by Zamil Akhtar
“When it’s over, will you do something for me?” I asked. “Take my son and me far from here. As far as you can.”
“Fair enough. You and your son can live in peace, in the land beyond the sea mists, where the sundews grow.”
Would his promise prove true? Did I have a choice, anyway? I approached Sadie. She stared at me with bulging eyes. Best slice her quick. Like killing and bleeding a goat, you don’t want them to linger with death’s terror.
I bent down, put the blade to her neck. Looked upon Cyra and Celene, who were just as terrified to watch her die. How weak we were, in the end, playing to the tune of some wretched angel. How sad that our own god didn’t protect us, protect her land. Just as she’d forsaken her Children, she’d forsaken us. But today, someone’s blood would mix with soil.
Truth is, we weren’t worth saving, were we? Marot was right…we were hypocrites, goading others to die for our selfish ends. What did it matter if millions drowned in blood, if my son could live?
The blade trembled against Sadie’s flesh. I grabbed my wrist to steady it. Tears dripped off her cheeks and onto the sand. In my hesitation, I’d failed to save her from the terror. But she needn’t suffer any longer: I closed my eyes and pushed the blade in and across.
Yet still, I heard her tremble. And my hand…so numb…as if it were…frozen.
I opened my eyes. Ice encased my arm. Within seconds, the roaring of the sandfalls turned to a whimper, and the sand itself froze in the air.
Meanwhile, Marot’s hateful eyes gazed upon someone at my back. I turned to see him: Kevah, the magus, his outstretched hand open and fingers pointing forward.
“So,” Marot said, “someone is watching over the land. Torturing little girls was getting stale. But you,” he chuckled, “you’ll make for quite a thrill.”
32
Cyra
Well, this hadn’t quite gone as planned. Wasn’t expecting Marot to grace us. Wasn’t expecting Kevah, either, but thank Lat he was standing there, commanding his jinn to freeze the sand.
Through my star-seeing eye, those jinn showed as clouds of fireless smoke — faceless and limbless. Where he pointed, they would whirl toward. And what they touched froze. One had whisked through Zedra’s hand before she could stick her dagger into the Karmazi girl’s throat. A larger, tornado-like one had spun across the sandfalls, turning them to frost. And now they headed for Marot.
Fear of the cold shuddered through me. I hated it more than having my lips and hands bound by threads and even this crushing pressure keeping me on my knees. When a smoky ice jinn veered off Marot and toward me, I feared it would freeze me to death. Perhaps Kevah was about to make good on his promise.
But instead, a smoky hand reached out of the whirling cloud, grabbed my wrists, and tore the threads binding them. A finger on the hand shapeshifted into a tiny blade, and it sliced across my lips, cutting the thread without cutting me.
Why me? How was I supposed to help? When I’d grabbed Zedra’s hand earlier and prayed for Marot to die, it didn’t work. The daytime stars would not sing — was it as Marot said?
Did I need a loving partner? But everyone between these frozen sand walls hated me.
Marot’s voice echoed from everywhere. “Kevah, you can’t defeat me with the powers I bequeathed. I’m afraid you’ll need someone higher up.”
Kevah obviously couldn’t be my partner; he detested my star-seeing eye and was busy staring down Marot while shouting orders to his jinn. So…I needed Eshe or Pashang, and that meant I needed out of this crucible.
The whirling jinn surrounded Marot. His form was…expanding, limbs snaking like roots, head tilted and inflated, eyes bubbling from his growing neck.
The ice jinn surged toward him, freezing his snaking limbs. Were we winning?
I kicked at the frozen sandfall; instead of cracking the ice, I nearly cracked my foot. I needed fire.
While Marot froze as the jinn coursed through his sprawling form, I ran to Zedra, who knelt on the sand, bound like I’d been. Her right hand dripped with ice, blue and stuck. I cut the thread binding her hands with a dagger I’d been concealing, in case Zedra tried to kill me, but her lips I left sealed.
“Can you make fire?” I asked.
She nodded, then pointed to Celene. Why? I helped Zedra up, and we ran to Celene. I got on my knees and cut her bindings. After, Zedra grabbed my dagger, pricked Celene’s finger, and dripped blood onto the blade. The girl shuddered but could barely yelp from her bound lips. Zedra scribbled a bloodrune onto the blade’s flat.
Unlike the ones Eshe had painted, it didn’t glow. She pointed to her threaded lips in agitation. Of course, she needed to recite the incantation.
I clutched Zedra’s head, put the blade to her face, and realized I could pluck her eye out if I wanted. Make things more even. But instead, I sliced at the thread binding her lips. She gasped and spat blood. My slice left a gash across her mouth and flowing blood, but she didn’t seem to mind it and whispered her words.
The bloodrune on the blade glowed. I handed it to her, and we three ran for the nearest frozen sandfall. She swung the dagger at it; fire flew off the blade and onto the ice wall. It cracked the ice, hissing a chilling smoke into the air. Zedra swung at it again, and again, and again, until the fire blazed a large hole through the frozen sand.
“Go, dear,” she said to Celene in Sirmian.
Celene ducked through, racing away from the monster at our back. But Zedra…she ran toward Marot. Perhaps she was going after her son. I turned for a last look.
Kevah’s jinn whirled through Marot’s stretched, root-like limbs, his towering neck, and even the sprouting eyeballs that resembled sacks of spider eggs. They’d almost fully encased him in ice. But was it so easy to freeze a god?
Sadie stood behind Kevah, cradling baby Seluq. Zedra had just reached them. Perhaps the magus didn’t need my help, powerful as he was, and I could instead focus on getting safe. Getting to Eshe and Pashang.
I crouched and followed Celene through the burning hole, unafraid of the flames ringing it.
A horseman rushed at me! I rolled across a sandy patch as he and more gholam galloped by, their war cries heavy in the air. What the hell was going on out here?
I got to my knees; scores of mounted gholam with spears and matchlocks charged what looked like the Jotrid line, which was firing bullets and arrows back. How could I get through to Eshe and Pashang?
I shuffled away as an arrow landed where I knelt. The gholam charge was just in front, so a stray Jotrid arrow could hit me any second, or a gholam rider could trample me, or a bullet find my heart.
I had to get to the Jotrids, lest gholam capture or kill me. I stood — where had Celene gone? Maybe behind, toward the gholam line, where she’d be safest. I couldn’t worry about her. Death gripped me, and I had to get out, had to go forward.
I ran toward the battling gholam and Jotrids as arrows rained. Gunshots and screams and clanging steel resounded. Riders threw spears, wrestled each other off horses, and tossed bombs that splattered guts and char everywhere. I couldn’t account for every danger. My heart burned with crippling fear; it was too horrible to be real — a nightmare. I kept low, creeping forward, tasting sulfur in the sandy air.
Gallops shook the earth from behind me. I turned to see gholam charging, guns drawn, armor a blinding glint. So I stood and ran, knees nearly buckling from the purest fear. I stepped over a horse flailing from an erupting spear wound, around a gholam trying to pull an arrow from his own neck, and by a half-crisped Jotrid, prayers on seared lips.
Jotrids charged from left, right, and front into me and the oncoming gholam, surrounding the scape with sharp edges, arrows, and gunfire. I tasted death in my swallow. Could this be it?
There! I sighted Pashang atop his mare on a dune just behind the charging Jotrids, Eshe beside him. I ran faster than I ever had through the rushing horsemen, fear and hope pushing me, no longer focused on the death and pain and rot. Both noticed, their eyes lighting up as they scop
ed the battlefield and sighted me. They galloped down the dune, through the battling mass of riders, toward me. I had to—
Hands ensnared me, tightening around my neck, then my chest, whisking me up onto a charging horse. The rider dropped me on the saddle and pressed me against his armor — I couldn’t see as my face scratched against his golden chainmail. Then he shouted and pulled the reins of his horse, steering it in a half-circle before he charged again. I’d been seized! By, by—
I tried to look up, but with a bulging arm, he crushed my face against his mail as my legs dangled awkwardly off the saddle. The horse jumped; I screamed and my teeth punctured my tongue.
His deathly arm squeezed my neck till I could neither inhale nor think. Blood from my tongue gushed down my windpipe, but his hold kept me from coughing it out. I drowned in my blood. My legs bruised and numbed from banging against the charging horse’s sides.
Whoever it was halted with a sudden pull of the reins. He grabbed my collar and tossed me off, flipping me through the air; I crashed onto hard ground, a bone in my back burning. I coughed blood and blinked against the sight of the sky and dozens of golden gholam surrounding me, an overwhelming throb in every bone.
The rider who’d taken me jumped off his horse, threw his golden helmet to the ground, and grabbed my collar. He pulled me to my feet, though I couldn’t stand. His arm well wound, he knuckled me in the jaw. My cheek tore against my teeth and a blood-soaked tooth ripped out my mouth.
“What did you do to Zedra?” he shouted.
I blinked and blinked the blurriness away until I saw Kato, his face lit with rage.
I could only whimper, “I didn’t—”
“Fucking sorceress! I shouldn’t have ever let you near her!” He unsheathed his scimitar, raised it.
“Zedra said you must not hurt her!” Celene’s voice. She pushed through the gholam and crashed into Kato’s chest, barely moving him. Then she stood between us and waved her hands. “If you hurt her, Zedra won’t forgive you!”
To our left, the frozen sandfall towered, blocking us from the battle beyond it and within it. Even in my battered state, I realized Kato had sent his gholam around the sandfall to attack the Jotrids, thinking we’d created the wall to trap Zedra.
“Does anyone know what she’s saying?” Kato asked his gholam. Seemed he didn’t understand Sirmian.
One of his men translated. Kato yelled in frustration and sheathed his sword. He wouldn’t go against Zedra’s wishes, though I didn’t recall Zedra wanting anything for me but death.
“Zedra’s inside,” I whispered, sipping my blood. “We didn’t cause this. The angel did. You must believe me.”
“Angel?” Kato spat on the ground. “We all saw him in Kostany, with his big wings and sword. In the end, Lat won, shattered him into a thousand thousand pieces. Same will happen here. We fear no angels, only men.”
Gholam on foot, matchlocks forward, ran by our position. The jumble of crying steel and battle shouts and gunshots neared. The Jotrids must’ve been countering, hard. Were they coming to free me?
Kato picked me up by the collar, his sweaty knuckles jutting into my neck. “How do we get Zedra back?”
“I need to pray.” I coughed on blood and agony. “I can pray for the death of the angel. My prayers are always answered, but I need a willing partner. Someone who…who loves me.”
Saying those words, I finally understood. That freezing day in the Waste, when my brother and I were huddling within a moth-eaten blanket, our bellies filled with air, I’d taken his hand. I’d prayed for my father’s safe return, for our bellies to be full, for the cold to end. And it all came to pass. Had I been a starwriter longer than I realized?
Kato snarled. “Who could love you but another monster?”
“Call it off,” I whispered, barely able to because of how crushed my throat was. “Call off your attack.”
“Our attack? You’re the ones who attacked us!” He gestured at the arrows jutting out of the ground. So, the gholam were only countering the arrow rain when they charged. Pashang had tried to use Marot’s arrival and the sand wall to his advantage. How clever.
“I can help. But I need—”
Kato tossed me onto the ground. Whatever bone had broken earlier stabbed my back muscle; I wailed and choked on pain.
“There’re too many of them. We’re all going to die.” Kato glanced around. “You there, Archer of the Eye!” He pointed to someone that seemed to me a blurry white smudge. “Shoot a message to Pashang. Tell him I have his bitch, and that I’ll smear her innards across this hellscape if he doesn’t halt his charge.”
Even in agony, I yearned to see beyond the sandfall — what was happening inside? Was Kevah winning? But I knew it wouldn’t be so easy. Marot didn’t seem worried when Kevah showed up, and that terrified me more than Kato ever could.
Numbness and nauseous pain took turns engulfing my body. A fate worse than death. Could this be it?
Celene knelt next to me, then wiped blood off my lips with her caftan.
“You probably shouldn’t help me,” I said. “They won’t like that.”
She shook her head and smiled with her cut-up lips. “They don’t understand. They don’t understand how important you are.”
“Important?”
Her smile seemed…too happy. This wasn’t the time to be smiling like a prince had just kissed you.
The thundering of Jotrid riders shifted the air. Steel sang, arrows whizzed, and gunshots roared. They crashed into the gholam line and melded together in a melee. With that momentum, the Jotrids should win soon enough.
“We were brought here for a reason,” Celene said, her voice anxiously joyful, “by Marot, by one of the Twelve. We should not question his methods. All is happening by his design.”
That made no sense. Worse, it terrified me. “He was going to kill you. I saw how scared you were!”
“Because, despite all I’ve witnessed, my faith is weak. I didn’t want to die. But even firm faith is not enough for me to enter Paradise. Only deeds, only service, will save me. Marot said, while we were riding here, that you were the key to everything. He told me I’d never go home, that I’d die in the east, and that, as long as I lived, I should devote myself to you.”
Why would he say such things to Celene? Was he trying to shepherd her, the way he’d tricked Zedra and me? To what end?
A pillar of light cracked the air, surging from within the sand wall until it hit the sky. It burned like the sun had crashed upon us, and I could scarcely look away as it lashed my eyes. The screams of the Jotrids and gholam fighting near the sand wall cut off, as if they’d been obliterated.
When I opened my eyes, the sand wall was gone — melted by the exploding light. Charred horses and men and black sand outlined where the wall once stood.
Before I could digest what happened, Kato ran over and pulled me up. He tossed me over his shoulder as if I were a gazelle he’d hunted, climbed his horse, then slid me down in front of him. With a kick, his horse bolted away from my hopes. My groin sat properly on the saddle this time, so at least it wouldn’t bruise me. But that didn’t help my back, which still screamed. I tried to make out Zedra or Kevah or even Marot, but smoke obscured everything, and we were galloping away. Away from the Jotrids, who emerged from the smoke and gave chase, fearless despite…despite something huge, winged, and monstrous in the sky.
I couldn’t see it clearly amid the haze, but the angel had transformed. Its head was in a cloud, and its mountain-sized feet were dangling above the earth as its wings flapped with a thundering that drowned the sounds of battle.
But my present problem was earthly. I couldn’t let Kato whisk me away. I wouldn’t be his prisoner, nor anyone else’s. I breathed deep, then lunged forward and smashed my head into his chin. He shouted and weakened his grip; I dipped to the side, fell off the horse, and—
Smashed onto sand. The impact sent me into the air, and I smashed again and rolled across the ground, blood blowing out my
mouth, bones cracked and shrieking, stars blinking everywhere. The charging horses barely diverted, their hooves kicking sand into my face, but at least these were Jotrids.
I finally came to a stop, positioned on my belly to see what they were fleeing: a flying giant with hundreds of flapping black and gold wings. Its face was a mesh of eye sacks that dangled off each other, each pupil blinking sideways. It gripped swords in all its seventeen tentacles, and the blades shimmered like colored crystals, red and blue and green and so many hues between. Was that angel…Marot’s true, full form?
Marada, the sultana of the Marid tribe of jinn, hovered across from Marot. Its three heads seemed eerily human and more horrifying than the squirming snakes that composed its body. Marada blasted the winged angel with an icy breath, but the angel didn’t flinch.
Three swords — all with crystal-red blades — flew off Marot’s tentacles and pierced Marada’s body. Then Marot fluttered his wings at a hummingbird’s speed, closed in, and swiped at Marada’s neck. A head severed, and a wave of air pushed the clouds. The flying head painted blood across the sky and puffed into black smoke.
Celene must’ve been giddy watching her angel fight. Even to me, something about it was wondrous. It…comforted me…because no matter what I did, I could never be as horrifying as that jinn and that angel battling in the sky. And if such things existed, and we could witness and be influenced by them, then surely it wasn’t all on us, the ants that we were…
Or perhaps the pain ringing every bone in my body as if they were broken bells had pulled me into a stupor of befuddled thoughts. Either way, if this was the end, then I could die watching wonders.
Familiar human shadows loomed over me. Pashang and Eshe crouched at my side.
“Can you walk?” Pashang asked, pulling me from my stupor.
I couldn’t even shake my head.
“Healer! Get a healer!” Eshe shouted. “My bloodrunes can’t fix broken bones!”
“We need…to help Kevah.” I wondered if I’d even made a sound. Pashang and Eshe put their ears to my face. I said, “Help Kevah kill Marot.”
