With Blood Upon the Sand

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Çeda kicked off the mat to reach her feet. “Do you never tire?”

  No sooner had she spoken the words than Zaïde’s ghostly pallor registered. She was standing perfectly still, her breath coming heavy, a discomfited look on her sweaty face. As Çeda ran to the edge of the room and fetched water from a ewer, Zaïde’s brows pinched, distorting the crescent moon tattoos between them. Her eyes were fixed on some point beyond the wall ahead of her, as if she were concentrating, willing her body to recover. Indeed, by the time Çeda returned with a glass of water, her breathing had slowed and the distressing ashen color of her skin had flushed a rosy hue.

  As Zaïde sipped the water, Çeda wondered if she should fetch help. It was easy to forget that Zaïde was more than twice Çeda’s age, perhaps even thrice as old—she’d never divulged her exact age. But here was a sign that perhaps Çeda should be more careful lest she lose her one and only ally in the House of Maidens.

  “Wipe that look from your face,” Zaïde said as she ambled toward the edge of the mat.

  “What look?”

  “And don’t patronize me.” She drank more from the glass, then set it on the table and returned to their starting position. “I’m not ready to see the farther fields just yet.”

  “It isn’t that,” Çeda said, taking her time moving across from her.

  “Oh, what is it then?”

  “I’m only annoyed that you won again.”

  “You’re a terrible liar, Çeda.”

  “I’m speaking the truth.”

  “A half-truth to hide your thoughts. Now come,” she said, taking another gulp of water, “it’s time we try something new.”

  “Shouldn’t we rest first?” Çeda asked.

  “Well of course, my precious child. And would you like someone to rub your feet as you lie upon your divan?”

  Part of Çeda wanted to laugh, but it felt too much like deflection on Zaïde’s part, or worse, deathbed humor, which was preposterous, of course. Zaïde was healthier than most people half her age. And yet there it was, a worry about Zaïde that went deeper than the mercenary notion of losing an ally. She’d come to enjoy her time with the Matron. Çeda had promised herself she’d make no friends in the House of Maidens, but if there was anyone who might hold that title, it was Zaïde.

  In the end, Çeda moved into place across from Zaïde, at which point the Matron lifted her hands into starting position. Çeda followed suit, the back of her right hand touching Zaïde’s.

  “Now close your eyes.”

  Çeda stared. “Why?”

  “I said close your eyes.”

  Çeda did, confused, feeling very exposed with the two of them poised to fight.

  “Now, feel your heartbeat.”

  Çeda had little choice—it was still pounding in her chest—but she expanded her awareness to feel more: the momentary surge of blood through her body, particularly in her temples and along her hands and fingers; her breathing as well, but only in relation to her heartbeat, one a staccato rhythm, the other a legato swell.

  “Good,” Zaïde said, as if she could sense how deeply Çeda was in tune with her body. “Now feel mine.”

  Confused, Çeda opened her eyes. She moved her hand away, an act that earned her a scowl. Zaïde grabbed Çeda’s hand and snapped it back into place.

  “Sorry,” Çeda said. She shut her eyes and enveloped herself in her own rhythms once more. For the life of her, though, she had no idea how she might sense Zaïde’s heart.

  “Come, Çeda, you like to think yourself a clever girl. Prove it to me now.”

  Çeda pressed her lips tighter, but then forced herself to relax. Zaïde was always pressing her in different ways: physically but also with insults and the occasional nasty trick. Your enemies will never let you rest. Why should I? She’d put them in first strike position for a reason. The backs of their hands were touching, so Çeda focused her attention there. She felt Zaïde’s warmth, felt her sweat-slicked skin. Felt the pulse of her blood.

  “Yes,” Zaïde breathed.

  Their heartbeats were out of sync, Zaïde’s moving slower than Çeda’s, no matter how out of breath she might have seemed moments ago.

  “Now slow yours to match mine.”

  Çeda tried, but each time she did, it only seemed to speed her heart, not slow it down. This was strange magic, what Zaïde was asking her to do. It might seem simple, but Çeda knew very well it was for some greater purpose. Mastery of this would lead to more, perhaps to the very secrets that made the Blade Maidens so mysterious to the populace of the desert: their ability to know the minds of their opponents, their ability to cow those who would stand against them.

  And there was another aspect that made her heart race. In the last moments before King Külaşan’s death, he had used this against her. He had synced their heartbeats, then pressed upon her, stifling the beating of her own heart, until the hatred of the asirim had revived her. Through her, the asirim had vented their long-suppressed rage for the Kings, allowing Çeda to turn the tables on him.

  “I said slow your heartbeat.” Zaïde was perturbed, yet perfectly in control. Her heartbeat had hardly changed, while Çeda’s rhythm swung wildly.

  Çeda concentrated once more. She reduced herself to sinew and bone and blood and muscle—not her memories, nor her emotions, but her physical self. Like this, she managed to slow the pace of her heart, and though for a time the two of them, Matron and Maiden, struck a cadence that was slightly out of sync, Çeda was able to weave them closer until the two were as one, a single soul in this place of sweat and learning.

  When Zaïde’s hand withdrew and reached out to strike Çeda’s neck, Çeda felt it, almost in advance.

  Eyes still closed, she blocked one strike, then two, then a third. Zaïde advanced, and Çeda retreated, blocking blow after blow. Then she stood her ground, blocking a flurry of movements that made the sleeves of their uniforms snap from the ferocity of it.

  Then Çeda felt a tug on her soul. A thing that made her cough, made her cringe both inside and out for how feeble it made her feel. Like turning an opponent’s hold against them, Çeda tried to turn their shared bond against Zaïde. Indeed, she heard a light cough from Zaïde just as Zaïde reached past her defenses and connected at last.

  Çeda remained standing there, eyes closed, the touch of Zaïde’s fingers still fresh on her skin. She realized the two of them were still in sync, that she was in fact finding it difficult to unchain herself. And finally, whether it was her own doing or Zaïde’s, the feeling was gone, and she was herself, alone in her skin once more.

  She opened her eyes to find Zaïde staring at her with something like awe. She recovered herself a moment later, the stern look she wore most often returning, but it was too late. Çeda knew that something strange had happened. Something unexpected.

  “What?” Çeda asked.

  “Have you done this before?”

  “No,” Çeda lied. She couldn’t tell the truth about Külaşan’s death, not here, so close to the House of Kings.

  Zaïde didn’t seem convinced, but after a moment, she nodded. “You did well, Çeda. We’ll continue with this another time.” She looked about the room, staring into the corners. “For now there are other things we must discuss.” She spoke in a voice so low Çeda could barely hear her. “You’ve gathered, no doubt, that there are times when it is unwise to speak freely. One day I’ll teach you how to know when you can and when you cannot, but not today.” Çeda was about to respond, but Zaïde held up a finger. She kneeled and motioned for Çeda to do the same, and then she did something most strange. Her lips pinched, lending her a sour look, as if she’d bitten into something horrible. Çeda soon understood that she was biting the inside of her lower lip, enough to draw blood. She ran her finger against it until it was covered in blood, then she ran the tip of it over Çeda’s lips. “Stick out your tongue.”r />
  Çeda did, and Zaïde touched it with her bloody finger. The Matron repeated the motions over her own lips, her own tongue. Çeda could taste Zaïde’s coppery blood, but she could also feel a tingling throughout her mouth.

  “Now,” Zaïde said, “if the gods are kind, this conversation goes unnoticed.”

  By Thaash’s bitter blade, this was blood magic, a thing forbidden to all but the Kings themselves and some few magi who answered only to them. “One day soon we will speak of your night in Eventide, but you have earned the right to ask me questions. So, Çeda. Ask what you will.”

  Çeda was unable to speak for a moment. She’d been so eager these past months that the sudden removal of Zaïde’s restrictions made her nervous, which only served to remind Çeda how risky all of this was.

  “Are you of the lost tribe?” she finally asked. Strangely, her words sounded flat to her ear, deadened, as if they were bound to them and them alone.

  “I am, though my blood is not so thick with it as yours. And there are others here as well.”

  “Among the Maidens?”

  Zaïde nodded.

  “The House of Kings as well?”

  Another nod.

  “How many?”

  “That I cannot reveal, but know this—you are not alone. We’ve been working our way into the Kings’ lives for a long while. I have the ear of one, who offers us some protection.”

  “Which one?”

  Zaïde shook her head. “That secret must remain with me.”

  “Are you in league with Ishaq, then? With Macide?”

  “That’s a complicated question with no simple answers. For now let me say yes, Ishaq and I work toward the same thing, the downfall of those who sit the thrones. We simply believe there are different ways to achieve it.”

  “He’s violent,” Çeda said.

  “He is violent, yes. And prideful, as if he alone has inherited the legacy of the thirteenth tribe. Make no mistake, though. There is no way around it. Rivers of blood will be spilled before the Kings step down from Tauriyat. But there is more to it than that. I believe you are aware that there is a poem, one uttered by the gods themselves on the night of Beht Ihman.”

  “The bloody verses,” Çeda replied.

  Zaïde nodded soberly. “Do you know the one that applies to the thirteenth tribe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Recite it.”

  It felt strange to utter it here, and terribly foolish, but she did as Zaïde asked, starting with the first stanzas she’d found in her mother’s book. “Rest will he ’neath twisted tree, ’til death by scion’s hand. By Nalamae’s tears and godly fears shall kindred reach dark land.”

  Zaïde nodded. “That is one stanza of what we believe is the final verse of the poem. In full, it reads thus:

  One King betrayed,

  one King unmade,

  King of Thirteenth Tribe.

  With withered skin,

  and fallen kin,

  his fate the Gods ascribe.

  Rest will he

  ’neath twisted tree,

  ’til death by scion’s hand.

  By Nalamae’s tears

  and godly fears

  shall kindred reach dark land.

  Zaïde paused. “You know who the King of the Thirteenth Tribe is.”

  Çeda’s skin prickled. “Sehid-Alaz.” To speak of this after being silent for so long, and with someone who might know more than she did—it made her worry that Zaïde was trying to trap her, to get her to speak against the Kings for some hidden purpose. But that made no sense. Dardzada had confirmed Zaïde’s identity, and Zaïde had done much to help her so far.

  Zaïde went on. “You’re also well aware who the kindred are.”

  “The asirim.”

  “It is that first line you recited that you and I and many from the lost tribe are most concerned with. A line that Ishaq scoffs at. ’Til death by scion’s hand . . . I believe, as others do, that there will be one of our blood who releases the asirim that they may find peace and pass on to the farther fields at last.”

  “And Ishaq?”

  “Ishaq . . .” Zaïde’s expression soured. “Our efforts in the House of Maidens began well before Ishaq was born. He argues that they are seeds that have borne too little fruit, and there’s some truth to that, I suppose, but it doesn’t negate what we do here. We cannot know which of us might free the asirim from the bonds placed on them by the gods on the night of Beht Ihman. It may be none who are living now. It may, in fact, be your daughter, or Macide’s or someone else’s we’re not yet aware of. There are, after all, those of the blood who do not realize it. I can only have faith that the goddess will see us through.”

  “Nalamae.”

  “Yes, Nalamae.”

  “She came to me that night, when I was out in the desert.”

  Zaïde was a composed woman, at ease with the world around her, so it was with no small amount of surprise that Çeda watched her rear back at this news like she’d been struck. “She came to you?”

  Çeda nodded. “I’ve seen her before, as well. She called herself Saliah. My mother took me to her house in the desert many times when I was young. I went there myself early this year, in spring.”

  “You’ve spoken to the goddess . . .”

  She seemed to have said the words more to herself than Çeda, but Çeda answered her anyway. “I have. She saved me in the blooming fields. Goezhen came with a pack of black laughers, though I know not why.”

  “Tell me, Çeda. All of it.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation. Again the mistrust for Zaïde, a habit born from a life of worry, of being taught to take care from the earliest days of speech. She knew it had to end somewhere, though. She could not do this alone, and she refused to become like Dardzada or even Amalos—someone who stood rigidly in place for fear of taking the smallest misstep—so she told Zaïde of her childhood visits to Saliah’s home, the way she was summoned by the chimes, how Saliah’s cheek had been cut by the crystal that had fallen and shattered against a stone. She finished with the night she’d been left in the desert, when Nalamae had led her into the waiting arms of the adichara, how they’d waited together as Goezhen came and inspected the very ground upon which Çeda had stood.

  For the first time, Zaïde seemed unsure of herself. “She wasn’t merely some desert witch? A woman touched by godsblood?”

  “Do you think a desert witch could hide from Goezhen himself?”

  “It’s just . . . we’ve long thought Nalamae lost.”

  “Well it isn’t as though she could move openly, is it? She’s been chased throughout the centuries by the other desert gods.”

  “Yes, it’s only . . .” Zaïde was crying, but there was a haunted smile upon her lips that echoed the naked amazement in her eyes. “We thought . . .”

  “You thought what?”

  “That she might have been killed, once and for all.”

  “The gods cannot die,” Çeda replied.

  “How little you know, child. Nalamae has died many times since Beht Ihman. Among the gods, she alone wishes to help us, to undo what her brothers and sisters have done. And the others know. They’ve always known, else why would Tulathan have named her as she spoke that poem to the Kings on the night of their dark bargain?”

  Suddenly all the stories Çeda had read about Nalamae made sense. How the other gods had seemed to be chasing Nalamae down, how she had returned as a little girl, and other manifestations. “The other gods hunt her,” Çeda said. “There are stories over hundreds of years.”

  “Yes,” Zaïde said, “and they’ve found her. They’ve killed her, or tried to. She returns, but we never know when, or even who she’ll be. It might be years or decades, even generations before she’s ready to help us once more. Don’t you see? If Nalamae has begun to sta
nd against the other gods, it means she’s ready to help us.”

  The news struck Çeda in the chest. “She’ll know, then. She’ll know the poems and which Kings they refer to.”

  “Perhaps, but I suspect you may be disappointed. When the goddess is reborn, she remembers little from her prior lives. The memories come back to her a little at a time. So we may find her, and if we do we will ask her what she remembers. But the chance of her deciphering the poems is small.” Zaïde paused, considering. “How many did your mother find?”

  “I know of three. One was for Külaşan, who lies dead. The second is certainly for Mesut.”

  “Recite it for me,” Zaïde said.

  “The King of Smiles,

  from verdant isles,

  the gleam in moonlit eye;

  with soft caress,

  at death’s redress,

  his wish, lost soul will cry.

  Yerinde grants,

  a golden band,

  with eye of glittering jet;

  should King divide,

  from Love’s sweet pride,

  dark souls collect their debt.”

  Zaïde’s brows pinched in concentration. “You said it is certainly for Mesut. Why?”

  “He wears a band of gold with a jet upon it.”

  “Would you bet your life that the poem refers to that stone and that stone alone?”

  “There’s more.” Çeda went on to tell Zaïde about the strange ritual in Eventide, how Mesut had used that golden band to summon the ghostly spirit that had then been drawn into the woman’s form, how the soul of the asir had reached out to the others in the blooming fields and how it had sensed Çeda after.

  By the time Çeda was done, Zaïde’s face had gone pale. “Breath of the desert . . . The asirim have been difficult to control in recent years. I thought it a sign that the days of their rule were nearing an end. But if Mesut is able to create more . . .”

  “And they’re using blood of the thirteenth tribe. I’m sure of it. Sacrificing our people yet again.”