The god’s piercing gaze passed over the village square where Ramahd hid, then focused on a nearby well. It shifted to a statue of Raamajit, the god clearly alert for something. Then, Alu be praised, Ashael moved on.
Ramahd followed him toward the blue waters of the harbor, where scores of ships were moored. He was aware enough to know that the harbor was Mazandir’s, not some port city of old, and that the ships were King Hektor’s. If Ashael reached them, Hektor and his entire fleet would be taken. Ramahd had mere moments in which to act, but he didn’t know what to do.
Outside the dream, he was vaguely aware how close his own ship, Alu’s Crown, was to the fleet—they’d rounded Mazandir’s southwestern edge and were heading toward it fast. Ashael and his horde had already swept through half the caravanserai.
Find her, Ramahd told himself, reveal her to Ashael.
He sunk back into the dream, saw Ashael approaching the ships in the seaside harbor. Their crews fought the elder god. There were some among them who wielded magic, but what were they to him? He was an elder, and what the elders had given to mortal kind could be taken away.
In the real world, demons flew ahead of the host and fell upon King Hektor’s fleet. Time was running out.
In the dream, Ramahd searched for signs of Meryam—any sign at all. Finding none, he grew desperate. The sounds of terror filled the desert sky and the seaside city, both. The battle had hardly begun and he’d already failed.
As small, winged demons, ifins, attacked the Qaimiri crews, it struck Ramahd. He’d been trying to pierce the veil of dreams Meryam had created, but he was a part of that dream. And dreams could be altered.
He needed to take control. To take the fight to Meryam.
He imagined the harbor was smaller than it had seemed. He visualized it with fewer piers, fewer ships, fewer soldiers on the decks . . .
. . . and it worked. Some of the demons that had flown toward the farther reaches of the Qaimiri fleet winged over and began concentrating on other ships, leaving the farthest reaches of the fleet alone. Ramahd reduced the numbers again and, lo and behold, the demons concentrated on the ship nearest to Mazandir.
No sooner had he managed that small victory than the vision altered again. Ships wavered into existence, sailed in from the sea to join the battle. Sunlight glinted off Ashael’s golden armband and cuff as he waved a hand toward the farthest ships, and a flight of winged demons headed toward them. And just like that, Ramahd’s gains were erased.
Meryam had sensed his meddling, he realized. He could feel her anger burning like a brand in the fog. It was fitful at first but grew stronger, as if she were searching for him. He’d found her signature at last.
And if I can sense you, Ramahd thought, so can Ashael.
Drawing on the dozens of times they’d been linked to one another, he listened for her heartbeat. He felt for the panic that swept over her when she felt like the walls were closing in.
Moments later, he had her. She stood on the wooden docks among hundreds of demons, only paces behind Ashael.
He focused on her, noting everything about her. Her frail limbs, her bony cheeks, the wicked gleam in her sunken eyes. As he did, the elder god slowed, then halted. He turned and stared down at Meryam. Around him, the demons flew into the sky, forming chaotic patterns.
By then, Alu’s Crown was sailing through the harbor alongside the Qaimiri fleet. Cicio, bless him, had set a course that would bring them close to King Hektor’s capital ship. Ramahd saw Hektor on the foredeck holding a sword. He stood wild-eyed, breathing hard, his face slick with black blood.
Basilio was just stepping onto the maindeck from the aftcastle. He took in the carnage with a stunned look. Qaimiri and demons alike lay dead across the deck. Then he spotted Ramahd, his eyes filled with confusion and wariness, as if Ramahd were somehow to blame for what was happening.
“Follow us, my king!” Ramahd shouted across the gap.
Basilio ran toward Hektor while waving his arms. “Your Highness, we must go home!”
“No!” Ramahd called. “Sharakhai needs us. We must sail north!”
Basilio said something too soft to hear. Moments later, Hektor, to Ramahd’s complete horror, nodded. “We sail south, Lord Amansir! You will follow us.”
“Your Highness, I beg you not to do this! King Ihsan is waiting for us with reinforcements.”
Ramahd had said it to lend hope, but it was clearly a misstep. The mention of a Sharakhani King only seemed to harden Hektor to the benighted city. Horns were sounded, the king’s orders being passed. Some ships moved to obey. Others did not. Ramahd saw why a moment later. The crews on the ships closest to Mazandir stood like statues. Around their heads, ifins were wrapped, their twin sets of wings flapping lazily. The demons’ mouths were clamped to the backs of crewmen’s necks, pacifying them, enslaving them.
Twenty ships had soon set sail, headed south for Qaimir. As their fleet slid over the sand, Alu’s Crown included, Ramahd stood on the aftcastle and faced the docks.
He could no longer see Meryam. She was lost in the cloud of demons, which had gathered tightly around Ashael. The god, meanwhile, stared down, unmoving.
Ramahd tried to reenter the dream, but the moment he did his mind was flooded with so much chaos he was forced to retreat. As the ships curved around a cluster of red rocks to the south of Mazandir, the cloud of demons tightened further. It was so dense even Ashael was lost among them.
And then the harbor was lost from view, and they were sailing hard, away from Sharakhai.
Chapter 33
A woman once known as Varal sat beneath a dying acacia. The tree stood in a garden that had once been lush. She remembered tending to the tree and to the garden itself. She remembered planting the valerian, the Sweet Anna, the veronica. She remembered planting the oleander bushes that had attracted so many songbirds—reed warblers, finches, saddlebacks, even the occasional amberlark. Now the garden was dead. The birds were gone. Only the acacia remained with its chimes: from the branches she’d hung hundreds upon hundreds of crystals using thread-of-gold that they might grant her visions.
Varal remembered all of this, and yet it felt foreign. She knew who those memories truly belonged to. When she was a young girl growing up in Sharakhai, she’d heard of Saliah the desert witch who lived far from the city with a lone acacia. She’d heard stories of how Saliah lured young men and women to the desert and devoured their souls. She’d had no idea at the time that Saliah was actually Nalamae. Even Saliah herself hadn’t known who she really was. Like Varal, when she’d worked for the Kings of Sharakhai as a shipwright, Saliah had thought herself her own woman. But then one day Nalamae’s presence had swept into her and everything changed.
Varal still remembered her husband, whom she’d married young. She remembered her five children, three of whom had died before their time. She remembered every ship she’d ever designed, every curve and edge of the twenty-seven ships she’d built for the Kings of Sharakhai. She remembered her hopes and dreams, all of them taken from her by the river goddess reborn.
“I want it back,” she said to the hot desert air.
The tree didn’t answer. Nor did the desert. She went to the well and drew a bucket of water. She poured it around the base of the tree. She refilled it three more times and repeated the ritual. It never helped. She was certain the tree wouldn’t survive the coming days.
As the thirsty ground drank the offered water, she sat in the shade beneath the tree’s broad branches. She couldn’t see beyond the stone walls, but she felt deeply connected to the desert. She remembered using a gnarled wooden staff to summon visions from the chimes. But the staff was gone, burned in the mountains to the east. Now she used her sister’s adamantine spear.
“Not my sister,” Varal said softly, “Nalamae’s sister.”
Your sister, countered Nalamae within her mind.
Varal shr
ugged and stabbed the spear’s tip into the runnels of the acacia’s rough bark. She knew she shouldn’t resist Nalamae—doing so only seemed to dull her divine powers—but she couldn’t help it. She’d always been stubborn. And besides, Nalamae had been running from her brothers and sisters for centuries. Perhaps what the goddess needed was a bit more stubbornness, an irascible will to take the battle to them.
If you truly believe that, Nalamae said, then why are you still here?
Varal looked up at the chimes, which were beginning to sound. “Because I don’t know what else to do.”
There were so many possibilities. So many ways the future might unfold.
Now you see the real issue, Nalamae said with sisterly affection. It was never the will, but the way.
“Be quiet,” Varal said. “I’m trying to concentrate.”
The chimes glinted in the sun. The sound they made was easy on the ears, but disturbing all the same. They gave the barest hint to the chaos playing out beyond the garden’s rough stone walls.
Through the chimes she caught glimpses of the desert’s past, glimpses of its future, glimpses of events that were unfolding at that very moment. She sifted through the visions, searching for the ones her sibling gods hoped would come to pass, then for ways to prevent them.
She saw a thousand pasts hurtling toward the future. She followed their trajectories, saw them twist and bend as other threads cut across them. She heard many voices. She saw children being born, armies being sundered. Again and again, she saw a city burning, then crumbling to dust.
“No!” Varal shouted, and gripped her spear tight.
So many paths led to that dark future, which the other gods had hoped for and counted on from the moment they made their pact with the Sharakhani Kings. But she refused to let it happen.
How to stop it, though? That was the question. She might kill Bakhi or Thaash. She might murder Tulathan or Rhia. She might rid the world of them all or bind them to this earth, and still the gate might open, destroying Sharakhai and its people, her children.
My children, Varal thought.
She’d had five, hadn’t she? Her memories of them were beginning to fade as other memories rushed in. The memories of the generations of people she’d given aid to. People she’d broken bread with, those she’d sung with around countless fires. The elder gods may have created the desert, but Nalamae had made it her own. She’d sheltered it from the foreign gods who coveted it. She’d fought her brothers and sisters for centuries to protect it.
Now all her work was about to be undone.
Gripping the haft of her spear tightly, she stabbed the tree again, and this time she saw something new. She was at the edge of a golden city by the sea. She stood on the docks. Ships were arrayed before her and a battle raged. Massive ravens with knife-like talons swooped toward the soldiers aboard the ships. Yet more attacked the people from the city who’d run to help them. They fought in vain, for the ravens were driven by the hand of an elder.
Ashael, tall and terrible to behold.
Then Ashael saw her. He hove closer, wondering who she was, how she’d come to be there. Was she another of the elders in disguise? Or one of the fates themselves?
In that moment, she feared for her life as never before. She’d come so far. Nearly all she’d ever wanted was hers. She need only control the one before her, the one who dreamed—
She blinked and found herself standing on the outskirts of a caravanserai. Sandships lay in the harbor, besieged by a host of demons. More and more of the demons were inexplicably giving up the fight. They flew up into the air, twisted in wild patterns, converging around the elder god and around her. Closer and closer they came, the cloud tightening, becoming denser, occluding the sky above.
As Ashael loomed over her and his glinting eyes stared into her soul, she knew.
She knew what she had to do.
The vision of Mazandir faded. The cacophony of flapping wings and screaming demons did as well. They were replaced with a kaleidoscope of chimes, a soft tinkling sound, and the soughing of the wind through branches all but bereft of their tiny green leaves.
Nalamae blinked. Took in a deep, cleansing breath and stood. The woman in her vision had been Queen Meryam. At last, the tree had shown her the path that was likeliest. It had shown her the part she, Nalamae, would play.
It wouldn’t be easy, and the price would be dear. If all went as she predicted, she would never see her children again.
“So be it,” she said to the dry desert air.
Spear in hand, she turned into a column of sand, which collapsed, coughing outward.
Then all was still in the garden once more.
Chapter 34
Ihsan stood at the mouth of the Hollow, watching Lord Amansir’s clipper sail away. “May Alu grant you favor.”
Behind him, Nayyan approached holding Ransaneh. “If you truly wished them well, you should have convinced him to join us.”
Ihsan shrugged. “He goes to save his people.”
“I understand, but if Meryam truly has set her sights on Mazandir”—she stopped several paces away and began bouncing Ransaneh on one hip—“he’s likely just consigned himself and his crew to death.”
“Don’t sell Lord Amansir short. He’s weathered much when it comes to Meryam.” The clipper was but a wavering smudge along the horizon. “Besides, if things are truly so hopeless, you could say the same about us.”
Nayyan, holding Ransaneh tight to her chest, made no reply. Her eyes were red. Not from emotion, he suddenly realized, but the physical pain of the black mould, eating away at her. Nayyan didn’t like his calling attention to it, but Ihsan still found his gaze drifting down toward her belly. Almost subconsciously, he tongued the hard spots inside his mouth. He still hadn’t told Nayyan about his own illness. It wasn’t yet visible to the passing glance, but it wouldn’t be long before it was.
“Is it bad?” he asked her.
“Yes.” She swallowed hard. “But it’ll pass.”
It was a testament to Nayyan’s distress that she allowed Ihsan to take Ransaneh. She stared at their daughter afterward with a forlorn expression.
“Go and rest,” Ihsan said. “Ransaneh and I will go for a walk.”
The wind tugged at the tail of Nayyan’s violet turban. “I feel so useless lying in the ship.”
“I know you hope to see Sharakhai liberated before you die”—he stared down at Ransaneh’s round face—“but you can’t do that if you’re weakened when your strength is called upon.”
Still she paused, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. “I really did think we’d live forever, Ihsan.”
Ihsan smiled, but it was a feeble, fleeting thing. “So did I.”
“Promise me you’ll protect her.”
The words made Ihsan feel horrible for hiding his sickness from her. He nearly confessed it right then and there, but the way she was looking at him, as if he were her only hope, convinced him to remain silent. Soon, he vowed, when the time is right. “Of course I’ll protect her,” he said.
She leaned in and kissed Ransaneh’s head, gave Ihsan a longer kiss on the lips, then headed for the Miscreant.
For a time, Ihsan was lost in guilt, but he’d never been one to stew in his own misery. He preferred to be active, mentally if not physically. If the fates have decided our days are numbered, so be it. He rubbed Ransaneh’s back. See Sharakhai safe. Make that your focus.
As he walked away from the Hollow with Ransaneh, his thoughts wandered to Meryam. He knew the former queen had long coveted Sharakhai. He hadn’t realized the lengths she’d be willing to go in order to get it. She’d cast all caution aside, which made him wonder whether she was thinking about anything beyond the conquest itself. With Ashael by her side, there was little doubt she could conquer the city. She could conquer the desert as well. She could retake Qaimir, then mov
e on to the other three kingdoms bordering the Great Mother.
What then? Did she imagine she could set Ashael aside like some unwanted artifact from the days of the world’s making? Perhaps. She’d have all the power she’d need to retain hold of her burgeoning empire. And none would dare stand against her, knowing she could call upon Ashael again if needed.
“And what of the abandoned god himself?” Ihsan mused.
As Ransaneh took a sudden, halting breath and released it in a sigh, Ihsan stared south, toward Mazandir.
If he and Ramahd were right about Meryam—that she was controlling Ashael through his dreams—she’d likely try to return him to the Hollow. He’d lain there for an age already. Who was to say he wouldn’t lay for another when Meryam no longer had use for him?
It was a brilliant, if very dangerous, plan, but it neglected one thing: the young gods and their plans. Meryam might think she could use Ashael’s power against them if needed, but she didn’t understand them as Ihsan did. She didn’t realize how far they saw, how subtly they tugged on the threads of fate. If they’d given her the power to raise Ashael, it was because her doing so was a crucial move in the game they played.
So did they want Ashael to awaken or not? And if they did want him to awaken, what would Ashael’s first move be?
His first thought was to return to Yusam’s journals, but they contained little to nothing about Ashael. He’d taken the journals as far as he could. There was another possibility, though it had its dangers as well. But he’d been playing the game with a handicap long enough. It was time he had a word with his opponents.
Late that night, after Nayyan and Ransaneh had fallen asleep, Ihsan dressed and crept quietly from the cabin. He waved to the pair of guards on deck—men well used to his peculiar nighttime routines—and made his way to the standing stones. Above, Rhia shone brightly, casting her soft golden light across the desert.
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