At least by physical means. Neila reached out and touched Salim’s shoulder.
“Salim,” she asked, “can you use your magic to open this door? Or to tunnel out, or—or something?”
There was no way to know without finding out. He patted her hand once, then pulled away and dropped to his knees. Hands folded together, he put his forehead against them and began to pray.
As before in the cave, the posture of supplication felt stiff and unnatural. Yet if there’d ever been a better time for it, he couldn’t remember what it was. Head down, eyes closed, he sent his mind out, and out ...
And hit a wall. Not a denial, exactly—no sense of divine refusal. Instead, it was as if his head were surrounded by a cage, a glass box against which his mind beat itself like a frightened bird. After a second, he realized that the box was precisely the shape and feel of the room itself.
“No good,” he said. “Khoyar’s warded the room against magic. I can’t do anything.”
Neila sighed and slumped down against the stone of the far wall. Salim did the same at his end, and together they stared blindly across the darkness at each other.
“What I can’t understand,” she said at last, “is why Khoyar would risk so much. I mean, even if he got the elixir, he’d have to constantly disguise himself to keep people from noticing his renewed youth. And he of all people should have been assured a positive judgment by the Lady of Graves, and a corresponding reward in the afterlife. Why would he throw that away for a chance at a few more years?”
Salim shrugged, knowing she couldn’t see it. “Fear of death is a powerful motivator. It can make a man sell out his friends, turn a wife against a husband or a child against its parent.”
“But he knows what happens!” she insisted.
“There’s a difference between knowing and knowing,” Salim replied. “‘Honor and fidelity are fleeting things, often cited but rarely seen.’ In the end, everyone is betrayed. And everyone betrays. It’s human nature.”
“Do you really believe that?” Her voice was quiet, tentative.
Salim smiled without humor. “As I told Khoyar, belief’s in short supply. Betrayal isn’t something I believe. It’s something I know.”
“How?”
He paused. Even now, sitting in a makeshift jail cell awaiting execution by a high priest of the bitch-goddess herself—no shortage of irony there—Salim almost let the question pass. Almost held his tongue in front of an innocent girl who was about to die because he’d misjudged his own abilities, underestimated the preparations of his opponent. The sheer arrogance of that fact broke down what half-formed barriers were left, and suddenly the words were in his mouth.
“Because I’ve been the betrayer, of everything and everyone I ever loved. And been betrayed in return.”
There was a period of silence, and then: “Who?”
“My wife.”
Another pause, then Neila’s voice, soft and careful. “What did she do?”
“She died.”
Neila reached out and took Salim’s hand. “I understand how you feel, but I don’t think that’s quite—”
“That wasn’t her betrayal. Her betrayal came later, as a direct result of my own.”
Neila faltered. “I don’t—”
“Listen,” Salim said, but he was no longer staring in Neila’s direction. “She died. She meant more than anything to me—more than life, more than honor itself. She was my world. And then she died.”
In the darkness before and behind his eyes, a picture was blooming.
“And I brought her back.”
Chapter Seventeen
The Priest-Hunter's Tale
I was born in the slums on the north side of Azir, capital of Rahadoum. My father could have been any of several men—my mother did what she had to in order to get by—but she named me Salim after her own father, who by all accounts had been kind, fair, and a man of learning before the burning plague laid him low.
Outsiders never really understand what it is to grow up Rahadoumi. Even those atheists from other countries who come to join us are still burdened by their pasts. For them, atheism is all about rejection, their philosophy defined by what it is they’re rebelling against. They can reject and rejoice, as the old mantra goes, and they’re more than welcome, but their pasts still follow them wherever they go. They constantly reassure themselves and the world of their conviction because, deep down, some part of them still believes.
To be a child, though—that’s something different. When you grow up in the Kingdom of Man, you do so knowing that your destiny is your own. The gods are real, certainly, and powerful—but so are the great whales off the island of Nuat, whose flukes can stave in a frigate. Stay out of their way, and you’ll be safe enough. Being Rahadoumi isn’t about attacking the gods or questioning their existence. It’s about the freedom to live as you see fit, with no creatures from another world passing edicts on who or what you can be.
And what does a small boy running riot in the shantytowns of Azir want to be when he grows up? Why, a member of the Pure Legion, of course! Every day, one squadron or another would pass close to the crumbled tenements where we played, and the cry would go up, passing from scrap-wood fort to rooftop nest. Games would drop in the middle, fights would stop mid-blow, and all the children would scramble toward the alarm, waving our whittled wooden swords.
How majestic they were! Sometimes they were ahorse, other times on foot. Grim-faced men in shining breastplates and cloaks that billowed from bronze epaulets. Sometimes they would have a prisoner with them, some underground priest or prophet who’d evangelized to the wrong person and wound up outing himself. Those were always the most exciting times. We were always respectful of the legionnaires, as was due the protectors of the First Law, but such rules did not apply to the religious filth they transported.
Once, on a dare, I stood atop a garbage heap and threw a stone at an already bloodied priest of Sarenrae. It hit him between the eyes, and he cried out in pain. The captain of the squadron held up his hand to stop them, and walked over to where I stood. Ignoring the filth of the refuse pile that fouled his beautiful boots and greaves, he knelt down so that he could address me at eye level.
“Why did you throw that stone?” he asked.
“Because that man is a priest.” I was both thrilled and scared, but I held my ground. Oh, I was a brave one, to be sure.
“And why is it wrong to be a priest?”
“Because priests are liars,” I said. “Religion holds us down, makes us slothful.”
The captain nodded, and I thought I had never seen someone more handsome. For a brief second, I wondered if maybe this man could be my father, for surely there was no one else in the world more worthy of the station.
“That’s true,” he said. “But there’s more to it. Religion doesn’t just cloud our minds. It asks us to deliberately deceive ourselves—to replace reason with its opposite, faith. And when men operate on faith, they can no longer be reasoned with, which makes them more dangerous than any sane man, whether good or evil. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“A man without reason is no better than a mad dog, and mad dogs must be put down for the good of everyone. But we must always do so with compassion, and remember all the time why it must be done. For if we ever forget—if we let our anger toward gods and priests become its own sort of faith—then we become no better than them. Remember this.”
Then he smiled, teeth white like the sun, and stood. A gauntleted hand fell on my shoulder.
“You’ve got a strong spirit, boy. Hold onto that.”
Then he turned and led the soldiers and their quarry away. I stood there long after they’d turned the corner, part of me wanting to run after them, to tell the captain that I knew he must be my father, and wouldn’t he please take me with them? I would fight, too. But of course I knew better. He was just a soldier, and rather than break the beautiful moment I’d been given, I stood on my trash pile and waited unti
l the sun set behind the towers of the city proper.
When I was twenty years old, I joined the Pure Legion. My mother cried, her tears both of pride and out of fear that I’d be killed by some devil-worshiping priest, but she knew that I’d already stayed with her as long as I could. With my first pay purse, I brought her from the trash-roofed shed we’d called our home and set her in a small apartment in the city, above a weaver who I knew needed another hand at the loom. Then I joined the column of recruits winding their way into the desert, led by the recruitment officer and bound for the stronghold of Shepherd’s Rock.
The training was hard, unlike anything I’d done before, but I was young and strong, my body hard from days hauling carts and boxes with the longshoremen, on the docks the men of other nations called Port Godless. In a few months, I learned fencing and spearwork, became a decent shot with a bow. I received a sword of my own, a beautiful tool worth more than everything else I owned combined. Yet I was quickly made to understand that for all their strength of arms, the most respected soldiers of the Pure Legion were those who were best able to sharpen their minds—to learn to think like priests, the better to sniff out their quarry and send them to the port or the gallows, depending on how much damage they’d done.
And I was good. Very good. My superiors singled me out early on for extra lessons, conducted after the regular soldiers—all good men and women—were released for the evening. They taught me to read, and took me to the Vault of Lies in the fortress’s heart, so I could learn from the confiscated holy texts and better understand those I would hunt. And then, when they judged me ready, they sent me back to Azir, to put it all into practice.
I hunted. It was a wondrous thing, the hunt—more engaging than any of my childhood games. They hid, and I followed. They left clues, and I picked them up and pieced them together. They converted, and I redeemed. The only thing I loved more than the chase was the final confrontation, the point where we could look each other in the eye, and they knew for certain that they were lost. I was merciful where the law would allow it, swift where it would not. I gained my own command, and traded my well-worn blade from Shepherd’s Rock for the ornate badge of an officer’s sword. My men sometimes called me “The Hound,” and joked that I could smell the priests’ stink on the wind. Some days, I almost thought that I could.
It was at this point that I met Jannat. She was a legionnaire’s dream, beautiful and fierce as a hunting kestrel, the daughter of my commanding officer. She wasn’t a soldier herself, but she easily could have been had she wanted to. Her hair was long and as black as the night, her skin smooth and gold, and she could drink any man in my unit under the table. I watched her for a year, and she baited me mercilessly—would the Hound be hunting this evening? Would he like to be scratched behind the ears? But always it was with that sly smile.
Years later, in one of our quieter moments, she told me that she’d teased me because she knew I couldn’t help but rise to the occasion, bettering my position. But at that time, I knew only that I loved her. At last, with the covert permission of her father, I took her to my favorite cliff looking out over the eastern sea and asked her to marry me. We made love for the first time beneath a cypress tree.
Those were good years. I was well off from my pay and bonuses, and neither of us was averse to making use of her family’s generous endowments. We bought a little house overlooking the coast, not far from those cliffs where I’d proposed, and agreed that children would come in time, once I had climbed higher in the Pure Legion and no longer needed to travel as much. There were rumors that her father might retire soon, and that I might take his place as one of the heads of legion activities for all of Azir. Since the rumors came from her father himself, we were hopeful. In the meantime, we were happy together. I would hunt during the day, then return home to another world, a domestic paradise where she would sing to me, or let me watch her sit in front of the window for hours at a time, painting the sea and the sunset.
That all changed the day I returned home and found the front door open, its latch hanging broken.
We knew, all of us in the legion, that our war was not one-sided. For the most part, the small congregations of worshipers we chased down were content to run and hide. Yet there were always those few who sought to fight back, targeting the leadership of the Pure Legion, as if killing one man or a hundred could somehow shake the conviction of a hundred thousand, convince them to bow their heads and walk willingly into the theists’ yokes. Seeing the door open, my mind went instantly to those stories. I drew my sword.
Inside, the house was a shambles. What furniture we had was knocked over, cabinets opened and looted, the stink and stain of spilled wine sprayed across the walls. Unwilling to call out on the chance that I might still catch the vandals by surprise, I stepped carefully over the shattered remains of my household and moved through the living room into the kitchen. And it was there that I found Jannat.
She’d died with a kitchen knife in her hand, its blade red with the blood of her attackers. But it hadn’t been enough. High on her chest, a deep wound had welled out into a puddle on the floor, its river of red run dry and crusted. Her pale green dress had been slit open from collar to hem, baring her naked flesh to the air. And they’d done things to her.
I don’t remember precisely what happened next, but I suppose I went a little mad. I can remember running through the rooms of our house, screaming challenges, but there was no one there to answer them. I scanned the nearby roads from the balcony, but there was no one who looked out of place. At last I returned to the kitchen and fell to my knees beside the body of my wife. With trembling hands, I pulled together the shreds of her dress, turned her cold cheek so she wouldn’t have to look at the wound that killed her. Hands on her shoulders, I laid my head against her stomach, burying my face in her clothes and skin. And then I did a terrible thing. My great betrayal.
I prayed.
I had no idea who I was praying to, but even in my grief, I understood full well what I was doing. I didn’t care. All that mattered was Jannat, and with the gelid blood of her heart sticking to my cheeks and running with my tears, matters of honor and justice were far away. I prayed, and in that prayer I promised everything. My life, my allegiance, my eternal soul—whatever was desired. Just to have my Jannat back. It would be worth it. I clutched her still form like a drowning man, and I sent my pleas—my prayers—out into the void with all the strength left in me.
And from the darkness, something answered.
There was a cough, and then a wracking, retching sound. Her body convulsed. I scrambled backward in surprise, half dragging her with me. I looked up.
Her head was off the ground, and she was staring at me with wide, terrified eyes. As I watched, the wound on her shoulder seemed to suck back into itself, scabbing over and then disappearing entirely. She began to shake, and then I was up cradling her head, pulling it into my chest as she wept.
“What?” she sobbed. “What just—?”
“Shh.” I put a finger to her lips, and then bent my face down to rest in her hair, curling over her like a shield against the world.
“A miracle, love,” I whispered. “A miracle.”
∗∗∗
But of course a miracle isn’t a miracle when you’re paid to hunt them for a living.
I tried to deny it myself at first, but she knew me too well, and she could see in my eyes what had happened. What I had done. In time, I came to accept it myself, thinking of it as my Moment of Weakness. Secretly, however, I regretted nothing. Jannat was alive, and that was all that mattered.
Yet at the same time, it wasn’t. In bringing her back with my prayer, I’d made a lie of everything I lived for, everything we both believed. I still hunted priests, but my work suffered. Not because I sympathized with them—I didn’t—but because a part of me was terrified that my own guilt stood out like a blazing brand on my forehead. With every preacher I confronted, I expected him to read my history in my face and proclaim it loud
and long to the rest of my company. I grew furtive, nervous, and obsessed with locating those men who had been responsible for the attack, while simultaneously keeping it from my friends in the legion that such an attack had ever occurred.
At home, things were little better. Jannat was back, yes, and healthy, but it wasn’t the same. In bringing her back, I’d made my choice, but she’d had no more say in her own resurrection than she had in her death. We tried to cover things up and move on as best we could, but the worm of shame had gotten into her heart, and refused to leave no matter how often I pointed out that I was the one who had been responsible. And some nights she would wake up screaming, remembering those last few seconds before she’d died, her attackers’ hands upon her and the slow pump of her lifeblood onto the cool kitchen tile. I’d turn to comfort her, but she couldn’t bear to be touched, and would stand at the darkened window until the memories passed.
All of this is to say why I wasn’t surprised when it finally happened. Walking through the front door that evening, I felt the change in the house, and knew beyond any doubt that I’d just set foot in it for the last time.
They were waiting for me in the living room. Jannat, her father, and several men from my own unit. No one had drawn weapons, but neither were they resting easy. I ignored the legionnaires and looked at Jannat, where she sat at the low table, arms crossed across her breasts. Her eyes were red and puffy.
“I’m so sorry, Salim,” she whispered. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“Jannat—”
“I think you’ve said enough to her, boy.” That was her father. He was a mountain of a man, and though the hair above his slab-jowled face was white, he still wore the armor of the Pure Legion with practiced ease. His voice was low, but held the quiet air of command.
“I know what you did was out of love for my daughter, and I respect that. But you know what has to happen. You have the choice to conduct yourself with honor.”
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