City of Daevas

by J F Mehentee

  22

  Roshan heard a command.

  ‘Wake up.’

  Her eyes opened. The outline of a man stood over her, his features fuzzy. A couple stood opposite him, but they looked ahead instead of at her.

  Roshan blinked to clear her vision. The trio were Behrouz, Yesfir and, holding a bow and a golden arrow, High Magus Sassan. Right then, she knew she should have felt more than relaxed detachment. She must have fallen clutching her broken arm, because she still held it. Thanks to Domain power, it had healed.

  She glanced past them, left and then right. On her right, twenty paces away, stood a row of six manticores. They ignored the guardsmen fencing them in with spears. She glimpsed their faces. Zana sat on his haunches, his paws raised. Vul also raised his arms, his hands, palms up, level with his shoulders.

  On her right stood guardsmen. Like Zana and Vul, some of them raised their hands, their palms facing her. At their centre stood a guardsman she remembered from Derbicca and Emad’s rescue. He had traded sword blows with Behrouz while protecting the high magus.

  A protective dome—you’re inside a protective dome.

  ‘If you try anything,’ the high magus said, ‘I’ll command your friends here to kill you.’

  He gestured at Yesfir and Behrouz, neither of whom moved.

  The threat didn’t affect her calmness. Instead, she noticed how the high magus swayed as he stared at her. Behind his gaze of curiosity she recognised a hunger she’d seen only during her days as a novice.

  He craves poppy juice.

  How had this small, drug-addled man caused the djinn and daevas so much suffering?

  ‘You killed a man with a scream,’ the high magus continued. ‘But your eyes, they aren’t like a djinni’s.’ He pointed the golden arrow at her. ‘I should kill you. But if you do as I say, follow my commands, like these two’—he nodded at Yesfir and Behrouz—‘I’ll let you live. Under my command, you and the djinn will achieve many things and bring greater glory to God.’

  She felt it then, the seal’s influence. Just like two nights ago, it pushed at her will, attempted to drive it down into herself.

  Laughter came from ahead of her. Roshan raised her head.

  ‘Stupid girl,’ Manah, the lamassu, said.

  Manah’s bearded face blurred. His beard disappeared. Manah’s cheekbones grew more prominent and his bottom lip swelled in the middle. His altered features turned the sabaoth’s face from male to female. His wing remained, but now the bull’s body morphed into a human’s, its contours female.

  Roshan tensed her stomach and sat up. She clutched her healed forearm and glanced up at the high magus. Sassan continued to stare at her and not the sabaoth. He hadn’t heard or seen the lamassu transform itself into a winged woman.

  Armaiti?

  ‘It is,’ she said.

  So, Manah was…

  Roshan paused. Over the past three days, the lamassu who’d visited her in Iram and in her dreams wasn’t Armaiti’s nemesis; it was Armaiti herself. The sabaoth had called her a stupid girl, and she was right.

  Armaiti’s nose elongated and curved until it resembled a beak.

  ‘You see it?’ the high magus said. ‘You can see the eagle-headed spirit God sends me.’

  Before she could reply, the high magus stepped back from Roshan. In the space between them, close to the high magus’s toes, letters as long as her hand appeared in the sand.

  ‘Kill her,’ they read.

  The high magus’s mouth worked. Roshan couldn’t tell if he gasped for air or tried to speak. He flung aside his bow, grasped the golden arrow with both hands and raised it as if it were a spear.

  ‘No, High Magus.’

  Roshan turned her head. The guardsman she recognised called out to Sassan.

  ‘She is our prisoner,’ he continued. ‘This not how a high magus behaves. What you’re about to do is murder. Stop this at once. Otherwise, I’ll arrest you and have you taken back to Persepae in chains.’

  The high magus’s turmoil reminded her of Manah’s—or, rather, Armaiti’s—exercises in the basin filled with stone columns. Armaiti had caused her to doubt herself, leaving her troubled about what to do. Roshan channelling her auric energy had helped the djinn, but its real purpose was to weaken her. And it had. At least some of what Armaiti-Manah had said was the truth. Domain power had healed her broken arm and replenished her aura. But what now? If she attempted to kill the high magus, would Armaiti intervene?

  Roshan drew herself up and knelt on one knee. Armaiti had made a fool of her. Now she’d do the same to her.

  ‘Command me, High Magus,’ she said. Roshan continued to support her forearm.

  The high magus looked over his shoulder at Baka. One hand released the arrow so he could point at the ziggurat.

  ‘Put that out,’ he said, referring to the fire burning on the fourth tier.

  Again, the seal fought to displace her will. The pressure it exerted was an itch—an itch she could ignore.

  Am I getting stronger?

  Was her auric energy still being renewed?

  She decided against standing for now. So long as the high magus thought he had the upper hand, she’d have the advantage of surprise.

  Neither Yesfir nor Behrouz moved. Roshan felt Yesfir’s presence at her side. Two nights earlier, when she’d rescued the three of them—Roshan, Behrouz and Navid—Yesfir hadn’t hesitated. She’d accepted that others, daevas included, might get hurt.

  Roshan looked past the high magus.

  Stop burning.

  The beacon winked out.

  With the high magus’s back to her, Roshan made to rise, wanting to see the look on Sassan’s face when she wished him dead.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Roshan remained kneeling and looked past Sassan’s golden arrow.

  Navid!

  Behind the high magus, her brother, still a rat, burrowed into the sand, hoping he could get under the protective dome.

  The high magus turned and looked down at her, his body swaying.

  ‘Yesfir told me your brother can shape-shift,’ he said. ‘I command you to kill him.’

  Roshan stopped holding her forearm and stood.

  ‘KILL HER.’

  Armaiti’s yell shook the ground. The high magus held his arms out to stop himself from falling.

  ‘Hold her,’ he shouted. Sassan gripped the arrow and raised it above his head.

  Behrouz grabbed Roshan from behind and held her upper arms with a crushing grip.

  Yesfir, Behrouz and Navid, Roshan thought, leave this protective dome.

  Against the background of Armaiti’s laughter and the guardsman’s loud protest, the high magus plunged the arrow into Roshan’s chest. Behrouz had followed Roshan’s command and let go of her. The force of the blow and the arrow lodging in her sternum drove her back down and onto one knee.

  Dense, molten power poured into her. Neither Core power nor Domain power, this carried emotions, memories and knowledge—lost, ancient knowledge—that ran from the seal, down the sabaoth’s arrow and through her body. It stopped at her right wrist and beneath her bracelet. Roshan’s vision turned hazy. The power, the djinn’s auric energy flooding into her, consumed her pain and yearned for release. Roshan closed her eyes and channelled the energy.

  Not all the auric energy belonged to the djinn in Baka. Some of it wound its way back to those who’d lived for centuries, having forgotten their former lives.

  A fisherman dropped the net he was about to cast. He dived from his boat into the sea, his legs forming a fish tail as he struck the water.

  Up on a hilltop, a woman put her basket down and reached behind her to scratch an itch. Her fingers brushed feathers, wings, and the itch disappeared. She launched herself off the hilltop and took to the air.

  A young shepherd trembled at the edge of a forest, his sling ready and his free hand filled with pebbles. Today, he meant to stop a lone wolf from taking his goats. The shepherd dropped the sling and pebbles to
watch how fur coated his hands and his nails turned to claws. He howled his challenge and then charged into the forest.

  The ground shook a second time, returning Roshan to the encampment.

  ‘Let go of the arrow,’ Armaiti shouted. ‘She’s draining the seal of its power.’

  Roshan gripped the high magus’s right wrist with both hands.

  More ancient power flooded her body and then her mind.

  She witnessed the fifteen nomadic djinn tribes and the days when they warred against one another. The power described their unification, the development of djinn magic and how formidable they’d become before the seal stripped them of their knowledge, memories and auric energy.

  And now that power, having travelled through the sabaoth’s arrow and into Roshan, returned to its people and made them whole again.

  Roshan smiled.

  Armaiti screamed.

  ‘You can see it—can’t you?’ the high magus said. ‘The eagle-headed spirit. God wants you dead.’

  The pressure he exerted eased for a moment, and then he shoved with all his weight. The arrowhead passed through Roshan’s sternum.

  More power surged through her and turned her skin blue-grey. Whirls of orange rose to the surface.

  ‘God never sent that spirit,’ Roshan said. ‘She used you to get to me.’

  Flames erupted from her skin, and the high magus’s tunic caught alight.

  While the high magus thrashed and yelled for her to release him, she felt only the calm detachment she’d experienced when she’d woken. Domain power rushed through her like a torrent, burning muscle and sinew, drying bone. It didn’t distress her that she burned at a rate too fast for her auric energy to heal her. This was Armaiti’s plan all along. The sabaoth had gotten what she’d wanted, but Roshan had set the djinn free, and Emad could realise King Fiqitush’s dream. That was all that mattered.

  She looked away from the high magus who burned along with her, her hands fused to his wrists. To her right, Yesfir and Behrouz stood outside the dome. Yesfir pressed Navid—who hadn’t shape-shifted—against her chest. From the way his tail twisted and swung, he struggled to free himself of her grip. She heard his mental anguish and experienced his shock and his confusion.

  Blind now, she reached out to Navid with her mind.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said.

  23

  Emad sat beneath a dome of invisibility and silence. Seated a third of the way down the staircase from the ziggurat, he watched mounted soldiers scour the city for djinn. He resented how they rode around as if they owned Baka.

  ‘You wouldn’t look so smug if manticores still roamed the place,’ he said to a passing rider. His resentment never made it past the dome.

  Flakes of ash drifted around him and settled upon the foot of the stairs. A blackened twig, no longer than his little finger and not yet burned through, bounced once on the paving. Several more joined the twig.

  Emad jumped up, flew down the stairs and ran into the middle of the square. He craned his head and groaned. The beacon had gone out.

  ‘I’d wager a narwhal’s tusk someone put it out,’ he muttered.

  By now, both ships would have weighed anchor and begun rowing.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ he said. ‘No one in the encampment knows about the ships. Why would they put the fire out?’

  With little auric energy remaining, raising a window to check on the ships meant he might not have enough left to leave the city.

  The city shook and interrupted the thought. His ankles and knees adjusted as Baka pitched. It was like standing on the deck of a ship. Emad had been a sailor for too long to feel seasick. Even so, he sat down before a sudden queasiness overwhelmed him.

  Dizzy as though he’d drunk too much, Emad pressed down with his palms to steady himself. His skin prickled and turned clammy, and his saliva tasted bitter. As suddenly as it had struck him, the queasiness disappeared. He hauled himself up and, in case either the ground or he began to shake, he held out his arms for balance. The bitterness on his tongue remained and the concern he felt for the ships continued to weigh on him. Yet, somehow, he felt different. People, places and events, memories he couldn’t be sure were his, tumbled into his head. Emad held up his hands. They looked the same, but when he clenched them, the surrounding air sizzled.

  ‘Djinni!’ a soldier yelled as he rode towards Emad, his short sword raised.

  His disorientation must have caused his dome to collapse.

  One half of him tensed to turn and run up the ziggurat’s steps. The other half, the half alien to him, raised a hand. Emad spoke a single word. His mouth shaped and pronounced the word of power precisely.

  What’s a word of power? the half that wanted to run wondered.

  Rider and mount flew into the air and over Baka’s west-facing wall. The soldier’s short sword clanged against the paving. Memories of brawls in inns where he often hurled his fellow drinkers over tables countered his surprise.

  ‘I remember some of those fights,’ he said, his recollection causing him to grin. They’d happened before Fiqitush had called him and the other djinn back. His grin dissolved. ‘What have I done?’ How much of his auric energy had he used up?

  Emad noticed the soldier’s fallen sword and stepped away from it.

  The image of another sword—this one longer than the soldier’s, curved and also made of iron—filled his mind. He’d won the sword from a Kemetian captain during a game of Ur. He’d worn that sword for years.

  Emad shuffled towards the soldier’s sword. The metal didn’t cause his hand to recoil. Emad grasped the hilt, hefted the sword and tested its balance.

  ‘I could touch and use iron just like humans,’ he said. ‘That was until Solomon arrived.’

  He touched his bracelet. Still no Roshan. Did she have the seal? Had something happened to her because of it?

  A rider swept past him but paid him no heed. A second rode by and did the same.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  From among the riders, those farther ahead and closer to the city’s crumpled door, came the call to retreat. Still gripping the sword, Emad turned and headed for a side street.

  Halfway down, clogged and weighed down with silt and sand, he pulled off his sandals. Emad ignored the bodies, some hanging from the roofs of the single-storey buildings. He rounded a corner and found the mangled and torn bodies of their mounts, the sticky sand encasing parts of them.

  His weight hadn’t changed in the past two days. Back in Iram, he’d stopped to catch his breath after running only two hundred steps. Now, with wet sand sucking at his feet, he experienced neither breathlessness nor a sharp pain in his side. If not for the bodies in his path, he would have run even faster.

  Emad reached the west-facing wall. Up ahead, a queue of soldiers, some nursing injuries, waited to pass through the gap left by the giant golem, who’d torn off a door. Riders and those on foot hesitated before stepping through the doorway. Rather than walk through it, it looked to Emad as if they jumped.

  His bracelet warmed and pulsed with a rhythm Emad recognised. It compelled him to look up. Above him, Shephatiah’s head poked over the ramparts. The young djinni gestured at him to come up.

  ‘He should be on a ship, not here,’ he said.

  The stairs leading up were within ten steps of the retreating soldiers. It might be all right for the lad with orange flames and youth to raise portals here, there and everywhere, but Emad’s auric energy was limited.

  Emad regarded the sword he still grasped. Something had happened in the encampment. Otherwise, the soldiers wouldn’t be retreating, and he wouldn’t be holding an iron weapon as if it were bronze. Emad let the part he hadn’t fully acquainted himself with raise the portal. He drew a circle with his finger, said the word of power and stepped through.

  Shephatiah wasn’t the only djinni up on the ramparts.

  ‘Why aren’t you lot aboard the ships?’ Emad said.

  Shephatiah’s wide smile sho
rtened and his brow bunched.

  ‘Your Highness,’ he said. He pointed to his eyes and then to Emad’s. ‘The seal’s power has been released.’

  Shephatiah spoke the truth. Instead of orange flames surrounding the lad’s irises, bright-blue flames burned in their place.

  The memories and the words of power, those were his old self, the parts the seal had torn from him.

  ‘Come, Your Highness,’ Shephatiah said, then directed him towards Baka’s lone door.

  The djinn Emad passed all possessed the same coloured flames.

  ‘I thought I’d imagined it,’ Shephatiah said. ‘Those below had started rowing when we saw the beacon. Then the lookout said it had been extinguished. When I came up on deck, I couldn’t believe what I saw. None of us could. When King Solomon used the seal, I and the others up here weren’t born. The older djinn are’—Shephatiah searched for the right word—‘confused by the things they’re remembering. We don’t have such memories, so we weren’t affected.’ Shephatiah pointed below and past the battlements. ‘I couldn’t believe what I’d seen from the ship.’

  Horses and soldiers jumped to exit the city. Emad rubbed his eyes. Baka had risen by about the height of a man.

  Fiqitush, you were right. Baka can fly.

  ‘How did this happen, Your Highness?’

  Emad shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know, and I have no memory of this city or any other that can do this. My guess is it’s happened because the seal has returned our auric energy to us.’ A thought crossed his mind. ‘How did you raise a portal to get here?’

  Shephatiah knitted his eyebrows.

  ‘The usual way—why?’

  So, the lad and the other youngsters didn’t know about words of power. The seal had untainted the auric energy they’d inherited, which explained the blue flames. However, they hadn’t been born until after Solomon had stolen both auric energy and memories from the djinn. Parents and the djinn elders passed down knowledge by word of mouth. The younger djinn would have to be taught how to weave magic with words of power, along with anything else Emad hadn’t yet remembered.