by Baloch, Fuad
Shoki took out his own sword. “For honor!” he screamed.
The men roared back, and then everyone was rushing past him.
Blood coursing through his veins, Shoki kicked his mare. Someone grabbed his reins. Angered, Shoki leaned in. The young inquisitor he had seen with Inquisitor Aboor stood, shaking his head.
“Let go!” he shouted.
“Sahib Inquisitor wishes you to join them!” he shouted back. “It’s vital, he says.”
Shoki tried taking back the reins from the young man but he didn't relent, yanking him now toward the group of magi and inquisitors. Shoki bit his lower lip. Whether he liked it or not, he wouldn't really serve the cause by joining in the actual fighting. He was no soldier. And even if he were, he doubted Salar Ihagra would have appreciated him joining in personally. Camsh would have had a fit.
The magi women turned to glare at him when he arrived. Maharis stood equidistant between them and the inquisitors, the djinn standing apart from them all. Shoki dismounted and rushed forward to examine the battlefield. The men had engaged the ghouls, the fields fast turning into a bath of severed limbs and gory bits. The ghouls screamed in guttural tones that sent shivers down Shoki’s spine. His men bellowed, screaming in a dozen different dialects and tongues.
“Stupid, stupid!” growled Inquisitor Aboor, coming to stand at his side. “Mountain’s breath, you had archers! Why waste men when you can spare arrows?”
“They broke ranks.”
Inquisitor Aboor glared at Shoki, shaking in head in disbelief. “How far have the standards slipped since my day!” He snapped his fingers, his brow furrowing. “We need to wait now. See if they can cut a path through for us.”
“You can’t do,” Shoki spread his hands, “your work from here?”
“We need proximity,” Aboor replied calmly as if explaining basic facts to a child for the umpteenth time.
“What are your powers?” Shoki shouted at the magi women staring at him, and at the three magi who had been following the inquisitors now staring at the sky with their mouths hanging open.
Purnava looked aghast, shaking her head in a huff. Aathmik raised her finger in admonishment. “You know better than to ask the question.”
Shoki chewed his lower lip in frustration. If they were to fight, it would help if he knew what each member of their group was capable of. Synergy. That was what they needed. Then again, he had spent enough time with the magi to know limits of what they were willing to share.
He turned back to the battlefield. Minutes had passed already, the ground growing thick with writhing limbs and still bodies. Yet, as far as he could tell, his soldiers hadn’t advanced an inch. Maybe they should have surrounded the ghouls, treacherous ground or not.
“Gods’ guts and glory holes shoved with camel dung,” Inquisitor Aboor muttered, shielding his eyes with both hands, his gaze turned away from the immediate fighting and toward the castle in the background. “They’ve more ghouls coming.”
True enough, as Shoki stood on his tiptoes, he could see a stream of ghouls pouring from the massive barbican gates that stood open. Worse, he recalled what Kafayos had seen. Shoki hadn’t told anyone except for the salars leading his force about what the djinn had reported to ensure the soldiers wouldn't panic, but now he wondered whether that had been the right decision. Maybe, if he had warned the soldiers not to underestimate the ghouls, they wouldn't have jumped in blindly.
Ifs and would-haves and could-haves.
Shoki grunted, scratching his chin furiously. What was done was done.
He closed his eye, then out of old habit, tried to fill his veins with jadu. Then, remembering what he had learned in the cemetery, allowed the power to come find him instead. His will soared into existence, a stream at once cold and hot, numbing and exhilarating, rushing through his very being.
The world shifted away even as it expanded. Like an afterimage, the figures fighting lingered for a second or two, their silhouettes silvery and ghost-like, then they too faded away into obscurity.
Essences leapt out at Shoki. Far too many to focus. He allowed himself to float over them, refusing to let himself be either distracted or cowed by what he saw. He had to seek a path through for the inquisitors. And if they couldn't succeed, then he had to lead the fight personally and face down Afrasiab, no matter the cost.
Darkness pressed in on him from all sides, a massive force that snapped him out of the jadu world. He shook his head, crying out in anguish, then cleared his mind to enter the world once more.
He was there.
The world grew quiet like an abandoned warehouse in the middle of night. Only, it wasn’t dark. Not with the colorful essences squirming and shifting all around him. He saw them, and their reasons for existence. The ground’s purpose to act as nature’s field, pushed upon by the sun’s singular mission of molding everything in its shape, the multitude of desires and goals making up the soldiers fighting figures that——Shoki blanched—had no purpose, no drive, no essence. Like the dream world he’d entered at the cemetery, he saw the void he’d seen at the corners of the world reflected in these writhing figures fighting against his men.
He could exchange essences to his heart’s content. Such was the power of his Ajeeb jadu. Replace the strength of one object to stand strong with the rottenness that had crept into another. Do it correctly and one could change the world.
What in the seven hells did one take away from nothingness?
He probed the ghouls. He could see them, perceive them, but not because they had essences of their own, but because of the way they managed to exist by sapping energy from everything they touched. They existed by creating voids of darkness that moved about as rips in the very fabric of reality.
Shoki shivered even in the jadu state. The spots of darkness and the taint of jadu was growing as well, making it harder for him to concentrate.
Rise.
He did, ignoring the ghouls for the moment.
The castle appeared like a child’s plaything next to the mountain of light and dark that soared over it. The barrier he’d felt before. Shoki approached it cautiously, reducing the distance between them through a simple act of will.
Within the mountain of darkness, a mass of shimmering energy struggled against its bounds, bolts of lightning crackling, falling harmlessly into the nothingness surrounding it.
In the middle of the column of energy, sat a stone Shoki had seen before.
The Hejar stone.
Shoki stopped, his attention drawn by it. Now that he concentrated on it, he could see dark shadows moving across its smooth surface. Shadows of shadows, representations of beings that his mortal eyes weren’t meant to see. They whispered at Shoki, rekindling memories of his visit to the pari village.
“Come,” they cooed. “Give yourself to us.”
“How dare you attack me!” the shimmering mass of energy bellowed at him. “Leave or I will take everything from you!”
Shoki stood still. There was something wrong with the picture he was seeing. The stone was in the center of the mass, but fine, dark lines of pure void spidered away from its center, crisscrossing the body of shimmering energy.
Was the stone and the darkness… binding the mass of energy that had to be Afrasiab?
“Approach and give yourself to us,” the shadows whispered to Shoki. Voices distinct from Afrasiab.
“How dare you!” bellowed Afrasiab.
The shadows grew agitated over the surface, squeezing the mass of energy, eliciting a low, haunting scream that petrified Shoki.
The pressure on his temples grew to such a level that he heard himself cry out in the jadu world.
Once more, he snapped out of it, huffing as if he had run a hundred miles, his shirt drenched and sticking to his back.
“The taint?” Maharis asked, his voice calm, quiet, despite the din all around.
Nodding, Shoki forced himself to stand upright. Far as he could tell, the war was raging just as he had left it. But when he
looked back, the number of soldiers that had been waiting to join the battle had dwindled to nothing, and from what he could see ahead, more ghouls were still pouring through.
“I… I don’t know what to do,” he admitted to Maharis. “I… we might have made a mistake here and—”
“Ready your weapons,” Inquisitor Aboor bellowed. Shoki whipped his head around in confusion. Ghouls were moving toward them, their snarling faces and ungodly dark eyes focused on them. Even as more soldiers jumped in to push back the wave, Shoki could tell that more and more ghouls were turning their way. They knew he was here. “If they break through, be prepared to send them on their merry way.”
Shoki shook his head. Aathmik and Purnava were staring at the battlefield dumbly, their bodies rigid, tense. They exchanged a glance, taking a step back.
“Seize your jadu!” Shoki shouted at them. “Lend us all your power!”
Trembling, Purnava turned toward him. “They’re… they’re too many!”
“We will prevail!” Shoki shouted back. The magi women exchanged another nervous glance, then turned around, and ran.
“No! Come back, gods damn you!” Shoki bellowed. “For the sake of all that’s holy and just, come back!”
Inquisitor Aboor spat to his side. “Craven magi!” He tested the edge of his sword with his fingertip. “Looks like I’ll have to be the first one through the breach once more.”
“Wait,” said Maharis. “I’m not yet done.” He turned around, then waved over a thin soldier stumbling back, one hand pressed against his bleeding head. “Come here!” Maharis approached the wounded soldier, then closing his eyes, pressed his hand on the soldier’s chest. The soldier’s body began thrashing as Maharis stepped back. His hands dropped to his side, his limbs spasming, the blood staunching as if cauterized.
Then, he began to grow.
Shoki swallowed as the inquisitors began to inch away from the man.
“W-what’s happening to me?” the man screamed, his words turning into a growl halfway through the sentence.
“You’re getting a new lease on life,” Maharis said. He snapped his fingers and pointed at the ghouls. “Kill them all!”
The man, now more than eight feet tall, lumbered forward as if half-drunk. The body continued to grow, eliciting grunts from the monstrosity. The few bits of clothing that had managed to remain on his body split, falling to his sides, revealing bulging veins the size of ripe oranges.
“No!” Maharis wailed.
The beast thundered, stopping mid-stride, one arm raised high like a hammer meant to split a ghoul’s head.
Then, the body burst open, spewing viscera and blood and sinew.
Shoki straggled back as bits landed on his tunic.
“Gods be praised!” shouted one of the inquisitors as those beside him gagged and coughed out the bits they had inhaled.
Maharis bowed his head.
“Taint?” Shoki demanded. His eyes found Jiza and Kafayos who stood behind them all, watching the proceedings coldly. No, that wasn’t quite right. Jiza held onto Kafayos’s arm.
“Aye,” Maharis wheezed.
“Prepare yourselves,” Inquisitor Aboor bellowed once more.
“I… I need to gift my power to myself,” Maharis muttered.
Shoki reached forward and grabbed the magus’s thin wrist. “You’re a Jaman magus. If you used your powers on yourself, wouldn't you be placing yourself at risk?”
Maharis offered a weak smile. “Shoki, I’ve lived almost all my life as a sniveling, weak man. If there ever was a time to go out with a bang, this is it.”
Then before Shoki could say a word, he closed his eyes once more, and touched his chest with both of his palms.
Shouts went up.
Shoki looked up, then readied his own sword, seeing the ghouls break through the last line of soldiers.
Chapter 42
Aboor
“Mountain’s stinking breath!”
Aboor lunged forward, spearing the first ghoul that shambled toward them. Grunting with effort, he withdrew his sword, feeling it catch within the beast’s body. A tiny sliver of fear dared rear its head. This was no ordinary battle waged against an enemy he understood. He shoved the fears aside. He was an inquisitor of the Kalb, and his entire life was devoted to fighting abominations of all kinds. The reason he was here was to put the fear of God into the hearts of these beasts and ensure they didn't upend the great balance he had to strike.
Grinning, relishing the rush of energy surging through his body, Aboor side-stepped an awkward sweep from the second ghoul, just as ugly as the first, its features different as if a different variation on the same nightmare. Spinning on his rotten leg, Aboor sunk the sword to the hilt in a third ghoul’s belly. Then, as he retrieved the sword, he swung it about in an arc, half-decapitating the second ghoul.
He shook his head. The enemy was slow and easy enough to fight but had the advantage of numbers. He couldn't waste energy on flamboyant attacks that left him dry.
“Form a line,” he shouted, then pushed a couple of inquisitors in who had stepped away. “Do not be fooled by them. Maintain your formation at the pain of death.”
“Kapan, in line!” shouted Kadoon, slapping an inquisitor to his right. “Listen to the Sahib Inquisitor.”
Aboor grinned, feeling three decades younger and four stones lighter. It was an illusion, the rational, cynical part of his mind knew that much, but in the heat of the moment, it didn't matter. He just hoped it would last until the battle was over.
He stepped in front of his inquisitors and glanced back. A dozen of their soldiers were routing, leaving blood trails as they shambled back. Hopefully, one of them was a messenger rushing out to get their reserves. Where were the damned magi anyway? The djinn stood behind them, as did the three who had followed him, but the women were gone.
Shoki was snarling, closing his good eye over and over, trying and apparently failing to summon his well. The magi were tainted, had always been, but seeing Shoki struggle carried a bitter reminder of how much the rot had gotten them as well.
His eyes fell on Maharis.
The weak man was a giant more than seven feet tall, his loose robes clinging tightly against his bulging muscles. A Jaman magus wasn't meant to consume their own well—a basic limitation imposed on all magi. But he, Maharis, had taken the risk.
An honorable thing.
More so, coming from a magus.
Even as blood streamed in his ears, he saw the real reason he was here. This was a fresh start. If they made it out of here, he could never go back to a world where inquisitors bonded magi against their will or refused to entertain the possibility of a world where the two coexisted. The world had changed quite a long time ago, but despite reminding others of the fact all this time, he was only just realizing it.
“Our goal remains the same,” Aboor ordered, turning back to look the inquisitors in the eyes. “Remain alive. Do not step out of formation. Get through the ghouls and into the castle itself. Find the Ajeeb magus and give him the severance he should have received all those centuries ago.”
The men roared back their approval.
Grimacing, Aboor turned around and stepped forward. There were no battle lines anymore. Everywhere he looked, he saw a jumble of limbs and bloody bits. Another few yards and he almost forgot they were fighting ghouls. The faceless enemy came in many guises, their exact form and peculiarities irrelevant when it came to the crux of it.
He was a soldier now, a sword in hand, and an objective to follow through. No more, no less. So long as his inquisitors remained alive, he had a path ahead of him. Like the breach at Kohkam, he just had to carve a way through the jumble of fighting bodies and ambush the enemy from within.
That was the only way they’d win this battle.
He lunged forward, stabbing a ghoul in the chest, then pivoting on his good leg to kick another who had stepped into his view. Kadoon screamed, his sword cleaving through the ghoul’s skull, splitting it in half
.
Aboor nodded, then, seeing an opening through the thick of bodies, motioned his inquisitors to follow him. The cynical, worldly voice in his head warned him against the risks. He should turn around and return with a better-organized army. But if he fled, he’d never get this chance at a new beginning again. The battle was larger than it appeared, its consequences far greater than simply severing a magus in his stronghold.
Even if he perished here, it’d be an honorable death.
He dodged another ghoul’s attack, slicing open its guts, and kicking it to the side. Another ghoul stepped in his path and went down the next second. But even before he had caught his breath, a third was taking its place.
That was what that djinn, Kafayos, had warned about. The salars of these ghouls—as ridiculous as the very idea sounded—had obviously decided they were the targets.
“Push through!” he bellowed.
More snarling, ghastly ghouls were gathering in front, making it impossible to stand their ground. A sea of rotten, purifying corpses of a variety of hues ranging from sickly green to shriveled black. Grunting, sword held out high, he took a step back. As did the inquisitors.
“They’re far too many!” Kadoon shouted.
“I can see that,” he snapped right back. “Keep your sword up.”
They weren't the only ones being pushed back over the bodies of trampled ghouls and their fellow soldiers. Men were shouting all around them, straggling back, unable to sustain the forward momentum that was so important in these battles.
Had this been any other battle, he’d have already concluded they had lost.
It wasn't an ordinary battle though. He looked over the heads of ghouls. Maharis was a dozen yards ahead, surrounded by a sea of ghouls. Somehow, he remained upright, a one-man army with the strength of two dozen men.
