Beneath the Twisted Trees

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  The room stared, then burst into conversation. Most stared at the disembodied head with some mix of confusion and revulsion. A few stepped away, hands to their mouths. Some shouted. It was in that moment, as all eyes were on Kiral’s head, that Davud caught a flicker from a shadowed corner of the room. Ramahd jerked and felt at his neck. He stared at his fingers, expecting blood, perhaps. The knights behind him stood in a strangely stiff manner, and Ramahd himself seemed suddenly woozy, as if he’d downed half a bottle of araq before coming here and it was finally hitting him.

  “What in the great wide desert is happening?” Davud whispered.

  Esmeray peered at the knights with her ivory eyes. “Look closely, Davud.”

  He saw it then, the faint traces of a spell that wrapped the knights, holding them in place. From the shadows stepped the queen’s woman, Amaryllis. She walked calmly past the Qaimiri knights to stand by Ramahd’s side, where she took Ramahd’s hand. Ramahd, meanwhile, swiveled his head and stared at her with a calm, almost vacant expression. By all appearances, Meryam made it seem as if everything that had just happened had been expected, a plan of hers long in the making.

  “She’s biding time,” Davud said. “Ramahd caught her off guard, but she’s looking for a way out.”

  In the relative quiet, the sound of marching suffused the room. From the same entrance where the knights had come in filed more soldiers: dozens of Silver Spears. More came from the servant’s entrance behind Meryam, including Layth, the Spears’ old, burly Lord Commander. Some held swords while others held crossbows, cocked and ready. They formed a circle, hemmed everyone in, including the Qaimiri knights.

  Unlike Ramahd’s entrance, some looked not the least bit surprised at this new turn of events. In fact, they seem relieved, particularly King Alaşan and his cohort of lesser Kings. There was a smugness in Alaşan’s eyes as he watched Cahil gawk. The moment Cahil drew his war hammer from his belt, a dozen Silver Spears raised their crossbows and trained them on his chest. He made no threatening move toward Meryam, but neither did he return the weapon to its holster.

  “You’d better start explaining yourself,” Cahil said to Meryam.

  Meryam smiled at him in a patronizing way, then turned her attention to the crowd, a famous playwright setting the stage for a rapt audience. “Weeks ago it came to my attention,” she said patiently, “that I had been deceived. That we had all been deceived.”

  Beside her, the man they all thought was Kiral was turning red. He was grasping at his throat as if he couldn’t breathe. The veins along his forehead and neck bulged. The strange choking sounds coming from his mouth managed to fill the grand space. Meryam, however, seemed unconcerned.

  “Some months ago,” she went on, “King Kiral entered into an arrangement with the blood mage, Hamzakiir. Some time before the Battle of Blackspear, it isn’t clear when, Hamzakiir managed to infiltrate our fleet, perhaps under the pretense of speaking further with the King of Kings.”

  Davud’s scalp began to prickle. This was a disaster. A terrible, unmitigated disaster. Meryam was orchestrating a story that would provide cover for her with the Kings of Sharakhai and her own countrymen. She was using Ramahd and the Qaimiri knights to lend weight to her tale, but Davud had no doubt she’d see to it that every single one of them would die when this was over.

  Cahil pointed to Hamzakiir with the point of his hammer. “Why are you talking about him as if he isn’t here?”

  “For the very simple reason,” Meryam replied, “that Kiral isn’t here. He has been usurped, his body stolen, by Hamzakiir himself.” She waved toward the opposite end of the table, toward the head. “I sent Ramahd into the desert to find the proof I needed, that we all needed, and at last he’s returned. Isn’t it so, Ramahd?”

  Ramahd nodded and said, “Yes,” but it seemed more like the answer a man deep in the throes of dementia might give, the answer he thought Meryam most wanted to hear.

  A woman gasped and pointed at Hamzakiir. His face, quivering and purple, was beginning to change. His short hair lengthened into long strands that clumped together. Kiral’s distinctive skin lost its pockmarks as a beard grew and turned from black to brown then streaked with gray. His well-muscled physique wasted away until what was left was a man with gaunt, harrowed features. He was nothing like the man Davud had seen in the place inside Hamzakiir’s mind—that was how Hamzakiir wanted to see himself. The man squirming on the chair beside Meryam was the reality, a man who’d clearly been starved in the months since Davud had seen him in Ishmantep. To weaken him? Davud wondered. For the sheer pleasure of torturing him?

  Hamzakiir clutched at his throat. He was being allowed to breathe, but only enough to keep him from falling unconscious. It wouldn’t last forever, though. Once Meryam had finished flaunting his helplessness, a simple but terribly effective display of her power, she would kill him.

  “We have to help him,” Davud said. “He can’t escape on his own.”

  “We don’t know how,” Esmeray whispered back.

  “I have an idea. Help me.”

  With that he began reaching out. After a moment’s pause, he felt Esmeray reaching with him, the two of them concentrating on the combined sigil they’d shown Hamzakiir.

  “Kiral is dead,” Queen Meryam continued, “taken by Hamzakiir and tossed aside like offal so he could take his place among the elder Kings.”

  There were many exchanged looks at the use of the term elder Kings—not, Davud suspected, because those in attendance hadn’t heard it before, but because it struck too close to its brother-term, the lesser Kings, of whom there were many in the room.

  “You were taken as well,” Cahil said.

  “I was for a time, but I found my way out. And I’ve fought for this day ever since. A day when I and others could be assured that Sharakhai would be threatened neither by Hamzakiir nor the mismanagement of the elder Kings.”

  Again the term, though this time Cahil laughed at it and said, “Mismanagement?”

  “Just so,” Meryam shot back. “If Kiral hadn’t been so excited by Hamzakiir’s offer to rid the city of the Moonless Host, a thing you were well aware of, King Cahil, this never would have happened. Nor would the city’s resources have been squandered in flying to the desert to battle one of its own Kings. And neither Malasan nor Mirea would have been drawn toward Sharakhai like vultures to a weak, stumbling oryx.”

  For a moment it looked as though Cahil were ready to argue with her. But then his face hardened. “The Kings do as they will.”

  “So we’ve seen.” Meryam pointed to the southern wall, a movement made weighty by the sounds of battle coming through the windows in the dome above. “And see what’s come of it.”

  “That’s nothing to do with you.” Cahil thrust his hammer toward Hamzakiir. “As you’ve already acknowledged, you didn’t marry Kiral King of Kings. You married a traitor to Sharakhai.”

  “So I did,” Meryam replied easily, “but Sharakhai’s safety is Qaimir’s safety. And I have come to love this city as if it were my own.”

  Cahil gave a biting laugh that drowned out the rising sound of battle. “This city will never be yours.”

  “You’re looking at it all wrong, Cahil. The truth is it has been yours for far too long. It’s time new hands took the reins.”

  At this, King Alaşan stepped forward. He was tall and proud, and looked much like his father, King Külaşan. King Melkani, his gaze sharp and piercing, stepped beside him. Then King Ohannes and King Umay and Temel who, but for his father’s mad ravings, was a King as well. They stood side by side, staring defiantly at King Cahil. These lesser Kings, the small Kings, some called them, were not so small anymore. From the servant’s entrance, a newcomer to the proceedings joined them. Trailing behind the shuffling form of Kiral’s gray-haired vizira was Yavuz, King Kiral’s son and the next in line to his throne. Unlike Temel, he was a King-in-waiting no longer. Kin
g Yavuz stood beside the others as an equal.

  Yavuz had been prepared for this, Davud realized—they all had, surely by Meryam herself—and Davud knew enough about the queen to know that she would leave none of this to chance. Even so, he was still shocked when King Azad began walking around the table toward the others. As he went, he removed a bright carnelian amulet from around his neck. Like Hamzakiir only moments ago, Azad began to change. His body took on a more feminine leaning, so that by the time he’d reached the others, a beautiful woman of some forty summers with striking features and a defiant stare had taken his place. Queen Nayyan had been revealed at last.

  Six Kings and one Queen had now joined Meryam—seven in all, a majority of the power in Sharakhai to add to the power Queen Meryam herself brought to the table.

  While it had unfolded, Davud and Esmeray formed the very sigil Meryam had used to bind Hamzakiir. The spell couldn’t be undone by reforming it, but Davud hoped that by creating it again he could understand what she’d done and through that learn enough to unmake it. Indeed, he felt the boundaries of the spell itself. He expected something like chains around Hamzakiir, but it wasn’t so. It was more like he’d been placed inside a bottle. He need only find its hidden entrance, which Meryam surely used from time to time to control him. But the prison felt perfect and seamless.

  “Follow me,” Esmeray whispered.

  She formed a new framework, and Davud filled it with arcane power. Her sigil was perfect—it combined search with substance and flaw—yet try as they might, the spell wasn’t working. They could find no flaw, and they were running out of time.

  “It isn’t too late to join us,” Meryam said. The words might have been reasonable, but her tone was not. She was goading Cahil.

  Cahil took in Nayyan and the six Kings staring defiantly at him. “You would put in your lot with her, a foreigner?”

  “We’re putting our lot in with one another,” Nayyan replied. “We’re no longer asking for our rightful seats at the table, Cahil. We’re taking them.” She took in the vizirs standing in for their Kings. “But fear not. There’s still room for you and the others. Unlike you, we’re not proposing to take what’s yours.”

  “They were given what they deserved, and you should be grateful. You were given the mantle of a King.”

  Nayyan sneered as she took a loaded crossbow from the hands of a nearby soldier. “I am taking the mantle of a Queen”—she lifted the crossbow to her shoulder—“and I will have the rights my throne demands.”

  Beside Meryam, Hamzakiir shook so badly he fell onto the floor.

  “This is your last and only chance to join us,” Meryam said to Cahil.

  Cahil’s face was red. His nostrils flared as he took in the room. Then he gave everyone his answer: a blurring hurl of his hammer, directly toward Meryam. It spun, end over end, and crashed through Meryam’s magical shield in a shower of bright yellow sparks. It struck a glancing blow to her head that sent her reeling backward. She tripped over Hamzakiir’s body and fell unceremoniously to the bright, polished floor.

  Nayyan squeezed the trigger of her crossbow. The bolt streaked the air and sank deep into Cahil’s chest. All but ignoring it, Cahil leapt onto the table and flew toward Meryam. A dozen more bolts flew, some missing, others piercing Cahil’s body as he ran, so that by the time he reached Meryam, a half dozen riddled his body.

  By then Meryam had regained her feet. As she sidestepped Cahil’s charge, one hand flew across her body and Cahil’s neck twisted sharply to one side. A great crack rent the air, and Cahil fell to the floor like a rag doll. He skidded to a squeaking stop, and silence fell over the proceedings.

  A skirmish erupted. Swords and daggers were drawn as those from Cahil’s house and the allies he had remaining—those from Sukru’s, Husamettín’s, Beşir’s, and Ihsan’s houses—fought against the Silver Spears and those from the houses of the lesser Kings. The Qaimiri knights stood stock-still, as if with everything else that was happening, Meryam hadn’t the presence of mind to command them to do anything.

  Davud and Esmeray continued to weave their spell, but it was no good. The prison Meryam had formed was too perfect. But then Davud noticed something shining from within. The prison walls were translucent, which he hadn’t realized since there’d been no light coming from inside the darkened walls. Now, though, he saw a new sigil, one he wasn’t familiar with. It was Hamzakiir. He was trying to help them.

  “Echo it,” Davud said, “quickly.”

  Esmeray formed a framework, a perfect match to Hamzakiir’s, and Davud rushed to fill it with power. It seemed to do nothing, however. The walls were still in place.

  “There,” Esmeray said above the shouts and sounds of the battle below.

  He didn’t know what she was talking about at first, but then he saw it. A hairline crack, as if the prison were made of so much glass. He tried harder, focusing solely on pouring as much power as he could into the sigil while allowing Esmeray to guide it into her waiting framework.

  The crack lengthened. More cracks formed. And then the prison shattered. It felt like a ton-weight being cut from its hauling rope, all that tension released in the blink of an eye.

  Below them, the battle had devolved into a slaughter. Two dozen lay on the floor, bleeding, dying, or already dead. Davud was more concerned about Meryam and Hamzakiir, though. He watched breathlessly as Hamzakiir blinked and stared about as if he’d just woken from a long, drunken sleep. Meryam had rounded on him, her hand lifted, a ball of blue fire already forming.

  Davud threw up a shield just in time. It barely held off Meryam’s arcane flame. The woman was every bit as strong as Hamzakiir had been at his peak, perhaps stronger.

  Meryam spun and locked eyes with Davud. As she lifted her hand toward him, a great crack sounded, and the floor of the gallery upon which he and Esmeray were hiding shifted. Great fissures appeared in the marble—Davud felt each of them like punches to his chest—then the floor beneath him suddenly gave way with a sound like rolling thunder. He and Esmeray plummeted to the main floor below and landed hard amidst the rubble.

  Something clubbed Davud on the back of his head and a keen ringing sounded in his ears.

  He felt Esmeray shaking him. He turned to see her mouth moving. She was saying something, but for the life of him he couldn’t understand what. Suddenly Esmeray’s eyes went wide. She stared beyond him. Davud turned to look too, and saw those who’d fallen during the fight—men and women he’d been certain were dead—begin to rise. They had terrible wounds, yet they regained their feet with the same sort of emotionless look Fezek had when they’d first woken him. As one they fell upon the Silver Spears and the followers of the lesser Kings and a battle that had been all but won was rekindled. More fell on both sides and those who perished rose too, and the remaining Kings’ forces were quickly evening the scales.

  It was Anila, Davud realized. It must be. But he couldn’t see her anywhere.

  Esmeray was still yelling at him, and finally he heard her words. “We have to free Ramahd.”

  She’d spun a framework around him, and Davud recognized it immediately. It combined corpus with awareness and shift. It tied the two of them, Ramahd and Esmeray, together. She meant to shift whatever strange effect the poison dart had inflicted on Ramahd to her.

  “I could kiss you,” Davud said.

  “Not now,” she replied.

  Davud, exhausted and lightheaded, shook his head and concentrated, then filled the framework with the last of his power. He felt the link between Ramahd and Esmeray form, then felt the spell lift the fog from Ramahd’s mind. It wasn’t dissipated, but instead transferred to Esmeray herself. As Ramahd yawned his mouth wide, blinking hard, Esmeray’s eyes went glassy and her face turned vacant, almost pleasant—a mirror image of how Ramahd had looked only moments ago.

  As the effect worked more fully on Esmeray’s mind, the framework she’d crea
ted dissipated. Davud helped her to a stand. Woozy, his vision swimming, he held her tight to him and skirted the edge of the room, hoping only to get both him and Esmeray to safety.

  He could see Meryam clearly now throwing azure fire at Hamzakiir, who was retreating steadily toward the edge of the great room. Each of the tight balls of flame thrown at him, however, shrank and dissipated in a flash of green as if they’d fallen into water. Meryam yelled something to the Lord Commander of the Silver Spears, who immediately lifted his crossbow to his shoulder, aimed across the room, and pulled the trigger.

  As if in slow motion, Davud saw the bolt fly across the open space toward Ramahd. Cicio was suddenly there with a shield in his hands. Instead of taking Ramahd in the chest, the bolt punched through the shield. As Cicio turned to meet a charging Silver Spear with a broad sweep of his sword, the rest of the Qaimiri knights swept in to defend Ramahd.

  That was when Davud saw her, Anila, standing beneath a peaked archway, one arm lifted as she commanded the dead. In that moment, as Davud guided Esmeray with more speed toward her, Hamzakiir dissolved into a cloud of roiling smoke that lifted up, up toward the windows in the dome. In moments Hamzakiir was gone, escaped. As Davud reached Anila’s side, she was staring at that same window.

  She turned and her eyes slowly focused on him. “Davud, how could you?”

  Davud felt his ears burn red. She meant Hamzakiir. Since being abducted, her life had been dedicated to seeing him dead, and she’d just witnessed Davud helping him to escape.

  “No time now,” Ramahd said, and pushed Davud and Esmeray into motion. “We have to get out of here.”

  Together they fled. The Qaimiri knights and the courtiers of the elder Kings had formed an unspoken alliance. They, along with the dead, beat a steady retreat while Ramahd protected them against Meryam’s spells. Through a courtyard, they saw smoke billowing from another wing of the palace. From the direction of the smoke, a skirmish between Malasani soldiers and palace guardsmen spilled into the hallway ahead of them, but they managed to skirt it and soon reached the Sun Palace’s grand entrance, where the full scale of the battle with Malasan was finally revealed.