Boom. Boom thoom.
“Ask what you will,” Emre said, glancing warily at the galleon. “I’ll answer as I can.”
“Where have you just come from?”
“We sailed from the southwest.”
Fezek stepped in. “She means, what were you doing and with whom were you doing it?”
“We met with Tribe Halarijan.” He gave Anila the broad strokes of the Alliance and his reasons for meeting with Shaikh Neylana.
Anila’s eyes narrowed as if she were peering into his mind. “But you went with another purpose in mind, did you not? A more personal purpose?”
Emre blinked. “How could you know that?”
Something inside the ship moaned, a thing that made Emre’s skin crawl.
“Please just answer the question,” Fezek said.
Emre ignored him, focusing only on Anila. “I went to right a wrong.”
“A wrong committed by someone you knew,” Anila said. “Someone you’ve known a long while.”
“Yes, but—”
“Name him.”
Before Emre could answer, the galleon was struck from within with so much force the hull boards cracked. Bits of wood sprayed outward then floated down, drifting on the breeze. A metallic clinking, a sound like chains being dragged over wood, accompanied it. Part of Emre wanted to know what was inside that ship, but another, much larger part just wanted to get out of there before the demon broke free and devoured them all.
“His name is Hamid,” he said to Anila. “I tried to settle a score with him, but it didn’t go as well as I’d hoped.” He told her how he’d reached Tribe Halarijan, how the tribe’s physic had healed him as well as she could, how he’d planned his revenge when he’d learned Hamid would be coming to treat with Neylana to convince her to join the Alliance.
“And where is he now?” Anila asked.
“Gone. Escaped on a skiff.”
“Headed where?”
Emre shrugged. “I’m not certain, but I suspect he’ll return to the tribe and try to poison Macide against me.”
“And where are they now, the tribe? Where is Macide?”
“That information isn’t mine to give.”
Anila took a half step closer. “I need it.”
“I won’t give it to you.”
She’d just reached up, her hand beginning to frost, when Fezek cleared his throat.
Anila stopped. Her lips were pulled back like a bone crusher ready to bite. “What is it, Fezek?”
“I rather think you have enough already, don’t you?”
As the sun beat down, Anila looked unsure of herself. She glanced at her ship. Whatever was belowdecks had gone still. The pounding had ceased. Anila had a curious expression, as if she knew Fezek was right but didn’t want to admit it. Her hand, which had been emitting a soft sizzling sound, went quiet, and the white fog trailing from it ceased. Without even bothering to look at Emre, she stalked away and up the gangplank to her ship.
“We sail!” she said. Her crew of ghuls followed, leaving only Fezek on the sand.
“I’m sorry about all this,” Fezek said, his hands spread wide, “but I think you’ll look back on this one day and count yourselves lucky. Perhaps it will lessen the sting to know that this will all be immortalized in the greatest epic poem the desert has ever seen, penned by none other than Fezek, the Warrior Poet of Sharakhai!” With that, he bowed like an actor at a curtain call, then headed up the plank after the others.
They were soon gone, leaving Emre, Frail Lemi, the Shieldwives, and crew to stare, bewildered, at its ponderous, dwindling shape.
Chapter 28
AS HER GALLEON GAINED SPEED, Anila went to the hatch at the center of the main deck and slid it aside with a shove of her foot. When she’d descended the ladder far enough, Fezek closed the hatch behind her—darkness, she’d found, was best when speaking to the creature below. The lack of airflow made the stink worse, though. She took a moment to become accustomed to it, knowing it would only grow worse.
As she descended further into darkness, the stench intensified to the point that she took out her sachet of dried rose petals and held it to her nose—the scent didn’t help much, but it kept her from emptying her stomach all over the deck. She reached the ship’s hold, where sunlight speared through gaps in the hull. The hold had been altered toward the ship’s stern. The berth deck had been carved out, creating a large, open space, but the ehrekh chained to the deck still made it look small.
The ehrekh, Guhldrathen, was twice Anila’s height—more if one counted the sweeping horns atop his head—and easily ten times as massive, what with his brawn and the twin tails that twitched lazily as she approached. Thick manacles of ebon steel bound his wrists and his taurine ankles. The chains attached to the manacles were anchored to the hull’s exposed ribs, preventing him from moving far. The chains had been proof against his terrible strength so far. He was beholden to her necromantic powers as well, and yet Anila still feared what he would do were he to escape.
To remind him, she released a bit of her hold on his soul as she stepped closer. He slipped toward death, a thing that caused him pain and terror.
Guhldrathen moaned piteously. Dozens of wounds marring his black skin became clear, none so large as the ragged gash in his stomach that exposed his rotting innards. His head twisted lazily as if in a fever dream, while around him lay the strongest layer of protection: a halo of sigils drawn in Anila’s own blood, their precise construction guided by Guhldrathen after she’d compelled him. “Show me how to create a prison,” she’d bade him, “a prison that will keep you until my quest to find Hamzakiir is complete.”
Like everyone in the desert, word had come to Anila of the Battle of Blackspear, the clash that had seen Kings pitted against tribes and where Guhldrathen had been killed by another ehrekh, Rümayesh. After leaving Davud at the Bay of Elders months ago, Anila had made for the site of the battle and eventually found the wrecks, a graveyard of broken ships. Soon after, she’d found Guhldrathen’s half-buried remains.
It had taken her eight days to raise him from the dead, but she had patience, and her time with King Sukru had trained her well. She’d eventually done it.
The ehrekh were strange creatures, though. They were mystical and ancient, difficult to control. Keeping Guhldrathen alive was a constant drain, but it had all been worth it. She’d forced him to use his magic to guide her toward Hamzakiir, the blood mage who’d kidnapped her along with Davud and their entire graduating class, and learn how she might defeat him once she did. At Guhldrathen’s instruction, she’d used her own blood and drawn sigils around his body where he lay in the hold. Guhldrathen became the focus of the spell. The sigils hemmed him in and granted him the second sight he needed to provide Anila the answers she sought.
Even with Guhldrathen’s ability to peer into the future, though, finding Hamzakiir had been anything but simple. Hamzakiir’s life was a thread complicated by dozens of equally powerful threads. Guhldrathen instructed her to sail to this place or that, to gather information for him, which he used to refine his scrying, his ability to perceive the path that would deliver Hamzakiir to her. So they sailed. They searched and they scried. Days became weeks became months, and Anila felt no nearer to the man she had vowed to kill than when they’d begun their journey.
“Well?” Anila asked when she’d come near. “You heard Emre’s answers.”
Guhldrathen’s head rolled toward her, and the tip of one horn clunked against the deck boards. “Blood,” he said. His deep, rasping voice made Anila’s skin feel as if worms were crawling beneath it.
“You’ve enough blood.”
His milky eyes blinked. Death had robbed Guhldrathen of his mundane sight. All that remained was his farsight, his ability to see things beyond the ken of man. “The answers thou seekest art close.” His throat convulsed, the rhythm like waves lap
ping against some dark, distant shore. “Give me thy blood, but a taste, and thou shalt have them.”
When she said nothing, his head swayed. His twin tails thumped harder, and in stranger rhythms. Anila felt her eyes begin to roll up into her head, felt her grip on reality slipping.
“Stop it!” she snapped, and fixed her will on Guhldrathen.
Unlike mortal souls, the souls of ehrekh did not pass to the world beyond. They lingered about the body instead, slowly dissipating over time. Again she let his soul slip toward death.
“Have mercy!” His moaning made the deck boards shake. “Have mercy!” Only when he’d uttered his plea a third time did she draw his soul close and allow his pain to ease. For a time he was silent, but then he swung his sightless gaze toward her once more. “Thy blood,” he insisted piteously. “I need but a taste.”
She considered torturing him until he obeyed, but they were so close. Her curiosity won out. She came nearer to him while pricking her wrist with a blooding ring. She held the wound over his open maw, and his forked tongue lapped at the drizzle that flowed from it. When Anila sealed the wound, he licked his bloodstained teeth clean, then pulled his lips back in a beatific smile.
Gods, what a gruesome thing to behold. “Give me my answers, Guhldrathen. Tell me where to find Hamzakiir.”
“Thy quest wends not so straight as that. But thou art closer. The man who died beneath the sand and was returned . . .”
“Emre?”
Guhldrathen nodded. “Follow the one who betrayed him, and thou wilt find Hamzakiir.”
The one who betrayed him. He meant Hamid, who’d attacked Emre and nearly killed him. “And where is he going?”
“Mazandir,” Guhldrathen said with a leering smile. “The winds of fate bear him toward Mazandir.”
Chapter 29
BY THE TIME Ihsan and the other Kings reached The Wayward Miller, the sky was bright with the coming dawn. While the ship was being prepared, Ihsan led the woman, Varal, down to one of the cabins and tied her to the bunk with lengths of rope. He’d been trying since leaving Osman’s estate to find hints that she was anything more than an aging shipwright, but had so far found none.
“Is it true?” he asked when the ropes were secured. “You have no memory of Nalamae?”
Strangely, the command he’d given her to obey had already worn off—which Ihsan would need to consider carefully when he had time—but the woman seemed all too eager to answer his questions. “No, Your Excellence. This has all been a terrible mistake. I swear to you, I don’t know those women! They ambushed me in the harbor and spirited me away. They’re crazed if they think I’m some goddess.”
Ihsan had no doubt she believed those words, but the account he’d read, the one he’d been working to make reality for so long, spoke of him and three other Kings finding the goddess in a horse stall. In the vision, she lay there, weak, her hand pressed against a deep wound to her gut. It wasn’t exactly how things had gone—Varal had no major wounds that Ihsan could see—but it was closer than most of Yusam’s visions. The entry hadn’t described her likeness other than to say a disk of golden light surrounded her head, a light that seemed to grow stronger the more she bled. It was a momentous vision, but it was the closing words that had stunned Ihsan. The vision recounted three women storming toward the woman’s stall, swords drawn, followed by a voice that seemed to shatter the heavens.
It was Ihsan’s own voice Yusam had been describing, and it had been the first piece of evidence that led Ihsan to believe he could find a way to regain his tongue. Yusam had made it abundantly clear the vision was one of the most important he’d ever seen. He’d not only stated it plainly, but the marginalia supported it—dozens of notes and ruminations had been scribbled in tiny script, most of which led Ihsan to other, related entries.
It was frustrating beyond measure to be this close and still have no idea how to proceed. It was still possible they had the wrong woman. Or it might have been the return of Ihsan’s voice or the command he gave that was of primary importance in Yusam’s vision. And there was one problem Ihsan had been wrestling with for months: the very nature of Nalamae’s rebirths might obfuscate prophetic visions, thereby safeguarding her return. How else to explain why Yusam, despite trying many times, had never managed to locate the goddess in any of her previous incarnations?
“My lord King?” Varal said.
Ihsan was so lost in thought he lifted his hands, ready to sign to her. Remembering himself, he made a show of scratching his neck. “I’m afraid your nature has yet to be proven, one way or the other.”
“You could command me!” She was practically breathless. “Ask me anything you wish. I’ll prove I’m a simple woman of Sharakhai.”
He smiled at her sadly. “I’ll ask you only one question, and I won’t even use my power to compel your answer.”
She smiled as the ship lurched into motion. “Anything, my lord King.”
“Nalamae has been hiding from her fellow gods for centuries. She has evaded them time and time again, falling only after decades of searching by her brethren. If she could avoid them, beings molded by the hands of the elder gods, how in the great wide desert would you, a simple shipwright by your own admission, know if the goddess had been reborn within you?”
She opened her mouth to speak several times, then said, “I just would.” But the faint flame of hope was already fading. As she fell back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling, the flame flickered and went out.
Ihsan shut the door behind him and returned to deck. The sun was rising in the east, a bright, half-lidded eye. The harbor around them was just coming to life, a dozen crews working the ships of a caravan, preparing them to sail for the harbor’s exit, which lay between two tall lighthouses. Ahead of The Wayward Miller, one sloop had beaten them to the sands and was slowing itself for inspection by two royal galleons.
The officials aboard the galleons would want to search the Miller, too, but Ihsan would command them to give a cursory inspection and allow them to move on, just as he had on their arrival. He was vastly more concerned about Çeda and her allies. He’d withheld a second watershed moment from the Blue Journals from his fellow Kings. In it, Çeda was riding across the sands on a horse, sword held high, as if she were ready to chop a man’s head from his shoulders.
What followed, Yusam had written, was dark, filled with blood and terror. I woke screaming from it. It wasn’t what I saw that is important here, but what I felt. There was hunger and malicious intent. A jealousy so deep it would drive a man to commit any sin. It was one of the rare cases of seeing through another’s eyes. I believe it was an ehrekh. It must be. The feelings were too inhuman for it to be otherwise.
Ihsan felt certain the vision would take place here, today, but he hadn’t mentioned it to anyone lest it upset the delicate tightrope act that was leading them toward Nalamae’s awakening. In the blink of an eye, the entry had finished, a spark is thrown, a light equal to the darkness is born, and that grand malignancy is driven back whence it came.
A spark, Ihsan mused. Some must burn before they truly shine.
Ahead, the sloop had been cleared and was gliding past the checkpoint. The Miller’s crew slowed the ship, and the pilot steered them to a stop between the two galleons. A Silver Spear with a jutting jaw and a royal inspector’s insignia on his tabard stepped aboard, holding a mug of steaming kahve, which he held up to Ihsan in salute.
“Submit for inspection?” he asked jovially.
Ihsan met him amidships. He was about to issue a command for him to conduct a cursory inspection, but paused. Something had gone wrong. Çeda was missing.
“My lord?” the inspector said.
“Yes, of course,” Ihsan said, then put power into his words. “Inspect the ship. You’ll find nothing of note.”
“I’m sure of it, my lord,” the inspector replied with a lift of his mug and an open-mouthe
d wink.
Ihsan followed him belowdecks, planning on telling him to find reasons to slow the inspection down, but unfortunately Cahil came as well, which prevented him from saying anything. When the inspector reached the cabin where Ihsan had left Varal, he opened the door, looked straight at her, then closed the door with a click. In that brief moment, Ihsan had seen Varal staring at the inspector beseechingly, but his gaze had passed over her as if he’d seen nothing more than an empty bunk. After checking the other cabins and glancing inside the hold, the inspector nodded to Ihsan and Cahil. “Well enough, my lords.”
Ihsan wasn’t sure what to do. He couldn’t very well give the inspector a command in front of Cahil, and commanding Cahil himself was out of the question—Cahil would pay for what he’d done to Osman, but this wasn’t the time.
When they returned to deck, Ihsan asked the inspector, “Do you ever find anything?”
“Oh, we do from time to time. Bricks of black lotus. Slaves hidden away. Why, one time—”
“Very well,” Cahil said, “we’ve leagues to sail before the sun sets.” He put a hand on the inspector’s back and guided him toward his ship, but not without sending Ihsan a sharp look of disapproval.
“Yes, of course,” the inspector said, lifting his mug in a final salute.
No sooner had he said the words than voices rose up from the crew of the portside galleon. There came a shout of alarm, soldiers pointing across the port bow. Ihsan, unable to see what they were pointing at, ran to the foredeck.
A hundred yards distant, a towering creature with bent legs, curving horns, and a pair of lashing tails was rounding a low line of rocks.
“Ehrekh!” one of the navy crewmen called. “Ehrekh!”
But it wasn’t an ehrekh. It was Goezhen, god of chaos. How strange to be filled with both terror and relief at the sight of him.
When Jackals Storm the Walls Page 27