The Empire of Gold

by S. A. Chakraborty

  “Brighten,” he whispered.

  The zulfiqar burst into flames. Glorious, swirling flames of gold and green that raced down the gleaming copper blade. The light exploded outward, attacking the smothering dark.

  And illuminating the hundreds of armed warriors who’d been waiting for him.

  Ali dropped into a fighting stance, but none of them moved. They were statues, he realized. Creations of stone and shell so lifelike it seemed impossible, garbed in the dress of a dizzying array of nations and times. Short tunics and pleated skirts, armor the likes of which he’d never seen, and a dozen varieties of helmets and shields. And while most of the statues stood at attention, lined up as though awaiting command, plenty more were sprawled on the ground with their stone hands raised as if to protect their heads, anguished expressions carved into their faces. Severed limbs littered the ground as though someone had taken a great hammer to them, smashing free legs and arms.

  Ali prodded a stone torso with his foot. The artist had certainly taken great care to exactly depict spilled intestines.

  Get out of here. Now. Gripping his zulfiqar, Ali carefully edged away, turning back the way he’d come.

  Just in time to see, out of the corner of his eye, something large skitter away.

  Ali spun, but it was already gone, vanishing into the darkness. He waited, but there was no sound save his pounding heart and uneven breathing. Whatever was out there beyond the black was silent. Waiting.

  Watching. Ali pulled free the iron knife Wajed had given him. A weapon in each hand, he stayed light on his feet, pushing past the pain in his ankle.

  He still wasn’t ready.

  A scaled tentacle lashed out, hitting Ali in the stomach and sending him flying. He’d only just landed in the sand, the wind knocked from his lungs, when he saw them—two demons lunging from the abyss. One was a sea scorpion the size of an elephant, with the horrifying upper half of a dead-eyed, purpling man. The second was equally monstrous: a horned viper with a spider’s legs and batlike wings.

  Ali rolled just in time to avoid the scorpion man’s tail. Its stinger plunged into the flooded sand next to his head, the wicked, blade-sharp scythe dripping with poison.

  He scrambled to his feet, narrowly avoiding a rake of the viper’s serrated legs, which would have ripped open his belly. The demons, monsters—whatever the hell they were—had taken Ali off guard.

  But they would not catch him.

  A blazing zulfiqar in his hand for the first time in months, Ali felt the despair and grief and utter helplessness that had gripped him since his city had fallen—since his father had banished him, since the marid had tortured him, since he’d awakened to the reality of living in a broken world in which his hands were tied in a thousand ways—fall away. The marid wanted a fight?

  Fine.

  Ali bellowed in rage, answering the viper’s hiss and the scorpion man’s awful moan, and threw himself at them.

  He ducked the stinger again, then kicked the scorpion man in the chest, lashing out with his zulfiqar at the viper. It reared faster than his eye could track and then seized his injured ankle, dragging Ali to the sand.

  This time the stinger didn’t miss.

  Ali screamed as it pierced his shoulder, the burning pain of the poison like being flayed with a thousand iron knives. But more in fury than fear, he struck out with his zulfiqar, slicing through the scorpion man’s tail and severing the stinger, still embedded in his shoulder. The demon screeched as a spray of salty blood gushed from the wound.

  Ali dropped the zulfiqar, ripped the stinger from his shoulder, and flung it at the viper’s face before retrieving his weapon. His left arm was numb, and he tripped over his own feet, battling a wave of wooziness. The scorpion man was squealing, wheeling and bucking about like a half-crushed insect as blood spurted from his tail.

  The horned viper came back, though, whipping around Ali’s lower half and squeezing hard. Ali tried to wriggle free, gasping as the beast pressed the air out of him. His one working arm still free, he shoved the zulfiqar against the viper’s scaled hide. It sparked and smoldered as the two of them howled in their death match.

  “STOP.” The rumbling voice was familiar enough by now that a mix of relief and apprehension was rushing over Ali before he even saw Sobek charging across the flooded sand.

  The scorpion man pulled at his snarled beard, chittering and wailing.

  “He is not an invader,” Sobek snapped. “He is kin.” Sobek seized the scorpion man’s tail, but instead of hurting him, a rush of water erupted from the Nile marid’s hands, pouring down the monster’s hide. In moments, his stinger was restored.

  Sobek came for Ali next, untangling the horned viper trying to asphyxiate his descendant as though the beast were an inconvenient weed. There was something almost paternal about the annoyed exasperation with which he dragged Ali out of danger, and the reminder of the bond between them—the history Ali was still struggling to accept—made him want to throw up.

  That could have also been the poison.

  Sobek gripped his arm, sinking his claws into Ali’s skin and sending a burst of coolness surging through his body. Ali fell to his knees, and his zulfiqar sputtered out, but relief was already coming—his injuries gone in a flash. The puncture the scorpion had punched into his flesh sizzled like boiling water and then healed, leaving a new scar. Ali touched it, his fingers meeting rough hide. The patch of skin Sobek had healed, about the size of Ali’s hand, looked as though it had been replaced with Sobek’s own scales.

  He didn’t have much time to consider it. The Nile marid had let go of Ali’s arm only to seize him by the chin, yanking him back to his feet. Sobek’s yellow eyes searched for the spot on Ali’s temple where Suleiman’s seal had been marked. It had started fading when Nahri took the ring, the few glimpses Ali had caught of his reflection in the water down here showing it was now gone for good.

  Sobek’s eyes narrowed to reptilian slits. “You fool. That ring was your only hope of salvation with Tiamat.”

  Ali wrested free of Sobek’s hand. “It wasn’t worth my people’s magic or my city’s safety.”

  The marid’s expression twisted, snarling teeth layering with a disappointed grimace.

  Then movement in the inky void shut them both up.

  The ground shivered beneath Ali’s feet, ripples dancing across the flooded sand. The stone warriors trembled, a pair tipping over and smashing together, then breaking apart in an explosion of tiny cowrie shells. Another glisten in the distance, the glimmer of a scaled fin like a whale breaching the sea’s surface on a moonless night. The fin, only one, indicated an unfathomable size.

  Ali straightened up, urging his zulfiqar to brighten once again. “My fire magic …”

  “Suleiman’s curse doesn’t extend to this realm. You have the magic you were born with, fire and water together.” Sobek’s eyes met Ali’s. “It will not be enough.”

  The darkness was condensing, churning. Shades of gray and midnight swirled into the black, rain falling from the unseen sky.

  It’s no sky, Ali realized. It’s the sea itself. He was at the bottom of the world, in a fragile bubble of air and sand, beneath the crush of the ocean. The teal water was sloshing violently around his feet, tendrils licking up like hungry tongues. The ground gave a second great shake, as if the entire abandoned city had been caught in the current of a passing ship, and a towering marble column fell, knocking over a troop of stone soldiers like falling dominoes. There was another dart of fins, closer this time, and a gleaming, impossibly large curve of muscled flank.

  Any hostility he felt for Sobek vanished. “Sobek,” he whispered. “What do I—”

  “She likes to be entertained,” the Nile marid cut in, his voice urgent. He’d grabbed Ali’s wrist again, so hard that it hurt, holding him firmly at his side. “She thrives on chaos and passion and will take it at your expense if it strikes her whim. Make sure it does not.”

  How do I do that? Ali wanted to ask. But he coul
dn’t open his mouth anymore, couldn’t make another sound. The darkness had split, crashing waves and storm clouds surrounding the ruined city like it was an island about to be devoured. Thunder boomed, shaking him to his bones as more rain lashed his face. The air smelled like blood, like salt, like the sweet scent of death. Lightning cracked across the oceanic horizon, illuminating a wild sprawl of sea creatures in the deep. Sharks and squids and eels, but also stranger things—armored fish, human-faced merpeople and sea dragons with multiple searching heads.

  Ali didn’t care about any of them. For swimming forth was a colossus that made the vast city he’d wandered for days seem small.

  Tiamat.

  THE MARID MOTHER CAME TO HIM IN INCREASINGLY fearsome pieces, too massive and too daunting to look at all at once. A spiked tail like a massive club and horselike forelegs that ended in talons. What might have been an udder, weeping waterfalls, and armored plates jutting from her back like hazy mountains, obscured by rainy gloom. Her serpentine belly could have contained five of Daevabad’s palaces and was sheathed by brilliant scales that glistened like wet marble in a dazzling array of colors—the scales he’d seen covering the bottom of Daevabad’s lake and the pathways of the Grand Temple. Another crack of lightning revealed barnacle- and coral-encrusted wings, like an entire section of the seabed had risen. Tentacles wriggled and stretched from seemingly everywhere.

  And her face … Oh, God. Ali had to look up and up, to where clouds and the sun would have been, had he not been in this hellish unknown realm. Her face was almost too terrible to behold, a leering skull that mixed the worst features of a lion and a dragon. Bull ears jutted over eyes like swirling typhoons, and jagged teeth that could have bitten a chunk out of Shefala filled a muzzle framed with more tentacles.

  Tiamat wriggled and stretched, then opened her mouth as if to yawn, and the resulting screeching roar, like the break of tidal waves and the death cries of seabirds, would have sent Ali back to his knees if Sobek hadn’t been gripping his arm. Even so, Ali abruptly shut his eyes, a primal part of his brain unable to process what was before him and closing off in response.

  Sobek’s claws dug into his flesh. “Look upon her,” the marid hissed in warning. “Control yourself. Make clear you come as kin, not as an offering.”

  Ali was shaking. He didn’t feel like kin to anything down here. But he forced himself to obey, gazing again at her monstrous visage. A churning, rainy mist orbited around her head like a loyal moon—the monsoon marid, Ali recognized, Tiamat’s messenger.

  A voice boomed in his head, and Ali clapped his hands over his ears.

  My children, Tiamat said lazily. Her voice was a drawl and a hiss and a pounding in his blood. What trouble have you gotten yourselves into now?

  The monsoon marid spun faster. Sobek! He has lied, disobeyed you once again!

  “I have done no such thing,” the Nile marid growled.

  No? Tiamat’s tail lashed the ground, encircling the flooded plain they stood upon. You were ordered to bring your kin to me once, and instead you devoured them yourself. Now my messenger says one survives, that he stands with a foot in each world and has endangered us all.

  “I acted in good faith when you ordered the annihilation of my daeva kin. You all know I did,” Sobek said, glaring at the marid swarming the stormy water. “I am sure you have feasted upon the memory I gave you more than once. Any survivors in Daevabad would have been unseen to us all.” He raised his voice in a crocodile’s bellow. “You were fools to tangle with the daevas again! Their generation had forgotten us, had forgotten how Anahid the Conqueror used her ring against us. This new Nahid might have held it and never come for the waters. Instead, you acted rashly and empowered her champion!”

  An eel-like creature with a turtle’s face surged forth from the water. An easy thing for a river lord safe in exile on the other side of the world to say. It snapped its beak. You have never borne the yoke of their servitude.

  There is a simple enough way to learn the truth, Tiamat declared, and the eel creature instantly bowed low. Sobek may be cut off from the communing of waters, but his misplaced hatchling is not. We shall see and share.

  One of her tentacles shot out, snaking around Ali’s leg and ripping him from Sobek’s grip. He yelped in surprise, the flooded sand growing small in the distance as he was passed up Tiamat’s vast body, overwhelmed by the blur of dazzling scales and the briny smell of rotting marine life.

  The last tentacle deposited him onto a massive, webbed paw, its claws rising around Ali like lethal saplings. Tiamat drew him close to her gruesome face and grinned, revealing brackish teeth. This close he could see that great scars marred her body, perhaps the remnants of some long-ago battle.

  Such fuss for something so small, she said by way of greeting. I hope you are worth being awakened.

  She ripped into his mind.

  Ali was driven to his knees, clutching his head as Tiamat wrenched open his life before his eyes. This was not Sobek or the monsoon marid idly flipping through memories like a bored student might study a book. This was everything at once, a blur of faces and laughter and pain. Climbing trees in the harem and weeping for his mother. The thrust of a dagger through his stomach on a cold night and Darayavahoush strangling him in the infirmary. The smell of blood, always blood. Anas’s blood in the arena sand, shafit blood drying on Ali’s face, Lubayd’s blood spilling from his lips, copper-flecked blood dripping from his father’s ear. Emotions. Passions. Lusts and hungers and things so long forgotten Ali wasn’t entirely sure they were even his.

  Sobek lunging from the Nile to save him from Qandisha and guiding him through the currents. The monsoon marid seizing him; Ali seizing Nahri. Nahri tumbling with him to the bed, her hands running down his body. Her hands cutting into his chest. The seal ring, wet with blood, on her thumb where it belonged …

  Tiamat abruptly turned over her hand. Ali plummeted to the sand, landing hard on his back.

  He gave it back. The amusement had vanished from her voice.

  You let him leave your waters with it, and HE GAVE IT BACK.

  Ali gasped for air, catching his breath just in time for Tiamat to press her clawed paw against his chest, pinning him to the flooded ground. The salty water washed over his face.

  Mortal, do you know what I would have given you for that ring? You wish to travel the currents? I would have devoured your enemies and seated you on a throne of their bones. I would have given you such power that you could have broken your world and re-formed it in the light you so desperately crave.

  Sobek grunted, a low warning sound that would have made every hair on Ali’s back stand on end if Tiamat hadn’t been crushing him to death. The Nile marid was almost all crocodile now. “He has fulfilled his ancestor’s pact. He is under my protection.”

  Tiamat made a sound that could have been her version of a snort—a horrible clacking coming from her monstrous mouth. You and your pacts, Sobek. She put more weight into her paw, and Ali writhed, certain his chest was about to collapse. Have you ever seen how protective a crocodile can be over its eggs, mortal? How swiftly that can change?

  “He is kin,” Sobek insisted. “He can see the currents and shape our magic. The blood debt that binds us from striking back at the Nahid’s champion marks him as well.”

  Tiamat laughed but then released Ali. He rolled onto his side, choking and coughing.

  Kin? Have you read his mind? He thinks of us as hell-bound demons and monsters. He despises you for what you did to his ancestors. He told the Nahid he wanted to crawl out of his skin when he learned you were part of him!

  Sobek didn’t flinch. “He is young. He will come to understand.”

  And is that what you wish, Sobek? That I give him back so you may have another daeva pet to keep company with in your lonely river? Why don’t we see what your cousins think?

  Tiamat shifted, shaking the ground, and then a burst of light rushed down her finned back and through the spine of her tail, glowing faintly beyond
the curtain of blue water like signal fire along a mountain chain. More marid were emerging from the depths now, clustering closer.

  Ali climbed to his feet, his body and mind aching. “What’s going on?” he asked Sobek.

  “They are communing.” There was open longing in the Nile marid’s expression. “She is sharing your memories among them.”

  The prospect of even more creatures gaining access to his innermost thoughts made Ali’s stomach turn. “Do you not join them?”

  “No.”

  Sobek’s voice was cutting, but Ali pressed him. Deadly family history aside, the Nile marid was his only ally down here, and there was still so much Ali didn’t know. “Why not?”

  Sobek gave him a look so vicious that Ali stepped back. “Because I disobeyed her.”

  Ali didn’t get a chance to question him further. Tiamat was already moving for them again. My children remind me that you came with offerings. Shall we see what you have brought to buy your life?

  With a burst of water, Ali’s ship appeared before them. Tiamat dragged a claw down its neck, splitting it like a hawk might rip open a rabbit. The hold burst, jewels and incense and precious resins spilling forth. One of her tentacles rooted through the piled treasure, tossing precious objects this way and that as though it weren’t a life-altering fortune on the sand.

  Trinkets, she dismissed them all, burying in a spray of mud a chest of gold that could have bought an army. What good will sparkly baubles do in my realm? I was awakened from my sleep to deal with you, and all you’ve done is disappoint me. She snatched at the chest of books.

  “No, don’t—” Ali spoke up, finally finding his voice before her.

  Tiamat paused, and Ali glanced up to see a wild grin on her terrifying visage. Is this something valuable to you?

  Flustered, Ali tried to explain. “They’re not baubles. They’re books. Precious ones we thought might honor you. Knowledge and stories and history. Entertainment,” he blurted out, remembering Sobek’s earlier advice.