The Blue Eye. Ausma Zehanat Khan

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      She waited until Sinnia had departed, tugging Wafa along with her. Hesitant now, she nodded at Khashayar. “I will require privacy.”

      She flushed a little under the keenness of his gaze.

      “I won’t intrude, sahabiya.”

      Something in his expression told her she could trust him, though all had come to chaos in both her city and his. His integrity shone from his eyes, his dedication a bond that pulsed between them in the room.

      Bowing her head, she slipped past him to make her way to the prayer nook. The vaulted ceiling of the cistern sloped down to a sandstone colonnade. Lanterns in rich blue turquoise were hung between columns of gold above an elongated pool. Between two of these columns, a single pillar, almost like a plinth, had been placed in the center of the pool. The glow of torchlight shone on amber walls, whose high periphery was lined with geometries of tiny blue tiles. At the northeastern corner, a mihrab was fashioned against cold stone like the plume of a peacock’s tail, feathered in emerald green, the exquisite tessellation sheened with light. Beneath it, the golden threads of a well-worn prayer rug reflected echoes of that light.

      Arian knelt on the rug. She held words of prayer in her mouth until they bloomed into blessings. Benedictions sought, tumultuous griefs confided. Her fears confessed to the One.

       What were they coming to?

       What hope did she have of turning the tide of this war?

      For years she had battled the tyranny of the Talisman and the greatest cruelty of their reign: their enslavement of the women of the east.

      The Companions of Hira were all that stood between the Talisman and total devastation, fighting to preserve Khorasan’s plural heritage, a battle they waged without recourse to force of arms. Instead, they relied upon the scripture of the Claim, the sacred magic passed through oral transmission; its written counterpart had vanished over time, destroyed by the Talisman’s purges.

      For a decade, Arian had used her gifts as First Oralist of Hira—First Oralist of the Claim—to disrupt the Talisman’s slave-chains. Then Ilea, the High Companion of her order, had assigned her a new task: to procure the Bloodprint, the sole surviving record of the Claim. Anchored by it, the Companions would have worked to overthrow the Talisman. Months ago, Arian had set out on the trail of the sacred text, but the Black Khan’s machinations had brought the Bloodprint to Ashfall instead.

      Now the Talisman’s war had come to the west, to the empire of the Black Khan, and battle raged at his capital. Arian could hear their cries beyond the chamber where she prayed.

      Her forehead touched the carpet in prostration. Tears welled up in her eyes, drifting up into her hairline. Her questions sounded like complaints, as if she’d had a crisis of faith. She believed devoutly in the Claim, but she needed to know why she’d struggled so long to lose the Bloodprint in the end. A devastating loss, mitigated only by a new mission: to find the Sana Codex, an ancient record of the Claim hidden away in Timeback, a city of the maghreb.

      As a last desperate hope, she had set out with her escort to retrieve it.

      I was learning the Bloodprint, she prayed in protest. Why let the One-Eyed Preacher take it? Though I seek the Codex as an answer to its power, is my quest likely to succeed? Do I possess the wisdom to unravel the secrets of the Claim? Will I be able to wield it against one who seems as invincible as the Preacher?

       If I fail, who will count the cost?

      The prayer rug was wet with her tears now. She had already measured some part of that cost. Her family lost to her in childhood. Her sister’s renunciation when they had chanced to reunite. The Black Khan’s theft of the Bloodprint at the Ark. The manuscript had been in her grasp—then gone. Now two further blows had been struck: she’d been severed from the Council of Hira and divided from the man she loved.

      I have Sinnia, she reassured herself. I have Sinnia and Wafa. And this noble soldier of the Zhayedan to guide me, Khashayar, so proud and brave.

      She thought about those instances when the Claim had swept over her like a cyclone, overwhelming her conscious will. She whispered a prayer to the One.

       Make me a servant of the Word. I have seen the darkness of the Claim. If I must use it to destroy, don’t let it twist who I am. I seek no arcane powers; I disavow the rites of blood.

      “Sahabiya.” The soft reminder from Khashayar brought her to the end of her prayers.

       Bless these lands, bless this city, bless the people of Khorasan. May the manifest blessings of the One descend upon those who journey at my side, those who wait for me at Hira, and those I leave behind in Ashfall.

      Then she made a futile bargain, struck over the ashes of oaths she had already taken.

       Keep Daniyar safe, and I’ll give myself to this cause.

      She kissed the spot on the carpet that she’d touched with her forehead. When she rose to her feet again, she glimpsed her reflection in the pool. The turquoise waters of the cistern seemed to collect the light—it throbbed at the base of the pool, undulating in a wave that tumbled back into itself. Arian peered into the basin. What caused the light to reflect off the bottomless depths of the pool? Was the basin tiled in silver? She couldn’t tell, the sparks of light kept refracting until the mosaics split apart, an illusion that made the turquoise depths seem infinite.

      A mystery she would willingly explore, but the pallor of her skin disturbed the surface of the pool, and her mind was distracted. Her face was lined with weariness, her eyes dull, her hair hanging in limp, damp trails. She’d been a queen at the Black Khan’s banquet—ornamented, perfumed, beguiling, young, and alluringly feminine, a woman who belonged at a court as graceful and dignified as Ashfall’s. How long ago that tranquility seemed now, how deceptive her brief transformation.

      She firmed the line of her jaw to make herself appear steadfast, a trick that failed to suffice, her body and spirit bruised in too many ways to count. Now, the dullness was a thing within, the spark of her purpose extinguished. She’d exchanged one guise for another, one quest for another, her course meant to be unerring, but she couldn’t deceive herself. She didn’t want to leave Daniyar. She didn’t trust that she would find her way to Timeback or that she would find what she was searching for in the city. The journey would take time.

      What would she return to?

      The green eyes that gazed back at her from the pool were bleak with worry and fear. “We must go,” Khashayar said.

      Must we? she asked herself.

       2

      “WE’VE FACED WORSE ODDS.”

      Sinnia’s spyglass was trained on the open grasslands, a brief stretch between the hidden exit of Qaysarieh’s tunnels and the rearguard of the camped-out forces of the Rising Nineteen. She grinned, a white flash against glossy dark skin. “It’s usually just the two of us against our enemies, me with my whip, you with your sword and the Claim.” She stretched out the muscles of her shoulders, a luxurious movement in the cramped confines of the tunnel. “This time we have a boy”—she ran an affectionate hand СКАЧАТЬ