Throne of the Crescent Moon

by Saladin Ahmed

  “When we met, I wondered why you were traveling on such dangerous errands unarmed.”

  “Aye. I am not a soft man, Zamia. I travel with those willing to kill. I flatter myself that I can still throw a punch as good as a man half my age. But…well, there is a difference between cold-blooded guttings and giving a cruel man a bloody nose once in a rare while.”

  Dawoud appeared in the doorway and snorted. “‘Once in a rare while’? Do not let him fool you, girl. Adoulla Makhslood has handed out cracked ribs and swollen skulls a good bit more often than ‘once in a rare while’!” The magus walked over and patted the ghul hunter on his shoulder. “This one’s as much a savage as any Badawi, make no mistake!”

  Zamia was about to take the magus to task for thus characterizing her people, but a sudden stink—so strong that to Zamia’s keen senses it was almost a physical object—filled the room. At first she was sure one of the old men had broken wind. They kept pointing accusing fingers at each other and snickering like children. But it was a different sort of stink, a scent her senses didn’t recognize. And it was streaming in from the small shop’s cedar windows. “What is that smell?” she asked, gagging around the words.

  The Doctor stopped snickering and, as he spoke, his voice dripped with disdain. “That is the smell of the dyers and the tanners. The new Khalif, in his infinite wisdom, had the wafting-spells reroute the stink through the Scholars’ Quarter last year. Now one evening each week that damned-by-God smell gets dumped upon us and lingers for an hour. Were it any more than that, I swear to you the Khalif would have a riot on his hands.”

  Dawoud grumbled something, walked over to a large knit pouch that hung on the wall, and produced from it two pieces of folded cloth. He handed them to Zamia and the Doctor. “Sad to say, I’m almost growing used to it. But Litaz has taken to keeping these around.”

  “Praise God for your wife’s wisdom, brother-of-mine.” The Doctor held the cloth over his mouth and nose. As Zamia followed suit, she was surprised by the pungent but pleasant smells of mint oil and cinnamon and under these the stinging scent of vinegar.

  The magus’s eyes tightened, and his voice grew firm. “I won’t let her be hurt,” he said. He spoke to the Doctor as if Zamia were not right there. “We are with you, my old friend, you know that. But this isn’t like the old days. I will not let Litaz be hurt. Now it is that before anything else.”

  Zamia felt words rising up within her but she kept them down.

  The Doctor set down his scented cloth. He put a big brown hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I will not let her be hurt either, brother-of-mine.”

  Zamia believed him. In that moment, the Doctor seemed frighteningly alert to her. His face looked less round, somehow. Hard and haggard. She wished her will alone could heal her wounds and return her powers. To be lying in a sickbed while brave old men—yes, Doctor Adoulla Makhslood was brave, Zamia had to confess it—did the work of avenging her tribe.…It twisted her stomach.

  Zamia vomited over the edge of the divan. Thin yellow bile splashed onto the Doctor’s kaftan, then slid away.

  Zamia was mortified. Her stomach twisted into further knots from pain and drugs, stink and embarrassment, and the taste of bile. She vomited again, this time at least finding the copper pail Litaz had placed beside the couch.

  At that moment, the alkhemist swept into the room and began shooing out the men. “Out, you two! Out! This child is a chieftain’s daughter, and she has just emptied her guts before you. Do you think she needs two old goats hovering over her? No! Leave this between us women of high station. I said go! Name of God, can you men not make yourselves useful elsewhere?”

  Zamia was as thankful for the alkhemist’s presence as for any rescue by an armed ally. She felt better now that her stomach was empty and, when the men had left, she smiled weakly at Litaz. But the little woman looked heartbroken as she sat beside Zamia.

  “Do you know, only a day ago I was dreading the drudgery of drawing up accounts after Idesday? I thought that was going to be the great pain of my week. Now? I have a houseful of pain and loss.”

  Shame flooded Zamia’s heart. “I am sorry, Auntie, to have brought my troubles to your door.”

  Litaz waved away the words. “I’m not speaking only of you. Adoulla Makhslood lost a lifetime’s worth of books and talismans in that fire, Zamia. He is doing things only a young man should do in order to re-arm himself: sleep-stealing spells, self-bleedings, and such. We fought side by side for many years, dear, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him more determined.”

  Zamia found comfort in this. She felt her respect for Doctor Adoulla Makhslood deepen almost physically. Litaz continued as she cleaned up the mess Zamia had made.

  “You must understand what he has lost, Zamia. That townhouse…it was a sign of something. A sign that this man without wife or child or high station held something in this world.” The alkhemist shook her head. “But I suppose these things would make little sense to a tribeswoman, especially to one as young as you. ‘With my father against my band! With my band against my tribe! With my tribe against the world!’ You think us all quite strange—this little family of not-blood—do you not?”

  Zamia thought for a moment before speaking. “Strange? Perhaps. But also admirable. So different from one another, yet so dedicated to each other. God’s truth be told, I’ve never seen such a way of being before. My own band feared me, even as they were happy enough to call me Protector.” She stopped herself before saying any more. How dare she speak ill of her band—her dead band!—to this woman who was practically a stranger!

  She changed the subject. “You and your husband, Auntie. You have been married to him a long time, yes? And you sleep with him despite his tainted powers?” Only after she’d spoken did she realize that, to a townsman, this was inappropriate talk.

  But Litaz just laughed. “Ha! Do you think he’s grown hooves or something? He has all the same elements that make a man. We may not be the hot-blooded couple we once were, but yes, of course I sleep with him!”

  “And yet you two have no children?”

  Litaz smiled a small, sad smile and said nothing.

  “Forgive me Auntie, I should not have—”

  “No, no, there’s no need for forgiveness, child. We had a son, Dawoud and I. It was a long, long time ago. He was a beautiful boy, and in his beaming little face was everything that was handsome of the Red River Soo and the Blue.”

  The air was thick with the sadness in the woman’s words. “He…he has gone to join God, Auntie?”

  A tiny, graceful nod. “Yes. Twenty years dead. He would be older than you, had he lived.” She looked at Zamia as if trying to decide how to say something. “Dawoud and I were taught hard lessons when we were young, Zamia Banu Laith Badawi. Lessons about the wrath of the Traitorous Angel. And about…vulnerabilities.” For a few long moments the alkhemist seemed to stare at something far away.

  “Well,” Litaz finally said, standing up. “My scrying solutions should be boiling by now. I must attend to them. You should eat something and sleep a bit more now. And take this tea, which will complete your healing.” The alkhemist fed her pocketbread filled with chick peas and olive oil, then gave her a too-sweet medicinal tea. Zamia had barely set down the cup before her eyelids began to droop and she slid into a dreamless sleep.

  She half-woke several times from her feverish healing sleep. Each time she caught the Doctor’s scent, awake and active. More than once she looked around and saw him there in the sitting room, pounding out some herb or filing some metal into a vial, mumbling some invocation as he did so. Once she saw him slash his own forearm and drip blood onto a piece of vellum. Litaz’s words about the Doctor’s determination floated through her head as Zamia drifted in and out of sleep.

  When she finally, truly woke she was alone. The wound in her side still ached painfully, but the nausea was gone, and she felt a renewed strength in her limbs. It was hard to tell time by the city’s sun and moonlight—buildings warpe
d it in weird ways—but from the dark outside the windows, Zamia guessed that it was very late at night.

  Again she tried to take the shape and again felt as if she were trying to breathe sand. She stifled her tears, though, and shakily brought herself to her feet. From another room she heard voices—the Doctor’s, Litaz’s, Dawoud’s. Zamia’s steps were slow and awkward. She followed the sound of the voices to the room adjoining the sitting room.

  The room was crowded with things and people. A shelf of books, racks of bottles, and strange tubes made of glass. The only relatively clear surface was a large table made of some strange metal. The Doctor’s white-kaftaned bulk was perched on a low stool, and Raseed leaned against the wall beside him. Litaz sat in a tall chair before this table, her husband hovering over her shoulder, both of them looking at a massive wood-bound book that lay open there. Beside the book was a bizarre brass and glass apparatus. One part of the thing looked like a small claw, and Zamia saw that this claw clutched her father’s knife. Litaz was looking into another part of the device—shaped like a huge eye—and evidently comparing what she saw to the figures and words in the book.

  Study, the memorization of plants, the intricacies of the stars. For years, her father had tried to teach her that these were a part of being Protector of the Band. “Patience, little moon, is a warrior’s virtue,” he would say. “Your strength alone is not enough. You must have knowledge, too, little rose. And judgment. And, as I say, little emerald, patience.” Though she was always ‘Protector’ when there were others to overhear, in private her father had perhaps a dozen “little” nicknames for her. She loved the way he’d peppered his speech with them, even as he had raised her to be a warrior.

  Her father’s greatest worry had been that Zamia was too lion-like. “You’d do well to spend more time learning the townsmen’s letters and less time stalking sandfoxes! There are many ways in which the Protector must defend the band,” he’d said just a fortnight ago, looking so disappointed that it hurt Zamia inside. Just to make her father happy, she had tried to pay attention to the book full of meaningless marks as he tried to teach them to her. Had tried hard. But try as she might, she was not made for such things.

  Her new allies all looked up as they heard her approach. Raseed stopped leaning on the wall and took a step toward her before he seemed to stop himself. The Doctor’s eyes were wide, perhaps surprised that she was on her feet. Litaz looked at her with the same puzzled face that she’d worn when looking through that glass eye.

  The old magus, though, was the first to speak. “Name of God, child, you should be resting! How is it that you’re on your feet? God’s balls, how is it that you’re awake? You should be heal-sleeping for another two or three days!”

  Litaz bit her lip, looking as if she were still puzzling something out. “The touch of the Angels,” the alkhemist said. “Amazing. Clearly, the power God’s ministers granted you goes beyond your lion-shape. Even with our healing magics helping, you should not have been able to walk for a week.”

  Zamia raised her chin just a bit. “Perhaps we ‘savages’ are more resilient than the soft townsmen you are used to treating, Auntie.”

  The Doctor made a farting noise with his mouth and laughed. “Yes, yes, surely it is the innate bravery of the Badawi at work here, girl.”

  Before Zamia could respond, Raseed was at her side. “‘God’s mercy is greater than any cruelty,’” he quoted from the Heavenly Chapters. “You were grievously wounded, Zamia. Praise God that you are recovering swiftly, but still you ought to be resting now, for—”

  Litaz made an irked noise. “Please,” she said to Raseed, “don’t give advice when you know not of what you speak. The best thing for Zamia now is not to sleep. The crimson quicksilver is reawakening her blood, just as it is the blood on this knife. If she can walk, let her. And speaking of blood, she has a right to see whatever answers we may glean here.” The Soo woman turned to Zamia and gestured to the only other stool in the room. “Sit. I was just making the final adjustments to my scrying solution. I was asking the men, but you’d know better than they—when you wounded this Mouw Awa creature, did it bleed?”

  Zamia forced herself to think of those few moments that had nearly killed her. Of her fangs digging into that monster’s foul flank. It had been both like and unlike tearing into flesh. There was shadow and pain but.…“No, Auntie. No, it did not bleed.”

  “As I told you,” the Doctor said, stroking his beard in thought. “The girl also said that to her remarkable senses, the blood on this knife smelled of neither man nor animal, whereas this Mouw Awa smelled of both. As I’d suspected, this must be the blood of the one who made those ghuls. The one whom that monster called ‘blessed friend.’”

  “Well, whatever its source, it is the strangest blood I have ever seen. Full of life and lifeless. All of the eight elements are here, but they are…negated somehow. Sand and lightning, water and wind, wood and metal, orange fire and blue fire! How could they all be in one drop of blood, and yet not be there?” The little woman turned to her husband. “Stranger still, within the clots there are creeping things moving about. It is as if this blood came from some mix of man and ghul. It makes no sense. Still, my love, you should work your magics here. God willing, they may give us better answers.”

  Using a tiny silver spoon, the alkhemist scooped a bit of white powder from a jar into a glass vial filled with red liquid. The liquid began to bubble and froth and turned bright green. Litaz then took this liquid and poured it over the bloodied knife that had been Zamia’s father’s.

  A bright green light began to shimmer off of the knife. The light grew brighter and brighter until it filled the room.

  “You can begin,” the Soo woman said to her husband. “Stand back,” she said to the others, doing so herself as she spoke.

  The magus stepped forward, placing his gnarled hands a hairsbreadth above the knife. An eerie green light began to glimmer about his fingers as they weaved back and forth around the blood-stained blade. The old Soo’s eyes rolled back, and he chanted a wordless chant in an oddly echoed voice. Wicked magics, Zamia thought. Instinctively, she started to take the shape…

  And of course found that she couldn’t. Panic rose in her again—she could feel the shape just beyond her reach, and feel the pain of her wound keeping her from her lion-self. Almighty God, I beg you, help me!

  But then the magus was speaking, and she had to heed his words, for that was the path to vengeance for the Banu Laith Badawi. Tears burned in her eyes, but again she shoved thoughts of the shape aside and listened.

  “This blood is like…like the cancellation of life,” Dawoud said as his long dark fingers darted back and forth above her father’s knife. “More than that, the cancellation of existence. Like the essence of a ghul, whose false soul is made of creeping things. But with will. Cruel, powerful will.”

  The Doctor spoke quietly to Litaz, as if Zamia and Raseed were not there. “This all makes a horrible sort of sense, when I think on it. There’s an old tale of a man called the ghul of ghuls—a man who was like a ghul raised by the Traitorous Angel himself. A man who’d cut out his own tongue to better let the Traitorous Angel speak through him. Who had his soul emptied, then filled with the will of the Traitorous Angel. He is supposed to wear a kaftan that can never be clean and—”

  The Doctor fell silent as Dawoud’s head tilted back and the magus grimaced as if in great pain. The old Soo was touching the knife now with his fingertips, and he screamed.

  It was a wordless screaming chant at first, but the pain-laced sounds resolved into words: “THE BLOOD OF ORSHADO! THE BLOOD OF ORSHADO!” The magus’s body jerked about strangely as he screamed, but he kept his hands on the knife. “THE BLOOD OF ORSHADO!”

  Litaz leapt up and pried her husband’s fingers from the blade. Dawoud stumbled into the corner and collapsed onto a cushion with a pitiful moan. He held his head in his hands and sat there, shuddering.

  The Doctor wore worry for his friend on his
face. “Your magic takes its toll on your body. For that, brother-of-mine, the world owes you.” He clasped a hand on the magus’s shoulder. “But magic can also take its toll on the mind. Praise be to God that the girl’s would-be assassin was unhinged enough to rattle on so. Clearly, this Orshado is the one who that monster called ‘blessed friend.’ I’ve long said that my order was misnamed. For in realty it is men, not ghuls, that I hunt. And now we have a quarry. With a tracking spell and a name we—”

  The Doctor’s eyes flashed, almost as if he would cry, Zamia thought.

  “I’ve forgotten,” he said softly. “I’ve no scripture-engraved needles. They were ruined in that fire, like everything else. Soiled beyond use if not destroyed.”

  Zamia wanted to insist that there must be another way, but she found that gathering her thoughts and words was an effort. She was weaker than she had admitted to the others. Her heart swelled when Raseed seemed to speak her thoughts for her.

  “Are there no other spells you might work, Doctor? Is there nowhere else you might buy such needles?”

  The Doctor shook his head. “It’s more complicated than that, boy. Those needles take weeks to make. If we were in a remote location, or facing a novice magus, I might try a cruder invocation. But the city is full of life-energy that will confuse a tracking spell, and this Orshado no doubt commands powerful screening magics. Only flawless components and impeccable invocations would have even a chance of finding our foes.”

  The Doctor looked around at each of them and seemed to force a smile. “But let’s not all look so hopeless, eh? We’ve a couple of names to aid us now, at least. Almighty God willing, even without a tracking spell, we will find this damned-by-God monster and its ‘blessed friend.’”

  In the corner of the workshop, Raseed shifted uneasily. His sharp features drew down in a frown. “That phrase bothers me, Doctor. How could such a creature have friends?”