The Bloodprint

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  She couldn’t see but she could hear the sound of Daniyar’s knives. She grabbed Wafa’s hand and followed, staying low to the ground, inching closer to the tower.

  The calm she had found wavered and the Claim wedged in her throat. She was murmuring intonations from feel as much as sound, trying to push past the barrier.

  Cries of surprise rang through the courtyard just as the mist turned blue, thinning out in patches.

  The Ahdath had recognized an enemy in their midst.

  A knife sprang toward Daniyar’s back, propelled by a crimson arm. He sensed the danger in time, whirling about to confront his attacker. The silver knives flashed, the guard sagged to the ground.

  The mist blanketed the courtyard again.

  Arian was at the door, her throat working furiously.

  How many generations were brought to ruin . . .

  How many . . .

  It wasn’t working.

  A knot of Ahdath surrounded Daniyar. They called to the men on the perimeter.

  Arian watched helplessly as the crimson band tightened around Daniyar.

  Wafa escaped her grasp, darting to the aid of the Silver Mage, a small, sharp dagger in his hand.

  She had to think of something.

  She had to act now.

  There is no one but the One. And so the One commands.

  Please.

  The grip on her throat eased. Knives flashed at Daniyar, at Wafa. The boy fell back, his arm bloodied. Slashes penetrated the cloak of the Silver Mage. A line of blood ran from his jaw to his collarbone.

  He put up an arm to block the onslaught.

  A knife slashed across it, blood spraying across the courtyard.

  I seek refuge in the One! I seek refuge in the Claim!

  She could not allow Daniyar to fall.

  She reached the group of soldiers, the mist tumbling from her shoulders like the robes of a wraithlike empress.

  “Arian!” Daniyar shouted.

  His voice was muffled by the mist.

  She drew no weapons, her eyes marking the face of each soldier.

  She chanted the words at a measured pace, at odds with the urgency of their position.

  “Consider the night as it veils the earth in darkness, and the day as it rises bright.”

  The knot of soldiers fell back a pace.

  Daniyar gathered Arian under his wounded arm, his face aghast.

  “You should have headed for the tower.”

  She kissed his cheek, then turned to face the Ahdath again.

  “Consider the creation of male and female. Verily, you aim at most divergent ends.”

  The Claim had never sounded quite like this in her mouth. She felt a thrill of power at the fear reflected in the Ahdath’s faces. No man lunged at her with his sword.

  “Thus, as for him who gives to others and is conscious of the One and believes in the truth of the ultimate good—for him, the One shall make easy the path toward ultimate ease.”

  The men’s arms began to move, bringing up their swords.

  Daniyar brandished his knife, pushing Arian and Wafa behind him.

  But the swords were moving away from him, pushing up to the crimson breastplates.

  Arian’s voice hardened.

  “But as for he who is miserly and thinks he is self-sufficient, and calls the ultimate good a lie, for him shall the One make easy the path to hardship. What will his wealth avail him when he goes down to his grave?”

  The swords of the Ahdath plunged through their own armor. The men fell to their knees in ranks, the mist swirling up around them.

  Daniyar wrenched Arian around.

  “What are you doing? What are you doing with the Claim? Answer me, Arian!”

  “I warn you of the raging fire,” she whispered. “The fire which none shall have to endure but the most wretched who gives the lie to the truth and turns away from it.”

  The men fell dead.

  Arian’s voice seized up.

  She shook her head blindly.

  Daniyar pulled her close, wrapping her in his arms.

  “Wafa, my knives.”

  The boy took them, urging them away from the square to the tower. Footsteps sounded behind them.

  Arian stared at the dead in horror.

  “It wasn’t me,” she gasped. “The Claim is overtaking me.”

  She saw the same distress in Daniyar’s eyes.

  The Claim was a force for good.

  Wasn’t it?

  “We have to talk of this but this isn’t the time.”

  Do you believe in the truth of an ultimate good?

  She was no longer certain.

  There was no time to contemplate the question. They scrambled for the tower door, chased by Ahdath arrows.

  Wafa sealed them inside, sliding the crossbeam home.

  There were shouts of alarm in the courtyard.

  The Ahdath had found their comrades in the square, each with a sword buried in his breast. The mist had dissipated when Arian had ceased her use of the Claim. Soldiers called to the guards inside the tower. Others battered the door.

  “Climb,” Daniyar said. “Hurry.”

  They sprinted up the steps, no longer hearing the sobs of the young man who’d been taken to the top of the tower. The Ahdath guards were quiet, waiting for them at the top.

  Daniyar went first.

  “Don’t use the Claim unless you have to,” he told her. “Give it time.”

  There was a recognition in his face that she had used it at his urging, after sharing with him her fears.

  He was angry at what the quest for the Bloodprint had cost them. The Silver Mage, the Keeper of the Candour, the Authenticate who read the truth—he’d never once doubted the rightness of the Claim. To doubt now, when they drew ever closer to it, was a dagger that sliced at his heart. Had he risked Arian for this, renouncing the Damson Vale?

  If the Claim could compel men to take their own lives, what would it be in the hands of the One-Eyed Preacher? What destruction would it wreak on Khorasan? What use would be made of the Verse of the Throne?

  Daniyar didn’t recognize the verses Arian had used to slay the Ahdath.

  He knew he’d never heard them.

  And he realized with a shiver that he didn’t want to know where Arian had learned them.

  51

  Daniyar vaulted onto the platform, a knife in each hand.

  Two of the Ahdath met him at the head of the stairs.

  “Take cover!” he shouted to Arian, his silver knives slicing quick and deep into unprotected flesh. His arm was stinging from the earlier blow; his reflexes were slower.

  “Watch out!”

  The cry came from the Ahdaths’ captive. Daniyar ducked low just in time, dodging the blow aimed at his back. The third Ahdath blundered into Daniyar’s path, carried forward by his own momentum.

  Daniyar’s knives slashed at the guard’s heels, bringing him down. He took a blow to the chest from a heavy fist, another to his right shoulder. Daniyar shifted, dropping to one knee, bringing his blade up with his left hand, driving it into his assailant’s ribs. It caught in the man’s armor as he reeled away.

  One man was left. He faced Daniyar, sword in hand.

  Wafa tried to climb up to help, but throughout the attack Daniyar had shielded the stairs from the Ahdath. It left his back unprotected and his footing unsteady, but the tactic had kept Arian and Wafa safe. Now he challenged the last guard with a solitary blade in his hand.

  The Ahdath didn’t speak, waiting for his chance.

  He circled Daniyar, probing for a weakness. And then he caught sight of Arian.

  He lunged forward, knocking Daniyar back.

  The Silver Mage fell hard, his head striking stone. The Ahdath leapt at him, his sword raised in a killing stroke.

  Arian’s dagger caught him in the throat. He gurgled once, then collapsed.

  Daniyar kicked at the Ahdath’s body with his boot, dislodging it from the tower.

  He bl
inked. A shadow moved in the corner of his vision.

  The commander of the Ahdath stood poised beneath one of the arches, the prisoner’s chains gripped tight in his hands.

  “You’re too late to save him,” the commander said. “You’re too late to save yourselves.”

  Below them, bodies threw themselves against the door.

  “Watch them,” Arian said to Wafa. The boy shadowed her, his eyes on the commander. She knelt at Daniyar’s side, taking him into her arms.

  “You’re hurt,” she said, ignoring the commander.

  “It’s nothing. My head will clear in a moment. Do what you can for the captive.”

  She traded places with Wafa, summoning him to Daniyar.

  “Who is he?” she asked the Ahdath.

  The commander held the young man at the brink. If he released his grip on the chains, the prisoner would plummet over the edge.

  “When you’ve come to rescue him, why dissemble? You know who he is as well as I do. You know why he’s here.”

  She had a moment of quiet discovery.

  The Ahdath didn’t know who she was. The news hadn’t reached him from Marakand.

  “Please,” the young man whimpered, his gaze fixed on Arian. “Help me.”

  He was a few years older than Wafa.

  Something had changed inside Arian, grown hard with the death of Turan. Too many innocents had pleaded for their lives, their lives discounted by Talisman and Ahdath.

  She waved a hand at the Ahdath, a rumble in her chest, its power surging forth before she could recite. This was new. And it felt glorious.

  The chains fell from his hand. She caught them in her own, yanking the prisoner to safety. The Ahdath commander froze in place, his eyes squinting in the glare of the sun.

  She pulled the boy to her, dismantled the chains, rubbed his wrists.

  “Who are you?”

  “Alisher,” he said. “Who are you?”

  She whisked aside her cloak, her golden circlets catching at the light.

  His mouth hung open. He sank to his knees.

  “Sahabiya,” he gasped.

  The Ahdath commander tried to move.

  Arian held him with a growl, her hand raised again.

  “Why do you murder children?” she demanded. “This one is but a boy, what threat could he pose to you?”

  The commander’s hands grappled at his throat.

  “Mistress,” he muttered, catching sight of Arian’s face in the light. “I cannot breathe.”

  “Answer me.”

  The Claim was tight and urgent in her chest.

  “He’s a scribe,” the man panted. “A scribe and a poet. Both have been outlawed.”

  The Ahdath’s eyes began to leak blood.

  Horrified, Arian dropped her hand. What was she doing? What was happening to her?

  She hadn’t spoken a word of the Claim.

  The Ahdath commander stumbled back, falling to his knees.

  “There’s no other way out of this tower. My men are coming.”

  Daniyar lurched to his feet, his face leached of color. Had he seen what she’d done to the commander? If so, he said nothing other than, “He’s right, we must hurry.”

  Freed from restraint, the Ahdath launched himself at Arian, a short sword in his hand. He was tripped by the prisoner, who flung himself at his captor’s knees. They grappled for a moment, then it was over.

  The Ahdath went sailing from the heights of the tower.

  Arian closed her eyes.

  Death. Everywhere death, and she the cause of it.

  Daniyar’s soft voice called to her.

  “Arian, hurry.”

  He pointed her to the center of the rotunda. An enormous marble stand was positioned at the hub, equidistant from the arches. Its giant marble halves rested on a base supported by stone columns, weighty and immovable.

  Why had the Ahdath brought this stand to the top of the Clay Minar?

  It had to mean something. It had to bring them closer to the Bloodprint.

  She brushed the sun-warmed stone with her hand, looking up.

  Light splashed across Wafa’s anxious face. Dapples of light, patterns of light. She looked at the stand again, at the smooth, wide space between its wedge-shaped halves. It was a space large enough to accommodate a manuscript.

  And its Cast Iron case.

  This had to be the repository of the Bloodprint, brought to Black Aura from Task End—hallowed, revered, and utterly precious.

  She thought of the objects they had carried on their journey from the Sorrowsong.

  Instead of the stone key, she took the single page of parchment from Daniyar’s pack. She placed it on the stand.

  “Come see,” she said to the others. They came to stand at her side in the shade.

  From half the arches, the rising light that splashed Wafa’s face fell upon the stand, warming the Verse of the Throne.

  There were sounds from the base of the tower, an angry ramming against the door bolted from the inside, the striking of swords from their scabbards. Their time for discovery was short. Yet Arian counted the danger as nothing.

  The scent of apples was the first hint of sweetness to penetrate the pungence of the room.

  At the top of the parchment, the ink that had formed the word call darkened to brown. Beneath it, a pale notation blushed against the page. Two numbers and a word.

  4:40. Hazarbaf.

  Daniyar frowned at the words. They stirred something in his memory of the Candour, something that made him better appreciate Arian’s growing sense of uneasiness with the Claim.

  He thought of what they had seen and done in the courtyard, and of the actions of the woman he loved, the woman for whom the Claim was a calling. It gave her a power that transformed her into something other than herself.

  Something other than the woman who had met him like a flame.

  And he understood that neither he as Silver Mage, nor Arian as First Oralist, had begun to plumb the depths of that power.

  The Ahdath’s prisoner tugged at his elbow.

  “We must defend ourselves. The door won’t hold them for long.”

  Wafa rebuked the young man.

  “The Silver Mage is the Keeper of the Candour. He knows how best to save us.”

  Arian smiled at Daniyar, her smile a brief and beautiful thing.

  He was shaken to his soul by its tenderness.

  He needed time, but there was no time.

  He was Keeper of the Candour, and it was the Candour he needed now.

  “Arian, pass me the pack.”

  When he had it in his hands, he withdrew the Candour as the others watched. He lifted it to his lips and kissed the interwoven letters on its cover.

  ﺡ ﻖ

  ﺤﻖ

  He signaled to Arian to remove the Verse of the Throne, setting the Candour in its place. He leafed through its pages, passing over passages that listed the duties of the Keeper of the Candour, cartographs that depicted a world before the wars of the Far Range, the script of ancient tongues that had blended together with time, the incantations of the Silver Mage—these were the treasures of the Candour. As he turned the pages, Arian’s head rested against his shoulder. He inhaled the scent of jasmine in her hair. And tried to focus on the task at hand.

  He came to the last page, to the verse inscribed beneath an enigmatic coda.

  4:40.

  The verse had no name.

  There was only the inscription. Verily, the One does not wrong anyone by so much as an atom’s weight. If there is good, the One will multiply it. From the One’s presence will be bestowed an infinite reward.

  “This is the only part of the Claim to be recorded in the Candour.”

  Arian’s lips brushed his shoulder, an unconscious caress. “I didn’t know.”

  He turned to her, his silver eyes molten. “I didn’t remember, until this moment. I thought it a call to righteous action.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  Daniyar ad
dressed Alisher, the scribe.

  “If I speak of this before you, you must give your word it will go no further.”

  Instead of a promise, Alisher flapped his hands at the Candour. “You carry a book upon your person, and such a book as this one—how?” His voice trembled with the words.

  Wafa scowled at the scribe. “I told you. You speak to the Silver Mage. It’s the book of the Silver Mage.”

  “Do you give your word?” Daniyar insisted.

  Alisher’s eyes widened at the question.

  “Would you trust my word? Here in Black Aura, where no one trusts anything?”

  Arian looked pained. “This was a holy city once.”

  Daniyar’s answer was frank.

  “A man’s word is his bond. I judge men on little else.”

  The younger man’s face flooded with painful color. He looked away from the brightness of the Silver Mage’s eyes—seeing into him, seeing him.

  “I won’t betray your trust,” he said at last. He bowed his head to Arian. “If I can serve the sahabiya in any way, you have only to ask.”

  Daniyar’s eyes met Arian’s.

  The legend of Hira had passed beyond the Wall.

  How secretive and powerful were the Council’s machinations. And how well they served Arian’s purposes now.

  Daniyar read the verse aloud.

  “The verse speaks of an infinite reward. We have the Verse of the Throne in our hands.”

  Alisher reeled away from the stand. He gaped at the parchment in Arian’s hands, reading it for himself.

  “The Verse of the Throne?”

  Arian’s response was gentle. “You are literate, then. ’Tis a rare thing to meet a scribe.”

  A grinding noise was heard from the base of the tower.

  “They’ve brought a battering ram,” the Silver Mage said. “Arian, listen to me. What else embodies an infinite reward?”

  It took her a moment to understand.

  “You think it means the Bloodprint,” she breathed. “The Claim as an infinite reward.”

  A great reward, a mighty reward, a moment of spiritual reckoning. She was alive to the significance of the words—to the links in the chain that had led them to this place, so close to the Bloodprint, the end of all they sought.

  Wafa cleared his throat. The Bloodprint mattered to him because it mattered to the Companions, otherwise it was nothing. Sinnia was gone. He couldn’t bear the thought that Arian would be wrenched from him, as well. He tugged at her arm.