A Desert Torn Asunder

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  It was Ihsan, the last Sharakhani King, holding his daughter, Ransaneh.

  “Hello, Çeda.” He leaned to one side and stared into the passageway beyond her. “Emre . . . How was the coronation?”

  “What are you doing here?” Çeda asked.

  “Please.” Without taking his eyes from Ransaneh, he waved them into the cabin. “Come and sit.”

  “How very gracious of you to offer us a seat in our own ship,” Emre said.

  “I only meant to say that there’s nothing to fear. I mean you no harm.”

  “Everyone thinks you’re dead.” Çeda sat on their bunk and set Willem’s book aside. Emre leaned against the doorway, his forearms folded across his chest while he glared at Ihsan.

  “I nearly was.” Ihsan’s eyes roamed the cabin’s ceiling. “Seven times, by last count.”

  “Assassins?”

  “Indeed. Most were sent by my own great-grandson, who’s convinced I betrayed him and the entire house by negotiating with Queen Alansal.”

  “He preferred King Husamettín’s way, I take it.”

  “Not only preferred. Demanded it. He wants my head to prove that the old guard is truly gone and a new one can rise to take its place.”

  “There are ways of dealing with such things,” Emre said.

  Ihsan laughed. “Kill him first?”

  “Well, certainly that’s one way, but I meant the Silver Spears. They’ve cracked down hard on those opposing the senate’s formation.”

  “True, but my great-grandson’s attempts on my life will naturally be difficult to prove. And my defense would necessarily require my involvement, which would open me up to more attempts on my life, from him or other sources.”

  “Other sources.”

  He made a show of nearly letting Ransaneh slip off his knee. Her body went tight, then she laughed. “No less than five shaikhs now have a bounty on my head.”

  “Tell me which,” Çeda said. “We can put pressure on them to—”

  “It won’t matter, Çeda.” He regarded her seriously for the first time. “The story of the Kings is nearing its end. My story is nearing its end. I cannot escape what we did on Beht Ihman. Not forever. And even if I could—”

  He bared his teeth, showing his gums, which had turned dark brown, then stuck out his tongue, which had almost no pink flesh remaining—like his gums, it was mottled brown, and had small lumps on it besides.

  “Then why are you here?” Çeda asked.

  His eyes returned to his daughter, then he lifted her and set her back down so that her back was to his chest and Ransaneh was facing Çeda and Emre. “While my story is ending, hers is just beginning.”

  A heavy silence fell between them. Ransaneh blinked her mismatched eyes: one brown, one hazel.

  “I cannot keep her,” Ihsan went on. “If I do, she will die. She’ll be killed when I am, and even if she somehow escapes, she’ll be a target for the rest of her life. But if you took her, she might live. You’re respected in the city. You’re revered in the desert. Wherever you choose to go, Ransaneh would be safe.”

  “People would know she’s your daughter.”

  “Only if you tell them,” Ihsan said. “She could be a war orphan. There are plenty of them, and that would create sympathy in all who meet her. While your adoption of her would show your generosity, further cementing Ransaneh’s safety.”

  Çeda stared at the child, lost for words. “Have you no family you could leave her with?”

  “None that I trust. And even if I did, she would be found. She is an heir to my throne. She’d be dead within months.” Ihsan kissed her head, which was thick with dark brown hair. “I don’t ask this lightly. I know she will be a burden to you, but I hope she’ll bring you joy as well. Ransaneh has been the light of my life.”

  “Then join us,” Çeda said. “Sail with us. We’ll find a place for you.”

  Ihsan shook his head sadly. “The moment she’s linked to me, she will become a target. No one can know.” Ihsan had seemed aloof and uncaring when they’d entered. Now he seemed desperate. “I’m not asking you to do this for me. I’ve earned every bit of your scorn. Do it for Nayyan. She sacrificed her life that we might all live. Without it, we would never had stopped Ashael, and you would never have had a chance to speak with your mother.”

  The gambit was a transparent one. By invoking Çeda’s time with her mother, Ihsan was playing on her emotions, forcing her to recognize that those few precious moments with Ahya—a gift Çeda could never have hoped for—had only been made possible with Nayyan’s final, brave act.

  Emre looked to Çeda. When she said nothing, he turned to Ihsan. “You did much to atone for your betrayal of our people, but to take a child—”

  Emre stopped when Çeda put a hand on his arm. “We’ll take her.”

  “Çeda—” Emre started.

  But he stopped when Çeda squeezed his arm. “She’ll die without us, Emre.”

  Ihsan’s ploy might have been transparent, but it had worked. Everything he’d said was true. Çeda had always felt as if she were not only unwanted by her mother, but a necessary evil, a tool to be used in Ahya’s far-reaching plans. Seeing Ahya, speaking to her for that last time, had opened a small window into her mother’s true feelings. It had allowed Çeda to make peace with her mother’s death and given her a sense of contentment—with herself, with her origins, with her place in the world—that she’d never felt before. And it had been made possible, in part, by Nayyan’s sacrifice.

  And, she admitted, she owed Ihsan. She would not honor him. He’d played no small part in Beht Ihman. He’d betrayed hundreds, thousands, in his centuries as a Sharakhani King. But he’d also scoured the Blue Journals for the truth. He’d worked to uncover and then foil the desert gods’ plot. He’d done as much as anyone to save Sharakhai.

  Emre looked like he wanted to argue—there was still a part of him that wanted to reject anything related to the old Kings of the city—but he softened the longer he stared at Ransaneh.

  Ransaneh burbled and wriggled in Ihsan’s grasp. She made a sound, baby-speak, while staring at Emre, who licked his lips and swallowed hard as he met Çeda’s gaze. Then he nodded to Ihsan.

  The tightness in Ihsan’s shoulders eased. “Thank you.”

  “Something still bothers me,” Çeda said, knowing this was probably the last time she’d ever speak to Ihsan. “Ashael. His departure.”

  Ihsan nodded. “Let me guess. You’re wondering why the other elder gods accepted him after going to such great lengths to bind him to this world.”

  It was clearly something Ihsan had given quite a bit of thought to. “Precisely,” she said.

  “I can’t say for certain, but I have a few thoughts. At the time, Ashael and I were both caught in the spell of the zhenyang. I couldn’t understand their words, but as those moments passed, I felt a release from Ashael, a feeling that his punishment had been sufficient, that he’d atoned for his crimes, or would in the next world. More interesting to me, though, was the impression I got from the other elders.”

  “And that was?” Emre asked.

  “They they’d expected his return.”

  It took a moment for the implications to sink in. “Are you saying the other elders struck Ashael down knowing he would one day reach the farther fields?”

  “That’s precisely what I’m saying.”

  Çeda stared at him, confused. “But why?”

  Ihsan shrugged. “Perhaps they couldn’t kill him. Perhaps they couldn’t find it in themselves to destroy one of their own. Perhaps it was some twisted form of penance. The point is I think they laid the groundwork for his return to them from the moment they drove that ebon spike through Ashael’s heart and forced him into the earth.”

  Çeda felt suddenly cold.

  It was Emre, echoing Çeda’s own thoughts, who spoke, �
�You’re saying they planned it all.”

  Ihsan’s look was the sort a mentor gets on discovering their student has finally mastered a difficult concept. “Is it so hard to believe the elders foresaw the young gods’ plan? That Ashael would be swept up into it? Remember the final, crucial verse of their poem.” He recited it in a singsong voice: “When at last the fields do wither, When the stricken fade; The gods shall pass beyond the veil, And land shall be remade.” After a pause to allow the words to sink in, he went on, “I thought, we all thought, those words referred to the young gods, but in the end it was the elder gods who passed beyond the veil.” He waved, as if taking in the harbor, Tauriyat, and the city beyond it. “And can anyone doubt that the land has been remade?”

  The very thought was dizzying, and in truth, Çeda didn’t want to think about it. She’d felt like a pawn so many times over the course of her long and winding journey to start worrying about the machinations of elder gods. “Perhaps you’re right, Ihsan.”

  Ihsan smiled his wry smile. “It’s just as likely my mind is performing contortions to make sense of it all. But it’s a theory.” He turned his daughter around, kissed the top of her head, and hugged her chubby frame as if he were protecting her from a sandstorm. Tears welling in his eyes, he lifted her until her tiny, slippered feet were on his thighs and she was eye to eye with him. “You’ll listen to them.” His tears fell, trails of diamonds along his cheeks. “You’ll be good.”

  After kissing the crown of her head once more, he stood and handed Ransaneh to Çeda, who shifted Ransaneh onto her right hip.

  “So where will you go now?” Çeda asked.

  Ihsan shrugged. “There are rumors of a cure for the black mould. It’s likely a fool’s errand, but I’ll chase it all the same.”

  With her free arm, Çeda hugged him. “Then go well, Ihsan.”

  “Go well, Çedamihn.” He turned to Emre and held out his hand. “And you, Emre.”

  Emre gripped forearms with him. “May the fates show you kindness.”

  Ihsan laughed and pulled the hood of his thawb over his head. “The fates will do as they’ve always done and shower me with cruelties.” He tipped his head toward Ransaneh. “But hopefully they’ll spare her.”

  With that he climbed the stairs and left the ship. Çeda and Emre returned to the deck to watch him go. He walked along the quay, weaving through the crowd, and was lost beyond the prow of a nearby galleon.

  Soon a team of Silver Spears were pushing the Red Bride away from the dock. They were towed beyond the harbor doors by mules, where Çeda and Emre could catch the wind and set sail. When they were underway and heading east, a strong wind came, kicking up dust and sand. Çeda went down to the cabin and picked up a blanket to protect Ransaneh, but stopped when she saw the book Willem had given her.

  She opened it to the first page and smiled when she saw the title: The Song of the Shattered Sands. It fit, she thought. It was tempting to turn to the first page, to begin reading. But after a moment she closed the cover and set the book on a nearby shelf.

  Another day, she thought, and went up to deck with the blanket. There, she wrapped Ransaneh and held her close while Emre steered, the skis hissed, and the Red Bride heeled over an easy dune.

  ASIRIM’S CURSE

  Twelve Kings weep,

  In desert deep,

  On sand dark bargain met;

  The Gods of old,

  Hear story told,

  Now blood will be their debt.

  The Lords of Stone,

  Speak low and cold,

  Of price, ancestral blood,

  Wave kings to field,

  Poor faith revealed,

  As Rhia shears fragrant bud.

  King of stolen eye,

  Does speak,

  He of golden lake;

  Granted he,

  Is summer’s key,

  Now he shall ever wake.

  With sleepless eye,

  Fair King shall watch,

  And rest he’ll ever seek;

  His weary bones,

  His dulcet tones,

  One close his doom shall wreak.

  One is young,

  His honor stung,

  By pact is he brought low;

  Goes he to field,

  For harvest yield,

  The reaper for the sown.

  Draws young groom

  From night’s bright bloom,

  A chalice dripping red;

  Should brier kiss,

  In heed remiss,

  His life blood withered.

  Sharp of eye,

  And quick of wit,

  The King of Amberlark;

  With wave of hand,

  On cooling sand,

  Slips he into the dark.

  King will shift,

  ’Twixt light and dark,

  The gift of onyx sky;

  Shadows play,

  In dark of day,

  Yet not ’neath Rhia’s eye.

  Winter King,

  With emerald ring,

  Quick and bright his blade;

  His words revealed,

  His fate concealed,

  In blood his debt is paid.

  With rising moon,

  Comes Goezhen’s boon,

  Death, her door assailed;

  Should steel lay by,

  Embrace denied,

  Crown black, his rage unveiled.

  From deepened vale,

  A King most hale,

  Sincere entreaties lost;

  Fought he alone,

  On plain of stone,

  Yet there his fate embossed.

  Thaash did see,

  In King of three,

  A foe made long ago;

  Said Thaash to King,

  Your words shall ring,

  Yet true name brings you low.

  This Lord stares down,

  On those around,

  Memory hidden, and thought;

  With crown of stone,

  Thy will is shown,

  While his cannot be sought.

  As winters die,

  As summers rise,

  Weighty lies his crown;

  Yet set aside,

  Crown shan’t abide,

  In dreams this king will drown.

  The King of Smiles,

  From verdant isles,

  The gleam in moonlit eye;

  With soft caress,

  At death’s redress,

  His wish lost soul will cry.

  Yerinde grants,

  A golden band,

  With eye of glittering jet;

  Should King divide,

  From Love’s sweet pride,

  Dark souls collect their debt.

  His reign began,

  As taken man,

  A King with loosened tongue;

  With but a sigh,

  Near Bakhi’s scythe,

  His form is drawn and wrung.

  When Gods of sky,

  Do close their eyes;

  Dread hunger burns and aches;

  Though horror grows,

  Like budding rose,

  By blood his thirst is slaked.

  One stood pleased,

  By lifeblood seized,

  By day lost souls are sought;

  With granted gem,

  And moonlit stem,

  To heel Lost Tribe is brought.

  Stained are souls,

  By blessed kohl,

  From this they cannot run;

  If lost is stone,

&n
bsp; His fate bemoan,

  Blue throne shall be undone.

  From golden dunes,

  And ancient runes,

  The King of glittering stone;

  By inverted thorn,

  his skin was torn,

  And yet his strength has grown.

  While far afield,

  His love unsealed,

  ’Til Tulathan does loom;

  Then petals’ dust,

  Like lovers’ lust,

  Will draw him toward his tomb.

  King with eyes of jade,

  Did speak,

  His hand waved over field;

  If King should peer,

  Through smoke o’er mere,

  Dark trick shall be revealed.

  See far his eyes,

  Through cloak and guise,

  Consumed by sight is he;

  Yet as death nears,

  Will grow his fears,

  Still, blinded shall he be.

  From amber groves,

  And lowing droves,

  A King of slender frame;

  All is heard,

  Of whispered word,

  With eyes of blue aflame.

  The whispers speak,

  Of all that’s bleak,

  Inveigle they his mind;

  In shadows deep,

  Will he find sleep,

  And there his reason find.

  One King betrayed,

  One King unmade,

  King of Thirteenth Tribe;

  With withered skin,

  And fallen kin,

  His fate the Gods ascribe.

  Rest will he,

  ’Neath twisted tree,

  ’Til death by scion’s hand.

  By Nalamae’s tears,

  And godly fears,

  Shall kindred reach dark land.

  When at last the fields do wither,

  When the stricken fade;

  The Gods shall pass beyond the veil,

  And land shall be remade.

  Appendix

  aba: a loose, sleeveless outer garment woven of camel’s or goat’s hair

  aban: a board game