Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Also by Bradley P. Beaulieu
Praise for Twelve Kings in Sharakhai
Chapter One
About the Author
Twelve Kings in Sharakhai
With Blood Upon the Sand
A Veil of Spears
Of Sand and Malice Made
The Lays of Anuskaya
Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten
In the Stars I'll Find You
The Burning Light
Strata
Copyright © 2017 by Bradley P. Beaulieu
This story first appeared in Evil is a Matter of Perspective: An Anthology of Antagonists © 2017 by Grimdark Magazine
Cover art by René Aigner © 2017
Cover design by Bradley P. Beaulieu
Author photo courtesy of Al Bogdan
All rights reserved.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
First Edition: November 2017
ISBN: 978-1-93964-929-4 (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-93964-927-0 (epub)
ISBN: 978-1-93964-928-7 (Kindle)
Please visit me on the web at
http://www.quillings.com
Also by Bradley P. Beaulieu
The Lays of Anuskaya
The Winds of Khalakovo
The Straits of Galahesh
The Flames of Shadam Khoreh
Short Story Collections
Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories
In the Stars I’ll Find You
Novellas
Strata (with Stephen Gaskell)
The Burning Light (with Rob Zeigler)
The Song of the Shattered Sands
Twelve Kings in Sharakhai
With Blood Upon the Sand
A Veil of Spears
Of Sand and Malice Made
Praise for Twelve Kings in Sharakhai
“Beaulieu has proved himself able to orchestrate massive storylines in his previous series, the Lays of Anuskaya trilogy. But Twelve Kings lays down even more potential. Fantasy and horror, catacombs and sarcophagi, resurrections and revelations: The book has them all, and Beaulieu wraps it up in a package that’s as graceful and contemplative as it is action-packed and pulse-pounding.”
—NPR Books
“Twelve Kings in Sharakhai is the gateway to what promises to be an intricate and exotic tale. The characters are well defined and have lives and histories that extend past the boundaries of the plot. The culture is well fleshed out and traditional gender roles are exploded. Çeda and Emre share a relationship seldom explored in fantasy, one that will be tried to the utmost as similar ideals provoke them to explore different paths. I expect that this universe will continue to expand in Beaulieu’s skillful prose. Wise readers will hop on this train now, as the journey promises to be breathtaking.”
—Robin Hobb, author of The Assassin’s Apprentice
“The protagonist, pit-fighter Çeda, is driven but not cold, and strong but not shallow. And the initial few scenes of violence and sex, while very engaging, soon give way to a much richer plot. Beaulieu is excellent at keeping a tight rein on the moment-to-moment action and building up the tension and layers of mysteries.”
—SciFiNow (9 / 10 Rating)
“I am impressed… An exceedingly inventive story in a lushly realized dark setting that is not your uncle’s Medieval Europe. I’ll be looking forward to the next installment.”
—Glen Cook, author of The Black Company
“This is an impressive performance.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Racine novelist delivers a compelling desert fantasy in ‘Twelve Kings’.”
—The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Beaulieu’s intricate world-building and complex characters are quickly becoming the hallmarks of his writing, and if this opening volume is any indication, The Song of the Shattered Sands promises to be one of the next great fantasy epics.”
—Jim Kellen, Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Buyer for Barnes & Noble
“Bradley P. Beaulieu’s new fantasy epic is filled with memorable characters, enticing mysteries, and a world so rich in sensory detail that you can feel the desert breeze in your hair as you read. Çeda is hands-down one of the best heroines in the genre—strong, resourceful, and fiercely loyal to friends and family. Fantasy doesn’t get better than this!”
—C. S. Friedman, author of The Coldfire Trilogy
Chapter One
In the western quarter of the Amber City lies a congested riddle of streets known as the Knot. There, a man named Brama walks, cloaked in the anonymity awarded to men who keep their heads down and their words to themselves. Years ago Brama would have refused to walk these streets, not without due compensation, in any case, and he certainly wouldn’t have called them home. He’d been a street tough then, a rangy gutter wren with the skill of a locksmith and the heart of a thief. He’d been brash, even bold, but no one would have called him brave. He would have laughed at the very thought of the Knot becoming familiar to him, but the wheel turns and times change. Brama is no longer the same man he was then. The young Brama wouldn’t even recognize him.
Truth be told, Brama could live in any quarter of the city he chose, but he calls this hellish place home for one simple reason: the Knot is populated by those who’ve learned to keep to themselves. To be sure, there are wolves as well as sheep. They prowl, preying on the weak, but Brama was never much of a victim, and only a fool would call him one now. If the pattern of scars over his face, neck, and arms aren’t enough to convince, his black-laugher scowl certainly is.
For his part, Brama doesn’t much care what anyone thinks of him as long as they leave him in peace. He exists, whiling away the days, nursing his dwindling fortune, wondering what the city and the desert gods have in store for him. He’s been in the Knot for nearly two years—me along with him—and he’s begun to wonder if the gods have forgotten him.
Surely the gods would not have forgotten a man like Brama, though they may have grown bored of his indolence, which would explain why, on this particular day, instead of heading toward his room above the tannery, Brama breaks his routine and heads down a back alley for the banks of the Haddah. Spring rains have returned to the desert, and the river is swelling. He goes to the place he favored when he was young and watches a group of children playing skipjack. One by one they sprint and leap from the bank onto a canvas held taut by their gleeful friends, bounce into the air, arms and legs flailing, and fall into the surging water below. Some of them he still recognizes, though they’ve clearly grown; others are new. Their laughs and their games make him feel as though he’s passed beyond the veil and now watches the world of the living, his feet forever rooted in the further fields. That’s what his father used to say happened to those who pine for their old lives. And he does pine at times, so much that it hurts.
Sitting in the shade of the embankment, hidden beneath his cowl, he watches those gutter wrens the whole afternoon. He stands only when the children exit the water, still dripping, ready to depart en masse. How he wishes he could join them. How he wishes he could run the streets as he once did. But that was a different life. And he is now a different man.
As he
turns to leave, he spots a girl watching the same group of children, pining, perhaps, as Brama was, for younger, simpler days. The girl is young yet herself. If she’s seen more than fifteen summers, I’m an innocent lamb set for slaughter. Red ribbons are braided through her hair, a common style in the city of late, and she wears the simple clothes of a lowborn Sharakhani girl, but there’s something odd about her. She stands tall, clasping her hands before her as a poet might before reading her lines. It’s unconscious, I’m certain, a tell as plain as one could be.
Perhaps aware of being watched, she turns and takes note of Brama, scans the riverbank and the plaza behind him with chary eyes, then rushes away. Even in this she has the posture and bearing of a noblewoman. But this isn’t the most interesting thing about her—to Brama or to me. It is the fact that, since the moment he spotted her, there were notes of light surrounding her. Like sundogs shining in a cloud-scraped sky, they shimmer, they glimmer. They brighten here and dim there. They move with her like the desert wind summoning demons from the sand as it gusts through Sharakhai’s tight and winding streets.
She glances back several times, but Brama chooses not to follow. He can see she’s scared, and who can blame her? The way Brama looks she’d be a fool not to be a little scared. Then she’s gone, lost down an alley. There’s a strange yearning that follows her absence. A deep desire for…something. Her presence? Foolish, Brama thinks. He doesn’t even know her. But then he wonders…
From around his neck he removes a leather necklace. Strung there like an amulet is a falcon’s egg sapphire. It’s one of the more priceless gems in all the desert, but one would never know by looking at it, with its surfaces grimed with oil and soot. It’s wrapped tightly in leather cord so that it looks like a cargo net lifting a dirty chunk of sky. This is my prison, the place I’ve been held since Brama and the girl known as the White Wolf trapped me here.
Wrapping the leather necklace around his hand with a flick of his wrist, Brama tightens his grip on the gemstone and steps down into the mud. His sandals sink as he walks, squelch as he trudges forward. When he comes to a place where the water has pooled, he squats and stares into a reflection that is imperfect—much like the landscape of his scar-torn face. The scars are an unsubtle reminder of a time when I was the master and he the chained. He was a comely man once—even I recognize that, a being who’d seen countless years pass in the Shangazi. It might have been why I was so pleased to make him cut himself; something about seeing himself destroy his own beauty pleased me. Part of me now regrets having done it to him, but I was wroth with the godling children who’d come for me; wroth as well that I’d been forced to take Brama when the one I’d really wanted was the White Wolf.
“She was never yours to take,” Brama said to his reflection.
For months now Brama has somehow been able to hear snippets of my thoughts. It happens when my guard is down, so of course I quickly replace my walls, but I know already they will fail once more—my will is strong, as is my god-given power, but nothing I have done in this place seems to last.
In the water’s reflection, a new visage forms, slowly replacing his. Long black spikes lift from his scalp as his curly locks of hair recede. Horns jut from a black-skinned forehead, curving back and around like a ram’s crown carved from ebony. Slanted eyes tinged with rust replace the green of Brama’s, and while Brama had always possessed features that were fair, more feminine cheeks and lips and chin replace his own.
Fear, as it always does, builds in Brama breast. It isn’t so much as it once was, though, which pleases me greatly. He of all people knows the danger I represent, but he’s become accustomed to me, a necessary first step in gaining my freedom and all the more important considering the effect we just witnessed illuminating that girl.
I say to him, “What is it you wish, my master?”
“How many times must I ask you not to call me that?”
“Are you not my master?”
“You are a fiend, and my enemy.”
My visage laughs, and both of us feel a brightening, a candle lit and doused in as little time as it takes a mortal child to giggle. “What shall I call you, then? Brama the Mighty? Brama the Bold?”
Though he chooses not to reply, curiosity overrides his fears, creating a strange alchemy of caution and hope. “Tell me of the girl,” he says. “Why was she twinkling like that?”
“It’s how I see you sometimes.”
“Mortals, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“But why does it happen? What has it revealed about her?”
“It means that she is someone who will affect your fate, or the fate of others who are dear to you, or both. It means she is someone around whom the winds of fate do whorl.”
“That tells me nothing.”
“It’s no more complex than predicting the weather by judging the clouds and the smell in the air. It is another form of sight, granted me by Goezhen, or perhaps a thing passed to me when I was crafted from his soul. Who can know any longer?”
“Is that why you wanted Çeda? Was she like that?”
“Oh, yes.” How bright that one had been. How very bright.
Brama considers this for a time, and I wonder what happened by the river. He’d been as transfixed as I, watching that girl rush away from the Haddah. For the first time since I’ve known him, I feel curiosity emanating from him like heat from a brand, and an urge to involve himself in something, anything, outside the tiny world he’s made for himself. I resist the instinct to influence him—he’s grown disturbingly good at sensing when I’m doing so. Instead, I simply wait.
“Shall I find her again?” he finally asks.
I hide my grin as I speak, “That is completely up to you, my Lord Brama.”
He seems irked by the answer but says nothing in return. Slowly, my visage fades from the silty puddle, until he’s staring at himself once more. He runs his fingers over the kindling-pile pattern of his scars. He stares around, to the now-empty banks of the Haddah. He feels the empty space inside him opening up again. He may hide it from others but I know how desperate he’s been to find someone. A friend with whom he can share stories. A woman he might love and be loved by. He’s confusing the lights with the sort of young love all mortal youths seem to experience. I do nothing to disabuse him of the notion—it is yet another step on the long road to freedom, after all—but it also touches my heart. I’ve not lived with humanity for so long that I am unaffected by the emotions my hosts feel.
Soon, he’s standing and tugging on the cowl that keeps his face hidden from the world. His mind is elsewhere at last, and it leaves me alone with my secret. The girl. The lights around her. It’s true that they are tied to Brama’s fate. But more accurately, they are tied to mine, and I have no doubt now that this girl will be the key to escaping my faceted prison once and for all.
#
Three days pass before Brama spots the same girl. He’s standing in a darkened doorway as she approaches a spicemonger’s cart a half-block distant. She’s wearing a different dress, a blue and white jalabiya. It’s as threadbare as the last but well made, with fine stitching, the sort a woman of means might once have worn. Her black keffiyeh lies loosely around her head, but oddly, as if she wasn’t born to it and had only recently started wearing one. She glances warily along the street as the plump fruit seller uses her pewter scoop to fill a burlap sack with dried wolfberry.
Brama’s curiosity rises. And for good reason. Wolfberry has a pleasant enough flavor, but the aftertaste is bitter as oversteeped tea. For this reason the fruit is not favored by most market-goers in Sharakhai, but it sells well enough in the Shallows, mainly for its ability to help ease the lows that go hand in hand with an addiction to black lotus. The girl shows none of the effects of addiction herself. Her hands don’t shake as she passes over a small handful of copper, nor are her lips bloodless, and her eyes are anything but sallow. There is, however, an undeniable weight on her shoulders. A sense of worry. A natural reaction, I
suppose, if someone she loves is deep in the throes of withdrawal, but that wouldn’t explain why she’s constantly looking up and down the street as though she’s worried about being discovered.
As it did the other day when Brama first spotted her, a play of lights flit about her, tumbling through the air. They look like a chromatic flock of cressetwing moths, mesmerizing as they brighten in the shadows and fade in the shafts of morning sunlight.
They have never failed to amaze me. And it’s no different for Brama. He stares, rapt. But as the wind-tossed flecks of light slowly disappear, it bothers him greatly. He’s suddenly convinced she will die. Brama has no way of knowing, but the lights never remain with a single soul for long, and I have no way of sharing this with him, not until he summons me again. Truth be told, though, I don’t know that I would even if he did. His indecision glows like a beacon fire, a thing somehow pleasing to my muted senses. It’s clear he wants to go to her, but what would he say? He knows by now, or at least suspects, that her fate is entwined with his, but the likelihood of scaring her with but a word is a near certainty.
No sooner does the thought cross his mind than the girl spies him in the doorway of the shisha den. The sheer depth of terror seen in her eyes convinces me of two things: first, she’s afraid of being found, and second, she isn’t sure who might be hunting her, else why be so frightened of a man she’s never met?
Wrapping her keffiyeh tighter around her face, she snatches the bag of wolfberries from the spicemonger and sets off briskly down a different street than she’d taken here.
The Tattered Prince and the Demon Veiled Page 1
