The Bloodprint

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  The Commandhan’s men came back to him to confer. He took a step back, flicking his whip against the leather of his boots.

  One of his men pointed to the flourishing script beneath the Hallow’s blue dome, its height rendering it legible for miles.

  Arian held her breath. It was an ancient treasure in a language most Talisman couldn’t read. Perhaps the Commandhan was different. His lash struck out at the snow.

  “Bring it down.”

  And there was nothing she could do but watch as arrows were holstered in their crossbows, declaiming a battle cry of doom.

  The blue tiles broke apart, the faience cracking like delicate shells against a stony shore. Arian felt the tiny fissures of pain in her bones.

  The Hazara remained stoic in the face of the Hallow’s destruction.

  I brought this to them, Arian thought. And I will bring them further loss yet.

  Wafa shrunk up beside her, taking her hand in his own, clinging tight.

  It was a lesson to him, to be patient and still like the Hazara when his most feared enemy was at his heels. Watching the tiles he hadn’t known how to value crack away from the dome’s face, he gripped Arian’s palm as if feeling the sting of the arrows himself.

  Sinnia’s lips thinned as she watched the ancient script break apart.

  “They will tire of this,” she whispered to Arian. “They have done their worst, now they will leave.”

  The larger of the two mastiffs let out a wild howl. It made the hair on the nape of Arian’s neck stand on end, fear flooding her senses.

  It was a cry of discovery.

  The Commandhan held up his hand. The Talisman gathered around him.

  “Find the dog!”

  They fanned out behind the Hallow, climbing the rise of the hills to the south.

  The ranks of Talisman were no more than a hundred feet away from the Hazara motionless on the rise. In a well-choreographed gesture at a sign from the Alamdar, the Hazara raised their white flags in the air.

  The terror of howling dogs and crunching boots receded.

  A thick veil of soundlessness fell between the two groups, dulling the clarity of the night, leaving the Hazara as indistinguishable from the landscape as gods carved of stone.

  “Commandhan!” a soldier called.

  Arian struggled to hear him.

  “It’s a graveyard. Look at the flags and the offerings.”

  In that moment, panic seized Arian’s heart.

  She knew what the Talisman would do.

  And she knew how the Alamdar would respond.

  The protection of the alams would be as nothing once the Talisman undertook their desecration of the site of ziyara.

  She clutched Sinnia’s arm.

  “Lead the women to the river. Use the flags to mask their path.”

  “If you wait for me.”

  “I’ll wait for you. And if I fall here, you must continue this quest.”

  They pressed each other’s circlets.

  “I swear it.”

  The boy looked uncertainly from one Companion to the other.

  “Go with her, for my sake,” Arian begged him. “Come back to me when your duty is done.” Bravely, the boy nodded.

  The Talisman rode into the graveyard, swords smashing at gravestones as they surged forward. Sinnia disappeared down the rise with the women, dragging Wafa by the hand.

  With a cry of despair, the Alamdar hurled his flag down into the graveyard, where it hit the ground with the ring of steel on steel.

  Arian covered her ears.

  What power did these alams have? What secrets did the Hazara keep?

  There was no more time to wonder. The Hazara flags rained down into the graveyard, the shroud of secrecy lost. With a roar of discovery, the Talisman turned their horses toward the Vanishing Point. The battle was joined.

  Arian overtook a rider on the foothill. She cut him from his saddle, leaping into his place. She wheeled into the midst of the battle, Hazara at the heels of her horse, the verse she had memorized welling up from her throat as a battle cry.

  “How many generations were destroyed before yours? And where are they now?”

  Some of the Talisman fell back, the Hazara in pursuit.

  “Will you stand while the innocent fall? Will you raise your swords to bring down calamity? No. You, too, will reap the corruption you have sown in the land.”

  Harsh, blazing, biting, stinging, the words leapt like fire from her throat, turning the frozen city into a fortress of burning cold.

  And still Talisman leapt into the fray, the blood of the Hazara crimson against the white clothing they had donned as a shield. They wore no armor. Very few carried weaponry. And they were cut down in droves, as Talisman horses wheeled and plunged over broken gravestones and bones.

  “To me, Hazara!”

  The Alamdar took a stand at the top of the rise, rallying his men to his cry.

  Arian ducked between riders, avoiding the blows of swords and lances, fighting her way up the rise. The Alamdar was surrounded by his men as they were cut down, the Talisman losing one soldier for every group of Hazara that fell, a terrible arithmetic to contemplate.

  Arian’s path up the rise was littered with bodies, but Sinnia was well away. Arian could find no trace of the path the women had taken, and she took some comfort from that.

  She called out verse after verse of the Claim, her voice shuddering against the night, the stars rolling back into the distance.

  It slowed the Talisman advance, but could not stop it.

  “Leave her to me,” the Commandhan shouted. “Kill the Hazara. Kill the Mir.”

  And before she could summon a verse deeper in power and majesty, an arrow sang out from the darkness and planted itself in the Alamdar’s chest. With jerky movements, he tumbled face-first, burying the arrow deeper. His turban came loose from his head, rolling down the rise. A Talisman soldier scooped it up on the end of his lance. He promenaded it through the graveyard, laughing.

  “The One is Great!” he shouted into the night.

  “The One is Great!” Talisman echoed.

  “The One is Great,” Arian said softly, reclaiming the words for herself.

  For long minutes, there was nothing but the sound of steel burying itself in blood and bone, the white spike of dawn beginning to crack the night, while Arian fought back, hoping to spare a single Hazara life.

  The mob of soldiers pressing her grew thicker.

  A rope circled the air in front of her before catching around her waist. With a tug, she was yanked from the Talisman horse to the ground. She landed on her knees.

  She reached for her sword to free herself too late. The Commandhan’s sword was at her throat.

  Beyond them, the killing continued.

  “Do not speak,” the Commandhan cautioned her. “Or I will cut your tongue from your mouth. And what price your precious Recitation then, First Oralist?”

  The Commandhan knew who she was. He’d tracked her for a predetermined purpose.

  She watched him warily, shutting the Alamdar’s death from her thoughts. There were still people she could save.

  “As you wish,” she said, raising her arms in a gesture of surrender. At his nod, she rose to face him.

  “I am Commandhan Hask. I’ve tracked you for many months across the path of our caravans.”

  Hask, Arian thought. Summit of the mountain. It was a strong tribal name, but not from a tribe she belonged to.

  Instead of speaking, she placed a hand over her throat and lightly massaged her larynx. The Hazara would hear her. With their leader fallen, she used the Claim to urge those few who could gather their alams to flee along the path the women had taken.

  Commandhan Hask remained oblivious to the dwindling cries of battle, confident of his victory. Tall, strong-shouldered, with green eyes set in a weathered, watchful face, he kept his attention on Arian.

  “Have you?” she replied, playing to his sense of importance. “I wouldn’t have
thought the efforts of one woman would so preoccupy a leader of the Talisman.”

  “I told you not to speak,” he said sharply. He flicked his crop at her as a warning, stopping short of making contact, his vanity pricked. “You’ve heard of me, then.”

  This time she waited for his permission. When he gave it, she schooled her voice into bland tones of reassurance.

  “You are one of the Shin War. Your tribal name is legendary in Candour, as are your exploits. They say you are the Preacher’s most feared Commandhan.”

  She’d read his tribal affiliation from his body language and from the green crest at his throat. The rest was invention. An intelligent adversary would recognize her flattery for what it was. A lesser man might be tricked by a more subtle use of the Claim.

  He touched a gloved hand to his crest, a stroke of black against a field of green.

  “I don’t see what there is in me to interest a Commandhan such as yourself. Unless it is the Preacher who commands you.”

  Her voice pulled his attention to her, shutting out the sounds of Talisman frustration as Hazara dispersed at the Vanishing Point. Her tone conveyed her own lack of importance as well as admiration for Hask’s role as a confidant of the Preacher.

  The riding crop wavered in Hask’s hand.

  “I told the Preacher you were of no consequence. For every caravan you disrupted, we sent four more to the north. But the Preacher has his reasons.”

  Arian’s heart plunged.

  Four caravans sent north for every one displaced. It was a hopeless record of her efforts.

  “What lies to the north, Commandhan? Why do you traffick your women there?”

  She made her tone confiding, even as she read suspicion in Hask’s eyes. She had very little time to learn anything from the Commandhan before his men gathered to his side again. In the near distance, she could hear the hooves of a rider approaching. She held her gaze steady on Hask’s face. The slightest shift in expression could tell her something she didn’t know.

  This time the crop struck at her waist.

  “I’m not here to answer your questions. If I had my way, you’d be sent north, as well. It’s the Preacher who sees a different use for you.”

  She shuddered, but not from his words. It was only with an effort that Arian kept herself from reacting to the sight of the Alamdar’s body being stabbed by Talisman swords.

  Don’t let them take his head, she prayed. Let this man of peace go to his grave in peace.

  She pressed on.

  “But north for what purpose? Surely, a captain of the Shin War is entrusted with the One-Eyed Preacher’s secrets.”

  She saw at once that she had erred. She’d revealed too much of her desperation to learn the Preacher’s deeper intentions. Hask raised his whip arm to strike.

  The stroke never fell.

  In one clean gesture, the rider who approached severed the Commandhan’s arm. Hask gaped at the darkness in shock. The rider swung around on his black horse. This time a blade found the Commandhan’s throat.

  A strong arm wrapped about Arian’s waist, seizing her from the ground. The rider grasped a series of white flags as the stallion pivoted sharply. Throwing down the flags at his rear, the rider urged his horse up the pass that led out of the valley of Firuzkoh.

  Rider and Companion vanished into the night, leaving Hask to bleed away his life into the snow.

  “Wait!” Arian called to her would-be savior. “I cannot leave the Alamdar’s body as sport for the Talisman.”

  The rider spurred his mount onward, ignoring her.

  “You should know in this country the dead receive few honors.”

  The rider was dressed as a Talisman soldier, in riding clothes that doubled as leather armor. At his throat he wore the same crest as the Talisman commander. A black stroke on a field of green, a symbol of the power of annihilation.

  The Shin War symbol.

  But the man who’d rescued Arian had never been a follower of the traditions of the Shin War.

  As the light began to break and the rider turned his head, she caught a flash of silver eyes.

  Daniyar . . .

  18

  The Silver Mage was a guise Daniyar kept secret from the Shin War, his strongest affiliation of identity. From the grim set of his shoulders, she could see that his attack against his own tribe was painful to him. He had rescued her from Hask, an act that had brought him no joy.

  “Why did you come after me? And where do you take me now?”

  They were leaving the sounds of the battlefield behind them. No one had given chase.

  Daniyar left her first question unanswered, the curve of his mouth bitter.

  “Where do you think? To the river. Your companions will meet you there.”

  So he’d found Sinnia. She didn’t have to ask to know that he’d seen the Hazara to safety. The Silver Mage had always stood by the helpless.

  Arian tightened her grip around his waist, feeling the muscles of his torso shift under her hands. She thought for a moment of pulling back his hood to rest her cheek against his neck. But given his hostility, he would view it as a trespass.

  “Please stop. I’ve just come from Hira—I cannot follow the Hazara to the Citadel.”

  Daniyar didn’t slow his pace at her request. Once she had needed no more than a glance to urge him. This antagonism was new.

  Cries at the discovery of Hask ricocheted up the ridge. Arian and Daniyar dropped down the other side, lost to the sight of the valley. But it wouldn’t take the dogs long to track them again.

  “The mastiffs,” she tried again. “They’ll find our trail. The flags you planted behind us won’t hold them for long.”

  “Then use the Claim for something other than killing.”

  She went still in the saddle behind him, stunned by the harshness of the words. She had never used the Claim to kill, she had used it on behalf of the innocent. If Daniyar read her actions in that light, they had grown more distant than she’d realized.

  “Can you still recite? Or did Hask cause you injury?”

  Now Daniyar looked back at her, his face bleak. His quick assessment should have revealed nothing, but the Claim served him in other ways than it served the Companions, gifting him with the ability to read truth in the words and gestures of others—he was an Authenticate. His gift had won him the highest possible rank among the Talisman, an unparalleled honor.

  Daniyar had refused it.

  “I’m fine,” Arian muttered.

  She hadn’t been this close to him in years. She could see the droplets of mist that matted the web of his lashes, leaving a fine sheen along his cheekbones. She felt the blood rush to her temples. His eyes slid over her skin like softly falling rain.

  “Don’t read me.”

  “There’s a lash mark over your ribs.”

  “It’s nothing. Here.”

  She drew a shaky breath, using the Claim to distract herself from the force of his attraction.

  “I call to witness all that you see, all that you cannot see.”

  In the valley they’d left behind, snow began to swirl from the ground even as it fell from the sky, first in mist-like trails, then as an impenetrable veil. It muffled the cries of the Talisman, descending like a shroud upon the graveyard. In moments, the lifeless body of the Alamdar was hidden away from the Talisman’s boots, cloaked by the purity of snow.

  “Would that you had never been shown your record, or known your account! Would that this death of yours had been the end of you. Of no avail to you is all that you have ever possessed.”

  The snow firmed itself along the pass that led from the valley, forming a second ridge, first knee-high, then waist-high, then shoulder-height. It froze as it fell, swaddling the valley in silence.

  The pass to Firuzkoh was lost. It would be closed off until someone with greater ability, or deeper knowledge of the Claim, broke through its veil of secrecy and snow.

  Daniyar reined in the black stallion at the head of the
next pass, turning the horse to give them their first clear view of Firuzkoh since they had fled.

  Its blue domes and softly rounded towers were mantled in white. The graveyard had resettled behind the walls of the Hallow, as if no one had passed through the city in centuries. Men and beasts spoke and moved and argued, but no sound reached the riders on the ridge.

  The city was icebound again.

  Arian slid from the horse to the ground, gathering herself.

  Daniyar watched her, his face tense.

  “You were slow to use the Claim. You could have saved the Hazara.”

  Arian swallowed. The Silver Mage threw back his hood. His dark hair fell in waves to the collar that bore the Shin War crest. His eyes pierced her, absent of understanding.

  “You think nothing then, of affording people the dignity of their traditions. The Hazara were safe on the rise. It was the desecration of their gravesite they could not tolerate. They gave up their safety to protect it.”

  His lip curled. “I’m not surprised the First Oralist defends her shortsighted actions and herself in such terms.”

  His words were angry, bitter, meant to hurt.

  “Do I need to defend myself to you?” she asked bravely. “Are we no longer allies, as we once were?”

  With a savage gesture, Daniyar leapt down from his horse. He gripped her chin with his fingers, his gaze as penetrating as the white gleam of steel. Heat radiated between them. She found herself trapped in the rhythms of the past.

  “There is so much in your words to offend me, I find I scarcely know you at all. Tell me, when have I ever moved against you? When have I ever harmed so much as a hair on your uncovered head? I saved you from your recklessness in Candour.” He scowled at the memory. “And I followed you down this road, knowing you were destined for discovery.”

  A terrible pain burned through Arian’s heart. She could feel herself fraying inside. His fingers were bruising her, their grip implacable. She looked for some hint of gentleness in the silver depths of his eyes, in the hard curve of his mouth. There was none to be found.

  She expected Daniyar’s hostility.

  It didn’t make it easier to bear.

  “You should have taken the river further east. The High Road would have carried you through Hazarajat. You would have avoided this place, and the Talisman on your trail.”