Beneath the Twisted Trees

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Kara strode forward, a woman walking to her grave, and the moths swept in behind her. Her movements were slow and languorous, but it was plain to see she was terrified. Her eyes pleaded with Kiral, with Husamettín, but most of all with Beşir, begging them to free her from this spell.

  Yerinde’s voice boomed, shaking the Kings. If Nalamae stood before thee, if love filled thy heart, thou wouldst honor thy vow and end her life?

  At this, something happened that Ihsan could not ever recall seeing before, not at any time in his more than four centuries walking the earth. Beşir, one the most self-absorbed men Ihsan had ever known, blanched. Yerinde had found one of very few things—not merely the death of his own daughter, but the lifting of his own hand to do it—that would give the man pause.

  Beşir licked his full, bloodless lips. “Of course I would, but she is not the goddess.”

  Yerinde stared down at him with a mixture of amusement and no small amount of self-awareness. The shift of her violet eyes toward Beşir’s daughter spoke volumes. No longer do we speak of the river goddess.

  Of course not, Ihsan thought. This is now about loyalty. It is about the Kings and our debt to the desert gods. It was a message from Yerinde to each of them—should they fail, those they loved most would be forfeit.

  Beşir’s eyes moved to Kara. Then to Kiral, who was taking it all in as if he’d had an epiphany. Whatever truth he’d seen had apparently shaken him to his core. Beşir’s look pleaded with Husamettín, who had stepped into the void of leadership left by Kiral’s inaction. Husamettín, however, had always been a calculating man, one who faced life’s tough realities unflinchingly. His stern look, his very stance, stiff-backed and aloof, told Beşir all he needed to know.

  Beşir curled in on himself. For a moment he looked more like Sukru than the touchy, reticent man Ihsan had known for centuries. But then, pulling his knife, he took two long strides, grabbed his daughter’s hair, and used the blade to open her throat. Blood spilled. Over Beşir especially, but also across the shoes and khalats of all the nearby Kings—all, miraculously, save Ihsan.

  They stared. At the blood as it spread. At Kara as she fell. At Yerinde as she smiled, transfixed by the expanding pool of red and the rapidly dulling eyes of Beşir’s daughter. When the river of crimson touched her bare feet, a shiver ran up her towering frame and the black moths went wild. They turned red, a cavalcade of crimson storming around them all. With it came a frisson of fear and pain and, strangest of all, pleasure; an insistent thing that felt real and true and, for that very reason, decidedly wrong in this context. Beyond the sphere of moths, things were markedly different. The guests of this once-joyous occasion had their hands to their ears. Pain distorted their faces as they screamed, the sounds of their agony dulled by the magic of the moths.

  Yerinde fixed her gaze on Ihsan. Thy request was for a way to lure the goddess.

  Ihsan replied as easily as he could manage. “It was.”

  And so I grant it.

  She put out her hand. Upon her outstretched finger landed a small blue bird: a sickletail, with long, curving feathers that trailed behind it like a wedding train. As Yerinde smoothed her fingers over its back, it changed shape. Its wings widened and lengthened. Its body grew. Its beak curved like a falcon’s, and its talons turned sharp and cruel. It became huge, as big as the buzzards that plagued the northern desert.

  Give it some remnant of the White Wolf and it shall lead thee to her. Such is Nalamae’s care for her child that, if threatened, she will come.

  “We have no such thing to give it,” Ihsan said.

  Do you not?

  “None that I would rely upon.”

  Is there no one in thy possession who might find such a thing? The absent smile Yerinde gave as she ran the backs of her fingers over the blue bird’s wings left a hollow in Ihsan’s heart. Without another word being spoken, the bird hopped down and began to lap obscenely at the blood near Kara’s feet. The goddess, meanwhile, turned and left, her moths following her like a pack of well-trained hounds.

  Chapter 5

  RAMAHD AMANSIR LIES on ground as hard as glass. The sun rests along the horizon, half swallowed and glowing like a forge fire. Striding toward him is a woman, a huntress wearing a bright red dress that flares wildly in the evening wind. It is Meryam, his queen. Her eyes are bright with anger. Her mouth is set in a line, grim as an unsheathed sword. And her face . . . By the grace of the one true god, she has been restored, fully fleshed, as if the years of abusing her body in favor of the red ways have all been swept away. She is the Meryam of old, and she is beautiful beyond words.

  In her right hand she bears an iron, the sort cattlemen use in Qaimir to mark their steers. The sign upon it, however, is nothing like a brand. It is a sigil, a thing meant to cast a spell on him, one that will remain with him forever should she catch him and sear it into his skin. Ramahd is no blood mage, but he recognizes the symbols that combine on the brand’s glowing end. One is forget. Laid over it is the sign for eternity. Meryam isn’t merely trying to kill him; she hopes to erase him from the world for what she views as his betrayals: the disobeying of her orders, standing against her as she fought beside the Kings of Sharakhai, attempting to expose to the world the fact that she murdered her own father.

  A nest of black tendrils snake from her opposite hand. They twist, ever-reaching, hypnotic movements bending not only to Meryam’s will but to their own infernal workings. Ramahd uses his power and cuts one as it nears. In that severing, some small amount of the magic Meryam is using to feed the spell is severed as well. The black tendril dries and crumbles in the wind, dissipating like ash.

  He cuts a second and a third but, Mighty Alu, there are so many. Meryam has become frighteningly powerful, as has her thirst for blood. His blood. Night after night she comes for him, granting few reprieves. Her gaze is baleful, her eyes golden and misshapen like a bull’s, not unlike those of Guhldrathen, the ancient ehrekh she once bargained with. And her hair! Oh Meryam, what have you done? Sprouting from among the cleverly woven braids are two small horns, rounded nubs no larger than a kid’s.

  “I loved you, you know,” Meryam tells him. Her face, a study in anger and disgust and rank dissatisfaction, belies those words.

  “How could you have done it, Meryam?” Ramahd asks as he cuts another dark tendril, this one just inches from his neck. “How could you have killed your own father?”

  She steps forward, wind whipping her hair, her bright red dress billowing, curling like a demon manifesting in the night. “What he did to Yasmine’s memory was unforgivable.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re trying to distract me, Ramahd. My father will have his reckoning when I see him again in the farther fields.”

  “And when you’re there, will you look upon him with anything but shame?”

  Blood streaks from her eyes to paint her rounded cheeks. “I’m not the one who should be ashamed. He abandoned our cause. He abandoned the memory of his own daughter. He was prepared to let her killer walk when the hill became too difficult for him to climb. He was ready to abandon her memory for gold!”

  “So you killed him for it?”

  She pauses as if she’s said too much. “You’ll see. Things are different there. He’ll admit that he was wrong, and if I deliver to Qaimir all that I’ve promised, he will take me in his arms and tell me how proud he is of his daughter.”

  “That’s what you think?” A tendril wraps his ankle and squeezes, burns where it touches his skin. Worse, it stalls his retreat. “That you can do whatever you wish, and it will all be forgiven in the next life if you deliver glory to our kingdom?”

  When another tendril slips around his opposite ankle, it stops him completely. Meryam smiles and drops onto his chest, then raises the brand high in both hands. “Do you doubt it?”

  “What you’ve done, what you’re doing”—he struggle
s to break free, but more black ropes are circling his wrists—“it carries no glory at all, Meryam.”

  She laughs while her golden eyes flash. Scalding blood pours from them to patter against his neck. “Such a simple fool. Haven’t you learned by now, Ramahd?” Down comes the brand, searing deep into his skin. “Conquest carries all the glory in the world.”

  Ramahd woke to someone shaking him hard enough to rattle the cot he slept on.

  “Wake up, Ramahd!” It was Vrago, a man who had been handsome once but now looked terrible. His eyes were heavy and listless. His face was haggard. “She’s back. You have to cut her off!”

  Ramahd blinked, taking in the crumbling, mudbrick room where he, Tiron, and Vrago were lying. He sat up, eyes wide, heart pounding. The image of Meryam’s inhuman eyes haunted him. He touched his chest, his skin itching where the brand had struck.

  Vrago shook Ramahd harder. “Ramahd, cut Meryam off!”

  Ramahd blinked, remembering the endless nights spent in the Shallows, the slums of Sharakhai’s west end. The hovels in which he and his men had been hiding blurred before his eyes, one like the next and the next, but at last his memories returned, along with his vow to stop Meryam’s attempts at finding him, which were coming almost every night.

  He felt for her presence and found it, faint though it was. She was growing ever more subtle in her search. She knew he’d returned to Sharakhai—the squadron of Silver Spears she’d sent to the buildings where they’d first hidden was proof enough of that—but she had yet to locate him precisely.

  While awake, Ramahd had become adept at sensing her. Whenever he did, he cut her off, which had forced Meryam to change strategies. She began searching for him in the small hours of the morning. Twice they’d nearly been caught. But the very fact that she was using his own blood to track him—she still had several vials of blood she’d collected before she ordered Basilio to have him taken to the desert and killed—had the effect of rousing him from deep sleep, at least enough so that one of his men, either Cicio, Vrago, or Tiron, could notice and wake him.

  Their war escalated. Ramahd adjusted his sleep patterns to foil her new approach. Meryam responded by searching for him at random intervals of day or night. Since then, the only way he’d thought to counter her was to sleep less. It couldn’t last, though. The weariness was weighing on him, dragging him down. One day soon Meryam would catch him too deep in slumber, and then she’d have them all.

  Meryam’s spell felt like a starving bone crusher approaching in the dark of the desert night. Ramahd didn’t cut it off completely, but instead made it seem as though her sense of him was fading, as if he were moving farther and farther away. Meryam, after all, was no longer the only danger. With the might of Tauriyat at her beck and call, she often had the Kings’ forces ready as she closed in, and she would send them rushing forward when she felt Ramahd beginning to cut the fabric of her spells.

  But then he remembered. By the breath of the one true god, his dream. The tendrils. The brand. She’d already found him.

  Shouts came from the stairwell just outside their room. Someone cried out in pain, then a ship’s bell began to ring. The bell was picked up somewhere on the floors above, then more came in from neighboring buildings. It was a signal, and the pattern—two short, two long—was an indicator that it wasn’t merely the Silver Spears who’d arrived, but Blade Maidens.

  Ramahd tried to keep his heart in check. He’d never had to face a Blade Maiden one on one. Alu willing, he wouldn’t have to tonight.

  Vrago took Ramahd by the nape of the neck. He smiled, and for a moment, the young, handsome man that had come to Sharakhai with Ramahd returned. “You’re awake?”

  “I’m awake.”

  He slapped Ramahd’s neck lightly several times. “Good,” he said, then broke away. “I’m going to scout the way ahead. Tiron stays with you. He knows the path.” He flashed one last smile and was gone.

  Ramahd was still blinking away sleep as he gathered his things, including a heavy sack that contained the head of King Kiral—the real King Kiral, the one Meryam had sent to his death at the hands of the ehrekh, Guhldrathen. Ramahd had been hoping since his return to Sharakhai to use it, to put his plan into action, but it wasn’t time yet. The allies he needed were still weeks away from the city.

  When Ramahd made to grab his bag of clothes, Tiron forestalled him. “Too dangerous.” He motioned to the sack. “Bad enough we’re still lugging that thing around.”

  Now wasn’t the time to discuss the head, so Ramahd simply nodded and Tiron led him from their tiny room. Like thieves they slipped along the narrow corridors of the tenement. When they reached a darkened stairwell, he took them up to the fifth story landing, where Cicio was waiting. Cicio, who cut a compact shape, pointed to the open window nearby, then slipped through it with liquid ease onto the roof of another tenement building. Tiron followed moments before the sound of splintering wood came from behind them.

  As pots and pans began clanging all through the building, Ramahd, Tiron, and Cicio rushed across the roof. By the light of the twin moons, Tulathan a narrow silver scythe, golden Rhia a near-perfect disc, Ramahd crouched at the roof’s edge and spotted several men rushing away from the building. Some were met by a tall black shape.

  A Blade Maiden, Ramahd knew. He immediately began looking for more, as they often worked in groups of five known as hands. He didn’t see any, but sweet Alu, he swore the one below was looking directly where he was peering over the edge of the roof.

  A sharp, piercing whistle rose above the sounds of clanging.

  It was echoed moments later by another, then another, in buildings on either side of the alley. They’d spotted him and were trading information so that they could close in.

  “Bloody gods,” Cicio said under his breath as the alarm continued to spread.

  They sprinted across the rooftop. Tiron, in the lead, leapt across the gap between this roof and the next and landed with a roll. Cicio followed. Ramahd came next, but as he flew through the air he felt something snap around his ankle with a sound like a thunderclap. He was pulled up short just as the bright pain of the whip strike was registering. He twisted awkwardly, the easy leap becoming a fight to simply reach the other building.

  His body fell across the roof’s mudbrick lip, and the sack slipped from his grasp and onto the roof. Glancing behind, in the direction the whip was pulling him, he saw a black shape at the top of a set of stairs attached to the building he’d just leapt from. Like one of Meryam’s tendrils, a dark line ran from the Blade Maiden’s hands to Ramahd’s ankle. He adjusted his grip on the roof as the Maiden pulled in the slack. Fearing a fall at any moment, he drew his kenshar and in one wild motion swiped it across the outside of his ankle.

  The knife’s keen edge cut through the braided end of the whip, and he was freed. He lost sight of the Maiden as Cicio began hauling him over the edge of the roof.

  The whip cracked again and Cicio screamed. “Bitch!” he cried. “Son of bitch!” Inexplicably switching to Sharakhan.

  The whip struck again, this time against Ramahd’s left thigh. It felt like a bloody stab of steel. He grunted hard against the pain while scrabbling over the edge. He’d just rolled over the lip when a resounding clap came behind him, loud as breaking lumber, the whip narrowly missing.

  Then he was up and running, and Tiron was shoving the sack back into his hands. “You carry the blasted thing.”

  Ramahd bore its awkward weight as they made for the far side of the roof. Behind them came a thud and a scraping sound, as of someone rolling along the gravel-strewn roof. A Blade Maiden, ebon blade drawn, was sprinting toward them, swift as a gods-damned cheetah.

  Ahead, Cicio leapt from the edge of the building into darkness. Tiron followed. Ramahd had no choice but to leapt blindly. Mimicking Tiron’s speed and direction, he flew across a narrow alley and through a massive hole, one story down, in
the crumbling building that faced it. He slipped on the rubble scattered across the floor. Knowing the Maiden would be just behind him, he didn’t bother trying to get up. He rolled quickly away, making room for the others to fight.

  He could just make out Tiron and Cicio nearby, plus a shadowy form in the open doorway. The crunch of the Maiden’s landing was followed by the twang of a crossbow. The shape was Vrago, and he’d just released a bolt at the Blade Maiden, who was crouched only a few paces away. But the Maiden . . . Breath of the desert, the way she moved. Vrago had a marksman’s aim, but the Maiden had anticipated it and dodged.

  As the crossbow bolt crunched into the mudbrick wall of the opposite building, Tiron rushed the Maiden. Her shamshir was up and ready. Tiron’s bright steel flashed, met by her ebon blade. The Maiden spun and sent Tiron reeling with a kick to the gut. She dropped, continuing her spin, and sent Cicio tumbling to the floor. Tossing the sack aside, Ramahd drew his own sword. The Maiden met two of his blows with bone-rattling blocks.

  Then another twang sounded. It was the second of the dual crossbow’s bolts being released.

  The bolt punched into the Maiden’s chest, just over her heart, sending her staggering back. One hand gripping the bolt, she blocked several more of Ramahd’s blows, each block weaker than the last, but then she snapped a sharp, powerful kick into Ramahd’s chest with a sharp kiai. He was sent reeling, but it was a desperate move and the Maiden stumbled as well.

  By then Vrago had charged, his crossbow clattering to the floor as he drew his fighting knife.