Larisa stood firm, her face as pale as her sister’s was bloody.
“We can’t afford the time.” And when Elena’s face darkened with rage, she added, “Forgive me, but you know it’s true. The Ahdath will have signaled others.”
Elena turned on Arian, fiercely. “You bring calamity with you, Companion. Was your prize worth it?” Her voice was filled with venom.
Justice is strength, Arian thought, a familiar weariness seeping into her bones.
She couldn’t deny the truth of Elena’s accusation. She had brought ruin to the man who had given his life for hers.
“Yes,” Arian said.
“Then calamity will find you also.” Elena turned to her sister. “She was meant to bring us hope, not death. Do what you want, Larisa. Just don’t expect me to help you again.” She found the gate to the garden, melting away into the shadows before Larisa could say another word.
“Forgive me,” Arian said. She murmured a prayer over Ruslan’s body. “I know he loved you.”
Larisa nodded, her eyes bleak.
“I wish he’d loved Elena, it’s what she always wanted.” She caught Arian’s hand again, seeking a nameless comfort. “They drugged me at Jaslyk, but they used their worst tortures on Elena. It was Ruslan who rescued her.” She brushed a weary hand against her eyes. “He was the best of men. To die serving a cause he loved is more than most of us can hope for. Too many of our men have been murdered at the Blood Shed.”
Fear struck at Arian. She had let herself forget Wafa and Turan.
“Please.” She squeezed Larisa’s hand. “Take me to the Blood Shed. I must do what I can for my friends.”
“How can we fight a battalion of Ahdath? You overestimate my skills.”
“Just take me there. I don’t ask you to fight, but I won’t be able to find the way alone.”
Larisa hesitated. “Companion,” she said. “If ever you loved your friends, you shouldn’t witness what happens at the Blood Shed.”
“I can’t just leave them.” Arian held out the scroll to Larisa. “I trust its power to aid me.”
“It didn’t serve my father.”
“Your father was not a Companion of Hira.” Arian tried a smile. Just as he’d withheld so much from Arian, there was something the Black Khan hadn’t told Larisa. “My name is Arian, but perhaps you know me as First Oralist of the Claim.”
47
Three hundred soldiers occupied the Registan, the square made bright by the glow of torches. Striding between their rows was a fair-haired man of unusual height with an eagle’s profile and close-set eyes, his weathered face mottled with rage. He carried a whip in one hand, striking his men at random.
Silver bosses at his shoulders, a crimson cape down his back, this was the man who commanded the Wall, the Authoritan’s right hand.
Araxcin of the Ahdath. Larisa whispered to Arian of his reputation for savagery. His actions in the square confirmed it.
As his lash fell, his men betrayed no sign of pain. They accepted the blows until the commander moved on.
Araxcin shouted at them in the language of the Transcasp, his words clipped with fury. Had she not known the language, Arian still would have understood.
“How did he escape?”
Semyon and Alik waited at the forefront of the battalion, their heads bowed for the whip. Illarion stood to Araxcin’s side, his sword in hand, his eyes searching the square.
“I don’t know what tricks aided the Silver Mage. Perhaps the Companion freed him.”
It was the wrong thing for Semyon to say. Araxcin’s whip struck him again.
“You let the Companion escape, as well! A woman alone bested all my men save Illarion, the only one who can think for himself.”
Arian frowned from her vantage point behind the pylons of the Shir Dar. Illarion had discovered the ruse, but had clearly left Elena’s role—and his own mistakes—out of his report to Araxcin. Arian could only speculate as to why.
“What will you do?” Larisa murmured. “What can you do?”
“How do I enter the Blood Shed?”
“You won’t need to. Look.”
The massive crimson door to the Blood Shed gave way.
The whip was stayed in Araxcin’s hand.
“Ahdath,” he shouted.
The two halves of the battalion stationed between the Blood Shed and the Shir Dar snapped to attention.
“You will search this city. You will find the Silver Mage. You will kill him where he stands. The Companion you will bring to me. Is that understood?”
With one voice, the men thundered, “As the one commands.”
Arian bit back a gasp. It was a terrible distortion of the Claim.
“But first a punishment. It has been weeks since the last execution, but tonight we are gifted with fresh blood.”
The Ahdath battalion thumped their fists against their chests. A lurid chant filled the air.
“Blood will be shed. Blood will be shed.”
Araxcin responded by rote.
“Lawful for you are carrion and blood.”
“That’s a lie,” Larisa whispered. “My father taught the opposite. Unlawful are carrion and blood.”
Arian signaled her recognition of the verse.
The crimson door of the Blood Shed gaped wide. An enormous wooden structure was propelled through the door on crimson wheels.
A bloodred gallows for a public execution.
Wafa and Turan were hanging from the gallows by their ankles, their bodies stripped to the waist, their torsos a welter of bloodmarks.
Arian choked back a scream.
“Lawful is blood,” the Ahdath chanted. “Lawful is blood.”
“Bring them,” Araxcin said, the bloodlust in his voice.
What could she do? How could she stop them all?
The gallows were wheeled to the center of the square. Araxcin prodded Semyon and Alik with his whip. They stepped forward to take two curved metal basins from the men who wheeled out the gallows. The basins were placed beneath the bodies of Wafa and Turan, their bound hands dangling above their heads.
Wafa and Turan were unconscious.
Arian stared at Larisa in horror.
“First they will drain the bodies of blood. Then the bones will be crushed and deposited in the crypt.” A gesture of Larisa’s hand indicated the Shadow Mausoleum.
Araxcin’s whip whistled through the air, rousing Turan to consciousness. His quiet groan tore at Arian’s heart. The lash fell again, propelling her into action.
She grabbed Larisa’s hand.
“Whatever you do, stay hidden.”
The chant echoed again.
“Lawful is blood, lawful is blood.”
Araxcin signaled to Semyon. The Ahdath soldier vaulted onto the platform, a silver dagger in his hands. Methodically, he slashed at Turan’s ankles, before severing the rope that bound Turan’s wrists together. Blood began to drip into the basin.
“Lawful is blood, lawful is blood.”
Arian sprinted through the square.
“Stop!” she called out. Soldiers began to turn. “It’s me you want, let them go!”
She threw off her cloak as she ran, dark hair tumbling free, her circlets shining in the torchlight.
No one moved except Arian. She held the attention of every man in the square.
Turan’s hand snaked up to remove the knife he had hidden in his breeches. With a final determined effort, he swung his battered torso up and across. His sudden, swift lunge slashed the rope that bound Wafa at the heels. The boy crashed to the platform, unmoving.
“Run!” Turan roared, the last breath of a lion.
Wafa lay still.
“Run, Wafa!”
The sound of Arian’s voice broke the spell over the square.
A venomous smile on his face, Araxcin strode to the platform. Before Arian could reach him, he slashed his knife across Turan’s throat.
“No!” Arian screamed. Her agonized cry rent the night.
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Turan’s blood spurted across the platform, draining the last bit of color from his face.
His gray eyes found Arian. With his hand, he motioned at Wafa.
“I promised you,” he managed, his mouth filled with blood. “And I am glad to give my life in your service.”
“No!” she cried. “Turan, no! I haven’t released you, please. Don’t leave me, please—”
“Sayah,” he whispered. “I come to you, at last.”
The grave, gray eyes went dark.
Araxcin moved to Wafa.
The anguish of a decade surged up through Arian’s skin, a volcanic rage swelling through her veins, commanding her very lifeblood, until it erupted through her voice like the cleaving of an enormous, mercurial sword.
Turan was dead. He would never ride at her side again.
Her protector, her guide, her friend—the one who’d loved her all her life, for her mother’s sake, for her own, holding her in his hands, urging her to keep faith—with the past, with the future, giving her reason to believe—making her feel less alone only to leave her again, another piece of her heart claimed by the Talisman’s war, by a cycle of endless darkness.
Taking everything.
It was still taking everything.
The captain’s whisper echoed through her grief.
I am glad to give my life in your service.
No, no, no, no, no!
An incandescent violence exploded from her throat.
“There is no one but the One, the Living, the Everlasting. Neither slumber overtakes the One, nor sleep. To the One belongs all that is in the heavens and the earth. Who is there that can intercede with the One, except as the One allows? The One knows what lies before you, what lies after you. You comprehend nothing of the One’s knowledge, except as the One wills. The throne of the One comprises the heavens and the earth. The upholding of them does not weary the All-High, All-Glorious One.”
The words scalded her larynx, seared her tongue, overpowered her thoughts with their majesty and might, until all that was left was the dagger of light raging against her skull from inside, and the worn and ravaged cry on her lips.
“A throne to comprise the heavens and the earth.”
An encompassing silence fell on the square.
Wafa raised his head.
Arian’s hand faltered toward his.
“Lady Arian,” he said, as he’d heard Turan address her so many times. It was the first time Wafa had spoken her name. “Look.”
She turned around.
The Blood Shed was crushed into dust, its crimson door dismantled. The Shir Dar had crumbled to ash, alongside its massive pylons. The Tilla Kari’s mirrored door was shattered into glass fragments.
And every man in the square lay dead, blood leaking from his ears and eyes.
Larisa limped across the square, slinging her arm around Arian’s shoulders.
Arian shook her head hopelessly.
“I killed them with the Verse of the Throne.”
“It wasn’t the Verse,” Larisa said. “It was something inside you.”
“My friend,” Arian croaked. “I have to cut him down.”
The ugliness of Turan’s wound brought her to despair. She had thought him dead once before, but she hadn’t loved him then.
She captured his head in her hands, mingling her tears with his blood, kissing his forehead, his cheeks.
She wanted to hold him, keep him close, keep him part of her forever.
It didn’t matter that her arms were slippery with his blood. She couldn’t bring herself to let go.
I let go.
Why did I let go?
How could I make such a choice?
What have I gained?
How do I count what I’ve lost?
“Turan, please,” she whimpered. She thought now of Elena’s plea that she use the Claim to bring back the dead.
She could kill, but she couldn’t give life.
How damning her legacy as Companion of Hira.
“Turan.”
She fastened her arms around his neck, tasting the copper tang of his blood.
“Let me help you.”
A man stumbled his way across the square, his crimson uniform shredded, traces of blood trailing from his ears to his jaw. It was Illarion, sole survivor among the Ahdath. And even in the depths of her grief, Arian guessed at the truth. Illarion must be an adherent of the Claim, for only the Claim could have spared him.
Still, she pushed him away. “No! This task is for me. He was mine, mine alone.”
“Would you keep him like this, as the sport of carrion birds?” he asked gently. “Will you not bury him with honor? Let me cut him down.”
“No,” Arian said again, this time with less conviction. “This task is for me.”
“You hold him,” Illarion said. “So he doesn’t fall from the gallows. It will take a strong arm to release him.”
He held up his hands in a gesture of peace as Larisa drew her short, sharp sword.
Illarion’s gaze flitted between the women.
“Where’s the other one?” he asked Larisa. “Did Anya survive this?”
“I wouldn’t seek her out, if I were you. Tonight the Ahdath killed the man she loved. I can’t begin to know why you are still alive.”
He stared at Larisa, abashed. Then he turned to the gallows, where Turan’s body swung in the wind, his blood draining into the basin. When they had cut him down, Arian sank to her knees, burying her face in his chest.
Wafa clung to her side, listening to her cry, his face worked in lines of distress.
He didn’t know how to comfort her.
He only knew that the Shin War captain had shielded him in the Blood Shed, just as he’d freed Wafa from the gallows.
Wafa had never known kindness from the Talisman.
What could he make of Turan?
A friend, a guardian, a man of moral purpose such as Wafa had never known.
And then a hopeful flicker picked at the corner of his mouth as another man strode forth from the dust of the Shir Dar. A man whose face was bruised and bloodied but unbroken and very much alive.
Daniyar, the Silver Mage.
He took Arian into his arms without a word.
“Where were you?” she murmured brokenly. “How could you have left me? They killed my captain. They killed him before my eyes.”
She clung to him with a fierceness that surprised him, her face marred by tears and blood. A wave of tenderness broke over his heart.
“Forgive me, my love. My use of the Claim is not as yours. I couldn’t breach the Blood Shed. I knew Sinnia to be your heart, so I went after her.”
Arian stirred in his arms.
Apart from their company, the square was deserted.
“Where is she?” And at his grim expression, “Please tell me.”
“I found a man who was willing to tell me,” he said. He said nothing of how he’d obtained his knowledge. “I don’t know why and you won’t have heard of it. They’ve taken Sinnia to a place called Jaslyk.”
Arian gasped. Elena’s malediction floated through her thoughts.
You bring calamity with you, Companion.
At this moment, she was saturated with Elena’s pain.
She was the bringer of prophecy.
To Khorasan and all those she loved.
Turan dead and Sinnia taken.
One missing and one to fall.
They buried Turan in the garden behind the conservatory of sciences, a solemn garden of moon and stars, an invocation of grace for the man who had cherished the Claim.
Illarion took the measure of the Silver Mage in the silence that fell in the aftermath.
“What do you need?” he asked, not bothering with preliminaries.
Daniyar answered in kind.
“We need passage through Black Aura Gate.”
48
Long-legged storks nestled in white-feathered musters had taken up occupancy in the minarets of Bl
ack Aura Scaresafe. The Wall lay to the south. A second rampart of clay ruins circled the Authoritan’s capital.
The river that gave Zerafshan his name—the gold-strewer—faltered alongside their path. Closer to the city, it extinguished itself with a final, parched gasp. Unlike the soil of Marakand, no golden loess from the mountains dusted the streets of Black Aura. The soil was an alkaline gray made arid by accretions of salt. A stunted forest formed the other side of their path.
Behind the broken ramparts, the old city descended, a convolution of windowless, fortified tenements whose wooden beams projected from rooftops. The labyrinth of turtle-domes that marked the city’s bazaar shrunk under the weight of a disturbing soundlessness. No customers or shopkeepers beetled between its alleys.
Where Marakand was a city of turquoise and gold, Black Aura was a battlement of unrelenting dullness, mud-brick and clay.
A tenuous light heralded the dawn in the eastern sky, a stark tower jutting against the horizon like a solitary finger.
The tower was known as the Clay Minar. A testament to the skill of brickwork masons, its dun-colored monotony was lit only by a band of turquoise, its gallery of fenestrated arches topped by cornices that served as pigeon roosts.
The rest of the city had sunk under the heavy hand of time, the tower alone soaring against a sky of Black Aura blue. Its conical design was proof against the shifting of the earth and the frequent shocks that tumbled ill-supported domes and improvised dwellings.
A legend held that coins were buried inside each of the tower’s bricks. After the bricks were sun-baked, they were laid end to end to be trampled by a horse. If the bricks cracked, the entire lot was recast and pounded again. Earthquakes had shaken the city over the centuries, but the Clay Minar stood firm.
They were only three now: herself, Daniyar, and Wafa.
Arian had begged Daniyar to take her to Jaslyk. Sinnia was her heart. If Sinnia were to suffer the damage that marked Larisa and Elena, nothing Arian had ever done would matter. Even Lania’s fate was something she could set aside.
“I can fight them now,” she promised Daniyar. “I can use the Verse of the Throne as a shield.” But her voice faltered a little, and she wasn’t entirely sure that she could.
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