Chapter 11
Za’skar City, Al-Haut port, Al-Haut Province, Sajamistan Empire
In the cramped, miserable caravan pulled by donkeys, I cling to the edge nearly falling out.
The shadow is beside me, watching the passing scenery.
My fingers graze my left earring, hanging uselessly at my lobe.
We ride to the royal port capital Al-Haut in Sajamistan, home of the scholarly city of Za’skar.
As we cross the capital walls, the caravan jostles and shudders to a stop. A head pops through the camel-skin tent, belonging to a lithe young man, perhaps in his late twenties, who springs on to the cart, frightening the other voyagers with his rippling grace.
His coppery brown eyes are lined in sormeh; he has narrow features and the dusky red skin of desert inhabitants.
His clothes have the typical sharp lines of Sajamistani attire: a high-collared pale tunic of fine linen with amber buttons, hemmed by stitches made of raven feathers, pale baggy trousers tight at his ankles, and a shawl crafted from tawny feathers tossed around his chest.
His curly hair is tied into a topknot, the tail of black muslin strewn around his head in a casual turban to shield the gales of gritty sand.
The shadow of a beard bristles along his square jaw.
On his arms, raven motifs gild his skin in the dye of blue- and black-threading.
Even his earring is a bleached yak-tail bone in the lobe.
From his neck dangles a martial mask of bone-stone. His eyes begin to survey the passengers until they land on me, lighting up. My fingers dig into the tent of the caravan. Breathing hard. He must be an Eajīz from Za’skar.
Under the monks, I once wondered if I’d meet other Eajīz. But not like this. Never like this.
‘May death be a peace upon you, new initiate,’ he greets me. His dialect is the Sajamistani court vernacular, purged of the accents found in the other provinces.
‘Who are you?’ I ask.
‘Unfortunately, your trifecta overseer, Yabghu of Squadron One, rukh.’
‘Rukh?’ I echo.
‘Like the bird, rukh. We call low-ranks rukh. In this army, each initiate is placed within a trifecta: a group of three low-ranks mentored by a higher ranked warrior – an overseer.’ Yabghu explains impatiently. ‘Name?’
‘Khamilla of the Usur-Khan tribe in the Tezmi’a steppes.’
‘Wrong answer, Azadnian steppe-girl. A rukh has no name. Clan, tribal lands, these become insignificant in the Eajīz military. Your only identity is your rank – of course until you prove yourself.’
‘I see,’ I say warily.
‘Bloodline?’
‘None.’
‘Good answer.’ He slaps me lightly on the shoulder but the sheer strength behind this Eajīz warrior has stunned me, almost toppling me out of the caravan. Behind his easy smile, there is a tightness, and I squirm back on to my seat.
‘Move,’ Overseer Yabghu says to one of the passengers before squeezing into the caravan on my left side.
He props his feet on the wooden ledge across, leather sandals nudging against a seated merchant who scowls at the offence.
Yabghu merely smirks with the look of a man who knows he is superior to other mortals.
I fight a wave of disgust. But I must get accustomed to this – touching and speaking with Sajamistanis.
‘Rukh, look around you. It’s not every day that an Azadnian witnesses the glory of our desert capital,’ Yabghu tells me.
Before I can answer, the squawks of birds reach me.
During my long journey from the north, I was helpless against the envy that rose in me as I drank in Sajamistan’s fat prosperity, evident by its provinces in the mountainous north and lush rolling hills; I felt it again on this journey, passing the desert valleys of bustling oasis cities fed at the expense of raids against us.
The bone-stone masonry wealthier than any Azadnian craftsmanship. But I hadn’t thought more of it.
Due to the growing shrieks of birds, and the glimmer in Yabghu’s eye, I frown and lean my head out of the caravan.
Around us the rocky geography is a roughly patched quilt of landscapes, from the thrust of sand dunes and the saturation of blue salt craters to the occasional bursting streams. Not far ahead, I spot the bone-stone walls surrounding the ancient city-state.
Clouds hang low so that flocks of birds appear to gasp out of them: ebony ravens, russet myna, fiery huma, and other abstract winged creatures I’d only read about in the legends found in the oldest tablets.
The birds circle the blessed city with great warbles as if completing a pilgrimage.
My tongue is unable to formulate enough words. ‘This city cannot be crafted by . . .’
‘Human hands.’ Yabghu finishes my thoughts. ‘It is both. Jinn who gifted their labour to our architects.’
We pass through the gates. The sand-packed alleyways are flanked by winding eaves strung with smokeless copper lanterns embedded with gems, opals and rare pearls, a barely imperceptible liquid inside.
‘This city is a legacy of riches from the bottom, darkest part of the ocean, retrieved by marid and jinn who once ruled here eons ago,’ Yabghu explains.
In the royal quarters, bedrock supports a trifecta of palaces, at a strategic elevation, glittering with bulbous domes of crimson, gold and glass, shimmering like sunlight.
Somehow the glass keeps clear despite the currents of nature.
Copper bridges painted with raven glyphs weave one palace to the other, as if floating in the air of pluming clouds.
These are a people ruling the skies. And the creatures with it, not only land.
All of it should be impossible. But this is Sajamistan, an empire of tribes entwined with the Unseen world of jinn-folk and death.
My eyes dart across the royal quarters over smooth glass palaces, paved somehow beside oasis ponds fed by the Vega Gulf’s narrow seaside that gilds the south, shaped from the remnants of Nuh’s Great Flood.
Citadel fortress walls cut crosswise in double defensive rows, sectioning the city into quarters.
Predawn morning bakeries cough smoke while fishmongers set out the morning’s catch.
Greetings of death from milling city folk ring through the air of the Grand Bazaar, which reeks with cosmopolitanism and mercantile trades.
My nose itches from stale animal-bone offerings.
Scholars head to elaborate brass-gilded schools, and monks with tall conical caps begin their preaching in monasteries festooned with stained-glass mosaics.
On the outskirts, sunlight glares against clusters of sunburnt clay villages amongst lush citrus gardens.
The caravan passes the city centre. Many people pull their shawls over their heads as they walk past a round, wooden structure, necks bowed, as if fearful.
‘That cannot be the ark,’ I stammer out.
Nuh’s ark, in its humble half-eroded wood, outmatches any riches around it.
‘A reminder of our end,’ Yabghu says and I glance away. The contrast is clear – in Azadniabad, we meditated on being one with the life of nature – but in Sajamistan, they insist on being one with death, reminders of it all around.
We near a pair of inner gates, and Yabghu jumps out of the cart, dragging me with him. He turns and whistles up at the guards stationed on turrets.
The heat of the desert hits me like a slap and I cough through hot air and oud melting together. Before the caravan turns a corner, the dark shadow leaps out and crawls over to my feet, as always.
‘Here it is, Za’skar City.’ Yabghu gaze searches beyond. I follow his eyes, looking skyward. Slowly, the copper gates yawning up into the Heavens shake and tremble, seamed into the bedrock, separating the two worlds of teeming summer capital and scholarly city.
Yabghu’s skin flushes in excitement. ‘Look carefully, rukh.’ He flourishes his arms. The gates finish opening and my eyes widen.
‘This is the army?’
‘Not only the army,’ Yabghu corrects rather pridefully.
‘The city within a city, an epicentre of jinn-folk, scholars and Eajīz. It is the birthplace of civilisation and magick, where the first jinn monarchs established courts before the Divine decreed punishment and the angels swept the smokeless fire-beings into the oceans; where Adam and Nuh came and went.’
Yabghu mistakes my fear for awe and crosses his arms.
‘By the Divine, this is Za’skar: where the first standing army in the history of the world rose and resisted their conquerors.’ His lips pull back into a sneer. ‘Not a place for mundane mortals.’
Mist rolls from the abrupt collision of oases and hot air, tickling my skin like the strokes of an ink brush.
Za’skar pulses like night and day, one end alive with wild gardens and monuments, and the other a blue salt desert, a sand-dappled vista, buckling beneath the sun’s zenith. The city breathes power . . .
For an empire so undeserving.
Yabghu begins to tell me small facts about the city as we walk through the gate.
‘Za’skar possesses an elite force of almost thirty thousand Eajīz.
At any given moment, ten thousand reside here in the city; the rest are stationed in outposts.
Some are advisers and senior officers, or generals employed under powerful clanhouses, not counting retired warriors. We’re a small battalion but efficient—’
A sudden bell tolls through the air, ringing seven times, and Yabghu’s pride bleeds away.
‘That signal.’ His voice tightens.
‘What signal?’
Without answering, he pulls at my sleeve. The dark shadow follows in my direction. Around us, flurrying warriors rush down dunes and through fig gardens.
‘You will see,’ he replies grimly but his eyes catch on my forearm. ‘Cover your threading.’ He hastens his pace until we are running.
My eyes try to fill in my surroundings, but cries of orders and rough voices overtake the air.