War of the Sultans

by Fuad Baloch

  Maharis didn't reply.

  Nuraya bit her lower lip, once more recalling the connection she had made between the one-eyed man she had begun to like and what his name hinted at. “How can you speak for all magi though? What’s stopping some of you to interfere in these battles? A couple of you did support Kinas, after all. Can’t the same happen again?”

  “It’s possible,” he conceded. “But highly improbable.”

  Nuraya shook her head, troubled thoughts swarming through her mind. “Those inquisitors warned about your people doing blood magic. Talk of infants and births and new kinds of magic. What’s—”

  Shouts came behind her. Puzzled, she turned around. At first, all looked normal. Just as it had been. The city gates wide open. The blue northern flags fluttering atop the parapets.

  The ground shook, almost rhythmically, as if a thousand feet were dancing in sync.

  Her heart suddenly beating hard, she stood, her eyes peeled at the city gates. Distant figures were crashing into each other, steel glinting in the fading sunlight.

  A bugle sounded from the city walls, followed by a dozen more.

  More than twice that number sounded from the Reratish forces beyond the partition.

  Her feet growing cold, Nuraya ran outside of the pavilion. Row upon row of armored snarling men, sword in one hand, shields in the other were marching toward the city. Whooshing sounds filled the air as the archers unleashed a cloud of arrows toward Qwasad.

  Nuraya stuttered back, not believing what she was seeing. “Why?”

  She felt a hand grab her arm. “We’ve been betrayed,” said Camsh.

  “Why?” she said again.

  More figures appeared on top of the guard towers. More steel glinted. Bodies flew toward the ground, limbs thrashing, their shrieks unable to reach her. The Reratish archers fired off another volley.

  The air filled with more bugles.

  The men who had been advancing methodically let out a roar, then broke into a sprint, headed toward the city gates that now lay open.

  “My sultana,” came a shout behind her. Jinan. “Never trusted the bastards, I didn’t. I’ll give the orders to attack them from behind!”

  “No,” she said, feeling the world sway under her feet, once more feeling the burden of numbers she couldn’t imagine away, once more spurned by the worlds conspiring against her. “We ride away!”

  “But—”

  “Now!”

  Chapter 16

  Shoki

  Shoki blinked. The world was hazy. Panic struck him and he snapped his eye open, then winced at all the light around him. Clear light, the kind he was used to. Overhead, leafy branches swayed under the harsh noon. He turned his head to the side. Lush trees spread out as far as his eye could see. The air was clean, free of the fine mist of ash he had been breathing all this time.

  He was out of Nainwa!

  A memory rose of events before his consciousness had fallen away. He’d been banished from the djinn city. He hadn’t been the only one. Scrambling to his feet, he turned around.

  Leaning on an elbow, Jiza was rubbing her eyes, the sheer fabric of her peshwaz doing little to hide her curves, her beauty more resplendent under the natural, bright sunlight.

  Shoki forced his eye away, scanned ahead. A wide road snaked ten yards from them. Some deserted imperial highway. Again, he looked up. The sky remained blue bathed in the yellow sunlight.

  His heart thudding, Shoki scanned the vegetation, one hand patting his sides. Of course, he had no weapon in the robes he had been given in Nainwa. He chuckled ruefully. Even if he had weapons, how could he hope to dodge magical attacks with them?

  “We’ve been banished,” said Jiza, rising gracefully in the periphery of his vision.

  “Thank the gods,” he replied almost reflexively before catching himself. “Why—” he paused, his eye darting east at the rustling leaves. “You didn't have to leave Nainwa.”

  “I made a promise to Azar.”

  “What promise?”

  She didn't reply. Her eyes widening, she looked around. “By Rolomon!”

  Shoki cocked his head to the side. “Hold on! Have you never been to Istan before?”

  “The noble races do not travel to your world as much as they once used to. The pact with Rolomon prohibits it.”

  “Noble races,” Shoki muttered. “From what I’ve seen of your people, you behave no differently than mine.”

  “Drenpa will pay for all his crimes.”

  “Sure!” he replied dismissively.

  “He will!”

  Shoki forced a smile. “Wonderful!”

  Jiza crossed her arms across her chest. A most disarming maneuver. Shoki swallowed, realizing again that a change of scenery had done nothing to lessen her appeal. If anything, surrounded by the richer colors, she looked more a vision come to life than a real person. Someone the Nirdu and Gharsi poets would dedicate tomes of poetry to.

  She was real though, as evidenced by how his body responded to her.

  Shoki’s gaze traveled down her face, settling on her cleavage straining against the fabric. Feeling himself blush, he looked away.

  “Something the matter?” she asked, her voice playful.

  “Erm…” Kicking a pebble lying on the road, Shoki cleared his throat. “If we have indeed been kicked out of your city, we need to decide where we go from here.”

  “Nothing has changed. We still need you. Our worlds are connected.”

  “Connected?”

  “The image and its reflection, looked upon from different vantage points.”

  Shoki blinked. “That… explains nothing.”

  “Don’t think you can ignore my world for the sake of yours.”

  Shoki met her gaze. “I’m sorry, I don't think I heard you right.”

  She took a step forward, raised an arm, the index finger pointing at his chest. “You made a bargain with Azar. One you need to fulfill. Even if you have to spill your blood for it.”

  Shoki forced a chuckle. “Lady—” She advanced, and he trailed away. “Erm… Look, there are two fundamental problems here. One, if you haven't yet realized, we’re no longer at your city to investigate whatever might be wrong with it. Two, and just as important, I am not the person your Azar needs to fix whatever’s wrong!”

  “You will regain your power. I will see to it.”

  Shoki narrowed his eye. “And that would be grand. Just grand. Except, you might be forgetting that you’ve already tried gifting me your powers and tried helping… erm… clear my mind. None of that helped a whit.”

  “Our first course of action is to get a sense of our bearings,” said Jiza, her eyes scanning the forest around them, the bangles on her wrists clinking softly. “Truly remarkable. I’d heard of these strange trees but had always considered them mere exaggerations.”

  “Are you ignoring me?”

  “No, Shoki Malook,” she said, turning to face him, the surprising ferocity in her words bringing him up short. She reached forward and took his hand in hers. He almost flinched at the heat of her touch. They might be back in his world, but her body still seemed to burn with a latent fire. “Nothing has changed. Drenpa will be caught and will be questioned. Azar will be found.” She exhaled. “Kafayos will not rest easy until he’s helped locate the clan leader. And then, Azar will send for us. In the meantime, my job remains the same: ensure you’re ready and able to help my people, and through that yours as well.”

  Shoki scoffed. “Kafayos will do no such thing. I’ve known guys like him my whole life. Those who consider themselves better than the rest. Cursed with the God complex.”

  “He helped you.”

  Shoki licked his lips, scratched his chin. “There could be other reasons behind that.”

  “He revealed his power to ensure no harm fell on you. Hardly the actions of someone who wants to harm the city.”

  “Well, he knows there is nothing I can do anyway, and so—”

  Jiza leaned forward, catching hi
m off-guard. “Why are you so stubborn? Are all humans like you?”

  He swallowed, realizing she was mere inches away. They were all alone, seemingly miles away from spying eyes. Two people, who had been intimate once. He felt himself stiffen.

  No! Shaking his head, he stepped back. Where were they? “Would’ve been good if your Namam could have dropped us near a major city!”

  “Do you know this place?”

  Placing a hand over his brow, Shoki squinted at the trees and the distant mountains to the north. “Hmm.”

  “You don’t, do you?”

  “Hey, give me a moment,” he replied defensively.

  She pouted—a djinn putting on a human act. Something Shoki knew but still found hard to shake off. What did matter was that he wouldn't be able to feign knowledge of his surroundings. A weight gathered in the pit of his stomach. He was back in Istan, the land he had sacrificed his jadu for. He had responsibilities here, far too many that he hadn't had to think much about in recent times.

  “How did Kafayos become invisible anyway?” Shoki asked, screwing his eye at the mountains, hoping to divert his mind. “I’d never thought that possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well…” He scratched his chin, motioning her to follow him south—a direction that looked as good as the rest. “I thought magi had the ability to store energy from other sources around them if they were Jaman. Or encourage an element around them if Zyadi. I just can’t see how he might be able to… well, disappear like he can.”

  Jiza fell in step with him, her scent intoxicating even here. “We know what power he has, but not how he obtains it. There could be a number of ways he managed to go invisible, and I doubt he’d ever share the specifics with us.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that’s giving up even more of his weaknesses.”

  Shoki considered her words. Strange to believe he’d known nothing about jadu and its mechanics up until a few months ago, and now was engaged in a discussion regarding its modalities with a djinn. A very pretty one at that too. He shook his head. “Well, how could that work?”

  She shrugged. “He could be a Zyadi magus. One who can see the potential in you and me to fall away from vision whenever light vanishes. He could have inflamed that potential, and—”

  “Hold up,” said Shoki, raising a hand. “If that’s true, and he’s used up some of our potentials to be dark in the night, what would happen to us when night does fall?”

  “You might fall dead,” she replied simply.

  Shocked, Shoki whipped his head toward her. She was smiling.

  “Whatever he did was on our aspects in Nainwa,” she said. “I doubt light and shadow work the same way here as they did there.”

  “So, we’d likely not know if that was the case.”

  She nodded.

  Shoki scratched his chin, annoyed at the stubble that had seemingly grown overnight. Perhaps it had something to do with him returning to the human world. “What if he was a Jaman magus?”

  “That would be harder to detect. He might have been able to leech darkness from objects he is attuned to over time, then use it on us.”

  “He’d have to store that in some artifact of his own, right? Something that binds that energy to him.”

  “Correct,” she said, raising her left arm languorously to stretch. Shoki’s eye fell on the steel bangle on her wrist. Was that her relic, her body’s connection to this world?

  “Could he have used multiple sources at once to do what he did?” asked Shoki. “I dunno. Maybe he is Zyadi as well as a Jaman. Or, he is just one kind of magi, but with the ability to call on different sources of power.”

  “Not possible.” She hesitated. “Extremely rare to find such combinations anymore. Even in the days of your Afrasiab, magi who could wield both Zyadi and Jaman powers were very uncommon. Even when paired with powerful artifacts.”

  “But if Kafayos, or Drenpa, did have these powers, they would never reveal them to others, would they?”

  She nodded, a troubled expression crossing her face.

  “They can’t hide their powers from the inquisitors though, can they?” said Shoki, his voice filling with wonder. “That’s why they know how to counter magi, no matter how powerful they might be.”

  “As I said, there’s another way for magi, djinn or otherwise, to acquire more powers,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. “If they acquire Asghar or Akbar artifacts.”

  Sensing something in her words, Shoki turned his head toward her, but she kept looking straight. “Erm…”

  “What?”

  “Are you…” Shoki shuffled his weight, cursing himself for not keeping the thought within him. “I seem to have a lot of people wanting to do quite nasty things with me. Are you one of those?”

  She tittered, then her face grew smooth. “I broke my pact for you, even if the union would never bring forth offspring.”

  “The pact,” repeated Shoki. Of course, if this prophet Rolomon had encouraged the races to remain apart, what they had done in Nainwa would hardly meet his seal of approval.

  Wait… Did she say no offspring? Shoki felt his breathing quicken. Was that due to the manner in which he had existed in Nainwa—neither human nor djinn, but some sort of a halfling?

  His thoughts drifted to what the two of them had done there. Embarrassed, he looked away.

  A racket came beyond the bend in the road. Shoki leaned in. How long had that noise been building? How come he’d not heard it before?

  “Stop!”

  Jiza did, raising an inquisitive eye toward him.

  “How good are you at fighting?”

  She laughed. “Djinn do not resort to primitive hand-to-hand combat. And my power isn't exactly conducive to warfare.”

  Shoki began shaking his head when the figures emerged into view. A caravan. A dozen mules. Two carriages. Around a dozen men and women.

  Peasants.

  Exhaling, he nodded. “Come, it’s time to find out what happened while I was imprisoned in Nainwa.”

  Chapter 17

  Nuraya

  “Didn't I say the Reratish couldn't be trusted?” shouted Inquisitor Altamish Aboor bringing up his horse beside hers. “Once a—”

  “Shut up!” she growled, curling her right hand into a fist.

  “Now we’ve lost the north as well,” he said before peeling away.

  Fury wrestled with the overwhelming sense of helplessness in her chest. She had been deceived. Again. This time, even though she had been trying to do the right thing, sacrificing herself for the sake of something greater, kismet continued to fight her.

  “My sultana,” huffed Jinan, pulling up beside her. “The scouts have just returned. We are not being pursued by the Reratish.”

  She nodded. Making the conscious decision to ride south must have succeeded in giving them the impression that she was still headed toward the Reratish prince.

  “Give me a dozen men,” he said. “Just a dozen, and I will return with their salar’s head.”

  “I can’t afford to lose you,” she replied. Not yet.

  “But—”

  “What did they do to Qwasad?”

  Jinan hesitated. “Smoke and fire billows over the city, the streets filled with corpses. Men. Women. Children.”

  “Rabb curse them all!” she swore. For someone brought up in luxury, she sure had been spending way too much time in the saddle, fleeing across Istan like some common thief on the run from the law. Had she been too hasty in deciding to flee? Could she have stayed and tried convincing the Reratish salar to cease his attack? Could she have attacked them from behind as had been her initial inclination?

  She turned her head around, ignoring her chafing thighs. A soldier carried Ranal’s banner to her left, the flag flapping in the wind, the bearer holding it up proudly even as the bright green looked more like gray in the gathering gloom. Another rider beside him flew her flag. Behind them, rode the thousand men that still followed her, the
ir eyes narrowed, their faces hard.

  They were enraged. Just like her, they too would have preferred to attack the enemy, do all that was possible to save Qwasad.

  She had dented their pride. As she had hers.

  But they didn’t know she had also saved them from a certain and ultimately futile death. She turned to face the darkening road ahead. Maybe they did know what she had done and resented her precisely for that. Common men taking macabre delight in blaming their afflictions on their betters.

  This time, her soldiers sang no songs. Nor did they chatter like they often did. Clacking hooves and snorting horses ridden by grim men.

  “Move away! Out of my way!” shouted Inquisitor Aboor at the soldiers behind her, once more approaching her. She ignored him. “There are inquisition strongholds nearby. We can take refuge there until we’re safe.”

  Nuraya clicked her tongue, noticing Maharis riding on her right flank.

  “Of course,” continued the inquisitor, raising his gauntleted fist at the magus, “we can’t take the abominations there. Or most of these men who follow you. Just you and a select group.”

  Nuraya shook her head. She had no idea where they were, and night wasn't far off. But one thing was clear—if she continued south, they were bound to come up against Reratish forces.

  “Jinan,” she bellowed, then waited until the siphsalar had joined her. “Order the men to turn north-east.”

  “We’re going back?” he asked, beaming under his large turban.

  “No, we’re going around Qwasad.”

  “Why?”

  “Just give the command,” she snarled. Jinan hesitated, then, huffing, pulled at his reins and turned back.

  “He’s going to cause trouble,” said the inquisitor, just as Camsh joined her.

  “All men do.”

  Inquisitor Aboor chuckled softly. Wiping his mustache with the back of one hand, he turned toward her. “My offer still stands. We’ve strongholds littered throughout the realm. If it’s refuge you seek, you can stay with us.”

  “A very tempting offer,” said Camsh, shouting to be heard. “One worth considering.”