King of Shards

by Matthew Kressel

  The ever-creative Rana had made a pun.

  The Bedu knew the rhythm of the sands and the seasons of its tides. They rode its eddies as a ship might navigate the sea. They knew the course of this broken world through the heavens and the motions of planets unseen by the naked eye. They possessed ancient magic that Daniel, in his puny existence, couldn’t conceive of. They were men who walked like gods.

  Men whom he needed to survive. The Bedu would save them from annihilation. With luck, the Bedu would help them save the Cosmos.

  But first the witch Marul Menacha had to release him from this four-limbed shackle. What irony that she was the only one who could help him now! Normally, he could alter his shape at whim. Now he was but little more than flesh, his mind deteriorating with each second. Mashit had dethroned him, cast him out of Sheol, depriving him of his power; he’d used the last of that power to bring Daniel here. If he didn’t reach Marul soon, he would wither and die, and the Cosmos with him.

  They had to hurry.

  Deep in the desert, a dune rose and obscured the Bedu from view. When it descended, the Bedu were gone, surfed away to some far-off city. Thus go the Bedu.

  I will join you soon, the demon thought. I must not tarry.

  Rana paused under the shade of a rocky overhang to drink. The demon didn’t welcome the pause, but hydration was necessary. Before drinking himself, Daniel dribbled water into the dog’s mouth from his bladder. The act was degrading, but the demon dog had little choice.

  “So how will this woman get me home?” Daniel said. “Who is she?”

  The dog needed to conserve his strength, but he allowed a brief answer. He inhaled deeply, forming the words in his mind, and blew them onto the sand. In English, the words read, “An old friend. She will make me man again, and then I will explain.”

  “Man again?” Daniel said, shaking his head. “All this is so . . . strange.”

  Rana was stacking a pile of stones into a miniature spiral stair. Daniel sat nearby, crossed his legs, and watched. He said, “If Gehinnom is a place of suffering, I don’t see it. Dry, yes, and full of, well, magic. But torment? Torturing angels? This is not my grandmother’s Gehinnom.”

  You privileged fool! the dog thought. How ignorant he was! But maybe that was for the best. The demon didn’t want Daniel getting wise. Not yet, because he wouldn’t like what the demon would propose, but it was the only way to save them all.

  Daniel removed the flower from his pocket and spun it in his fingers.

  Do you think that woman loves you, Daniel? the dog thought. If you only knew what your “Rebekah” truly is you’d stomp that flower to tatters. How many souls had Mashit slaughtered, how many demons had she sent to the bowels of Abbadon’s palace to suffer for eternities? The human Daniel knew was a mirage, a fantasy.

  Rana, building her spiral stair, began humming a tune, and he shivered with delight. Her melodies were creation itself, each note kindling fires inside distant, newborn stars. Daniel’s eyes dilated as he fell under her spell.

  Do you sense her power yet? the demon thought, giddily. Do you feel what she is?

  “Goddess, would you look at that!” Rana said in Wul. She had stacked the stones in a spiral that began as a small circle and widened gradually as it rose. On Earth it would have been called a Fibonacci spiral. But this shape didn’t exist on Gehinnom—couldn’t exist—because the laws of this universe would not allow such a compact agglomeration of form. Her structure looked precarious, as if it might be toppled with a strong gust of wind, and yet as Rana placed the final stone on its peak it seemed steadier and more ancient than the mountain beside them.

  “I’ve been dreaming this for weeks,” she said. “It was haunting me. I knew it was possible, but no matter how hard I tried, it always collapsed.” She leaped to her feet, excited. “I wish I could show Papa this. Or Chief Jo. I could build a life-sized one, a garden terrace or a private stair for the king!”

  Daniel studied the curious shape. You, Daniel, the dog thought, are the reason her structure doesn’t fall. You are the hidden pillar. Do you know it yet? Daniel was the reason Emod’s table had stopped rattling too. His presence alone was enough to uphold universes. What was a loose table or a pile of stones?

  The demon’s hopes rose. Daniel, the sustainer! Rana, the architect! And he, the demon, with the wisdom to bind their trinity into something never seen in all of history.

  The demon’s hackles rose, his skin tingling with an electric charge. Another demon was near! He could not let whoever it was see him like this, a helpless mongrel. If they recognized who he was, things would not end well.

  He leaped behind a crop of stone as a large shadow descended over the mountainside. A giant black eagle alighted on the cliff’s edge. Larger than an elephant, the eagle spread her wings to block Rana and Daniel’s escape.

  The dog knew this demon. She was Chialdra, his brother’s faithful servant.

  Rana pulled a bejeweled dagger from her belt as Chialdra cocked her head. The bird’s glittering topaz eyes blinked twice.

  “What have we here?” Chialdra said in a voice like grinding millstones. Her sharp teeth glimmered with saliva. “Two fools and a camel?”

  She has not sensed me? the dog thought. Is my power that weak?

  “Leave here!” Rana shouted. “Or I’ll slice off your wing!”

  The dog had to stop this madness. Rana was brave, but no match for Chialdra. She’d snap Rana’s spine like a twig. And he would not let his brother’s idiot servant thwart his grand plans.

  On all fours, he slunk low between the stones, weaving between their sharp edges. Daniel picked up a stone, ready to throw.

  Chialdra cocked her head again. “No talisman, charm, or rite? No swordsman flashing his might? But a girl with a miniscule blade and a man who threatens with shade? How brave of you both. How bold!”

  “We’ve nothing you want,” Rana said.

  “How do you know what I want?”

  “We’ve no gold or jewels. And we swallowed devil’s bane this morning. If you eat us you’d sicken and die.”

  “Devil’s bane? Hahaha!” Chialdra cackled and cawed, hopped closer. Her wings smelled of blood from a recent kill. “I’ve not heard that one in awhile. No, child, I heard you hum! You’re the Crooner they tell stories of, aren’t you?”

  “The Crooner?” Rana said.

  “The no-things that dwell in the wastes of the Jeen speak of a girl from Azru who sings while she lays stone. The ones that fear none, fear you! I have long wondered, what could a girl possess that scares demons so? Her songs, the no-things say, are zephyrs of bliss. I was drifting in a thermal when I heard you now. The veil was lifted, and I glimpsed the ninth heaven.”

  “You aren’t worthy of the first,” Rana said.

  “No doubt,” Chialdra said. “But what need have I of heaven when I have the Crooner?”

  “I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

  “Have I? Rumors of your music float across the desert.”

  Chialdra is a simpering fool! the dog thought, listening from behind a nearby rock. Rumors of Rana’s power drift across Creation down to the lowest depths of Sheol.

  Rana raised her knife. “What do you want?”

  “To hear you sing again! To hear that which makes demonkind tremble! Sing for me, and I promise I won’t eat you or your brave friend. Your camel, however . . .”

  “A demon’s promise is emptier than air.”

  “How little you know of demonkind.” Chialdra flapped her wings once; the gust knocked Rana and Daniel over. “And less of air!” Chialdra chuckled, a sound full of air and phlegm. “Besides, what choice do you have?”

  A shadow fell across Rana’s face as Chialdra raised her wings. The dog crept closer. Rana glimpsed him crouching low in the rocks. They exchanged glances, and for a moment he feared she would give him away. Instead Rana turned to Chialdra and said, “Let me think of a tune.”

  After a pause she hummed a new song. Her voice
was honey waterfalls cascading down sunlit stones. Oh the ecstasy!

  Chialdra retracted her wings and spun in wild dervishes on the cliff’s edge. Her movements were careless, precarious. She teetered, caught herself, and spun again. As Rana sung, the dog dreamed of balmy nights in Abbadon’s towering palace, the giraffe-necked Kokabiel beside him in bed, the hot breeze from Lake Hali blowing through the curtains.

  Oh, Koko, how I miss you! How he missed running his hands over the demon’s white fur.

  Lost in dream, he nearly forgot to act. He sprung from his hiding place and chomped into Chialdra’s knee. Chialdra screamed and flapped her wings, knocking Rana and Daniel off their feet again. Chialdra leaped into the air, and the dog hung on, biting hard, dangling beneath her body. He bit deeper, tearing into meat as she swung wildly, trying everything to fling him off. Hot blood spilled down his canine lips, across his body, splattering on the rocks below.

  Chialdra screeched, and stones tumbled from the mountainside. Daniel leaped away. Chialdra pecked at the dog with her beak. Tossed about, he sawed into her leg until he found bone, then ground harder. With her free talon, she stabbed at him, piercing his side.

  He yelped and released his bite. A mistake!

  He fell for a horrifying second, then slammed into stone.

  Pain! Not since the Shattering had he known so much pain! He gasped and spat blood as Chialdra righted herself in the air.

  Her injured leg dangled limply, spilling blood onto the rocks. “My leg! My leg! I’ll return to devour you all, I swear it! I swear!” she squealed. “And then you’ll know a demon’s promise!”

  Weeping, she sped off into the desert, raining red onto the sands.

  “Goddess!” Rana shouted, after catching her breath. “Adar? Adar! If he’s dead we’ll never find Marul!”

  Foul pain throbbed with every beat of his canine heart. It hurt so much he could not tell which part was injured. Unconsciousness threatened, and he fought to stay awake.

  “Adar!” Daniel shouted. “Adar?” His voice bounced across the rocks.

  “Hush!” Rana said in Wul. “You’ll cause a rock slide!”

  Rustling above him. Someone was climbing down. Daniel, calling out.

  Groaning, he rose to his feet.

  “I see him!” Daniel said. “Adar! We’re coming! Rana, he’s badly hurt. He’s bleeding.”

  The dog hopped toward Daniel. His left hind leg was broken, his right rear hip torn open and bleeding onto the stones. Three ribs were broken, perhaps more.

  Daniel tried to pick him up, but he growled and leaped away.

  “Let him up!” Rana said. “Oh, Goddess!”

  He fumbled onto the path, limped three paces, and collapsed.

  Rana covered her mouth. “You should have stayed hidden! Why would you do such a stupid thing, Adar?”

  With his last bit of power, the dog exhaled green smoke. Except his power was too weak. The smoke blew away before the words found their way to impress the sand.

  “Es per-shemp Bedu,” he wanted to write.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  With the same shreds of fabric Daniel had used to bandage her own injury, Rana wrapped Adar’s wounds. A sob formed in her throat. She felt like a helpless child, afraid she might explode with tears. If Adar died, there would be no way to find Marul, and this whole adventure would be for naught. Adar groaned as she bandaged him, whimpering with every fold.

  “Be still now. Be still.”

  That was the largest bird she’d ever seen. The largest animal too, and a demon at that! The eagle had said rumors of her song drifted into the deep desert. Was that true? She recalled the look on the masons’ faces when she sang, how they labored twice as hard under her melodies. Sometimes while singing, she felt as if the masons were extensions of her body, two dozen muscular arms bound to her through ligaments of music. She had thought it a mere vision, just another image that came to her like the vistas that haunted her dreams. But what if her music did have power?

  She remembered the beryl-winged hawks that circled overhead when she sang, how they cried out whenever she paused. And the implacable Chief Jo always calmed like baby Liu snug in blankets when she sang. She was different, possessed of a creative spirit that terrified most men. But demons knew of her? Perhaps the cityfolk were right. Maybe she was cursed.

  She finished bandaging Adar in a knotted weave she hadn’t realized she had been making, an abridged version of the blanket she had knitted for Liu. A natural dog would have died from these wounds, but the demon Adar still lived. For how long?

  “You can’t walk,” she said. “We’ll carry you.”

  Adar defiantly climbed to his feet. His bright eyes had lost their luster, now rheumy and red like Papa’s. She reached for him, but he hopped away.

  Daniel had a worried look on his face. He too was lost without Adar, she realized.

  “We’d better go,” she said. “Before another demon visits. I’ll refrain from singing, this time.”

  They mounted the camel, and Adar limped pathetically beside them. The faint moon rose above the DanBaer like a half-lidded eye, and she felt as if it wasn’t the only thing peering down at them. The rocks seemed to whisper ancient secrets as the wind brushed around their sharp corners. Rainbow lizards skittered between the cracks, laughing.

  The encounter with the eagle had left Rana with a lingering shiver, but under her fear was a curious elation. She had faced a demon and lived! Was this why Marul was always so full of life, because of how frequently she had skirted death?

  Adar limped, tenaciously leading them onward, and she was impressed with his demon stamina. They reached the top of the DanBaer just after peak sun. A sand- and wind-blasted plateau spread for a full parasa to the south and east. A long time ago a city had stood here, but now only scattered rubble and faint marks that hinted of ancient foundations remained to speak of it. No one remembered the city’s name; most called it Old Stone.

  The ruby-tiered Araatz mountains, flat-topped, wind-blasted, extended to the eastern horizon, a stunning view. A long time ago Rana had asked Papa why their tops were flat as tables. “Did some great hand chisel away their peaks?”

  “No, flower,” Papa had said. “Time has flattened the Araatz.”

  “Time?”

  “Time is the greatest of all masons,” he’d said. “She lifts mountains and grinds them to dust, and the strongest men and the richest kings always succumb to her hand.”

  The memory filled her with nostalgia. She hadn’t been on this plateau since she was six, when she had helped Papa build the Crypt of Umer for the dead king. She remembered working with stone, the excitement of wielding her first tools, Papa’s strong hands guiding hers, pounding hammer to chisel, the peal of metal against rock. The joy after a day’s work, sitting on his knee, looking out over Azru, much smaller then, listening to his stories of cities destroyed by war or cataclysm, rebuilt by heroes like her, one stone at a time. She knew she’d follow in Papa’s footsteps, become a great mason like him.

  “I’m quite sure,” Papa had said, “you’ll be much greater than me.”

  And she had rebuilt Azru, laying stone in nearly a thousand storehouses, towers, homes, and palace courtyards in her life, more than any other living mason. She could have taken Papa’s place as chief architect. But King Jallifex did not want a woman in that role. Rana would have to wait until the king died or was overthrown. And even then there was no guarantee his successor would feel any differently about women in power, never mind that they all prayed daily to Mollai, the most powerful woman of them all.

  She sighed. No, Azru, despite the late-night hopes of Mama, had always been a place ruled by men, and it would always be.

  Azru was hidden below the cliff’s edge, where the late King Umer’s tomb clung. Hundreds of featherless gray birds had long ago made a nest of it. She wished she could see Azru from its vantage point now, how it had grown in those long years, but they were headed in the opposite direction.

  She
ached to hold baby Liu in her arms, to hear Papa’s voice, even if he were to admonish her to wash her hair. She longed for Mama’s nagging. And, Goddess, she even missed Davo’s lustful stare. They weren’t even a full day from Azru. What the hell was happening?

  The answer came as she passed a toppled wall of stones where a tiny scorpion, its diamond pincers glittering in the sun, skittered away. This was the farthest she’d ever been from home. Her whole life lay behind her, in one small city she couldn’t even see. It had taken her twenty years to come this far.

  Why have I waited this long? she thought. She stared at the Araatz’s immensity. The world is enormous and I have only seen such a small part of it.

  Silently she recited a prayer to Mollai for Adar’s health. The limping demon continued to lead them across the plateau. His steps slowed and became languid in the brutally hot sun.

  “Please,” she begged Mollai. “Please don’t let him die.”

  They reached the far side of the plateau and followed Adar down between two large boulders. The sun vanished behind a rock wall as they dipped into the descending path, barely wide enough for a single man to walk. The path twisted crookedly alongside the mountain, bordering an immense canyon. She’d heard of this dreaded place. The Black Chasm was as terrifyingly wide as it was deep. Vertical black lines ribbed its slate-gray walls. The distant cliffs winked at her like flecks of diamond in coal, while the chasm bottom slept in shadow, save for a scattering of fires that belched noxious smoke that fouled the air.

  Her lungs burned as she inhaled ash.

  The Gates of Korah, she thought. She’d heard stories of travelers slinking down to their dark crevices and returning mad, if they even returned at all. The Cursed Men, it was said, held evil bacchanals among the smoldering fires on moonless nights. They feasted on the newly deceased and played piping music that struck men dead if they heard but a single note.

  Was Marul down there? She wasn’t sure if she could go there, if that were true. And her she-camel seemed to agree. The beast stopped. Daniel, grasping her waist, said something nervously behind her.