And he did not know where it came from.
The sultan toyed with the antique circle at his chest. Nasir had touched it once, that medallion. Darkness had seized his mind, whispers and half-crazed screams echoing in his ears when his fingers passed over the inscriptions in the ancient tongue. It was a darkness wrought with pain, a darkness that could never end.
It was a darkness that despaired in itself.
The medallion was special, and the fact that it was with the sultan at all times made it even more so. And if Ghameq saw the same darkness, he welcomed it.
The fire roared to life, and the sultan stood. Sweat trickled down Nasir’s back when he reached for the poker, his palm slick against the metal. He was very well capable of using it himself, but he passed it to his father.
The poker. Burning flesh. A scream. He squeezed his eyes shut and released a quivering breath. It was a weakness he wished he didn’t have to display, and with it came a lick of shame at his neck.
“You are still weak,” the sultan murmured as he stoked the fire.
Nasir quelled the ire that quaked at the tips of his fingers. “I’m worn out, Sultani.” And there will come a time when I won’t be.
“Hmm,” the sultan said absently, as if he had heard Nasir’s unspoken words. “One day, you will see the flaw in your ways, in your curse of compassion, and understand what I’ve wanted for you from the beginning.”
But his father hadn’t wanted this from the beginning. There was a time when he, too, had valued compassion. Nasir thought he remembered the curve of a smile and a palace flooded with light. He held that flickering memory close, but with each passing day, it only withered further. Was this what Owais had been trying to understand?
The boy crouched and reached a careful hand for a grape in the bowl by the sultan’s sandals, and Nasir waited until he swallowed his stolen prize before handing Ghameq the leather folder.
He stepped back. The farther from this abomination of magic he could be, the better.
Ghameq flipped open the sleeve and tossed a strip of papyrus into the fire, its surface covered in words the near-black of blood.
Dum sihr. Blood magic, punishable by death and forbidden by the Sisters, for it allowed a person to practice magic of their choosing with the price of blood. Without it, the masses were restricted to the one affinity they were born with. But Ghameq was the sultan. He could do as he wished. What Nasir didn’t understand was how he could use magic if it no longer existed.
He knew the Silver Witch was somehow involved—that woman who frequented the palace as if she were a sultana herself. She was the one who provided Ghameq with the strips of papyrus wrought with blood. Blood that somehow played the part of both wielder and vessel itself.
The flames crackled and burst open, fading to the color of Pelusian eggplants. The room exploded in hue and heat as a silhouette rose from the flames, giving shape to a pale face with dark eyes and the stringy beard of a man who was alive and whole in Demenhur: Haytham, wazir to the Caliph of Demenhur.
Rimaal. The Demenhune never failed to spook him; they looked like ghosts—pale, ethereal, and strangely beautiful. Like Altair, they were full of light, but too much light, as if snow flowed through their delicate veins.
“Where is he?” Haytham, unwilling traitor to his caliph, rasped. He darted quick glances behind him, to a room unseen.
“Here,” Nasir said.
“Baba!” the boy whimpered when Nasir guided him closer.
Haytham’s strangled cry sent a sob through the boy, and Nasir tightened his grip around his shoulders.
“Give him to me, I beg you,” said the wazir. Pathetic.
“Begging changes nothing,” Nasir said, and the sultan stepped forward.
Men cowered before Haytham. His strength as wazir was the only reason the Caliph of Demenhur still stood. Yet even with an entire caliphate between them, Haytham’s fear was instant. Nasir noted it in the stilling of his form and the tightening of his jaw.
Haytham dropped to his knees. “Sultani.”
“Get up,” Ghameq said in staid condescension. “Has the Silver Witch approached Ayman?”
Nasir stiffened. Those were not two people to appear in the same sentence, let alone the same room. Ayman was a good caliph, if there was one. He wouldn’t tolerate a meeting with the likes of the silver-cloaked witch. Even so, she was familiar enough. Ghameq could have asked her himself.
He doesn’t trust her.
Haytham stared at his son. His loyalty to his caliph ranked higher than loyalty to his sultan, but his love for his son exceeded all else. He closed his eyes and the answer was yes, or there would be no hesitation. The sultan turned to the boy, and Nasir wanted to shove him into the shadows, away from that malevolent gaze.
“She has,” Haytham said. “They met in the House of Selah by the western villages. We do not know to whom her letter was delivered, but we hope it was the Hunter. I know nothing else, Sultani.”
At the mention of the Hunter, the sultan’s eyes lit up. If there was anything more unnerving than the Demenhune, it was the Hunter. Nasir didn’t know if everyone in Arawiya knew of him, but Nasir knew enough.
No one else could do what the Hunter could. Nasir had tried it himself. On an assassination errand, he had detoured to the Arz. The moment he set both feet into the forest, an impossible darkness had swarmed and the way out had disappeared. It had taken him hours to get back, and he had been breathless for days, heart stuttering at every little sound.
He was an assassin, stealthy, deadly, feared. Yet he had never felt such fear in his life—he had very nearly drowned from it.
The magic of the Arz and the magic of the medallion around Sultan Ghameq’s neck had to be one and the same. It wasn’t fueled by what once lit the minarets. This magic was limitless, dark, endless.
“Does the quest begin in two days?” the sultan asked.
“We believe so,” answered the wazir.
What quest? Haytham’s fiery body wavered, flames casting long shadows in the room. Nasir tugged at the neckline of his thobe as sweat beaded on his skin.
“My son, Sultani. Why have you taken my son?” Haytham blustered.
Not even Nasir, the daama crown prince, knew the answer to that.
“Ensure the caliph will stand before the Arz when the quest begins, and your son will be returned to you unharmed.”
“Before the Arz? But—” Haytham stopped, and Nasir made the realization as he did. “You mean to kill him.”
The sultan denied nothing. First the Caliph of Sarasin. Then the army and the gas from the Leil Caves, and now this mysterious quest. The Demenhune caliph. Haytham looked at his son again, and amid the fire, the pain in his eyes shone.
“Accidents happen often in these strange times, wazir,” the sultan mused. “And if you find your throne cold and empty, sit on it.”
Understanding dawned in Haytham’s eyes. He was to be a pawn. Because a throne with a pawn upon it was infinitely more useful than an empty one. The sultan could control Sarasin easily enough from Sultan’s Keep, but Demenhur was much too far and expansive, and the people less in favor. With his son in danger, Haytham would be the perfect, obedient puppet.
Haytham threw a glance at something behind him, his hair glowing purple. The shift bathed the room in purple, too, and the boy drank in the sight with wide eyes and parted lips. Nasir loathed his childish innocence.
“Will you or will you not do as I’ve asked?” The sultan’s voice was hard.
Haytham paused. His son leaned closer, catching every word.
“He will be there.” Haytham’s voice cracked with his oath. “Please—please don’t hurt my boy.”
If Ayman was soft, Haytham was hard. He was the one who kept Ayman standing, who kept order in Demenhur, one of the largest caliphates of Arawiya. But in that moment, Nasir had never seen a weaker man. Love makes men weak.
“He is safe so long as you cooperate,” the sultan said, as if promising Haytham he would
water his weeds.
Safe? In a damp, cold dungeon that would kill him before anything else?
Haytham opened his mouth, to beg again by the look in his eyes, but the sultan threw a single black seed into the flames. The Demenhune and the fire disappeared.
“Take him back,” Ghameq said in the sudden silence.
There were a million things Nasir wanted to say. A million words and a hundred questions. “He will come prepared,” he managed finally. Haytham. Ayman. They weren’t fools.
The sultan didn’t even spare Nasir a glance. “He will come prepared for you, not for an entire contingent of Sarasin forces armed without blades.”
Nasir froze. Slaughter and suffocation. That Sarasin contingent hadn’t gone missing; Ghameq had merely given them a new order. He was already commanding the army he lawfully could not.
The Sultan of Arawiya planned to have them suffocate the innocents of Demenhur’s western villages and make sure the caliph was among them.
With the attack coming from a caliphate, rather than the sultan, there would be no more skirmishes for expanding borders. There would be war.
The caliphs existed to hold the sultan in check, just as the sultan existed to hold the caliphs in order. They were very nearly kings themselves, the sultan merely stewarding them all. A fail-safe left by the Sisters to ensure balance.
What was Ghameq trying to do?
Nasir opened his mouth, but he was an assassin, and his hands were steeped in blood—how could he argue against the death of innocents? He pressed his lips together.
And like the mutt that I am, I will do everything he says.
CHAPTER 5
Zafira’s house was the last in the village and closest to the Arz, making it easy for her to switch between herself and the Hunter. Still, she breathed a relieved sigh when she snapped the latch of her front door into place.
A fire crackled in the hearth, and Lana was sprawled across the cushions of their majlis, asleep. The village news scroll lay in her lap, along with the latest edition of al-Habib. The periodical was worn and tattered from the many hands that had perused it before hers. It was full of gossip, short stories, and the latest happenings from around the kingdom. The faltering caliphates and lack of magic meant the editions were few and far between, but that only made them more cherished.
Al-Habib was aniconic and abstract, rife with calligraphic art. Zafira never had the patience for them, but she had always wished for depictions giving faces to the names, if only so she had an image of the caliph and the sultan in her head to hate. The crown prince to fear. The immortal safin to understand.
Light freckles dusted Lana’s glowing skin, and the orange of the flames danced in her dark hair. If life were simpler, Zafira might have envied her sister’s beauty.
She slipped out of her boots and crossed the foyer, digging her heels into the little bumps so she could feel the stone. Hanging her cloak on the polished knob by the hall, she went to remove her satchel and froze. A square was tucked between the folds. Parchment.
Silver as a crescent moon, crimson as fresh blood.
She threw a quick glance at Lana and pulled it out with careful fingers. The silver winked in the frail firelight. It hummed. Beckoned like the Arz. Her breath escaped haltingly.
Open me, the parchment seemed to whisper. The dangerous curve of the silver-cloaked woman’s smile flashed in her mind, and she turned it over slowly. Angled creases and an unbroken seal—a letter, reminding her of a woman who did not exist.
The words bint Iskandar were wrought upon the silver. Daughter of Iskandar.
A hammering started in her chest, yet she held deathly still when Lana shifted on the cushions, murmuring something about Deen in her sleep. Zafira pursed her lips and broke the seal, brushing her thumb over the geometric emblem, the slender curve of a crescent moon in its center. Arawiyan script scrawled across the page.
Peace unto you, esteemed one.
You have been invited upon a journey of a lifetime. To an isle where nature has no limits and darkness holds all secrets.
Why should you desire to venture to such a place, you ask? Oh, dear one. For the retrieval of magic in the form of an ancient book known as the lost Jawarat.
Glory and splendor. The past once more.
Your quest begins two dawns hence, at the mouth of the Arz.
Zafira read it again and again, finding it harder to breathe with each pass. The words coiled in her, strangled her heart.
Magic. A journey to Sharr, for there was no other island in existence. To retrieve magic. To restore Arawiya to its former glory and do away with the Arz. With this lost Jawarat. She racked her brain for the meaning in the ancient tongue. Lost Jewel.
She dropped the letter back in her bag with trembling fingers.
Was this why the caliph was in the House of Selah, a quarter-day’s ride from here? The western villages were small, the poorest in Demenhur, especially when compared to the majestic capital of Thalj, four days from the outskirts where Zafira lived.
Sweet snow below. Two days from now. Sharr and magic and—
Her thoughts screeched to a halt: the silver-cloaked woman was real. She had left this in Zafira’s satchel. There had been no one else in crimson and silver. But how real was this invitation, this quest? The existence of magic?
As much as the woman spooked her, Zafira would endure another meeting just so she could make sense of everything.
She pulled the letter from her satchel again. She needed to hold it. Feel it. Read the words again and again, drunk on something unseen. The shuffle of a blanket broke the silence, and she deftly slipped the silver parchment away again as Lana sat up.
“Okht!”
Zafira would never grow weary of hearing that sweet voice say “sister.”
“How’s Umm?” she asked with a smile, eyeing their mother’s closed door. The letter called to her racing heart.
“Asleep. I don’t think she’ll be coming to the wedding,” Lana said. She had Baba’s eyes, soft and brown, but a more haunted version of them. Lana was the one who soothed Umm’s nightly episodes of denial, restless by her side. Zafira harbored an endless chasm of guilt because of it, and it suffocated her now until she broke away from her sister’s gaze.
The Hunter and the Nurse. That was what Baba had called his girls when he would accompany Zafira into the Arz and little Lana would assist Umm in gathering Demenhur’s scarce herbs. Little did he know how much of a nurse Lana would be after their mother’s nightmares began.
“You look tired. How was the hunt?” Lana asked, making room for her.
“Good,” Zafira said with a shrug, but she didn’t miss how Lana’s eyes narrowed. As much as she loved Yasmine, Zafira didn’t always adore her adamant questioning and her demeaning of the Hunter’s masquerade. It was far easier with Lana, who looked at Zafira as something akin to a hero. “All right, all right. Maybe a little exciting, too.”
She settled beside Lana and recounted her confrontation with the Sarasins, adding a few more extraneous details to spice up the tale. The letter called from the satchel on her lap, but again, she made no mention of the silver-cloaked woman. Lana’s eyes danced as she hugged her tasseled blue pillow to her chest.
Zafira had gifted it to her long ago. Thanks to the skins from her hunts, they weren’t the poorest people in the village, but they didn’t always have dinars set aside for extravagance.
She tapped a finger to Lana’s nose. “Now, we have a wedding to get to. If you’re there before everyone else, you might be able to persuade the servers to give you a larger piece of dessert. You know,” Zafira teased, singing her last words with a waggle of her eyebrows, “like aish el-saraya.”
Lana’s eyes lit up at the mention of the famous bread pudding with pistachios and cream. “Will you braid my hair?”
“And I’ll even burn Umm’s bakhour so you’ll be the best-smelling girl at the wedding,” Zafira promised, to Lana’s glee. At times like these, Zafira marveled at her sist
er’s childish antics. Her laughs and awe. Her grins and sweet words. It was hard to imagine this was the same girl of fourteen who managed the household by herself and woke in the dead of night to soothe their mother’s eerie whimpers. But she was one of many girls forced to age before her time, and it was everyone’s fault but little Lana’s.
Oblivious to the change in Zafira’s mood, Lana grabbed her hand and led her away. Zafira’s bag slid to the floor, the letter within.
But first, the wedding.
* * *
The sun began its descent as the crowds grew in the jumu’a. The circular, soft gray stone was heated from beneath and surrounded by the market. Rhythmic patterns leaped from its center, reaching tendrils toward the border, telling a story no one could decipher. Jumu’a stones were scattered across the five caliphates, laid by the Sisters themselves.
Baba said water used to sit beneath this stone once, cooling the ground. That was before the sand became snow. A time now foreign to every Demenhune alive, and to nearly all Arawiyans—unless they were immortal safin, with elongated ears and pride to rival a peacock’s. Or more than ninety years old.
Zafira sat cross-legged on a cushion on the ground while the bride lounged regally on a decorated dais. She nudged Yasmine every so often to point out another person they hadn’t seen in months.
Most of the western villagers were here in a colorful array of dazzling gowns and dark-hued thobes, hair tucked beneath wool shawls or tasseled turbans, thin bodies bulked by coats, beads and jangling jewelry. Children darted between adults, laughing and shouting. The surrounding shops had closed for the celebration, grimy windows dark, and though ornate carpets and cushions were spread generously across the expanse, most of the people hovered near the low tables laden with food.
It wasn’t every day the western villages could boast a wedding, so when the occasion arose, everyone partook—lending decor, delicacies, and furnishings. Especially when it was a beauty like Yasmine, beloved by the children she tutored, admired by the women she inspirited, envied by the men who knew of her closeness to the Hunter.
We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya) Page 5
