by Baloch, Fuad
The djinn are here.
A shiver ran down her spine. Her jailer was a ghoul, who worked for a magus, who in turn was being visited by djinn. What world was this, for she didn't recognize it anymore?
What would Abba have done in her situation? She’d always seen him as the all-powerful sultan, the world bending to his whims. He was the mountain, unable to be squeezed into a box she had been sequestered in. No, there was little he offered that would help her here.
Another realization bubbled over her chaotic thoughts. Neither Abba nor Mother had much guidance to give her, for what she faced was nothing they’d ever grappled with. There was no appealing to tradition or history or precedent to guide her. Not with a ghoul who should have existed nowhere but the depths of the seventh hell, recalled as nightmarish depictions on the lips of priests.
Nuraya stepped to the side. Her stomach grumbled. She was helpless but also hungry, her body unable to set aside its trivial needs.
Vhali rushed past her, her bangles clinking softly, followed by the grunting ghoul.
The doors thudded shut behind her. A second later, she heard the bolt being jammed into place.
She was alone once more.
Not alone, she reminded herself.
Her captor was here. Afrasiab. A name she’d heard before as well. Another demon?
Nuraya placed her arms on her hips.
She would make him pay.
Chapter 10
Shoki
Shoki hobbled forward. Again, the world threatened to fade, spots of darkness and brilliant light fighting for supremacy in the periphery of his vision. The duel abated for a bit, letting him see the dark, gray clouds overhead, the rich greenery under his boots.
How far was he from the rest of his men? Where was Jiza taking him?
A voice was speaking. Jiza’s. He shook his head, ordering his thoughts. Words floated up to his ears, so intimate he could almost see their shape, almost touch them, yet they failed to impart any meaning.
His shoulders tightened, his hands going clammy. What was happening to him? Had his companions abandoned him already? No one had said anything, but since the battle against the Zakhanan soldiers, they had all been keeping their distance from him. Even Salar Ihagra. Was it because they, too, feared the darkness settling in him, or was it because of the deaths he had caused? Pressing his lips together, he grimaced. Just like Jinan, he had thrown himself into a battle without thinking through the consequences. Truth be told, even he was having issues recognizing this being tearing out of him.
“—and we are going to—”
Thunder crackled overhead. Startled, Shoki raised his chin. The sky was no grayer than the last time he’d looked. It wasn’t raining, not yet anyway. Leaves rustled around them, the sound louder than it ought to have been. Shoki blinked, ignoring the ghostly twitch under the eyepatch covering his ruined eye, and for the first time really saw where he was.
A burial ground.
Crumbling graves surrounded them, the faint etchings on the stone markers impossible to read, eroded by the passage of time to mere scribbles. Not only had the dead gone to mud, even their final resting places were sinking to oblivion. This was no Matli, yet the place had a quiet sense of dignity about it. Shrines and tombs stood at regular intervals between the graves, their archways cracked, the windows broken, tree branches hanging over the dented domes, the walls covered by moss.
Shoki scratched his chin, letting his gaze sweep the ruins, dragging his feet forward. Sunlight had broken through the clouds and now filtered through the broken window frame of the small tomb to his left. Despite the layers of grime and moss covering its three remaining walls, the tomb was impressive. Twenty feet high yet small enough to have only held a maximum of six visitors. A dull green script peeked through the moss. If it announced the parentage and accomplishments of the dead, there was no one around who could read it anymore.
Shoki ran his fingers through his thick, greasy hair, pulling it away from his face. The denizens of these graves had been alive once. All of them, just like him. They, too, once had dreams and aspirations and loves and defeats. They, too, would have sung and played the lute and laughed merrily.
Now, they, all of them, lay quiet, never to speak again.
Shoki shivered. He had fought battles, had killed plenty, but seeing the dead at rest was a much more harrowing spectacle than the process of dying.
Rubbing his arm, he chuckled as another wave of delirium washed over him. They might have breathed like him once, but they’d never been abominations, never had to live with the heavy burden of heresy and sacrilege hanging over their heads.
“Over there,” Jiza said, pointing at the stump of a large tree in the clearing up ahead.
Shoki followed her, letting her burned cedar wood scent guide him. Despite where they were, memory floated up of the time he had spent with her in Nainwa. It ought to have filled him with shame, but today, he longed for it. Maybe, that was the way to ground him back to reality: another brush with the fantastic.
Shoki felt her hand on his arm and stopped. They were beside the stump already and she was saying something.
“What?” Shoki asked, his voice sounding wrong to his ears.
“Sit down,” she said, her voice soft, firm, pointing at the stump.
He did, letting his arms dangle loosely to his sides. Wind picked up, setting the long stalks of grass swaying in the gentle breeze. He smelled the wet earth and fresh grass and her scent, his ability to smell heightened so much it overpowered all else.
No! He clamped his nose hard with a hand, turning his head toward Jiza. “Where am I?”
“Moinodo.”
Shoki chuckled. “Moinodo or Kihzoy, names mean little to me. Why am I here?” He flinched as a bird took to sky in the distance. “Why here and nowhere else?”
Jiza exhaled, her back straight as her eyes swept through the desolate graveyard. Shoki followed her gaze. She was looking at a couple of weathered graves under the shade of an ancient neem tree.
“History is cyclical,” she said. “And you humans make sure to never forget that.”
Shoki blinked. “Huh?”
She waved her hand, her fingers curling, a shadow crossing over her angular features. “Did you know, unlike you, the djinn don’t bury their dead?” Jiza paused. “Beings of fire perish to ash when their time ends, the air scattering it about. Dust, however, gathers when weighed down under the weight of mud.”
Shoki kept quiet. He heard her fine—a good thing—but he didn't understand her meaning. Then again, if her speaking continued to ward off the darkness, then that was something he welcomed. Even as he thought that, he could feel it lingering behind him: a specter, mocking, challenging him.
“What’s happening to me, Jiza?” he asked.
“I told you,” she said. “It’s the foulness, this taint!” She paused, an unexpected, playful smile appearing on her lips. “Or maybe it’s just your body going through withdrawal symptoms.”
Shoki laughed. “Betting either way like a sultan’s minister, eh?”
Jiza took in a long breath, her eyes still glued to the distant graves as if she saw something different than what Shoki did. Maybe that was the case. Maybe, this was some dreamlike world, and he was hallucinating once more.
“This place held greater importance two hundred years ago, even when it was still in a similar state,” Jiza said, her voice sounding faraway. “Bana visited it when he was still a young explorer. I read his chronicles.” She raised a hand toward a mausoleum tilting to the left. “He met three saints here, living within that structure. All day and night, they sang the glory of the Unseen God and His divine favor on the chosen people.”
“The chosen people?”
“Men and women buried here. People who used to be important a millennia ago. Forgotten by the masses since.”
Shoki furrowed his brows. “Gods’ guts, Jiza. Why talk in riddles? I’m going mad, or have you forgotten that? Mad! If you can help,
just goddamn do it.” He grabbed her by the shoulder, shook her. “I was never bonded by an inquisitor before. Does that explain my state?”
Jiza ignored him, her face still turned away, her chest no longer moving to keep up the illusion of being a human.
Shoki gritted his teeth. His men—Salar Ihagra’s men—were at least three miles away. A trek he couldn’t make on his own in this state if he was to just up and walk away. He needed Jiza. And the damned djinn knew that, holding that as an advantage.
He sneezed, raising a hand to cover his mouth. The hairs in his nose tickled and he sneezed again. Slapping his chest, Shoki rose, teetering like a drunk, sneezing over and over again.
When the fit passed, he collapsed back on the tree stump, drained.
He shivered. Where had the cold come from? Shoki looked around. The sun still battled the clouds, the surrounding forest growing gloomy. Jiza sat still, unmoved by the cursed fit that had almost taken his life. Hugging his chest, he pulled his knees up, the cold still seeping into his very bones.
His eye fell on a vulture flying high up in the sky. A vulture? He cocked his head to the side, wondering what the beast would find in a cemetery.
No, it was far away. The village, he realized. Probably picking the bones of the fresh corpses he had left behind.
Shame and regret spread through his pores. He had put his men through danger they didn’t need to go through. He had taken lives that could have been saved. Why? He didn't even know if he’d pick up Nuraya’s trail. And even if he did, he couldn't fight Afrasiab with a mere fifty men!
Actions of a madman.
A tear gathered at the corner of his eye. He made no effort to flick it away. Small penance for all he’d done.
“Magi are abominations,” he heard Inquisitor Aboor declare once more in his mind. This time, he didn’t even bother summoning the strength to swat it away.
Time was running out. This much he did know. Even as he sat watching the graves of those long dead, his own sanity was fast approaching its own demise. Shoki snickered. He had no need to be afraid of the end. Not if it meant one less mad magus for the world.
“Shoki,” Jiza murmured, finally turning around to face him. Her features betrayed no emotion, her large eyes boring into him. “You refused to meet the magi but they’re not the only ones seeking you.”
“They aren’t?” asked Shoki, quirking an eyebrow.
“No.” She reached into her peshwaz and retrieved a small scroll. “This is for you.”
His hands shaking, Shoki reached for it. The seal had been broken. Any other time, Shoki might have thrown a fit at that, but now wasn’t the occasion. The vulture screeched in the sky, followed by the screeching of its brethren, their sounds filling the air.
Shoki unfurled the scroll over the stump, placing one hand to keep the wind from taking it away.
“The Rising Sun,
Far too long have you remained hidden from the world. Even as the great night of forgetfulness reigned hundreds of years, we held our faith, biding our time. Now, finally, we rejoice, for the truth has been unveiled.
Take up the honored, respected, feared name of your ancestors, scion of the great family, and let this realm return to its rightful leader.
Rise, and we shall rise with you. Give the order and we will lay down our lives for you.
All hail…
Shoki Malik,
the true Sultan of this realm!”
Shoki gasped, then reread the second last line once more. Shoki Malik! Not the Malook he had used all his life, a name his parents had given him despite calling themselves Lyunas.
“No! This—this—”
Jiza leaned toward him, a pained look spreading on her face. Shoki’s heart filled with terror. “Meet your destiny, Shoki. Your past that must define your present and in turn influence your future.”
He shook his head, feeling the world moving under his feet. Breath rattled in his chest, the sheer enormity of the claim startling in its preposterousness. “Nonsense… This is sheer lunacy. Fancy of madmen. B-b-blasphemous words!” He forced another chuckle. “The whole world has gone crazy! The whole Gods’ guts cursed world!”
She reached into her peshwaz again, her unblinking eyes never leaving his face, her movements precise and graceful like a cat’s. “Tell me, Shoki. Where are you?”
Shoki raised an eyebrow. She didn’t respond. Shoki whipped his head away, annoyed at the games she continued to play with him, his mind still struggling to make sense of the letter, trying and failing.
Then, his heart stirred. A forlorn lute string being plucked that only he could hear. His hands grew clammy, his heart mourning the dead he had never met. The earth smelled like the breeze that blew over the street where he’d lived with his parents in Algaria. He was home, even when he wasn’t.
His heart knew where he was, even as the mind continued to protest it all.
These were the graves of his kin.
“Are these…” he hesitated, struggling to even form the words, “Malik graves?”
The djinn smiled, her terrible smile filling him with more dread. Who was she? What did she seek from him? Was that what she’d been planning with Camsh? Why was he still sitting here? She was deceiving him. She had to be.
Jiza nodded, her hand rising. “There’s hope for you still, then.”
Shoki blinked, catching the glint of silver as Jiza brought her arm out with a flourish.
Metal glinted.
Before he could duck or raise a hand, the knife was sinking into his chest, the soft flesh parting to let in the cold steel.
With a cry, Shoki fell to the ground.
Pain, terrible and impossible to bear, spread through his chest, his insides tearing apart, the sensations becoming his universe.
Shoki opened his mouth, felt blood trickle out.
He turned toward the sky.
No great moments of clarity came. No visions of the times he had spent with those he had called his parents. Not even the kiss he had stolen from Nuraya, the woman he had fallen in love with. He tried turning toward Jiza, wanting to grab her by the throat and demand answers.
The sun winked out.
Chapter 11
Aboor
“Now what?” Aboor asked, taking quick, shallow breaths, as he squinted at the tavern a hundred yards ahead. Why in the Divine’s name etched on the mountain peaks had he ever agreed to getting off horseback anyway?
Yasir, the magus, pushed back his sweaty hair peeking from under his black turban. “Straight ahead. Keep moving.”
Aboor pinched the bridge of his nose. Puhana might have tricked him into working with abominations, but he’d be damned if they thought he’d dance to their tune as well. “Five thousand souls live in this damned oasis spread over two miles! So, I ask again, how far do you demand I limp?”
Yasir turned his frenzied, dark eyes over to him and Aboor tensed. The middle-aged man might have been acting the perfect magus bonded to Puhana, but Aboor knew better than to trust an abomination. Chaos swirled in the magus’s irises. Considering almost all other magi were going mad, having rebelled against their inquisitor overlords, the same could happen to Yasir and his two pet magi as well. But when that did happen, they would not catch Aboor unawares. He half raised his hand, ready to call the sixteen inquisitors behind him to begin the Divine Chant and sever the magi at the first hint of trouble. The other contingent of seventeen inquisitors remained fifty yards away, his way of ensuring he wouldn’t lose all his resources at the same time.
“There!” the magus said, nodding to himself. “In that tavern.” The other two magi made agreeing noises, keeping their gazes downcast.
Raising his hand to shield his eyes from the unforgiving desert sun, Aboor squinted again. The tavern was a large rectangular building, surrounded by palm trees, standing an arm’s throw from the only sizable body of water for three hundred miles. An oasis of a few thousand had no need for a tavern this large, but this far east of Algaria, almost all c
aravans crossing the Gabon desert rested here.
Aboor touched his mustache. So, this is it then. He’d traveled with the magi for two hundred miles, had heard Puhana’s assurances that these magi believed in a world where magi worked under inquisitors, and had taken personal pledges of obedience from the magi, but they hadn’t proven their worth yet.
This was the time to find out.
One of many outcomes could happen in the next little while. Despite the knots forming in his stomach, Aboor found himself grinning. It had been far too long since blood had thrashed quite so in his veins. Almost enough to make him forget his perennial aches and pains, papering over the many indignities that old age and a failing body had made him suffer.
Inquisitors were taking up positions behind him, breaking into excited chatter and nervous laughs. Another group he hadn't had a chance to really take the measure of yet. Green inquisitors who’d barely had two years of journeymen training before being assigned to him. Such was Aboor’s lot.
“And you can… what, sniff jadu up ahead?” Aboor asked. “Even after they learned the secrets of masking themselves from us?”
“Aye,” Yasir replied.
Aboor shifted his weight. “Mountain’s breath! Cursed be the vile magi fleeing their masters.”
Yasir didn't reply, but Aboor watched him and the other two magi closely for any signs of dissent. They were good, giving no hint of displeasure at his comment. Aboor smiled, accepting the prospect of a long-drawn challenge.
Two inquisitors walked up to him. “Sahib Inquisitor, should we fan out, cover the exits from the tavern?” the shorter of the two inquisitors asked, a usually quiet man whose name Aboor still couldn't remember. Something he’d have to correct. He might have been out of the military for a while, but a good salar needed to keep on top of little things like that.