by Baloch, Fuad
Filling her lungs with the dank air, Nuraya turned the handle. It moved, creaking, the sound jarring in the silence. She pushed the door open and shuffled inside.
A hundred pairs of blood red eyes turned to look at her and she screamed. She was in a vast, circular anteroom of sorts. One so large it could have housed a thousand petitioners at one time. High walls wreathed in inky darkness climbed up toward the heavens, the scores of torches unable to illuminate the high roof.
Nuraya took an involuntary step back, one hand rising to block her nose from the fetid stench she had come to know well during her imprisonment.
Her back found the door. The closed door.
The ghouls glared at her. Scores of them. Nightmares come to life and each a sight so terrible it would have made pregnant women abort their babies. Like dark clouds in the night sky, they were all different—some as tall as nine feet, a few with fangs for teeth—and yet they were all united in the fear they drew in her heart.
“Annndooooo!” the ghouls rumbled in their discordant voices, her skin breaking out in a cold sweat.
A dozen ghouls stood outside a door directly ahead. That was what her heart had been yearning for all this while.
Was Afrasiab in there?
Summoning every bit of strength, Nuraya staggered forward.
“Annndooooo!” chanted the ghouls once more.
“S-step out of my way!” she commanded, her voice quivering. She made a shooing motion with her right hand. She needed to get through this door to see who or what lay in there.
A dozen ghouls, just as repulsive as the one guarding her, made more terrible under the flickering lights, advanced toward her.
“No!” she shouted, as the first ghoul grabbed her by the shoulders. “Let go!” Screaming, she punched the ghoul with all her might, then winced when her knuckles landed on a surface harder than a wall of stone. She tried kicking the second ghoul in the nuts who approached her from the front. Her toes found rock, and she screamed out in pain.
A hairy, moist hand covered her eyes. “Annnndoooo!” Every fiber of her being shrieked. Another stinking hand covered her mouth and nose.
Nuraya struggled, fighting, flailing, more hands falling on her body.
“Annndoooo!”
She fainted.
Chapter 14
Shoki
Jadu called out to him.
Not something that stood out on its own despite being the fundamental element of this reality. Instead, it needed to be divined, a shadow that went unnoticed, but when finally witnessed, impossible to unsee. It surged through the darkness, fueling the dark entities moving about the plain. A grain of sand in a sandstorm, shining through like a beacon of light.
Shoki straggled forward, allowing his heart to guide his path forward. He had tried and failed to grab his well before. But in this world, with all distractions and objections replaced with their real analogues, he felt compelled to try again and anchor himself to reality.
Something he had no issues with.
Shoki closed his eyes, letting his heart reach out. Yes, he could feel it. The barest of flickers that set his heart racing, then a tide that surged though. Cold, slimy to the touch, washing over and through and around him, visible, yet just beyond his perception.
He tried to seize jadu. And failed.
This time though, he didn't despair, continuing to trudge forward, letting his heart guide his feet.
Voices rose in the periphery of his vision. Words and languages that weren't human. He wasn't alone in this world. Shoki stopped and turned around, bracing himself for an attack. The voices continued their inhuman chatter, majestic beings not deigning to look at the humble gnat.
How many types of races existed beyond humans, djinn, and the pari folk? Were angels that the prophets had preached about real? Were they here? Was there really then a god, or a pantheon of divine beings, sitting in judgment over other races? How many more beings existed whose nature of existence had never been understood before?
How many of those watched him this very moment?
A shiver came over him as he tried to grapple with the idea. Like grits of sand pouring through tiny, invisible seams in a wall, now that he’d thought of them, he could sense these beings. Far too grand and complex for him to perceive, even using his heightened senses here, but impossible to ignore.
Curiosity urged him to reach out to them, implore them for help, get to know them.
Any other day of his life, he’d have done just that.
Now though, he had more important things to do, and he couldn't afford to let this world and its dark charms swallow him. Not yet, anyway.
More mundane memories rose. His conversation with Jiza before she had stabbed him. Witnessing his long-dead kin in the burial ground. Their voices had fallen silent now, almost as if he had left them behind in some faraway world. Even the shock of the letter had begun fading.
Again, he allowed his feet to take him forward, toward the anchor he needed.
Something called out to him. No, not quite a thing, more the lack of it. A void, sucking and warping energy around it, standing out by the manner in which it gave nothing away about its intent or purpose. An object lacking… essence.
A mountain of fear descended on him. Everything had an essence. A fact he’d known intuitively. Yet, even as he tried making sense of that call, his thoughts flailed away in terror.
Shoki turned toward the void.
No silhouettes or edges marked its boundaries. It just stood there. No, not just standing. Moving. Expanding. Not as fast as a running man, but not slow like a half-dead desert snake either. Energies roiled around it. Beings gathering near its ends, most fleeing, but some… embracing it.
Who were they?
Beings of different races. Pari folk. Djinn. Humans. And more whose nature he couldn't divine. Those that rushed headlong to it carried flickers of their own essences, their presences dimming as they got closer, then winking out as they let the void take them. They moved out once they’d assimilated with the void in an outward motion. In a hundred different directions. Tiny blobs of void Shoki sensed only by the sheer absence of essence as they crisscrossed the paths of beings with essences.
The void and its children felt wrong; its calls most unholy.
Shoki took a half-step toward it, then stopped himself.
This was a battle he might very well have to fight one day, but was today the day for it?
He turned his back, once more letting his inner self take control.
More and more objects were fleeing the encroaching pool of void. But a not-insignificant number continued rushing toward it. Their potentials announced them as men and women and beings of various persuasions, not scared of embracing the nothingness. Most carried the power to affect the external world. Magi. Abominations.
One of them, a magus, tried fleeing from the void. Three smaller blobs of void surrounded it, pressing inward. The flickering light of the magus’s potential struggled, burning high and bright for an instant, then winked out.
A part of Shoki berated him for standing still and not doing anything to resist the void. No! If he stumbled blindly into this sandstorm, with no anchor to guide him, he’d be lost forever.
This wasn’t the time.
The world faded away for a spell, his heart stopping as if tired of fighting against the never-ending travails it had to put up with.
It flickered back into existence.
Shoki gasped.
His well stood directly ahead. A surging tower of brilliant azure energy so bright it hurt just to look at it. A great mast in the fathomless vastness surrounding it, its potential a presence that rivaled anything in its vicinity.
Greed, lust swelled within him.
He needed his well.
Shoki trod forward.
The well moved away.
Shaking his head, Shoki approached it once more, only to see the same result.
“I haven’t come this far to go away empty-handed!”
&nb
sp; This time, keeping his attention firmly focused on the pillar, he sauntered toward it with intent. It slipped away again.
Shoki longed and thirsted for his well. Most of his life he’d lived without jadu, but the little taste he’d had was enough to make him want more.
He tried sprinting forward, the well still remaining beyond his reach.
Rage built through him. He needed to get out of this world. Needed to get his well back if there was any hope of righting the real world. He was no leader of men, nor had he any great insights to offer the world. He didn't even have the stamina to ride a horse for a whole day without complaint. All he had was his ability to wield jadu. An ability he had misused before. One thing he would do differently if he got another chance.
Again and again, Shoki tried to seize his power, continuing to fail.
Time was passing, centuries worth, or lasting mere seconds, its passage observable, yet impossible to measure.
Though he felt no tiredness, finally growing exasperated, Shoki stilled for a moment, spreading his arms. Voices were chattering around him. Most, if not all of them, seemed unaware of the approaching void, and the minions it had spawned. Like his own dead kinsmen, they remained engrossed in their own little bubbles.
What could he do?
Shoki tried recalling everything he’d learned about jadu. The curses the inquisitors used to refer to magi. The discussions he’d had with Mara and the djinn scholar in Nainwa. Bits and snippets about its nature he’d heard from the lips of peasants.
Nothing seemed to offer a way out of this blasted predicament.
There had to be something he could do though.
The past few months raced through his mind. The day at diwan-e-aam where the sultan had paired him off with the inquisitor. Their trek through the deserts and plains of northern Istan. His meeting with Mara. Falling in love with Nuraya, then seeing her take the mantle of sultana. The fall of Buzdar. The—
Shoki paused, recalling, of all people, the beggar he had encountered at Buzdar. One who had called himself Dullah, servant of the great saint Edin. When the enemy had arrived at the city gates, instead of telling him to flee, the beggar had said something really strange. Something about piss and shit going the same way in heavy downpour. And how Shoki needed to ensure he didn't get swept up by it.
His heart thudding in his chest, Shoki shook his head. What were the chances that what he’d heard all those weeks ago, applied here? Surely not!
This time he turned his back to his well. It was there, calling out to him, his heart screaming at him to run toward it.
He ignored the temptation, forcing his thoughts at the world around him. One way or the other, all he had ever known was turning to shit, its foulness spreading every which way. Like men did, he ignored the filth.
Shoki closed his eyes again. Instead of seizing the well, of lusting for it, he spurned it, recognizing it as the source of filth it was, the power that turned men and women and djinn to abominations. He opened his heart, acknowledging the foulness all around him, knowing he had to do his bit to fix it. Eventually.
Power, impossible and overwhelming, thrummed into him. The dark world around him lit up for the briefest of seconds, offering him a glimpse of the strange, flat world lacking definition or landmarks. Distantly, he saw two pillars, burning with a similar power as his. Were these Ajeeb magi?
Darkness returned.
Shoki straggled back, his breath catching, his body unable to keep up with the massive power surging within him.
“I—”
Another jolt of jadu coursed through him, the sweetness unlike any nectar he had ever tasted.
A curtain of darkness fell upon him for a second time.
Chapter 15
Nuraya
Nuraya woke to the sounds of thunderclaps and lightning.
“What—”
Something crashed into the wall, its impact jarring her bones.
She scrambled up to her feet. For the briefest of moments, her mind tried to make sense of where she was. She had entered the chamber guarded by ghouls. And there… she had lost consciousness, now waking up—she looked around—in her prison.
Another crash sounded, this time beyond the shut doors. Something was going on in the corridor she had taken to flee Vhali and the ghoul.
Blinking to rid the disorientation she still felt, Nuraya dashed toward the windows. At first, everything looked normal. The dense tree branches outside the garden swaying gently under the noon breeze, the tall grass undulating, the skies blue and placid for once.
Then, a flicker of bright light to the left caught her eye. She turned and gasped. A huge figure hovered in the sky, its features masked by the bright sun behind it. Even as Nuraya watched, the figure, at least fifteen feet tall, raised a hand. Lightning crackled, bright, snake-like, shaped like a spear. It leaped off its hand, hitting a far castle wall she couldn't see from her vantage point.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end even before she heard the impact. When the rolling wave came, it rattled her bones, reverberating in her chest.
War had come, this time pitting abominations against abominations.
Nuraya stood very still, her mind racing, her eyes glued to the flying figure. It looked majestic, reminding her of the angels she’d heard about from her teachers, who waited on Rabb in the highest heaven. Whose side were these magi on? How could she use this diversion to claw out an advantage for herself? Should she try to escape once more? Reach out to the attackers and see if she could convince them to take her side? Or, were these magi who had come to claim her instead of Afrasiab? Her head hurt. Of course, there was also the possibility—no matter how remote—that these magi were here to fight for her. If that was the case, then she had to reach out to them, let them know where she was.
This was her opportunity regardless. But if she made the wrong choice, she would end up ruining it.
Was the figure truly a magus, or an illusion of sorts? After all, who really knew how the magi worked?
Shouts of “Annndooo!” floated up from underneath the windows. Ducking her head out, Nuraya turned to the right, straining to locate the ghouls. Though she heard them, a whole group by the sounds of it, she couldn’t see them, the fog of war restricting her vision.
The figure floating in air had no such constraints though. It swiveled around, fingers pointed at the unseen ghouls. More bolts of lightning snaked into existence and leaped into the distance. She heard sharp crackling, sizzling, thuds, and the ungodly gibberish of the ghouls. If the bolts did find them, to their credit, the ghouls didn't cry out in pain.
The figure stayed floating as if held in place by an invisible string, making no attempts to hide its presence. Two things leaped at her in that moment. Whoever this magus was, he or she was arrogant enough to present an inviting target like that. If the intent was to draw the ghouls away, the figure could have been moving about, keeping up constant attacks besides just egging the enemy on.
The second realization felt more important. This magus wasn’t here for her. Had that been the case, the magus wouldn’t be concentrating fully on the ghouls instead of looking for her as well.
That made things simpler for her.
She had to get away. She had to hope she hadn’t been seen yet by the invaders and had to give both them and the ghouls the slip. No way was she going to trade one set of captors for another.
Nuraya dashed toward the doors. Locked, just like always.
She screamed in frustration, then bracing, smashed into the door with her shoulder. Pain shot through her, failing to subside in face of her immense rage. Trembling, she took a step back, was about to run in to the door again, when she heard the sound of splintering wood.
Her heart beating furiously, Nuraya scrambled forward, peering at the door. The sturdy wood that had somehow withstood all this passage of time, was rotting in front of her eyes, melting in its position as if made of wax facing immense heat.
Her room had grown hot as
well, the stone walls no longer able to resist the sweltering heat blowing in from the windows.
Fire. The magi were using fire.
The ground rumbled again, longer this time, strange and harrowing voices filling the skies outside. Nuraya debated between turning around to see what was going on or waiting for the door to come free. She chose the latter. Before either the ghouls or the invaders found her, she had to be out of her cage.
“Annndooo!” ghouls shrieked, their voices coming from the corridor outside.
Nuraya stiffened, cursing her rotten luck. Was something different about the manner in which the ghouls were uttering that word?
More blobs melted away from the door, giving Nuraya a view outside the room. No ghouls stood guard. For the moment, anyway. Nuraya gritted her teeth, filling her lungs with the hot air. Squaring her shoulder once more, she ran for the door, unwilling to wait any longer than she had to.
She’d expected to hurt her shoulder again, burning herself in the process if the smoldering wood was indeed as hot as it looked. Instead, she was through the door before she even realized it, the wood breaking as if made of some brittle metal.
Jadu.
Nuraya whipped her head around. The corridor to the right, one she hadn’t taken the last time, spread out for a good fifty yards. She might have taken it, had it not been for the dozen ghouls there she saw shuffling toward her.
Nuraya turned her head to the left. The corridor she had taken before was empty albeit littered with debris and chunks of stone. She broke into a sprint, her eyes darting about for anything she might use to fight her way through. The ghouls were far too strong, something she had discovered to her detriment, but maybe the attackers wouldn’t be the same.
An eternity later, she burst out into the courtyard, panting with exertion. Chips of stone flew over her head, followed by a booming noise. Nuraya ducked, a hand rising instinctively over her head. She looked up. Two more figures flew in the air, just as tall as the first she’d seen. This time, she caught a glimpse of their faces before they disappeared from her view. Dark slits for eyes, bald pates, skin the color of charcoal.
