Hebusalim, on the continent of Antiopia
Jumada (Maicin) to Akhira (Junesse) 928
1–2 months until the Moontide
Kazim knelt in prayer, alone in the largest Dome-al’Ahm in Hebusalim, prostrating himself to heaven, asking Ahm’s forgiveness and blessing. The enormity of his mission was beginning to fully dawn upon him. It had never been just a game, not really, but training was not reality. To perfectly execute a killing stroke with a blunted wooden knife was not to drive a steel blade into a man’s heart.
Footsteps echoed in the vast space and he turned to see Rashid, Jamil and Haroun, striding across the stone floor. They were booted, despite the prohibition on footwear in an Amteh holy place, and part of him was offended by this subtle expression of Hadishah arrogance, but the thrill of trepidation was greater. Was this the moment?
It felt like he had been preparing for ever, that this daily cycle of exercise, eating, prayer and sleep was some kind of nightmare wheel that would never stop turning. The only person he saw every day
was Haroun, who quietly read him the words of the texts, of self-sacrifice, of striking the necessary blow, of the evil of the unbeliever. He could have quoted them backwards now:
the Only God is the One God who is Ahm. There is no salvation for the Unbeliever
. But they were just words; only the act of killing Antonin Meiros could release him. Only through death could he live again, somewhere far away, just Ramita and him, with their children.
‘Kazim,’ said Rashid. ‘Come.’
He led them to a Hadishah safe house, deep below the house of a merchant near the gold souk. They were admitted silently, unquestioned and unchallenged. There was an underworld here, dealers in opium and gambling and money, all in the service of Ahm. The Hadishah ruled that world, and Rashid led the Hadishah. Kazim saw fear mixed with reverence in all who recognised him. He wondered what role the man lived openly; he had seen or heard virtually nothing since he came here, and Hadishah did not ask more than they were told.
They descended, the deepest into the earth he had ever been, to a dimly lit pillared cavern some hundred paces long. An old woman stood hunched over before a plinth with an open book on a stand. To Kazim’s amazement, Rashid fell to both knees and prostrated himself before her, and the others did the same. Kazim hastily followed suit.
Who is she, that Rashid kneels to her?
‘At last,’ the old woman said. Her harsh, dry voice was oddly familiar. Despite himself, he lifted his head, and he realised that he did know her after all: the ancient crone in Aruna Nagar Market who had first told him that his fate was tied to Ramita Ankesharan. A thousand questions boiled up, but he swallowed them fearfully as her eyes pierced the gloom and fixed on him.
‘Sal’Ahm, Kazim Makani,’ she rasped. She rose and offered him her arm. The others, even Rashid, remained behind as she guided him to an alcove that she had obviously prepared. There was a brazier and a few artefacts – a knife, some small crystals that looked like large chunks of salt, and a pair of beaten copper goblets.
She motioned for him to sit on the richly patterned carpet that
covered the floor, then, moving stiffly, sat cross-legged herself. ‘My name is Sabele,’ she told him. Her irises were yellowish, he noticed with a shudder – amber-coloured, like a jackal. ‘You may call me Grandmother, though that is not precisely correct.’
Grandmother?
He studied her fearfully.
She is another Hadishah mage. This is a test
.
‘Rashid argued against my seeing you until after the deed is done,’ the crone told him. ‘He felt the risks were too great.’
‘What risks?’ he found the nerve to ask.
‘The risk that you fail and my presence is torn from your mind under questioning.’ Her voice was cool and emotionless. ‘I recognise the risk, but I overruled him.’
She overruled Rashid
. He nodded nervously.
‘Rashid does not know all that is at stake. He knows what you are, but he does not know
all
that you are.’ Sabele leaned forward. ‘He does not know what we can gain if we play our hand correctly. He has chosen you for this mission because he deems you capable, because your sister or this Ramita will open the door for you, because you are Raz Makani’s son. But he does not know all that Raz Makani was.’ Her eyes met his intently. ‘Nor do you. It is time you learned.’
He was suddenly afraid of what he was about to be told.
‘Raz Makani was a descendant of mine,’ Sabele said, ‘as was Falima, his wife.’ Then she suddenly changed the subject. ‘Do you know the tale of the Rondian magi, of Corineus and his followers?’
Kazim nodded; Rashid had told him. ‘They gained their Shaitan-powers, destroyed the Rimoni and conquered Yuros,’ he replied.
The woman sniffed diffidently. ‘I was there,’ she told him, and he felt his skin go cold.
The woman’s eyes challenged him to disbelieve. ‘I was born in Yuros almost six hundred years ago. I was one of Corin’s followers; we drank ambrosia together. But only one third of the thousand people gathered there gained the gnosis and became magi. Fully one third died in their sleep. But that left another group: those who did not gain the gnosis that night, but who did not die. I was such a one.’
‘But—?’
‘Hear me out, boy.’ She put a finger to his lips. ‘Listen. Those of us who failed to gain the gnosis that night were left in a strange position: witness to the miracle, but not party to it. Those who had gained the power declared that we had been proven unworthy, and once they destroyed the Rimoni legions and established their rule, they turned their attention to us. Sertain and his cronies wrote a holy book for their new religion, the Kore, and in it they named us “Kore’s Rejects”. First they hounded us, then they went so far as declaring us heretics and condemned us to death.’ Her voice was harsh as she spoke, thick with remembered bitterness. ‘Our numbers dwindled, and we began to believe that we had been indeed found wanting. Within a decade, we were hunted almost to extinction. Only through our courage and loyalty to each other did we survive.’
She fell silent for a long while, as if pondering this thought. Kazim waited until he could not refrain from asking, ‘What happened then?’
She looked up. ‘An accidental discovery: I came upon a dying mage who had been caught unawares by a rival and left for dead. His body was ruined beyond healing and as I bent over him, he died. For an instant, as I was checking to see if he breathed, I thought I glimpsed a tiny puff of luminous smoke rising from his nostrils, and I inadvertently inhaled that vapour. It was his spirit, departing the corpse.’ She gestured at the brazier with a curling hand and caused the smoke rising there to twist, a prop to her tale. ‘
I had inhaled his soul – and gained the gnosis
. And because my fellows were as kindred to me, I shared my discovery, which paved the path to our salvation.’
Kazim stared. Rashid had
never
mentioned anything like this.
‘We know now that the ambrosia had not quite worked on us, the so-called Rejects: there had been a flaw in the mix, or maybe some unknown element in ourselves that had retarded the process, leaving us with the
potential
for the gnosis. To gain it fully required a trigger: a soul imbued with the gnosis.’
Kazim’s mind raced ahead and began to make connections as Sabele went on, ‘My fellow Rejects, desperate to gain the gnosis, followed my lead, but dying magi were not readily available. In
desperation, some turned on each other, and to my sorrow, this worked: transformation could also be triggered by absorbing the soul of a Reject. Drinking a human soul
replenished
our powers, but it could not trigger the gnosis. In essence, we had to kill to gain our powers.’
Kazim watched her in sick fascination.
She told me to call her ‘Grandmother’
.
‘The magi learned of us, and they were appalled. They call us “Dokken”, “Souldrinkers”, “Shadowmancers”, and many other such names. A purge was declared, and the few of us remaining went into hiding. We have been hiding ever since.’
‘And you are my great-grandmother?’ Kazim asked fearfully.
‘Add a few greats, boy,’ she told him. ‘I fled here when the first windships came, hundreds of years ago.’
Hundreds of years – Ahm have mercy!
Kazim forced himself to think, despite the hammering in his chest. He recalled what he’d been told of the magi. ‘Then the blood must have dissipated through the generations …’
‘These things work similarly: you are one-sixteenth blood, so the gnosis in you is thin, but not too thin. You will make a Shadowmancer, if you have the will.’
He gasped and jerked away. ‘But I don’t,’ he choked out, ‘I don’t want your Shaitan-gifts.’
All I ever wanted was to be was a good man, a happy man, with Ramita beside me
.
‘If the children growing in her belly are Meiros’, then your woman has the gnosis already.’
‘The children are mine!’
‘Are you sure?’ She smiled indulgently. ‘If she had the gnosis, why would she want one who has not?’
‘She does not – and she loves me.’
‘She is falling under Meiros’ spell.’
‘Never!’
She looked at him pityingly. ‘You think she is unchanged by all she has seen and experienced here? You think, even if she could, she would return to the south? She is his prisoner, until you cut her
free.’ She held out her hand, palm upward and let flame dance on it, and he found himself watching in fascination, unwillingly wondering what it would be like to be able to perform such miracles – to do it and not be damned. ‘Would you not like to pilot your own skiff, boy? Or rain down fire on the infidel? To bestride the world like a prince?’
His mind went back to the joy of soaring above the ground with Molmar, and he recalled the humiliation of being thrashed by Rashid in the arena.
I would never be treated so again. I would be his equal
… It was not a dream he could easily reject.
‘You say I would have to kill a mage and consume his soul?’ he asked, nauseated at the thought.
‘You keep on consuming souls to replenish expended energy,’ Sabele replied. ‘There is something in our condition that retards normal recovery. A mage can regain his powers by rest; we must feed on others.’
‘Are – are we—?’ Saying ‘we’ was almost the strangest part of this conversation. ‘Are we as strong as the magi?’
Sabele looked at him measuringly. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that rather depends. Would you know more?’
He looked at her, scarcely able to think. This power she was offering was a dream, a fantasy – but to become a real power in this world, when the times were so perilous, was a Shaitan’s bargain that he surely could not afford to decline.
Ramita will understand
, he told himself.
I do this to grow stronger, my love, so I may protect you
.
‘What must I do?’ he asked.
Ramita was alone in her courtyard. Meiros was away, attending yet another emergency meeting at Domus Costruo, and Alyssa Dulayne had taken Justina to a party. Ramita had been largely alone since that night at Southpoint and already it felt like something that had happened years ago to a different person. Only Huriya was left to her, but she was constantly away in the daytime and consumed with her own appetites at night. Ramita could hear the sounds of passion
emanating from Huriya’s room even now. Jos Klein was intoxicated with the Keshi girl, constantly seeking her out.
She is my sister, but I hardly know her any more
.
She prayed Kazim and Jai were far away, far enough to survive Meiros’ wrath, even if things went badly. She had two glimmers of hope: one, that her children truly were Meiros’, or if they weren’t, that he might forgive her. She rehearsed over and over in her mind how she would beg his forgiveness: her next children would be his, this she would swear; she was so very, very sorry – but she would make it up to him. It sounded pitiful, even in her mind. These were things men did not forgive.
She dined alone on some cheese and bread and a small glass of juice. Olives gave her indigestion this week. Her pregnancy had her appetite rotating in some obscure cycle, so she was never sure what she would be able to eat without having to stagger to the privy. It was the first week of Junesse and the courtyard, a roasting dish during the middle of the day, became bearable only at night. The curfews imposed in the city outside were poorly policed, so the city was noisy after dark, even in their quiet neighbourhood.
Her heart fluttered as a dry voice asked from her doorway, ‘My dear, you are still awake?’ Antonin Meiros grinned boyishly as he hobbled into the room.
She looked up, feeling a smile return to her face for the first time in several days. ‘Husband—’ She went to get up, but he kissed her forehead and settled opposite her.
‘How are you, Ramita?’
‘Well enough. I have some discomfort here,’ she said, lightly touching her belly, ‘but otherwise I am well. Although I miss my husband,’ she scolded lightly.
‘I am sorry, my dear. We are trying to get Salim to meet with us, but Rashid cannot get him to agree.’
She remembered the darkly handsome emir with a shudder. ‘I don’t trust him.’
‘Rashid has his uses.’ Meiros poured himself some fruit juice. ‘His family have been part of the Ordo Costruo from early on; they have
much to be grateful to us for. They have remained loyal to the Order through two Crusades. He will be steadfast.’ He looked across the table at her. ‘I did not come to see you about the woes of the world. I came to see your lovely face and to hear your voice. Tell me, is Justina paying you more attention these days?’
‘No – well, a little. She sees me daily, but only to see if I have started to, um,
manifest
.’ She steeled herself. ‘Husband, is there anything that might prevent this thing happening to me?’
‘No. According to the texts, it has always happened,.’ He smiled kindly. ‘Don’t be afraid, my dear. I know you were raised to think of the gnosis as evil, but it isn’t; it is just a tool, no more good nor evil than the person wielding it. Your soul is in no danger.’