“The crystal,” Brama repeated, “must be destroyed.”
“Why?” Çeda asked.
“Because if it reaches its breaking point on its own, it will be too late. But if we can break it now, on our terms, then Anila and I can step through and halt it.”
“Halt it . . .” Ihsan said.
“For a time, yes,” Brama replied.
Çeda shook her head, confused. “How?”
Anila, with the ghul and Brama still supporting her, took them all in. “It must be done from the other side,” she said in heavy tones. Her black, patterned skin was radiant, chromatic. Her eyes were heavy and her head hung low. She looked close to death. There were no obvious wounds on her, but Çeda knew some wounds left no marks.
The sounds of orders being called, of soldiers marching, grew louder, particularly from two of the cavern’s many tunnels. Fighting erupted along one of them.
Brama swung his gaze over the assemblage. “All of you, go, quickly. Get as far away from the cavern as you can.”
Cahil ignored him and turned to Ihsan instead. “Will it work?”
“I don’t know.” Ihsan looked at Çeda. “Will it?”
Çeda wanted to laugh. How absurd of him to ask her. Her eyes drifted to the lump on Brama’s forehead. He had a piece of an elder god inside him, the bone of Raamajit the Exalted. It made him seem otherworldly, a demigod himself. It was power she could only dream of, but just as important was the determination in his eyes.
“I trust Brama,” she said, “and it’s our best chance.”
Ihsan, Nayyan, Husamettín, and Cahil all shared a look. One by one, they nodded, then broke away. The Spears, the Maidens, and the soldiers from Qaimir all followed, moving ever quicker toward a tunnel far from the approaching soldiers.
Davud went to Anila and embraced her tightly. He gave her a long, tender kiss, as heartfelt a thing as Çeda had seen in a long while. “Go well,” he said as tears streamed down his face.
In return, Anila whispered something into his ear, then broke away with a melancholy smile. Brama spoke to Davud as well, something about a young man trapped in the collegia.
Emre, meanwhile, took Çeda’s hand. “Let’s go.”
“A moment,” she said.
Standing before Brama, she took in his round cheeks, his curly hair, the vulnerable look in his eyes. He had so much power at his command, but she saw the handsome young thief she’d met so long ago in the Shallows, a man who made his living by stealing into homes and taking what he wanted. She’d asked him to join her on her mission to tame Rümayesh, the ehrekh who’d eventually mastered him, precisely because he’d been so good at it. It had changed him entirely—the thief transforming into someone prepared to give everything that Sharakhai might live.
He was scared. Petrified. He didn’t know if he could do it.
Çeda took his hands in hers. She rubbed the skin along the backs of his hands, ignoring the many scars. As she stared into his fearful eyes and smiled, words of reassurance came to mind—you can do this; everything will be okay—but they felt false, so instead she pulled him into an embrace. Shivering terribly, he slipped his arms around her and they held one another.
Behind Çeda, a trumpet blared, a call to battle. Brama pulled away and stared into her eyes, he was not calm, but there was strength there. And gratitude.
“You’re brave,” Çeda said to him.
“I’m a thief.”
“You’re about to steal a treasure unlike any other, something the gods themselves conspired to make.”
He smiled. “I think what you’re trying to say is that this will be the greatest heist the world has ever seen.”
“The greatest by far.”
Brama actually laughed, and the mischievous twinkle in his eyes, a twinkle he was once so well known for, made a sudden and unexpected reappearance.
Çeda stepped away, then she, Emre, and Davud left, retreating as war spilled into the cavern.
Chapter 62
BRAMA HELD ANILA’S HAND. The crystal was now blindingly bright. A steady thrum suffused the chill air of the cavern and resonated deep within his chest.
I know what you wish to do, Rümayesh repeated, but it won’t work. You cannot part from me. You cannot leave me behind. We are linked.
Brama heard panic in her words. She wasn’t certain her words were true. She was terrified of dying, her soul fading until she was forgotten. But she was right about one thing. Brama couldn’t leave her behind.
“I’m not parting from you,” he said aloud. “I’m bringing you with me.”
A silence followed as Anila stepped toward the crystal.
After all I’ve done to you, Rümayesh said, all I’ve done to those you love, you would bring me with you?
I would. I release my hate, Rümayesh. I release my pain. Hold my hand on the other side. Join me in saving this city.
Shouts came. Crisp orders were called. Men and women died in the bloody clash that followed. Anila, meanwhile, raised one hand, fingers splayed, and pressed it against the crystal’s surface. Brama felt something prickle over his skin. She was reaching through the crystal to the land beyond. She was weakening it on purpose, opening the gateway just enough that the two of them might pass through and hold it closed from the opposite side.
The crystal emitted a sharp ting. Several new cracks formed. It seemed brighter than only moments ago.
You have moments to decide, Brama said.
He felt a moment of confusion, of indecision. Even now she didn’t trust that he would bring her through. But then Anila, so intent, so powerful a moment ago, collapsed to the cavern floor. She’d died in that moment. Brama had felt her passage through the crystal.
So had Rümayesh. Very well, Brama.
As the cracks in the crystal widened, and a pure golden light shone through, Brama pressed his hands against its surface. He felt Anila calling to him from the other side, her hand reaching to pull him across.
For the first time in many years, a feeling of deep and pervading peace spread through Brama. Reaching out for Anila’s hand, he stepped into the light.
Chapter 63
ÇEDA GLANCED OVER her shoulder while running for the tunnel. Anila had already crumpled near the crystal’s foot. Brama, a strange, beatific smile on his face, fell next, while beyond, hundreds of Silver Spears were being driven back by a company of Mirean regulars who outnumbered them many, many times over. More came from a second tunnel.
Queen Nayyan and King Husamettín shouted for them to retreat. Some obeyed. Many others, locked in combat, never heard the orders and fought on.
The crystal was bright as a newborn star. As the soldiers streamed past it, King Ihsan stared into the light, transfixed. As a keen ringing filled the air, the battle first eased, then ceased altogether. Everywhere, soldiers, be they foreign or native, were turning toward it, squinting, hands raised against the light.
Nearby, Davud stopped running. With frantic movements he drew a symbol in the air. An azure blue shield went up mere moments before the crystal exploded in a grand display of light and flying shards. Near Çeda, the shards sparked off Davud’s shield with a sound like shearing steel and fanned toward the cavern’s roof. The soldiers near the crystal weren’t so lucky. Like a scythe through wheat, hundreds were felled in the blink of an eye.
As their anguished cries filled the cavern, Davud’s shield faltered, then winked out of existence. Where the crystal once stood, a condensed point of light glowed fitfully. It hovered in the air, expanding slowly outward. First it consumed Brama’s and Anila’s unmoving forms, then Macide and the scaffold, then more and more fallen soldiers. Its outer edge shimmered like Davud’s shield, but in a gentler manner, like the surface of a sunlit pond. Everything within it was lit strangely, as if dusted in gold.
It expanded ever outward, hungry, a wall of cold coming with i
t. The chill felt like a harbinger of the lord of all things coming for them. All around, the soldiers, regardless of nation, began to recover. They pointed and shouted. They helped fallen comrades to their feet while casting their gazes about as if the cavern itself were coming alive. All sense of enmity, of opposing sides, had drained away, leaving them all mere mortals—delicate, breakable things—who hoped that the light wouldn’t swallow them.
Everyone in Çeda’s group had headed into the tunnel, all save Ihsan, who remained even when Çeda tugged on his arm. He glanced at her, giving her an unreadable expression. “Go on,” he said, and returned his attention to the center of the expanding light.
Only then did Çeda realize what he was looking at. She hadn’t noticed, but within that magnificent brightness, a man and a woman stood holding hands. It was Anila and Brama.
“You can’t help them,” she said to him.
“I know,” Ihsan replied.
Çeda left him standing there—he could remain there until the end of days if he wished—and ran to catch up with the others. With nearly a hundred soldiers as their escort, they wove their way through the tunnels. Terrified of the light, Çeda threw glances over one shoulder while navigating the uneven terrain—as sure as rain was rare, she was certain she would pass to the land beyond if the light touched her.
On they went in silent desperation, Cahil leading them steadily upward. The light was lost behind them for a time. Çeda prayed they’d escaped it, or that Anila and Brama had managed to contain it in some way. As they reached the marble-tiled halls of the Sun Palace, however, her hopes were dashed. The expanding, glimmering shield lifted through the floors, passed beyond walls, growing ever larger, ever faster.
We’re too late, Çeda thought. It’s going to consume the entire city. It’s going to consume the desert.
She and countless others fled the palace—soldiers, servants, children, the elderly, the injured, the sick—as dawn arrived, bathing the landscape in a soft, beautiful glow that seemed wrong with so much pain and terror around them. All across the palace’s manicured grounds lay soldiers, both alive and dead, and evidence of a greater battle, a battle that would surely still be raging had everyone not stopped to stare at the shimmering dome expanding through the palace walls, colonnades, and porticos. Many screamed. All gave ground to the light save for some few who, like Ihsan, seemed transfixed by it and stood there staring, awaiting their fate.
Çeda took Emre’s hand. They sprinted over the dry palace lawn, their breath coming in great, heaving gasps.
She felt Emre’s hand tighten as it swept over them. A deeper cold caressed Çeda’s skin. It was tender but awful and ghulish at the same time, like the kiss of a dead lover. It was hardly the worst part, though. Now that she was within the light, it felt as though a great chasm had opened up beneath her. She now existed in both worlds, and she was no longer certain she could return to the land of the living. She was no longer sure she wanted to.
The lure of the land beyond was so strong her steps slowed. Then she stopped and turned. Near the palace’s grand entrance stood a wavering form with long black hair in a flowing blue dress. Her features were cloaked in white light, but Çeda knew her from her shape, her stance, from the way she favored one hip over the other.
Memma, came a whisper in her mind.
How she wanted to go to her. To speak to her. To embrace her and walk among the field of blazing blues once more. She’d already taken a step toward her when she realized Emre was doing the very same thing.
She turned to find him staring at a wavering form not ten paces distant. “Rafa?” he breathed.
She suddenly remembered the vision from Yusam’s mere of Emre walking toward Rafa, ignoring her pleas. It so unnerved her that she spun away from her mother, turned her back to the palace’s entrance, and sidestepped toward Emre. Grabbing the neck of his leather armor, she yanked him into motion. He stumbled, his movements leaden.
“Look away, Emre!”
She snatched his hand and pulled on it and kept pulling until they were running once more. She stared doggedly ahead, fixating on the war-torn landscape, the walls, the city beyond. Another few paces, she prayed. Just another few paces.
High above, a white haze streaked the sky. A cold wind blew. It toyed with their hair and clothes. The smell of burnt honey carried on the wind—that and something acerbic, like a smithy, as if the first gods had returned, ready to forge the world anew.
All around lay evidence of a larger battle. Dead bodies littered the grounds, the walkways, the gardens and patios. They hailed from all five kingdoms: Sharakhai, Qaimir, Kundhun, Mirea, and Malasan. Many had terrible, bloody, mortal wounds—lost limbs, crushed skulls, arrows through throats—and yet some now moved, becoming animated, their souls returning to them through some artifact of this strange place caught between two worlds. They pushed themselves up from the dry ground, then stood, looking about with vacant expressions.
Davud was suddenly beside her. “Çeda!”
The panic in his voice made her turn. Some of the Silver Spears accompanying them had stopped. By turns they were terrified or inexplicably calm. Without fail, though, they all took on a look of peace and acceptance, then simply fell to the ground, lifeless, their souls shedding their mortal coils like burdensome cloaks.
King Cahil had stopped, much as Emre and Çeda had moments ago. His right hand was pressed to his chest. His left was pumping into a fist over and over. He stared about, but it was only as Çeda neared him that she saw what he was looking at. Standing in a circle around him, barely discernible, were the faint outlines of many, many souls. Some were hunched and aggressive, others curled inward over their bodies as if in pain. Many had arms lifted, fingers pointing at him accusingly.
Cahil turned slowly, taking them all in. They were those he’d tortured, Çeda realized. Hundreds of them, standing, waiting, judging. In that moment the centuries of Cahil’s brutal reign as the Confessor King were stripped away, exposing him as the young, petulant man who’d risen to become King in the days before Beht Ihman. He was fragile, scared. He knew what was about to happen.
“Father?” Yndris called to him.
Cahil turned, but he didn’t look at his daughter. He looked at Çeda. His brashness gone, he seemed vulnerable. He wanted her help, though what he thought she might do, Çeda had no idea, nor would she have lifted a finger to help him even if she did know. That which is sown shall be reaped, promised the Al’Ambra.
As the forms closed in around him, Cahil’s eyes went wide. His right hand pressed against his chest, directly over his heart. His mouth worked soundlessly and he collapsed to the dry ground. A white outline rose from his prone form, a wight where the man had once stood. Cahil spun about, his fear plain. The wights around him wasted no time. They descended on him, tearing, while Cahil’s attenuated scream filled the chill air.
“Father!” Yndris screamed. She sprinted toward him, only stopping when Husamettín grabbed her wrist.
Çeda, Davud, and Emre, meanwhile, skirted the thrashing mob, watching in wonder and horror as the grand, golden vault ballooned beyond the walls of the Sun Palace, beyond the House of Kings, beyond Tauriyat itself and into the city proper. Nearby was an empty war chariot with two Malasani horses still harnessed to it. The driver was slumped over the front, an arrow stuck through his chest. Emre leapt up, dragged the driver off with a grunt, then took up the reins.
When Çeda and Davud had crammed in behind him, Emre snapped the reins, and called, “Hiyah!”
They rode hard and caught up to the soldiers who’d escaped with them from the cavern, some of whom had taken horses or chariots or war wagons of their own. Emre steered wide of the remaining pockets of conflict and eventually they passed through the House of Maidens, beyond its broken front gates, and into the city. All was madness along the cramped road known as the Spear, soldiers retreating, the people of Sharakhai braving t
he streets, drawn by the unexpected silence. On seeing the shimmering dome, some raised their hands to the sky and cried tears of joy, viewing it as deliverance from their enemies, a gift from the desert gods, proof that Sharakhai and her people were favored above all others.
As they headed for the Wheel, the city’s busiest intersection where the Spear met the Trough, they caught up with the expanding edge of the glittering dome and passed beyond it. When they did, the feelings of cold, of being stretched, of being drawn toward the cavern, all eased sharply but did not abate entirely. When they reached the Wheel’s central fountain, Emre pulled on the reins and spun the chariot about. Others had done the same, creating a strange patchwork of soldiers and citizens all about the Wheel’s broad, cobblestoned surface.
From the Wheel, the whole of the House of Kings was laid bare—the palaces dotting the slopes, King’s Road running its winding path, the stout barracks, the blocky archives of the House of Maidens. Outside the walls stood the Temple District with its hulking testaments to the gods. More buildings, both ancient and new, plagued the landscape, becoming smaller and more ordinary as they cascaded down the slope away from the House of Kings.
Everything trapped inside the great, glittering dome was limned in gold, an effect that encompassed Tauriyat, the House of Kings, and a quarter of the city beyond. It was so large it encompassed King’s Harbor, the fertile fields, and surely a great, curving swath of the desert as well.
For a long time no one spoke.
“Did they succeed or didn’t they?” Emre asked absently.
“They did and they didn’t,” Davud replied. “I suspect we arrived too late. Or it was too powerful to stop entirely. Maybe it was both. But somehow, they’ve managed to stall it.”
“For how long?” Çeda asked.
When Jackals Storm the Walls Page 53