CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness (16 page)

As it grappled with the phoenix, dousing the bird’s fire in a steaming conflagration, Kahe saw the power of the goddess.
This
was why Hia wanted them both there; Mehahui had the power and the knowledge, but not the instincts of a sorcerer.

Without waiting for her waterbird to finish the phoenix, Kahe attacked the Ouvallese. The pathetic spell barely warmed the metal of the whale-horse’s scales. But when Mehahui copied him, the animal screamed under the red hot metal, plunging forward in terror. Its iron shod feet trampled the warriors closest to it.

On its back, the attendants clutched Oahi, struggling to keep him upright as he worked the counter-spell. Even though he cooled the scales, the panicked creature did not stop its rampage. A blond, bearded man, with a gold circlet on his helm staggered forward in the hut to stand next to the old man. What would the King of Ouvalle do when all his animals panicked?

Kahe croaked, “Others.”

Mehahui nodded, and heated the scaled armor of the whale-horse next to the first.

As quickly as she heated it, the Ouvallese sorcerer cooled it, but the frightened animal turned the disciplined ranks around it to chaos. Mehahui turned to the next one as the King shouted to a hut behind him.

Kahe drew in his breath as the front whale-horse plunged into the wood, letting him see the one behind it clearly for the first time. In this hut rode a half dozen men and women. Though of differing ages, each wore a simple gray skirt with the white flame of Hia—these passengers were some of the dying of Hia’au. The Ouvallese did not have one sorcerer, they had a half dozen, and in battle, Hia’s only chosen people were the dying. Kahe could expect no favors from her, unless he paid her price.

Clutching the upright post in the corner, a priest of Hia spoke quickly to the woman closest to him.

Kahe grunted and pointed at them. Mehahui had to destroy the sorcerers before the priest finished explaining the spell he wanted the woman to cast.

Mehahui nodded and threw the spell to heat their whale-horse’s scaled armor, but Oahi anticipated her and cooled it before the animal panicked. Kahe shook his head. “No. People.”

Squinting her eyes in confusion, Mehahui refined her spell and released it. The magnitude of the spell staggered Kahe as it passed him. It came from someone on the threshold of death. Mehahui’s face was gray. She swayed on her feet. They had to finish this now, before she went home to Hia.

The warriors of Ouvalle screamed as one, ripping their helms from their heads. Some threw themselves on the ground in their efforts to get away from armor that began to take on the dull cherry red of heat.

Even the king wrenched his circlet from his head before Oahi cooled the metal.

It was a mighty spell, but the wrong one. Hia’s dying wore no metal. Kahe grabbed Mehahui’s arm and pointed at the hut of the dying. He threw a cloud of dark, hoping to absorb the priest in that veil of nothing.

Mehahui nodded. Staggered and threw the same spell. The world groaned at the immensity of the void she created. As it flew forward, it unfurled to the size of the road. In the moment when it engulfed the first row of warriors, the woman in the hut unleashed her spell as well, dying as it left her. Small and arrow-bright, the spell flew past the void without pausing. Its shape seemed familiar, but Kahe did not recognize the form. He tossed a general defensive spell and prayed to Pikeo for luck that it would be enough to counter this attack.

The void continued eating its way through the ranks of Ouvallese warriors. Those closest to the edge of the road threw away their weapons and ran for the woods. The old sorcerer in the hut produced the counter-spell for the void, but it only reduced the girth of the dark cloud.

Kahe looked at his wife, at her gray and bloodless lips, at the bright red staining her skirts and ankles; Hia, Pikeo and The Mother—she had surpassed the ancient man in power.

The dying woman’s narrow spell struck Mehahui in the belly. Light as white as Hia’s fire flared around her. She convulsed.

Kahe leaped to catch her as she collapsed. Seeing her fall, the Ouvallese king shouted a command to the few remaining archers. They raised their bows and fired at Kahe and Mehahui. Kahe welcomed the speeding arrows, but they too were consumed by the void Mehahui had created.

It roiled forward.

The handler for the king’s whale-horse frantically turned the animal, trying to outrun the void.

Created in the moment before her death, it was the strongest spell Kahe had yet seen.

Seeming to recognize this, the sorcerer in the King’s hut grabbed a knife from his side and plunged it into his own heart, throwing the counter-spell again. It struck the void, undoing it, as the whale-horse plunged into the trees. The archers again raised their bows.

In Kahe’s arms, Mehahui stirred and opened her eyes.

She gulped in air. “Oh, Hia. No!”

Her skin was clear and flushed with life. Kahe took her face in his hands, feeling the warm vitality of her flesh. “How?”

“They healed me,” she groaned. “The goddess has left.” She looked past him at the archers. Her eyes widened.

They had no more blunt arrows. A field of sharp points sprang toward them.

“Pikeo save us!” Kahe threw himself across her, turning to cast a shield at the deadly arrows. It stopped most of them.

A familiar pain tore open his cheek. Another arrow plunged into his left shoulder and the third went through his right arm and pinned it to his thigh.

But none of them hit Mehahui.

Kahe waited for Hia’s power to come to him, but the wounds were too slight. So he sent a prayer to Pikeo begging for good luck. They were in a crossroads, if ever Luck were going to play fair with him, it would be here and now.

And this would be the moment to strike. Oahi sagged in the arms of his escort, already gone home to Hia, but Kahe lacked the power for any large spells. He tried to reach for his dagger but by unlucky chance, the arrow bound his right arm to his leg.

His left arm hung limp. This was how Pikeo answered his prayer?

Mehahui pushed him off of her and got to her knees. He saw her prep for a spell with a sense of despair. Flush with life, she had even less power than he.

The spell fluttered from her, almost dissipating by the time it reached the army. She had thrown an unbinding spell. It was a simple childish spell, good only for causing a rival’s skirt to drop.

One tie on the king’s hut came undone.

Kahe held his breath, praying that Pikeo would notice that chance and play with it.

As the animal lurched onto the road, the king’s hut slid off and toppled among the remnant of the Ouvallese army. The hut splintered as it crushed the men unlucky enough to be caught underneath it. As the debris settled, Kahe gasped at what the hand of Pikeo had wrought: the pike of one of the Ouvallese had impaled the king like a trophy of war.

He convulsed once and hung limp.

At the sight of their dead monarch, a rising wail swept through the remaining warriors. Those closest to Mehahui and Kahe backed away. Others, seeing their decimated ranks, threw down their arms and ran.

Mehahui leaned her head against Kahe’s back. Then she patted him, soft as a hatchling. “Stay with me.”

Kahe coughed as he tried to speak, gagging on the mass in his mouth. She knelt in front of him.

Looking at his wife’s fair and healthy face, Kahe sent a prayer of thanks to both gods.

“The arrow in your cheek appears to have followed the same path as the other did; it is lodged in your bandages. I’d say we have Luck to thank for our survival today.” Mehahui picked up the sorcery kit. “And now, my love, I intend to keep you out of Hia’s hands.”

She placed a hand against his cheek and Kahe had never felt anything so sweet as his wife’s touch, proving they were both alive.

Saladin Ahmed

As soon as I arrive in the village of Beit Zujaaj I begin to hear the mutters about Abdel Jameela, a strange old man supposedly unconnected to any of the local families. Two days into my stay the villagers fall over one another to share with me the rumors that Abdel Jameela is in fact distantly related to the esteemed Assad clan. By my third day in Beit Zujaaj, several of the Assads, omniscient as “important” families always are in these piles of cottages, have accosted me to deny the malicious whispers. No doubt they are worried about the bad impression such an association might make on me, favorite physicker of the Caliph’s own son.

The latest denial comes from Hajjar al-Assad himself, the middle-aged head of the clan and the sort of half-literate lout that passes for a Shaykh in these parts. Desperate for the approval of the young courtier whom he no doubt privately condemns as an overschooled sodomite, bristle-bearded Shaykh Hajjar has cornered me in the village’s only café—if the sitting room of a qat-chewing old woman can be called a café by anyone other than bumpkins.

I should not be so hard on Beit Zujaaj and its bumpkins. But when I look at the gray rock-heap houses, the withered gray vegetable-yards, and the stuporous gray lives that fill this village, I want to weep for the lost color of Baghdad.

Instead I sit and listen to the Shaykh.

“Abdel Jameela is not of Assad blood, O learned Professor. My grandfather took mercy, as God tells us we must, on the old man’s mother. Seventy-and-some years ago she showed up in Beit Zujaaj, half-dead from traveling and big with child, telling tales—God alone knows if they were true—of her Assad-clan husband, supposedly slain by highwaymen. Abdel Jameela was birthed and raised here, but he has never been of this village.” Shaykh Hajjar scowls. “For decades now—since I was a boy—he has lived up on the hilltop rather than among us. More of a hermit than a villager. And not of Assad blood,” he says again.

I stand up. I can take no more of the man’s unctuous voice and, praise God, I don’t have to.

“Of course, O Shaykh, of course. I understand. Now, if you will excuse me?”

Shaykh Hajjar blinks. He wishes to say more but doesn’t dare. For I have come from the Caliph’s court.

“Yes, Professor. Peace be upon you.” His voice is like a snuffed candle.

“And upon you, peace.” I head for the door as I speak.

The villagers would be less deferential if they knew of my current position at court—or rather, lack of one. The Caliph has sent me to Beit Zujaaj as an insult. I am here as a reminder that the well-read young physicker with the clever wit and impressive skill, whose company the Commander of the Faithful’s own bookish son enjoys, is worth less than the droppings of the Caliph’s favorite falcon. At least when gold and a Persian noble’s beautiful daughter are involved.

For God’s viceroy the Caliph has seen fit to promise my Shireen to another, despite her love for me. Her husband-to-be is older than her father—too ill, the last I heard, to even sign the marriage contract. But as soon as his palsied, liver-spotted hand is hale enough to raise a pen . . . Things would have gone differently were I a wealthy man. Shireen’s father would have heard my proposal happily enough if I’d been able to provide the grand dowry he sought. The Caliph’s son, fond of his brilliant physicker, even asked that Shireen be wedded to me. But the boy’s fondness could only get me so far. The Commander of the Faithful saw no reason to impose a raggedy scholar of a son-in-law on the Persian when a rich old vulture would please the man more. I am, in the Caliph’s eyes, an amusing companion to his son, but one whom the boy will lose like a doll once he grows to love killing and gold-getting more than learning. Certainly I am nothing worth upsetting Shireen’s coin-crazed courtier father over.

For a man is not merely who he is, but what he has. Had I land or caravans I would be a different man—the sort who could compete for Shireen’s hand. But I have only books and instruments and a tiny inheritance, and thus that is all that I am. A man made of books and pittances would be a fool to protest when the Commander of the Faithful told him that his love would soon wed another.

I
am a fool.

My outburst in court did not quite cost me my head, but I was sent to Beit Zujaaj “for a time, only, to minister to the villagers as a representative of Our beneficent concern for Our subjects.” And my fiery, tree-climbing Shireen was locked away to await her half-dead suitor’s recovery.