Читать книгу: «The Blue Eye», страница 6
9
ARIAN FOUND THE OTHERS ON A RIDGE ABOVE THE SUPPLY DEPOT, where most of the camp was asleep. A handful of guards were near a small armory, another one asleep at the foot of a trio of camels. The Nineteen had grown confident to leave so few here, but it was more likely that they had dozens of similar depots dotted about the desert.
“Wait here,” Khashayar told them. He disappeared down the ridge.
“How did you know to call the aesar?” Sinnia asked.
She hugged Sinnia close to her, the warmth of the contact easing the chill of her encounter with Najran. “From those stories you told me of your childhood. Those tales of warriors who crossed the Sea of Reeds to summon up the firewinds.”
“Those were fables,” Sinnia muttered, aghast. “That was quite a risk.”
“Surprising, I know,” Arian teased. “Given our adherence to only proofs we can see.”
A pause. Then Sinnia’s bold grin. She squeezed Arian harder.
“Wretch.”
Arian smiled too. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist.”
She noticed Wafa staring at the pair of them, mildly indignant that the Companions had found anything to laugh at in their near escape.
She stroked a hand through his curls, kissing the top of his head.
“Don’t be frightened,” she reassured him. “Have faith in Khashayar.”
Wafa snorted in disgust, which she apprehended as his general disgust at men of every stripe, save for the Silver Mage. At the thought of Daniyar, her spark of amusement subsided. The depth of her longing for him remained acutely painful.
She took a sip of water from her waterskin, then offered it to Wafa, meeting Sinnia’s eyes. Using the language of the Citadel, she told Sinnia what had happened in the valley.
“Twice now, I’ve been unable to kill Najran.”
Sinnia’s eyes swept the supply camp for signs of renewed activity. There was no sign of Khashayar, a black blade against the night.
“Najran is the Shaykh’s sayyid. He wouldn’t have risen as high as he has if he wasn’t uniquely gifted.”
Arian’s exhalation was a sigh. “Perhaps. But I failed to kill him with the Claim. I split the Registan with my voice and killed dozens of Ahdath at the Clay Minar. And together, we held off the One-Eyed Preacher. How could Najran have resisted the compulsion of the Claim?”
“There is no compulsion in faith,” Sinnia reminded her.
Sinnia was right, but it was beside the point. The real question was whether Arian had now encountered someone more powerful than the One-Eyed Preacher. Like the Nizam of Ashfall, Najran was a whisperer who had the ear of power. How far did that power extend? Could there be something to the Nineteen’s numerology—a hidden message contained within the arithmetic of the Claim? If there was, why had Najran then denied the power of the Nineteenth revelation? Why had he dismissed the story of the Adhraa as a story of the Esayin?
She had a more practical concern, as well. How long would the veil of fire hold before Najran tracked them again?
“Let’s go.” Khashayar’s gravel-edged voice. He’d crept up to them without a trace of noise.
Sinnia hissed in surprise. “You’ll be the death of me, Khorasan. Next time give us a warning.”
A corner of his mouth jerked up. “That warning would come with blood that I’d prefer not to spill.”
The words might have softened his image as a member of the Zhayedan, but when Sinnia scanned the supply camp again, she saw that the guards lay dead upon the ground.
“What of the others in the tent?”
“Don’t ask.” He pulled both of the Companions to their feet, easier now with physical contact. A camaraderie was building between them; neither woman rebuked him. Keeping his voice low, he added, “I’ve damaged their armory and spoiled their food supplies, though I set some aside for our journey. The camels are ready. I can add your packs to their load.”
Arian and Sinnia helped him load their supplies, careful to divide their waterskins evenly between their three mounts. Unlike Sinnia, Arian hadn’t ridden a camel before. Their strong smell and snorting breath came as a surprise, as did their long, thick lashes. Camel spiders scurried around their hooves. Arian suppressed a shudder. Wafa shrank back from their dun-colored mounts, his expression frightened and forlorn.
“Do you want to ride with me, boy?” Khashayar offered. Wafa shook his head with a scowl that bordered on rudeness. He clung to Sinnia’s hand, making his preference clear.
“So this is your thanks for the way I carried you across the desert. Ruffian.”
Khashayar’s grin flashed against the darkness. He boosted Arian up onto her camel, swinging into his seat with easy masculine strength. Arian kept pace with him, Sinnia and Wafa at his other side. It took them some time to adjust to the swinging gait of their mounts, but Khashayar rode without difficulty.
“You’ve done this before,” Arian observed.
“Training,” he answered briefly. He wouldn’t tell her more. The Zhayedan protected the secrets of their army.
“We should make for the Gulf of Khorasan. If we cut through the gulf, we’ll be at the court of the Negus much sooner than we planned.”
A sharp shake of his head. “I overheard the guards.” Faint contempt in the words. The Zhayedan wouldn’t be so careless discussing their plan of battle. “The Nineteen hold the Gulf. They’ve set the ports ablaze, which means there’s no safe place for us to cross. We’ll cut southeast, travel overland, skirt the far edge of the Rub Al Khali. Then we can cross the Sea of Reeds. If we journey south on the water, we’ll be able to make up some time.”
Arian considered his plan, conscious of what he’d chosen not to say.
“If we take the longer road, by the time we reach Timeback, Ashfall may have fallen.”
A grim twist of Khashayar’s lips. “Not as long as there are Zhayedan left to fight. I have my orders from the Khan. I won’t allow myself to fail them.”
Too tired to argue with his Zhayedan stubbornness, Arian subsided in her seat.
He glanced over at her, his gaze skirting the shadows under her eyes, dropping lower to the pale curves of her mouth.
“You should rest, First Oralist. I can lead the camels while you sleep. We’ll be easier to spot come daylight.” He reached for Sinnia’s lead too. “You as well, Companion. Neither of you have rested since your arrival at Ashfall. Nor long before, I suspect.”
Sinnia snatched back her lead with a sinuous twist of her shoulders. “I can manage.”
But he knew how to persuade her. “The First Oralist will not sleep if you remain on guard. Will you permit your contrariness to add to her fatigue?”
Glaring at him, Sinnia passed him the lead.
Khashayar swallowed a smile. “I’ve anchored your carrier. If the boy doesn’t jostle you, you should be able to sleep.”
Sinnia settled back with thanks, Wafa fitted against the sleek curves of her body.
A quiet question from the First Oralist disturbed the silence, as Khashayar linked their reins together. “Does it ever rain in the desert, Khashayar?”
“This isn’t true desert,” he answered. “These are small dunes over scrublands—they collect their share of rain. When we cross the Rub Al Khali, you’ll be able to tell the difference.”
She’d eased back in her saddle, still alert, the rich color of her eyes silvered at the edges by starlight. A soldier to his bones, Khashayar’s senses tingled at this touch of the supernatural.
“Will you offer a prayer for Ashfall?” A storm of emotion in his eyes as he thought of his burning city.
She leaned over to take his hand, her palm soft under his. “May the unrighteous fail to prosper, may no harm come to the believers. May Ashfall stay safe for all the nights to come, may the One protect the Guardian of Candour.” Her voice went quiet. When she let go of his hand, his retained the warmth of her touch. Another sign of who she was.
Her eyelids were heavy now; he urged her to rest again.
She settled back in her seat.
Then he had the night to himself.
10
THERE WAS TOTAL DARKNESS IN THE COLD ROOM BENEATH THE QAYSARIEH Portal. Its walls were lined with nooks that ran from the ground to the vaulted ceiling above. Each nook could be piled with the bodies that fell in war, until a moment of respite allowed for burial rites. In the center of the room was a giant table whose surface was formed of a marble slab, cool and dark and at least three feet thick. Along one wall of the room was a heavy set of double doors that led to a similar chamber on the other side, this one staffed by healers, busy with care of the wounded. Thus far, the doors had remained closed. There was only one body in the cold room.
The delicate form of the Princess of Ashfall was laid upon the marble slab atop a silk divan with silver handles decorated with obsidian rooks. Her thick dark hair fell in spiraling curls from the slab to the floor, a lock at her temple as white and jagged as lightning.
The Assassin lit a torch and placed it in a brace by the door, so that soft gold light danced over the Princess’s face. Her body had been washed and dressed in a burial robe, which fit too loosely on her slight frame.
The same insult in death that had been offered her in life.
“No more,” he whispered, bending to her ear. He brushed aside the curls clustered around her forehead, slipping off his gloves to wind the single white lock around his finger. The lock singed by the One-Eyed Preacher’s fire felt brittle to the touch, not silky like the riotous curls that spilled in abundance to the floor.
The Assassin let his gaze caress Darya from her forehead to the soles of her feet. Releasing the lock twined about his finger, he raised his sensitive fingertips to open Darya’s eyes. They stared straight up at the ceiling, black as onyx, the pupils striated in shock. A faint odor of death emanated from her body, proof of the onset of decay.
But she was not yet lost to the Assassin.
He unsheathed a blade made of bone from a strap at his waist, running the tips of his fingers along its edge. The knife would do.
There were three sources of power in the chamber: The chill of the cold room. The flickering light of the torch. And the Assassin himself. He sheared off part of the white curl of hair with his blade, setting it on the table not far from Darya’s head. Then, running the edge of the blade over her robe, he slit the flesh over Darya’s heart. He pressed the blade into her flesh until a single pearl of blood welled up over its tip. An act of preservation he had thought of from the moment he had spied the Princess on her bier. A careful exhalation and the blood drop on the tip of his blade settled on the shorn white lock.
Next he took Darya’s wrist in his hand, pushing up the sleeve of her robe. He studied the delicate carpus, the two rows of bones that knotted her wrist together. Angling his blade with care, he made an incision through flesh. On the proximal side, he sliced swiftly until a shaving of bone curled up on the tip of the blade. Placing her wrist gently back on the table, he nicked the shaving with two of his fingers so that it landed on top of the drop of blood.
Then he took his blade and used it to etch a six-point star into the marble. His preparations were complete.
He bent over Darya again, pressing his thumb to her lips. Its curves were still resilient. Nodding in satisfaction, he angled Darya’s jaw to leave her mouth wide open.
The sound of raised voices came to him from the chamber across from the cold room. Their efforts with the wounded were failing. Soon the healers would require this room.
He moved quickly, calling up the verse of the Bloodprint he had taken the time to memorize in the hour the Black Khan had spared him at his fortress.
The Assassin was not a traitor to the Khan. He had studied verses from the Bloodprint as promised, to aid in the Black Khan’s defense. But he had also done more. He had sought the answer to a riddle that had long defied his understanding.
The living cannot be called forth from the dead, except on the Day of Resurrection.
If they could, the powers of his tribe of Assassins could grow to unparalleled dimensions. The question was not whether the Assassin could raise the dead. The question was whether he ought to: whether having raised the Princess from her bier, he would then be able to command her. To restore the Princess to the role she should have occupied as the right hand of her brother.
He’d sensed the power of the Claim inside the Princess, just as the First Oralist had, when Arian had thought herself unobserved with Darya in the Black Khan’s scriptorium.
He’d witnessed Darya’s vision as it appeared in Arian’s mind. He permitted himself the familiarity of her name because he was gifted in the Claim himself. His gift bound him to any who were similarly bound or inspired, and with Arian—
He’d caught her words, perhaps because he was uniquely disposed to hear them.
You are a child of Hira.
You belong to us.
A regretful smile at the limits of Arian’s vision. Arian thought she’d found another disciple of Hira who might be made literate, when Darya’s power was at her fingertips. Where it could and would serve Ashfall.
Then there was the question of the Assassin. The Black Khan owed him a debt, one the Assassin hadn’t claimed. Until this moment with the Princess.
He hadn’t sought the Khan’s permission because he knew the Khan would not refuse him. Not after everything the Assassin had offered in the Khan’s service.
And he hadn’t yet begun.
He would give the Black Khan more, offer him true fealty, if he could have the Princess.
To an end he would share with no one. Not even the Khan he admired.
He had enemies in common with the Khan. And for the moment that was reason enough.
He murmured the verse he’d selected from the Bloodprint. He whispered it three times over his small pile of relics, and then he waited. Fire struck the lock of hair, sparked crimson with the drop of blood, acquired the blade-sharp edge of bone before dissolving into dust. He gathered the odorless dust onto the tip of his finger. Then he dropped it into Darya’s mouth.
He leaned close and pressed his lips to hers, breathing into her mouth.
Once, twice, a third time … until the wooden legs of the table rocked against the floor and the slab of marble cracked in two.
Movement. The soldiers in the other room were shifting the metal bar that locked the door between the chambers.
There was little time to act.
He whispered the final words.
“Breathe, Princess, and rise.”
11
COLD SLEET AGAINST HER SKIN IN THE DARK OF UNSETTLED NIGHT. Bones that felt fragile, breakable with a breath. Skin stretched across sinew. And unfamiliar movement, fingers curling into soft, wet palms, untouched by the hardship of labor.
Who am I? she asked from the quarry of nightmare.
Princess of Ashfall, came the answer.
Then where is my brother?
Fighting a war that only you can end.
Memory returned in broken pieces. A princess at the edge of the court, who found herself in disfavor. The eager desire that clamored in her blood to win her brother’s approval. A handsome man in uniform who sat at the right hand of the prince. His name came to her mind.
Arsalan.
He is not for you, Princess.
Cold rejection in her soul. Arsalan was hers, and she would claim him.
Where am I?
Open your eyes, Princess. Discover the truth for yourself.
Her eyelids drifted apart. She was sitting on a stone bench under a night sky streaked with shining sleet, the stars above her polished to silver blades. Petals of snow bloomed against her skin. Her head was … free … light, her neck open to the cool kiss of the wind. Her hair was undressed, flowing over her shoulders like a cape. When she pressed her hands to the bench to raise herself to her feet, the sound of bells didn’t follow. She was unencumbered.
On the stone bench across from her, a figure watched her from the shadows. Waited for her to take in her surroundings. A park inside the palace, a green garden lush with groves of almond blossoms and plane trees. A place for lovers to meet to give in to clandestine desires.
A sudden throb of emotion.
Was the man who watched her from the shadows her lover?
They were enclosed in a secret copse among a dozen others in the garden, this one perfumed with jasmine. Utterly peaceful in the haze of midnight, the scent of jasmine rose around her body and calmed her.
The man who watched came to his feet in a sleek and silent motion.
Was it Arsalan, the general of her brother’s army? Would he touch her, kiss her, take her for his own?
Arsalan—
What do you remember, Princess?
He stayed in the shadows so she couldn’t see his face. But Arsalan’s voice called to her, sang to her across the wall of sound that crashed down over her memories.
What was the sound? Was it the sound of battle?
Weaponry loaded and fired. The urgent voices of men calling across the courtyard. Stone against stone … a battering rush of noise.
Her name. Her name called by a man who loved her.
And a blue-eyed boy chasing at her heels, his small hands reaching out to catch her.
Why was she at the walls? Why did she race to the Messenger Gate, her bells chiming a frantic alarm?
Why was there so much smoke … where had the thunder come from … a roar of fury and terror …?
She covered her ears with her hands, sinking onto the bench, the quick collapse jarring bones that moved without coordination. Unbalanced, she slumped to one side.
And still the man in the shadows watched her, utterly without pity.
But why would she need pity? She was the Princess of Ashfall, sister to the Black Khan.
Strong male hands that gathered her close to a body honed for battle. A cry of loss, as he pressed her face to his own—touching her freely, giving her what she’d longed for when she was no longer able to ask for it.
And a roar that silenced the night—proof of her brother’s grief.
She wanted to go to him, to reassure him, to offer her help in any way she could, but how could she? He wouldn’t want her. He was angry at her; he had banished her to Qaysarieh. But she had redeemed herself, hadn’t she? She had obeyed the Nizam’s order to free her half-brother from the dungeons. She had brought him to the Emissary Gate to use his gifts as Dark Mage to fight in Ashfall’s defense.
Your brother Darius is dead.
The man from the shadows was speaking in her mind, his voice cool and precise, a blade slicing through snow, a cadence to cauterize wounds.
But how could Darius be dead?
An image in her mind, brutal in its clarity. The Nizam … Darius … herself … racing to the Messenger Gate. Something wrapped in Darius’s hands, something of vital importance … something she should have protected.
The Bloodprint.
The One-Eyed Preacher has it now.
The memory came as a blow.
She tumbled from the bench to the ground, sensing the disarticulation of her spine, as her limbs jerked out of sequence. Her breath touched her lips, faint and icy. She forced the paralysis from her right hand and pressed it hard against her heart, searching for a rhythm.
Nothing.
Just a cold, empty space at her core.
Finally, the man in the shadows was moved to offer his assistance. He raised her to her feet and held her against the armor that fit his body like a skin. Magnetic eyes gleamed at her through the openings of a mask engraved with a script that was foreign to her.
Yet Darya could read the script. She knew who the man was.
Assassin, she whispered in his mind. Why have you called me to life?
Are you alive, Princess?
A touch of mockery in the question. But nothing there of pity.
He was holding her weight between his hands, as she couldn’t support herself.
She had breath but no heartbeat. Thought without the gift of speech.
You are able to speak, Princess. You merely have to decide.
“Do I?”
It didn’t sound like her voice, which was sweet and girlish. The pitch of her voice had changed. It was … riper. Smoothly inviting. Nothing like Darya at all.
You see? You’ve begun your transformation.
Terror opened up. Of the lightning that had stolen her life, of the One-Eyed Preacher’s infinite power, throbbing like a drumbeat in her skull, draining her of that which made her Darya, snuffing out her soul like a spark.
Stop. Those firm hands continued to hold her. You have nothing to fear from him now.
What have you done to me?
What needed doing.
“No!” She struggled against his unyielding grip. “You shouldn’t have done this! You should have let me go. You’ve turned me into something I shouldn’t be.”
She felt … wrong. Her bones, her flesh, her manner of movement, it was all wrong. She was overtaken by panic, but the tears she wanted to shed wouldn’t come. Despite her fear and confusion, her face was as smooth and cold as a sculpture carved from ice.
“They’ll laugh at me!” It wasn’t her voice. This voice didn’t seem to mind. “They’ll call what you’ve done to me an outrage. You’ve made me an object to be pitied—a monstrosity!”
Are you a monstrosity, Darya? Did Arsalan think of you so?
He placed another image in her mind—this one accompanied by sensation. Darya shivered in his hold, as the touch of a man’s hands imprinted itself on her skin.
Those same hands slipped to her feet, removing the anklets she wore, stowing them beneath the breastplate of his armor. She glanced up to see who it was. Arsalan’s face wore a mask of sorrow, graven lines beside his mouth, heaviness on his brow.
For you, Darya. All for you.
“What do you want from me? What use do you think you can make of me?”
The icy touch of the Assassin’s mind against hers.
You will stand beside your brother at the gates. You will oversee his council of war. You will awaken his powers as Dark Mage. You will become who you were always meant to be.
It took every ounce of strength she had to wrest herself from his hold. Her footsteps lurched out of rhythm, one forward, one back, the spacing unequal. She pressed both hands to her diaphragm and drew a shuddering breath.
Traces of snow trailed down her face, mimicking tears she couldn’t cry.
“You won’t do this to me. You won’t command me.”
The Assassin curved a hand around her neck, pressing down on a pulse that didn’t throb.
You have nothing to fear from coming into your power. I will be there to guide you—nothing more.
She didn’t believe him. And then she was distracted, as an image of Arsalan flashed into her mind, one she had conjured for herself, shielded from the Assassin. She was wrapped in his strong embrace outside the door to her chamber, and Arsalan was kissing her as if she held the key to his salvation.
Something hot and dark unfurled inside her thoughts. Warmth ignited at her fingertips. She ducked under the Assassin’s arm, her sinews finding their rhythm, her footsteps slipping into place. She caught the glint of surprise in his eyes.
I do not require your guidance. I have already chosen the man I wish to have at my side.
Princess, you move too swiftly. Arsalan will not come to you like this.
The sensual curve of a smile on her lips. A shimmy of seduction in her shrug, as she turned to leave the garden, gliding lightly down the path.
He has no say in it, Assassin.
Come to it, neither do you.
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