Sandstorm (24 page)

The blue light fell on Corvus when he was forty paces from the WeavePasha’s palace. Its walls loomed above the surrounding rooftops, blocking the stars in the eastern sky.

The stars in the western sky were blocked by the blue glow of a djinni’s endless whirlwind.

Corvus drew his short sword, even knowing it was useless against the floating giant who descended upon him.

“Shahrokh,” Corvus said, “the WeavePasha’s wards will already have sounded. Best flee before he boils you down to nothing.” Corvus backed against the alley wall and wondered if he dare draw his shield from the portal concealed in his breast feathers.

The djinni vizar, managing an expression combining imperiousness and boredom, rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. Pain blossomed in Corvus’s head, as if an
ice pick had been driven through one eye. He wretched and fell to his knees.

“The human’s … 
competence
 … is known. As are his motivations. To face me out here in his beloved city would be to bring it down around him, even if he managed to destroy me in the process. But do not worry, spy. If alarms are ringing within el Jhotos’s cursed palace, they warn him of nothing more than a sending. Only my semblance is polluted by this human-fouled air. My essence soars above Calimport.”

“What do you want?” gasped Corvus.

The djinni lord laughed. “As I have told you before, you are incapable of understanding the answer to that question. What you wish to know is why I am here, why I suffer your presence, even remotely.”

The invisible spike withdrew from Corvus’s eye, but an all-too-visible threat replaced it. Corvus had not realized he had dropped his sword until it floated up from the ground.

“It amuses me to offer a warning. You and your companions present an unexpected level of … martial
efficacy
. The standing membership of El Pajabbar has been completely wiped out just once before in its history, and Memnon the Hunter himself took the field that day. The remaining yikaria in Calimport are on the edge of open rebellion, and may have to be put down.

“Circumstances have changed. Should the WeavePasha enspell the pasha of games’s heir and send him as an assassin, the
heir
will be put down. Return Marod yn Marod to us untampered with.”

Corvus found that he could not move. The sword’s point traced the fine lines of the guild symbol carved into his beak, its presence invisible to most and its meaning unknowable to even the few who might detect it. How is he doing this? the kenku wondered.

“I will try,” said Corvus, “but that is all I can do. I have no influence over the WeavePasha.”

With a gesture, the djinni sent the short sword plunging deep into the flesh of Corvus’s thigh. Still held immobile, the kenku could not even fall.

“You risk your life to speak, and then choose an obvious lie? Your influence on el Jhotos is known.”

The weakness he felt spreading throughout his lower body could not be attributed to any special quality of the blade beyond its sharpness. Corvus coated his weapons only with poisons he was immune to. The djinni must have opened a vein.

“I will try,” said Corvus again. “This is all I can promise.”

“Corvus Nightfeather works best when he is offered unusual incentives,” said Shahrokh. “This is known. Return the heir. Meet your other, more pressing obligation to me. Do this and earn a favor you will count a blessing. When the pasha of games sends the goliath and the halfling woman into the arena, I will ensure they do not face each other.”

Shahrokh’s disappearance was instantaneous and absolute. Without the blue glow, the alley was pitch dark.

But I can see in the dark, thought Corvus, not realizing it was an interior blackness washing over him. Why can’t I see in the dark?

C
EPHAS SAT, LEGS CROSSED, AT THE CENTER OF A GLADE
of towering trees. The closely trimmed lawn he rested on was on the opposite side of the great circular garden from the cluster of tents.

Ariella faced him, her legs also crossed. Their knees had to touch because, she said, they must be close enough to join hands. Before they found this secluded spot, she returned to her tent and changed into the same loose-fitting clothes Cephas wore, though she still had her sword. The weapon lay to one side, its tooled scabbard and belt draped over the satchels holding Cephas’s piecemeal armor and double flail.

She told him to sit quietly and seek a place of peace within himself that matched the peace without. He looked around, and said, “I have not seen trees like these before, though there were only a few different kinds on the highland
plains in Tethyr. There were none at all in the canyon, or on the Spires of Mir.”

Ariella angled her head up at the rugged bark and silver-backed brown leaves in the canopy high overhead. “They’re weirwoods, I think, though I’ve never seen one, either. Said to be rare. But perhaps one of the spires we saw in Argentor was once of a kind with these, before they all changed to stone. Do you find talking about trees brings you to a peaceful state, Cephas?”

He grinned. “I don’t think I’ve ever talked about trees at all. Unless Grinta the Pike’s advice on the killing of treants counts, though her technique is not peaceful.”

When Ariella laughed, he remembered that her voice had reminded him of bells the first time he heard it—bells on a weapon harness. Perhaps I don’t know what an inner place of peace is, he thought.

“You told me you knew thirty-one ways to block a morning star,” she said. “My own fighting style is less formalized than the ways you were taught, I think. But I wonder if any of those ways is a block of the
returning
swing. Did you ever fall before a blow, then strike while you opponent was extended, so you needed to defend only against the weaker backhand strike?”

Cephas answered, “The Fluttering Leaf style. I’m no master of it, but I know it. It is better suited for …” He stumbled, not wanting to offend her. “For more delicate fighters than I.”

She arched an eyebrow. “By which you mean weaker. I am not as strong as you, Cephas Earthsouled, but strength does not win every battle.”

Cephas pictured bullheaded axemen and spinning silver blades. “I know. I’ve seen Shan and Cynda fight,” he said.

“Just so. Though I would not look to them to learn peace of mind. The Fluttering Leaf, now, when a
practitioner of that art accepts the opening strike, what does he do?”

A thousand days of drills came to mind. “Well, nothing. The blow falls, and you fall before it. You hold no stance; you raise no warding shield. It passes over you.”

“You need to take every thought that comes to you and fall before it. Anything that rises up, let it pass by. Even the energy you call the earth-force. Let that flow away. To achieve a Second Soul, a windsoul, you must empty the one you already possess.”

Cephas tried. The first thing he realized was that trying to think of nothing yielded the opposite of the desired effect. A floodgate of memories, worries, idle thoughts, and unfocused observations was opened by his effort. Her voice sounded like bells.

“I grow more peaceful inside when you’re talking, Ariella.”

She smiled. “I will tell you, then,” she said, “that I myself express no other soul than the wind. I have never felt a need to listen for anything other than its call.”

Cephas said, “But you think you can teach me this trick?”

“It is not a trick, Cephas. It’s a
discipline
, like your gladiatorial fighting styles or my sword spells. I can show you how to open yourself to the wind, because I have heard the wind in you.”

Cephas found that other thoughts ceased to press on him.

“Those genasi who take on more than one soul are one of the great proofs that we are all one people, despite the differences in our abilities and appearances,” she said.

“There are others? Other ‘great proofs,’ I mean?”

Ariella said, “The Firestorm Cabal actually makes one positive contribution. They have kept genealogical records that span centuries and track lineages across different worlds. They don’t publicize this, but their cabal
was founded here, in the South. The genasi who first drew swords in the Second Era of Skyfire were Firestormers. They brought their records north and joined them with the annals of my people, and found that the clans and families are related in deep time. Their work is related to the third great proof.”

“What is that?” Cephas asked.

Surprising him, she blushed. Her silver cheeks turned the same blue iron shade that colored her crystal hair. “Genasi, no matter which soul they express”—she cleared her throat—“breed true.”

Cephas found he was at the edge of his experience. “Oh.”

She laughed. “The Cabalists believe the great clans of earthsouled and stormsouled and all the others should keep their lineages apart. They use words such as ‘pure’ and ‘inviolate.’ When couples of different expressions, well, have children together, for instance, the Firestormers say they’ve blurred the
szuldar.”

Cephas asked, “This is widely believed?”

She shrugged. “It’s hard to say. There are many who find the idea repellant, this programmatic separation of the expressions. I know I do. And my parents. My father is watersouled, and my mother most often expresses as fire.”

“Yet you are windsouled?”

Again came the laughter like bells. “My mother was born windsouled but found the fire suited her better. She is a famous chef in our city. My father has always been watersouled, as has one of my brothers. He followed Father into the Waveriders, the Akanûlan navy.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother,” said Cephas.

“I have two. The Waverider is the eldest. My younger brother is windsouled, and says he will join the Airsteppers’ Guild like me. I think he’ll change his mind once he learns
it’s something more than an adult version of the races he and his friends run among the skymotes.”

“The motes of Airspur host better games than Jazeerijah, then,” Cephas said.

She looked at him. “It’s when you talk about that place that I hear the wind in you the loudest.”

Cephas despaired of finding the peace of mind she described. “How did your mother learn the firesoul?” he asked. “You said she was not born with that expression.”

Ariella blushed again, even deeper this time. “Mother’s story …” she said, hesitating. In the short time Cephas had known Ariella, he had never seen her hesitate. “It has to do with a man she knew before my father. She says it involved ‘certain fiery circumstances.’ ”

Cephas pursed his lips. He did not quite know why that caused Ariella to blush and hesitate, but it gave him an idea.

“Well,” he said, gazing up at the trees, “perhaps what we need is something related to the powers the windsoul grants. If I learn to fly, we could seek ‘certain heightened circumstances.’ Though I don’t know what those could be.”

He felt her hand on his chest and thought of lightning.

“I know something we could try,” she said.

A time passed that was as endless as the span of a heartbeat.