Chapter 37 #3
I’m thrown against a hut from the sheer power emanating from her affinity. But I roll to all fours, then I’m running again. Nūr swells, the energy coiling then erupting. My seventy-seven bonds vanquish the first row of gh?ls despite the distance, but they reform.
Arezu raises her arms again and again, commanding the roots to stab the creatures, but it’s not enough. She is only one girl against dozens. Her shaking limbs slacken. I scream her name. In that split moment, the wind carries a word that will haunt me for eternity: ‘Master?’
Then they are on her. Arezu’s head cracks against the stone, dozens of gh?ls swallowing her from view.
And then she’s gone.
I throw myself at the gh?ls, my affinity erupting. ‘Kill me! Kill me instead!’
I am met only with Arezu’s cries as I pass through the horde.
They do not die, no matter how much nūr I unleash.
But the curse of power, I know, is that when it is needed most, it fails you.
My Divine-gifted affinity is cursed, it’s wretched, it’s an omen disguised as a blessing.
It’s nothing against forces that usurp natural order.
Desperately, I thrust my khanjar deep into my shoulder before holding out the dripping blood, begging for the gh?ls to gorge on me, but it accomplishes nothing.
I do not stop fighting, I battle until my arms tremble, I lose all the martial forms and swing wildly. I kill them a hundred times over. I send a true prayer for the first time in months, I beg the Divine to save her until my throat aches.
But war in his cruelty does not care. He taunts me with each tear of her flesh.
At last, when my knife thrusts into the last one and it crumples, my sight latches on the broken thing below me.
Her pupils are blown and her scalp is torn apart.
A pool of blood streams beneath her body and there is not one wound but so many that I do not know where to press my hands and staunch the bleeding.
The wind howls and the clouds sob. Her bloodied lips part as if to whimper words.
I drop to my knees. ‘No.’ I try to breathe but pain squeezes my lungs. ‘Arezu?’ My voice tears between the pleas.
She cannot see me. Her eyes gaze heavenward, a flower searching for light. But there is no light in this bleak land. And when she is gone, I don’t think there will be any left.
‘Please, my Creator,’ I choke out. ‘Save her.’
Tears roll down her cheeks against the blood flecking her skin. Her hands reach up, clawing fervidly at the air as if aching to hold someone, to feel warmth as death breathes into her, swallowing words into wheezes.
She cannot see me; she cannot hear me. She thinks she is alone. This child is dying. And she is utterly alone.
Her trembles cease.
‘Arezu!’ Frantically, I shake her. ‘You cannot die!’ I shriek. ‘We promised to be warriors, to spit upon our opponents and fight. We promised,’ I sob.
The regret is blinding. Why hadn’t I realised it before; why had I not held her achingly close, tucked her into my shoulder and told her -told all my pupils – that I loved them.
That in my time at Za’skar, they were my joy?
Why had I not appraised them of this: they were the first people I’d ever loved by choice.
Why was I so selfish?
I gather her marred hands. Tears pearl Arezu’s lashes and she stills for good.
No.
‘Arezu,’ I plead, lifting her to my shoulder.
I cannot save her.
I shake her, once, twice.
I cannot save anyone.
‘Arezu!’ Again, and again.
Something slams on to my chest, throwing us backwards. A gh?l rises and I crunch my fingers, the nūr splintering it. Though my world has irrevocably changed, the rest of the world has not. I cannot even mourn for the child who only ever knew war – who was never a child, but a weapon.
She’s one of millions – the reason why beautiful flowers are picked from a garden but never the weeds. Because humans like destroying beautiful things.
Now I see.
My hands raise to the sky and curl into fists. ‘Heavens!’ I scream, and the material world shatters like glass and I’m before the light of the immaterial.
My psyche grows into ridges of poisonous blackness, and I feel No-Name at my back.
‘She’s dead,’ I whisper, letting her arms curl into me.
‘The creatures I helped create killed her.’ I feel hollow.
I should not exist. ‘Arezu died, not knowing that it is my fault. Her master let her die. Arezu was a child; she had nothing to do with this war. And she is not alone. All of them – the villages, steppes, pastures – they didn’t ask for this. ’
My hands reach out to grasp my beautiful seventy-seven bonds.
I crush them.
The Heavenly Energy rumbles and shakes before delving into shadows. They are a tide and I’m the shore and I welcome them with open arms.
No-Name gazes in satisfaction. ‘When Mitra succeeds, the other kingdoms will fall because of you.’ She smiles.
Why does winning a war matter when no one good is left?
If heroes existed, Arezu would not be dead.
If heroes existed, the Camel Road would not be caught between two empires.
But heroes do not exist. They never did when I was a child, and they never did for the children here.
If heroes don’t exist, then one can only be a monster.
No-Name was right. By heeding the warnings of the monks, I thought I could kill Akashun without plunging off course. But to seek power is to resist all ties to natural order.
And so, on my knees within the spiritual world, I raise my bloodied hands, allowing unnatural order to grant me power, to make me their demon so I might destroy another.
Through my fear, rage slams harder. The psychospiritual world pulses as my bonds tangle into each other.
From gold, they tinge into black. Some bond lines snap from their Heavenly sources before burrowing down below.
The understanding is clear: I am about to do something wrong. Something I cannot return from.
‘His Mitra, his war, his greed, he killed her.’ I tremble. ‘Now show me rage.’
Then I’m hurtling from the psychospiritual to the material, the power shattering through the cosmic realms and billowing through my bonds, crackling in spars of light.
At first my vision is a bliss of white: nūr’s blazing currents. My body is paralysed to basic commands. I channel the power toward the falak and gh?ls and then . . . Azadnian soldiers. The arches bypass my squadron, who whirl in horror.
‘Farewell, siblings,’ I hiss.
I want to blast them into oblivion. I know what held me back. It’s these bonds, these arbitrary, meaningless gold lines – they are an illusion, compelling Eajīz to think they’re safe.
In one swoop, my nūr incinerates hundreds of gh?ls and destroys the living quarters of the Azadnian troops. I stare as the sheer brightness blasts them into oblivion, creating smiling skeletons. My arms widen until the light empties out.
This feels good. It’s not the gore of it; it’s the sheer destruction. It’s the asymmetrical power finally within my grasp. The freedom of no constraints to simply erode all in my path in a symphony of destruction. It feels too easy.
I revel in it for a moment, tasting the chaos. This is destruction, but destruction is the force from which I was birthed. Now it’s clear. I almost grin. The only way for me to rule would be to break the world under the stomp of my feet and glue it back together with their collective fear of me.
My vision tilts and a pair of hands catch my body.
‘You complete fool,’ Cemil says, but he doesn’t sound angry. ‘Let’s go,’ he orders.
I scoop up Arezu’s body. We flee to the gates, where the other squadrons have retreated. Corpses block the exit, forcing us to climb over them. On the other side, Alif Adel’s eyes blaze black. He points to the southern monastery where the last gh?ls have flocked.
‘We blow it apart.’
I understand his intention. ‘Even if there are survivors.’
‘There are none,’ he answers. ‘Mitra are in the communes. We have no more reinforcements. We kill them now before they slaughter the entire township and move into the central Camel Road.’ Then he seizes me by the shoulders. ‘Our people need us. Use whatever incense remains and meditate.’
We do. Cemil had a marked spot during the battle, and his affinity transmutes pockets of Yabghu’s smokeless fire to the southern corners of the township.
Meanwhile, I pull from the Heavens, combining my bonds into a colossal mass.
Then I tear the nūr into three strips like silver linen. Adel’s currents clash into it.
‘Widen it into Yabghu’s heat!’ he snaps.
Digging in my heels, I envision it expanding.
Adel commands the currents at each sphere of nūr and smokeless fire, waving them toward the monastery.
When the light vortex reaches it, his strength as a Seven-Slash causes several explosions in the southern quarter until nothing but debris and smoke remain.
The gh?ls die on each impact and any human bodies left are shredded apart.
Then silence.
Adel inclines his face to the sky, grief evident.
‘A difficult battle won, warriors.’