Beneath the Twisted Trees Read online

  Tell her yes, Rümayesh spoke from her hiding place somewhere west of the Mirean camp.

  She was near, he realized. Very near. And suddenly he understood why. You thought this was a trap, Brama said. You caught the same scent, weeks before I did. That’s why you left me.

  She paused. They would never have harmed you.

  If you believed that why wouldn’t you have come yourself?

  It had to be this way. The queen knew you were but an emissary within moments of speaking to you. And I didn’t lie to you. There were things that needed tending to. He was about to reply, but she spoke over him. Look at her, Brama.

  Despite the feelings of betrayal, he obeyed. The sheen on Alansal’s skin had intensified, while the look in her eyes had darkened; they looked like two black pits in a field of stardust.

  Queen Alansal has spent her days collecting things like the bones of the old gods. Few could harm an ehrekh, or trap us like Çedamihn did with the sapphire, but there are some that might. How foolish would I have been to have gone to her without knowing more?

  It felt strange to be so closely watched by a queen whose powers he could only guess at while another sort of creature stared at him from within. In that moment, he would do anything to make it stop.

  “How large is the bone?” Brama asked Queen Alansal.

  “It is a piece the size of a chestnut.”

  “If we help you, all of it goes to my lady.”

  For the span of a breath, the queen considered, then nodded. “Very well.”

  “Very well,” Brama echoed. “Rümayesh agrees to join you.”

  He felt Rümayesh’s relief, which was strange in and of itself. He hadn’t realized how desperate the ehrekh would be to gain such a thing. But he was glad for it as well, because it hid his own secret: that for the first time since being caught up with Rümayesh, he had a chance to be rid of her once and for all.

  Chapter 3

  WITHIN THE ADICHARA GROVE, Çeda drew her kenshar and balled her right hand. The pain was already high, but she forced it higher by pumping her fist, then pressed the tip of her kenshar into her palm. Blood welled, dark and glistening in the pale light of the wavering blooms. When enough blood had gathered, she held her open palm to Mavra.

  Mavra hesitated, but not for long. She knew this was her path to freedom. With a hand that felt impossibly warm, she reached out and gripped Çeda’s wrist, then ran her too-dry tongue up Çeda’s palm, accepting the offered blood. Çeda felt a terrible thrill run through her, a quickening of sorts, while her link to Mavra, so weak and tentative a moment ago, crystallized into a bond that was every bit as strong as the one she’d shared with Kerim, the asir who’d accompanied her into the desert after the Night of Endless Swords.

  “Good,” Çeda said, ignoring the ache in her hand and wrist.

  Behind Mavra, the adichara were pulling back, allowing Sedef to return. It was Mavra’s doing. She knew, as Çeda did, that Sedef’s consent was crucial. Perhaps Sedef did too. It would explain why he seemed so wary, why he walked in a hunched, distrustful manner until he reached them. Only then did he pull himself up to his full, towering height. He smelled like a charnel and looked as if he were on the verge of savaging her.

  If it was meant to intimidate her, it didn’t work. Çeda refused to be cowed. She held her bloodied palm out to him.

  Sedef stared down at it, and Çeda saw the flash of an image: Sedef’s tongue being cut from him over a century earlier by King Cahil after Sedef had hesitated to obey an order. Unable to speak aloud, his words rang in her mind. We trade one form of slavery for another.

  And suddenly his show of strength made sense. He was scared. Not for himself, but for his kin. Çeda refused to lie to him, to any of them. They would all know the truth before they joined her.

  “Make no mistake,” she said, “you will be bound to me. It can be no other way until the curse is lifted. But you will be as free as I can make you.”

  Sedef’s eyes, those jaundiced eyes, looked as if he were about to break down and cry. Çeda could feel his thirst for revenge. It was greater than even Mavra’s. But he also knew that if this failed, they would all be hunted down by the Kings.

  “Please, Sedef.” She shook her hand. “Join me.”

  After a moment’s pause, he took her hand. With much of his tongue gone, he could only kiss her palm, then suck on his blood-glistened lips. But he managed it, and Çeda felt the bond with him grow. In some ways it ran through Mavra. She was their undisputed leader once more.

  As the ache in Çeda’s right hand deepened, a frail female form stepped forward, one of Mavra’s daughters. Then a waif of a boy, shriveled and blackened like the rest. Each licked her palm, forming a bond with Çeda, and the ache in her hand grew. She bore it with a smile, because the thought of freeing some of them, even imperfectly, made her heart soar.

  On and on they came, some two dozen in all, each pushing Çeda’s agony farther. She could hardly flex her hand for how terribly it hurt. The skin was angry and swollen, as if it were infected. The small red scar at the center of her thumb, the old puncture wound where the adichara thorn had pierced her skin, looked as if it were about to burst and release blood or poison or pus. For as long as Çeda could remember, she’d been able to sense the blooming fields, but never had her awareness felt so complete as it did now. She felt the blooms, the branches, the roots, even the strange cavern below Sharakhai where the roots all joined.

  “Çeda?”

  She also felt, for perhaps the first time, an enmity for the trees themselves. Perhaps it was a reflection of the asirim’s hatred. Or perhaps it was her own growing awareness of the part the trees had played in the enslavement of her people.

  “Çeda!”

  She turned to find Sümeya staring at her.

  “The night is wasting. The Kings may still come.”

  Çeda spoke in a distant tone, “We’re nearly done.”

  But when all of Mavra’s children had completed the ritual, Çeda remained where she was, simply feeling the trees. She took a sudden breath, her mind beginning to clear. Husamettín had likely felt what they had done, and what they were about to do would alert all of the Kings—how could it be otherwise? That danger had made her second guess her decision for weeks, but the chance that it might sever the asirim’s ties to the blooming fields, or at least allay their burden, was one she couldn’t pass up.

  “Unearth the trees,” Çeda said to the asirim. “Tear them up by the roots.”

  “No!” Melis said, stepping in front of Çeda.

  The asirim hesitated.

  “The trees must go,” Çeda said.

  She hadn’t expected any objections, but now she could see she’d misjudged the situation. Melis had always been the calm one, but now she was incensed.

  “The adichara are sacred!” Melis shouted.

  Çeda spoke calmly. “The trees are not sacred. They are a tool created by the gods to imprison my people.”

  Melis motioned to the gathered asirim. “We have what we’ve come for. It worked. I can feel it.”

  “Mavra and the rest have called these trees home since the days of Beht Ihman. They’re bound to them, Melis. The trees are part of what enslaves them.” When Melis made to speak again, Çeda pointed to the darkest part of the grove and talked over her. “You were taught that these groves were called the killing fields, were you not? They said it was because of the way the asirim, the holy warriors of Sharakhai, chased down her enemies, enemies whose bodies were thrown to the trees that they might drink of their blood. They have a different meaning to us. Death reigns here each month, Melis, when more tributes are collected. But for the asirim it is their own deaths, denied to them these many centuries, which the killing fields and these trees represent. How can you defend the very symbol of what is most reviled?”

  Melis stared at the clearing as if she co
uldn’t understand how she’d wound up there.

  “Let them take the trees,” Sümeya said.

  Melis glared at her as if it were the worst sort of betrayal. Her hand on the pommel of her ebon blade, she stalked away.

  “You should’ve told us,” Sümeya said once she was out of earshot. “You should’ve trusted us.”

  Çeda stood there, feeling foolish. “You’re right. It seemed so obvious to me, but I should have realized.”

  Sümeya looked as though she’d been expecting a different response. She waved to the asirim, who seemed agitated, on edge. “Best get on with it.”

  Çeda nodded. “Go,” she said to Mavra and the rest. “Tear the trees down, all of them that housed you.”

  They set to immediately, tearing at the trees, ripping up the smallest among them that they might reach the larger ones. Were these normal men and women, they would have no hope of tearing up these trees with their gnarled trunks, not without tools. But these were the asirim, and their strength was breathtaking.

  One tree broke with a great crack near its base. They threw the trunk aside and began digging up its roots. Nearby, Sedef and several others tore up another, larger than the first. Behind Çeda two more were falling to the strength of the asirim.

  It was loud, all around her, but Çeda was numb to it. She was coughing, bent over, left hand on her knee to keep herself from falling to the sand while her right hand covered her heart. It was beating so strangely, its rhythm like tripping down a set of stairs. And it hurt, as though each beat were causing irreversible damage.

  She tried to reach out to the asirim, but couldn’t. Her mind was running wild. She felt a presence, watching with keen interest. It reminded her of the visions in Nalamae’s tree, a hundred perspectives shown in the hanging crystals, except in this case she was the one being observed. It felt divine in nature, but she was certain it wasn’t Nalamae. It was another of the gods. Which, she wondered in growing fear, Yerinde? Tulathan? Rhia?

  She found no answer, and the vision faded, but her panic refused to ease. “Make them stop,” she said. But it came out too softly.

  Sümeya was suddenly at her side, one hand on her back. “What’s happened?”

  Çeda felt so weak. Her heart had begun to skip. “Make them stop!”

  Sümeya was not bonded to the asirim, but she had taken a petal. Çeda felt Sümeya press upon the asirim as she screamed for them to stop. It felt distant and muffled, but Çeda could hear the panic in her voice. It was that, more than anything, that brought Çeda back from the edge. She dropped to her knees, clutched her chest, and focused solely on her breathing, her heartbeat, willing both to fall into their proper rhythms.

  The asirim, meanwhile, listened. They felt Çeda’s pain and worry. It echoed within them. Mavra, Amile, Natise, and the rest. Even Sedef. They didn’t love her, but they at least saw her as an ally, and a woman whose blood ran thick with their own blood, and that meant much in the desert.

  The tearing, cracking sounds ceased. The clicking and clacking of the adichara resumed while the asirim closed in around her. Their worry cradled her like down. For a moment, she simply basked in it, realizing that the pain in her right arm had eased.

  “Are you well?” Sümeya asked, kneeling by her side.

  When Çeda didn’t respond, Sümeya felt the pulse on Çeda’s neck. She lay the backs of her fingers along Çeda’s forehead. It felt good, to be cared for. Beyond her, the twin moons had lowered in the west. She knew it shouldn’t, but the night felt strangely serene.

  That was when Çeda felt a new heartbeat. One she was sure hadn’t been there a moment ago.

  “Someone has come,” Çeda said, but it came out in a whisper. “Sümeya, someone has come!”

  Sümeya heard her this time. She stood, drawing her shamshir in a blinding flourish, and turned to the precise location where Çeda had sensed the new heartbeat. In a burst of movement, she dove right and whistled, Enemy! Beware!

  Something dark streaked through the air where Sümeya had been standing. The black shaft of an arrow sunk deep into the chest of an asir who wailed as she was spun to the ground.

  Mavra lifted her arm and pointed beyond the trees. Beşir! she called. King Beşir has come!

  Sedef was suddenly by Çeda’s side, pulling her to her feet.

  Sümeya sprinted along the pathway toward the open desert. Attack! she whistled to Melis. Protect our flank!

  Çeda saw movement to her left. The trees were parting. A tunnel of sorts opened directly ahead of her, giving a narrow view of the desert. On the sand stood a dark shape, bow drawn, sighting along the shaft of another arrow.

  The bowman released, the arrow flying straight for Çeda’s head. She’d begun to move, but already knew it was too late.

  Sedef charged into the arrow’s path and took it deep in the chest. He reeled from it, then grabbed the shaft and yanked it free. Bits of flesh and dark blood flew. He turned and loped with the others along the paths through the grove, following Sümeya.

  Çeda felt lightheaded. Her ability to feel those around her wavered. She felt King Beşir’s presence, but then he was simply gone. With a meaty thump, an arrow struck Mavra’s side where she was lumbering behind Çeda. Mavra screamed, a pitiful, high-pitched sound that turned into a growl. Sedef reached her side, placed a hand around the shaft, and drew the arrow from her ribs. He caught another of the black-fletched arrows in his thigh for the trouble.

  They fled from the blooming field and into open desert.

  Melis stood ready with her short bow, the string already pulled to her cheek. Sümeya had just strung hers and was drawing an arrow from the quiver along her back.

  “If we don’t do something,” Sümeya said, “he’ll kill us all.”

  From within the blooming fields, more arrows streaked through the night. Melis and Sümeya let fly with arrows of their own, but their shots never found their target. Beşir’s angle of attack was always carefully chosen and their arrows were often caught in the branches. Whenever their aim came too close, Beşir simply moved to a new location where the branches would part for him, opening up a new pathway for his deadly fire. He was concentrating on the asirim, sending them into a panic, but Çeda waited with River’s Daughter drawn, her mind open and aware, knowing that sooner or later Beşir would return his attention to the three of them.

  She felt a shift, and Beşir’s dark silhouette appeared inside the blooming fields twenty paces away. His bow was already drawn and aimed toward Sümeya. Çeda slid right and lunged with her buckler as the arrow was released. It struck her shield hard and ricocheted with an ear-piercing ting.

  Beşir loosed two more in rapid succession, one for Çeda, another for Melis. Çeda dodged the one meant for her and blocked the other, though this time the arrow struck the face of her buckler with so much force her entire arm went numb. Her joints were just starting to tingle, the feeling returning, when she felt a tug along her lower back, then a burning along her skin, evidence of a grazing arrow that bit into the nearby dune with a sound like crunching gravel.

  It took Melis and Sümeya only the beat of a heart to aim and loose their arrows, but by then Beşir was already gone. The tunnel he’d created in the trees slowly shrank back into place.

  Çeda suddenly felt him near. Very near. Just behind Melis, where Çeda couldn’t easily use her sword to meet him. Melis felt him as well. She turned, holding her bow like a staff, but Beşir, clothed in a black khalat and turban, was already swinging his own bow across her guard.

  He struck Melis on the side of the head. Even before she collapsed in a heap, he was on Sümeya, using her position and his own quick footwork to prevent Çeda from reaching him. Sümeya blocked the swing of his tall bow with her shorter one once, twice, but when she tried a third time Beşir dissolved like a shadow and reappeared behind her, his bow across her neck.

  “Well, well,” B
eşir said, his voice sonorous and expressive, not unlike Ibrahim the storyteller, “if it isn’t the black sheep who began it all.”

  Sümeya struggled, but Beşir had her at an extreme disadvantage. He held her steady, the bow slowly cutting off her air supply. Her movements were coming slower, her resistance weakening as she blacked out. Çeda was ready when Sümeya slumped to the ground. She charged and attacked, but Beşir parried her blows, batting them away with sharp twists of his bow.

  Several asirim were galloping toward them on all fours, including Sedef, who favored his wounded side. Beşir seemed unconcerned. “Husamettín thought you would reappear in Sharakhai before you dared the blooming fields.” He blocked another of her blows. “But I bargained you would come here, to do exactly this.”

  Çeda felt for Beşir’s heart. She tried to reach for it, to press on him, but it was as though his heart were able to disappear and reappear, just like the man himself.

  “Some of the other Kings might be impressed by what you’ve managed to do. But I’m not. It ends here, Çedamihn Ahyanesh’ala. It ends tonight.”

  She knew he was going to use his god-granted power on her, just as he had with Sümeya. It was only a question of when.

  From her right, Çeda felt the lifting of the sand. Mavra was kneeling, one of her great hands pressed to the ground, and the sand was blowing in a gale before her. At this point it was no more than a stiff wind, but Çeda could tell she was readying for something. Sedef was nearing, and he was dragging a bulky object behind him.

  Çeda and Beşir traded several more blows as Sedef’s heavy footsteps brought him closer. Then Beşir retreated. By all appearances he was a man who’d seen fifty summers, but he moved like a gazelle. He drew an arrow from the quiver at his hip as he did so. She’d just begun to charge as he nocked the arrow.

  And then she felt it.

  The strange tug inside her that she now recognized as Beşir’s intent to shift among the shadows.