A Thousand Nights

by Johnston, E. K.

  It did not take me very long to convince my kind to join me. They craved blood as I did, and did not much care that this time, they might have to kill quickly rather than linger over every wound. There would be blood enough in every form to sate them, and power beyond what they had known after.

  “But my queen is not to be touched,” I said to them. “I will have her whole in mind and body when this is done, and the desert is red with the blood of her family.”

  There were some quiet complaints at that—that I might choose a pet to lavish suffering upon while my kin were forced to deal the mercy of a fast death to those they caught. I let them whisper. They must not guess the truth of why I wanted her. They must not take her, as I had taken Lo-Melkhiin. She was mine for that, if any were to get it, but I hoped instead to control her through other means.

  I nearly swooned to think of what we might do together. I could force people to do what I wanted, but I had to be close enough to touch them. She could reach across the desert and do her work as easily as I might reach for more bread at the dinner table. I had not bothered to learn of smallgods when I had taken Lo-Melkhiin, but perhaps it was time to make Sokath, His Eyes Uncovered have great thoughts about them. His heart might burst when he was done, which was why I had avoided him in favor of the younger Skeptics—he was nearly clever enough without me. For this, though, I would risk his death. I had many others at my beck and call.

  But first: the desert. I would take my kin onto the sand, and we would turn it red with blood. Men would not sing of the battle we fought there. They would whisper it around their campfires. They would be afraid to speak of it any louder than that, lest the wrath of the victors be called down upon them. Women would wail in the desert, grieving their dead husbands and sons. They would cling to those children who had been too young to fight and had not died—if we did not kill them anyway, of course. My kin were sometimes difficult to control.

  Lo-Melkhiin worried about his mother, overhearing our plans as he did. He knew that I would save the girl at any cost, but he did not think I would expend the same effort to bring his mother back to the safety of the qasr. It struck me how deeply he seemed to care for them both. A man might love his mother and not be judged weak by other men for it. Most men did not have the luxury of loving their wives—at least, not so soon after marrying them.

  And he did not love her, not quite. But he thought very highly of her. He was impressed with her bravery, and with her unwillingness to change her desert-spirit within city walls. He thought her power was mysterious, but not terrifying as mine was. He wished he were able to know her better, as himself, without the specter that was me hanging between them. He thought she was born to be a queen.

  It was so different from how I coveted her. I looked forward to rubbing it in his face later—that he would only ever have her through me. I would touch her with his hands, and use his mouth when I kissed her, and she would fight his body with all the strength in hers when I did it.

  Now, though, I had my work before me. My army was not great in number, but we were great in power. We would drive the rebels back with the strength we gained from devouring their own ancestors. We would rid the desert of their treachery.

  And when we were done, I would return to the qasr with my bride, whether she willed it or not.

  WHILE I HAD BEEN DREAMING OF my sister’s past, and watching the stars fall from the sky, and spinning useless thread in Lo-Melkhiin’s qasr, my father and my brothers had been busy. They had returned with the caravan to find me gone, but my mother and my sister and my sister’s mother had not let them mourn, as would have been traditional and proper. I lived—my sister was sure of it—and if I was to keep living, they must take their camels back into the desert and trade once more. This time, with every bolt of cloth, crock of honey, and packet of myrrh that changed hands, they must tell what had happened, and what my sister was trying to do.

  I know now that my father did not grieve. My brothers had been chafing under the rule of a king who lived so far away and was so cruel. Two of them had daughters. When they went back into the desert they bartered no less shrewdly than usual, but with every bargain they told of my marriage: how I had made Lo-Melkhiin’s eye turn from my sister to me. My father told the men he traded with that I was brave. My brothers said that I was clever—that I had made Lo-Melkhiin love me, and that was why I did not die.

  And everywhere they went, they built a shrine, and they left purple cloth, and they prayed.

  Soon, they found that women came to trade with them instead of men. The women listened to the story of my wedding with an attentiveness the men had not shared. Rarely now were my father and my brothers tasked with building the shrines to me. Often they were already built, nestled in the sand or in the corner of a tent, or even in the caves where the dead were buried, though I had not died. They left the purple cloth—as a gift, they said, for the living smallgod I had become.

  Just when they were about to turn back, when they had reached the edge of the sand desert, could see the scrub desert and, at the full length of their sight, the low blue lines that were the mountains to the north, they met a pale man who carried bright metal, the like of which they had not seen. They wondered if he was ill, his skin was so pale. He wore his kafiyyah like a woman would, veiling his face to them. Men only covered their faces if there was too much sand in the air, or if there was a sickness about.

  “If he stays too long in the sun, he burns red like a coal in the fire,” my sister said to me as she told me what had gone on after I had been taken away. “His skin peels away, and he says he is very sick when it happens. Your brothers laughed at first, because it was something only a woman would do, to be concerned about her skin—but he showed them his hands, and how they burned, and they held their tongues after that.”

  My father traded for the bright metal, as much as he could carry. The pale man took honey and spices and dyes, light things that would not burden his camel, and said that if my father wished for more metal, he had only to return in one month. My father could not say how he knew the metal would be needed, only that the smallgod had told him. In any case, my father returned to our wadi with strange tales to tell my mothers and my sister, and with baskets of bright metal shaped as knives, arrowheads, and pins.

  My sister told me that she was captivated by my father’s words about the pale man, and by the bright metal he had brought. She begged my father to go back, to trade for more, and to bring the pale man with him if he would come. He listened to her, and went out into the desert with the caravan long before there was a need for new trade.

  Everywhere he stopped to let his camels rest, my father saw new shrines built to me. There were offerings of pickled gage-root and sweet-water flowers, though the desert burned around them. Girls sang new hymns at the shrines, their light voices carrying on the wind. In the evenings, when they sat around the fires and wove, they chanted prayers instead of working-songs; though my father could not hear them, he knew what they said.

  At last, my father came again to the edge of the scrub desert, and met the pale man there. This time, the pale man had two camels laden with metal and with ore, which he said he could shape however my father liked.

  “Come with me to my tents,” my father said to him. “It is a long journey, but your camels look strong, and we will do what we can to protect you from our sun. I promise you, you will trade well while you are there.”

  “Revered caravan master,” the pale man had said to my father, “I had hoped you would invite me. There is much of your desert that I wish to see.”

  And so they went, my father retracing his steps back to his tents. He showed the metal to all the men he met, but the pale man would not trade.

  “Come with us,” he had said to them instead. “Come and we will see what we might make.”

  Around this time, word spread of the bird that had attacked Lo-Melkhiin and brought him low. My sister said she had prayed to me, unceasingly, that I would help him die. I co
uld not tell her that I had done the opposite of that, but now I knew where the swell of power had come from. It heartened me to learn I was not bound to grant the prayers that brought me power. I was bound enough as Lo-Melkhiin’s wife. I did not wish to be bound any further, even to my sister.

  “Others have been attacked by the birds,” my father had said to the men he traded with, and to the women who listened to his words. “Why is Lo-Melkhiin so ill when no one else has ever been?”

  “The birds are from the mountains, as am I,” the pale man had told them. “I have seen them drink the water that comes from the caves where I get my ore. I have seen them sharpen their great claws on the mountainside, and the claws gleam brighter than the daggers that I make.”

  “Could it be that the metal makes Lo-Melkhiin ill?” my quietest brother had asked.

  My father said nothing for a very long time.

  “If it is so...” the youngest said then. He was less wise, but kinder. “Then we might save our sister from him.”

  The words had not been true when I thought of them, but in the silence between what I thought and what I said, I had made them real.

  “If it is so,” said my father at last, “then we might save everyone.”

  They could not test the metal against the king, of course, but they could test it against other metals. It was much harder than silver. It was far stronger than copper, though it could not be made to shine as bright. It bent bronze, which is what most people were using for weapons. The arrows that Lo-Melkhiin’s archers carried, and the daggers and swords at their waists, were bronze. If my father could get enough metal, and the pale man thought that he carried enough with him, then he could make weapons that Lo-Melkhiin’s army would not be able to withstand.

  Now, instead of trading, my father was recruiting.

  “Come with us,” he said to the men they met. “Come and bring your women and your children and your herds. Bring them to my wadi, where they will be safe, and we will go to meet Lo-Melkhiin and stop him from stealing our daughters to die as his wives.”

  Many of the men we met were from villages that had given a daughter already. Those who had not yet, knew that they would have to soon, if I died. They came to my father’s cause slowly at first, but my sister said that it was their women who begged them to join. I did not doubt that. Men prospered under Lo-Melkhiin’s rule, and if it cost them a daughter, it was no more than a hard winter might demand as payment for survival. The wives and mothers, though, grieved each loss and prayed at my shrines to avoid further losses. They told the men to go, and, after a time, the men went.

  When my father returned to his tents along the wadi, his caravan stretched so far behind him that my sister said she could stand on the sand and look, without seeing its end. Then she smiled, and said she had not looked too long, because when she saw the pale man who rode with my brothers, she forgot that the caravan was there at all.

  “I knew it must be the man with bright metal,” she said to me. Her eyes gleamed with love for him, and I recoiled like she had struck me. I had made this in her, and I feared she would hate me if she knew it. “No one else could look like that,” she said. “He was so pale, I saw why your brothers thought he must be ill. He had taken off his kafiyyah so that it did not cover his eyes. He told me later that he wanted to see my father’s tents, but that he forgot to look at them, because instead he saw me where I stood waiting.”

  “Sister,” I said to her. “Why do you love him?”

  She looked down at her hands, which were lined with henna for the wedding. She did not hear my desperation.

  “I did not know at first,” she said to me. “I saw him and I wondered if I loved him only because he was so different from any man I had ever seen.”

  That, at least, sounded like my sister. She had always been more adventurous than I. It seemed fitting that she would see a man so strange and love him for it.

  “He spoke of his mountains and of his time in the desert,” she said to me, “and my heart was heavy. I thought he meant to return to his home in the north. But he told me that he wished to stay in the desert. He could go and get more ore to make the bright metal, but he wanted the desert to be his home.

  “Then I was truly glad, sister of mine,” she said to me. “Because if I married him, I could stay here with my mother and with your mother, with your shrines and with our dead. I would not leave my father’s tents, and my husband would not ask me to.”

  She had not answered my question. She had not told me that she loved his eyes or the sound of his voice. She had not said that his touch lit a fire on her skin. Then it came to me: she loved him because he did not seek to change her. If I had made him, or if my father had found him, it did not matter. My sister would have a husband who would not make her sit, veiled and weaving, in his tent. He would not take another wife, as my father had done. She would be his, and he would be hers, alone. This was why she loved him, and it made my heart glad to hear it.

  “Come,” my sister said to me. “Let me show you how we will end your husband’s rule.”

  My gladness turned hard in my chest; and around it, the copper fire of a hundred prayers burned.

  MY BROTHERS HAD TAKEN Lo-Melkhiin’s mother to a tent and left her there, with the boy and the old woman and three guards to stand outside. The tent flaps were closed, and it must have been stifling, but I knew that no one would go in to see her unless my father ordered it. When my sister would have taken me around the camp and shown me off like a prize cow, I begged her to let me go to Lo-Melkhiin’s mother instead.

  “Do you think she has not counted the men, as I did?” I asked her. “Do you think she has not guessed what this wedding of yours will entail? Do you think she has not suffered too?”

  My sister relented, and took me to the tent. The eyes of men followed us as we went, my sister in her priestly-whites and me in my fine city dress. How different we had become in so short a time.

  “Here is Lo-Melkhiin’s mother,” she said to me when we reached the tent. “I will stay out here and wait for you, sister. Come to me when you have said your words.”

  I nodded, and held the flap open to go in. The tent was well-appointed and less hot than I had feared. Lo-Melkhiin’s mother would not wilt in the stuffy desert heat. There were rugs on the floor, and a faint incense burned, as though someone had thought she would be offended by the smell of so many sheep and goats and men. Someone had brought tea and dates, like all visitors were given when they came to my father’s tents, though I did not know if anyone had stayed to drink the formal welcome with her. Though I no longer dwelt amongst my family, I was still bound by their duties to their guests.

  “Welcome, lady,” I said to her, bowing, and then sat down across from her. “Welcome to my father’s tents.”

  The tea was gone, but I held the bowl of dates out to her and she took one. I took one as well and then gestured to the boy, who fell on the bowl like he had not eaten in days. Lo-Melkhiin’s mother coughed quietly, and the boy remembered to take at least one of his prizes to the old woman, who smiled as she ate.

  “Shall we discuss the desert storms, then?” asked Lo-Melkhiin’s mother. “Or perhaps the state of the herds? There seem to be a great many of them here.”

  “Mother of my heart, there is no reason to hide my family’s purpose from you,” I said to her, “for you have seen it with your own eyes. They do marry off my sister, as my father said, but they also plot against your son.”

  “They are not the first,” she said to me. “The first died so quickly their blood did not even stain the marble floor inside the qasr. Why does your father think he will fare better?”

  “He has many friends who will help him,” I said to her. “And they have a new metal from the mountains to the north, brought by the pale man who will be my sister’s husband.”

  “Ah,” she said to me. “The same metal that the Skeptics say was on the talons of the great bird that attacked Lo-Melkhiin?”

  “The very
same,” I said to her. “There are daggers made from it, and fletched arrows that will fly true.”

  “True enough to hit Lo-Melkhiin?” she asked. “True enough to slay all his men?”

  “Lady mother,” I said to her. “I do not think he will fight with men.”

  The old woman stood quickly, grabbing the boy and pulling him into her lap. He struggled, probably having decided that he was too old for such treatment, but she was much stronger than he was. She put both of her hands over his ears so he would not hear us. He fought her for a few moments more, and then gave up, the way the goats did when they realized that they could not escape us, and that we held them for their own good. He settled, waiting, and she did not relax.

  “You think there are other demons that will come with my son?” Lo-Melkhiin’s mother said to me.

  “I know it,” I said, though until I said the words, I could not have said how I knew.

  Lo-Melkhiin had never said that there were more of his kind directly, but he had hinted at it. He had said that he would find a way to take my sister, and I knew he could not do it himself, bound as he was by the laws of men. Yet he was so sure he could, if he wished me to suffer, that I knew he must have other demons at his call to do it. They might not be as strong as he was, perhaps because they were living in the desert, but I knew in my bones that they would be stronger than my father and my brothers, and all the men who would fight beside them.

  “I do not want my son to die,” Lo-Melkhiin’s mother said to me. “He is a good man.”

  “He might have been, my lady mother,” I said to her. “But the demon has used his skin for so long, used his hands for such awful things. Do you think he is a good man still? Do you think when he is free of the demon, his heart will be whole?”

  Sometimes men go mad in the heat of the sun, and beat their children as they would their goats and sheep. My father never tolerated such behavior in his tents, because those children sometimes grew up to be cruel too. I feared that Lo-Melkhiin, the true one, had been locked so long inside a monster that he would be a monster himself, even if the demon were driven away. We had a demon for a king already; I did not wish to replace him with another. Yet I had seen the dark spot within his mind, and I knew not to fear it. Perhaps Lo-Melkhiin’s mother’s wish was not so desperate, but I wanted to be very, very sure.