by Evie Manieri
The girl’s face broke into a shy smile as he came towards her, but the smile was an ill match for the eager look in her eyes and did little to reassure him. ‘Is everything all right, Rahsa?’ he asked her, trying to sound as casual as possible. ‘You look like you want to tell me something.’
She giggled, a horrifying sound that chilled him to the bone. ‘No. I don’t want to tell you. That would spoil it. I want to show you. Everything’s going to be all right now.’
‘That’s good.’ He tried to smile back. He could see that she was holding something behind her back, hiding it like a child with a stolen sweet. ‘You can show it to me later, okay? I have to talk to these people now. You look tired. Why don’t you go lie down and I’ll come and find you?’
The expectant smile on her lips crumbled away, making the intensity in her eyes even more alarming. ‘But you have to come with me,’ she sang out softly. ‘I did it for you. I have to show you – you have to see it for yourself.’
‘I really can’t, Rahsa,’ he said apologetically, holding up his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘Not right now. I’m sorry.’ He turned away and began to walk back to the others, but he could feel her staring at him. He turned back and said firmly, ‘Really, Rahsa: go and get some sleep. I mean it.’
Something like anger flashed across her face, but so quickly that he thought he must have imagined it. Then she smiled at him again, even more broadly this time. ‘You just don’t understand yet,’ she said, nodding to herself. She walked towards him. ‘Don’t worry. It will be all right. I’m going to help you. I’ll always help you. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.’
Before he realised what was happening, she had grabbed his shoulder and thrust her lips violently against his. He struggled, trying to push her away, but no sooner had he loosened her grip than she shoved him, so hard that he fell backwards onto the ground, winded.
‘I won’t touch you!’ she shrieked, her shrill voice almost belonging to a different person. ‘Her stink is on you – traitor! Traitor!’
‘Rahsa, what—?’ he gasped as he struggled back to his feet. He heard voices raised in alarm and as the others rushed forward, her own dreadful scream ripped through the air and she covered her ears with her hands. And now Daryan saw what she had in her right hand: Eofar’s knife, the same one he had so carelessly left in the bathing room after he’d knocked it away from her; he’d never had the presence of mind to go back and retrieve it.
She shrieked again and lunged for him, and as he stared at the point of the blade, with the suddenness of a thunderclap he became acutely aware of the precarious collection of bones and soft tissues that made up his body, the flesh that offered no more resistance than the skin of a fruit. He was not so amazed that he was about to die as he was confounded that a creature so fragile could have survived as long as he had.
A heavy arm shoved him out of the way and he crashed into Binit as Rahsa’s scream suddenly choked off: Omir had grabbed Binit’s sword and plunged it straight through her chest.
‘No!’ Daryan screamed, as Omir tugged the blade out and Rahsa crumpled to the ground. He scrambled over to her on his hands and knees. The front of her robe was already soaked with blood. She was still alive, but each breath was a gasp of pain, and her eyes were rolling heavily in their sockets. ‘Why did you do that?’ he demanded frantically of Omir, who stood over them with the bloody sword clutched in his hand. ‘You didn’t have to kill her!’ He tried to lift her up, but the jostling made her cry out in pain.
‘What do you mean? She tried to kill you!’ exclaimed Binit, circling around next to Omir and staring in consternation at the blood dripping from the point of his sword. ‘Omir just saved your life!’
‘He knows that,’ the tall Shadari told Binit quietly. He was looking down at Daryan, frowning thoughtfully. ‘She was going to kill you,’ he told Daryan, ‘but your first thought was for her. Not yourself.’
‘I just—’ began Daryan, but then he saw Rahsa’s eyes fix on him. Her lips moved and dark blood bubbled up at the corners of her mouth – he bent his head closer to hear what she was trying to tell him.
‘I did it … for you,’ she gasped out.
‘I know,’ he said, trying to reassure her, though he still had no idea what she meant. ‘I know you did.’
Tal picked up Eofar’s knife from the floor. ‘There’s blood on this!’ he announced, holding it up in the torchlight.
‘Daryan, are you hurt?’ Omir asked quickly.
‘No, no,’ he answered, watching Rahsa’s face as she struggled to form more words.
‘She’s burning now,’ she whispered. ‘I wanted us to watch together.’
‘We will,’ Daryan reassured her, then he realised what she’d said. ‘Burning? Who’s burning? Rahsa?’
‘The blood’s on the handle, not the blade,’ said Tal, running his fingertip over the hilt of the knife and then holding it close to his eyes. ‘It’s all right, it’s not Shadari blood.’
Daryan looked down at Rahsa’s right hand, which was resting on his chest. Her fingers had left a bloody handprint on the front of his robe: a blue handprint.
‘Who’s burning?’ He pulled her closer to him. ‘Rahsa!’ he cried as her eyelids fluttered, ‘Rahsa! Who’s burning?’
As suddenly as if a string had been cut, her body went limp and heavy in his arms. Her head smacked down on the stone floor: she was dead.
‘Poor girl,’ Hakim said sadly, staring at her. ‘Temple madness, I guess. I’ve seen it before. And now with Shairav leaving she won’t even get a real funeral. She’ll have to stay shut up in the Dead One’s tombs—’
Daryan rocketed to his feet, crying, ‘That’s it – the tomb! She said “burning” – the sun – the sun shines on the tomb. She’s there – she’s burning—’
‘I don’t—’ Hakim started, but Daryan had turned to Omir and was clutching his robe.
‘Find Shairav – get to the stables; I’ll meet you there. Go!’ He grabbed Eofar’s knife out of Tal’s hand.
‘Daryan, what—?’ Omir called out after him.
‘Go!’ he yelled back, running as hard as he could for Eleana’s tomb.
Isa was burning.
Chapter Twenty-Three
She had to move – but the body that she inhabited no longer belonged to her. She couldn’t feel her heart beating. She couldn’t feel the stone beneath her. Her eyes were open, but looking through them was like looking through a window; she could only guess that the wheezing gasps that occasionally broke the silence were the sounds of her own breathing; if she still had lungs, she couldn’t feel them.
Her mother’s letter lay open on the tomb a few inches from her face, shifting gently back and forth in the breeze from the skylight above. There was a bright light near her knee which might have been the sunlight glancing off her sword. She thought she could remember putting it down there just before she’d perched on the edge of the tomb to read the letter. But mostly she could see her left arm. She didn’t want to look at it, but she couldn’t turn her head away, and she was afraid that if she closed her eyes, she would never open them again.
She had to move: she knew that. But she knew the reason she couldn’t move was because she couldn’t feel, and the reason she couldn’t feel was because she didn’t want to, not since she’d woken up screaming, convinced that someone was pounding her hand over and over again with a hot poker.
The sun had been blazing down on her hand and forearm. It had taken just a few frantic heartbeats for her to realise that the pounding was the rhythm of her pulse. Then the pain had stopped; it hadn’t gone away – she wasn’t stupid. She knew it was waiting for her, daring her to acknowledge that the mangled thing connected to her shoulder still belonged to her. And as unbearable as the pain had been then, by now it would be far worse, for all this time the sun had been beating down, it had also been steadily creeping over the tomb, and by now it was past her elbow. The skin on her forearm was bubbling with inky-black blisters; shortly, t
he flesh would begin to char away and poisoned blood would seep out, as it was already doing on her wrist and the back of her hand.
She had to move, and soon, if she wanted to survive this. She didn’t want to die – not like this, not facing an afterlife as pointless and insignificant as her mortal one had been. Only warriors who died by the sword were admitted to Onfar’s celestial hall. The Book of the Hall relegated the murdered – and she was being murdered; she knew that – to the same shabby realm as accident victims, children and others of marginal status. Even worse, she had been killed by a slave, some scrawny creature who had snuck up behind her and smashed her in the head with something and then left her lying in the sun to burn without her having lifted even a finger in her own defence. The shame of it would haunt her through eternity.
But to live – that meant to feel the pain, and this pain terrified her. She’d never known such fear. Whatever courage and fortitude she’d built up over her lifetime were laughable, mewling little things in the face of this. Was a little more life worth so much suffering? Death would find her, sooner or later; right now it would be so easy to close her eyes, just drift away. Already she could feel gravity’s hold over her lessening, and lightness filling her, pulling her upwards, like a glistening soap bubble …
Her reverie was interrupted by a sharp cry, then her vision blurred as she was lifted up. There was a babble of unintelligible words, and a crash, followed by another shout, and finally cool shade poured over her like balm. Away from the hateful sun, her eyes were able to focus again: she could see the doorway of the chamber, and her sword, teetering on the edge of the step next to the oozing lump of flesh that had once been her left hand. The crash had been the sound of the sword, falling from the tomb.
She didn’t see him until he ran to the doorway, and then ran back to her. She wanted to say his name, to tell him that she was glad he’d found her. She wanted him to hold her – that most of all.
‘Can you walk, Isa? Do you think you can walk, if I help you?’ His face was close to hers, though she couldn’t feel his warmth. She saw her right wrist in his hand – he was feeling her pulse – but she couldn’t feel his fingers. ‘You’re so warm. We have to get you out of here. Frea’s soldiers, they’re—’
They’re here, she thought. She could sense them in the hallway, a moment before they entered the chamber, both talking at once.
<—saw him go this way, if we follow him—>
<—sure it was him? They all look alike to me. I don’t—>
<—he’ll lead us to Eofar—>
<—care about Eofar! We should be looking for the Mongrel. If we—>
Daryan leapt up as they entered and placed himself between her and the two men. He had a knife – Eofar’s knife – but even in her present state, she could tell by the way he held it that he had no idea how to use it.
‘Stay away from her!’ he shouted to them, his voice breaking in the middle with a kind of squeal. But the soldiers weren’t looking at him; they were looking at her.
Air sliced into Isa’s lungs and feeling tingled back into her limbs – but not the pain, not yet, though she could feel it pushing, ready to explode. She had just a few heartbeats before her brain awoke to the truth. She reached across her body and closed her right hand around the hilt of her sword. She felt the coldness of the metal: it was the clearest, most vibrant sensation she’d ever felt in her life.
She tried to stand up, but her legs weren’t ready and instead she found herself sliding down the steps until her feet hit the floor. She used the momentum to rock herself upright. The left side of her body felt ridiculously heavy, as if it were weighted down by sandbags. Her right arm was too weak to lift her sword any higher than her knees, but she staggered forward. She could feel the pain beginning to claw its way over the barrier.
Either one of them could have taken her down; together, they could have done it with laughable ease – but instead, they backed towards the doorway.
They were afraid of her, Isa realised with a sick kind of relief. Afraid of her. And she thought of what she must look like to them, with her burned arm, and black blood, viscous as paint, dripping down and spattering the dusty floor. She was a monster, a thing out of their nightmares – an affront to the gods. She was an abomination.
And then the pain, as if knowing the battle was over, finally broke free.
‘Dar—‘ she gasped, expending the last ounce of her strength. She didn’t feel herself falling, but she did feel his arms as they came around her and she felt his warmth – no longer burning – as he pressed his cheek against hers. In her head she was screaming, but he couldn’t hear her and she was glad of that, because then he might have stopped telling her that everything was going to be all right, that he loved her, that he had always loved her, that he wasn’t going to let her go.
But there was something she needed him to know. ‘Rahsa,’ she coughed; all she could manage, but it would have to suffice.
‘She’s dead,’ Daryan reassured her, without understanding that the danger she feared was for him, not herself. ‘She was mad; I should have known. I should have made sure—’
Now she wanted to reassure him, but she had no more strength for words. She could feel the pain beginning to ease again, but this time, instead of embracing the numbness, she fought it. She tried to feel the coarse cloth of Daryan’s robe under her fingers, his arm beneath her, holding her up. She tried to feel the ache in her head where she’d been struck, but it was all slipping away. She heard the sound of swordplay, sounding very far away, and the last thing she saw before the room went dark again was her brother’s face swimming in the doorway.
Moments passed, or hours; she couldn’t know. The pain existed outside of time. But she knew when she felt the pain again that she was coming back, moving closer to reality. She heard the sound of voices, but the words were garbled, as if she were under water. She focused all of her efforts on dragging her eyelids upwards.
She found herself looking up through a dark grey haze at the point of a sword. The sword was suspended over her heart, like a stake, and the white-knuckled hands that held it belonged to her brother. Then something streaked by the corner of her vision and slammed into Eofar, knocking him and his sword against the side of the tomb.
‘No! No!’ she heard Daryan grunting.
She could no longer see either of them, but she could hear them grappling somewhere behind her. ‘I won’t let you do it!’
‘There is no other choice!’ Eofar’s voice sounded flat, but emotions too complicated for Isa to parse were cascading from him.
‘There is! Find it!’
‘Tell him!’ Eofar pleaded to someone Isa couldn’t see. ‘Tell him the burns are poison – it’s too late for her. Tell him she’s dying!’
The person he was addressing didn’t answer, but a moment later Daryan made a funny choking sound and cried, ‘Wait! I know what to do – Rahsa – her father—’ Then in a different tone entirely, he said calmly, ‘I know what we have to do. We cut off her arm, just like they do with the mining accidents.’
‘No – No!’ Eofar barked. There was a long pause and she knew he was
talking to someone in Norlander, but she couldn’t quite follow it—
‘Speak Shadari, damn you!’ she heard Daryan demand. ‘I’ve had enough secrets for one day.’
With a shock, Isa heard Lahlil’s voice coming from the other side of the room. Her emotions were so suppressed that Isa would have never known she was there if she hadn’t spoken. ‘He was reminding me what that will make her: an outsider. An outcast. He said that of all people, I should understand.’
‘Your arm didn’t make you an outcast,’ Daryan told her pointedly. ‘Your mother did that when she shut you up in a room.’
‘How dare you!’ Eofar rasped.
‘No – listen to me,’ Daryan said, ‘you’re not worrying about Isa; you’re worrying about how people will treat her, and that’s not the same thing. All of my life, people have treated me like I’m useless, and a coward – but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I believed them.’ His voice broke. ‘Isa isn’t like that. She’s better than me – better than any of us. The only one who’s going to decide whether she lives or dies is her. We’re not going to stand here and make that decision for her.’
‘Taking her arm won’t save her,’ Eofar argued. ‘She’s not Shadari, she—’
‘It might,’ said Lahlil quietly, ‘if we do it now.’
‘You don’t know that. You couldn’t—’
‘Did you see that?’ Daryan asked sharply. ‘Her eyes just opened. Isa!’ She felt his hands on her right wrist and she managed to open her eyes again. The blurry face bobbing in front of her eyes said, ‘There, look! Isa? Isa! Can you hear me?’
She couldn’t answer him – she didn’t have the strength, not even to speak her own language. The pain was draining everything, and soon there’d be nothing left.
‘Here – give her this.’ Lahlil’s voice was much closer now.
Isa heard a metallic scraping sound. Then a pause.
‘How much?’ asked Daryan.
‘All of it.’
‘This won’t hurt her, will it? You wouldn’t—’