The mountains were silent but for the breathing and rustling of the members of the Puruzam Company sitting or stretched out behind him. The full moon overhead traced silver on the edges of leaves and stones. The next full moon would signal the Pradani festival Chamakutsav - the courtship of Curiyan Deva of the moon and Cantiran Devi of the sun at its solstice. That solstice would also be Pehli Sabah, the Muwahhid festival commemorating the Almamaru - the crossing of the Nandali Ghatta to their new home in the Northern Plateau. And this year, in an occurrence not seen for over two hundred years, the full moon would eclipse the sun on the day of Pehli Sabah. All of Suristhanam would be celebrating that day. Well, most of them. His Ribhus people would not, nor would the Vargit lizardfolk. Nor the viperous Sa'halassa. Most of Suristhanam, then. Celebrating with their families and their loved ones. Giving gifts and sprucing up their houses. Baking sweets and savories, hosting dinners.
"What's that?" Pinar whispered next to him, shaking him from his thoughts. He rebuked himself for letting thoughts of the holiday distract him.
Down in the pass, a large figure had rounded a bend. Fazil toed the sleeping Purdil lying near him. "There's something down there."
"Some thing or some one?" Reiaf asked, coming beside Fazil, though he'd be unable to see well through the darkness of the pass.
Purdil pushed himself off the ground and brushed the dust from his backside. "It's a matter of perspective, id'nit? What are we to the yuan-ti?"
"Lunch," Reiaf patted Purdil's rounded belly. "Or in your case, lunch and dinner."
Fazil shushed them and focused on the figure lumbering up the pass. He was slightly bigger than man-sized, very broad in the shoulder and chest, made ever broader by the large straps of metal and leather that seemed to be tied to his body. He walked boldly up the pass, too bold for a scout, who would keep to the edges of the path to avoid detection.
"He's alone. But he's armed."
Even at that distance, Fazil could make out the long, broad sword hanging from the person's waist. He could hear the unscabarded metal clanging lightly against the person's rough plating.
Pinar pulled an arrow from her quiver and set it to her long bow. The others drew their weapons with screeches of metal against metal that sounded loud to Fazil's sensitive ears.
He waved Pinar's bow down. "It's too far. You'd just let him know we're here."
The figure walked steadily onward, growing closer to below their position. What was one hobgoblins warrior—a warlord, by the look of him—doing pacing his way through Hope's Gorge? Fazil turned his eyes northward. Was someone meeting him? No, the north was empty, according to the last reports.
"So we just watch him?" Reiaf huffed. "He's too far to shoot, and there's no way down to him."
"We'll follow him from above," Fazil decided, pushing himself up. "Track back up the arm and cross around the mountain using the goat paths. Relief, go back to get the horses and meet us at the end of the pass."
His decision made, Fazil set the company to gathering their packs for the hike. But he continued to watch as the warlord drew nearer. Now Fazil could see the top knot of his dark hair, the emblem on his chest marking him as part of the Khaar Iheshat. Each of his shoulder guards bore in their metal the shape of a face crying out in agony. The face of elven men.
Amir Sameer al-Bazikwahi's intelligence had proved correct.
The sounds of the company preparing to leave grew louder, and Fazil shushed them again. Several of the Puruzam Company were recent recruits, still somewhat green and unpracticed in stealth. The warlord was almost directly below. After a dozen more paces, the warlord stopped. For whatever reason, Fazil could not discern. But he did not like it.
With a snick, the hobgoblin unlatched his sword and raised it slowly, along with his gaze, to the company's position on the ridge. From above, Fazil saw his mouth stretch into a grin, revealing his sharpened teeth.
"It's a trap!" Fazil hissed.
The first hail of arrows rained down upon the unprepared warriors from behind and further up the ridge line. Fazil spun and narrowed himself, and the sharp edge of an arrow sliced across the leather covering his chest instead of piercing it. Four of his company fell, feathered death taking them at once. Two more had shafts quivering in their bodies, one in the leg and one in the shoulder. Purdil plucked an arrow that had lodged in his pagri and snapped it with one hand while he drew his sword with the other.
Only a few more arrows followed, the hobgoblin bowmen now readying javelin or sword to advance. Pinar found cover behind one of the scrubby pines on the ridge and let loose death of her own, as cries followed each arrow she loosed.
Leaping over a fallen shamsherbaz, Fazil rushed to the front, the others rallying to either side of him. Fifty or more forms, growling and shouting their assault, emerged from the rocks and the shadows in a rampage toward them. Their backs to the drop of the ridge, Fazil and his company pushed forward, not waiting for death to come to them.
"The Eye of Iwa be upon us!" they shouted as one.
Three more of the company fell in the crush of the onslaught, pierced by javelin or cut down by foul swords. Pinar had dropped her bow and sliced a dagger through the gut of a hobgoblin who ran by the tree she hid behind. Fazil had no time to watch the others as he parried his first blow and neatly spun to slice the head from his attacker. But the cries of his companions reached his ears as they fell, overwhelmed by sheer numbers. The curve of his shamsheer dripped blood and gore as he sliced first the exposed thigh of one creature and then the shoulder of another. There were too many of them.
Hampered by their limited sight, the humans struggled to find targets in the moon-dark of the night. Unhampered by this disadvantage, the hobgoblins hacked at them mercilessly, gathering in small bands to surround and slaughter each shamsherbaz. Fazil felt himself being pushed further back toward the edge of the ravine. As two hobgoblins ran towards him, he rolled aside at the last minute, and they plummeted over the edge with cries that silenced when they reached the bottom in a clanging thud.
He knew that they had to get behind the hobgoblins, that they had to find a way out and off the ridge. Only seven of his company fought on, bloodied but relentless. Reiaf lay on the ground, the haft of a javelin rising like a sapling that quivered in the wind from his belly.
Pinar had her back to the pine tree, fending off three hobgoblins. She was foremost among the party.
"To Pinar!" Fazil shouted.
The others began pushing toward her. Fazil careened his way through the horde that confronted him, blocking their blades but not staying to engage. Like a boulder rolling downhill, he knocked them aside, drawing blood where he could, but unstoppable in his advance.
Surprised by the rally of the company, the hobgoblins were suddenly in the rear of the melee. Two more shamsherbaz fell as arrows found them from behind. Purdil reached Pinar first and dispatched one of her assailants, and Fazil, finally reaching her, sliced through the back of another. Pinar herself, freed from multiple attackers, finally gutted the lone creature before her.
Scarcely pausing to withdraw her blade, Pinar spun around the tree and they followed her, crashing through the rear guard in flight down the ridge. Arrows whistled around them, taking down another. Now they were five.
Night blinded, the others slowed behind him as he raced to take the lead position to guide them through the treacherous path.
"Stay close!" He barked at them, picking his way through crumbling rocks and down screes and around scrubby bushes.
The hobgoblins raced after them, closing the distance. At this pace, they would never outrun them. Nor would a defensible position give them any advantage against such numbers. Pinar and the others had left their bows behind. They had no choice but to run until they could run no more.
A cry behind Fazil signaled the end of the fifth of them, too slow on the rocky terrain. He could smell the acrid sweat of the hobgoblins, the stink of their leather. Despite his best efforts, the others were falling behind.
He took the course around a large boulder that blocked the path, slipping on loose stones. As he rounded the boulder, something cracked on the back of his neck, and he fell, his shamsheer slipping from his hand and rattling down the path. Strong hands grabbed the neck of his leather plating and pulled his stunned form into a large crack in the boulder and tossed him with his back against stone. Fazil felt the cold press of sharp metal against his neck.
"Phaugh," the devil-masked hobgoblin spat. "An elf. You had to be a damned elf."
The blade nicked into Fazil's neck, and blood trickled down into his leather coat. Fazil went limp against the stone, pinned and swordless. The creature pulled back, though, reluctantly, struggling against his instinct to kill the elf.
"Fazil!" A voice shouted in passing, and then the trample of passing feet. Inside the cleft of the boulder, he heard more forms pass, the clatter of shod feed, the clank and clash of weapons. He tried to push himself up.
The creature held a finger up to his lips, warning Fazil to hold his tongue.
"You can't help them," the man creature before him rasped low. "They'll be dead soon enough. I should have waited for one of them instead of a stinking elf." For a hobgoblin, he spoke the common tongue well, though with a harsh, guttural quality. "We will wait."
The creature was not dressed for battle, Fazil realized. Instead, he wore fitted, blackened leather over his whole body, with supple black boots up to his knees. His black leather mask sported two short, wavy horns that curved back over the top of his head and then up. Scar ridges marked the leather of the cheeks, and ears like bats' rose up outside the horns. At least Fazil thought those were the features of the mask and not the hobgoblin, but only removing the mask would reveal the truth. If he could disarm the foul creature.
A human cry rang out, the piteous wail of a death knell. Then a defiant shout of rage and the clashing of swords that ended in harsh, goblinish laughter. There should have been another death cry, but there was only silence. Whoever had died last had died quietly.
The hobgoblin did not move, and he kept the sword at Fazil's throat. Shortly, more feet passed, but not in haste. He didn't know why this hobgoblin was keeping him alive. Perhaps for torture. Perhaps for ransom.
The creature had his masked head cocked, the better to listen, bat ears or no. For a long time, there was no sound, only Fazil's labored breathing. The sharp pain at the base of his skull had radiated up into his head and down to his shoulders. Fazil tried to shift, but the blade followed him. And so he waited, his mind ever watchful for an opportunity to evade the blade and end this creature's life.
After what seemed an eternity, the hobgoblin focused his attention again on Fazil. Feral, dark eyes pierced his. "Such long hair for an elf," he mused darkly, taking a dagger from his waist with his free hand. "It'll make a fine trophy."
Fazil's hand grabbed the approaching wrist. "Only if you kill me first. Which you would have done by now." With the blade against his throat, Fazil could do no more than spit at the creature's feet.
The creature jerked his arm free and gave a sharp, bruising kick to Fazil's thigh. "Arrogant bloody elf." He growled in frustration. "This dagger belongs deep in your shining guts and slicing your heart from your chest to feed to the younglings. I should be stomping your bloody brains under my feet in glee instead of…Aarh!" he roared at himself and kicked Fazil again in frenzied rage.
With a clawed hand, the dark hobgoblin reached into the crevices of his black leather jacket and pulled out a wad of pale hide, which he tossed to the dirt beside Fazil.
"Take this," he barked. "Give it to someone who matters. You do not."
Warily, Fazil raised his hands to show his compliance, though he did not understand what he was agreeing to, except life. The masked figure inched the blade back slowly from Fazil's neck, his black eyes never leaving the shamsherbaz's. Fazil kept his position as the creature backed toward the opening of the fissure and disappeared into the shadows of the night.
Fazil picked up the wad of hide as if it were dangerous. Folding back an edge, he saw black scratches of writing across one side. The hand was even, like a scholar's, but the script looked goblin, a language he refused to learn. He puzzled the note and the circumstances surrounding it until the sun rose.
In the gentle light of the morning, rising through a now-clear sky, the mountains seemed unjustly, deceptively beautiful. The footprints in the dirt all headed downhill—none turned back to the higher clearing where they had been attacked. There were no signs of the creatures around. With the coming of morning, they had surely reached the safety of cavern darkness somewhere, their task completed.
Fazil stowed the hide missive in his pack and searched the ground for the sword he had dropped when attacked. He found his shamsheer not far away, where it had skidded to a stop amid the scree. In the coolness of the mountains, blood and flesh were still moist upon the blade, and he grimly cleaned it with a cloth and some water, centering himself with the simple regimen of the action.
He scribbled a prayer and the names of the fallen on a scrap of paper from his kit and set it afire inside a tin cup, praying as the smoke rose with his supplication. When all that remained was ash, he tapped it into a small vial he carried to use in the Ash Prayer in the evening.
Weaving his way down the ridge path away from the site of the battle, he discovered a veteran he had served with since the Vargit Swamp, well before they both escaped massacre in the fields around Sherpatta in the civil war. Durga's body had been hacked mercilessly by the hobgoblins until she was almost unidentifiable. But after years of fighting together, he knew at once who it was. Cold comfort that the bodies of the two hobgoblin warriors Durga had slain before her own death lay crumpled near her.
Fazil lifted her body from the pile of ruin and carried it down a little path, screened from the site of her death. Using stones from the crumbling mountain, he built a cairn over Durga's remains in a place facing the east.
Further down, he went looking for the other two he knew had trailed him in their flight from the ambush. A few more monstrous, brutish bodies littered the path, evidence that his comrades had put up a last fight. Blood splattered the ground in several places, bits of armor and weapons dispersed about the path like fallen leaves. But he could not find the bodies of his last two colleagues, Purdil and Pinar. Fazil had heard what he thought was at least one death knell. He glanced at the edge of the cliff nearby, wondering if they had fallen or been driven over it to crash to the rocks below.
When the tracks he followed turned to those of only hobgoblins, and those not moving with speed, Fazil knew that whatever had happened, Purdil and Pinar were lost. Wearily, he turned back up the path to the site of the battle.
He found Talq's battered body halfway back to the high point, his back cleft deeply as he ran from the creatures. In their chase, the hobgoblins had not paused to despoil him as they had Durga. Fazil found Talq's blanket in his pack and wrapped his body in it. Then he built a cairn over Talq's body and continued upward.
Fazil was no stranger to death and battle. Blood had washed his hands enough that it was a wonder it had not stained his skin. Even before he joined Iwahhid, he'd fought with his brother Srivakijan against marauders along the Tayyib caravan route through their desert. And as a Muwahhid shamsherbaz, Fazil had seen battles against the yuan-it encroaching from the south, and with the Vargit lizardfolk threatening the developing port city of Isanhar on the Neela Sea. He'd shed Muwahhid blood against the Zehni Rebellion. He'd laid about him with bloody and righteous rampage in the war of the Tayyib siblings until he was drenched in the blood of the dying and had to wipe it from his eyes with the back of his sword hand to find his next foe.
And he had lived long enough to watch whole generations of humans grow and die in their natural course. Such frail creatures, so fleeting in their lives, burning in their brevity like a too-hot fire. He had fought beside this one's great-grandfather. He had trained this one's great-great-grandmother how to shoot an arrow from her horse. They had died, their children had died. They all kept dying. And they had moved on to dwell with Iwa in paradise, while he lived on. Forever losing his companions, for so long denied the peace and joy that they attained. Paradise came to the humans quickly. Not so for him.
Still, the gruesome scene he came upon wrenched him. Fazil laid aside his sword and pack and began his grim task. It gave him some dark satisfaction to drag each fallen hobgoblin to the overlook of Hope's Gorge and shove their body over the edge, as a message to the warlord that had stood there below only hours before to signal the assault. A quick search of the creatures revealed nothing but that they were part of the Khaar Iheshat. He gathered their weapons and chucked them over the edge to land in a clatter that echoed up and down the pass.
He pulled each fallen Puruzam warrior to a clean spot near the edge, free from blood and gore. There, he lined up the bodies close together, as they had been in life, in a row under the sky. Too many for him to build a cairn over or try to bury, Fazil simply prayed to Iwa to watch over them and take them to their new home. And to tell them that he would join them when his long centuries of living came to an end or when Iwa chose to cut it short.
Then Fazil gathered his shamsheer and pack and began his lonely journey to Qaragarh. To those who mattered.
As he reached the trail head, Fazil lookd down the path and stopped. Pinar was trudging up the stony trail. When she saw him above, she froze, her eyes wide in amazement.
"Fazil?" she shouted.
"Pinar! You're alive?"
"It seems," she chuckled grimly. "And so are you?" Her brow knit. "Just you?"
She rushed up by him on her way to the battle scene, but Fazil placed his hands on her shoulders to stop her.
"Don't," he shook his head. "They are gone, and I have put them to rest."
Crestfallen, Pinar dropped her head to his shoulder. "I saw the cairns on the ridge…that was your work."
Fazil held her out at arms' length to examine her. "Are you injured? How did you survive?"
She gave a rueful smirk. "I tripped on the path and rolled out of sight. I hid until they ran past me and stayed there the rest of the night. Like a coward."
Fazil gave her a brusque pat on the shoulder. "Your fight goes on. It was only delayed. Now you live to strike with your bow again in the name of the blessed. It was prudent."
Pinar looked back down the path. "You were ahead of us, me and Durga and Purdil, and then you were gone. I thought you must have been driven off the edge of the ridge."
"I fell and hit my head on a rock as I rounded a large boulder," he lied. He placed a hand on the still-tender spot. "No one saw me as they passed in the dark, I presume. When I woke, the sun was rising and I found the others."
The cryptic missive from the hobgoblin he carried in his pack put the lie on his tongue. He didn't know what it said or who best to share the tale with, but it wasn't Pinar. There was treachery within the letter and its delivery. Whoever that devil-masked creature had been, he had known to bring that letter to this place at this time, and deliver it to a living shamsherbaz who could take it back to Qaragarh.
"Purdil…did you see…?" He moved on.
Pinar shook her head. "I heard fighting, then nothing. His body?"
"No sign."
Silence fell, the silence of remembrance and chagrin. With no other words, Purdil retrieved her bow from the pile of weapons Fazil had gathered. They hitched their packs and started down the path along the ridge. After an hour, the lower part of the ridge leveled on the east to a pine speckled valley through which a rivulet ran, bordered by neem trees. The western end of the valley rose to a pass through two low peaks. They stopped to wash the battle from themselves at the stream and refill their water skins. Fazil went downstream a bit to strip completely and perform his ablutions, while Pinar went upstream behind the shielding of the neem trees. They ate a little in silence, but for the murmur of the stream across the stones. At the western pass, they found an overhang that protected them from the wind and gathered dried brush and needles to build a fire as the sun was setting.
Fazil retrieved the vial of morning ash and emptied it into his tin cup, adding some water and mixing it with his finger. "Will you say the Ash Prayer with me?"
"I have no ash to add."
He offered her the cup with an outstretched hand. "Then share mine. For Puruzam."
She raised the cup and said the prayer before sipping. The ashy water tasted like despair and loss to Fazil when he drained the cup. As it always did. As it always should.
Both were exhausted from the events and their hike, but neither could sleep. They sat with their arms wrapped around their knees and stared into the flames, moving occasionally to toss more branches on the fire. Fazil searched the haunted eyes of his companion. There was more than the loss of a warrior in her eyes. There was anger.
"You fought well, Pinar," he assured her across the fire. "Do not learn so soon to be so bitter in defeat. You must learn to bear it, for there will be more."
She spat in the fire. "They knew we would be there. We have been betrayed."
Fazil's eyes sought his pack and the hobgoblin missive it contained. "The Khaar are not unknown in Qaragarh. Even now, they have a diplomatic corps in the city. Amir Tordain will…"
"Diplomats," she scoffed. "Whisperers, you mean."
Fazil wasn't sure. Oh, indeed, they were spies. But something about what had happened left him uneasy. It wasn't as simple as spies gathering information. Few had known exactly where the shamsherbaz were going and when they would be there. As an elite force, their movements were carefully guarded. Who inside their command structure had that information, and how did it escape the tight fist that enclosed it?
"We will report everything to Amir Tordain upon our return," he continued past her interruption.
But Pinar would not let it go. "We were set up. We weren't supposed to survive to report back. Some son of a mother's whore sent us out here to be killed."
"To what purpose, Pinar?" Fazil pressed. "Why would they risk that we might see the Khaar warlord and live to tell the tale?" Unless someone wanted just that. But his mind twisted itself in knots trying to fathom that reasoning. To deliver the missive? No. Whoever that hobgoblin was, he was operating on his own. The others were bent only on annihilation of the Puruzam.
Fazil shook the thoughts out of his head. This was a knot for others to untangle. He preferred to simply cut the knot with his sharp blade.
"Try to get some sleep," Fazil advised Pinar. Still, she glowered, so he changed tack. "That's a fine piece of work," he tried, pointing to the bow she had retrieved from the battle scene, that now lay on the ground at her feet, ready to be seized up. The wood was very dark, and white painted lines traced delicate arabesques around blood-red thistles on the risers. "I haven't seen its like."
Pinar's eyes fell to the bow. "It was my father's. He crafted it from a tree from the Northern Woods. He said a dryad gifted him the timber from a deodar tree because he was such a handsome man. My Amma said it was because the dryad mistook him for a troll and wanted him to go away. It was a tale to make their daughter laugh." She reached out to trace the curve of the wood with a finger.
"You're from Gwachi, then," Fazil said. He gestured to his face. "You don't wear the…"
"Singaar," Pinar supplied when he faltered. "Not in the company. Godhuli followers are not always welcomed in this part of the empire and singaar makes it difficult to go unnoticed. Like a man not having a beard or having pointed ears."
That was fair, Fazil admitted. But while she could remove the elaborate makeup and embellishment that the Godhuli wore on their faces and around their heads, he couldn't just grow a beard or clip his ears.
"What region are you from?"
Pinar fixed him with unblinking, fierce eyes. "My ancestors were Bashmenedi."
Fazil shifted uncomfortably, remembering the massacre of the entire population of the old sultanate capital, and his people's refusal to get involved, despite a plea from the Gwachi Sultan to the Rhibus elven king. "I had not yet been born. I am only 432 years old."
Pinar's eyes softened a bit. "Your people live so long, I forget that you have not lived forever. 432 years. And still just a captain of the shamsherbaz?" She teased him, her grim mood softening.
"I only wish to serve the will of Iwa." He spread his arms wide, encompassing himself and the mountains. "This seems to be his will."
In the wee of the night, as they slept close to their diminishing fire, Fazil's ears pricked. He and Pinar had talked a while longer, easing the anger that had gripped Pinar until she could at last lay her head down. Something was rising up the pass from the valley they had traversed, quiet of footstep, but huffing and muttering. He opened his eyes just a slit to let them adjust to the dim light of the fire. The rock of the outcropping and overhang shielded them from the path of approach, so he couldn't see what was coming. Despite the small fire, a chill seeped into his flesh.
"Pinar," he rasped.
Like the trained warrior she was, Pinar opened her eyes but didn't move. It took her only a few seconds to home in on the sound as well. Then he saw her shiver.
They were scarcely on their feet, swords in hand, before the apparition reached them, drawn by their fire. White wisps of emanated light rounded the outcropping, their tendrils taking hold of the rock like hands, pulling the ethereal figure behind them into view. Suffused in ghostly radiance in hues of silver and black, the being floated a few inches above the ground. Clothed in colorless robes, the remnants of his ragged shoes clinging to his filthy feet, the form of the emaciated man opened its cracked mouth and howled strange words at them.
"Arni altariq."
"Away, spirit!" Fazil brandished his sword at the creature.
"Arni altariq!" the apparition commanded again, moving towards them.
Their backs were pressed to the wall of the overhang. Pinar had grabbed a burning branch from the fire before retreating, and she swung at the ghost. The immaterial man ignored the fiery limb that passed through him, trailing tendrils of smoke and silvery light, as he reached sepulcher hands up to wrap around Fazil's throat.
Fazil battered at the empty air of the ghost's arms, helpless against the being. Its touch was cold as wet ice around his neck, and he gasped at the strength and frigidity of those hands. The warmth began to seep out of him, his limbs faltered, no longer flailing amidst the swirling vapors of the ghost. He was not ready for paradise after all, he realized, as he felt himself weakening, his life seeping away.
Pinar was shouting something and waving the still-burning branch wildly around. The words were meaningless to Fazil, either in his fading or in a strange tongue. All that existed for him was the unrelenting despair in the creature's moon-colored eyes. So much sadness, so much loss. And his chill touch was forcing that despair into Fazil's very soul, bringing him to the edge of the death that had taken the ghost.
"Nahn Muwahhidin!" Pinar was shouting again and again. "Nahn Muwahhidin!"
Something of her words penetrated the spirit, for his grip loosened, and the icy daggers of his despair withdrew from Fazil's heart. Those sad moon eyes turned to Pinar at last. "Ayn dhahabuu?"
"Sanuadih lak altariq!"
Fazil still didn't understand her, but she was pleading for something or offering something. The deathly touch released, and he collapsed to the ground. He was so cold, and so weak.
The ghostly figure and Pinar spoke urgently together. Fazil could tell that Pinar had to search for some of the words before speaking them. It was a language she knew fairly well, but either hadn't spoken in a while or hadn't completely mastered.
"What are you saying?" Fazil asked, pushing himself into a sitting position, his back against the stony wall.
"He wants to know where his family went to, where everyone went," she explained, her eyes not leaving the spirit's. "He thinks he is still making the Almamaru across the mountains from the homeland, and he became separated from the rest. And he thinks you're a devil who stole me away." She pointed her ears and then her smooth chin. "I'm trying to explain."
Fazil rose on unsteady legs, but he felt the warmth returning to his bones. "Don't tell him that they all…"
"I know," she cut him off. "Don't say the word. It is similar in his language."
The ghost spun threateningly back to rising Fazil and spat harsh words through his cracked, luminescent lips. Pinar spoke hurriedly to it, and he caught only the words Iwa and Muwahhid.
Understanding well enough, Fazil pulled the silver ta'wiz free from inside his leather armor and held it up for the ghost to see. "Du'a," he said, pointing to the amulet.
Convinced at last, the ghostly man pulled the wisps and tendrils of his ethereal form into himself until he was just a silvery, glowing, floating, desperate man. His words poured out of him, growing ever more urgent, as Pinar both responded and translated haltingly for Fazil.
They learned his name was Mershad, and he thought the pilgrims must have forgotten him while he was sleeping. He couldn't understand how his wife and children left him behind, or didn't come looking for him. As he told his story, his despair rose again, becoming a wail that echoed down the path and up into the night. Tears that would never moisten the ground fell from his eyes and then became vapor to be blown away by the night breeze.
"Tell him about Hope's Gorge," Fazil advised Pinar, when the man's story ended. "He can take the path that leads to the Himilbad Necropolis. Tell him that his people can be found there."
When Mershad had faded into nothingness, when his silvery despair had wafted away, the night seemed somehow darker than before.
Fazil and Pinar reached the company's horses as the sun was setting the next evening. Loosely tethered to a copse of trees next to a stream, the horses nickered at their return, eager to be released. A few of the twenty horses hinnied for their riders, looking past the two survivors for them in vain.
Their trek down from the higher peaks had been uneventful. Qaragarh was another day and a half away through the rolling hills that descended down to the lowland. To the north, the precipice of the Northern Plateau rose high above them, pierced only by the distant falls of the Jangalee Ghodon that ran past Qaragarh westward to the sea. From their high vantage, they could see the golden sands of the Maaph Desert stretch to the south of them, dunes cresting endlessly both east and west. Fazil turned his eyes towards Khambhe, too far away to see, and stood for a moment with his longing for the land of his birth.
Under the trees with the horses, they camped for the night. Pinar, exhausted, fell at once into sleep, while Fazil stared into the flames of their small fire. The waning full moon had passed its zenith when he heard a shout coming down the hill they had last crossed.
"Ho!" a man cried.
Fazil leapt to his feet, his sword at the ready. "Pinar, get up, there's someone out there."
Pinar rolled to her feet, drawing her own blade.
"Ho!" the voice cried again, moving closer. "Keep away from my horses, you bloody thieves!"
Peering through the gloom with his sharp eyes, Fazil made out the form of the man, tall and thickly built, one arm bound in a rude sling, the other brandishing a broken sword. Stunned, Fazil laughed from his belly, and cried "Ho!" to the approaching man and rushed out to meet him.
Under the light of the quarter moon, Purdil dropped his broken blade when he recognized Fazil and opened his unwounded arm to embrace him.
"I ran off the edge," Purdil explained, when they had returned to camp. "I didn't mean to obviously, but it was black as night…well, it actually was night and I couldn't see where I was going." He was seated by the fire, eating the remains of the birds Pinar brought down with her bow for their dinner. "I suppose they thought that was the end of me, and I did too. But there was a ledge below me. Knocked me unconscious and broke my arm." He lifted his broken arm as evidence, then winced at the motion. "When I woke up, the sun was past noon. I couldn't climb up but I managed to make my way down the bloody face by nightfall."
Fazil told him of their encounter with the apparition Mershad, but he did not mention the puzzling demon-masked hobgoblin and the missive he had stowed in his pack. Pinar was somewhat retiring and diffident, offering only a terse summary of her events. Fazil was just overjoyed to have his old friend alive, to know that one more had survived the ambush.
For ambush it was, Purdil agreed. There was no mistaking it. "I'll bloody bash the devils what put us there with my one good arm! Bloomin' hobgoblin spies'll rue the day they messed w' Purdil bloody Wedgehead and w' the bloody Puruzam!" With a string of curses, he described the many ways he would dismember the hobgoblin spies in the city who had set them up, until even Fazil blenched at the precision of Purdil's imagined retribution.
Himilbad would need to be garrisoned, and forces sent to guard the northern end of the pass. If it were not already too late. There might already be battalions of hobgoblins and their allies encamped in the slopes of the Nandali Ghatta just within reach of the northern cities closest to the mountains. Fazil chafed at the thought that it would be four days from their sighting of the hobgoblin warlord before he could deliver that warning to his mansabdar.
Fragrant and musty date palms and neem trees gave some shade as they rode westward, leading the riderless horses into the fertile strip that separated the precipice from the desert, finally reaching level ground. They camped again by the shore of Dead Fall Lake, the roar of the falls of the river from Himilbad far above lulling them to sleep and drowning out all other sounds. By midmorning, the first glimmer of the golden domes of Qaragarh came into sight, shining blindingly above the red sandstone and white marble of its structures. Fazil longed to gallop into the city he had called home for nearly three hundred years, but he did not want to exhaust the horses.
Minarets spired up into the azure sky, and pointed domes in blue, white, and gold rose above massive mosques, temples, and mahals. Above them all rose the walls and platform of Darwapur Shukri Fort, its three great gates coming into view. The dust raised by stone carvers wafted above the city, clouds of industry as countless hands worked to repair and restore the damage of the assault that had driven the city at last to the deciding battle at Sherpatta.
They crossed the long, flat bridge across the Jangalee Ghodon River but turned west along the Cinerary Shore to skirt the city, riding outside its surrounding wall. Kestrel Mahal of Amir Tordain bin-Furundrak al-Malletfist lay northwest of the city in the face of the plateau, and Fazil led his companions and the horses there. Weary, dusty, and battered, the three met the questioning looks of the stable hands with stoic faces. The empty saddles of seventeen shamsherbaz spoke for themselves.
Carved into the face of the precipice, the mahal reflected a blending of traditional Iwawwid style with Amir Tordain's own dwarven culture. Squared columns framing lintels instead of pointed arches comprised the facade of the mahal, but they were carved with elaborate arabesques, birds, and other creatures. Delicate jali screens pierced the precipice surface, letting sunlight into the cavern hall. Carved niches throughout the face of the cliff housed the nests of countless kestrels, who flitted and swooped about. Made wealthy by quarrying stone from the precipice, Amir Tordain was a respected figure in Qaragarh, maintaining, as was his duty, the contingent of warriors that served the empire, including Fazil's Puruzam company. What now remained of it.
Fazil had served many mansabdars in his years, outliving the humans by generations. So many had been lost in the war, and alignments had shifted so greatly. In its aftermath, Fazil and the remnants of his company had offered their service to Amir Tordain. He was wearied by the political intrigues and machinations that had plagued the empire, and Amir Tordain kept himself removed from such activities. There was plenty of gold to be made by Tordain in his simple industry without having to engage in manipulation and artifice, especially with the ongoing construction of the new port city of Isanhar, just across the sea from the dwarven port city of Nainka.
"See to the horses," Fazil instructed Pinar as he dismounted near the stables and barracks that formed part of the complex of buildings outside the wall of the precipice. "You," he pointed to Purdil, "get to a healer. I'll find you after I brief the amir."
"The amir's in the city," a stablehand said with a tap on his cap as he took the reins of several of the horses. "Hear not to expect 'im 'til night."
Fazil looked down the dusty path leading to the western gate in the city wall. If Tordain wasn't available, he needed to find someone else who mattered. Tapping the hobgoblin missive he had secreted inside his leather jerkin, he set off down the road to the city.
Outside the walls of the kitabkhana, frenzy barely masked by the decorum of the imperial fort reigned. Five years had passed since Empress Firuzeh's last child was born, and while decorations and pavilions had been going up for the upcoming rare conjunction of Pehli Sabah and Chamakutsav, to those were now being added lanterns and garlands for the baby's aqiqah. Workers and aunties wove peach roses and yellow carnations around the columns of the diwan where the blessing ceremony would be held and draped embroidered and bejeweled silks from its beams and arches. Thick red carpets woven with the golden imperial griffon and sun were laid under and around the pavilion, with low tables and cushions for the guests. The babe was a blessing, they said, a symbol of the renewed life of the empire. It wasn't hard to count backwards, though, to realize that Firuzeh must have been already with child even as she rode into battle against her three brothers.
Tayyib diplomats and their staffs who had come for the Concordant negotiations ambled through the gardens or huddled together under pavilions, their work interrupted by the baby's arrival. Until the empress returned to duties, no official meetings would happen. The Concordant delegates spent their days circulating through the fort, and small gatherings formed around them wherever they went.
Inside Laksha's shared studio in the kitabkhana, the only sound was the asynchronous monotone mudra muttered continuously by her and her colleagues and the only movement was that of the brushes floating silently from pigment to paper. The painting of Gurkani Tayyib was taking shape under Laksha's hand, although she missed the wyvern tail she'd had to paint over.
There were plenty of wyvern in the painting, however, although they were stone. The scene showed the creation of the Wyvern Road that led down from the high Northern Plateau to the area of the lowlands where Gurkani had founded Qaragarh. Carved into the face of the plateau by Amir Tordain's ancestors four hundred years ago, the zigzagging pathway was shielded from view and weather by a flight of stone wyvern – wings outstretched but interlocked – swooping down from the heights to the lowlands, symbolic of Gurkani's conquest of Suristhanam. In her painting, wyvern covered all but the lowest portion of the cliff face, and dwarven stonecutters hung precariously from ropes with tiny chisels and mallets in their hands. Of course, the scale was all wrong – they would have been almost invisible if painted accurately, and Gurkani would not have towered like a giant while he directed their work.
Still, her mind whirled with thoughts of her bargain with Salim to steal from Sameer bin-Nabeel, the second most powerful person in the empire. She had only a few more days before Salim expected her to deliver the item, that strange short golden club with ribbed, rounded-claw ends. She had scouted his mahal on the fort platform and had found–as she had expected–that it was guarded by troops from his Crescent Tigers, Bazikwahi's elite company. She hadn't yet figured out how to slip past them and into the three-storey building, but she had some ideas.
Breaking the deal was not an option. She would do almost anything to get back the dagger and the pendant that were the evidence of her horrible deed.
Laksha shook the thoughts from her mind. She wished that she knew what Gurkani had actually looked like, so she could better represent him. All the other paintings and sculptures of him were faded and weathered, and no two looked the same, apart from his full black beard. In the absence of a definitive model, she painted him as she imagined him to be. The truth is he was ending up looking like her father Jahid, at least as much as she could remember of him before he and her mother were killed during the assassination of Bayazid Tayyib so long ago.
"Laksha."
At the sound of her name, she settled her brush to rest before turning. The man with Alim Nurrudin was tall and thin, with dark, tightly coiled black hair and dark skin, wearing a long tunic that was so deeply blue it was almost purple. She would have to try to replicate that color in pigment.
She recognized the stranger by his bearing and his gold-tipped staff as one of the Radiant Citadel delegates. Why had Nuruddin had brought him to her? She shook out her stiff fingers nervously.
"This is Laksha bint Anaga," Nuruddin introduced her. "One of our best painters," he added with a wink at her. "Laksha, this is Deland Longully from Godsbreath."
"Blessings, Deland Longully," she said, extending her hand.
His large hand engulfed hers. "Blessings."
His voice was deep and rich, even in that one word, with a timbre in it as if he had sung a short song.
"Deland was asking questions about the stories of our land, and I believe that you also are interested in stories," he smiled at Laksha. "Perhaps you might take some time to show Deland around our House of Books?"
Her? Was Nurrudin pawning off the delegate for some reason? He was master of the kitabkhana, after all. She hoped the delegate didn't feel insulted to be passed off to a young painter. Nurrudin was an honorable man; he'd never treat a guest with disrespect. Well, then, nor should she, though she didn't understand why he'd asked her. But as she started to rise to go with the man, she reached for her brushes and pigments. She couldn't just leave them.
"Tanysh will clean up for you," Nuruddin volunteered the young man working nearby and pretending to not listen to their conversation. "Won't you Tanysh?"
Tanysh nearly tripped over his own feet rising from his cushion. "Don't worry, Laksha, I'll take care of everything."
Nurrudin gone, Deland bent down to examine her painting and reached out a hand to touch the paper. "Such a beautiful…"
"Ai! Don't touch it!" she scolded him. Deland jerked his hand back as if burned. So much for respecting a guest. "Forgive me, no one touches the pages. Not even me."
He looked curiously at the painting. "You do not touch your books?"
"Some," she explained. "Special ones. Aren't there things in Godsbreath that you don't touch?"
"Yes," he smiled, "food while another person is cooking it. Recipes are holy in our families."
Laksha showed Deland around the kitabkhana, proud of the work they did there. The binding rooms where pages were gathered and bound, the carving room where the intricate posts for scrolls were created, the script room, filled with studious men and women copying out texts with brushes and ink.
The delegate – Deland, he insisted she call him – nodded his head in appreciation at the efforts of the craftspeople, and asked pointed questions of many of them, appearing genuinely interested in their work. "I have seen many literate cultures," he observed as they walked down a corridor, the gold heel of his staff clicking on the stone floor. "But never one that devoted so much industry and skill and dedication into creating books as yours."
Hearing his rolling, warm voice, she wanted to keep him talking. "Do you not have books in your land?"
He nodded. "We have them, yes, but we pass on our most special stories in other ways. In the telling of them, in the quilts that my people make, in the foods that we make, in our traditions. We are, you might say, a people who are very much aware that we are living inside a story. What we do and how we treat one another will be remembered by our ancestors and their ancestors, and we will continue to live in their retelling, long after we have been sung to our last sleep." Deland halted in the corridor, and Laksha stopped to heed. "My great-great-great-great grandmother made a stew using a chicken that she swears knocked on her door with its beak to be let in and crawled right into the pot. And if I made that stew for you at my home, everyone at the table would tell you the story of great-great-great-great grandmother Betildi and the chicken that knocked on her front door. And maybe, if you married one of my grandchilds," he winked, "someday I would pass Betildi's recipe on to you, and you could share her story with your grandchildren. Unless you have your eye on that young man who was so eager to clean your brushes."
"Tanysh?" Deland had wrapped her in the blanket of his words, but mention of Tanysh shook her out of his enchantment. She was just as sure that Tanysh would ask her to dance at Pehli Sabah as she was that she'd refuse. "I'm not looking," she gestured Deland to proceed down the corridor. "These eyes are only on books."
"Do you enjoy reading?"
"Very much," she replied. "But I only learned recently, after I was recruited to be a painter here a few years ago." Recruited…that was a nice word for it. "I paint a lot of history and I like those books, but they're difficult to start with so I read a lot of fables at first. You know, the virtuous noble on a quest, dragons, monsters, treasure and rewards." She was babbling, she realized. "I like stories," she summed up awkwardly. "My parents used to tell me stories before… I like stories."
As if sensing the sadness in her, Deland sighed heavily. "Not all stories end well. Sometimes, those are the ones that mean the most to us. Sharing our sadness can ease it, for there are more of us to bear it up."
Pushing aside thoughts of her parents, Laksha led him to the grinding room, where raw materials, metals, and gems were ground and mixed with gums to make the paint pigments she and the other artists used.
"So many colors," Deland observed dutifully, clearly aware of her shift in mood. He looked around at all the sacks of plants, piles of metal, and trays of gemstones. "It's like standing in the middle of the Trade Discal at the Radiant Citadel. Color everywhere."
Mention of the Radiant Citadel piqued Laksha from her retreat. "Do they have bookshops there?"
Deland laughed. "Yes, it's a remarkable place. You can find almost anything there. Many stories can be found at the Radiant Citadel. You would love it, I'm certain."
"But that would require being with other people," she observed wryly.
"And you do not like people," Deland concluded with mock sagacity.
Laksha shrugged. "People are a distraction."
"From what?"
"From…" Their talk had turned suddenly uncomfortable for her. "From life," she tossed out lightly, dismissively.
"Life without people. What is that?"
"It doesn't matter." She set her hands in the mudra and muttered the mantra, sending her hand to lift up a dozen rubies and let them sift back down into the pile of gemstones. "I don't think the empress is going to sign the Concord. None of us will ever go there."
"That would be a disappointment to the Muwahhidin that are already there," Deland shrugged.
How could there be Muwahhidin in the Radiant Citadel? There had been no contact between Suristhanam and the Citadel for centuries. Laksha turned a quizzical eye to the Proclaimer.
"There were Muwahhidin in the Concordant lands and on the Radiant Citadel when Suristhanam was sundered," he explained. "They had no way to return here, and their descendants live still, hundreds of years later, among other peoples. Just as there are descendants from Zinda and Sensa and Atagua and all the rest here in Suristhanam, are there not?"
Laksha knew he was right, though she rarely thought of them. Once, she had seen a group of small dragonish people – kobolds, she heard them called, from Siabsungkoh – as part of a merchant caravan passing through the city, and down by the Katpur Volcano there were horned people from Tletepec who sent specialists to confer with the imperial diviners on occasion. In her reading at the library, she'd come across many stories of people from Concordant heritages striving or thriving throughout the land.
She felt the turn of her thoughts toward those separate peoples, including the Muwahhid, and realized aloud, "You're either trying to convince me or you're trying to learn how we all feel about this, aren't you?"
Deland smiled slyly. "You're a clever girl, Laksha bint Anaga. Officials rarely speak openly about their feelings."
Laksha dusted her hands, though they had not touched any of the gems. "You're asking the wrong person," she told him honestly. "Just because I live in the fort doesn't mean I know anything. I know Tanysh wants to go, and everyone's excited about the possibility." She gestured around to the workers in the room grinding gems into powder. "But we don't make the decisions. And I don't know if you know, but we've been through some awful times lately."
Without waiting, Laksha left the workroom and headed towards the library. She didn't like being manipulated, and honestly, she didn't care either way about the Concordat, as long as she could keep living at the kitabkhana and painting her paintings and reading her books.
"Our most important books, the histories and religious texts, are all done by enchantment," she explained as Deland hurried to catch up to her. "That way, they remain pure. They cannot absorb any of the impurity of the individual beings who create them. There are books here that are almost a thousand years old that have never been touched by living hands."
Deland was following along behind her with one hand on his staff and the other behind his back. "Then how do you read them?"
Laksha saw a young madrasa student in the library sitting on a cushion by a window with a large book open on a low table before her. A young man sat to her side, reading a book of his own, which he held in his hands. She pointed a finger there to draw Leland's gaze.
The student read for a few moments then murmured something to the man next to her. Raising his fingers into a practiced mudra, the young man turned the page, then went back to his own book.
"She cannot…" he raises his fingers in an awkward replication of the mudra.
"No," Laksha shook her head. "Only a few can learn the skill. We all take shifts in the library being page turners for those accessing the sacred books." It's very boring, she did not add. "At least it gives us time of our own to read."
They moved on to the room that held the most precious of the empire's books and scrolls. The small, dim room smelled of oiled leather and dried parchment. The books of the small collection were large and heavy, their bindings cracked with age, despite their periodic oiling. Two ancient books were kept in a glass-topped case, and she explained that those were two of the surviving books that had made the Almamaru with the original settlers across the Nandali Ghatta almost a thousand years ago.
"I come here sometimes to look at the paintings in the books for inspiration," she explained. "Here, let me show you."
Forming the mudra and whispering the mantra, Laksha lifted and lowered a large, leather-bound book to the flat counter and opened it with her hand. She turned pages of text to find a painted plate. The plant-based pigments had faded and some of the metal pigments had oxidized, but the scene was still legible. The book seemed to be about the conquest of the Northern Plateau sultanates by Gurkani Tayyib, before he extended his empire southward into the Pradani lands. The ruby reds of blood had kept their color, making them stand out gruesomely amid the fallen warriors, who had faded with age.
Leland leaned close, appreciating the fine detail. She turned the pages again to find another painting to show him–Gurkani and his wife presiding over their court and advisors. Then another. The style was altogether different from her own. Everything here seemed as if flattened together, while her paintings had somewhat more depth.
She turned to another painting for Leland, and the glimmer of gold pigment caught her eye. Her breath caught in her throat as she fixed her eyes on it. Held high in Gurkani Tayyib's hand, as he sat astride his horse in battle, was a short golden rod with two ribbed, rounded claws, one at each end. It was the golden object that Salim wanted her to steal from Sameer bin-Nabeel.