Chapter 35
Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the Great Rescue in the rural area of Rifchat.
For years, the surrounding villages suffered at the hands of a cult that stole their children and kept them captive for nefarious purposes.
On this date, an unidentified vigilante slew the cult leaders and left the missing children safe in a local prayer house.
Two and ten out of the three and ten children who had been reported missing were returned to their families.
The children were targeted for their physical differences, but none of those rescued showed signs of being true hizouras, authorities say.
One girl was never found. According to a statement from her parents, she would be ten and six today.
This event mirrors a similar event called the Little Rescue that occurred in Tiglah one year later, where again, all the missing children but one were safely returned.
—the Chanala Chatpaper
Khawla loops the heavy bracelet onto her slim wrist. The four girls stand before the glowing pillars expectantly.
“Were we supposed to wait for the meteor shower?” Yara asks when nothing happens.
Shay realizes Tarik never said anything about the meteor shower, even though he knew about the cave. “I'm not sure it works that way.”
“Me neither,” Marjan agrees. “It's more about the window closing after the shower, so as long as it hasn't happened yet, the stars should still be in alignment for this to work.” She shrugs one shoulder. “If you give credence to that sort of thing, like Mmi does.”
That makes sense, in a way. Perhaps the true urgency had less to do with the meteor shower, and more to do with Al-Mukhtar mining the crystal pillars and weakening the Lallat. But if that's the case, what are they supposed to do that they haven't yet?
Shay pinches the bridge of her nose. Maybe they should say something. Some kind of chant or blessing. She finds herself repeating the words she remembers the Marabout saying at the holy institute.
“Our Lallat are waiting to be restored,” she says, hoping she's remembering correctly. “The keepers of treasures, the fairest four.”
“Oh, I know that rhyme from childhood!” Yara exclaims.
“Me too,” Marjan says, nodding together with Khawla.
Even Walid joins in as the girls recite the rest: “Rabia tends the earth, and Rasha draws the tide. With the sun, Noor dances, and on the wind, Iman rides. Earth, flame, water, air. We remember their names, our Lallat fair.”
Shay waits for the pillars to blaze again with light.
To explode or disintegrate, revealing the women trapped inside, their bodies preserved from the ravages of time.
Instead, they slowly go dim. Within beakers, the entire cavern is doused in black pitch, broken only by the lesser glow of the hjabats.
The sound of their worried breaths mixes with the plaintive plunk of waterdrops.
In the absence of their glow, the markings along the bases of the crystals become apparent. Long strips have been crudely shaved off. Chunks have been gouged out, leaving behind round divots like a wounded tree trunk.
Shay recognizes the dizziness early this time. She looks down at the ring, the black spot spreading from its center like rot across the rind of a fruit.
“We should all sit down,” she tells the other girls. She thinks it better to avoid falling around so many sharp rocks.
The leaching darkness grabs hold.
The Lallat sought shelter in the cave, not from Al-Mukhtar, but from the citizens of Mekchaouen.
The men seeking to overthrow the sister-rulers had poisoned the public against them.
They invented chemicals and toxins and used these to manufacture illnesses, destroy crops, and even induce destructive weather patterns.
They falsely blamed these ailments on the Lallat, telling the citizens it was proof the women had fallen from His grace.
That He had appointed the men as His new leadership.
They'd incited a mob. The Lallat needed a safe place to strategize how they should respond—how might they convince people of the truth. But it wasn't long before their secret meeting place was discovered, and they found themselves face-to-face with twelve men.
“Alright.” Noor glared hotly at her three sister-rulers. “Which one of you didn't understand the part where we weren't supposed to tell anyone our secret meeting location?”
“Lallat.” Jawad Lazar stepped forward as the men's spokesman, while the other eleven watched the proceedings from an elevated ledge far up the cavern wall.
“It is our hope that we can convince you to resign from your posts without struggle. Let us show the citizens of Mekchaouen that we can broach a new age in peace, leaving behind the dark days of magic and superstition.”
Iman stepped forward, meeting him, her chin upturned. “You call anything you don't understand, anything you can't control, superstition. Anyone with the capacity to reason will see through your deception.”
“You don't seem to understand,” Jawad said, his calm tone at odds with the rictus smile strapped to his face.
“People have enough to contend with trying to survive.
They don't want to reason, not if they don't have to.
They need only the assurance of food and shelter, the safety of their family.
To believe they are righteous, that they have chosen the side that opposes evil.
At the end of the day, most will not let something as indulgent as reasoning prevent them from a good night's sleep.”
“You assume people are lazy,” Iman replied with disgust. “That is a dangerous assumption.”
“Not at all.” Jawad waved his hands dismissively, making ripples in his long white robe. “I think most people are willing to work very hard to avoid this exercise you call ‘reason.’“
While the two exchanged words, the temperature in the cave was rapidly dropping. Iman realized she was shivering, despite the thick wool of her djellaba. She glanced back at her sister-rulers, the fog of their breaths clinging on the air.
She turned back to Jawad. “What's going on?”
“This is exactly why reasoning is dangerous,” Jawad jeered, his smile becoming narrower, meaner, like his mouth was squinting. “While you are busy reasoning, someone else is acting.”
The hair on the back of Iman's neck teased to attention. A familiar figure materialized from the shadows.
Zubeda. Her closest friend. Someone with the potential to be more than a friend, she'd sometimes thought. Had she read those signs all wrong?
“I knew it!” Noor exclaimed, pointing a finger at Iman. “You told her!”
Iman gasped around the painful clenching in her throat. “I didn't want her to worry. I thought …”
“We were friends?” Zubeda finished, blue ribbons of Shawafa streaming from her fingertips.
“Where was your friendship when my husband was engaging in dalliances and you could have read his thoughts but said it was an invasion of his privacy? When he left me, and you could have changed his heart to love me again, but you said it infringed on his free will? What good is magic if it has so many restrictions?”
While Zubeda spoke, a layer of ice formed along the inner walls of the cave.
It became cold enough that soon, the Lallat would have to funnel all their available energy to staying physically alive.
Accessing their Shawafas would be increasingly difficult.
With twelve men and four women, their magic was the only thing keeping them from being overpowered.
The men on the ledge made no move to apprehend them. If they had weapons, they kept them hidden.
“We must drive them away while we can,” Rasha said, as though Iman had telegraphed her thoughts. Maybe she had? Her mind was already feeling wobbly.
Zubeda raised her hands. There was an unnatural tinge to the vapors pouring off her fingers, the blue casting a darker pall.
Iman's first thought was that the woman had imbibed.
Strong drink was known to make a woman's Shawafa both more powerful and erratic.
But her speech didn't slur. Her eyes weren't bloodshot.
Her pupils, however, were abnormally dilated.
“Zubie,” Iman said, concerned when perhaps she should have been fearful.
She found it hard to believe the nights she'd provided her shoulder to be cried upon, the hours of listening over tea, always assuring her friend she deserved better, had meant nothing.
Hadn't they baked until they ran out of sugar?
Hadn't they laughed until they wept? Hadn't they danced under the stars for the pure joy of being alive? “Did you partake of some elixir?”
“Just a special powder Jawad is testing out,” Zubeda said. There was almost a hum beneath her voice, as if her vocal cords, as if all the muscles in her body, were strung a bit too tight. “It gives your Shawafa a boost.”
Iman glared at Jawad, raising her eyebrows, quite certain this powder would prove to be as risky as the other formulas he'd come up with. Didn't Zubeda understand she was being used as a human experiment? “I thought you wanted magic to go the way of dragons?”
Jawad shrugged. “Sometimes, you have to use a bit of venom to create a cure.”
Rabia eyed Zubeda's glowing hands with growing apprehension, her own fingers barely producing the smallest filaments of green. “You understand that the punishment for using your Shawafa to harm another woman is having it rescinded, don't you?”
“Those are your rules.” Zubeda laughed haughtily, gesturing to all four sister-rulers. “They won't matter if you step down.”
Iman felt the very blood inside her body begin to freeze, slowing to a slog through her veins.
Rasha, who had spurred them to action moments ago, now sat on the cave floor as though too weak to stand.
Whatever Zubeda was doing, she seemed to direct it with precision so it only affected the Lallat in front of her, not the men above, or Jawad, who stood behind her.