“Seven weeks ago. Eight.”
“And since then?”
“One night . . .” He blinked and shook his head, as if trying to clear a vision. “One night I heard noises coming from the caravanserai.”
“What sort of noises? Tell me what happened, Belivan.”
“I was walking home from my sister’s house. We aren’t supposed to go through the caravanserai, but I’ve done it from time to time and no one has ever said anything against it. I was walking through the courtyard, and by Bakhi’s good grace, I heard it. Wailing. Calls that would wake the dead from their sandy graves.”
Outside, the wind picked up. It whined beneath the closed shop door as a chill crawled down Çeda’s skin. Melis glanced at it. Çeda could tell she was ready to leave, that she wanted to return to the others. Çeda did as well—Emre was in danger—but they needed to know more. Melis caught Çeda’s eye, and she made the sign, be ready, so only Çeda could see, then turned back to Belivan. “How often?”
Belivan’s brow pinched as if he were trying to solve a particularly difficult riddle, but Çeda recognized it for what it was—pain over his inaction, pain from hearing the wailing and doing nothing about it because there was nothing he could do. It was a look that everyone in Sharakhai was intimately familiar with, for it happened every night of Beht Zha’ir, when men and women huddled in their homes, unable to do anything to stop the culling of human lives, the sacrifice the asirim took from their city. “I should have stayed away,” Belivan said. “But the sound was so desperate. I hoped I’d been dreaming . . .”
“But you hadn’t been,” Melis said.
He shook his head. “I went back the next few nights and heard nothing, but on the third night, I heard them again. And again two days later.” He squeezed his eyes, tears falling against the Maidens’ leatherbound journal. “I don’t know who they’ve taken, but I fear for their souls.”
“How long have the Maidens been gone? When was the last time you saw them?”
“Five weeks ago. Perhaps more.”
He was about to speak further when Melis whirled and whispered, “Sümeya,” mere moments before the sound of shouting and swordplay filtered in through the shop’s front door.
Melis rushed into the street. Çeda followed and together they ran back toward the caravanserai. There were people in the street now, some of them stumbling from their mudbrick homes. Some grabbed their children and headed back indoors. Others watched as Çeda and Melis ran with swords drawn. More shouts came—shouts of anger, not pain—followed by the ring of steel.
In little time Çeda and Melis reached the dock surrounding the caravanserai. “Go to the ship,” she said to Çeda, “bring the Spears and whatever crewmen can come. And by Goezhen’s dark kiss, keep your eyes peeled for danger.”
As she sprinted away, Çeda ran for the Javelin. The soldiers had heard the sounds of conflict, but it still took time to get them organized and off the ship. With Çeda leading the way, they charged along the dock, a dozen of them in all, swords at the ready. She led them down the short tunnel to the courtyard when all sounds of swordplay abruptly ended, as if one of the old gods had returned and swept them away with a wave of his hand.
“Be wary,” Çeda said to the soldiers behind her, then led them into the courtyard, leery of an ambush. But they found the courtyard empty.
Except . . . The bronze pump at the center of the courtyard was rotating. Beneath its base, Çeda saw a hole with stairs leading down into the darkness, but the hole was slowly being covered by the pump’s stone base. She sprinted forward. “Quickly now,” she said as she sat on the dusty stone and set her feet against the base. As the men closed in around her, she held the lip and heaved, pressing with her legs. The men followed suit, bellowing as they shouldered the pump’s handle or the patina-covered mouth or strained at the base.
In the end, the mechanism was too strong, and Çeda was forced to release the stone before her fingers were severed. The pump set home with a boom that shook the very ground.
“What shall we do, Maiden?” one of the Spears asked.
They all stared at her, awaiting orders. Gods, what could she do? A year ago she would gladly have left a Blade Maiden to whatever fate awaited her, but she knew she couldn’t do that. Not any longer. She turned to the doorway where Sümeya had been questioning Lord Aziz. “Come,” she said. “Be wary.”
Even before she gained the room, she noted the sickly sweet smell in the air, the same odor she’d smelled on the floorboards of the Maidens’ barracks. When she rushed through the open doorway she found Aziz lying unconscious near the center of the room. Emre lay just next to him, blinking groggily and pulling himself up off the floor. Lying next to them like fallen dolls were three bodies, swords near to hand. Blood stained their blue kaftans. Swaths of red painted the inlaid floor beneath their still forms. These were the men Şaban had brought with him to the docks when the Javelin had arrived. His servants. Or his assassins. Çeda knew not which. As Emre sat up and coughed, she moved to each of them and pulled their veils away. By the gods. They were the same as one another. The very same. From their lips to their chin to the mole on their right cheek.
“What happened?” she asked Emre as she knelt by his side. He stared at her with a look of confusion. He took in Aziz’s prone body, then the dead men. His eyes were heavy until she gripped his jaw and forced him to look at her. “What happened?”
When he spoke, his words were slurred. “Şaban . . . He stormed in with his men. They were devils with swords, Çeda. They fought the Maidens, and for a time held their own. But when it looked like the tide was turning, Şaban threw something down in the center of the room. There.” He pointed to the floor where bits of glass lay like the pieces of a shattered star. “The room filled with smoke, and . . . that’s the last thing I remember until I heard you screaming in the courtyard. I thought you were dying, Çeda.”
Çeda smiled grimly. “Not yet, gods willing.”
Just then Emre’s eyes went impossibly wide. He crawled backward as the sound of labored breathing came from somewhere behind Çeda. She turned and found the two asirim standing hunched in the doorway, faces gaunt, eyes sallow, their long, blackened fingers flexing. The Silver Spears stood at the ready, but looked on them with naked fear. They practically tripped over themselves to make way as the two sad creatures slouched into the room, arms twitching, eyes assessing everyone with a hunger Çeda could now feel.
“Take Emre and Aziz back to the ship,” Çeda said to four of the Spears. “Stay there until we return. The rest of you, light lamps and come with me.”
She returned to the pump. The asirim obeyed her silent command to follow, but slowly, grudgingly. She pointed to the pump. “Open it.” When they didn’t respond, she shouted, “Open it!”
She could feel Kerim, the closer of the two, his amusement over her command even as the yoke the gods had placed across his shoulders pained him. I am not bound to you, daughter of Ahyanesh.
It was true. Kameyl still commanded them. Apparently there hadn’t been enough time to draw them near. Kerim wouldn’t obey her, not without being forced to. He’d decided she wasn’t worthy. She had no time to worry about his feelings now, though. She knew it to be a grave insult to do so, but she pressed her will upon Kerim. He resisted, and Çeda could feel Kameyl’s bond to him as well, but soon both the existing bond and Kerim’s will gave before Çeda’s need.
Kerim’s rage burned bright as a bonfire, not just for the Kings and the Maidens, but for Çeda—especially for Çeda. I didn’t wish it to be thus, she told him. When he gave no reply, she turned to the other. Tell me your name.
The asir ignored her, stretching its neck as if the very question pained it. Its yellowed eyes flicked toward Kerim, perhaps asking for permission. “Your name,” Çeda said aloud, to the confused looks of the Silver Spears.
The asir swallowed, then emitted a g
urgling sound that made Çeda’s heart weep. The asir tried again, and this time, Çeda heard it. A name uttered with the insect buzz of a voice that hadn’t been used in decades. “Mynolia.” Çeda was surprised to hear it voiced aloud, but she could hear the strong note of pride in the asir’s voice, could see it echoed in her fierce, bloodshot eyes.
Will you join me, Mynolia?
Join her willingly, she meant. She didn’t wish to force Mynolia as she had Kerim. She thought she might have to, for her question was met with silence, but then at last she nodded.
Like a knife pressing between two halves of a walnut, Çeda slipped her will between Mynolia and Kameyl. It was easier than before, but still difficult, and she was sure she’d have to explain herself later—to Kameyl and Sümeya and surely Mesut as well—but there was nothing for it now. She needed the asirim’s help.
She headed back to the courtyard and pointed to the pump. Turn it, she bid them. Mynolia immediately obeyed, grabbing the pump’s handle with one hand, the throat with the other. Kerim crawled low to the ground, yipping like a hyena. His fingers gouged the earth, but then he set to it, wrapping his arms around the base and straining against the pump’s hidden weight.
“Shall we help them, Maiden?” the captain asked, though it was clear from his look that he hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.
Likely Kerim would not attack them, but she didn’t want to chance it unless it was necessary. She pointed to a decorative stone near the base of a date palm instead. “No. Just roll that closer, and be ready to wedge it in.”
The asirim’s muscles pulled taut as shroud lines. Their lips pulled back in rictus grins, revealing chipped, yellowed teeth. Slowly, the pump turned. When the stairs were revealed, the Spears rolled the stone into place, wedging the way open. One of the Spears, a bull of a man, offered Çeda a lantern. She took it and headed down along tight, winding stairs. The asirim followed on all fours, moving like dogs eager for the hunt. The eight Silver Spears came last. They reached a landing some thirty feet below. On level ground at last, Çeda drew her ebon sword and rushed along a limestone passageway that wavered beneath the lantern’s uneven light.
Soon they reached a point where the passageway split, but the fresh blood dotting the floor made for an easy trail to follow. They twisted through this place, and it quickly became clear that this was no mere underground lair; it was a carefully constructed place with markings that spoke of ancient days. Perhaps a temple to the elder gods, or one of the earliest made in honor of the young gods.
A darkened doorway yawned to their left. The rotted smell from that room was so strong it was difficult to approach. The asirim went before her, sniffing, yapping their way deeper into the darkness. Putting her sleeve across her face in a vain attempt at stifling the smell, Çeda followed. Along the right side of the room, wavering in the lamplight, stood dozens of copper vats and iron implements on stands. Their utility Çeda could only guess at. In the center of the room were six stone beds, and upon them she could see glistening remnants. Raising her lantern high, she could make out the outline of legs, torso, arms, and head.
She felt light-headed. It was the smell, she knew. It might overwhelm her if she wasn’t careful, so she looked through the rest of the room quickly before heading back into the hallway where a blessed breeze was clearing the smell from the air. Somewhere far ahead, a battle cry echoed through the catacombs, and again came the sounds of steel on steel.
“Go,” she called to the asirim. “Find them. Protect my sister Maidens.”
Conflict raged within the asirim. Some part of them wished desperately to rend the flesh from her and the Silver Spears, but they also relished the mere thought of inflicting pain on anyone to appease their ever-gnawing hunger. They ran ahead with a loping gate, faster than Çeda could run.
They came at last to a vast room with mammoth pillars running along its length. Each pillar had a lantern hanging from it, but the thing giving off the most light was a body burning with strange blue-green flames that filled the air with thick smoke and an acrid smell that made Çeda’s stomach turn. On the far side of the room stood a statue that towered fifty feet high. It had the form of some forgotten god, kneeling, hands resting on its knees, palms facing upward. The god had the head of a jackal, its opaline eyes bright and mischievous.
Beyond the flaming body, a dozen dead men wearing the garb of the desert tribes—thawbs and ghoutras and keffiyehs—littered the floor. And beyond them a battle raged near the base of the god. Sümeya, Kameyl, Melis, and Yndris were all there, their ebon blades arcing, fending off blows from a dozen enemies.
As she ran toward them, Çeda caught movement from a darkened tunnel to the right of the towering statue. Her breath caught as she saw the naked, fleshy form issuing from it.
“Bakhi save us,” one of the Spears intoned.
The creature might have been a man once—she could see its shriveled cock wag as it shambled forth—but now it was an ungainly, corpulent thing, staggering with half-healed scars complicating a strange topography of gangrenous skin. A second lumbered out from the tunnel, another man, and then a third, a woman, each like foul simulacrums of wool-stuffed dolls, the soldiers of a mad child.
By the gods, Emre, what have you got us into?
She knew they were the collegia students, turned by blood and the wicked hand of a mage into the poor, shambling creatures she saw before her. She knew that Hamzakiir had presided over their ghastly transformation. But Goezhen’s sweet kiss, why? Why take young men and women, peaceful souls, and do this to them?
The shambling forms advanced with an awkward gait, as if they could barely remain standing for the pain it caused them. Their faces, too, echoed a horror Çeda could only guess at.
Her terror rose with every step they took. “Them,” she said to the asirim, pointing. “Take them down.”
The asirim immediately heeded her call, wailing as another form darkened the tunnel. It was Şaban, studying the scene with something akin to satisfaction before receding into the darkness of the tunnel. Rhia’s bright eyes, it was never Lord Aziz who had the answers. It was Şaban, who was surely Hamzakiir in disguise.
Çeda made for the tunnel, hoping to catch him. Ahead of her, as the asir approached the nearest of the shamblers. The man’s porcine eyes widened, a host of emotions playing across his face: mostly fear, but anger and confusion as well. His flesh turned a dark shade of yellow. He shook violently, skin shaking miserably, fists quivering before him. A moan escaped him, low at first but rising quickly to new heights. It was a call that sent a cold spike of fear through Çeda’s heart. The thing bent over, and bore down, his midsection widening to degrees Çeda would never have thought possible.
Çeda gave a piercing whistle. Danger! Right flank! Melis, Sümeya, and Yndris immediately disengaged and retreated. Kameyl, however, did not.
Mynolia leapt upon the shambler moments before it burst with such violence that it shook the entire chamber. The very air pressed against Çeda, sending her back a step. Far, far worse was the effect it had on those closer. A sickly ichor bloomed from the point where the shambling man had once stood. It spattered over Mynolia, who’d been flung free in the burst. It sprayed over the statue of the god and the other lumbering creatures. It coated many of Hamzakiir’s men. Kameyl, though partly protected by the men in front of her, caught some of the dark liquid across her right side.
The low thrum of the eruption died down, but following it, depthless howls of pain filled every corner of this forgotten place. It came from Hamzakiir’s men, from Kameyl, and especially from Mynolia, who lay writhing on the floor, her black skin hissing as the viscous substance ate its way through her. Even the stone of the god’s knees smoked from the foul liquid, whatever it was.
The two other shamblers appeared unharmed. They were shaking now as well, their color deepening. Çeda whistled—back!—a split second before Sümeya gave the very same order with
a whistle of her own.
This time Kameyl listened. She was covering her face and favoring her left side, but she still held her sword in hand. Hamzakiir’s swordsmen scrambled backward, too, eyes wide with fear. They hadn’t been forewarned, then. Hamzakiir had forsaken them.
Çeda was just able to draw Kerim back through a force of will driven by her quickly building fear. The two remaining shamblers burst—thoom, thoom—spraying their deadly ichor over the temple steps and the two fallen men. The screams of the fallen soldiers rose to new heights, but they fell silent soon after. Their bodies stilled as a grayish-green gas rose from their lifeless forms.
The five surviving tribesmen stared wide-eyed at the devastation, at their fallen brothers. Their weapons hung limply in their hands. When they realized how outmanned they were—five Maidens, an asir, and eight Silver Spears standing ready to oppose them—they dropped their swords. All of them had been splattered to one degree or another by the ichor. They grimaced, sucked air through gritted teeth. They stared first at the Maidens, then at the gelatinous remains of the howlers, things controlled by a man they had no doubt considered an ally.
Kameyl stood before them, sword still in hand, the embodiment of cold steel, Kings’ law, and righteous anger. The body that had been burning when they entered was no longer aflame, leaving the lamps to light the massive space, but, despite the relative dark, Çeda could still see the burn marks on Kameyl’s face and right hand. Kameyl’s lips were pressed in a thin line. Her nostrils flared as her breath came short and quick. But she did not flinch. She merely stared with diamond-glint eyes at the nearest of the Moonless Host.
Then her eyes went wild with rage.
“No!” Çeda cried, but before she could move to stop her, Kameyl raised her ebon sword and brought it down like the blow of an axe against the nearest of the men. The sword’s dark edge seemed to sneer at his hastily raised defenses. It sliced through his arms, cleaved his skull in two, and wedged between the broken remains of his collarbone. Chest heaving with her labored breath, Kameyl lifted one leg and kicked him free of her sword. As he fell, limbs twitching, the remaining men backed away. They did not, however, run. Like the Haddah giving up its water at spring’s end, their will to fight had been drained.
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