He stormed toward the other members of the tribunal and retook his place on the carpets. “We take the vote now.”
Zaghran looked at him with disgust. “We will see what the tree has to say.”
Hamid’s face reddened. With a flash of his right arm, he drew his sword. He’d actually taken a step toward Zaghran before he collected himself and looked about, working his mouth, as if it had become suddenly dry. He shoved his sword back into the scabbard, but seemed to have trouble finding words. “She controls it,” he said finally. “All she’ll show you are lies.”
“How do you know before you’ve even seen them?” Zaghran replied evenly.
“Because she’s jealous. Çeda has wanted the mantle of shaikh since the day she set foot in the desert.”
“Be that as it may”—he turned a cold shoulder to Hamid and waved Çeda toward the acacia—“Çedamihn will proceed.”
The shaikhs took their places on the carpets. Even Hamid. The crowd closed in. Çeda, meanwhile, pressed her palm against the bark of the tree. It suddenly felt as if she were standing at the mouth of a well. Through it, Çeda reached into the past and summoned the truth. Hamid’s truth. She shared it with those standing around her, not just the shaikhs but the entire crowd.
Hamid drawing his sword against Emre, who barely managed to block it. Hamid digging a grave for Emre in a small, sandy bay and rolling Emre’s limp form into it. Hamid stealing up to the window of a captain’s cabin, preparing to suffocate Emre where he lay unconscious in a coma. A girl, Clara, entering the cabin and interrupting his plans, prompting Hamid to seriously contemplate killing her as well. Hamid pulling on Sehid-Alaz’s heartstrings, convincing him he’d been betrayed by Çeda and Macide.
A hundred more visions came, glimpses into Hamid’s past, the damning mosaic of a self-serving man who would do anything to secure his own power. Çeda hated experiencing it, but she kept going until the story was told in full.
When the sound of the wind blowing through the acacia’s leaves returned, all knew what Hamid had done. All understood the sort of man he was. None would defend him, not even those who most wanted to see Sharakhai fall.
And Hamid knew it. The fear was plain on his face. He opened his mouth several times, but did not speak. Darius, standing behind him, had gone pale.
Zaghran stood and stepped away from Hamid. So did Shaikhs Aríz, Neylana, and Dayan. The others followed suit until they were standing in an arc, leveling their glares at Hamid, who had yet to rise.
“So we vote,” Zaghran said. “All those in favor—”
Çeda wasn’t sure what else Zaghran might have said, for just then she was swept away again by the acacia. She stood in the desert before the mouth of a yawning pit, around which stood a circle of towering stones.
Çeda knew this place. She’d gone there with Emre, years ago, when she’d had trouble with the ehrekh, Rümayesh. The soothsayer, Adzin, had taken them there. It had felt foul at the time, but the feeling in this strange, sudden vision was infinitely worse. She felt as if her gut had been filled with a mixture of malice and spite.
An otherworldly being with long limbs and ashen skin rose from the pit. Tall as a titan, he had two broad horns that fanned horizontally from either side of his head. Ragged bandages covered his eyes. A black spike pierced his emaciated chest.
An elder, Çeda realized.
“Come, Ashael,” said a woman standing beside the pit, “for there is a task that befalls us.” It was Meryam, and she was staring up at the elder god with a look of unbridled joy.
Ashael’s shrouded gaze swiveled toward her. “Shall I call my children as well?”
“Yes,” she replied. “We will soon have need of them.”
“As you wish,” Ashael said, and raised his hands to the sky.
From within the pit, a dark presence grew. It rose like bile, then spewed forth, spilling into a deep blue sky. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of demons flew up, occluding the sun, casting a pall over the desert landscape.
“All of them, Ashael!” Meryam cried with joy. “Yes! Yes! Bring them all!”
The river of demons continued to flow, but Ashael seemed to be ignoring Meryam. Instead his head turned until he seemed to be staring straight at Çeda.
Suddenly the only thing she could see was the god himself. From his forehead, a bright white light emanated. It grew and grew, and pain came with it. She felt as if she’d been thrown into the sun.
She woke on the ground holding her head. The others around her were doing the same. Her eyes met Zaghran’s, who looked every bit as worried as she was.
“Did you see it?” she asked him.
He nodded. The other shaikhs, though she hadn’t asked them, nodded as well.
Frail Lemi was turning around and around. “Where’d fucking Hamid get to?”
He was right. Hamid was nowhere to be seen. Now frantic, Çeda scanned the crowd for Hamid’s stocky shape, his sleepy eyes, but it was no use.
Hamid was gone.
Chapter 28
When the Miscreant set sail shortly after dawn, Ihsan set them on a westerly course for the Hollow. Nayyan leaned against the mainmast, bouncing Ransaneh in her arms. Ihsan still hadn’t told her about his own affliction. It didn’t feel right.
It likely never will.
He knew it was so, yet still he remained silent.
Perhaps tonight after we anchor and take our evening meal.
Ihsan took the stairs up to the foredeck, where Ibrahim sat with his back to the bulwark. He was absently stroking his long, gray beard while reading a Blue Journal.
Inevra, their stout old buzzard of a captain, was there as well. Eyeing Ihsan, she doffed the leather, sweat-stained monstrosity she referred to as a hat and wiped her brow with the back of one sleeve. “I’ve never sailed this stretch of sand,” she said in her craggy voice. “The navy had orders to avoid the Hollow since well before I became a sandswoman, and I’ve been sailing for fifty years.” She fanned herself with the hat then returned it to her head, situating it just so. “The caravans avoid it too. And not just because of the reefs. It gives off a feel, they say.”
“A feel,” Ihsan repeated.
Inevra nodded while pointing to Ihsan’s belly. “They say it’s like someone’s trying to pull out your insides through the button your mother gave you. We’ll make for the center of that stretch. Unless I’m the beetle-brained fool my father always told me I was, that’s where we’ll find the Hollow.”
She seemed strangely excited by the prospect, as if they were hunting for hidden treasure like Bahri Al’sir. Ihsan didn’t fault her for it. It was just her way. Whatever the task, Inevra threw herself into it, and neither storm nor slipsand nor fallow wind would stop her.
“Can you feel it,” she bellowed to Ihsan near midday, “your gut sinking?” She was peering intently off the starboard bow, toward a broad stretch of rocky reefs. “We’re getting nearer!”
He felt it a bit, but in truth, Ihsan was having trouble concentrating on anything but the future that awaited both him and Nayyan. There were no two ways about it. It was only a matter of time before the black mould saw them dead. He doubted even Azad’s fabled draughts, assuming any still existed, could save them now.
At the mainmast, Nayyan noticed Ihsan’s stare. She looked as if she were ready to say something, then let her gaze drift back to the way ahead.
“We’ll stop Meryam,” she’d said that morning. “We’ll stop her, and we’ll save Sharakhai. We’ll leave our daughter a desert that is whole, not fractured by the gods.”
Nayyan seemed to be clinging to that notion like a rock in a storm-wracked sea. Though she didn’t realize it, Ihsan was clinging to the very same rock. The game that had begun on Beht Ihman four centuries earlier was tilted in the gods’ favor, but there were moves yet to make, and if anything had been proven over the past several years, i
t was that the gods were not infallible. They’d stumbled more than once. It was up to Ihsan and Nayyan to make sure they stumbled again.
As the Miscreant sidled along the lee of a dune, the uneasy feeling in Ihsan’s gut intensified. It felt like someone had poked a meat hook through his belly and was rooting around, trying to snag his innards.
“My Lord King?”
The summons had come from Yndris, who had a spyglass pressed to one eye. She held the glass out for Ihsan to take, but he could already see what was worrying her. Two points off the starboard bow, a dark cloud billowed along the horizon. When he peered down the spyglass’s length, he saw it wasn’t formed of sand and dust, but individual shapes, winged forms.
“Demons,” he breathed. “Hundreds of them, thousands.” They swirled in a gyre like a colony of bats.
Ibrahim snapped the Blue Journal closed and stood. Using a ratline to steady himself, he squinted into the distance. “Queen Meryam’s found the Hollow then?”
“Meryam is a queen no longer,” Ihsan replied, “but yes, she surely has. We may have arrived in time, though. She may not have used Goezhen’s body to—” His words trailed away, for just then the cloud erupted like a geyser. “By the great beyond . . .”
Nayyan gave Ransaneh over to her wet nurse, then took the spyglass from Ihsan. “Bloody gods,” she breathed a moment later.
As the Miscreant eased over another dune, the entire crew stared, mouths agape. The column lifted higher and higher into the clear blue sky, a murmuration of inconceivable scale complete with an attenuated sound, a screeching, a wailing that pierced the air, intensifying the already ill feeling in Ihsan’s gut.
After long minutes, the column began to settle and the demons were lost from view.
No one moved. No one said a word. It felt as if to do so would rile the demons anew.
“What are the chances,” Ihsan ventured, “that they’ve all gone back into their hole?”
Nayyan looked unamused. “She’s done it, then. She’s found Ashael.”
“It appears so, but finding a lost god and controlling him are two different things.”
“Did the journals say anything about this?” She motioned to where the demons had risen. “A fount of some sort? A column of darkness? Smoke rising from a pit?”
“Nothing that I can recall.”
A silence passed, broken by a question from Ibrahim that echoed Ihsan’s own thoughts. “What will she do now that she’s raised him?”
Ihsan shrugged. “I imagine she’ll march on Sharakhai. But she’s entering a bargain with an elder. It may take days, weeks to get what she wants from him.”
No sooner had he said the words than Yndris called again from the gunwales, “It will take neither weeks nor days, it seems.”
The cloud had picked up again. It was no great column in the sky now, but a simmering shadow along the horizon. Part of the cloud was breaking away, and was heading toward the Miscreant at great speed.
“Draw in the sails!” Inevra called. “Anchor the ship!”
They crew worked smartly, and then filed down the stairs belowdecks. “Batten down the hatches!” Inevra bellowed. “Prepare for battle!”
The hold plummeted into shadow as they secured all hatches, doors, and shutters. They prepared weapons—swords and shields, bows and arrows, which the Maidens and soldiers aboard could use through the arrow slits built into the hull.
They watched the skies through those same slits as the demons approached. Some were small as cats while others were large as mastiffs. Some few were taller than men. These bore crude black iron weapons. Tridents. Spears. Bent swords with dull blades that could nevertheless kill a man if swung with enough force. Their eyes were wild with glee. Their mouths were split wide, revealing rows of needle-like teeth.
The sound of flapping wings rose up, grew louder. Ransaneh began to cry. Then the demons arrived.
They threw themselves against the ship. They crashed against the hull, creating dull, pounding thuds that sounded like a tumult of Kundhuni war drums. The demons with spears and tridents attempted to stave in the arrow slits, to widen them, to give the lesser demons greater purchase. And indeed, as the wooden planks gave way beneath the repeated blows, long black claws reached in. They tore at the hull. Bit by bit the openings widened, and more demons rammed the hatches. Ihsan saw them fly high into the air, then streak down to throw their weight against the doors.
The sound was deafening. The demons’ high-pitched screams blended into a maddening dissonance. Ihsan could hardly think from the sheer intensity of it. And the longer it went on, the more fear spiraled within him.
“Begone!” he yelled at those near the arrow slit he was manning. “Leave this ship unspoiled!”
He poured all the power he could manage into his words. The searing pain along his tongue, throat, and the roof of his mouth was proof that his power was flowing, but the commands had no effect.
The crew loosed arrows. They stabbed through the openings with sword and spear. The demons were not invulnerable. Some fell, their flesh cut deeply, black blood flowing from their wounds. But when one dropped, there were always more to take its place.
From the top of the stairs at the aft end of the battle deck came a hard thud. Light streamed down and soldiers screamed.
“To me!” came Yndris’s rally cry.
A dozen soldiers and crewmen rallied to her position at the base of the stairs, ready as demons gushed in.
Behind Ihsan, across the open deck, one of the openings was now large enough that smaller demons were slipping through. Light flooded the ship’s interior as a spindly demon ripped several hull boards away. The sound of them, their screams, became deafening.
A great roar came from Ihsan’s left. Captain Inevra rushed forward, holding an overturned table. Her burly cuss of a first mate was there with her. Together, they rammed the table against the opening. Other crewmen were close behind with hammers and nails at the ready. They pounded the nails quickly and efficiently, securing the table against the hull. It was a temporary measure at best, but it seemed to have worked—the pounding against the table ceased, and the demons swarmed to the other exposed arrow slits.
The rest of the crew focused on demons that had squirmed their way through the opening. One soldier was lost when a demon tore a great hunk of flesh from his neck. A Maiden fell screaming when another sliced her leg at the back of one ankle. A small demon with two sets of wings writhed in the air around Ihsan. Ignoring the pain in his ribs, Ihsan drew his fighting knife and swung for it. The demon avoided him with sinuous ease, and when he advanced and struck wildly, it slid past him and fell upon Ransaneh’s wet nurse.
“No!” he shouted and dove forward. Heedless of the demon’s claws, he ripped it from the wet nurse’s neck before it had a chance to sink its teeth into her, then he slammed it down on the deck and stabbed its writhing form over and over.
By the time he was done, the flesh along his forearm and wrist was a shambles. Bloody furrows ran deep, some cutting into muscle, but at least the thing was dead. The others had dispatched the remaining demons, at the cost of three more soldiers.
Forward, the sounds of struggle had faded. Yndris seemed to have stemmed the tide for now.
“We can’t go on like this,” Nayyan said.
Ibrahim was nearby. He was staring at the arrow slits, the expression on his face an odd mixture of fear and calculation. “I need silver.”
Ihsan stared at him. “What?”
“There’s no time to explain. Bring me all the silver coins you can find.”
Ihsan didn’t know what he was on about, but he was aware there was a special connection between demonkind and silver. “The coffer,” he said to Captain Inevra. “Bring it.”
As the fighting continued, she rushed with her first mate toward the armory at the fore of the ship. They returned a short whi
le later carrying a heavy chest between them. Inevra unlocked it and threw the lid back to reveal several leather bags. Ihsan pulled one out. It jingled as he set it hard onto the deck. After tugging the mouth open to reveal a not-inconsiderable sum of silver coins, he looked to Ibrahim. “Your silver.”
Ibrahim nodded and scooped up a handful. “Help me. Everyone aboard takes one coin. They wish upon it, then hand it back. Quickly now.”
“Wish for what?” Ihsan asked.
“No one can be guided in this. They’ll wish for what they may, though I rather think many will wish for salvation.”
As the battle waged on, Ihsan and Nayyan did as he asked. The three of them moved from soldier to soldier, crewman to crewman. Ibrahim insisted that the wounded were included. Anyone who was conscious took a coin, closed their eyes, and made a wish. After kissing it, the coins were collected. Nayyan, Ihsan, and Ibrahim were the last to complete the ritual. They had thirty-three in the end.
The distraction of performing the ritual with the coins threw their defense into disarray. The hatch at the top of the stairs, hastily repaired, was sundered completely. More boards near the aft end of the deck gave way. The screams of the demons came louder. It made it nearly impossible to think of anything but fighting to the death or fleeing.
Ibrahim cupped the coins in his hands. “Now help me!” he cried as he rushed aft.
Ihsan didn’t argue. Nor did Nayyan. They, along with the captain, her first mate, Yndris, and the remaining Blade Maidens, slashed their way past the demons.
Ibrahim, gripping the coins tightly, motioned to the large ramp, the one that could be lowered to the sand to lade and unlade cargo. “Open it!” he cried over the sounds of battle.
“That will let all of them in!”
Ibrahim took in the carnage around them. “They’re already in.”
Swallowing hard, Ihsan nodded. He lifted one of the two levers that would lower the ramp while Nayyan worked the other. The ramp dropped with a thud. The sound of flapping, of demons screaming, came louder.
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