Chapter Twenty-Six Samira
TWENTY-SIX SAMIRA
The door shut on its own behind me.
The inside of the Seer’s hut was cramped.
The rotted wood filled the space with a moldy smell, making my nose curl.
There was no furniture. The room was completely bare.
And the pull of the Shroud seemed incapable of penetrating the thin walls; the urge to frolic and giggle dissipated the moment the door closed.
“Hello?” I whispered.
A delicate pink light sparked to life down a hallway to my left. Beckoning.
I steeled myself and headed in its direction.
I entered a kitchen. Rusted pots and pans hung from the ceiling alongside various herbs, an unlit oven beneath them.
The pink light was coming from a lantern on the low wooden table at the center of the room. But there wasn’t a flame. It was almost as if the lantern gave off the light on its own.
Movement caught my eye, and I startled. A cloaked figure that hadn’t been there seconds ago sat at the table, cross-legged on the floor. The hood fell back as she tilted her head up at me.
Her eyes were clouded with blindness, and wrinkles puckered around her mouth. But that was about as much as I could tell behind the countless red runes that covered her face. Even the edges around the whites of her eyes were red with them, like the tattoos had bled into her eyes.
She gestured to the other side of the table. “Sit,” she ordered, voice rough with age.
I licked my lips nervously and quickly obeyed, folding my legs under me.
“You’ve come to ask Zarqa for a fortune you do not care to see,” she stated. “But you will receive it all the same.” The Seer reached into the baggy sleeve of her cloak and pulled out a filled chalice.
I blinked in surprise. How could she have that in her sleeve without spilling it?
In the dim pink light, I couldn’t make out exactly what was in the cup save for small leaves floating at the top.
Zarqa brought the cup to her lips and took a hefty gulp. Then she held it out to me.
With shaky hands, I accepted the cup. Brought it to my nose and sniffed. It was a sharp smell, almost like mint, but with a strange follow-up odor that nearly brought tears to my eyes.
“Drink,” she said.
Bracing myself, I took a sip—and nearly gagged. The heady odor punched me in the back of the throat and burned all the way down.
“All of it,” the Seer instructed.
I didn’t give myself time to think before pinching my nose and downing the rest. It clung to my tongue, making each taste bud pucker in horror. I dry heaved.
Zarqa ignored it as she put the chalice aside. “Give me your hands.”
Still coughing, eyes watering, I reached across the table, and she clutched my hands in her leathery ones.
She tilted her chin up, her long gray hair stirring in an unseen wind.
Two pinpricks of light pierced through her cloudy eyes, and she looked right at me.
Her voice came out in a quiet hiss. “Samira.”
Gooseflesh popped up all over my body at the use of my real name.
I tried to lower my gaze, to look away from that piercing knowledge, but… I couldn’t. I had the horrible sensation of falling. Right into those twin lights. Deeper and deeper, until I didn’t see the pink hue of the lantern, didn’t feel the rough wood of the floor.
I was falling, falling, falling…
And then a hot breeze whipped around me, and sand tickled my cheeks.
I blinked and turned my head, lips parting in shock.
I wasn’t in the Seer’s hut, though she still held my hands in her unwavering grip. When I looked out, I saw sand for miles and miles. Dunes stretching to meet the horizon.
“It was greed that brought you here,” Zarqa said in that same disturbing hiss. As she spoke, the wind intensified, kicking up the sand around us, stinging my skin.
But the Seer appeared unaffected. Her lit-up eyes stared, unblinking. “It is greed that will seek you out. Greed destroys, greed burns.”
The sand was nearly a cyclone around us, doing much more than stinging. It scraped over me so rapidly, it burned. Blood ran down my arms, and when I opened my mouth to scream, sand funneled in. Choking me, suffocating me.
I turned to run—my feet wouldn’t move. I looked down and saw that I was sinking. I jerked against the sand, but some unseen force kept me locked in place.
Zarqa’s grip on my hands became a vise. I cringed as the bones in my fingers groaned.
The sand was up to my knees, my thighs, my hips. It crushed my chest, and I couldn’t breathe. When I gasped for air, there was only sand.
And then the blaze of the sun vanished as I was swallowed up.
Silence. Deathly silence. A tomb’s silence.
Zarqa’s voice whispered by my ear, “But out of fire were you born, out of water were you found. To both must you return before all is razed to the ground.”
I lurched, digging into the sand. I didn’t know which way was up or down, but I dug and dug and dug. My nails cracked, my skin bled, my lungs burned. And still I dug and dug—
My head burst through the sand. I gasped and felt like sobbing when oxygen surged past my lips. I tried to open my eyes, but they stung with the sand cascading off my head.
I forced them open all the same.
Zarqa was gone. I wasn’t holding her hands anymore. But I was holding something…
I held up my hand, and a chain unraveled, a large spherical pendant hanging from it. An amulet. A globe glinted at its center, reflecting a glare. I shielded my eyes with my hand and turned my head—
My jaw dropped.
To my right, at least a mile or two away, stood walls.
Bright, metallic walls made of gold. They encircled a city.
I could just make out the domed roof of a citadel at its center.
It glinted against the sun’s rays, made of bright gold.
The whole city was made of gold. I had never seen such a place before.
But I had heard stories of it. Legends. And so had King Zaid.
The Buried City. Filled with more riches than anyone could count even if they lived three lifetimes, meant to be paradise on earth. Within its walls, there was an abundance of livestock, water, shelter. There was no famine, no disease, no evil. No dehydration.
And it stood right there.
But then a shadow loomed over me, stretching impossibly tall, a line of black coating me. Stomach dipping, I turned.
A being of darkness rose up behind me, like a shadow come to life. It was giant, only its torso rising out of the sand as if the world couldn’t contain its full form. I craned my head far back but couldn’t make out its eyes—if it even had any.
“Hello, Samira,” it greeted me. Its voice was an indistinguishable wheeze, rasped out with great effort, a person’s dying breath.
A chill passed over me. This being knew me. “Who are you?”
The shadow curved forward so it blocked out the sun, the sky, until I was bathed in its cold darkness. “You know who I am, Samira. But you do not know yourself. Let me show you.”
My bloodstream flooded with adrenaline. Though it didn’t make any sense, I did know this creature.
I couldn’t recall how, but I did. And instead of fear, intense anticipation lifted the hairs on my arms. The desire to follow the creature came over me swift and fast. I wanted to remember how I knew this shadow.
I wanted to know what this creature knew about me.
When the shadow reached its enormous hand toward me, I reached back.
Then Zarqa was in front of me, her threadbare cloak billowing as if in an angry storm, her glare shooting twin beams of crimson light straight through me. She snatched my hand and jerked me away from the shadow. Sand swelled up, surrounding us. With a gasp, I lifted my arms to cover my eyes.
When I lowered them again, I was back in the Seer’s hut.
Adrenaline made me lightheaded, and my insides contracted tightly in fear. “What… what was that?” I asked breathlessly. I could still feel the sun baking my skin, taste the sand in my mouth. And when I looked down, the paint on my arms was indeed chipped.
“The realm of visions is volatile,” she replied, as if that were an answer, and then began whispering fervently under her breath.
She lifted her hands away from mine slowly, and as our palms pulled apart, glittering emerald rays stretched out.
As the Seer moved her hands farther away, I saw they weren’t just rays.
They were symbols, delicate swirls that I didn’t recognize.
I didn’t think I would’ve been able to understand them even if I knew how to read.
The Seer lifted her hands until the symbols were levitating in the space in front of our eyes. They bathed the entire room in their gentle green glow.
Then, in a sharp movement, the Seer’s hands flexed, palms out to my face.
The symbols shot at me and slammed into my forehead, knocking me on my back.
It was like someone had brought a branding iron down on me. I squeezed my eyes shut and screamed, clawing at my forehead as the symbols burned into me. I saw them on the backs of my lids, felt them burrow into my skull, my brain.
When I opened my eyes again, green light beamed out. I slapped my hands over my eyes and writhed on the floor as another shriek cracked out of me.
I was burning from the inside out. My blood was on fire. My bone marrow was on fire. I was going to die. I was dying. I was—
It stopped. Just as quickly as it had come on, it all just… stopped.
The heat died, leaving a dull throb above my eyebrows. No light beamed out when I opened my eyes this time. Even the pink light from the lantern had gone out, stranding me in the quiet dark.
Struggling to catch my breath, I grabbed the edge of the table and pulled myself up.
Zarqa was gone; I was alone.
I stood—too quickly. Vertigo enveloped me, and I reeled backward into the wall of pans, which clanged loudly. I waited for the spinning to subside, but it didn’t.
Holding my breath, I pressed my shoulder against the wall and slid along it, staggering to the front door.
When I emerged from the hut, everyone turned to me.
My legs gave out, and I vomited.
Rade was at my side in an instant, rubbing my back and mumbling soothing words.
I didn’t hear a single one of them.
Every time I tried to stand, I saw double and my stomach turned over. I vomited again.
Suddenly, I was being lifted and cradled against a strong chest. I dared to crack open my eyes and recognized Keir’s face above me.
“Keep your eyes closed,” he warned a split second before he took off, bolting impossibly fast. I squeezed my eyes shut and clung to the fur of his cloak.
Hurried shuffling followed us within the darkness. It kept speed with Keir, and a vicious laugh sounded very close by, watching from the shadows. But Keir’s arms tightened around me, and he didn’t slow.
The wind whipped my hair against my cheek, and before I knew it, sunlight warmed the backs of my lids.
He didn’t bother asking if I was well enough to ride on my own. He just settled me into the saddle and then climbed up behind me, clutching me to him as he whipped the horse’s reins. We took off like an arrow out of what had once been Netherridge.
I must’ve passed out, because the next thing I knew, I was lying in my bed.
Keir stood at the edge of the bed. Sweat glistened on his face, and he was staring at me with wide eyes.
A healer slid her hand under my head and put a vial to my lips. I drank its contents without question, not even cringing against the tang.
“Don’t fight the sleep,” the healer told me.
I didn’t. When I felt the drowsiness creeping up on me, I jumped happily into it.