Twelve Kings in Sharakhai

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Çeda smiled. “Nothing wrong with looking, Tehla.”

  Tehla leaned closer and licked her lips, so shamelessly Çeda felt her cheeks redden. “Like a fig, that one. Plump and juicy, am I right?”

  “Tehla!” The two of them shared a laugh, though Çeda found herself more jealous of the older woman than she ought to be.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve never taken a bite!”

  “A gentlewoman never tells.”

  “Oh ho! A gentlewoman, are you now?”

  “Stop it,” she said, wolfing down the last of her still-warm biscuit with a smile, “there’s something I need.”

  Tehla’s eyes narrowed. “Something you need? It wouldn’t be Davud, would it?”

  “It would, Tehla. It would.”

  SEVEN YEARS EARLIER . . .

  ÇEDA RETURNED THE MORNING AFTER the rattlewing attack with water and herbs for Emre. She’d worried over him the entire night and sprinted the last quarter-league, back into the desert, ignoring the pains from the rattlewing bites. She found him lying beneath his blankets in the same position she’d left him. He was still breathing, but shallowly, and he didn’t respond when she shook him gently.

  He hadn’t taken any of the water she’d left him, or very little if he’d had any. She couldn’t force him to eat, but she poured water carefully into his mouth, waiting as he swallowed it with painful sluggishness. He moaned from time to time—perhaps from a dream, perhaps from pain—but otherwise was silent as she chewed Sweet Anna leaves and goldenthread roots and packed the poultice into each of his puckered red wounds. She took one of the blankets and cut it into strips, using it to cover the bites, keep the poultice in place and safe from drying prematurely in the arid wind.

  By the time the sun was high she was nearly done, and she was exhausted. She drank some water, herself, and looked in the pack for a strip of meat. That’s when she realized. She’d left the mouth of the pack open so Emre could reach in and grab whatever he needed, but now there was no food left. None. Emre hadn’t eaten it, she was sure. He was too addled.

  Lizards, perhaps, or desert mice. Who knew? The point was, the food was gone.

  She dropped the pack into her lap and stared at Emre, wishing he could talk to her. “By the gods I’ve really fucked this one good, Emre.”

  She might be able to hunt for some food, but she didn’t want to leave Emre again unless it was absolutely necessary. It was dangerous enough leaving him like this last night. If he recovered enough during the day to accompany her to the stream, so be it, but for now, they would wait and rest, and she’d let Emre heal. At least, as much as he could. It meant they would be here until morning, and it made her gut churn. It meant they would spend the night in the desert once more. It meant they’d be here, just beside the blooming fields, on the night of Beht Zha’ir.

  Everyone knew the asir lived somewhere among the blooming fields. They would rise from their graves and stalk toward Sharakhai, and she and Emre would be in their path.

  With the sun high, it seemed like a distant worry. She knew it was anything but, and yet she was so tired she could think of nothing but resting her head awhile. She repositioned the packs to either side of Emre, leaving enough room for her to lie next to him, then pulled the blankets over their heads to shelter them from the sun.

  “Emre?”

  He didn’t respond, but he was breathing somewhat more easily than before, so she drew herself next to him and fell into a deep, deep sleep.

  She dreamed. And her dreams were not kind.

  She woke to the sound of wailing.

  It sounded like a child in pain, a child dying from disease. The hair at the nape her neck rose, and she pulled the rumpled blanket off her head and checked Emre.

  Tulathan was out, and Rhia was just cresting in the east. Both were bright, giving her more than enough light to check Emre’s wounds. They were better, and Emre’s breathing sounded deep and restful. He mumbled when she spoke to him but did not wake fully.

  It was a blessing, she decided. They couldn’t make their way through the desert like this in any case, so perhaps it was better if he could sleep through the worst of the pain. She fed him water as another mournful call came, this one closer than the last. It sounded as though it had come from the blooming field to the north.

  Would the asirim in the near field wake? Would they sense the two of them lying there? Would they come for them, as they’d come for the tributes marked by the Reaping King in Sharakhai? She sat up slowly, worried she might be seen but entirely too curious to let that stop her. She moved silently up the gradual slope to the crest and looked toward the wide plateau of rock where the blooming field lay. Points of light were winking slowly into existence. Here and there among the black swath of the adichara, the blooms were opening their petals to the twin moons, bright like lamps across a city grown wary of the night. She could even see wisps of light drifting up from the pale white flowers. Pollen, she realized. Pollen drifting on the breeze.

  Of the beetles she could see no signs—a blessing from the gods, surely. No longer did they buzz over the field before her. They’d returned to their hives in the carcasses of the dead, perhaps scared away by the cold of night or the light of the moons or both. Nor did she see what she feared most: dark forms climbing forth from the sand.

  Her stomach grumbled as she returned to Emre and poured water down his throat. She gave him enough to keep him for a while, and then drank sparingly from the skin herself. She’d been hungry before, but never this hungry—as little as she and her mother had had, Ahya had always made sure Çeda had food in her belly.

  Just as she was ready to give Emre more, she heard hoofbeats. She immediately stood and looked to the southeast, toward Sharakhai, where a horse was cresting a distant dune. Who would be coming here? Who would brave the night of Beht Zha’ir?

  The horse was coming straight toward them.

  She and Emre were too high. Too exposed. “Emre!” she rasped. “Emre, we have to go!”

  She shook him violently, but he wouldn’t wake, so she took him beneath the armpits and dragged him down the dune into the valley. She ran back and grabbed their packs and waterskins and returned just as the horse was nearing. She knelt next to Emre and drew the sand over his body, piling it over his legs and arms and torso before lying on her stomach and covering herself as well as she could.

  She rested her head against the sand and stilled herself just as the horse crested the nearest dune. It was a tall horse. Regal. And atop it, limned in silver moonlight, was a man who rode with practiced ease. He was coughing, his entire body wracked by it, but he rode on, heading abreast of the nearby blooming field, blessedly oblivious to Çeda’s presence. She thought he might be headed for the fields themselves, but he wasn’t. He headed for another landmark entirely: the tamarisk tree, she realized. She remembered the sigil engraved on the stone between the roots and wondered again what meaning it might have.

  When the horse had passed by a goodly distance, she stood and ran after, keeping low, ready to drop to the ground if the rider should turn in his saddle. He never did, though. He seemed single-minded, staring determinedly ahead, slapping at the horse’s flank to force it onward. She was worried about how well she could keep up, but the horse was clearly winded, and she lost little ground, even as sore as she was. When he came near the tree, the rider slipped over the saddle, dropped down to the sand, and sprinted toward the tamarisk tree, wracking coughs his constant companion.

  He stopped before he reached it though. He just stood there, unmoving, body shuddering from his unrelenting coughs. And then something wondrous happened. Dark tendrils were moving, growing up from the ground in a rough circle around the rider.

  “Gods be good,” Çeda mumbled, numbly realizing how stupid it had been to do so.

  These were the roots of the tree, snaking upward like the tines of some twisted crown. Soft p
opping and cracking sounds accompanied the movement, and soon they had enveloped the rider as if embracing some long-lost love. The roots tightened around him, drew him down, the sand parting like silt. A particularly long and mournful wail came from somewhere to the east as the man, still coughing, was drawn lower and lower, the roots of the tamarisk pulling him down into the desert itself.

  Soon he was gone, leaving Çeda to stare at the tree in wonder. By the gods who walk the earth, what had just happened? She waited for something else—for the man to rise once more, for someone to chase after him, for something to happen—but she heard only the occasional rattle of branches as the tamarisk swayed back and forth in the nighttime breeze.

  The horse stayed for a while, but then wandered southwestward, perhaps toward the stream, making Çeda wonder just how often the horse had taken this journey with its master. She stood, dusted off her clothes, then pulled her knife and stalked warily toward the tree, making sure she stayed well wide of the place where the roots had risen from the ground. She circled the tree for a time, waiting, watching, but nothing happened. The man didn’t return.

  She returned to the base of the tree and knelt where the sigil lay partially hidden by the roots. The moonlight was well bright enough for her to make it out. Was it the sigil of a King? The very notion made her shiver with fear and excitement: A King? Here? Who else would ride to the blooming fields on an akhala? Who else might command the sort of power she’d just witnessed?

  A King, and she’d been only a few dozen paces from him. She stared down at the knife in her hand, and then she laughed. She couldn’t help it. How ineffectual she would have been. The mere notion that she might have attacked the King was ludicrous. And yet she hungered for it. For her mother’s sake. For her own.

  She committed the sigil to memory, drawing it in the sand several times before she was satisfied, then stood and stepped closer to the depression that marked the entrance to the sands. Finding nothing of note, she headed back. She didn’t go to Emre, though. She continued past him to the nearest of the blooming fields.

  She looked to the blue-white blooms, breathed in their heady scent. She hadn’t meant to be out this night. She’d only meant to look upon the trees and return before Beht Zha’ir in anticipation of another, future trip. But here she was now, staring at the flowers everyone in Sharakhai knew about but so few had seen. Her mother had collected these for years, had dried them and given them to Çeda on holy days or days with special meaning.

  One of the flowers hung just above her head. It wound this way and that, as if it were lost, as if it were looking for something. She knew the thorns along the branch were dangerous, so she was careful as she reached up and held the flower gently and then cut it free with a snick of her knife. She held it near her nose, breathed deeply of its scent. Dear gods, how it reminded her of her mother.

  “I miss you,” she said to the cold desert air. “Emre misses you.”

  She listened, her hearing sharpened by her sudden awareness of all that was around her. Or perhaps it was her loneliness, her yearning to be with her mother once more.

  She heard the ticking sounds coming from the adichara, the soft sigh of the wind through the branches, the wails of the asirim far in the distance, but nothing else. Nothing at all.

  After tucking the bloom carefully inside her shirt and slipping her knife home, she returned to Emre. She stayed awake the entire night, watching for any sign of the King, listening for anyone else who might be riding here to meet him. She saw nothing, heard nothing, until shortly after sunrise, when a piercing whistle broke the stillness. Soon she heard the plodding of hooves. She watched from over the top of a dune as the same man rode toward the blooming fields. He pulled up near the edge of the twisted trees and slipped from his saddle. He stripped down with a sluggish pace Çeda had seen often in the streets of Sharakhai, men moving gingerly, bodies clenched inward after a night of heavy drink. After removing his khalat and turban and even his small clothes, he stood naked before the rising sun. And then he stepped, hunch-backed, into the adichara. The branches spread, then embraced him, as the roots of the tamarisk tree had done the night before.

  Tulathan’s bright eyes, what was she witnessing? A man, a King, pierced by a thousand thorns. Was he committing suicide? But no. A moment later the adichara branches spread, releasing him. He faced the sun, spread his arms wide, and arched his head back as if he were presenting himself to the new day. While staring at the cloudless blue sky, he drew deep breaths, unencumbered by whatever had been afflicting him before he’d stepped into the trees. Points of red flecked his skin, blood from where the thorns had pierced him, but they didn’t appear to hamper his movements in any way. In fact, when he retrieved a bolt of white cloth from the horse’s saddlebag and ran it over his body, his skin looked whole, unmarred.

  After pulling his clothes back on, he mounted his horse and rode back toward Sharakhai along the same path he’d taken here, and the desert was silent once more.

  Çeda had no idea what she’d just witnessed. All she wanted was to return home and be done with the desert for a time. Thank the gods, Emre woke a short while later.

  “What’s happened?” he asked.

  “You attacked a bloody great host of beetles, that’s what.”

  “Did I win?”

  “You lost.”

  He stared at her, bleary-eyed. “Did I?”

  “You did,” she said as she helped him to sit. Breath of the desert, she was relieved to see him like this.

  “How long have we been out here?” he asked after downing half a skin of water.

  “A night and a day and a night,” she said, sipping from her own skin. Water had never tasted so good. “We should head back. If you’re able.”

  He nodded, and she helped him to stand. He was clearly in pain from even the simplest of movements, but she didn’t wish to stay here any longer than needed. The chance of the King’s returning was simply too great.

  As she’d suspected—for it had been the same with her—Emre seemed to fare better the more he moved, and by the time they reached the stream, he moved, if not with ease, at least with something akin to it.

  “Did anything happen?” he asked as he balanced himself awkwardly over a brace of river stones.

  “I fetched water, I made a poultice, I looked after you. What would have happened?”

  He shrugged. “How would I know?”

  She touched the flower beneath her shirt. “No, Emre. Nothing happened.”

  ÇEDA WAS LATE FOR HER MEETING with Davud, but she wanted to catch Emre and she was already running through the spice market, so she steered herself past Seyhan’s stall. When she arrived, the crowd was thrumming, but Emre wasn’t there. Seyhan, a man who often looked old but today seemed surprisingly spry, was scooping peppercorns into a muslin bag for an old man with violently shaking hands. Seyhan’s grandson, a waif of a boy with eyes too big for his head, was scooping star anise into small muslin bags, from a burlap sack every bit as large as he was.

  “What’ve you got Emre doing?” Çeda called to Seyhan over the din of the market.

  Seyhan glanced her way, eyebrows raised, chin lifted in a questioning gesture.

  She cupped her hands and tried again. “Emre . . . You didn’t send him to the harbor to pick up barrels, did you? He shouldn’t be lifting them for a few weeks yet.”

  Seyhan’s face soured. “Emre,” he spat. “He’ll be lucky to have a place by my side, assuming he ever returns.”

  “What?”

  Seyhan handed the bag over to the shaking man and accepted two sylval. As the old patron dropped the peppercorns into a larger muslin bag and shuffled away through the busy market, Seyhan turned to Çeda. “I’m not some pitiless bastard, Çeda. I heard he got jumped, so I was willing to give him a bit of—how do the caravan men say it?—room to maneuver, but now I hear he’s been running around Sharakhai,
healthy as can be.”

  “But he isn’t healthy,” Çeda shot back. “Not yet. He just needs a bit more time.”

  “Don’t go making excuses for him. Just yesterday, Galovan’s daughter saw him along the Trough, moving well enough to sidle up to her and give her a kiss. If he’s well enough for that, he’s well enough to sell spice.”

  “A man can walk along the Trough,” Çeda replied, more than concerned but unwilling to let Seyhan see it. “The Kannan doesn’t prevent him doing that.”

  “Yes, then why did he ask Sahra not to tell her father that she’d seen him? I’ll tell you why. So I don’t find out. I’m not a cruel man, Çeda, but I’m no fool, either.”

  No, I’m the fool. Emre was getting himself into trouble. She knew it. She just didn’t know the whys or wherefores. “It’s my fault,” Çeda said as someone bumped past her. “His injuries were bad, and I made him promise to wait just a day or two more so they could heal properly.” She shrugged. “I guess he decided to take my advice for once.”

  Seyhan’s face soured even further, but after a moment he softened. “Just tell him to come by and see me.”

  “I will.”

  Part of her wanted to go hunting for Emre right then and there, but she had other business to attend to. She found Davud beneath the old fig tree at the edge of the bazaar. He was all smiles and gave Çeda a big hug that surprised her. When she told him what she wanted, however, he grew serious and lowered his voice, nearly to a whisper. “I know little enough of Beht Ihman, Çeda.”

  “I’m looking for texts, Davud. Texts that were written as close to that night as possible, those that might be untouched by the hand of the Kings.”

  Davud shrugged. “There might be some, Çeda, but I don’t have access to them.”

  “But Amalos would, wouldn’t he?”

  Amalos was Davud’s master at the collegia, his mentor, whom Davud assisted as he worked his way through his studies.

  “He might,” Davud allowed.