Empire of Sand

by Tasha Suri

  “Nightmares,” said Bahren. He sounded sick. “They’re here.”

  “I won’t act before I see Amun’s vow broken,” Mehr said.

  Abhiman wrenched Mehr to her feet with an oath. Mehr bit down on her tongue to stop herself from making a sound. She maintained eye contact with the Maha. There was nothing he could do—nothing she could hear—that would make her relent.

  “Bring Amun here, Abhiman,” the Maha said. He spoke through gritted teeth. “Bahren, you stay and watch the girl.”

  The Maha looked at Mehr, his fractured eyes full of fury and helplessness. “You have a bargain, Mehr.”

  Abhiman was stammering, protesting, but when the Maha snarled, “Go,” he stumbled swiftly out of the room.

  Mehr felt suddenly as if she could breathe. She tried to hide her relief, tried not to appear triumphant. Nothing had been won yet. First Amun had to be set free, had to survive. Then Mehr had to dance the Rite of the Bound—alone—without being destroyed by it. She had to face the nightmares without allowing them to coil their way inside her head and heart. Easier said than done. But Mehr would find a way. She would have to.

  “Maha,” Bahren said, into the bitter quiet. “Maha, our brothers and sisters are dying. I hear them. I fear for them. Please, give me leave to assist them—”

  “No,” the Maha said, his voice sudden and savage. “No, you stay here and protect me. I am your master. I am the reason the Empire stands. You stay.”

  “Maha,” Bahren said respectfully. He spoke no more.

  Kalini had bowed her head. She raised it then, looking up at the Maha with eyes soft with light. Mehr saw her touch her fingertips to the Maha’s wrist.

  “Maha,” she murmured. “Are you in pain? Do you suffer?”

  “When the storm proceeds as it should, my pain will ease,” he responded, his voice gentler, now that he was speaking to his beloved one. “Everything will be as it should be.” He smiled at her, beatific. “I am not an old man yet.”

  “No, Maha,” Kalini agreed, looking up at the gossamer of his face. “You will never be old.”

  Her hand was still on his wrist, soft and tender, when she drew her scimitar from its scabbard and slit the Maha’s throat.

  It was a dance, almost. She moved so beautifully, so economically, that she could have been moving through the steps of a rite. She drew the scimitar in a fine, clean arc. Blood poured from the gaping maw where his throat had been. He was dead before he even had the chance to scream.

  Mehr was frozen. Kalini looked over at her, cocking her head to the side. The blade was still in her hand.

  Bahren made an awful noise behind her, choked and heartsick. “What have you done?”

  “He wasn’t a God any longer,” Kalini said to him, her voice terribly calm. “Surely you saw the mortality creeping over him. The taint of it. I spared him from suffering the foulness of begging scraps from a slave.” She leaned down and gently brushed his eyes closed. “I gave him a merciful death. I’ve kept him pure. You would have done no less, if you had been brave enough, Bahren.”

  “How could you, sister?” Bahren whispered, uncomprehending.

  “I’m not your sister,” Kalini said. “I had a sister. She died for no less than a God. Now that will never change.”

  Kalini stood and walked calmly toward the door. “Let the world burn,” she said to Mehr as she passed. “None of it matters any longer.”

  Bahren let her go. His hands hung numb at his side. Mehr listened to Kalini’s measured footsteps fade beyond the doorway.

  “The nightmares had her,” Bahren said, his voice full of grief. “They must have forced her to do it.”

  Mehr pressed a hand to her face, breathed in her own skin deep and slow to blot out the smell of blood, and took him by the shoulder. “Bahren. You need to go.”

  He looked at her. His eyes were wet and shocked.

  “What?”

  “Run,” Mehr said gently, “while you still can. I don’t think the temple will be safe much longer, and I still have work to do.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The honeycomb corridors of the temple were dark, the lanterns snuffed out. Mehr could barely see. She walked slowly, tracing the walls with her fingertips. She was glad, now, that she’d worked so hard to learn the layout of the temple. She had nothing but her memory to guide her through the gloom. She saw none of the mystics, but as she walked she heard the occasional sobs and cries cutting through the howling darkness. She thought of the girls who had welcomed her and taught her karom, and shivered, dread for them coiling in her stomach.

  Mehr was sure the mystics had marked the windows with Amun’s blood to keep the daiva out, but the Gods and their nightmares had made no promises on Amrithi blood. There was darkness in the temple now, a smell of iron in the air. Mehr heard a skittering, drawing steadily closer. She froze.

  The nightmares were walking the corridors.

  She closed her eyes. Stayed very still. You will not find me. Not now, not yet, not today—

  The noise passed. Mehr waited a moment, then kept walking.

  Mehr found her way to their old room by memory alone. She walked up the stairs. The room was bathed in the light of the dreamfire pouring in through the open shutters. Abhiman was nowhere to be seen. She didn’t know if Bahren had found him and told him to run, or if he had made the decision himself. She didn’t know if the nightmares had caught him. She didn’t really care.

  “Amun,” she whispered.

  Amun lay on the divan. He was thinner than he’d been before, bruised and very still. She saw water with a ladle on the ground beside him. Someone had gone to some effort to keep him alive, but his skin was gray, his body soaked with sweat. His sigils were as faded as the rest of him. It was only when she placed her hand against his lips, her own fingers trembling, that she was sure he was still breathing.

  It broke her heart and healed it over again to see him alive but so harmed. The Maha’s death may have released him from his vows, but the bond between them was still hot with his pain. After all he’d suffered she wasn’t sure, couldn’t be sure, that he would recover from what had been done to him.

  She wanted to lie beside him and feel the warmth of him beside her. But there was no time. Instead she placed a hand on his chest, on the place where the scar of their marriage vow lay. She leaned forward and kissed him, a bare brush of her lips against his own. The light of their bond was a golden knot binding them together, so bright it burned her fear clean away.

  “I’m going to survive for you,” she whispered. “Please, survive for me in return, my love.”

  She left him there. She had no choice but to do so.

  She walked back down the stairs and made her way toward an exit that led to the desert. The doors were flung open. Mehr stopped and stared at the lashing dreamfire, the waves of sand rolling as swift as water with the wind. She had never seen a more awful storm.

  The Maha was dead. His mystics were in disarray. Mehr would not have their prayers running through her to guide her or give her strength. Amun would not be with her, performing the rite at her side. She had no partner. No ritual clothing. No kohl around her eyes, no ornaments wreathed through her hair. She was just a woman, thin and hurt and tired. She was no more than human, no more than that, and that would have to be enough.

  She kneeled down and took off her boots. Then she sucked in a breath, straightened her shoulders, and stepped beyond the temple walls.

  The sand wasn’t smooth beneath her feet. It didn’t even cling to her strangely, as it had when she’d left her mother’s clan. Instead it kept re-forming into new shapes beneath her, collapsing into hollows, then re-forming into jagged edges that made her stumble and struggle for balance. Around her the wind transformed from blistering heat into bitter cold. In the cracks between the dreamfire, the sky was a cavernous void, then a seething mass of pale things. It was as if the shape of the earth were constantly altering.

  Mehr bit her lip and kept on walking.
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  The daiva surrounded her fast. They swept around her, not harming her, their golden eyes blinking in and out of sight between the gouts of dreamfire. Mehr took strange comfort in their presence. They made her feel a little less alone.

  Deep in the storm, she stopped walking. She breathed in and out, trying not to choke on the sand around her. She reached for the seed of immortality within herself. There was no more time left to build up her courage, to remind herself of what needed to be done. It was time to act.

  Mehr raised her hands. Set her feet against the ground. She began to dance the rite.

  The dreamfire poured into her. It was an obliterating fire, too big for her body, too large to leave her soul whole. She let it come. It rose through her blood, filled her eyes and her ears and her throat with light, lifting her bodily with its power. She submitted to its power, bending with the storm, refusing to allow it to break her. She had to survive. She had to turn her will to the task of bending the Gods.

  This time she did not have the Maha’s will or the mystics’ prayers. She did not have Amun to guide her or save her. The only hands shaping the dreams of the Gods were her own. She poured all her heart and soul into a rite that was no longer a two-person act of creation but an act of pure lonely desperation. She drew forward the dreams toward the only thing she desired: survival.

  Do not kill us, do not end the world, oh Gods, do not send your nightmares for us, please, do not send your nightmares—

  She was thrown back into her body. Her lungs ached. Her eyes stung. She was flat on the ground, arms pinned by clawed, pale fingers. A nightmare hung above her, its face a thousand pale, fractured shards around flat silver eyes. She turned her head and saw more of those eyes watching her. They were everywhere. The storm had breathed life into them.

  Mehr wanted to laugh. She’d achieved the opposite of what she’d asked for. The Gods were angry indeed.

  The nightmares were no longer simply a cold, creeping horror at the back of her skull. The fury of the Gods had carved them into flesh as hard as bones. It hung above her, but its whispers were inside her too, filling her skull with cold terror.

  Images rose up in her mind, blotting her vision out: Hema’s throat cut; Usha dead on the ground; Kalini’s cold eyes; Amun gray and broken; the feel of Abhiman’s hands around her throat; the Maha’s fist against her face; Amun’s eyes, starless and bleak. There was so much darkness inside her. She’d locked it away for so long. Feeling it now, rising up, nearly destroyed her. Sickened, she felt tears force their way from her eyes. A scream began to claw its way up her throat.

  She forced her eyes to snap open. No.

  She wouldn’t be destroyed.

  Mehr gripped one of the clawed hands that had pinned her to the ground. It was hard, but it had a brittleness like sandstone. As she dug her nails in, struggling to shift its hold, its surface crumbled a little against her skin.

  She dug her fingers in harder. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. She couldn’t escape it. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to focus on her body. Turning her wrist laboriously in its grip, she clumsily shaped the sigil for banishment.

  The nightmare shuddered above her, then crawled slowly away from her. Mehr struggled up onto her knees, keeping her gaze fixed on the nightmare, on its lidless gaze.

  She’d escaped, but it was no good regardless. Her lungs were heaving; her hands on the ground felt raw and abraded. The storm was too big and far too furious. The nightmares were inching in closer again. She couldn’t do this.

  It didn’t matter if she had already failed. She still had to stand. She still had to try.

  She was just beginning to rise to her feet when a hand reached for her own. The hand was pure smoke, dark and full of shadows. Mehr looked up. A daiva stared down at her. Veiled, its eyes glowed through the mesh.

  The world around her was suddenly, blessedly silent. The howl of the storm had faded away. Daiva wings rustled, producing the barest, whisper-soft susurration. A circle of daiva surrounded them and, beyond it, the nightmares hovered like hungry scavengers, carefully held at bay. The sand beneath them was still and soft, and the howl of the storm seemed like a faraway thing, ancient as a childhood memory. The daiva had hollowed a place within the storm for Mehr to kneel and for the veiled daiva to watch her. For a moment, at least, Mehr could not feel the weight of the dreamfire, and the respite was desperately sweet.

  The daiva was still holding out its hand. Mehr took it. The hand felt as solid as the nightmare’s flesh had, cool and silken, no brittleness to it at all. Its veil was dusted with stars.

  “You,” Mehr whispered. “I gave you my tears.”

  “Yes,” the daiva said. “You did.”

  The voice did not come from the daiva alone but from everywhere around them: from the air and the sand, from somewhere deep within Mehr’s own soul. It rattled in her head, filling her with glorious warmth.

  Mehr flinched, stumbling back.

  “You spoke in my language,” the daiva said. Its voice was a chorus, a hundred familiar voices—Lalita’s, Amun’s, Arwa’s—bound together in an inhuman song. “Your master’s control has shattered. Now we are stronger and can speak with your words.” Mehr had a sense the daiva would have smiled, if it could. “Words aren’t so hard.”

  “He’s not my master,” Mehr rasped.

  “Of course,” the veiled daiva said mildly. “Dead men master no one. He was your master.”

  “No,” Mehr said, shaking her head. “No, no matter what he did, I always belonged to myself.” She spoke reflexively, but in that moment, she knew it was true.

  The circle of daiva rustled around softly, a whisper running through them that sounded like the chime of bells.

  Mehr knew that sound. She’d heard it. Dreamed it, long ago.

  “I have watched you a long time,” the veiled daiva said.

  Mehr thought of the daiva that had haunted her dreams, the chimes she’d heard in the desert, on the first night she and Amun had shared a tent under the stars. She shivered, not quite from fear.

  “Why?” she asked softly. “Daiva, why me?”

  It cocked its head to the side, quizzical as a bird. “You were a tool,” it said slowly, as if grasping the words from a long distance. “You were in the right place. Near the one you call Maha, but not yet his property. We haunted the edges of him, the man who made immortals small. Years and years, we haunted him.” The veil rustled. “And there you were.”

  “I see,” Mehr said. “You saw that I was a weak link in his armor.”

  “A strong one,” the daiva responded. “A strong link to us. Your blood is our blood. You were still ours.” The daiva held a hand toward her. Its hand transformed back into wisps—coiled, gently, against the edge of her jaw. “There is a little of my blood in that flesh of yours,” the daiva said. “And in the flesh of your mother, and the flesh of your beloved. Blood has power.”

  “So I’ve always been told the daiva believe,” Mehr said shakily.

  “So humans believe too,” the daiva responded swiftly. “The one you call Maha came to the Salt and bound his first Amrithi for the sake of his bloodline, after all. All this, he did for love of his children. He wanted an Empire for his progeny. He wanted to bless them with an everlasting throne.”

  An image bloomed in Mehr’s mind through the daiva’s touch: the shadow of the Maha from time long gone, an arrogant and charming commander of men with unflinching eyes and overbearing charisma. She saw a small hand in his own, saw the terrible love in his eyes. In his child he’d seen himself, seen his glory stretching eternally into the future. His love was selfish and overpowering, a monstrous thing.

  He would not have cared about the price he paid or demanded the world to pay for the sake of his own blood. He’d died sure of the glory of his own purpose.

  Mehr felt nothing for him. Not even pity.

  “Some men believe there is no greater immortality than blood,” the daiva observed. “Even when they die, as they must, they
hope their blood will survive.”

  The images faded. The daiva drew its shaded flesh back, coiling it back into a simulacrum of fingers. It watched her with its prayer-flame eyes, still and silent, as if a storm weren’t raging in a great circle around. It watched her as if they had all the time in the world.

  “Men,” the daiva said, “are so often fools.”

  “Do you want to punish me for the heresy I have committed?” Mehr asked. She held her head high, trembling a little, the eyes of all those daiva and pale nightmares following her every movement. “I know that binding the dreams of your forefathers is wrong. Daiva, I am sorry for it, but I can’t relent. I must try to perform the Maha’s rite. I must try to keep this world whole. Please don’t stop me. I beg you.”

  “We do not care about heresy,” the daiva said. “That is a mortal concept.”

  “Why have you come for me, then?” Mehr asked.

  “Because we care about balance,” the veiled daiva told her. “We who are the sunrise and sunset, life and death, good and evil. We desire order. The man called Maha shattered the balance. He weakened us. He fed on the good dreams of our mothers and fathers and left their dark dreams caged, feral and alone. That was wrong of him.”

  “He did many things that were wrong,” Mehr said in a small voice.

  “The nightmares must be free,” the daiva said. Its voice held the compassion of Hema’s, the implacableness of Nahira’s. “You should not stop that.”

  No. Mehr would not accept it, would not let the world burn.

  “Should not or cannot?” Mehr demanded.

  The daiva tilted its head again. It didn’t appear angry.

  “Do you respect the will of your ancestors?” it asked.

  “I can’t let the world die,” Mehr said.

  “All things want to live,” the veiled daiva agreed. “So do we.” A susurration ran through the watching circle. “So we ask you for a trade. Daiva to mortal.”

  The daiva was suddenly very close to Mehr, close enough that Mehr could discern the sunburst of its bright eyes and the ever-shifting contours of its face beneath the veil.