by J F Mehentee
He had suspected this daeva, like the majority—until they converted—wouldn’t know. Could Emad be more dangerous than Aeshma?
‘Lying is not speaking and acting well. I keep my promises. Tell me, Emad. Are you lying? You say you have a message for me. Is that just a ruse because we caught you trying to escape Derbicca?’
Emad’s smile didn’t falter.
‘Escape? Don’t you mean leaving? What is it we’re supposed to be escaping?’
If not for the fireball, he’d have both daevas in chains.
‘Let’s not play games, Emad. You know why I’m here.’
Emad gazed at the ground and pursed his lips.
‘I do,’ he said, then looked up. ‘Respectfully, High Magus, converting to your One Religion won’t make me equal in the eyes of your fellow humans.’ He pointed at the bruises on his face. ‘This is how we’re treated by the followers of the One Religion. Later today, when you’re inside Derbicca’s temple, why not give a sermon on how your kind should act well towards my kind.’
Was this why God tested him? Had the lofty position of high magus put him out of touch with reality? Was conversion going to create the control over his citizens he’d promised the emperor?
‘I promise to look into what happened and make sure such wrongdoings don’t happen again.’ And he would, but he didn’t want this daeva to think he had the upper hand. ‘You must know, however, that all those who accept the Divine Light as the one true God are equal in His eyes.’
The djinn rubbed his chin with his free hand. The corners of his eyes creased as he looked to be considering Sassan’s words. Then, slowly, the corners of his mouth rose. Sassan found Emad’s smile infectious—until the daeva laughed.
‘Spoken like a magus.’ Emad wiped an imaginary tear from his eye. ‘A magus whose God hasn’t yet persecuted him. We’re already equals, High Magus. The only difference between a djinn and a human is our pain tolerance. Our magic superseded yours, so God levelled things by sending Its lackey, Solomon, to rob us of our auric energy. When the time comes, when God decides you’ve overstepped the mark, It’ll send another Solomon to bend humans to Its will.’
Emad was baiting him. Or was there some truth to what he’d said?
‘The djinn’s power made them arrogant,’ he said. ‘God sent Solomon to remind the djinn that they’re not above His laws.’
Emad rolled his eyes.
Sassan wished he had a sword—one with an iron blade.
‘Listen to yourself, High Magus. Did God tell you that? Did It tell you the djinn were arrogant? Had It provided you with a tally of our sins? Did It explain how we adored and worshipped It, named It the Divine Light? God turned Its back on us and not the other way around. We might have been confident of the powerful magic we wove, but we never abandoned God.’
Sassan heard the pain and loss behind Emad’s words. He no longer saw humour in the daeva’s eyes. Emad was right. Everything he knew about the djinn and Solomon, he’d learned as a novice, in Persepae, and not from God himself. Sassan glanced at Aeshma.
‘My cousin and I are leaving Derbicca to escape secular persecution,’ Emad continued. ‘High Magus, in the name of the Divine Light, please let us go.’
Sassan glanced at the general. Afacan raised both eyebrows as if to say, Why not?
Sassan opened his mouth and then closed it.
This is the test.
Whatever had been done to them, whoever had given Emad those bruises, had to be punished. They hadn’t acted well.
‘If I let you leave,’ Sassan said, ‘I’ll have no proof of the wrong done to you. Stay and point out the wrongdoers.’
Emad shook his head.
‘And what do you think will happen to us after you’ve left? Do you think anything will have changed?’
Secular persecution. They were being persecuted for being different.
‘Return to Derbicca and convert, Emad. Then you’ll be under God’s protection.’
Emad’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped. Slowly, his mouth closed. His free hand clenched into a fist.
‘You haven’t heard a word I’ve said. Have you?’ Emad groaned. ‘God abandoned the djinn. It doesn’t care if I say my prayers twice a day or fart on the Sacred Flame. If you really think God cares about any of us, Its high magus included, then why don’t you fight me? You can choose any weapon you want so long as it doesn’t have an iron edge. Let’s see if God will protect Its high magus against the likes of a lowly daeva. If I win, I’ll have proved my point. Then you must act well and let me and my cousin leave. If you win, I’ll return to Derbicca and you can execute me, because I promised myself, a long time ago, I’d never bow to the likes of you or your God.’
The vehemence behind Emad’s words forced Sassan to take a backward step. He felt his cheeks burn when he saw how the general regarded him. Sassan swallowed, then turned his attention to the three guardsmen standing beside the daevas.
‘Keep an eye on our guests,’ he said.
Sassan swivelled on his heels and marched back to his tent.
19
Armaiti watched Sassan and General Afacan stride back to the high magus’s tent. Both men were troubled, the general complaining about Sassan even considering the daeva’s challenge.
She probed the general’s thoughts.
Better to kill both daevas and swear the men to secrecy.
Both the general and Armaiti knew the high magus would never agree to such a thing. Even now, Sassan’s faith supported his belief that God would intervene. Sassan couldn’t think of how to defeat a daeva without an iron weapon.
Emad had to die. If he lived, helped his brother, Fiqitush, and as a result the djinn and daevas thrived, it would make the already-difficult task of killing Roshan impossible. The girl thrived on helping others. The more the djinn and daevas depended on her, the greater the likelihood she’d further develop her powers.
Sassan dismissed the general, telling him he needed time to think and pray. The general hid his frustration and bowed. Armaiti found herself caught between following the general and entering Sassan’s tent. She preferred the general’s neat and straightforward approach. Could she help him find a way of convincing the high magus? Sassan, she reminded herself, was a man who frequently mistook his own needs and aspirations for those of his God’s.
She entered the tent.
Sassan knelt by the still-burning fire altar, his prayer a request for guidance, a means for him to prove God’s dominance over all His creations.
‘Make me your weapon, Divine Light,’ Sassan prayed. ‘Show me how to defeat the daeva in your name.’
Armaiti waited, already certain Sassan’s entreaty would go unanswered. Just as she had revealed Baka’s location, now she’d have to provide him with a means of beating Emad. Armaiti touched the part of Sassan’s mind that caused a convulsion. She took her time, observed how the high magus lay twitching, powerless and useless.
Armaiti wrenched his consciousness from his body and stood before him an eagle-headed humanoid. She held out her hand, its fingers curled around an arrow, and spread her wings. For a second, she basked in Sassan’s awe, then ignored it. His wonderment wasn’t for her but for the God who he believed had sent her. Armaiti recited an incantation, her words burrowing themselves into his memory.
The arrow’s iron head turned from grey to gold. The wooden shaft, and then the fletchings, also changed.
Armaiti severed the connection. Sassan’s consciousness, a cloud of white with sparks of light within, drifted back into his motionless body.
Sassan’s eyes flickered open. He didn’t move while he replayed the vision, his lips practising Armaiti’s incantation. He stood, disorientated, until he recognised his tent’s interior and the fire altar. Sassan remembered he’d been praying.
He smoothed his tunic, straightened his hair and wiped the side of his mouth.
Always the embarrassment first, Armaiti thought.
Sassan closed his eyes, relived the visi
on, awareness of what needed doing dawning on him.
‘Guard,’ he called. When a guardsman appeared, he said, ‘Bring me an arrow.’
The guardsman bowed and slid between the tent flaps.
Sassan pressed his hands together and sent up a prayer of thanks.
Then he thanks God.
Armaiti saw the flames in the altar lengthen. Unnoticed by Sassan, her irritation had leached out into the physical plane.
If she were the Unmade Creator, she wouldn’t ignore such adoration.
The guardsman arrived with the arrow.
Sassan took it and then said, ‘Go find a bow and wait outside until I’m ready.’
Armaiti sensed impatience coming from outside the tent. The general had been waiting and, seeing a guardsman carrying an arrow for the high magus, wanted to know what was going on. Armaiti dispatched a tendril of calm.
With the guardsman dismissed, Sassan began the incantation. Armaiti felt Sassan’s thrill as his words transformed the arrow into gold. She touched the arrowhead and did nothing to hide the wisp of blue-grey smoke that swirled from it.
Capable of self-delusion, Sassan was, nonetheless, an intelligent man. Armaiti gauged his understanding: he knew he held a weapon with an edge not made of iron but imbued with Heaven’s power. Sassan now had the means of defeating the daeva.
With more confidence than he’d had when he’d entered it, Sassan marched out of his tent. A passive Afacan fell in at his side. Sassan passed the guardsman holding the bow and held out his hand to receive it. The high magus smiled when the guardsman’s gaze fell upon the golden arrow.
Such arrogance, Armaiti thought.
Her annoyance became panic when Sassan caught sight of the two daevas. One of Sassan’s magi approached him, but he waved him away. It didn’t matter how much human energy Emad’s aura contained. He’d shoot the daeva in the thigh and put an end to his foolish challenge. Like every male citizen of the empire, Sassan had endured a year of conscription on reaching eighteen. He’d joined the emperor’s archers, and hitting the daeva’s thigh from forty paces wouldn’t be difficult at all.
Kill him, you fool. Don’t injure him.
‘Emad,’ Sassan called. ‘I accept your challenge.’
Caught out by the confidence in Sassan’s voice, the daeva frowned. Sassan nocked the golden arrow.
Armaiti focussed her full attention on the high magus. The calmness she’d imbued the general with became tenuous, then dissolved. She saw the general throw up his arms.
The fireball floating above Emad’s hand sputtered and then went out. Aeshma blinked. His jaw moved as though he were chewing, and he shook his head as if to clear it of his cousin’s enchantment.
Sassan raised the bow and took aim.
Armaiti thrust her consciousness into Sassan, took control of his muscles. She raised the bow a fraction, high enough so the arrow would strike Emad in the centre of his forehead, avoiding any means of him being saved. Right then, she could have left, but she remained until Sassan released the golden arrow.
20
Air whistled past Roshan. The washerwoman on the roof above her shrank. Roshan clawed at the air, hoping to catch something—an awning, a washing line—and hold on to it.
I don’t want to die.
The skin of her hands and wrists turned blue-grey. Beneath her skin, an orange glow bloomed. Flames erupted from out of her hands, her arms, the tips of her boots and her chest. The light blinded her, not that she had time to close her eyes. The rooftop no longer put distance between itself and her.
A hardness pressed against Roshan’s back and buttocks. Her arms rested against the same, and she felt grit between her fingernails.
Roshan bent forward as if to touch her toes.
The washerwoman stood on the rooftop. The fall didn’t look so far now. Roshan saw the woman’s grimace.
‘Djinni,’ she yelled, a finger pointed at Roshan.
From nowhere a circle of guardsmen appeared, the tips of their spears and swords aimed at her. Behind them, a crowd pressed its weight against the circle, their hatred of Roshan matching the washerwoman’s. In among them Roshan recognised two faces: Emad and Aeshma. Like the others, both daevas shoved against the ring of guardsmen. Aeshma’s arms reached over the head of one, his fingers claw-like as he fought to reach her.
‘Go away,’ Roshan cried. ‘Leave me alone.’
As if an emblem on their tunics, a fiery disc blossomed from the centre of each guardsman’s chest. The flames spread down and across their torsos. The guardsmen beat at the flames, igniting their hands, and their hands lit their thighs and legs.
One of the crowd screamed, her hair on fire. The guardsmen collapsed to their knees their bodies and faces hidden beneath flames. The crowd, who moments earlier had tried to push past them, now stumbled backwards to escape.
‘Stop!’ yelled Roshan.
Her cry blew flames from the guardsmen onto the escaping crowd. Fire consumed their tunics as their wearers flailed their arms, fell to the ground and rolled against the sand. The circle of guardsmen, reduced to husks of ash and soot, collapsed and gave Roshan a clearer view of the crowd. Half, blackened and charred, lay scattered on the ground as if someone had kicked a camp fire. Only one remained standing, his fallen cousin cradled in his arms. Aeshma looked up from the scorched remains of Emad, his eyeballs replaced by flames. Black smoke billowed from his mouth as he screamed.
Roshan covered her ears. The heat and smoke made her eyes water.
Emad’s blackened shell caved in, his ashes tumbling between Aeshma’s fingers. The giant daeva raised his head and cried out one last time before he, too, surrendered to the flames.
This time, his cry carried both pain and a single word. The word lingered as he crumbled into grey dust.
Destroyer.
Roshan woke panting.
Her firestone coloured her room’s ceiling and walls a pale red. Roshan sighed. She wasn’t in Derbicca but back in Iram. A mixture of relief and shame at having left Emad and Aeshma to fend for themselves made her teary. She went to rub away her tears and stopped. Even in the dim light of her firestone she could see how her skin had turned blue grey.
Someone knocked on her door. Roshan sat up, then looked down at her hands. They looked pink in the firestone’s glow.
What’s happening to me?
‘Roshan, it’s Navid. I brought Zana. Can we come in?’
His voice now came from outside her room instead of from inside her head. And then she remembered she’d turned him back into a human.
She gathered her sleeping blanket around her, retrieved her firestone and increased its glow.
‘Come in.’
Zana entered first and Navid followed.
‘We missed you at dinner last night,’ Navid said. He sat down cross-legged, his elbows resting on his knees. Zana hunkered down next to him.
Everyone had witnessed how her guilt over events in Derbicca had unsettled her. With Navid human again, they’d have to speak to share their thoughts. There was no need for words. The ends of Navid’s eyebrows almost touched and his lips formed a thin line. She recognised the look. Her brother was worried about her.
‘I wasn’t hungry last night,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t eat after what happened.’ She stopped herself from remembering how the administrator had struck Emad and the guardsman had poked Aeshma with a sword. ‘Have you heard anything about the prince and his cousin—any news?’
Navid shook his head.
‘Last night, the king said Emad and Aeshma had gone into hiding, and he’d be sending Shephatiah back to Derbicca to check on things first thing this morning.’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘We were getting breakfast. You need to eat. Come with us. The king might have some news.’
She was hungry, but facing the king again made the gap between her shoulders tighten. Emad and Aeshma having to go into hiding was her fault.
Navid leaned forward and whispered, ‘You can’t hide in this room. If you’r
e not careful, the king will hold his next meeting in here.’
His smile reassured her, and her stomach grumbled.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll get up.’
Zana rose, but he didn’t turn to leave the room so she could change.
‘Navid has something to tell you,’ he said.
Her brother rolled his eyes.
‘Not now,’ he said to Zana. ‘We can tell her later. After breakfast.’
Navid looked more pleased than annoyed. She could do with cheering up.
‘What is it?’ she said. ‘Tell me now.’
Zana’s grin revealed three rows of teeth.
‘Show her,’ he mouthed at Navid.
Her brother uncrossed his legs and jumped. His feet floated above the floor. Roshan bent her head back and saw her brother hanging from the ceiling by his fingertips.
Roshan flung back her blanket and slid off the bed. She circled him, then stopped when she saw it wasn’t his fingertips but long, curved nails that clung to the rock.
‘You’ve got claws,’ she said.
Navid landed beside her and showed her his hands. The curved nails retracting into his fingertips made her stomach turn.
Roshan had an excellent memory, and she’d recited the incantation exactly, word for word.
‘Do you want me to repeat the incantation?’ she said. ‘Saying it a second time should remove what’s happening with your hands.’
‘It’s not just his hands,’ Zana said. ‘You should see the claws on his feet. They’re bigger than mine.’
Roshan turned away from them. What was happening to her and to the magic she weaved?
‘I’m sorry, Navid. Perhaps you should ask Yesfir to repeat the incantation.’
Navid shook his head and then pulled her into a hug.
‘I don’t want to change. I like being this way. I get to have the best of both being human and being able to move and climb like a rat. I just want to know if the effects of your magic will wear off.’
Roshan wriggled out of his embrace.
‘I don’t know how I did it,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how long it will last. All I can think of is what Yesfir said yesterday, after we got back from Derbicca. The sabaoth, Armaiti, she used some of her auric energy to save me. I still have that energy and it’s affecting the magic I weave.’