A Veil of Spears Page 21

  Ramahd swallowed. He wished he hadn’t. “Wouldn’t it be better than where you are?”

  To his surprise, he felt a pang of doubt. And it was coming from Brama. This was a fear that plagued him in the darkest moments of his days, the thought of losing the sapphire, and Rümayesh with it.

  The thought was hardly there before it vanished.

  “That depends on your perspective,” Rümayesh said. “Were I you, a man whose life is gone in the blink of an eye, I might agree. But imagine you had more days to your name. Imagine your dark father, Goezhen, granting you undying life. Might you not want to experience more?” Rümayesh pressed the sharpened point of Ramahd’s ring into the skin just over his madly beating heart. “Things you might never have thought of?”

  “I would never accept being imprisoned.”

  “Imprisoned?” she scoffed. “Who speaks of prisons? I ride a river. To what end, I do not know, but I know that it has led me to places I would never have found otherwise. A life of meager means along the flood-prone banks of the Haddah. A host of lives who intersect with Brama’s in devastating ways, showing life’s cruelty with an honesty I’d never known before. There is beauty in that chaos.” Brama’s smile widened. “Take you, for example.” Brama’s fingers trailed up Ramahd’s skin, raked through his hair, as a lover might. “I wonder where the stream of your mind will take us.”

  Brama’s bright green eyes, so intent, stared deeply into Ramahd’s. The swarm of wasps had returned. Louder than before, they stung. They delved into his mind.

  “Perhaps to Macide Ishaq’ava,” Rümayesh said easily, “who slew your wife and child?”

  They bore deeper, the pain intensifying.

  “To Çedamihn Ahyanesh’ala, the White Wolf?”

  The sound was deafening. The buzzing. The chittering.

  “To your queen, Meryam shan Aldouan?”

  Mighty Alu, lend me strength. Ramahd pushed harder against her. He was somehow managing to keep her at bay, but for how long? The din of the insects was maddening!

  “Come,” Rümayesh said. “Allow me in of your own free will? I’m afraid the alternative might leave you a bit . . . tattered.”

  Ramahd’s fear was so great he nearly gave in, but in that moment the memory of a room in a distant tower came to him. Not his own memory, but Brama’s. He saw Rümayesh in her true form: hooved feet, taurine legs, a forked tail that swished this way then that, a crown of thorns and two horns sweeping back from her forehead. Worst were her depthless eyes and the dark humor in them—for all she’d done to Brama, for what she was about to do.

  The memory dimmed as Brama mastered his emotions, though Rümayesh seemed pleased, amused, not only by Ramahd’s fear but Brama’s. She was delighted that even after all the time they’d spent together, Brama still viewed those days with unbridled terror.

  “You are a wicked demon,” Ramahd said through gritted teeth.

  “Perhaps. But I get what I want.”

  The pressure on Ramahd’s mind intensified, becoming a gale of wind and sand and biting stone. The insects consuming flesh, bone, and blood. As he had with Hamzakiir months ago, Ramahd tried to resist, tried to snuff the ehrekh’s power before it became too great, but it was impossible. He was too fatigued. And how could he, a mortal man, stand against a creature forged by the hand of Goezhen?

  His walls fell altogether, but in that moment something brightened deep within his mind, as if it had been waiting for him to reach his lowest point. This new presence stormed forth, grabbing Rümayesh, lashing at Brama, bulling forward as they tried to raise their defenses against this new threat. An anguished cry escaped Brama’s throat, though whether it was from Brama or Rümayesh or both of them, Ramahd wasn’t sure.

  Brama fell. He scrambled away as the light in the sapphire went out, plunging the room into darkness.

  Ramahd heard something scraping across the cell floor. Heard Brama’s panicked breathing. He felt Brama’s terror as Meryam—Ramahd was certain it was her—clawed through his mind. She had to reach Brama, Ramahd realized, and through him she would reach Rümayesh. Rümayesh may have realized this as well, for even though she was fearful of Meryam’s power, she acted with a calculated calm, pressing on Brama’s mind as well, squeezing him from both sides.

  She was trying to stop Meryam from reaching her. Meryam knew it, and she tried to bolster Brama’s defenses, to keep him awake long enough for her to take both Brama and Rümayesh while they were so intent on Ramahd. Ramahd tried to help as well, but what could he do? He was but a locust caught in a terrible storm.

  In the end, Rümayesh pushed too hard, and Brama succumbed to the weight of the onslaught. He fell limp, and in that moment a brightness blasted Ramahd’s mind so quickly, so forcefully, there was nothing he could do to prevent it. Then the brilliance was gone, and Ramahd was falling into darkness.

  * * *

  Ramahd woke feeling as though his arms were being ripped from their sockets. He was still chained to the wall of the cellar. The same bare light filtered in from the stairs to his left. Brama was now a vague, man-shaped smudge in the darkness of the dirt floor. How long have I been under? Not long, he thought. Surely Brama’s army would have checked on him at some point.

  Ramahd pulled himself tall. Feeling along the wall behind him, he touched the iron hoop where the chain looped through it and around his wrists. Feeling with his bare feet, he found a second hoop. His fingertips touched the iron spike in the wall, which had been driven into the mortar between the stones. Secure enough if the mortar was fresh, but this was an old home with old foundations.

  Wrapping the chain around both hands, he yanked it down. It held. Taking a deep breath, he tried again, pulling his legs up until those chains pulled tight as well. Like the string of a bow drawing the ends closer, he drew on the chains, pulling with all his might. They didn’t budge.

  Moments later, he heard a door creak and footsteps walking across the floor above him. His fear over what they would do when they found Brama unconscious sent his fear soaring. He pulled again, heedless of how bright the pain in his joints was, of how deeply it cut into the skin of his ankles.

  Brama moaned in the darkness.

  A wheezing grunt escaped Ramahd as he heaved against the chain. He became a part of it, as unyielding as steel.

  At the top of the stairs came a knock.

  “Brama?”

  A woman’s voice, muted behind the closed door.

  Ramahd pulled harder and finally something gave. With a sound like shearing steel, he fell hard to the floor and the chains clanked down loudly around him. He reached into the darkness. Felt Brama’s ankle. He dragged him closer, once, then again. He patted along Brama’s waist, and found a leather belt. A ring of keys.

  The door creaked open. Candlelight flooded the stairwell, pushing back the darkness. “Brama?”

  Ramahd pulled the ring free and felt each of the three keys, trying to judge which might unlock the chains. But as the footsteps came nearer, he simply tried the first one on his ankle. It was wrong, but the second one fit, and when he turned it, he felt the sweet release of the mechanism.

  “Stop!” he heard the woman call.

  The light wavered wildly as he unlocked the second shackle. He threw the chains off and rolled backward and onto his feet just as her lithe form swept forward in the gloom.

  He was just able to avoid the sweep of her knife. He backed away as she swiped again, warding away the knife with the chain he now held between his hands. As she came in a third time, he flicked the chain around her wrist, trapped it, and pulled her close. She tried to recover, to adjust the blade and slash him across his right arm, but he was able to control her movement by tightening the chain. He head-butted her, slipped a foot behind her ankle, and sent her spilling to the ground. From there, it was simple to wrap an arm around her neck, still keeping the knife secure, and choke her until
she lost consciousness.

  He moved quickly after that.

  The keys were where he’d dropped them. After unlocking the chains around his wrists, he retrieved the woman’s candle from the stairs where she’d left it and brought it near Brama, scanning for the sapphire.

  It wasn’t around Brama’s neck but had been thrust away as he’d fallen back. He could hardly believe it. He picked it up and found it was heavy, like lead instead of crystal. It was wrapped in leather cord, covered in something sticky, sooty. But for all that, as simple as it appeared, he could tell he was holding a thing of power.

  He became so transfixed he lost track of time until he realized minutes had passed.

  Shaking his head, he remembered the fierce battle that had sent Rümayesh into hiding. He had no idea what had happened to Meryam, but he had to get back to her.

  But what to do with Brama?

  He took up the knife of the woman who’d tried to kill him, then approached Brama carefully. By the gods, his mouth was working. His head lolled from side to side, but he didn’t open his eyes, not even when the light from the candle came near.

  Ramahd stood over him. Meryam might have use for him, but given how many zealots had decided to throw their lot in with him, he had power, and that power made him dangerous. He stared at the scars that crisscrossed Brama’s face, his neck, the skin of his hands. He had no idea what had happened to the man, but it was likely a mercy to do what he did now, which was to run the knife across Brama’s throat.

  Blood ran in gouts as he turned to the woman. She was young. She could still make a life for herself. She might rally those loyal to Brama, but given their nature—men and women who not so long ago had been addicted to black lotus—he doubted they would stay with her for long, not without their savior.

  In the end, Ramahd let her be. He moved upstairs, found his boots and sword on a table in the simple home, and left.

  Chapter 23

  DAVUD TRUDGED TOWARD the blooming fields. King Sukru was by his side, walking like an old hyena: crook-backed, bald pate, and hungry, piercing eyes, the sort of creature a pack might devour rather than be slowed down. As had been true the last time they’d come, both Zahndr and a Silver Spear accompanied them, but unlike last time they were dragging between them a bound and gagged man—one of the few scarabs who had survived the Night of Endless Swords.

  Ahead, the blooming fields sketched an imperfect line toward the horizon. The thorny adichara branches were motionless. The air was still, as if the trees were rapt, waiting to see what the King and Davud were preparing to do.

  “My Lord King,” Davud began, “might we speak of the man we’ve brought?”

  “The scarab,” Sukru spat as he led them through a gap in the trees.

  Within was a sizable clearing. Along the far side of it lay a swath of trees that looked different from the rest. Healthy adichara were large thorny bushes that choked the space around their thick, gnarled base. Their branches were brown, with tinges of green near the ends that matched the small, spade-shaped leaves. The famed blooms were encased in indigo buds. The trees Sukru led him toward were blackened, with few leaves and fewer buds. Unlike on Beht Zha’ir, when Sukru had brought him to a lone tree, here was a wide swath of disease that went deeper into the grove—a dozen trees clustered together like children lost in the desert, huddled, crying, dying.

  “All I ask, my Lord King,” Davud went on, “is that you allow me to apply the knife.”

  Ignoring Davud, Sukru motioned the Silver Spear to bring the prisoner before him. The Spear complied, forcing the man to his knees, while Sukru swung his withering gaze to Davud. “Why?”

  Zahndr, standing behind Sukru, was shaking his head—a warning for Davud to go no farther, but Davud had made up his mind. The prisoner was hardly more than a boy. He was thin and malnourished with a haggard expression that gave some hint to the horrors he’d seen as a prisoner of the Kings. He was trying to put on a brave face—one last defiant act before he died, perhaps—but his eyes betrayed him. They shifted nervously between Sukru and Davud. He no more wished to die than he wanted to kiss Sukru’s feet.

  “When we last came here, I suspect I could have learned more had the tribute not died. If I might be allowed to take some of his blood while he lives, perhaps we can go further than we did that night.” Davud thought no such thing, but satisfying Sukru’s curiosity over the dying adichara wasn’t worth a life. Growing up in Roseridge, Davud had known many like this young scarab. He might not agree that the path to peace was through war, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t save a life when there was no need for it to be taken.

  “There was no mention of this in the book I gave you,” Sukru said, “nor the one Hamzakiir left you.”

  “No,” Davud replied, hoping he didn’t sound too eager. “It was something Hamzakiir said when he confessed his nature, and my own. He said the ehrekh hunger not for blood alone, but the blood of the living. I would try this with a living soul.”

  For long moments Sukru’s eyes searched Davud’s. Then he looked to the scarab as if he’d pissed on Sukru’s curl-toed shoes.

  “His lifeblood can still be spilled if I’m wrong, my Lord King.” He hadn’t wanted to say it, but everything about Sukru spoke to the desire to end this man’s life. He’s been anticipating it since Sharakhai, Davud realized. I should have spoken sooner. But there had been precious little time. He’d only seen him for a moment as he boarded Sukru’s yacht, and the King had immediately hidden himself away in the rear cabin.

  From the sheath at his belt Sukru pulled a broad-bladed kenshar. From the sour look on his face Davud thought he was going to run it across the scarab’s throat just to spite him and his pet theory. But after a moment, he held it out, hilt first. “The gods forbid we end the life of a filthy scarab.”

  Davud tried his best to hide his relief but was unsure how successful he’d been given how churlishly Sukru was watching him. He ignored it as he flicked his fingers for the young man to move closer to the diseased adichara.

  When he refused, the Silver Spear took him roughly by the arms and dragged him there.

  “Give me your hand,” Davud said.

  The man’s breath came faster now. “Please! Not my soul!”

  Zahndr backhanded him. When he still refused, the Silver Spear grabbed him by the neck and choked him until his face turned red.

  “Please, don’t!” Davud cried.

  The Spear didn’t listen, and then Zahndr was wrenching his arm away from his body, preparing it for Davud.

  Bakhi, please don’t let this end in death.

  As Davud brought the knife near, the scarab’s face turned hard. “No!” he shouted, and leaned back and kicked Davud in the face.

  Davud reeled as pain blossomed across his cheek and nose. He thumped against the sand, falling just short of having his face raked on an adichara’s thorns. He rose to the sound of Sukru laughing. It was a low rumble, like thunder in the distance, but it grew the longer Sukru stared. Soon the King was gripping his knees. “Would you spare him now?”

  Davud tenderly touched his nose to see if it was bleeding. Thankfully it wasn’t. He could only imagine Sukru’s laughter if it had been. With the pain subsiding, he moved more carefully toward the young man. “I only need a bit of your blood.”

  The scarab was shaking his head furiously. “I would die before I give it to you.”

  “Well then . . .”

  Before Davud realized what was happening, Sukru snatched a thin knife from Zahndr’s belt.

  “. . . your wish is granted!”

  “No!” Davud shouted.

  But it was too late. Sukru drew the knife sharply across the young man’s throat and threw him against the diseased adichara. The scarab—Davud realized he’d never learned his name—clutched at his throat. His legs kicked, scoring deep furrows in the sand.

  “Not
another word, boy,” Sukru said as he handed the knife back to Zahndr, who accepted it with a grim, accusatory look at Davud, as if Davud had been the killer. “Now get on with it.”

  Davud was petrified by Sukru’s cruelty, and angry with himself for not finding some way through it. The scarab stared at Davud, blinking, fingers clutching, and then slowly he went still. In that moment, he couldn’t help but think of Çeda and her plight, the secrets she was trying to uncover, the cruelty she hoped to end. And here he was, a willing participant in that same cruelty. He wanted Hamzakiir to pay for all he’d done, but first Davud had to learn more about his abilities and the cruel realities of this ancient conflict.

  I advise you to find another mage when you return to Sharakhai, Hamzakiir had told him in Ishmantep. It won’t be easy, and I suspect before long one will find you, one you mightn’t like to have as your master, so work quickly. Davud did have a master now, and he wasn’t at all sure he liked him.

  Sukru’s stare became more intense. “I’ll not ask you again.”

  “Of course, my Lord King.” Davud knelt on the ground beside the young man. May Bakhi deliver you swiftly to the farther fields. Then he touched his fingers to the blood that oozed from the slit in the young man’s throat. He used it to draw sigils on his palms. The first combined subsume with the sigil the firefinch had given him, a sigil he’d come to call delve for the feelings of burrowing and deepening it seemed to bring about. The other encompassed several from the book Sukru had given him: sigils for graft and grow.

  In Sukru’s book, Davud had learned of blood magi who used multiple sigils at the same time. The mage would, as the author had put it, grip the sigils, which would in turn summon the desired effect. He hoped this combination would allow him to delve more deeply than he had the last time so that he could learn why some of the adichara trees were beginning to wither and die.

  That done, he retrieved an ampule from the pouch at his belt, filled it carefully with blood, and downed it in one swallow. He was no longer new to the taste of blood, but the raw potency of it still awed him. Just as it had when he’d snuffed the flames in Ishmantep, it offered him enough power to do whatever he wished.