With Blood Upon the Sand

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  At last, Hamzakiir was done. He wiped the palm of his hand. The blood sizzled, his palm now clean. “Rest now, Davud Mahzun’ava. It was a very near thing, but I think you’ll live. Rest, and when you wake up, you can see your Anila.”

  He wanted desperately to see her now, but knew he couldn’t in this state. He’d no more nodded and made the sort of grunt he hoped would be interpreted as assent than sleep had taken him once more.

  Again he dreamed of Anila, but this time, it was she who killed him in a thousand different ways.

  “Davud.”

  He felt something cold and wet against his forehead, wiping his skin. Then again along his cheek. Did he have a fever?

  The cloth moved more quickly now, more forcefully. “Davud. Please wake.”

  He opened his eyes, squinting against the sun breaking through the closed shutters. He was lying in a bed, a young woman with black hair and expressive brown eyes at his bedside. Her nose and cheeks were covered with light freckles, pale now against her dark skin, a reminder of her youth, she’d said, when she couldn’t get enough of riding horses with her father along the winding bridle paths in the Hanging Gardens to the east of Sharakhai.

  “Anila,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper.

  “You were dreaming.” She looked down at the bloody cloth she held in her hands. “You were calling my name.”

  Davud shook his head. “I don’t recall.” A bald lie, but he couldn’t very well tell her the truth.

  She dipped the cloth into a bowl of water on the table at the bedside, wrung it out, and continued to clean his face. “You seemed scared.”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said sharply. “I don’t know what you’ve been through.” A moment later she softened. “What happened to you, Davud?”

  He wanted to tell her that he’d been through what she’d been through, and to a degree he had, but it would be enough of a lie that he couldn’t let it pass his lips. She knew, or at least suspected, that things had gone differently for him than it had for everyone else who’d been taken here. And surely she was justifiably concerned over being taken away from the others—rescued, in effect—and brought here to find Davud covered in blood.

  “The blood,” Davud said as she wiped his neck. “What patterns were they?”

  She shivered. “Sigils, written in the old script.”

  She was hiding something. He could see it in her eyes, and the way they refused to meet his. “What did they say?”

  “I don’t know all of them.”

  He grabbed her wrist. “Anila, what did they say?”

  She looked about the room, as if by doing so she could find her courage. “They spoke of blood and binding, of unbreakable pacts.”

  Dear gods. And now she’d wiped them away. “Can you re-create them?”

  “What? No!”

  He sat up in his bed to look for a mirror, his body screaming from the effort. There was nothing he might use to see his reflection, however. “Please, you must try.”

  Despite his demand, she began wiping more of the blood away.

  He grabbed her wrists. “Anila, stop it!”

  “Why?”

  “Because I must know what he wrote upon my skin!”

  “It’s too late. It’s gone. I’ve already wiped the rest of it away. It was foul, Davud. I don’t know why you would want to know of it. Just be glad it’s gone.”

  He pulled the blanket back. It was true. Other than a red cast to the skin along his chest and arms and stomach, it was all gone. “How could you have done that?”

  “Davud, you’re hurting me.”

  He looked at her hands, saw how white they were. He released his hold immediately. “I’m sorry,” he said, but he hardly felt the words. Hamzakiir had helped him through his change. That’s what he’d said, wasn’t it? He was going to help him to live beyond this stage, and then what? Fool that he was, he didn’t even know. Perhaps he’d had the conversation with Hamzakiir. He might have. But if so, he couldn’t remember a word of it.

  “What have I done?” he whispered.

  “Davud, tell me what happened.”

  “Where is Hamzakiir?”

  “Who?”

  Davud stared at her, uncomprehending. “Who brought you here?”

  “I don’t know. He was veiled.” She motioned to the door. “They’re down the stairs if you wish to speak with them.”

  Davud stared at the door, inexplicably afraid of stepping into the world again. “What were they doing to you?”

  Anila’s eyes, openly concerned for Davud a moment ago, became every bit as afraid and haunted as Davud felt. “I don’t know. We were kept in a cell. They came for us, one by one. We heard horrible screams. It must have been torture, but what they were hoping to learn from us I cannot say.” She paused. “Do you know?”

  “No,” Davud said, and it was the truth, but Anila stared at him doubtfully.

  “Were you with us?”

  “Yes.” He breathed a sigh of acceptance. “No.”

  “Davud, what are you talking about?”

  “I was with you at first, but when we arrived here, I was kept in a pit.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” He couldn’t tell her the truth. He didn’t wish her to know what Hamzakiir had done to him, what he was now. But Anila had seen him lying here with sigils painted in blood covering his entire body. He may have lived, but he suspected he’d done something he would one day come to regret. It all came down to power. He’d given Hamzakiir power over him, and that was something he should have died before doing.

  “Davud, what were those sigils for?”

  Just then the door opened. They both turned to find Hamzakiir standing in the doorway. “Well, well, the dead have risen. If you’re well, I would have a word with you.” His gaze rested firmly on Davud, excluding Anila from the conversation. Even his body language divided Anila from Davud as he moved to the foot of the bed, his back to her, waving Davud toward the open doorway, a clear indication that Anila would remain. He held a leatherbound book in one hand, a thin tome. The leather and pages looked freshly made.

  Davud felt his insides churn as Anila watched him with a wary expression.

  Hamzakiir gave him an impatient smile. “I suspect you’ll find your legs to be in good working order.”

  Davud took the wet rag from Anila’s hands and wiped away as much of the remaining blood as he could, then stood and pulled on his collegia robes, which had been washed and laid on a chair by the bedside. Any embarrassment he felt over being naked in front of Anila, who refused to avert her gaze, was dwarfed by the knowledge that he’d be leaving her to confer with a man who was, for all the evidence before him, torturing his friends and would likely continue to do so. But he needed to know what had happened to him. And then he would see about leaving this place, taking Anila with him, saving others if he could.

  He left the room, and Hamzakiir closed it behind him. Anila opened the door immediately, shouting, “You’ll not leave me behind!” but a man wearing a turban and desert clothes barred her way. There was another guard on the opposite side of the door. Together, they pushed her back inside the room.

  As the door clattered shut, Hamzakiir, unfazed, strode along the bright ceramic tiles and reached a set of stairs heading down. “Time grows short,” he said.

  Davud rushed to catch up. They wound their way down to ground level and soon were standing in a courtyard at the center of the building. It was well past midday, the sun cutting angular shadows over the walls and onto the winding path through the garden. From beyond the walls, he could hear the sounds of commerce, men calling, women bartering, goats bleating, but here, the courtyard was empty, the windows that looked upon it shuttered, the many doors that led to it all closed.

  Hamzakiir moved to a benc
h near the center, beneath the shade of a palm, not far from the old bronze pump at the center of the courtyard. When Davud sat beside him, Hamzakiir motioned back toward the building they’d just left. “It was a very near thing. You’re strong of will, but you waited so long before reaching out to me.”

  “What did you draw on me?” Davud asked.

  Hamzakiir seemed confused, even slightly affronted. He scratched his chin, then combed his beard back into place, before replying. “I would have thought that was clear. They were sigils, drawn to save your life. Sigils that will continue to work for weeks, sheltering you from the worst of the effects. Sigils that will hide you from those who might try to take advantage of a mage young to the ways of blood.”

  Just how someone might take further advantage of him, Davud wasn’t sure, and he didn’t care to ask just then. He made to ask another question, but Hamzakiir spoke over him.

  “Your mistrust is understandable, and I don’t blame you for it, but there are realities you must now face. Rituals you must perform lest you slip back into the pain and madness you felt in the pit. If you ignore it, you will die.” He raised the leatherbound book. “Use this, and it will serve as your guide in the days and weeks ahead.”

  He held the book out for Davud to take. Davud did, holding it so that a pair of pages near the center of the book were revealed. Sigils were written there in the old language of the desert with ink of rusty red. Davud couldn’t deny their beauty, but he was also quite sure that they’d been drawn in Hamzakiir’s blood. “You wrote this,” he said, more to fill the space between them than a question that needed answering.

  Hamzakiir nodded. “Last night, after your ritual was complete.”

  He read over the instructions that accompanied the sigils. Detailed notes followed each, stating their purpose, the rites he must follow leading up to the drawing of the sigil, and the ones he would follow after.

  “Those in the opening pages will keep you alive. The ones in the following pages will . . . help you rise above your station, should you so choose. Use them or not as you see fit, but do not ignore the first seven pages.”

  “Why?” Davud asked, flipping through the pages. “Why have you done this?”

  “I was the spark that caused the change within you. I was honor-bound to complete it.”

  “That’s all?”

  Hamzakiir considered this for a time, as if deciding how much to share. “There was someone I recently made a similar offer to. I was fairly certain he would deny me. But still, I had hoped he would accept.”

  “And you think this somehow evens the scales?”

  “Had we two been born in Mirea, both of us would believe so.”

  “But we weren’t.”

  Hamzakiir smiled. “Had we met under different circumstances, I would continue your training myself. It is of course impossible now, for many reasons, but I advise you to find another mage when you return to Sharakhai. It won’t be easy, and I suspect before long one will come to you, one you mightn’t like to have as your master, so work quickly.”

  “I know of no mages in Sharakhai.”

  “You’re resourceful and you’re smart. You’ll find one if you look carefully enough.”

  Amalos, Davud thought. He’ll be able to help.

  But would he? Amalos might have loved Davud once, but he wouldn’t after this. How could he?

  “You haven’t saved me,” Davud said. “You’ve cursed me.”

  “It is part curse, to be sure. I freely acknowledge it. But if you embrace the red ways, they are more freeing than you can ever imagine. We touch the blood of the first gods, the very stuff of creation. Isn’t that worth what you’ve gone through?”

  “What are you going to do to my friends?”

  Hamzakiir stood. “I’ll be putting both you and Anila on a ship tonight. You will sail for Sharakhai, but will arrive well after this business with your friends is done.” He took one step toward the door through which they’d entered the courtyard. “Farewell, Davud Mahzun’ava.”

  “Wait! Tell me!”

  Hamzakiir ignored him, striding for the stairwell. Davud stood and ran toward him, but as he did, a veiled man in dark desert garb broke away from the shadows of the doorway and intercepted him.

  He shouted after Hamzakiir, “What are you going to do to my friends?” mere moments before the guard sent a fist crashing into his stomach. Davud crumpled, his breath whooshing from his lungs. He clutched his gut, his breath refusing to come for long moments, but then finally it did in one long, wet rasp, and pain came with it.

  “One more shout like that,” the guardsman said, “and I’ll undo all the good work my lord has done. Do you understand?”

  As Hamzakiir’s form vanished into the darkness of the stairwell, Davud nodded.

  All too soon the sun was setting and Davud was aboard a ship, a small, two-masted ketch, and had set sail. Anila had at first refused to go, demanding to know where the others were. She had screamed until the guard, the same brute that had punched Davud in the stomach, wrapped one arm around her throat and squeezed until her face had gone red and she’d fallen unconscious. By the time she woke the sun was setting over the desert. They could see it through the small starboard window of the cabin they shared, casting golden light, then a bloody, muddy red against the distant clouds.

  “You bargained for my life, didn’t you?” Anila asked as she sat on her bunk.

  Davud was seated, leaning forward, hands in his lap, staring at the planks of the ship’s hull. “Yes.”

  “What did you give up in return?”

  I’m not even sure, Davud thought. Hamzakiir claimed he’d saved Davud because of an unwritten code among the magi. Perhaps it was, but he couldn’t help shaking the feeling there was more to it. “I just wanted to save you.”

  “But not the others?”

  “Of course the others. I tried to, Anila. I did.”

  “How hard?”

  Not nearly hard enough. “We have to return to Sharakhai and let them know what’s happened.”

  “They won’t return us to Sharakhai until his plans have been completed.”

  “Then what we know may help bring him to justice.”

  Anila lay down and faced the curving hull. “I know you were trying to help me, Davud, but their faces haunt me already. Their cries. I cannot be free while they remain there, being tortured every day.”

  “Yet here we are.”

  Anila rolled over and glared at him in disgust, then faced the hull once more. “Not for long.”

  Chapter 38

  RAMAHD FELT SOMETHING HARD nudge him in the side. “Come,” came Meryam’s voice, dragging him out of a dream he’d been having of a desert oasis. He’d been swimming with a woman—Meryam, he realized now. They’d been circling one another in the cool water, moving slowly closer. Ramahd had been trying to reach out to her, but she’d been playful, swimming away when he came too close. Gods, how he wanted her.

  Again something blunt bored into his ribs. “Up, Ramahd!”

  He opened his eyes to find Meryam poking him with her shoe as he lay on the couch in her room. They’d been working late again last night, and had been doing so for nearly a full day. Meryam had tried over and over to keep him up, reasoning that they might miss something important, but finally she’d relented when Tariq had gone to sleep.

  He looked over to the nearby windows, where the light of dawn leaked in through gauzelike drapes. For a moment the drapes lifted in the warm, oddly humid wind. “Did it rain?” he asked.

  “For a time,” Meryam replied, moving about the room, setting a tray of marbled cheese, dates, grapes, and a golden, crusty bread with white and black sesame seeds embedded in its crust. She poured jasmine tea for him as he tore off a hunk of bread and slathered the soft, smoky cheese over the still-warm interior.

  As he chewed and sipped t
ea, coming slowly awake, Meryam said, “I’ve been summoned to Tauriyat.”

  “By whom?” he replied around the sweet meat of a date. When Meryam didn’t respond with a sharp retort, merely going about the business of making a plate of her own, Ramahd began to understand. “By King Ihsan?”

  She pulled a nearby chair closer to the couch, sat, and pulled a grape from the bunch on her plate. “I suspect he’ll want to know why the Queen of Qaimir has not yet called upon him.”

  “And will you go to see him, the Honey-tongued King?”

  “Eventually I must, but I put him off for now, claiming a mourning period for my father.”

  “That’s probably for the best, at least until this business with Tariq is done.” Ramahd had met Ihsan many times, and knew him to be a dangerous man. He had a way of making one speak about things one didn’t really wish to speak of. Meryam would do fine, however. There wasn’t a woman or man alive he trusted more to keep secrets.

  Meryam pulled up the hem of her skirt and put her feet up on the couch cushions in a gesture so relaxed, so intimate, that Ramahd nearly laughed. The places we’ve been. The things we’ve done. He wondered, not for the first time, where the two of them might be if he’d met Meryam before Yasmine. Never mind that her father, King Aldouan, wouldn’t have allowed it. And never mind that the very thought made Ramahd feel as though he were betraying Yasmine’s memory a thousand times over. He couldn’t help but wonder if he and Meryam might have been happy. And if Yasmine might not still be alive.

  But then he would never have had Rehann. Her life had been cut short, true, but he would trade those bittersweet years for nothing. “The gods cast the dice when we’re born,” he’d once told Rehann, “and we live the life they’ve decided for us.”

  “But who casts the dice for the gods?” she’d asked him.

  Who indeed, my darling child?

  “Are you ready?” Meryam asked, popping the last of the grapes into her mouth.