Chapter 31 #2
ceiling. A garden of gemstones decorated the walls, ruby roses glittering amongst emerald leaves and diamond thorns. From
each corner, water poured out of the chiseled mouths of dragons and bull-headed men to meet in channels that should have overflowed
but somehow only churned and churned, like a monsoon sea. The tiled floor, big enough to serve as a city’s plaza, was a deep
black with silver constellations blinking like true stars.
It would have made for an extraordinarily beautiful sight, a vision out of Paradise... were it not entirely crawling with
monsters.
A green-skinned woman carrying her own decapitated head by its hissing snake locks wailed and wandered. Dogs with smoldering
skin and four flashing eyes prowled the narrow exit on the other side of the chamber, while winged shadows wheeled around
the lofty columns. There were scorpion men and lions with dragon heads and tails of barbed quills. Way, way more nasnas than I ever wanted to see again and a nightmarish flying bat that reminded me of the creature in the lagoon.
Sobbing ghastly wraiths were trapped in the stone walls, their grasping hands reaching out to drag any passerby into their
tombs, and a demon with fiery orange skin and a wickedly sharp bronze mace stalked the floor.
Raksh had said this place was meant to imprison beings such as himself, and he hadn’t lied. Not technically. He had, however,
vastly understated just how terrifying and monstrous those beings were. I would take a thousand selfish chaos spirits over just one of the creatures prowling the chamber before me.
Then a familiar scream sounded in the distance, pulling my attention to an archway on the other side of the vast chamber.
Dunya .
Wonderful. I’d found her. There was just a prison’s worth of monsters separating us. I took an experimental step forward...
And the floor evaporated.
Again .
I cried out in shock, nearly tumbling from the vanishingly small patch of shimmering yellow-gold light that remained under
my boots. The rest of the floor had been transformed into the night sky it resembled, as if the world had turned over and
had gravity reversed. Demons fell screaming into the stellar abyss, while others sprouted wings covered in festering sores,
flapping away to save themselves. But my shout must have drawn their attention, for more than a handful hissed, wheeling around
in the air to fly in my direction.
Desperate, I glanced back the way I had come. A small bank of black sky separated me from the stone passage, but I could probably
jump to it. Ahead, a terrifyingly slender, barely visible beam of the same golden shimmer that was beneath my feet seemed
to stretch to the archway. But the beam could have equally been a trick of the light, of my own misplaced hopes.
Run, you fool , a voice in my mind urged. Back to your family, back to your friends . Surely this place was dangerous enough to take care of Falco. Surely it was not all up to me .
“I cannot do this,” I choked out. It suddenly seemed madness to think I could, arrogant to believe the fate of the world relied
on me —a criminal, a sinner, a foul-mouthed middle-aged woman with a bad knee. Did it not seem far more likely I would be devoured
by these monsters or fall forever, doomed and forgotten? Had I been so na?ve to see purpose in the incidents that had led to me being here, rather than quirks of an uncaring universe? What madness to gaze upon the violent chaos and cruelty of this world and have faith !
Tears ran down my cheeks. I took a steadying breath, fixing my gaze on the golden shimmer I prayed was truly there. This was
going to be either the bravest or the stupidest thing I had ever done.
“God is greatest,” I whispered, sheathing my sword. Then I took off across the hall.
There was a moment—terrifying, heart-stopping—when I seemed to plummet, but then my foot landed on the narrow beam of sunlight
made physical. I let out a garbled sound that could have been a prayer, a curse, or just a scream—but I did not stop running.
I drew no weapons, not even as creatures swooped and snarled at my head.
I knew in my heart that they were not my test.
The hall and its narrow bridge seemed to last forever, but then I was stumbling through the archway and collapsing onto solid
rock once again. I might have kissed it had my entire body not been shaking so badly that any additional movement seemed beyond
me. I crawled around a stony pass, eager to put myself beyond the reach of the devils in the hall, my heart still racing.
But the creatures in the chamber weren’t the only monsters here.
“Do not move, whoever you are,” Falco’s cold, curt voice greeted from some distance away. “Interrupt and we die.”
***
Falco had no sooner warned me not to move than I immediately sat up, both because my disposition tends toward contrariness and because he could go jump off
a cliff. But then I did freeze and not because of the Frank’s warning.
But because Dunya was levitating .
Not particularly high, mind you, but she was still very much floating before a tall stone column that stretched to the ceiling and was covered in cuneiform characters similar to those on her shattered tablets.
This chamber was larger than the last but looked like a natural part of the cave, illuminated by torches and the reflections of cleverly placed copper mirrors.
Wisps of light twirled around Dunya’s limbs, her garments fluttering in an invisible wind.
A blindfold had been tied around her face, and in her outstretched hands, she held a lump of salt and a stylus.
Blindfolded or not, she was writing, using the stylus to carve characters into the stone column as easily as one might inscribe warm wax.
“ Al-Sirafi? ” Falco drew closer, stepping out of the shadows with his sword dangling from his hand. Dunya seemed oblivious to my arrival,
lost in whatever magic she was doing, but the Frank looked shocked, his wide astonished eyes tracing over me. “It is you. But how?”
In the back of my mind, the marid suddenly screamed.
I fought a gasp as my entire body shook, cold sweat breaking across my skin. It sounded exactly like a ghostly relic of the
marid’s wail. A warning in a language that was not words but still clearly told me to beware, to retreat. To flee from the
man before me and dive into the depths of the seabed, where I could not be pursued.
The Frank inhaled as though he’d heard it as well. “You are changed.”
The knowing in his voice unnerved me nearly as much as the marid having a toehold in my mind. Did whatever powers Falco possessed
enable him to sense such magic?
And yet... I rose to my feet, cracking my neck and drawing my weapons with all the unnatural grace I now possessed. Let
this fucker see me. Because he would definitely not be beating me in swordplay again. “Indeed,” I replied evenly.
A hint of trepidation flickered in his face. “All the bleating you did about my arrogance and yet you made your own deal with
the supernatural to survive.” Hunger filled his voice. “With what? How did you summon them? What did they offer?”
“If I could send you their way, trust me, I would.” The prospect of the obnoxious peri court having to deal with the power-hungry Frank was genuinely tempting.
But more worried about Dunya, I ignored Falco’s questions to draw closer to the young scholar.
She was still engraving characters in the stone column, working as though bewitched.
Beads of water rose and dripped from the silvery rock like sweat.
“Dunya?” I called softly. “Are you—”
Falco hissed at me to shush. “Need you be told twice ? She is calling forth the Moon of Saba and warned that if the spell was disturbed, it might bring down the entire chamber.”
She’s doing what? I spun back to Dunya. But neither the spellbound youth nor the weeping veneer of text I wasn’t able to read could tell me.
I hesitated, uncertain what to do next. I was here to make sure Falco could not take possession of the Moon and was admittedly
a little reluctant to believe Dunya had a sound plan for thwarting him. But bringing down the cave upon all our heads because
I interrupted some sorcery I didn’t understand was not an agreeable end.
Deciding to leave Dunya alone for now, I returned my attention to Falco. Him, I would deal with. “Frightened of a child, are
you?” I mocked, taking a purposeful step in his direction.
He lifted his chin. “I recognize talent when I see it,” he said with obnoxious conceit. “Dunya is a clever, curious person.
She’s going to do wonderful things.”
“As long as she does them in your service.”
“I was the one who saved her from her family, no?” Falco gave me a plaintive look. “You could still join us, nakhudha. Indeed,
I cannot help but feel you are meant to. Do you not see fate in arriving at this very moment? We could bring our peoples together! Build a new world!”
Oh, I saw fate in my timely arrival. Just not the way Falco did.
I stalked closer to the Frank. “Did fate tell you to throw me off my ship? Because I took that personally, Palamenestra,” I said, finally hissing every syllable correctly.
“And spare me this self-aggrandizing nattering about building a better world. You’re not doing this to improve the occult sciences or bring people together.
You didn’t save Dunya— you needed her . You’re just a craven little man who wants power and is looking for any excuse to believe yourself a hero. But you know what?”
I raised my sword. “I am going to give you a taste of the magic that changed me.”
I was across the chamber the next moment.
Falco wasted a precious second looking displeased and unhappy—this man was genuinely disappointed the woman he’d tried to
kill didn’t wish to serve him—but seeming to realize I was indeed intent on murder, he ducked behind a sulfur-yellow stalagmite
that smelled of rotting eggs before I could separate his head from his body.