Along the tunnel, two forms approached. First was Mae, wearing her lacquered armor and her grinning demon mask. Just behind her was Queen Alansal in an elaborate silk dress, her shining black hair flowing like a waterfall past her shoulders and down her back. As the queen stared grimly, Mae let her demon mask fall aside. She spoke, though her words were lost to Brama. Rümayesh was too fixated on Anila—she was what mattered, she was the one who would tip the scales one way or the other.
Alansal paced carefully toward Anila, her hands raised as if she considered Anila a threat. “We’ve heard your tale,” the queen said. “And we know Rümayesh’s quite well. Believe me when I tell you she cares nothing for you. She only cares that you’re willing to kill Hamzakiir.”
But Anila was so very vulnerable. With the smallest of urges from Rümayesh, her anger was rekindled, and it pushed her beyond all reason. “He must die!” she shouted at the Mirean queen.
“No.” Alansal took careful steps closer. “Don’t you see? The crystal threatens the city we now stand beneath. We are on the very edge. Rümayesh needs it to be pushed over, and she wants you to do it. I beg of you, stay your hand until we can find a way to—”
Her words caught in her throat with a sound like choking. The queen’s war pins made it nearly impossible for Rümayesh to work her magic, even with the bone of Raamajit, but she still managed to turn the air thick. Brama felt it pressing down on his chest like a hundredweight. Mae and Alansal slowed, their movements becoming glacial.
Anila was slowed as well, but not nearly so much. Rümayesh was granting her near free movement. Anila stared into Hamzakiir’s eyes and gripped the knife in both hands, its point facing down.
Queen Alansal, coughing, cried out for Anila to stop. Then, abandoning her pleas, began speaking in a language Rümayesh didn’t know. A spell, perhaps.
Mae shouted, “Hear me, Brama! Fight Rümayesh! Fight her!”
Rümayesh, meanwhile, was speaking through Hamzakiir’s mouth. “Collum,” Hamzakiir intoned. “Jasur. Raji. Aphir.”
They were the names of Anila’s classmates, the collegia scholars Hamzakiir had performed his grisly experiments on, transforming them into instruments of death. It enraged Anila, but at the same time reminded Brama of those he loved: his family, his lost friends from the west end, the people from the Knot with whom he’d worked to rid the black lotus’s taint from the city. If Rümayesh had her way, they would all be lost.
Mae, still caught in Rümayesh’s spell, stood over Brama, her pretty round face revealing how much she cared for him. He was lucky to know her. She was a true friend, and she would be lost too if the crystal shattered.
So Brama did fight. He used Rümayesh’s own spell against her. As Anila raised the knife high, ready to drive it into Hamzakiir’s chest, Brama forced the spell to work on her as well. And it did. Anila slowed, then froze altogether, the muscles along her arms and neck standing out in the ghostly light.
No! Rümayesh screamed in his mind. No!
But it was too late. Brama ascended like a desert storm, fighting, scratching, sending Rümayesh down, down, deeper than she’d ever been.
The fates’ ways were as cruel as they were inventive, though. Brama hadn’t anticipated the ghul, Fezek. With Brama’s ascendance, Fezek was freed as well. He stood on quivering legs only a few paces away. Seeing Anila trapped, he thought her under attack and lunged for Brama. With an animal roar, he clubbed him on the crown of his head.
Brama was stunned, and his spell of holding was released. Mae and Queen Alansal were suddenly, unexpectedly freed, but so was Anila. As Mae and her queen darted toward her, Anila gave a shout of pure red rage and drove the knife in her hands deep into Hamzakiir’s chest. Hamzakiir went rigid and blood pooled from the entry wound, then flowed freely as Anila yanked the blade free.
The blood spread like a plague across his chest.
Alansal tried to mop it up with her silk dress, but it was everywhere, already seeping into the meshlike roots spread over Hamzakiir’s body. “The roots!” she cried. “Tear up the roots!”
With a wave of Brama’s hand, a spell was cast, and all around them roots were ripped free. But they’d already begun to shrivel. The effect flowed outward along all three tunnels as if Hamzakiir were some newborn fount of power. Alansal yanked her pins free from Brama’s chest and used them like machetes to hack at the roots.
As Brama groaned in pain, Mae dropped to her knees and pressed a bandage to his chest. “I know you there, Brama. I see it in your eyes.” She waved to the roots. “Please stop them dying. Stop them dying before there no time left.”
Brama tried, but he didn’t know how to stop what was happening. Seeing his despair, Mae joined her queen, hacking the roots with her sword, a single-edged dao. A moment later, Brama took the knife from Anila’s quivering hands and joined them, but there were simply too many.
Soon it was beyond their reach. The effect rushed along the three tunnels, and everyone stopped trying. They looked at one another, stunned, afraid to speak. Silence or not, they all knew the truth. In moments Hamzakiir’s blood would find its way to the cavern and the crystal.
They’d failed.
Brama had failed.
Queen Alansal was furious. She stared at Brama, Anila, and Fezek in turn, gripping her pins as if she were considering killing them all. Then she gave a rapid sequence of orders in Mirean and strode away, her hair and her stained dress flowing in her wake.
Mae looked heartbroken. “I must leave. My queen order it.” She buckled her demon mask back into place. “She will take Sharakhai, Brama. Better you not be here when she do.”
Then Mae followed her queen. Alansal had come to try to stop Rümayesh and prevent the devastation the crystal was sure to cause to the city she coveted. Having failed, she would try another way, though Brama had no idea what she thought she could do to prevent it.
Anila was on her knees, leaning against a large rock. She looked stunned, and more and more it seemed as though she might close her eyes and cross the threshold into death.
Which sparked an idea. A wild idea. A magnificent idea. An idea as mad as it was vast.
Rümayesh’s voice drifted up from somewhere deep inside him. It will never work.
Brama ignored her. “Quickly,” he said to Fezek, “help me with Anila.”
“Why? Where are we going?”
“We’re going to the cavern”—Brama grit his teeth against the pain in his chest and helped Anila to her feet—“and we need to reach it before Queen Alansal does.”
Chapter 61
ÇEDA’S LEGS ACHED, her lungs burned, but she pushed herself hard as she and Emre made their way along the root-covered tunnels toward the cavern with crystal. She could still feel the adichara beckoning to her. Come, the trees whispered. Lay beneath our branches. Find your final rest. Even with help of her tattoos and her connection to the desert, even with Sehid-Alaz shoring up her will, it was all Çeda could do not to turn around and go back.
Then, of a sudden, it stopped.
Çeda’s footsteps slowed. She set her hand against the tunnel wall, holding herself up as she caught her breath.
“What is it?” Emre asked between heaving breaths.
“The spell,” Çeda said. “It’s gone. It just vanished.” Which implied more. She’d felt the focus of the spell itself vanish as well. “Macide is dead.”
Emre, outlined in the faint light from the glowing moss along the tunnel’s ceiling, took in her words with a look of confusion, as if he wasn’t sure what they meant. “It’s over, then? You’re free?”
“Yes, I’m free, but the trees . . .” The adichara’s lure had faded, but her sense of the adichara had not. All around the city, more were succumbing to Meryam’s spell—like a poison, it spread among the trees. “They’re still dying.”
From the blooming fields came Sehid-Alaz’s faint voice. We
can support them for a time. Indeed, she felt the asirim shift their focus from supporting one another to supporting the trees themselves. But hurry, Çedamihn. We cannot last long.
“Come on,” Çeda said, “let’s keep moving.”
They resumed their mad dash though the dark tunnels. Çeda left it unsaid that she didn’t know what to do. She had no idea how to stop this. What was there to do, though, but reach the cavern and see?
Soon, the clash of steel grew louder, as did the wails of pain and full-throated rally cries. More alarming was the fact that the roots beneath their feet were growing ever more brittle. They cracked and gave as she and Emre traversed them. Even with Sehid-Alaz’s efforts, more of the trees were dying.
Somewhere ahead she could sense the crystal. It felt like it was going to give at any moment. And then what? Will we all die in a burning white fire? Will everything simply cease to be?
Refusing to give in to the fear, she focused on the way ahead. The light in the tunnel increased. The sounds of battle became markedly sharper. She was filled with a singular purpose—find the others, learn what they knew of the situation—yet when they reached the cavern itself, Çeda stopped in her tracks and stared at the searing brightness at the cavern’s center.
“Breath of the desert.”
As she stared at the blinding white light that was the crystal, a cold certainty ran through her. We’re too late. We’ve come too late.
It was painful to look upon. Hundreds of hairline cracks ran through and beneath the crystal’s surface. Worse was the way her skin prickled. Deep inside her, it felt as if a thread were strung through the center of her soul and was trying to draw her toward the crystal.
“Çeda,” Emre said, pointing to one of the many pockets of fighting throughout the cavern.
She forced herself to focus and saw what Emre was referring to. The forces of Sharakhai, Silver Spears in white, Blade Maidens in black, were squared off against scores of Mirean regulars dressed in banded leather armor, some—their commanders, surely—with blue horse tails flowing from the top of their steel helms.
The most intense fighting was near the crystal itself. On one side stood rank upon rank of the Damned, the elite Mirean warriors who wore lacquered armor and grinning demon masks, led by none other than Juvaan Xin-Lei, dressed in similar armor painted white. Juvaan was a terror. His white hair flew as he fought a cadre of Silver Spears and Blade Maidens. Sümeya, Kameyl, and, strangest of all, Queen Nayyan, were among them, the three moving with catlike reflexes, trading ringing blows with the Damned even as they protected one another. Cahil, bloody and screaming, brought his hammer down onto the helm of a fallen Mirean warrior. Husamettín fought behind him, Night’s Kiss a buzzing blur in his hands. Ihsan lay on the ground near them, bloody and unmoving.
Beyond the crystal and the scaffolding beside it was a sight that made Çeda’s knees go weak. A creature ten feet tall if it was one stormed about madly. It was a scene straight from a nightmare. The ehrekh, Guhldrathen, roared, swiping his terrible claws against any soldier, Sharakhani or Mirean, who stood before him. He rushed from group to group, decimating one before moving to the next as if his only goal was to deal death.
No soldier could stand against him, but in his mindlessness he took cut after cut from spears and swords. Dozens of arrows, some broken some not, pierced his gangrenous flesh. Just when it seemed the beast could hardly take more punishment, it locked its cloudy gaze on Husamettín. Çeda’s eyes watered and her mouth filled with spit, the taste a foul mixture of copper, sulfur, and ash.
As Guhldrathen pounded over the dry roots, many sprinted away, their eyes wild with fear, but not Çeda and Emre. They ran toward it. Emre, short bow at the ready, drew arrows from his quiver. Three flew in rapid sequence, each drawing a sharp line in the air before sinking into the flesh of Guhldrathen’s face or neck.
Husamettín and Cahil called for an ordered retreat toward the crystal, and used it to halt Guhldrathen’s advance. Ignoring the damage being inflicted against him, Guhldrathen swiped at Husamettín, but the King of Swords was always quicker, using swings of his buzzing sword or dashes over the uneven landscape to keep his distance.
When the ehrekh stomped one foot hard, however, a wave traveled outward from the point of impact. Roots were sundered and everyone nearby, Çeda included, lost their footing.
Husamettín fell backward, but rolled over one shoulder and was up again in a flash. Guhldrathen, fearfully quick for his size, stormed forward and backhanded Husamettín, sending the King and Night’s Kiss flying in two different directions. The King ducked the next blow, and Guhldrathen’s fist crashed into the side of the crystal instead, striking home with a great boom. One of his tails lashed out behind him, catching Sümeya’s sword and sending it flying. As Husamettín wove and dodged like a fluttering swallow, Cahil charged. Kameyl did as well.
In that moment there came a splintering sound. Another hairline fracture appeared in the crystal, a jagged white line that was hard to discern among the cracked-glass pattern of the rest. Even in the sound of battle Çeda could hear the high-pitched tone that accompanied a piece of the crystal breaking free. It was like a shard of light, as big as Çeda’s forearm, tipping end over end to land near Davud’s feet.
Davud immediately picked up the shard and lifted it high above his head. While his free hand described sigils in the air, he called, “Guhldrathen!”
The ehrekh had been rounding on Husamettín, but stopped and stared, transfixed by the shard held in Davud’s hand.
Çeda, meanwhile, sprinted toward Guhldrathen’s back and whistled sharply: warden then crouch. Sümeya, understanding, stepped into Çeda’s path and crouched low. Kameyl, meanwhile, having retrieved Night’s Kiss, sent it soaring through the air toward Çeda. Çeda leapt onto Sümeya’s back and launched herself high into the air, catching Night’s Kiss as she flew.
She landed on Guhldrathen’s back, steadying herself by grabbing the curve of one horn. Whatever spell Davud had used on Guhldrathen was broken. The ehrekh roared, trying to dislodge her, but Çeda’s hold was strong and sure. Slipping Night’s Kiss across his throat, she used her opposite hand to grip the blade. Guhldrathen reeled. His bough-like arms flailed as he tried to knock her free. His horns swept this way and that, bludgeoning her, but none of it worked. Çeda had him like a wolf bitch clamping her jaws around her latest kill. With a cry built of fury and fear, Night’s Kiss buzzing louder than she’d ever heard it, she sawed the blade back and forth, cutting Guhldrathen’s neck to the bone.
The resistance against the blade suddenly vanished, and Çeda was sent tumbling down Guhldrathen’s back and onto the dried roots. Guhldrathen’s head, meanwhile, rolled down his hulking frame like a melon off a cart. As it thumped away, his headless body tipped and crashed against the roots, which gave like the brittle bones of a long-dead acacia.
Only then did Çeda realize how quiet it had become in the cavern. In the madness of fighting Guhldrathen, the Mireans had chosen to retreat and regroup. Husamettín, finding his feet slowly after having been struck a glancing blow, regarded Çeda and the sword in her hand, his sword for over four centuries. After a moment’s pause, Çeda handed it to him—now was not the time to fight over the ownership of a weapon. Husamettín in turn slid the blade into its sheath, then went to one of the tables that had been knocked over. Near it, half hidden in a bolt of black velvet, were River’s Daughter, Çeda’s knife, and her sword belt. He took all three up and handed them to Çeda.
She accepted them with a nod, then buckled the belt around her waist. Gods it felt good to have her weapons back. By then a group was gathering around them. There was a large contingent of Silver Spears and several hands of Blade Maidens who’d decided to throw in their lot with Queen Nayyan and the elder Kings. A group of Qaimiri soldiers and knights had remained as well. Around them was a bloody battlefield. Dead bodies lay everywhere, clustered where the fighting was s
trongest. Fallen weapons and shields were scattered about. Ihsan, conscious now but limping badly, and Queen Nayyan, supporting him, wove their way among them, occasionally slipping on the uneven landscape of the roots.
Many of those gathered stared up at the crystal, at the place where the shard had broken free. Others stared at the shard itself, which Davud had dropped near the crystal’s base. It lay half buried in the roots, still glowing, though faintly, like an ember dying in the night.
Yndris burst from a nearby tunnel, speaking in a breathless rush. “The Mirean have taken the city. They’re sweeping through the Sun Palace and will be here in minutes.”
Ihsan, always so composed, had a look of naked worry on his face. “That doesn’t matter if we can’t do something about the crystal.”
A long silence followed, a silence in which everyone looked perfectly helpless, including Ihsan.
“Please tell me Yusam’s journals told you something about this,” Çeda said.
Ihsan shook his head. “Yusam never saw this far. We have arrived in uncharted territory.”
The feeling that Çeda was losing her soul to the crystal was strong and growing stronger. Others must have felt it too, their looks of unease plain to see. More than one had their hands over their stomachs. Already the cry of soldiers engaging in battle was nearing. The Mirean forces were returning, and they wouldn’t be able to hold them off again.
“Gods,” Çeda said, “we can’t have come so far only to fail in the end.”
The others seemed to agree, but had no idea what to do. And soon enough, any choice would be taken from them.
“Any ideas?” Çeda asked Davud, who’d always been clever and well read and who now had the power of a blood mage running through his veins.
He stared back with a helpless expression. “I wish I did.”
“We have to destroy it,” came a voice from beyond their circle.
The Blade Maidens and Silver Spears parted, creating a path and revealing Brama and a strange-looking ghul, a shambling man with a peg leg. They supported a woman between them, Anila the necromancer, who looked so weak Çeda doubted she could stand on her own.
When Jackals Storm the Walls Page 52