With Blood Upon the Sand Page 10

  He saw them preparing to leave Almadan. Saw them travel cross country and into the mountains that bordered the Great Shangazi. Saw them pass through the Last Keep and down the divide toward the desert proper. Soon they had reached Ur’bek, a collection of sandstone buildings radiating outward from a deep well and a set of stone piers where sandships were berthed. In short order the Blue Heron was being outfitted for a long voyage over the sands.

  “Please, my Lord King,” his cousin, Duke Hektor, was saying. “Surely I, along with Meryam and Ramahd, who have done so well in Sharakhai, can carry out your will in the desert.”

  Aldouan gripped Hektor’s shoulders and held him at arm’s length, the two old men staring at one another with emotion in their eyes. They loved one another dearly, Ramahd knew, but it was a false display on Aldouan’s part, more tragic than anything else.

  “My Lord Duke,” Ramahd said.

  All eyes turned toward him, including Hamzakiir, who stared with eyes ablaze.

  “Yes, Ramahd,” Hektor said.

  The dry desert wind played across the deck of the ship, sending a biting spray of sand along with it. Ramahd swallowed. This was his last chance. Hamzakiir plays you falsely. He plays us all falsely. He tried to say the words, but no matter how he tried to coax them out, they would not come. “I will lay down my life, if it comes to that. As will Meryam. We will see our king safely home. This I swear to you and to Qaimir.”

  Hektor seemed confused by his words, but Aldouan smiled and clapped Hektor’s shoulders. “You see? All will be well.”

  “And if, Alu forbid, you don’t come back?”

  “Then my daughter Meryam shall be named queen,” Aldouan said. And when Hektor asked the next logical question, seeing as Meryam was there with him, he waved him off, and said, “If I don’t come to an accord with the Kings of Sharakhai, the succession will be the least of our worries.”

  Soon they were off, onto the endless sands. Ramahd woke again as the ship rocked back and forth, the swell of the dunes like the roll of the waves on the Austral Sea. He sat up, groaning. “Dana’il?”

  Quezada was coiling a length of rope beneath the gunwale. He looked at Ramahd as if he were mad. Rafiro glanced over to him from where he stood at the pilot’s wheel.

  And then it all struck Ramahd like a hammer.

  Dana’il wasn’t here. He’d died in the dungeon of Viaroza, and Ramahd had been complicit in his death. If the gods were kind, he was no longer there, but for some reason Hamzakiir had killed him brutally, feeling it necessary to make an example, perhaps, or lashing out petulantly as he regained himself.

  Ramahd stood, bracing himself on a belaying pin. After the anguish of the previous night, he was surprised to find himself in control of his faculties. Even so, finding his sand legs wasn’t easy. The ship kept throwing him around as he strode forward, hand along the gunwale like a useless landsman. Looking over the landscape, he tried to get his bearings. He’d been here before, he was sure, but his mind was so muddied he couldn’t place it. Somewhere near Mazandir, perhaps?

  Ahead, Hamzakiir stood at the bow, watching the way ahead, ignoring Ramahd and the crew. As Ramahd approached, he looked for something, anything, that might give him some advantage. He might be able to draw the small kenshar hanging from Hamzakiir’s belt. Or perhaps he might run and crash into his back, launching him over the gunwale . . .

  “Come, come,” Hamzakiir said, “you’re not so foolish as that.”

  With those words, the realization that this journey would end exactly as Hamzakiir wished it fell over Ramahd like a heavy cloak. He nearly threw himself over the gunwale. Instead he asked, “What will you do with us?”

  Hamzakiir half-turned, the wind angling his shoulder-length hair across the curious look on his face. “Meryam is gifted. Her father, if I’m being honest, is but a pale imitation. But you . . . How could your parents have let your potential go untapped?”

  “My mother was from Iliatoré.”

  “Ah,” Hamzakiir said with a knowing nod. He’d spent time in Qaimir generations ago, learning the ways of the blood magi from the people who had conceived and nurtured its practices. He would have learned of Iliatoré, the easternmost province of Qaimir where the ways of the magi were not only avoided, but in some places shunned. “Your father held no sway over her?”

  “Some, but it was always a losing battle. She was a determined woman.”

  Hamzakiir smiled wanly. “I know the type.”

  “Qaimir was your ally once. Do you think you owe us nothing, to take the king and his daughter against their will?”

  “I am the son of Külaşan, the Wandering King, now the rightful heir to his throne. If the king’s daughter wanted special consideration, she shouldn’t have tried to take me against my will. And don’t pretend he isn’t complicit in his daughter’s crimes. He knew very well what she had planned to do, and condoned every step of it. You are the one I have some sympathy for, Ramahd Amansir. You knew little enough of their plans. You were but a piece on the board, as I was for a time. But now I am a player. You might be too.”

  While Hamzakiir gazed across the sands with a placid expression, Ramahd’s ire grew. “I would never join you.”

  “Do you know the king and your Meryam had many conversations about you? They considered you headstrong. Too focused on Macide Ishaq’ava for their tastes. Always bucking when the king tried to rein you in.”

  “He killed my wife and daughter.”

  Hamzakiir nodded. “I understand your pain. But know this. They had conversations about leaving you behind. Giving you back to the desert, Meryam once said.”

  Giving someone back to the desert was not only a Sharakhani term, but an ancient custom of the desert tribes, giving their dead to the dunes, which would draw their bones down and embrace those to whom they’d given birth. It was sometimes used in Qaimir by those who thought someone had turned their back on their own country and had come to accept the Shangazi as their home.

  “Meryam loves me.”

  “We can love and still betray for the greater good, can we not? And what of your king? Can you say there was ever any great love between the two of you?”

  It was true. There never had been. His arranged marriage to Yasmine had been one of convenience for the king, who at the time had been facing threats from the seas, and needed to secure more of the ships Ramahd’s father controlled. But Aldouan had never loved Ramahd for it. The marriage may have been convenient, but it had forced Aldouan to marry off his eldest daughter to a lord who, at that point, had not been greatly respected in the halls of Santrión.

  “Did you allow me on deck merely to watch me suffer?” Ramahd asked.

  “I am granting you truths that you might make important decisions. You’ve shown yourself worthy. And you still have a goal, do you not? You still wish to take your revenge, a thing even you will admit was slipping further and further from your grasp well before I was awoken in the catacombs of my father’s palace.”

  “I will not stand by your side.”

  “Don’t, then. Take your prize and return home to Qaimir.”

  “My prize . . . ?”

  “Macide.”

  Unbidden, a host of chilling memories ran through Ramahd’s mind. His wife running across the sand, an arrow taking her through the chest, their daughter dying of thirst as he and the other survivors of the Bloody Passage struggled to reach the nearest caravanserai. Ramahd pinched the bridge of his nose, driving away the memories that Hamzakiir himself had surely drawn up. “You would give me Macide, and let me go?”

  “If that is what you wish. But I could do more. I could see to it that Qaimir itself falls into your lap.”

  The ship rose over a dune. As the Blue Heron crested it and sailed down the far side to more shallow sand, Rafiro called out orders to trim the sails.

  Ramahd had dreamed of sitting the thron
e of Qaimir. What lord hadn’t? But it wasn’t something he yearned for. He would complete his business here and return home. Find a wife. Raise children as he’d always meant to do. “Why would you do this for a man who’s your enemy?”

  Hamzakiir turned and looked him up and down. “I don’t consider you my enemy. As I said, you were caught in a web much larger than you’d ever imagined. Take what I offer and go home if you don’t wish to remain in the desert. Or remain by my side and we’ll explore how you’re able to . . . blunt my attentions. You have only to agree, and it shall be so.”

  Alu grant him grace, he thought about it for a moment. The pain and confusion of these past weeks had worn on him, and he would give much to have it gone. But he would have to give up too much in order to attain his freedom. Meryam. King Aldouan. They may not have been forthright with him at all times. They may have even discussed sacrificing him like a kulthar piece in a game of aban. But he knew his place in life. He accepted it. He was a kulthar, and if his country would be safer for his sacrifice, then he would gladly make it. And his crew, who had been nothing but faithful to Ramahd. How could he abandon them? And then there was Dana’il . . .

  “Why did you kill Dana’il?”

  “Who?”

  “In the dungeon of Viaroza. Why would you force him to use his own knife to kill himself?”

  Hamzakiir shrugged. “There was anger in me.”

  “No. That was not anger. That was cruelty. Dana’il was a loyal friend. I loved him, and you treated him like a dungeon rat.”

  “Well,” Hamzakiir said, looking genuinely disappointed, “I see you’ve come to your decision.”

  Until this point, Ramahd had been free, but Hamzakiir once again placed the shackles upon him, and he found himself suddenly speechless. He was forced belowdecks, to the small hold at the rear of the ship, where he and Meryam and King Aldouan slept or sat on the dirty floor. He felt his mind retreating to the small space that Hamzakiir left for him, or perhaps it was the place Hamzakiir couldn’t reach. Whatever the case, he reflected on how very tired Hamzakiir had seemed. The man was not without his limits, then. He may have control over them from the blood he’d taken from each, but it still took effort to exert his influence. It wore on him, day by day, which was perhaps as good a reason as any other to offer Ramahd free will, as well as a bit of sanity to contemplate where Hamzakiir was taking them, and why.

  With light coming in through the small, shuttered window at the back of the hold, Ramahd could see his king sitting beside Meryam, their backs against the sloping hull. They watched Ramahd with haunted eyes, as if they were pleading with him to do something. But what could he do? They were trapped. Whatever weakness Hamzakiir might have shown, he was too powerful to oppose.

  As the rise and fall of the ship over the sands sent the three of them leaning this way then that, Ramahd fought to get words through gritted teeth. “How long?”

  Aldouan and Meryam stared at him with hollow eyes.

  “How long?” he said again, louder this time.

  Both of them looked as though they dearly wished to speak. Their eyes glistened like distant stars. Their mouths quivered.

  In the end, it was Meryam who said, “Seven weeks.”

  The words struck him like a hammer blow. Sweet Alu, seven weeks . . . Could it truly have been so long? All that pain. It had taken place over the course of weeks, not days as he’d assumed. What was worse, though, were the implications. It meant that they’d traveled well beyond Iri’s Teeth. They certainly weren’t headed for Mazandir; they could easily have reached Sharakhai in seven weeks.

  This area of the desert . . . How familiar it had looked. And then, as he stared into Meryam’s horrified face, he remembered.

  Breath of the desert, they had to free themselves. They had to leave before they reached that blasted plain. He began fighting Hamzakiir’s hold on him as he’d never fought before. His desperation gave him strength, but he struggled even to reach his feet. Pain built in him as he moved toward Meryam. He reached out his hand to her, but she merely stared, tears streaming down her face. She couldn’t help in this fight.

  It was up to him, then. He would have to take Hamzakiir. Somehow, he would have to do it. He walked toward the door. Each shivering footstep that brought him closer brought with it waves of pain. They shot up his legs like lightning, making him shiver from it. Sweat was gathering on his forehead by the time he reached the latch, and it was pouring from him by the time he gained the forward cabin.

  Inside, he found a kenshar he’d had for years, a gift from the Kings of Sharakhai to the ambassador of Qaimir. He stalked back down the passageway and climbed the stairs up to the deck. When he reached it, Hamzakiir was still at the bow, looking out over an expanse of desert that looked dark, almost glasslike. His men saw him, but he ignored them. He would rush Hamzakiir. He would send steel deep into his flesh and watch him bleed.

  But he’d not gone three steps before he fell to the floor, writhing in pain. As he screamed, the ship slowed.

  “Bring them,” he heard Hamzakiir call.

  He realized he’d blacked out. The ship was no longer moving. He, Meryam, and King Aldouan were thrown down to the sand. Nearby was a vast plain of black stone. They were dragged onto it, the ground cutting their clothes, slicing their exposed skin.

  “Far enough,” Hamzakiir called after a time. “Stand them up.”

  “Aye,” Rafiro called woodenly, and he, Quezada, and Hernand lifted the three of them, propping them up like drunks standing for the judgment of their lord.

  Hamzakiir took the ornamental knife Ramahd had been holding a short while ago and used it to pierce the tip of his thumb. Blood welled there. He came to stand before Meryam, and while whispering words Ramahd couldn’t quite make out, drew a bloody symbol on her forehead. Ramahd had stood on this plain with Meryam months ago, and she’d done the same with the blood of a sacrifice, a man, a tanner they’d brought from Sharakhai for the express purpose of summoning an ehrekh. She’d used the blood to protect Ramahd and his men, to give them strength to withstand the presence of Guhldrathen, but this was something wholly different. Hamzakiir was giving them no sign of strength; he was marking them with a sign of summoning, a sign meant to attract Guhldrathen, to make it clear he was giving the beast an offering.

  He meant it, perhaps, as a way to release his own debt. Hamzakiir had made some bargain with Guhldrathen in the past to grant him the long life that had saved him in the catacombs of his father. Whatever he’d received, he’d betrayed Guhldrathen, a fact Meryam had exploited to find how she might be able to reach Hamzakiir. It had worked, for all the good it had done them. The tables were now completely turned, and it was Meryam, her father, and Ramahd who would pay the price.

  Hamzakiir repeated the ritual before King Aldouan, and then came to stand before Ramahd. There was a saddened look in his eyes as he painted the mark on Ramahd, and when he was done, he met Ramahd’s eyes for a moment. “You should have taken my offer.”

  Ramahd managed enough control to spit in Hamzakiir’s face.

  Hamzakiir wiped the spittle from his cheeks and chin with the back of his sleeve, then backhanded Ramahd so hard he collapsed to the ground.

  “Come,” he heard Hamzakiir say. The sound of footsteps resounded over the glasslike stone, then began to fade. “Let the winds bear us to Ishmantep.”

  He heard the ring and rattle of a ship being readied, of sails being hoisted. A bell was rung. Soon after came the shush of a sandship’s runners skimming over the surface of the Shangazi.

  Then all was silence save for the haunting wind.

  Until dusk neared. That was when Ramahd first heard it. The rhythmic sound of thunder in the distance, pounding, booming, coming nearer and nearer.

  Chapter 8

  IHSAN THE HONEY-TONGUED KING strode into a room with a cavernous ceiling. Taking a bite of the quince he’d plucked fr
om his garden, he made for the far end of the room, where bright patches of sapphire, emerald, and ruby sunlight splashed against the stone floor from the mid-afternoon sun, which slanted in through a row of tall, stained glass windows. Three sides of the room were occupied by shelves filled with thick tomes, large tables with glass contrivances, and cabinets with a myriad of drawers filled with ingredients so rare they would put any apothecary in Sharakhai to shame.

  King Azad stood before one of the many tables, nursing the contents of a flask with a glass rod. He wore a simple flaxen robe with the cowl laid around his narrow shoulders. As he stirred, he dropped a measure of red powder into the brew. The tinkling of the glass and the soft bubbling of the rose-colored liquid mingled with a soft hissing coming from a lidded pot in the far corner. He glanced Ihsan’s way as he neared. “You know I don’t like to be disturbed.”

  “And I detest sandstorms, yet they strike the city on their own schedule, not mine.” He took another bite of his quince. The fruit was overly crunchy, not quite ripe but deliciously cool after such a hot day. After one last bite, he shot the core into the basket filled with thorny branches and a scattering of blue-white petals, wilted and browning at the edges. The air was thick with the sweet smell of desert flora and other, more bitter scents. “For the love of the gods, Azad, the air has nearly as much bite as my quince.” He moved toward a closed window nearby.

  “Leave it,” Azad snapped. “I’ll not have the dust of the city invading this place.”

  “I swear, one day I’ll find you unconscious on the floor.” And yet Ihsan made no move to open the window; this might be his palace, but allowances were made for projects such as this. “I suppose a bit of thick air is a reasonable price to pay for immortality.” He moved to Azad’s side instead, where nearby, a mound of thorny branches, cuttings from the adichara, were stacked on the table. He picked up one of them, examining its length. “So what of it? You’ve reported little progress of late.”

  “I’ve only just begun experimenting with the roots you secured from Kundhun. But I have made strides.”