The Sahrayn sailor shuddered again. “Everyone who’s made it to that beach has been slaughtered.” His voice rose. “We should just take blades to each other’s throats—it’s a better fate than being eaten alive.”
“They’re picking us off,” Ali argued. “We stand a better chance if we fight together . . .” He eyed the men around him “Would you stay here only to be killed later? Look at what they did to the Citadel. Do you think that wasn’t deliberate? They came after the Royal Guard first, and if you think whatever is attacking us is going to have mercy on a band of stranded survivors, you’re a fool.”
A Geziri captain with a nasty gash across his face spoke up. “We’d be in view of those archers. They’ll see us swimming and have us riddled with arrows before we even get close to the shore.”
“Ah, but they won’t see me coming.” Ali kicked off his sandals. It would be easier to swim without them. “I’ll stay under the water until I get to the wall.”
The captain stared at him. “Prince Alizayd . . . your courage is admirable, but you can’t swim that length underwater. And even if you could, you’re just one man. I counted at least a dozen of those warriors and probably a hundred ghouls. It’s suicide.”
“He can do it.” It was Lubayd, his voice intense. He met Ali’s gaze, and from the mix of grief and admiration in his friend’s eyes, Ali could tell Lubayd knew what he was preparing to do. “He doesn’t fight like the rest of us.”
Still seeing uncertainty on too many faces, Ali raised his voice. “Daevabad is our home! You all took oaths to defend it, to defend the innocents within who are about to be butchered by the same monsters who just killed so many of our brothers and sisters. You will get back to that beach. Gather all the weapons you can. Help each other swim. Paddle on pieces of wood. I don’t care how you do it, but get across. Fight. Stop those things before they get into the city.”
By his last words, a good number of the men were rising to their feet, grim but determined, but not all.
“We’ll die,” the Sahrayn sailor said hoarsely.
“Then you will die a martyr.” Ali glared at those still sitting. “Stand up!” he roared. “Your fellows lie dead, your women and children are defenseless, and you’re sitting here weeping for yourselves? Have you no shame?” He paused, meeting each of their gazes in turn. “You all have a choice. You can end this night a hero, with your families safe, or you end it with them in Paradise, their entrance bought with your blood.” He drew his zulfiqar, fire blazing down its length. “STAND UP!”
Lubayd raised his sword with a wild—and slightly frightened—cry. “Come, you puffed-up city-born brats!” he goaded. “What happened to all the crowing I’ve been hearing about your bravery? Don’t you want to be sung about in the stories they’ll tell of this night? Let’s go!”
That brought the rest of them to their feet. “Prepare yourselves,” Ali ordered. “Be ready to go as soon as they’re distracted.” His heart racing, he shoved his zulfiqar back into its sheath, ripping a length from his ruined dishdasha to secure his blades.
Lubayd grabbed his wrist, pulling him close. “Don’t you fucking die, Alizayd al Qahtani,” he said, pressing his brow to Ali’s. “I did not drag your starving ass from a crevasse to see you eaten by ghouls.”
Ali fought the tears pricking his eyes; they both knew there was little chance he was making it off the beach alive. “God be with you, my friend.”
He turned away. Before he could show the fear coursing through his blood, before the others could see even a second of hesitation, Ali dove into the lake.
He swam deep, the motion throwing him back into his memory of the marid nightmare. Though the water was dark with silt, he caught sight of the lake bed below. It was muddy and gray, a pale imitation from the lush marine plain of his dream.
Could the marid be behind all this? Ali wondered, remembering their rage. Had they returned to take back their home?
He kept swimming. Ali was fast and it wasn’t long before he caught sight of the wall he was looking for. He took care to press himself close against it as he silently broke the water’s surface.
Voices. Ali listened closer. He wasn’t sure what he expected—the gibberish of some unknown demons, the slithering tongue of the marid—but what he heard froze his blood.
It was Divasti.
They were being attacked by Daevas? Ali glanced up, past a narrow lip of overhanging rock, and caught a glimpse of a young man. He looked as though he could be a Daeva, dressed in a charcoal-colored coat and black leggings, the dark colors blending perfectly with the shadows.
How in God’s name did a band of Daevas come through the lake armed with ghouls and flying horses?
The Daeva man suddenly drew up, his attention narrowing on the lake. He reached for his bow . . .
Ali was out of the water in the next breath. He pulled himself onto the wall before the shocked eyes of the man, drew his zulfiqar, and plunged the fiery blade into the archer’s chest.
The man didn’t have a chance to scream. Ali shoved him off the end of his zulfiqar and knocked him into the water. He’d turned to face the others before a splash even sounded.
Daevas, three of them. Another archer—a woman with a long black braid—and two men armed with a broadsword and a mace. They looked taken aback by his arrival, aghast at their comrade’s death. But not afraid.
And they reacted a lot faster than he would have imagined.
The first drew his broadsword, the acrid smell warning Ali of iron before it sparked hard against his zulfiqar. The man danced back, careful to avoid the poisoned flame. It was a move Ali associated with other Geziris, with warriors who’d trained against zulfiqars.
Where had a Daeva man learned that?
Ali ducked, narrowly avoiding the studded mace that swung past his face. The Daevas neatly fanned out to surround him, moving in perfect unison without saying a word.
Then the remaining archer hissed in Djinnistani. “It’s the Afshin-slayer.” She let out a mocking laugh. “Bit of a disingenuous title, sand fly.”
The swordsman lunged forward, forcing Ali to block him, and again the mace-bearer used the distraction to attack. This time the mace clipped Ali’s shoulder, the studs tearing out a patch of flesh.
Ali gasped at the burn, and one of the Daeva men leered at him. “They’ll eat you alive, you know,” he said, gesturing to the ghouls below. “Not us, of course. Orders and all. But I bet they smell your blood on the air right now. I bet it’s making them ravenous.”
The three warriors stepped closer, forcing Ali to the edge of the wall. He didn’t know who had trained the Daevas, but they’d done a damn good job, the soldiers moving as if they were of one mind.
But then the swordsman pressed too close. Ali dropped, seeing his opening and lunging at the man holding the mace. He caught him clean across one thigh, the poisoned flames leaving a line of swiftly blackening flesh in their wake.
“Bahram!” the archer cried in horror. The man looked shocked, his hand going to the fatal wound. Then he glanced at Ali, his eyes wild.
“For the Banu Nahida,” he whispered and rushed forward.
Caught completely off guard by the man’s declaration, Ali was ill-prepared for his desperate charge. He raised his zulfiqar in defense, but it didn’t matter. The man took the strike through the stomach, throwing himself on Ali and sending them both tumbling over the wall.
Ali landed with a bone-jarring impact on the wet sand. A wave passed over his face, and he choked on the water, his shoulder throbbing. His zulfiqar was gone, stuck in the body of the Daeva man he’d killed, now lying deeper in the shallows.
A high-pitched moan had him struggling to his knees, the hungry whines and tongueless shrieks of the undead ghouls growing louder. Ali turned his head.
His eyes went wide. There were scores of ghouls running for him—some bloated corpses of putrefied flesh and bloody teeth, others reduced to skeletons, their clawed hands sharp as knives. And they were only second
s away from closing in. They’d eat him alive, rip him apart, and be waiting for his friends—the few who survived the archer he saw even now nocking an arrow.
No. This couldn’t be their fate. His family, his city. Ali thrust his hands into the wet sand, the water surging through his fingers.
“Help me!” he begged, crying out to the marid. The ancient monsters had already used him; he knew their assistance would come with a terrible price, but right now Ali didn’t care. “Please!”
Nothing. The water stayed silent and lifeless. The marid were gone.
But in a small corner of his mind, something stirred. Not the alien presence he expected, but one that was familiar and comforting. The part of Ali that delighted in wading through the flooded fields of Bir Nabat and watching the way the water made life bloom. The memory of the little boy whose mother had carefully taught him to swim. The protective instinct that had saved him from countless assassins.
A part of him that he denied, a power that frightened him. For the first time since falling in the lake that awful night . . . Ali embraced it.
When the next wave broke, the world was quiet. Soft and slow and gray. Suddenly, it didn’t matter if he didn’t have his zulfiqar at hand. If he was outnumbered.
Because Ali had everything else. The water at his feet that was like a deadly, angry animal pacing its cage. The moisture in the air that was thick and heady, coating every surface. The veins of underwater streams that were spikes of power and pulsing life and the springs in the rocky cliffs eager to burst their stony prison.
His fingers curved around the hilt of his khanjar. The ghouls surrounding him suddenly seemed insubstantial smoky nothings, the Daevas not much more. They were fire-blooded, true, burning bright.
But fire could be extinguished.
Ali screamed into the night, and the moisture in the air burst around him, pouring down as rain that licked his wounds, soothing and healing his battered body. With a snap of his fingers, he raised a fog to shroud the beach. He heard the archer cry out, surprised by her sudden blindness.
But Ali wasn’t blind. He lunged for his zulfiqar, yanking it from the dead man’s body just as the ghouls attacked.
With the zulfiqar in one hand and the khanjar in the other, droplets of water spinning off their wet blades, he cut through the crowd of undead. They kept coming, relentless, two new ghouls pushing through for every one he decapitated. A furious flurry of snapping teeth and bony hands, seaweed wrapping their decayed limbs.
The Daevas on the wall above him ran, the heat from their fire-blooded bodies vanishing. There were others; Ali could sense another trio rushing to join them and five already in the remains of the Citadel. Ten in total, that he knew.
Ali could kill ten men. He cut off the head of the ghoul blocking his path, kicked another in the chest, and then raced after the Daevas.
He stopped to fling his khanjar at the closest, catching the man in the back. Ali plunged it deeper when he caught up, twisting the dagger until the man stopped screaming before yanking it free.
Pounding caught his attention. He glanced back through the gloom he’d conjured to see two archers on smoky horseback racing along the water’s edge. One drew back his bowstring.
Ali hissed, calling to the lake. Watery fingers snaked around the horses’ legs, dragging the archers into the depths as their enchanted mounts disappeared in a spray of mist. He kept running. Two of the fleeing Daevas stopped, perhaps inspired by a burst of courage to stand their ground and defend their fellows.
Ali put his zulfiqar through the heart of the first, his dagger opening the throat of the second.
Seven men left.
But the ghouls caught up with him as he lunged for the wrecked outer wall of the Citadel, snatching him back as he attempted to climb it. There was a blur of bone, the scent of rot and blood overwhelming as they tore into him. Ali screamed as one bit deeply into his already wounded shoulder. They were everywhere, and his hold on the powerful water magic dipped as panic seized him.
Daevabad, Alizayd, his father’s voice whispered. Daevabad comes first. Bleeding badly, Ali gave more of himself up, embracing the raw magic coursing so wildly within him that it felt like his body would burst.
He was given a gift in return. The sudden awareness of a rich vein of water beneath him, a hidden stream snaking deep, deep under the sand. Ali called to it, yanking it up like a whip.
Stone and sand and water went flying. Ali lashed it at the ghouls, taking out enough to escape the horde. He scrambled over the ruined Citadel wall.
Another pair of Daevas had been left to deal with him, their bravery rewarded with two swift strikes of his zulfiqar that took their heads. Blood was running down his face, torn patches of flesh burning under his tattered dishdasha.
It didn’t matter. Ali dashed toward the breach, arrows raining down on him as he navigated the broken courtyard where he’d first learned to fight. The bodies of his fellow djinn were everywhere, some pierced with arrows, some torn apart by ghouls, others simply crushed in the violent mayhem the lake-beast had unleashed upon the complex. Grief and rage flooded his veins, pushing him on. And though the archers might have been able to see in the summoned fog, one nearly struck true, an arrow tearing past his thigh. Ali gasped.
But he didn’t stop.
He vaulted over a ruined pile of sandstone, what he dimly recognized as the sunny diwan in which he’d attempted to teach economics to a bored group of cadets. The swordsman who’d mocked him stood there now, shaking as he raised his blade.
“Demon!” the Daeva screamed. “What the hell are y—”
Ali silenced him with his khanjar.
Four left. He inhaled, taking a moment to survey his surroundings. A glance revealed two archers still standing on the Citadel wall, a position from which they’d be able to easily target the soldiers landing on the beach. The remaining two Daevas had swords in their hands. They were steps from the breach in the Citadel wall that led into the city, a mob of ghouls on their heels.
Ali closed his eyes, dropping his blades, sinking to the ground and plunging his hands into one of the pools of water left by the lake’s attack. He could feel his fellows in the distance, the last survivors of the Royal Guard staggering out of the water. But none were close to the Citadel. Not yet.
Good. He called to the lake again, feeling it pace in his mind. It was angry. It wanted vengeance on the stone island marring its heart.
Ali was about to let it take a small piece. He beckoned to the waves lashing the wall. Come.
They answered.
The water roared as it crashed over the Citadel, dashing the archers against the stone courtyard. It parted as it neared him, rushing past to grab the ghouls and smash them to bits. A single scream rent the air as it swallowed the last Daevas and raced to the breach, eager to devour the rest of the city.
It took everything Ali had to rein it in. There was a howl in his head, and then he was the one screaming, clawing at the ground as he wrenched the lake back the way it had come. The water fell at his feet, surging into the sand and swirling into ruined, rocky crevices.
His hold on the magic disintegrated and Ali collapsed. Blood and sweat poured from him in equal parts as he sprawled on the ground. His ears were ringing, the scars the marid had carved in his body throbbing. His vision briefly blurred as his muscles seized.
And then he was lying still upon the cold, wet ground. The sky was a rich black, the spread of stars beautiful and inviting.
“Alizayd!”
Though Ali heard Lubayd shout his name, his friend seemed a world away. Everything did, save the beckoning stars and the warm blood spreading beneath him.
There was a crack of thunder. Odd, he dimly noticed, as the night sky was cloudless.
“Ali!” Lubayd’s face swam into view above his. “Oh, brother, no . . .” He glanced back. “We need help!”
But the ground was already turning cold again, water seeping up through the sand to embrace him. Ali blinked, h
is mind a degree clearer. The spots dancing before his eyes faded as well—just in time for Ali to notice an oily black smoke rising behind Lubayd. The tendrils danced, twisting together.
Ali tried to croak out his friend’s name. “Lu-Lubay—”
Lubayd hushed him. “It’s okay, just hold on. We’re going to get you to that Nahid of yours, and you’ll be fine.” He tucked Ali’s zulfiqar back in his belt, and a smile cracked across his face, doing little to erase the worry in his eyes. “Don’t you be letting this—”
A jarring, crunching sound stole Lubayd’s words. His friend’s expression froze and then his body jerked slightly as the crunch came again, a terrible sucking noise. Lubayd opened his mouth as if to speak.
Black blood spilled from his lips. A fiery hand shoved him out of the way, and his friend crumpled.
“By the Creator . . . ,” a smoky voice drawled. “What are you—you lovely, destructive bit of chaos?”
Ali gaped at the creature looming over him, its clawed hand clutching a bloody war ax. It was a skinny wraith of a thing, with limbs that looked like pressed light and golden eyes that flared and flashed. And there was only one creature in their world that looked like that.
An ifrit. An ifrit had crossed the veil into Daevabad.
The ifrit seized him by the throat, and Ali gasped as he was lifted into the air. It pulled him close, its glittering eyes inches from Ali’s face. The smell of blood and ash washed over Ali as the ifrit ran a tongue over its sharp teeth, unmistakable hunger and curiosity in its feral expression.
It inhaled. “Salt,” it whispered. “You’re the one the marid took, aren’t you?” One of its razor-sharp claws pressed hard against his throat, and Ali got the impression it would be nothing for the demon to rip it open. “But this . . .” He gestured to the ruined courtyard and drowned Daevas. “I’ve never seen anything like this.” Its other hand ran down Ali’s arm, a quick examination. “Nor anything like the magic simmering off you.” The fiery eyes gleamed. “I’d love to take you apart, little one. See how that works, layer by layer . . .”
The Kingdom of Copper Page 52
