Of Sand and Malice Made

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  She searched the stands as the rush of her own blood filled her ears. She found him moments later. Kadir, standing three rows up, the lone spectator who wasn’t shouting or staring with an exhilarated expression. In fact, he was calm itself, as if everything so far had gone according to his master’s plans.

  Her mind spun with the implications. Brama was no lord from Goldenhill, but surely with Rümayesh’s resources, not to mention the spells she might conjure, he could have bought his way into a lord’s good graces, perhaps convincing him that he was some long lost cousin who’d come to Sharakhai, a prince in his own right in one of the many desert tribes. It wouldn’t be so difficult for an ehrekh to weave any tale she wished.

  “Why?” was all she managed to ask.

  “Why does the spider hunt the fly?” Rümayesh said with Brama’s voice. “Why does the snake pursue the vole?”

  The answer was so blithe it enraged her, and she fought all the harder, heedless of the pain. She’d been caught in Rümayesh’s web for months, and this after the godling boys, Hidi and Makuo, had toyed with her for their own purposes. The very notion of becoming enthralled to Rümayesh, of becoming little more than a plaything, lit a fire of rage inside her. She had little leverage, but enough that she could push backward.

  Rümayesh was put off balance for a moment, but countered the move easily. “And what shall we do now? There’s no need for us to fight for the pleasure of others. Why don’t you come to me? Let us talk away from this place, and I’ll tell you what my heart truly desires.”

  Çeda’s answer was as clear as she could make it. She pushed violently backward, again catching Rümayesh off balance, then drove her legs like pistons, faster and faster until she’d slammed Brama’s body into the wall of the pit. She sent three sharp strikes of her elbow into Brama’s ribs, then crashed her head backward into the demon-faced helm. His grip went momentarily lax. In that moment, she slipped from his grasp while slamming the back of her helm like a battering ram again and again into the mask of his helm. Then she bent forward, throwing his body over her hip.

  He fell and rolled. His demon mask had come undone and now hung loosely from his helm. Çeda gasped. A rumbling came from the crowd as Brama’s face was exposed. Everyone could now see that he wore another sort of mask entirely. The skin of his face, once so comely, was littered with scars—from burns, from cuts, she knew not what. She could hardly recognize the face of the boy she’d met by the riverside after he’d stolen her purse. Was that what had doomed him? It was no innocent act, but it had been the stone rolling down the hill that led to a landslide of events culminating in this: a boy possessed by an ehrekh, tortured even while she inhabited him.

  “As the gods live and breathe, why?” Çeda asked, ignoring the strange silence of the crowd.

  “Because he fought, dear girl,” Rümayesh said from Brama’s ruined lips, “and the same will happen to you if you resist.”

  The crowd grumbled. Pelam had been watching this exchange with concern, but now he strode forward. “Fight, or I’ll call a draw and the glory and winnings will both remain in the pits.”

  Çeda stared at Brama. She wanted to free him from Rümayesh, wanted to beat the ehrekh from his body and his mind. But it didn’t work that way. As far as she knew, nothing short of killing him—or Rümayesh’s sudden disinterest—would free his soul. Whatever might happen in the days ahead, she knew she couldn’t fight him, not like this. Not here. She opened her mouth to tell Pelam that she wouldn’t continue, when Brama said, “I withdraw.”

  Pelam’s eyes shifted between the two of them. “You what?”

  “I withdraw,” Brama said again as he stood. He used a finger to scratch behind his ear, an odd gesture, but then he blinked and nodded to Pelam. “The White Wolf has bested me this day”—he sketched a bow, moving his eyes to Çeda—“but perhaps there will come a day when I will have her.”

  His look sent chills running through her.

  Pelam paused, clearly wondering if this were some sort of joke, but as the crowd grew ever more restless, he announced Çeda as the winner. While a strange, half-hearted mixture of cheers and whistles of disappointment rose up around them, Brama replaced his mask, hiding his scarred face once more, and now it was the demon that watched her, its face smiling, grinning, laughing.

  Well before the sun had risen, Çeda waited with her back against a mudbrick wall, watching old Ibrahim the storyteller’s house for any sign of movement.

  She hugged herself to ward off the chill desert air. She hadn’t slept all night. The realization that Rümayesh had returned, and that she’d set her sights on Çeda once again, had been gnawing at her like a rat trapped inside her skull.

  She couldn’t get those scars out of her mind. There had been so many, some old, some new. And they were so horrific. Somehow she knew that Brama had felt it all, and that Rümayesh had enjoyed his pain. Why she would be so sadistic toward him, Çeda had no idea. The ehrekh were not like the men and women of the desert. They were covetous things, crafted by the hand of a wicked god. It was said that each had been made by Goezhen himself, and that their personalities had been influenced by the mood of the god of chaos at the time of their creation. Some few were benevolent spirits, created when Goezhen was in a rare, charitable mood. Others were tricksters, inheriting the mischievous traits Goezhen was sometimes known for. A good many, however, were vicious and sadistic, the qualities most often attributed to Goezhen, and it took no great amount of deduction to figure which flavor Goezhen had served up when he’d made Rümayesh.

  But why come for Çeda? And why now? Çeda had been there in the desert when, with Brama’s and Çeda’s help, Rümayesh had been reborn, effectively freeing her from the clutches of Hidi and Makuo, the godling twins. Makuo had died in that struggle, but cruel Hidi had been left alive, and Rümayesh had taken him, surely to enjoy her revenge in as many inventive ways as possible. Likely weeks or even months had passed before she’d finally tired of torturing Hidi and given him back to the desert. She may have felt some loyalty to Çeda for her part in defeating the trickster boys, but all things fade, including feelings of debt and gratitude. Wasn’t that a lesson taught again and again in the old tales?

  And now here she was: prey once more. But she would play the part of the victim no longer.

  Somewhere in the desert, a jackal yipped, a sound followed closely by the laugh of a bone crusher, the rangy hyenas that plagued the desert. A scuffle followed, then silence, though who the victor might have been, Çeda had no idea.

  At last, within Ibrahim’s house a lantern was struck, making the interior of the small mudbrick home glow with amber light. She saw Ibrahim’s crook-backed silhouette a moment later, the light dimming as he shuffled to the back of his home, perhaps to eat a bit of cumin bread, a bit of herbed goat cheese, before wandering through the city to collect coin for his stories.

  Çeda stole around to the back of the house, then scratched at his back door. “Ibrahim.”

  The sounds of scraping came, an old man shuffling over stone tiles. The door opened, and Çeda squinted from the suddenly bright light of the lantern he held in one hand.

  “Who’s there?”

  This came not from Ibrahim, but from the shadowed form of a woman standing deeper in their home.

  “Back to bed, my love. It’s only a lost little wren.”

  “Don’t forget your limes today.”

  “I won’t,” Ibrahim replied.

  “It helps with the gout.”

  “I won’t forget,” he repeated, his annoyance poorly concealed, and the dark form receded like an appeased revenant. Ibrahim turned back to Çeda and waved her in. “Come.”

  “It would be better if we spoke outside.”

  “I’ll not speak without my tea.” Ibrahim glanced back toward the open doorway, then whispered, “As well as my lime.”

  He motioned her to a table with
three chairs around it. The mosaic worked into the tabletop—an amberlark, its wings spread wide—reminded Çeda of Blackthorn’s armor. She sat as Ibrahim stoked the coals in the potbellied stove and poured water into a copper kettle. He worked in silence, and for a time Çeda was glad for it. Her mind had been a fire running wild, each fear fanning the next, like embers on the wind, steadily widening the blaze. Seeing Ibrahim go through this simple morning ritual, and the smell of the fermented tea leaves as they steeped, gave her a sense of normalcy. She knew it to be false, and yet it was a place of calm, a respite from the storm, so that by the time Ibrahim set a cup of steaming, jasmine-scented tea before her, she actually hoped she might be able to do something about this.

  After setting down his own cup of tea, and a small plate with a lime cut in two, Ibrahim squeezed one of the lime halves into his own tea and the other into hers. She was about to protest when he leaned down and shushed her. “It helps with the gout.” That done, he lowered himself into an empty chair, cradled his teacup in both hands, and regarded Çeda with expressive eyes and a gap-toothed grin. “Now, what can Sharakhai’s oldest and wisest storyteller do for Çedamihn, daughter of Ahyanesh?”

  Çeda didn’t answer for a time. She held the tea to her nose and breathed deeply, allowing the name of her mother to tease memories of her first sips of tea years ago. It was a sweet memory, more than enough to mellow the citrus taste of the brew.

  Ibrahim studied her while sipping. His eyebrows pinched from time to time, but he said nothing. He merely waited.

  “Do you remember when I came to you at the bazaar and asked you of the ehrekh?” she finally asked. As his smile faded, she continued, “I was being haunted by one in my dreams. I found her and freed her in order to free myself. I thought she might be grateful, that she might leave me alone, but now she’s of a mind that I’m hers to do with as she pleases. She came to me as Brama only yesterday, in disguise, and said . . .”

  Çeda stopped, knowing that she was moving too quickly, that Ibrahim wouldn’t understand.

  “Why don’t you start at the beginning?” he suggested.

  She wanted to. She wanted tell him everything. If there was anyone in the west end who might be able to help her, it was Ibrahim. “You can tell no one of this.”

  “It is between you and me.”

  “I’m deadly serious, Ibrahim. You can tell no one.”

  Ibrahim reached out and brushed his hand against her cheek. “There are stories and there are stories, Çeda. Some are meant to be shared far and wide. These are the stories that lift. That bind. Or that cause fear where we should be afraid. Those sorts of stories keep us as one and remind us of who we are. And then there are those that infect, that poison. Trust me to know the difference between the two.”

  Çeda swallowed, nodding. She took a deep sip from her tea, and launched into the tale from the beginning. How the twins had followed her, how she’d been pulled into a struggle between two women vying for Rümayesh’s affections, how Rümayesh, in turn, had been drawn to Çeda instead. When she told Ibrahim of her dreams, they came back so strongly the room seemed to darken, and the cool breeze coming through the nearby window seemed to steal the warmth from her. She finished with Rümayesh’s resurrection, her rebirth when Brama had marked the obsidian stone with his own blood.

  “Brama named her—” Çeda began, but Ibrahim interrupted her.

  “There was a day,” he said, “when I might have wanted to learn that name. I was a curious man when I was young, too curious at times, but I’ve long since reconciled myself with the telling of stories, not living them.”

  Thalagir, Çeda thought. That was the name Brama had given her. How very desperate he’d looked as he’d spoken it. Just as Ibrahim had said of his younger self, Brama had been curious and ambitious, but he’d overreached and paid the price for it. He’d also saved Çeda’s life. Had he not done what he’d done, Rümayesh would have possessed Çeda, not Brama, and she would have suffered everything he had.

  “I only thought—”

  “I know what you thought, but keep the ehrekh’s name to yourself. Tell me instead about the fight in the pits.”

  She did, starting with the incredible sapphire Rümayesh had used to bribe her and finishing with the battle and its strange ending. “What I can’t figure out is why she would pay so much just to enter, and then bow out when she might have won.”

  Ibrahim finished his first cup of tea and poured more. “What are sapphires but baubles to the ehrekh?”

  Çeda shrugged. “True, but she’s like a cat, Ibrahim. She enjoys toying with those she hunts. I know there are stories of the ehrekh, of them trapping men in jewels for a thousand years, of them using precious stones to draw the greedy to their desert lairs.”

  Ibrahim nodded, his eyes going distant. “Modern fancies penned by clumsy storytellers.”

  “Then what are the real stories like?”

  “Who can tell anymore? Stories change over time, accreting new details like an ever-growing pearl that hides away whatever truth it might once have known.”

  “But you know many stories. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Stories are like glimpses of a distant mirage. See it from enough angles and surely you’ll come to see the truth hidden behind the wavering falsehoods.”

  A look overcame Ibrahim then, a fleeting thing, there and gone, but Çeda saw it: a look of shame. He recovered quickly, taking a deep breath as if he were considering her situation seriously. “Of the ehrekh, I know enough to know that they’re dangerous, that they become fixated on things, as Rümayesh seems to have done with you. I know that they both love and hate man, for they yearn, as Goezhen does, for the touch of the first gods, and perhaps it is because of this that they so enjoy their games of cat and mouse. I also suspect that they are prone to overconfidence. Beyond this, Çeda, I don’t know what you wish me to say. There is no magic I might give you, no bauble that might make the ehrekh forget, or make her cast her gaze elsewhere.”

  Ibrahim seemed worried. He didn’t want to get involved. And who could blame him? If she’d heard some sad story of an ehrekh from someone she barely knew, she might do the same.

  Çeda stared into her teacup, then took a sip of it to hide her desperation. It was fine tea, but it tasted so very bitter. “Of course,” she said numbly. “I knew this was a fool’s journey from the start.”

  She stood to leave, but Ibrahim grabbed her wrist. “They are creatures made by the hand of a younger god, Çeda, and so are imperfect. Remember their nature, and let that be your guide.”

  She nodded. It was the sort of adage that sounded sage, but was actually meaningless, useless. “Thank you, Ibrahim.” She left his home then, into the cool morning streets, and headed home.

  The sun had nearly risen by the time Çeda returned to Roseridge. She slowed, however, as she came near the doorway that would take her up to the home she shared with Emre. There was someone standing in her doorway.

  The form stepped into the alley as she neared. She pulled her knife, holding it at the ready.

  “Çeda?”

  He came closer, and she saw that it was Tariq, his rakish handsomeness replaced by a haunted look Çeda had never seen on him before. There were specks of blood around his cheeks and eyes, and though the cloth of his kaftan was dark, she could see dark, misshapen blotches along the chest and sleeves. More blood, she reckoned, but whose?

  “What’s happened, Tariq?”

  “I need you to come to Osman’s estate. Right now.”

  He took her arm and tried to get her moving back the way she’d come, but she was in no mood to be treated so, least of all by Tariq, so she twisted her arm away and sent a hard palm into his chest, knocking him back. When he tried again, she blocked his wrist, grabbed two fistfuls of his kaftan, and drove him furiously back against the mudbrick wall behind him. Now that she was so close, she could see his bloody lip and a cut alo
ng his chin. “What are you doing?” she hissed. “What’s happened?”

  “It’s Osman.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s gone mad, Çeda. I was in the yard, coming back from the stables when I heard him shouting at Sim and Verda.” He lowered his voice. “He was raging. I could barely understand him. He claimed they were after his money, his fortune. Said he’d seen them going near his strongbox. There was a tone to his voice, like they’d stolen his own child from his arms. I thought to leave them alone for a time, let Osman work this out undisturbed. He knows his business, you know that.” Tariq seemed to be trying to convince himself of something. “So I backed away, planning to return to the stables till it all cooled down, but then I heard Sim shout and go silent a bare moment later. Then Verda screamed, first in surprise but then in pain.”

  Tariq’s eyes had gone distant. Haunted. She pulled him off the wall, then let go of his kaftan. “Go on.”

  “When I heard those screams I went to help, but when I reached his parlor, Sim was dead and Verda was bleeding from a dozen wounds all along her chest and arms, and he was staring at me as if I’d been in league with them.” Tariq swallowed. “The look in his eyes . . . it was murderous, Çeda. Dark, the sort you see on bone crushers before they bolt toward you, like he’d been possessed by a demon. I’ve never seen him like this. I’ve never seen any man like this.”

  “Osman’s a careful man,” Çeda said. “Vengeful when angered. You know this better than I do. So how do you know he hadn’t caught them at something?”

  “Çeda, he did the same to me. He stared at me with those black laugher eyes and asked me if I’d helped them open his strongbox. ‘Why would I do that?’ I asked him. ‘For the jewel,’ he said, and he charged me, grabbed me with his bloody hands and struck me and demanded I tell him where we’d taken it. And that was when I saw it, the sapphire. That gods-damned sapphire, just lying on the table beside his favorite chair. ‘It’s just there!’ I pleaded. And Bakhi only knows why he decided to listen to me. He turned his head, and I saw his gaze lock on that stone, the lantern light glinting off its surface. That’s when the animal look drained from him. He stood and staggered over to the table. He picked up the gem and stared at it for I don’t know how long. I was too terrified to say a word. He finally turned and took in Sim, dead not two paces from him, and Verda, her blood leaked into a great pool in the corner of the room behind me. He looked down at his hands as if he’d just realized who had done the murdering. He fell into the chair, then stared at that gem, stared at it like it was the only thing in the world. ‘Go find Çeda,’ he said to me. ‘Bring her here.’”