“You’re half one already,” Caleb said.
In a language different from Wul, Marul shouted, “Good people of the desert, I am Marul Menacha from the city of Ilia. Many years ago I slept under your tents. I shared a hundred sunrises with your fathers. Give us your favor in these dark times. We mean you no harm.”
This language was harsh, raspy, more suited to the desert than melodic Wul. And Daniel understood every word.
The bearded-man consulted a stout man at his side. Then he strode down the steep dune, his legs thick and powerful.
Caleb opened his arms wide and said, “Good friend, we welcome you—”
The man ignored Caleb and walked up to Marul. It seemed as if his astoundingly blue eyes, the color of the sky after a summer rain, could pierce through all subterfuge.
“You’ve changed much,” the blue-eyed man said.
“Haven’t we all,” said Marul.
“I remember you, Marul Menacha of Ilia. I sat on my father’s knee as you regaled us with stories of worlds beyond Gehinnom. You spoke of hollow metal birds that fly men from city to city and brave souls who traveled to the stars on pillars of fire.”
“Who is your father?” she said.
“Alazar ben Olam, blessed be his memory.”
“His memory?”
“The sands have taken him.”
“Alazar, gone?” Sadness wrinkled her face, but she quickly composed herself. “How did he leave us?”
“The forty houses suffered an execrable curse. At every sundown, we turned into boars and scorpions, returning to our human bodies at dawn. Many died each night, until my father made a deal to save us. He bargained with Chialdra, the eagle demon. Though Chialdra helped us remove the curse, she betrayed my father and ate him alive in front of our children. May her name forever be a curse.” He spat.
Marul winced. “A tragedy of generations. You are Jesse, then?”
He shook his head. “Jesse was my brother. He died of malnutrition three years ago during a famine. I am Elizel ben Alazar.”
“Little Elizel?” Marul exclaimed. “The boy who raised an orphaned calf and raced it around the camp, making your mother crazy with fright?”
“Zissl mothered more than half our camels.”
“Oh, Elizel, how you’ve grown! So much time has passed.”
“And with time comes change. The desert sparrows bring rumors from across the world. Demons are ransacking cities everywhere. They hunt for a demon named Rana.”
Marul’s face twitched. “Rana’s no demon. She’s a human girl!”
Elizel eyed her suspiciously. “You know this Rana whom they seek?”
“Distantly,” Marul said. “We were friends many years ago.” She eyed Caleb. “I have been away from many things for a long, long time.”
“The cycle of destruction returns to Gehinnom again,” Elizel said. “Demons return to seduce the distraught with their poison knowledge. They foul the minds of our children and plot our slavery for a thousand generations. We must be ever vigilant. Tell me, Marul, why do you walk with these abominations?” He gestured to the Mikulalim, and—Daniel realized with a start—himself.
“They are our guides. We were looking for you. We need the help of the Quog Bedu.”
“For what?”
“It’s a long story, and—” she held her hand up to shield the sun— “best told in shade. Will you give us sanctuary?”
Elizel considered for a moment. “We will offer you sanctuary, Marul, and respite for the humans among you. But our law does not allow these maneaters to walk the sands and live. In the name of the Great Goddess Mollai, Giver of Rain and Succor, we must to destroy these abominations.”
Marul shook her head. “Elizel, please! The Mikulalim have been nothing but kind to us. Allow them to return to their home!”
He frowned. “I sympathize, Marul. No one wants blood, and least of all me.” He eyed his people crowded on the hill. “But you cannot ask me to flout the law while thousands watch.”
“As a friend, as someone who slept in your father’s tent, I ask you—no I beg you—make this exception! Send your people away, and allow the Mikulalim to flee.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But that cannot happen. I gave the order before I came to meet you. It cannot be rescinded.” He tilted his staff toward them and fifty armed men charged down the hill. There was nowhere to run.
“Daniel!” Caleb shouted. “Take off your cloak! Now! Hurry!”
Daniel threw back his hood as the men ran for them. Stones whooshed past his ears. One hit a Mikulal in the head, and he wailed as he went down. A soldier came for Daniel and raised his sword. Marul shouted, “Stop! He’s human!” The soldier knocked Daniel in the ribs with the butt of his sword. Daniel gasped and tumbled onto sand.
Soldiers surrounded Junal. He never lifted his sword. They sliced open his cloak and it fell to the ground. Naked and trembling, Junal screamed as his skin caught fire in the sun. Smoke and flames leaped from his body as Junal withered like a punctured balloon. Daniel watched, sickened, as the screaming Junal shrunk into a quivering lump of animal tissue. Junal’s mouth had melted away, but his scream continued.
The soldiers tore away the cloak of another Mikulal, and another, until all were screaming. Caleb’s hold on them was so strong they went willingly to their death. “Stop!” Daniel screamed. “Stop killing them!” He rose to his feet, but a soldier kicked him in the back of his legs and he stumbled again.
In a different language, Marul chanted, “May your suffering be abated. May the cool waters of eternity salve your wounds.” The Mikulalim whimpered as Marul’s hands glowed the stark blue of ancient sea ice. The Mikulalim turned the same color, and their screams lessened. In less than a minute, all of the Mikulalim had been reduced to smoking lumps of flesh.
A soldier put his sword against Marul’s neck and said, “Stop your magic, witch, and let the abominations die!” She lowered her hands. The glow faded, and their screams resumed.
Four soldiers surrounded Daniel. One raised his sword.
“Remove your cloak!” Caleb shouted.
Daniel yanked the cloak over his head and tossed it aside. He fell to his knees. He wore only his boxers, and the sun poured like boiling water onto his skin. He wanted to scream, but with great effort he held his voice, afraid they would kill him if he made a sound.
Elizel swept through the soldiers. He stopped before Daniel and demanded, “Why do you wear the cloak of maneaters?” His ultra-blue eyes bored into Daniel’s head like Junal’s words.
“Because,” Caleb said, “he’s a milk-skin, from the north! He cannot abide the sun.”
“I asked him!” Elizel said. To Daniel he said, “Answer me!”
Panting, Daniel said, “I’m from . . . the cold north. The hot sun hurts me.”
Elizel didn’t seem convinced. He turned to his men and said, “Burn what’s left of the abominations and salvage what we can from their trunks. Then burn those too, as it is said, The cursed shall burn in your passing, so that not even the dust of their memory remains.”
The soldiers hurried to execute his orders as Elizel climbed up the dune.
“Elizel ben Azar!” Marul shouted, her cheeks wet with tears, “You’re nothing like your father!”
“I know,” Elizel said. “Unlike him, I do not bargain with abominations.”
The soldiers tore apart the Mikulalim trunks and kindled a fire with the wood. One by one, they threw the screeching Mikulalim into the pile. Daniel watched as a soldier picked up Junal’s pouch, the one that held his wife’s lock of hair, and tossed it in to the flames.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The dreams were always the same. Rana was lost in the smoke, groping in the dark, as Mama called, “Rana, baby, where are you? I can’t see!” Mama’s voice was faint, just out of reach, and no matter which way Rana turned she never got any closer. A different voice, a man’s raspy whisper, reached into her dreams. She opened her eyes.
She found he
rself in a small tent. It was light, but not bright. Maybe just before dawn. Her head throbbed painfully, and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. Drugged, by that robed man’s potion. She tried to move, but found her arms and feet were bound. Her body ached from lying too long in this position.
“Rana, are you awake?” Emod lay beside her, bound in thick leather belts. His face was heavily bruised, and blood stained his shirt.
“So, Emod,” she said hoarsely, “how’s business?”
“Quiet!” he whispered. “They’re just outside the tent.”
Heavy belts wrapped her, just like him. Straining, she brought her knees to her mouth, and reached for the belt with her teeth.
“Wait!” Emod said.
But when her mouth touched leather a sickening taste spread on her tongue. She gagged and retched.
“That charlatan pretended to charm these belts with magic,” Emod said, “but I saw him sprinkle some powders on them.”
She pushed through the waves of nausea, blinking away the visions of her parents’ flayed bodies, the pecking flies. “Where are we?” she said. It hurt even to speak.
“A couple hours from Azru, I think. Somewhere on the Tattered Sea.”
“You owe me money.”
“Huh?”
“I gave you my works to sell. And you underpaid me, every time.”
“Rana, focus! These men, they’re going to sell us into—”
“I never asked for my fair share because I thought I was helping you. I thought I was keeping you from starving.”
He blinked at her. “You were.”
“I want my backpay,” she said.
“Rana, these men, they would have killed me.”
“You brought them to my house, Emod. My house.” Her voice rose, and Emod glanced at the tent opening. “There were a thousand other houses to plunder, but you chose mine.”
He closed his eyes. “Can you forgive an old fool?”
“You’re neither old nor a fool,” she said. “And I see you never were a friend.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I was hiding under my table when they came down Bedubroadstreet. They were slaughtering everyone along their path. They were about to kill me, when I blurted the first thing that came to my mind. I told them I could lead them to your studio, that they would find treasures there. I know how foolish that sounds now, but when you have a sword to your neck, you’d do stupid things too.”
“It takes less than a sword for some,” she said.
“There was death everywhere. I was terrified. We were just outside your house when we ran into this trembling woman. She was carrying a baby. These beasts were going to toss the baby into the flames and do unspeakable things the woman. But I said, ‘Look, here we are! A treasure house sits just over this pile of rock!’ And while the men looked, the woman fled with the child. You see, Rana, I saved not just my life, but two others as well.”
Rana thought, A baby girl, by my house? “What color were her eyes? This baby’s?”
“I don’t know. It was dark.”
“Her hair, was it straight and black?”
“I don’t remember. Maybe. Yes, I think so. Why does it matter?”
“I never found my sister.”
“Goddess, you think that baby was Liu?”
She paused. There was something in Emod’s tone that made her suspicious. He had spent his entire life swindling people. Was he spinning a tall tale, one that made Emod the hero instead of the villain? Or had he really saved Liu’s life?
Oh, Liu. Precious beautiful Liu.
How Rana longed to hold Liu in her arms. How she ached to stare into her sister’s glistering eyes. Soon she would wake up from this horrid dream, and Mama and Papa would be waiting for her to sit down to dinner.
Emod stared at her. “Those demons who attacked Azru, why were they looking for you?”
She shivered at the memory. “Not me. Someone I was with.”
“That pale-skinned man? The one who didn’t speak Wul?”
“His name is Daniel Fisher, and he holds the world on his shoulders, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at him.”
“And here you blame me, when it was you who brought those beasts upon Azru.”
She remembered the crumbling walls, the falling towers. The city she had built brick by brick—was it all dust now? “It’s not my fault. That dog was the demon king Ashmedai. He brought this upon Azru.”
“A lowly dog, the Great Ashmedai? Stealing steaks on Bedubroadstreet to eat?” Emod shook his head. “Rana, you’ve inhaled too much of that man’s potion.”
“But it’s true. Mashit, a demoness, has cast him out of Sheol. She is looking for him.”
Emod gave her a pitying look. “Rana, we’re both exhausted. And there’s something important I need to tell you before they come back. While you were sleeping, the leader—the one with the scars across his face and arm—he tried to touch you.” He paused. “I told him that you were a virgin, that the witch queen wouldn’t buy a woman defiled with diseases. He beat me, but then seemed to grow entranced by your necklace. He stared at it for several minutes, as if dreaming, and then he grew sleepy and left.”
The necklace, to her surprise, still remained around her neck.
“These men are beasts,” Emod said. “He will try to approach you again.”
“I won’t give him the chance.”
“Then we have to find a way to escape.”
Rana remembered Grug’s last words. Sing, Rana, sing. “Yes,” she said. “I’ve an idea.” She shouted, “Hey! Ox asses!”
“What the hell are you doing?” Emod said.
Suddenly the beast of a man, the leader with the missing finger, shoved his scarred, bearded face through the tent opening. With him came the smell of sweat and shit. Last night she had feared this face, but now she saw only a diseased animal that needed to be put down.
“Ah, the whore is awake!” he said. “You two ain’t getting any food or water til tomorrow, so you best shut your little—”
“You want to sell me to the harems in Ektu El?” she said.
“That’s the plan.”
“You’d make three times more selling me as a performer than a whore.”
“You dance?” the man said, scratching his beard.
“No, I sing.”
“So can I!” he said. “With my ass!” He laughed and coughed up phlegm. “Now be a good whore and shut the fuck up. And you—” He kicked Emod in the ribs. “Keep your mouth shut!”
“What you doing with the bitch?” someone said outside the tent. “If you fuck her, then we get a turn too!”
“There’s nothing but shit in here,” the leader said. “Finish packing the camp!”
“Oh my Goddess!” Rana said in her best slatternly voice. “Your cock is so big and hard! Can I lick it? Please, can I?”
“Rana!” Emod said. “What the hell are you doing?”
The man raised his hand to hit her, but another man, even more ugly, strode into the tent. “You said we ain’t to fuck the bitch because our pricks are dirty, but you said nothing about her sucking us off.”
More of the men joined in. “Is he fucking her? What a demon!”
“He was going to show me his big cock,” Rana said to the second man. “How about you take me outside so all you boys can have a go?”
“Rana!” Emod said. “What are you—”
The leader kicked Emod. “The bitch lies!” he said. “I got my fucking trousers on!”
“Yeah, but it’s been weeks since we had soft lips between our legs,” the other said. “Let’s bring her outside and have turns at her, just for a bit.”
“There will be no such thing!”
The men protested. “Bring the whore out! Let’s see her titties!”
“Enough!” the leader said. “You want to see her?” With one huge arm he lifted her by a belt and carried her out into the bright sun. He threw her down to the sands.
“Hey!” one said.
“Don’t break her! She’s worth a small city.”
Rana coughed and blinked as her eyes adjusted to the brightness.
“There!” the leader said. “As you can see, she’s tied, and my cock is in my pants. And if any of you dogs try to shove your pricks into her, I’ll cut them off!”
Rana faced four dour-eyed camels, each overburdened with plunder from Azru. The bronze bust of Mollai she had made for Mama poked from one of the saddlebags.
There were six men, scarred, tattooed, hirsute, plus the charlatan in his colorful robe. This pale man smoked a long, thin bone pipe while one of his eyes leered at her. The other gazed at the men. All the men eyed her hungrily, except for the charlatan, and Rana sensed that he preferred their form to hers.
“I can sing,” she said. “I can sing more beautifully than dessert sparrows. I’m worth more as a singer than a whore.”
“Is that true?” one said.
“Don’t know,” said another.
“How much more?” said a third.
“At least five times,” she said. “Maybe ten.”
The charlatan’s long white-hair blew in the wind as he lowered his pipe. “She’s trying to trick you,” he said. His mousy voice barely reached her ears.
“Back in Azru, you cowered when the men fought the maneater,” she said to him. “You chant gibberish. You’re no magician. You use cheap potions any fool can buy.”
He scowled at her, then reached for a knife at his belt. It was her knife, she saw, the one with the bejeweled hilt. “I’ll show you magic!” he squeaked.
The leader raised his hand to stop him.
“Let me sing,” Rana said. “And judge for yourselves my worth.”
The charlatan crossed his arms. “Let’s hear you, then.”
“Yeah,” another said. “You can practice your song for when we spread your hips!” The men laughed and the robed one took a puff of his pipe. Rana’s nose twitched from the cloyingly sweet scent of the smoke.
“I cannot sing while bound,” she said. “How do you expect me to fill my lungs?”
“It’s a trick,” the charlatan said. “She wants to run away.”
“We’re in the deep desert. Where would I run off to?”
The leader stared at her for a minute, then ordered the charlatan to undo the “magic” of the bonds, which amounted to him putting on gloves while he unbuckled the many belts and chanted nonsense words in Bedu-Besk. As he unbuckled them, she whispered, “You’re not half a magician. You’re not even half a man.”
King of Shards Page 21
