Of Sand and Malice Made (13 page)

Emre?

“Çeda, for the love of the gods, wake up!”

No. Not Emre at all.

Someone else. A boy with a wicked grin.

She looked about for the glowing knife. She fought. She struck the boy across the jaw, and when he recoiled from the blow she kicked him as hard as she could.

As he grunted and fell backward, it all came back in a rush. The trip to the desert. Falling asleep as the stars came out. Dreaming the dream of an ehrekh.

She wasn't home in her bed; she was sleeping among the trees of the strange forest where Kadir had once taken her. And the man she'd just kicked was no godling boy, but Brama.

Brama reached his feet, then rubbed his jaw. His stance was wary, but when she made no move to attack, he stood tall and glared down at her while the silver light of Rhia shone down half-lidded from the heavens.

As memories of the pain Hidi had been inflicting faded at last, the wounds on her own face registered. Her lip was split, and the right side of her face felt as if she'd just finished a particularly nasty bout in the pits. “Well you didn't have to beat me like a stubborn mule!”

“You were
screaming
! Do you think they'll not hear us? You might wish to suffer the same fate as your ehrekh, but
I
certainly don't. Now get up. It's time to go.”

Brama rolled up his blanket, cinching it tightly.

Çeda began to do the same, but stopped when Brama went to tie the blanket behind the saddle of his horse. Çeda quickly opened the locket around her neck and took out one of the adichara petals hidden within. She placed it beneath her tongue, closed the locket, then helped tear down their makeshift camp. The petal's flavor was strange, like sour ale, so unlike its normally bright taste, and it did little more than allow her aching body to move with something approaching normalcy. It would have to be enough, she decided. She'd been taking the petals so often she wasn't surprised the effects weren't as strong as usual.

She finished preparing the horses and then strapped her shamshir across her back, and pulled the veil of her turban into place. “Ready,” she said to Brama.

Brama had two lengths of rope wound crosswise around one shoulder and across his chest. Other implements like metal hooks and several small bags hung from his belt, the tools of his trade. “You don't
sound
ready, and by the gods you don't look ready, either.”

She shrugged. “I'm as ready as I'll ever be.”

“You have the stone?”

Çeda placed her hand on the leather pouch at her belt. Within rested the obsidian disk Kadir had given to her. “I have it.” Kadir himself had refused to join them, saying there were other things that needed doing should they succeed in the keep. What those things might be, he had refused to say.

“Very well,” Brama said, and with that he set off at a brisk jog. “Keep up, Çeda. The run will do you good.”

She followed, and together they threaded their way through the stone tree trunks toward the drop-off where Kadir led her yesterday. They'd debated on whether to bring the horses nearer. Having them close might be handy in a pinch, but Brama had reasoned that if the twins were as dangerous as she said, then leaving them back a bit was the wiser course. She'd agreed, but now she regretted the decision. She was so exhausted she kept brushing up against the trees, and once a branch caught her hip and twisted her around as she ran. As she fell hard to the dry, packed earth, she could swear it sounded as though someone were laughing in the distance, but when she stood and glanced back along her path, she saw nothing. The trunks of all the trees were bare.

Brama came running back and immediately held his hand out, motioning for the pouch at her belt. “Çeda, I should do this alone. Give the stone to me and I'll return as soon as it's done.”

“No,” Çeda said, her hand on the pouch. “That isn't why I brought you.”

“You're ready to collapse!”

“I only tripped is all.”

Brama stood there for the span of a breath, then said, “If you say so,” and spun on his boot heels and continued toward the cliff. Çeda followed, moving slower now, wary of the trees, wary of Brama as well.

When they arrived at the cliff, Brama tied one length of rope around the nearest of the dead trees, threw the bulk of it down the slope, and climbed after it. Çeda followed, and the two of them soon reached a stone lip, which was the point at which the decline became more manageable. Silver Tulathan was high in the night sky now. Golden Rhia was rising. By their light Çeda and Brama picked their way carefully down to avoid a fall, and soon reached the valley floor, where they ran quick and low toward the keep.

Çeda could hear the screams from the tower now. She could see the ruddy light from the brazier as well. She rubbed her thigh where Hidi had plunged the knife into Rümayesh's thigh. It hurt
Çeda's
leg now, made her move with ungainly steps. Çeda grunted as pain burned deep into the muscle of her other leg, too—a fresh wound from Hidi, surely, some echo of what Rümayesh was feeling in that room high in the tower.

Brama turned. She could see the worry in his face. He pulled her upright, looking toward the slope they'd just descended. “You're going to get us both killed, Çeda.”

“I'll be
fine
,” she said through gritted teeth.

He looked as though he were ready to send her back anyway, but then he turned and continued toward the keep. Çeda followed, muffling her pain as well as she was able, the feelings in her body an echo of the screams coming from the tower above. When they reached the wall, Brama ran his hands over the stones with unexpected tenderness. Like a master huntsman might choose a path through a forest, his gaze moved along the stones, ever upward, toward the battlements. He did this a second time, then a third, and finally set his fingers into the gaps between the stones and began to scale the wall.

The keep was old, the stones of the wall weathered, and yet when Brama began climbing, he did so as if the task were no harder than crawling along the ground. His grip was sure and strong, his instincts perfect. He placed his feet just so, used his arms to draw himself ever higher, and he paused only long enough for his fingers to find purchase in the gaps, however slight they might be. As quickly as he was moving, each moment seemed an age, for Rümayesh's outpouring of pain filled Çeda with every breath, every beat of her heart.

Hurry, Brama. Please.

When he reached the top, he wrapped the remaining rope around a merlon and sent it snaking down to Çeda. She tried to climb, but was forced to allow Brama to pull her up as a new sort of pain—the kind that made you forget
who
you were and
where
you were—was driven deep into her gut. She groaned as the cries of anguish coming from the tower rose to new heights. The misery of an ehrekh poured from it, along with the glee of a godling child, and Çeda
felt
that pain, a mere echo of what Rümayesh was feeling now. How by the gods' sweet breath could anyone, even an ehrekh, endure the torture being delivered?

The moment Brama dragged her over the battlements, Çeda collapsed to the rampart.

“Stay here,” Brama said. “I'll return with the stone.”

Çeda grabbed the leg of his trousers. The pain was decreasing at last. She could hear words drifting down from the window in the tower above, could hear some soft echo of them inside her mind as well. Hidi. Though what he was saying Çeda couldn't tell.

“I can make it,” she said.

“Then
get up
. I'm not staying in this infernal place for a moment longer than I need to.”

After coiling the rope, Brama dropped it along the inside of the wall and slipped down to the keep's barren courtyard. Çeda followed, and soon the two of them were
gliding like ghosts to the door at the far side, the one Kadir had told her to find. Brama knelt, lock picks at the ready. He slipped them into the keyhole and moved them carefully while pressing his ear to the door. Soon the door was open and Brama was helping her to stand.

The hall that greeted them was dark, but Kadir had described the keep well enough. After a series of passages, they came to a lone, unlocked door at the end of a hall. The room inside was lit faintly by open windows high above. The walls—as the message tattooed on the sole of the woman's foot had implied—were covered with golden mirrors.

No sooner did Çeda step inside than—thank Nalamae for her grace—the pain in her body lifted. She was able to breathe deeply, and instead of curling inward from the agony in her gut and chest, was able to stand tall for the first time in what felt like years.

Çeda stared at the mirrors, wondering at the properties of this room. A sanctum of sorts? A place for Rümayesh to escape from the world?

Brama had already moved to the center of the room, which was littered with dust, stacked furniture, and mismatched piles of books that looked as if they'd been ransacked, though whether that was recently or ages ago, Çeda couldn't tell. Brama knelt and swept his hands over the stones, examining each in turn. Çeda joined him,
looking for the stone the tattoo had described—
beneath a heart of stone
, it had said. It took little time for her to find it, a stone the size and shape of a human heart.

“Here,” she said. It pried up easily, revealing a deep hole. She reached in and found a bag made from cloth-of-gold, and when she tugged at the neck and upended it, an obsidian disk fell onto her palm. It was dark and clear. It reflected moonlight like glass. Upon its surface was an ancient symbol, a complex sigil that represented Rümayesh. It was her name, but also, to a degree, her entire
identity
. Kadir had told her she must wipe it away and create another, and through that ritual she would somehow
define
the ehrekh and trigger a rebirth.

Brama watched her with a hungry expression.
“Hurry!”
he hissed when he finally had her attention.

The edges of the obsidian were rough, almost knifelike. She used it to make a cut along the palm of her left hand, then collected the blood on her opposite thumb and rubbed it along the surface of the disk, mixing it with the dried blood there.

As she did, a wind began to whisper through the windows above. The wind's intensity quickly grew. It began to howl, to whine. Dust and sand swirled at the center of the room. Silver moonlight cut through the dust and sand like spears cast down by Tulathan herself.

“What are you waiting for? Get the other stone.” Brama's voice was high-pitched, his face a study in worry.

Çeda dug in her purse for the stone, but stopped when she heard the scuff of steps behind her. She spun and found a dark-skinned boy standing in the doorway.

“You not find it there,” Makuo said.

He was holding an obsidian disk, she realized. She reached deeper inside her purse and pulled out a hunk of sandstone. She stared at it, confused, but then realized what it was that had caught her and made her fall out in the dead forest. Makuo. He'd been there, and he'd switched the stone without her realizing it.

“You come,” Makuo said, laughing, “like we know
nothing
, like we birds sitting in a tree, waiting to be taken by a stone from your sling.” He sent the disk spinning into the air with a flick of his wrist. “What you think now, girl? Are we birds waiting to be struck?”

Too late, she remembered what she'd forgotten from her dream. Makuo hadn't been in the tower room. Hidi had come alone. Gods, how foolish of her . . . But her mind had been so addled from lack of sleep, and from the jarring shift of perception when Brama had pummeled her awake.

Had the twins known all along about her dreams? Had they allowed her to continue so that she and Brama
would reveal the location of the sigil stone? Had
Kadir
known and put her at risk for some other purpose?

What matter is any of that now?

Makuo opened the door and shouted down the hall. “Come, brother! The girl here, and she bring a friend.”

As he did this, Çeda saw something from the corner of her eye. The moons were high, their light shining through the windows above. In one of the mirrors, she saw a man. Kadir. In the reflection, he was standing just next to her, but he wasn't here in this moonlit room. She could see other things that didn't match as well—furniture, paintings on the walls, a woven rug, none of which appeared in
this
room, all cast golden by the mirror's surface.

A portal,
Çeda realized.

The mirror was a portal, and Kadir was on the opposite side, waiting for the right time to step through it.

She reached for her shamshir as Makuo was turning around.

“Looking for this?” The boy laughed bitterly as he tossed Çeda's curving shamshir into the hall behind him, where it clattered against the stones. “This, too?” He flipped his empty hand into the air, and suddenly, Çeda's kenshar was spinning in the air. He caught it with a flick of his wrist. “You think you take
my
blood? No, girl, Makuo take
yours
. Makuo mark the sigil stone with it and bind you to Rümayesh before you die.”

Çeda didn't wait for any more words.

She charged.

She knew Makuo was quick, that he was gifted with the trick of disappearing and reappearing, and so she was ready when a shadow was cast over the doorway and he vanished. She spun and found him thrusting the dagger toward her.

She sidestepped. Swept both hands in a blocking motion across his wrist and used his momentum to whip him down to the floor. He struck the stones hard and grunted as his breath was expelled. He tried to twist his arm free, but Çeda held tight. She used her advantage to climb atop his back while keeping the knife at bay.

Brama came running, knifepoint down as he prepared to stab Makuo. But Makuo had godsblood running through his veins. He was strong and wickedly quick. He kicked Brama's legs out from underneath him, then twisted in a furious motion, breaking Çeda's hold, and soon he was on top of
her
, holding her kenshar across her throat.