Freedom's Slave

  “No, I can do it, I can—”

  “My Empress—you need to get on your gryphon,” Taz said, kneeling down so he could lock his eyes onto hers.

  “No,” she shouted above the din, her voice frantic. “I did it with the wind, just let me—”

  “That’s it,” Raif growled. Her grabbed her around the waist and threw her over his shoulder. He held on tighter as Nalia tried to work her way out of his iron grip.

  “Raif! Just give me a minute!” she yelled.

  He ignored her. “Touma, get on Taz’s rug,” Raif said to Nalia’s captain of the guard.

  The Ifrit stood his ground. “I will when the empress is safely in the air,” he said.

  “Gods and monsters,” Raif muttered.

  He bodily forced Nalia onto her gryphon, Thatur nodding his approval. She writhed against his arms, but he had her in an iron grip. Touma and Taz jumped onto the carpet with the others, and they all took to the sky just before the ground they’d been standing on disappeared below the earth’s surface, creating a chasm so deep it seemed to go all the way down to the center of the worlds.

  “I’m sorry, rohifsa. I had to,” Taz heard Raif say to Nalia.

  She slumped against him, spent. “I know. I’m sorry, too.” He smoothed back her hair and gave Taz an exhausted look.

  “Well done,” he said to Raif. Here again was one more reason why the Taifyeh’Urbis needed one another.

  Ajwar leaned toward Taz. “Is my daughter always like this?”

  The corner of Taz’s mouth turned up. “Always.”

  Her father frowned. “She must get it from her mother.”

  From the sky, the disaster below was a distant roar. Taz could hear the flap of the gryphon’s wings, the panicked beat of his own heart, Touma’s mumbled prayers, Ajwar’s labored breaths. Aisha was calmly going through her medicine bag, organizing her supplies. Nalia grasped Raif’s hands where they held her around her waist, pulling him closer, and the longing Taz felt then for Kes was so agonizing he had to wrap his elbows around his knees to hold himself together.

  The sky was full of flying carpets of every color and size, jinn of all castes watching their realm break, their faces filled with horror. There was no coming back from this devastation—not even Nalia could stitch their world back together. A rush of energy washed over the carpets as a crash echoed throughout the land, so loud Taz had to cover his ears. Screams filled the air as jinn fell off their carpets and plummeted to the earth below, falling too swiftly to evanesce. Aisha cried out as she went over and Taz threw himself across the carpet, grabbing her hand just in time as Touma held on to his waist with one hand and the carpet with the other. Ajwar caught her bag just as it slid over the edge.

  “I’ve got you!” Touma shouted as Aisha continued to scream.

  Taz’s muscles shook and sweat broke out on his forehead as he strained to lift her. It took a few harrowing seconds, but he finally hoisted her back onto the carpet and she collapsed against him, sobbing.

  “Is she okay?” Nalia called, clutching Raif, eyes wide.

  Taz waved his hand. “She will be.”

  The jinn around him began to shout and Taz followed their gaze, staring at the unthinkable. The entire northern ridge of the Qaf range—the mighty mountains that had scraped the sky just moments before—collapsed from the sea to the western ridge. The mountains where Nalia and Raif had just gotten married, where Taz had once fallen in love with a Djan soldier long before going to Earth, were now reduced to dust as the earth’s maw opened for the rock, greedy. The only part of the Qaf still standing was the western ridge that held the palace and the portal—a few small mountains that overlooked the Infinite Lake.

  Where once mountains had separated Arjinna and Ithkar, there was no longer a border. In mere minutes, the chasm the mountains had fallen into closed up, the land suddenly flat, as though the mountains had never been there. An impossibly high pillar rose out of the earth in their place, perfectly round and smooth, made of the same blue and gold lapis lazuli as the mountains. Its circumference was the size of the small reflecting pool in the Shaitan temple; Taz had no idea what the gods intended it for.

  With mountains gone, the land was one, the obsidian plane of Ithkar giving way to the sodden earth of Arjinna and, beyond that, the Gate of the Eye. Raif shouted an incoherent stream of words as he pointed to the gate and the wall that had always separated Arjinna from the Eye. Taz’s eyes followed where his finger pointed.

  The earth was rumbling toward Arjinna’s southern border, a wave of dirt and rock that breached the towering wall, tearing it down in one fell swoop. Taz held his breath as the darkness of the Eye roiled, spinning like a top over the gray dust that coated its floor. The air filled with the keening of thousands of ghouls.

  Gods, no, he thought.

  They couldn’t fight an army of ghouls. They might as well never leave the sky, or fly through the portal and somehow close it behind them, abandoning Arjinna forever, leaving it to the monsters.

  Taz reared back as a blinding flash of diamond light shot across the Eye, covering it with a thick membrane of glossy, opal light.

  Nalia gasped, her eyes filling with tears as—just for a moment—a white phoenix soared toward the sky, disappearing in the clouds. The earth stilled then, waiting, Taz knew, for the last plague to begin.

  46

  THIS TIME, THEY HAD MERE SECONDS BEFORE THE NEXT plague hit.

  Bolts of lighting stabbed at the jinn in the sky, hundreds of them, each one seeming to aim for its own victim. Thatur dove down, faster than he ever had, holding his wings against his flanks to gather speed. Raif held on tight to Nalia, shielding her with his body. She screamed as the bolts of lightning began shooting toward them from high above, faster and faster, in such quick succession that the sky was filled with a continuous, deafening thunder. Raif had assumed the volcanos would overrun and lava would cover the land—it seemed an appropriate plan of attack for the god of fire. He and Nalia had been fools to think they could outwit both Ravnir and Tirgan with enchanted carpets. Perhaps it was the carpets that had made the god of fire choose lightning, the most terrifying of his weapons.

  A bolt sped past them, so close it singed part of Thatur’s tail. A pained caw ripped from his throat but he never lost his focus, tilting to the side as he dodged the bullets of lightning that rained down from the sky, swerving expertly so as not to hit the carpets around them. Raif pressed his knees against the gryphon’s flanks and Nalia gripped the feathers on his neck, white-knuckled.

  There was nowhere for them to go. The Qaf Mountains were gone, the Cauldron had collapsed, and there was no shelter to be found in Arjinna with every structure destroyed by the wave. Dark burn marks crisscrossed the ground where Ravnir’s bolts scorched the land.

  “Thatur says he knows of some caves, deeper inside Ithkar,” Nalia yelled as she turned to him.

  He hadn’t heard Thatur say a word, but then Raif remembered how the gryphon was able to communicate with Nalia. Raif looked behind him, motioning for Taz and the others on his carpet to follow as Thatur sped farther north, to the wild lands of the jinn. Soon steam blanketed the whole land, the lighting bolts here coming just as fast and thick, but harder to see. It felt as though they were flying through clouds during a terrible storm. Raif continued to keep his body hunched over Nalia’s, pushing her head down, even though he knew it was little protection against Ravnir’s onslaught.

  Thatur navigated the unfamiliar landscape as though he knew it well, and Raif realized that this was where the gryphon must have hidden after the coup, before he built his nest in the Qaf. Several long, agonizing minutes later, Thatur slowed, waiting for Taz to come alongside him.

  “The cave is just ahead,” Thatur said, dodging yet another lightning bolt. “Stay right behind me and don’t stop.”

  Thatur shot forward and the clouds of mist parted slightly as a very small opening in a craggy mountain came into view. The gryphon swooped down and Raif’s stomach lurched.
Within seconds they were inside a cave. Raif held up his hand, throwing emerald balls of light ahead of Thatur as he flew through a low tunnel, slowing just before an arch that led into a cavern large enough for all of them to comfortably rest inside.

  Nalia added her own spheres of glowing chiaan to Raif’s, and the cavern glowed with soft, pulsing light. Raif slid off Thatur, his legs wobbly, and reached up for Nalia. She fell into his arms, hugging him to her.

  “Let’s stay in this cave forever,” she whispered.

  “Okay,” he said.

  She let go and crossed to Thatur, where the gryphon lay on the ground, panting. Raif had never seen the formidable creature so exhausted.

  Nalia knelt down and wrapped her arms around Thatur’s neck and planted a kiss on his beak. She whispered into his ear and the sound of a soft, lionlike purr echoed in the cave.

  Then: “My Empress, kindly release me and behave like the royal leader you are.”

  Nalia laughed and kissed him on the top of his head before releasing him. “I love you, you crazy bird.”

  “Gryphon,” he growled.

  Taz’s carpet came through the arch, and once he’d stopped the thing he stumbled to the ground and lay flat on his back.

  “Fire and blood,” he said. “How are we even alive?”

  “The gods are good,” Aisha said.

  Raif snorted. “That’s the most ironic thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Raif’s father-in-law chuckled quietly and he caught Raif’s eye, smiling. It was hard to believe a former Shaitan overlord and a Ghan Aisouri were part of his family now. Raif wondered if his father could see him from the godlands. What would Dthar Djan’Urbi have to say about his wife and her father?

  Touma crossed to Nalia and bowed. “Is there any way I can be of service, My Empress?”

  “No, Touma, rest—you deserve it.”

  “Gods, I’m thirsty,” Taz said.

  “I can help with that.” Aisha focused her Marid chiaan on the stalactites above them, the rock sweating water.

  Nalia manifested several clay cups and jugs just as a stream of water gushed into them.

  Taz laughed and raised his cup of cool water to Aisha in thanks. She smiled, sipping at her own.

  They decided to stay in the cave until they could no longer hear the thunder. Even Nalia didn’t try to go back out and lead more jinn to safety. They all knew it wasn’t likely that they’d make it back through the lightning storm a second time.

  Raif sat in the mouth of the cave, his turn to listen. The thunder continued for over an hour and then suddenly stopped, replaced with a deafening silence. He waited a few minutes more, trying to see through the mist. There didn’t appear to be any more flashes of lightning.

  He ran back to the cavern, where the rest lay sleeping.

  “It’s over,” he said, louder than a whisper, quieter than a shout.

  Five pairs of eyes snapped open and Touma’s head fell into his hands as he wept. Nalia sat up from where she’d fallen asleep propped against Thatur, her eyes meeting Raif’s. She smiled at him; he could feel her relief from where he stood.

  Nalia and Raif mounted Thatur as the others jumped back on their carpet. The mist from the smoking volcanoes had become thicker and it was slow going, Thatur navigating through the sharp piles of rock that dotted this landscape.

  “Nalia . . .”

  Raif stiffened. “Did you hear—”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Nalia . . .”

  A whisper in the mist, a voice ancient and strange. No, not one voice, a chorus with a snakelike hiss.

  “Ghasai œŋæ.”

  “Oh, gods,” Nalia said. She looked at Taz and her father. Something passed between the three of them, a palpable fear.

  “It’s the old language,” Raif said, “isn’t it?” He didn’t understand a word, but Raif knew it when he heard it.

  Nalia nodded. She felt suddenly cold to the touch and goosebumps covered her arms. He held her close to him. The last time Nalia had come into contact with the old language, she’d tried to kill herself.

  “What are they saying?” he asked.

  “We want your breath,” Nalia whispered.

  “Ghasai nëjër. . . .”

  “We want your blood,” Ajwar said.

  Fire and blood. Raif knew exactly who was out there. Now the voices were drawing closer, surrounding them, darting and feinting, swordplay with words. Thatur growled.

  “Ghasai zæë. . . .”

  “We want your bones,” Taz murmured.

  Breath, blood, bones. Something tugged at Raif’s memory and then his breath caught.

  “Breath, blood, and bones to a master bound,” Nalia whispered. The words that had been on her shackles from Malek.

  Taz turned to Raif. “Are you ready, brother?” Raif’s hand went to his scimitar, but Taz shook his head. “That won’t be enough.”

  The mist parted and the Ash Crones stood directly in front of them, naked but for swaths of black rags that were tied around their limbs and torsos, crisscrossing lines that bared their breasts and the gray tufts of hair between their legs. Long black hair fell from their balding heads in greasy strands and their eyes were onyx pits—casteless, as though they belonged to a race all their own.

  There was nothing to compare the sight of their horrid bodies to—translucent flesh, bulging veins, yellowed teeth, sharp as daggers. A hot wind gusted through the mist, and their horrific stench wafted over the jinn. Raif gagged, but Nalia reached out her hand, as though to touch them. The crone in the center smiled, a forked tongue darting out of her mouth, hungry. Her eyes flashed with evil intent. This must be their leader, who Kes had spoken of—Morghisi.

  “Death wants her due,” the dark mages chanted as one. “Mora, goddess of all that dies, Mora, Mora, Mora.”

  Black chiaan streamed from the tips of their fingers as they raised their arms, straight as boards, fingers pointed at Nalia, Raif—all of them.

  Not now, he thought. Not this way. He and Nalia were going to die someday—soon or in a thousand years—but there was no way in hell they’d give up their spirits in front of these monsters.

  Nalia sucked in her breath, as though she were choking, as though the very air in her lungs were being ripped out of her. Raif held out one hand, palm up, the other in a viselike grip around Nalia’s waist.

  “Be gone, daughters of Mora,” he said, his voice thundering in the heavy quiet of the wilds.

  Emerald chiaan surged toward them, a wave of magic, everything he had in him. It was joined by Taz and Ajwar’s golden chiaan, Aisha’s electric-blue Marid power, and Touma’s dark-crimson energy. Nalia clutched at her throat, her breath rattling, blood seeping down her nose, and he closed his eyes, remembering their wedding, making love on a magic carpet. My wife, my wife. Raif dug deep inside himself and discovered a store of power he didn’t know he had.

  There was a cry of rage, a dissonant cacophony of sounds that pummeled his ears, and when Raif opened his eyes, the crones were gone and Nalia was heaving beside him, gulping air.

  “What was that?” Touma cried.

  Nalia leaned her damp forehead against Raif’s chest.

  “The first battle in a war we don’t have time or strength to fight right now,” Raif said.

  Breath, blood, and bones: not on his watch. Raif wiped the blood off her face with the edge of his sleeve.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she whispered.

  Thatur pushed into the still-dark sky as they made their way south.

  47

  “SO YOU FINALLY MET THE ASH CRONES,” AJWAR SAID AS he came to stand beside Nalia.

  She glanced at him. “Lovely bunch of ladies.”

  “Delightful,” he agreed, his voice dry.

  Nalia could still feel the tendril of blind submission they’d placed inside her through their hypnotizing chant. How had they known the words that had been on her shackles from Malek, the words that were on the shackles of every jinni on the dark c
aravan?

  “Was it their magic that made the slave trade possible?” she asked, glancing at her father.

  “I suspect so.” He shook his head. “They are as old as this land, capable of the greatest evil—as you yourself have seen. Most dark magic can be traced back to them.”

  Nalia sighed. “I’ll have to deal with them eventually.”

  “Yes,” he said. “But first things first.” He pointed to the palace.

  “First things first,” she agreed.

  Kill Calar, take back the throne. Easier said than done.

  “The sadrs say the Godsnight is intended to purify the land,” Ajwar said.

  She sat on a low mound of dirt, gazing at her destroyed realm, too exhausted to cry. Hundreds of jinn had been lost in the last plague, too many to count. Arjinna had been ravaged by the gods and yet the moons still hung from the sky. Why didn’t the sun return now that the gods had finished their plagues—or had they?

  The plagues, the Ash Crones—and she still had to dethrone Calar and rid the realm of her shadows.

  “The humans have stories of their god doing the same,” she said. “A long time ago, he covered the earth with water—a never-ending storm. All the humans died and all the animals except two of every kind: male and female.”

  Nalia had often wondered what the humans had done that was so bad as to warrant mass death and destruction. Even after returning from the Eye and seeing the violence done to Arjinna by Calar and the effects of the war between the castes on the land and its people, Nalia still didn’t understand what good could come of destroying entire civilizations. Jinn, and humans for that matter, weren’t failed experiments or projects. They were intelligent beings who loved and dreamed—who deserved a chance to live, a chance at redemption.

  “The humans were forced to start over,” Nalia said, “but it didn’t change anything. In fact, I think they became even worse.”

  She thought of the slave trade between the humans and Ifrit—jinn lives in exchange for human weapons. Build, heal, grow. That was what Nalia needed to do. And now that there was no longer a barrier between Arjinna and Ithkar, it would be much easier to find peace among the castes in a united Arjinna. Maybe, Nalia thought, as horrible as they are, the gods do have a plan.