by Zamil Akhtar
No. How could that be? “I…did everything…I could.” My heaving made it hard to talk. “I…did…follow a plan. My…emotions—”
“Grovel, cry, scream, pray — all futile, now. It was unlikely to begin with. If only one of my sons had survived instead, there would be hope. But you…it was a curse to even watch you try.”
“Father Chisti!” I called out. “I didn’t spare a moment for myself. Not even a drop of happiness. All I did was further the plan, from wake to sleep.” That wasn’t true, though. I’d sought pleasantries, pleasures. Gotten fat on good food. Grown lazy lying upon silk sheets. But in my heart, I never let go of our cause.
“Shush now. Your best was never going to be enough. The horror that I feel, you can never know. Because you haven’t experienced what’s coming for us. If only you’d sipped that terror, become one with it for the briefest increment, perhaps even you could have succeeded…if only from utter desperation.” He was always going on about how he’d sipped it. But to me, it was merely a fear brought to life by prophecy, not experience, and perhaps that was why I’d been so careless.
I crawled to his feet. I kissed the back of his cold, hard shin. “Then let me sip it.”
“Do you know what you ask? The Great Terror is surging toward us, coming to remake us all in fire. Are you so sure you want a sip?”
“I’ll do whatever it takes to stop it, Father. I will carry the mission of the Children on my back until I’m dust and bones.”
“Not enough!”
“What else have I?”
“You think dying is a sacrifice? A life is not a thing. There exist fates of eternal suffering that words cannot encompass. Imagine your skin boiling until it’s liquid, then you’re given a new skin to boil again — forever. Does that sound terrifying? It’s bliss compared to what will happen. It’s paradise to what’s out there.” He pointed to a patch of utter black in the ring-lit sky. “To what’s coming.”
“I’ll stop it. I’ll save us all. I will.”
He turned to face me. He touched my head with a single, chill finger. I dared not look up. I dared not look upon his face, to see those disappointed, deadened eyes.
“You will sip the Great Terror? Then, in your vigorous desperation, you will save us all from it?” His laughter — it shook with sadness, with despair. “You? You who already failed!”
My tears moistened his toes. I clung to his ankles. “If I’m dead…is this…where souls go? Is this Barzakh?”
He chuckled. “You’re not dead. And no, I won’t let you sip. Because, despite your failings, I still love you. To see you cry — do you not think it hurts my heart? That’s all the suffering I’d have you taste. The suffering of your own disappointment. The suffering of a single life…it’s a drop compared to the ocean that will drown us. A hundred years, a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand. It doesn’t matter how long we delay. Unless my righteous Children are brought back to rule, as Lat intended, it comes — more assuredly than death.”
Father pulled me up by the hair. I screamed. I felt like a plant being ripped from its root. Then I saw his eyes: sad, dead, and as terrified as mine.
He plunged two fingers into my sockets.
I awoke screaming. The sunshine’s high angle through the open balcony door told me it was midday. When I lived with the Children, we had no water clocks, so told time by shadows and rays. Ah, the nightmare faded, and present concerns replaced its terror. A day had passed with me asleep. Was I too late?
I tried to move my hands and legs…nothing budged. I was a brick. And alone in my room — where was everyone?
The ceremony, Cyra’s marriage to Kyars, the peace accord with the Sylgiz…all things I didn’t want. All things I had to stop. For the sake of the Children. For the sake of mankind.
But what could a brick lying on a bed do? Perhaps it was as Father had said…I’d failed. I couldn’t save us. The Great Terror would envelop the world, and we’d be remade in fire. Without the Children to stop it, without the restoration of our righteous rule, there was no escape.
The door creaked open. A youthful girl with delightful hazel locks entered. She set a tray of incense on my bedside while staring into my eyes. “You’re awake?” she asked in strangely accented Sirmian. “They told me to fetch the healers if you woke.”
“No, don’t,” I croaked. “Celene is your name, right?”
She nodded.
“I’m glad we could meet. Please, stay with me for a moment. Sit, if you would.”
With some hesitation, she sat on the edge of my bed and stared at the floor.
“I know how you feel,” I said, my throat dryer than a dune. “To be ripped from your home and brought to a strange place. It hurts, doesn’t it?”
She remained silent. I gestured with my eyes at the water cup at my bedside. She fed me sips, easing my throat pain.
“On the outside, we make it look like we’re fine,” I said. “But within, the storm never stops raging. Even if that storm shrinks and slows, it’s always there, in the center of your heart, ready to rage again.”
She remained silent.
“They tell me you’re a Crucian princess. I was…sort of a princess, too, you know.”
“It sounds like you want me to do you a favor.”
“Pardon?”
“Whenever someone tries to get to know me, it means they want something. It was the same in Crucis, and it’s the same here.” Said so dryly. “So, what do you want?”
She wasn’t wrong, as sad as that was. I did want something. I gestured with my eyes at the closet. “Carry me in there.”
She chuckled. Good. First emotion I’d gotten out of her. “I’m not strong. I don’t think I could lift you.”
“You don’t know your strength until you try. You might surprise yourself.”
She looked at the closet, then back at me. “Do you feel safer in there? Because that I can understand…I suppose.”
Soulshifting required one to be relaxed, comfortable, and unstimulated. In the Vogras, I would soulshift from a cave that overlooked our tribe’s land.
“Something like that.” It hurt even to smile, but I did for her.
Celene pulled me up. I barely felt her wrap her arms around my waist and her tug. She dragged me, huffing all the while, into the closet. Panted on her knees after letting me go.
“You did it, dear,” I said. “See?”
She actually smiled, and it was as sweet as halva. “Want me to close the door?”
I nodded, surprised I could move my head so much.
That poor rat had died a rather ignoble death — unfortunate, as it had taken hours to catch it and write the bloodrune on its belly — so I shifted into the drongo. I landed on the roof of the Sand Palace, shedding a feather somehow, then fluttered about until I settled atop the great hall’s glass dome.
A feast was taking place below. Kashanese men blowing into long, reed flutes and gyrating girls wearing sequin-sown silk performed upon a platform in the center of the room. Around them sat the Sylgiz and the Alanyans, intermixed and jovial. At the head, on the dais, sat Khagan Cihan, Cyra, and Shah Tamaz, joking and giggling and sipping rose water. Her wedding dress…by Lat, the crimson silk suited her, as did the airy shawl and the fat, ruby-encrusted diamond around her neck. A part of me was joyous for her, as I’d been when my own daughters married, though none had ever looked so radiant.
No. Like Father had said, I wasn’t desperate enough because I hadn’t sipped. I’d wasted time making friends, listening to poetry, enjoying dances. That had to end; I’d never get a chance like this and couldn’t let a tender thought distract me.
I eyed Grand Mufti Khizr Khaz laughing in the back with a man wearing thin, desert-appropriate Abyadi garb. Given the atmosphere, the ceremony had obviously ended, and I was too late to stop it.
I flapped my wings and fanned my tail, yearning to peck out all their eyes. Cyra’s marriage to Kyars would seal the peace between the Sylgiz and Alanya. She could bed Kyars
all she wanted, his seed wouldn’t put a child in her, but my child would now be hers. Seluq would be hers — she’d have more authority over him than me. Authority to twist and turn him into whatever she wanted, whereas I had to guide him to be the restorer of the Children. The shield against the Great Terror. Not just Shah of Alanya, but Padishah of everywhere Lat was worshipped.
The peace accord I’d have to undermine. There were ways to cause chaos that didn’t involve the Sylgiz sacking Qandbajar. I’d worked hard to make that happen, plotted and planned for months, but it’s impossible to consider everything. I hadn’t considered Cyra — my blind spot. Her sudden cleverness had come from nowhere, and her desire to make peace and wed had somehow overcome my careful plan.
Curse the saints. I had to do what I had to do. Set things right before it all slipped away. Turn this sordid twist into an opportunity. No weakness. No mercy. Because to show mercy to anyone down there would imperil mankind itself. Destroy all that I’d toiled for, for the sake of the Children, for the sake of all.
It was time to act. It was time to activate the bloodrune.
7
Cyra
Absent the tension of war, the Shah and my brother got along like songbirds. After all, both were tribal folk at heart, preferring the rugged countryside to a city’s comforts. Good that my husband was the opposite, like me. So while I enjoyed the dancing girls and flute players, they conversed about hunting, fishing, and archery. Both also claimed to have sighted simurgh carrying off camels, or in my brother’s story, a mammoth. They’d even wandered upon jinn tribes in the guise of humans, walking with backward-facing feet.
“I was barely seventeen when this happened,” Shah Tamaz said to my brother, “but I caught a bizarre fish. Its scales were like glass — you could see through it, to the bone. And its insides glowed, as if it had swallowed stars. Didn’t care — I was hungry. But when I began cooking it, within minutes I fainted from inhaling the smoke of its flesh. Then I had the strangest dream. I was on an island — in the sky were twelve lights of red and green, and they danced around each other in the most peculiar orbits. Felt so real. And then I saw my great-great-grandfather Ismaid. He’d driven out the Sirmians when they sacked Qandbajar almost a century ago. He told me I’d go through the same as him and emerge victorious, like he did.”
My brother barely blinked as he listened — the best audience of one Tamaz could have. Though he actually had an audience of two: I pretended not to hear. Better they bond without me getting in the way. Men’s stories become circumspect when their sisters or wives or daughters are around.
“I wrestled a wave lizard once,” my brother said. “Bit me twenty-seven times. The bites make you see things. For six days afterward, I thought I was a blade of grass, bending in the wind. And that’s not poetry — I did believe I was a blade of grass.”
“A poet — I think it was Ravoes — once said ‘bend like grass, and you’ll never know suffering.’”
“He obviously never experienced actually being grass.” Cihan and Tamaz laughed together. “Tell me, you ever fight?”
“Of course,” Tamaz said. “How do you think I got this limp? Almost twenty-five, thirty years ago now — the last time I saw battle. The Sirmians crossed south of Zelthuriya, violating our treaty. Shah Jalal wanted to make himself a padishah, it seemed. But my father was not having it. We lined up against them in the desert. A plucky, muscular man stepped forward from their line and challenged our best to a duel. So naturally, I stepped up.
“I don’t recall the details of the fight, but it was over rather quickly. The man was good at getting low — he cut into my thigh and left me writhing in the sand faster than I could swing. I was certain those would be my final prayers, but for some reason, instead of finishing me off, he simply backed away and returned to their line while his army cheered his name — ‘Murad! Murad!’”
“The Sirmian shah!” My brother looked on, entranced. “Did he tell you later why he spared you?”
The Shah shook his head. “I haven’t spoken to him since. We’ve had good relations, though — strong trade, especially. When the Crucians seized Kostany, the Majlis debated whether we should help Sirm fight back, or finish them off.” Tamaz paused to breathe. “I’m not a man of war, Cihan. Though we could have taken their land, eventually we’d find our borders at Crucis. And then the wars would never end. Better the Sirmians deal with them than us, so we can enjoy the fruits of peace. That’s why I overruled the Majlis and sent my son to help them. And now, with our aid, Sirm is strong once more.”
“Most khagans would conquer whatever they could,” Cihan said, “not concerned about overextending or creating a buffer with the enemy. You are a wise shah, Tamaz. I thought my own father weak, all those times he didn’t attack. Perhaps it wasn’t weakness that led to his end but rather a lack of foresight.” Wonderful how they were bonding.
I looked out at the guests. Oh Lat, I made the briefest eye contact with Hadrith, who was sitting with his sisters and glaring at me. He hadn’t even touched his plate of bone marrow pilau, piled like a mountain. Perhaps he was jealous. Wonderful — he had his chance and let it slip away. We’d still have to work together to find the sorcerer, but in a purely proper way.
I wondered how Zedra would feel if she were here. Perhaps she’d be jealous too, or perhaps she’d dance for me. Tamaz’s wife and concubines seemed to get along, in the rare instances when I saw them. Tamaz’s harem was separate from Kyars’ and much smaller, and the Shah rarely let them leave, as was the custom among most Seluqals, so I didn’t really know how well they got along.
I eyed Pasha Kato talking to a Sylgiz warrior — that son of a slipper Gokberk, who had to lean in with his only remaining ear. Whenever I saw his scarred face, I remembered the puppy whose neck he crushed; it took him seven stomps to silence its dying screeches. By Lat, we were both only eight or nine years old at the time; he must’ve been born cruel. Now, he seemed rather jovial for a man my brother had supposedly undermined with this marriage and conversion to the Path of the Saints, though the latter would happen tomorrow at the Shrine of Saint Jamshid.
Anyway, the way Kato gesticulated, it seemed his hands did half the talking. I could tell he was recounting a battle from how he darted his fingers, as if they were a horse’s hooves stomping on the ground. Was this man really conspiring to take over Alanya?
Hadrith had some evidence on Kato. After all, Kato had suspiciously remained in the city while his forces went with Kyars, and he’d also found the scribe who wrote the letter which brought the Sylgiz here. But…the man didn’t strike me as a cold, considerate schemer. Hadrith, Ozar, Barkam — they never liked Kato to begin with. Perhaps he was less pliable than Kichak, the former gholam commander who had died in Sirm, so they reached for any reason to topple him.
A thought struck: what if the sorcerer was the one conspiring to take over, and Kato merely a distraction? A piece on the board?
Just then, Sambal walked into the great hall, his wimpy-looking fists at his shoulders. Behind him was Eshe, looking absolutely wretched in that eunuch disguise: a green, fur-lined robe over floral brocade and a pillow-like hat — just not his style. They both went to Hadrith and whispered in his ear. Then Hadrith gazed up at me with a wide, terror-filled gape.
Hadrith got up, dusted his brocade, and waded through the crowd. He bent his neck before the Shah, just below the dais.
“Your Glory,” he said with a quaver that made him difficult to understand. “I…I believe there is about to be…an attempt on your life.”
Dear Lat, what had Eshe learned?
The Shah straightened and said, “Hadrith, say that again.”
“My Shah, there is—”
Eshe pushed past him and said, “First of all, I’m not actually a eunuch. I’m a Disciple of Chisti and an expert in bloodrunes. You must get away from these two at once!” He pointed to Cihan and me. What the hell?
Gold-clad gholam approached and surrounded us, as if instinctually sen
sing danger.
The Shah shook his head. “Slow down. What exactly is the danger from my new daughter and son?”
“The bloodrunes are of conqueror’s blood,” Eshe said. “A flavor found almost entirely among the tribes of the Waste.”
“I don’t follow,” the Shah said sternly, as if losing patience. I didn’t either. What was he trying to say about Cihan and me?
Eshe took a heavy breath. “Excuse me, but my eloquence has departed in this moment. I saw the runes all over your palace, and I know what they do. We’re not dealing with just any sorcerer. Any Sylgiz in this room with conqueror’s blood could, at this very moment, be under the control of something far worse. A soulshifter.”
Oh Lat. Conqueror’s blood — one of the flavors? Perhaps my brother possessed it, or someone in the crowd. And soulshifter sounded far more terrifying than sorcerer.
The Shah turned to Hadrith and said, “Do you vouch for this man, on your life and the lives of your household?”
Hadrith nodded rapidly. “My Shah, I do. You can ask her as well.” He gestured toward me.
“Cyra?” The Shah turned to me. “You know about this?”
“I’m not fully grasping what this has to do with me,” I said, “but I’ve seen a bloodrune in the bath.”
My brother, who’d been silent, now stood and said, “It would be best if the Sylgiz and I returned to camp until your matter is sorted. We’d not have our peace poisoned by intrigues and sorceries.”
“My Shah, we’ll take you to my house,” Hadrith said. “You can’t stay in the Sand Palace.”
Eshe said, “That would be best. I’ve a way to nullify the runes, but it could take some time. Until then, best you and your household leave this place.”
This was all so sudden, yet the peace deal had already been signed and sealed with my marriage to Kyars. Nothing could be allowed to jeopardize the Shah’s safety and the kingdom’s peace.
Gholam surrounded the Shah — a golden wall — as Cihan and I stepped off the dais and gathered with the other Sylgiz. The crowd made way for the Shah to depart, and the guards opened the double doors that led into the antechamber, which itself led to the palace exit.
