Grave Ghost

by Tia Reed

  “Yeah!” Brailen said, lurching forward. The intoxicated imbecile tripped over a pail and landed on his knees. He reached out, slapping one hand over the genie’s face while the other slid onto the punctured sack. “You will succumb to the great Brailen, genie.” He wiggled closer so he could clamp both his hands on her head.

  “Ooh,” he giggled. “Ugh. She feels funny.”

  Ahkdul pulled his knife from the sack and rested it on Brailen’s ear. The genie whimpered as salt trickled out of the rip and through the holes in the net. “You’ll forfeit flesh if you fail.”

  “Not fair! She said I could do this, not me.” Brailen tossed his head her way, lost his balance and toppled over the genie. His fit of giggles was enough to fray Kordahla’s nerves.

  “Ah!” he cried as Ahkdul hauled him up. “I know it! I know it! Pay the great Brailen his due.” He scooped one arm into his chest and bowed once, twice, three times, the other arm raised in a ridiculous flourish behind him.

  Ahkdul took an involuntary step forward. For once he forbore to thump the lad into line. “You will search her until you are sure,” he said, his voice dripping with longing.

  Kordahla held her breath.

  Brailen straightened, cocked an eye at his raised hand and slapped it to his side. He giggled. “Rosie. It’s Ro, Ro, Rosie. Ro –”

  Ahkdul’s punch pummelled him into the sacks. Brailen put a hand over his bleeding lip, took it away, spat out a bloody tooth and giggled. Catching hold of his shirt, Ahkdul poised the knife for a downward thrust. “You will never breathe that name to another living soul.”

  It was hard to feel sorry for the pathetic boy, the more so when he clutched at Ahkdul, fawning even after all the abuse. “I serve my lord.”

  “Fetch me a lamp.”

  Brailen scurried up the ladder. His foot slipped and his chin banged onto a rung. Ahkdul turned to her and unwrapped her veil as the lad pushed the hatch open.

  “This is a day to celebrate your beauty. You shall have a garland of pearls to seal our engagement.”

  She lowered her eyes, demure, submissive, staying her hand though she wanted to pull her mother’s veil from his grasp. “Pearls remind me of derral, and so of home. Will you gift me a different gem?”

  “A diamond.” He picked up a handful of salt and threw it at the genie. Kordahla winced as she moaned. “With your name I bind you, genie. Once I summon you, Rosie. Twice I hook you. Rosie.”

  “No,” the genie breathed.

  “Three times I bind you. Rosie.”

  The genie cried out.

  “My lord,” Brailen called down. He twisted on the ladder, lost his footing and fell. Still on the floor, he held out a bronze oil lamp. Ahkdul took it by the elongated spout.

  “Leave us.”

  “But I want to see the magic. It’s my right as a mage.”

  One look at Ahkdul’s face and Brailen fled to the deck. With the boy gone, avarice murdered Ahkdul’s ire.

  “You will start by attiring us in clothes befitting an emperor and his wife. And deck the boat with the trappings to match.”

  “Salt,” the genie whispered.

  Ahkdul frowned. A careless sweep of his knife cut through the net, nicking her flesh. He left the binding around her ankles intact. Kordahla sat beside the genie and bathed her with water from the bucket, washing the salt from her ashen body.

  “Enough,” Ahkdul said, kneeling to catch Kordahla’s arm. “My due, genie.”

  The dear child found the energy to speak. “I have the strength for one small feat.”

  Ahkdul pursed his lips, narrowed his eyes and pulled the ropes tighter. “You are bound to do my bidding.”

  Perspiration was dripping off the genie’s forehead. He could not doubt she was ill. “Bring me the cure. I’ll grant every wish you ever had.”

  “What cure?”

  Kordahla rose. For once, she would stand over her supposed lord. “Let her first prove she is yours. But I do not wish for fancy clothes aboard this boat to announce to the world she is in our possession. Let her grant me the gem you promised.”

  Ahkdul’s shoulders jerked.

  “By this token we shall seal our engagement.”

  “One feat?” he asked.

  “One small wish,” the genie whispered. “Until I am well enough to grant you the riches you deserve.”

  Kordahla held her breath.

  “Very well. I would be emperor of The Three Realms, with all the power and riches that implies.”

  “It is too much,” the genie murmured.

  Ahkdul’s lip hitched up.

  “My Lord,” Kordahla said, sickened by the courtesy she must of necessity show. “Would you wish for a treasure you cannot yet keep?”

  “Too weak for that,” the genie said.

  Ahkdul tensed. “A small wish? I would wish for a honourable, respectful, dutiful wife to bear me many sons. Will you argue that is more than any man may ask?”

  “You shall have it all, and more, if you but grant me the gem you promised.”

  They were standing too still. She was breathing too fast.

  “The world’s largest diamond, genie.”

  “My lord.” The words were too quick to her own ears. “Diamonds and sapphires remind me of the mahktashaan with their crystals. They remind me of a home I must forget. Might I have an unusual gem, a stone no one could mistake for anything other than djinn-wrought?”

  Ahkdul’s nod was almost imperceptible. “It is fitting,” he agreed.

  The genie rose into the air, her head drooping from weariness. The palest of rose light seeped into her crystals as she began a slow turn. Kordahla put a hand over her mouth. When every twitch of the genie’s muscles was visible, their ploy could not pay off. But a gradual quickening set her ablur, and when she came to rest, bobbing before them, her legs still bound, she held out her hand. A watermelon stone suspended on a chain of gold floated through the air. Kordahla reached for it.

  “It is a wonder.” Ahkdul took it from her hand. “Two colours. Never have I seen a stone like this. It is indeed a gem fit for my bride. Hence forth, it shall be known as an honour stone. It shall be a symbol of the royal house of Terlaan.” He ran his eyes over the genie. “What cure?”

  The genie sank to the floor. “No. . . cure,” she said on hands and knees.

  “You are bound to tell the truth,” Ahkdul snarled.

  The genie’s breaths had turned ragged. “Eye. . .of. . .Mahktos.”

  “Rosie?” Kordahla said with a prickle of fear. Dear Mahktos, the child might lack the strength to make good her escape. But the genie was beginning to lose substance.

  Ahkdul held out the lamp. “To your prison, djinn.”

  The genie was turning translucent, becoming smoke which curled towards the lamp. Ahkdul grinned as it skimmed the spout, grimaced as it twisted up towards a crack in the hatch. With a growl, he threw the knife. It sailed right through the smoke and lodged in the wall.

  The ship rocked to port. They toppled to the side, and fell back as the keel regained the water. A loud bang startled her into jumping. Ahkdul launched himself up the ladder. She scrambled after him. On deck, chaos reigned. Sailors worked at the broken mast while soldiers waved swords and yelled challenges at a golden genie drifting high in the sky, a diamond tiara upon her head and crystals blazing gold at her joints. Kordahla baulked as the golden genie pointed a finger right at her. A power gripped her and lifted her off the ship. The shore came rushing up to meet her. She braced for a fall but was caught on a cushion of air which cradled her landing on soggy grass. A crack made her turn her head. Their vessel had split asunder. Men were falling into the murky water.

  “Rise, child.”

  The golden genie stood before her in the glory of the sun and the moons. Her brilliant elegance eclipsed the light of day; her floral scent drowned the rot of the mire.

  Kordahla buried her face in her hands. No mortal deserved to look upon this queen. But even with her hands pressed to the dirt
, a finger found its way under her chin to raise it, to lift her body and her legs, as though she were a puppet. Still she dared not raise her eyes to the queen of legend.

  “Be at peace. You have nothing to fear.” The genie’s voice had the lilt of a harp. Her long, fair hair fanned around her heart-shaped face although the air hung still.

  In the water, men thrashed and screamed. One went under. She shuddered. The ship continued to sink.

  “For saving my sister, I owe you a debt,” Tiarasae, Queen of the Genies said. The words demanded Kordahla meet her eye. The beauty of the creature was like a stab of longing through her heart. “You may make a wish. My gratitude is such that I will grant it.”

  Kordahla stammered meaningless sounds. The man who had sunk had not reappeared. Tiarasae, Queen of the Genies, ethereal and serene, turned and beheld the gruesome death of screaming men in the snap of vicious jaws.

  “My brother.”

  “He is safe. The swine might suffer if you wish it.”

  The shimmering genie was bewitching in her radiance. Kordahla could not tear her eyes away. Treachery and treason: a pact with a djinn betrayed until time crumbled to dust. No. She would not accept the torment entangled with the wish.

  “Save the rose genie,” she heard herself say. Her eyes travelled up. The girl was sprawled across a sunbeam, not a shimmer of pink left in her skin.

  “We will care for her, but she is gravely ill and a cure is not within my power. Will you not make a wish for yourself? I will not ask again.”

  Kordahla closed her eyes, swayed. Stayed resolute. “Mariano,” was all she would say.

  She felt silken lips brush her forehead. “Stay strong, child of Mahktos.”

  Her skin tingled. A breeze brushed the sensation away. It carried with it a faint cry of distress, a child’s voice, oddly familiar. Not Vinsant. Timak. Kordahla opened her eyes. The genie was gone. Mariano was wading from the river. Ahkdul was crawling out behind him, and Kahlmed, too, dragging spluttering Brailen. Around them, men hauled themselves to safety, dripping, coughing, and oblivious to the blessing she had just received. One screamed and fell, pulled under as blood washed the water around him. Out in the river, men thrashed and drowned, fodder for the monsters in the murk. One by one, the soaking, shivering thugs pooled on the shore, spitting and punching each other in their haste to lay blame. Those of them who had survived, anyway.

  Chapter 45

  AFTER MUCH DEBATE and a change of clothes, they took horses. The need for a quick getaway loomed in all their minds.

  “Has the zombie passed this way?” Jordayne asked at the arched south gate.

  “We turned it around,” the uneasy duty sergeant replied. “We’ve had reports it’s approached all three gates. Our orders are to contain it within the city.”

  “New orders. It is to pass.”

  “What secret do you hold of that abomination?” Drucilamere asked when they trotted the road to the cemetery.

  “In good time,” Jordayne replied, tightening her cloak against the wind. Drucilamere knew better than to persist.

  They climbed the hill in silence after that, leaving the horses tethered halfway up with a guard who believed they had left the wedding to pay their drunken respects to previous shahbanus. It would not do to have a neigh alert the kidnappers to their presence. The sparse trees covered them as they skirted the low wall of the sprawling cemetery towards the far side of the hill, where the lake swept east of Mage Cove onto the base of eroded cliffs before lapping at the vineyards which were forever trying to equal the reputation of San Xalid’s drops. The Vae were watching out for them; the sigh of the wind drowned their words while the clatter of light sticks masked their clumsy passage. The moons were not so kind; two full faces, most auspicious for a wedding, made concealment nigh on impossible.

  “To the left,” Rokan whispered as they hunkered behind an ostentatious gravestone which belonged to a merchant with more money than taste.

  Beyond the far wall, a silhouette was scouting the edge of the cliff. Prahak was proving to be a wily bastard. The dangerous, crumbling rock which splashed into the lake kept most folks at bay.

  Jordayne shifted.

  Rokan curbed her advance. “A hardened thug like Prahak, there’ll be more.”

  Two more, in fact, easy to spot thanks to a sheet of lightning.

  Rokan tapped Drucilamere and gestured right. “I’ll need your help.”

  The crouching men ran between the cover of the headstones, one in each direction.

  Jordayne blinked at their chauvinistic backs. “And mine, seeing as there as are three of them and we don’t want to alert Prahak,” she said to the wind. She stood and checked her dagger, one of two she had brought along, and knotted the modest navy kameez she was wearing for ease of movement under her bust. Swinging hips and bosom, she sauntered towards the middle man, trusting her feminine wiles would convince where the garment did not. Her flamboyant kick as she rolled over the far wall grabbed his attention.

  “You the one as sent for nighttime entertainment?” she drawled in her best peasant voice. Even under the twinkling stars she could see the fool was gaping at her like she was about to fulfil his erotic dreams.

  “Well now, depends, don’t it,” he said.

  The other two had halted to stare at her.

  She looked him up and down. “Suppose you tell me which one of you virile lads is Prahak?”

  The sentry on the right had taken the bait and was angling towards her. His misplaced enthusiasm encouraged the middle man forward as they vied to reach her without appearing to be the lecherous cretins they were. A sway of her hips held their attention. That gave Rokan the opportunity to dart from behind a lichen-covered statue of Vae’oenka, clamp a hand over the third man’s mouth and shove a sword through his chest. Jordayne winked, flicked a finger under the middle man’s chin as she spun, and headed towards the trees.

  “Coming?” she called over her shoulder.

  The men looked at each other, and sprang after her. Drucilamere took the opening to creep up from behind and slash at the second man’s neck. Her dagger was across the middle man’s throat before he could yell a warning.

  “Fun, my dear. I’m starved of it,” she said to Rokan before he could comment. The wise man grunted before dragging the bodies to the edge and tossing them to the fish.

  “There will be others at the entrance,” Rokan said as they stared through the darkness, listening to waves splash the rock below.

  Druce turned to survey the dip of the land. “Wherever that is.”

  Jordayne put her hands on her hips. “A distraction, darling magus. Draw them out.”

  “Then we retreat till we know what we’re dealing with,” Rokan said.

  “Can you deal with them?” she asked.

  “Depends how many, what kind of fighters they are and what weapons they have. At least we’ll discover how to enter.”

  “You might have to take care of the gatecrashers,” she said to Druce as they jumped the wall and returned to the statue of Vae’oenka. The blue-white lichen had an eerie glow in the moonlight.

  Her mage was silent, his affection usurped by the strange little boy they were here to rescue. He didn’t utter a peep as he tipped the packet of porrin Ilyam had given him into his mouth and faced the cliff. His jaw remained clenched, his face strained. She looked away, knowing better than to suggest his burns pained him. Tomorrow, she would drag him to a physic. Tonight, he would kill himself of an overdose to reach the boy, and nothing she could say or do would prevent it. A squeeze of his arm as his breaths deepened was all she could offer. For now.

  The magic, when it came, was a spectacular display. Ten boulders rose and spun off the edge of the cliff, colliding and bouncing off each other with earthshaking thumps that brought three armed men running up from below a dip in the land. As they called a warning, flames jumped from the rock. Two rocks smashed together, sending a shower of gravel onto the cliff. One man, the tallest, yelped as he wa
s hit and another ducked a large, hurling fragment. The third, a stocky brute, growled and retreated. Two boulders plummeted out of sight. Another hit a sixth and broke into rubble over the cliff as three more men appeared. The stocky man was cluey enough to wave the newcomers down. He yelled at them to alert Prahak while the tall man picked himself up and ran towards the trees, seeking out the source of the tumult. The remaining boulders dropped. Two found a target, crushing men, including the tall one, beneath them. One disintegrated into a dust cloud that obscured the last.

  Rokan jumped up and, calling for the men to warn Prahak, ran for the newest arrivals. His sword was through a stomach before the man realised he was not one of theirs. He pulled it out just in time to parry a sharp blow. Giving the fighting pair a wide berth, Stocky jumped into the dip. With a mighty bellow, Rokan angled to cut him off, good man. Surprise, if it still existed in this turmoil, was their best chance.

  Jordayne shook Drucilamere. Her unresponsive magus was staring into thin air. Since the thunder was not enough to wake him, he would, she decided, be fine while she assisted Rokan. She rounded the statue as the last of the dust settled.

  And baulked. The rumble was not thunder but the last boulder rolling her way.

  “Druce. Drucilamere!” She tugged him. He swayed. The boulder rumbled close. She slapped him. “Snap out of it!” He blinked. She put some distance between them and ran at him. Hurled herself into him. Held him tight through his totter. The boulder bore down. She spun. They toppled, leaving his long legs lying along the base of the statue, right in the path of the boulder, a mere revolution away. Getting to her knees, she tugged at him. He didn’t move. The boulder crashed into the statue. Vae’oenka tilted to an alarming angle as the boulder skipped into the air. Jordayne dropped, rolled Drucilamere snug against the plinth and lay over him, pressing hard into the marble. The statue fell over them, pinning them in the gap between the rendering of the goddess and the edge of the plinth. The boulder landed on the statue and rolled down its length. Its weight cracked the marble. She grabbed Drucilamere’s arm and pulled it in tight. The image of the goddess snapped in two but the boulder kept rolling over them and into the trees, where it levelled a few saplings before coming to rest against the fluted bole of a fig tree.