Grave Ghost

by Tia Reed

  Lying on top of Drucilamere, Jordayne kissed him long and hard. He blinked before he thought to kiss her back. She wriggled out from under the statue and held out a hand to help him up. Further up the slope, Rokan was standing over a prostrate body, waiting for them. She needed to support her unsteady mage as they joined her sergeant.

  “I’m sorry, my lady. One got away.” Rokan said.

  Jordayne turned a grim eye towards the dip. Prahak knew they were here.

  Rokan led the way to an eroded notch in the edge of the cliff, where rock had long ago broken away under the assault of wind and rain. He stepped down onto a precarious ledge and extended a hand to her. What had not been apparent from above was the iron hand holds knocked into the rock, and the overhang that concealed the narrow opening to a cave.

  “We need to hurry,” Druce said.

  Jordayne didn’t like the way his words slurred. She took a deep breath.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Timak’s mouth opened in silent terror as Prahak came into the room. His bowels emptied into his pants. Wrinkling his nose in disgust, stumpy Keb set a second chair facing him. Prahak sat, bloody knife in hand.

  “You told me her name.” As Prahak set the tip of the knife on the back of Timak’s left hand, Timak felt the ground drop from him. His head lolled but stumpy-legged Keb grabbed his hair and straightened it.

  “You said it was Rosie.” Prahak drove the knife through his hand. Timak screamed. “You lied. That makes you no use to me, boy.”

  Timak nodded. He wanted to die. He wasn’t afraid of dying. He was afraid of the pain.

  Prahak pulled out the knife. “I’m going to give you one last chance. I know how much porrin will loosen your tongue. That’s how much you’re going to get.” The evil man fished a packet out of his vest and handed it to Keb. He didn’t look away from Timak, not for one breath.

  “Understand?”

  The squeak he made was supposed to be yes. He closed his eyes in case the monster didn’t understand. Prahak tapped his face, twice and sharp.

  “When you drink the bliss, you tell me your genie’s name. If you don’t, I’ll cut off your hand and send it to the palace. Tell me which hand or I’ll cut off a hand and a finger. Right off. Got it?”

  “Left.” Another squeak. He couldn’t open his eyes.

  Prahak patted his cheek. “You’re learning.” He pulled Timak’s right thumb, cut deeper into the congealed wound. Timak screamed. “Open your eyes.”

  He strained his eyes so far sideways they hurt. Prahak grabbed his chin.

  “Look at me.”

  He managed to look at the man’s nose. Prahak’s smile was cold as the djinn.

  “Right after I cut off your hand, Keb here is going to have some fun. I know you understand what kind of fun.” Prahak tightened his grip. Timak whimpered. “You understand what kind of fun, don’t you, boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. When he’s tired of you, I’m going to cut your other hand off and send that to the mage guild. Piece by piece, I’m going to send you back to every person you’ve ever loved. And that includes your parents, boy. Your mother might like your head.”

  Vae let me die, let me die, let me die.

  Keb chuckled. “Prahak’s real skilled. He can hack pieces off people every day and still keep them alive for a week while I have my fun.”

  Timak hurled the gruel they’d fed him from his stomach.

  “Hey Prahak, might have to kill him by drowning. Teach him to keep himself clean.”

  Prahak patted his cheek. “Think about it, boy.”

  “Open up.” Keb held the packet to his lips and shook the dry powder in. Timak swallowed it down.

  Yazmine, please come. Please come. Please. I don’t want to say your name. I don’t want to say your name. I don’t want to say your name. I don’t want to say your name.

  He was dizzy. So dizzy. Room spinning. Sailing up by the jagged roof, looking down. His head had dropped forward. Prahak was staring at him. Keb was pushing his head up. Prahak put the knife on his left wrist.

  “What’s your genie’s name?”

  The quartz on his chest warmed. Soft light flared. The bucket in the corner lifted and whirled around the room. The shards of the broken jug went flying. The blanket flipped up. Prahak stood. A shard sailed close to his face. Prahak batted it away with his knife, cut his bonds in four quick strokes. He pulled Timak against him and backed against the wall. Keb spun and ducked as broken pottery flew in every direction. The blanket wrapped around the stumpy man, tripping him. He landed hard on his back. The room was spinning faster than the pottery. The blanket was rippling to life. Timak struggled. Prahak held him fast.

  A stocky man burst through the door and flung up his arm. Through a thick fog, Timak heard him say, “We’re discovered. At least one mage.”

  One mage should mean something. He couldn’t think what. Magic, maybe. In this room. Swirling things. Creating a monster. Was Keb a mage? The horrible man was struggling with the blanket monster. It was eating Keb alive. It would devour him next. Timak struggled. Prahak threw him into the whirl and left. On his stomach, Timak threw his hands over his head. Nothing hit. He had to get away from the blanket monster before it swallowed him whole. He crawled towards the door. Keb grabbed his ankle and pulled him flat. Thin wool brushed his leg. He screamed. Keb pulled him closer. Timak twisted. He wanted the blanket to die. He wanted the shards to pierce it.

  The mage read his mind. Three shards dropped onto the monster pinning it to the floor. Timak pulled free and wriggled towards the door. Keb was squirming out of the long woollen throat. He had to leave. The rippling monster was still alive. Keb reached for him. He was going to torture Timak and feed him to the beast. The blanket stretched towards him.

  A shard shot straight across. It landed in Keb’s eye. The man dropped onto his stomach. His hand twitched. Timak got up, fell down, got up. He tottered towards the spinning door and collided with wall.

  Prahak came in, grabbed him, dragged him out. When Timak fell, Prahak hoisted him under one arm and carried him through constricting tunnels and chomping chambers. Timak didn’t know if he screamed.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Ordosteen took her to their marriage bed with urgent strength and, not long after, again with tender consideration. Head on his shoulder, one hand on his chest, Rochelle luxuriated in the aftermath of their lovemaking. Shahbanu. It was not a thought she had ever entertained. Not with the rumours about the deaths of so many wives flying. The whispers had not stopped during the long, lonesome years the shah had remained a widower. They had not even paused during the revelry which was yet raising the ceiling in the great hall below. They had changed, though.

  She’s risking her life, the mature dames said.

  It was childbirth as killed them. Our new shahbanu is past the age, the servants observed.

  He must have made a pact to keep her safe. We’ve had peace for generations and now war threatens, the satraps grumbled, the clever ones, the insightful men at least.

  A breeze blew through the open window, billowing the damask curtains, dissipating the heat of their passion. Rochelle snuggled against her sleeping shah. Her darling Ordo had confided the best and worst of it in this golden, jewelled bed the night after he had proposed, after she had offered him her talents in a way that left him vulnerable to her charms. After he had pressed a stray emerald into the empty setting in the centre of the bedhead, a gem which had dislodged the night he had thrown her out of this sumptuous chamber. He had sought to persuade her, to set her mind at rest. And to unburden himself. Of every nuance of his pact except the one he had just dealt. Rochelle was not naïve. Years at court taught the prudent to notice. She could guess at whose expense she gained a royal title but she was not inclined to dwell on it. The realm owed nothing to a Terlaani, however young and beautiful she might be. How much more pleasurable for her thoughts to linger on her title. Shahbanu. With all the esteem and power and riches – and the man, the very d
esirable man – it carried.

  His skin was cool beneath her hand. She brushed it down his torso. She might have woken him with a lover’s illicit touch if her fingers were not frozen. She rose from their bed and crossed to draw the shutters. The curtains continued to flutter. Her breath formed a white puff in front of her. She waited for it to disperse, time to consider what treasures might lie on offer. For certain it would be worth more than the dazzling gems on the bedhead, or the pearls in the jewel box on the oak dresser.

  “There is nothing left for which to deal,” she said, holding the thick curtains as goosebumps erupted along her flesh.

  The giggle was childish.

  Unashamed by the her lush nakedness, she turned. The taupe djinn was a disappointment even bent into a heart above the bed. Her imagination had conjured creatures of unsurpassable power and beauty, not an ugly weakling with an unruly shock of black hair.

  “It is my wedding night. There is nothing you could offer me I have not already claimed.” She pulled her revealing nightgown off the dressing screen, where it had waited, unclaimed, since she entered the room.

  The djinn changed shape, becoming a swaddled taupe baby. Her pang of regret tasted nastier than the smell of horse sweat in the air. She dismissed it as she slipped into her gown and slunk into bed, beneath the quilt embroidered with red roses to bless their nuptials. One hand moved onto Ordosteen’s shoulder. A single shake would banish all temptation.

  “I am djinn. All things are possible,” the creature said, his voice odd in the mouth of a newborn.

  Her hand paused. “Indeed, for your kind, they are. But I will not curtail my life, not even for an infant.”

  The baby spun into a blur. The blur slowed into the adult djinn. He crossed his legs and sat above the golden foot of the bed. “You married the man.”

  Rochelle curled a finger around a lock of Ordosteen’s white hair. “His pact is broken. And I am past the age.” A safe answer, noncommittal.

  The djinn shrugged. “A boy child of his loins and your womb. Heir to the Myklaani throne. Shah in his time. And you safe from the complications of childbirth.”

  Rochelle swallowed. She looked down at the man beside her, so passionate in love, so peaceful in sleep. Her hand moved onto his chest. She leaned over to plant a light kiss on his lips. His suffering was etched in the deep lines around his eyes, the creases around his mouth. A pact had cost this man more than heir and wife. If only the longing for a son to set upon the throne did not burn in her like a fierce, blinding sun. If only it did not burn in him.

  “I will listen to your pact,” her lips said before she could stop them.

  The djinn spiralled around the bedpost. “I ask a trifle. Oh.” He stabbed a finger at the opposite post. “Uh oh. Double and triple uh oh.” Giggling, he brought his knees to his chest and tucked in his head. A breeze ruffled his hair. It strengthened into a howling wind, whipping the curtains to the ceiling, tugging the bedcover she was pulling to her chest. It swept the perfumes and candle off the dresser and hissing indigo smoke into the room. Rochelle’s hand tightened on the hair on Ordosteen’s chest. She shook him.

  “Wake up.”

  The smoke popped. An indigo djinn towered so high he had to stoop beneath the ceiling. An openhanded swipe tossed the taupe djinn off the bedpost, flipping him across the room, straight through the dresser. He landed with his head on the floor, the rest of his body nowhere to be seen. “Master,” he giggled.

  Vermillion eyes gleamed with malice. The indigo djinn blew an icy wind across Ordosteen.

  Rochelle shoved harder. “Ordo, wake up.”

  The taupe djinn crawled out of the dresser, his shimmering skin dull next to the gold mounts on the oaken legs. “I serve you, Master.”

  “You dare!” the indigo djinn said. The crystals in his joints flashed.

  “She wants a child, Master. You can deal for a child.”

  The indigo djinn snapped his fingers. Shackles appeared around the taupe djinn’s wrists. “Do you presume?!”

  The taupe djinn burst into tears. “I did it for you, master. I’m a good servant, your most loyal slave.”

  Indigo’s fingernail grew into a pointed sword. He thrust it through the other djinn’s forehead. The taupe djinn screamed. Still Ordosteen did not wake. Rochelle rubbed a frantic hand over his pale skin.

  “Leech. Fawning goat. Remove yourself from my sight. Flay yourself with a whip of a hundred tails, and boil yourself in a vat of boiling oil.”

  “As you wish, Master,” the taupe djinn snivelled, turned his body into that of a goat. A knotted whip appeared in one of his hands. He cracked it over his chest before fizzling into thin air. The snap of the tails lingered in the room.

  Rochelle pulled the bed covers close. “What have you done to the shah?”

  The indigo djinn crossed his muscular arms. “Nothing that will dampen your conjugal bliss. Will you deal, palace whore?”

  “You owe me. I delivered Matisse’s blood to you.” A major moon and a half ago, in Zulmei, when the heir had come to her bed for a night that had made Ordosteen jealous enough to propose. Had she known depth of the shah’s infatuation she would not have entered into a pact with the terrifying indigo creature staring down at her. A creature who had lurked in the shadows, hiding the full extent of his horror.

  “Did the tribe of fleas infesting this hellhole not call you shahbanu this night?”

  “A position accorded through Ordosteen’s love and a deal of his own.”

  “You have the title you dealt for, whore. Will you make another for a child?”

  Was she touched by the madness of greed, unable as she was to dismiss the offer even as she cowered? The djinn laughed, a terrible, calculating sound. The cover whipped out of her hand and off the bed, leaving her brutally exposed. She shivered as the djinn stroked a finger along her body. It stopped over her belly. Her womb, she thought with an excruciating pang.

  “I am the shahbanu,” she said, hopelessly vulnerable.

  The djinn ripped a nail through her nightgown and pressed a finger into her flesh. “A pretty name to go with a pretty face. A memory that will crumble to dust, a barren whore taken by a jinxed shah to provide comfort in the dusk of his reign.”

  She slid her hand down to Ordosteen’s and gripped tight, turning her eyes to the arabesques gracing the ceiling, the fertile blooming of flower and fruit. “It is enough.”

  “Is it? Think your affection, your fidelity will satisfy his lust for a son?”

  Those words! This abominable creature had spied on her the very night Ordosteen had proposed. The night they had kissed in the garden, bathed by the scent of frangipane. He was taunting her with those words. He was tormenting her, transforming into a young, indigo beauty and kneeling on the bed. And Ordosteen, rigid as a strung puppet, was sitting up. Her husband opened glazed eyes and raised stiff arms to embrace the apparition. Rochelle rose onto her knees. She wrapped her arms around her husband, brushed her lips against his neck, his cheek, his jaw. The enchantment was vile. Ordosteen did not respond to her touch. He leaned towards the djinn, towards its full, puckering lips.

  Rochelle struck the creature across the cheek. This djinn had no right to expose the deepest part of her heart, to force her to admit a place as this man’s wife was not enough. Not now, when he could sire an heir. When he might take a mistress to his bed. When. She. Might. Set. Her. Flesh. And. Blood. On. The. Throne. The yearning would waste her to skin and bone.

  The indigo temptress pressed a hand to her cheek. Of course she would mean for the nuances of her expression to deceive. But it was not shock this creature felt. That was clear in those malicious vermillion eyes. If only a newly-crowned shahbanu could find it in her pining heart to care.

  Her voice was husky, hoarse. “A boy child to set on the Myklaani throne, with both his parents alive to witness him come of age.”

  The djinn resumed his true, terrifying form. A wicked smile flashed across his face. “For you, whore, nothing less
.”

  Rochelle rose and wrapped a silk gown around herself. She faced the creature with a smattering of nerves and a mountain of triumph.

  “What would you have me do?”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Sian dreamed of Faradil, its yearning call, it ancient wisdom, its fathomless hurt. She dreamed of the Myklaani mage and his words. You have courage of the best kind. When the time comes to face who you are, do not run. She dreamed of Orin. The answer is within you. You must trust the spirits. And Joser. You must be strong. Your time is come. She dreamed of Ishoa. Over and over, she dreamed of Ishoa, lying battered on her furs.

  And suddenly, Sian was flying over hill and valley, along stream and through wood, past the hollow bole and up the narrow path to the cave. The fire was smoking sacred seeds, its flames throwing warning light on Ishoa’s broken body. Joser and Mun sat beside her, their staffs upright in their hands. When the two soothsayers lifted their heads, Sian stepped into the cave, past the bundles of drying herbs, over the shadows of the hedgehog and the squirrel.

  “The spirits reach and guide you,” they said, before turning to Ishoa and resuming their low chant.

  The shadow of a cobra raised its hood and hissed. Sian gasped. Soothsayer Mila was here, in spirit if not in flesh. She was here because Ishoa was ailing, fading, dying. It was Draykan’s words whirling around her now, telling Sian what she had failed to understand then, what even her leadsman had not grasped. There have never been two at once.

  “I’m sorry,” she pleaded. The man-ogre Gor had come for her, but he had hurt the person she loved most in all the world.

  The body on the furs moaned. The shadow bear lay down. In her mind, Ishoa’s spirit voice spoke clear and strong. “The spirits have chosen. You are the hope of the Akerin.”