Sandstorm (single books)

by Christopher Rowe

  Hearing, well … That was just a matter of making sure the help didn’t get carried away and push the spikes too far into her ears.

  She had not responded when he stroked her hair and whispered. She could not feel his hand. She could not hear his voice.

  “That book is worthless!” Shahrokh shouted.

  Corvus picked up the copy of the Book of Founding Stories and examined it. “Many would agree, Vizar. It is not rare. Its making is merely competent. The contents-”

  “The contents are not what Holy Calim set down between those covers!”

  Corvus agreed, nodding. “That is true. Though these are the covers he inscribed the Ritual of the Rising Wind between. And the pages themselves are, in fact, very similar. But no, if you pass a palimpsest stone over them, you will not find his writing.”

  “Such a pathetic trick …” said Shahrokh.

  “Now, now,” said Corvus. “I believe I did an excellent job switching out the covers. I daresay I even improved both volumes. And, if I may be allowed a bit of pride, I did manage to deceive an efreeti cinderlord and a djinni skylord.”

  “Tell me where the Book of Calim is, spy. Should I make specific threats, or is it enough to know that every life within a thousand of your ridiculous paces depends on your next words?”

  “El Arhapan has filled the arena with the elite of the city, and fifteen thousand slaves,” Corvus said. “That is many lives. Many loyal servants of Calim among them.”

  “The loyal would count their deaths blessed. The Return is the only thing of importance.”

  “And that book that will ensure it, yes. Which only I can recover, so to speak.”

  “There are a thousand ways I can drag this secret from your mind, kenku. You do not have to be alive for all of them.”

  “Ah, well, there’s where another of my advantages lie, though I admit its value is … debatable. Shahrokh, you came to me because I am a Graduate Survivor of the Rookery of Tears. The deaths we deal are permanent, irrevocable. Especially when we deal them to ourselves. If you seek to test the truth of this claim, come closer. I will be dead before you can bellow another curse, and the only powers in the universe that could bring me back are powers with no desire to see the return of Calim. Blessed be his name.”

  Shahrokh moved himself lower. “I hesitate to invite this on myself,” he said. “But speak.”

  “First, no djinni is to act against the wishes or actions of any mortal in this city for, let us say, a day.”

  The vizar’s eyes turned the color of thunderheads. When they returned to normal, he said, “It is done. My people withdraw to the skies to await my word. Where is the book?”

  “Second. No djinni under your command, and not you either, will cause harm to any person who has ever been a member of Nightfeather’s Circus of Wonders for a period of one thousand years, starting now. And let’s say that goes for anyone who signs on in the next year.”

  “You recognize how easily I will circumvent this by using mortal agents, I am sure, but on the condition that you reveal the book’s location, then it shall be as you say. Will you mouth more inanities, or is the deal struck?”

  Corvus got to his feet. “The copy of the book containing Calim’s ritual hidden in its text was in my nest. When you severed my link with that, the book spilled out, along with many other things I value. Almost all of those things were books. So when you find them, you’ll have to be careful to choose the right one. I trust you’ll not make the mistake of judging a book by its cover again any time soon.”

  Shahrokh glowered. “Your judgments of me mean nothing, kenku. I have lived millennia and toppled empires, because I make estimations about my foes. If you think I will now pay some terrible price because I underestimated a mortal, then you have forgotten that my only goal is to hold the book. The forms are fulfilled. So I will meet that goal.”

  Corvus said, “The forms, yes. The ancient protocols for striking a deal with a djinni.” He held up the book of stories. “They’re all in here, did you know that?”

  Shahrokh did not reply. He crossed his arms, ready to wait as long as necessary.

  “You’ll forgive me if I do not simply name a location. The terms of our bargain will be met, I think, as long as I give you adequate directions to find the book. In fact, I think I could even convey them as a series of riddles if I had the time.”

  “You think I will blindly follow your directions?” Shahrokh asked.

  “I think you must, because that is my third demand. That meets the forms.” Corvus leaned over and rolled back carpets until he uncovered the floor. It was coated with dust. He set the book aside, then kneeled and began sketching with one talon.

  “You know ritual magic well enough to recognize that these are the sigils needed to open a portal in the mortal world. Surely there’s no place in the mortal world you would be afraid to travel in order to recover the Book of Calim?”

  Cephas floated above his father’s house, unpleasantly aware of the scattering of djinn hovering somewhere beyond. They had streamed past him as he flew, as disinterested in him as one might be in a fly.

  He did not know why the djinn had withdrawn, and he watched for their return; however, for the moment, he counted it as luck to be unhindered as he studied the courtyards and verandas below. The manor was enormous, and its design included many interior chambers open to the sky. He flew on the windsoul, so his flight must be brief. He went as high as he dared, risking a fall to the manor or even farther if he did not go back down soon.

  Ah, he thought, seeing the manor below him. Of course. To a denizen of the elemental plane, something that combined aspects of both earth and wind was necessarily impure. The flagstones lining all the courtyards were perfectly clear. Only the floor of a single round room had something in its character to distinguish it from the rest.

  With the last moment of flight granted him by the wind-force, Cephas floated above the foundation stone. He felt his body begin to fall, and he wondered if earth combined with wind had a song of its own.

  Then he felt the earth-force gathering inside. It spread through his limbs, and all along his szuldar, as the change came over him and his earthsoul manifested.

  When he had made the shelter beneath the burning tent in Argentor, Flek told him to shape a space inside himself, a shape he knew well. The shape had been the only home he had ever known-his cell on Jazeerijah. It had barely been large enough to hold him and his friends.

  Such a small place would never be sufficient to contain the force he felt inside him. The cell had been his home, but any home he would ever make now must be large enough to contain more than just him and a few others-Ariella and Tobin, Melda and Whitey and all their kin, his long-lost cousins of Argentor, the twins. Grinta the Pike needed space. He must have room, too, for Mattias and Trill, even though they would occupy it in memory. Their memories loomed so large.

  Maybe even space for Corvus; he did not yet know.

  Cephas opened his eyes against the wind. He extended his arms and legs, pointing himself down toward the foundation stone. He dived through the air, like an aerialist. He gathered his strength, like a strongman.

  He clenched his fists, striking for home.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Now open this book again. Now begin anew.

  There is more yet in these pages.

  – “Epigraph” and “Epilogue”

  The Founding Stories of Calimshan, Printed and Bound at Calimport

  The Year of the Broken Blade (1260 DR)

  On another night, the bizarre incident that saw a herd of minotaurs finally chasing a goliath into the pits would be the most memorable part of the Games. This would not be the case tonight Marod realized, when a horrified silence fell over the south stands. Nor would the day be remembered because of a fight between twin Arvoreeni adepts.

  The silence was replaced by screams, and wholesale panic descended on the arena as eighteen thousand people stormed the exits. The gamemaster’s box was set be
neath a billowing tent, so he had to lean out to see why the crowds ran.

  His house was not falling as fast as a stone cup cast onto the field might, but its speed was increasing.

  From her waiting room in the north wall of the arena, Shan heard the panic and made a quick check of the door between her and the sands. She did not know what disaster was befalling the genasi, but it would doubtless affect her plans. Besting the door’s lock would take no time.

  On the opposite side of the arena, the Spiritbreaker’s assistant did not answer when he asked her to report what she saw outside. The disloyal woman stuck her head out the spyhole and didn’t even take the time to draw it back in before she engaged the magic in a ring he hadn’t even known she wore. She faded from view.

  He frowned and crossed to the door, which opened at a command. The arena was a scene out of a nightmare. The air was full of windsouled flying for the roofline-so many of them that he witnessed a dozen brutal collisions at a glance. Thousands of human and halfling slaves, along with minotaur guards and genasi, either possessed of a lesser soul or already exhausted by a failed effort at flight, packed the dozen exits cut into the stands, climbing and crawling and mindlessly killing in their panic. He saw a yikaria warrior climb up a watersouled nobleman’s back and disappear out an entrance by striding across the heads and shoulders of the packed mob.

  A shift in the crowd was occurring. An enterprising pair of earthsouled women had smashed through the decking beneath the sands and beckoned other slaves through the gap they’d made down into the pits.

  A sudden parting in the crowd of flying windsouled revealed the source of the mayhem. The Spiritbreaker did not at first recognize the structure making a ponderous descent toward the western grandstand, but the rain of furniture, potted trees, artwork, and tiles that fell from it was so voluminous and, even from his vantage point, bespoke such wealth that he knew it had to be the manor house of one of the great families crashing into the Djen Arena. Then he realized it had to be the el Arhapan mansion where he himself lived, and, oddly, the thought that came to mind then was that he was pleased he kept his books in cases that closed and locked.

  Given the size of the estate and the rate it was falling, the destruction would be enormous, and it might take several tendays for the slaves to dig out his rooms near the center of the complex.

  He turned, and there was the halfling woman, still holding her short sword and dagger. He made a brief mental review of his various options, and decided that, regrettably, there was no way to escape with her in tow-a pity, but he had learned a great deal from their time together.

  He smiled vaguely at her, and as he did so, their eyes met. The potions of the Pasha of Apothecaries were still at work. Her eyes were slow to track his movements, and she seemed barely to recognize him.

  He paused. Her reaction was quite interesting, because she shouldn’t be tracking the movement of anyone taller than she was. And, of course, she shouldn’t recognize him even a little.

  It was the last thought he ever had.

  To conserve the brief moments of flight Ariella could manage while burdened with him, Cephas made a strange and strenuous climb. With the swordmage clinging to his back, he used the regularly spaced joins in the elemental foundation of the el Arhapan estate as finger and toe holds, and as the manor fell downward, he made a great effort to keep to its pace, climbing as fast as he could and so descending toward the arena at a slower rate than the structure.

  Ariella had found him soon after he crashed through the foundation stone. As he fell, the strap that secured his right shoulder guard had caught, swinging him hard against the shifting underside of the estate. One end of the floating artificial island was disproportionately heavier, and when the house began to fall, it first listed sharply, until it was at right angles to its former position.

  “The lesser foundation stones must have enough lifting force to slow the fall!” Ariella shouted. “We’ll have to time this carefully to avoid being crushed when it hits the arena!”

  Cephas was grimly satisfied with what he saw below. Household guards of the genasi had fought their way to defensive positions at the exits and were organizing a doomed escape into the cavernous spaces below the stands. This left the vastly more numerous slaves to their own devices, but those devices proved the better. The exodus of the slaves through the many holes blasted in the sands of the arena was much better managed than the mad scrums at the exits, or the general free-for-all in the air above the arena where windsouled attempted flights over distances far outside the range of their powers. Cephas hoped the slaves would all escape without injury, though he understood this was a slight possibility.

  The nobleborn, though, could be damned.

  Seeing one world crash down into another, seeing thousands of people fleeing and fighting for their lives, seeing chaos and tumult unlike anything she had ever known, Shan pared her plan back to its barest essentials.

  Find Cynda.

  The gamemaster’s tented area was an island of relative calm in the chaos at the far end of the arena. She judged it the best place to begin.

  Five hundred paces of hell separated Shan from her immediate goal. She glanced skyward and, making an estimate of how much time she had to cross, considered her options.

  She grazed the hilt of her parrying dagger with the thumb and forefinger of her left finger. She might be able to cut her way across.

  Cynda. It was Cynda she sought.

  Shan drew the dagger and slid it through the straps that held the cuirass of her leather armor tight. She bent, used the dagger’s edge to part the laces of her high boots, and stepped out of them.

  She ran, and as she came to the outer edge of the panicked mob diving into the warren beneath the arena, she sprang, extending her hands and finding purchase on the shoulders of a man methodically pushing other slaves into the closest pit. She somersaulted through the air, her feet briefly grazing the upraised shield of a household guard who had abandoned her post in the stands.

  Shan was a warrior and a scout. She had learned those skills from the finest teachers in the world.

  And she was an aerialist. She had learned that skill from her sister.

  “Where is Shahrokh?” roared Marod. “Where are any of the damned djinn?”

  When his aide did not answer, the master of games turned to find that the man was gone. Fled with all the rest, he thought. How could this have happened? What could cause an entire estate to fall, and how could the djinn disappear at the same time?

  Little matter. He would learn who was behind the destruction of his beautiful arena soon enough, and then they would pay. He was already thinking of ways to continue the Games. The Sabam could be repurposed for more traditional combats, perhaps, or, even better, he could relocate to Manshaka while the djinn rebuilt here.

  For now, his best course of action was to retreat into the hidden tunnel that led to the stables and wait out the immediate crisis. He twisted a particular ruby setting in his ornate chair, and rotated the entire seat, revealing a downward-sloping passage.

  As soon as he set foot in it, he saw that it was not empty. He would have sworn that no one knew of this passage except himself, Shahrokh, and the earthsouled who dug it and who were killed when they finished their labors.

  But there was a halfling slave he did not recognize, just finishing a task he must have been at for some time. The passage between the pasha of games and the halfling was coated with an oily, smoking substance that ate away at the stone.

  “Yeah, you don’t want to come down this way,” said the halfling. “These walls is fixing to collapse.”

  The pasha gathered his windsoul, preparing to launch through the air at the man, but the halfling had spoken true. The brickwork walls began to crumble, and the ceiling slumped.

  Seeing no way through, the pasha stepped back from the hidden entry and shouted in rage. “Who are you?”

  The halfling shrugged, and before Marod’s escape route was completely closed t
o him, he heard the reply from beyond the falling rubble. “We don’t use names.”

  The manor crashed to earth.

  Sensing Ariella’s exhaustion, when he saw a clear spot through the dust clouds below, Cephas relaxed his grip and dropped a distance perhaps three times his height. He tucked and rolled when he landed, coming back to his feet with flail held ready, probing the shifting mass of rubble that marked the location of the Djen Arena with his earthsouled senses.

  Ariella landed beside him, sword drawn, and stood so that they were back-to-back. “After the fall,” she observed. “Quiet? Not what I expected.”

  There were calls and cries in the far distance, but in the immediate area, the only noises came from the clatter of stones and the hiss of sand as the rubble settled. One entire side of the Djen Arena was gone, flattened by the mass of the el Arhapan estate. The interconnected structures built atop the elemental foundation had fared much the same. The parts of the estate that struck first were reduced to nothing, while some walls and even windows retained their integrity, even if they were set askew. The presence of the floating stonework in the rubble led to less devastation in the el Arhapan buildings than might otherwise have been expected.

  “No sounds,” he said. “There was time for most of the crowd to escape below then, and I trust that if Corvus lives, we’ll know soon enough. We should try to find the others.”

  On the north side of the grounds, they discovered an area of rubble-free sand. The collapsed walls beneath the gamemaster’s box formed an impenetrable barrier on one side of the clearing, and the badlands of ripped-open flooring and rubble encircled its other sides.

  Marod el Arhapan lounged in a veranda chair at the center of the sandy space.

  The man watched them approach. For a moment Cephas wondered if perhaps his father did not recognize him in his earthsouled manifestation, but he was merely waiting for them to close within conversational distance.