Chapter 4

The sun was high when the former queen of Qaimir, Meryam, and her most faithful servant, Amaryllis, reached Sharakhai’s western harbor. There was a time when Meryam could have walked anywhere in the city, including the western harbor, without fear, not because she’d once been a queen of Sharakhai as well—though she had been—but because then she’d had power. Real power, not the ephemeral sort that comes from wearing a crown. Meryam had been a blood mage then, one of the most fearsome her homeland or the desert had ever seen.

Those days were long gone. Meryam no longer had any power to speak of. Her throne had been taken by her cousin, King Hektor. Worse, Lord Ramahd Amansir, the husband of Meryam’s dead sister, Yasmine, had ordered the very ability to use the blood of others to be burned from her. In the short time the ritual had taken to complete, Meryam’s world had been reduced to one of craven fear and endless regret, a thing the sheer press of humanity only intensified.

She found herself watching everyone—from the work crew resurfacing a yacht’s skimwood skis, to the line of women bearing baskets away from a docked ketch, to the gutter wrens who sized Meryam and Amaryllis up, judging their worthiness as marks. She spotted no less than twelve Mirean patrols during their short walk, the result of a display of force from the city’s new monarch, Queen Alansal of Mirea. Hundreds more moved along the piers and the crescent-shaped quay: men wearing thawbs and turbans, women wearing abayas and chadors. Ship’s crews laded and unladed ships. An auctioneer cried out bids at the auction block while caravan ships traded wares over the gunwales. Meryam watched them all, wondering which of them was planning to inform her enemies of her whereabouts.

That very morning, she’d sat at the edge of her bed, telling herself to get dressed. She knew in her bones how important their mission to the harbor was, and yet she’d been unable to do more than hold herself tight, rock back and forth, and stare at the clothing Amaryllis had laid out on the nearby rocking chair.

On seeing Meryam’s state, Amaryllis had prepared a tincture. “Take this.”

The cup she held out contained a purple liquid, and its depth of color made clear how much Amaryllis had upped the dose of calming medicine that had become part of Meryam’s daily routine.

It probably would have been wise to take it, but the medicine muddied her thoughts. She couldn’t afford to fail in the coming negotiation. Too much depended on it. So she’d waved it away and got dressed.

Her nerves steadied as she and Amaryllis neared the end of the quay. They returned, however, as the old sloop, The Gray Gull, came into view. The Gray Gull had been taken by the Moonless Host when the last of their high-ranking members, including Macide Ishaq’ava, had fled from Sharakhai. Adzin and most of the crew had been killed at the end of that wild escape. The ship itself, abandoned by the Moonless Host, had eventually fallen into the hands of Adzin’s closest relative, Yosef.

Meryam stopped at the head of the pier and stared at it. By the blood of the one true god, it looked like a ship of the dead. Tatty sails, threadbare rigging, hull half-eaten by dry rot. It wasn’t so much the ship’s ghulish air, nor the meeting that was about to take place within it, that made Meryam’s footsteps falter and then stop; it was the weight of all that would follow. In Mazandir, the goddess Tulathan had given Meryam the body of the desert god, Goezhen, who’d been slain by his sister, Nalamae. She’d bid Meryam to take Goezhen’s corpse and use it to raise Ashael, the lone elder left behind when the other elder gods had departed this world for the next—except she hadn’t told Meryam where Ashael was, nor how to raise him. The search for Ashael had only just begun in earnest and Meryam had already lost count of the number of times she’d nearly given up. It all felt too big for her. Unattainable.

“We don’t need to do this today,” Amaryllis said.

Meryam shook her head. “To wait another day would be to tempt the fates, and those old hags probably think they’ve allowed us too much time already.”

She headed down the pier with Amaryllis following. The ship’s captain, Yosef, stood at the gunwales. He had the bronzed skin of a Malasani. His baggy trousers, tall red fez, and bejeweled vest, which appeared to be waging a valiant but losing war against his ample potbelly, gave him a look that bordered on the foolish. But everyone Amaryllis had spoken to said it was an act, a way to put one off-guard. All said he was as shrewd as any captain in the western harbor, a place famous for chewing up and spitting out the unwary.

Yosef waved her aboard with a grin. “Tulathan shines on our meeting.”

“Yes”—Meryam did her best to ignore the way he was staring at her ivory eyes, a byproduct of her magic having been burned away—“we’ll see about that.”

The crew traded nervous glances as Yosef led Meryam down the nearby ladder and into the ship’s bowels. As strange as the ship looked from the outside, it was even stranger within. Hundreds of oddities hung from rusty hooks along the passageway. There were bloodstained carvings of animals in tortured poses, tufts of hair with bits of skin still attached, strings of what looked to be fingernails, and rag dolls whose eyes had been eerily painted in kohl.

Disturbing as they were, seeing them was a relief. When she’d learned about the man who’d once owned this sloop, and the sort of scryings he’d once performed, she’d thought surely whoever had taken ownership after his death would have taken everything down. That Yosef hadn’t gave her hope that he would have more of the soothsayer, Adzin’s things, things she desperately needed.

“You’re the cousin of the previous owner, are you not?” Meryam asked as they entered a cabin with a low table and large, overstuffed pillows around it.

Yosef’s wide smile revealed yellow, tabbaq-stained teeth. “You’ve heard of his miracles, then.”

Meryam waggled her head. “Recently, yes.”

Yosef waved his hands broadly. “You’re interested in the ship, then!”

“Not exactly, no.”

His smile faltered. “What, then?”

“I’m interested in Adzin’s maps, his writings.”

Yosef was the sort of horse trader who treated people nicely until he knew he no longer had a sale, at which point they meant less to him than a pile of mule dung. Meryam could tell he was already precariously close to dismissing her. “I’m not selling maps,” he said, “nor writings. I’m selling a ship.”

“I have no use for a ship. What I want are Adzin’s notes on his forays into the desert.”

The collapse of Yosef’s smile was like a wall succumbing to a battering ram. Giving up the pretense of pleasantries altogether, he licked his teeth. “I have no such things.”

“Are we speaking about the same man? Your cousin was Adzin the soothsayer, was he not?”

“Most certainly.”

“What do you know about his trips to the desert?”

Yosef looked more confused. “As much as anyone.”

“Then you’ll know that on occasion he visited peculiar places. Places filled with ancient power.”

A hint of a smile returned. “Yes, which is precisely why this ship is so valuable.”

“He would have had maps that marked those locations. He would have notes about the sort of power conferred by each.”

“There are several maps and a ship’s log, all of which you can have if—”

“Fetch them.”

Yosef’s face turned hard, giving him an ugly, bulldog look. “They aren’t for sale.”

The words were hardly out of his mouth when Amaryllis sent a golden rahl flying through the air. It landed on the table with a sound that, for a man like Yosef, would speak of fragrant tabbaq and the rarest of liquors. The rahl circled noisily for a moment, then fell with a clatter.

Yosef stared at the coin. His eyes lifted, judging both Meryam and Amaryllis anew, then he scooped up the coin, stood, and left the cabin. He returned shortly with four maps and an old, leatherbound log. Meryam looked through all of them, but they were run-of-the-mill documents. The maps showed no signs of special markings, the routes Adzin might have traveled out to the desert, nor did the log show anything out of the ordinary, only trips to and from various caravanserais and notes of mundane cargo bought and sold.

Meryam realized her fingers were shaking. “There must be more.”

“There isn’t.”

“Did Adzin ever mention the Hollow?”

Yosef shook his head. “Should he have?”

The very name, the Hollow, was known to only a few. No one Meryam had spoken to, nor any of the many ancient texts she’d read, had been able to give her its exact location. She’d hoped that Adzin’s notes would hold the answers she sought.

Meryam turned toward Amaryllis. “Give us a moment, won’t you?”

Amaryllis nodded and left, sliding the cabin door shut behind her.

When her footsteps had faded, Meryam regarded Yosef with a cool expression. “I understand what Adzin did. He could peer into the future.” She waved to the doorway, beyond which lay the passageway with the grisly oddments hanging from hooks. “For the right price, he used all manner of techniques and tokens to separate the threads of fate, then helped his patrons choose one. I understand that he may have had discerning clients who wouldn’t have wanted their fates revealed. I assure you, I’m not interested in any of that. What I want is knowledge about his techniques, the resources he used here in Sharakhai and in the desert.”

Meryam had heard of Adzin only by chance. After escaping from Ramahd in Mazandir, the goddess Tulathan had come to Meryam and offered her a way to rule the desert alone. She’d given Meryam only two things to help: the body of the fallen god, Goezhen, and the name of an elder god, Ashael.

Much of what Meryam had since learned about Ashael terrified her. He’d been abandoned by Iri, Annam, Raamajit, and the other elder gods when they’d left this world for the next, which naturally made one wonder: Why had Ashael been left behind? Her research made the answer clear. Every text spoke of terror, of destruction, of a god who reviled the creations of others. If that was true, why wouldn’t the gods leave him behind? Who would want such a cancer despoiling the new world they were about to create?

Meryam knew she was playing with fire, but the knowledge she’d gained gave her hope she could have everything Tulathan had promised. Goezhen was part of the puzzle—Tulathan meant for her to use his body in some way, perhaps as an offering, to control Ashael—but she needed to find him first.

She’d searched through hundreds of texts Amaryllis had procured for her using their quickly dwindling fortune. Adzin had been mentioned in an obscure text written by an amateur soothsayer, a woman who’d heard of Adzin’s fame and had managed to apprentice herself to him. She’d had eager eyes at first, a lust for hidden knowledge, but everything had changed after a voyage she and Adzin took to a place of raw, malevolent power.

It’s a place that feeds many of Adzin’s wondrous abilities, she’d written. A depthless pit in the desert where many demons dwell.

Meryam had thought little of it at first, until she’d read one of the woman’s final entries.

I asked Adzin of the pit today, after plying him with the best araq my meager silver could buy. I had hoped to learn how to control the creatures that come from it, as he does. In a drunken slur he admitted that it isn’t necessary to control the creatures. It’s necessary to control their master.

And who is their master? I asked.

Ashael, said he.

A chill ran through me at the very name. I’ve learned enough about Ashael to know one does not toy with elder gods. One leaves them where they lie, sleeping.

She’d abandoned her apprenticeship the next morning, making excuses that her father was sick, that she needed a job with better pay. When Adzin had offered her more, she’d declined and had never spoken to him again.

In the cabin of The Gray Gull, Yosef waved vaguely to the ship again, this time with much less enthusiasm. “I daresay with a ship like this, a smart woman like you could suss out Adzin’s methods given time.”

“Let me make myself perfectly clear. I don’t want the ingredients. I want the recipe.”

“You’re asking me for something I don’t have.”

“Let me search the ship then,” Meryam said, hating the pleading sound in her voice. “I’ll make it worth your while to let me have a look about.”

“So you can take what you want while no one watches?”

“Watch me if you wish. I only need access to the ship for a day or two.”

Yosef stood, a dour look on his face. “This meeting is over.”

“No, please.”

But Meryam could tell she was losing the battle. She was trying to find the right words to convince Yosef to help her when Amaryllis called from the passageway.

“My lady?”

Meryam opened the door to find Amaryllis holding one of the oddities from the wall, a raven’s skull. “Look,” she said, holding it out to Meryam.

Meryam accepted it, but could find nothing strange about it.

“Look through the eye.”

Meryam did, and saw at last what Amaryllis had spotted. Within the skull, in the smallest script Meryam had ever seen, words were written. It was a note, penned, no doubt, by Adzin himself. Only when Tulathan is in her first quarter, Rhia in her third, can one find the path to solace in the desert.

Her curiosity piqued, Meryam took up a painted carving of a doe, slain by an arrow. No message was apparent until Meryam held it up against the light filtering down from the hatchway above. There were small cuts in the red paint, made by a scalpel, perhaps, all over the doe’s skin. More words, Meryam realized.

When the summer doldrums are strongest, go to the plain of glittering stone. There can the efrit be found, dancing beneath the stars. Promise them fresh silver and they will reach to the heavens. Diamonds will they place in your palms before they vanish in a glimmer of stardust.

The grisly oddments, Meryam realized. Those were his journal. Those were his notes. Find the right ones and she would have Ashael’s location. Find the right ones and the desert would be hers.

When she turned toward Yosef, she discovered the fear that had been so oppressive only moments ago had vanished. She was filled with purpose now. She’d found the head of the path that would lead her to everything she’d ever wanted.

“How much for the ship?” she asked.