Beneath the Twisted Trees

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  As they’d sat within her private room in her capital ship, Alansal had taken one of the steel pins she always wore through her hair and used it to draw an intricate design in the air before her. On the final stroke, a chromatic line had appeared. The line flowed, gentle as a summer breeze, and Queen Alansal had thrust her hand into it. When she pulled it free, she had the amulet in her hand.

  She’d held the priceless artifact out for Brama to take while the scintillant line closed itself with a soft tick. All of the self assurance Alansal had shown in their earlier meetings was gone, replaced with a worry that seemed depthless. “Go,” she said. “See my people safe.”

  The small bone inside the amulet was plain to see, but it was the new senses granted by Rümayesh that allowed Brama to feel the power emanating from it. It was a remnant of a distant age, a fragment of the raw potency wielded by the elder gods. How many such things remained in the world? Brama accepted the amulet with reverence, but made no promises to Alansal. They both knew theirs was a desperate hope.

  Behlosh stared at the spinning amulet. He was hungry for it. Brama could feel it. “Rümayesh will not turn on her master for thee.” He waved dismissively to Mae, a gesture that somehow felt wrong coming from a creature with four arms. “Nor for them.”

  Brama stilled his hand. The amulet wrapped his forearm, then slowly started to unwind. “Do you accept or not?”

  Behlosh leaned over Mae. Two arms supported him while the other two gripped Mae’s chest. Behlosh’s thumbs pressed into her skin, above her breasts. Black claws pierced her and Mae struggled, but she was too weak to do anything more than writhe beneath Behlosh’s terrible strength.

  Brama studied Behlosh’s every move. He steeped himself in the ritual being performed. The scourge had a tight grip on Mae, but Brama felt its ill humors being burned away like the chill of the night at the desert sun’s rising. Brama felt once more that strange sense of satisfaction at her pain.

  Please no, Brama pleaded. Not with Mae.

  But his unspoken wish only seemed to intensify the feeling. What made it worse was disappointment—his disappointment—at feeling the scourge fade. The combination was so powerful he reacted to it physically. His mouth watered; his nostrils flared in disgust.

  By the gods who breathe, how I hate what I’ve become.

  The last of the scourge was driven from Mae’s body. Then, like a brand pressed to a wound to stop the bleeding, Behlosh proofed her body against reinfection. The damage the scourge had done was not pretty—Mae might never be whole again—but the disease was gone.

  When Behlosh stood and held out one hand, Brama threw the amulet to him.

  Brama said, “Why does Goezhen wish to see so much death inflicted upon the Mirean fleet?”

  For a long time, Behlosh was silent. “Tell Rümayesh my thoughts still linger over the taste of her first love.” There was a sneer in his words.

  He burst into a cloud of buzzing locusts, lifted, and was gone, leaving Brama alone with the softly breathing Mae. He mounted Kweilo. “Come on, girl,” he said, snapping the reins. “We’ve lots to do, and little enough time to do it.”

  Chapter 29

  EMRE SAT IN THE CAPTAIN’S cabin of the Amaranth, recording in the log the ship’s position and the events of the last few days. Writing was still torturous for him. He’d never learned as a child. Çeda had tried over and over again to teach him, but he’d been a terrible, ungrateful student, and now he was paying the price. Pens were cursed artifacts that turned his hands to stone.

  He sat back to look over his handiwork. “Iri’s black teeth, a strutting hen could do better.”

  “Ships ho! Ships ho!” called a voice.

  Grateful for the distraction, Emre put the book and pen away and rushed from the cabin. Off their starboard bow, sailing easily over a smooth plain of sand, was Calamity’s Reign. No other ships accompanied them. Young Shaikh Aríz and his vizir had both said, and Emre agreed, that only a single ship from the tribes, the Amaranth itself, should be sent to treat with the Malasani king. Aríz had, however, agreed to hide his tribe in a range of low, rocky hills a half-day’s sail from Sharakhai. Should Emre have need, he had but to send a skiff to warn them.

  Hamid and Frail Lemi joined him at the bow as a swath of masts and sails and dark hulls came into view along the horizon. The Malasani fleet was quite a sight. Hundreds of ships arrayed in a vast line, their masts so numerous they looked like the bristles of an untidy brush.

  Beyond the Malasani fleet loomed the blooming fields, an ominous stroke of black ink. From one location not far from the fleet of ships, gray smoke billowed in a twisting column into the blue sky. Frail Lemi stared at it while cracking his knuckles. “What are they doing, Emre?”

  Nothing good, Emre thought. “I don’t know, Lem, but we’re about to find out.” He turned to the pilot, “Make for the smoke.”

  They did, and the sheer vastness of the fleet became clear. Goezhen’s sweet kiss, there must be four hundred ships. Thousands of soldiers combed the sand, many preparing engines of war—catapults, ballistae, and mobile barriers. They were being placed on rafts with skimwood skis that could be hauled into whatever position the Malasani commanders wanted—either defensively, should their fleet be attacked, or as a steadily advancing bulwark that would protect their lines as they headed toward and into the city harbors. Though Sharakhai itself wasn’t visible yet, Tauriyat could be seen, a misshapen lump hanging above the horizon. Emre thought he could just make out the blocky shape of Eventide.

  Calamity’s Reign began pulling ahead. Emre let it. As angry as Haddad had been with Emre, she’d still agreed to make introductions to her king. “Whatever happens then,” she’d spat, “is up to you.”

  Within the hour both ships had anchored and Haddad was marching toward the camp with an escort of several dozen Malasani soldiers. Emre and the others waited on the Amaranth. Over an hour later a herald in bright clothing came.

  “King Emir of Malasan will see you,” he said.

  He led Emre, Hamid, and Frail Lemi between the ships and toward the place where the smoke was lifting from the blooming fields. Hundreds of Malasani soldiers were there in a line, each bearing spears and shields, and facing the groves of adichara trees as though they expected a battalion of Silver Spears to come streaming out. Near them was a platform on skis. A dais, Emre thought at first. When he was led onto it, however, he realized its true purpose. The Malasani king, a man of only thirty summers, was clean shaven with dark hair cut straight across his brow. He was handsome enough, though he had a pert mouth that practically begged to be punched. Worse was his garb. Over a tan and orange tunic, his inlaid lap armor was nicked and dented in places. They looked inherited, those battle marks, evidence of another man’s glory. Combined with the battleworn scimitar hanging from his belt, it smacked of a little boy prancing about in his father’s clothes.

  Also on the platform were some two dozen noblemen wearing shining, unscathed armor. They chatted and mingled as if this were some prelude to a dinner party. Haddad stood among them, silent and uncomfortable, a doe in a herd of grunting boar. She glanced Emre’s way, but then returned her attention to to the nearest of the blooming fields, which was afire.

  No Sharakhani thought of, much less looked upon, the adichara in a neutral way. Some revered them and, just as they regarded the asirim as holy warriors, considered the blooming fields to be hallowed ground. For many, however, even some who lived in Goldenhill or Hanging Gardens, the adichara were symbols of fear and oppression. So it was strange for Emre to see the fields like this, black smoke issuing from one of the groves, the rest laid bare beneath the light of the summer sun. They seemed strangely harmless, as if everyone in Sharakhai had been afraid over nothing for four hundred years.

  As Emre and Hamid were relieved of their swords and knives, and Frail Lemi of his great spear, Umber, the herald whispered into King Emir’s ear. It w
as then that Emre noticed a strange man standing near Haddad at the corner of the platform. He was crooked and bent and thin as a rail. He wore a golden mask with androgynous features: high cheekbones, a strong chin, full lips, and wide, elegant eyes. Along the forehead was a starburst pattern that struck a chord of memory. It was so sudden and so strong it swept Emre back to his days of living with Çeda in Roseridge. One of the illuminated books Çeda had kept in their home was a scholar’s work on the gods and holy relics of Malasan. Emre could hardly read at the time, but he’d been fascinated by the masterful drawings. He and Çeda had stayed up late one night, and she’d told him about each of their gods. This mask had been the sign of one of them, but he couldn’t remember which. Ranrika maybe, or Shonokh.

  The king’s herald finished speaking, at which point the king turned and regarded the newcomers. When Frail Lemi’s sheer height and brawn registered, there was a brief widening of his eyes—the most common reaction to seeing the big man up close for the first time. Emre, Hamid, and Frail Lemi bowed, and King Emir waved for them to rise.

  “You are welcome,” he said in near perfect Sharakhan, spreading his arms wide as if to encompass not merely the fleet behind him, but the whole of the desert.

  It was a grating gesture, perhaps meant to provoke. Haddad studied Emre with an unreadable expression. There was no doubt she was still angry with him, but there was worry in the way she kept glancing toward the blooming fields. Her attention was drawn away as the frail man in the golden mask tugged at her sleeve and began whispering to her.

  Emre smiled at the king as pleasantly as he could manage. “I could say the same to you.”

  The king replied with a smile that could only be read as insincere.

  “I’ve come at the behest of Macide Ishaq’ava,” Emre went on, “shaikh of the thirteenth tribe. I would speak with your Excellence of our plans, and of yours, to see where our people might find common ground.”

  “An interesting term, common ground,” King Emir said.

  “Oh? How so?”

  King Emir’s smile was smug. He knew he had the power here and wanted Emre to know it. “It presumes you will have any ground left to call your own.”

  “You think we won’t?”

  Instead of answering, King Emir turned toward the tree line and waved. “These trees fascinate me. Do you know much about them?”

  More than I’d ever share with you, Emre thought. “The blooming fields were planted by the gods after Beht Ihman to protect Sharakhai.”

  “They seem to be doing a rather poor job of it.”

  Surely he meant the asirim. And indeed, where were they? Had the Kings used them against the Malasani fleet? Had they sent them elsewhere?

  As if in answer, a bone-rattling howl came from the trees. A dark figure came barreling out of the shadows. How thin it looked, how emaciated. Its skin looked dark and gangrenous. It wore no clothes, but ran naked like one of the hairless mongrel dogs that scavenged the west end for food. A second asir came a moment later, slower than the first. Limping.

  Emre had been learning Malasani from Haddad and her crew over the months they’d been together, and so was able to piece together some of the questions the noblemen were asking. Where are the rest of the asirim? Where is the vaunted Sharakhani fleet? He cobbled together the answers as well. Mirea, they were saying. The Mirean fleet was shrieking down on Sharakhai and the royal navy had been sent to stop them, likely with the bulk of the asirim.

  The two asirim charged the line of Malasani soldiers, who stood with shields at the ready. Noticeable among the soldiers was a group of about twenty. They were large of frame with big potbellies. Now that they were out in the open it was easy to recognize them for what they were: golems. Their clay bodies shimmered with bronze filings. Clothes and armor, even jewelry and sandals, were rendered into the clay and each was shaped, more or less, like the same portly man. Their faces were identical, or nearly so. Some appeared to be older than Ibrahim the storyteller, others younger than Emre, but their chins, hook noses, and arched brows were all the same. The strangest thing about them, however, were their expressions. Each was unique and, without exception, intense. They appeared fearful, angry, hateful, or filled with crazed happiness. Their eyes and mouths moved eerily, causing their expressions to shift wildly like the fickle winds of spring, but soon enough they would revert to their previous state. It was as if each was trapped in time, some brief moment of a man’s life playing out over and over on their artificial features.

  They plodded forward, five of them converging on the path of the first asir. The asir tried to leap over their staggered line, but one of the golems carried a net and threw it into the air with perfect timing. The asir went down in a tangle of limbs, tearing viciously at the netting with claws and teeth, managing to rip it in several places. But then two of the golems, bearing massive war clubs, battered the poor creature’s shriveled form.

  Nearby, the priest in the golden mask had left Haddad’s side. From the edge of the platform he watched the scene play out, hands bunched beneath his chin and shivering with pleasure as the golems worked their weapons. It made him seem the sort who’d inflicted casual cruelty on others when he was young and now pined for those days of power.

  The asir took blow after blow but still fought and howled and clawed, then managed to break free and tear at the nearest golem’s legs. A normal man could withstand no more than a blow or two from those clubs, but the asir took a score or more before it finally fell. Still the golems pounded its lifeless frame.

  As the second asir, much slower than the first, suffered the same fate, one thought kept running through Emre’s mind: These are my tribe; these are my people. Çeda had spoken those words many times about the asirim, and while Emre had recognized the truth in them, he’d never really felt it, not until seeing them like this. It touched something deep inside him. The asirim weren’t merely his people. They were people.

  Some of the rage he’d felt when his brother had been murdered by Saadet ibn Sim, the Malasani bravo, returned. So did the feelings of helplessness.

  “Call them off,” Emre said.

  But the conversation was so loud, no one paid attention.

  “Make it stop!” Emre shouted in Malasani.

  King Emir turned toward Emre and raised one hand. All conversation ceased. “What did you say?” he asked in Malasani.

  Emre replied in Sharakhan. “I said, make the golems stop beating the asirim.”

  In the background came the rhythmic thump, thump, thump of the golems’ clubs. The tips of the blunt weapons were smeared with black blood. It flew in arcs with each lift, each mighty swing down.

  King Emir stepped closer until he and Emre were within striking distance of one another. “Beg for it.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” He waited, staring at Emre, perhaps expecting him to say something rash.

  The words were right on Emre’s lips. Please stop beating them. What did it matter if he asked? Except the idea of giving in to this man made him want to retch. This would only be the beginning.

  Emre took a half step forward. The king’s guardsmen drew short swords from their belts, but halted when King Emir raised a hand.

  “Call the golems off. And remind your priest that respect for the dead does not include clapping like a little boy at murder.”

  Indeed, the priest had start clapping softly. The eyes behind the golden mask were wild with pleasure. At a touch from Haddad he froze, and his gaze swung toward Emre, who felt himself go cold. Emre had seen plenty of crazed, unpredictable men and women in the Shallows, the sort even enforcers steered clear of. That was the kind of look the man was giving Emre now, as if he were devising special tortures, things a normal man wouldn’t dream of.

  King Emir had the air of self-satisfaction about him, as if he’d been given the excuse he needed to do as he pleased with Emre. But
he noted the priest’s strange reaction as well. He turned toward him and had just opened his mouth to speak when his eyes snapped toward the adichara trees.

  Emre turned and saw another asir loping out from beneath the shade. This one didn’t howl as the others had. It simply ran, and with much more speed than Emre would have guessed it could muster. Strangely, it bore a sword, a great, two-handed shamshir made of nicked steel that shone dully in the daylight. The golems moved to block its path but before they could, a cough of sand lifted up from the desert and swirled around them. It swept over the platform like a gale, forcing everyone to shield their eyes.

  When the sand and dust dispersed, several of the noblemen were pointing. One of them gasped. The golems were gone, nowhere to be found. A moment later Emre caught movement, a roiling over the surface of the sand. The golems had been sucked into the desert, he realized, clearing a path to the soldiers.

  Arrows were fired. The Malasani soldiers locked shields and raised their swords, and still the asir tore into their line like a scythe through wheat. Man after man fell, screaming, clutching at wounds from the asir’s blurring sword, clawed hand, or ravenous mouth. Some were thrown aside by gusts of wind that lifted the sand in plumes. A dozen were cut down as several golems regained the surface and squirmed, trying ineffectually to free themselves from the grasping sand. Only one was able to wade slowly forward, but it looked as though it were fighting the flow of a raging river.

  With the Malasani soldiers scattered or dead, the asir turned toward the platform and howled so loudly that Emre’s skin prickled from it. He found himself stepping backward even before the asir began running toward them.

  The noblemen on the platform were beginning to realize what was coming for them. The asir seemed fixated on one in particular, however: the man in the golden mask. Emre heard a surprised shout behind him. A big body bulled past him, leapt onto the short rail at the edge, and bound into the air. It was Frail Lemi with his greatspear, Umber, somehow gripped in both hands as he flew to meet the asir.