Beneath the Twisted Trees Page 12

  “Have you seen Çeda in recent months?” Ihsan asked her.

  Djaga couldn’t help but glance at the Mirean woman by her side. She wasn’t scared for herself, but for her lover. “No,” she eventually replied, in the sort of short bark that many Kundhuni used when they were angry.

  “Have you seen her?” he said again, this time letting power into his voice.

  For a time, Djaga said nothing. She swallowed hard. She blinked. But then gave in, as all those under his spell eventually did. “No.”

  Ihsan wondered for a moment whether it was simple defiance or her love for Çeda that made her unwilling to tell him. Likely it was both. Djaga hadn’t reached the pinnacle of pit fighting by backing down from anyone.

  Ignoring her impudence for now, he stepped past her and took the ladder down into the ship. He’d just come from the internment camp where hundreds of the Moonless Host were being kept, along with Mirean and Malasani dissidents. There, huddled alone, in the corner of a tight mudbrick structure, was a once-great man, at least as far as such things went in the west end of Sharakhai. His name was Osman, and he was a hollow-cheeked ghost of the gladiator he once was—Zeheb’s master of the masks, the one who decided who would fight in which helms and gladiatorial armor. Çeda had been one of his gladiators once and had worn a mask of her own.

  By the time he departed, Ihsan was impressed with Osman. In his many years, he’d found only a handful who could resist his commands. Osman had managed it for many long, shaking breaths. In the end, however, his lips had quivered, the tortured look on his face had broken, and he’d given Ihsan that which he sought.

  Ihsan reached the captain’s cabin, where the warden of the Blade Maidens was holding back the hinged lid of a wooden bench. Within, nestled among blankets and bric-a-brac, was a helm fashioned into the likeness of Nalamae. Atop it was a wolf pelt, the empty pits of its eyes humorless and hungry. And beneath, a faded set of leather armor—gladiator’s breastplate, battle skirt, bracers and greaves—all dyed white.

  Ihsan picked up the helm and ran his fingers over Nalamae’s primitive features. “Well, well, well, perhaps we’ll find you after all.” He wondered again if he should abandon this search—he had no idea where it might lead and what might come of it—but in the end he came to the same conclusion as every other time he’d considered it. It was simply too dangerous to defy the goddess after opening his fool mouth and begging for her help.

  Taking up the helm and armor, he left the ship and made for Eventide.

  Chapter 10

  BRAMA RODE TOWARD THE SUMMIT of a hill on a lively chestnut mare. The small, mountain-bred horse, Kweilo, was a gift from Queen Alansal of Mirea, and her name meant little bird in Mirean, because of how she liked to skip and prance when unsaddled or when given free rein.

  Near the base of the hill to Brama’s left, where dry, rocky ground met waves of amber sand, stood dozens of standing stones in two rough lines, like the ribs of some half-buried titan.

  Rümayesh sat atop one of the misshapen pillars. She surveyed the desert’s expanse, crouching like a condor on the lookout for prey. If this day went like any of the others they’d spent scouting, she would remain atop that stone until nightfall. With her so preoccupied, Brama retrieved the vial of powder the queen had given him—a scraping from the finger bone of Raamajit the Exalted, one of the old gods. He cracked the cork open and inhaled the wondrous scent. There was little enough powder inside, but its very odor sent a rush of power coursing through him, power he used to shore up the mental walls he’d erected against Rümayesh.

  When Kweilo’s lazy pace delivered him to the summit at last, Brama replaced the stopper, hid the vial away, and dropped down from the saddle with a heavy thump against the stone. Kweilo immediately began nibbling on the nearby ironweed. Rümayesh, meanwhile, swiveled her great horned head toward him. Amusement rolled off her in waves, but she said nothing, and neither did he. As her attention returned to the sand, Brama lifted his spyglass and studied the horizon, looking for the telltale signs of ships.

  They were a day’s ride from the Mirean encampment, where Queen Alansal had a small fleet of cutters ranging far ahead along the caravan trail and elsewhere to spy for the Kings’ fleet. But she’d ordered a dozen more teams to search nearer to the caravanserai: a second line of defense should the Kings capture the Mirean scout ships. The queen had overwhelming numbers. If the estimations of her generals were correct, the Kings’ galleons might outnumber the queen’s dunebreakers slightly, but the Mirean ships easily housed twice the number of soldiers.

  But all knew the size of their forces was but half the story, and perhaps the lesser half at that. The Kings had had centuries to gather their strength for just such an attack. They had the favor of the gods. They had the asirim. They had their Blade Maidens and Silver Spears. If that weren’t enough, they’d scoured the desert for its magical artifacts, hoarding all they could find. The Kings might have been loath to use such artifacts in the past lest knowledge of them escape, but Alansal was certain they would use them now that their rule was in jeopardy.

  As the sun began to set, Brama rode down the slope. To the northeast, he spotted movement. A pair of qirin drove across the desert, kicking up sand, the sun shining red off the sapphire-blue scales of their maned necks while their long, burnished tails trailed like pennants in the wind. Their riders were Mae and Shu-fen, twin sisters and the very same warriors who had accompanied Juvaan when Brama had first arrived at their camp.

  They were two of the Damned, warriors who’d sworn their lives to the queen. Like all the Damned, they wore brightly painted armor and helms with demon masks that covered their faces. Brama had assumed they’d been assigned their mounts or that they’d hunted them in the wilds of the Mirean highlands, but Juvaan told him that the qirin had chosen the twins. Both Mae and Shu-fen had been sentenced to life working in the queen’s mines for premeditated murder. Legend had it the beasts could look into a mortal’s soul and see a path toward redemption. If they did, the prisoners were freed. So it had been with Mae and Shu-fen—the two qirin had, in no uncertain terms, saved the lives of the warriors who rode them. It was a sacred honor, but more than this, it was an unbreakable bond between the saved and the savior.

  As Mae and Shu-fen neared, Brama hailed them. They didn’t return the greeting, however. They were too busy trying to calm their mounts. The qirins’ coats twitched. Their tails flicked. They fought their reins. Mae let it go on for some time, watching what they would do, but then she issued a trilling whistle and the qirin calmed.

  “What is it?” Brama asked.

  “They feeling something,” she said in halting Sharakhan. “How you say? Dangers?”

  “Something dangerous,” Brama replied.

  “Something dangerous,” Mae said imperfectly. She smiled a quick, proud smile and then spoke in rapid Mirean to Shu-fen.

  Over the past few weeks, Brama had often lost the sense of the desert that had come so easily to him when he’d been alone. But just then it returned in a rush. He had a sense that something wasn’t quite right, that the world around him was different somehow, in the midst of a change. His gut churned from it.

  He drew his shamshir and stared across the dunes, trying to locate the source. He knew it was out there somewhere, but the desert ahead of him was completely empty, devoid of all save a rise of dark stone in the distance and the occasional cough of spindrift. Kweilo, against her nature, was eerily calm. Her ears were pinned back and her tail was low. The qirin began to prance. They tugged hard at their reins as Shu-fen and Mae fought to keep them still. Waves of heat and steam trailed from their nostrils. These were beasts trained for war, and qirin met fear with aggression.

  Rümayesh still sat atop her column of stone, staring down like a lynx that heard a scorpion shifting beneath the sand.

  What is it? Brama asked her.

  Receiving no answer, he pulled his gaze
back to the landscape ahead. He swore something had just shifted. Most likely it was just the heat rising off the dunes, but it hadn’t felt that way.

  There. He saw it again.

  At the top of the next dune, a strange phenomenon presented itself. The horizon seemed to tilt, then tumble, then right itself before tilting again. It looked as though the air itself had been given life, an elemental of some sort, or a demon.

  From the corner of his eye he saw Rümayesh leap down from her perch and charge across the sand. To his left, Shu-fen let out a “Hiyah!” and spurred her qirin forward. Mae mirrored her, the two of them charging toward some other perceived threat.

  Brama, however, couldn’t take his eyes from the strange vision ahead. A dozen paces away, sand was kicking up with soft but quickly intensifying crunching sounds. Footsteps, Brama realized, charging straight for him. He lifted his sword and managed one hard swing before he felt something barrel into his chest.

  He was thrown violently to the sand. Kweilo skipped away, and the sky seemed to melt, revealing a shriveled, blackened face. An asir, he saw, a girl once, now a wisp of a thing with the features of a starving gutter wren: emaciated ribs, cadaverous face, sticklike limbs.

  Searing lines of pain lit along Brama’s chest as her long claws tore at him. A great bellow of pain escaped him, half caused by fear as the asir opened her jaws impossibly wide, a rabid bone crusher going in for the kill. The asir fought to reach his neck around the shamshir Brama had managed to wedge between her jaws. The terrible swipes of her clawed hands continued to tear at the flesh along his ribs. He couldn’t keep taking this kind of damage but, Bakhi’s swift hammer, he dare not take his attention from girl’s mouth. He rocked the sword back and forth, cutting deeply. Black blood oozed. Fell hot against Brama’s face, dripped in his mouth. The asir hardly seemed to care about the mess Brama’s sword was making of her cheeks, teeth, and jaws. She fought with a mad, singular intent: to end his life.

  Only when Brama had pulled the sword free and managed to lever it against her neck did she have any sense of self-preservation. She rolled away and came up quick, swiping viciously at his shamshir. So inhuman was her strength that the blow sent the sword spinning from his grip. But Brama was already reaching for his belt. He managed to pull his kenshar free and was bringing it up hard as the asir darted in again. He drove the knife beneath her jaw. Gripping the top of her head, he sent it further, levering it back and forth like a thief’s blade working the lid off a chest.

  The asir’s entire body fell into a paroxysm. The terrible scream she released was a thing that felt separate and alive. The sound crawled across his skin, but he kept sawing, until finally the asir fell silent and slumped over him. He threw the frail body aside, wondering at how little she weighed and the terrible strength she’d just exhibited.

  Ignoring the foundry of pain in his gut, Brama made it to his feet. He looked wildly around, expecting more asirim to come rushing at him, but there were none. To his left, Mae and her qirin fought an asir with long, gangly limbs. The asir’s whole left side was burning in blue flames, but it hardly seemed to notice. As Brama limped forward, the asir charged. Mae’s demon mask grinned as she pulled at the reins and her qirin reared. Its hooves pounded the asir’s upraised arms, and then it twisted with sinuous grace to avoid the asir’s lunge. Its mouth stretched wide and it doused the asir in fresh turquoise flames.

  The asir staggered and fell to its knees. In that moment, Mae rode past, swept her tassled dao sword across the thing’s neck, and it fell back to the sand. Its head, nearly severed from its neck, twitched a moment and then lay still as the flames licking its body sent dark smoke billowing into a cobalt sky.

  Near the standing stones, Rümayesh had come upright from a dark shape lying prone on the sand. Another asir. Rümayesh leapt, and suddenly there was a taller, gangly asir caught in her grip. She bore her weight down on it, pinning it to the sand while all three of her tails pierced its chest over and over. When she bit into the asir’s neck, it lost its struggle, and Rümayesh yanked her tails free. Black blood flew in three grand arcs.

  Shu-fen was riding hard up the windward side of the dune to join Mae. She slowed her mount when she saw the asir lying there unmoving, its body aflame. The two of them reined their qirin over, wary of more asirim, but no more materialized. Mae’s armor had been scored in several places. Shu-fen, however, was favoring her right side, one gauntleted hand pressed tightly against her thigh. Brama knew serious wounds when he saw them; the flow of blood was enough that he wondered if she’d make it.

  “Can I help?” he asked.

  Shu-fen lifted her head. A moment later, she used the tip of her sword to point at Brama’s chest. Her face was hidden behind the mask of her helm, but Brama could feel her stare.

  Brama looked down. He was so accustomed to pain and his body’s ability to heal itself that he hadn’t realized how bad his own wounds were. Pain was pain. Give it attention and it would soar to the heavens, but let it be and it would eventually dwindle. Still, as he took in the mess the asir had made of his flesh, he felt some of the same terrible twinges he’d had when he’d been a prisoner to Rümayesh and she’d tortured him daily.

  For just a moment, he lamented the life he might once have led, the loves he might have had had his body not been ruined by her attentions. He thought again of returning to Sharakhai. Of returning to Jax, the woman he’d come to love and who’d somehow come to love him. But he couldn’t. Do that and Rümayesh would use her against him.

  I would never use her against you, not after all you’ve done for me.

  Brama cursed himself. He’d grown more adept at keeping Rümayesh out of his mind, but the pain had caused his concentration to slip. He began the process of replacing his barriers and said to her, Are there more of them?

  He felt the warbling sensation near his heart—Rümayesh’s laughter as felt through their shared bond. I don’t know why you won’t believe me, Brama. Your wish is my command! Tell me to leave your Jax alone and it shall be so. Tell me you wish to return to her and it will happen.

  With the pain it was difficult, but Brama felt the walls slip securely into place at last.

  As you will, Rümayesh said, and crouched over the asir she’d slain as if she were about to dissect it.

  As Shu-fen took a bag of medicinals from her saddle bag and began to dress her own wounds, Brama wondered why the Kings would send only a handful of asir. He had no answers, and soon Mae was dismounting to tend to his wounds. The bandages she wrapped around his waist were quickly soaked with blood. With her demon helm off, Brama could see her face clearly at last. She had fair features and eyes of bright, jade green, a sign of good fortune in Mirea. She kept glancing at Brama with worry, but he merely shook his head and tried to reassure her. “All will be well.” Mae’s pinched lips and pallid cheeks made it clear how unconvinced she was.

  Soon he, Mae, and Shu-fen were headed back toward camp, while Rümayesh remained to look for more asirim. They arrived near nightfall, and Brama and Shu-fen were led straight to the hospital ship. The physic, a man who looked too young to be going to war, and far too young to know anything about medicine, tended to Brama first. As he unwrapped the blood-soaked bandages, Mae’s eyes went wide. The deep gashes hurt terribly, but they had already started to mend. Many had closed. By morning the bleeding would have stopped entirely. By the following evening, all the wounds would be closed and scar tissue starting to form.

  Mae and the physic engaged in hushed conversation, excluding Brama. When they’d gone on for some time, Brama broke in. “I’d like to speak to the queen.” When neither responded, he said, slower this time, “Queen Alansal.”

  They refused him. When he became insistent, they made hand signs for him to remain for a short while. He was just about to leave the hospital, their concerns over his well-being be damned, when Juvaan Xin-Lei, the tall Mirean with ivory skin and snow-white hair, cam
e striding in.

  “Say anything you wish to say to the queen to me,” he said when Brama repeated his demand.

  Brama considered pressing him, but what would be the point? Juvaan pulled up a chair to his bedside, and Brama told him all of it: the attack, the strange asirim, how crazed they were.

  At this, Juvaan sniffed. “The asirim have always been crazed.”

  “So the stories say,” Brama replied, “but have you ever heard of them being masked as they were, almost impossible to see?”

  “No, but we are fighting not only the Kings of Sharakhai, but a Queen of Qaimir as well: a known blood mage.”

  “Even so, why would the Kings send the asirim against you in that way? Why be content to attack a few forward scouts?”

  “An excellent question,” Juvaan said, standing, “one my queen and I will consider carefully.” He bowed from the waist. “Thank you, Brama Junayd’ava. There’s no telling what might have happened had you and Rümayesh not been there. We are in your debt.”

  Brama gave a nod in return, and Juvaan left.

  Late that night, Brama felt something stir. He’d become well attuned to Rümayesh and the impression she made on his senses. She was distant, still in the desert. But there was another scent very much like hers. And it was near. Very near.

  Night had fallen, but by the light of the small lamp near the infirmary’s entrance, he could see that the other patients were sleeping. He crept toward the door, slipping easily into the gait that had served him so well in his days slinking over Sharakhai’s rooftops.