by Fuad Baloch
“They let him go.” Maharis paused. “The severed magus lived another four years after that. A man with a body that needed feeding and bathing, but one without conscious thoughts. He loitered in the streets, reduced to the kindness of strangers. He survived three winters somehow… The fourth proved his last.”
Shoki exhaled. It seemed every magus he met had had some negative experience with the inquisitors. Either they had been snatched from the arms of their loving parents, abused when they were younger, or discarded like animals when they had misbehaved.
He had done the right thing, sticking his neck out for Maharis, whilst still keeping in with his vow to help this conflict of theirs to end. Yes, the magi still needed to be contained. They had to be stopped from harming innocents, from weakening the Divide that might have been strengthened for the moment but would crumble if not cared for.
But there had to be a better way of treating the magi. One the next ruler of Istan would need to ensure. Something that could only happen once the wars ravaging Istan had finally ceased.
More doubts gnawed at him. Had Nuraya been right in leaving the magi and the inquisitors to sort matters between themselves whilst she looked at forging alliances to defend the realm from invaders?
Perhaps, if one looked at things from her perspective.
But she was also wrong in thinking she could afford to ignore this conflict. Shoki couldn't, not after what he’d seen in the world between worlds, through the sight afforded by jadu.
“… and so, our efforts here are stymied as well,” Maharis was saying. “We’ve got Lopas and Urnal, but even both of them together cannot penetrate the defensive perimeter of the castle.”
Shoki nodded. Though he hadn’t seen it himself with his jadu sight, he could almost imagine how this defensive parameter might work from a magical perspective. Perhaps entities in the vicinity of the inquisitors acquired some of their essence, becoming impervious to magi attacks.
His shoulders slumping, he followed the magus as he continued leading him away from Nuraya. “Maharis, I broke your phial, but you owe me nothing. I still have no connection to my well. I can give no hope to you or any others. Maybe, I should… go away, seek the answers I need elsewhere.”
Maharis stopped and turned around to face him. Again, Shoki was shocked by the transformation in the magus’s appearance. His cheeks were fuller, the beard thicker. “You are an Ajeeb magus.”
“But—”
Maharis waved his arm as if to brush away his concerns. “Besides, we’re almost there.” He started moving again toward a rugged hill to his right.
Shoki followed him. “I don’t understand one thing. If you know the inquisitors are well trenched within the castle, why not go away, come back at a later time? What if the inquisitors were to engage in a counterattack? Perhaps that is what Inquisitor Aboor had wanted all along. Attack the magi, with Nuraya’s army cutting off escape routes?”
Maharis shook his head. “We cannot turn away.”
Shoki gritted his teeth. Sure, the magi would want to break free from the inquisitors, but couldn’t they see the grave danger they placed themselves in?
“There!” said Maharis, pointing at a dark depression in the hill.
Shoki blinked. “The… cave?”
“Come on,” Maharis said, then stepped through to the threshold and went in, the darkness swallowing him whole.
His fingers clenched, Shoki approached the cave. A natural-looking phenomenon, as far as he could tell having lived all his life in sandy, dusty Algaria, yet the manner in which no light penetrated from within felt wrong. The handiwork of a magus?
Shoki looked back.
Nothing but the gently swaying trees and the soft rustle of grass. With a start, he realized he hadn’t seen any small animals or birds as they had been approaching the cave.
Gathering his resolve, Shoki faced the cave and entered.
Light, bright, and searing, burned his eye. Shocked, Shoki threw up a hand, closed his eye shut. When he opened it again, he found himself in a round chamber of sorts lit by a bright blue light.
Blinking, he looked around.
A dozen or so men and women in a variety of robes and dresses and peshwezes sat in the center. An old, dignified woman, her hair long and white, sat between them, Maharis just beside her. They were all looking at him.
“Welcome, we’ve been waiting for you a long time,” said the ancient woman, rising in a smooth motion. Though she looked more than eighty years old, her skin appeared flawless from a distance, her voice smooth. Shoki shivered, feeling the various magics at work tug at something in his chest. “My name is Naila. Approach.”
Questions raging in his chest, Shoki dragged his feet forward, his eye scanning the inner chamber. The stone walls were smooth, perfect. Shoki looked up, then around once more, trying and failing to find the source of the strange illumination.
From the corner of his good eye, he saw another figure rise. A thin, feminine figure, her peshwaz clinging scandalously tight to her body.
Shoki darted his head around, froze. “Jiza!”
The djinn smiled. She stood still, very still, her chest moving very slightly, the lips parted in a perfect arc.
“Y-you are alright!” exclaimed Shoki, his gaze taking in the beautiful woman. Feeling a blush coming on, he coughed. “I mean—”
“I had to leave… when the attack happened,” she said, then pointed at Maharis. “The magus was kind enough to offer refuge.”
“She has remarkable powers,” said the old woman. Naila. “A magus with the power to store her magic and then gift it to others. Less a woman, more a renewable Asghar stone.”
Someone chuckled. A plump, balding magus dressed in the western garb, his conical ship-like hat in his lap.
“Do they know that you’re a…” Shoki began, then fell silent when Jiza shook her head. He exhaled. So, they knew she was a magus, but not that she was a djinn as well.
“Sit down, Ajeeb,” said Naila, motioning to Shoki as the other magi started shuffling to make space for him in the circle.
“Shoki. Call me Shoki.”
“Very well, Shoki, pray sit down.”
He did, his eyes flitting over to the two women who still stood.
Naila inclined her chin toward Jiza, and both of them took their spots as well.
Silence fell. An uncomfortable, stifling thing.
Shoki blinked, swallowed, shying away from the faces turned his way. Magi. They were all magi. His brethren. When was the last time he had been among this many magi at the same time? Even at the diwan-e-aam when they used to come to pay their respects to the sultan, there’d never been more than half-a-dozen, always accompanied by inquisitors.
A dozen of them sat around him now. Abominations, as the world referred to them. Beings who tore through the fabric of the world. People who couldn’t be trusted to contain themselves.
Yet, for the moment, they sat peacefully enough. One of them had carved this room. Another had flooded it with light, whilst leeching it from the entrance. His gaze found Lopas and Urnal, the two magi who had been attacking the inquisitor castle with clouds and iron spikes.
If they were here, had their attacks ceased as well?
“Why aren’t you out there?” Shoki asked Lopas. “What if the inquisitors escape?”
“Your concern for us is touching,” said Naila, her voice soft yet heavy with authority.
Maharis shrugged. “No good draining their wells unnecessarily. The inquisitors are unaffected by their powers.”
“Ajeeb,” said Naila, a smile on her lips. “Shoki, we’re at an impasse. I was there at the initial negotiations—a sham exercise—for peace with the inquisitors. We got nowhere, of course, courtesy the dishonest manner in which they operated. Would you have a suggestion on what we should do?”
Shoki spread his hands. “I don’t know. I don’t even have a well to call my own anymore.”
“A shame,” she said. Sighing, she turned her gaze away.
“Maybe we do have to retreat. Regroup, sadly letting the inquisitors slip away with our phials. If only we weren’t this weak. If only we had magi of the old—those like the great Afrasiab—to strengthen our cause.”
Shoki blinked, recalling the Ajeeb magus’s name he had heard at Nainwa. He raised a hand—
“They will keep hunting us,” said Lopas, interrupting Shoki’s train of thought. “One by one, they will sever us all.”
“We cannot leave,” said the plump magus.
“But what other choice do we have?” said Naila. “Maharis failed to convince both Nuraya and the Ajeeb into supporting our cause against the inquisitors. Short of external help, the longer we stay here, the more at risk we are.”
Shoki nodded, letting his hand drop. So, they did appreciate the risks they faced staying here. Still, the sense of wrongness grew. It was like a group of old women making small talk, pointedly ignoring the dead body to the side.
Lopas pursed his lips. “We can’t leave. I and Urnal have been expending our energies for days. Our residue will linger for a week at least, if not longer. They will find us. And when they do…”
Silence fell upon them again.
Shoki scratched his chin. He may have freed Maharis, but the others would never be safe from the inquisitors. A predator fearing for its life while wounded was far more dangerous and unpredictable than one who was hale. One more thing the inquisitors failed to appreciate in their hubris.
His eye fell on Jiza. She was staring at him. He swallowed. Would she still insist on taking him back to Nainwa? Had she found out anything about the djinn who’d attacked them? Were they really Drenpa’s soldiers? Had they been the same djinn who had attacked them when Mara had been with them? Had Mara been found?
“Naila,” he said, turning toward the old magus. “Do you fear there’s more than the eye sees?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
Shoki licked his lips. He had already chosen his side—no good withholding information now. “I fear there’s a larger conflict. Larger than the battle between the inquisitors and the magi. Larger even than the fate of Istan. A war between the worlds. The… pari folk are moving against us. So are the djinn. Do you… feel the same?”
Urnal smirked, shaking his head as he turned toward Naila. The old magus didn’t seem amused though. “Aye.”
Shoki blinked, then leaned forward. “What do we do? How in the seven hells do we part this veil and uncover the real enemy?”
Naila pointed a long, thin finger toward the cave, toward the inquisitor castle beyond. “We need to get there. There, we will find our answers.”
Shoki exhaled, feeling his energy dampen. They couldn't get into the castle for the inquisitors would detect their presence through their residue, nor could they attack them for laws of nature protected inquisitors and their possessions from the magi.
He blinked, turned his chin up toward Jiza.
She was a djinn, one who knew how to obscure her residue.
As if reading his mind, Jiza shook her head.
Thoughts raced through Shoki’s mind. If the residue could be obscured allowing a magus to escape, could the reverse be true as well?
Shoki exhaled, then turned toward Naila, his voice rising in excitement. “We might have a way.”
Chapter 35
Nuraya
“This is what the gods of Atishi want,” declared the old woman, raising her voice over the arguing folks. “And anyone who doesn't believe that can bugger right off!”
The man sitting beside her, his features partially obscured despite the raging fire, scoffed. “If that’s the case, where are all the soldiers this army will need to kick the nuts off our enemies?”
A fair question. Pulling her hood down, hoping none would look their way in the dark of night, Nuraya leaned forward, wanting to see the expression on the old woman’s face before she responded. Camsh tried saying something, his face hidden under a hood as well, but she raised her hand and he fell quiet.
The old woman threw an ugly look at the younger man, then turned her back to him. “She has us, the sultana does. The people. The very soul of the realm.”
The men and women, all northern peasants, their bodies lean, their faces gaunt, no doubt glad for the chance to rest their bones after a hard day’s march to Kohkam, nodded vigorously. “For the sultana!” one of them raised a cry.
“For the sultana!” responded the other four sitting around the fire.
The dissenting man scoffed once more. “Women!”
“The end is coming, and by the gods of fire and ash, it’s going to be nothing like the prophesies of how the world will end!” said the old woman once more, her voice taking on the lilt of a fire priestess.
Nuraya stood frozen for a long breath. Camp fires, similar to the one she stood beside, blazed throughout the section set aside for the newest recruits of her army. Peasants she had separated from the veterans to ensure no more conflicts rose between them after Camsh’s initial reports.
Were similar debates happening over the other fires too? Would they have similar characters to the ones she had just heard; a group of her supporters warding off a growing number of dissenters?
She had to know.
Nodding to herself, Nuraya resumed her walk.
Three men huddled around a smaller fire. “No riches for you, old man,” snorted one of them, playfully thumping the shoulder of the man beside him. “No women either, up north. Heard they all fled Ahasan!”
“I’ve fought before,” declared the other man, straightening his back. “Part of the Royal Fourth Army I was. Ah, what glorious marches we undertook, all the way over to the western borders and back!” He leaned in. “Just so you know, there are always women, you piece of camel dung. And there is always gold to be had. Find the dodgiest looking peasant, scratch beneath the surface, and you might find a rich, sniveling merchant under the guise!”
Nuraya hissed, one hand drawing her hood further down.
“But did you ever fight for a kinslayer?”
Nuraya stiffened, her fingers clenching.
The men laughed good-naturedly.
“I used to be a sailor, I did,” confided the first man, shaking his head sadly. “Traveled the worlds. Ports throughout the Zakhanan empire. Even the Ku’rshi across the great ocean. Women of all shapes and sizes and colors I had. Oh yes, I did indeed, Rabb forgive me,” he said, sighing wistfully. “Great big tits on one Kur’shi whore. Bigger than the largest melons you’d ever set your eyes on. An old hag in the ports of holy Yom of all places, ancient enough to have been an old woman in the days of prophet Binyom himself, the lips of her cunt hanging lower than my balls!” He laughed, the other men joining in.
“My sultana!” protested Camsh.
She nodded, forcing her feet forward.
Despite the late hour, shrouded figures moved between tents, shouting at each other. Confused voices belonging to those who’d never been part of an army before, let alone one commanded by the sultana herself, mixing in with a few overconfident ones who declared themselves battle-hardened mercenaries—their claims impossible to be verified.
“My sultana,” whispered Camsh, leaning toward her after she had stood brooding beside a dark tent for a long while, “Ahasan’s messenger must be getting impatient now.”
“Good,” she said, nodding. “He should know waiting for a monarch is a great privilege denied to most.”
Camsh didn't say anything and stepped away.
Pulling the hood forward again, she moved between the fires again. Why had she never set out like this before amongst her men? She’d had plenty of opportunities before, of course. Instead, she had chosen to remain cocooned in her own little bubble, surrounded by men who said what she wanted to hear, hiding the true nature of the world. Camsh had gotten her out once, and she was thankful he’d done it again.
Sucking her teeth, Nuraya shook her head in amazement. The girl she had been might have left the comforts of the Shahi Qilla behind
a lifetime ago, but it seemed even when she had been adventuring through the realm, her mind had remained stuck in a make-believe world, seeing only what she sought to see, hearing only what she desired to hear.
All that had led her to a rude awakening.
At least, now she was awake, hearing what her people, her subjects and not just soldiers, really thought and felt. Words and claims and fears and hopes that she needed no mediator in between to comprehend. Just the monarch and her subjects. Not that dissimilar to the bond between the Unseen God and the worshiper, both able to talk directly without the need of a priest to act the interlocutor.
“… Shoki would have!”
Nuraya stuttered to a stop, turned toward the dozen or so men gathered around a fire to her left. A couple of them were chewing strips of dried meat they must have brought along from their homes. Another half a dozen had mugs in their hands, some dark liquid sloshing inside.
“He wasn't the right man to lead the realm,” said one of them. “The man had been a city guard before he discovered he was a magus, for fuck’s sake!”
“A magus!” said the voice she had heard before. “He was a magus! Ever seen a magus before, you piece of dried shit? They are gods, all of them. And he, Shoki, was the most powerful magus of them all. Did you know he struck down the walls of Algaria all by himself!”
“Lies!”
“All true! He had almost sat on the throne.”
“Why didn't he then?”
The man leaned forward, looking around as if to make sure he couldn't be overheard. Nuraya dropped her head when his eyes swept over them. “Tits happened, you idiot, that’s what! They say the kinslayer offered a glimpse of the… forbidden jewels… and the rest is history.” He laughed. A second later, the other men joined him in the ribald laughter as well.
Nuraya clenched her fingers so tight she felt the skin break.
“My sultana, we should keep moving,” whispered Camsh. She shook her head.
“Wonder what royal tits look like?” said the first man. “Do they jiggle just as much as my wife’s?”