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Lions of Istan

Page 44

by Fuad Baloch


  Torn between the need to rush to her friend, her… dying friend and confronting her mother, Nuraya stood, undecided for a moment.

  Then she advanced toward the woman who had birthed her into this life then taken all its joys away. “Mother!”

  Impossibly, her eyes shot open when Nuraya was a step away from strangling her. Instead of the usual whites, Queen Aleena’s eyes were streaked with red veins as thick as true trunks in a pool of muddy water. Nuraya steeled her resolve and maintained her glare.

  “Daughter…” croaked her mother, a trembling hand rising as if to caress Nuraya’s face. Repulsed, Nuraya took a step back. The unnatural redness subsided a little on her mother’s face, the features growing more human-like. “Daughter—” She trailed away and screamed. As if held in place, she threw her head back, another spasm overtaking her body, her shrill squeals filling the hall.

  Unable to restrain herself, Nuraya rushed forward, grabbed her by the shoulders. “What’s the matter? What’s—”

  Again, her mother’s body convulsed as if some invisible force was twisting it in two. Nuraya struggled to maintain her grip as the queen thrashed around like a fish out of water, her body drenched in slick sweat.

  “Nuraya!” came a rasping voice from behind her. Nuraya wheeled around, her left arm still draped across her mother, her own heart thudding against her ribs as if fearing the worst was still to come. Shoki was up on his feet, swaying as if struggling against unseen gusts of winds, his long, unkempt hair matted flat, a dagger in his hands. “S-step away from her!”

  “Shoki,” she started, then caught herself. Forcing steel in her voice, she raised her finger. “What are you doing to my mother?”

  “Nuraya,” he said, taking an unsteady step forward. “She’s an agent of the pari folk. A-all this time she has been—” He swayed sideways, then his bloodshot eye settled on her again. “She’s been planning to destroy the stone stored within the Shahi Qilla. Step away!”

  She shook her head, refusing to turn her head toward her friend who moaned no more. “What stone?”

  “T-the very thing that maintains the Divide between the worlds. Something she has promised to destroy for the pari folk.”

  She glowered at Shoki. “Who gives you the right to hurl insults like this against—”

  “Ask her!” he thundered.

  Nuraya gaped at the magus who had never before raised his voice to her. Not only did he have the temerity to do that, he did so without any hint of remorse.

  “Kill him…” croaked her mother. “Hurry before he regathers his strength.”

  Aghast, she turned over to face her. “No more deaths.” She raised an arm over to Kinas’s body, her heart breaking as she swept it toward Mona. “Haven’t we already sacrificed enough?” She shook her head, ignoring the melancholy spreading through her. “No more.”

  “Unless she is destroyed,” said Shoki, “she is not going to stop. How many more will you lose before you realize this? Step out of the way.”

  Nuraya turned around so she stood between the two of them, her heart beating fast. Her mother was all she had left. Whatever she had done, Nuraya could make it right, couldn’t she? “Shoki, go away. I… I’ll address it.”

  “No,” he said, continuing to shamble forward. “You do not know what she is capable of.”

  “Couldn’t I say the same about you?” she challenged, regretting her choice of words almost immediately as Shoki’s eye widened.

  Shoki took another lumbering step forward, bringing the dagger up. “You don’t want to get caught up between us.”

  “I am the sultana of the realm. Whatever the quarrel is, I will rule over it.”

  For a breath, the lanky former city guard gaped at her. He raised a trembling hand to wipe back the hair from his face. A wistful sadness settled in her chest as she watched the face she had kissed once. It all seemed such a long time ago.

  He scratched his chin. “Nuraya—”

  Screaming, Queen Aleena shoved Nuraya to the side, then raised her arms toward him.

  “No!” Nuraya shouted.

  A hiss of current rushed past her, thrashed into Shoki, sent him flinching away in pain. She bolted toward him, but he held up a hand.

  Cursing, he struggled up, his lone eye falling shut, his own hands rising skyward.

  The queen snarled, hissed, began singing in that strange language of hers once more. The other three magi muttered and began shuffling back.

  Nuraya felt the hairs at the back of her neck stand. She stuttered backward, slipped, and fell. When she brought her hands up, they were slick, wet with red. Kinas’s blood. With a curse, she scampered to the side, wiping her hands on her peshwaz.

  She felt the hilt of a sword poke her behind. The sword her brother had been carrying. Drawing a sharp breath, she brought it forward. Kinas’s blood had begun drying on it. Istani blood.

  The magi faced each other. Shoki, by himself, his lone eye shut. Queen Aleena directly opposite, her own eyes squeezed tight as well, even as she continued to howl.

  What was her mother up to? Who was she? What was Shoki talking about? Nuraya rose on unsteady feet, the sword clutched in a hand and walked over to the magi, again unable to look upon her friend.

  “Die!” snarled her mother, her eyes falling open, a crooked finger raised high. “I am more than enough for the pari folk.”

  Nuraya blinked, crossed over to stand in front of her. The queen’s eyes fell upon her, almost lucid. “Mother, is what Shoki alleges true?”

  The queen laughed. “Girl, you know so little of the world. Don’t worry, once I’ve erased the Divide, I’ll make sure nothing touches you. You are going to become the sultana you always wanted to be.”

  “Nuraya,” came Shoki’s rasping voice. “I am too weak. Can’t stand this for long. Stop her!”

  The queen cackled, her ruthless eyes rolling back in their sockets. Closing her eyes, she began to sing again.

  Nuraya felt a chill creep down her spine. From the corner of her eye, she saw the grand vizier fall to a crouch, begin inching toward the doors. She too would have done the same had she not been the mistress of this hall.

  “You want to prove you deserve to be the s-sultana?” asked Shoki. “Strike her down.”

  “No. As I said, I will judge—”

  “I… am too weak… know too little of how these powers work to stop her.”

  “Magus, you shall die!” shouted Queen Aleena.

  “H-help… me!” said Shoki, raising a trembling hand toward her. “Strike her b-before she destroys us all.”

  Nuraya’s eyes fell on the sword she was still clutching in her hands. Feeling a cold sweat break out on her skin, she swallowed.

  Shoki screamed, stuttering back as if being pushed back by some invisible force. “Strike her down!”

  Time seemed to slow down to a crawl. She stared at the sword, at Shoki, then at her mother. Being the ruler of a great realm meant making great sacrifices. Making difficult choices. Something she had always known, had thought herself capable of.

  Except… her hands shook now, a terrible indecision gnawing at her. Her heart believed Shoki, but… how was a daughter meant to strike at her own mother? She might have poisoned Abba, but she’d still not heard her mother’s reasons.

  Falling silent, Queen Aleena stepped forward.

  Nuraya swallowed. The queen was within striking range. All Nuraya had to do was to swing her sword. Shaking her head, Nuraya took a step sideways to cut her off from Shoki and placed a hand over her shoulder. “Get—”

  A painful current ran through her veins and Nuraya jerked her hand away.

  “Die!” screamed the queen.

  “H-help!” yelped Shoki.

  Licking her lips, Nuraya stared at the sword in her hand. Words wouldn’t work here. Something she knew instinctively. Neither would much else.

  There was only one way. Her mother had committed terrible sins. Murder of a sultan. Hidden her own nature from the inquisitors who mi
ght have been able to help her. If Shoki was right, what more would she do if left unchecked?

  “Mother!” she shouted, still gripped with indecision, knowing full well that time was slipping from her grasp even as she stood debating her next steps.

  Sultan Anahan’s wife, and his murderess, waved a casual hand toward her. A gust of wind thrashed into Nuraya, lifting her ten feet into the air, then crashed her into a pillar, taking the hard choice away from her.

  Chapter 49

  Shoki

  Pain, worse than when the inquisitor had gouged his eye, assailed Shoki. He cried, his good eye squeezed shut, mind empty. For long moments, there was nothing but a burning, flaming universe of pain that was self-aware, self-contained.

  Again and again, the waves of pain crashed into him, each one impossibly worse than the previous. Dimly, some recess of his mind acknowledged his subconscious’ desperate attempts at maintaining his hold on jadu.

  Not that it would do much.

  Not only had the woman he was facing been a magus for far longer, she also continued to draw strength from an Asghar artifact, enough strength to ward off his earlier attacks.

  Nuraya had the chance to put this right!

  Again, he screamed as yet another unrelenting wave crashed into him. How could he withstand so much torment and still breathe? Mountains would have sundered under the strain, entire oceans boiled away.

  Through the never-ending monotony of agony and misery, he heard the queen sing her terrible song. Words that, somehow, he understood as calls to the pari folk. Beings that had tried recruiting him, having already won over the queen.

  “H-help…” he croaked between screams.

  Again, a wave of excruciating pain rolled over him, left him reeling even as he gasped for one more breath.

  Why hadn’t she killed him yet?

  The queen was an Ajeeb like him, had more power than him. Why prolong the inevitable?

  Weight, heavier than that of the whole world, settled into his stomach, weighing him down just as the ground pushed him up toward the heavens. Thoughts fled. Just the perception of pain. So overwhelming no words could describe it.

  For a blessed moment, pain subsided. Shoki opened his eye and peeked at the mundane world outside his void. Nuraya was struggling to her feet. Her forehead was bloody, one hand clutching the other arm gingerly.

  Shoki blinked, thoughts of her betrayal setting off a red-hot current of revulsion within him. She had the chance to stop her mother, to end this before it became impossible. And instead, she had—

  “Argh!” he screamed, doubling over as the queen raised her voice once more.

  Why was she torturing him?

  Something snagged at his consciousness. Something he should have seen by now.

  Like the first ray of bright sunlight penetrating the thick cover of clouds over dark mountains, illuminating the valley shrouded in darkness, he finally saw why she hadn’t killed him yet.

  Not on account of prolonging the torture. The queen thought herself so far above him in both station and destiny that he wasn’t worth the effort.

  In him, though, she faced an antithesis to her power. Some part of him, an Ajeeb part he couldn’t sense, couldn’t control, continued to counter her attacks. No matter how unlike they might have been in their mundane lives, they shared too much in this world.

  Like a drunk, lumbering toward his goblet even when he couldn’t see anything in his intoxicated state, Shoki extended his hands out for jadu.

  His mind was too weak, his body fatigued. He could feel it within reach, but it kept slipping away.

  He didn’t give up.

  He was an Ajeeb magus, one who could use any matter when he was in the void. Could the paradigm be shifted? Could he grab jadu through a well that wasn’t his?

  Screaming, Shoki flung his arms open. In the mundane world, the marble pillars thrummed with energy stored over centuries holding up the vaulted ceilings. Shoki leeched it. The distant portraits of long-dead sultans stared at him with disdain. He leeched their hatred at what he was doing in the center of their world.

  The three magi, sensing his approach, rushed toward the doors. Cackling, he waved his arms around to them, sucked their wells as well.

  Each breath he took, the world darkened, the queen’s song beginning to fall silent. Shoki welcomed it, greedily grabbing all he could. Bit by bit, pain receded, reduced to a level where he was just barely aware of it—a fly buzzing in the distance.

  The world came alive in a blaze of fire.

  His eyes were shut, yet he saw everything, better than he had before. Once more the Shahi Qilla floated, that one big island imbued with ancient magics holding the Divide in place between the different worlds. And in its very center, lay the stone, an object that didn’t even have a name. Dark, coarsely textured, dense, no larger than a hen’s egg.

  Wind buffeted him. An instant later, it picked up strength, blasted into him with the force of a hundred hurricanes. He didn’t budge, his eyes arrested by the stone. Thunder clapped in the distance, a racket rising in the heavens.

  Again, he didn't look away.

  The stone was what made the sultans of this realm greater than all other rulers. This was their job—maintaining the Divide between the worlds.

  Horror crept into him as he saw one of the silvery veins shrivel, get swallowed by the encroaching black crust. The world darkened. Shoki licked his lips. The stone was getting weaker. So long as magi continued to expend their energies without check, the darkness would continue to swallow the silvery veins.

  Until none was left.

  The realm needed a sultan, someone who could manage the Divide. That was what was required—a guardian, a keeper, even if that person wasn’t from the family long entrusted with the sacred duty.

  Nuraya had failed. Not only had she unleashed the magi onto a world previously well-contained by the Kalb, she had also displayed her inability to restrain the very monsters she had loosened.

  If not her, who else would maintain the Divide?

  The answer floated up to him without a moment’s hesitation.

  I.

  A preposterous thought. Yet, even as winds smashed into him, fractures emerging in the island, the claim didn’t sound that far-fetched. A simple acknowledgment of what needed to be done.

  The sultan had died.

  The sultan lived.

  He shook his head. What would the late Iron Sultan have made of him in this instant? Had he been in Shoki’s position, what would he have done?

  He turned around. The queen sailed over the horizon. Her mouth peeled back, her arms spread back, she resembled a gargoyle one might see outside the Atishi mausoleums. Only, no gargoyles shone as much as did the queen.

  Brighter than Shoki. Brighter than even the Shahi Qilla that was growing paler by the second. Currents of potential and possibility flew from the ancient structure toward the queen.

  Shoki swallowed, looking up at yet another clap of thunder. The shadowy figures were closer, much closer than before. No longer as afraid as they had been before, they swam in the skies, circling over the queen’s head as she continued to leech the ancient structure’s power for herself.

  Shoki gathered what strength he had, imposed his will on the flowing currents, tried swapping them with the waves in motion below them.

  He encountered fierce resistance, tried again. The queen turned one arm toward him. An invisible fist punched him in the gut, set him flying back into the endless sky.

  Too weak!

  He scrambled back up. Precious moments before the queen turned the thrust of her acquired force on him. Imbued with the ancient magic of the structure, she might finally have something his body could not counteract. Whatever he could do, it had to be done now.

  Breath rattling in his chest, Shoki looked at the stone.

  “Stop!” he shouted. The queen ignored him, growing stronger by the second, the dark silhouettes floating over her head now. Pari folk, straining to take form
and enter the world once more.

  He had to do a swap.

  Again, Shoki turned around, his magical eyes desperately seeking out any source of energy he could utilize.

  Nothing but the island, the two Ajeeb magi, the ephemeral pari folk, and the silent waves crashing into the shore.

  Shoki stood very still. Then, slowly he brought his own hands before him. He did have a source of energy, one he understood more than anything else. One he had tried before the queen had rebuffed him. Swaps had always been difficult for Ajeeb magi, something he had come to realize, because they had to be intimately aware of the limitations of both sources of energy. Any mistake and not only was the exchange made poorly, it also drained their well.

  Here was a source he understood better than any he ever would.

  Shoki exhaled, expelling the essence that made him a magus, pushing it out, forcing it outward. Pain shot through his body. He screamed under the immense strain as he felt the very meat on his bones start to come off, the internal organs getting sucked into the void.

  “What are you doing?” screamed the queen.

  Shoki forced a chuckle. A long time ago, his liege lord, the great sultan of the realm had given him a responsibility. Find out what was happening with the magi and help the inquisitors fix it. He might have thought he’d failed at that mission, but in a way all these past weeks had been leading to this one moment.

  He was meant to be here.

  A shiver ran down his spine as the air around him crackled with his essence. Did the Sultan suspect anything like that might happen? Work of kismet, random and haphazard, or a divine hand?

  He would never know. And that was alright by him.

  He was a city guard, one sworn to protect it from those that invaded its sanctity. As simple as that. And now was finally the time to take charge, do Salar Ihagra proud.

  The one time he had to not run away.

  Focusing the energy thrumming around him, he turned toward the Shahi Qilla, facing the dark stone.

 

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