Saladin Ahmed - Throne of the Crescent Moon

What foul magic is this?

Raseed looked around frantically, trying to find a ceiling, a floor, or a door. But there was only the churning whorl of red light.

He went into his breathing exercises, and with them came a degree of calm. He recited scripture. “Though I walk a wilderness of ghuls and wicked djenn, no fear can cast its shadow upon me. I take shelter in His—”

The Heavenly Chapters died on Raseed’s lips as a man appeared before him.

The man carried a spear. He was roughly dressed and had a gruesome sword wound through his middle. He should not have been able to stand. Something about his face was familiar to Raseed…

One of the highwaymen! When Raseed had first left the Lodge of God two years ago, he had been ambushed by three highwaymen on the long road to Dhamsawaat. He had slain them with ease.

This was the first man Raseed had ever killed.

The man looked at Raseed with empty eyes and spoke.

“ ‘O BELIEVER! KNOW THAT TO MURDER ANOTHER MAN IS TO MAKE GOD WEEP!’ ”

At the sound of that voice quoting from the Heavenly Chapters, Raseed froze in fear. The man’s mouth moved, but the voice that spoke the scripture was Raseed’s own—the doubting internal voice he often heard in his head.

As the man spoke, the other two highwaymen whom Raseed had killed on that day appeared. One had half his head missing, the other bled from his chest. They joined in the chanting, each speaking in Raseed’s own voice.

“ ‘O BELIEVER! KNOW THAT TO MURDER ANOTHER MAN IS TO MAKE GOD WEEP!’ ”

Another mangled man blinked into existence beside Raseed. The magus Zoud, who had been kidnapping women, wedding them, then feeding them to his water ghuls. Raseed had killed the man on his first ghul hunt with the Doctor.

“ ‘O BELIEVER! KNOW THAT TO MURDER ANOTHER MAN IS TO MAKE GOD WEEP.’ ”

Another wicked man whom Raseed had slain appeared. Then another. As one, the dead men stepped toward him. And at last Raseed felt movement return to his limbs.

He slashed out with his sword at the closest form, but the forked blade whistled through the highwayman as if through empty air. He feared the touch of those dead men’s hands more than he had ever feared anything, though he could not say why. He backed away step by step, keeping his eyes on them.

Behind him he heard a great whoosh of fire. He felt his blue silks singeing. Prying his eyes from the dead men, he turned toward the horrible heat. He saw a vast chasm filled with water-that-was-fire.

The Lake of Flame! I have been consigned by God to the Lake of Flame!

The dead men advanced. Raseed backed away a few more steps and felt the heat at his back begin to scald his skin. From nowhere and everywhere he heard a soft weeping that sounded like the universe being torn in two.

But then, beneath that, he heard another voice. Dim and distant, he heard Doctor Adoulla Makhslood’s words from moments ago.

“Raseed bas Raseed. A good man… a good partner…”

Raseed clung to the words as if they were the sheltering embrace of God Himself. He found power in them.

No. This flame is not real. These men are dead. I have served Almighty God as best I can. I have failed at times, but “Perfection is the palace in which God alone lives.”

Around Raseed, the thick, roiling red glow wavered and seemed to thin. The dead men disappeared. For the briefest of moments, he saw a gaunt figure in a soiled kaftan before him.

Orshado! This is his doing, not God’s!

It lasted only an instant, and then the dead men were on him again, herding him toward the Lake of Flame. Raseed felt his flesh burn but he stifled his screams.

He forced focus upon his thoughts as he never had before. He pictured the Doctor, Litaz, and Dawoud. He pictured Zamia Banu Laith Badawi, who had dared to speak to him of marriage. He thought of the flaws they all had and the good they had done. And he heard himself chanting.

“ ‘Perfection is the palace in which God alone lives. Perfection is the palace in which God alone lives. Perfection is the palace in which God alone lives.’ ”

Again the churning red light wavered and thinned. Again he saw Orshado standing there.

Raseed flew forward, the chant on his lips, his head filled with thoughts of his friends. The red light dispersed. The dead men did not return. He slashed his sword at Orshado, and felt as if he were breaking through a brick wall.

He heard the gurgling scream of a man with no tongue. Then he was in the throne room again, on the rising dais. The Heir lay bleeding on the throne and Orshado stood before Raseed, clutching his temples in pain. It was as if time had stood still while he’d faced the death-specters.

The agony they’d caused was still with him. Pain blazed through Raseed’s body, and his back burned. But he forced himself forward, slicing out again with his sword as he did so.

Manjackal, sand ghuls, skin ghuls. Again and again these past few days, Raseed’s sword arm had proven too weak to vanquish the creatures of the Traitorous Angel. But now he felt filled with God’s power. He was the Weapon of the Wisely Worshipped.

This was the moment that he had lived his whole life for.

The force of Raseed’s blow carried him and Orshado both away from the throne and over the edge of the dais, which had now risen halfway to the ceiling. They plummeted to the floor as Raseed’s sword sliced through the ghul-of-ghuls’ neck.

The man in the soiled kaftan made no noise, even as he died.

Raseed felt his bones break as he hit the stone floor. He cried out in pain, but in his mind he heard only the Heavenly Chapters. God is the Mercy that Kills Cruelty.

Beside him he saw Orshado’s headless corpse twitch once and fall still.

Raseed tried to stand but felt the pain pulling him down into darkness. He watched the dais—with the Doctor, the Heir and the Falcon Prince still on it—rise on a notched column of marble carved to look like the scaled length of a cobra. A stone block in the ceiling slid aside. The throne ascended through the resultant hole, the underside of the dais fitting perfectly into it. There was another loud sound of grinding stone and the contraption stopped moving.

For another astonished moment, Raseed just stared at the ceiling that had swallowed the Doctor. He noted with satisfaction that the skin ghuls were all falling to the ground.

Then the pain blazed again and darkness took him.

Adoulla Makhslood felt as if a great gray boulder were crushing down upon his soul, smashing to bits everything within him that had ever been happy. He half-sensed things happening around him—a lion running by, bursts of fire in the air, the soft footsteps of a man in a filthy kaftan, his own mouth mumbling words to a man in blue—but they meant nothing to him. He felt that he was dying and that he was being shoved from the sheltering embrace of God. In all his years on God’s great earth, he had never felt such despair.

Then he heard the howl of a jackal that was somehow also the scream of a man. And the next moment he felt the merciful hand of Almighty God rolling the soul-crushing boulder away.

He blinked away tears of grateful joy. He heard a loud sound of grinding stone and a click like something sliding into place. He rubbed his eyes and sat up. His chest blazed with pain and his kaftan was shredded. But when his fingers felt for wounds they found none.

And then it all came back to him. The things his eyes had seen while his soul was behind a screen of shadow. Mouw Awa attacking him. Zamia attacking Mouw Awa. Orshado stabbing the heir. The throne climbing to the ceiling.

Adoulla struggled to his feet and tried to sort his thoughts. I am alive. Which must mean that Mouw Awa has been destroyed. But what of its master? He saw no sign of Orshado.