A Veil of Spears

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Fahrel gasped. A moan escaped her, one filled with pain and sorrow. And then, like the quieting of a winter breeze, Çeda felt Fahrel’s soul depart. Her skin turned ashen. Her eyelids fluttered as the color in her eyes turned to ice. In her place stood another. Çeda could see it in the intensity of her eyes, which had been cast anew. That unchained soul stared about the circle. Her nostrils flared. Her lips drew back to reveal a row of perfect teeth. Everything about her spoke of the desire to fly over the desert, to expend her rage upon her enemies.

  Çeda moved to the next in the circle, Stavehn, a stout man with a misshapen face and a bulbous nose. “You are the light that guides us,” Çeda said and kissed his forehead.

  He did not stare at the sky as his soul departed, but at Çeda, his impotent fury plain to see. The asir that filled his form kept that intensity, but the mood had changed. He was a vessel filled with power: trapped lightning, ready to be unleashed.

  One by one Çeda and Leorah walked along the circle, and one by one an asir took the form of the man or woman before her until only Salsanna remained. Çeda wanted to spare her. She’d hardly come to know this valiant woman and now she was leaving. But to question her would be to insult her gravely, so she nodded, and Salsanna nodded back.

  “Go well,” Çeda said to her.

  “May we meet again,” Salsanna replied.

  Çeda guided the last, and Salsanna departed these shores. In her place stood someone who sent a chill along Çeda’s spine. The other asirim held power, but this one held more. Like Sehid-Alaz, like Kerim, like Havva, she was so intense she burned from within.

  Çeda heard a crack, like the breaking of fine porcelain. She looked down and saw the jet stone had broken down the middle. As she watched another fissure appeared, and another, dark fragments breaking away and falling to the amber sand until none remained in the bracelet’s artful setting.

  As Çeda removed the bracelet and tossed it among the black fragments, the sun crested the horizon. It shone bright and beautiful upon all those gathered. Çeda thought the Forsaken would be bent as the asirim. But they weren’t. They stood tall, holy avengers unsullied by the taint of the Sharakhani Kings.

  All those gathered stared in awe and no one appeared ready to speak, as if doing so might change their nature, might bend their backs and turn them into the servants of the Kings once more.

  When another bell rang, the spell was broken.

  “The Kings’ ships are moving!” the lookout called.

  The wind was strong and growing stronger. “Battle is upon us!” Ishaq called.

  The thirteenth tribe obeyed and spread to their assigned ships. Çeda was about to move toward hers when she saw how bent Leorah was, how weak. “Come, grandmother,” Çeda said. “You and your sister have done well.”

  Leorah looked up with surprise in her eyes. “You know?”

  “I suspected, ever since Salsanna told me the story of Devorah. As I feel the asirim, I felt Devorah within the amethyst, though at first I didn’t recognize it as such. Once I did, I began to sense changes at dusk and dawn, when your souls shift between body and stone.” Çeda gripped Leorah’s right hand, the one with the great amethyst ring. “It’s how you were able to help shepherd the Forsaken into their new forms, yes?”

  Leorah nodded, her eyes suddenly misty. “I’m glad you know, child.”

  “I am too,” Çeda replied. “I feel both of you now, lending one another strength. She’s carried you for some time, but she doesn’t do so alone. I’ll help as I can.”

  “Very well, child.” Leorah smiled a grandmother’s smile, and motioned to her yacht. “Come with me. I’ve fight in me yet.”

  Me too, Çeda thought, and led her onward.

  Chapter 61

  THE AUTUMN ROSE SAILED the morning sand. Shaikh Aríz’s crew was tense but ready. None of the grim determination they’d shown by the fireside had diminished. If anything, it seemed more intense now that the time for battle was upon them.

  Well and good, Emre thought. We’ll need all the bravery we can get.

  He stood amidships, watching their fleet of thirty sail ever closer to the Kings’ line of navy ships. Thirty against their seventy-three. Impossible odds already, but there was Çeda’s mission to consider as well. She hoped to press deep into the Black Spear fleet and kill Onur, then rally the other tribes to join their cause against the Kings. Emre saw her fleet sailing in the opposite direction: nine ships readying their attack against Onur.

  “Nine bloody ships,” he said under his breath. “What madness have we given birth to?”

  It wasn’t only that they were facing similar odds against Onur. It was that they had to move quickly if any of this was going to work. Wait too long and the Kings’ ships will have decimated Macide’s cadre of ships.

  The only saving grace was that the Kings had spread their fleet thin before the wind dropped. They must have been counting on the thirteenth tribe to flee, perhaps in many directions at once. Their spread formation would allow them to divert two ships to every one that fled and still have ships left over. And if the tribe chose to flee in a tight cluster, the Kings’ faster ships would be able to slow them down while others sailed in behind to finish them off.

  Haddad stood near Emre with a bright red scarf wrapped around her head. The tail blew in the early morning wind. “This isn’t a bad way to die.”

  “I’d prefer not to die at all.”

  “Who doesn’t? But the lord of all things comes for us all. Wouldn’t you rather that day be grand?” She waved her arms wide. “However it ends, this is a day the desert will sing about for a thousand years.”

  “Perhaps, but if we lose, we’ll be painted as the villains. Is that what you want?”

  “The victors may spin their tales, Emre, but the truth will find its way free. So be bold. Be brave. Let the fates see to the rest.”

  Emre’s laugh was cut short when a shout came from belowdecks. Moments later, three crewmen emerged with two familiar faces coming up the ladder behind them: Ramahd and Brama. Frail Lemi trailed behind them, cracking his knuckles with a look like he hoped they would try something.

  Emre met them near the hatch. Haddad joined him, as did Aríz, Tribe Kadri’s young shaikh. “Surely my eyes deceive me,” Emre said. “Brama Junayd’ava and Ramahd bloody fucking Amansir? I’d wager my left nut you were both told to leave the desert behind.”

  Frail Lemi laughed. “Left nut . . .”

  Brama stared at Emre with that same cocksure look he’d had when he was young, the one that dared him to say something smart to him again. It had always been a bit of a joke back then. No one had ever mistaken Brama for a fighter—he’d been nothing but a thief, a second story man—but this was not the same Brama. The scars over his face spoke of a different man, as did his expression, which reminded Emre of the massive rats that plagued the west end. They were bold, those things. It sent chills down the spine just to look at them.

  Ramahd was different. He was staring at Emre as a man lost in the desert views an oasis. He wanted something, but just then Emre didn’t care what. He pulled his knife and advanced on him.

  “Stop, or Çeda dies,” Ramahd said quickly.

  Emre stayed his hand. He gripped the knife, certain that whatever Ramahd had to say would be a lie. But what if it wasn’t? He was many things, but he’d never struck Emre as a liar. “This had better change my mind.”

  “You heard me at the council. Every word of it was true. Before the sun has set, Guhldrathen will be here. Çeda’s in grave danger, but there’s a way we might save her.”

  In the distance, the Kings’ fleet loomed. It wouldn’t be long before they met in battle. “How?” Emre said.

  Ramahd’s relief was clear, not only in his face, but in the way his words almost tripped over themselves. “You’ve heard the stories of the ehrekh. How dangerous they are. How angered they become
when betrayed.”

  Emre brandished his kenshar. “We have no time for stories, Lord Amansir!”

  Ramahd tipped his head toward Brama. “He has an obsidian stone with him. If we break the sapphire that traps Meryam’s ehrekh, it will be freed, but with the stone, he can control it. Can you imagine the devastation it might wreak upon the Kings’ fleet?”

  “Is there a stone?” Emre asked the men holding Brama.

  They patted Brama down and found a pouch inside his trousers. Inside was a disc of black, glasslike obsidian. Emre took it, but felt nothing special about it. “How can this free the ehrekh?”

  “No,” Brama replied, “we must break the sapphire around Queen Meryam’s neck first. That”—he nodded toward the obsidian—“will make her bend to my will.”

  Emre shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Believe me when I say it will work,” Brama said. “But even if you choose not to believe me, I’m offering you a powerful tool, one the Kings would surely use against you.”

  “This smells, Brama.” Emre held the stone to the morning light and saw the sun shine through it like a silver coin in sepia ink. “It smells of ox dung and goat piss. The ehrekh cannot be controlled.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Brama replied. “But what’s your alternative? Run the Kings into the sand beneath the skis of your mighty fleet?” He made a show of looking along the line of the tribe’s ships. “Setting aside the Kings themselves, and the blood mage, Meryam, they still outnumber you three to one. They boast the finest ships in the desert and crews who know them better than you know your own cock. Are you ready to stand against a thousand Spears and a hundred ebon blades? Your hope of Çeda and Ishaq overcoming Onur in time to turn the tide is a mummer’s fancy. None of you will last. Not you, not Macide”—he looked to Haddad—“not your pretty friend from Malasan, and not Çeda.”

  Brama’s eyes burned like a demon in the night. “But consider this alternative. I know the ehrekh, Emre. There’s a reason the Kings fear them. There’s a reason spells were put upon the city walls to keep them out. But imagine if one were to land in the middle of their precious fleet. We’ll likely die either way, but at least we’ll have pissed in their soup before we feed the Great Mother. Imagine telling that story to Rafa when you reach the farther fields.”

  There was a manic glee in Brama’s grin that gave Emre hope. A normal man would quake at what lay before them, but Brama stood unafraid.

  No, not merely unafraid. Eager.

  The deck shifted as they crested a shallow dune. In that moment Emre noticed the crew. Truly noticed them. He’d been so intent on the day, ignoring everything else—the ship’s crew, her warriors, the old, the children, the wounded—that they’d become background, a part of the coming battle instead of what the battle was about. He dearly hoped he could save Çeda, but this battle was about so much more than her.

  All those on deck and in the rigging stared at him, awaiting his decision, looking to him for orders. He wasn’t prepared for this. He wasn’t prepared for any of it.

  Aríz would normally look to his vizir, Ali-Budrek, but he didn’t this time. He nodded to Emre, as if he sensed Emre’s indecision. “Whatever you decide, Tribe Kadri will follow.”

  Emre couldn’t lead them blindly into a battle they would lose, not without taking every opportunity to help them first. But gods, the battle was nearly on them already. The Autumn Rose was not a small ship, but the Kings’ galleons dwarfed it.

  “Do you know which ship they’ll be on?”

  Brama turned and pointed. “The sapphire is aboard that one, behind the line.”

  One of the Kings’ ships sailed a quarter-league back from all the others. Several other galleons along the navy fleet’s grand arc were doing the same. These were the Kings’ ships, Emre understood now, and they’d be well protected from the initial onslaught.

  How to reach Queen Meryam’s, then? The chances that the Rose would be stopped were high, and he couldn’t leave it to chance.

  He turned, looking over the ship’s deck, staring out across the quarterdeck to the ships sailing in a line behind them. And then his eyes fell upon the skiff secured to the ship’s stern.

  It struck him then, a crazy idea that seemed crazier by the moment. “Here,” he called to the flagman. “Hurry. We need to send a message to Macide.”

  Chapter 62

  ÇEDA COULD FEEL the morning’s wind gaining in strength. The Amaranth’s sails were full, the angle was favorable as well, and the captain was taking full advantage of both. It felt angry, the wind, even eager. Surely Thaash himself had come to witness the coming battle. Though if so, does that mean he’ll grant his favor to the Kings?

  Eight ships followed in the Amaranth’s wake. Nine ships in all had been fielded to do battle against the Black Spear fleet. Çeda had to laugh, if only to break the tension. “I don’t know if you’re listening, Nalamae, but we need you. This day of all days, guide our steps.”

  How she wished she could speak to the goddess directly. But she couldn’t. The goddess was in hiding.

  She glanced over to the bowsprit, where Leorah was standing with one hand holding the jib sheet for balance. She was peering at the line of Black Spear ships as if her very gaze could peel away the hulls and reveal all that lay within. Her right hand gripped Nalamae’s staff. Her whole body was quivering.

  Ishaq and Çeda had both questioned her about the staff. She admitted that Nalamae had given it to her, and that it had been done to even the scales for Yerinde’s granting of the wyrm to Onur. Beyond this, she refused to say more, and Çeda had the impression Nalamae herself had forbade her from speaking of it.

  The goddess saw far, Çeda knew, and the stakes were clearly larger than this one battle. If it was true Yerinde had granted Onur power over the wyrm, it meant the other gods were involved, actively involved, in this conflict, and that Nalamae must tread with utmost care lest her brothers and sisters find her. Had Ihsan himself not asked after Nalamae? Were the other gods meddling on Tauriyat as well as the desert? It would explain Nalamae’s hesitance, but knowing made it no less frustrating.

  She gazed west and took in the long line of Kings’ ships, some of which were now breaking away from the battle with Emre’s small fleet and heading toward their looming conflict with Onur. We might lose this war before it’s truly begun.

  Sümeya and Melis joined Çeda on the foredeck. All three had their veils pulled across their faces, to ward against the biting wind. Seeing them there, Ishaq stepped up to the foredeck. His pepper-gray beard blew over his shoulder as he considered the ships ahead. He seemed content as if, after running his whole life, he was grateful for the chance to stop and turn and strike at the heart of the Kings.

  “You’re strangely calm,” Sümeya said to him.

  He ignored her and called to Leorah, “Have you found him?”

  Leorah shook her head violently. “No.” The wind tugged strands of hair from the bun atop her head as she shook her head again. “Now leave me be!”

  She was crying, Çeda realized. She wished desperately to help, but it was too much. She’d been pushed to the point of exhaustion.

  “Mother, it’s time to go.” Ishaq tried to lead her away, but she remained, the fingers of her left hand refusing to let go of the jib line. “It’s time to go below. The battle’s about to begin.”

  Bent like a dying tree, she swiveled her head to stare at Ishaq. “I’m not afraid of battle.”

  “Have no fear,” Çeda said to them both. “We’ll find him. He’ll come to survey the battle sooner or later.”

  Ishaq’s attention was caught by something along the horizon. Sidewinding through the sky like a pennant on the wind was the sand wyrm. It flew toward the ships, surely summoned by Onur.

  The crew tensed. All eyes followed the wyrm, even as they readied the ship for battle. If it were possible, Leo
rah became more intense, her look more desperate. She scanned the ships ahead and tried to blink away the tears streaming from her bloodshot eyes. Then, without warning, her eyes rolled back in her head, and her limbs went slack.

  Ishaq and Çeda caught her, and gave her to Frail Lemi, who lifted her as if she weighed nothing. The big man whispered tenderly to her as he carried her away. “It’s all right, grandmother. All will be well.”

  The first of the cat’s claws were launched a moment later. The thud of their launching filled the air as dozens more followed, arcing across a pale blue sky to catch the struts of the oncoming ships. Burning pots flew as well, trailing black smoke. The Black Spear ships responded in kind, moments before the amber wyrm arced down toward the Amaranth.

  A jolt of fear ran through her to see the beast undulating across the pale blue sky, its wings spread wide, the morning sun lancing through the magenta veins that streaked its translucent skin. Terror set Çeda’s heart to pounding, but her fear was tempered by relief. She’d reasoned that Onur would send the wyrm at Ishaq’s ship. Ishaq had agreed and allowed all seventeen of the Forsaken, their asirim, to lie in wait belowdecks.

  She could feel their hunger in the hold below. Not yet, she said to them, but the time has nearly come.

  Closer and closer came the Black Spear ships. Closer and closer came the wyrm. Just as it spread its wings and arched its taloned feet forward, Çeda called, “Now, my brethren! Now!”

  The crew slid back the hatch over the hold and the Forsaken sprang forth. They wore their white gauze still, refusing to be encumbered by armor. Each carried two long fighting knives. It was strange to see them so. Çeda was used to seeing the asirim crouched like animals, in pain from the constant torture of serving the Kings and the magic the gods had laid upon them. But these were different. Theirs was a righteous purpose, fearsome to behold.