The Bloodprint

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  “Its dome would have been unique had it not been for the heavens,” Larisa murmured. And when Arian looked at her, “It was something my father used to say. If this is the dome on the map, it doesn’t bode well for us. The architect who built it insisted on a kiss from the queen as payment for his services. The kiss left a mark on the queen’s face that she tried to hide by veiling herself. When the king learned of the architect’s kiss, he had the queen burned alive.”

  “And the architect?”

  “He developed wings and flew to safety from the top of the dome.” Larisa’s tone was harsh. “A woman’s fate is always worse.”

  Ruslan interrupted her. “This isn’t the same dome. Look at the drawing.”

  Four pairs of eyes contemplated the tiny figure on the map. The dome’s circumference was gently fluted, ribbed in a brilliant blue.

  Ruslan’s eyes met Larisa’s in perfect understanding.

  “It’s the Dome of the Gur-e-Amir. And it’s under guard.”

  46

  The night was silent, the Ahdath patrol in the square of the Registan watchful.

  “They’re waiting for Araxcin, the commander. Once he arrives, the blood sport will begin.”

  “Then I have time,” Arian said. “I can still rescue them.”

  Larisa shook her head. “You don’t understand. There is only one door to the Blood Shed. Three hundred men stand between you and your friends. How will you fight them? With the Claim?” Her tone was doubtful.

  Arian paused.

  “You say the Claim doesn’t affect you. Your father was a scribe, a learned man. Did he not teach you of the Claim?”

  “For all the good it did him or any of us. But it wasn’t that.” She lowered her hood and turned her head to the side, uncovering ears that were tattered shells, crisscrossed with curved scars. “This is how they mark followers of the Usul Jade. It’s a special torture of the Authoritan’s that prevents the Claim from falling on our ears. He thinks us skilled in its use, so he reserves its power to himself.”

  A savage inheritance for the daughters of Salikh.

  But Arian knew the others didn’t understand the power of the Claim as she did. Its words, its essence entwined with her own, waking a majesty she’d barely tapped.

  Though she had spent her life learning its secrets, the Claim was still unpredictable.

  And if Larisa and Elena were the daughters of Salikh, the Claim might still lie dormant within them, despite the Authoritan’s tortures. But this wasn’t the moment to instruct them in the mysteries of the Claim—she had to think of Wafa and Turan.

  “How much time before the commander arrives?”

  “It won’t be long.” For the first time, Larisa appeared uncertain. “The Gur-e-Amir isn’t far from here. Marakand is a city that wraps around itself. I’ll send Basmachi to scout the road. If we do not tarry, there’s a chance you could still reach your friends in time. If you truly believe you can save them.”

  If Daniyar or Sinnia were here, she could have sent them to the Blood Shed. As it was, she would have to make a choice.

  “I’ll need more practical clothing.”

  If she didn’t find the tomb now, storming the Blood Shed would leave her little chance to do so. If the Ahdath discovered Gul, the city would be swarming with soldiers.

  She didn’t know why their ruse at the Wall had failed, but it had robbed her of the chance to search for Lania. There was nothing she could do for her sister now.

  But for Wafa, Turan, the women of Khorasan—there was still the Bloodprint.

  Elena equipped her with clothing and weaponry. She handed over Daniyar’s pack.

  “Do you come with us?” Arian asked her.

  “I go wherever Larisa commands me.” But Elena’s eyes were on Ruslan, and Arian guessed she was bound as much to Ruslan. She turned her attention to the scouts of the Basmachi, the silent, waiting men who’d filled the cramped room below the stairs. After a moment’s consultation, Ruslan sent them ahead. As the streets dipped down to meet the horizon, Arian lost sight of the Registan and the Blood Shed.

  She didn’t hear Wafa’s voice again.

  She prayed he wasn’t already dead.

  As she trailed Larisa through Marakand’s empty streets, she heard thuds, bodies falling to the ground—the Basmachi’s quiet skirmishes with Ahdath who emerged from the darkness at intervals.

  There were no lanterns in the city’s quiet streets. Occasionally, the pitiable sound of weeping could be heard from torchlit balconies or the desolate interiors of safeguarded dwellings. She saw that Elena and Ruslan marked each of these as they passed for later reconnaissance.

  And she wondered again where Daniyar was and why the Blood Shed was silent.

  She whispered the question to Elena, whose sullen face provided no answer.

  Nonetheless, Arian was grateful for the Black Khan’s intercession with the followers of the Usul Jade. Marakand was a labyrinth. Beyond the ordered square of the Registan, the city sprawled in a dozen different directions, crammed with tunnels and blind corners. She couldn’t have found the route from the Registan to the Gur-e-Amir on her own. And she was heartened to learn of the Basmachi, to know that she and Sinnia were not alone in their bitter, unending struggle.

  And if I find the Bloodprint—

  But that was thinking too far ahead.

  For now, she needed to focus on finding the tomb in the complex of the Gur-e-Amir, a maze of graves within graves.

  Then she would rescue Wafa and the others.

  And Daniyar, if he hadn’t turned up by then.

  Two torches in iron brackets illuminated the entrance to the mausoleum. Most of its exquisite façade was chiseled away. What was left was the faintest blue-green murmuring against brick. Guards strolled the perimeter of the mausoleum in pairs.

  Between the massive entrance and the Dome of the Gur-e-Amir, the complex was empty, a sprawl of broken arches overrun by a creeping system of leaves and vines, crooked trees leaning against tiers of moldering brick. The night air was filled with the sickly sweet stench of decay. The feeble light of the torches flickered against the melon-shaped dome, now green, now blue, as the light danced over its surface.

  Beyond the dome, the graveyard waited, silent against the gloom.

  “Don’t use the Claim unless you have to,” Elena muttered. “We must delay Illarion’s discovery of Gul for as long as we can.”

  As yet, Arian had seen no need for its use—the Basmachi were effective at dispatching Ahdath patrols, dragging their crimson-clad bodies into the shadows. But she understood the caution.

  They passed through the rotted vegetation into the octagonal complex. A complement of four guards was stationed before the soaring cupola of the dome, a faint light playing against their crimson armor. Elena and Ruslan moved swiftly. The Ahdath had no sooner looked askance at the intruders than knives were drawn against their throats, their scrabbling movements smothered into stillness.

  “Hurry. Take out the map.”

  No stranger to death herself, Arian found herself disturbed by the gleam in Elena’s eyes.

  Answering her thoughts, Elena said, “You have no idea what these men are capable of in Jaslyk.”

  Arian nodded. Sometimes killing was a necessity, not a choice. She took no pleasure from it, but her record with the Talisman was no different from Elena’s with the Ahdath. She had rarely discovered a moral compass to war. Saying nothing, she passed the map to Ruslan who scanned it with a miniature eyeglass, mumbling to himself.

  Arian studied the room. The people of the Claim had labored over these monuments, slaves of a distant era. But this one was a commemoration of the dead, built for the glory of man. The lavender-and-gold ceiling shone like the eye of a fulgent sun. Blue and white tiles lined the terracotta walls, assembled into patterns of astonishing expressiveness. The interior of the chamber echoed the loveliness of the dome. Slabs of yellow-gold onyx paneled the lower walls. Marble cornices hung above the paneling like stalact
ites. Gilded cartouches in high relief sprung from the chamber’s arches. Letters of an ancient script were chipped away from the walls, scattering tiles at their feet. A single lantern kindled the darkness.

  The air inside the chamber was musty, a strange sweetness rising from the earth. Ruslan rotated the map in his hands. He pointed ahead into the gloom.

  “It’s not a graveyard,” he told Arian. “It’s a map of the complex itself.”

  Arian unhooked the lantern from its brace, throwing light upon the chamber ahead. Nine tombs were arranged beneath the dome in a geometric configuration. A stone barricade separated one tomb from the others.

  Ruslan traced the lines on the map with his finger.

  “This way.”

  They moved forward with caution, Elena standing guard.

  Two steps descended to the floor of the mausoleum. A profusion of six-point stars shone from the gilded walls. The tombs’ headstones had been destroyed, the names of the dead lost to time. The inscriptions that had once marked the onyx were broken off, leaving the tombs bare.

  They turned right and then left, following the lines on the map.

  “It doesn’t lead anywhere,” Arian said. “It just turns back on itself.”

  She searched each tomb for a sign or a marker that would give a clue to the Bloodprint. Perhaps there had once been flowers and stars that served as echoes of the map, but these had been chipped away. The tombs were too much alike.

  Ruslan traced a solitary path between the tombs, counting aloud.

  He came to a stop in front of the tomb that lay at the center of the complex. It was covered by a crosspiece of nephrite, a block of jade so dark it looked black.

  It was a green mirror of the dome above.

  And she realized, the Dome of the Gur-e-Amir was the Dome of the Green Mirror.

  There was no name on the tomb, nor was it raised higher than the others, reclining upon a set of modestly carved tiers.

  Ruslan beckoned Arian forward.

  The dark green jade was cracked down the middle.

  “No matter how you move through the complex, the lines return to this tomb.”

  Arian knelt before the crosspiece. She found a battered verse in the script of the Claim.

  Were I to rise, the whole world would tremble.

  Beside it, the now-familiar symbol was stamped. Three small circles collected inside a five-point star.

  “Rasti, rusti,” Larisa whispered. She viewed it with horror. “The king’s grave.” She shuddered. “We must not disturb the king’s grave, not for anything. His tomb is cursed.”

  Arian shivered at the words, at the sense of something unseen, unknown.

  The five-point star in a room bursting with six-point stars. The green mirror, an echo of the symbol from the map. This was the tomb she sought, the tomb with the clue to the Bloodprint.

  “You speak of superstition,” she said.

  “You don’t understand. This is the grave of the Amir, a tyrant who ruled the greatest Khorasan empire of the age. He built pyramids from his enemies’ skulls. Marakand was his capital.” She looked around. “What do you need from here, Companion?”

  Arian gazed at the tomb helplessly.

  “I don’t know.”

  But there had to be something. Ilea had sent Turan to the Sorrowsong to procure the puzzle box. The Black Khan had directed the leaders of the Basmachi to await Arian’s arrival in Marakand to guide her to this spot.

  The place on the map marked by the five-point star.

  Besides the inscription, there was nothing to distinguish this tomb, nothing to suggest it as the hiding place of the Bloodprint.

  “What lies beneath the tombs?”

  “The crypt,” Larisa answered. “The tombs are for show. They distinguish the Amir and his family, but their bodies molder in the crypt below.”

  Could that be it? Could a clue to the Bloodprint lie beneath the cenotaph? Or perhaps the Bloodprint itself, secreted away by the Bloodless? Even as she thought it, Arian realized how improbable the idea was. Hadn’t Turan told her the manuscript wouldn’t survive in a crypt?

  “You’re taking too long,” Elena warned. “There are soldiers at the gate.”

  A sense of urgency clamped down on Arian. She examined the slab of jade. Perhaps a message had been scratched into its surface, a single word that would point her to a safehold.

  But apart from the crack down the middle, the block of jade was unmarked.

  The sound of voices was growing louder. Ruslan and Larisa joined Elena at the entrance to the chamber.

  Six-point stars. Everywhere Arian looked there were six-point stars.

  And etched at the foot of the grave beside the tyrant’s motto, a five-point star.

  There had been six stars on the surface of the puzzle box, six stars that shifted into five.

  Arian scrutinized the tiers that supported the tyrant’s tomb. It rested upon a slab of pale green marble that was buttressed in turn by a block of yellow onyx, a stone surround serving as the base. Her attention was caught by the tier of yellow onyx, wider than the others, the only one to be carved with a motif.

  A pattern of diamonds rather than stars appeared at staged intervals, five to each side, one at the head and foot of the tomb.

  Five to each side.

  Six into five.

  The voices were coming closer. Elena and Larisa moved away from the threshold of the chamber, crossing beneath the dome.

  Arian must have missed something.

  She looked again and realized not all of the tomb’s markings were diamond-shaped.

  Beneath the inscription at the foot of the tomb, a round medallion was set into the base. Arian had seen the medallion before. She had carried it here from the Sorrowsong.

  An inconceivable idea flashed through her mind.

  Daniyar had remembered five attributes of the One from the manuscript from Maze Aura.

  Life, knowledge, dominion, power, and will.

  Out of a snatched fragment of memory, Arian discovered the sixth.

  Oneness.

  The Oneness of the One.

  The sixth and final virtue.

  “They’re coming,” Ruslan warned, moving away to the portal.

  Arian wrenched Daniyar’s pack from her shoulders. She rummaged through it, discarding the puzzle box and the key, taking the ewer in her hands.

  Intercalated into its surface was the round medallion carved of the form of lapis lazuli known as asmani.

  The sky-blue stone marked with drifts of white.

  “Oneness,” Arian said to herself.

  With a twist, she broke the medallion free of the pitcher.

  Breathing harshly, she inserted the medallion into its counterpart at the foot of the grave, pushing down hard.

  Nothing happened.

  And then she heard a click. It reminded her of the mechanisms of the puzzle box, with its grinding and whirring of gears.

  The medallion rotated clockwise twice, lajward scraping against stone. Then back again twice. Then clockwise five turns. Then back again five times.

  Two, two, five, five.

  Its movement ceased just as the sounds of battle reached Arian.

  Ahdath were in the antechamber. Six men, maybe eight.

  One of the Basmachi scouts engaged with them, Elena at his side.

  Larisa called to Arian. The Ahdath tried to break past her.

  Arian pressed the medallion again, fear blocking the words in her throat.

  With a groan, the medallion popped out of its groove. Behind it, a dark space had opened beneath the crosspiece.

  With a hurried prayer, Arian reached inside.

  Her fingers touched parchment.

  She recognized the texture of deerskin.

  The Bloodprint was said to be written on deerskin.

  The noise from the antechamber faded, the strike of steel, Ruslan’s grunt, Elena’s cry.

  All of it dwindled away. Arian read the scroll in her hands.
/>   And read it again, shaken by her discovery.

  She was holding a page of the Bloodprint in her hands.

  She was reading a verse of the Claim.

  A verse of dazzling symmetry.

  Four lines above, four lines below its central axis, the verse arranged as a chiastic structure inked in green, a mirror of itself.

  A green mirror.

  The verse she had never believed she would find, its power and glory blazing through her mind, suffusing her body with light.

  The unknown verse.

  The Verse of the Throne.

  She gaped at Larisa who stood panting at the threshold to the room.

  “Hurry,” Larisa gasped. “More are coming.”

  In the antechamber, Ruslan was slumped on the ground, Elena at his side, the bodies of Ahdath littered around them. Elena kissed the craggy scar on Ruslan’s cheek. His tired eyes focused on Arian.

  “Did you find it?” he asked. “Will it help?”

  He was dying. She nodded quickly, kneeling at his side. Larisa’s face was tight with the knowledge of loss to come.

  “It means everything.” Arian touched a hand to her tahweez. “It will change our fortunes in this war.” She whispered into his ear. “It’s the Verse of the Throne, Ruslan. You’ve led us to the Verse of the Throne.”

  For a moment, his eyes were touched by wonder.

  Then he was gone.

  “No—Ruslan, no!” Elena’s wail was buried in Ruslan’s chest.

  Larisa nudged her sister with a gentle hand. “We have to go.”

  Elena clung to Ruslan’s body.

  “Please, Larisa,” she begged. “Do something.” And then, to Arian, “Bring him back.” Ruslan’s blood colored her face and chest. “Use the Claim. The Claim will work, it has to.”

  The agony of her desperation tore at Arian.

  “Elena,” she said, using the Claim as a balm. It had no effect. “You know what the Authoritan did to him. The Claim cannot recall him.”

  Elena’s bloodstained face was acrid with recognition.

  “Of course,” she said. “When has the Claim ever been of use to us? It took our father’s life, now it has taken Ruslan.” She faced her sister, defiant. “I won’t leave his body for the Blood Shed, help me move him.” She pointed to the tomb of the king. “He deserves a king’s grave, help me move him there.”