Raseed didn’t know or care what the traitor was going on about. His attention was on the floor beside the dais, where Mouw Awa crouched over the Doctor, who screamed in pain.
He had to help his mentor. The manjackal was distracted and Raseed, moving faster than he’d ever moved in his life, flew at the thing.
But, fast as he was, Zamia Banu Laith Badawi was faster. A bolt of golden light, she shot past him, growling “This one is mine!” and barreled into Mouw Awa, knocking the manjackal from the Doctor.
Raseed spared a glance at the combatants, light and shadow battling in a tangle of claws and growls. Then he saw the man in the soiled kaftan—Orshado, it had to be—dash forward and calmly touch the wall-of-light. There was a flash of red, and the wall was gone. At a gesture from Orshado, the skin ghuls, no longer impeded, strode toward the throne.
Raseed reached the Doctor. Claw-marks had shredded the Doctor’s kaftan, though Raseed could see no blood. Around the rims of the Doctor’s eyes, Raseed could see a red that was brighter than bloodshot.
“Ministering Angels! Doctor, are you…What can I do?” he asked, ashamed to feel as frightened as he did.
“Raseed bas Raseed,” the Doctor said, his voice hollow and vacant. “A good man…a good partner.”
Raseed grabbed the ghul hunter by the shoulders. “Doctor, please! How can we kill these things?”
The Doctor’s bright brown eyes seemed to struggle against the red light that rimmed them. “Hunh? Be…behead. Stop skin ghuls!”
“I did behead one, Doctor, it just—”
“O…Orshado.” It was the last thing the Doctor said before he fell into some sort of sorcerous death-sleep.
Orshado. Then the ghul of ghuls himself must be beheaded!
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw gouts of magical flame—Litaz and Dawoud battling yet more skin ghuls. He didn’t know what had become of Zamia.
Raseed laid his mentor’s big limp body carefully upon the dais. He looked up and saw Orshado leap impossibly—magically—onto the throne itself. The ghul of ghuls backhanded Pharaad Az Hammaz with a, no doubt, sorcerous strength. The master thief dropped his sword and fell from the throne onto the dais. Then Orshado, one foot planted on the throne, grabbed the child—the Heir, Raseed realized—by his long, jet-black hair and drew a knife.
He’s going to drink the Heir’s blood, just as that scroll said.
Orshado’s curved knife darted up and down, and the Heir screamed in pain. A red spray spattered Orshado’s kaftan.
At the same time, the half-conscious Falcon Prince spoke a single word and made a strange gesture. Then he reached past the bleeding Heir and pressed something on one of the throne’s armrests. Raseed heard a loud click and a groan of shifting stone.
Another secret that the Khalifs never learned of? It seemed so, for below him the floor swiftly receded as the throne and the entire dais it sat on—with Raseed, the Doctor, the Heir, Pharaad Az Hammaz, and Orshado all on it—rose on some sort of column.
Raseed gave the Doctor’s limp form one last pained glance, then looked back to Orshado. The ghul of ghuls plunged his knife into the Heir’s chest a second time.
Raseed leapt toward the throne. Almighty God, though I know I am unworthy, I beg You to grant Your servant strength!
He flew at Orshado. But the ghul of ghuls waved his hand, and then something strange—something impossible—happened.
The throne room around them ceased to be. Where stone walls and ceiling had been there was only swirling red light. Raseed’s companions were gone. Orshado and his monsters were gone. Raseed was alone.
What foul magic is this?
Raseed looked around frantically, trying to find a ceiling, a floor, or a door. But there was only the churning whorl of red light.
He went into his breathing exercises, and with them came a degree of calm. He recited scripture. “Though I walk a wilderness of ghuls and wicked djenn, no fear can cast its shadow upon me. I take shelter in His—”
The Heavenly Chapters died on Raseed’s lips as a man appeared before him.
The man carried a spear. He was roughly dressed and had a gruesome sword wound through his middle. He should not have been able to stand. Something about his face was familiar to Raseed…
One of the highwaymen! When Raseed had first left the Lodge of God two years ago, he had been ambushed by three highwaymen on the long road to Dhamsawaat. He had slain them with ease.
This was the first man Raseed had ever killed.
The man looked at Raseed with empty eyes and spoke.
“‘O BELIEVER! KNOW THAT TO MURDER ANOTHER MAN IS TO MAKE GOD WEEP!’”
At the sound of that voice quoting from the Heavenly Chapters, Raseed froze in fear. The man’s mouth moved, but the voice that spoke the scripture was Raseed’s own—the doubting internal voice he often heard in his head.
As the man spoke, the other two highwaymen whom Raseed had killed on that day appeared. One had half his head missing, the other bled from his chest. They joined in the chanting, each speaking in Raseed’s own voice.
“‘O BELIEVER! KNOW THAT TO MURDER ANOTHER MAN IS TO MAKE GOD WEEP!’”
Another mangled man blinked into existence beside Raseed. The magus Zoud, who had been kidnapping women, wedding them, then feeding them to his water ghuls. Raseed had killed the man on his first ghul hunt with the Doctor.
“‘O BELIEVER! KNOW THAT TO MURDER ANOTHER MAN IS TO MAKE GOD WEEP.’”
Another wicked man whom Raseed had slain appeared. Then another. As one, the dead men stepped toward him. And at last Raseed felt movement return to his limbs.
He slashed out with his sword at the closest form, but the forked blade whistled through the highwayman as if through empty air. He feared the touch of those dead men’s hands more than he had ever feared anything, though he could not say why. He backed away step by step, keeping his eyes on them.
Behind him he heard a great whoosh of fire. He felt his blue silks singeing. Prying his eyes from the dead men, he turned toward the horrible heat. He saw a vast chasm filled with water-that-was-fire.
The Lake of Flame! I have been consigned by God to the Lake of Flame!
The dead men advanced. Raseed backed away a few more steps and felt the heat at his back begin to scald his skin. From nowhere and everywhere he heard a soft weeping that sounded like the universe being torn in two.
But then, beneath that, he heard another voice. Dim and distant, he heard Doctor Adoulla Makhslood’s words from moments ago.
“Raseed bas Raseed. A good man…a good partner…”
Raseed clung to the words as if they were the sheltering embrace of God Himself. He found power in them.
No. This flame is not real. These men are dead. I have served Almighty God as best I can. I have failed at times, but “Perfection is the palace in which God alone lives.”
Around Raseed, the thick, roiling red glow wavered and seemed to thin. The dead men disappeared. For the briefest of moments, he saw a gaunt figure in a soiled kaftan before him.
Orshado! This is his doing, not God’s!
It lasted only an instant, and then the dead men were on him again, herding him toward the Lake of Flame. Raseed felt his flesh burn but he stifled his screams.
He forced focus upon his thoughts as he never had before. He pictured the Doctor, Litaz, and Dawoud. He pictured Zamia Banu Laith Badawi, who had dared to speak to him of marriage. He thought of the flaws they all had and the good they had done. And he heard himself chanting.
“‘Perfection is the palace in which God alone lives. Perfection is the palace in which God alone lives. Perfection is the palace in which God alone lives.’”
Again the churning red light wavered and thinned. Again he saw Orshado standing there.
Raseed flew forward, the chant on his lips, his head filled with thoughts of his friends. The red light dispersed. The dead men did not return. He slashed his sword at Orshado, and felt as if he were breaking through a brick wall
.
He heard the gurgling scream of a man with no tongue. Then he was in the throne room again, on the rising dais. The Heir lay bleeding on the throne and Orshado stood before Raseed, clutching his temples in pain. It was as if time had stood still while he’d faced the death-specters.
The agony they’d caused was still with him. Pain blazed through Raseed’s body, and his back burned. But he forced himself forward, slicing out again with his sword as he did so.
Manjackal, sand ghuls, skin ghuls. Again and again these past few days, Raseed’s sword arm had proven too weak to vanquish the creatures of the Traitorous Angel. But now he felt filled with God’s power. He was the Weapon of the Wisely Worshipped.
This was the moment that he had lived his whole life for.
The force of Raseed’s blow carried him and Orshado both away from the throne and over the edge of the dais, which had now risen halfway to the ceiling. They plummeted to the floor as Raseed’s sword sliced through the ghul-of-ghuls’ neck.
The man in the soiled kaftan made no noise, even as he died.
Raseed felt his bones break as he hit the stone floor. He cried out in pain, but in his mind he heard only the Heavenly Chapters. God is the Mercy that Kills Cruelty.
Beside him he saw Orshado’s headless corpse twitch once and fall still.
Raseed tried to stand but felt the pain pulling him down into darkness. He watched the dais—with the Doctor, the Heir and the Falcon Prince still on it—rise on a notched column of marble carved to look like the scaled length of a cobra. A stone block in the ceiling slid aside. The throne ascended through the resultant hole, the underside of the dais fitting perfectly into it. There was another loud sound of grinding stone and the contraption stopped moving.
For another astonished moment, Raseed just stared at the ceiling that had swallowed the Doctor. He noted with satisfaction that the skin ghuls were all falling to the ground.
Then the pain blazed again and darkness took him.
Adoulla Makhslood felt as if a great gray boulder were crushing down upon his soul, smashing to bits everything within him that had ever been happy. He half-sensed things happening around him—a lion running by, bursts of fire in the air, the soft footsteps of a man in a filthy kaftan, his own mouth mumbling words to a man in blue—but they meant nothing to him. He felt that he was dying and that he was being shoved from the sheltering embrace of God. In all his years on God’s great earth, he had never felt such despair.
Then he heard the howl of a jackal that was somehow also the scream of a man. And the next moment he felt the merciful hand of Almighty God rolling the soul-crushing boulder away.
He blinked away tears of grateful joy. He heard a loud sound of grinding stone and a click like something sliding into place. He rubbed his eyes and sat up. His chest blazed with pain and his kaftan was shredded. But when his fingers felt for wounds they found none.
And then it all came back to him. The things his eyes had seen while his soul was behind a screen of shadow. Mouw Awa attacking him. Zamia attacking Mouw Awa. Orshado stabbing the heir. The throne climbing to the ceiling.
Adoulla struggled to his feet and tried to sort his thoughts. I am alive. Which must mean that Mouw Awa has been destroyed. But what of its master? He saw no sign of Orshado.
He was in a very small stone room without windows or doors. The throne-dais had somehow risen into this chamber, and it filled most of the room. The Heir’s unmoving body was sprawled across the Throne of the Crescent Moon, which was spattered with the boy’s blood. Pharaad Az Hammaz was hunched over the dead Heir.
And there was blood dripping from the man’s lips.
Adoulla fell to his knees, and his joy at having dodged a dark death fled. He screamed wordlessly at the foul act he was witnessing.
The Prince looked at him, the guilt on his face as visible as the blood was. “The boy asked me to do this, Uncle. He knew he was dying.” His voice was a rasp, with none of its usual bravado. “The passing of the Cobra Throne’s powers through hand-clasping was a lie, it seems. Its feeding and healing magics were a myth. But the blood-drinking spell. The war powers. These are real. I can feel their realness coursing through me.”
Adoulla wanted to vomit. He wanted to choke the Prince then and there. But it took all of Adoulla’s strength just to rise to his feet. He bit off angry words as he did so. “He was a boy, you scheming son of a whore! A boy of not-yet-ten years!”
And, just like that, the madman’s smug mask dropped. “Do you think I don’t know that, Uncle? Do you really think my heart is not torn apart by this?”
“Better that your heart were torn apart by ghuls, than that this child should die. You are a foul man to do this, Pharaad Az Hammaz, and God will damn you for it.”
The bandit wiped blood from his mouth onto his sleeve. “Perhaps. I did not kill the boy, Uncle. But he is dead now. His father is dead. There will be a struggle for this damned-by-God slab of marble, and I will need all of the power I can muster if I am going to keep it from falling back to some overstuffed murderer who lives by drinking the blood of our city. What was I to do?” The smug smirk returned.
The Prince’s matter-of-fact manner made Adoulla furious. Without quite realizing what he was doing, Adoulla lunged at the bandit, throwing out the right hook that he’d mastered back when he was the brawniest boy on Dead Donkey Lane. The man was absorbed in his newfound power, or Adoulla would never have been able to lay a hand on him. But the punch connected with a crunch.
The master thief’s eyes flashed with hatred and his hand went to his sword. Adoulla had doomed himself.
But then a slow, sad smile spread across the Prince’s face. “I suppose I deserve that, Uncle. That and more.” Pharaad Az Hammaz winced as he touched the corner of his mouth, which now dripped with his own blood. Adoulla looked at the floor, disgusted with the Falcon Prince, disgusted with himself—disgusted with everything on God’s great earth.
“Look at me, Uncle, please,” the Prince said. He sounded different, now—like a frightened child. Adoulla looked up and locked eyes with the man.
“Even…Even without the benevolent magics I’d hoped to hold,” the thief continued, “there is a chance to begin something new here. This is why, before he died, the boy asked me to do this thing. The Khalif claimed that it was God who set his line on the throne. I now know that you spoke truly that this man Orshado was sent by the Traitorous Angel to seek the throne. But me? I am just a man, Uncle. Just a man trying to do what is right.
“When I saw Orshado stab the boy, I knew what I had to do. And thanks to a trick of the old stonework I was able to do what needed doing in private. Now the question is what will happen when I lower the throne back into place and try to wrest order from this chaos. There are still ministers who support me, and my diplomats and clerks-of-law will help me twist recognition from the other realms. There is still some small chance to avoid soaking the streets in blood. Given time, my scholars might even find ways to use the Cobra Throne’s powers to help the people. But if word of this—” he gestured at the dead Heir and faltered.
The Prince swallowed and began again. “If word of this part of things gets out, even that small chance will fly out the window. It will mean another civil war, of that we can be certain. You and I are not here together through mere happenstance, Uncle. You would call it the will of God. I will simply say ‘Great sailors sail the same seas.’ But either way, I need your help. Your silence about what you have seen.”
Do you know what happens to whores in war? Miri’s question of two days ago echoed in Adoulla’s ears. He looked at the limp form of the Heir sprawled on the Throne of the Crescent Moon. If he kept this vicious, villainous secret there was a chance—a chance only—that this could happen smoothly, without ten thousand corpses in the streets. Adoulla watched a small splotch of blood—whether the Prince’s or the Heir’s, he couldn’t say—slide magically from his kaftan. Again he remembered his God-sent dream—a befouled kaftan and a river of blood.
Was it Orshado that God had been warning him of? Or was it himself?
What a damned-by-God mess. He would keep the Prince’s secret. It was wrong, and it was foul, and he didn’t doubt he would answer for it when called to join God. But it was also the only way. And it might—right here and right now—save his city, his friends, and the woman he loved. He looked up toward Beneficent God, He From Whom All Fortunes Flow, and begged silently for forgiveness.
He looked at the Prince and made his voice as hard as he could. “If you turn out to be a liar, Pharaad Az Hammaz—if you don’t do everything in your power to keep this city safe and to feed its people—there will be a price to pay. A very heavy price. Don’t think that palaces and death-magics will protect you. If you betray this city, I swear in the name of Almighty God that I will drink your blood.”
The Prince bowed solemnly to him and said nothing.
Chapter 20
ZAMIA STOOD WITH HER COMPANIONS in the early morning sunlight, staring at the burned and broken wreck that had been the shop of Dawoud Son-of-Wajeed and Litaz Daughter-of-Likami. The stink of burnt wood and charred stone stung her sensitive nostrils, and she had to stand back farther than the others.
Litaz had finally stopped screaming. The anger in her voice now was cold but no less powerful. “The Humble Students. May God damn them all to the Lake of Flame. While we were saving this damned-by-God city from the Traitorous Angel, they were doing…they did this.”
Raseed, his arm bandaged and his face bruised from the battle, frowned at the burned-out building. “This…this is not the work of God that they have done, Auntie. I am sorry.”
“It is the work of wicked men,” the Doctor said weakly, putting one arm around Litaz’s shoulders and the other around the shoulders of her husband. Even before they had discovered this destruction, Zamia noted, the Doctor had seemed unusually subdued.
After the group’s wounds had been treated by Pharaad Az Hammaz’s healers, they had left the chaos of the Crescent Moon Palace stealthily and under escort, the quiet thanks and blessings of the Falcon Prince following them out the gates. Even Raseed had stayed silent as they left, though his eyes had been like swords leveled at the master thief.
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