With Blood Upon the Sand Page 3

  “Of course, my lord. It was”—Dana’il’s soft features contorted into a haunted grimace—“difficult. For her, I mean, not me. She told me after I’d carried her back upstairs that she’d made a breakthrough. She’d wore him down, more than ever before. I thought surely she would sleep, but she grabbed my wrist, holding me there, and told me she needed urgently to speak with you. I tell you, I’ve never seen anything like it. She was in a fey mood, and the desperation in her eyes . . . She had that look of hers, the one that makes you feel mortal. I feared for her life even as she lay there safely in bed. I feared for yours as well.”

  “But why the urgency, Dana’il? She can’t possibly mean to try again now.”

  “My lord, she does mean to. Something new, she told me.”

  This didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel right at all. “Give me her exact words.”

  “She said to fetch you, to say it was time for you to pull the rope as well.”

  He rolled his eyes, then fixed his gaze on the castle above. “How many times have I offered?” he said under his breath.

  “I’m sorry, my lord?”

  “Never mind.”

  The wind driving them, they made their way toward the cliff while, out to sea, the clouds gathered their might.

  The wind, Ramahd thought. How the wind will howl tonight.

  Meryam detested it when Ramahd helped her eat or drink, but he couldn’t watch her struggle any longer. Sitting by her bedside, he cradled the back of her head while pressing a glass of honeyed goat’s milk to her lips. She sipped, nostrils flaring, eyes staring fixedly at the painting of a mountain fastness on the wall. Gaunt, was all he could think while watching her drink. So very gaunt. He’d thought of leaving and forcing her to sleep until she’d regained her strength, but he’d decided on the climb up that he’d listen before making his decision.

  When she finished the milk, she licked her lips and patted Ramahd’s hand. “Well enough,” she said, and he lowered her gently back down. Her eyelids were heavy. She wouldn’t remain awake much longer. Despite the urgency she’d shown to Dana’il, she now seemed calm, perhaps appeased now that Ramahd had arrived.

  “Tell me why you’ve summoned me here,” Ramahd said.

  “Because I need your help.”

  “You know you have but to ask.”

  Meryam chuckled, a tumble of stones. It became a wracking cough, but thankfully it was soon over. Her sunken eyes turned wicked. “Be careful what you offer, dear brother. You mightn’t like what comes of it.”

  Brother, she often called him, though they weren’t related. It was one small remnant of the days when Ramahd had been married to Meryam’s sister, Yasmine. He’d called her sister as well. He’d liked their little ritual then, the two of them giving sly smiles to Yasmine, who was endlessly annoyed by it, but now it only served to remind Ramahd of the wife he’d lost in the desert, the daughter who had followed her mere days later.

  “I’m well aware of the dangers, sister. What is it you wish? Shall we take up your father, the king’s, offer? Bring others from Almadan to assist?”

  Meryam waved at the air as if the suggestion were an annoyance akin to a buzzing insect. “No. What I need is your mind. Your will.”

  “Mine?” Ramahd crossed his arms over his chest, the chair creaking beneath him. “What can I do where you have failed?”

  “And here we arrive at the difficulty. Hamzakiir was buried half dead and left for decades beneath Külaşan’s palace. When he was raised by Macide and his men, he hungered for blood. He still hungers. I thought I could use that to my advantage. I’ve been pressing him each time we wage battle, but he’s wary, Ramahd. And wily. A dozen times I thought I had him, but each time he retreats into his mind, and today he nearly turned the tables on me.”

  “Then we should wait. Give you time to regain your strength while we starve him.”

  Meryam scowled. “No. He is weak from my efforts. If we give him time to rest, he will regain strength as well. How he lives without sustenance, I do not know. Likely it was part of the bargain he made with Guhldrathen, and surely it’s the very thing that kept him alive for so many years in the catacombs. I would give him no respite.”

  “Then what can I do?”

  “I need bait, Ramahd.”

  Ramahd was not entirely surprised by the response, but the way she’d said bait, like she hungered for it as well, made him wonder how close to the end of her energies she really was. “You want me to draw him out.”

  Meryam nodded. “To draw him out, and in so doing leave him vulnerable.”

  “How?”

  “With blood, dear brother. Yours.”

  “You wish me to give my own blood to a man who could kill us the moment he frees himself?”

  “It’s that or kill him and be done with it.”

  “Exactly what I’ve been saying since we took him in the desert. Let’s return there and throw him at Guhldrathen’s feet, then hunt for Macide as we’ve promised to do.”

  Meryam was already shaking her head, her body quivering terribly. “Even if I wished it, and I don’t, my father would not allow it. Hamzakiir is a valuable piece on the aban board. The king will not throw him away so easily.”

  “Guhldrathen is a threat that grows every day, endangering us all.”

  “So dramatic. I may be threatened by the ehrekh. You may be. But he hardly threatens us all.”

  Ramahd took a deep breath. He wasn’t going to argue again. Meryam wouldn’t change her mind, and neither would her father. “When?”

  Meryam smiled, nodding at him as if he were some prized nephew who had just taken a splendid turn at archery. “I would begin now.”

  Ramahd had thought Dana’il foolish for thinking so. Even now he thought Meryam was making light, but when she didn’t return his smile, he knew she was sincere. “You can’t be ready so soon.”

  “He is particularly weak.”

  “You are particularly weak.”

  “I don’t wish to delay. I know I look frail, brother, but I am more ready than I have ever been. Together, you and I will break him.”

  He was ready to deny her out of hand. She normally took days to recover, and even then it felt as if she were pushing herself to the point of recklessness. “Why is it so important to do this now?”

  “Because I nearly have him.”

  He tried to measure her words and her will, but he knew little of the red ways. Meryam must see some particular weakness in Hamzakiir she wished to exploit. Weak she may be, but Hamzakiir may be even weaker. Had they not been starving him all this time? And surely Meryam’s dogged determination to break him had chipped away at Hamzakiir’s defenses.

  “Very well,” Ramahd said at last. “If you think it’s best.”

  “Oh, I do,” she said, her dark eyes twinkling. “I do indeed.”

  In one corner of a cell beneath Black Swan Tower, the burning coals of a brazier cast a deep red light against the ceiling and walls. The air smelled of dampness and mildew. The contrast of the cold from the sea to the chill found here in the dungeon was stark. His swims were invigorating. His time spent here in the dungeon of Viaroza, however, never failed to cut him to the bone, as if the men and women and children who’d died in this place were still hanging on, refusing to go to the farther fields, preferring instead to reach for the hearts of living men with their spectral hands.

  At the center of the cell Meryam leaned into a large padded chair. Dana’il stood by her side, ready to support her should she begin to fail. Facing her was a monstrosity of a chair, a veritable throne with dark leather straps, its wood stained indelibly by the blood of those who’d fallen into its unforgiving embrace, and within it sat Hamzakiir, the straps and their buckles holding him tight. Ramahd stood before this strange tableau—a healthy man, a broken woman, and an undying prisoner—wondering again if he’d made th
e right choice. It wasn’t too late to change his mind. He could deny Meryam. He could lift the razor he held loosely in one hand and slit Hamzakiir’s throat. And yet he remained silent, hoping desperately that this would all be over today.

  Hamzakiir’s head lolled forward, his lank hair hanging down to cover his face. He was so still many would think him dead, but Ramahd knew the signs: the sluggish movements of his eyes, the glacial expansion of his chest. His pulse could only be felt in the large veins along his neck, and even then seemed far too slow, far too weak to keep a man alive. He was like the golems the holy men of Malasan were said to create. And yet Ramahd knew he was anything but weak. For all Meryam had done to him, he was still a keenly dangerous man. We play with fire, Ramahd thought, me and Meryam and her father, the King of Qaimir. But what was there to do now but harness it lest it burn down everything around them?

  “Come closer,” Meryam said, flicking her fingers.

  Ramahd complied. His gut churned at being so close to this broken remnant of a man. It was the same reaction he had to the asirim of Sharakhai, but somehow Hamzakiir felt more threatening. The asirim were simple creatures of rage, while Hamzakiir, if the stories of him were true, was filled with calculation, ambition, even hubris, qualities infinitely more dangerous.

  When Dana’il held out a glazed bowl, roughly equidistant between Meryam and Hamzakiir, Meryam pointed a crooked finger to Ramahd. “Now . . .”

  Ramahd stepped forward and held his right arm over the bowl. He lifted the razor and pressed its edge against his skin. Not twenty minutes ago, he’d used it to lay a wound across his left arm so that Meryam might drink of his blood in preparation for this, the second part of their ritual. He drew the razor back, creating a twin to the other wound. An intense burn came a moment later. Blood flowed. It pooled at the bowl’s center, pattered against the cerulean glaze.

  “Enough,” Meryam said after a time.

  Ramahd took the fresh bandage over his right arm and wrapped the wound, quickly and efficiently.

  “Now lift his head.”

  Ramahd did, and Dana’il lifted the bowl with Ramahd’s blood to Hamzakiir’s lips. Hamzakiir was unresponsive for a time. His eyes were closed. A long, stained beard hung from his chin and his long, gaunt cheeks. But then his throat worked. His mouth parted.

  “Be ready,” Meryam said. “I will help, but you must hold him at bay for as long as you’re able.”

  Ramahd’s heart beat madly. Give him a sword. Give him a place to meet his enemy on the field of battle. As common as the arcanos di crimson was in Qaimir, he’d never been completely comfortable with it, even with Meryam, a woman he mostly trusted. It was far worse to be entwining his soul with a man like Hamzakiir, no matter that Meryam was here to protect him.

  Dana’il stood across from Ramahd, holding the bowl steady, his eyes darting between Ramahd, Meryam, and Hamzakiir. There was fear in his eyes, and in the way he stood stock-still, tight as a bowstring, ready for whatever might come. The two of them had agreed beforehand that if things grew out of hand, he’d be given leave to plunge a knife into Hamzakiir’s chest. Ramahd gave him a quick nod, and Dana’il nodded back. Ever stout was Dana’il, ever faithful.

  Hamzakiir lifted his head, the chair’s leather straps creaking as he strained against them. Eyes still closed, his head craned forward, as if it were a reaction he had no control over. Dana’il tilted the bowl up, a determined look on his face. Hamzakiir drank of the blood, tentatively at first. He swallowed, once, twice. The fresh wound along Ramahd’s right arm flared to life, then immediately began to feel cool, then cold. Soon it was as though his right arm had been plunged into a cask of ice water.

  Her eyes still fixed on Hamzakiir, Meryam said, “Sit down, Ramahd.”

  There was another chair in the corner, but Ramahd refused to move. “I will stand for this, Meryam.”

  She shrugged. “As you will.”

  Hamzakiir swallowed more blood. His eyes twitched beneath their lids. Ramahd felt his fingers going numb. The deep chill traveled up his right shoulder, across his chest, and down his left arm—the connection being formed between these two with him as the crude conduit.

  Meryam had prepared him, but to feel it . . . The clawing cold spread to his chest, his torso, his legs and feet. Only when the cold ran through every part of him did a growing presence make itself known. At first it was nothing he could pinpoint, but rather a thing that encompassed the room, filled the darkness within it. It was a primal thing, a thing every man feared whether he wished to admit it or not. It was vast, this presence. Powerful. Undeniable, like the moons as they rose from the horizon in the dead of night.

  Years ago, Ramahd had been dumped from a ship near the cold southern islands of the Austral Sea. Those desolate places were rimed with ice, scoured by the unforgiving wind. It had taken him long minutes to swim back to the ship, and by the time he’d regained the deck, his body had ceased shivering, which the ship’s physic had said was a terrible sign. They’d taken him belowdecks to dry him off and warm him. His movements, no matter how small, had felt like ice picks being driven through chinks in his frozen skin, fracturing him bit by bit.

  The experience was not so different from what he felt in that cell below Viaroza, only it was much worse, for while he felt the same sort of physical pain, he also felt torn between two wills, Meryam’s and Hamzakiir’s. They were powerful in ways he hadn’t fully comprehended, as if they’d been slumbering beasts, aeons lost, and now had risen and were girding for battle.

  Meryam’s breath came sharp and quick. “Have you returned to us?”

  Her voice was calm, but Ramahd knew how hard she was fighting—he could feel the battle raging within him. Hamzakiir’s strength was terrible, and it made Ramahd wonder at the sort of horror he might become if given the chance to heal. Ramahd had no hope of stopping such a thing; he prayed to Alu that Meryam did.

  Indeed, her presence strengthened, a bastion against the coming storm. Dana’il’s right hand now rested along the handle of his fishing knife. His look questioned Ramahd, but it was not yet time. Ramahd shook his head. Dana’il swallowed, eyes flitting like a cornered fox, first to Hamzakiir, then to Meryam. He motioned to Ramahd’s right hand. The white bandage had somehow come loose. Blood trickled down Ramahd’s fingers to tap against the grimy stone floor. Only then did he feel the warmth of it, a failing brand against a growing winter storm.

  Hamzakiir slowly lifted his head. His pepper-gray hair hung around his face. His eyes seemed to have difficulty focusing, but then they came to rest on Meryam, and hardened. “Well, well,” he said, his voice a bitter groan from long disuse. “The child from Qaimir.”

  “I found you for a reason, Hamzakiir. Do you not wish to know it?”

  “I’ll not speak to my captors as though they were equals. Release me, Meryam shan Aldouan, and we may talk. Do not, and I will free myself.”

  “Listen to me now,” Meryam said, ignoring his words. “Listen . . .”

  And Meryam spoke, though what she might have said, Ramahd couldn’t say. He was feeling light-headed, and was having a difficult enough time simply keeping his feet under him. He breathed more deeply, feeling the bond running through him from Meryam to Hamzakiir. The two were fully linked now, though whether Meryam was getting what she desired from it, he couldn’t say. What kept scratching away at his mind, however, was how she’d pressed, how she’d changed her own pattern after weeks of effort plodding in the same dogged fashion. Meryam, always so persistent. And that gleam in her eye when Ramahd had finally assented, as if she were pleased but didn’t wish him to know it.

  Eyelids impossibly heavy, Ramahd swung his head toward Hamzakiir, who looked stronger now, more able to sit his chair. Meryam was no longer speaking. It was Hamzakiir who spoke, whispering while Meryam listened, rapt. Dana’il had an expression of naked worry. He’d drawn his knife. He gripped it tightly in his right hand, holding
it as if ready to drive it into Hamzakiir’s chest but for whatever reason had decided against it. He caught Ramahd looking at him, eyes pleading for Ramahd to do something, to understand the danger they were all in.

  But Ramahd didn’t. Not until Hamzakiir looked up and asked Ramahd to unbuckle his straps. Only when Ramahd complied, his mind going through motions he knew to be very, very wrong, did he begin to understand what was happening, but there was a veil over his mind and his thoughts, preventing him from doing anything about it. Hamzakiir gave more commands, though what they might have been Ramahd had no idea. He saw himself helping Hamzakiir out of the chair, walking him slowly out of the room, up the stairs, and into the castle proper. He led Hamzakiir to the Lord’s chambers, his own bedroom. And there he pulled back the bedcovers, helped Hamzakiir into the bed, and settled the blankets over him as if Hamzakiir were Ramahd’s own grandfather who’d taken sick.

  “Go now,” Hamzakiir said easily, “I need my rest, but wake me on the morrow. There’s much to do before we leave for the desert. And return for your sister. She’ll be cold, I expect.” He smiled absently and patted Ramahd’s sticky, blood-covered hand. “We wouldn’t wish her to catch cold.”

  Ramahd nodded, bowing his way out of the room. He returned to the dungeon beneath the tower. Meryam was as she’d been, sitting and staring at the empty chair across from her. Hadn’t someone been sitting there? He was distracted by the form of a man lying on the floor. Ramahd stared at those lifeless eyes, the knife held loosely in one hand. A wide, gaping wound ran across his abdomen. His entrails lay spilled across the floor like coils of bloody rope.

  How odd, Ramahd thought, for a man to do such a thing. Who the man might be Ramahd had no idea. He looked familiar, but Ramahd couldn’t place him. Some thief, no doubt, given the punishment he deserved.

  Ramahd turned to Meryam, who studied the empty chair, eyes agape. “What have I done?” she voiced in a breathy, quavering whisper.

  “What did you say?” Ramahd asked.

  She looked up to him, a hard sort of understanding forming in her eyes, but then the look faded. “I’m so very cold, Ramahd. Take me upstairs, won’t you?”