by Sara King
Damn the magus. He’d just wanted to tell her his fears, to warn her, and she had called the shadows down upon him. It was taking less and less provocation to set her off, nowadays, and his life had become a bitter waiting game. Eventually, she was going to call him for her final wish. Whatever she decided that wish would be would decide her fate.
Until then, she used him like the damn slave the wereverine taunted him to be. ‘Aqrab was so angry he was shaking. How dare she. It was vile. And wrong. And totally unprovoked. She was the one who was being unreasonable.
He stalked from one end of the tether to the other, his bare feet leaving a tread in the sands beneath him, feeling the scorching winds of the Fourth Lands like a pleasant caress against his skin. Damn her. All he wanted was to go home. Couldn’t she see that?
‘Aqrab looked to the east, wondering what had happened to his village. His family. He’d had to leave it all behind with his surrender, bound in servitude to an immortal who was just smart enough not to make that final wish, but too stubborn to see that he wanted, more than anything, to simply be free. Time had worn him down, the ages drying out his soul like the hot breeze of his homeland. He no longer cared about vengeance or retribution. All he wanted was to be able to walk a little further, to tread across the dunes and go home.
Damn her. Damn her stubborn soul.
He knew she wasn’t going to make the final wish. Regardless of what he said, no matter how much he insisted he only wanted to be free, she would take that to mean whatever she wanted. And she accused him of twisting his words. The obstinate wretch! She had sealed them both into a never-ending hell, from which there was only one escape.
And he could see it in her eyes. She’d rather die than let him go.
Her spirit still burned for vengeance. She still swung that sword of righteousness, in her mind. She still waited for the moment she could lop off his head, offered in surrender. Three thousand years ago, she had been about to kill a helpless man, about to seal his soul to her in eternal servitude, for a misunderstanding. ‘Aqrab’s deeds had to have been utterly misunderstood by the small minds of the First Lands. It was the only explanation for this lunacy. He had destroyed a city, yes, but in doing so, had saved so much more. The man’s wish had been typical greedy, self-centered, selfish First-Lander fare. He had wanted riches, first. Then women. Then he’d wanted the world.
‘…the power to shatter mountainsides with my step, to make the people of the world cringe before me in awe as I summon tornadoes with my very breath…’ the man had wished. And ‘Aqrab had given him just that. And, in doing so, had gotten a divine bounty put upon him as an ‘oathbreaker.’ The damn simpletons simply didn’t care about the weave he had seen, had he allowed that wish to play out as the man had wanted it. They didn’t care about the destruction that one fool would have wreaked upon the earth, in his mortal grasp for the gods. They just saw a djinni step out of the rubble and assumed he had meddled in First Lands affairs. The hypocrites.
And now he was tethered to the one sent to kill him. And she still wanted to, with every ounce of her soul. He could see it in her pretty brown eyes, whenever she deigned to look him in the face. She hated him. All of him. She hated his very being, his core, and wanted nothing more than to have put that sword through his neck. He’d tried to tell her what had happened, why that city had fallen, but she had cut him off, every time. ‘Twisted words’ she had spat. ‘Your kind are masters at it.’
Damn her.
He had learned quickly enough that there was no talking to her. Once his initial curse had worked—worked, praise the gods!—she’d been forced to leave her sword at that oasis to be swallowed by the sands. She had been unreasonable ever since. Utterly unwilling to so much as listen to him.
Just thinking of her perpetually rigid spine, her disdain, her contempt for him made his blood boil. She treated him like he was the slave the wereverine claimed he was.
Three thousand years was taking an ever-more-unpleasant turn, and this morning was just another indication that she was finally losing what little respect she ever had for him. How long would it be until she started forcing him to draw upon the power of creation of the Fourth Lands by simply flooding him with shadow until he submitted? It had to have occurred to her by now. That she hadn’t begun using him to fulfill her base desires, like every other First Lander he had ever met, still left him baffled.
…but not hopeful. Sooner or later, she was going to do it. He had seen it in her eyes. And once she crossed that line, once she forced a wish that had not been given to her, then not even her precious Lord of War could keep the lords of the Fourth Realm from utterly annihilating her and all of the weave-tearing ripples of her ill-begotten wish.
But at least he would be free.
Three thousand years was much too long to spend tethered to a beauty who would rather spit in his face than share warmth by the fire. Her nightly slight—where she would not even allow him to rest in a bed because he might somehow contaminate it with his presence—was a constant reminder that she considered herself above him, utterly superior to him in every way.
Utterly superior…and proud of it. Proud of her hold on him. Proud of the way she could make him grovel on his hands and knees, with no more than a mental nudge.
If only the little beauty didn’t set his damn loins afire every time he saw her slender form! It was one last humiliation, one last jab to prove that she was better than him. She saw him, looked him up and down like chattel, and sniffed—sniffed—as if she smelled something foul. And, what was worse, the longer he was around her, the more he wanted her, and the less he found himself craving the other women they happened upon. It made absolutely no sense to him, and left him infuriatingly flaccid on plenty of opportunities for merry-making over the years.
The wolves, especially, had been fond of breeding, yet for every moon-kissed woman who had so much as looked in his direction, his loins had simply not cooperated, until he had received the reputation of a damn impotent over the years. A djinni. Impotent. It was appalling and disgraceful and utterly humiliating. …and yet time and again, it was proving frustratingly true. The little winged Fury, with her snide comments and outright disdain, had somehow subjugated his passions, until, recently, she was the only one that could inspire his ardor—and she did it even when she was shoving shadows down his cord.
Never had ‘Aqrab been more frustrated or humiliated than he was now. It was almost as if the gods were taunting him, dangling this forbidden fruit in front of him for so long that now it was all his body seemed to desire. A Maiden of the Sword. A virgin-priestess. An angel of vengeance. A warrior without equal, proudly untouched by man…
…until one frightened djinni brushed his fingers against her leg and whispered his final wish.
And he wasn’t even sure she wasn’t bewitching him, either. It had been so long since he’d had a woman, he couldn’t tell anymore.
With the hatred he saw in her eyes every time she looked at him, he wouldn’t have been surprised. What better way to bring a djinni to his knees? A creature known for passion, romance, lust, desire…the very forces of creation. What better way to break him than taunt him with what he so desperately needed, but could not have?
In despair, ‘Aqrab slumped to the sand, staring to the east, where somewhere across the dunes, his village waited for him around an oasis. If it was still there. Three thousand years and even the Fourth Lands saw changes. The sands shifted. Leaders came and went. People moved, decided to try a change of scenery.
‘Aqrab had just dropped his head into his hands to stare at the golden sand between his bare feet when he felt the jolt of terror slam into him from the other side of the link like a titan’s sledge to his chest. He grunted, then twisted to the half-realm.
The sands disappeared, replaced by glowing crystalline dunes in all directions, overlaid by a barely-translucent, near-black forest of trees and a three-story mansion. All of it in varying contrasting shades of shimmering white and blac
k. He was in the backyard of the Sleeping Lady Lodge, looking up at the second story.
The winds were rank with danger, now, like rot seeping forth from the land itself, chanting little thrumming patters of danger and flee through his soul. For some annoying reason, the winds seemed to watch over the First Lander to which he was bound, though the little magus had never had the knack to listen to them. An irony, ‘Aqrab thought, because he himself rarely ever received such a warning. Hence why he kept finding himself trapped in the First Lands, bound to some shadow-wreathed object, waiting for his penance to be served.
Through the glimmering-yet-transparent walls, he could vaguely make out the translucent bodies of eight women in the kitchen of the Sleeping Lady, bent over three crumpled forms.
Recognizing his magus as the one fallen nearest him, ‘Aqrab’s heart hammered suddenly, sending out concentric rings of crystal luminescence over the dual-land around him in a glowing white wave. The translucent crystal forms of the First Lander grasses at his feet wilted slightly, shriveling in the heat of his fear.
One of the eight women squatted beside his magus and grabbed her by the hair, hefting her face from the floor.
Dead? ‘Aqrab thought, horrified. If she had died, he was lost. Bound forever to her bones, waiting for that final wish.
At any other time, ‘Aqrab would have flitted inside and blasted them all with the full heat of the Fourth Lands. The winds, however, stayed his hand. Danger, they kept chanting. Danger. Flee. Danger…
Who were the eight women? How had they subdued the phoenix, let alone his magus?
Danger. Flee. Danger… The frenzied chant kept gnawing at his panicked brain as he watched the squatting woman lean down, pluck something from his mistress’s back.
Even from this distance, he cringed at the roiling mass of shadow that seemed to rip tears in the very fabric of the half-realm, a ball of black sunfire tracing pathways outward from something the woman plucked from his magus’s spine.
‘Aqrab went cold. He knew what that blackness was. He had seen it before, roaming the lonely dunes of the Fourth Lands. A basilisk, a single drop of whose venom could paralyze a First-Lander. …or kill a Fourth Lander instantly.
‘Aqrab fought down a rush of terror. Bounty-hunters, then. Quite possibly a full Inquisitional retrieval team. Here for the phoenix, no doubt.
…but did they know they had a djinni bound to remain a mere five hundred cubits away? Or a Fury laying at their feet, her powers hidden from her by the Pact of Realms until she could find a way to remove the taint of the wolf from her blood? Two top-tier bloodlines, brought low and helpless to defend themselves?
His heart pounded like white fire through his veins as he considered. Gods, he had known it was a bad idea to stay with the phoenix, but as soon as he had mentioned as much, the stubborn little magus had done the exact opposite, to spite him. Vicious, arrogant little beast that she was.
Flee. Flee. Flee, the winds chanted, their urgency building, now.
I can’t flee, ‘Aqrab thought, frustration and terror building like an unwelcome rot in his chest. He was bound to her by a Fourthlander Oath. There was nowhere he could go.
What was worse, if the Bounty-seekers had any sense at all, it was only a matter of time before they found that cord snaking out from his mistress, and followed it to its source. And then, the chronic humiliations and emotional torments that the little magus had heaped upon him for the last three millennia would be nothing in comparison to the way they forged his soul to their whims.
Then, suddenly, it was as if the winds sucked into one spot, solidifying before him, a thousand angry faces of mist and light. Together, they grabbed ‘Aqrab by the throat and yanked him off of the ground, leaving him to dangle by a crystalline hand. FLEE. The winds screamed it, half man, half winged demon.
Then the thing dropped him and vanished, as if it had never been. In the dead silence that followed, ‘Aqrab picked himself up off of the ground, his heart pounding waves of glowing white outward through his feet.
What, he thought, sheer horror leaving his every hair on end, was that?
But then he saw the cases that the women were opening, saw the vials and potions, saw the arcane contraptions meant to imprison and bind. To bleed…
‘Aqrab ran. Up the crystalline stairs, through the gathered women at the head of the stairs, making them start, and then twisting into the First Realm once he was clear. He brought with him a raging inferno of the Fourth Lands, making the fools scrabble away from him in terror, straining to reach their weapons. He bent down to his little magus, whispered a prayer that she would forgive him, and, just as the woman in jeans flicked something small and tiny in his direction, twisted them both to the Fourth Lands.
Chapter 2: The Fury of the Fourth Realm
When Kaashifah woke, she couldn’t breathe. The air seared her very lungs, and her skin felt as if it were on fire. She sucked in a breath, then choked, gagging, as her life-wind came back stained with smoke. The world around her was a searing blast of heat, pain, and brightness. She saw dunes. Endless dunes, but no shadows. Above, the sun beat down on them, perfectly centered in the cerulean sky.
The Fourth Lands, Kaashifah realized, in horror. He used my weakness and took me to the Fourth Lands.
The beast was under her, touching her, his big cool body moving fast and easy as he jogged across the sands.
Kaashifah sucked in another breath, felt it burn her lungs, saw wisps of smoke curl outward when she exhaled. She choked again, gagging on her words as her internal organs dried and tightened. Her skin was on fire, she realized. It bubbled and hissed from the furnace of the Fourth Lands, eating away at her corpse.
“‘Aqrab, please!” Kaashifah gagged, trying to form the words, yet unable to force more than an airy moan through her desiccated lips.
But the monster seemed to understand, because he seemed almost apologetic as he said, “Not yet, mon Dhi’b. They are too close. Hunting me.”
He was killing her. Taking her life-winds so she could no longer command him while she died, burning, on his shoulder. He was tired of the games. She’d taken too long, so he’d resigned himself to a talisman of bones the rest of his life.
“Please,” Kaashifah whimpered, a smoky whisper against her lips.
“No, mon Dhi’b,” he panted. “I can’t.”
Kaashifah reached for the shadows, then, but realized, in growing horror, that this world had no shadows. Nothing to shove down the cord at him, to force him back to her own Realm. In growing dread, she simply held on, too weak to fight him. She felt herself burning alive. The pain was so intense that Kaashifah stopped breathing. She clung to his moving body simply for the coolness it radiated, soaking up what little blessed protection his skin provided from the burning sun.
Please, she thought. Gods please, don’t let it end like this… To die and have her soul bound to him, forever, was a fate that Kaashifah could not endure.
Just when she felt herself fading, losing her grasp on life itself, the djinni wrenched them back to the First Lands.
Kaashifah sucked in a single breath of ice, coating her insides with searing coolness, and choked out another gasp of smoke. She vaguely saw trees, though the surface of her eyes were scorched and dried until only dim shapes and colors remained.
“I’m sorry, mon Dhi’b,” the Fourth Lander said, setting her to the ground and kneeling beside her. He was biting his lip, his head down, his huge body a black mass hovering over her, covering her, too close. Every inch of her hurt, every nerve screamed. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t force him to back away from her, to stop touching her. He put his hand to her face, sending pounding waves of torture throbbing through her being. “Please, I’m sorr—”
Kaashifah wrenched the shadows from nearby and drove them into him, powered by every ounce of her terror, every throbbing agony of her blistered skin.
The monster fell to the ground beside her and started to writhe, then, his big lungs emptying in a bellow as he s
creamed. Kaashifah, too weak to move, felt him thrash beside her, his big arms or legs sometimes hitting her in reverberating, pounding hurt, peeling away roasted skin as she was unable to protect herself from his flailing.
When the ogre finally stilled, the moon had come up. She heard his ragged breathing from the forest floor beside her, matching her own.
As the minutes stretched into hours, she heard him start to sob.
When he could cry no longer, ‘Aqrab sat up, slowly, so poisoned by shadow that he was still weak and trembling, completely unable to flee to the firelands. He crawled a few feet away from her through the cold, filthy brush, then collapsed, his back to the magus. Misery ached through his body with every horrible breath. He wanted to die. More than he had in his entire life, he wanted to simply die.
Yet, by his own desperate hand, the only one capable of ending him was unable to kill.
Shaking in the aftermath of her cruelty, ‘Aqrab stared at the mosses inches from his face. Why had he saved her? Eventually, they would have drained her of her magics, killed her, and disposed of the body. How hard would it have been to simply take her body with him to the Fourth Lands? A sack of bones would surely be more merciful than this.
Some hours later, he heard a rustling. He remained where he was, back to her, still too corrupted to return to his homeland. A moment later, the movement ended in a whimper and he heard a soft thud. Still trembling, ‘Aqrab lifted his head to look.
The First Lander was had flipped onto her stomach, the only part of her that had been shielded by the heat of his homeland. Bits of moss and forest sediment rested in her blistered, oozing skin.
Seeing that, ‘Aqrab almost felt sorry for her. Almost. Then he remembered the shadows she’d shoved into him, staining his being, leaving his very soul writhing in agony, and had the sudden urge to take her back to the Fourth Lands, permanently. And he would have, at that point, had he not been too weak and tainted to even feel his homeland.