King of Shards

by Matthew Kressel

  “The Stele of Yiskorel,” Emod read. “If we’re here, then—”

  “Then we’re hundreds of parasot from Azru,” Rana said. Mama had said so many times that the desert eats people like a lizard eats ants. She would die here. She thought of Liu, staring up into some stranger’s eyes, wondering where Mama and Papa had gone.

  She said, “I’m sorry. I thought we were headed south.”

  “The Stele once pointed the compass,” he said.

  She stared at its crooked alignment. “Now it’s just a misplaced stone.”

  The camels looked up at the Stele as they passed, mesmerized by its reflections. The bas-reliefed demons stared at her from its surface, their metallic eyes glinting in the sun. The Stele had been crafted from a solid piece of hematite. What monster chisel could have hewn so much stone? What great hand could have hefted it here? She wished she could meet the artisans who had crafted it, but like most things on Gehinnom no one remembered their name. A few of its corners still shined with a mirror luster, but the desert had not been kind to the Stele. One side had been entirely sandworn to a blur.

  “Yiskorel, the Memory of God,” Rana said, “fades like an old man.”

  Emod sighed. “He isn’t the only one.”

  “Emod,” she said. “Back at the camp—”

  “Please. Let’s not talk about it.”

  “But there something I need to say.”

  “Rana, please!” His voice echoed from the folds of hematite.

  “It had to be done,” she said.

  “Rana,” His lower lip quivered. “I’ve never killed before.”

  “Those men deserved death, Emod.”

  “Did they? All of them?”

  “Yes,” she said, because the alternative was too horrid to consider. “Besides, you didn’t kill them. I did. I just used your hands.” She trembled at the power she wielded. To move men with song. When she found Liu, no one would ever stand in her way again.

  “You’re wrong,” he said. “I was not an empty vessel, a puppet, which you moved. I was fully awake. Alive! And most of all, inspired.”

  “Inspired?”

  “I murdered those men, Rana, not because you moved my hands, but because I ached to kill them. Decades living on the streets, being beaten and robbed and cheated, were the tinder. Your song lit the match. Now my heart is a raging fire, and I cannot put the flames out.”

  “You want to kill again?”

  He glanced at her. “Kill? My life was dull, full of long days and frigid nights. When you sang, I felt something I had long forgotten, something I hadn’t felt since I was a boy. Rana, I want to hear you sing so I can feel that surge of life again. And that terrifies me.”

  “Life terrifies you?”

  He shook his head as if shooing away demons. “What scares me is knowing that all of my days were shadows, that my life was dust. I can see now how much time I’ve wasted.”

  “We do the best we can with what the Goddess gave us.”

  “And what did I do with these calloused hands?” he said, releasing the reins. “Lie, cheat, steal? And now, I’ve killed. They are stained now.”

  She harrumphed. “I saved your life. You could at least be thankful.”

  He looked mournfully at her. “Thankful? Rana, I thought you were my friend.”

  “Were you ever mine?”

  “Of course!”

  “Really? How many times did you cheat me out of my earnings?”

  “I was poor. I thought you were being kind.”

  “I was, but I thought you were a different person. Not a coward who betrays his best friend the instant someone points a blade at his neck.”

  “I was your best friend?”

  “You were my only friend.”

  He rose in his saddle. “And now?”

  “Now we are but two strangers in the desert.”

  “Yes,” he said with growing confidence. Emod did have a way with strangers. “The Rana I knew didn’t inspire men to slaughter.” He shook his head. “Rana—if you remember anything of our friendship, then grant me one final kindness. Please don’t ever sing to me again.”

  “Not every song must inspire murder. I could sing to make you feel joy, even pleasure, if you wanted it.”

  “I’ve no doubt you can. But your music is not what I fear most. It’s the silence, after.” He swallowed. “I’ve found a void inside myself I did not know was there.”

  “Then you should thank me for showing it to you.”

  “Rana, not everything should be brought into the light of day.”

  She looked at the sun. “In the desert, Emod, we have no choice.”

  He slumped forward, broken, ruined. And she had ruined him. But Emod didn’t kill her parents, she thought. And Emod didn’t kidnap her and try to sell her into slavery. Maybe she had been too harsh with him.

  “It’s all right, Emod. Rest assured, I won’t sing to you, if that’s what you want. We’ll find Liu, and the three of us will travel to Ektu El, where it rains every day. I’m tired of this desert.”

  Emod lay desolate. Perhaps he’d always been this way and she’d never noticed. “I will eat and sleep and die in the rain,” he said. “I will let the waters wash me away, until there is nothing left but silt and shame.”

  They continued south, until the Stele of Yiskorel vanished over the horizon. The tides returned with force, and the whistling dunes rolled beneath them in wave after nauseating wave. A black speck spiraled down the distant sky and darted back up into the air.

  Ash, from Azru?

  The speck whirled down and darted up again, and this time she caught a silhouette of black wings. She sat up on her camel.

  “Rana, my eyes are poor,” Emod said. “Do you see a black thing in the sky?”

  “It’s a bird, I think.”

  “A rather large one,” he said. “It may mean we’re near a city.”

  “I hope so.”

  They scaled a tall dune, and as they reached its peak the bird dove toward them. It swooped low across the sands a hundred paces away, its shadow rolling over dunes. With a metallic squawk, it banked on its enormous wings and came racing for them.

  “Look out!” Emod screamed.

  It darted over their heads, blotting out the sun for an instant. With the bird came an ashen smell of a thousand spent campfires. Men returning from the deep desert had smelled the same, and they had spoken of horrid things on a desert of black sand. The bird’s dark wings, topaz eyes, and its festering, crooked leg were all familiar. This was the same bird she had met on the DanBaer, the demon eagle called Chialdra.

  Rana said, “Oh, hell,” as Chialdra arced into the sky.

  “What do you mean, ‘oh, hell?’ What is it?”

  “It’s a demon. I’ve met her before.”

  “You shared tea and tobacco, I hope?”

  “Not quite. She vowed to kill me.”

  “Oh, Goddess,” he said, raising his hands skyward. “Dear Mollai, do you entertain yourself with our suffering?”

  Wings spread wide, Chialdra circled above their heads. The camels eyed the bird, growing nervous. Chialdra squawked, her voice distant but audible, “A gift of my master, it must be, for the Crooner returns, the desert bird who beguiles with song!”

  Rana touched her necklace. Why wasn’t it working?

  “I came to hear but one song,” Chialdra said, spiraling down, “But you tricked me! My leg is ruined, beyond repair. Even my master Azazel will not fix me, for he says I get what I deserve.”

  “I’m sorry about your leg!” Rana shouted. “But the one who bit you was the demon Ashmedai. He gnawed your leg, not me!” And, she thought with rising bile, it was also Ashmedai who brought the demon horde here, who was responsible for her parents’ death.

  “Ashmedai, a lowly mongrel? Ha!” Chialdra squawked.

  “Not any more. He walks like a man again. He crosses the Tattered Sea with the Cursed Men. If you have a quarrel, it is with Ashmedai, not me!”

 
; “I have one leg left, and I’ll not lose that too. Little worm, you were complicit in the attack. For that you must die.”

  Emod cleared his throat and shouted, “Great demon!” He bowed as if to a great king. “Rana has beguiled me too. I am her victim! Spare me your vengeance!”

  “Emod!” Rana sneered. “Are you really this craven?”

  Chialdra screeched, “Do you think us friends, that I have compassion for strangers? I am demon, and you are man. And your cowardice is repulsive to me.”

  Emod clasped his hands and whimpered, “Please!”

  “Your song,” Chialdra said, “was the most lovely I’ve heard. It still rings through the chambers of my heart! But now I hop like a toad to eat, I wince with every wing beat, and I must sleep on my side. In the morning I pick vermin that has crawled into my feathers! It is a shame, to destroy your oasis of a voice, but it’s best to rid this desert of your guile. Hark now, Crooner, for your songs are not the only ones with power! For I am a bird of the desert, and you are in my realm now.”

  “Rana!” Emod wailed. “Forget what I just said to you. Sing to this demon!”

  “You’re incorrigible, Emod!” she said. But it was a good idea. Except that Chialdra was high again, and circling ever further away. She could never raise her voice to such a height.

  “It’s too late,” she said. “She’s too far.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We ride!” She kicked her camel. “Go! Go!”

  She sped off toward a large dune, and Emod quickly chased after her. Chialdra circled higher, and began to sing a poem in a bizarre language. Rana didn’t understand the words, but the melody was familiar, as if she had heard its tune whistling through the eaves of her house on windy nights.

  “Goddess, what is that?” Emod said. “What the hell is that?”

  Far to the south, a black barrier was quickly rising from the horizon, as if a curtain was being drawn across the sky. The wind picked up, blowing sand into her eyes.

  Her camel hopped nervously. “A sandstorm! Chialdra’s calling the winds!”

  “What do we do?” he said.

  “We have to find shelter.”

  “Should we pitch a tent? Bury ourselves in sand?”

  “Not here. We’re too exposed.”

  “Let’s go back to the Stele!”

  “It’s too far.”

  They paused at a dune peak to look around. Their camels groaned at the approaching storm. Chialdra sang and sang and the black curtain rose over a quarter of the sky. Bleak, roiling clouds reached a hundred fat fingers toward the sun. Lightning struck in the south, and the thunder rolled across the desert. Her camel shuddered, and she struggled to hold on.

  She clasped the Mikulal necklace and closed her eyes as the wind howled. “You helped me twice already,” she whispered. “Help me one more time.”

  “We could bury ourselves at the dune’s base,” Emod said.

  “No, the winds will make a vortex.”

  “Then where? Where do we go?”

  She scanned the desert. Nothing but sand and more sand. It was hopeless. They were going to die. “Nowhere,” she said.

  Emod sagged. “I wanted to feel rain again,” he said. “Pouring down my face.”

  “I’ve never felt rain,” she said. She made the Mollai Triangle with her fingers. “Blessed Mollai, Giver of Rain and Succor, see Liu through the narrow path. Bring her to the house of peace and blessing, as you have promised the faithful.”

  In the half of the desert where the shadows had not yet reached, something flashed.

  “Emod, did you see that light?”

  He squinted. “Lightning?”

  “No. There’s something over that third dune.”

  The clouds swallowed the sun, and Chialdra vanished inside them. Her cackling song continued above the growing thunder. Half the sky was covered in murk, and the storm itself seemed to be alive, its gray folds the skin of some monstrous beast. Rana had never seen anything so large and terrifying, not even in the vortex above Azru. Lightning struck and thunder pealed. The camels brayed as sand pelted them. A parade of enormous dunes came marching up from the south like soldiers, while the sands beneath them bucked like angry animals.

  “Cut your second camel loose,” she said. “Let’s make a run for that light.”

  “But there’s nothing there!”

  “Do it, Emod!”

  “The camels hold our future, Rana! My future!”

  “If we don’t run, we’ll have no future.” With a slash of her knife she severed the rope to her second camel. The beast barked. From its saddlebag she grabbed a satchel of jewels, then cut the leather straps of the mount. It fell to the ground.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “Giving it a chance.” She threw the bag of jewels to Emod. “Enjoy your riches in Sheol. I’ll be over that dune!” Then she darted off toward the glare.

  “Goddess!”

  She glanced back a minute later. Emod had loosed his second camel and was speeding after her with the bag of jewels clutched to his chest.

  Her loosed camel kept close, but Emod’s camel, heavy with burdens, struggled to keep pace with them. It bleated heart-rendingly as it vanished behind a dune. The second camel turned back for its companion, and when the dune rolled past, the two animals were gone, though their bleating remained.

  Darkness spread over the desert as the storm hurtled across the plain, swallowing what was left of the light. Lightning forked in blinding green flashes, and the whipping air grew acrid with the smell of molten glass.

  Her camel barked as she kicked it. The wind howled, and sand tore into her skin. They crested another dune, when lighting struck twenty paces ahead. Her camel reared, and she hung onto its reins as the thunder shook her bones. The light winked again. A reflection? A thousand paces away, mostly obscured by windblown sand, hundreds of people were making camp.

  “Am I dreaming?” Emod said. “Is that real?”

  “Goddess, I hope so!”

  They raced for the camp in darkness so thick that in between lightning strikes she could see no more than ten paces. When the green lightning flashed, she glimpsed a swarm of cackling birds swirling around her, birds of sand. They pecked at her with grainy beaks, but it was too painful to keep her eyes open, and for long terrifying seconds she kept them shut. Her fear was too much, and she screamed.

  Chialdra’s laughter echoed through the clouds. “Howl, songbird! Wail! I shall suck the marrow from your bones! If any remain!”

  A flash of lightning reflected from a transparent surface that arced into the sky. The desert went dark again before Rana could grasp its full shape.

  “Rana!” Emod shouted. “It hurts!” He was near, but she couldn’t see him. A monstrous dune hoisted them up and threw them down just as suddenly, rumbling like a falling mountain as it went, and she nearly fell from her mount.

  “Keep going!” she screamed.

  Her camel was bleeding. The reins were slippery from its blood. She rubbed her face and found to her horror she was bleeding too.

  “Emod?” she cried. “Emod, where are you?”

  The shape appeared over a dune, like a rising moon, a transparent dome covering a camp of hundreds. Men and women in long white robes stood inside its perimeter. Pale blue light flowed from their hands toward the transparent wall. She spotted an opening, a small, glowing circle large enough to fit a man. Two robed men struggled to keep the door open, and two women were waving Rana toward them.

  “Hurry!” a woman shouted into the din. “We have to close the door!”

  Rana raced toward the opening, but she had to close her eyes. The storm shredded her skin, her face, her eyelids. She leaned against the camel’s neck. Suddenly the wind ceased, but the pain grew worse. Her camel groaned and fell over, and she tumbled onto sand.

  A round-faced woman hovered over her. The storm roiled behind her head. “How many are with you?” she said in Bedu-Besk

  In Wul s
he replied, “Just Emod.”

  “We saw no others,” the woman said in Wul. “Be still. The healer is on her way.”

  Every pore in her body wailed in pain as she climbed to her feet.

  “Are you mad?” the woman said. “Lie down!”

  Two magicians held the door open, while a third peered into the storm. Before the woman could stop her, Rana ran through the portal.

  The pecking birds, the excruciating pain, returned. “Emod!” she called. “Emod!”

  Something bleated nearby, and she stumbled toward it, eyes closed, led by sound. She tripped over something big and opened her eyes. Emod’s camel lay prone. A bone protruded from its hind leg. It was braying like a calf. Emod was trapped underneath, unmoving. She tried to free him, but the camel was too heavy.

  “Mamu,” he cried. “Mamu, help me!”

  She screamed, and it sounded if the whole world was screaming with her. She fell onto her stomach and buried her face. The sands shredded her clothing, her back. This was the end. All would be over soon. She would join Mama and Papa in heaven.

  Strong hands grabbed her, lifted her onto shoulders. With quick, heavy steps they carried her through the maelstrom and back into the dome. The silence that followed seemed louder than the storm. They set her on her back, and she was too shocked to speak. A second man lay a grotesque shape down beside her, a monster so bloody and torn she couldn’t tell what species it was. But she knew who this was.

  “Emod,” she said, her voice as shredded as him. “Emod, look at me!”

  He didn’t move.

  A husky man with a sharp jaw approached her and said in Wul, “Chialdra has left the Bedu in peace for twenty-two years. What did you do to arouse the demon’s wrath? And why does the symbol of the cursed men dangle from your neck? I should throw you back out there!”

  A woman pushed the man out of the way. “Step back, brute!” she said in Bedu-Besk. “Let me heal these men!”

  Goddess, Rana thought, delirious. Am I so damaged they cannot tell my gender?

  “Send a message to Lord Elizel,” one said. “Tell him we have more guests.”

  A woman muttered a spell, a tuneless chant, beside Emod.

  “We’re too late,” the healer said, after a moment. “He’s too far gone.”