Twelve Kings in Sharakhai

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Meryam shrugged. “We believed he was dead, killed on the battlefield and lost in the desert. But now it’s clear that the Kings of Sharakhai had him all along. They spirited him away. Why, I cannot guess. It appears that the Host have found him, and that they want something from Hamzakiir, some secret, else why secure a breathstone?”

  Ramahd felt the ship lean into the sand as Dana’il steered them toward the grim-looking place Meryam had indicated. From belowdecks, Ramahd heard the same thumping as before. He gripped the gunwale as the ship heeled along the lee of an uneven dune. “What could Macide want?”

  “That’s what I hope to discover.” Meryam turned and raised her hand to Dana’il. “Take care, now!”

  “Aye!” came Dana’il’s reply.

  The sun was low in the sky now, nearly touching the broken mountain peaks in the distance. Ahead, the dark stain on the horizon resolved itself into a vast plain of dark rock. Black stones as large as houses littered the sand, making it a difficult landscape to navigate, but Dana’il did so with an ease that astounded Ramahd. The ship sailed ever closer to the edge of the plain, but soon they could go no farther, and Dana’il ordered the sails lowered and the anchor dropped.

  “Bring him,” Meryam said as she strode toward the port gangway.

  Before she could go two steps, however, Ramahd grabbed her wrist and spun her around.

  Meryam’s eyes lit afire as she stared at his hand on hers. “Unhand me! I am not your wife!”

  Ramahd did, to the uncomfortable glances of the crew.

  Meryam’s eyes were afire, but there was something more. Something deeper. She wasn’t here any longer. Not completely. She was in another place, as she often was before she performed her magic.

  “Tell me why we’re here,” Ramahd pressed. “Tell me why we’ve bound one of the Sharakhani and brought him here”—he flung his hand toward the dark landscape—“to this hellish place.”

  “Do you care for one of the Moonless Host then?”

  “I care nothing for them. I care for my crew. I care for you.”

  Meryam blinked. “We’ve come for answers, Ramahd.”

  “Yes, but from whom do you hope to get them?”

  “You’ll see soon enough.”

  “You’ll tell me now, or we’ll turn back.”

  “Bring him,” Meryam countered, “and I’ll tell you.” And with that she strode toward the bulwarks, took a spear from a rack near the portside shroud, and threw it down to the sand. After untying and kicking the rope ladder over the side, she climbed down after it.

  Ramahd turned and stared at Dana’il. His first mate stood at the ready, prepared to do whatever Ramahd wished, including hauling Meryam back to deck, but he offered no suggestions other than an impotent shrug.

  “Well, go on then, get him,” Ramahd spat, frustrated as he turned to follow Meryam.

  He leapt down to the sand, and they walked onto the black stone. It was strange, almost glasslike. Ramahd’s boots sounded dull against it. Sand skittered over its surface in whorls, revealing the fickle whims of the desert wind. From somewhere, sometimes from all around them, there came haunting sounds, like the moaning of some lost and long-forgotten god.

  A short while later, the crew dragged a gagged man to the ship’s side and forced him down the rope ladder. In little time the entire crew were following Meryam and Ramahd, spears and swords in hand, their faces steeled for whatever lay ahead. The gagged man walked ahead of them, his eyes darting everywhere, his nostrils flaring as if he knew what was coming.

  “There are creatures in this world,” Meryam said when they’d walked a good way, “that have lived longer than you or I. There are creatures that see things in other worlds, those linked to ours. There are creatures that will speak with us.”

  “For a price,” Ramahd replied.

  “Aye.” Meryam chuckled grimly. “For a price.”

  He had known, of course, what Meryam planned to do with their captive, the owner of the tannery that had sheltered Macide. Macide had moved on quickly, as they’d known he would. They might have taken him had King Aldouan’s orders not prevented it. It still burned that he’d been forced to let Macide go—by none other than the father of his murdered wife—but the King had said nothing about sympathizers like the tanner, so when Meryam had demanded a sacrifice for this voyage, Ramahd had known immediatly who he would choose.

  Ahead, Ramahd saw the spot where Meryam was headed. Lines etched the surface of this otherworldly plateau, radiating outward from a certain point, as if something devastating had happened there long ago. Meryam brought them to a shallow depression in the otherwise smooth stone.

  “There,” she said, pointing to the hollow with the tip of the spear.

  Dana’il laid the tanner down in it. The man was terrified, but he didn’t plead for mercy. He lay there, shivering, pressing his bound fists against his forehead with his eyes closed, mumbling words of prayer to Bakhi.

  Meryam stood over him like a sentinel, spear at the ready. She lifted it over her head with both hands, intoning something low in the tongue of the magi, words Ramahd was glad he didn’t understand. Meryam’s hands began to shake. Her words grew louder as she circled the tanner, once, twice, thrice. Then she lifted her head up to the sky and cried out, “Guhldrathen!” —and brought the spear down sharply, through the center of the tanner’s chest.

  The man writhed, an almighty scream escaping him. His legs shivered and his bound hands clutched the spear as if he were trying to pull it free. But he was pinned to the stone below, and soon his head had fallen back, and his body went limp.

  Ramahd wondered at Meryam’s strength. She’d driven the spear deep. Fully half its length had been swallowed by the stone. There was not a chance, not in a hundred years, that Ramahd could have done the same, even at his most desperate. None of his men could have, yet Meryam had done it with ease, with the magic of her own blood.

  She stood by the tanner’s side and reverently bathed her hands in his blood. She wrote symbols on his forehead, ones Ramahd had rarely seen. Only in the old texts of the libraries of Almadan had he seen the like. The coppery smell of blood was strong as she came to Ramahd. Her eyes were distant again, oblivious to Ramahd and the crew as her slick fingers worked, painting an arcane symbol over his skin. He might as well have been a canvas for all she noticed him. Then she did the same to the rest of the men, giving them each symbols that looked similar but with unique flourishes.

  “Guhldrathen!” Meryam called again, facing the mountains and the now-fallen sun. “Come! You are commanded!”

  Her words sounded small against the backdrop of the Shangazi, but there was power there, magnified by the darkening sky and the moaning wind and the blasted black stone upon which they stood.

  “Thrice I call upon you, Guhldrathen! Come! Come, for your servant has need!”

  From the shadows, well out into the desert, Ramahd saw movement. Something coming this way, though it was distant enough, and the land so filled with shadow, that he had difficulty telling what it might be. But he heard it. He felt it in his bones. A rhythmic pounding. A scratching like knives against marble.

  Ramahd felt his stomach drop as a low gurgling sound reached them. The atavistic growl of a beast twice Ramahd’s size. As the thing advanced, darkness came with it, a cloak of midnight, drawing the shadows around and over its shoulders. But Ramahd could see its eyes, twin points of yellowed ivory.

  Ehrekh, they were called, creations of Goezhen, god of fell beasts, god of dark ambition. They were fickle creatures. Capricious. Given to anger and revenge for those who sought to manipulate them.

  The blood on his forehead felt suddenly foul. He wanted to wipe it from his skin, and from the skin of his men as well. It wasn’t that he felt blood magic was unnatural; aeons ago, before the gods had left these shores, they had breathed life into the first of men. They’d shared w
ith man their own blood, that they might live—a gift even the younger gods hadn’t been granted, if legends were true. What, then, could be more natural than using what the first gods had given them?

  No, it was because Meryam was using her own blood to treat with a perversion of the first gods. Goezhen, who thought himself equal to the first gods, had made the ehrekh, and they hungered, always, for true life. It was why they meddled in the affairs of man, why they enjoyed tasting of their blood. Allying themselves with such a creature could bring only sorrow. That was why Meryam hadn’t told him what she meant to do. She knew he would have forbidden it.

  He’d been foolish to trust her, blinded by his need to fulfill the King’s demands so he could concentrate on planting Macide Ishaq’ava’s head on the end of a spear.

  The ehrekh’s midnight skin glistened as it approached. Its muscled chest and arms were like those of a man, but its lower half was more like a bull, with coarse fur covering legs and haunches. A long, forked tail with barbed tips whipped back and forth. Black thorns rose up around its head—a dark crown visible against the dusk, not so different from that of Goezhen’s. It walked hunched forward, arms wide, claws flexing as if it were hunting even now. As it came near Meryam, it crouched even lower.

  Ramahd readied to draw his sword and protect Meryam should the beast attack. It was a foolish thought, cast aside as useless the moment it came to him. Weapons would not avail them against an ehrekh, not even had they ten times the men. Until the ehrekh was appeased, Meryam would be their shield and sword.

  The ehrekh paced back and forth, looking toward but apparently not seeing Meryam. It sniffed, scenting the wind as it lowered itself even further until its head was nearly even with Meryam’s. She stood before Ramahd and the others, but the ehrekh seemed unconcerned with them. All its focus was bent upon finding her.

  “Who comes?” it called, its voice the deep of the earth itself.

  “My name is not yours to ask,” Meryam replied. “But I know yours.”

  Guhldrathen smiled, revealing the yellowed teeth of a lion. “Many have come, thinking I could not find their names.”

  “I have brought you a taste, ancient one.”

  “I am no dog to lap at your command.”

  “Take it, Guhldrathen. Taste the blood of man, and be glad I’ve come.”

  The ehrekh stopped its pacing for a moment. “This?” It sniffed the air and took two long strides toward Ramahd, stopping just short of him. It hunched down, as it had near Meryam. Its pointed chin jutted forward. Its blackened lips pulled back to reveal sharp teeth, red gums. It sniffed, nostrils flaring. Despite himself, Ramahd cringed from its almighty mass, cringed from the very smell of it, fire and rot and disease. “Thine gift is this?”

  The urge to run was almost overwhelming. The only thing that gave him the strength to oppose it was Meryam’s sigil, which he could feel on his brow more powerfully than before. He realized then that the sign was no protection from Guhldrathen; it was to grant them the nerve to withstand the ehrekh’s presence. The sign was warm and deep, and gave him a sense that he wasn’t alone, that Meryam would see them through this.

  Meryam walked calmly toward Ramahd and gently took his place so that she stood before the ehrekh, not Ramahd. “Nay,” she said, “not this one. Your gift lies upon the desert, marked by ash.”

  Its eyes shot to the ashwood spear, then the tanner lying on the stone. With one long stride it was standing over the dead man, crouching low, lips pulling back as it lifted and lowered its thorned head to sniff at the spear, then the tanner. Legs spread wide, it lowered its head down near the ground. Its forked tongue lapped at the blood.

  It bared its teeth in a grim smile like the massive desert hyenas, the black laughers, just before they attacked. “Why hast thou come?”

  “I wish to know of Hamzakiir.”

  The ehrekh swiveled its head toward Meryam. “What use have thee of Hamzakiir?”

  “He came to you once, did he not? He used you.”

  “As thee would use me.”

  “No. Not as I would use you. I come with gifts freely given. I ask for but a favor, a small enough thing for you to grant.”

  “Know thee this”—it rose to full height and stared at her like an angry god—“Hamzakiir I cannot find.”

  “Perhaps not, but you can find those who touch him. He is near us, near me and the others who have come to this place. Like threads in a weave, our tales are intertwined. Follow them to a meeting point, and there you will find Hamzakiir.”

  The ehrekh looked to the crew now, as if it hadn’t realized they were there before. It stalked once more, circling them, arms wide, fingers clenching as it paced.

  “Thou comest. Thou barters with blood that means nothing to thee. Dost thou think mine interest lies in such?”

  “No,” Meryam replied easily. “This is but a taste. There will be more.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Guhldrathen, can you not guess? Do you think me unprepared?”

  The ehrekh flexed its muscles, as if it were barely able to contain its rage. “I would hear it spoken from thine own mouth!”

  “Give me what I seek, dark one, and I’ll give you your vengeance. I will give you Hamzakiir.”

  The ehrekh’s nostrils flared as it arched back, arms raised, releasing a cry to the moonless sky. Then it crashed its fists against the ground on either side of Meryam. Chips of stone flew in all directions, one cutting Meryam’s chin, drawing blood. She ignored the hot trickle slipping along her neck as she met the ehrekh’s eyes.

  “Hamzakiir?” the ehrekh intoned.

  “He is protected from you. I know this. But I swear before the gods themselves that I will strip those protections from him and deliver him to you, or my own life in forfeit.”

  It leaned forward, huffed a breath so forcefully that Meryam’s dress fluttered momentarily, and licked the carmine trail of blood from her neck. Then it nodded once. “So be it.”

  It rose once more to stare at each man in turn, its gaze not so different from Meryam’s when she was taken by her magic. It returned to Ramahd twice, frowning as it gazed into his eyes. It growled, a sound Ramahd could feel in his chest, in the pit of his stomach.

  “Hamzakiir is whom thou seek?”

  “It is so,” Meryam replied.

  “Thou canst find him.”

  “How, Guhldrathen? How?”

  “He canst find him”—it leaned in close to Ramahd until the two of them were eye-to-eye, though still speaking to Meryam—“if he but follows the White Wolf.”

  EMRE STEPPED INTO THE APOTHECARY’S SHOP without knocking. He scanned the front room filled with bowls of small powder-filled bags and shelves of restorative elixirs and crescent-moon charms to hang over a child’s bed to keep sickness at bay.

  “Dardzada?”

  He continued into the workroom, with its thousand-drawer cabinets.

  “Dardzada?” he called up the stairs.

  When no one answered, he stepped out through the rear door and into the herb garden.

  Dardzada was walking the rows with a huge watering can, sprinkling the medicinal herbs he grew there. He was already facing Emre with a placid gaze that made Emre want to rip his throat out.

  “What have you done?” Emre asked.

  Dardzada set the watering can down and brushed his hands free of dirt. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

  “How could you have taken Çeda to the Maidens?”

  “You seem to have me confused with the Silver Spears. Perhaps they caught her reaching into a desert lord’s pocket one too many times.”

  Emre stabbed his finger north, toward Tauriyat. “You took her to the House of Maidens!”

  “And why would I have done that?”

  Emre lowered his voice so that, if there was anyone listening on the other side of the garden
walls, only Dardzada could hear. “Because she was poisoned. Because you couldn’t heal her and could think of nothing else to do with her.” Dardzada’s expression changed little. Somewhere far away, a goat bleated; its bell clinked. “Don’t think of denying it!” Emre shouted. “I went there. I asked along the Spear, and several people saw a fat man dressed as a Qaimiri monk leading a dray with a sick woman aboard. He abandoned her outside the gates. And minutes later, a Matron came to inspect her. They took her in, and she hasn’t been seen since. They killed her, Dardzada, and it was all your fault.”

  Again Dardzada was silent, and it was too much for Emre. He grabbed Dardzada’s collar and shook him furiously. “Why?”

  Dardzada’s face grew red, and he broke Emre’s grip in a sharp movement, tearing his striped thawb. He tried to throw Emre to the ground, but Emre latched on to him, and they both tumbled over. They wrestled for a while, Dardzada trying to straddle Emre, but Emre was too quick and too strong, and soon he was straddling Dardzada. He struck Dardzada hard across the face.

  Dardzada fought like a cornered lion, scratching and clawing and pummeling Emre with fists that struck like battering rams, but Emre was so angry he didn’t care. He fought back just as hard, connecting with a punch to Dardzada’s gut and another to his side. They rolled over the garden rows. Dardzada tried to kick him away, but Emre held on, and the two of them grappled, straining mightily, until both were panting like dogs in the heat of summer.

  Emre hauled Dardzada to his feet, planning to give him the haymaker of all haymakers, but his anger for Dardzada had drained in their fight, leaving only his own self-loathing. He shoved Dardzada away with a mighty push that sent him tripping over his own watering can. In the process Emre lost his footing on the crushed plants and fell heavily to the ground.

  For a long while the two of them lay there in the garden, bruised and bloody, staring at one another.

  “Despite everything you did,” Emre said, “your sharp tongue, taking your hand to her, inking that bloody tattoo on her back to brand her as a bastard, she still loved you. She trusted you. And you handed her to the Maidens to die.”