II
THE GUARDSMAN DID NOT KNOW how many days he had been held in the red lacquered box.
The lid opened and the gaunt man’s hard hands pulled him, naked and whimpering, from the box. The gaunt man threw him to the dirt floor. The guardsman lay there, his throat burning with thirst, trying to remember his name. All he could remember was that he was a guardsman, born in the Crescent Moon Palace and sworn to service there. That the other guardsmen served under him. The gaunt man and his shadow-creature would not let him forget that.
And he remembered the street thief and the beggar. The gaunt man had killed them both slowly, letting their blood spatter onto his already filthy kaftan. He had made the guardsman listen to their pleas. Made him smell their waste as they soiled themselves in fear.
He did not know where he was now. A room. Rafters and scrabbling rats. A cellar? A cell?
Then he heard the squealing in his mind, and the jackal-thing’s voice was in his head again.
Listen to Mouw Awa, once called Hadu Nawas, who speaketh for his blessed friend. Thou art an honored guardsman. Begat and born in the Crescent Moon Palace. Thou art sworn in the name of God to defend it. All of those beneath thee shall serve.
Listen to Mouw Awa, who is unseen and unheard by men until he doth strike! Who doth laugh away sword-blade and arrow! Who was remade by the Jackal God and freed from his prison by his blessed friend.
Listen to Mouw Awa and know no hope. Know that none shall save thee. Mouw Awa doth use his powers to sneak and smuggle and kill his blessed friend’s enemies. The fat one, the clean one, the kitten.
The shadow-jackal-man continued to whisper in the guardsman’s mind of blood and bursting lungs. Again he felt hard hands under his armpits. The gaunt man dragged him to the other side of the dark room, where a great black kettle bubbled and hissed and smelled of brimstone, though there was no flame beneath it. The liquid within the kettle looked like molten rubies, and the red glow of it lit the gaunt man’s black-bearded face.
He felt himself being lifted and plunged into the kettle. He felt his skin being scalded. And somewhere he heard the shameful screaming and pleading of a man who had once been strong.
Chapter 7
ZAMIA BANU LAITH BADAWI breathed in the scent of her family’s death again. She bolted awake, screaming and growling and reliving that horrible night when she’d found her band.
No, it was just a dream. This is a new night. She was not in the desert. She was lying on a pallet in Doctor Adoulla Makhslood’s townhouse.
But that cruel crypt-scent was still there.
Not just a dream! Out of the corner of her eye, Zamia saw motion. Something lunged at her. Only her Angel-touched reflexes and the years of training with her father saved her. Something—something almost man-shaped—smashed into the pallet where she had lain a breathspace ago.
No! Mouw Awa the manjackal is unseen and unheard by men until he doth strike. But the kitten hath scented him!
The thing before her was shadow-black, save for glowing red eyes. Somehow she heard its words with both her ears and her mind. The creature held a vague shape—something like a jackal walking about on a man’s two legs. But the edges of its outline whipped and wavered like tent flags in the wind.
The reek of her band’s death wafted from the creature. The smell of burnt jackal-hair, and of ancient child-blood. Its eyes. They were a brighter version of what she had seen in her dead bandsmen. And looking at the abomination before her, Zamia knew that it was this thing that had eaten the souls of her band—of her father.
She screamed in fear. The thing lunged at her again, and she barely managed to dodge back from its shadow-wrapped fangs. She shouted.
“RASEED! DOCTOR! ENEMIES!” It came out lioness-loud, louder than any girl’s shout could be, as she took the shape. When she was younger, she had needed to try, over and over again sometimes, to take the shape. But now it came without thinking, in the space of a breath. One moment she was a woman, the next a great golden lioness. One moment a girl’s fear filled her, the next her veins raced with sunlight.
With the claws and fangs and gold coat came confidence. She dodged another lunge and growled at the creature. “Whatever you are, you have murdered the Banu Laith Badawi. I’ll tear out your throat!”
The thing before her made a sickening whine, between a dog’s and a vile man’s. Mouw Awa is alone no more. He hath been found by his blessed friend. And he shall slay the kitten and the fat one and the clean one for his blessed friend. Mouw Awa doth shiver, knowing how salty-sweet will be the kitten’s soul-of-two-tastes!
Hearing this thing’s voice in her head was disturbing, but her father had taught her years ago to pay attention to an enemy’s body rather than their words. Zamia roared again to rouse her allies. Then she leapt at the foul creature before her.
Even as she did so, she tried to understand what this monster was. Could her claws cut a shadow?
Zamia raked out a left paw and found her answer. The foul thing—Mouw Awa, it had called itself—spit and whined and danced back in pain.
The kitten hath cut Mouw Awa! Savage as her father, the cruel cutter of Mouw Awa’s blessed friend!
The sheer speed of the creature as it leapt at her caught Zamia off guard. She managed to stay a half-step ahead of one snap of its maw, then another. But she was tiring already and all signs were that this creature was not. And she was not used to fighting in these cramped conditions.
She scrabbled back and tipped over a small bookstand, which pinned her rear paws. God help me! The creature closed, and its scent threatened to overwhelm her.
A streak of blue flew at the thing that called itself Mouw Awa. Raseed!
The dervish’s sword was out, and he slashed at the creature, drawing its attention away from Zamia. Once, twice, and thrice Raseed’s forked sword cleaved into the thing, but it made no mark.
“Be careful! This thing—it has the stink of my father’s wounds!” Zamia growled. Then she flexed her back legs and shattered the wooden bookstand. Splinters bit into her flesh, but she ignored them.
She watched monster and dervish, looking for an opening. Again Raseed’s sword slashed into Mouw Awa, but the thing just whined and sneered. Mouw Awa’s fangs missed their mark once, then twice. The creature lashed a forearm across the dervish’s chest. Raseed went flying as if he’d been kicked by a horse. Zamia’s heart sank into her stomach.
Out of the corner of her eye, Zamia saw the old man appear on the stairs, shouting. She ignored the Doctor, though, and flew at Mouw Awa.
Neither sword-blade nor prayer doth stop Mouw Awa. He hath smuggled in the spell-makings. He shall savor the twin tastes of lion and child while his blessed friend’s creatures slay the clean one and the fat one.
The creature dodged her strike and threw something at the ground. There was a sound like wind whipping, and suddenly two man-sized sandstorms were boiling in the middle of the room. Then the small storms took shape—arms, legs, fangs.
Merciful God! If the desert dunes were made monsters, they would look like this! The man-shaped things snapped their jaws, showing teeth like jagged rocks. One darted out a forked tongue. No, not a tongue. A pink rock viper. The desert’s deadliest snake.
Zamia saw these creatures come between her and her allies, and that was all of the attention she could spare. The mad, murdering monster before her had earned death, and her only purpose on God’s great earth was to kill it.
She slashed out again and again, but Mouw Awa always seemed a step ahead of her blows. That shadow-wreathed snout seemed to sneer. The kitten doth hiss and spit, but she shall die in the mangling maw of Mouw Awa, once called Hadu Nawas.
The other combatants were to her back now. Behind her she heard shouted scripture, Raseed’s cries, and magical sounds like small thundercracks. It took all of her discipline not to turn from her foe. Something was on fire, and the smoke, along with the creature’s cruel scent, made her gag.
She growled loudly. Her band’s e
nemies had fled like children from that growl. But Mouw Awa just pressed the attack again, coming close enough that Zamia could feel a strange heat coming from its maw.
The creature lunged again and missed. She saw her chance. She sprang, seizing the opportunity the overconfident monster had given her.
Given me!
Too late, Zamia realized that it was she who was overconfident. Mouw Awa was not off balance. The thing had feigned and drawn her in. Her claws raked out, and dug deep into shadow-flesh. But the creature shifted position, and its black jaws snapped, digging into her ribs. Zamia screamed and hissed and clawed at the thing again. Mouw Awa stumbled away from her, grievously wounded.
But its fangs had done their damage. Now she was aware of nothing but her pain. The pain, and a burning red heat that made her whimper. Then there was only darkness.
Merciful God help me! Only half believing what he saw, Adoulla watched two sand ghuls come to false life in his library. Zamia was locked in battle with a creature like the shadow of a jackal come to life—the likes of which he’d never seen. Raseed was struggling to his feet.
Adoulla noticed these things, but the sand ghuls were what held his attention. The power involved in raising such creatures from a distance, in commanding them from some unseen place, in subverting the ward spells Adoulla had worked here, was incalculable. The number of men that would have had to be murdered and maimed to work these magics.…They faced a dire threat indeed.
One of the ghuls charged Adoulla, a snarl etched on its grotesque almost-human features. Adoulla’s hands were already in the pockets of his kaftan. He drew forth a small vial and uncorked it with his thumb. The sand ghul’s raking claws were now only inches from Adoulla’s eyes, but he stood his ground calmly, sprinkling crushed ruby in the air before him and reciting.
“God is the Oasis in the Desert of the Soul!” The ruby dust turned to ash in midair. The ghul collapsed into a pile of loose sand and dead beetles. Adoulla felt grains of sand and less pleasant things blow across his face as the creature was drained of its animating magic. In a sort of reflection, he felt the drain of the invocation hit him hard—his chest tightened, and a stitch stung his side. After their battle the night before, he didn’t have much left in him.
Too old, he thought. But even as he thought it he saw the lion-girl fighting desperately against that shadow-thing and watched Raseed trying hopelessly to slay a sand ghul with his sword.
No, not too old he told himself. These children will die if I am. He summoned strength from God-alone-knew-where and fumbled in his satchel for some remedy against these creatures.
He thanked Beneficent God aloud when his fingers closed around three smooth stones the size of grapes. He gathered the lightning beads—each a swirl of mother-of-pearl—and looked up to see that Raseed had been knocked to the ground again. He was already getting to his feet, but the ghul he’d been battling now darted toward Adoulla.
Adoulla twisted as the thing hissed and swung at him. He somehow managed not to be torn open by those rocklike claws. But the flat of the ghul’s great forearm caught him across the chest like an iron bar. He fell backward, landing on his ass with a grunt, the wind knocked out of him.
He started to throw the beads, then hesitated. They’d cause a fire, no doubt. His home…
But he had no choice. Adoulla threw.
The sand ghul hissed loudly as the tiny stones struck it. They were sucked immediately into the thing’s abdomen, sand shifting away from sand to briefly reveal a writhing mass of scorpions and shiny black beetles. Adoulla spoke the invocation.
“God is the Lightning That Strikes Thrice!” It was slurred with pain and regret, but it was enough. There was a loud but muffled noise, like a peal of thunder wrapped in a wool blanket, and the sand ghul froze in its tracks. Then another muffled peal and another as the beads exploded inside the creature. Sheets of lightning-fire shot out from the sand ghul’s midsection, scalding the arm Adoulla threw up to protect his face. Small fires caught in the room and spread with magical speed. Adoulla could smell paper burning and wondered in agony what books and scrolls he was losing. He saw his furniture catch fire, the very walls of his home aflame. Then the invocation’s drain hit him and he collapsed, pain and smoke filling his mind.
Raseed watched one of the sand ghuls crumble from the Doctor’s invocation and thanked God as he faced off against the second one. He had never fought sand ghuls before, though the Doctor had spoken of them. It was not like fighting bone ghuls or water ghuls. No matter how many times Raseed swung his sword, the blade found no flesh to bite. Every thrust slid into loose sand, and it took every bit of Raseed’s skill just to dodge the ghul’s blows as he freed his sword.
Almighty God, what can I do against such a monster? But his thoughts were dashed out of him as the creature slammed him to the ground with a great, grainy fist. He came to his feet quickly and saw the Doctor toss something at the ghul and speak an invocation before passing out. There was a thundercrack sound, and Raseed threw up an arm to shield himself from a sheet of fire. He turned his face from the blast and saw Zamia fighting that shadow-creature.
Raseed’s skin and silks were singed, but he ignored the pain. When he turned back to the sand ghul, he saw that the Doctor’s invocation had had a remarkable effect. At the sounds of the small explosions, the creature had stopped moving, incapacitated by whatever passed for pain in such a monster. The magical heat of the explosions had caused the palm-tree-thick midsection of the sand ghul to melt into glass! The melted remains of scorpions and centipedes clouded the glass with black. The sand ghul was stopped in its tracks.
Small fires burned about the room, catching and spreading with astonishing speed. But Raseed focused on his enemy. He knew an opportunity when he saw one. Glass could be broken.
He sheathed his sword, extended his right arm and pointed his fist at the sand ghul. With a loud shout that focused his soul, he flew forward, thrusting his fist into the thing’s stomach. If it has a stomach!
There was an earsplitting crack. Then a thick tinkling sound like a thousand tiny bells. Raseed felt countless splinters of hot glass digging into his skin, from his knuckles all the way up his arm to his elbow. But he was focused, and not a glimmer of pain made it through his training. Praise God.
In a blur of movement he withdrew his arm from the monster’s midsection. The sand ghul collapsed in a rain of sand, broken glass, and dead centipedes. Raseed turned from the waist high pile before him, scanning the room.
The whole house was filling with smoke and fast-spreading fire. The townhouse walls were blackening with flame. The Doctor lay moaning in pain but did not seem to be badly wounded. A golden lion—Zamia!—squatted in the corner, growling and whimpering as she bled. Raseed’s breath caught in his throat.
The jackal-creature, clearly wounded, struggled to stand and make its way to the window. It whined as shadow-stuff whirled about it in tattery flags. Raseed heard it speak somehow in his mind even as he moved toward it.
No! Mouw Awa hath been cut and bitten! Might this mean his death? No! His blessed friend shall heal him. His blessed friend shall sit on the Cobra Throne while Mouw Awa’s howls doth hound the air!
The thing clawed at the lattice window, splintering the dark wood and howling in pain. Before Raseed could reach it, it leapt from the second story window to the hard-packed dirt road below. The fall will kill it, Raseed half-hoped. But as the thing hit the ground it seemed to simply…melt away. He himself had a remarkable skill in stealth, but this was different. Mouw Awa did not hide…it joined with the lamp-shadows. The thing had fled but it was not dead—Raseed could sense that much.
It was Raseed’s duty to pursue, but his eyes were drawn to the limp forms of Zamia and the Doctor. They needed him now. The tribeswoman had changed shape again in the space of a moment. He felt his heart would burst, seeing this girl of five and ten years with a grisly wound in her side. The Doctor moaned and sat up, coughing from the smoke around them. The flames blazed
hotter, the wood of divan and bookshelf cracking and popping in the fires.
Zamia whimpered. Only her mouth moved, making pained, pleading sounds. His gaze returned to the street below. O God, is it wicked to let such a monster flee just to save the lives of friends? But even as his soul asked Almighty God for guidance, his body choked from smoke and moved to Zamia’s side.
Suddenly a glowing green light filled the townhouse. As he reached Zamia, he saw a hundred tiny hands the color of seawater stamping at the flames and waving away smoke. Magic. But not the sort of spell the Doctor worked. Whatever it signified, Raseed didn’t care. All that mattered was Zamia’s wound, which was bubbling and hissing horribly, as if with an alkhemist’s acids. Raseed felt tears filling his eyes and not only from the smoke.
He felt the Doctor’s large hand on his shoulder and heard that gruff voice in his ear. “Come, boy. Help has arrived.”
Raseed snarled at his mentor. “We should not have brought her here, Doctor! She’s just a child!” An incoherent cry escaped from his throat. “We should not have brought her!” He was startled by the sudden impulse to strike the Doctor.
The Doctor winced from the smoke and the pain of his wounds. “Snap out of it, boy! I said there is help here!”
Raseed saw, more than felt, a bony, red-black hand on his forearm. Dawoud. Litaz. The Doctor’s friends. The smoke filled his eyes and his mind. He let himself be guided out of the burning townhouse, only half-aware of what was happening.
The next thing he knew, he was standing in front of his ruined, soot-blackened home. The spell-fires were already dying, but they had done their damage. The Doctor sat on the street, his head in his hands. His Soo friends—the tall, bald magus Dawoud and his wiry little wife Litaz—stood beside him, gently setting Zamia’s unmoving body onto a litter.
Throne of the Crescent Moon Page 9