Beneath the Twisted Trees

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  The spear flew hungrily, perfectly, and neither wind, nor pull of earth, nor arcane workings of an elder ehrekh had command over it. It struck Behlosh dead in the chest. Brama knew the skin of ehrekh was proof against weapons made of mundane steel, and yet the spear impaled Behlosh. Struck him through.

  The ehrekh’s eyes went wide as he was driven back. One hand gripped the haft, not even trying to remove it; just holding it, as if Behlosh couldn’t quite believe what happened. His other arms windmilled while reaching back to break his fall. He crashed to the sand and writhed. With all four hands, Behlosh tried to dislodge the spear. A great groan of pain escaped him, and the muscles along his arms bunched, but the spear remained. He tried one last time, the effort weaker, and then lay still.

  Brama wasn’t sure how long he stood there. Mae and her qirin lay motionless, the workings of Behlosh’s spell having unraveled, and Brama knew he should go to help them, but he was stopped by languid movement to his right.

  Rümayesh.

  She watched as Brama approached. She’d seen what he’d done. No, Brama thought, she hadn’t merely seen it. She’d had a hand in it. Brama had, too, in the guiding of that raw power, but when he’d lofted the spear he’d felt more spectator than actor. In a moment of perfect clarity, he now understood why. How could he, a mere mortal, have worked the bone of Raamajit? How could he have mastered that ancient artifact, when he’d failed so miserably with the soldier in the hospital ship? The simple truth was he couldn’t.

  A blood mage like Meryam might, maybe a woman like Alansal, steeped in the knowledge of magic’s inner workings, but not him.

  He trudged past Behlosh’s corpse and stopped several paces from Rümayesh. It felt strange to see such a powerful creature laid so low. Hand missing. Limbs lying at strange angles. She looked like an effigy of sticks and string waiting to be burned.

  Brama waved to her. “I could heal you.” He may not have mastered the stone, but he felt its power still, and he could do this much. “I could heal you. But if I do, you must let me go.”

  Rümayesh stared with those rusty red eyes. Her throat worked and a pitiful sound escaped her, but her eyes remained flinty, unyielding. He felt her trying to influence him, but he shut her out.

  “I know what you’ve done,” Brama went on. “I know what you’re trying to do.”

  Rümayesh smiled a leopard’s smile. Her teeth were smeared with blood so dark it was almost black. “Then you know there’s no going back.”

  For weeks now, since before Brama had arrived at the Mirean encampment, Rümayesh had been working her way into Brama’s mind and body. He could feel it, her tendrils within him, her roots growing deep. All those times she’d hidden herself from him, he’d thought it because of the secrets she was keeping about her lord Goezhen and the commands he’d given her. And perhaps that was one of her purposes, but the greater truth was she’d slowly been displacing his soul, and replacing it with her own.

  It all made sense now. The feelings of twisted pleasure at the pain of the scourge victims, the feelings of hunger and jealousy as mortal souls departed for the farther fields, his growing awareness, not just of Rümayesh’s mind, but her shape. During the battle with Behlosh, he’d used the bone at her behest, but his body had felt like a marionette—she’d not yet taken all the strings, but she wasn’t far from it either. And for his part it almost felt as if he could . . .

  He tried to lift her arm. And found, Bakhi strike him down, that he could. It felt like his own arm, his own body. He felt her trio of tails, and when one of them lashed, Rümayesh smiled, her eyes drifting toward the movement. She was forcing them to trade places, and unless he did something about it, she would soon succeed.

  Rümayesh’s smile widened when she saw the terror in his eyes. “You should never have thought to part from me, Brama.”

  “That’s why you’re doing this?”

  Her smile faded. “No, but it did force me to hurry my plans.”

  Brama shook his head, feeling ever more hopeless. “Mortals aren’t made for such things. I’m no ehrekh. I’m no child of sand and stone.”

  “Men would kill for the power you’re about to inherit. Have killed for it. You can live out your days a god. You can witness the dying of the desert.”

  “I don’t want to! I want to live my own life and, when the time comes, leave this world for the next.”

  “As do I.”

  Brama started. That was it, he realized. She hoped to become mortal, and by doing so, have her soul pass to the farther fields when she died.

  Rümayesh sensed his thoughts. “It is something that has eluded even my lord Goezhen, though he desires it so.” There was a glint in her eye, a hint of the wonder she now felt. “At last, I can rejoin my Lirael.”

  “No,” Brama said. “I won’t let you.” He had enough command over the bone to do it, and she was too weakened to stop him.

  One of her tails slapped the sand. “Then sever our tie and be done with it.”

  “You’ll die when I do.”

  “So will you, Brama.”

  She was right. He could feel it. Their souls commingled, and destroying one would destroy the other. “I don’t care. I don’t accept the future you’ve written for me.”

  Rümayesh closed her eyes and the wind gusted. Sand tickled her ebony skin, collected in the thorns of her hair before another gust lifted it away. When she opened her eyes once more, they were resolute. “Would that I had such free will.”

  To be driven by a hunger such as hers. To be given a taste of relief from time to time, but never finding the satisfaction she craved. He recalled the wonder he felt at seeing the desert in the manner of the ehrekh. A new world had been opened to him. But at what cost? To feel joy but not sorrow? To feel hunger as other souls drifted toward the farther fields?

  He refused to live like that.

  Gripping both hands into fists, he summoned the power of the first gods. He felt the bond between them. Thin and ghostlike before, it was now bright between them, a cord made of light. Rümayesh watched with a look that seemed to welcome what he was about to do. He ignored her. He no longer cared what she wanted.

  With one last look toward the horizon, he severed their link. A terrible pain ran through him. It burned like the summer sun. It cleaved Rümayesh from him, and in doing so tore his soul in two.

  The last thing he recalled was spindrift lifting from a dune like the curl of a horn. Then it dissipated, and was gone.

  Brama woke to someone calling his name. It was distant. Dreamlike. Even when he opened his eyes and saw Mae hovering over him, it sounded like cotton had been stuffed into his ears. As the blood smearing Mae’s cheeks, mouth, and chin registered, a keen ringing rose up, smothering what little he had been able to hear.

  He was lying next to Rümayesh. His knife was held loosely in his right hand though he couldn’t remember having drawn it. The fingers of both hands were bloody and his head hurt terribly. He dropped the knife and felt along his forehead. There he found a lump. Something was under his skin. Something hard.

  By the gods, Raamajit’s bone.

  “What did you do?” he asked.

  Confusion replaced the worry in Mae’s eyes.

  “What did you do?”

  “I did nothing, Brama. You did.”

  She’d found him crawling toward Rümayesh. He’d taken his knife and used the tip to gouge at the skin of her forehead, then, after liberating the bone, he’d cut his own forehead and pressed the bone to the wound.

  The bone had kept his soul intact. The part that still remained within him, in any case. But it wasn’t alone. Rümayesh’s was there as well. He felt unwhole, made of two parts, a man stitched together. The Torn Man, Brama thought. He began to giggle. Then laugh. The Tattered Prince, sewn together from the torn remains of two tattered souls. His laughs soon devolved into long, wracking coughs.r />
  He rolled over and held both hands to his head to stem the terrible pain. Time passed. How much, he wasn’t sure. But the next thing he knew, Mae was helping him to stand. She tugged at his sleeve, spoke to him, but the ringing sound in his ears had returned and he heard little. He wasn’t ready to leave in any case.

  He gazed down at Rümayesh, who lay there, lifeless. It felt impossible. He’d been with her for so long he thought he’d never be free. You still aren’t, he thought. There’s a part of her inside you yet. He couldn’t think about that, though. Not now. He examined Behlosh, the simple yet remarkable spear still lodged in his chest. Brama tried to lift it, but he was too weak and it wouldn’t budge. When he drew some power from the bone, however, the spear lifted free, as if it had been waiting for him all this time.

  “Brama, we must go!”

  Mae’s words sounded as if they came from the other side of the desert.

  He nodded, and together they walked to her qirin and rode back toward the main cluster of fighting. Hundreds of warriors from both sides fought—over the sand, on the decks of ships, in the rigging above. Near the center of it all, Queen Alansal and Queen Meryam were locked in battle. Sharakhani and Mirean soldiers lay dead all around them, as if something had exploded near the center of their conflict.

  Queen Alansal did not cut an imposing figure, but she looked like one of the first women compared to frail Queen Meryam. Somehow, though, Meryam’s skeletal frame made her seem more dangerous. She looked wild, like an animal caged and underfed, ready to do anything to stay alive. She swung a whip of fire from one hand. A sound like thunder rolled across the battlefield as she wielded it against Alansal, who dodged several strikes. But then one was too quick, too precise, and she was forced to block it with one of her steel pins. The end of the whip curled around it, spraying fire while doing so, and Alansal caught much of it. Even from this distance Brama could hear her scream of pain.

  Another strike came in, which Alansal also blocked imperfectly. Her dress was on fire and another two strikes came in rapid succession. The second crashed against her dead on.

  “No!” Mae screamed, and urged Angfua to move faster.

  Queen Meryam strode toward Alansal, who had fallen face-first onto the sand. Meryam was saying something while pointing to the Mirean ships, no doubt demanding Alansal’s surrender.

  Alansal pushed herself off the ground. As she regarded Meryam, only paces away now, the flames along her dress flickered and went out.

  Queen Meryam drew her flaming whip back, but before she could strike, a steel pin flew from Alansal’s hand, glinted in the air between them, and struck Meryam deep in the chest, just above her heart.

  Meryam staggered backward, her left hand gripping the head of the long pin. Somehow managing to keep her feet, she sent her whip lashing.

  By then Alansal had gouged the sand with the other pin. A bright thread of chromatic light lit where the pin touched it, as if the sand were nothing but fabric, and Alansal had just cut her way through it. She rolled into this tear in reality, slipping from view and narrowly avoiding the lightning strike of Meryam’s whip. Another flaming strike came just after, but Alansal was gone, and the strange doorway was closing behind her. As it snapped shut, a great gout of sand lifted into the air and a thunderclap resounded over the battlefield.

  Meryam was thrown backward. She fell to the sand and lay there, unmoving, as a dozen Blade Maidens who’d been rushing to her aid reached her and spirited her away. Queen Meryam might be wounded, but it was clear the Sharakhani forces had the upper hand. Everywhere Brama looked, the asirim were causing devastation. The Maidens and Silver Spears had taken dozens of Mirean ships. There were pockets of resistance yet—the Mireans had tens of thousands of warriors at their command—but without their queen, and without Rümayesh to aid them, it was a losing battle.

  Mae was riding toward a fellow soldier, one of the Damned, assaulted by two asirim. Mae drew her sword and shouted over and over, trying to draw their attention, and Brama lifted the spear, hoping to impale one of them as he’d done to Behlosh, but he felt none of the power he’d felt earlier. The bone of Raamajit felt closed, deadened, a storehouse of power still, but one for which the keys had been inexplicably lost.

  The asirim were raking their claws over the defenseless qirin warrior. But suddenly they stood and their heads swiveled east. Another asir a dozen yards beyond did so as well. All across the battlefield, the asirim were breaking away from the conflicts, be it on the deck of a ship or on the sand, and turning east.

  Mae pulled up as the two asirim ahead began loping across the sand. Others followed. Soon, everywhere Brama looked the asirim were bounding across the desert, heading toward the same unknown destination. The Blade Maidens called to them, ordering their return, but the asirim bounded away like a pack of black laughers on the hunt.

  It gave the Mireans heart. Led by several of Queen Alansal’s generals, they launched a counterattack. And then Brama heard a sound that astounded him: horns from the Sharakhani ships calling for retreat. The Mireans charged full on, hoping to catch them, but they were overeager and disorganized, and the Sharakhani forces were not toothless. A counterattack spearheaded by the Blade Maidens inflicted terrible damage, and soon the Mirean generals had had enough. They beat their signal drums, calling for their troops to regroup.

  “What just happened?” Brama asked, watching as the Kings’ galleons began sailing south.

  Mae unbuckled her demon mask and let it hang loose. “The goddess of luck has granted us her favor.”

  No, Brama thought. This wasn’t luck. Something very strange had just happened. The prevailing desert winds, which had dominated for over four hundred years, had just shifted, perhaps for good. “Come,” Brama said, pointing toward the Mirean ships with his spear. “Let’s help where we can.”

  Mae glanced back at him, an inscrutable expression on her face.

  “What?” Brama asked.

  Still she remained silent.

  “Mae, what is it?”

  “I thought after battle, you go.”

  Brama paused, a bit dumbstruck. In truth, he’d had no idea what he would do after the battle. He hadn’t been sure he’d make it out alive. He still wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to do with his life, he wasn’t sure what he could do, given the realities of Rümayesh and the bone in his forehead, but he was struck by how much Mae seemed to care. It was then that he realized what a good friend she’d become, and how much he didn’t want that friendship to end.

  “I don’t want to go, Mae. Not yet.”

  Mae stared at him a good long while. As reserved as she always was, he couldn’t tell if she was pleased or not. “Good,” she finally said. Then a smile broke over her face, quickly hidden as she spurred her qirin into motion.

  Chapter 57

  WITH THE EASTERN HORIZON a swath of citrine and gold, and the rest of the sky a star-splashed indigo, the Amaranth sailed toward the southern reach of the Mirean encampment. Emre stood on the foredeck, scanning the profile of the other ships. It was obvious they weren’t accustomed to fighting in the desert. Their hundreds of ships were arrayed in loose clusters, some small, some quite large. Some of the ships’ anchors hadn’t even been lowered.

  A dozen gaps presented themselves as the ship sailed deeper into the camp, but Emre had Darius hold off on entering. He was on the lookout for the prison ship. He’d never seen it, but King Ihsan’s Blade Maiden had described it well enough: an old desert sloop with poor lines and a snub-nose due to a broken bowsprit.

  “There!” called Frail Lemi, raising one musclebound arm to point to a curving arc of dhows and sloops and a large Malasani barque that looked strangely out of place among the smaller ships. Near the middle of that arc was the snub-nosed sloop. “That’s it right there, ain’t it, Emre?”

  “That’s it, Lem.”

  Frail Lemi beamed while Darius, his
weakened arm hardly a hindrance, adjusted the Amaranth’s course. When they came within an eighth-league of the camp’s outer edge, a bell began to ring on one of the Malasani ships. The alarm was picked up on several other ships. And more beyond those.

  Darius piloted the Amaranth brilliantly, skirting twin clusters of rocks that squatted like a pack of hyenas in the dim morning light. Frail Lemi stood on the foredeck, holding the ship’s anchor. The anchor was tied to a thick hawser that Old Nur had spent the night reinforcing. The other end of the hawser was wrapped around the mainmast, circling it five times. The slack was piled in a tight coil on the deck between the foremast and the mainmast, where the end of the hawser had been secured to a heavy iron ring.

  Emre, holding a thick shield, drew his shamshir and slid to the starboard gunwales. “Archers!” he called, seeing a dozen bowmen moving into position on the Malasani ships and the sand before them.

  Frail Lemi moved to the gunwales behind Emre and ducked low. Hamid in turn crouched just behind Frail Lemi, holding a sword and shield as Emre was. Darius brought the ship in line with the prison ship. The rest of the crew sat on the main deck and gripped the hawser with thick leather gloves. The arrows began to fly a moment later. One thudded hard into the bulwarks near Emre’s head. Another punched through the foresail. A third struck the pilot’s wheel, startling Darius. From then on came a steady rain of barbed shafts.

  As they approached the prison ship Frail Lemi stood and began swinging the anchor above his head. Emre used his shield to protect Frail Lemi’s large frame as best he could, as did Hamid behind him, but they needed to give Lemi room to spin the anchor.

  That Lemi could throw it was amazing enough. The anchor was iron, with three great hooks, meant to dig into the sand and prevent a ship from drifting in stiff winds. Plenty on board could lift it, but only Frail Lemi could hurl it far enough to wrap a mast, or use the trick he’d shown them to make the hook catch.