“Try,” Anila said. She was staring at him as if she knew exactly what she was asking—risk it, her look said, or this will all have been for naught.
He knew he shouldn’t. He promised himself he would wait until he returned to Sharakhai, where he might be taught by those who knew better. She didn’t have the right to ask this of him, but he couldn’t shake that look of hers. You owe me. And she was right.
“Very well,” he said.
After taking a deep breath, he summoned a mote of flame. It was tiny, almost insubstantial, floating over his palm like two warring moths. He made it grow to the size of a grape, then a walnut. “I’m not really sure how to throw it,” he said after a time. When he moved his hand, the flame moved with him.
“If you can draw the flame into you, then you can force it away.” She motioned to the slope of the nearby dune. “Try there.”
Davud closed his fist. He stood and faced the dune, then summoned the fire again. It wavered more than it had the first time, but at least it wasn’t the size of a gnat. He licked his lips, tried to stabilize it, but that only seemed to make it worse. Anila watched him with hungry eyes, as if she desperately wished she were the one wielding the flame. It made him entirely uncomfortable, though he couldn’t have said exactly why.
“Is it so different from alchemy,” she asked, “finding the balance between components?”
“It is nothing like alchemy,” he replied. Like a dust devil, the swirling flame dissipated, then reconstituted a moment later, brighter than before. “The balance you have to maintain is so delicate.”
“It’s only that the components are different.”
“That’s like saying a painting is merely shades of color.”
“It is.”
“Stop being such a deconstructionist. Art is more than its base components. True art touches the artist’s soul, and that in turn touches others’. Why else does it affect those who view it years or even centuries later?”
Her brow knitted, but her eyes lost none of their intensity. She said no more, waiting for him to try. But it was so difficult merely to maintain the effect. It was not as though the flame were some physical object he were holding. He could feel it, but it wasn’t like his hand or his arm. It was as if the flame were an opening to another world—a world inside him, perhaps, or another plane of existence, he couldn’t tell which—and what he was doing was merely allowing some small part of it to manifest.
As he drew his arm back, preparing to fling the fire toward the dune, the flame wavered. He reformed it with conscious thought. The doorway to that other place was so difficult to shape and maintain; if he wasn’t careful, the floodgates would open and too much would pour forth.
That one small doubt became a worry, that worry, fear, and all too soon the fear became a certainty, a self-fulfilling prophecy. The delicate balance within him shifted. His mind went wild with terror that he’d harm himself, that he’d harm Anila, and suddenly it was all he could do to contain it.
The sleeve of his kaftan burst into flame. Anila shouted, backed away from him, but he could spare no concern for her. He was too busy trying to contain the fire threatening to run wild within him. Anila returned, a gray blanket trailing behind her like a dead man’s cloak. She lifted it into the air, shouting something to him, when it all became too much. His world became fire and fear and a black pit that yawned open beneath him.
Davud screamed. His mind scrabbled for purchase. And yet down, down he fell, the darkness calling, its arms wide, welcome and waiting and so very, very hungry.
Davud woke with a start.
It was still night. He stared at the sky for a long while, realizing Tulathan had risen, had moved halfway across the sky, in fact. He lay next to the fire, which was burning more brightly than was wise. Anila lay behind him, her arms draped over his body. The bedrolls cocooned the two of them. The smell of burnt hair was strong.
And he was cold. So cold.
He remembered the chill feeling sweeping over him even as his sleeve caught fire. How fast it had happened! How dissonant the cold was against the blaze of heat. He remembered falling as well. The sheer terror within him, blotting out all other emotions and conscious thought. Now that he was distanced from it, though, he could set aside the fear and see the sort of thing he’d held in his hand. Never in his life had he wielded real power. Amalos always told him that knowledge was power, and that was true as far as it went, but this . . . The fire coursing through him. The sheer rush of it. The things he might do if he could master it. The wrongs he might right. The very thought sent a chill down his spine.
Anila stirred. “Are you awake?” she whispered.
“Go back to sleep,” he whispered back.
She pulled him closer. The smell of her skin, her hair, her cheek against his neck. It made for a heady mixture, indeed. “I thought you were going to die.”
“I tried to do too much.”
“I shouldn’t have pushed you.”
“I knew better, Anila. I shouldn’t have relented.”
“I’m sorry, Davud.”
“We’ll be more careful next time.”
“No. I mean about Hamzakiir. You were trapped, just like I was. Just like all the rest. How were you to know what he would do?”
“I wanted to save everyone.”
She ran her hand along his chest, then leaned in and kissed his neck. It felt like lightning running through him. “I know.”
The sun was brightening the eastern sky.
“We’d better get moving,” Davud said.
“We will.” She hugged him to her. “Soon enough.”
For a time they lay like that, sharing one another’s warmth. The fire died down, became embers—golds within reds, nestled in a bed of black. The sun had just touched the horizon when Davud rose and kicked sand over the fire lest it smoke.
“Davud?”
He spun at the sound of panic in her voice. She was staring at the horizon. Davud saw only wave after wave of rolling dunes. But then he spotted it. From this distance they looked like sharp blades—the lateen sails of a sandship. The Burning Sand. He knew her lines well.
“They might not know we’re here,” Davud said. “Sail now and we might give our position away.”
They were hopeful words but also naive, and they both knew it. Without either of them saying another word, they burst into motion. In less than a minute, they were in the skiff and sailing across the sand. Davud checked their position using the sextant and the stars still visible, adjusting course once he was satisfied with the path they were taking toward Ishmantep.
Anila watched the trailing ship as Davud steered. “By my estimate,” she said, “we have four days of sailing before Ishmantep rises over the desert.”
Davud nodded numbly. “They’ll not rest at night now that they’ve found our scent. But at least the skiff is faster.”
“Not by much. And the moons will be bright. The way ahead is clear. They’ll be able to sail all hours while we—”
“We’ll trade off,” Davud said, not at all confident they’d be able to sail for three more nights straight and not risk getting caught in one of the deep furrows between dunes, or worse, catch on a rock and lose one of the skis. “We’ll be fine.”
Anila was crying. She wiped away her tears, her eyes locked on the trailing ship, a ship filled with men and women who would likely kill them the moment they caught up with them. “I should have let them take us to Sharakhai,” she said. “I should have been content with telling the Silver Spears what happened and let them go in force to Ishmantep. Now we’re going to die on the sands, Davud.”
“Anila.” She remained as she was, eyes filled with regret. “Anila!” he shouted at her. She turned to him. “You were right to do it. I should have done it myself. I should have done more in Ishmantep. You and I?” He stabbed one finger toward the Bu
rning Sand. “We’re going to stay ahead of that ship. We’re going to reach the caravanserai before them. The gods will see to the rest.”
The fear in her was palpable, but at his words, she sat taller and nodded. They sailed throughout the day, and for a while it seemed as though they were distancing themselves from the Burning Sand, but after midday, the wind grew stronger, and the trailing ship started to gain on them. Neither he nor Anila said a word about it, but they both knew their fates now rested with the fickle wind. The skiff had the advantage when the wind was low, but when it blew stronger, the sails of the two-masted ketch could catch more and power their ship faster over the grasping sands.
They jettisoned what they could. A length of rope. Canvas they might have used to patch the sails. The two small axes they’d found in the supplies. They upended the crates that held their remaining water, hardtack, smoked meat, and other provisions into the hull of the skiff, then threw the crates over the side as well.
From what Davud could tell, it made little difference. Captain Rasime was gaining on them. Davud thought surely the ship would catch them by nightfall, but they were still a half league out when the sun set. And then, thank Goezhen for his kindness, the wind lost some of its fury.
They sailed through the night, Anila first, then Davud, one sleeping as the other steered. Day came again and they led much the same chase as they had the day before: the Burning Sand catching up over the course of the day, the wind dying and the skiff putting distance between them at night, except this time, they’d come within a quarter league of their skiff. The crew climbed the masts and the rigging. They called and whooped. “Lai, lai, lai, lai!” A simple enough statement to understand: Flee as you will, we’ll dig your sandy graves all the same.
Davud and Anila ate sparingly. They spoke seldom, but as the sun broke the horizon the following day, Anila said, “They’ll catch us today if the wind is the same.”
“It will be different.”
“And if it isn’t?”
Davud kept his eyes focused ahead, hoping. “It will be.”
“Davud, don’t delude yourself.”
He tore his gaze away from the horizon. “Well, what do you suggest? I can’t very well make the ship go faster!”
“But you could, Davud.” She motioned to Hamzakiir’s book in the bottom of the skiff. “If you tried.”
“It’s too dangerous,” he said. “I nearly killed myself last time.”
“We’re going to die if they catch up with us, and it won’t be a quick death, not after what I did to Tayyar.”
For a moment, the vision of Tayyar lying on the matted grass, bloody, skull caved in by a rock wielded by Anila’s hand, came to him. He pushed the image away. “The wind will favor us.”
But it didn’t. The wind blew across their bow with the sort of zeal that made it seem as though the desert itself were eager to find out what would happen when the Burning Sand caught up to them at last. Indeed, slowly but surely the trailing ship was closing the distance, a half league, then a quarter. At midday, Anila took the book and held it out to Davud. “Use it, Davud.”
He stared at it for a long while, then glanced back at the looming ketch. Gods, it was getting close. He took the book and allowed Anila to take the tiller, then shifted forward. He began poring over the sigils for wind and command. He practiced drawing it in the sand collected at the bottom of the skiff.
“Enough,” Anila said an hour later.
“It needs to be perfect.”
“It is perfect. You were always the best of us with ink and quill, Davud. I know you’re stalling.”
“I can’t do it, Anila.”
“What, the spell? Of course you can.”
“No, I can’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I need blood!”
One’s own blood gives power, Hamzakiir’s book mentioned more than once, but not nearly so much as another’s. He could tell by Anila’s sudden nervousness that she knew exactly what he meant. Her jaw stiffened as she held out her hand. “Take all that you wish.”
“It isn’t that simple.”
She shook her hand, eyes defiant, black hair blowing in the wind. “It is that simple. You need it. I have it. Take it, Davud, and save us both.”
A horn blew behind them. Davud could see Rasime standing far forward along the bowsprit, one hand on the rigging, the other holding a curving horn. Like a revenant, she was, looming at the head of a ghost ship. “We’ll bury your bones!” came her faint voice. “We’ll bury your bones and the Great Mother will grind them for a thousand years then a thousand more!”
Davud swallowed, trying to ignore their incessant clashing of swords. “Very well,” he said, and took up his knife. He took Anila’s wrist and pressed the sharp tip into her forearm. Blood flowed. He placed his lips over the wound and tasted her blood while summoning the sigil to the fore of his mind. He drew more and more still, the metallic clang of the swords becoming rhythmic, a perfect match to the cadence of Anila’s heart.
He felt Anila’s body. Her very soul. He felt her fear, but also the exhilaration coursing through her as she fed him magic. The skin along her arm was chill to the touch, but her heart was an inferno. “Now, Davud. Do it now!”
He stood as a black arrow streaked in and speared into the hull of the skiff. Another tore through the sail’s canvas as Davud slipped one arm free of his kaftan, then the other. After shrugging the kaftan so that it fell around his hips, he took more blood from Anila’s arm and used it to draw the sigil on his pale, bared chest.
“Take him down!” Rasime shouted, pointing at him with the tip of her swinging shamshir. “Take him down!”
The few arrows loosed so far had been in warning. But no longer. Now a dozen men and women stood along the starboard bow, launching arrows in a high arc.
“Get down,” Davud said. His voice shook, but he didn’t care. As Anila obeyed, crouching low and guiding the skiff over the lip of a dune, Davud drew the symbol deeper in his mind, calling the wind, forcing it against the ketch.
It came slowly at first. A subtle shift in the wind that made their sail thrum. A lifting of spindrift that spun in the air like a nautilus shell before dissipating. A gust that rolled over the Burning Sand’s rigging like a hand plucking notes from a harp.
More arrows flew. Some splashed harmlessly into the sand. Others knifed into the hull. Anila was low, crablike, her eyes wide with fear. “Davud, Hurry!”
Davud tried to ignore her. The last thing he needed was—
Bright white fire tore into his left leg. He looked down and found an arrow sprouting from his thigh. He screamed, one hand reaching down reflexively to clutch at the wound. His fear was as great as Anila’s, but now there was anger, too. Anger over all that had happened since Sharakhai. The sleeping gas in the basilica. Waking on a ship and finding Collum dead. Being given the ultimatum from Hamzakiir. Being toyed with. Being driven to choose between his own death and saving Anila. Being chased by this infernal ship! It built like a storm, then swept forward so quickly it was on him in moments.
A fresh volley of arrows stippled the sky. Days ago, with the fire, Davud had had trouble finding the balance between drawing too little and too much. Not so today. Either his anger or Anila’s blood or the simple repetition of the experience allowed him to raise one hand and brush the arrows aside. Like leaves caught in a summer gale, they were thrown well wide of the skiff. Then Davud concentrated on the Burning Sand.
Power raged through him, consuming Anila’s blood. Sand and wind drove against their enemy’s ship, rippling the sails, pulling at the rigging. Rasime’s orders were nearly swallowed by the howl of the wind, but Davud could hear the fear in her voice. He was glad for it, glad she could feel fear as he had felt it. Ropes snapped. Sails ripped. As the ship tipped up the side of a dune, a crewman on the mainmast fell and was lost to the billowing
sand.
The Burning Sand began to fall behind. Davud released his hold on the gale, allowing it to expend the last of its energy unaided. He spared some small amount for their skiff, though, pushing them onward at a speed he hadn’t realized a skiff could reach.
Anila had been watching with wide eyes, but as the Burning Sand was lost from view entirely, swallowed by the massive cloud of dust Davud’s spell had drawn from the desert, she stood, heedless of the unattended tiller. Throwing her hands into the air and tipping her head back, she shouted, then laughed with complete abandon, her face toward the sun in an exultant display of emotion.
“You were brilliant, Davud!” She took him into a tight embrace. “Do you hear me? Tulathan’s bright eyes, you were bloody brilliant!”
This time, when she began to laugh, Davud joined her.
Chapter 47
AFTER RAMAHD’S NARROW ESCAPE from the Tattered Prince, the days became interminably long. Meryam would not wake. Ramahd thought she might be have been caught by the strange presence they’d felt within that deep blue gem around drug-addled Brama’s neck, but he started to think otherwise when her sleeping rhythms settled, becoming more akin to those she had after drawing overly on the power of blood. It was certainly cause for hope, but when it went on, day after day, he worried she would stay this way until she died of malnutrition.
She was well cared for. The servants of their house knew how to deal with her condition. But if her sleep continued too long, even their skills would prove insufficient and Meryam would eventually pass. Ramahd could even see it in Basilio’s eyes, a certain well-masked hunger as he asked after her. Ramahd wanted to drive a fist into his face for it, but for now it was best if Basilio didn’t suspect they knew of his allegiance to the cabal in Qaimir that plotted against Meryam.
He had other things to worry about in any case, not the least of which the possibility that Tariq—and by extension, the crime lord, Osman—had learned of their identities. Osman wasn’t known for assassinations, but Ramahd wasn’t so green that he thought him above it. And even if the repercussions proved less drastic, neither he nor Meryam needed the attention. Their greatest weapon in Sharakhai had been the care they’d taken to hide their true purpose. If Osman found out, he might try to make life difficult for them, either by blackmailing Meryam, or worse, selling their secrets to the Kings. Ramahd resigned himself to that possibility. If it came to pass, they could likely weather such a storm. The Kings knew of Meryam’s abilities, but thought they were being directed, as Ramahd had hinted on several occasions, toward the capture of Macide and others in the Moonless Host.
With Blood Upon the Sand Page 54