Throne of the Crescent Moon

by Saladin Ahmed

Litaz rolled her eyes. “We don’t do this for their sakes, Adoulla. You know that. But we have little choice here.”

  Dawoud lifted his teacup and drained its dregs. “So we go to the palace,” the magus said, “though we’ll not have an easy time getting an audience, no matter how many wild-eyed warnings we bring. Especially after my last visit. We’ll be lucky not to be taken for assassins ourselves. Roun Hedaad is a good man, but his guardsmen will be happy enough to fill us with crossbow bolts with little provocation. And even if we get past them, the Khalif will not see us.”

  Adoulla wore a dark scowl as he spoke. “And what if the Khalif does listen? What if we somehow stop this Orshado? Then this foul power will be the Khalif’s to seize. Do any here truly doubt that he would slay his own son in order to do so?”

  Raseed started to say that such a thing was not possible, but he knew the Doctor would mock him. And, as he thought on it, he was not sure that he could speak such words without uttering a falsehood.

  For a long moment, none of the others answered the Doctor either. Then Dawoud stood. “It matters not. We can only do what we know we must do and leave the rest to the merciful hand of Almighty God.”

  “Yes, it is all cut-and-dried,” the Doctor said sarcastically. “We need only defeat the most powerful ghul-maker we’ve ever faced. And somehow slay his unkillable creature while we’re at it.”

  “The monster Mouw Awa is not unkillable, Doctor,” Zamia said, her voice half growl. “God willing, I will be the one to prove this.” Raseed’s heart beat faster, hearing such brave words.

  The Doctor stroked his beard. “Aye, Zamia Banu Laith Badawi, may it please God to make it so. It has been only few days since the creature left you lying on a litter, all but dead. Your healing, praise God, goes miraculously well. Do you think—” the Doctor’s voice grew as gentle as Raseed had ever heard “—do you think you can take the lion-shape again?”

  Tears filled Zamia’s emerald eyes, but they did not fall. Raseed felt sick with knowing that he wanted—wickedly!—to go to her and to hold her as he had sometimes seen men hold women on Dhamsawaat’s streets.

  A rueful scowl spread across Zamia’s face. “I don’t know, Doctor. Each month for several days, when I am—when women’s business is upon me—I am unable to take the shape. Yesterday was the last of those days. Even were I unwounded I would not be able to take the shape until the sun is at its highest point today. Come noon, though, I will try. If, may Almighty God forbid it, I fail, I will at least die trying.”

  Raseed was incredulous—to make the tribeswoman speak of such shameful things, and then to ask this sacrifice of her! “Doctor, she was nearly killed the last time we faced this creature! We cannot ask her to—”

  The girl’s growl was louder than any she’d made before. “No one is asking anything of me, Raseed bas Raseed. Things are as they are. I know the murderer of my band. Through my own carelessness he…it…escaped once. It will not happen again.”

  The Doctor nodded. “Sometimes even a blind man can see the hand of God working. This thing Mouw Awa must be destroyed. Of that there can be no doubt. And God’s Angels have very clearly given us the proper weapon to do so. ‘To break down a wall when God grants a door is the work of fools.’”

  Dawoud broke in, his words sounding hard and dry. “It is as it is, then. Zamia, you shall travel with us to the palace, and if we cross paths with this Mouw Awa, it falls to you to kill it.”

  The old people went to prepare themselves, and Raseed found himself alone with Zamia. As soon as they were gone, she stepped close to him, and he fought furiously with himself to keep from breathing in her scent too deeply. When she spoke, he jumped, startled.

  “Raseed bas Raseed,” she said quietly, “before we go to face our deaths, I would ask a question of you.”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you understand that, with my father dead, you must ask me directly if you wish for my hand in marriage?”

  Raseed felt as if a sword had been slid into his guts. “I…I…Why would you ask…” he found he could not form words from his thoughts.

  But the tribeswoman simply shrugged her slender shoulders. “The Heavenly Chapters tell us, O woman! Ask a hundred questions of your suitor and a hundred questions of yourself.”

  “Suitor!?” Raseed had never before felt so lost within his own soul. Ten different men warred within him. “May God forgive me, Zamia Banu Laith Badawi, if I have behaved in a manner that…if I have shamed you by…”

  “Shamed?” She looked baffled, which only confused him more. “How does shame come into this? I have simply seen the way you look at me. The only shame here would be born of deception. Can—?” she broke off at the sound of the Doctor’s heavy footsteps approaching from another room.

  “If God grants us our lives beyond this day, we will speak of this again,” she said quickly. Then she nodded formally to him, ending the conversation.

  Raseed went into his deep-breathing exercises, feeling more need for the calm they brought than he ever had. He stretched and prepared his mind and his body for battle, wondering whether he would die this day or live on with a soul full of shameful desires—and not knowing which would please God more.

  III

  THE WORLD WAS MADE OF pain and the guardsman’s soul was formed from fear. How long had he sat unmoving in this cauldron, with only his head above the roiling red glow? He recalled, like dreams, slight sips of water and gruel. Some small, still-thinking part of him said that he was being kept alive while his body macerated slowly in the sparkling ruby oil.

  The gaunt man in the filthy kaftan was there, holding open a sack of rich red silk. The shadow-jackal was beside him. The gaunt man upended the sack into the cauldron. Bones and skulls—men’s, but too small for men’s—spilled out with a ghastly clatter. Fragile looking skulls, tiny ribcages and fingerbones.…

  The shadow thing’s voice squealed again in his mind. Listen to Mouw Awa, who speaketh for his blessed friend. Thou art an honored guardsman. Begat and born in the Crescent Moon Palace. Thou art sworn in the name of God to defend it. All of those beneath ye shall serve.

  Thou doth see the baby-bones. Infants fed and fed and then bled dry. All for the fear that doth now waft from thee.

  Listen to Mouw Awa. His blessed friend hath waited so long for the Cobra Throne. Shortest days hath come and gone and gone and come. Never one quite right. Mouw Awa the manjackal knoweth well the pain of waiting. He helpeth to deliver his blessed friend from waiting, as his blessed friend did for Mouw Awa.

  The gaunt man burned things before him. His eyes burned with smoke as the jackal-man droned on.

  Thou smelleth the smoke of red mandrake and doth recall fear. Thou smelleth the smoke of black poppy and doth recall pain.

  And suddenly, a whole piece of the guardsman’s mind slid back into place. He was Hami Samad, Vice Captain of the Guard, and there was nothing he could do but beg for his life through a cracked throat. “Please, sire! I will tell you whatever you wish! About the Khalif, about the palace!” He began to weep wildly. “Ministering Angels preserve me! God shelter me!”

  The gaunt man stared at Hami Samad with black-ice eyes. The guardsman felt the gaunt man’s spindly fingers dig roughly into his scalp. The gaunt man’s eyes rolled backward, showing only whites. Horrible noises filled the room, as if a thousand men and animals were screaming at once.

  There was a tearing noise, and there was pain a thousand times more searing than anything he had yet felt. Impossibly, he felt his head come away from his body. Impossibly, he heard himself speak.

  “I AM THE FIRSTBORN ANGEL’S SEED, SOWN WITH GLORIOUS PAIN AND BLESSED FEAR. REAPED BY THE HAND OF HIS SERVANT ORSHADO. THE SKINS OF THOSE-WHO-WERE-BELOW-ME SHALL MOVE AT THE MUSIC OF MY WORD. ALL OF THOSE BENEATH SHALL SERVE.”

  The last thing he saw was Hami Samad’s headless body in a great iron kettle, spurting blood that mixed with a molten red glow of boiling oil.

  Chapter 17

  THE SUN WAS HAL
FWAY UP IN THE SKY, and its heat was already making itself known. Dawoud sweated and huffed to keep up with the two young warriors and his indefatigable wife. He and Adoulla walked several strides behind the others, the ghul hunter’s breath coming nearly as heavily as Dawoud’s own. Ahead of them, Litaz spoke softly to Zamia and Raseed, but Dawoud and his old friend kept silent as they strode, saving their breath for breathing.

  An hour passed, and the sun climbed a bit higher. They made their way through the large paved caravanserai that marked the entrance to the Palace Quarter. Ahead of them, a group of merchants argued heatedly with one of the Khalif’s coin collectors.

  “Do you see this, brother-of-mine?” Adoulla asked quietly. “It’s not just the poor that the Falcon Prince speaks to. The Khalif has made his own bed of scorpions. He has even alienated the minor merchants with his taxes and his half-day-long tariff lines. The small timers are just waiting for an excuse to join the Prince’s supporters.”

  Dawoud laughed. “That would be some alliance! Like a bad prophecy: ‘O watch for the day when the thief and the shopkeepers lie down together!’”

  Adoulla gave him a sidelong glance. “It’s not so impossible. The Prince has always been daring. His targets have always been those with the biggest purses, men that most stall-keepers and middling merchants are happy to see get robbed.”

  The road followed the new canal that had been diverted from the River of Tigers. Dawoud poked Adoulla and gestured to the tiny boats that moved along the canal, knowing that his friend had not yet seen this newly made marvel. The swift, magically moving water that the little boats bobbed on fed into a massive waterwheel. “Follow a twisty route of wafting spells and copper pipe, and this is the other end of the stink that now haunts our neighborhood every month. This thing can grind as much grain as ten normal mill wheels, you know.”

  Adoulla snorted. “Yes, the end of the stick with no shit on it. Of course all the money from this monstrosity goes into the Khalif’s coffers. And now we’re off to save the son-of-a-whore’s dynasty.”

  “Quiet!” Dawoud hissed as a watchman stepped out of a side alley, rudely crossing their path without so much as a glance at them.

  The party stood and waited for the man to pass.

  They approached the wheel. The noise it made—creaking wood, splashing water, groaning chains—was deafening. It was monstrous, Dawoud had to admit. One could scarce believe it was made by men.

  Then they passed through a marble arch, and a path of smooth white paving-stones, wide enough for six riders, stretched ahead of them for a hundred yards. At the end of the great path, which was grander than the Mainway itself, lay the Crescent Moon Palace, behind a high wall. As always it forced Dawoud’s attention, though he’d been here just the other day.

  Yet this time he found his eye drawn even more forcefully to the thin silvery spindle that was the minaret of the Court magi. So much space for seven men when seventy could live there. The Khalifs of Abassen had apparently never learned of the foul power that, for generations, had literally sat untapped beneath them. But what did the court Magi know? How would they fit into this mad sequence of magical events? He felt his tired mind spinning with too many damned-by-God complications.

  As they made the long walk to the gates of the palace, Dawoud shifted his attention to Raseed. The boy’s eyes kept darting to the tribeswoman and then to the paving stones before him. He is worrying about protecting her. Wondering how to fulfill his duties and keep the girl safe at the same time. This worried Dawoud. Not the dervish’s cloaked devotion to Zamia—Dawoud accepted his wife’s claims that the obvious feelings between the two young ones would not be an impediment; that in fact “love was what made everything else matter,” despite the fact that young people’s love was a thing of foolishness and first sights. No, it wasn’t Raseed’s interest in the girl that worried Dawoud. It was the dervish’s obvious struggle with that interest, and the second-guessing that came with it. They were hunting monsters in the Crescent Moon Palace. In a situation like this, second-guessing could mean the death of the world.

  They were about a dozen yards from the gate to the palace courtyards when a gray-eyed young officer of the guard stopped them.

  “Hold! Who are you that you dare approach the palace of the Defender of Virtue wearing weapons?” The man’s hand rested easily on the pommel of his sword.

  “God’s peace, guardsman. I am Dawoud Son-of-Wajeed, a friend of Captain Hedaad’s. I must speak to the captain at once. He is expecting me to call upon him.” It was true enough that he could say it with authority.

  “Captain Hedaad?” The man looked uncertain but not unfriendly. “Well, I can’t leave my post, Uncle. But if you truly have business with the captain, I will send for him.”

  “That will be fine. The matter is urgent, though, so please hurry.”

  “As you say.”

  Dawoud had been prepared to press silver into someone’s palm in order to get his message up to Roun. But apparently his and his friends’ fates were kind. In their hour of need, they had met with an honest guardsman. It was gratifying, while on this mad quest in a land not even his, to see Abassen’s agents acting as they ought.

  The young officer called a slender guardsman over. “Kassin! Send word to Captain Hedaad that—”

  “Why, now, are we disturbing the captain?” a vaguely familiar voice broke in.

  Name of God, no!

  The long-faced minister from the Khalif’s court came walking up surrounded by a retinue of a half-dozen guardsmen. What on God’s great earth is he doing here? “What do we have here?” he said. The gray-eyed officer started to explain, but the minster waved the young man back to the guardhouse. Then he turned to Dawoud.

  “You were warned to stay away from the palace, old man. And instead you have returned with armed friends! You are either mad or the foulest of traitors.”

  Dawoud knew better than to try and speak to this man of the threat that loomed over the throne. “A thousand apologies, your eminence. I am here only because I need to see Roun Hedaad.” He heard his friends shuffling nervously around him.

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “The captain is busy. And you have disregarded most traitorously the express wishes of his Majesty. Your friendship with the captain does not change that. Men! Seize them!”

  Dawoud heard Raseed mumble a prayer. The Badawi girl growled. Dawoud looked a question at his wife and Adoulla in the wordless near-language that the three had developed over decades of fighting together. What do we do now?

  But neither his wife nor Adoulla seemed to have any answers. And really, there was nothing they could do. Even if they were somehow able to kill a squad of guardsmen, more would show, and they would die before ever getting inside the palace. Their only hope was going along for now and waiting for an opportunity—or creating an opportunity—to get word to Roun Hedaad. And to hope that he could actually do something to help them. The guardsmen took his wife’s knife and Raseed’s sword, and marched them at spearpoint away from the gate.

  Dawoud cursed the slow roll of this own thoughts and saw his frustration reflected in his wife’s and Adoulla’s eyes. There was a way out of this—the three of them had destroyed the Kemeti Golden Serpent and bested a whole band of invisible robbers. These were just men with weapons. They had only to puzzle out…

  His train of thought broke as he realized the minister and his men were leading them away from the palace. This can’t be good. After a few minutes they were well away from the gates, in a secluded alley of the Palace Quarter. They came to a small, windowless house with a barred iron door. The minister opened this door himself with a set of three small keys. Once they were inside, the guardsmen closed the door behind them.

  Adoulla was the first to finally find his tongue. “Why on God’s great earth have you brought us here?”

  A big guardsman casually shoved the ghul hunter with his spear-butt and told him to shut up. The minister, still not saying a word to them, went to the center of th
e house’s one room and lifted up a dusty old rug. Beneath the rug was a metal grille, which the minister opened with yet another key. Though it was rusty, the grille made no noise when the minister swung it up. There was a stairway—wide enough for two men—carved into the stone floor beneath the grille, leading down to God-alone-knew-where. Some dank hole where we can be slain without the Captain of the Guard knowing about it, no doubt.

  “No more of this!” Zamia shouted suddenly, her thoughts clearly going down the same road. She drew herself up fiercely and, Dawoud noticed, tried to hide the pain still in her side. “I can smell the deceit on you! A Banu Laith Badawi is not marched into murder quietly like some docile townsman!”

  “I said, be QUIET!” the same guardsmen who’d jabbed Adoulla said, accentuating the last word with a much crueler jab of his spear into the small of the tribeswoman’s back. Zamia cried out and buckled but did not fall.

  Dawoud didn’t even see Raseed move. But the next thing he knew the little dervish was, with one hand, holding the big guardsman aloft by the throat. If Dawoud had ever doubted Adoulla’s tales of the boy’s more-than-human prowess, he couldn’t doubt them now!

  There was a sudden clatter of weapons, and another group of armed men came pouring out of the hole in the floor like ants from an anthill. They and the guardsmen formed a circle around Dawoud and his friends.

  The new men were armed with daggers and cudgels. They wore the simple clothes of laborers or apprentices, though here and there Dawoud saw a bit of incongruous ornament: a silk scarf around the neck of the lanky man in front of him, an embroidered vest on a short but hard-looking boy to his right. At equidistant points of the circle of plainly dressed toughs were figures wearing some sort of livery. One of these was an ugly woman, tall and stout as a man. They were dressed identically, in tight-fitting linen breeches and thigh length overshirts the color of wet sand. The image of a swooping black falcon was dyed across the front of each shirt. These were better armed than the others. Each held a well-made cutlass and wore a small buckler made of steel-reed.