Sandstorm

Chapter Fourteen

Shahrokh built a ship out of sand and summoned invisible servants to drag it across the endless dunes at terrifying speed. Their pace outstripped Trill’s greatest efforts, and if there were any features that distinguished one part of the Calim Desert from another, they passed so quickly that Cephas did not witness them.

Conversation was impossible, as the djinni made no accommodation for the terrific wind of their passage, and the effect it had on his mortal passengers. Cephas huddled on a gritty bench with Ariella, the couple doing their best to shield each other from the element they ordinarily embraced. Shan found a place in the bucking vessel’s prow that was something like a cave and tucked herself inside.

Corvus stood apart from the others, feathers ruffling wildly, with his taloned hands curled around the low wall that encircled the deck.

Finally, in the first communication any of them had exchanged since the djinni set them aboard the magic craft, Corvus extended his arm, pointing.

Cephas and Ariella looked up, able to fully open their eyes at last because the craft began to slow. Shan rolled from her place beneath the prow and stood as the ship gained altitude, leaving the sandy desert floor far below. They took in the extraordinary view ahead.

Shahrokh flew down from the cloud of djinni escorts who paced them, pausing a moment to speak. “Look on Calimport!” he said. “Faint echo of the lost First City of the Djinn, but still the mightiest city of the mortal world!”

The companions were silent for a moment. “It’s like flowers,” Ariella finally said, “growing from a broken vase.”

A kaleidoscope of color and motion, the palaces, temples, manors, and fountains visible in the distance shamed even the most exotic blossoms of the WeavePasha’s gardens. And the tumult of fallen and shattered structures that spread out beneath floating buildings for leagues in every direction was certainly broken. They even matched the terra-cotta color of pottery. The architectural flowers floated above this broken city with no towers or spires that could be said to be stems. Upper Calimport floated on invisible foundations of magic.

Shahrokh’s vessel of sand began to slow, angling toward a floating palace that was, if anything, more spectacular than all the others. But Cephas’s eyes were not drawn to its towering minarets and airy gardens open to the sky above. Instead, he looked down, to one of the few areas in the city below free of rubble.

The palace they were approaching floated above an arena.

He leaned over the side, anxious to see if there were gladiators at combat, hopeful that there were not. Ariella pulled him back, just as the sand ship floated between two marble pillars that framed an entryway to a veranda paved with invisible stones.

Dozens of windsouled genasi stood waiting for them, and as Shahrokh’s magical conveyance blew away on the wind, one taller than the rest approached with arms wide open. His voice, familiar to Cephas from his own speech but also from faded memory, boomed across the courtyard.

“Marod yn Marod! Oh, my son, my long-lost son!”

Cephas stood on an invisible balcony, staring down at the Djen Arena far below. There were no gladiators on its sands. Earlier, while he was drying from his bath, there had been a chariot race in the neighboring Sabam Arena. He had walked out onto the balcony and watched the crowds streaming away from the race, realizing the number of people he saw in that one instant was greater than all he had seen before in his life.

He thought about what he had been told so far. The balcony was outside the towering doors of his suite of rooms. The bath chamber was staffed by his servants-the djinni Shahrokh had been particular on that point; they were servants, not slaves. Whatever their status, he sent the dozen watersouled women away after they had shown him what use he was expected to make of the many soaps, brushes, and perfumes arrayed around the enormous copper cauldron overflowing with steaming water.

These gold-threaded silk trousers and this elaborately stitched brocade vest were his, as were the clothes that filled the cedar cabinets, teak armoires, and lavish closets of his rooms.

“You have many questions,” Marod el Arhapan had said, speaking to all of them, but looking at Cephas. “But you are also exhausted. I have ordered chambers prepared for our guests, Son, and your rooms are appointed with every luxury. I will not pretend we know each other yet, but please allow me to offer such refreshment as is in my power before we begin to correct that terrible lapse.”

The four companions were then separated, each rushed away in the company of at least one djinni and several windsouled attendants-all but Cephas. Only the vizar djinni, Shahrokh, accompanied him on the long walk through high-ceilinged passages and across many open-air courtyards.

“Allow me to anticipate you, Marod yn Marod,” said the djinni. “Both of your companions sent here by the firesouled Memnonar live, and neither your father nor I had any hand in that. The windsouled stablemaster who acted as their agent in the lower city was identified and killed by your father’s order, unfortunately before I was allowed to question him. You will find that your father is sometimes … impetuous. The man had already sold them, and they were turned into the pits below the Djen. My agents seek them there now, and I trust the search will not be long in bearing fruit. There are few goliaths in the pens, and though the halflings are there in numbers, the woman’s talents will no doubt leave an easily followed trail.”

Cephas had to think back over what the djinni had said carefully after the fact, because all he heard at first was that name. Marod yn Marod. Marod, the son of Marod. Son of the master of games, the man who owned this tremendous floating castle, who wielded enormous influence in this ancient, magical city.

The man who owned stables of gladiatorial slaves.

The man who was his father.

While he poured scented water over himself, Cephas went over all he had learned in just the last two days. His mother had died at the hands of Azad the Free. His father directed the Games she died in-if he believed Corvus Nightfeather. Corvus, it seemed, acted as an agent for at least three different warring factions: the WeavePasha of Almraiven, the djinn of Calimport, and the efreet of Memnon. And learning all that came after he found a way to wear a new body, to express a new soul. After he had found Ariella.…

When he finished washing, he discovered that someone had removed the rags his clothing had become from where he’d tossed them in the corner. He walked into the bedchamber and found a light linen robe lying across the curtained bed.

He had left his armor at the foot of that bed and found that it had been freshly oiled, the scale pieces arrayed on a rack along one whitewashed wall. Whoever cleaned the armor had even mended a strap worn near to parting.

The flail was there, too, also displayed on a stand, very much like the one Azad the Free used for the same purpose.

Azad adh Arhapan, he thought. Was he owned by the man everyone agrees is my father? Did he use this weapon to kill the woman who bore me?

Cephas unconsciously rested one hand on the blacksmelt boss of the flail’s distal end. When he noticed, he jerked his hand away as quickly as if he had seen a scorpion crawling up the chains.

The master of games, alone now, found Cephas on the balcony.

“My domain,” said his father, seeing Cephas study the arena below. “And yours. I was told you have great expertise in the Games, though I grieve to know how you gained it. Damn Azad for his disloyalty and his imagined revenge. I gave the man everything a human of the Emirates could ever dream of, and his repayment was to murder my wife and steal my son.”

Cephas saw that people were moving across the sands now, drawing great rakes behind them. He could not make out whether or not they wore collars from this great height. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Marod.

After a moment, he said, “I don’t know if I will ever touch my flail again. But I think if it were in my hands right now, I might try to kill you.”

The pasha’s only reaction was to sigh. “Yes, Shahrokh’s spy and his stories. I am sure it is too painful right now, but I might like to hear them one day. These people of the shadows we are forced to use for too much of the business of state, they have great talents for taking the truth and shaping it to their own ends. Did he tell you I killed my beloved Valandra? Did he tell you I did not know she was born earthsouled?”

Cephas did not look at the other silver-skinned man. “Not exactly, no. He did say it was Azad who killed her, but-”

“But it is more complicated than just that. Yes. I am afraid I lack the subtlety to guess how he warped the tale.” The pasha pointed down at the arena. “They’re sifting the sands for bits of armor or dropped weapons. Wouldn’t do for a champion to fall because he stepped on something sharp.”

“Where is … Shahrokh’s spy? And my other friends?”

“Ah, well. I cannot say. The kenku and the mute halfling woman insisted they be allowed to go and join the search for the pair the firesouled sent here in some efreeti gambit. The lovely Ariella, though, will join us for dinner.”

“I am surprised you bothered to learn her name.”

The pasha sighed, then smiled. “I must admit, I know it only because Shahrokh told me. As you will soon learn, there is an enormous amount of work involved in governing a city, much less managing the Games that the people of the lower city love so much. My vizar says that Ariella Kulmina is a member of the Akanulan Airsteppers Guild, and that she’s the first of her nation in anyone’s memory to officially visit Calimport.” He cracked a wry grin. “That we can attest to, of course. In any case, she will be honored and treated as a visiting diplomat. As for these other people you’ve fallen in with, the kenku’s agents …”

“His troupe,” said Cephas. “They are performers in the circus troupe Corvus leads.”

The pasha moved to a gilded wood cabinet and opened its doors. He took a silver pitcher and a pair of simple clay mugs from its interior. “Pomegranate juice,” he said, pouring. “Corvus is the kenku? Of course, he had to have some cover story for moving about the realms unmolested; his sort always does. A circus, eh? That’s … whimsical.”

The pasha eased onto deep cushions held in a framework of glittering black wood. His expression was calculating as he openly studied Cephas. He took a long drink of the juice, then unexpectedly threw the mug over the low wall that marked the edge of the balcony. He leaned forward, gazing back and forth through the invisible floor, and then pointed. “There! See it?”

Cephas looked through the clear floor. Following the line the other man indicated, he saw a hint of motion. The mug, already far below, was soon lost to his view against the sands of the arena floor.

Hands on his knees, his father waited a long moment, watching the groundskeepers move across the sand. “Damn,” he said at last. “None of them even saw it. Oh well, it’s always a long shot. And an expensive diversion if I do happen to hit one. The cups are cheap, but the mewling Ilmatari priests charge outrageous fees for healing head wounds.”

Cephas said, “You thought to hit one of them? To drop that stoneware on one of those people down there? What are you trying to demonstrate?”

The pasha sat back in his chair and parted his hands. “Honesty-something I know you have had little experience with. What is the name the slaves called you?”

“You mean Cephas? It is the only name I have known.”

“It is not. You remain Marod yn Marod el Arhapan, as you were when your blessed mother birthed you. ‘Cephas’ is a word in the language Shahrokh and the other djinn use. It means ‘son of stone,’ and it is a terrible insult among their people. Did the kenku tell you that?”

“No,” said Cephas, “but …”

“If you had a sister, which Valandra and I dreamed of, she would have been Khanisa yr Valandra el Shelsper, to honor your mother’s family. They were the first earthsouled elevated to the nobility, and my marriage caused great controversy. We planned to cement their place by using a matrilineal name. They told you this story in that village of escaped slaves in the Spires of Mir? When they explained all the other secrets of your szuldar?”

Cephas looked at his father. “They explained nothing to me there about my ancestry. That came later. From Corvus.”

“You broke fast with Acham el Jhotos in Almraiven. A rare honor, to visit those famous gardens. They are watered with the blood of our people-did you know that? Did he tell you that he ordered my father-your grandfather, Marod-beheaded on the walls of that garden in the Year of the Emerald Sun? Did he point out the spot?”

Cephas did not answer.

“Kin of the WeavePasha have died in this city, make no mistake. I work every day to ensure that more will follow them to the Nine Hells. When your grandfather was sent to his death, his hands were bound behind him. But when the WeavePasha’s grandson died a month later, his hands were free, and he held a sword, and a shield. He even bested a half-dozen gladiators before one of the yikaria took him down. He had a chance.”

Cephas said, “I am no friend of the WeavePasha. We fled his city, pursued by wizards throwing fire.”

“Yes, some of his innumerable descendants, no doubt. Tell me, Son, what did you do to offend him? He is known the world over as one of the most powerful mortals alive, so I hope you did not give him insult. Did you attack him?”

Cephas shook his head. “No, nothing like that. He was kind to me, if you must know. He and Corvus quarreled.”

“He and Corvus quarreled,” his father repeated, as if to himself. “The kenku has many masters. A disagreement over the fee, perhaps.”

“No!” said Cephas, tired of being led about as if he yet wore a collar. “El Jhotos meant to-to do something to me. Some magic that would work me into a weapon to be turned against you.”

The pasha considered this. “So Shahrokh told me. I had hoped it was not true. I suppose I cannot blame you-you have spent your life hearing my name cursed, I am sure-but Marod … I must admit, it still tears my heart. How could you agree to it? How could you agree to kill your own father?”

Cephas felt the tug again but could not pull against it. “You know I didn’t know,” he said.

The pasha stood and approached Cephas. He put his hands on Cephas’s shoulders. Cephas had seen few mirrors but had a general idea of what he looked like, even windsouled. The man before him was a mirror sent back in time from twenty years in his own future.

The pasha nodded. “Yes, Son, I did know. And I am sorry that I played a courtier’s game of rhetoric in drawing out the truth. I will not tell you how to judge the actions of the people you have traveled with. I don’t know the full truth of their actions myself. But I do know some truths, and I tell you these plainly.

“I am Marod el Arhapan, Pasha of Pashas of the Holy City of Calimport, Governor of all Calimshan and Holder of the Keys against the Day of Blessed Calim’s Return. I am the Pasha of Games and of Ships and of Trade, and Ambassador to the Djinn of the Plane Below. And I am your father.

“I am an owner of slaves and a killer of men. My wealth is earned by the work of ten thousand people whom I will never see and rarely spare a thought for. And I am your father.

“And I have never, ever lied to you.”

Corvus expected to be separated from the others. He expected the change in demeanor that came of the djinn who floated beside him, and if he had not expected that the handful of windsouled courtiers would disappear as soon as they left the courtyard, it was only because he hadn’t anticipated they would be along for the brief time they were. It was of little consequence. Their only role was to attach the chains.

The chamber the djinni warriors pushed him into after stripping everything from him had no ceiling, and, for a brief moment of vertigo, he thought it had no floor. But beneath his feet was simply more of the transparent rock so much of this floating palace was built on.

“Just an earthmote in disguise,” he said.

“Oh, it is much more than that, Corvus Nightfeather.” Shahrokh entered the round room from above, a battered cylinder held in his large hands. “Here. A gift.”

Corvus accepted the cylinder but dropped it almost instantly as he collapsed in pain to the transparent floor. He felt as if all his feathers had been plucked at once.

“Be calm. You are still intact. Though that is not what the cinderlord proposed, by the way. He thought a celebration was in order once we agreed the book is real, and he suggested we pluck you and roast you over coals. If there is a more barbaric race in the universe than the efreet, then we have not encountered it in a hundred thousand years of exploration.”

Corvus found that he could speak, after a fashion. “Perperhaps if your people … had not spent so much of that time exploring the insides of bottles, slaves to the whims of m-mortals …” He braced for another wave of magical torture, but none came.

“An insult that was old before your people lost their power of flight,” said Shahrokh, unperturbed. He gestured, and the curved length of old metal floated back into his hand. “The pain was no work of mine, by the way. Merely an ancillary effect that came when all your active rituals and contingencies were disrupted by this item. I must admit, I had hoped the famous nest would spill its contents from your chest, but the possibility was small. Lost to the cosmos, I suppose.”

Corvus managed to lift his head from the floor. His view of the city below was washed in red mist, whether from the blood still running from his eyes or that already pooled on the floor, he could not guess. “Djinni magic is more finely cast in stories,” he said. “Perhaps the cinderlord could adjust your toy there so that it works as intended. Certainly the WeavePasha could.”

Shahrokh’s laughter sounded friendly. “Oh, even those two worthies could do little with this relic,” he said. “Its full restoration of power must await the return of my Lord Calim. This is a fragment of a destroyed artifact of the old world, sifted out of the rubble below. It is a segment of the storied Taros Hoop, repurposed by an elf slave to leech magic.”

Corvus wondered if he could stand yet, then thought better of it. “Your dependence on mortal magic is as great as your dependence on mortal society. Does the pasha know you are mining the ruins for old human relics?”

Shahrokh laughed again, though this time his laugh was less genuine. In other circumstances, Corvus might have described it as polite. “Like all the windsouled, he knows exactly what I tell him and no more, kenku. You know this.”

“I wonder,” Corvus said. “Perhaps you underestimate him, as you have his son. Though of the two, I imagine it will be the boy who kills you.” He struggled to his feet, and in doing so, saw that the blurriness of the buildings below was not in his vision, but was an imperfection in the transparent stone itself. Unlike the flagstones in the courtyard, this room was floored with floating crystal of less-than-perfect clarity.

“They will kill each other long before the thought of raising a hand against me enters either of their thick skulls,” said Shahrokh. He looked down. “What are you staring at, assassin? There are no shadows for you to coax to your bidding in this room, even if you still had access to your arts. Why do you think I chose it?”

Corvus took hold of his lower beak and snapped it sharply to the left, correcting a minor displacement that must have come with the fall. “I thought it must be humility. These clear paving stones are from your home clouds in the Elemental Chaos, aren’t they? This one is cloudy itself, so I took it as a demonstration that the djinn and their works are less than perfect. Yes, I see it now. You are apologizing for your ridiculous ego in the only way you can. I am moved, approaching tears, in fact. I wonder if you would send for my short sword so I have something to wipe them away.”

Shahrokh did not laugh this time. He waved, and Corvus fell to the floor again, hard. “That cloudiness is the foundation stone’s power, fool. You think these stones are windows for the windsouled to use to gaze down on their petty holdings? The buildings of Calimport are not earth-motes. They are items of power themselves. The stone you bleed on holds this palace in the sky, and it is the envy of the mighty, even in the Elemental Chaos.”

“Not an apology, then,” Corvus groaned. “In that case, I must admit you have me stumped. Now that you’ve used the magic of a mortal-wrought artifact, restored by a mortal, to disrupt my mortal rituals, why are you still floating there like a duckling on a storm-tossed sea? Are you confused, Shahrokh? Now that you have the book back-a book stolen by a mortal and returned to you by my efforts-are you at a loss as to what to do next? Need advice from your betters? More help cleaning up messes you made? Please, Shahrokh, do not be shy. I want to help. Sincerely, your wish is my command.”

As he spoke, Corvus regained his feet and made a careful study of the floor, then the walls. There was no sign of the door he had been pushed through.

The djinni moved around to where Corvus had no choice but to meet his eyes. “Perhaps,” he said, “as you intimate in your ceaseless cawing, I have grown too used to the company of mortals. The reason you are still here is that I am curious. I have a question for you.”

Corvus decided he was through talking.

“It is a simple question, spy. When did you withdraw from the game?”

Corvus did not look away from the djinni’s eyes. He did not blink, and he did not answer.

“Ten years ago,” Sharokh said, “when we first approached you, I would never have guessed that it would be the WeavePasha you betrayed instead of us. We believed you would never turn the book over if you managed to locate it, and we had made our preparations assuming that. When you told us to make ready for the el Arhapan whelp to be returned as an instrument of the WeavePasha’s will, we even made arrangements should that plan have succeeded. Other windsouled have been prepared to take that family’s role in the Rituals of Return. All of that work assuming things would go awry. Yet at some point, you made a decision to do exactly what we asked of you. When was that?”

Corvus said, “I see there has been some mistake. If I have fulfilled my obligations, then I am sure you meant to offer some other reward than to strip me naked and torture me.”

Shahrokh considered this. “No, I do not believe we did. Once again, and this is the last time. The third time, which should please you. When?”

If Corvus could have smirked, he would have. “Never,” he said.

“You will never answer?” asked Shahrokh.

“No, you floating fool. I never did what you asked.”

When he awoke again, Corvus was in a squalid cell lined with straw, dimly illuminated by gray light falling from far above. The door was open, and a short figure squatted on its heels just beyond the door’s frame. Ah, thought Corvus, raising himself up on his elbows. Now this is what I expected.

The shadowy figure stood, revealed to be a halfling man with an ugly scar running down one side of his face. He threw a bundle at Corvus.

“Bird-head man,” he said. “Ain’t never seen one of them. The slave tattoo looks funny through your feathers. Here’re your tunic and your pail. Tunic’s to wear as clothes, use as bandages, whatever you want, really. Pail’s for slop. The kind that goes in and the kind that goes out, both. Welcome to Calimport Between.”

Corvus rose and cracked his knuckles. He felt the indelible tattoo of windblown sand marking him as a slave as a dull throbbing pain on his forehead, but whatever spell had put it there had also healed the worst of his injuries. He made a swift check of his surroundings, then wasted no further time in pulling the filthy shift over his head and gathering up his pail.

“Don’t you mean Calimport Below?” he asked the man.

The halfling was already walking away. “Sure, bird-head man,” he said. “Whatever you say.”