The Black Khan

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  Raising his sword with grim purpose, Daniyar severed his hands.

  He staggered to his feet in time to meet the fire that blazed from the Authoritan’s scepter. His armor disintegrated with a touch. But his flesh did not burn or bleed.

  Instead, the script on his chest flamed to life. It rose before him like a shroud, a garment of protection.

  Lania curled a hand in his direction, words pouring from her lips in a raging torrent of fire.

  “If the One should sustain you, none can ever overcome you. But if the One should forsake you, who can sustain you after? In the One, then, let the believers place their trust.”

  Her eyes blazed at the Authoritan with a mixture of triumph and compunction. “It is as you taught me, Khagan. Blood is power—my power—just as you always promised. I have ascended to the throne.”

  The Authoritan raised his staff at her, impotent sounds of fury issuing from his lips. Lania blocked him with a word. “Die.”

  The Authoritan spat out a response. “I cannot die. I am fed on the blood of the Silver Mage—the bloodrites render me immortal.”

  She raised a careless hand in Daniyar’s direction. “Look at him,” she said, a tender note in her voice. “Does it seem as though I bled the Silver Mage?” She pointed at the scepter, dissolving it into flame. “I fed you the blood of swine, collected these many months for this purpose.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Does it burn, my love? Does it render your power wretched?”

  “Lania—”

  The Authoritan choked out her name, blood flecking his lips. Crimson streaks bled through the harsh white lines of his skull.

  She tilted her head to one side. Even bereft of her headdress, her power and majesty were terrifying to behold.

  “It does burn. I’m so glad.” She held up the vial she’d hidden under her robes. With a delicate fingertip, she repainted her lips with traces of Daniyar’s blood. When she had finished her gruesome task, she pursed her mouth. “It was time, Khagan. You have ruled the Wall long enough.”

  She paced around him in a circle, watching him try to cough up the tainted blood. He clutched at the sudden hindrance of his robes, suborned by the heft of his bones, heavy and graceless again.

  “I weakened you.” She trailed her bloody fingertip along the pale expanse of his forehead.

  “And I healed myself, Khagan. What did you imagine those trials with the bloodbasin were? They were my bloodrites. They aided my Augury; they made me strong. I brought my sister and the Silver Mage here, the Silver Mage—who could not be defeated by the Talisman in Candour. And I sent the Bloodprint to safety. All this I have done, and I did it with what you taught me.”

  The Authoritan was driven to his knees by the tip of Lania’s finger.

  “Why?” he gritted between his teeth, stripped of his invincible aura. “I was your protector. I was once your savior.”

  “No,” she spat back at him. “I was traded to the Wall because of you. I was ravaged at your command. How could you imagine I wouldn’t be revenged for that? You will die, Khagan. I have suffered you long enough.”

  Now when Lania sang, her voice was eerie with pronouncement. It conjured up images of death.

  “I bring forth the dead out of that which once was living.”

  Daniyar stared at her with dread.

  This was how Lania conjured the Claim. She occulted each word with its opposite meaning. It was a darkness so grand and terrible, he felt the reaches of his soul shrink back from it. Had she learned it from the Authoritan—or had she taught it to him?

  Again he felt a traitorous, ignoble thought stray across his mind: With her occult abilities, she could have prevented the burning of the Candour. But she’d been playing her own game, reluctant to give away her hand.

  Leaving ruin in her wake, as she unraveled her grand design.

  The Authoritan’s breath rattled once from his chest and was still.

  The weight of his body collapsed inward. When only the shell was left, Lania hissed a final word. The bones of the High Priest of the Bloodless shattered, leaving behind a white powder. At Lania’s sharp look, two of the doves hurried to collect the fine white dust in a bowl.

  He gave her one last look, not sure if what he expressed was pity, admiration, thanks—or all three—then stood ready to join Arian.

  With the Claim silenced and the Authoritan destroyed, the Ahdath patrols faltered into the hall. None drew a sword against the Silver Mage. None attempted to recapture Arian, or Alisher cowering at her side.

  Instead, they assembled in formation. Two of the commanders whispered to each other. Lania marked them out. She hissed the arcane word at them. In a breath, they fell down dead. A murmur passed through the officers’ ranks and just as quickly subsided.

  Lania held up her palms. One faced the Ahdath, and to them she said, “I command the city and the Wall. If any man disobeys, he will meet the Authoritan’s fate. Is that clear?”

  None ventured to challenge her.

  With her other hand, Lania beckoned Arian close. “Did Nevus harm you, sister?” she asked. She had her answer when Arian moved nearer, exposing her injuries to the light.

  Lania’s palm slashed the air. Nevus’s head rolled neatly from his shoulders.

  “You should have taken his head as well as his hands,” she said to Daniyar. “But you’re too measured a man for that.” Her voice was touched with a note of wonder, though she meant the words as a disparagement.

  Her eyes narrowed as Daniyar stepped over Nevus’s body to gather Arian into his arms. Arian clung to him with a strength that surprised them both. They sought out each other’s wounds, each appalled at the suffering of the other. Tears streaked Arian’s cheeks at the sight of Daniyar’s blood, spilled in such excess that he wore it like a second skin. She tried to give him her cloak, but he wouldn’t allow her to remove it or to unlatch her arms from around his neck. He kissed her as if he were a dying man drinking from a gold-strewn river.

  Turning her head away from the sight, Lania spoke to the man skulking in the shadows. “Come forward,” she said. “Tell me your name.”

  Trembling, Alisher skirted the waiting Ahdath. He hovered just under the Authoritan’s whip, casting a chary eye upon it. His knees shaking, he bowed low before the Khanum. “Alisher, Highness. It’s Alisher, your tutor.”

  “Alisher?” She struck her hands together in a self-mocking gesture. “You I did not Augur. You were nowhere in my reading of the bloodrites.” Her voice sharpened. “I thought you dead. The Khagan sent you to the tower. The verse you wrote displeased him. I believe you wrote it for your beloved—see how the Khagan repaid you.”

  A grimace of pain twisted Alisher’s face.

  “Recite it for me now.”

  With her cracked face and her lips as red as a demon’s, Alisher dared not meet her eye. He mumbled the verse to himself.

  “Louder.”

  He cleared his throat, repeating himself while the Ahdath watched with manifest disfavor.

  “I would give up Black Aura and Marakand / Just for the mole on your cheek.”

  Lania smiled her cold, red smile. “You were my favorite tutor. You should have taken more care.”

  Alisher cast a quick glance at the Ahdath, unwilling to trust to Lania’s mastery. He hastened to agree. “It was presumptuous of me. I thought it would amuse him, as my verse often did. But he said Marakand and Black Aura were not mine to gift, and all for so trifling a sum. I told him he could see my exorbitance had left me in a state of poverty. The Khagan wasn’t amused.”

  “He wouldn’t have been. Black Aura and Marakand were the treasures he held closest to his heart. He admitted no other’s dominion. Not even in foolish verse.”

  “I learned that to my cost.”

  Lania took the measure of the hall. The Authoritan’s silver fountain had run dry. Behind the military arrangement of the Ahdath, her doves waited for instruction.

  “You.” Lania indicated the captains. “Assemble at my sighting
chamber in the Sihraat. I will instruct you there. I will Augur any attempt at disobedience. Instead of Basmachi, yours will be the skeletons strung up over the gates. The rest of you, to the Wall.”

  An Ahdath with a portentous face stepped forward. “Khanum, it was Commander Araxcin who held the Wall. Who commands in his absence?”

  Lania spoke the word she’d occulted again. It pierced the man’s heart like an arrow. This time when Lania snapped her fingers, Ahdath came forward to bear away the bodies of those who’d dared to doubt her. The rest scattered on her command.

  Lania spoke to the doves. “Go. See that my orders are carried out. Except for you,” she said, pointing.

  Half a dozen girls of the Transcasp came forth. They knelt on either side of Alisher, their glances stealing to the Silver Mage, who held Arian fast in his arms.

  Lania returned her attention to the poet, compelling him to meet her eyes. “I did not Augur your presence here, Mudassir, and this puzzles me.” Her use of his former title startled him. “How did you come to be with my sister?”

  “I—ah—chanced upon the First Oralist,” he managed. “I was rescued from death at the Tower of the Claim by the courage of the Silver Mage.”

  “Yet you stole back into the Ark, using my doves against me,” Lania told him. “It was the last time, Mudassir. Do not return again.”

  Alisher bowed low, his ill-fitting breastplate banging against his knees. “It was my honor to teach you, Highness.”

  A faint smile shimmered through the ruins of her mask. “Didn’t you know, Mudassir? It was always me teaching you.”

  Alisher hesitated. He dropped to one knee, adopting the posture of the doves. “Khanum,” he said, “what of Pari and Donyanaz? May I take them with me?”

  Lania ignored the request. She spoke to two of her doves instead. “Find the one called Gul. I will need her at the Sihraat.”

  At the mention of Gul’s name, Arian’s head came up. For the first time, she looked at her sister—at the destruction of the dais and the silent emptiness of the great hall. What had seemed insurmountable to Arian, Lania had destroyed in moments, taking control of the Ahdath and the Wall, the Authoritan burned to dust.

  In a hoarse voice, Arian asked, “Was this what you always intended? Is this why you brought me here? To use me to defeat him?”

  Lania’s face didn’t soften. “You still think it was you? After I let him give you to Nevus? No, little sister.” She glanced at Daniyar, a sudden softening in her face. “It was the Silver Mage. His was the blood I needed. He was everything I needed. You were merely a pretext the Authoritan could believe. He wasn’t my savior,” she said thoughtfully. “The Authoritan was my destroyer.”

  She turned away from the warmth of Daniyar’s eyes—from his limitless compassion.

  Hesitantly Arian continued. “Did the blood of the Silver Mage change you? Did it truly make you stronger?”

  Lania’s answer was fierce. “Blood changes everything.” And at Arian’s troubled look, she said, “Do not ask what you do not wish to know.” She ignored Arian’s confusion, her gaze sweeping the hall to take the measure of her victory. She snapped orders at those who had yet to leave the room, evidence not only of her abilities, but of the single-minded ferocity it had taken to get her to this moment. The gestures of her arms rippled with power and purpose.

  Arian went to Lania and embraced her. Impatiently Lania suffered the embrace, though her hand was gentle on the wound at Arian’s back.

  “It will be cleansed,” she murmured.

  Arian drew back to look at her. “You are free of this now,” she said. “Come with me. Come back to Hira where you belong.”

  Lania pushed Arian aside, her gilded green eyes ablaze with a violent satisfaction. “You seem to forget that I command an army—I now command everything north of the Wall.”

  “And what will you do with your army?” Daniyar asked. He reached for Arian’s hand, pulling her back to his side, his gesture possessive and bold.

  Lania’s eyes darkened. She took note of his silent allegiance with a peremptory nod of her head. She spoke in a brittle voice. “What does it matter to you, my lord? Your destiny calls you away.”

  “You told me I would die tonight.”

  “I said you would lose—and lose the Qatilah you did.” She pointed to the Authoritan’s shattered scepter. “But it was never my intent to let you die. Not when your blood is so precious.”

  Daniyar looked at her steadily, reading the things she didn’t say, the unvarnished emotion that she tried to disguise. “Am I your prisoner, then? You told the Authoritan my blood would renew him if you kept me alive. Is it the same for you, Lania?”

  Her eyes closed at his gentle use of her name. With a blind gesture, she indicated the powder collected by her doves.

  “I have no need of you now. Your blood has served its purpose in my rites. Take my sister and go.”

  Arian let out a sound of protest. “You could still come to Hira.”

  Lania’s reply was cold. “You understand me not at all, sister.”

  Arian persisted. “If you won’t save yourself, think of your doves. They were brought here by Talisman slave-chains. Will you not act against that? Will you not aid me in this?”

  “The doves are none of your concern, sister. Stay if you will; go if you choose. I must take my Ahdath in hand.”

  “To what end, Lania? Why do you seek this war?”

  “Why do you think? The Authoritan has answered for his crimes. Now I unleash my army on the Talisman and on anyone who stands in my way.”

  “Then we fight the same battle. We serve the same cause.”

  “No, Arian—we do not.”

  They stared at each other, so closely bound together, so alike in coloring and expression and countenance, yet so different at heart and in experience, the older face a ruined echo of the promise of the younger.

  Sensing she had lost, Arian pressed a hand to Lania’s cheek. “I came to save you, Lania.”

  “I know you did, little bird.” Gently she removed her sister’s hand from her face. She studied the lines of Arian’s palm closely. “I Augur a difficult road for you, Arian—what waits for you beyond the Wall will cause you a suffering unlike anything you have known.”

  Arian stared at her, stricken. Lania knew her inadequacies as First Oralist better than anyone else. If she thought Arian would fail …

  She tried to hide her uncertainty, but she knew that Lania had seen. Blinking swiftly, she said, “What is to come, Lania? What do you foretell?”

  Lania shook her head, amused. “You are First Oralist of Hira. You do not believe in Augury. You certainly cannot sanction it.”

  They stared into each other’s eyes, loss and love passing between them in a language neither sister could speak. The long years Arian had spent searching for Lania, raiding slave-chains, cast out from Hira, impelled by a love that was truer in memory than reality—to find Lania so distant, so twisted by darkness … so changed. And yet still with that infinitesimal spark of love buried beneath the ruins of her charade as the Authoritan’s consort. Lania’s love for Arian hadn’t died. Neither was it enough. And Arian—so gifted in the Claim, so powerful in her own right as a child of Hira’s magic—couldn’t find a way to persuade her or to reach her sister’s heart. Lania’s refusal to speak a word of affection to her, to offer Arian anything deeper as an explanation of her choices, told Arian as much.

  The links that had bound the daughters of their house—the daughters of Hira—had long since been sundered by suffering. There was nothing else Arian could do.

  Feeling the weight of her disillusionment, Daniyar pulled Arian back into his arms, determined to shield her from everything still to come. “We must go,” he murmured in her ear. “The Bloodprint cannot wait.”

  Lania nodded at her sister. “Go with him, he is yours. It is you he loves, no other.”

  Daniyar glanced at her dress. “You still bleed, Lania. Let me do what I can to aid you.�
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  With a proud lift of her chin, she waved his hands away. “Do not presume to handle me. I cannot bear your touch.”

  Her voice faltered over the lie, and Daniyar registered the truth. She had wanted him, she had grown to care for him, and so she had sought to protect him … though what moved him most was that she had hoped he would yearn for her in turn. But his love for Arian was unmistakable, undeniable … and he looked at Lania with regret for having deceived her to this end. Outraged, she strode across the dais, searing him with a look. She snapped her fingers. One of her doves brought the six-tailed whip to her hand. She curled it around her fingers. Cracked, stripped, bleeding, and defaced, she seethed with imperial power. Holding Daniyar’s gaze, she took her seat on the Authoritan’s throne. “This was your gift to me.”

  Alone in the throne room, Lania dipped a finger into the bowl of white powder. She extracted the vial of Daniyar’s blood to add it to the bowl, stirring it with her finger. When the mixture had thickened, she lifted the bowl to her lips and sipped. Then she set down the bowl and took up the six-tailed whip, easing back onto the throne.

  The tails of the whip were stained with Daniyar’s blood.

  She remembered how he’d looked, beaten and bloodied by the Ahdath, his face strained in agony, his fierce will unbroken. How much pain the Ahdath had caused him. How much he’d been willing to suffer on her sister’s behalf. She touched her lips to the whip, kissing the traces of his blood.

  Then she destroyed it with a word.

  23

  THE BLACK KHAN’S PARTY HAD BEEN ON THE ROAD FOR TWELVE DAYS and had changed their horses twice. They were close to Ashfall, having ridden through the night, to discover the first of the Talisman’s preparations against the city. With the attention of their main army focused on Ashfall’s outer defenses, the Talisman had dispatched a smaller force to block both sides of the approach to a narrow pass that led down to the plains, where the Talisman army was camped, south and east of the city’s ramparts. The lowlands that surrounded the city were deep and fertile, sectioned with dozens of glimmering blue tributaries, yet anything that could have given sustenance to Ashfall had already been set to the fire or claimed for the Talisman’s own use.