by Zamil Akhtar
A wail like the births and deaths of a thousand demons rent the sky. Another of Marada’s heads flew off, splattering blood across the clouds and then withering into smoke as it surged toward the land.
“What the hell is that thing swinging at?” Eshe said. Of course, he couldn’t see Marada. He could only see Marot. For whatever reason, the angel had unveiled itself while the jinn hadn’t.
Pashang said, “There’s something there. If you squint, you can see its outline distorting the sky.” He put his hand under me; the pain from the broken bone in my back made me see stars, figuratively. I wailed, so Pashang set me back down.
“Take…my hand,” I mumbled to either of them. “I think…I finally understand…how this works. We need…to pray.”
Eshe shook his head, seething as if angry I’d even suggested it. “No, we need to get you on a litter and get out of here.”
The rumble of oncoming horses shook and nauseated me almost to sleep. Why were the Jotrids now galloping away from the gholam, whom they’d routed? What the hell could make them run from a human enemy toward an angel?
Ululating? It loudened with the endless earthquake of riders, the shrill cadence for which the gholam were known.
Meanwhile, Marot’s sinuous tentacle wrapped around Marada’s remaining head, pulled it off, and tossed it a hundred miles. The jinn sultana’s body turned to blood and smoke. Had Marot won? Was it over?
I coughed blood and spit. The gholam’ ululations deafened, coming from everywhere. Kato had said they feared no angel, but they seemed to not fear us, either. Pashang’s dismal gaze told me they’d surrounded us. We’d lost. Their reinforcements had arrived, whereas ours, the Sylgiz, were days away.
In the sky above Marot, a hole appeared, through which was a black, starry heaven. A woman with brilliant blue and green peacock wings descended through it, a scepter in her hands. Her long black hair reminded me of my mother’s, last I’d seen her, eight years ago. More than that, just the sight of her soothed my pain.
“Lat with peacock wings, holding a magnificent gold scepter,” was how Pashang had described his third vision. Was that truly her? The god?
She aimed her scepter at Marot; it emitted a blinding aurora, from which I felt balms for all the pain, hopes from a heaven of stars and rings of light, and pure, warm memories that weren’t even mine.
The angel turned to crystal and exploded, waves crying through the air, shards raining in all directions. They fell like hail upon us: clear, radiant, bloodless diamonds. Even the guts of a god were beautiful.
By Lat, did this mean Marot was dead now, too? She’d eliminated him so easily, as a true god would.
The gholam ululated louder as the angel died. Kato was right — the same had happened here. Eshe, Pashang, and I looked on, mouths agape. It seemed we could all see her. Lat had shown herself, finally.
“This is my final vision,” Pashang said, joyful. “This…it’s her.”
“Is it truly Lat?” I asked, shuddering once more from the stabbing feeling in my broken back.
Pashang took my hand. “Let’s pray. It’s all been for this.”
Eshe pulled our handhold apart. “She’s killed the angel. There’s nothing to pray for!”
“Eshe is right,” I said. “I think I’ve had enough.”
Pashang banged his knuckles onto sand. “Enough of what, life? The gholam are about to slaughter us. Why not ascend, instead?”
Ascend? Something about that word seemed so…alluring. To ascend, to be above this blood and death. As if we were clouds, scoffing at the humans shooting arrows at us. To be…as the jinn…as the angels…as the gods…
Pashang held out his hand. I reached for it, but Eshe swatted it away.
“It’s better to die,” Eshe said. “Cyra, have you forgotten? Marot gave you the power to starwrite so you and Zedra could bring calamity. You mustn’t use it, and especially not in desperation!”
Pashang got in his face. “We’re on a path you could never understand. I’m here to remove the obstacles off that path…I like you, but best you not be one, Eshe. With a single choice, this is defeat, or the ultimate victory.”
Victory…I wanted it. How could I let us lose, now, when we’d come so close?
Arrows rained on us. The Jotrids around fell with shrill, endless, gaping death screams. Some charged at the surrounding gholam, perhaps hoping against sense to break through. Given the breadth and depth of the gholam’ hollering, they’d need wings.
“No surrender!” Pashang yelled. “Fight till the sands sip your blood!” We were in a sea of dying horses and men. An ocean of sand and blood and fear. All the while, arrows hailed. Jotrids ran to us, holding shields above our heads, blocking out the sun and sky. The shields thump-thumped as arrows hit them.
Pashang reached out for a third time. “Take it, Cyra. We can be below the sand, or we can be among the clouds.”
Eshe hit the ground, cowering as an arrow landed next to his leg. “Don’t do it, Cyra! There are fates worse than death!”
A fate worse than death. That was our path, wasn’t it? But I couldn’t agree. There was no fate worse than death, than annihilation. So long as there was life, there was hope.
And you, Eshe, you I’d never let them hurt.
The gholam stopped ululating and yelled as they charged us from all sides. The sounds tortured me: bombs exploding horses, gunshots bellowing, the grunts amid screaming steel, the final cries of life. Worse were the smells: rot and bile and sulfur, each drenched in defeat. And yet, I could do naught but lie here, the screeching ache in my back keeping me still.
No matter how excruciating the pain, I wouldn’t choose death. I recalled the burning sadness the day I was taken from my yurt in the Waste, toward a new home, and that freezing abyss when I’d said goodbye to my brother and Tamaz as I cried in some shrine in Zelthuriya. It’s true, I’d wished for death, but that was then, when I was powerless and reliant on the promises of others. Now, with a prayer, I could change it all.
Instead of leading his men in this hellish last stand, Pashang was here, kneeling next to me.
“A fate worse than death,” he said. “Well, this is already pretty bad. Maybe Eshe is right. Let’s just die.” Somehow, I heard him clear as a ringing bell amid the awful cacophony. Hopeless words. Even the feared Khagan Pashang had lost his resolve, turning from man to boy as the noose tightened.
Blood sprayed everywhere as the gholam began a killing frenzy. And yet somehow, somewhere, I smelled flowers.
Eshe crawled next to me, careful to stay low. “Wish I had some seeds.”
How sad to give up. To go willingly into death for someone else’s cause. Zedra had won, but only because we chose to lose.
A horse with a sizzling bullet wound almost fell on me; its rider crashed into Eshe, then rolled off him. The rider had pissed his pants and now stuck his bleeding head on the sand, waiting to die. One by one, those shielding us fell, each to gunshots.
Pashang, too, waited to die, no prayers on his tongue. He looked at me, and I looked at him. Ascend…that sounded much better than what we waited for.
I grabbed his hand. He resembled the boy from memory, who’d tripped into a ditch and broken his leg, with only me to help him out and tend his wound. I whispered what I used to call him when we were children, and we both smiled.
Together, we prayed to the dark, dreaming sky. Prayed to live. Prayed to be free. Prayed for victory, for home.
The stars shone, floating above my body like so many fireflies. I connected the flickering ones, pulling them into each other’s orbits. Above me, to my side, and near my navel. The final star was the color of blood, and when I touched it, it screamed.
With the shadows of frenzied gholam looming over us, their swords and spears and guns and arrows bearing down, the sky turned to rust.
And then, as if it were a tarp, it tore. A sinewy hand pushed out the tear, attached to an arm covered in eyes. It grabbed the woman with peacock wings. She flailed in its
grip, dropping her scepter, which landed in the distance. The eyes on the arm blinked sideways a hundred times a second, the pupils changing color all the while. And then it crushed her. Crushed her so hard that she burst bloody.
With its blood-dripping fingers, the hand wrote something on a cloud. It resembled a tree. All the while, Eshe and I looked on with horror. Pashang with ecstasy. The bloodrune glowed, and the giant hand receded into the tear.
The gholam bearing down on us exploded, their heads flying in a bloody eruption. Bile stench filled the air, and rivers of innards surrounded us. What the hell had I prayed for? Was this victory? Was this…ascension?
“I was wrong,” Pashang laughed, every speck of him covered in blood. “This is so much better than death!”
And yet, one thought resounded: Did I just kill god?
33
Zedra
I blended into the stinking mass of refugees walking the road to Dorud, baby Seluq at my chest. We’d run clear of the battle, but it would be a tiresome journey through thorny scrubland that seemed to hate whatever lived on it. The high sun’s scorch made me want to throw off my clothes and rush into the ice pool…but I was as far from the harem bath as could be.
It wasn’t long until Seluq cried; he was thirsty. For whatever cursed reason, I never was able to lactate, so I begged for water or milk from a big, pockmarked woman who herself was holding two babies; from a man in rags, his face swollen; from a dirt-faced brother and sister who barely reached my waist — what had happened to their mother and father?
Not a drop of sustenance, among so many. Or perhaps they were saving it for themselves, as any hoping to survive ought to. If only my bloodrunes could conjure food and milk, like Vera’s grandmother could.
The dirt-faced girl reached into her caftan and presented something to me: a locust, roasted to hickory. No, I wouldn’t feed my son one of Cyra’s abominations. So I suffered his cries. At the very least, we were alive.
I didn’t know who won the battle, whether the battle in the sky or on the land. I hoped not to find out until I reached Dorud. Nothing mattered except getting there, to the safety of Grand Vizier Barkam. But I had to survive this trek first.
Perhaps I should’ve sacrificed Celene when I had the chance. True, it would’ve cursed the land, but better to be rulers of a cursed land than dead. I’d lost because I couldn’t go far enough. Perhaps the Children were no more because we could never be as cruel as our enemies, and so they inflicted cruelties upon us, time and time again, until we ceased to be.
Baby Seluq’s cries only heightened…but it was a relief to have his warmth bundled against me. Kevah…Kevah had saved him, whisked him from Marot’s frozen hands into Sadie’s, and she’d given him to me. So now…now all we had to do was keep going. Keep breathing. If we could get to Dorud, perhaps there was a chance.
The ground rumbled from oncoming horsemen, each thud-thud-thud filling my heart with dread. I turned to see Jotrids getting larger on the horizon. A faintness threatened to topple me.
How foolish to have hope.
It wasn’t long before I was sitting in a carriage, a prisoner of the Jotrids who’d encircled my child and me. No amount of begging would change their minds.
They’d bound my hands so tight, I could scarcely feel them. No chance for me to bloodwrite. Across sat a short-haired woman, blood and soot caked on her face. She fed drops of mare’s milk to baby Seluq from her fingers, which seemed to calm him. I recognized those lithe hands, the daggers at her sides, and even the shape of her breasts. Elnur, the woman I’d soulshifted to kill Pashang and Cyra.
Her deadpan eyes wouldn’t leave me, even as she shushed and rocked Seluq. What could I say to make her help me?
“You have children?”
She shook her head. “Only a stillborn.”
“I…had a few of those. It’s crushing. Like an eclipse seizing your light.” I swallowed despair. “You won’t hurt my baby, then, will you?”
She hunched her shoulders. “I’ll do what I’m told.”
Do what she’s told…by who else but Pashang? The cruelest man in the kingdom. I shouldn’t have expected more from a Jotrid.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “For what I did to you.” But I was sorrier I’d failed to kill Cyra and Pashang.
Elnur snickered. “Sure you are.”
“You’re not so talkative, are you? These could be my final moments. Tell me something good. Anything. Please, don’t make it so terrible for me.” It felt real now, my end. Finally, death. My throat sored, and no matter what, I couldn’t stop shaking my leg, tap-tap-taping it on the carriage floor. My final tremors.
She sighed. “We’ve just come from a battle, lady. A battle caused by you. Gholam guns killed four of my cousins. My younger brother lost a leg. The lovely girl I was trying to get him engaged with burned to death. So, why don’t you tell me something good?”
The carriage door opened. A man climbed inside: Pashang, covered head to toe in bloodstains, a book in his hand. Melody of Nora was written on the cover. He flipped it open, then showed me.
A bloodrune lay scrawled across the page. A memory writing rune — seven stars and an eye — which could only be written in god’s blood and a few other rare flavors.
“You have a lovely smile, by the way,” Pashang said. What an odd greeting. He reached over and untied my hands. They tingled as the color seeped back in.
“You’ve never seen me smile and never will.”
He caressed baby Seluq’s cheek, which made me hopeful, which terrified me, considering how my hopes had gone lately.
“Your long life has come to its end, Zedra. But Cyra meant what she said — we won’t hurt you or your son. This bloodrune,” he tapped the page, “this is who you really are.”
I huffed, trying to understand. “You’re going to replace my memories? But then I’ll be someone else.” I sighed. “So…that’s what Cyra meant. If I’m not Zedra anymore, I won’t know how to bloodwrite or soulshift.”
“Not just someone else. You’ll be you. You’ll be Nora, the young girl whose body you’re in.”
Of course. It never made sense why I wasn’t old, like in my memories. I’d never worn a magus mask, and yet, I made myself believe I had, to justify why I wasn’t a hundred years old anymore. But nothing could explain why I didn’t carry Chisti’s god’s blood, why my blood was such a base flavor.
“You knew her?” I asked. “You’d seen her smile?”
Pashang wiped blood from his eye. “I failed her and her tribe. That’s what started all this — my weakness. Tell me, Zedra, will you beg forgiveness before you die?”
I shook my head. “From who? Are there any worthy to forgive me in the first place? Who is so wonderful that their forgiveness is my salvation? Truth is, we’re all stuck in a vicious circle, hacking each other to bits so we can be safe from one another. And if you’re not in that circle, it’s because someone else is in there, killing for you.” I took in the sight of my son, sleeping in the arms of an enemy. “Aside from our children. Theirs are the only forgiveness I’ll seek.”
“I, too, feel it’s futile to beg. Maybe I can outweigh the bad with the good, like so many killers did. I’ll start with your son. We’ll keep him with us. Raise him. A Seluqal hostage, he’ll be — the first in a long while.”
That sounded better than death, at least. But my son was to be the Padishah of the Final Hour. Uniter of the East. The shield against the Great Terror. And yet, he wasn’t even the Children, nor was he a Seluqal. He was the son of some terrible angel, and perhaps a chance at life was his best hope.
“And Nora? What will you do with her?”
Pashang shrugged. “That’s up to Cyra.”
“It doesn’t matter, does it? I’m not her. I’ll be gone…finally. Thank Lat. Much better than swallowing more of this pain — the pain of a people who are long dead and can never return.”
“Oh, they’ll return. In the hearts of all. To separate ourselves from the Seluqal kingd
oms to our north and east, we’re going to make Path of the Children the faith of Alanya. Cyra’s idea.”
I supposed being remembered and revered was a note better than annihilation.
“Is Kato…did he survive?” Only now did I consider those I’d endangered. Men and women who had families, too, that deserved better than tears. Only now did I sip their sadness. How bitter. “And Celene?”
“Can’t say about Kato. Celene’s our prisoner. I wonder what the Imperator of Crucis will offer to get her back…”
“She deserves to go home.” I’d failed her, spectacularly, too, and could only hope her father would give the Jotrids whatever they wanted. “And what of Kyars?”
“He lost too many men, so we’re going to siege the Sand Palace. If he’s smart, he’ll make for Merva or Zelthuriya before we surround it. I’d wager Qandbajar is as good as ours.”
“Qandbajar is only a city. You’ll have to fight for the rest of Alanya. And Kyars…he’ll want his son back. Me back.” By starting this war, I’d ended six hundred years of Seluqal rule in Qandbajar. And if Pashang’s words were to be believed, I’d restored the Path of the Children as the path. How strange to lose it all and still win something.
“Of course he’ll want you two back. The perfect bait.” Pashang stretched and yawned. “The war is just beginning. I should thank you for starting it. To be true, I kind of like you, Zedra. A shame you’ll be gone. Nora isn’t nearly as interesting, I’m afraid.”
That was some praise. “Do me another favor…” the shame choked me, and now I finally spilled my tears. “Don’t tell my son about me. Don’t let him believe his mother was so wretched. If Nora is the boring girl you claim, she’ll be a better mother than I ever could.”
“Come now, I would’ve loved to have you as a mother.” Pashang chuckled. “But you’re right — I think it best if everyone forgot you.” He held the book open to the bloody page. “And I think it’s about time to say your prayers.”