Twelve Kings in Sharakhai

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  She’d been fighting on her own for so long but had been doing so blindly.

  Did she have allies now? Did she have kin? The King of the asirim had started her on this new path. She’d been sheltered by Zaïde, a woman who hid the design of the asirim in this very tattoo. It was clear she was allied with the asirim in some way. But how? And what did she hope to do? There was no longer any doubt in Çeda’s mind that she was Dardzada’s contact in the House of Maidens, a thing Çeda must speak to her about soon, assuming she lived to see the sunrise.

  Beneath the light of the twin moons, she saw these wretched creatures anew. No longer were they faceless things, separate from her. She was a part of them, and they were a part of her.

  “What happened that night?” Çeda asked around the lump forming in her throat. “What happened on Beht Ihman?”

  The King’s eyes met Çeda’s with deep emotion, as if the events of that night were playing through his mind even then. He opened his mouth to speak but his eyes teared and his throat convulsed. He levered his jaw open but shook his head violently, as if he dearly wished to rid himself of his memories if only he could speak them aloud. But nothing came out. He was compelled to silence, perhaps by the Kings, perhaps by the gods themselves.

  He turned his head, then, to Çeda’s right. He lowered in his stance, devolving into a feral beast once more. The others around him did the same, as one, turning in the same direction. Çeda looked and listened, but could detect nothing untoward in the dunes or the blooming fields, and yet the hairs rose on the back of her neck.

  She watched the night carefully, until there came from the opposite direction the rhythmic hiss of footfalls against the sand. Someone was sprinting toward them.

  “Go,” said a voice in the night, barely loud enough to hear. “Go, my children.”

  The asirim scattered, all but the King and two other asir, including the one who had traced the designs in Çeda’s tattoo. Out of the darkness came a tall woman bearing a staff.

  “Saliah,” Çeda whispered.

  By all that was good, the desert witch had come.

  ÇEDA HAD NO TIME TO WONDER at Saliah’s arrival, for as the tall woman approached, she whipped the head of her staff against the sand, sending it spraying up and into the night sky. As the sand drifted downward, glittering beneath the light of the moons, Sehid-Alaz and the two other asirim used their hands and feet to wipe away the signs they’d made in the sand. And then they, too, fled toward Sharakhai.

  “Quickly!” Saliah hissed as she took Çeda by the arm. “Quickly now!”

  She took Çeda to the wall of adichara. The adichara rose and twisted away, creating a path into the heart of the twisted trees. When they were five paces in, the branches moved back into place, coming to rest as if they’d never moved in the first place, except that the branches around Çeda were now well clear of her, and they twisted away if she came too close, lest the thorns prick her.

  “Shhhhh,” Saliah whispered as she held her staff in both hands before her. Çeda wasn’t sure if she was talking to Çeda or herself or to the adichara, but she knew enough to be quiet. She knew enough to be still.

  They waited a long while, but that only heightened the sense that there was something treacherous in the air. Saliah didn’t move, nor speak, but Çeda could see her lips moving, as if she were whispering prayers.

  At last there came a sound. A scraping, as of claw against stone. Forms darkened the way ahead. Çeda could see them dimly through the adichara, two creatures with massive withers and sawtooth fur and backs that sloped down toward their shortened hindquarters. They were followed by another, and another, then one more.

  Black laughers. Bone crushers, like the ones that had chased her in the desert. They were easily as tall as Çeda at the shoulder. One of them opened its mouth wide, revealing long canines and shovel-shaped incisors.

  They snuffed over the sand, especially around the spot where Çeda had been standing. In the air, however, Çeda could see the barest glint, the suspended remnants of the sand Saliah had struck into the sky.

  One of the laughers sneezed, a thing that sounded more like a breathy grunt.

  At this, the others let out a bestial call that sounded like the lowing of a bull, but more primal, somehow, as if they were calling to the earth itself. Çeda could feel it deep within her. It made her skin itch, made her stomach tighten and her mouth go dry. On and on it went. Çeda’s hands moved toward her ears, but Saliah grabbed her wrist, warning her to remain exactly as she was.

  One of the beasts swiveled ears the size of a man’s hands back and forth. Then it swung its great head toward Çeda’s position. It snuffed closer. The others turned and watched, perhaps unsure what their brother had heard or smelt. They neared, crowding around the place where Çeda and Saliah were hiding, until one of the adichara branches swung outward and waved before them.

  The nearest of the black laughers retreated, whining as it went. The rest of the pack giggled, a pitiable and fearsome sound, and backed away as well, some bowing their heads.

  Footsteps could be heard trudging across the sand, and Çeda felt Saliah’s hand tighten on her wrist.

  No longer was the witch whispering. She was deadly silent now, as a smell like bitter, burnt myrrh filled the air, and a masculine form appeared. He was tall. His legs bent at strange angles, as if he were half-man, half-beast. His skin was black as night, a void against the blanket of stars on the horizon behind him, and on his head he wore a crown of thorns. The very stone and sand around him seemed to bend inward, as if his gravitas were too much for the desert to bear.

  Çeda’s knees went weak. Her breath came in quick gasps, her ribs and stomach tightening to the point of pain. The little girl inside her wanted to weep, to cry out, but she knew that doing so would mean her death.

  For this was Goezhen himself. The god who’d created many of the twisted creatures that filled the desert, these bone crushers among them. He squatted down in the exact place where Çeda had stood mere minutes ago. He ran his hands over the sand where the symbol of the thirteenth tribe had been. After gathering up a handful of that very same sand, he allowed it to trickle between his fingers to the desert floor.

  He stood tall and looked over the adichara, his gaze sweeping over Çeda’s position. Çeda thought surely they’d been found, that he would walk toward them and pluck them from the twisted trees, but instead the god of fell beasts turned away, toward Sharakhai. For a while, he considered the city. He looked hungry, somehow, bent as he was, breath huffing in and out, arms spread at his sides as if he wished to destroy something. Anything. Perhaps Sharakhai itself.

  The black laughers approached. One rubbed its head along his hip. Another rubbed its shoulder along Goezhen’s thigh. He ran his hands absently over their muscular withers.

  He said something to them, the sound of it low, like a war drum pounding in the distance. She could not make out his words, but a moment later, the bone crushers laughed and were off, loping into the desert with long strides, sand kicking up behind them. Goezhen followed, his dark form quickly lost behind the dunes.

  Then all was silence once more, all save the faint rattle of the adichara branches, the thorns rubbing against one another.

  Saliah released her grip on Çeda’s hand. The adichara slowly unraveled behind them until they could walk to the other side, to fresh land. Like Çeda, Saliah surely felt the stone where they’d been standing had been trod upon enough this night.

  Çeda opened her mouth to speak, but Saliah raised her hand. “Enough words have been spilled this night.” She looked up, though Çeda was sure that Saliah was blind. The moons had continued their westward trek and were nearing the horizon. “The God of Thorns has heard us,” Saliah said. “He does not yet know you, but he may if we don’t take care.” Çeda was about to speak, but Saliah spoke over her. “Utter not his name. Not when the moons are out. Speak of him
only in the daylight, Ahya’s daughter, and then only to those you trust most. The days are coming near when we must all act, but I think there is time yet.”

  “Time for what?”

  “To prepare.”

  “But how?” Çeda asked.

  Saliah touched the tip of her staff to Çeda’s hand. She pressed it to the wound, which flared with pain. “It has already begun. You are an arrow, Çedamihn. A spear pointed at the heart of Sharakhai. And we will work together to unravel what the Kings have done in the name of their gods.”

  Çeda’s thoughts were brought back to the stories of the gods chasing one of their own through the desert. Of Goezhen and Bakhi and Tulathan tearing down a temple built to honor their sister goddess. What Saliah had just done no desert witch could do. Not even one of godsblood, the old folk. There was only one explanation.

  “You’re—”

  But Saliah clapped her hand over Çeda’s mouth. “Do not say it!”

  You’re Nalamae. As sure as the desert winds blow, you are Nalamae. “Why?” Çeda asked. “Why can’t I say your name?”

  Her only answer was to take Çeda’s hand and lead her along the sand to a lower place. “Come,” she said. “Come, for it is time you see what the Kings have wrought.”

  Saliah turned toward Sharakhai. The moons were bright. The wind was cool. The goddess looked over the landscape. She lifted her hand and made a motion like the plucking of a harpstring. And in that moment, the wails of the asirim sounded in the distance. They came, nearer and nearer to the place where she and Saliah stood, and eventually Çeda saw them trudging over the dunes with bodies in tow.

  A dozen of them came, four dragging bodies across the sand, leaving deep furrows in their passing. Furrows that would soon be lost to the wind. The nearest of the sacrifices was a woman. She woke groggily as she was being dragged by the arms toward the adichara.

  “Tulathan protect me!” she cried. “Tulathan protect me!”

  She was not trying to escape. Her words were a desperate attempt to bolster her spirits, to smother her fear. She was trying to be brave. Many taken by the asirim had prayed for the honor, but now that it had come she was having doubts. As she was dragged ever forward, she stared at Çeda.

  “Peace be upon you,” Çeda said, for she had no other words.

  The woman didn’t respond. She looked to the adichara again, then ripped her arms away and tried to run. The asir was on her in a moment, grabbing her legs. The woman scratched and clawed at the sand. The asir dragging her, a shriveled crone, paid her little mind. With no preamble whatsoever, no words whispered to the gods for this sacrifice, she picked the woman up and tossed her into the center of the thorns. The white blooms were still wide and staring at the twin moons, but the limbs of the adichara were much more active than they’d been earlier. Those nearest reached up and snatched the woman from the air as she screamed.

  Her screams pitched higher as her body was torn limb from limb. Her blood showed a shining black against the bark of the twisted trees. Other bodies followed—one, two, three—each of them tossed to a different section of the field like meat to starving hounds. Thankfully none of the others awakened, but their blood spilled every bit as easily as the woman’s.

  By the gods above, they feed the trees. They take people from Sharakhai and feed them to the adichara.

  One of the asirim stopped near Çeda, a man with long limbs and lost eyes. He bowed his head to her, a thing that made Çeda wholly uncomfortable. It struck her then why he had done so, what had changed: They had accepted her.

  The mere thought of accepting them in return, thereby accepting what happened each Beht Zha’ir, sickened her, but she didn’t know what else to do. She bowed her head in return, and the asir moved on.

  One by one, the asirim trudged into the adichara, and one by one, the trees accepted them. They folded their thorny boughs around those lost souls and pulled them deep into the sand until they were lost from sight.

  When they were all gone, when the desert was peaceful once more, the adichara began to sway gently. A beetle lifted into the air, wandering aimlessly over the twisted trees. It was horrifically ordinary. In another few hours, the sun would rise, and the blooming fields would look no different than they did every other night. Yet they hid so much, hid their secrets like thieves spreading their arms over piles of stolen gold.

  Çeda and Saliah were alone once more. No dark creatures. No asirim. No screaming sacrifices.

  Çeda felt as though she’d lived an entire life this night, and in a way she had. At the very least she had been reborn, and a new world opened up to her, all because of her mother.

  It has already begun, Saliah had said. You are an arrow, a spear pointed at the heart of Sharakhai.

  “The King,” Çeda said, remembering her mission this night, remembering Emre and all that he and the Moonless Host were set to do. “I must find his palace.”

  Saliah merely nodded and walked carefully, one hand stretched before her as if she expected the heat from a fire. She began leading Çeda southwest.

  “Wait!” Çeda went to the nearest of the adichara, pulling her ebon blade as she went. Four quick swipes of the blade and four blooms were dropped easily down to her. She stuffed them inside her dress and moved back to Saliah’s side, and together, they moved beyond the blooming fields and over open sand.

  Çeda knew where they were headed well before they reached it: to the tree where Külasan had been drawn down into the sands. She could see it—a dark smudge on the horizon—but Saliah didn’t head straight for it. She seemed to find something that pleased her and pulled Çeda by the arm, setting her in place, just so.

  The sand beneath Çeda began to shift. It parted, a soft hissing accompanying the movement, swallowing Çeda’s feet, then her shins, then her thighs. Saliah backed away and left Çeda standing there, slipping into the sand, alone. “Wait, can you not come?”

  Saliah shook her head. “The Kings are well protected by the desert gods. But you are one of their own. You, they cannot see, not easily, in any case.”

  “Will I see you again?” Çeda asked.

  “There will come a day.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.” It was one of the loneliest feelings Çeda could ever remember, knowing the goddess was about to leave her. “Now trust to the shifting sands.”

  Çeda continued to sink, and all too soon she had been swallowed to her waist, then chest and arms, then shoulders. She was towed deeper and deeper, until at last, with one final breath of the cool night air, she was pulled beneath the surface of the sand.

  Despite herself, despite knowing Saliah was doing this to help her, she fought to free herself from the darkness. The baked smell. The unyielding tightness of the earth. It was too much.

  She was desperate to breathe, desperate to scream. On and on it went, the pressure, the scraping, as her lungs burned, as her skin was scraped raw, until finally she was free but falling into darkness.

  She fell onto a stone floor, one knee cracking painfully against it, though it was eased by the leather sewn into her fighting dress. She could see nothing down here. Nothing at all. She rose unsteadily, taking long deep breaths of the chill air. She felt around for a wall, and found it a moment later. She walked the other way and found another wall. A passageway, then. But which way to go?

  The question was answered moments later by the sounds of shouting. And then the ring of steel and cries of rage and pain.

  And among them, dear gods, she could hear Emre.

  MARCHING AHEAD OF EMRE were Macide and Hamid and Darius. Behind him came a dozen more men and women—soldiers of the Al’Afwa Khadar, the Moonless Host, all of them jogging in order to reach their destination in time. They were all wearing clothes and boots the color of wet earth. Turbans and veils covered their faces to ward against the wind but also to hide their identities.

>   So far all had gone well. They’d left Sharakhai shortly after sunset and headed northwest, along the same streambed he and Çeda had followed so long ago. Eventually they slowed as they approached the blooming fields. Emre watched carefully for signs of horses or movement along the tops of the dunes or the rocky ridges. He even paid careful attention to the scent on the wind, anything at all that might give him some warning of where Çeda and the Blade Maidens would be.

  Macide had agreed to approach any conflict with care should the Maidens discover them, but he gave no guarantees that Çeda wouldn’t be harmed. In battle, he’d said, promises are as much use as jewels to a dying man.

  They went beyond the blooming fields for a quarter-league, and then Macide began walking carefully along the right side of the streambed. He checked several large, glinting rocks packed deeply into the earth. He ducked low, searching around them, though for what, Emre couldn’t guess.

  But when Macide crouched and felt along the base of one particular rock, he then stood and motioned for everyone to come near. “On your bellies.” He lay down and slid along the dry earth, and soon he was swallowed by the shallow bank, lost to a gap Emre hadn’t realized was there.

  Hamid went next, and then it was Emre’s turn. He lay flat and sidled into the gap, which was hardly wider than he was. He barely managed to make it into this strange passageway, this natural tunnel into the earth. Embedded in the walls and roof and floor of the passage were sharp crystals. They tore at his hands and knees and, when he wasn’t careful, the back of his head. He heard little more than his own breathing, and the breathing of the others, until finally the passage widened, and he heard the trickle of water in the distance.

  After a time he was able to rise to a crouch, and then to a full stand. Ahead, Hamid lit three torches he’d brought and handed one to Macide and another to Darius. Golden light played against a cavern whose every surface was covered in clear white crystals. It was as if he were trapped inside a gemstone, like something out of the tales of the vengeful ehrekh.