Saladin Ahmed - Throne of the Crescent Moon

He thanked Beneficent God aloud when his fingers closed around three smooth stones the size of grapes. He gathered the lightning beads—each a swirl of mother-of-pearl—and looked up to see that Raseed had been knocked to the ground again. He was already getting to his feet, but the ghul he’d been battling now darted toward Adoulla.

Adoulla twisted as the thing hissed and swung at him. He somehow managed not to be torn open by those rocklike claws. But the flat of the ghul’s great forearm caught him across the chest like an iron bar. He fell backward, landing on his ass with a grunt, the wind knocked out of him.

He started to throw the beads, then hesitated. They’d cause a fire, no doubt. His home…

But he had no choice. Adoulla threw.

The sand ghul hissed loudly as the tiny stones struck it. They were sucked immediately into the thing’s abdomen, sand shifting away from sand to briefly reveal a writhing mass of scorpions and shiny black beetles. Adoulla spoke the invocation.

“God is the Lightning That Strikes Thrice!” It was slurred with pain and regret, but it was enough. There was a loud but muffled noise, like a peal of thunder wrapped in a wool blanket, and the sand ghul froze in its tracks. Then another muffled peal and another as the beads exploded inside the creature. Sheets of lightning-fire shot out from the sand ghul’s midsection, scalding the arm Adoulla threw up to protect his face. Small fires caught in the room and spread with magical speed. Adoulla could smell paper burning and wondered in agony what books and scrolls he was losing. He saw his furniture catch fire, the very walls of his home aflame. Then the invocation’s drain hit him and he collapsed, pain and smoke filling his mind.

Raseed watched one of the sand ghuls crumble from the Doctor’s invocation and thanked God as he faced off against the second one. He had never fought sand ghuls before, though the Doctor had spoken of them. It was not like fighting bone ghuls or water ghuls. No matter how many times Raseed swung his sword, the blade found no flesh to bite. Every thrust slid into loose sand, and it took every bit of Raseed’s skill just to dodge the ghul’s blows as he freed his sword.

Almighty God, what can I do against such a monster? But his thoughts were dashed out of him as the creature slammed him to the ground with a great, grainy fist. He came to his feet quickly and saw the Doctor toss something at the ghul and speak an invocation before passing out. There was a thundercrack sound, and Raseed threw up an arm to shield himself from a sheet of fire. He turned his face from the blast and saw Zamia fighting that shadow-creature.

Raseed’s skin and silks were singed, but he ignored the pain. When he turned back to the sand ghul, he saw that the Doctor’s invocation had had a remarkable effect. At the sounds of the small explosions, the creature had stopped moving, incapacitated by whatever passed for pain in such a monster. The magical heat of the explosions had caused the palm-tree-thick midsection of the sand ghul to melt into glass! The melted remains of scorpions and centipedes clouded the glass with black. The sand ghul was stopped in its tracks.

Small fires burned about the room, catching and spreading with astonishing speed. But Raseed focused on his enemy. He knew an opportunity when he saw one. Glass could be broken.

He sheathed his sword, extended his right arm and pointed his fist at the sand ghul. With a loud shout that focused his soul, he flew forward, thrusting his fist into the thing’s stomach. If it has a stomach!

There was an earsplitting crack. Then a thick tinkling sound like a thousand tiny bells. Raseed felt countless splinters of hot glass digging into his skin, from his knuckles all the way up his arm to his elbow. But he was focused, and not a glimmer of pain made it through his training. Praise God .

In a blur of movement he withdrew his arm from the monster’s midsection. The sand ghul collapsed in a rain of sand, broken glass, and dead centipedes. Raseed turned from the waist high pile before him, scanning the room.

The whole house was filling with smoke and fast-spreading fire. The townhouse walls were blackening with flame. The Doctor lay moaning in pain but did not seem to be badly wounded. A golden lion—Zamia!—squatted in the corner, growling and whimpering as she bled. Raseed’s breath caught in his throat.

The jackal-creature, clearly wounded, struggled to stand and make its way to the window. It whined as shadow-stuff whirled about it in tattery flags. Raseed heard it speak somehow in his mind even as he moved toward it.

No! Mouw Awa hath been cut and bitten! Might this mean his death? No! His blessed friend shall heal him. His blessed friend shall sit on the Cobra Throne while Mouw Awa’s howls doth hound the air!

The thing clawed at the lattice window, splintering the dark wood and howling in pain. Before Raseed could reach it, it leapt from the second story window to the hard-packed dirt road below. The fall will kill it, Raseed half-hoped. But as the thing hit the ground it seemed to simply… melt away. He himself had a remarkable skill in stealth, but this was different. Mouw Awa did not hide… it joined with the lamp-shadows. The thing had fled but it was not dead—Raseed could sense that much.

It was Raseed’s duty to pursue, but his eyes were drawn to the limp forms of Zamia and the Doctor. They needed him now. The tribeswoman had changed shape again in the space of a moment. He felt his heart would burst, seeing this girl of five and ten years with a grisly wound in her side. The Doctor moaned and sat up, coughing from the smoke around them. The flames blazed hotter, the wood of divan and bookshelf cracking and popping in the fires.

Zamia whimpered. Only her mouth moved, making pained, pleading sounds. His gaze returned to the street below. O God, is it wicked to let such a monster flee just to save the lives of friends? But even as his soul asked Almighty God for guidance, his body choked from smoke and moved to Zamia’s side.

Suddenly a glowing green light filled the townhouse. As he reached Zamia, he saw a hundred tiny hands the color of seawater stamping at the flames and waving away smoke. Magic . But not the sort of spell the Doctor worked. Whatever it signified, Raseed didn’t care. All that mattered was Zamia’s wound, which was bubbling and hissing horribly, as if with an alkhemist’s acids. Raseed felt tears filling his eyes and not only from the smoke.

He felt the Doctor’s large hand on his shoulder and heard that gruff voice in his ear. “Come, boy. Help has arrived.”

Raseed snarled at his mentor. “We should not have brought her here, Doctor! She’s just a child!” An incoherent cry escaped from his throat. “We should not have brought her!” He was startled by the sudden impulse to strike the Doctor.

The Doctor winced from the smoke and the pain of his wounds. “Snap out of it, boy! I said there is help here!”

Raseed saw, more than felt, a bony, red-black hand on his forearm. Dawoud. Litaz. The Doctor’s friends. The smoke filled his eyes and his mind. He let himself be guided out of the burning townhouse, only half-aware of what was happening.

The next thing he knew, he was standing in front of his ruined, soot-blackened home. The spell-fires were already dying, but they had done their damage. The Doctor sat on the street, his head in his hands. His Soo friends—the tall, bald magus Dawoud and his wiry little wife Litaz—stood beside him, gently setting Zamia’s unmoving body onto a litter.

“The fire’s been dealt with,” Dawoud was saying to the dazed-looking Doctor. “We got to it before it could spread to the neighbors. My magics keep them from seeing or smelling what has happened here. But what in the Name of God has happened here, Adoulla? And who is she ?”