by Sara King
Thunderbird grunted. “I will protect them.”
“I don’t need your protection, peahen,” the dragon growled. “I’d rather stick my dick in your effeminate pustule of a—”
The djinni, who had gotten to his feet in front of the dragon, nonchalantly rammed an elbow into his snout, cutting off the rest of the dragon’s sentence with a pained snort. “We’d be happy for your protection, my liege,” ‘Aqrab said smoothly, over the dragon’s curses.
Inwardly rolling her eyes, Kaashifah spread her wings and said, “Take them and go. I’m going to go get my sister’s attention.”
Thunderbird cocked his head at her. “How do you plan to do that?”
Kaashifah grinned. “In the most visible way possible.”
Thunderbird sniffed. “Fine. Djinni, tell your steed to follow me closely. The land is utterly crawling with these things.” He made a disgusted gesture at the wreckage of the Inquisition helicopter. At that, he began expanding, with ebony feathers sprouting from his skin and pushing outwards, rippling with electricity. Once he stopped growing, he stood about nine feet tall, and his sheer presence made the little hairs on Kaashifah’s body stand on end. Then, as he spread his wings, Kaashifah had just enough time to grab onto a tree before he slammed them down in a crack of thunder and soared skyward.
The dragon remained on the ground for long seconds after the sizzling black bird disappeared over the horizon.
“What are you doing?” Kaashifah demanded, gesturing. “Go!”
“I’m not doing it,” the silvery dragon muttered, sitting stubbornly on his haunches. “I won’t work with that peacock.”
Nearby, they heard the whine of another helicopter, the light whomph whomph whomph as it whistled towards them, then the rattle of machine gun fire.
“There’s treasure in that place somewhere,” Kaashifah said hurriedly. “A vault. Where do you think they pay their Bounties from? They have Bounties of a hundred bars of gold.”
Savaxian wrinkled his nose, then twisted his long neck around until he face-to-face with the djinni. At absolute eye-level, only an inch from the djinni’s nose, the dragon said, “I’m not your steed.” As he spoke, smoke curled from his mirror-like nostrils.
“Agreed,” ‘Aqrab said.
“Fine. Get on.”
‘Aqrab was just climbing atop the serpent’s back when a blaze of eye-searing white light lit up the low-lying cloud-cover on the horizon, and Kaashifah heard Thunderbird shriek. Gripping her sword, she launched herself from the ground on a tide of energy and air, and, lifting above the treetops, had just enough time to see Thunderbird crash into the trees ahead, followed closely by the radiant wings of a Fury.
A second later, the treetops beneath her began to explode in a wash of shredded woodchips and plant fibers, and she felt a hail of bullets slam into her shielding.
As long as they’re not using faespar, we’re good, Kaashifah thought, climbing to altitude. Ahead, the world was beginning to pop and flash with lightning-strikes, and the cloudcover was taking on the low, ominous black swirl of a building tornado. Rain was wetting her wings by the time she reached the place where Thunderbird had fallen.
Seeing her sister standing above his dazed form, sword in hand, foot planted in his back, lifting her arms for a downward swipe, Kaashifah tucked her wings and dove, head-on, as fast as gravity and her magics could push her, flaring at the last possible minute, and slammed into her sister with a shoulder, tearing her off of the demigod, hurling them both into the trees in a roar of cracking branches and falling birch.
“You!” her sister screamed at her, pulling herself out from under a pulverized spruce tree. Her shirt and pants had been more or less shredded by her impact with the brush, but her gemmed golden belt had miraculously stayed intact. For her own part, Kaashifah had landed relatively upright, and was already in the air again, trying to draw her sister away from her friends.
On the ground, her sister swung her blade, flattening a stand of willow between them, then stepped calmly over it and launched herself into the sky. “The first taste wasn’t enough?” she sneered, coming to a level with Kaashifah. “You want me to finish the job?”
While Zenaida kept her wings flared, her arms thrown out in challenge, Kaashifah kept her wings close to her body, balancing on her pillar of energy. Less of a target, that way. She smiled sadly at her sister’s disdain. “Sister, what is your name?”
“I abandoned that abomination to the whores that gave it to me,” the woman snapped, flapping her wings wildly to stay aloft and at an even height with her. “You can call me Zenaida before you die.”
“Zenaida,” Kaashifah said, lowering her head in a respectful nod as they circled each other. “What you don’t realize is that, the other night, I wasn’t trying to kill you.”
Zenaida threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, of course not! That’s why I had you at my mercy, my foot on your throat, my sword about to pierce your brain.”
Kaashifah shrugged under the mockery. While her sister had tricked the djinni into touching her, Kaashifah had been doing the same, and just another few short seconds with Zenaida’s foot on her chest would have given her the time she needed to block her sister from her Fury. “I understand what happened to you. I would have us be kinswomen again. Start a new Sisterhood. Serve our Lord as his Justicars once more.”
Zenaida’s eyes narrowed at her through the rain. “I would rather copulate with a diseased boar than serve your Lord again.”
Kaashifah’s eyes widened at ‘your’ Lord. She lowered the tip of her sword slightly, in shock.
Zenaida took the moment to dive beneath her and slam her fist into the pillar Kaashifah had formed to the ground, leaving Kaashifah suddenly unsupported as the flow of energy vanished. A moment later, Zenaida was surging up towards her, to meet her on her fall.
Out of reflex, Kaashifah wrapped herself in a bubble-shield and pushed it outwards, having just enough time to get it out beyond her wings before Zenaida slammed into it, hurling her across the sky like a football.
Kaashifah used the extra speed from Zenaida’s attack to gain a lead on her sister, then turned, keeping the distance, and was about to try and reason with her when a helicopter opened fire, not fifty feet away. At the barrage of squashed metal pellets that slammed into her shield before peeling off and falling to the ground, Kaashifah glanced at the black machine, wet from the rain, then up at the clouds, which were even then beginning to spit hail down at them, to be pulverized by the rotors.
Somewhere down in the churned mass of forest, Thunderbird was either unconscious or dead. Her other two friends were dropping low into the devastation, much too visible for Kaashifah’s liking. She saw the djinni, a nervous mountain of ebony clinging to the quicksilver of the dragon’s back, and Kaashifah had a horrible spasm of guilt. He was a poet. And she was enlisting him to war?
Then a worse pang hit her, watching his uncertain grip on the dragon, the tension in his big shoulders, the hunch to his spine…she’d spent so long with him that she could read his body like a book, and the djinni was terrified. He could have gone home, free amongst the dunes of the Fourth Lands, and instead he was here, in the pounding rain, putting his life in jeopardy for her oath. She thought about how easy it had been to gain his surrender, at the oasis of Tafilat, and felt a twisting in her gut, realizing that she was putting him into such danger all over again.
And, she realized, her chest was aching at the thought of him getting hurt. Seeing that terror in his stance, she had to stifle the urge to fly down, to shove him into the safety of the Fourth Realm and tell him to wait for her. She did not want to lose him. The mere thought left her struggling for air. Not now. Not after the joy. Not after just regaining what she had lost for so long…
The helicopter opened fire again, and this time a few pellets of faespar pounded through her shield in a strafe that peppered her abdomen. Grunting, Kaashifah swung to face the machine, which was even then twisting, being buffeted by the wind
s. She watched it return to hover, this time taking aim at her friends on the ground…
Panic buoying her, Kaashifah rushed to meet the machine with her sword, cutting a swath through the hail, slicing cleanly through the front skis, cockpit, and rotor blades. In an instant, one after another, all four of the rotors hit the light of her blade and severed upon impact, with wings of metal sailing off into the darkness of the storm. Flightless, the helicopter dropped the hundred feet to the ground, hitting the slushy earth like a stone.
Behind her, Zenaida laughed in disdain. “Was that supposed to kill them?!”
No, Kaashifah thought, watching a couple of black-clad forms stagger, disoriented, from the ruined machine, there have been too many deaths already. Then, she shook herself with a frown. The djinni’s preachings of peace, she realized, had rubbed off much too well for her comfort.
But above her, Zenaida’s attention was wandering, her gaze following the furrows that Thunderbird had cut into the forest with his body, doubtlessly seeking the magics that hid her friends.
Kaashifah had to get her sister away from here.
“I heard you wore a favor of our Lord!” Kaashifah called to her sister. “Yet now, facing me, you do not… How long did it take you to craft it, little sister?”
Instantly, Zenaida’s concentration snapped back to her, rage livening her stone-gray eyes. At that, she started to grow into her full Fury, gaining strength and size, scaly arms and legs, with talons tipping the hands on her sword. As the transformation finished, her wings growing and expanding to the size of aircraft wings, a wash of brilliant feathers slipped out over Zenaida’s skin in tiny shields of light, granting a barrier against Kaashifah’s sword.
That’s good, Kaashifah thought, remaining in her half-form. She never took full Fury unless she was going up against something huge and unmaneuverable, like a dragon ancient, but she wasn’t about to correct her sister. You just stay like that, little sister. While stronger and harder to pierce for the feathers, the full Fury was also slower, harder to turn, and made a much bigger target.
“You,” Zenaida bellowed through an eagle’s beak, “are dead, little sister.”
Kaashifah took offense to ‘little’ sister, but merely smiled. After all, she had tens of thousands of years of experience in the art of battle to know exactly what her small-minded kinswoman was about to—
Zenaida sucked in a breath, opened her beak, and a vast jet of green flames shot forth, encasing Kaashifah in a sudden, sticky, burning slime.
Shrieking, trying unsuccessfully to fling the stuff from her body, Kaashifah lost altitude, her concentration on her energy-pillar failing as the slime started eating into her body, cauterizing her skin. The rain, she found, only seemed to make it burn hotter.
Frantically, she ran a shield down her body, squeegee-ing the greenish substance from her person like slime off of a fish.
What in the name of War was that? Kaashifah thought, watching it fall to the treetops below, where it disintegrated the towering cottonwoods into sizzling, burning puddles of smoke.
“I’m impressed,” Zenaida called down to her. “I can honestly say you’re the first one to have thought of that. Most try to rub it off, which just rubs it in.”
“What the hell?!” Kaashifah screamed, watching a swath of cottonwoods fall, eaten by the greenish fluid. Her skin was raw and covered in welts where the stuff had touched her. She turned to stare at her sister in horror.
“A babasha produces such lovely bile,” Zenaida laughed. “I used it to kill our sisters, in the beginning. Never got the hearts, though, so I looked for other ways. This one works so much better…” Now that Kaashifah was paying attention, her sister was drawing a small vial from upon her belt, popping the cap off, and tilting her head back to swallow the contents. Kaashifah caught the hint of a vile, undead seaborne serpent, carried on the wind, before it was gone.
A moment later, Kaashifah saw the first hints of something wriggling underneath Zenaida’s scalp, like tiny heads trying to push outward, and quickly averted her eyes, her heart like hot thunder in her chest. Suddenly remembering where she had smelled that putrescent stench before, she thought, She just drank the blood…
…of a medusa.
Appalled beyond words, she gagged at the sudden overwhelming stink of rotting snakeflesh. Oh my God, Kaashifah thought, revolted. What has she done? The legends were specific. A Fury who had served as her Lord’s Justicar and abused the power—a servant of truth and integrity who broke the Pact of the Realms—would have no afterlife to look forward to. Furies were not like humans. They did not have a guaranteed chance to redeem themselves again and again, no matter how horribly the short-lived little monkeys messed up. Unlike many of the immortals, for the most part a Fury was, for this life and every other, her Lord’s servant. And to deny her Lord, to break the Pact…
Zenaida was fallen. Truly fallen. Once she reached the end of her life-string, their Lord’s great Hounds would hunt her down and rip her soul to pieces.
Kaashifah caught movement out of the corner of her eye—the djinni trying to pry Thunderbird’s lifeless body from the ground. She saw her sister’s shape turn toward them, the stench of undeath clinging to the back of her throat despite the winds.
A pang of fear struck Kaashifah to the core, seeing her sister’s attention sharpen. A djinni, not being a magus, would have no defenses against a medusa’s stare. Kaashifah had to distract her. Now. “So tell me about this Aimon,” Kaashifah shouted above the wind. “How did his heart taste, sister? I’ve heard that both fey and cowards have a sweeter blood, so it must have been divine.”
Zenaida’s head whipped back to her and a hundred frenzied screams issued from desiccated lips. An instant later, her sister lunged for her.
Still not looking at Zenaida directly, Kaashifah spun and started pounding her wings, shoving herself upward with all her strength, entering the impenetrable fog of the clouds, a blinding-white wall reflecting the glory of her wings. She kept going, higher, through the rain and the damp, sucking in the cold drizzle of the cloud as she panted to force her limbs to work harder.
Please she thought. Please let her follow me…
It seemed forever that she soared upwards through the clouds, lightning crackling all around her, blinded by the light radiating from her wings. When she finally broke free, several thousand feet above, her sister was already breaking through the clouds with her, joining her over the ocean of mist.
“If only our sisters could see us now,” Zenaida laughed, as Kaashifah quickly put distance between them. “The great Blade of Morning, running and hiding like a little child.” The stench of rot blew across to her over the clouds, and her voice was raspy and many-tonal, like it was being spoken by numerous mouths.
“Sister…” Kaashifah whispered, horrified, yet carefully keeping her gaze averted. “What you do is forbidden.”
“Oh really?” Zenaida laughed. Kaashifah could hear the smugness to her voice when she said, “To lie with a man is forbidden, too, yet you seem willing enough to overlook that.”
Kaashifah felt her face flush hot, but refused to let her sister divert the point. “You are breaking natural law,” she cried. “The Pact—”
“The Pact is a lie,” Zenaida snapped. “It was natural law that a Fury could not touch a man. It was natural law that all her male children were abominations. Just how much do you think they distorted over the years, sister? How much of it was lies? Stories made up by bored scholars, enforced by our own swords?”
But Kaashifah knew the truth. “Zenaida…” she said softly, “that is our purpose. We’re to stop things like that.”
Her sister chuckled at her, and it sounded like it came from a thousand serpents’ mouths. The stench of rot was horrific, and Kaashifah had to cover her face with her shirt, to keep from retching.
“Do you see our Lord striking me down?” Zenaida laughed at her. “Do you see his precious Hounds climbing from the underworld to rip me apart?” She snorted
. “No. Because it was all lies. We’re no more Justicars than the dragons. There is no Lord of War, sister. There is only a many-faced, unlovable fuck who ignores us all equally.”
“He sends us messages!” Kaashifah cried, her heart stuttering at the blasphemy. “You yourself have heard them!”
Zenaida waved a dismissive hand. “It was a dream. My own intuition, trying to warn me.”
“I received mine awake,” Kaashifah retorted. “He spoke to me. Many times!”
“Then you are insane!” Zenaida shrieked, and the sound came as a hiss from dozens of tiny mouths. A moment later, Kaashifah became aware of her sister’s approach, barreling down on her in full Fury.
Kaashifah, knowing she could not fight her sister without preparing some sort of barrier against the medusa’s magic, rolled onto her stomach and bolted.
“That’s right,” Zenaida cackled behind her, a hundred little hissing voices, “run, little Fury. Run like your sisters.” Zenaida was, Kaashifah realized, with increasing dread, keeping up. Easily. She heard the slice of a sword cutting the air, only a yard from her feet.
Kaashifah, despite her small size, had always been one of the faster of her sisters, probably due to her tiny nature. Now, though, it was all she could do to stay ahead of her sister’s sword. Frantically, she began weaving a mental barrier against the power of the medusa. Though the creature’s stare wouldn’t turn a Fury to stone, she was pretty sure it could paralyze…
“I know what you’re doing, little sister,” Zenaida hissed in a hundred voices behind her. “You find a way to counter it, I’ll just find something more interesting. You’re going to die today, Morning Blade. You no longer have your djinni to protect you.”
Fighting rising panic, Kaashifah aimed for the southwest, over the inlet, away from her friends. She was not, she realized, on as equal footing as she had thought. While Kaashifah had untold ages of experience behind her, this sad and twisted creature was using the magic of others to win her battles.