Behind Ihsan, as the battle against the demons raged, horns blew, calling for an ordered retreat, sooner than he’d feared. The broad arc of their defenses abandoned the ships and pulled back toward the harbor doors, collapsing their lines to prevent a complete rout. Grouped by nation earlier, their fighting force had been reduced to a mad mix of soldiers, be they Sharakhani, Qaimiri, or desert tribesman.
Nayyan stood near Ihsan with her shamshir at the ready. Their stalwart wet nurse was with her, Ransaneh protected in her arms. Nayyan glanced up at the wall, the look on her face echoing everything Ihsan was feeling in that moment.
“Husamettín had better bloody hurry”—she stared at Ashael, who was just crossing the line of abandoned ships—“or it won’t matter if we breach the doors.”
Ihsan’s mouth hurt too much to reply. And what was there to say? Nayyan was right.
The winged demons had been focusing on the front lines, but more of them were swarming over Ihsan’s position. One bearing a trident with a broken tooth swooped toward him and Nayyan met it with a swing of her sword, but the demon pulled up and swept in from another direction. Another smaller demon with claws like sickles joined it, and Nayyan simply couldn’t keep up. She took cut after cut. Most of the damage was absorbed by her battle dress, but not all. In a half dozen places, Ihsan saw fresh blood that stained the violet cloth of her dress black.
The one bearing the trident had just struck a nasty blow to the back of Nayyan’s legs when an arrow punched into its chest. Another caught it in the neck as it tried to fly away and it fell, whirling like a waterwheel and was lost in the throng beyond the front lines.
Ihsan turned to see Emre, bow in hand, nocking another arrow. Ihsan nodded to him, and Emre nodded back, then turned to fire an arrow into an ifin hurtling toward Çeda.
Ashael floated above the crescent of wounded ships. As he cast his gaze over the death being dealt in his name, Ihsan found himself wondering where Meryam might be. Was she as amused as the elder god? Were those her emotions playing out on Ashael’s face?
As if in answer, Meryam was suddenly there, floating over the sand in Ashael’s wake. For a moment, her eyes met Ihsan’s, and she smiled, as if to say, “You see? I told you it would all be mine in the end.” Ihsan had never reveled in dealing pain, but now he wished he could turn invisible, as she could. He wished he could appear before her and send his blade into her heart—
—A massive explosion rent the air behind him. Meryam shook in fright, then disappeared, hiding herself once more with Ashael’s power.
Ihsan turned to see rock and dust coughing outward from the leftmost tower. A moment later there was a second explosion from the same tower, this one lower down, closer to the sand. A third came near the top of the opposite tower. Stone fragments rained down. Ready for it, the soldiers below lifted shields to protect themselves.
The explosions had destroyed the mechanisms that opened and closed the gates. It was meant to allow the soldiers below to push forward with the masts and force their way into the harbor. But no one was moving. They were waiting for a signal.
Hurry, Husamettín.
Even with the demons howling around him, Ihsan was transfixed by the battle along the wall. The Mireans were mounting a stiffer defense. More of their soldiers poured toward the fight. Soon, they would regain the left tower, and if that happened, the doors might never be opened.
There came a metallic pounding from the tower’s lower hole. Then a roar followed by a loud clink. Several breaths later, Husamettín ducked his head through the lower hole and waved Night’s Kiss back and forth. The sword buzzed, trailing darkness as it went.
“Now!” Husamettín called. “Reclaim your city!”
As one, the teams of men and women holding the masts shouted, “For Sharakhai!” and drove forward.
The masts pressed, and the right door held, but the left one was pushed back. Farther and farther it swung, and the moment a gap appeared, a line of Silver Spears rushed through it. The Mireans had sussed out what their enemies were trying to do—Ihsan could see teams on the opposite side trying to keep the gates closed—but they couldn’t hope to stand against so many.
The soldiers along the righthand side, seeing that the assault teams had failed to compromise the rightmost door, dropped their masts and ran into the gap to engage the Mirean soldiers. Soon it was an outright rush, dozens, then hundreds filing through to secure the passage of those behind them.
Husamettín slipped down along a rope from the smoking hole in the tower. Horns blew again, the signal that the doors had been breached. As hundreds more began attacking the Mirean soldiers inside the harbor, the flotilla of wounded were dragged toward the gap, and the lines of warriors fighting the demons retreated further. They did so with discipline, collapsing the lines as those behind them reached the relative safety of the harbor.
Order couldn’t hold forever, though. The battle was reaching a fever pitch. The demons, sensing weakness in their enemies, grew reckless in their assault. And the Mireans had managed to form a defensive line inside the harbor, slowing their advance.
Like sand through an hourglass, more and more joined those inside the harbor, but those who’d not yet gained entry were beginning to panic. A crush of soldiers pressed Ihsan backward, together with Nayyan, Ransaneh, and her wet nurse.
As the shouts around them rose to new heights, the four of them were pushed through the gap and into the harbor’s interior. It was hardly a relief. The Mireans had built a stout line of defense, comprised of not only their own soldiers, but those of Malasan and Kundhun as well. Warriors wearing grinning demons masks and mounted on qirin tore into their right flank. The legendary beasts with the head of a dragon and the rear of a horse trumpeted their strange calls, and sent gouts of blue flame over rank upon rank of Silver Spears. A Blade Maiden amongst them, acting too boldly for her own good, was gored by a qirin’s horns and sent pinwheeling through the air.
For all the progress they’d made initially, Mirea had now stemmed their advance, which was nothing short of calamitous. Fully half their numbers were trapped beyond the harbor doors, unable to make their way inside.
Ihsan saw the horde through the gap in the gates. The land-bound demons fought wildly, killing with fearsome efficiency. Those with wings fought with more precision, targeting the archers and those using spears to keep the larger demons at bay.
Ransaneh, still in her nurse’s arms, cried inconsolably. Nayyan stared about wide-eyed. None of them could do anything but watch as the slaughter played out.
Chapter 47
Within Eventide, Queen Alansal, holding her war pins, rushed toward Davud. The powder he’d thrown into the air began to settle, spreading as it did so. Queen Alansal was caught in it. So were Davud and Chow-Shian.
One moment, Davud was coughing from it. The next he was swept away.
* * *
A god floated over rolling sand dunes. Around him were his children—simple beasts with simple souls. They prayed for his true awakening, prayed for his release from the manipulations of the One Who Crafts His Dreams.
Through those dreams, the mortal woman used the black powder to drive the god and his children toward the Amber City. A great battle unfolded. The mortals struggled. One of the young gods joined them. But what could she or the mortals do against an elder?
The closer he came to the ancient city, the more he became aware of the spear of light rising from the slopes of Tauriyat, a gateway of some sort. It sparked ancient memories, instilled in him an anger he could not fully explain.
As he struggled to remember, his dreams changed. He saw visions of other gods—elders, not the young gods who came after. He saw how he was shunned. He saw how his creations were condemned. He saw how the other elders conspired, then struck him down, before leaving this world for the next.
They robbed him of his long-awaited reward. Turned this world into
a prison. It would have remained so if not for the ambition of a lone, mortal woman, one whose skill with the red ways was taken from her, who found a way to awaken him nonetheless.
Through the light ahead, he sensed the world beyond. Saw glimpses of it. It was just there, mere steps away. All he need do was to walk through. And why not? He deserved the next world as much as the others.
So it was that he floated up the mountain toward it. The gateway was too narrow for one such as he, but what matter was that? He need only widen it.
As he did so, he sensed others nearby: four of the young gods. He knew their names—Tulathan, Rhia, Bakhi, and Thaash—but paid them little mind as he stepped through and was lost to the world beyond.
The young gods wasted little time. They followed as the gate was closing, heedless of the damage its imperfect seal would cause to the world they left behind.
In the wake of their passage, a rift was formed, an imbalance between the two worlds. A bright, wavering miasma flowed from the gate. It spread outward, consuming all within the city. Lost were those who call the city home. Lost were those from the desert. Lost were those who hail from foreign lands. In its indiscriminate hunger the miasma consumed man, woman, and child, desiccating their bodies in moments, their screams attenuating as their flesh turned to ash.
The miasma spread beyond the city, consuming the caravanserais, the oases, the tribes who sail the amber sea. There was nothing but ruin, a desert torn asunder, a swath of devastation that would last another age as the gate slowly mended itself.
* * *
Davud slowly came to. Above him, suspended from the stone railing, was a lattice of bamboo pipes. It took him long moments to shake off the horrific vision of the miasma, the lost lives, the devastation that extended well beyond Sharakhai.
Near him, Queen Alansal lay on the cold stone of the empty hall. She blinked and pushed herself to a sitting position. Her gaze shifted to the sickbed beside her, where Chow-Shian lay still, unmoving. She was dead, a victim of the poison, the potency of the dream, or both.
Her gaze slid to Davud with a look so emotionless that Davud couldn’t say whether or not she would take up the steel pins that lay on the floor beside her and plunge them into his heart.
“I didn’t understand,” she said slowly. “As powerful as Chow-Shian was, I thought the vision of Ashael a farce, some trick Meryam was playing on us all, or a ruse of the Sharakhani Kings.”
“And now that you know the truth?” Davud asked.
Queen Alansal tilted her head and softened her gaze, as if she were listening for something. Davud heard it as well. It was the clash of steel. The shouts of soldiers. The battle for King’s Harbor had begun.
Alansal stood, twirled her ankle-length hair into a ball, and speared her hairpins through it to keep it in place. “We must go, you and I.” She held her hand out to Davud. “We must save them.”
Davud accepted her hand, and the queen of Mirea pulled him to his feet. Then the two of them were running through the palace toward the patio that overlooked King’s Harbor.
Chapter 48
Çeda stood below the gates of King’s Harbor and realized that Husamettín’s gambit had failed. The doors to the harbor remained closed. This is where we die, she thought, caught between two forces, each greater than our own.
As she fought desperately beside Sümeya and Kameyl, a bell began to toll. At first it was barely audible over the sounds of battle, but more bells rang until the mountain was alive with it. They were the palace bells, echoed moments later by those in the harbor master’s tower. For hundreds of years the Kings had rung those bells to celebrate holy days or to relay simple messages between the palaces, the harbor, or the House of Maidens. Now they were being used by Mirea, in a particular rhythm: one long note followed by three short ones, the signal for retreat.
The Mirean soldiers faltered, then stopped fighting altogether. More and more of them stared at something higher along the mountain. Çeda turned and caught movement along the slopes of Tauriyat. A qirin was heading down toward the harbor, leaping from stone to stone with liquid ease. The beast had a broad golden head, a flowing mane, and forelegs that reminded Çeda of the great, flightless birds the Malasani sometimes raced. The coat along its rump and long tail were a bright, shimmering silver. It was the size of an ox but moved with the grace of a yearling oryx.
A woman rode the qirin side saddle. Her jet black hair was held in place with two large pins. Her dress was made of golden silk. Çeda had thought her a qirin warrior but soon realized her mistake: It was Queen Alansal herself. Sitting behind her, holding tight to her waist, was a young man wearing a desert thawb and a thick winter khalat. By the gods, it was Davud. With three jaw-dropping leaps, the qirin bore them both to the harbor’s sandy floor.
By then the Mirean forces had not only ceased fighting, they’d backed away, letting the throng push through the harbor doors. When all had made it through, every available soldier began pushing on the door with the ruined hinges. But the demons were both numerous and inhumanly strong. They prevented its closing, then began pushing it back. Some were starting to sneak through the gap.
Everything, all their efforts, would be for naught if the demons entered the harbor. Spotting a pair of spears lying on the sand nearby, Çeda scooped them up and tossed one to Sümeya, who understood immediately. Sheathing her sword, Kameyl retrieved another and handed it to the man in front of her, a bloodied Silver Spear.
“Take up the spears!” Çeda yelled as the three of them pushed their way through the crowd of soldiers toward the gap. “Help close the doors!”
All across the line near the broken harbor doors, spears were passed forward. Çeda stood behind the frontmost ranks, those who heaved against the door with their shoulders. There, she placed the spear against the door and pushed. So did Kameyl, Sümeya, and a hundred more. Frail Lemi was suddenly beside her, roaring while putting everything into heaving with his greatspear. It still wasn’t enough. There were too many demons working against them.
Çeda turned at an odd trumpeting sound. Charging toward the door with surprising speed was a staggeringly large beast. The thing was big as a house with a bumpy shell, a long neck, and steel-capped horns jutting from its bony head. It was a gui shan, brought all the way from the forests of Mirea for Alansal’s invasion of Sharakhai. On its back was a wooden platform with a rider’s bench, upon which sat a single Mirean soldier, a woman who held the gui shan’s reins and a long crop. She was using the crop to strike the gui shan’s broad head. As the gui shan came closer, the rider yelled a single word in Sharakhani over and over. “Away! Away! Away!”
The soldiers near the gap scrambled from the gui shan’s path as it lowered its head and rammed the door, trampling demons as it went. Its legs churned. Its beady eyes rolled in their sockets, and it gave a loud trumpeting call.
A second gui shan followed, this one ridden by a man with only one arm. The gui shan added its efforts to close the gate to the first’s. Soldiers joined in the effort, and slowly, slowly, the door began to close, and the tide of demons was stemmed. Emre and a group of archers sent a rain of arrows into the gap, preventing more demons from entering the harbor. Finally, with a great, collective roar, the door boomed shut.
Near the harbor’s quays, Queen Alansal and Davud had dismounted. Alansal drew on the qirin’s reins, the beast lowered its head, and she spoke into its ear. A moment later, it rose up on its hind legs, clawed the air, and breathed a gout of blue-white flame. A sound issued from its throat, a warbling, high-pitched peal that went on and on.
The demons had begun flying over the wall, but on hearing the strange call, they winged over and fled, screeching. In moments they were gone, leaving the harbor a safe haven, proof against the darkness beyond the gates. A ragged, triumphant cheer rose up. Even the Mireans joined in. All knew the horde weren’t defeated, but they’d gained a moment’s peace.
&nbs
p; By the time Çeda made her way through the crowd and entered an open stretch of sand, she found Alansal and Davud standing beside a cluster of Mirean commanders. Thousands were gathered nearby, but a circle was kept clear to allow Alansal to parley with her enemies.
Husamettín, Night’s Kiss gripped tightly in one hand, was first to enter the circle. Çeda followed with Emre. Across from them, Ihsan broke through the crowd with Nayyan. Young King Hektor, bloodied and looking more than a little shaken, came next. Ramahd, standing at the circle’s edge, nodded to Çeda, and Çeda nodded back.
Queen Alansal spread her arms to the six of them and spoke imperiously, “I declare our hostilities ceased.” She motioned to the harbor doors, making the long sleeve of her yellow dress flare. “At least until this battle is fought.”
Husamettín stood still as a statue, though Night’s Kiss swayed from side to side, as if he were having trouble sheathing it. The sword buzzed, as if it yearned to taste the blood of a foreign queen.
Beside him, Ihsan spoke softly. “Will you put that bloody sword away?”
A beat passed, then another, and Husamettín sent Night’s Kiss into its scabbard with a clack. “Why now?” he asked Queen Alansal.
“Because with the help of one of your own”—Alansal waved at Davud—“I saw the destruction of this city. I saw the desert and its people laid to waste, a victim of the young gods’ conspiracy.”
“You saw it?” Husamettín pressed.
Alansal’s face was stony, emotional through its utter lack of emotion. She clearly didn’t want to answer how she knew, and in the end, she didn’t. She glanced to Davud, who answered for her.
“Chow-Shian shared a vision of it using zhenyang.”
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