by Fuad Baloch
Dazed, Shoki followed the soldiers up the wide road leading to the Shahi Qilla. The trek was familiar, something he had done over countless months, yet it filled him with a dread he had never experienced before. There was no Salar Ihagra at the end of this trek. No friends either.
Magi, waiting for them, ready to pounce the moment they got close.
And even darker forces awaiting their turn to be finally unleashed.
Through wielding his jadu, he too had played a part, no matter how unwilling, to loosen their restrains. Was there a way to push them away?
I will, Nuraya had said. Not the most reassuring promise, but then again what better could he hope for?
Shoki looked at the skies. The western horizon was beginning to darken, black clouds heralding the approach of night. Neither of the two moons was out tonight.
The men were restless, their horses snorting. The more they climbed, the more subdued the chattering became. They were now close enough to see the gates leading into the Shahi Qilla barricaded. Armed men stood behind the portcullis, archers atop the parapets. Any moment, arrows would start flying, seeking the soft bodies of these soldiers who had decided to make Nuraya’s call their own.
Some time ago, the queen and the three magi had joined the sultana, her lady-in-waiting, and the siphsalar. Men had stepped away, a hush falling as the magi strode through. Shoki refused to look left toward them. Why hadn't Nuraya chided her mother for what she’d done to Hanim, a good man? Or for her unforgivable crime against the Iron Sultan?
Deraman strode ahead of the Sultana and her retinue now, Shoki knew. A dim but generally good-hearted man turned into a beast by abominations like him.
Shoki shivered, recalling Queen Aleena’s face when she had gone berserk, and severed Hanim’s connection with the living world. What magus could do that? Emotional manipulation, the djinn magus had said. Had the queen somehow channeled Hanim’s thoughts and emotions against him?
More dark and foreboding thoughts crowded his mind. Once more, he saw Inquisitor Aboor glower at him, shake his head in disgust at the magi. At him. A part of him had wanted to protest, challenge the assumption that all magi were the same.
But was he any better? He had brought down the walls, draining his jadu, signing the deaths of thousands.
“Ready your shields, men!” came a gruff command from one of the mercenaries Shoki had seen beside Rurik and Jinan. Metal clanged as the men braced themselves, a sea of gleaming wooden and iron shields turning into tortoises with hard shells.
Someone shouted. Heads shot up. Shoki dared a look. Arrows flew overhead, most missing their marks, a few finding home though as evidenced by screams from either side to him.
Panic rising in his gut, Shoki looked around. What was he doing, stupidly marching alongside a band of soldiers with no means of either attacking or defending? Shorn of magic, he was naked, helpless like a babe. A liability for himself and those around him.
The voice inside screamed at him to get away. Breath catching as more men yelled, Shoki tried elbowing his way through the thick of men to the right. Either they didn’t recognize him as a magus or didn't care much for the threat he posed in the immediate future. Shoki tried the left, then attempted getting through the press of soldiers crowding behind him. He failed to find a way through, remaining stuck with them, all of them ripe apples packed too tight, their bodies reeking of fear and worry and anxiety.
“Oh, Rabb and gods of the pantheon, what have you landed me in?” Shoki lamented. Tears of frustration welling in his eye, heart pounding against his ribs, he looked up at the darkening heavens.
Atishi gods, unlike their Husalmin counterparts, existed in a variety of avatars and forms. Gods could be found in the faces of mortal humans, humble trees, distant mountains, and the flickering flames of a fire. Yet, try as he did, Shoki saw nothing, heard none of them.
“Twenty goats…” he croaked, his voice drowned by men’s shouts, recognizing even in the moment how he only seemed to call for divine support when he’d already gotten himself into situations he shouldn’t have been in the first place.
Helpless, he looked to either side for a way through to safety. Through the bobbing shields, he could see the magnificent spires of the temples that framed the road leading to the Shahi Qilla.
There, to the right, loomed the white limestone building of the Grand Qazi, the highest judge in the land. Just beside it, the golden dome of the palace of the sultan’s viziers gleamed.
Other, smaller streets led to various other parts of the city. One of them wound its way through the Mercantile quarter, taking the traveler all the way to Shoki’s home. His heart ached at the thought of finally being in the city after all this time, and yet being unable to visit his home. He didn't even know where his parents had been buried.
And he’d probably never find out.
Shoki stumbled and crashed into the mercenary directly ahead who shoved him back. Coughing, Shoki looked around. The men were still shouting, arrows still raining down on their ranks.
He squinted, then shouted at the mercenary. “W-why aren’t we moving?”
The mercenary shrugged, then scowling, wiped his forehead with the back of a hand, his emaciated body almost comical under armor at least two sizes too large for him—booty perhaps from one of the dead soldiers outside the city walls.
Walls that stood no more.
Shoki jolted his head at the twang of snapping bow strings. The Sultana’s Hands were firing back at the enemy archers. Shoki needed no military knowledge to know how futile the gesture was. The enemy held all the advantages here—elevation, numbers, better fortification, experience, and strong walls.
A metallic tang spread in the air. Shoki sniffed, the hairs on the back of his neck rising. He opened his mouth to scream as the immense sense of wrongness filled his soul.
Screams rose from the ranks of men ahead of him. Grunting, the mercenary with the weathered face crumpled to the ground. Shoki dropped to his haunches. Blood leaked from the unmoving man’s eyes, nostrils, mouth, ears, from his breeches. Instead of pooling around him though, it crawled south, up the slope toward the gates, a stream seeking the river.
Shoki staggered back, no one blocking his retreat now.
The enemy magi were not just here, they were also unafraid to wield their jadu.
Those mercenaries who had not yet succumbed broke formation and ran to find cover. Those who successfully dodged the magus fell prey to the archers.
Shoki blinked then realized he stood exposed in the middle of the wide cobbled road, an easy target for both the magi and the archers, unable to defend himself from either.
As he shambled back, his foot slipped over the lifeblood of some mercenary and he lost his balance. He fell to the ground, his face inches from the lifeless eyes of a dead man staring out at the sky, the blacks of his eyes pale as rotten egg.
Screaming, scrambling on his fours, Shoki followed his nose. Blood pounded in his temples, the air filling with shouting and whooshing arrows and distant rumbles.
He looked up and cursed. In his haste, he hadn’t even looked where he was fleeing. Instead of getting away, he had run into a band of mercenaries who hadn’t broken yet. Panting, he looked up and realized he had found the sultana’s retinue.
Oblivious to him and the danger all around, Nuraya sat proud on her war horse. The mercenaries directly ahead put up a barrier of shields that thrummed every time an arrow deposited itself there.
Swallowing his own terror, Shoki forced himself to stand straight. At least, Jinan wasn’t here to witness his moment of cowardice. Just a dozen or so mercenaries, Mona, the magi, the queen, and the sultana herself.
“I can’t find any metal,” wailed magus Lopas. “What are the odds of my well running out in the middle of a battle fought with metal?”
“Of course that would have happened, you fool,” yelled the queen, her voice loud, infernal. “Everything has its limits. Guard what little you still have lest it wastes away.”
“I have given as much strength as I could to this brute,” Maharis was saying, pointing his hand at Deraman, holding up a tiny shield.
The third magus with the affinity for rain clapped his hands. The skies thundered, a dark cloud taking form over the eastern parapets. Shoki shook his head, scoffed. These magi, even aided by the Asghar artifacts, were beginning to weaken.
His skin prickling, Shoki raised his chin. They were looking at him, all of them. The magi, the sultana, and the queen.
“You’re an Ajeeb,” snarled Queen Aleena, pointing a long fingernail at him. “What’s stopping you?”
Shoki choked up, words deserting him having been addressed by the Iron Sultan’s wife.
“Seize your jadu and help us, you camel-dung!” she screamed at him now.
“I…” he shook his head. “I… cannot…”
“Shoki,” said Nuraya, moving her horse to stand beside her mother. “Is there nothing you can do to help?”
He opened his jaw to object but didn't say anything. He had to try once more. For her sake. Closing his eye, he let his being free to seek out the sweet, foul jadu.
It came up empty.
He hung his head.
“If it’s because you fear what might happen to the magi,” Nuraya continued, “you need not worry. Once I sit upon the Peacock Throne, I will do that I can to ensure the magi do not roam completely unleashed. Does that satisfy you?”
He blinked. She thought he was being unhelpful on purpose. Then, his mind pondered her words. Not quite the emphatic promise he would have liked to hear, but a start, nonetheless.
An arrow thudded into the ground not ten yards from where he stood. Even as he flinched, the sultana’s gaze never wavered.
“I…” he shook his head once more, tears of frustration gathering in his eye, “cannot see my well. I—”
“Come here,” snapped the queen, gesturing at him to approach her.
Shoki swallowed. He had only ever seen the calm, measured side of the queen before. Is that what magic did to a person? How did he appear to others when he was under its thrall?
“Approach!” commanded Queen Aleena once more.
Wanting to flee, yet unable to muster the strength to disobey, Shoki dragged his feet forward.
“My sultana,” shouted a mercenary sprinting hard toward them. “The siphsalar sends word for you to vacate this ground right now. It is not safe.”
“No place is safe while the enemy magi live,” snapped Nuraya, waving her hand at the distant parapets.
“Perhaps, we could retreat—” started Mona.
“No!”
Shaking his head, his feet turning to molten lead, Shoki forced himself forward, stopping a pace away from the queen.
“Look up!”
Shoki did, then recoiled from the shadows lingering in the large eyes.
“I gift you my rage, and my wrath,” said the queen, reaching down from her horse to tap him on the shoulder.
Shoki blanched at the touch. Then, he stiffened. A cold current ran through his veins. It disappeared the next second. Hot lava thrashed inside his chest, a roiling, burning sea baying for destruction, for release.
Shoki staggered back. He slipped then reached out to right himself and his fingers found jadu.
The world fell away for a second before rushing back in. No longer a mere mortal constrained by his body, he looked around. The magi stood out the brightest, moons against the tiny pinpricks that were other soldiers. Nuraya’s aura was a bright white, pure, pristine, simple. Queen Aleena shone the most, her almost translucent aura as tall and wide as the City Walls had been, an agitated, semi-transparent gas bursting with colors and shadows that both fascinated and repulsed him.
Shoki took a step back, the better to orient himself.
Something was wrong this time. Like a tainted visor that colored everything one saw through it, foreign impulses waged war inside his chest, urges encouraging him to lash out, to destroy, to win at any cost.
Why? he asked.
The urge didn’t dissipate, his mind reducing everything in front to its constituent parts, physical and spiritual, readying the arsenal should he decide to swap potentials and destroy them.
Shoki gritted his teeth. He had to be careful, swap entities properly. Last time he had tried his jadu, he had miscalculated, depositing too much of the wall’s strength to far fewer men, burning himself out until now.
Maybe that was his limitation. Make one too many mistakes and end up losing the well.
He had to be careful, he reminded himself once more. Nuraya had to ascend to the throne so she could lock up monsters like him and her mother.
He considered the portcullis. Through a postern gate, soldiers had been pouring for some time without him realizing. Not the locals they had encountered at the City Walls. Pale skinned northerners who had accompanied Kinas. Shoki followed them. The soldiers, taller than elephants in his vision, clashed with mercenaries no greater than ants.
Their men were breaking everywhere he looked, reduced to a jumble of flies unable to dodge giants swatting at them.
Shoki took a step back, letting all divisions between men wash away.
To his right, a sharp hissing sound rose followed by the gurgle of water. He turned. Urnal, the dark-skinned magus with the affinity for water, sucked vapor from the sand particles, from the sweat and blood of men. Like an aqueduct, the vapor flew toward him, long lines of mist twisting in and over each other as they wrapped themselves around his extended hand.
Their eyes met. Shoki raised a hand. Urnal’s eyes glazed right past. Shoki exhaled. Whatever the magus saw, he couldn’t see Shoki. Perhaps, they shared different realities when wielding jadu.
Shoki turned his attention to the stone walls. In a high guard tower, stood the shadowy silhouette of the man with an affinity for blood. Not that different from Urnal in all truth. As more and more blood sucked into his being, he grew thicker, depositing what he couldn't hold into a metal ring he wore on his right hand.
Something was wrong.
Shoki watched the magus for a long moment. Had the magus been Zyadi, he would have been able to encourage the leakage of blood around him but not attract it to him. Had he been Jaman, he could have hoarded his own blood, but no one else’s. Yet… somehow this magus was able to not only encourage enemies’ blood vessels to explode, but also strengthen himself in the process by storing it for himself.
How was that possible?
Then, Shoki’s eye fell upon the stone clutched in the shadowy figure’s other hand. Another magical artifact. Not an Asghar stone though that strengthened one’s innate powers. An artifact that gave him new powers.
An Akbar stone?
Someone screamed, the sharp, piercing sound somehow worming its way through to his jadu world.
He was wasting time, standing dumbly.
Shoki extended his own hand. It stretched, the fingers lengthening until he was close enough to the blood stream flowing toward the magus. Reaching out, he tried to sever the connection. The blood streams curved, going around his probing fingers. Shoki reached for it again, but it was like playing a game of hide-and-seek. The closer he got to catching and cutting off the stream by hand, it managed to find another way to give him the slip.
Exasperated, he stopped. There had to be a better way.
His eyes fell on the parched sand. Summers in Algaria were some of the driest in the entire realm, and with Urnal stripping any vapor that did exist, the ground was parched.
Gathering his will, Shoki willed the stream of the blood toward the thirsty sand. The two red streams closest to him wobbled, started curving downward. One of them touched the ground, the thirsty sand particles jumping to lap it up.
Shoki smiled, imposed his will even more. The other stream guttered out as well, the blood particles spilling out into individual droplets, falling to the ground.
He looked up. The enemy magus was aware of him now, his eyes scanning the crowd as if looking for
him, except Shoki didn’t think it likely. Extending his arms around, stepping back as if wary of an attack, the enemy magus drew in great rivers of blood from the men fighting down below.
Shoki stepped in once more, spilling the droplets quicker than they could reform. Time passed. His control began to weaken. Shoki exhaled. His mind was tiring of the constant struggle to impose his will.
Another limit to his powers he needed to be aware of.
He saw his mistake. He was spending too much energy on diverting the blood, instead of stopping it. His actions might have slowed the enemy magus but had done nothing to stop the Sultana’s Hands from dying.
What could he do?
A gust of wind blew in from the east, slapping his robes against his body. He leaned in forward, but the wind continued to grow stronger. Men and horses grunted. Another strong gust came from the opposite direction, pining them in the center. At a whistling sound, Shoki looked up. A cloud of arrows whizzed overhead, landing within their ranks.
More energies and auras winked out, their energies being swapped by those imbued in the arrows. A poor exchange for human lives.
Shoki threw up his arms, willed the arrows to drain their will to fly. They continue to sail, their trajectories unaffected.
Of course, he had to exchange them with something else.
But what?
Shoki looked around, his heart thudding against his chest as he desperately sought a way to carry out the exchange.
His eyes fell upon the unmoving bodies of men. Gathering his resolve, he drained the will of the arrows, exchanging it with the inertia of the bodies to remain still.
A massive force slapped him in the gut and Shoki doubled over. He had miscalculated once more. Too many arrows or too few bodies or some such. When he looked up though, weakened by the exchange, the arrows had stopped falling, a hundred or so corpses now hovering a dozen inches from the ground.
Shoki lay panting, fearing his control over jadu was slipping away once more.
“Get up!” shouted an angry voice beside him. He shook his head, a part of him wanting to lay down and rest. Fingers dug into his ribs. Shoki blinked and whipped his head around. The queen scowled at him, her perfect face torn with anger, fury. “Get the job done, magus!”