Sandstorm (37 page)

“Why is there a goliath on the sand?” asked the pasha of games. He turned to his aide. “I told you there will be no other matches!”

“There are none, Pasha, I swear it!” the aide cried. “Look! He is alone. There are none for him to fight!”

“Then what is he doing?” demanded el Arhapan.

The aide had no answer. He was as mystified as the pasha when the crowd roared—particularly because they roared with laughter.

Flamburnt was fast for a man of his particular size and shape, but he was no match for Cephas in his windsouled form. The ambassador made it no farther than the central veranda before the gladiator brought him down.

The firesouled had no fear in his eyes when he looked at Cephas. That emotion did not appear until he glanced back down the gallery—where Ariella was taking her leisure in joining them. Cephas shifted his weight, raising his knee from the man’s throat.

Flamburnt struggled but could not throw Cephas off. “You are the earthsouled son of el Arhapan,” he said, talking fast. “It is your death you lean over. I am a wizard of the highest degree and an initiate of the Sacred Hunter’s Lodge in the holy city of Memnon. The flames that devour your soul will be set by my hand!”

Corvus leaned closer. “These soul-scouring flames, you can call them up before I toss you over the side?”

“Perhaps a deal can be struck!” said Flamburnt. “Call off the swordmage and tell me what it is you need explained.”

Ariella had reached them. “Ask him why two Cabalists of Memnon or Airspur or wherever they’re from are skulking about a Calimien palace.”

Flamburnt spit his response. “We were to act as observers, to ensure that the djinn did not manage to lose their half of the Ritual of Return yet again. But of course they’ve managed just that!”

Cephas remembered the pronouncements of the elementals in the desert but decided he was more concerned with the lives of his friends than the plots of the insane. “I am told,” he said, “that this house has a foundation stone, though the words sound out of place in the sky. Do you know what that means?”

“Of course I do,” Flamburnt said, rolling his eyes. “The windsouled build these extravagances atop mystic
air quarried from the cliffs of the Plane Below. The foundation stone is a sort of keystone in reverse—it is the means of gravitational defiance. Somewhere in the center of this manor is a chamber open to sky, containing an elemental matrix that’s both wind and earth.”

Both wind and earth, thought Cephas.

“I know that because I read it in a children’s primer, buffoon,” said Flamburnt. “Such knowledge hardly seems worth bargaining for.”

Cephas said, “If you say so.” He removed his weight from the man, letting Ariella take his place above the firesouled mage. “I know what to do,” he said to her.

Then, ignoring Flamburnt’s cries of protest, he flew.

The wizard known as the Spiritbreaker stood with his hand on the shoulder of his finest work. The halfling woman remained motionless, a short sword in one hand and a parrying knife in the other. Neither he nor the other genasi in the room was concerned about the bared steel, even though both pieces were possessed of considerable magical potency. The Spiritbreaker’s control of the woman was absolute. He had broken the mind of an Arvoreeni adept.

He asked his assistant, “Have they cleared the sands yet?”

She shook her head. “He’s still out there. He keeps slipping away at the last moment and causing the yikaria to stumble. I don’t sense any magic, so I cannot explain where he’s finding all those pastries. Perhaps his pockets? Those
are
enormous pants.”

The wizard growled. “Why doesn’t Marod just order the fool shot and be done with it?”

“He’s tried,” the woman replied. “But every time the archers appear on the towers, the crowd goes insane,
and they withdraw rather than risk being pulled down.”

He tried to find calm. He so wanted to see this woman fight. He patted the tamed halfling on the head. “I don’t care how perfect he thinks your foe is, dear,” he said. “You’ll make short work of them.”

She did not respond.

Even if he had given her permission to speak, of course, she
couldn’t
. That had been the key. She could not cry out in pain, and for the first few days, she had not evinced any other signs that his usual tricks were having any effect, either.

But then it came to him. She was drawing strength from that handicap, he thought. She was reveling in the fact that he could not take her cries of pain from her, no matter how he tried. And he could use that. He could push on that. He could push past it.

He reasoned that a voice is like a sense in reverse. Taste depended on many of the same physical features that some undead creature had destroyed in this subject, so that was easy to clip away. Smell, his studies revealed, was related to taste, so the same alchemical formulae worked double duty there.

Touch, now, had been more difficult. That was, truly, where his own expertise could be best appreciated. That was all magic, the most delicate of ritual extractions and insertions. And it had not taken her overly long to learn to grip her blades without the benefit of feeling them.

Hearing, well … That was just a matter of making sure the help didn’t get carried away and push the spikes too far into her ears.

She had not responded when he stroked her hair and whispered. She could not feel his hand. She could not hear his voice.

“That book is worthless!” Shahrokh shouted.

Corvus picked up the copy of the
Book of Founding Stories
and examined it. “Many would agree, Vizar. It is not rare. Its making is merely competent. The contents—”

“The contents are not what Holy Calim set down between those covers!”

Corvus agreed, nodding. “That is true. Though these
are
the covers he inscribed the Ritual of the Rising Wind between. And the pages themselves are, in fact, very similar. But no, if you pass a palimpsest stone over them, you will not find his writing.”

“Such a pathetic trick …” said Shahrokh.

“Now, now,” said Corvus. “I believe I did an excellent job switching out the covers. I daresay I even improved both volumes. And, if I may be allowed a bit of pride, I did manage to deceive an efreeti cinderlord and a djinni skylord.”

“Tell me where the Book of Calim is, spy. Should I make specific threats, or is it enough to know that every life within a thousand of your ridiculous paces depends on your next words?”

“El Arhapan has filled the arena with the elite of the city, and fifteen thousand slaves,” Corvus said. “That is many lives. Many loyal servants of Calim among them.”

“The loyal would count their deaths blessed. The Return is the only thing of importance.”

“And that book that will ensure it, yes. Which only I can recover, so to speak.”

“There are a thousand ways I can drag this secret from your mind, kenku. You do not have to be alive for all of them.”

“Ah, well, there’s where another of my advantages lie, though I admit its value is … debatable. Shahrokh, you came to me because I am a Graduate Survivor of the Rookery of Tears. The deaths we deal are permanent,
irrevocable. Especially when we deal them to ourselves. If you seek to test the truth of this claim, come closer. I will be dead before you can bellow another curse, and the only powers in the universe that could bring me back are powers with no desire to see the return of Calim. Blessed be his name.”

Shahrokh moved himself lower. “I hesitate to invite this on myself,” he said. “But speak.”

“First, no djinni is to act against the wishes or actions of any mortal in this city for, let us say, a day.”

The vizar’s eyes turned the color of thunderheads. When they returned to normal, he said, “It is done. My people withdraw to the skies to await my word. Where is the book?”

“Second. No djinni under your command, and not you either, will cause harm to any person who has ever been a member of Nightfeather’s Circus of Wonders for a period of one thousand years, starting now. And let’s say that goes for anyone who signs on in the next year.”

“You recognize how easily I will circumvent this by using mortal agents, I am sure, but on the condition that you reveal the book’s location, then it shall be as you say. Will you mouth more inanities, or is the deal struck?”

Corvus got to his feet. “The copy of the book containing Calim’s ritual hidden in its text was in my nest. When you severed my link with that, the book spilled out, along with many other things I value. Almost all of those things were books. So when you find them, you’ll have to be careful to choose the right one. I trust you’ll not make the mistake of judging a book by its cover again any time soon.”

Shahrokh glowered. “Your judgments of me mean nothing, kenku. I have lived millennia and toppled empires, because I make estimations about my foes. If you think I will now pay some terrible price because I
underestimated a mortal, then you have forgotten that my only goal is to hold the book. The forms are fulfilled. So I will meet that goal.”

Corvus said, “The forms, yes. The ancient protocols for striking a deal with a djinni.” He held up the book of stories. “They’re all in here, did you know that?”

Shahrokh did not reply. He crossed his arms, ready to wait as long as necessary.

“You’ll forgive me if I do not simply name a location. The terms of our bargain will be met, I think, as long as I give you adequate directions to find the book. In fact, I think I could even convey them as a series of riddles if I had the time.”

“You think I will blindly follow your directions?” Shahrokh asked.

“I think you must, because that is my third demand.
That
meets the forms.” Corvus leaned over and rolled back carpets until he uncovered the floor. It was coated with dust. He set the book aside, then kneeled and began sketching with one talon.

“You know ritual magic well enough to recognize that these are the sigils needed to open a portal in the mortal world. Surely there’s no place in the mortal world you would be afraid to travel in order to recover the Book of Calim?”