“Aye, you are decent in your strength, I will grant you that. However, with each passing minute, the storm outside worsens.”
Caleb extended his hand to the dome above. The milky white interior cleared, giving way to transparency. Around and over them, sand and debris swam, an ocean of desert floating above.
“Jaha’s wrath is mighty,” Darya whispered.
“It is,” added Caleb. “This storm is the mightiest that Greater Dyli has seen in more than a hundred years.”
“Will we stay here?” Ashallah asked. “Will our cause be delayed?”
“No,” Caleb replied firmly. “A greater threat stirs in Rilah. With each minute that the Grand Sultan sits on his throne, his thirst for power grows. Those few enemies he has at home and the borders will see their entire bloodlines vanish before their eyes, before meeting their demise. Those in lands beyond the deep waters will face a similar fate.” Caleb turned to face Ashallah. “This storm will provide us cover. It is our best chance to travel to Rilah as quickly as possible, without drawing the attention of the Sultan’s many watchers and turquoise sentries. The way will be fraught peril though. Some of your mortal comrades – the Tirkhan – will not make it. You may not make it. The choice is yours.”
Ashallah stared back into his eyes. Not because they mesmerized her, though they were brilliant. Rather, because she could sense Darya looking upon her at that same moment, awaiting her answer. Because she did not want to return her look, and in doing so, appear vulnerable. Because she did not want to admit, that for the first time since she could remember, she truly feared for the safety of another.
She lifted her hand. She nodded.
Caleb turned to Darya. His stare met hers, providing all the affirmation she needed.
Darya stepped close to them. Caleb took her hand before looking back to Ashallah to take hers.
Darya and Ashallah looked to one another. Darya extended her hand.
Ashallah placed her palm in Darya’s. She held it, firmly, as she instinctively shut her eyes.
The dome around them dissolved. The storm swept in, to engulf them. Unlike when it first came, Ashallah did not bear the sting of grains against her skin. Even her eyes held up, her sight unaffected.
Ashallah tilted her head. She looked down.
She felt Darya tug on her hand. “Don’t let go!” she shouted.
Ashallah resisted the temptation. This is not possible, she told herself. No. Not this.
She stared at her legs as sand raced all around. Slowly, they receded, their essence disappearing, as though the grains that brushed against them stole their flesh and bone. Still, she endured no pain, no sensation whatsoever. Even as her toes, then her ankles, shins, knees, and thighs vanished.
She turned to Caleb and Darya. Like herself, the sand decorticated their bodies from their feet upward, the grains unraveling their clothes and turquoise stripes. What pieces left them appeared to turn to sand, and joined the surrounding storm, which continued to swirl with fury.
“Don’t let go!” Ashallah managed to hear through the blast of sand and howl of the wind.
A Tirkhanian shora struck her thigh, suspended there briefly, marked by blotches of blood. As quickly as it had appeared, a shift of the wind blew the head wrap off into the swirl of sand above.
A scream, short and labored, drifted to her ears.
Then there was a squeeze at her hand.
Ashallah turned her attention back to Darya, whose hand still held hers. Her calm demeanor persisted, even as her torso extricated into the cyclonic rage.
Darya parted her lips. She spoke. Ashallah strained to listen yet failed. For Darya, tranquil in her speech, did not struggle to yell or scream. Although mute to her, Ashallah managed to watch her lips, and in doing so, read what words her mouth formed.
“You will not perish. You are strong. You are midnight.”
Then the sands receded her neck, her face. They took Darya. Then Ashallah.
Thrust upward, Ashallah’s instinct was to flail her arms and legs. Though when she looked down, she discovered she had none, finding only granules in the wind where her appendages should have been. She reached for her face, feeling neither her fingers nor her cheeks. Despite the absence of her body, not one of her senses had dulled. In fact, they had heightened. The sand no longer impeded her sight, as she saw everything. The swirling of the sand around her. The upheaval of dunes and mountains. The burying of all structures in the storm’s wake. Her hearing amplified every subtlety of the wind, whether a low pitch or a high howl. Then there was the sand. The touch of a million granules sweeping over her body, to be followed by a million more, along with millions after that.
So it continued, the sensation of heightened consciousness, for hours upon hours. Never before had Ashallah experienced such a loss of control, such freedom from determination. It struck her as both terrifying and soothing, restricting and liberating, as though every activity of her life had been condensed and then released during this storm.
Through it all, Ashallah not once spotted her comrades-in-arms. She suspected they were like her, reduced to grains in the breeze. Once, though, she thought she felt Darya. Not as one feels a female’s touch, but the way one imprints on another a memory, an experience, a bit of personal history. Like déjà vu, Ashallah felt as though the two had shared a moment that could not be expressed or pinpointed. Could she have passed through me? Ashallah asked herself. Her grains of sand intertwining with mine? A kind thought, to be sure, she told herself. I wonder if we were one. Wouldn’t that be brilliant?
Only when the sands changed in hue did Ashallah sense a difference in her being. Ahead, a sphere burned bright, its radiance spreading outward. Every grain from its center glowed white and ignited those they encountered, thereby dispensing their darker earth tones. As the light expanded, growing nearer, Ashallah received its warmth. Only then did she realize...
The sun, she thought. The rising sun.
As the sphere grew larger and brighter, the sands at its center thinned and dispersed. The sky opened before her. As did an image in the distance, one with curves and straight edges that seemed to rise from the desert floor as if to challenge the magnificence of the sun.
Rilah.
In the bazaars of Yasem and countless other towns and cities she visited, she had seen merchants selling scrolls with paintings of the Immortal City. The structures and buildings that Rilah boasted were impressive, even on papyrus. Tall, white domes of marble and flattened ivory, stretching over a hundred feet high. Murals of seascapes, mountain vistas, and jungles from lands afar, painted on the brick walls that supported block after block of hanging gardens. Even the homes and flats inspired a sense of awe. For unlike the dust-colored buildings of Yasem and countless other towns across Greater Dyli, nearly all those of Rilah were awash in white or pastel colors, so as to reflect the desert sun and thus cool the interiors.
Whether due to the brightening sun or the dissipating storm, Ashallah began to sense that the power that had propelled her upward was starting to wane. Her bird’s eye view of the Immortal City dropped. Her elevation lessened as the earth below seemed to rise. This time, she did flail, as the sand around her coalesced to regenerate her arms and legs. Ashallah could feel her face being restored, the skin on her cheeks rippling under the pressure of the air. Whatever had shielded her from the wind and sand faded, as both assaulted her body.
This is it, she thought. For her experience of flying had ended, leaving her body to fall. Should I close my eyes? she asked herself. She had always believed that she wanted to die with her eyes open, so that she may stare Death himself in the face. But then again, she had also imagined dying on the battlefield, before a mighty adversary or amongst a cluster of enemy combatants. The concept of a boring end to her life, without the adrenaline of fighting in her veins, in the absence of her blades, had never occurred to her.
Open or closed? she considered again. That is the only choice I have, the only action I can take. A sm
all decision. The last I will ever make.
A scattering of granules in the wind hammered her eyes. Ashallah raised her arms to protect her face a moment too late, thus feeling the sting of sand. She shook her head. She blinked vigorously as she fought back tears of pain.
I will not die crying, she told herself. I will die with my eyes dry. A true warrior.
Her blinking subsided as her vision cleared, in time for her to see the dunes below speeding up towards her. Instinctively, she raised her arms before her face to brace herself for the moment of impact.
Then, it stopped. All of it. Her body from falling. The rush of air over her body. The grains of stinging sand. The dunes approaching her from below.
Ashallah looked all around her. Suspended in the air, she was perhaps no more than a hundred or so feet from the ground. She moved her arms and legs, finding them, along with her body, hanging horizontally. It was as though she was laying on a sheet of air, able to see the dunes, crests, and depressions below.
A ridge, soft and subtle, traversed the arch of her back. It turned inward. Ashallah realized it was the edge of a hand, stroking her.
“Be not afraid,” cooed a familiar voice. Darya, floating, appeared alongside her.
“I’m never afraid,” Ashallah retorted, knowing her words were at least half a lie.
“We will descend now,” Darya assured her. With that declaration, Ashallah felt the air meet her body again. This time it was soft though, and slow. Much like how a mother lowers a babe into a crib.
As they floated towards the ground, Ashallah raised her head. She stared at the walls of Rilah, which even from afar appeared as mighty precipices.
“Their sentries,” Ashallah began. “Their turquoise. Will they see us?”
“The Grand Sultan would not risk his best seers, his top assets, during a storm. Especially the storm of the century. Not when he now has all seventy-seven jinn. We are safe.”
Are we? Ashallah asked herself. Even as their feet touched the sand and they regained their footing, Ashallah could not put the thought out of her mind that they were closer to danger than ever before.
“Caleb!” Darya exclaimed, seemingly oblivious to Ashallah’s inner sense of concern. Ashallah turned to find the Firstborne float down to the sand not more than two dozen feet away. Darya embraced him.
“My child,” Caleb responded. “I am fine.”
“The others. I did not see them descend. You are the first I have spotted. Did we lose them?”
“We did not.” Caleb pointed to a hill far behind them, where a sole figure stood. From such a distance, Ashallah could not tell if it was man or woman, Firstborne or Tirkhan. Yet Caleb continued pointing, confident in his knowing, his sight. “Come,” he beckoned them as he marched toward the lone one. “We should join the others before all the others rise.”
Ashallah thought he was referring to those citizens of Rilah. However, as she trudged on after him, she soon discovered otherwise.
One by one points in the sand shifted. From under stretches of canvas and mounds of displaced desert, all manner of living rose. Ashallah eyed a single camel first, followed by three others. Then a mule. A horse. Finally, a person emerged, albeit slowly. The old man shook the sand from his shora, his cloak, and hair.
“Shouldn’t we cover...” Ashallah started.
“Yes,” Darya finished. “We should.”
Ashallah found an abaya thrust in her face. She raised her gaze to discover that Darya had already dressed, with the whole of her covered and veiled. Behind her, Caleb continued to walk, although he too had covered himself with mask and cloth. And shrunk.
“How did he...”
“The Firstborne would have never survived so many generations had they not mastered, in full, the art of disguise. Their ability to conceal their true stature and talents can happen at a moment’s notice. Furthermore, they often carry with them coverings to help their allies. Hence my clothing and yours.”
Ashallah had no time to respond before Darya dropped the abaya into her hands. She hurriedly threw it on as others around them emerged from the sands to gather themselves and their belongings. By the time they had reached the lone one on the crest, an army of vagabonds had risen from the desert.
“The storm. It claimed more than we could have anticipated,” stated the Firstborne, who Ashallah could not identify beyond his distinct, booming tone, as he had covered himself as well. She took special note that the Tirkhan warriors were uncovered, as was their custom following a storm, that they may display their courage before Jaha’s might. However, their display of pride and boldness seemed hampered by their lack of numbers. Their numbers had dwindled to but a few. Among them, the broad-chested one was absent.
“The sentries and guards will be opening their shutters and doors soon,” Caleb opined as his comrades rallied around him. “Along with the gates. We should try to move as close as possible to the front...”
“Rahim. Where’s Rahim?”
“And Yaromir?” Ashallah asked, almost forgetting about the scribe. “Where are they?”
The Firstborne and remaining Tirkhan, in their haste, had forgotten them as well. All looked over their shoulders and scanned the dunes and mounds. From every direction, pack animals and nomads rose from their caravan lines, further complicating their efforts to find two missing men. Even Caleb, with his gift of seeing great distances, struggled through his search.
“Are they even here?” asked one Tirkhan, whose face had endured several scrapes from the storm. “We lost so many to Jaha’s fury.”
“True,” agreed one Firstborne, who true stature and skin remained concealed.
“They are here. Nearby,” Darya insisted. “I know it.”
The others shared wayward glances and raised brows. Even Ashallah, who in times past would remain the last one to admit when a fellow warrior had been lost, sighed.
Darya would have none of their skepticism though. “Keep looking!” she pleaded and demanded all in one breath. “Keep looking!”
Obliged by honor, they did just that. Their group scattered in every direction, hunting for some hint of a Turquoise warrior and a royal scribe. Ashallah trailed after Darya, who marched towards the main road into Rilah, where the desert wanderers had gathered. Dusty and worn, they formed a snake that extended miles from the city’s main gate. Ashallah stared in awe, wondering how so many travelers could enter one walled city and not overwhelm it. Darya, on the other hand, expressed no sense of reverence, as she walked the line, her eyes eager to spot the familiar.
In their search, Ashallah laid eyes on all manner of people. Dylians formed the bulk of the mass, with their dark hair and eyes, along with their tan skin. Many others dotted the line into the city, including other clans of the Tirkhan, the tribes of Renaika, Vedo-In, and Kitare. Unlike those Ashallah was used to seeing in Yasem, the ones before her were the true nomads. Having traveled hundreds or even thousands of miles, such wanderers bore tattered wool garments patched together or camel skin clothes. Such dress, much of it unwashed due to the scarcity of water in the desert that surrounded Rilah, reeked of stenches common in stables or gutters.
Amongst the grungy and slovenly, there managed to be the cleansed, the women who had taken vows of varied dedication. Dotting the length of the waiting stood pockets of immaculate fabrics, in all variety of hues. The Rosil, in their tones of red roses, kept their eyes forward even as men beckoned them to reveal so much as a hand or an ankle in their direction. The healers in white marched the whole of the line, with the injured crying “Aliya” to attract their attention. Only the Kafan Sisters - in their flowing sky-blue abayas, cloaks, and robes – garnered no consideration save the occasional glance from a curious child.
So many colors, Ashallah considered. All of them.
No, she thought. Black is missing. As is indigo, midnight blue. The colors of the Shadya.
Ashallah scanned the line, squinting as she searched for those colors. They are not here, she told herself. Th
ey are absent. Forbidden. For no woman of that sisterhood would dare be allowed into the city of the Grand Sultan.
As she squinted, her gaze falling on the end of the line in the distance, Ashallah’s peripheral vision caught sight of a figure off to her far right. On a dune, it appeared alone and shorter. Not as though it lacked stature, but because it was either hunched over or leaning.
“Darya.”
Darya turned. “Yes.”
However, Ashallah had already left her side. Her legs, drawn to the solitary form, took her away from the road and into the sand. They left light prints in the sand, the product of her instruction, the marks of a soldier trained to move quickly on ground where others would struggle. They carried her over crests and through depressions.
“Wait!” Darya called after her, her voice labored and already far-off. “Ashallah, where are you going?”
Within seconds, Ashallah was able to give an answer to that question.
“To your brother,” she said, not loud enough for anyone but her to hear.
As she neared, she could tell that the sandstorm had taken its toll on Rahim. The vest and trousers he had worn at the oasis stuck to his body in tatters. A blend of dried blood and sand caked his skin, obscuring his turquoise stripes. His blond hair, disheveled, had taken on the tone and texture of the sand. Only his eyes – sapphires in orbs of white – had stayed unscathed.
For all that the turquoise brother had endured, though, the one he hunched over had fared worse.
Ashallah slowed as she neared close enough to recognize the lacerated face. “Yaromir?”
Rahim shook his head. “No longer.”
The quiet, mild-mannered scribe bore all the marks of one mangled by beast or battle. The skin of his face lay shredded, with that not torn enveloped in blood. Long cuts, as if a tiger had clawed him, stretched over his torso, while his legs and arms stretched out at irregular angles.
All broken, Ashallah knew. From his legs to his arms to his ribs. Perhaps more. He is at an end.
Panting, Darya approached. Ashallah looked over her shoulder just in time to catch sight of Darya’s eyes widening.
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