Saladin Ahmed - Throne of the Crescent Moon

Litaz bit her lip, looking as if she were still puzzling something out. “The touch of the Angels,” the alkhemist said. “Amazing. Clearly, the power God’s ministers granted you goes beyond your lion-shape. Even with our healing magics helping, you should not have been able to walk for a week.”

Zamia raised her chin just a bit. “Perhaps we ‘savages’ are more resilient than the soft townsmen you are used to treating, Auntie.”

The Doctor made a farting noise with his mouth and laughed. “Yes, yes, surely it is the innate bravery of the Badawi at work here, girl.”

Before Zamia could respond, Raseed was at her side. “ ‘God’s mercy is greater than any cruelty,’ ” he quoted from the Heavenly Chapters. “You were grievously wounded, Zamia. Praise God that you are recovering swiftly, but still you ought to be resting now, for—”

Litaz made an irked noise. “Please,” she said to Raseed, “don’t give advice when you know not of what you speak. The best thing for Zamia now is not to sleep. The crimson quicksilver is reawakening her blood, just as it is the blood on this knife. If she can walk, let her. And speaking of blood, she has a right to see whatever answers we may glean here.” The Soo woman turned to Zamia and gestured to the only other stool in the room. “Sit. I was just making the final adjustments to my scrying solution. I was asking the men, but you’d know better than they—when you wounded this Mouw Awa creature, did it bleed?”

Zamia forced herself to think of those few moments that had nearly killed her. Of her fangs digging into that monster’s foul flank. It had been both like and unlike tearing into flesh. There was shadow and pain but…“No, Auntie. No, it did not bleed.”

“As I told you,” the Doctor said, stroking his beard in thought. “The girl also said that to her remarkable senses, the blood on this knife smelled of neither man nor animal, whereas this Mouw Awa smelled of both. As I’d suspected, this must be the blood of the one who made those ghuls. The one whom that monster called ‘blessed friend.’ ”

“Well, whatever its source, it is the strangest blood I have ever seen. Full of life and lifeless. All of the eight elements are here, but they are… negated somehow. Sand and lightning, water and wind, wood and metal, orange fire and blue fire! How could they all be in one drop of blood, and yet not be there?” The little woman turned to her husband. “Stranger still, within the clots there are creeping things moving about. It is as if this blood came from some mix of man and ghul. It makes no sense. Still, my love, you should work your magics here. God willing, they may give us better answers.”

Using a tiny silver spoon, the alkhemist scooped a bit of white powder from a jar into a glass vial filled with red liquid. The liquid began to bubble and froth and turned bright green. Litaz then took this liquid and poured it over the bloodied knife that had been Zamia’s father’s.

A bright green light began to shimmer off of the knife. The light grew brighter and brighter until it filled the room.

“You can begin,” the Soo woman said to her husband. “Stand back,” she said to the others, doing so herself as she spoke.

The magus stepped forward, placing his gnarled hands a hairsbreadth above the knife. An eerie green light began to glimmer about his fingers as they weaved back and forth around the blood-stained blade. The old Soo’s eyes rolled back, and he chanted a wordless chant in an oddly echoed voice. Wicked magics , Zamia thought. Instinctively, she started to take the shape…

And of course found that she couldn’t. Panic rose in her again—she could feel the shape just beyond her reach, and feel the pain of her wound keeping her from her lion-self. Almighty God, I beg you, help me!

But then the magus was speaking, and she had to heed his words, for that was the path to vengeance for the Banu Laith Badawi. Tears burned in her eyes, but again she shoved thoughts of the shape aside and listened.

“This blood is like… like the cancellation of life,” Dawoud said as his long dark fingers darted back and forth above her father’s knife. “More than that, the cancellation of existence. Like the essence of a ghul, whose false soul is made of creeping things. But with will. Cruel, powerful will.”

The Doctor spoke quietly to Litaz, as if Zamia and Raseed were not there. “This all makes a horrible sort of sense, when I think on it. There’s an old tale of a man called the ghul of ghuls—a man who was like a ghul raised by the Traitorous Angel himself. A man who’d cut out his own tongue to better let the Traitorous Angel speak through him. Who had his soul emptied, then filled with the will of the Traitorous Angel. He is supposed to wear a kaftan that can never be clean and—”

The Doctor fell silent as Dawoud’s head tilted back and the magus grimaced as if in great pain. The old Soo was touching the knife now with his fingertips, and he screamed.

It was a wordless screaming chant at first, but the pain-laced sounds resolved into words: “THE BLOOD OF ORSHADO! THE BLOOD OF ORSHADO!” The magus’s body jerked about strangely as he screamed, but he kept his hands on the knife. “THE BLOOD OF ORSHADO!”

Litaz leapt up and pried her husband’s fingers from the blade. Dawoud stumbled into the corner and collapsed onto a cushion with a pitiful moan. He held his head in his hands and sat there, shuddering.

The Doctor wore worry for his friend on his face. “Your magic takes its toll on your body. For that, brother-of-mine, the world owes you.” He clasped a hand on the magus’s shoulder. “But magic can also take its toll on the mind. Praise be to God that the girl’s would-be assassin was unhinged enough to rattle on so. Clearly, this Orshado is the one who that monster called ‘blessed friend.’ I’ve long said that my order was misnamed. For in realty it is men, not ghuls, that I hunt. And now we have a quarry. With a tracking spell and a name we—”

The Doctor’s eyes flashed, almost as if he would cry, Zamia thought.

“I’ve forgotten,” he said softly. “I’ve no scripture-engraved needles. They were ruined in that fire, like everything else. Soiled beyond use if not destroyed.”

Zamia wanted to insist that there must be another way, but she found that gathering her thoughts and words was an effort. She was weaker than she had admitted to the others. Her heart swelled when Raseed seemed to speak her thoughts for her.

“Are there no other spells you might work, Doctor? Is there nowhere else you might buy such needles?”

The Doctor shook his head. “It’s more complicated than that, boy. Those needles take weeks to make. If we were in a remote location, or facing a novice magus, I might try a cruder invocation. But the city is full of life-energy that will confuse a tracking spell, and this Orshado no doubt commands powerful screening magics. Only flawless components and impeccable invocations would have even a chance of finding our foes.”

The Doctor looked around at each of them and seemed to force a smile. “But let’s not all look so hopeless, eh? We’ve a couple of names to aid us now, at least. Almighty God willing, even without a tracking spell, we will find this damned-by-God monster and its ‘blessed friend.’ ”

In the corner of the workshop, Raseed shifted uneasily. His sharp features drew down in a frown. “That phrase bothers me, Doctor. How could such a creature have friends?”

The Doctor raised a bushy eyebrow. “You know, boy, I’ve heard people ask the same about Raseed bas Raseed! ‘His face is so sour,’ they say!”

He is always making mock, even of matters of life and death, Zamia thought, noting the Doctor’s oafish smile as he poked the dervish in the ribs.