Sisters of the Raven

by Barbara Hambly

  At least Lohar only fed his djinn on the lives of beasts. At least it was only life alone that the Sunflash Prince sought.

  No, she thought. He had tried to swallow her in the idol. Had tried to absorb her power. It had taken all her strength, even bestialized and weakened as he was, to hold him off.

  “I’ll make you give it back.” The deep, drunken muttering made her nape prickle with horror. “Make you give all men their power back.” And there was a faint metallic clink, like the lid of a golden vessel being removed. The darkness was absolute, riven through with sparks of bluish lightning that illuminated nothing. The air was icy and filled with the abrasion of hatred, like heated chains.

  Frantic with honor and agony, the teyn’s voice rose to a death shriek.

  Magic filled the canyons of the Dead Hills like a noisome reservoir. The horses snorted, fought their bits: “Can we go up on foot?” asked Oryn, bending from the saddle to catch the rein of Pomegranate Woman’s mount before it bolted. “Is it far?”

  “That’s the mouth of the Hosh tomb there.” The Summer Concubine pointed to a dark square in the cliff face at the top of a ghostly pale talus slope. In the desert starlight the tall cliffs were barely an outline, and with the clouds moving in, even that would soon be gone “Yarbekt the Strong’s is that way—that’s the big one with the colossi outside its entrance. And there’s another one around the side of that promontory back there that must be Trosh’s—it’s the only one back there. We must have explored every one of these looking for the power circle. We didn’t know then, of course, that he had enough power to place wyrds on the spot to make us miss our way.”

  “I never trusted the man.” The Red Silk Lady dismounted stiffly—Oryn sprang down to help her, although he staggered himself—and tied back her veils like a robber’s mask behind her head, the way the nomad women did, leaving her face modestly covered but her arms and shoulders free. She’d brought along her crossbow, with a quiver of arrows; her stick she’d left in the litter. Mohrvine was likewise armed. “All that rot about ijnis helping him until wizards’ powers started to return . . . which is what they all say.”

  For all her appearance of decrepitude in the city, the Red Silk Lady had scornfully refused offers from both Oryn and her son to permit her to tide pillion behind them: “In my day a woman kept up or was left.” The Summer Concubine, who’d been about to pick out the gentlest of the cavalry mounts for her, had stepped back at that point and let her select her own.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve another of those coins that your girl made that are supposed to draw djinn magic?” the old lady asked now. “Ah, well: I had no little magic coins when I was a girl, and I’d go with my father to hunt lions. We’ll just have to watch for our chance. It’s as that girl of yours said: We don’t know what we can do until we have to. You, me, anyone. And after ten years of doing nothing but watching and experimenting and weaving webs to protect myself, I’m curious as to what I can actually do. Good luck to you, girl.” And she made a sign of blessing, like a nomad sorcerer.

  At her mention of how long she’d known she had power Mohrvine glanced sidelong at her, but said nothing. Only cracked flint and striker, and touched the resultant bit of burning tow to the wicks of the lanterns that had been borne on the saddle bows. The Summer Concubine wondered what his reflections were that his mother hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him, and what would be said between them when all this was over, if any of them survived.

  And what the results might be, for the House Jothek and for the realm.

  The Red Silk Lady followed Mohrvine up the narrow way toward the promontory of rock, keeping up with him, as far as the Summer Concubine could tell, as nimbly as a goat. The yellow light of the lantern was visible for a long time, like a single firefly in the dark.

  “Now, you all stay close,” she heard Pomegranate Woman whispering to the horses, striking their noses and scratching their ears. “You run away if jackals come—here’s a little luck mark for you . . . and one for you . . . but you come back when I call. Pontifer, are you ready?” The Summer Concubine wondered whether the imaginary pig had run beside the horses or been carried on Pomegranate Woman’s saddle bow.

  “Are you all right?” Oryn limped up beside the Summer Concubine, laid a big gentle hand on her shoulder. Under his borrowed military cloak his shirt and pantaloons were ragged, and she could see bruises on his face and arms, and a crude bandage wrapped his left hand. He shivered with a chill born of exhaustion. He must be starving, she thought—she couldn’t remember when she herself had last eaten, and she had a raging headache—but gourmand though he was, it apparently didn’t cross his mind to mention it. He held Boaz’s sword with a kind of awkward firmness, and she wondered if he’d used his own in the courtyard fighting before he was taken.

  She hefted the cottonwood staff Pomegranate Woman had given her with its makeshift disk that might or might not draw off spells of lightning. Her mind probed at the darkness, listening for the Sigil of Sisterhood. Praying Raeshaldis was somewhere, alive. She willed her power into it, releasing magic to that invisible sourcing sign: Take of it what you need. Add it to your strength.

  She felt drained by the rite, as if she had no strength to give.

  “Yourself?”

  He smiled. “Beloved, to stand here with you in starlight—albeit I’d rather I were a bit more stylishly dressed—is the greatest felicity of my life. And shall be, should it end tonight.”

  He gently kissed her hand.

  Then she felt it, like the sharp impact of a ward spell on her mind, like the note of a bell, or a cry.

  Raeshaldis.

  Calling for help.

  In the hills around them, all the jackals began to howl at once.

  “Great heavens.” Oryn hefted the sword. “Here they come—can we make it around the hillside to Yarbekt’s tomb?” Though it was harder to see now than it had been—the darkness seemed somehow thicker—the Summer Concubine could make out the shapes of the dogs racing down the hills, out of the gullies. Feeling cold and very unlike herself, the Summer Concubine called on the name of fire, which Soth had given her, and around them fire blazed up like a wall. Scrubby thorn and sagebrush ignited, and she caught the storm winds, twisted them to fling the flames at the yelping beasts.

  Some of the jackals turned tail. Others, jaws yellow with foam and eyes crazed, plunged through the blaze at them. Oryn, who ordinarily loved the palace dogs to the point of absurdity, hacked at one that sprang at Pomegranate Woman’s throat, slashed open the side of another right behind. The Summer Concubine called on the name of fire again and the jackals’ coats caught. They ran squealing, to roll in dust or vanish into darkness—“Now!” called Oryn, beckoning to the thin track that led around the shoulder of the hill.

  As they broke into a run the wind shifted, turned, blowing the fire back at them. The Summer Concubine put forth her mind, her magic, and the fire flattened, scattered as if it were a live thing driven two ways. They came around the rocks and saw the colossi that dominated the wadi. Thank the gods it isn’t one of those inconspicuous little holes in the rock that the later monarchs favored.

  Her breath stabbed agonizingly in her lungs. A stitch bit her side, turned from a cramp to a stab as if a sword had been run into her, then a ripping avalanche of pain. At the same moment the wind increased, blowing up out of the south against the course of the storm. Curtains of dust whirled before them; hard little specks of bone and rock and broken pottery tore at her veils, her body, her hands.

  “This happened in the temple!” she heard Pomegranate Woman shout—or maybe she only heard it in her mind, as if from a great distance off. “Darkness—we were lost . . . led out of the world, into someplace else.” The dust was so thick in the air she could see nothing. The pain made it almost impossible to concentrate, but she fought to whisper the word of a channeling spell and felt the pain pour along her arm, into the staff, into the disk, leaving her free.

  Free and blind, stumbling .
. .

  “Follow Pontifer!” shouted Pomegranate Woman, and through the dust—as if it were only a fragment of light projected onto the dust—the Summer Concubine thought she did, in fact, glimpse the ghost of a little white pig trotting over the broken ground that she could no longer see, out of the fringes of the dream world toward the tomb invisible behind the screaming maelstrom of dust and darkness and stones.

  Blue fire flashed, outlining the broken slot that tomb robbers had made in the sealing stones. On either side the tall images of the ancient king stared bleakly, scoured by sand and wind. Darkness and magic seemed to flow from the opening, and the Summer Concubine heard a girl scream in pain.

  Oryn caught her arm, dragged her forward. The pig, if it had ever existed, had vanished. The Summer Concubine felt the draw of Raeshaldis’s mind on hers, calling on her magic, calling on any power she could summon. Heard her crying our, spells of escape, of the breaking of magical bonds—

  Crying out names.

  The names of the djinni.

  One by one—the Summer Concubine could almost see the list Soth had written up for her in the palace library, the same list.

  Crying them out hoarsely, desperately, her breath broken with exhaustion. And around her, in the dark of the crypt, the howling of wind and worse than wind.

  Within the tomb the darkness was still more dense, and the wind—impossibly—worse as well. The carven walls channeled it, strengthened it; it seemed to blow from all directions on her, confusing her as she clung to the stone for guidance, support. Fragments of things she couldn’t see cut her, and she felt blood on her face and sticking to the rags of her veils and her dress. Behind her she heard Pomegranate Woman cry out in pain, felt Oryn’s hand on her wrist sticky now with blood. The light of his lantern flashed briefly on a pit, bridged by a grave robber’s narrow plank—it was covered with spells of ruin and collapse, and the Summer Concubine crawled across first, her mind touching, counterspelling each of those ragged, grasping, invisible hands before the others could cross.

  In the painted passageways of the maze she felt other spells, ripping and shrieking, but she never really felt in any doubt about where the Sigil of Sisterhood was leading her.

  As they came into the inner crypt she saw Raeshaldis cornered against the wall with an old ceremonial halberd in her hands. She slashed at a thing that lunged at her, tried to seize her with crystal talons—a huge thing that was hard to see exactly, hard to distinguish from the darkness and the wind and the whirling, blinding black glitter of the air.

  But it was solid enough to tear the girl’s face and hands, to rip at the younger girl who stood next to her, likewise wielding an ancient weapon, her long raven hair pointy with blood from the cuts on her face. The thing, whatever it was—it looked sometimes like a vulture, sometimes like a spider, sometimes like an enormous scorpion of crystal and gold—had ripped the dark-haired girl’s leg, dragged her away from the wall, and Shaldis strode out, stood over her, cutting at it and crying out spells and names as she cut.

  Lightning flared forth from it, striking at the two girls. The Summer Concubine felt Shaldis draw on all the power of the Sigil of Sisterhood, on the power of all those who had participated in it—Turquoise Woman and Corn-Tassel Woman and Pomegranate Woman and herself—desperate to gather enough strength for a counterspell. The lightning struck at a silver disk tied to a stick and lying a little distance from Shaldis’s feet; the creature tried to lunge in past it, and Shaldis struck at the grabbing claws with the halberd that required both her hands to wield. The Summer Concubine cried out, put forth her own power and at the same time held up her own sigil, drawing some of the lightning away. The thing—djinn, or whatever it was or had been—cried out in a man’s voice, thick like a drunkard’s, “Bitch! Slut!” and sprang at the Summer Concubine, and Shaldis, gasping, fell to her knees.

  “Nachosian, kamaa!” Shaldis cried out the words of the spell of freedom, the spell of escape, for the dozenth time, or the hundredth. “Alvorgin ea amar!”

  And the djinn—surely this thing could not be a djinn?—evidently wasn’t the djinn Nachosian, because it struck, slashing, at Oryn, at the Summer Concubine, at Pomegranate Woman as she ran forward under its hammering wings and grabbed the black-haired girl, dragged her and Shaldis toward the passageway to the outer air.

  Thief, the thing cried, in that thick, hot voice that seemed to come from somewhere else. Thief, robbing us of what is ours . . . . I’ll make you give it back. Make you give it back.

  Wind tore at them in the darkness. They were in the labyrinth of painted tomb passageways again—the Summer Concubine tried to remember the way out, but the whirling dust, the fire that seemed to spring from the walls, to pour from the mouth of the thing that struck at her and at Oryn again and again, blinded them. Oryn fell to his knees, slashing at the creature with his borrowed sword. The branch on which the protective sigil was tied caught fire twice, and twice the Summer Concubine felt another power—Shaldis or Pomegranate Woman—reach to put it out while she drew all her own strength in just holding the thing at bay. When they reached the pit the plank was burning, flames that were swept aside as Pomegranate Woman ran across, dragging the black-haired Foxfire Girl. The others followed, staggering. A claw tore the Summer Concubine’s arm and she felt again the deep stab of pain spells, racking her body, bleeding her from within.

  A dark mind reaching for her. Devouring her.

  “Mathrashiar, kamaa!” Shaldis cried from somewhere. “Alvorgin ea amar! Redfire the Wondrous, kamaa . . .”

  “You shall not keep it from me!”

  Ahead of her in the dark outer chamber of the connecting tomb, the Summer Concubine saw Oryn fall, struck by something that seemed to whirl down out of the crazed winds. She barely recognized the white face, the black sunken eyes, the whirling rags of hair as Aktis. Oryn caught the wrist that slammed down at him, staying the knife in midstroke—

  “Tharuas, kamaa . . . !”

  “I won’t let you!” gasped Aktis, strings of spittle trailing from his lips. “It’s mine!” With the horrible strength of the mad he thrust the knife down at Oryn’s throat; Oryn grappled, blind in the darkness. The Summer Concubine seized Aktis’s arm and the mad wizard flung her aside as if she’d been a child. In the same moment, foul and glittering, the thing—djinn, monster—emerged from the tunnel behind them, lunged at Pomegranate Woman and Foxfire Girl, trapped in a corner. Oryn rolled, fingers scrabbling at his dropped sword in the blue, unearthly aureole of the djinn’s fire. The creature struck at him with its four-pronged tail stinger, catching his arm—

  “Ba, take him!” screamed Aktis. “Kill him!”

  And from the dark of the passageway that led back to the crypt, Shaldis’s voice sliced out; “Ba, kamaa!”

  The creature stopped, the gold claws pinning Oryn to the stone.

  The winds swirled, died; flurried in a hundred little dust devils in the corners, then lay still.

  Aktis shouted, “Ba!” which the Summer Concubine realized had to be the djinn’s name—she even recalled it from the list Soth had given her—and she added her voice, her magic, her will, to Shaldis’s as Shaldis cried;

  “Kamaa! Alvorgin ea amar!”

  Come forth and be free.

  Come forth and be free.

  Aktis screamed, “No!” and rushed forward, knife upraised, striking not at Oryn but at the black-haired Foxfire Girl, who was still kneeling, gasping, in the shelter of Pomegranate Woman’s arm.

  And from the depths of the inner crypt passageway came the hard, vicious thwack of a crossbow firing. Aktis stopped midstride, coughed. Put up a hand to grip the bolt that had appeared so suddenly through his throat.

  Above his head, the glittering shadow of gold and lightning began to melt away.

  A second holt slammed out of the tomb’s painted darkness and pierced the wizard’s skull. The impact flung him sideways against the wall. At the same moment Shaldis plunged from the shadows, ripped something from the folds of
Aktis’s robe. Gold flickered in the wan glare of Pomegranate Woman’s lantern. Shaldis threw the golden bottle to the floor and snatched up a piece of rubble, smashed it again and again. The Summer Concubine heard a crunch, like fragile glass or crystal breaking within its soft sheathing of gold.

  The shadow of the djinn evaporated with a final flicker of lightning, with a last frail sigh of wind.

  The air, filled with dust, seemed terribly, restfully still.

  Mohrvine and the Red Silk Lady emerged, bows in hands, from the inner passageway into the glow of the lantern. Oryn scrambled to his feet, held out his arms even as the Summer Concubine ran to him. “Summer Child,” he whispered, and caught her in a crushing grip. Mohrvine lifted the weeping, bleeding Foxfire Girl, who clung desperately to his neck. Pomegranate Woman helped Shaldis stand up, looked around—obviously for Pontifer—and with a whistle to her unseen pet, picked up the protective staff and led the little group to the outer passageway and into the night. By the time they’d brought everyone safe from the tomb and dragged forth Aktis’s body, the clouds overhead had broken, letting through a vast drench of desert moonlight.

  By morning they had scattered, rainless, away.

  THIRTY-TWO

  I think I knew it had to be Aktis,” said Raeshaldis, gingerly reaching out with her good hand to take the teacup the Summer Concubine offered her, “when I saw the djinn in the temple go back into the statue of Nebekht. I didn’t know what it was then, but I understood that whatever it was, it was a thing such as Urnate Urla had been trying to imprison—and that Aktis had to have one too. The magic didn’t feel the same, but it felt similar enough. And it struck me that the statue of Nebekht was a giant version of Urnate Urla’s golden lamp, and of the bottle I’d seen in Aktis’s rooms. Gold and crystal, with three bands of iron. Then I called out the name of Meliangobet, and Naruansich showed me who that was . . . and I knew.”