by Tia Reed
“Halt,” the mahktashaan ordered, frowning up at Orin. “Ogres?” he asked Erok. When Erok shrugged, he spoke with Leader Terhel. The two of them walked in the direction of the cliff while Morik bound Brax.
Sian sidled as far as she dared to Erok. “Can the soothsayers control the weather?”
He looked at her like she was crazy to be asking. It wasn’t fair, the way everyone thought she ought to know about the soothsayers. She wasn’t one. She wasn’t.
“I don’t know. I cannot recall a time they did more than read the bones and dance the spirit’s will. But I do not recall a time as dire as this, either.”
“Are they as powerful as this Terlaani mahktashaan?”
“Spirits! Ask the soothsayers, Sian.” She dropped her head, feeling like a chastised child, like she was still at the village where every word that left her mouth was worthless and the other children teased mean. Erok’s hand clasped her shoulder. “You know more than me about this,” he said.
She shook her head and kept hiding behind the fall of her straight hair because she didn’t know more, she really didn’t.
Morik gestured at Erok’s hands. Her hunter’s lips tightened into a grim line. The horrible man raised a hand towards her. She couldn’t help ducking and turning away.
“Okay,” Erok barked, putting his hands behind his back for the soldier to tie.
“There are tales my grandfather told of his grandfather’s time,” Brax said. “Of a time the Terlaani call the Hunger Wars, when the lowlanders tried to invade our lands. They plundered the Forest of fruit, slaughtered its animals for meat and burned its wood in their fires, but they paid no homage to the spirits. Grandfather said through the spirits, the soothsayers guided the tribes in battle, that they called forth storms and opened the lowlanders’ souls to their plunder. It is how the Akerin drove them away.”
Sian swallowed. This path they all wished to set her on was washed with savage power. Lightning sparked again, drawing her eyes up. Orin was still there at the edge of the cliff. His white eyes turned right on her. She gasped as they bored into her soul.
“What is it?” Erok asked.
“How did he get there?”
“The girl has the eyes of an owl and more questions than a pond has puffers,” Brax said. “Vorn had no right to call her stupid.”
She flinched. Her father had every right. Brax had said so too. It was why she had all this painful, gnawing doubt inside.
“Who?” Erok asked. He scowled at Brax before following the line of her sight.
“Orin,” she replied, sure but soft because Erok must realise she was as stupid as her father claimed. “On the cliff. Don’t you see him?”
Erok wore a look of puzzled disbelief. “Through the trees? In this storm?”
His words shocked her into darkness. The soldiers had lit lanterns so they could tread their way up and down the gloomy path. The broad trunks surrounding them were silhouettes beneath a sheltering canopy that blotted out what little light the rumbling storm had spared. The forest obscured their view of the summit.
And yet, another crack of lightning illuminated the soothsayer, his staff firm on the rock though its teeth and claws were flying. Over the howl of wind, under the rumble of waterfall, his deep ululating call ensnared them.
“By the Forest, she’s right,” Brax said.
“I see nothing in this early gloom.” Erok turned to face the cliff.
The mahktashaan and Leader Terhel were returning, illuminated by a magical ball of light floating above their heads.
“Move,” Leader ordered, cocking an ear to the eerie cry. It served him right he tripped over a rock as pulled Sian away from Erok.
Teal light surrounded them. Four balls of light burst from the crystal and hovered above their heads, lighting the rocky path with the brightness of open day. Their first step whipped up a wind which pushed them towards a junction. Along the southern fork, branches brushed the ground, stirring dirt and leaves into an impenetrable storm. Two soldiers turned east but jumped back, drenched from an icy downpour that should not have slipped through the canopy. The sheet of rain drifted towards them. Sian shivered stray drops off her clothes as the mahktashaan spoke his magic words. Teal light collided with rain and dust. His crystal dulled, sparked, went out. Behind them the wind raged with a force the strongest of the soldiers could not breech.
Leader Terhel ordered them onto the remaining path. The frowning mahktashaan lagged to char another sigil in another oak. Sian cried out at every stroke. He reached out to steady her but she pulled into the swirling, howling wind. He was enemy to the Forest, she was friend. But the wind permitted her no escape. The mahktashaan gestured and hurried onto the remaining path, the rain lashing at his cloak. She had no choice but to huddle against the sudden chill and follow.
They were heading west.
✽ ✽ ✽
They came and bound him again. Forced bitter porrin into his mouth.
“Did she come?”
“No. please, I swear, I swear.” He was crying, couldn’t stop. Couldn’t understand what they asked.
“What’s your genie’s name?”
So dizzy. His head dropped. He groaned. He didn’t think it was loud. Not like that cold laugh. Prahak took his hand and turned his palm up. Stabbed the knife through it into the arm of the chair. Timak screamed. Vomited. Blacked out.
He started awake. Water was dripping from his hair, his face.
“There you go.” Rough Hands tilted a bucket over his head. Water streamed into his ears, his eyes.
“Where are you from?”
“Teqrin.” They had to hear his mumble.
“Did Lord Ahkdul use you?”
“Ye-esss.” They had to leave him alone.
“What’s your genie’s name.”
He made a sound. They had to believe he didn’t know. Mahktos help him, they had to believe.
“We’re nearly done. Drink.”
He turned his head but they were strong and he was weak.
The porrin coursed through him, carrying him away to a room where a hundred Prahak’s were stabbing him in a thousand tender places.
“What’s your genie’s name?”
The bliss took hold of his tongue.
“Wake him up.”
✽ ✽ ✽
Kordahla was up at blood-red dawn. Demure in veil and blanket wrap, she carried her water jug past her sleeping brother onto deck. The shore was a distant haze across a lake pocked by a persistent drizzle. Strings of fuzzy algae swirled around ducks braving the deceptive calm of the stinking waters. The stale breath of crocodiles bubbled to the surface and burst. The salve she had rubbed under her nose eased the ordeal of sailing through these stagnant pools. Or perhaps the smell was less of a trial than the cruelty she had witnessed.
Unheeded by sailor, she climbed into the hold. Arun would have sensed her intent. He would have been waiting for her. And so. She had no friends left but the ones she made, and if that friend was a treacherous djinn, what further loss could she suffer?
The fitful genie was tossed across sacks of salt plundered from the villages or towns they passed. The wooden barricades and stone walls designed to keep the jabberweis out had done nothing to repel the soldiers Ahkdul had sent out in the rowboats.
“Peasants serve their lord’s needs,” he had said when, shamed under their glares, she suggested they receive adequate coin for their wares. She had remembered those callous words downriver as his gaze molested a little boy. At his nod, Kahlmed, on shore to ensure the town’s compliance, had placed a proprietary hand on the waving child. A dour man, lean and weathered, had walked up, took one look at the ship and launched into an intense discussion, too civil to be anything but a bargain. She had raised her chin, churning her anger into unbridled fire. Would have slapped Ahkdul, the consequences be judged by the Vae, if Mariano had not exchanged low and heated words with the swine. The Lord of the Swamp had looked her up and down, licked his lips and walked to the bow
. The dour man had pushed the child upon Kahlmed as he climbed in the boat, spat when the scarred man refused, and stormed away, leaving the confused boy to raise a tentative hand in farewell, and her to flee to the hold and her miserable charge for the remainder of the day.
Like as not, she would spend today the same way. The salted net had carved red grooves into the unconscious genie’s grey skin. Kordahla mopped the girl’s brow. Genie or not, Arun would have healed these hurts. Strange, unsettling even, how acute his loss yet was, how much she thought of him, a simple mahktashaan whose role was to serve and protect.
Swallowing, she started to unwrap the bandage, five winds to reveal the flesh. Perfect, unscarred flesh. She bit her lip and checked the other hand. Miracle of Mahktos, the girl had five crystal-jointed fingers on each.
The genie’s eyes fluttered open, beseeching.
“What made you ill?” Kordahla asked. “Is there a cure a physic might prescribe?”
“Kaidon,” the girl murmured.
Dear Vae, Vinsant had tangled with one of the beasts. But they had spoken since, two nights ago when he had saved her from her shame. He was well. “Please tell me Vinsant is well.”
“A touching scene,” Ahkdul said, standing at the edge of the hatch.
She threw her blanket over the girl as he climbed down.
He folded it over, and chuckled. “It seems I can work what torture I choose.” He held a knife to the genie’s neck. “What is your name?”
The girl’s skin turned white. She closed her eyes, so tense she might have been trying to shift into a sword.
“If I cut your head off, will it regrow?”
“No, please.” The words were no more than a moan. “Help me.” A whisper.
As distasteful as the contact was, Kordahla put hand on Ahkdul’s arm. “If she dies, you’ll get nothing from her.”
He moved the knife to the genie’s unbandaged hand, setting it across the slender wrist. “I am not a patient man. Tell me your name.”
In the distance, thunder rumbled low and threatening.
Kordahla drew a sharp breath. At its end, Ahkdul chopped. Thunder cracked. Blood spurted across the hold. The genie shrieked. Kordahla screamed. Screamed falling to her knees while yelling men ran to the hatch. While Ahkdul picked up the delicate hand and left her among the stained rags and dusty sacks, with blood pooling a dull pink and shimmers winking through the wound. Left her rocking. Weeping. With a genie who did not rouse.
When the genie at last stirred to a gibberish rant, and Kordahla in her maddened grief thought to dig her fingers through the holes and unravel the net, to set the genie free whatever the cost, a throat cleared.
“Your lord wishes you to dine on deck,” Kahlmed said.
She dared not look at his hideous, scarred face. Clung to the ladder way too tight, and sank into a chair the sailors had placed beside a canopied table on the deck without a word. She could not touch the plate of hard cheese and dried meat they served. It was decent fare, unlike the stew which the plump, greasy cook shoved at Brailen. The reek from the large bowl was more sickening than the stink of the mist thickening over the stagnant lake.
“Not hungry,” the lad mumbled, slouching against the bulwark in the light drip of rain.
“You will eat,” Ahkdul said, stuffing a hunk of bread into his mouth.
Lightning flashed across the bow of the ship.
Kahlmed drew a sword and pointed it at Brailen’s chest. “Eat.”
The cook sidled off, whiter than ocean spray.
The sleepy lad scooped and dropped spoonfuls of the brew, wrinkled his nose, and fished a morsel out with his fingers. “A nail.” His lip turned up in disgust, he flicked it onto the deck. The shiny, disgusting fingernail gleamed. Mariano broke off whatever comment he was making. She let the crumb of cheese she had cut to satisfy her brother fall into her lap. Ahkdul did not even glance at the offence as he hacked off a hunk of onion.
“I trust the cook takes more care with our meals than he does with those of your men,” Mariano said.
“You need not worry on that account,” Ahkdul said, his open mouth dripping chewed food.
Oh, but they did. She pressed a hand over her mouth. The grumbling lad was dragging the spoon through the bowl to fish out a finger. A spark of sunlight caught a shimmer of rose. Dropping the bowl, he lunged at the cook as thunder boomed, rocking the ship.
“You’re trying to kill me.”
Kordahla felt her stomach convulse. She tried to rise, but Mariano pulled her down.
“It is best you sit,” he whispered as Kahlmed dragged Brailen from the cook, delivering blow after blow to the hapless lad.
Ahkdul rose, picked up the finger and dropped it in the stew. The boat began to spin around her.
“Genie flesh,” the swine said, forcing the bowl on Brailen. “You will eat it, mage.”
She shuddered.
“Genie flesh.” The lad blinked. “Magic flesh.”
“Yes,” Ahkdul said. His thick hand wrapped around Brailen’s throat, forcing the repulsive lad onto a capstan. “Let’s see if your magic swells.”
Brailen scooped the brew into his mouth, chewing, swallowing with gusto while flashes of lightning ringed the eerily silent ship. She pulled from Mariano’s grasp but it was too late. She was vomiting before she could reach the side.
“I’m going to be the most powerful mage in The Three Realms. No, the most powerful mage IN THE WORLD.”
She fled to her cabin. The clouds had thinned to a veil before she could gather the strength to walk past the men and climb into the hold. Her soothing words coaxed the genie to open her weepy eyes but Kahlmed had come down behind her and it was him the genie saw. The poor girl began to scream.
“Leave us alone,” she said.
Kahlmed sneered.
Kordahla stomped up the ladder and right to Ahkdul. Her oh so compassionate fiancé was engaged in aggressive swordplay with Mariano.
“Sweet scums.” Her brother made a sudden adjustment of his sword to avoid injuring her. She spared him no more than a glance. “Your methods are not working. Give me one hour alone with her.”
Resting the tip of his sword on the deck, Ahkdul adjusted her veil so it fit closer to her eyes. “A genie is a valuable prize.”
“You may flog me if I betray your trust.”
“It will not be enough. For stealing from the kitchen, any common man on board this ship would have his hand cut off, to mark him as the thief he was. For releasing a genie, I would have him tortured for days before boiling him alive in a vat of hot oil. But I would not grant this request to a common man.” He addressed Mariano, who was looking at her through narrowed eyes. “What punishment would befit a noble woman who traded thus on her lord’s trust?”
Mariano removed his turban and wiped his brow. “That would be for her lord to decide. Though her lord should not be so quick to judge her intentions.”
“So you think?” Ahkdul took her hand, stroked the wrist with his thumb. With a sudden twist, he gripped so tight her next breath shook. “Tortured, yes. But I would not have her boiled. She is more valuable alive.” The corner of his lip made a crooked twist. “After all, my heir will come from her womb.” He pushed her away and raised his sword in challenge. Once, twice, thrice the blades clashed. Kahlmed sauntered over as she watched, holding her breath at the naked threat.
“Princess Kordahla may prove her intentions,” Ahkdul said, as he pushed her brother away from a deadlock.
The triumphant look she tossed Kahlmed was a mistake, but she had nothing to cherish if not a small victory. Even so, her arms trembled as she climbed into the hold. She bided her time, comforting and singing until a measure of sanity returned to the genie’s eyes.
“If you are free of the salt, can you work one feat of magic?” she whispered when she had judged those who spied on her would have relaxed their guard.
The terrified genie stammered a near incomprehensible reply. Kordahla had to hope her own wiles wo
uld suffice.
✽ ✽ ✽
“Goodbye,” Vinsant said with a nod of finality when the weird little girl at the Temple of the Rift held out a red hibiscus. He had no idea where she had picked one of those so close to the snowy peaks.
She said something in the old tongue with a shake of her head. Holding the hem of her flimsy shift, she twirled to the crude stone statue, and placed the flower in the crook of an arm.
“She says you will return very soon,” Padesh said. The tightening of his lips had to be displeasure, and Vinsant didn’t think it was because the little girl was hugging Mahktos.
“Fat chance,” he muttered, squashing some of the strewn thyme with the toe of his boot.
“This close to the rift, the villagers are touched by the djinn. Many are blessed with a degree of second sight.”
The air was colder for the sky’s vivid blue. Vinsant shuddered.
Hands on her hips, the girl spoke again. As soon as she finished, a huge gap-toothed smile broke her earnest expression and she skipped from the shallow cave to the rickety village.
His curiosity won out over his scepticism. “What did she say?”
“She claims,” Padesh said crossing his arms, “you will wreak havoc if you cross the rift with, whatever this means, the eye, and that you will wreak havoc if you don’t drown getting it.”
Vinsant waved his hands in warding. “Oh no. I’m done. No more havoc from me.” He stared at girl as she waltzed towards a bent, wrinkled man waiting at the foot of the narrow, pebbly path. Maybe she had heard him talk in his sleep. Maybe that’s how she knew about the Eye.
“Yeees,” Padesh said, elongating the vowel like he did not believe it. Which was when Vinsant determined he was not going to miss the mahktashaan with the beige crystal even if he had to lie to himself about it. Padesh had made it quite clear this was where he parted from the disgrace of an apprentice Vinsant was turning out to be. Not that he had used those exact words.