After breakfast, they stood in the barn by lamplight.
Kameyl, Sümeya, and especially Jenise went about their business quickly, saddling up, all eager to leave the city. Osman seemed pleased, almost proud. Varal, meanwhile, kept staring at the barn door, looking utterly unsure of herself.
“All will be well,” Çeda said to her.
Varal nodded, and swung up to her saddle.
The rest were about to do the same when the sound of footsteps crunching over gravel came from beyond the open barn door. At first it sounded like a lone person approaching, but then it sounded like more.
Çeda drew her sword, as did the others, all except Varal, who bore no weapon.
“Those won’t be necessary,” came a voice from the edge of darkness. The words were slurred, as if the speaker were drunk. “Slide them back into their scabbards and remain still.”
Çeda’s right arm suddenly ached. The old adichara wound along the meat of her thumb flared to life, as it sometimes did when magic was being worked against her. She also felt an undeniable urge to do precisely what the voice had bid her.
By the light of the lamp hanging from a nearby beam, Çeda saw several silhouettes. Then from the darkness a man’s form resolved. She recognized him immediately. Handsome King Ihsan, sleight of frame, wearing a light beard and a commoner’s clothes. Behind him trailed three other men: tall King Husamettín, wearing a turban that almost, but did not quite, hide the scars on his forehead; King Cahil, whose face, as it had for four hundred years, seemed trapped between boyhood and manhood; and the last, a man with a broad frame who looked like he’d been starved of every meal for the past decade. He’d changed so much it took her a moment to recognize him. King Zeheb.
One more appeared. Yndris, Cahil’s daughter. She wore a fighting dress and an expression that made Çeda want to slap it from her. “Well, well,” Yndris said, “so the whispers spoke the truth.”
Still trapped in Ihsan’s command, Çeda was defenseless as Yndris walked up to her, gripped her shoulder, and punched her hard in the gut. Çeda’s body curled around the blow, then fell to the barn’s dirt floor.
King Ihsan sighed. “I told you to leave them alone.”
“You told us not to kill them.”
“Leave her be, Yndris,” Ihsan commanded in a stronger voice, and this time Çeda felt power leeching into his words.
Çeda was facing away from the Kings and couldn’t see what they were doing, but she heard one of them come nearer. “You said the vision spoke of the goddess and four other women.” Cahil’s voice.
“So?” Ihsan asked.
“It said nothing of a man.”
A pause. “It didn’t, but it wouldn’t always—”
“You were in my care for a time,” Cahil said. It took her a moment to realize he was no longer speaking to Ihsan, but to Osman.
No, Çeda tried to say. No, no, no.
She knew precisely what Cahil was about to do. He was just working himself up to it, as he often did. Leave him! she tried to scream, but she couldn’t. She was prevented by the power of Ihsan’s voice.
“Do you remember what I told you?” Cahil went on. “That if you ever defied the Kings again, I’d come back to deal with you?”
Please, don’t do this!
“He hasn’t defied the Kings,” Ihsan interjected. “Not the rightful ones, in any case. We’ve all been gone.”
Çeda heard the sound of metal sliding on metal. Çeda knew in her bones Cahil was drawing his hammer from the loop at his belt. “Close enough,” Cahil said.
Words erupted from Ihsan’s throat. “King Cahil, you will stop!”
Çeda felt the full power in that command, and yet a moment later there came a sickening crunch, followed by the sound of a body collapsing to the barn’s earthen floor.
“No!” Çeda cried, breaking through Ihsan’s spell at last. She fought. Tried to move her arms, tried to shift her legs. If she could move even a little bit, the rest would become easier. He’s alive, she told herself. He’s still alive. Though part of her already knew he wasn’t.
“Gods damn you, Cahil,” Ihsan said.
As if he’d just finished inspecting a horse and had decided not to buy it, Cahil sniffed. “I want you to understand me, Ihsan, and sometimes you must admit you have trouble focusing.” A pause. “Do I have your attention now?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Because I will do the same to you if you ever use your power on me or my daughter again.”
With that Cahil’s footsteps picked up, grew softer. A second set soon followed, Yndris trailing in her father’s wake.
“Ihsan,” came Husamettín’s deep voice, “we have what we came for. It’s time to go.”
The horses were led away with Varal still on hers. The sounds dwindled, but one set of footsteps came nearer. Ihsan stepped over Çeda and crouched low, tilting his head so he could stare into her eyes. He wore an odd expression, a strange mixture of curiosity and regret.
“That was unfortunate,” he said. “I know you were close.” He glanced up toward the barn door. “I must know before I go. Is it true?” he spoke with an infuriating calm. “Is she the goddess reborn?”
Çeda refused to speak, but Ihsan repeated the question, and this time an ache developed inside her that was so acute she soon found herself answering in the only way she knew how. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“She doesn’t know,” Çeda replied. “How could I?”
Ihsan nodded, as if that were a perfectly reasonable answer. Then his gaze drifted to her right hand, which had begun to twitch. His eyebrows pinched together, and she felt certain he was about to tell her to stop, to somehow reinforce his earlier command. But he didn’t. He grunted, “Hmm,” as if it were something he would dearly love to have studied further if prior commitments hadn’t prevented it.
He stood and walked away, the sound of galloping horses came soon after, and Çeda was left alone with Sümeya, Kameyl, Jenise, and the body of a man she’d once loved.
A burning rage drove her. Her fingers had already begun to move, and the more she worked them, the more her arm and the rest of her body loosened. Soon she was pushing herself off the ground, jaw clenched, spittle flying from between her teeth as she released a long, seething moan.
She saw him at last: Osman, staring sightlessly through her, blood still oozing from a long cut in a deep depression in the crown of his head. “Oh, Osman,” Çeda said, tears falling as she placed one hand on his stubbly cheek. “I’m so sorry I brought this upon you.”
She left him there. She had to. There was no choice if she wanted to reach Varal in time. Another thing Cahil and the others will pay for. She reached her feet. She shifted on legs that felt heavy as lead until she was standing before Sümeya. “Wake, gods damn you. Fight him!”
She tried to extend her power to Sümeya. Tried to break the hold Ihsan’s words still had on her. Whether it helped or whether it was Sümeya’s will, or the simple fact that Ihsan was no longer near them, Çeda wasn’t sure, but slowly she began to move. Çeda did the same with Kameyl and Jenise. Minutes passed. She was certain they were losing any chance they had of following the Kings. But she refused to give up.
As movement returned to the others in slow increments, Çeda rushed to the stalls, where only three horses remained. They would have to do. As Çeda saddled the first, Kameyl and Jenise did the same with the other two.
Sümeya, meanwhile, approached Çeda with a grim look in her eyes. “We’ll go if you wish, but King Ihsan . . .” Her intent was plain. When they found the Kings, Ihsan could just command them to stop.
Çeda pointed to the bow and quiver of arrows at the back of her saddle. “Ihsan dies first, before we’re close enough for him to use his voice. Now come,” she said as she straddled the horse and held her hand out. “We owe t
he Kings a measure of justice.”
Sümeya gripped forearms with Çeda and swung into the saddle behind her. Then the four of them were storming through the barn door, riding hard in the wake of the Kings.
Chapter 26
AS THE DAYS PASSED for Brama and Mae, they continued to circumnavigate the blooming fields. Not once did Mae mention the grisly ritual Rümayesh had performed on the body they’d found. It wasn’t for lack of courage. Mae was a brave woman, but some things were too dark to delve into, and she knew that discussing it wasn’t going to change Rümayesh’s dark urges.
At first, Mae kept her distance from Brama, remaining mostly silent, but as days passed into weeks, and they circled the entirety of the blooming fields, moving ever closer to the place they’d begun their circuitous journey, a sense of normalcy returned. Or what passed for normalcy—Mae trusted him only so far, and Brama fought daily to keep Rümayesh from regaining dominance.
“Near my home in Mirea, there are marshes,” Mae said over a fire one night. “There are plants there, bodies shaping like bells. Bugs slip inside. Can’t get out.” She sipped jasmine tea as, nearby, her qirin, Angfua, snorted softly. “There are others, plants with leaves like ribbons that curl around spiders that try walking on them. Another with insides that moving like ants. It attract bright red beetles that can’t escape once they go in. The dead help the plants live”—she waved toward the adichara trees—“so why these ones die, Brama? Why their food killing them?”
It was the very question Brama had been struggling with.
“Maybe the people attracted to them because the trees are dying,” Mae submitted. “Their lure stronger in some way. Maybe trees want to die.”
Brama poked the coals and watched the embers bloom. “Perhaps, though I think it more likely that they’re being sent by someone to kill those specific trees, the diseased ones.” They’d found no fresh tributes that hadn’t been enveloped in a dead tree.
Staring into the fire, Mae nodded knowingly. She looked fierce like that, but wise as well, like one of the warrior poets her country was famed for. “Like pruning leafs to help sick plant.”
“Maybe,” Brama said, “but if so, it’s not working. It’s infecting the other trees around them. Whoever’s doing it must know that by now.”
“Why must?” Shadows played across Mae’s round face and her bright green eyes as she considered Brama. “The Kings doing this for centuries, yes? With asirim gone, maybe they need keep it going. Appease the gods. Maybe they send them out and the cursed drawn to dying trees.”
She had a point. The asirim were gone. Could it be that the tributes were still being sent from Sharakhai and simply left to the fates? Brama doubted it, but there was only one way to find out.
“Beht Zha’ir is nearly here again,” he said. “We’ll find another of the tributes, and get our answers.”
“You free them?” Mae asked. “We question them together?”
“Yes,” Brama said. He wasn’t sure how he’d do it, but he would find a way.
Mae seemed both pleased and relieved. She was a dogged soldier. She wouldn’t return to her queen without the answers she sought, but this mission was weighing on her—she wanted to be done with it and return to the Mirean camp.
As night fell on Beht Zha’ir, they waited near the blooming fields. The twin moons rose. Eventually they saw a lone figure weaving in and out of sight over the dunes, a boy of ten or eleven summers with a strange gait, trudging as if one ankle pained him. A clubfoot, Brama saw as he crested the dune ahead of them.
Suddenly, Brama felt a heat building inside him. A feeling like needles pricking his skin came soon after, the sensation rushing outward from his chest and down along his limbs.
He knew what was happening. It was Rümayesh. She was waging another assault against him.
He thought he’d been prepared. He tried to stand against her. He gripped the haft of his spear, calling upon the power of Raamajit, but he felt nothing. Somehow Rümayesh had walled him off from that well of power, precisely as he’d done to her over the months since they’d become one.
Gods, he’d been so confident. He often slipped when he was tired, but he’d been taking such care, and now he felt himself falling. He tried to touch the lump on his forehead but got no further than a swaying of his hand, a thing Rümayesh, overwhelming him entirely, turned into a beckoning motion.
“Come,” Rümayesh called to Mae, and began walking toward the blooming fields.
No, Brama cried from within. No, no, no! His astonishment at how quickly it had happened was matched only by his terror about what would happen next.
Mae, clearly confused, waved to the boy. “Are you stopping him?” When Rümayesh made no reply, Mae followed. “Brama, are you stopping him?”
“The answers we seek are difficult ones,” Rümayesh replied, “and it’s doubtful the boy will have them on his own.”
The boy limped between them, but Mae grabbed him by the scruff of his threadbare shirt. The boy fought, but not hard.
“Free his mind, Brama!” Mae shouted. “As we agree, free his mind!”
Rümayesh’s response was to lift one hand and with a gust of sudden wind send Mae flying backward along the sand.
The boy fell too, but then he stood and moved on as if nothing had happened. Rümayesh followed. Mae, meanwhile, was slow in getting up. She coughed hard, then came lumbering forward as if it pained her to move. By the time she caught up to them, Rümayesh and the boy stood within a clearing. Nearby was a dying adichara, its blooms vastly weaker than those of the trees surrounding it. That was where the boy was headed. That was where he would die.
“You wanting to use him,” Mae said, “like you use the other. You letting him die so you can hang his insides from the trees.”
“You’d be surprised what answers you can get from the blood of the living and the light of the stars.”
Brama was horrified that Rümayesh would do this, but he was also confused. They both knew that to kill the boy would make Brama all the more desperate. It would likely give him the resilience he needed to tip the balance back toward him, so why do it? Out of simple cruelty? It all became clear when Rümayesh turned to find Mae with her bow drawn, a diamond-tipped arrow nocked. The arrow’s shaft, made of some lustrous white wood, shone in the night, almost luminous under the glow of the adichara blooms.
Rümayesh wanted Mae dead. That was what this gambit was all about. She couldn’t attack Mae outright, though. Kill her and she risked ceding control of Brama’s body, perhaps for a long while. But get Mae to attack her and part of Brama would want to defend himself. Rümayesh could accomplish two goals in one fell swoop: rid herself of Mae, a stabilizing influence in Brama’s life, and the guilt resulting from her death would send Brama into a well of despair, a thing that might take him days, weeks to get himself out of. It would give Rümayesh more than enough time to gain dominance over him permanently.
The knowledge drove him to desperation. He railed against his bonds, but it did him no good. Rümayesh was too powerful. She had too great a hold on their shared form.
“Let him go,” Mae said with conviction.
“If we want answers for your queen”—Rümayesh waved to the spellbound boy—“this is what is needed.”
“I know who you are.” Mae drew the string of her bow to her ear. “I know Brama gone.”
“Then you know that to kill me is to kill Brama too.”
“I think Brama doesn’t mind.”
When Brama saw Mae’s face pinch, he knew what she was about to do. He tried to stop Rümayesh, tried to suppress the power she was gathering. But he was too late. Too weak.
Mae loosed the arrow. Rümayesh swept her arm up to ward the arrow away, but the arrow remained unaffected—the spell slipped from it like water on oiled canvas.
It punched into Brama’s side, sent him spinning to the san
d. One moment, the pain was oddly muted, but then Rümayesh’s will retreated and it struck Brama full force.
“The boy,” Brama growled through gritted teeth. “Get him away. Save him, Mae.”
Had the adichara been healthy the boy would have been consumed by now, but as it was the desiccated branches were only just reaching around him. Mae sprinted forward, sand kicking up in tails behind her. She yanked him to the ground just before the branches encompassed him. The boy thrashed, somehow managed to regain his feet. He nearly dove into the adichara, but Mae tripped him and pinned him to the sand again.
By then Brama had made it to his knees. The arrow wound flared, forge-bright, but Brama was used to pain. With a snarl, he snapped the shaft and pulled the arrowhead free. Moving as quickly as he could, he shifted across the sand to the boy. Using his own blood, he drew symbols on his forehead, ancient runes that dispelled the compulsion laid upon him. He hadn’t known them before, but it was easy to do now, with Rümayesh’s mind so closely linked with his.
Slowly, the boy’s thrashing subsided. His worried look became one of confusion. Instead of focusing on the adichara, he stared with terror-filled eyes at Mae and Brama.
“It’s all right,” Brama said softly. “You’ve had a bad dream is all.”
Brama tried to delve into the boy’s memories, but everything before that morning was fuzzy. After stacking a cartload of grain, he’d snuck behind the storehouse to pass water and had turned at the sound of footsteps scuffing along the alley behind the mill. He’d no more than spotted a shadow when his memories went dim.
As Brama helped him to stand, the boy took in the trees as if he feared they would attack him. He touched one closed fist to his forehead. “Forgive me, hajib, but why am I here?”
When Jackals Storm the Walls Page 25