Master of Elements

by Sonya Bateman

  Balain slowed the pace. And when we turned the next corner, we met up with three or four of those shambling, lantern-eyed horrors we’d run up against in the woods. The aid’ha.

  They saw us at the same time, and charged.

  Balain let out a roar and drew one of his swords. “I will take care of these hell-spawn,” he called out, moving to block the passage.

  “Uncle.” Malak walked up behind him. “Allow me to fight with you.”

  The older djinn blinked once, pulled his second sword, and handed it to Malak. “It would be my honor.”

  “Let me through,” Pahna said, pushing her way between me and Ian. “I’ll join the fight.”

  I sensed more movement and peered down the corridor that ran ahead in the other direction. “Uh, guys, I’ve got bad news. There’s plenty for everyone,” I said, pointing to another oncoming group of zombie djinn.

  “I’ve got them,” Pahna said as she started to glow.

  Ujura rushed toward her. “Not alone. I am with you.”

  She smiled and nodded. Seconds later, two polar bears bellowed their way toward the new group of monsters like furry bowling balls aiming for undead pins.

  “I believe they have this handled,” Ian said.

  “Not quite.” I jerked a thumb back over my shoulder. “We’ve got more coming this way.”

  Ian grinned. “How fortunate for us. After hours of pandering to the delicate egos of self-important blowhards, I have been hoping for something to kill.”

  “Go for it. I’m right behind you.”

  He glowed into the wolf and raced back down the corridor we’d just come up. I sprinted after him, drawing my dagger, and caught up just as he took the first one in the pack to the ground with his teeth buried in its throat. I ignored the awful ripping sounds, edged past him and plunged the blade into a second one’s chest.

  A puff of dust blew out from the wound, and thin black gunk poured down the creature’s gaunt body. It roared in my face, giving me a very unpleasant look at the black, squirming insides of its mouth.

  Okay, so chest wounds weren’t fatal. I wrenched the blade free and drove it into one of the thing’s eyes.

  It let out a burbling scream and staggered back, its claw-like hands scrabbling at the handle of the dagger. When it thumped to the ground, I lunged at it and pressed my palms against the surface on either side of its head.

  A stone spike shot from the ground and burst through the center of its face, and the light in its remaining eye went out.

  Ian had taken two down by the time I retrieved my dagger and went for the next one. This time I didn’t bother stabbing it. I slapped a hand against the wall and wrenched a whirring stone saw blade from the wall that took its head off in one clean blow.

  “Too bad the Wihtiko won’t be as easy to kill as these things,” I said to Ian, who was busily tearing an arm from a screaming aid’ha with his teeth.

  Ian spat the limb aside and slashed the prone creature’s eyes with his claws, then sat back on his haunches and panted as it died. When no more of them showed up, he glowed back into himself and spat out a mouthful of black ooze, swiping absently at the ichor splashed on his chest. “Yes, that is a shame,” he said. “But if it were that easy, the Annukhai and the Alqani would have managed it already.”

  “Good point. And speaking of, we should probably go find them.”

  I didn’t know my way around the labyrinth, but I could sense where the rest of them were. It wasn’t long before we tracked them down, surprisingly all in one place. They’d found the center of the maze, and all the weapons.

  They’d also found a lot more of the aid’ha. The massive central chamber was filled with dozens of gaunt, snarling zombies, and these were actually using the weapons they’d hoarded in a pile in the middle of the room. The others still fought in pairs — Malak with Balain, and Pahna with Ujura.

  Ian and I dove right in.

  It wasn’t long before I started to regret saying these things were easy to kill. They still were, but taking down one of them was a lot different than fighting half a dozen armed monstrosities at once. I killed one with a stone buzz saw and wrenched the sword from its dying hand, only to catch a dagger in the thigh from another one behind me. As I turned to lop its arm off, something hard and heavy thunked the back of my skull, and my vision exploded white with pain.

  I finished the one who’d stabbed me, and went after the bastard with the slingshot.

  By the time we’d wiped out the last of the aid’ha, everyone was banged-up, bleeding, and breathing hard. It took a few rounds of healing before we were ready to go through the weapons.

  Malak was the first to pick one up from the pile, a short blade mounted at the top of a wooden frame shaped like an H with a double cross-stem. “A katar,” he said with a touch of reverence. “My father’s elite often used them … wait.” He bent and peered into the space he’d pulled the blade from, and then reached a hand carefully inside the pile.

  What he pulled out wasn’t a weapon. It was a necklace strung with alternating bone beads and gleaming black stones. Four ivory fangs arranged in an overlapping pattern formed the centerpiece.

  “Is that …” Ian said in a paper-thin whisper.

  He didn’t complete his sentence, but I didn’t need him to. I caught an image from him, for just a few seconds, of an older man dressed in shades of brown. Boots, pants, vest with no shirt. Shaggy brown hair with black and white streaks, a matching beard, and a face that looked a lot like Ian’s — though that face was far happier than Ian’s had ever looked, and projected a calm, confident strength. And the necklace currently in Malak’s hand was at his throat.

  It had belonged to Omari-el.

  Malak approached him gravely, holding the necklace in front of him. “Long ago, your father gave this to mine as a token of friendship between our peoples,” he said. “I would be greatly honored if you would accept it now, in the same spirit which it was given.”

  Ian swallowed once. “I do accept,” he said, and took the necklace.

  I would’ve said I couldn’t imagine how he felt, but I didn’t have to imagine it. I could feel it myself — the deep, sharp ache of sorrow mingled with wonder, love, and longing.

  Having a piece of his father meant more to him than he’d ever let on.

  “Well, then,” Ian said after he put the necklace on, and his voice only trembled slightly. “We have much to do here, if we are to salvage and distribute these weapons.”

  Everyone went to work.

  Chapter 31

  We spent the rest of that night sorting, splitting up and hauling weapons. By the time Ian and I dragged ourselves back to the tent, the sky was starting to lighten again. And we still had a lot of work ahead of us.

  We were up by late morning, figuring out who was going, who was staying, and what weapons were assigned to whom. The total number of ‘seasoned warriors’ in the Annukhai village was zero, if you didn’t count me and Ian, but all the older kids wanted to participate. Galina and Yurai, the storytelling brother and sister; Toklai and his friend Qimmig; Vana and Sabrah, the young women who usually watched over the littlest ones. Malak and Pahna, of course, and five or six others ranging in appearance from late teens to early twenties.

  I really didn’t feel that great about the whole army-of-children thing, but they would not be left out.

  Ian led a bunch of them into the woods for weapons training, and I stayed in the village to show the rest a few fun new things they could do with earth-based magic. After a while, we switched groups. It was mid-afternoon when we finally took a break and headed back to the tent for a quick meal and a much-needed rest.

  Now we had a fire going outside and a pitcher of djinned-up mead between us, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that massive, deadly failure loomed ahead.

  “All right. Walk me through this again,” I said as I sprawled on the ground, staring into the flames. “We fix the Great Seal out there with earth magic, and that does … what, exactly?
”

  Ian sipped his drink. “It makes the creature mortal,” he said. “When the clans first trapped the Wihtiko, they used the Great Seal to dampen its powers, and a summoning spell to draw it in. But they believed it could not be killed, and so instead they cast a powerful yahmaan, a sleep spell.”

  Okay, so I got the seal and the sleep spell. They’d both been used on me when Toklai and his scouts brought me in. But the seal they’d carved had completely shorted out my magic, and that wasn’t what Ian just said. “Blunting its powers isn’t the same as cancelling them,” I said.

  “No, it is not.” Ian sighed and poked at the fire with a stick. “In theory, the Annukhai warriors’ assault on the beast could have succeeded. They were able to injure it. But their numbers were not great enough, and according to Meriwa, their ray’is — Malak’s father — broke part of the seal while attempting to subdue the Wihtiko. This returned the creature to full power, and it proceeded to consume the remaining Annukhai.”

  “Consume?” I didn’t like that word. It was even worse than ‘eat.’ “So you really think this thing sucks out souls.”

  “That would explain the aid’ha,” he said.

  I pushed myself up to sitting and drank some of my mead. “Okay. It sounds like once the seal is active, then it’s just a matter of mauling and stabbing this thing to death. As long as we’ve got the numbers and we don’t break the seal,” I said. “What about that infecting it with the life of the earth stuff?”

  Ian shrugged. “Nate was unable to find any writings pertaining to that phrase in Khanaq’s home,” he said. “Whatever it means, it may not be part of the truth behind the legend.”

  “Right.” I stared into the fire again. “Do you think we have the numbers? I mean, with a bunch of polar bears and all those weapons, maybe we’ve got a shot, don’t we?”

  “I do not know. But speaking of weapons, I have something for you.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a flat, cloth-wrapped bundle about the size of a dagger. “Be careful,” he said as he handed it to me. “They are quite sharp.”

  I took the bundle gently and opened the cloth with as much care as dismantling a bomb. If Ian said they were quite sharp, that meant I’d probably cut myself on them if I sneezed too hard. Whatever they were.

  Inside was a matched set of knives unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Each one was a single, continuous piece of hammered bronze with a handle as flat as the blade. Four fused metal rings, like brass knuckles, were attached to one side of the handle, and from the base of the handle all the way around to the back of the blade was a razor-honed cutting edge.

  I could see immediately how they worked. Strap one of these babies on your knuckles, and you’d slice your target any way you hit it.

  “Nice,” I said softly with real appreciation, holding one of them up to stare down the length of the blade. “Actually, they’re beautiful. And I don’t usually say that about shiny things.”

  Ian nodded. “They belonged to Jai. My father’s champion,” he said. “I find it fitting that you should have them.”

  Now I wasn’t just impressed. I was deeply touched, especially that Ian would give me something that belonged to his clan. Remnants of the Dehbei were scarce, to say the least. “Thank you,” I said with a slight hitch as I wrapped the blades back up. “Okay, now I’m going to ruin the moment with a stupid question. What’s the deal with the champion thing? I never did get why you started calling me that here.”

  “Because you have been my champion for many years, though I have never referred to you in that manner before. The word has a slightly different meaning among the djinn than it does for humans.” He lifted a slanted smile. “Each clan’s leader chooses a champion — he is the fiercest warrior with the bravest heart, the one the leader trusts above all others, with all things, including his own life.”

  “And I’m all that to you, huh?” I said thickly, trying to pretend I wasn’t blinking back tears. “You sure you’re not just saying that because we’re about to die?”

  “Our impending death may have been a contributing factor.”

  That startled a laugh from me, and I actually felt a little better about our odds. “So can you tell me anything about Jai? Aside from his excellent taste in weapons, of course.”

  Ian chuckled, shaking his head. “I lack the skill with air magic to create a proper thought form,” he said a touch of sadness in his voice. “But perhaps, considering our souls are joined, it will not be necessary.” He reached out and placed a hand on my chest, taking a deep breath. “Be still, thief, and remember with me.”

  For once I decided not to make a wisecrack, with Ian seeming so sincere. I took a calming breath and closed my eyes, trying to open myself to Ian’s mind. I heard a deep voice come from somewhere close, and opened my eyes in shock …

  To find myself staring into the broad smile of a huge Dehbei warrior. “Come now, young prince, surely it takes more than a lucky hit to defeat you?” He laughed and reached out a hand that swallowed my own, pulling me to my feet as if I was weightless.

  I felt myself scowl and brush the dust from my vest, mumbling through my embarrassment. “That was not luck, Jai, and you are well aware of it. That was treachery. You should be ashamed, resorting to such tactics against an opponent half your size.”

  The bearded giant pulled a cloth from his belt, mopping the sweat from his face with a faint grin. “Shame? I keep hearing about it, but I’ve never met it.” He laughed and turned, waving me towards the well at the far side of the courtyard. “Come, join me for a drink. The sun will lay us both low if we don’t take a break.”

  I huffed in frustration at the warrior’s casual attitude, but was secretly glad to quench my thirst. Father had tasked Jai with training me in hand-fighting after that fool Qua’laam insulted me by not moving out of my path, forcing me to trip over his feet like I was a clumsy beast. After I disciplined the fool for his disrespect, I was told I needed to learn some control — and, I suspected, a bit of humility along the way. Jai was to be my instructor for both, it seemed.

  The huge man settled against the well, lifting the bucket and dumping the contents over his head. “That’s better. Now I won’t smell like a cart-ox, even if I look like one.” I sniggered before I could stop myself, but the clan’s champion just grinned, cocking an eyebrow at me. “Show some mercy, rayan. Not all of us can be as beautiful as you are. If I was from a more noble family, I’d offer Omari-el a dowry for you myself.”

  I grabbed a cup from the edge of the well and started lowering the bucket into the water, keeping my back to Jai to hide the flush on my cheeks. “I am a prince, you know. My father could have you staked out in the desert for saying such things.”

  Jai’s expression grew instantly somber, and he nodded slowly. “That’s very true, prince. He certainly could. But that is not the point. Can you?” He pushed away from the well and slowly rolled his shoulders, the water dripping from his bronzed skin. “Your father could order me to wrench the sun from the sky, and I would turn to ash trying to do just that. Do you know why, young prince?”

  I huffed, wrestling the bucket onto the stonework of the well and cursing under my breath as it splashed over my feet. “Of course I know why, champion,” I sneered. “My father is the leader of the Dehbei. He has the power of life and death over all of his subjects, and commands the respect of all that cross his path. Why should I not be given the same honor as he?” I took a deep drink of water and angrily shoved the bucket back into the well.

  Jai’s hand shot out faster than I could see, and he lifted me by my vest to dangle helplessly before his green-gold stare. “You will be given such honor when you have earned it, pup. Your father has spent centuries protecting the Dehbei, and spilled his blood a thousand times to do so. What have you done to be worthy of such respect?”

  I gasped as he lowered me back to the ground, blinking furiously as I glanced around to see if anyone had noticed the way I was being treated. “I am the only son of .
..”

  “Omari-el.” Jai’s deep voice carried across the courtyard, and I whirled to see my father approach. My stomach turned, watching the onlookers bow and back away as he came to join us.

  “Jai. Gahiji-an. How is the training coming?” Father smiled warmly and clapped his champion on the shoulder, apparently unaware of the shame he continued to heap upon me.

  I swallowed hard, kicking at the dusty ground. “Horribly. Jai cheats at fighting, and he mocks me incessantly. It is more than I can bear.”

  Jai nodded in agreement, grinning like he was proud of my keen insight.

  Father gave a solemn nod, crouching down to look deeply into my face. “He does you a great service, son. What have you learned from it so far?”

  I staggered back, staring in shock and horror at my father’s kind smile. “Service? He shames me, Father! Like everyone else!”

  Jai cocked his head, suddenly serious. “And how have you responded? With spoiled pouting, and threats made with someone else’s authority. How will that serve you when the one mocking you is a foreign chieftain? What will you do when an enemy employs deception and intrigue to destroy the Dehbei? Will you still invoke your father’s wrath when he is dead and gone?”

  Hot tears flooded my vision, and I jumped in surprise as my father wiped them away. “Do not cry, son. Jai does you this service out of love, so that you can learn to behave as a leader must. In time, your own deeds will give you the respect of our people, and you will grow to become an even greater man than I.”

  I sagged with shame at my immaturity and swallowed down the lump in my throat. “I understand, Father. My title is worth nothing if I act like a mindless savage — or a spoiled child.”

  Jai’s rich laughter boomed out, and he slapped my back nearly hard enough to throw me to the ground. “Well said, rayan. It seems you’ve learned more than your fighting skills would suggest today. Come, let us resume our exercises. If you can keep your spoiled tongue between your teeth, I may even show you how to cheat, just like me … ”