The Kingdoms of Dust

by Amanda Downum

  Guards and servants shouted, scrambling into the street. In the hypostyle a pillar tilted and fell, then another, and another, like a row of children’s blocks. All of Qais shook like a tabletop under a pounding fist.

  “Lady!” She turned to see Salah bolting toward her, dust rising from his steps. “What’s happened?”

  “I don’t know. Get as many to safety as you can.” If there was any safety to be found. “Wait,” she called as he turned to obey. “My mother?”

  “She ran for the temple.” He vanished into the chaos before she could ask more, shouting commands to his men.

  The temple that was collapsing as she watched.

  She reached for shadows, thinking to bypass the toppling pillars, but the darkness split with a howl that knocked her backward. Only Adam’s hasty catch saved her from falling in the street. The wind from the void scraped over her like sharkskin; the effort to seal the rift left her shaking.

  “Stay here,” she said, forcing her trembling knees to still.

  In response, the lintel cracked, raining chunks of sandstone onto the Chanterie steps. Moth yelped as a stray shard caught her brow.

  “I don’t think so,” Adam said.

  “That’s it!” Moth wiped her forehead, smearing blood. Pink light crackled across her fingers. “There’s something else in here besides the message, but I couldn’t work the spell.”

  Before Melantha could react, the girl darted close and plucked a knife from her belt. Her arm rose to block a strike, but that wasn’t Moth’s intention. Instead she brought the blade down the outside of her own left wrist. Blood trickled into her palm and dripped between her fingers. At its touch, the ruby blazed with hot red light, and a shining veil of power rose around them.

  “What is that?” Adam asked.

  “A ward. Isyllt left it for me to find. She must have known—”

  Another chunk of masonry crashed down, but the shield held. As she watched the city collapse around them, Melantha couldn’t find any gratitude for Iskaldur’s foresight.

  “I have to get to the temple,” she said to Moth.

  Magelight sparked in the girl’s eyes. “I know. So let’s go.”

  They dodged falling pillars and teetering walls. Somewhere along the way Moth had sliced her other wrist; blood streaked her face and rained from her fingers, faster than the shallow wound should allow. The more she bled, the brighter the protective spell burned.

  As they cleared the hypostyle, Melantha drew up short, breath abandoning her lungs. The ghost wind poured screaming from the fractured temple, stronger than she had ever seen it. But instead of grief and despair, this storm howled in exultation, fierce and free.

  At the base of the temple steps, in the shadow of the maelstrom, Nerium and Kash struggled. The jinni fought with savage desperation, but he was still weak from last night’s defeat. Nerium flung him away, crushing him to the ground with a word.

  Melantha moved to join her, but paused as Iskaldur and Asheris descended from the storm, held aloft on flaming wings.

  “What have you done?” Nerium shouted over the roar of falling masonry. Her nightdress was smeared with dirt and sweat, and blood trickled from a shallow cut on her cheek. Power crackled at her fingertips.

  “It’s over.” Iskaldur’s voice rang with inhuman strength. Another column split and fell. She gestured to the ruined temple and corrosion flew from her fingers to splinter the steps. Her hair writhed around a death-white face, floating in the draft of the void.

  Melantha’s chest hitched as she understood: Iskaldur had succeeded where she had failed so many years ago. She had become the void.

  “It’s over,” the necromancer said again. Her voice was nearly human this time.

  Nerium’s face was grey and streaked with tears. Melantha couldn’t remember when she’d last seen her mother cry. “I thought you understood. All we’ve done, all the sacrifices—”

  “I do understand. That’s why I did it. No one ever needs to make those sacrifices again. This has gone on too long, Nerium.”

  “Look up, you fool! Look at what you’ve unleashed.”

  Iskaldur lifted her head to the storm, jaw gaping as if she only just noticed the widening spiral.

  Now, Melantha thought. While she’s distracted. Her fist clenched around a knife. Demons could still die. And if she couldn’t kill the necromancer, at least she could distract her for Nerium. It might be the last chance she had—

  To do what, she asked herself. To make her mother proud?

  She coiled to strike, but fell instead as Adam hooked her legs and tugged them out from under her. She lunged up, spitting sand, and he caught her knife-arm and twisted.

  “No,” he said, his voice as gentle as his grip wasn’t. “I can’t let you do that. I have to trust her.”

  “Trust?” She spat the word in his face. “Trust that?”

  Asheris’s shout drew their attention in time to see Nerium strike, magic a killing blade in her hand. The jinni threw himself in front of Iskaldur, wings flaring.

  Kash got there first.

  “It’s over,” he said, all the malice drained from his voice. Four gaunt arms held Nerium close and his killing beak brushed her cheek, soft as a kiss. “It’s done, Nerium. Now we can both be free. Now you can rest.”

  His wings flared, obsidian feathers slicing open the night. He fell backward, Nerium cradled against his chest. The void took them both.

  “No!” Melantha flung Adam aside, ripping open the night as she dove.

  A storm raged beneath the skin of the world. The tempest caught her, spun her, sucked her down. Blind and breathless, she fought the current, reaching frantically for her mother. Instead familiar cold fingers closed on her wrist, steadying her amid the whirlpool.

  “It’s done, Arha,” Kash whispered. Instead of spite or mockery, his voice was soft and tired. “Let her go. You’re free now.”

  Free. The word was hollow, just as she was. She’d said she wanted out, but without Quietus what was she? An empty shell, full of ghosts and other people’s memories.

  “Are you going to kill me, too?” It would be easier if he did. How many times could she kill herself and start over? She felt like salted earth inside.

  “No,” Kash said. “I have something else for you. Talia.”

  “What?” The sound echoed in her head like a forgotten dream.

  “Talia. That was the name your mother gave you, the name you lost to the void. It can be yours again, if you want it.”

  “What do I do with it?”

  She felt his shrug. “Whatever you like.”

  He let go, and she fell through shadow and out the other side, to collapse weeping onto the sands of Qais.

  Asheris sighed as Kash and Nerium vanished, his wings slowly furling. “It’s done,” he repeated.

  Isyllt shook her head. “No.” Her hard-won control slipped, and the denial opened a gash across his cheek. They both flinched and she turned away, hugging herself as if that could contain the destruction. “Not yet. Al-Jodâ’im didn’t deserve what happened to them, but the world doesn’t deserve this. They don’t want to be here—it hurts them, even as they destroy us. I have to send them home.”

  She understood in that heartbeat how to do it. And something else, too. She turned back to Asheris, and the voice that strained her throat to bursting was not her own.

  “We can set you free, jinni.” Her hands rose like a puppet’s to cradle his face. Ahmar’s curse disintegrated at the touch, wiped away as easily as a spiderweb. Darkness rose from her skin like smoke, and the fire in his blood flared to meet it. “You are trapped as we were. We can take apart your prison as you did ours, till only the fire remains. You would be as you were once more.”

  “Free.” Wonder and disbelief transfigured his face, lit his eyes like flame within crystal.

  “You can go home.”

  His hands closed over Isyllt’s as if in prayer, and his eyes sagged shut. When they opened again their light was fiercer
, sharper, and so very sad.

  “Thank you. More than I can ever say. But no.”

  “What?” Isyllt reclaimed her voice, shoving Al-Jodâ’im aside even as she questioned the wisdom of interrupting cosmic powers. “What do you mean, no?”

  “I can go home to Mazikeen, hide behind shining walls, while the Fata bleeds dry. Or I can fight. I thought I was trapped between two worlds—what if I can be a bridge instead?” He gave her a lopsided smile. “And you were right—I would miss the theater.”

  “Very well,” said the Undoing, returning Isyllt’s mental equivalent of a rude elbow. “We have learned something of sacrifice in that pit, for good or ill. We’ve learned about vengeance too, and enemies. So we can give you another gift instead.”

  Isyllt felt that gift leave her, disappearing into the roiling storm above their heads. Her awareness followed, and for an instant she saw through the eyes of the storm. It spiraled across the desert, spinning faster and faster. The black wind swept toward the northern coast, where its daughter-storms would founder ships and douse the flames of lighthouses. It swirled west to the mountains of Ninaya to wake avalanches on their shoulders. In the shining city of Mazikeen, jinn drew back in horror as their glass-walled towers fissured and leaves fell from the Tree of Sirité, and to the south little spirits cowered as the gale shook the jungle canopy.

  But it was east that the Undoing flew, east to Ta’ashlan. Darkness broke in a wave over the City of Lions, and a thousand screams rose and were snuffed. Men and women fell in the streets, and those indoors fell to their knees and prayed. In the imperial palace, the empress collapsed on her balcony, clutching her stomach as the wind brushed past. But the storm gathered thickest over the great cathedral. One of the Pillars of the Sun split and crashed into the street below, destroying a line of buildings with its rubble. On the Illumined Chair, an old woman’s heart burst as she cried out to her god. And in the apiary, her hands sticky with honey and pollen, Ahmar Asalar looked up in horror and awe as the full force of the Undoing descended on her. And fell, dying, amid the ruin of her hives.

  With a whiplash shock, Isyllt’s awareness returned to her own flesh. The enormity of what she’d unleashed washed over her, sharp as a razor whose kiss wasn’t felt till blood flowed. Before she could try to understand, Al-Jodâ’im’s attention turned back to her.

  “Home.”

  “Home,” Isyllt whispered. Her wild elation drained, leaving fatigue in its wake. Not the smothering oppression of the ghost wind, but the strain of sleepless nights and more magic than fragile flesh could bear.

  “How?” asked Asheris. “How can you return them there?” He gestured upward, to the stars lost behind the storm.

  Kash and the ghost wind had shown her the first night in Sherazad, but she only now understood. “The void touches everything. I have a piece of it inside me. I am the gate—I just have to open it.”

  Asheris frowned. “That doesn’t sound pleasant.”

  Isyllt smiled, but it felt like a grimace. “I won’t feel a thing,” she lied.

  She lay down in the sand of ruined Qais and rose again into the Fata, shrugging off her flesh like a cloak. She looked down at her body, gaunt and wasted, white robes stained ochre with dust. A spent husk with neither soul nor spirits animating it. Asheris stood beside her, his eagle’s head hanging like a burning mask over his human face. He spoke, but the roar of the storm swallowed the words. His fire was a spark against the seething darkness of Al-Jodâ’im. The Undoing drowned all of Qais, filled the valley like ink in a bowl.

  Isyllt knelt beside herself, flexing ghostly hands. Both hands were whole here, freed from crippled meat, and she had use of her shoulder again. She wondered if she’d live to use the real one again, but it was too late for that to matter.

  She plunged her two good hands into her breast, through skin and meat and bone. Muscle throbbed in her grip, slippery as a dying fish. She ripped her heart free.

  Light sprayed from the wound like blood, a hemorrhage of magic. The hollow black diamond Kash had shown her glistened between her fingers, pulsing like a living thing. She dug her thumbs into the groove between ventricles and it came apart like a scored pomegranate. Instead of pith and seeds it held stars, and all the darkness between them.

  “There,” Isyllt said. She felt the word on her lips, but couldn’t hear it. Her living heart faltered at this violation, and her ghostly form shuddered with every beat. “That’s your door. Go.”

  An icy touch brushed her cheek in benediction. Then the wind from her sundered heart caught them, drawing them in. The void calling its children home.

  Like water down a drain, darkness spiraled into the rift, faster and faster. Isyllt screamed as the maelstrom rushed past her, or thought she did; the void took that too. The current spun her, filling her with black and cold.

  You may come with us, if you wish.

  It was an offer no other mage might ever receive. For a wild instant she even considered it. But a voice spoke her name, calling her back to her failing flesh.

  Good luck, she wished them as she fell.

  The darkness that swallowed her was the ordinary kind.

  CHAPTER 29

  She wasn’t dead. She could tell because she hurt.

  Isyllt opened her eyes to neither stars nor ceiling, but striped cloth. The air smelled of wool and smoke and desert night. She tried to roll over and remembered the splint halfway through the motion. With a croak that should have been a curse, she fell back on the blankets.

  “Here.” Adam slipped a hand under her good shoulder and helped her sit. When she had her balance, he held a cup to her lips. The water was tepid and tasted of leather, a welcome change from the sour film of sleep that coated her teeth. Half the liquid trickled down her chin, but that was all right; she needed a bath.

  When he took the cup away, Isyllt scrubbed her face with her sleeve. “The world is still standing, I take it?”

  Adam shrugged, crouching beside her. Firelight trickled through the open tent flap, painting his face with shadows. “Most of it, anyway. There’s less of Qais than there was. Part of the hall collapsed in the aftershock—that’s why we’re sleeping out here.”

  “Is everyone all right?” The question sounded ridiculous given voice.

  “The mages in the library died, but I don’t think they were all right to begin with. Moth was exhausted after that spellcasting, but she’ll be fine. Brenna— She’s used to starting over.” For once he didn’t correct the name.

  “Asheris?”

  “He’s out there somewhere.” He gestured beyond the tent. “We’ve taken turns looking after you, but he’s restless.”

  “How long has it been?”

  “This is the third night. You woke a few times before, but not for very long. This is the first you’ve been coherent.”

  “I don’t remember,” she admitted, wiping her face again. Her head was still full of Al-Jodâ’im and their song. “But I do remember you calling me, at the end. When I was fading.”

  He looked away, staring at the slice of night framed by the tent flap. “You hired me to look after you. Even when you do stupid things.”

  “Your contract ended over a decad ago, by my count.”

  He snorted. “I’ll bill you.”

  Isyllt laughed, and something lodged in her chest snapped and fell away. “Help me up. My legs will atrophy if I lie here any longer.”

  The night was deep and still, well past midnight from the stars. Two tents were pitched by the canyon walls, between the ruins of Qais and the path leading to Al-Reshara. It was toward the ruin that Isyllt walked, stretching cramped limbs.

  The starlight was enough for mage-trained eyes to see the rubble of the temple, and the gap-toothed hypostyle beyond. Past the columns, the Chanterie was a blacker bulk in the darkness, its silhouette uneven now. No lights burned throughout the empty city.

  “What happened to the people?” Isyllt asked softly, respectful of the weight of silence. “The guards and
servants.”

  “Most have already gone. Melantha sent them away. It’s a long trek to anywhere worth going, but between the myrrh and the money in Quietus’s coffers, I think they’ll be all right. A few are still here. Waiting to be sure we don’t break anything else. Do you think anything will ever grow here?”

  Isyllt drew a deep breath, tasting the night. Old magic remained thick in the air, and would for a long time to come, but the sense of hopelessness and loss was already fading. “Eventually.”

  They stood in the dark for a time, listening to the gentle whistle of the wind through the canyon walls.

  “Are you going with her?” Isyllt finally asked. She’d thought she was too tired and scraped clean to care, but as soon as the words left her mouth she knew that wasn’t true.

  “Does that mean you didn’t spy on all our conversations?” Adam exhaled sharply. “No. I’m not. I thought about it, but…” He shrugged. “The poison has drained, and I’m glad of it, but that doesn’t mean we’re good for each other. Maybe I’ll look for nice women from now on.”

  “Let me know how that works for you.”

  Adam chuckled. “Come on. You’re going to fall over soon.”

  She couldn’t argue with that. Her knees quavered and only the splint—filthy and itching by now—kept her spine straight. She followed him back to camp, but shook her head when he held the tent flap open.

  “I need air.” And the stars. Their song was fading, but she could still hear the faint crystal chime of constellations.

  “Watch out for scorpions.”

  They settled by the dying fire, leaning against a boulder still warm from the sun. Isyllt closed her eyes and listened to the starlight and wind, the crackling of embers and Adam’s soft breath. It was lonely in the way of empty places, but peaceful now with the prison destroyed and prisoners freed. For the first time in decads, she didn’t dread sleeping.