“No,” Çeda said, her hand on the pouch. “That isn’t why I brought you.”
“You’re ready to collapse!”
“I only tripped is all.”
Brama stood there for the span of a breath, then said, “If you say so,” and spun on his boot heels and continued toward the cliff. Çeda followed, moving slower now, wary of the trees, wary of Brama as well.
When they arrived at the cliff, Brama tied one length of rope around the nearest of the dead trees, threw the bulk of it down the slope, and climbed after it. Çeda followed, and the two of them soon reached a stone lip, which was the point at which the decline became more manageable. Silver Tulathan was high in the night sky now. Golden Rhia was rising. By their light Çeda and Brama picked their way carefully down to avoid a fall, and soon reached the valley floor, where they ran quick and low toward the keep.
Çeda could hear the screams from the tower now. She could see the ruddy light from the brazier as well. She rubbed her thigh where Hidi had plunged the knife into Rümayesh’s thigh. It hurt Çeda’s leg now, made her move with ungainly steps. Çeda grunted as pain burned deep into the muscle of her other leg, too—a fresh wound from Hidi, surely, some echo of what Rümayesh was feeling in that room high in the tower.
Brama turned. She could see the worry in his face. He pulled her upright, looking toward the slope they’d just descended. “You’re going to get us both killed, Çeda.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said through gritted teeth.
He looked as though he were ready to send her back anyway, but then he turned and continued toward the keep. Çeda followed, muffling her pain as well as she was able, the feelings in her body an echo of the screams coming from the tower above. When they reached the wall, Brama ran his hands over the stones with unexpected tenderness. Like a master huntsman might choose a path through a forest, his gaze moved along the stones, ever upward, toward the battlements. He did this a second time, then a third, and finally set his fingers into the gaps between the stones and began to scale the wall.
The keep was old, the stones of the wall weathered, and yet when Brama began climbing, he did so as if the task were no harder than crawling along the ground. His grip was sure and strong, his instincts perfect. He placed his feet just so, used his arms to draw himself ever higher, and he paused only long enough for his fingers to find purchase in the gaps, however slight they might be. As quickly as he was moving, each moment seemed an age, for Rümayesh’s outpouring of pain filled Çeda with every breath, every beat of her heart.
Hurry, Brama. Please.
When he reached the top, he wrapped the remaining rope around a merlon and sent it snaking down to Çeda. She tried to climb, but was forced to allow Brama to pull her up as a new sort of pain—the kind that made you forget who you were and where you were—was driven deep into her gut. She groaned as the cries of anguish coming from the tower rose to new heights. The misery of an ehrekh poured from it, along with the glee of a godling child, and Çeda felt that pain, a mere echo of what Rümayesh was feeling now. How by the gods’ sweet breath could anyone, even an ehrekh, endure the torture being delivered?
The moment Brama dragged her over the battlements, Çeda collapsed to the rampart.
“Stay here,” Brama said. “I’ll return with the stone.”
Çeda grabbed the leg of his trousers. The pain was decreasing at last. She could hear words drifting down from the window in the tower above, could hear some soft echo of them inside her mind as well. Hidi. Though what he was saying Çeda couldn’t tell.
“I can make it,” she said.
“Then get up. I’m not staying in this infernal place for a moment longer than I need to.”
After coiling the rope, Brama dropped it along the inside of the wall and slipped down to the keep’s barren courtyard. Çeda followed, and soon the two of them were gliding like ghosts to the door at the far side, the one Kadir had told her to find. Brama knelt, lock picks at the ready. He slipped them into the keyhole and moved them carefully while pressing his ear to the door. Soon the door was open and Brama was helping her to stand.
The hall that greeted them was dark, but Kadir had described the keep well enough. After a series of passages, they came to a lone, unlocked door at the end of a hall. The room inside was lit faintly by open windows high above. The walls—as the message tattooed on the sole of the woman’s foot had implied—were covered with golden mirrors.
No sooner did Çeda step inside than—thank Nalamae for her grace—the pain in her body lifted. She was able to breathe deeply, and instead of curling inward from the agony in her gut and chest, was able to stand tall for the first time in what felt like years.
Çeda stared at the mirrors, wondering at the properties of this room. A sanctum of sorts? A place for Rümayesh to escape from the world?
Brama had already moved to the center of the room, which was littered with dust, stacked furniture, and mismatched piles of books that looked as if they’d been ransacked, though whether that was recently or ages ago, Çeda couldn’t tell. Brama knelt and swept his hands over the stones, examining each in turn. Çeda joined him, looking for the stone the tattoo had described—beneath a heart of stone, it had said. It took little time for her to find it, a stone the size and shape of a human heart.
“Here,” she said. It pried up easily, revealing a deep hole. She reached in and found a bag made from cloth-of-gold, and when she tugged at the neck and upended it, an obsidian disk fell onto her palm. It was dark and clear. It reflected moonlight like glass. Upon its surface was an ancient symbol, a complex sigil that represented Rümayesh. It was her name, but also, to a degree, her entire identity. Kadir had told her she must wipe it away and create another, and through that ritual she would somehow define the ehrekh and trigger a rebirth.
Brama watched her with a hungry expression. “Hurry!” he hissed when he finally had her attention.
The edges of the obsidian were rough, almost knifelike. She used it to make a cut along the palm of her left hand, then collected the blood on her opposite thumb and rubbed it along the surface of the disk, mixing it with the dried blood there.
As she did, a wind began to whisper through the windows above. The wind’s intensity quickly grew. It began to howl, to whine. Dust and sand swirled at the center of the room. Silver moonlight cut through the dust and sand like spears cast down by Tulathan herself.
“What are you waiting for? Get the other stone.” Brama’s voice was high-pitched, his face a study in worry.
Çeda dug in her purse for the stone, but stopped when she heard the scuff of steps behind her. She spun and found a dark-skinned boy standing in the doorway.
“You not find it there,” Makuo said.
He was holding an obsidian disk, she realized. She reached deeper inside her purse and pulled out a hunk of sandstone. She stared at it, confused, but then realized what it was that had caught her and made her fall out in the dead forest. Makuo. He’d been there, and he’d switched the stone without her realizing it.
“You come,” Makuo said, laughing, “like we know nothing, like we birds sitting in a tree, waiting to be taken by a stone from your sling.” He sent the disk spinning into the air with a flick of his wrist. “What you think now, girl? Are we birds waiting to be struck?”
Too late, she remembered what she’d forgotten from her dream. Makuo hadn’t been in the tower room. Hidi had come alone. Gods, how foolish of her . . . But her mind had been so addled from lack of sleep, and from the jarring shift of perception when Brama had pummeled her awake.
Had the twins known all along about her dreams? Had they allowed her to continue so that she and Brama would reveal the location of the sigil stone? Had Kadir known and put her at risk for some other purpose?
What matter is any of that now?
Makuo opened the door and shouted down the hall. “Come, brother! The girl here,
and she bring a friend.”
As he did this, Çeda saw something from the corner of her eye. The moons were high, their light shining through the windows above. In one of the mirrors, she saw a man. Kadir. In the reflection, he was standing just next to her, but he wasn’t here in this moonlit room. She could see other things that didn’t match as well—furniture, paintings on the walls, a woven rug, none of which appeared in this room, all cast golden by the mirror’s surface.
A portal, Çeda realized.
The mirror was a portal, and Kadir was on the opposite side, waiting for the right time to step through it.
She reached for her shamshir as Makuo was turning around.
“Looking for this?” The boy laughed bitterly as he tossed Çeda’s curving shamshir into the hall behind him, where it clattered against the stones. “This, too?” He flipped his empty hand into the air, and suddenly, Çeda’s kenshar was spinning in the air. He caught it with a flick of his wrist. “You think you take my blood? No, girl, Makuo take yours. Makuo mark the sigil stone with it and bind you to Rümayesh before you die.”
Çeda didn’t wait for any more words.
She charged.
She knew Makuo was quick, that he was gifted with the trick of disappearing and reappearing, and so she was ready when a shadow was cast over the doorway and he vanished. She spun and found him thrusting the dagger toward her.
She sidestepped. Swept both hands in a blocking motion across his wrist and used his momentum to whip him down to the floor. He struck the stones hard and grunted as his breath was expelled. He tried to twist his arm free, but Çeda held tight. She used her advantage to climb atop his back while keeping the knife at bay.
Brama came running, knifepoint down as he prepared to stab Makuo. But Makuo had godsblood running through his veins. He was strong and wickedly quick. He kicked Brama’s legs out from underneath him, then twisted in a furious motion, breaking Çeda’s hold, and soon he was on top of her, holding her kenshar across her throat.
Before he could use it a dark line swept down over Çeda’s field of vision. Kadir was suddenly behind Makuo, holding two wooden handles to which the ends of a thin but sturdy wire were attached. As the wire tightened around Makuo’s neck, a form darkened the doorway to Çeda’s right.
“No!”
Hidi, holding the knife he’d been using to torture Rümayesh these past many months, charged Kadir. So fixated was he on saving his brother, though, that he didn’t see Çeda as she used her legs to trap one of his. She twisted her body and brought him to the floor. Hidi fell hard. His knife slipped from his grasp, skittering away and clanging against the foot of a golden mirror.
Gurgling sounds came from Makuo as he stabbed backward, catching Kadir once across his shoulder and again on his forearm. But Kadir had his knee against Makuo’s upper back and was sawing the dark wire back and forth. There was blood all along Makuo’s neck. Makuo, desperate, dropped the knife and tried to slip his fingers beneath the wire.
But it was too late.
The wire slipped further and further into his flesh, then slid with a sound of rending flesh all the way to Makuo’s spine. A wet sucking sound filled the air as Kadir released the wooden handles. Makuo’s dying form collapsed to the stones.
“Brother!” Hidi screamed.
He tossed Çeda away like a rag doll. He rolled, picking up the knife he’d dropped, then advanced on Kadir with murder in his eyes.
But before he’d gone two steps, the wind in the room changed. The dust and sand gathered, spinning tighter on some unseen axis until it had formed a cloud, had coalesced, had drawn into the form of a woman with cloven hooves, a tri-forked tail, and a crown of thorns. Rümayesh stood naked, eyes aflame, ebony skin limned silver in the moonlight. Her horns swept back like a crown, making her look somehow regal, like Goezhen’s consort, a queen of the shifting sands.
Her form had coalesced just off Hidi’s path. Hidi, sensing the tide had turned, sped like an arrow for Kadir, perhaps hoping to take Rümayesh’s servant before he could be taken. But Rümayesh was reborn. She was swift and powerful. She was whole.
She darted to one side, grabbed Hidi by his neck and lifted him into the air, and though Hidi’s knife bit into her shoulder, she slammed him down against the stone, his head crashing just next to the opening where Çeda had found the sigil stone.
In the far corner, huddling at the foot of one of the golden mirrors, was Brama. He watched all that was happening with wonder. One hand was dark with blood. The other held the sigil stone, the one Makuo had stolen from Çeda’s pouch. Brama had written on it with his own blood. He’d written Rümayesh’s name, her new name. The one that would give others power over her.
“Stand back!” Brama said, holding the sigil stone before him. His eyes flicked between Kadir and Rümayesh. He was terrified. He’d seen death—all who grew up in the west end of Sharakhai saw death—but not like this. Not so close. “Stand back!”
Hidi was unconscious. Blood was seeping from his nose, from his ears. Rümayesh had been bowing over him, perhaps preparing to end his life, but now she stood erect and faced Brama. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Thalagir, I name you. Thalagir, I command you. Stand back and let me by.”
Thalagir. Her name, the one Brama had chosen.
Indeed, Rümayesh tensed, her arms tightening, her hands balling into fists. Çeda thought surely she would defy him. After all, what were the words of a thief to an ehrekh born in the desert wastes? But to her wonder Rümayesh did step away.
That was when Çeda noticed the mirror behind Brama. As before, when Kadir was readying to step through, it wasn’t reflecting the room as a mirror should. It was showing an image of Çeda’s back, of Kadir’s and Rümayesh’s as well. Çeda turned and saw the mirror behind her. By the gods, she could see Brama’s back through that one.
And then she understood. The portal had changed.
Kadir was already running.
“Stop!” Brama called.
“Brama, behind you!” Çeda shouted.
But Brama didn’t stand a chance. He looked at Çeda with eyes afire, as if he’d freed the fetters from a feral beast and no longer knew how to control it.
Kadir reached the mirror behind Çeda.
He ran through it.
Brama began to turn just as Kadir appeared behind him. In a blink he had Brama’s arms. He wrenched them and Brama dropped the sigil stone. It clunked against the floor and rolled away with the sound of tinkling glass, coming to a rest at Rümayesh’s feet.
Rümayesh picked it up, brought it to her nose, and sniffed the fresh scent of Brama’s blood. A forked tongue slipped from her mouth, and she licked the blood on the stone. As she did, a shiver ran down her frame. Her eyes, however, were all for Brama. They looked at him with indescribable hunger.
That was when Çeda understood. The sigil stone. It bound Rümayesh, but it also bound the one who’d inked their blood upon it.
Rümayesh lowered the crimson-inked stone, took one step toward Brama.
“No!” Çeda shouted, taking up her knife from Makuo’s dead fingers and running toward them.
Kadir released Brama and interposed himself. Çeda tried to dodge past him, but Kadir was too fast. He grabbed her and held her around the neck. He avoided Çeda’s knife, snatching her wrist and locking her arm behind her.
All while Rümayesh stalked toward Brama.
“Stop!” Çeda shouted. “You don’t have to do this!” She fought, but Kadir was too strong, and she was still too weakened by the nightmares, by the constant lack of sleep.
Rümayesh shot one hand out, grabbing Brama by the neck. She leaned in and kissed him, smearing his own blood over his lips. Brama struggled for a time, but eventually he fell slack. And then their positions seemed to reverse. Brama stood taller. Rümayesh’s form slouched, then collapsed to the ground.
Brama stared down at the ehrekh’s form, but this was no longer Brama, she knew. This was Rümayesh. Just as she’d taken the form of the matron from Goldenhill, she’d taken Brama’s now. Brama stepped over and pried the ehrekh’s fingers from the sigil stone, then he turned to Kadir and nodded. Only then did Kadir release Çeda.
When Brama spoke, the quality of his voice, the cadence, had changed. “I thought it would be you”—she lifted the stone—“but one never knows where the fates will lead you.”
“There was no need to take him like this.”
“I beg to differ. He named me, and that, my dear sweet dove, is more than reason enough.”
“I know your name now.” It was foolish, perhaps, to state it so baldly, but Rümayesh had stolen Brama’s form partly to ensure that her name remain safe. Çeda wouldn’t leave this place not knowing whether she would be hunted as well.
Brama—no, Rümayesh—strode to where Hidi lay breathing shallowly on the cold stones of this room. She stared with Brama’s eyes at the godling child, but her words were for Çeda. “It isn’t merely the name, dear one, but the stone itself. Now go. As I’m sure you’re well aware, there is unfinished work here.” She hoisted Hidi up and over her shoulder, then strode from the room as if Çeda didn’t exist.
Kadir made to follow, but paused as Çeda said, “You would have taken me when I came to save her?”
“You came to save yourself, remember?”
“You would mince words now?”
Kadir turned, a momentary look of shame in his eyes and in the set of his shoulders. “I would have regretted it, but my first duty is to my mistress.”
“Does she not use you as she uses all of us?”
Kadir stared deeply into Çeda’s eyes, as if he’d considered this question often and was still unsure of the answer.
“Is it using if I allow it?” he finally asked.
Çeda had no answer, and Kadir soon left.
Of Sand and Malice Made Page 10