The Zaravshan River unspooled in a gleaming ribbon as Javid guided the wind ship due north. A week of steady rain had revived the parched crops on either side. Green fields followed her winding course, tended by teams of oxen and laborers in broad straw hats. The weather had changed just that morning. Two hours into the flight, the Ash Vareca glided along under ideal conditions—blue skies with a light, fresh breeze from the south. And yet the knot of apprehension in Javid’s gut cinched tighter with every league.
On the one hand, he was glad to put Samarqand at his back. Shahak seemed to regard Javid as his savior and demanded his presence at all hours of the day and night. The king had mellowed a bit since the bloody day he took the crown, but he was mercurial and frankly, terrifying. He consumed spell dust at such a fantastic rate, Izad Asabana’s stores were nearly depleted. And so Javid’s big commission had finally come along. The prince didn’t want to let him go, even for a day, but he accepted that Javid was the only pilot skilled enough to be trusted with the run.
That was the rub. Javid knew Asabana would never be paying him so much if it wasn’t dangerous. And he still didn’t know exactly where they were going. His boss referred him to Leila, who had been cagey, saying merely that the source of the dust lay to the northwest.
“How much further?” he asked her.
She stood next to him, amidships beneath the air sack, her long hair unbound.
“Another few minutes.”
“Holy Father, just tell me,” he snapped. “I’m not turning back now. But I am the pilot of this ship and I’d like to have some idea of our destination. Is it Delphi?”
She glanced at her father. Marzban Khorram-Din sat on a stool among piles of empty silk-lined bags, hands folded in his lap and eyes closed, appearing deep in meditation.
“You flew across the Umbra?” she asked innocently.
Javid sighed. “You know I did.”
“So you’ve had experience with extreme conditions. That’s good.” She paused. “You’ll need it.”
It came together in that moment and Javid gave a low groan.
“The Gale,” he said. “You want to cross it, don’t you?”
“I’ve done it before,” she said quickly. “Many times. We just have to get high enough.”
“How high?”
“Very high.”
Javid thought of the pile of gold he’d been promised. His father hadn’t worked in weeks. He probably never would again. They were barely surviving on the few coins Asabana gave him after withholding the debt payment, and his sister Golpari’s wedding was two weeks away.
But the Kiln. Holy Father. Javid thought of the scorched stone of the Rock. Of the glimpse through the gate of a shimmering desert when he and Nazafareen traveled through the shadowlands. Like everyone else, he’d grown up on stories of the war. The Gale existed for a good reason and crossing it seemed the height of madness.
“You have to trust me,” Leila said, studying him with her clever brown eyes.
“What about the fire daēvas?” he asked uneasily. “I heard they were still alive in there.”
Leila smirked. “Who told you that?”
“A friend. She heard it from some Maenads.”
“Well, I’ve been inside the Kiln and I can assure you it’s deserted.” She peered at the map in her hand and checked it against the path of the river. “It’s time. We must start gaining altitude.”
Now would be the moment to refuse, a sensible voice informed him. Before it’s too late.
But another part of him—the one who’d volunteered to cross the Umbra, the one who used to sneak into the palace grounds to steal figs, the one who loved his family and felt responsible for them—stayed silent.
Leila produced a pouch of spell dust and tossed a handful into the air. It hung suspended in a glittering cloud for a moment as she whispered some words. Then the ship gave a mighty lurch and began to climb. Javid grabbed a cable.
“You don’t have much finesse, do you?” he muttered.
Up and up the Ash Vareca soared, until the river dwindled to a fine artery. The air grew thin and cold. Javid had flown up to three leagues before, but they were easily twice that height now. Thin wisps of cloud shrouded the ship and the fields gave way to tawny sand as they veered away from the river.
Javid stood at the port rail, gaze fixed on the western horizon. The sky took on a strange greenish cast. After a few minutes, a line of black clouds appeared, hanging like a curtain across the desert. Lightning flickered in their depths. Cone-shaped funnels trailed from the underbelly, reaching in long, ragged fingers toward the ground. They swayed like cobras and where the fingers touched the earth, the force of the wind tore loose spinning clouds of sand that made the most horrifying sound he’d ever heard.
The funnels raced toward them. Javid carried out a swift calculation based on their current trajectory. Then he made the sign of the flame, touching forehead, lips and heart.
“We’re not high enough,” he called to Leila.
“Father,” she said calmly. “Perhaps you could increase the altitude while I maintain the bubble of vapor? I think it will need to be fortified.”
Of course, she would have to conjure air to breathe. They were far too high. Javid realized she was handling at least five complex weavings of power alone and felt both impressed and unnerved.
Marzban Khorram-Din opened his eyes. He reached into his own pouch and pulled out a pinch of spell dust.
“Hold on to something,” he said in that austere, croaking voice.
Javid had just wound a rope around his hand when the Ash Vareca hurtled upwards like a boulder shot from a trebuchet. The anvil-formed thunderhead loomed just ahead…and then they soared over the top of the Gale, the flat bottom of the cloud beneath and blinding sun breaking through overhead. He felt a moment of raw, tingling exhilaration before they were plummeting down the other side, buffeted by strong gusts that tore at the air sack.
Javid let out a whoop that earned a disapproving scowl from Marzban Khorram-Din and an indulgent smile from Leila.
“I’ll handle it from here,” he said smoothly, taking a pinch of his own dust. Javid spoke a few words of command from his admittedly far more limited repertoire, but nothing happened. He frowned and tried again. Still nothing.
“Spell dust doesn’t work in the Kiln,” Leila said. “Magic seems to be dampened by the wards on the Gale.”
Javid had his second unpleasant revelation. “So that’s why you brought me along.”
“See?” She turned to Marzban Khorram-Din, who had resumed his meditative posture on the stool. “I told you he wasn’t stupid.”
Fickle crosswinds still battered the Ash Vareca, the ropes creaking as she swayed back and forth. Javid hurried to light the burners and arrest the ship’s too-fast descent. The sacks began to swell with hot air and he watched the scrap of red silk tied to one of the cables. Accurately judging wind direction was one of a pilot’s most important skills since the ships had no independent means of propulsion—except for dust. The moment it caught a westerly current, he stabilized their ascent and they left the churning monster behind.
“I thought I might manage it without his help this time.” Leila looked annoyed at herself. “Father says I must if I’m to take over once he’s gone.”
“You almost did. It’s still more than ten wind pilots together could have done.”
Leila smiled. “We still have to do it again to get home.”
He grinned back. “I don’t mind. What a tale! My sister Bibi will wet herself.” His smile faded. “I can’t tell anyone, can I?”
“Only if you want to end up like Asabana’s other pilots,” she replied dryly.
Javid studied the landscape below. Wind-swept dunes stretched in all directions like a sea of golden sand. As they descended, he could feel the intense heat radiating from the desert. Combined with the unrelenting sun, it felt like a blacksmith’s forge. Sweat popped out from every pore. He imitated Leila and donned a white linen head wrap doused with water.
“Why did you come here in the first place?” he asked. “You couldn’t have known about spell dust then.”
She glanced at the alchemist, who opened his eyes and gave a brief nod. “My father is a great admirer of Nabu-bal-idinna, an explorer of the golden age. Just as Nabu-bal-idinna sought to map the shadowlands, we wanted to map the known world. Including the Kiln. He talked Izad Asabana into funding an expedition. I think Asabana liked the boldness of the proposition. It appealed to his vanity. He wasn’t a lord then, but I suspect he secretly wanted to be. All he risked was a wind ship, which was no great price. He’d already made a fortune smuggling.”
“And you found no sign of life?”
“None. We didn’t get far in our explorations though.” She leaned over the rail. “Once we discovered the spell dust and how to use it…. Well, there was no point in continuing, was there?” Leila sounded a bit wistful. She stared out at the horizon, shimmering with liquid waves of heat, her eyes distant.
“How far does the desert extend?” Javid asked.
“I don’t know. Hundreds of leagues.”
“Do you think it’s all like this?”
She turned to him. “No,” she said softly. “I imagine most of it’s worse. The farther west you go, the stronger the sun will be.”
Javid surveyed the blasted landscape. Worse? Surely nothing could survive out here.
Leila leaned over the rail, and when she spoke, her voice was cool and collected as always. She pointed. “Do you see it?”
It took him a moment. Javid shaded his eyes against the glare. Then he spotted something, like a glint of sun striking a mirror. As the ship neared it, his breath caught. The ruins of a glass city lay ahead. Some of the buildings appeared intact, if half-finished, with lofty towers gathering all the hues of the rainbow and throwing them back like prisms. But other parts showed the ravages of a terrible fire, the glass blackened and melted.
At Leila’s direction, he landed the ship in a huge open plaza flanked by statues half-buried in the sand. They were made of stone and depicted men and women whose smiling faces struck him as tragic and macabre amid the silent ruins.
“What is this place?” he asked Leila.
But it was Marzban Khorram-Din who answered.
“This was Pompeii,” he said. “The capital of the Vatras.”
Javid felt no fear. He could see it had been deserted for long centuries, though it must have been a marvel before its destruction. They made their way into the city, passing dry fountains full of dust and empty gaps that looked like parks judging by the benches and graceful arches. If ever there had been gardens or trees, no sign remained. An eerie calm hung over the place, with not even a breath of wind to stir the sands.
But still he saw no evidence of spell dust. Each of them carried ten of the silk-lined sacks. They passed down a street with smaller dwellings that might have been homes or shops. Leila and Marzban Khorram-Din halted before one of them.
“You can go in if you like,” Leila said softly. “It’s better alone, the first time.”
He gave her a questioning look, but she merely waited.
So Javid ducked through the low doorway. He stood in what must have been the kitchen. A table had been set with plates and goblets, now covered in a fine white ash that looked iridescent in the dim sunlight.
Around the table sat a family of four. Two adults and two children. The fire that claimed their lives was so fierce and sudden, it had charred them instantly in the exact poses they’d held in life. Javid hesitated for a long moment, grim doubts filling his heart. Then he reached out and touched the nearest corpse. His fingers brushed the shoulder, light as a summer’s breeze, but even that was too much. The unnatural stillness preserving the body was a fragile thing. The figure collapsed into a pile of glittering dust.
Javid stumbled out of the house, breath coming in nauseated gasps.
“Holy Father. I can’t….”
“You must,” Leila said firmly. There was pity in her eyes, but hardness too. “They are dead and can’t be brought back. But if we do not return with these sacks….”
Javid squatted on his haunches, head in hands. “Holy Father,” he muttered again.
“War is coming,” she went on relentlessly. “King Shahak must save us from the Pythia. He is a flawed man, but he is all we have. This is just a commission, Javid, like any other.”
He shot her an appalled look. “How can you—”
“Like any other,” she repeated. “Except that you are being paid an obscene amount of money to do it.” Leila paused. “Think of your family.”
She didn’t elaborate. Javid understood all too well. As repugnant as it was, if he failed to return, they would be good as dead. If King Shahak didn’t kill them, Asabana would.
He laughed, a ghastly sound. Holy Father, the king was snorting the bones of dead daēvas. Dead Vatras! And Javid had made himself Shahak’s pet. His father was right. He never should have started working for Asabana. But it was too late now.
He stood and took a long drink of water from the skin Leila offered him. It revived him somewhat.
“This is easily the worst thing I’ve ever done,” he said in disgust.
“You’ll get over it,” Leila said.
He looked at her. “I really hope I don’t.”
Javid closed his eyes, praying for forgiveness from the souls whose grave he was about to rob. Then he shook the bag open and went back inside.