Lions of Istan

by Fuad Baloch

  Sultana’s Hands bellowed, then rushed toward the mass of humanity up ahead that continued to crush into itself, a formless sea oblivious of soldiers hastening to embrace its cold fold.

  As the men ran past him, howling and shrieking, Shoki stood still, watching them as if from some distant viewpoint.

  He jolted upright, a prickly feeling crawling up his spine. Was someone watching him? He jerked his head left, then right. Nothing but more of Nuraya’s men tramping toward the killing fields.

  Shoki turned his head back toward the wall. Jadu called at him, wanting him to reach for it. He resisted the urge. Proximity had an influence on what a magus could do, he’d heard Mara declare. This close to the walls, in the thick of action, would what he saw be any different, any less terrifying than what he’d seen from a distance?

  Shoki looked ahead. The teeming masses had swallowed the Sultana’s Hands, leaving no trace of individuals. Nothing but an ocean of limbs and blood and shouts. If this was what fighting was, how did one ever not strike friend instead of foe?

  His stomach growled, his palms growing sweaty. Shoki whipped his head around. Tiny blobs of colorful ink stood atop the lonely western hill. One of them was Nuraya, his sultana, the keeper of his heart, the one person he should have turned down but had been unable to.

  Jinan stood beside her. Queen Aleena too. And the three magi, spent, but no less proud.

  At least, she had remained back, something her mother or Mona had probably helped turn her away from.

  Shoki exhaled, felt his insides tighten. Something was wrong, something they were not seeing, something his gut continued to call out.

  Before more thoughts could crowd in, distract him from what needed doing, Shoki closed his eye, then seized jadu.

  A cold numbing pain seared through him. A moment later, he cracked open an eyelid, and found the world transformed.

  He couldn't see the wall anymore. In its stead, a mountain of raw, pulsing energy rose so high it blotted out the sun. At its peak, a riot of colors seemed to swim through some viscous liquid. Little fly-like projectiles flew from the colors, hurtled toward the ground, sunk into balls of red and green energy. Shoki looked around. The world burst with ever-shifting colors. One second, a bright fiery mix of red and orange as a berserker thrashed into an opponent over and over again, the next the colors fading, dying like mist before the encroaching dawn.

  Shoki swallowed the bile rising in his throat. How was one meant to make sense of it all? He concentrated on a distant figure to his right. An archer more like, bathed in a glow of determined blue, throbbing with imbued intent. One of the Sultana’s Hands. Again and again, the figure drew a black instrument—the bow most likely—transferred some of his own latent energy into the wooden shafts that burst into fiery reds the moment they left him.

  Taken by the wondrous sight, Shoki found it hard to tear himself away. The blue aura weakened for a second, sparks of pale green rising in its midst as it began withdrawing.

  Shoki took a step toward the distant figure. Looking at the world as he was, he couldn't tell how far he was from the archer. Regardless, his vision seemed vast, almost limitless.

  A bolt of purple lightning sunk into the blue energy.

  Shoki screamed in frustration. Like the giant had the other day, the blue figure burst into a sea of red droplets, its energy leaking, fading, the actual man underneath dying even as Shoki watched helplessly.

  The enemy magus was here as well.

  Terror gripping his insides, Shoki forced himself to turn away from the dead archer and toward the battle.

  “Where are you?” he muttered, squinting for the dark blob that signified the enemy magus, the words sounding faraway, strange to his own ears.

  Then he realized something else that had been troubling him. His other senses were confused. This close to the walls, things smelled differently, the air thick with strong, pungent odors, interweaving with each other even as they all remained unique, distinguishable.

  Instead of the clatter of weapons, the screams of men falling prey to each other, the occasional snorting of horses, he heard matter. Not the guttural growls of men, but their essences crashing against those opposing them. He saw, felt, heard the bits that made a person.

  Raising his hands, Shoki covered his ears, unable to take all this in. The noise didn't go away, but the mere act seemed to buy him some semblance of control.

  Exhaling, he turned his chin toward the mountain that was the city wall blocking his view of the city beyond. Amidst the swirling sea of colors and energies, two large dots of energy stood still, waves of elemental power churning, roiling around them.

  Breath caught in Shoki's chest as he saw the two enemy magi weaving elaborate patterns from the seemingly infinite lines of energy floating up to them. One magus, a red crimson dot, pulled in streams of red blood from the men that fought around him, growing larger in size and strength each second. The other grabbed currents of air and used them as invisible whips.

  Shoki considered turning his head back toward Nuraya, then changed his mind. Nuraya’s magi had already spent their energy. For better or worse, he was on his own.

  Focus!

  Shoki raised his hand toward the wall, reached out to it. His fingers stretched, crossing over the fighting men, brushed against the rough limestone and mortar. Shaking his head, he probed deeper, and went past the surface.

  With a gesture, he peeled back the outer layer, peered at the green matter swirling inside, recognized it as the wall’s resolve to stand upright, something given to it by the masons who’d built it.

  Licking his lips, sweat beading down his brow, Shoki reached for the green matter. Slippery. Hard to grasp. He extended once more, not giving up. The world swayed around him, darkness clouding his vision, but he fought the onslaught.

  The wall’s resolve slipped from his reach.

  He turned toward Ahasan’s defenders atop the parapets. Few in numbers, their limbs tired, yet they continued to fight on, confident in their ability to keep both sets of invaders from entering the city walls.

  Shoki blinked, unable to take all the confusing emotions and energies that made up the world he was seeing. The wall, the men defending it, the dying masses underneath, the air, the distant sun, each and everything he turned to was a riot of potential and opportunity calling out to him.

  He staggered back, unable to reconcile the vision that surely only the gods possessed. He was but a babe, learning to crawl, facing burdens even the Iron Sultan would have struggled to bear.

  Breath was getting harder with each passing second. Coughing, Shoki looked down at himself and gasped. Where everything else seemed to contain a dominant color surrounded by many other hues, his body had no one color. Like a mirror, his colorless body seemed to reflect a thousand hues in a breath, never letting anyone settle for long.

  He looked at the other magi, at the dark colors that made their beings, then back at himself.

  He was an Ajeeb magus. Neither a Jaman magus who could store energy from an external source, nor a Zyadi who could influence external matter. Unlike them, he lacked a particular matter he was connected with, yet had the potential to connect with them all.

  His mind reeled at the infinite possibilities. How was he to try and tame something that impossibly complex?

  Shoki howled.

  He didn't know how to use this power. What if he ended up making it all worse, extending the war instead of helping it reach a speedy conclusion?

  His body soared upward. He knew his physical body still stood on the ground, far away from the walls, yet he found himself peering at the defenders on the walls from a great height.

  Outside the walls, the Sultana’s Hands fought on with the limp resolve of a dog that was beaten back and knew it had nowhere else to go. In contrast, both Kinas’s and Ahasan’s forces fought with a tiredness so great, they couldn't even muster enough strength to consider routing.

  He had to do something. Even if he didn't understand t
he mechanics of exchanging energy, or the unintended consequences, he couldn’t stand still letting the enemy magi continue to attack their forces.

  At a whim, Shoki darted his head toward the skies. The sun was still harsh, a source of power so potent and powerful Shoki could not dwell on it for more than a second before all thoughts began to desert him.

  Beyond and around the bright sun though, he felt the darkness taking form, chattering excitedly for the time when the sun would go down, when worlds of the men and djinn and pari folk would no longer be separated.

  If he seized jadu, he’d be doing his part to weaken this barrier. But even if he didn't, the enemy magi would do it regardless.

  He was left a simple choice.

  Taking in a deep breath, he tried forcing all colors to give in to him. For a second, the world swayed, the colors and potentials of entities dancing, collapsing into each other. He blinked. Was that him approaching the limits of his power?

  When the moment passed, he peered again at the killing fields. Sultana’s Hands were less than a thousand strong now, grains of black rice standing out against the austere white and purples of Kinas’s and Ahasan’s soldiers.

  More than their numbers, he could read their dominant energy. They were at a breaking point. Not long before they would rout.

  Shoki licked his lips, turned his focus to the resolute walls that had stood all these centuries guarding the capital city of the Istani Sultanate.

  Almost by instinct, he reached for the green essence of the walls once more, gathered buckets of it in his arms as if bales of cotton. A part of him quailed, shouted at him to stop. No time. Instinct kicked in, letting him do what he had failed at before.

  Turning to his men, he willed them to have the same green strength of the walls instead of what little they had left of their own, then flung the resolve he had gathered at the Sultana’s Hands that still stood fighting.

  The world shook. A great force hurled him toward the ground. He flailed about, caught no purchase, smashed into the ground with an almighty thud.

  All color seeped away, leaving a blackness that wasn't a color as much the absence of it.

  Shoki blinked, breathing hard. His vision grew misty, light spreading around him once more. He shouted, seeing nothing beyond the few feet ahead of him. Like a drunk wanting one more swig from the empty pitcher, he extended a hand toward his jadu, lusting for the rush of current coursing through his veins and came out empty.

  “No!” he howled, his fingers trying to grasp but finding nothing.

  The fog vanished. He turned his chin up. He was on the ground, no longer looking down on the proceedings, but there physically and mentally.

  Men stood around him. Sultana’s Hands in the middle of a chaotic sea of blood and carnage.

  His eye fell on Rurik, the rotund mercenary, raising his fist a hundred yards to his right. He was bleeding from a dozen different cuts, but he stood tall, straight. More men gathered around him. Not just men, fiery, unflappable warriors who roared, causing the ground to shake under their feet.

  As if sensing the change, the enemy soldiers began withdrawing, allowing the Sultana’s Hands to reform their lines. Nuraya’s men stood still, packing thick together, unmovable, impassive.

  A wall that wouldn't be broken down.

  Strong gusts of wind set their cloaks fluttering, but they remained upright. The enemy magi with the affinity for blood was still out there as well. Blood fell from the wounds of these warriors, spiraled upward instead of falling down, swimming up in streams toward the magus.

  Still, the Sultana’s Hands stood unconcerned.

  Shoki blinked. Was that his doing?

  A groaning, rumbling sound rose from the city. His heart lurching, Shoki staggered to his feet, his good eye fixed at the ancient walls.

  Men directly under the wall were shouting, running away. Shoki squinted. Tiny ant-like figures were falling from the parapets, their limbs flailing.

  “My gods…” whimpered Shoki.

  The ground shook once more, the creaking and groaning so loud Shoki had to cover his ears.

  Immense cracks formed in the wall, began widening. For an instant, the crack directly ahead was so large, Shoki could see the minarets and domes of Algaria’s skyline.

  The ground rumbled.

  Like a child’s plaything made of wet sand, the walls that had guarded Algaria from besieging armies for hundreds of years, crumbled to the ground in a hail of dust and shouts.

  Shoki opened his jaw to scream. An invisible force of air thrashed against his chest, set him flying. The next second, a cloud of dust covered the sky. Shoki coughed and sputtered as he inhaled the acrid smoke.

  A loud ringing noise assaulted his senses. He shook his head, thrust his fingers deeper into the ears. His body ached all over, a pounding headache in the base of his skull that refused to let him think straight.

  He cried, feeling his chest cave as more gusts of winds whipped him. His eye burned, his mouth a foul mess of smoke and spit and bile. Half a dozen painful breaths later, Shoki staggered up on his elbows and rubbed at his good eye with a hand.

  What had happened?

  What had he done?

  Ensconced in misery and pain, his mind recalled another of Salar Ihagra’s lessons. An able salar preferred strategy over tactics. Consequences mattered more than short-term gains. That was true for a magus as well. Something he should have thought through but hadn’t.

  Once more he reached for his jadu.

  This time, his fingers brushed against the slippery crystalline surface, but still couldn't hold it. Before he could try again, the bright sunlight dimmed for an instant. Shoki squinted up. The darkness swirled in front of the sun now, a gathering of unnatural, unseasonal clouds.

  Someone crashed into him. Shoki cried out in pain, fell back writhing on the hot sands.

  Rubbing his eye, his mind growing numb, he squinted at the distant walls. No walls stood there anymore. Just massive mounds of rubble. Dust was beginning to settle now, enough that he caught another sight of the city he’d been yearning to see for months, afternoon shadows stretching out long behind them.

  A clatter of distant horse hooves came from behind and he turned his head. Riders were pouring in from the northern hills, their faces pale, long hair spilling out of cream-colored turbans, their lines true and rigid.

  Kinas’s soldiers, those he had been keeping in reserve till now.

  Not one of them deigned to look his way.

  No one stood to challenge them either. Ahasan’s men were routing now, pollen scattered by the wind. The walls at their back were gone, along with the archers who had been defending them, and they ran around like headless chickens.

  No one remained to stop Kinas’s men.

  No one, except fewer than a thousand Sultana’s Hands.

  “Flee!” screamed Shoki.

  If Nuraya’s men heard him, they paid him no mind, standing still like ancient trees. They wouldn’t break, Shoki knew. He also knew trees that didn’t bend to the hurricane, snapped.

  What had he done?

  A wave of darkness, heavy and thick, descended upon him. Beseeching the gods for strength, Shoki raised an impotent hand to ward it off.

  The darkness cut off the world from him for long breaths.

  When he came to, the sun was closer to the horizon, the dark clouds still swirling around it.

  How long had passed?

  He tried getting up, then groaned as shards of pain lanced through his limbs.

  “Keep still for a bit,” said a thick voice. A familiar voice.

  Shoki felt his spine grow cold. He moved his head toward the voice, toward the djinn magus who smiled beatifically down at him, still clad in his loincloth, his bald pate and naked torso glistening with sweat in the golden sunlight.

  Mara extended his hand toward him.

  Shoki jerked it away. “W-what are you doing here?”

  “I believe,” said the djinn, his voice somber, “I’m of
fering assistance.”

  Shoki opened his mouth, found it impossible to muster the strength for an argument. His eye traveled to the heap that was once Algaria’s city walls, toward the few soldiers that still fought over it.

  Most of Kinas’s riders were already past the walls, gathering in the plazas beyond. Once regrouped, they’d be riding to the Shahi Qilla. A smaller number of them had engaged the Sultana’s Hands outside the city walls.

  “What have I done?” moaned Shoki, looking at the warriors fighting with no concern for personal safety. “Given these men a fighting chance, or sealed their deaths?”

  “Boy, do you seek my help?” asked the djinn.

  Shoki blinked, distantly recalling something about offers of help from djinn. He shook his head.

  “The pari folk know you’re an Ajeeb magus,” said Mara, his eyes hard. “They will come for you.”

  “C-come for... me?”

  The djinn exhaled, drew his eyes away. “If you think you do not need my help fighting the magi that stand in your direct path, or the pari folk hunting you, I’d better get on my way.”

  Shoki swallowed.

  Mara turned, began walking away.

  “Wait!” Shoki called out, terror rising in his gut again.

  The djinn stopped.

  Shoki clicked his tongue, knowing he was making a mistake, but for the moment unable to think straight. “C-can you help us win this battle?”

  Mara cackled. “Is that what you want or your sultana?”

  “Can you?”

  “Are you sure this is what you really seek?”

  Shoki licked his lips. He had made it all worse. And he had to make it right. “Aye.”

  “And you want my help?”

  Shoki nodded.

  Chapter 42

  Nuraya

  Nuraya grinned broadly as the walls came down.

  Once the dust had settled, astride an increasingly restless Vengeance, she raised her sword high in the air, pointed at the rubble that once used to be a barrier between her and her manifest destiny. “This is the sign from Rabb we were waiting for. Our cause is just!”