A Veil of Spears Read online

  He forced it into the earth, trailing after the blood that had seeped below the surface. He felt the roots combine, felt them merge and merge again to form the trunk, felt them divide and divide again as the branches fought for space with its brethren. As his awareness grew, he willed them to tell their story, limiting himself to the ones that were diseased. The dozen trees before him were strong in his mind, a life like his, and yet unlike it. These trees had lived through the ages, since their quickening at Tulathan’s hand.

  Suddenly a vision swept him up. A woman, tall with plaited blonde hair, carried a gnarled wooden staff, the head of which looked like a cobra spreading its hood. The woman had seen forty summers, perhaps. She was broad-shouldered, with a broad, handsome face to match, not unlike the first men and women depicted in the frescoes of Yerinde’s temple.

  The desert’s harsh sun drove down, creating stark shadows against the sand as she walked. As she approached the blooming fields, the branches leaned away as if she were aflame, unbearable to be near. Upon reaching a clearing, she knelt before an adichara and put her staff down. For a time she breathed, eyes closed, arms to her side, palms outward, as if she were feeling the rhythms of the grove. The sun stretched toward sunset. At the precise moment it kissed the horizon, she leaned forward and blew upon the base of the adichara before her. Sand and stone lifted like dust, revealing ever more of the knobbly trunk as it dug deeper into the earth. Again she blew, and a third time, until the mosslike roots were revealed.

  Her hand scraped the rough bark. Her fingers clutched the roots. The moment was dizzying, for Davud felt himself at the same time, kneeling beside a similar tree while a King named Sukru stood near and a dead man lay close enough to touch. Who are you? he wanted to ask, but his courage was failing him. Then he was drawn down, down, down into the earth, and he couldn’t tell which of them it was happening to.

  Both, you fool.

  Deep into the earth he went, the roots creeping through stone, along tunnels, through gaps, into caverns large and small. The roots filled cracks and crevices, wriggling ever deeper, a great coalescing as they fused with one another to form a trunk.

  All of them, Davud realized. All them. As if the individual trees are nothing more than the leaves of a grand arboreal organism growing beneath the bedrock of Sharakhai itself. But if that were so, why were some of the branches dying?

  The roots met in a cavern. They coated the walls, reached up to the very center of the cavern’s high roof, where they braided into a thick clump that grew thinner, thinner, until only one small tendril was left. From that distal thread, moisture dripped, pattering against a stone that lay below.

  And the stone . . . It glowed violet, like a heavenly body being fed and nurtured within the womb of that very cavern. Davud didn’t know the nature of it, but he was certain the adichara had created it. Their roots been guided here by unseen hands so that their essence might feed this stone. But what was that essence? It wasn’t water. And it certainly wasn’t blood.

  Before Davud could think further, he was swept back to the desert. The woman lifted her head, suddenly wary and afraid. She turned the way she’d come, then stood, picking up her staff.

  Her brow furrowed in concentration as the dying light of dusk lit the desert red. From beyond the line of trees there came a snuffing sound. A huffing. Lumbering toward her were a pair of dark forms, animals with ridged backs and heads held low. They had thick fur with long black spines along the shoulders and back. Desert hyenas. Black laughers. Bone crushers. Except these two were much larger than those that typically roamed the desert.

  They sniffed along the stone where the woman had entered the blooming field—a path now blocked by the poisonous branches of the adichara. Still, they tried, growling as they pushed their massive heads into the undergrowth. When the woman moved in the other direction, the trees parted, and the black laughers sensed it. One backed away from the adichara, yipping. The other laughed its chilling laugh. Then both tipped their heads back and howled to the darkling sky.

  The woman reached the sand, but already she could hear more of the black laughers on this side of the adichara. There were three. No, four. Sprinting toward her while tails of sand kicked up behind them. She held her ground, ready for battle. When the nearest came close, she swung her staff, caught the beast across the jaw, and sent it flying, its massive head lolling. It struck the sand and lay still.

  The others fanned out, refusing to come in range of her staff. She sprinted forward, so fast that the largest of the beasts had no time to back away, and caught it on the top of its skull. It was driven down, but the others were darting in now, and more laughers were approaching.

  Jaws snapped and throats growled. Those farther away yowled. One bit her leg. Another lunged and clamped its jaws around her wrist before she managed to tear it away.

  With a grand wave of her staff, the adichara came alive. The branches reached out, grabbing the fetlocks of the nearest laugher. A second was grabbed by its neck. Then a third by its snout, the thorns refusing to let go no matter how much it snapped and struggled. More branches wrapped around their legs and barrel chests, then drew the laughers into the groves, where thicker branches wrapped them and squeezed. They whimpered and whined as the trees tore them apart.

  Then the adicharas went still. The remaining bone crushers backed away, then laughed louder, longer, higher than before. A smell pervaded the deepening night, a scent like myrrh and loam and burning pitch. Fear lit the woman’s features as she turned toward the bright horizon.

  Silhouetted by the sun’s dying light was a massive figure. Black skin, a crown of thorns, legs like a bull’s. Two tails lashed the air behind it. It was Goezhen, who traveled with a pack of bone crushers, the elders of those that plagued the desert. He held a javelin loosely in one hand and was approaching at a walk, but then he seemed to recognize the woman, for he smiled and began to lope forward.

  She lifted her staff high, gripping it with both hands. Putting her whole body into one savage movement, she speared the tip into the ground between her feet. It sunk a foot into the stone. Eyes closed, she whispered to the head of the staff. From the point where the staff entered the ground, the earth split. A crack formed and shot forward like lightning, running toward Goezhen in a jagged line, then cutting beneath him. The gap widened, earth fell away, and Goezhen had to scramble, stabbing his javelin into the wall of the crevice that had formed. He tried to climb out, but the earth came snapping back, trapping him from the waist down.

  Goezhen roared as the shaking of the earth began to quell and the stone pressed ever inward. It was crushing him, but Goezhen was not done. He pressed his arms against the ground and with a roar lifted one leg free of the earth. The ground beneath him tore as he climbed out. The woman—surely she was Nalamae; who else would oppose Goezhen?—was whispering again. Goezhen, however, seemed ready. He lifted his javelin, took two long strides, and sent it flying through the air.

  It flew true and struck Nalamae in the chest. She shattered, breaking into pieces as if she were made stone. Indeed, her skin and clothes had dulled, turned an amber color. She fell apart like a statue at the strike of an iron maul.

  Goezhen neared, crouched low, lips pulled back in shock and anger. His jaundiced eyes narrowed. He leaned to one side, sniffing, scrutinizing. Nothing happened, however, until he took another step. The stones burst, exploding with a sound that shook the earth. Goezhen reared back as a sound like chittering insects filled the air. Chunks of stone and scree fell to the ground. As the sound died away, a great cloud of dust was borne on the breeze.

  Goezhen pulled a thick shard of stone from the meat of his thigh where it had been driven by the explosion. He pulled more from his chest and arms. Black blood flowed, slicking the fur along the joints of his taurine legs. He stared, hands balled into fists at his sides, his face and chest and arms bleeding from a dozen wounds. His entire body tensed and the god of ch
aos released a bellow of rage.

  As it rang through the dusk, Davud was returned to himself though the sound still echoed in his mind. But Goezhen was gone. Gone were the black laughers. Gone the brilliant sunset. Instead, Davud found himself staring at the trunk of the adichara before him. By his side, the dead scarab lay, flies crawling on his eyes and lips, slipping inside his open mouth. Zahndr stood nearby and seemed surprised when Davud lifted himself up off the ground and came to a stand.

  Davud ignored him. He couldn’t shake the feeling that there were black laughers near, that Goezhen was coming. Had Nalamae been here? But no.

  “How long?” Davud asked.

  “Six hours,” Zahndr replied, eyeing Davud as if he expected him to sprout reptilian legs and crawl into the sand. He held out a skin of water. Davud accepted it gratefully, drank deeply, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “There were black laughers. In the dream, I mean . . .”

  He stopped, for Zahndr was shaking his head grimly. “This story isn’t for my ears.” He motioned Davud to the way back. “Best get on. The King’s been anxious for you to wake.”

  Soon Davud was back on the yacht, sitting in Sukru’s cabin as the deck tilted easily with the slope of the dunes. He shared his vision. Most of it in any case. He withheld the part about Nalamae and Goezhen. He wanted more time to think, to speak with someone he trusted. If only his old collegia master, Amalos, were still alive . . .

  Sukru’s eyes stared past Davud as if Sukru had just learned he was dying. “The cavern—what sort of stone?” he barked after a time.

  Davud shrugged. “It looked like crystal, but not faceted. It was smooth, and violet light glowed from within.” He paused, waiting for Sukru to ask more. When he didn’t, Davud asked, “Is there any such cavern?”

  Sukru’s mouth worked. He seemed restless, worried. His eyes flitted to and fro, as if he were lost in some grand equation he couldn’t quite solve. “Leave me.”

  “Of course, my Lord King.”

  “And Davud?” Sukru said when he was halfway through the door. “You will speak of this to no one.”

  “Never, my Lord King.”

  The way Sukru had said it . . . Davud already knew he shouldn’t tell anyone. Sukru had given that order before they’d taken their first voyage to the blooming fields. The very fact that Sukru had said it again, with such a malevolent look on his face, made Davud realize just how dangerous it was to be party to this information.

  That made two things perfectly clear. First, Sukru hadn’t known about the cavern. And second, now that he did know, he was worried. The patience of a butterfly and the anger of a bull, the Sparrow had said of Sukru. Although Davud believed those words, he hadn’t felt their weight. Not until now.

  He spent the return voyage wondering if Sukru would storm in and run a knife across Davud’s throat, as he’d done to the scarab.

  Chapter 24

  SEVERAL DAYS PASSED after unexpectedly finding Emre in Leorah’s yacht. They were busy days. Çeda met what felt like a thousand people. She heard tales. She helped to unload food and water and firewood from the ships for a feast held over the course of the day. She learned how to make a sour flatbread that had a thin, crispy, almost burnt shell and a soft, airy interior. Coupled with a rich tagine of lamb, potato, tomato, eggplant, and rosemary, it was divine. She tasted a dozen other dishes as well. Buttery saffron rice in the morning. A simple meal of pears and cheese near midday. The bread and tagine as the sun was lowering.

  Leorah finished Çeda’s tattoo. Staring at the finished image in a mirror, Çeda felt proud. To have her own story inked indelibly into her skin by the hand of her own great-grandmother was a thing she couldn’t have imagined a year ago. The image and its making bridged the distance between their generations, a weave that encompassed not only the two of them, but Ahya, Ishaq, and Macide as well.

  After two days of celebration, the mood of the tribe sobered. They had a purpose here, and the dangers mounted the longer they remained. Ishaq held council for long hours of each day. Most of those attending—Macide, Dardzada, Darius, Hamid the Cruel (as he’d come to be called), a broad-faced woman named Shal’alara who was said to have more lives than a cat, and more—had been leaders in the Moonless Host. The lines between the Host and the tribe had become so blurred that they were all now de facto tribe elders.

  Only once was Çeda summoned, and then only to recount her story for the elders to hear for themselves. She answered a few questions, but it was clear they already knew most of her tale. She’d hoped to speak to Ishaq about her plans to return to Sharakhai, to make her case clearly and calmly, but she was dismissed before she had a chance.

  She had gone to Ishaq several times after, hoping they might come to some accord, but he’d rebuffed her each time, making it clear to Çeda how poorly she’d handled herself the other day. She shouldn’t have been so impolitic, especially at their first meeting. She’d created a rift between them and now was having trouble finding a way to mend it. Wait, and he might assume she’d decided to join the tribe and cede her will to his, but push too hard or too quickly and it would cement his impression of her as an immature girl filled with fire and brimstone and little else.

  On her fifth day at camp, several ships prepared to sail. They didn’t want to risk the whole tribe being together for so long. Not just yet. So they ordered those ships carrying the tribe’s eldest and the mothers and the youngest of the children to sail for one of the safe havens the Moonless Host had used over the years. The rest would take to the sands the next day, following one final council.

  The ships eventually departed. Çeda thought Ishaq might come to bid the ships farewell, but he didn’t, and when sunset neared, Çeda began to worry that he now assumed Çeda was a part of the tribe. He might not give her a chance to speak after all. The council still hadn’t broken, and the morning would be consumed as the rest of the tribe prepared to leave. Swallowing an urge to walk into the pavilion and demand that Ishaq speak with her, she went to Leorah’s yacht, hoping to ask for her advice. Salsanna was there, sitting on one of the runners. Çeda made to head up the gangway, but Salsanna rose to her impressive, full height and stepped in Çeda’s path. “Leorah will be along soon.”

  The way she’d said it, so matter-of-factly, reminded Çeda of her mother’s manner, which in turn reminded her of the strange way she’d closed her letter. “Who is Devorah?” she asked Salsanna.

  Salsanna brushed the sand from the back of her blue skirt with the sort of absent care that made it clear just how much she was surprised by the question. “How do you know that name?”

  “It was in a letter my mother left to me. She said to trust Leorah and Devorah, for they both see beyond the horizon.”

  “Devorah was Leorah’s twin sister. She died when they were young. Your age, in fact.”

  “Died how?”

  Salsanna glanced at the gangway leading down from the ship, perhaps nervous that Leorah might hear her. “Years ago the shaikh of Tribe Rafik sheltered Leorah and Devorah, but Sukru somehow found them and demanded Leorah as his bride. On the morning Leorah was to depart for Sharakhai, Devorah went to Sukru’s ship. She posed as Leorah and told him before the crew and the entire tribe, that she would never consent, nor would any other woman from the tribe. She would die first, or if forced to go to Sharakhai, then she would kill him as he slept.” She glanced at the ship again, and lowered her voice before continuing. “It’s said she drew a knife right there and then and tried to cut Sukru’s neck. Sukru seemed to know she would try. He took the knife from her and drove it into her belly, dragged her to the edge of the deck, and threw her down to the sand. With Devorah dying below, Sukru stared out over the tribe. None had known what Devorah planned, and they were shocked, but they now stared defiantly at Sukru, as though each and every woman there was ready to treat Devorah’s threat as her own.

  “After s
pitting onto Devorah’s lifeless body, Sukru returned to Sharakhai. Many considered it a victory, but it had left Leorah without her sister. As the King’s galleon sailed away, she lay on the sand by Devorah’s side. She took the amethyst ring from her, the one she wears to this day, as a remembrance of the sacrifice her sister had made.”

  Out in the desert, Kerim wailed. It sent shivers down Çeda’s spine. She knew the sort of man Sukru was. Gods, the very thought of being married to him made her blood run cold. “I don’t doubt your tale, but why would my mother ask me to listen to them both, as if Devorah were still alive?”

  Salsanna shrugged. “Leorah won’t admit it, but she talks to the ring. She’s said now and again that both she and Devorah agreed on this or that. I think something broke in her the day Devorah died. When it did, she placed the broken pieces into that ring, along with her love for her sister.”

  A hollow thumping sound came from the yacht, and Leorah emerged. “Are you telling stories about me again?” She stood bent to one side, her cane helping to support her.

  Salsanna helped her down the gangway. “Would you rather I didn’t?”

  Leorah smiled slyly. “Depends on which story.”

  “Only the good ones,” Salsanna replied.

  “Well then,” Leorah said, winking at Çeda, “tell all you like.”

  Behind them, the elders of the tribe were stepping out of the pavilion. Another long wail fell across the sand, and many turned to look, including Ishaq—Çeda could see his silhouette, standing just outside the entrance, backlit in gold.

  Leorah’s story had sparked something in Kerim. Çeda could feel his hatred for Sukru, as well as a burning desire to obey him. She felt the same conflicted feelings from him toward Ishaq as on the morning they’d met several days before: a familial bond coupled with a deep-seated yearning to end his life.