With Blood Upon the Sand

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Interesting that he used the word blinded to describe her. It made her think of Saliah in the desert, blind yet far-seeing. “I felt no deception in her when she wore the guise of Saliah Riverborn.”

  “You would know if Saliah were lying?” Amalos chuckled, in a way that made the young blush, for it called their wisdom into question. “You don’t think it beyond the goddess to deceive you?”

  “When my mother and I went to her, I sparked an augury. Saliah seemed not only surprised by it, but shocked. She had much the same look when I came to her again after you refused to help me.” Suddenly Amalos seemed to find something in his lap terribly interesting, but he made no mention of their talk when he’d refused in no uncertain terms to help her in her quest against the Kings. “I’ll grant you she might have deceived me,” Çeda went on, “but I’ve been thinking on it a long while now. I believe she saw something in that vision the day before my mother died, and again when I went to her, things that perhaps led her to finding herself once more. It may even be that she willingly sacrificed my mother to learn more.”

  “What do you mean?” Zaïde asked.

  “My mother begged her to shelter me. After I’d climbed her acacia and the chimes rang, she refused to even consider it. I think she knew my mother was going to die, and that I would one day return to her in the desert.”

  Amalos stirred at this. “Auguries are difficult to interpret, as you know from your time with King Yusam. She may only have been doing what she thought best—whatever would give you, and her, the best chance at succeeding.”

  “At the cost of my mother’s life,” Çeda said.

  “Not all can be saved,” Amalos countered, “especially as the other gods seem to be working against her.”

  Çeda knew it was so, and she’d given up on wishing things had gone differently that day. They hadn’t. And, right or wrong, she was closer to the Kings than she’d ever been, more able to put a stop to their cruel ways. She hadn’t asked to walk this path, but she stood upon it now, and she would make the most of it.

  “Time grows short,” Zaïde said. “We should speak of the Kings’ poems. Recite them for Amalos.”

  And Çeda did.

  “Sharp of eye,

  and quick of wit,

  the King of Amberlark;

  with wave of hand,

  on cooling sand,

  slips he into the dark.

  King will shift,

  ’twixt light and dark,

  the gift of onyx sky;

  shadows play,

  in dark of day,

  yet not ’neath Rhia’s eye.”

  “Beşir, of course,” Amalos said. “The bane of the desert tribes. He’s long been known to slip into shadows in one place and appear from another.”

  Çeda nodded. “The poems seem to hide each King’s gift in the opening verse and their weakness in the second. Külaşan was laid low by the adichara pollen. Could it be the same with Beşir and the light from Rhia?”

  Amalos stroked his beard as if it were a sleeping cat. “It seems likely, but let me think on it awhile. The second?”

  “The King of Smiles,

  from verdant isles,

  the gleam in moonlit eye;

  with soft caress,

  at death’s redress,

  his wish, lost soul will cry.

  Yerinde grants,

  a golden band,

  with eye of glittering jet;

  should King divide,

  from Love’s sweet pride,

  dark souls collect their debt.”

  Çeda paused. “I’m sure it refers to Mesut. I’ve seen the band of jet he wears on his wrist.”

  “Take great care with your assumptions,” Amalos said. “Never forget that the Kings know of these poems, and that they’ve had centuries to prepare themselves for their enemies.”

  “No, I know this bloody verse is his. I saw him in Eventide. He and Cahil took a woman there, perhaps a woman of the thirteenth tribe, and made an asir.” She went on to tell Amalos about how the woman had been fed Cahil’s serum, how Mesut had summoned a soul from his golden band. She shivered, recalling how the woman’s skin had desiccated, how the wight had entered her, how she had joined hands with the other asirim. “She’d been beholden to Mesut, bound to him with chains stronger than those on the other asirim in the blooming fields.”

  Amalos scratched his chin, clearly shaken by this news. “But why?” His eyes searched Zaïde’s for answers, all but ignoring Çeda. “Why sacrifice someone new?”

  “Because the bonds on the asirim are weakening,” Çeda interjected. “It’s been happening for years, and the Kings know they’ll lose more with each passing year.”

  “She’s right,” Zaïde said. “There have been reports of the asirim straining at their leashes. And rumors have been floating through the House of Kings for years now that Mesut goes to the blooming fields to cull those that no longer obey. It may be that he draws them into his golden band.”

  “And if he can now use them,” Çeda said, “binding them to another form, it would shore up the Kings’ waning power.”

  Amalos shook his head, his eyes staring through the stone walls as if he couldn’t quite believe it all. “At the cost of yet more lives.”

  Zaïde stood and raised her hand when Çeda wanted to continue. “Come, we’ll not solve all the world’s problems today, and it’s getting late. We must return to the House of Maidens.”

  As Zaïde and Çeda wended their way back through the tunnels, Çeda tried to concentrate on the path, but her mind was running wild with all they’d talked about. “Zaïde, what if I tried to learn more from the asir, about Mesut and his bracelet?”

  “How?”

  “In the desert, the asir I bonded with was the very one Mesut raised in Eventide. He chose her for me, I think, perhaps to ensure that it would be safe for other Maidens to bond with those raised in a similar manner.”

  Zaïde thought on this as they walked. “It’s too dangerous. Besides which, it’s not likely that you’ll be bonded to another asir for some time, and even if you were, chances are Mesut will choose another.”

  They were nearing the savaşam. The time she had to speak to Zaïde openly was rapidly shrinking. “I might be able to reach out to the asir, the one I was bonded to, if I took a petal.”

  “It’s too dangerous, Çeda. Mesut might sense it. For now, leave it be.”

  Light flooded the tunnel as Zaïde opened the panel leading to the savaşam. “Zaïde, please, if only I could ask her. Surely she would know—”

  Çeda went silent. They weren’t alone. Yndris was standing on the far side of the savaşam, just next to the peg where Zaïde’s winter robe was hung. The rope that had been tied to the handles of the sliding doors earlier now hung loosely.

  “Ask who?” Yndris asked casually.

  “Why were you looking through my clothes, Maiden?” Zaïde asked her.

  “I came in and found the two of you missing. I was looking for clues. We can’t be too careful these days, can we?” Yndris stepped toward them. “Ask who, Çeda? And ask them what?”

  But it was Zaïde who answered. “Why would you interrupt our training in the first place?”

  Yndris shrugged. “I knocked, and when no one answered, I opened the doors.”

  “Did you slip that rope, Maiden?”

  Yndris was a very pretty girl, but her expression of innocence, a thing that bordered on mockery, was revolting. “It was undone when I arrived,” she said. “Does my father know that you take students into the tunnels?”

  “Why would His Excellence care one whit where I take my students?”

  “Forgive me, Matron. It only seems odd. Times being what they are, enemies all around, it does seem . . . imprudent, does it not, to leave a lesson to run about the hidden tunnels o
f Tauriyat?”

  “What I do with any of my students is no concern of yours.”

  “Mine? No, you’re right, of course. But my father has been consumed in an inconsolable rage over what happened at the collegia. He’s convinced we haven’t gone nearly far enough with the masses that teem over the west end like termites.”

  Çeda had met people like Yndris before. Traded words with them. Traded blows as well. But somehow, she’d never been angrier than she was with Yndris now. Yndris had grown up in the halls of her father’s palace, and Cahil was one of the few Kings who kept his firstborn children in his palace if they wished it. Family above all was the refrain for those sired by the Confessor King. It was said Cahil had always doted on Yndris, a child born with jewels around her throat and gold around her ankles, and here she was speaking of the people in the west end as if they were insects to be crushed beneath her bootheel.

  “What’s more,” Yndris went on, “he isn’t pleased at all with your favored Maiden, allowing so many to flee when dozens should have been hung for their crimes.”

  “What I did saved lives,” Çeda said, “which was a fair sight better than you, launching arrows into them as if they were targets on a range.”

  “They were guilty of murder, every single one of them.”

  “They were only reacting to—” Çeda began, but Zaïde stepped between them.

  “You can rest assured I’m taking all the proper precautions, child. Now leave us. We’ve work to do. And if you ever go through my things again, it’ll be lashes for you.”

  Yndris stared defiantly into Zaïde’s eyes. “The whip is no stranger to the halls of King Cahil.”

  “Would you care for some now, then?”

  At this Yndris was silent. She gave Çeda a look that had all the smugness of a sibling who knew she’d found something she could hold over her elder sister. But then she bowed her head and strode from the room, closing the door behind her as though she hadn’t a care in the world.

  After Zaïde slipped the rope back over the door, and they heard Yndris’s footsteps fade, Çeda released a pent-up breath. “We’ll never be able to use the tunnel again.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It was a mistake not to make the doors more secure, but I’ll have a Maiden I trust watch the hall to this room.”

  “She’ll tell her father.”

  “I’ll tell him first. One of the many things we’ll be talking about is the flora and fauna of the desert. It so happens there are several type of fungi that we use in our ointments and salves. And there is a special place deep beneath Sharakhai that has a slow flow of water that is especially effective at treating ringworm. There are a dozen reasons more for us to be wandering the tunnels, so think nothing of it. If you’re asked, play innocent. You have no idea when or how often we might visit the tunnels. Give Yndris no reason to suspect anything. But be vigilant as well. We cannot afford more mistakes.”

  “Very well,” Çeda said, though her nerves were frayed.

  “You will come for training six hours each day. I will continue to teach you the way to your heart, and others’, but I will also teach you history, mathematics, and language—your King’s script is passable, but you need much more work on the spoken and written forms of our neighboring kingdoms. We will deepen your knowledge of plants and herbs, how to make healing salves and a range of poisons. And courtly manners, child. Gods know you’re a bull amongst babes. You must learn all these things, quickly and well if you’re to have time to go to Amalos and search for clues.”

  “Why must I learn so much? If I could spend more time with Amalos—”

  “Don’t be foolish. If you do not, the Maidens—or worse, the Kings themselves—will suspect. And besides, you must be trained, Çedamihn. There is much that lies ahead, for all of us.” She took Çeda by the shoulders and took her in from head to toe. “Now you are little more than unsharpened steel, but put a keen edge on you and a fine weapon you shall make.”

  “And if Yndris or someone else comes for me while I’m gone?”

  “I will steer them wide. But few will come, and I’ll make sure that Sayabim keeps Yndris busier than she has ever been in her life. The need to learn is a rite of passage taken seriously among the Maidens. Now, repeat after me.” Zaïde proceeded to show Çeda a series of hand signs—basic directions for left and right and up and down—that would take her through the maze of corridors to the collegium historia. Çeda memorized the sequence and repeated it for Zaïde.

  “Again,” Zaïde said after she’d done it once. Then twice more until she was satisfied. “Good. You’ll show me again when next we meet.”

  Chapter 29

  DAVUD OPENED HIS EYES TO DARKNESS. His head was pounding. He coughed, his throat dry as sand. It was cold in this place. So very cold. He was lying on a bed of warmth-stealing stone that was moist, slick in some places. He pushed himself up off the floor and felt for the walls, stumbling across a bucket. He found water within, a wooden ladle as well. He drank from it desperately, downing as much as his stomach could bear. Only then did he continue his search for the boundaries of this place. He was in a tight cell, a few paces from wall to wall. The air didn’t feel stale, but neither was it fresh. It smelled of the earth—rather like the tunnels below the scriptorium.

  The collegia . . . Sharakhai . . . How far away they seemed. Worlds away. He reasoned he was still somewhere in the desert, but that could be anywhere. The Shangazi wasn’t called the Great Mother for no reason. It was massive. It took weeks to sail from one end to the other.

  Come, Davud. You can reason this out if you try.

  He thought back to the few moments he’d had on the deck of that ship. It had been past midday. And by the angle of the shadows on deck, he judged that they’d been heading on a southeasterly course. Surely they’d been trying to get as far away from Sharakhai as they could. If they kept to the direction they’d been traveling—a suspect assumption at best, but he had to start somewhere—it would land them in the traditional lands of Tribe Kadri or Tribe Kenan. Kadri were nominal allies of the Kings, the Kenan were not, so Davud’s best guess was that they were taking shelter in some Kenan stronghold. He remembered reading of old abandoned mountain keeps that they’d built in the years leading up to the war with Sharakhai. That would place them in the foothills of Iri’s Teeth.

  “All conjecture,” he said into the darkness, the words echoing. “Guesses at best.”

  “And yet guesses can lead to the truth.”

  Davud shivered at the sound of the voice coming from somewhere above.

  “Who’s there?” But he already knew. It was the man who’d looked upon him so curiously on the deck of the ship. Hamzakiir.

  He started as something flapped against the wall near him. He felt it graze his arm. A coarse rope, he discovered after waving his arms back and forth. He held it like an idiot, thinking Hamzakiir might lower himself down, or that one of the Host might.

  “If you wish to remain,” said Hamzakiir, “I can draw the rope back up. There is, as you can well imagine, more than one collegia graduate to occupy my mind.”

  Davud grabbed the coarse rope, tugged on it to ensure it was sound, then began to climb. He was no soldier, no pit fighter to climb such things with ease, and yet it came easier to him than he’d guessed, and soon he had reached the top and levered himself over the stone lip. Strangely, the aches and pains he’d felt upon waking had vanished, leaving him with a heady, exhilarating feeling he could only assume was due to being let out of that terrible hole. Dim light came from a tunnel to his left. High walls surrounded him, but the ceiling above was lost in a sea of darkness.

  “Where are we?”

  Hamzakiir began walking toward the tunnel. “As unimportant as a tally of the grains of sand in the Shangazi.”

  Davud followed when it became clear Hamzakiir would be content to leave him behind. “Where are my friends?
”

  “A much more interesting question. For now, let us leave it aside. We’ll return to it, I promise you.”

  “Why have you brought me up from that hole?”

  “Ah, now we’re nearing the mark.” They reached a room with a small wooden table, with a lantern upon it and another short tunnel that led to a winding set of stairs. Hamzakiir took up the lantern and walked to the stairs, then began climbing up. “You’re a scholar now, is it not so?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then tell me, how did your friends find themselves asleep within our ship?”

  Davud remembered the screams, the rising panic when they realized they were being gassed in the basilica. That was the obvious answer, but from the way Hamzakiir had approached the question, he seemed to be looking for something more. From what he’d learned of the basic alchemy classes he’d taken, he suspected that such an application of gas would last only hours at best. They might have used the gas on them again. It would have been relatively easy to do so in the enclosed space. But he recalled no container or bag in the hold, and there had been no residual scent. More importantly, it would explain the marks of blood they’d all had on their foreheads.

  “You forced us to sleep with blood magic.”

  “Very good,” Hamzakiir said.

  A rush of fresh air hit them as they reached a hallway—ground level, Davud assumed—but Hamzakiir continued up the winding stairwell. There was a strong urge to run down the hall, to find his way out and back into the real world, but what good would that do? Surely there were guards. Or if not, Hamzakiir would be able to stop him with a wave of his hand. He’d have betrayed himself for no gain. He needed to find his friends, to gain his bearings and recover from the ordeal of traveling here.