to the ground. Flames licked along the fallen boughs and the branches high above.

  The entire tree was lit aflame, a blinding torch burning in the night.

  Chapter 26

  Night had fallen when Meryam left The Gray Gull and walked to the fathomless pit known as the Hollow. She knelt beside its yawning mouth while Tulathan, the silver moon, hung half-lidded in a dark, scintillant sky. Amaryllis and the crew, save for a lone watchman, were sleeping. Meryam had tried to sleep as well, but her dreams had been haunted by the death of her crewman, Ernesto. She woke with visions of the winged demon, wrapping its thin limbs around Ernesto’s frame. The dream eventually faded, but not before she saw the demon clamp its jaws over Ernesto’s neck and plummet into the depths of the pit.

  Kneeling on the hard rock, she stared up at the bright moon. “Come to me.” She used her thumb to draw Tulathan’s holy symbol, a crescent shape, over her heart. “Come, for I need your guidance.”

  The cool wind gusted, sending scree skittering along the rocky plateau.

  “Come, Tulathan.” Though it felt like a betrayal to her patron god, Alu, she made Tulathan’s sign again. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Somewhere in the distance, a ridge owl screeched.

  “You wanted this,” Meryam said, louder this time. Her voice sounded desperate, even to her. “You wanted it as much as I did. I need but the smallest of clues to do the rest.”

  But the desert remained deaf to her pleas. It stung to have come so close only to be abandoned by Tulathan. What was there to do but forge ahead? She couldn’t force the hand of the gods.

  How very droll, Meryam, when forcing the hands of the gods is precisely what you’re trying to do.

  It was her sister’s voice, Yasmine. She’d been gone a long while—for good, Meryam had thought.

  “Leave me alone,” Meryam grumbled.

  But why, dear sister? Don’t you miss me?

  “Why would you return after all this time?”

  Because your gambit has failed. When you come to grips with that fact, I expect you’ll throw yourself in that pit, and the two of us will be reunited at last.

  “Shut up, Yasmine.”

  She stared down as Ernesto’s terror-filled eyes appeared in the darkness. He’d left behind a wife and three children. He’d been a veritable wizard with rope and string. He’d used that skill to make intricate hemp bracelets. He was gone now because Meryam had pushed too far, too fast. She should have taken her time. She should have learned more about Ashael.

  Despite the admission, she took the leather bag she’d brought with her and tugged its mouth open.

  Take care, Meryam, lest everything fall apart.

  Meryam couldn’t tell if it was her own voice or Yasmine’s. Barely had the thought registered when Yasmine laughed, long and hard. Meryam felt her cheeks redden. Ignoring the feelings of inadequacy, she reached into the leather bag, took a pinch of the ivory powder within, and threw it into the cavernous gap.

  Down the powder floated. The moonlight made it looked like a gossamer net spreading wide as it disappeared into the void. Only then did she sniff what remained of the powder from her fingertips. Its subtle power filled her lungs, made her eyes flutter momentarily.

  She blinked and the edges of the deeper shadows began to shimmer. She blinked again and those edges grew bright. Having performed this ritual several times over the past few days, she’d grown accustomed to the feeling, but it still felt heady, as if a well of power lay just beyond reach.

  Minutes passed as the moon cast its silvery light over the desert. Meryam became aware of the creatures below, the many demons that fed like lampreys off Ashael’s dreaming form. Even as they feasted, they hungered for Meryam, especially the one that had risen and taken Ernesto. But no demons rose from the depths. They were too comfortable near the elder god. It would take a good deal more powder for them to rise.

  The demons represented but the first of the dangers of trying to awaken the fallen god. Even if she found some way to protect herself and her crew from the demons, how could she safely use Ashael for her own purposes?

  The answer surely lay in Goezhen’s body. Tulathan had given it to her for a purpose. What, though? What was she supposed to do with it? She’d been struggling with that question from the moment Tulathan left her beside that stinking pool in Mazandir. She’d thought she had an answer, but the tragedy of her first attempt at raising Ashael from the pit had left her scrambling for some other solution, some other purpose for Goezhen beyond simple sacrifice.

  As had been true during her previous attempts, glimpses of an ancient world came to her. They were from Ashael’s dream, delivered to her through the powder she’d sent down into the pit. She saw the world as it was millennia ago. A world unpopulated by mortals, when only gods walked the earth. Having long since abandoned his attempts at creating new life, Ashael found amusement in maligning the creations of others, destroying beauty, perverting perfection.

  Time passed. Meryam saw humanity progress. Tribes formed. Villages arose. Then came cities made of stone. Civilizations blossomed only to crumble to
dust, often because of Ashael. How he adored debasing mortalkind, torturing them. He was the heart of evil, a darkness that spread to many of the young gods, Goezhen first, then Naamdah, Sjado, and Odokōn.

  When Ashael’s fellow elders saw his rot spread to even the most powerful of their creations, they knew something must be done. They’d already begun making plans for the creation of a new world. They would continue those plans but without Ashael. They would bury him instead, send him deep into the earth. Leave him behind as they went to create a world that would be pure and unsullied by his malevolence.

  When Ashael’s dreams faded, Meryam woke folded over her knees, tears streaming down her face. Mortals weren’t made to experience the dreams of elder gods. Despair flooded through her. She was no closer to solving this riddle than when she arrived. She feared she never would be.

  As dawn blazed bright along the eastern horizon, Meryam wondered about Ashael’s influence over the young gods. Goezhen had been created by Iri, but corrupted by Ashael. His body would have meaning for Ashael, surely, but if she took that step, if she sacrificed his corpse, there would be no getting it back.

  Sacrifices aren’t really sacrifices unless they’re permanent, she told herself.

  When dawn arrived and Amaryllis came from the ship, Meryam said to her, “Have Goezhen’s body brought to the pit.”

  Amaryllis had two cups of steaming tea, one of which she held out to Meryam. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Amaryllis stared down into the nearby pit, then nodded. “As you say.”

  It took the crew some time, but soon enough, as the morning sun warmed the dark stone, it was done: Goezhen’s massive form rested at the very edge of the pit.

  Six crewmen stood at the ready, poleaxes to hand, ready to lever Goezhen’s emaciated body into the pit.

  “You need but give us the word, my queen,” said the captain.

  He had on a brave face, as if it was for Meryam’s benefit alone, but the way he kept glancing at the pit made it clear that he was torn. He’d be pleased to be rid of Goezhen’s corpse but feared what would happen next.