by Zamil Akhtar
Alir said, “That can’t be helped. But you don’t need to talk to her.”
“I haven’t talked to a girl in two years. I can fast tomorrow.”
“She probably doesn’t want to hear anything you have to say, anyway.”
“Why not?” The one named Rafa cleared his throat. “So, soulshifter, eh? What was that like, exactly?”
What was it like? “He made me stab my eye out. Then he made me kill my father-in-law and got my brother killed.” My one eye flooded again. It was appropriate to cry, so I let it happen.
“Idiot,” Alir said. “Ever even talked to a girl before?”
“That’s some story.” Rafa tightened his grip on me. “Alir, you think—”
“The soulshifters died out long ago. She’s clearly had a bad time, but no, I don’t think so.”
I swallowed the bitter liquid foaming in my mouth and asked, “Are you two…Disciples?”
Alir laughed. “Do we look like Disciples of Chisti to you?”
Rafa said, “A Disciple? That’s the kindest compliment I’ve ever received!”
“That’s the only compliment you’ve ever received, Rafa.” Alir sneered. “Come on, the hospital is just ahead.”
The hospital was inside a mountain, too, but windows had been chiseled up the high wall to bring in sunlight. Pallets stretched in all directions, filled with the sick and injured. The two had to walk a few minutes to find an empty pallet. I was just one among the downtrodden, now.
It didn’t feel good to find comfort in these rough wool sheets. I’d rather they tossed me in quicksand to drown than on this heap of straw. I wanted to say, let me die, let me die, but I knew they wouldn’t. Zelthuriyans were known for their charity, if nothing else.
Rafa’s smile was sweet. It wasn’t soaked in pity, as it ought to have been. Just a simple, kindly smile.
“Do you know—” I coughed. A bit of blood gushed with spittle. I spat it on the stone floor.
Rafa bent down. “You all right?” He turned to his friend. “Get a healer!”
I wiped the blood from my lips, then said, “It’s all right. I just wanted to ask…do you know…the magus? What was his name? Keev…Ke—”
“Kevah? Never met him. Everyone knows he’s here, somewhere in the city, but I can’t say I know where.”
What did it matter? Could some magus bring back Tamaz? My brother?
I closed my eyes. Though I’d been asleep most of the past few days, I wanted more. As long as it was dreamless, it was better than being awake. Anything was.
“We’re in a saintly order,” Rafa said. “I could try and ask my sheikh, if you want.”
I shook my head. “Don’t bother. It doesn’t matter, anyway.”
He glanced to his right, down the silent avenue between pallets, then said, “The healer is coming. My friend and I actually have to go. We’re on duty. But I’ll come visit tomorrow to make sure you’re all right.”
Charity. I didn’t want it. “Don’t bother.”
The way he pouted reminded me of my little brother, who was also dead. My mother was my only family left, and last I heard, she was near death — a sad end for a line of khagans and khatuns that went back to the time of Temur.
The healer came, washed my face wounds, and changed my bandages. Then some women in white came, scrubbed my entire body with a sponge, and changed me into a baggy caftan, all while a group of stone-faced orderlies formed a wall around me with their backs turned, so that no one except the women washing me could see my nakedness. It was much more than I wanted or deserved, but I didn’t have the strength to protest.
I stayed overnight. I didn’t get off my pallet in the morning and instead ruminated over the awful events that had happened. Ashamed to say it, but I didn’t pray. You’d think a woman in despair would have nothing else, but prayer was for the hopeful. And hope was a bitter thing.
Around me, so many suffered. I saw people die in their beds, carried out in shrouds. I saw a child without legs. A woman without arms. A man who coughed bile until he stilled. Just the everyday suffering of the poor, I assumed, and now I was another among them.
It smelled like death, too, like everything we tried to mask with perfume and incense. As if I was breathing someone’s insides. But aside from the occasional cough and heaving, it was oddly silent, as death ought to be.
I didn’t want to stay here surrounded by suffering. It only reminded me of Tamaz and my brother. But what about myself? The soulshifter had not only stabbed my eye out, he’d slit my throat. So why was I alive?
The memory blazed through my mind: while my soul was floating overhead like a bird and watching the carnage, I saw myself slit my neck, and then Eshe grabbed my hand and knocked the knife away. He dipped his fingers into my blood and wrote…characters of some sort onto my neck. The blood stopped gushing, as if the wound had closed. Whatever he’d done, it saved me from bleeding out. Was Eshe…a sorcerer, too?
In any case, it was his fault I had to suffer instead of die in peace. Now the best I could do was die somewhere in this holy city, somewhere close to Lat and the saints. Paradise would surely be better…if I were going there. Even eternal nothingness seemed like a salve…if I could be so blessed.
I’d watched my grandmother die of a wretched disease that made her skin fall off. She died helplessly mumbling prayers, in contrast to how she’d lived. A Sylgiz huntress — what a life. How remote I was from anything so noble.
I sat up on my pallet. It didn’t hurt so much. My soul wasn’t flying into the floor or the air — it seemed solidly in me. Perhaps because the soulshifter had cast my soul from my body, it was struggling to center again. Or perhaps it was the poppy Eshe had been stuffing down my throat.
I got up and walked out of the hospital — just like that. I supposed if you were healthy enough to walk out, you didn’t belong there, and so no one stopped me.
The street, which was really a valley between mountains, brimmed with chanting and crowds. The mountains shadowed everything, and a breeze hummed between them. Bright gold, red, and green colored the towering pillars that flanked the doors of the surrounding shrines, the eight-pointed star of Lat blazing above each. The insides all seemed dark and welcoming.
I chose one at random, got into a short queue with eager pilgrims, and went in. I found the woman’s section, just behind the sepulcher that housed the saint’s body, and sat against the cool stone. Women wearing mostly white came and went — some lit candles at the base of the sepulcher, others sat and recited holy words.
“Kevah,” I said, wishing Eshe hadn’t told me. Wishing he’d let my hope die so I could rot in peace. But no, he had to give me a name. “Kevah.”
I said it again and again, as if I were praying to the man. As if it would summon him. It just sounded so lovely on my tongue. If Kyars and I had a son, perhaps I could’ve named him that.
What a sad thought. Sitting in this holy cave, among these pious women, I wondered if I could stay forever. Forget. Just pray, night and day. Not have a name, a status, a place. “A blade of grass, bending in the wind,” was what Tamaz had said. His final poem.
“Goodbye, Tamaz. Goodbye, Cihan.” I heaved and sobbed in silence, clamping my mouth to not attract attention. Were they really gone, or was this a long, cruel delusion? “Goodbye, Cihan. Goodbye, Tamaz. Welcome, Kevah.”
Unlike my dead loved ones, this man’s name sounded so hopeful on my tongue. Where was he, anyway? I’d not the strength nor desire to search a mountain city for a faint, flickering hope. Let him come to me, if he were so powerful. Let him hear my whispers. “Welcome, Kevah. Goodbye, Cihan. Goodbye, Tamaz.”
Tears drenched my face. How sorry I felt for myself. Really, who could compete? Perhaps it started when the Jotrids captured and took me to the palace. Or maybe I shouldn’t have tried to marry someone so above my station, someone like Hadrith or Kyars. Couldn’t I have been contented with…literally anyone? Just someone to laugh with and have children, like how my mother and fath
er had each other.
And yet, I recalled the cold wave that almost froze off my brother’s toes, that killed Sylgiz babies in their cribs. You needed things, if you wanted to survive. Fertile land, foremost, which the Vogras River provided. Gold helped too, so you could buy what you couldn’t grow. That was why Qandbajar had spices, silks, metals, books, animals, fruits, nuts, seeds, and precious jewels from the eight corners of the world. And to defend what you’ve built, you needed soldiers. Specifically, more soldiers than the enemy.
That was why I wanted to climb so high. I was just trying to survive, for Lat’s sake. But I’d been outplayed…by someone whom I didn’t even know I was playing against. By a damned soulshifter.
“Goodbye, Cihan. Goodbye, Tamaz. Welcome, Kevah.” He obviously wasn’t coming. I’d have to get off my ass and find him. But where to start in a city this large and mysterious?
I smudged the tears into my skin, crawled toward the woman sitting nearby, and asked, “Uh…do you know where Kevah lives?”
The woman, who was heavyset with light eyes, glared at me and replied in a strange language. Probably a Kashanese dialect. I smiled, then got up and walked outside, embarrassed that I’d even tried.
A yawning, green-turbaned fellow stood in the street. I asked him, “You know Kevah?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Kevah the market inspector? He’s my drinking brother!”
“No-no, Kevah the magus. Know where he lives?”
“Oh, the magus. No, I don’t.”
Unhelpful, to say the least. Then I looked up; the Shrine of Saint Chisti stood at the end of the main street, towering over the other mountains. Its door was painted yellow, as if the sun had splashed upon it.
I made my way toward it, until I got stuck in a crowd. No, a line. The longest line I’d ever seen, winding through the streets in rows upon rows. And it was so slow, too; it seemed to move a foot a minute. Were people really waiting this long to pray at Saint Chisti’s sepulcher? I supposed if anyone’s prayers could help you, it would be those of the holiest man ever.
I’d never waited in a long line before. Now I knew why they were so awful. And worse, I wasn’t even sure if Kevah lived in that giant shrine.
So I pushed through, swimming against a sea of people. Hollers and jeers sounded from those I passed, but if they wanted to stop me, they’d have to pull me back. Perhaps my bandaged face and neck scared them — you don’t want to touch a monster, after all.
After minutes of pushing against people, covered in the sweat and dust of hundreds, I finally reached the front. But green-turbaned guards blocked the massive, sunshine-colored door. One stuck his hand out to stop me from entering.
“Go back,” he said. “This isn’t some bazaar, it’s the holiest place on earth. Wait your turn, like everyone else.”
“Is Kevah here?”
“Kevah?” He raised an eyebrow. “Uh, I think so. He’s usually here at this time.”
“I need to see him. Please.”
Now he chuckled. “The magus doesn’t just see anyone. And he doesn’t receive intercession.”
I had to say something, anything, to get through, lest they send me to the back of that obscene line. “I…I’m…I’m his daughter!” I hoped he had a daughter.
The other guard butted in. “Kevah mentioned he had a daughter. And that he missed her dearly.”
“It’s me!” I said. “I haven’t seen my father in so long. Please, let me through!”
“O-Of course!” they both replied.
They stood aside and told me where he was. Some room behind the sepulcher, down a hallway, down three flights of stairs, then around the corner, and down another hallway, and past the kitchen, then—I’d already forgotten the rest!
If I wasn’t huffing and faint from pushing through that line, the shrine would’ve taken my breath away. A thousand candles stood upon the altar. Paramic calligraphy covered the walls, shimmering in the candlelight. Worshippers filled every space: the men and women weren’t even separated. They chanted in unison, low and somewhat somber. How sad that I’d entered this holy place with lies.
I wandered into the hallway behind the sepulcher. Men wearing wool cloaks — like those of Saint Jamshid’s Order in Qandbajar — glared with suspicion as I went through doors and down staircases. Perhaps they were fasting and didn’t want to talk with or touch a woman. Was today some saint’s birthday that I’d forgotten? There were so many, and I wasn’t raised believing in these saints. Each of them had a shrine, a day, a special prayer, and a particular reason for us to pray to them, despite being in Barzakh, where souls go after death. There was even a saint named Death, who always terrified me.
It was far simpler when I lived among the Sylgiz; there were only so many Children to pray to. Twelve Chiefs, in fact, though I couldn’t remember their names.
A faded yellow door at the end of the hallway — that’s what the guard had told me. And now I stood before that door. Kevah must be in there. Instead of knocking like a mannered person, I opened it, slid inside, and shut the door behind me.
“Melodi?” the man sitting against the bare wall said. “Melodi!”
Before I knew it, my forehead was against his chin, and his arms were wrapped around me.
“Daughter, I knew Lat would bring you back to me,” he said in Sirmian. “What happened to your eye?”
I pushed out of his embrace. “No, I’m not. I’m not your daughter.”
He glared at me, sorrow-filled, then walked to the corner where his water pitcher sat. He picked it up and splashed the entire thing on his face. Was that some kind of ritual around here?
Now he slid back against the wall and sat. “I’m sorry. I’ve been fasting for days. I mistook you. Melodi is dead…what was I thinking?”
So his daughter was dead, and I’d used her to get inside. A shameful coincidence that he’d mistaken me for her.
“I’ve broken my fast,” he said, now speaking Paramic with a serious Sirmian lilt, “by talking to you. By touching you. So, in celebration, I’m going to order a feast.”
“Is that…really something to celebrate?”
He shook his head. “No.” He laughed. Something about how absurd his laughter was made me laugh too.
“So…who are you, strange girl?” He turned his head to the side, then said to the wall, “Oh Lat, don’t say such things, bird.”
Was this man…crazy? Was a crazy man who talks to walls my only hope?
“My name is Cyra, and I’ve come from Qandbajar, where a soulshifter used my body to kill the Shah and is probably planning something even more terrible.”
He looked at the wall again, which had a cheap sequin-covered tapestry hanging on it, and said, “You’re worse than Ahriyya.” Then he smiled at me. Such a…beautiful smile on a beautiful man with curly blond hair and a straight jaw. Not that I had time for such thoughts. “Apologies, Cyra. I was talking to a jinn.”
“There’s a jinn in this room?” I glanced around, unsure if he was serious. There was little else here but a pallet, some books, and a splintered wooden chest.
“He’s harmless. But he’s been a bit…bored, so…uh…never mind. You said something about a soulshifter using your body to kill the Shah of Alanya. Is that right?”
Whenever I nodded, my neck wound flared. “I was told to find you. That you could help. Because you’re a magus.”
He sighed like someone with the weight of the world on him. “I’ve been a magus barely a year. And in this year, my only accomplishment is learning Paramic. I’ve made almost no progress in achieving fanaa.”
“I see…” I sighed with almost as much weight as him. “I really need your help.”
“Listen, a soulshifter is a serious thing — I don’t know much about them, except that they were an ancient order that Seluq destroyed when he conquered this part of the world. They’re a curiosity of history, and a terrifying one. Now you’re saying a soulshifter…used your body…to kill the Shah of Alanya? And yet, I’ve heard no
thing about Shah Tamaz dying.”
“Because it just happened. I’m not lying.”
“All right, assuming it’s true, I don’t know what you want me to do.”
“Who else could fight a powerful sorcerer but another powerful sorcerer?”
He shook his head. “Seems you’ve been misled. I’m not powerful, not at all. I haven’t gained the allegiance of a single jinn tribe, despite wearing three masks.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means I’m only a magus in name and completely incapable of fighting a soulshifter, of all things.”
What could I say to that? Something Zedra once told me popped into my mind. “You don’t know your own strength until you try.”
He chuckled. “That’s a nice saying to encourage children. But we’re talking about things beyond the veil. Things birthed from forbidden stars. Things so ancient and evil that…”
He trailed off and began shaking, then grabbed his hand to steady himself. Perhaps a symptom of fasting for so many days?
“If not you, then who?”
He turned once more to the wall and said, “I regret it, all of it.” What was he talking about? “That’s your job, bird.”
Now he strummed his hands against his chest while staring into me. “I’ll ask them to give you lodging in the women’s dorm. As for your plea, I’ve heard it. My jinn is going to verify what you’ve said. Word travels faster in their…circles. But I can’t promise you my help. While terrible things may have happened in Qandbajar, I’m supposed to master my training. Lat gave me this task, and I can’t just walk away to help you. Besides, from how it sounds, it’s beyond me, anyway.”
How fanciful to claim that Lat herself gave you a task. Not the answer I wanted, not at all. Still, I held my tears. “Do you want me to go alone? You may be a weak sorcerer, but I’ve no skills at all. I’ll die if I try to fight back…which is fine, I suppose.”
He smiled beautifully again. “My jinn says he likes the sound of your voice. He’s a useful little creature…he would lament if you died.”
