A Desert Torn Asunder

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Over the next hour, the Alliance fleet and the royal navy rushed to collect their wounded and make ready to set sail. The shaikhs gathered in the Amaranth’s hold. The shutters were opened to let in light. Barrels of food and water, and crates of fire pots and cat’s claws, were stacked along the hulls, leaving only a cramped space in which to hold council.

  Calls from other ships could be heard through the hull. Horns sounded. Men and women barked orders. Others wailed in pain. True to his word, Ihsan reached the Amaranth with Nayyan and Husamettín in tow. Yndris and her hand of Blade Maidens joined them. And in a strange twist of fate, Ibrahim the storyteller was with them.

  Çeda went to him immediately and embraced him. “By the Great Mother, how did you wind up here?”

  “That, dear girl,” he said in a low voice, “is a story for another day.”

  As the Amaranth lurched into motion, Husamettín broke the relative silence. “Who speaks for the desert?”

  “I do,” Çeda said. The others had agreed that her history with the Kings positioned her best to lead the discussions.

  She returned to her place beside Emre. To either side of them were the other twelve shaikhs. Behind them, Frail Lemi, Kameyl, Sümeya, and a dozen other vizirs and advisors stood in ranks.

  “Sharakhai is grateful for your help,” Husamettín began, “but a greater task lies before us.” He focused his attention on Çeda and Çeda alone, as if expressing gratitude to the entirety of the Alliance was beyond him. “Meryam of Qaimir moves quickly toward our fleets. She hopes to take us, then move on to the city. I ask that you cede authority to us until—”

  His next words were lost as the entire assemblage of shaikhs began to shout. Arms flew in the air, some with fists clenched. They might have agreed to let Çeda speak for them, but ceding authority to the Kings, Husamettín especially, was asking too much. Çeda and Emre tried to calm them, but their words were drowned out.

  Suddenly Ihsan stood in the center of the hold, hands raised, his palms facing the shaikhs in the Kadri sign of peace. “Please, my good shaikhs!”

  Slowly, the shouting quelled.

  “Let’s have no talk of ceding authority,” Ihsan went on. “Let us agree instead that we offer council, with the best interests of the desert in mind, a starting point for negotiations.”

  It was an interesting ploy. He hadn’t asked Husamettín’s permission, and now that the offer had been made, Husamettín couldn’t easily retract it without making himself look the fool.

  “Can we just get on with it?” Nayyan said. Her brow was furrowed and her expression pinched. She didn’t look wounded, but she seemed to be in a good deal of pain.

  Ihsan looked to Çeda, waiting for her assent.

  He had changed so much in the past few years, Çeda genuinely believed he wanted a partnership with the desert tribes, at least until the war was decided, which was about as far ahead as any of them could see anyway.

  She nodded, urging him to continue, and Ihsan went on to tell them how Meryam had raised Ashael. How she used powdered horn to manipulate him through his dreams, and how Ramahd had sailed to Mazandir to try to use the same black powder against her.

  “Well, he’s surely failed.” Emre waved vaguely aft. “Meryam is still coming for the city.”

  “True,” Ihsan said, “but I cannot say what became of Lord Amansir.”

  “We have a battle to prepare for,” Çeda said, “and you have a plan, so let’s hear it.”

  It was Ibrahim who responded. “We use ivory,” the gray-bearded storyteller said.

  “Ivory?” Çeda asked.

  Ibrahim looked to Ihsan, who nodded. “Meryam relies on powder from Goezhen’s horn to keep Ashael in a dreaming state. In this way, she controls him. But the Al’Ambra speaks of a second powder: ivory, the key to the wakeful mind. If we cannot wrest control of Ashael from her, our best option is to awaken him from his dream.”

  A rumble of confused, worried conversation suffused the hold.

  “Can it be done?” Çeda asked Ihsan.

  “I believe so.”

  “And what if we do wake him?”

  Ihsan smiled wryly. “I rather think he’ll be angry with the woman who manipulated him.”

  “Maybe,” Çeda said, “or he could destroy everything in sight. We can’t predict what Ashael’s reaction might be.”

  “Granted, but the alternative is allowing Meryam to continue unchecked.”

  An uncomfortable silence followed. Çeda tried to weigh the odds, but how could she? She hardly knew the first thing about Ashael. “It’s dangerous, Ihsan.”

  “Very. But we have no other way to stop him. And at the moment, events are following the young gods’ plan to the letter.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I spoke to Rhia, who all but sanctioned Meryam’s actions. Tulathan gave Goezhen to her, along with clues, no doubt, on how to use his horn to control a dreaming god. They want Meryam to succeed. They believe her actions will lead to the gateway being opened. That’s reason enough to stop her. If that means waking Ashael, then so be it.”

  Çeda’s first instinct was to disagree. The plan felt foolish in the extreme. But the sour feeling in her gut was still growing. If they didn’t find some way to stop Ashael, all would be lost. “Assuming the desert agrees, what would you need?”

  “Ivory of any sort,” Ihsan said. “Jewelry, statues, carvings. Anything that can be filed down to a powder. As much as we can find.”

  “And in the meantime?” Çeda asked.

  It was Husamettín who replied. “Our options are to flee into the desert or sail for Sharakhai in hopes that Alansal will open King’s Harbor to us.”

  “We cannot flee,” Ihsan said adamantly. “The events of this next day will decide Sharakhai’s fate.”

  “And do you suppose,” Çeda said, “that after the battle we just fought, Queen Alansal will simply welcome us into Sharakhai?”

  “There’s no way of knowing,” Ihsan replied, “which is why we’ve sent envoys ahead, one to her fleet, another to the city, both requesting that she do exactly that.”

  “Do you think she’ll agree?”

  Ihsan shrugged. “No, but the effort must be made.”

  “And if she refuses?” Çeda asked.

  “Then we fight our way into the city,” Husamettín said.

  The rumble of conversation resumed, louder than before, but Çeda didn’t join in. The ever-present ache in her right hand had suddenly deepened. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

  “Quiet!” she shouted. “Be quiet!”

  “What is it?” Ihsan asked.

  Before she could reply, a heavy thud sounded on the deck above them. Then came a cry of surprise and pain, followed by a voice raised in alarm.

  “To arms! To arms!”

  Chapter 41

  Çeda sprinted up the stairs to Amaranth’s maindeck to find a winged demon with its arms around the ship’s helmsman, an aging woman with freckles and kinky red hair. She was swiping at the demon with a knife as it flapped its wings and lifted her off the deck. She screamed as the demon clawed her wrist, and her knife went spinning beyond the gunwales.

  Something dark loomed to Çeda’s right. She would have sworn the skies had been clear only moments ago, but another demon was attacking the leader of the Shieldwives, Jenise. Çeda ran toward her, but the demon was too fast. With a mighty beat of its wings, it launched itself over the side of the ship. Jenise twisted and squirmed in its grip, fighting to free herself, to no avail. The demon was too strong, its grip too sure.

  Many had bows to hand and were sighting along arrows, the strings drawn, but none let fly. They were as likely to hit Jenise as they were the demons.

  “Give me that,” Emre said.

  He took a bow from one of the warriors, drew, and released the arrow in a motion
that made it look easy. It caught the demon holding Jenise in the neck. It gave a high-pitched wail and flailed, clawing at the arrow and releasing Jenise. As she fell to the sand with a hard thump, three of her fellow Shieldwives jumped overboard and ran toward her. The demon, meanwhile, twisted through the air, crashed against a dune, and lay still.

  The demon holding the helmsman flapped away, screeching as it went, weaving wildly to avoid the arrows that were finally streaking toward it.

  All across the fleet, demons appeared out of thin air. Several winked into existence over the Bastion and began attacking the company of Silver Spears on the foredeck. Two more with curving tusks jutting from their bat-like snouts materialized several ships over. One attacked the ship’s helmsman while the other fell on the ketch’s mainsail and began tearing at the canvas.

  Çeda’s heart pounded. Her first instinct was to draw her shamshir and join the fight, but what good would that do? The demons were being concealed, the spell lifting only when they attacked. If they didn’t find a way to combat it, the fleet would be decimated. At the very least these attacks would slow their fleet down, allowing the approaching horde to overtake them.

  Çeda took a deep, calming breath and balled her right hand into a fist. She pumped it over and over to heighten the pain and, with it, her sense of the desert. Casting her awareness over the desert before her, she felt for the hidden demons. She sensed one flying toward the Amaranth. Another hovered above the Red Bride. More were distant, closing with every moment. An arcane veil concealed them.

  As more demons appeared and attacked, Çeda raised her hand, squeezed it as if she were gripping the edge of a sheet, and yanked down sharply.

  In a blink, a hundred demons appeared all across their fleet. A great shout rose up from the crews and warriors alike. But, though they were surprised, they were no raw recruits. Nearly all were battle-hardened. Arrows flew, filling the sky like dragonflies along the Haddah in spring. Spears were set against the approaching demons. Swords and shields were raised when they swooped too close. On the Bastion, a Blade Maiden snapped a whip toward one demon headed toward the rigging, caught it around the neck, and yanked down. Where it fell to the deck, a dozen soldiers in white tabards stood ready. They stabbed it with their spears, killing it in moments.

  Demon after demon fell to the assault but, breath of the desert, it wasn’t enough. Some of the demons were utter terrors. Dozens of soldiers perished. Worse, ship after ship was coming to a sliding halt as sails and rigging were torn.

  And all the while the horde itself was catching up.

  Ashael could be seen clearly now, towering above a host of six-armed demons that skittered over the sand like scarabs. Countless thousands crawled around them, seemingly tireless. And behind the horde came a fleet of Qaimiri ships.

  “It’s Meryam,” Çeda said to Sümeya, who had just felled an attacking demon. “She must have taken King Hektor’s fleet in Mazandir, as we feared.”

  Orders were called to bring the Bastion and Amaranth closer, and Husamettín, Ihsan, Nayyan, and their entourage returned to their capital ship. They’d just swung over when a cloud of small demons descended on them. They were ifins—small, eyeless demons with two sets of wings. Many of them were felled with sword and spear. Others were struck through with arrows. They plummeted to the decks or the sand and flopped about like fish in the bottom of a boat.

  But there were so many of them. And when one managed to slip by a warrior’s defenses, the demon would wrap its wings around their head. Some were torn free. Others clamped their circular mouths filled with needle-like teeth onto their victims’ necks. Immediately, whoever they’d bitten would go still. Moments later the demons threw themselves against any who stood around them. Their movements were wooden but effective, for the simple reason that no one wanted to fight them.

  The soldiers and crew mates all across the fleet soon realized their mistake and fought back in non-lethal ways—grappling, tripping, or throwing nets over their compatriots. But that created another problem: with fewer soldiers left to fight the ifin, more and more of the small demons were finding victims to latch onto.

  Emre released arrow after arrow, taking an ifin with nearly every shot. Others on nearby ships did the same. Çeda hoped she might use the power of the desert to force them away, but she was weakened after the earlier battle and from banishing the demons’ spell of hiding.

  Instead, she drew River’s Daughter and slashed at the incoming ifin. Frail Lemi manage to bash one, but another dropped onto his head with a slap from behind. He went still a moment later, his brown eyes going impossibly wide as the ifin’s wings hugged his head. Kameyl ran to him, tried to pull the ifin off, but the next moment another one caught her from behind.

  Emre had an arrow aimed at them, but held his shot. The risk of harming either of them was too great. “Get off them!” he shouted in fear and frustration. “Get off them!”

  As a frenetic battle took place on the quarterdeck against several larger demons. Sümeya ran forward and threw a cargo net over Kameyl.

  Emre dropped his bow and sprinted for Frail Lemi.

  “Emre, stop!” Çeda called.

  But Emre didn’t. He slammed into his towering friend. While Emre’s momentum was halted, Frail Lemi went staggering backward. He swung his arms wildly and fell into the open hatchway. A moment later there was a heavy thud, and Frail Lemi groaned.

  Çeda had just turned back toward the Bastion when something struck her helm. She heard the sound of flapping, felt the ifin’s leathery wings slapping the metal. She was fortunate she had the wolf pelt trailing down her neck to her back. Even so, she could feel the ifin’s head and neck slither beneath it. She felt the burning pain of scrapes and cuts as its needle-like teeth fought for purchase.

  Shal’alara was suddenly there. She gripped the ifin with one hand and tore it free, but the demon immediately clamped its teeth onto her forearm. Gritting her teeth against the pain, Shal’alara swept her shamshir through its neck.

  The head was severed, but the mouth remained tightly clamped and it took a fierce tug for Shal’alara to free it. Even then, a hunk of flesh went with it and the wound started bleeding freely.

  Everywhere Çeda looked it was chaos. The winged demons had been slicing through more and more rigging. Sails were starting to fall, useless now, and the Amaranth was slowing as more of the crew were falling victim to the ifins. The Bastion was similarly under siege. Indeed, it was slowing to a crawl, its sails all but useless. Only a few on the quarterdeck, including Ihsan, Nayyan, and Husamettín, were still free and fighting. The rest of the crew had all been taken.

  All across their combined fleet were similar scenes—ship after ship succumbing to the attack as Ashael loomed. The horde’s forward line pulled even with the trailing ships. Some still had crews aboard. Others had fled across the sand. Both were overrun by larger demons, torn limb from limb, feasted upon. The sound of it was horrific.

  “What do we do?” Emre asked, his voice strained.

  “I don’t know,” Çeda said.

  How could they hope to stand against an elder? They couldn’t. It had always been folly, she realized.

  As the horde nipped at the Bastion’s heels, a light came streaking down from the sky. Like a comet it fell toward the dunes and struck along the leading edge of the vast horde. A great plume of sand lifted into the air and black demon bodies were thrown wide of the impact.

  As sand rained down and the dust cleared, a woman stood alone in the crater. She looked small compared to the demons, and minuscule compared to the approaching elder god. She looked potent nonetheless.

  Çeda’s heart lifted. It was Nalamae.

  She held her spear against the coming horde. The demons on the sand scrabbled toward her like insects. Those in the sky descended. Some, bearing tridents, threw them down at her, shrieking as they went.

  Nalamae swung her s
pear over her head in a circle, once, twice, thrice, and the sand lifted in a vast arc around her, more with each swing. On the third, it sprayed outward, flaying the demons’ skin and flinging them wide.

  The bulk of the horde, meanwhile, parted, creating a corridor between Ashael and Nalamae. Ashael floated along it. The tattered shendyt gathered around his waist fluttered in the wind. Small demons flew around the broad sweep of his horns. A spike of ebon steel transfixed his chest, the wound around it dark and crusted with blood. His eyes were bandaged, and yet his gaze was clearly fixed on the goddess before him. As her spell of biting sand rushed toward him, he lifted one hand. Like a pillar of rock standing alone against a storm-wracked sea, the sand and rock splashed against some unseen barrier. He drove his palm toward Nalamae, and the same sort of wave rushed toward her.

  The wave sent her flying backward. As she rose again, a whip made of fire appeared in Ashael’s hand and he lashed it at Nalamae. Though Nalamae blocked it with a swipe of her spear, a sound like thunder and a fan of flames were released from the point of impact.

  Nalamae retreated toward the Bastion as Ashael sent lash after lash against her defenses. Flames exploded with each one and burned brightly against her armor. Some splashed over an abandoned sloop, setting it ablaze. She struggled more with each swing of her spear. One mighty lash drove her down to one knee. She dodged the next, rolling and hiding behind the stricken Bastion.

  Staying his whip, Ashael lifted his opposite hand, and the Bastion burst into a kaleidoscope of pieces. Wood, rigging, canvas, shards of metal, pottery, and more spread outward in the air before him. Within those shattered remains, Nalamae floated, helpless in Ashael’s spell.

  “No!” Çeda cried, and leapt over the gunwales.

  “Çeda, stop!” Emre shouted.

  She couldn’t, though. She refused to abandon the goddess. She knew she couldn’t hope to make it in time, but she kept running anyway.

  Ahead, Ashael held out one finger toward Nalamae. She floated ever closer to him. Her shining spear fell to the sand below. With a look like Ashael meant to do to Nalamae what he’d done to the ship, he touched his finger to her chest.