Girl, Serpent, Thorn (24 page)

Parisa shook her head. “It will only work with a human.”

Soraya started to reach for the lock of hair, but the memory of Parvaneh's furious, glowing eyes burning at her through a sheet of that same hair made Soraya physically recoil from Parisa's outstretched
hand and sink back into herself the way she had always done. Her arms wrapped around her waist, her shoulders hunched over, her hair falling down around her face.
Poison,
she thought.
I'll always be poison.

“She won't want to speak to me,” Soraya said. “I'm the reason she was captured.”

She peeked up through her hair, expecting Parisa's eyes to go cold or angry, for her fist to close, but she mostly seemed impatient. “Yes, and Parvaneh is the reason we were captured, but that never stopped her from trying to find us again.” With her other hand, she took Soraya's chin and lifted it, so they were eye to eye. “Even if she's upset with you now, if you do right by her, she will forgive you.”

“Maybe I don't want to be forgiven,” Soraya said, pulling away from Parisa's hand. “Maybe I just want to be forgotten.”

And now Parisa's frown deepened into a look of disgust. “Then what do you plan to do?” she asked, her voice stern. “Are you still going to bring us the simorgh's feather?”

Soraya looked away. “Every mistake I've made has come from trying to find that damned feather at any cost. I'm finished planning.”

Parisa was silent at first, then shook her head slowly. “You should be angry.”

Soraya laughed harshly and shrank even further into herself. “Do you think that would do any good? I've been angry my entire life, and all it's done is twist me into something as terrible and violent as
he
is.” Memories flashed through her mind—the yatu's face draining of all life, her brother on his knees, Ramin's agonized scream. And at the heart of it all was a little girl with green veins looking at an illustration in a book, seeing a prince with scales growing over his skin, and knowing that they were the same.
You deserve each other
.

Shame flooded her, and she buried her head in her hands, try
ing to make the memories stop. Parisa took her hands and brought them down from her face. She held them tight, her gaze as sharp and knowing as that of the bird she resembled.

“You say you've been angry, that you've hurt others, that you've become something violent like him,” Parisa said. “Very well, then.
Be
angry. Be violent. But not for his sake. Not to do as he commands. Be angry for yourself. Use that rage to fight him.”

Soraya shook her head. “It's too late. My mother was right to make me poisonous—I see that now. I can't fight anyone like this.”

“Your mother fought him. She outsmarted him by bringing you to me and asking me for protection. If you truly are like her, as you told me you were, then you'll find a way to outsmart him, too. Be clever. Be patient. Keep that anger close to you, nourish it like a flame, and when the time is right, fight him however you can. No one is untouchable, Soraya.”

Her hands slipped out of Soraya's and she turned and went to the door, opening it before becoming an owl and flying into the darkness of the tunnels.

Soraya stood there alone awhile longer, looking down at her hands—open but not empty.

 

As the smell of burning hair filled the cavern, Soraya inhaled deeply, breathing in the smoke. She had spent several minutes staring down at the strands of hair that Parisa had left for her, but in the end, she knew that the only thing more unforgivable than betraying Parvaneh would be to give up without even trying to free her.

When the hair had finished burning, Soraya lay back on her straw mattress and tried to will herself to sleep. Eventually, her breathing slowed and her thoughts became hazy and disconnected as her dreaming mind took over.
Parvaneh,
she thought.
I have to speak to Parvaneh.

She knew where her dream had taken her before she even opened her eyes again. The air around her was chill and slightly damp, and when she breathed, she smelled esfand.

Golvahar.
She was in the dungeon of Golvahar. She kept her
eyes shut tight, not yet ready to face the home she had betrayed, but they filled with tears anyway. Tears of relief or regret, she wasn't sure. She wasn't even sure she had a right to call Golvahar home anymore.

She pushed self-pity aside, reminding herself that she had come here with a purpose, and that Parvaneh would find no comfort in being locked up in her former prison. Soraya opened her eyes and sat up from the cold, stony ground. She couldn't see much—the entire cavern was swirling with misty gray smoke, so thick that it obscured her vision, though strangely enough, she had no trouble breathing.

When her eyes adjusted enough to see the shape of bars in the distance, she rose and went toward them. As she came up to them, though, her foot met something hard. When she looked down, she found a row of dim orange lights hidden deep under the layers of smoke. She bent down, hoping they were the braziers with the esfand. There were at least five of them, enough to ensure that Parvaneh would be completely weakened, if not fully unconscious. Her hand met the metal of the brazier, but to her surprise, it wasn't hot, or even warm, to the touch. It was solid under her fingers, but it didn't
feel
like anything at all, as if she were touching it in a dream—which, she supposed, she was. When she tried to lift or move it, it wouldn't budge, and so she gave up on trying to put out the smoke and went on toward the bars, feeling for them with her hands.

Two of the bars were still bent from when Parvaneh had freed herself, and Soraya stepped through them, into the cell. “Parvaneh?” she called out. Even if Parvaneh were unconscious, Soraya thought, she might still be awake in this uncertain dreamscape. There was no response, though—or maybe Parvaneh didn't
want
to respond.

The smoke closed in on Soraya from every direction, making her feel disoriented and slightly drowsy, even within a dream. She kept wandering with small, uncertain steps until she saw a shadowy outline on the ground near the far end of the cavern. She went
toward it, and as she neared, the smoke began to clear slightly, as if it knew what she was looking for and wanted to oblige. And then Soraya saw her.

Parvaneh lay on her back, her wings hidden from view, her hands folded over her stomach, her eyes closed. Surrounded by tendrils of smoke, she looked like an apparition, or a mirage in the desert, the air shimmering around her. Soraya bent down beside her and looked at her face. She had always thought people were supposed to look peaceful when asleep, but Parvaneh's forehead was lined with distress. Soraya reached with one uncertain hand to smooth the line away, but as with the brazier, she couldn't make any change to her surroundings, nor even fully feel anything under her touch. She had thought she would be afraid to speak to Parvaneh again, but this silence, this sleep that was almost death, was far worse. Soraya would have endured the angriest of diatribes if it meant seeing those eyes open again.

“I'm sorry,” she said, the words swallowed up by the smoke. “I promise I'll come for you. I won't give up. I won't let him win. I'll show you how wrong you were about me.”

Before she willed herself awake again, she brushed her lips against Parvaneh's forehead, a kiss neither of them could feel.

Soraya woke with her fists clenched at her sides, her whole body coiled and ready to act. She rose at once and checked the candle. It was only a little shorter than it had been when she'd gone to sleep, which meant she probably still had time before dusk. When Azad returned, she would have to think of a way to guide their conversation toward the simorgh's feather again, but in the meantime, she finally had a place to search.

Her cloak was bundled up under the straw of her mattress, and she retrieved it now, even though she hoped that after Azad's decree, no one would trouble her. Her caution was unnecessary—as
soon as she stepped out into the main tunnel, she encountered a div who passed by her with a simple nod of the head. There were fewer divs passing through than she had seen before—probably because it was day—but each div that she passed as she made the climb up to Azad's room paid her similar treatment. A strange thrill went through her on each of these occasions. Unlike their exaggerated deference to Azad, these gestures of recognition were small and subtle—a quick nod, a flash of a smile, a knowing look.
We see you and know you,
they said,
and you are welcome here.
After a short while, Soraya found herself returning the gestures, and the cloak dropped from her hands.

When she thought she was near Azad's room, she began to slow and peer down tunnels, looking for an iron door. Most of the rooms and caverns didn't have doors at all, and the ones that did were either made of wood or were simply curtains, so it was easy enough to find the one she was looking for. Unlike the door to his treasury, this one had no lock—his attachment to his humanity was his only secret—and so Soraya opened it and went inside.

She had thought that returning to this room, where she had nearly given in to her worst instincts, would be unbearable. But the room around her was nothing like the one from last night. She would have thought she was in the wrong place except for the cool breeze coming in through the window, the only one in all of Arzur, Azad had said. Because the breeze wasn't the only visitor to the chamber—sunlight also streamed through the window, transforming the room entirely. It was the bright orange light of a slowly dying sun, which meant she didn't have much time until dusk, and yet she stood enraptured at seeing and feeling the sunlight for the first time since she had been taken from Golvahar. She had never realized how easily hope died when there was no sunlight, how hard it was to believe that another day was worth fighting for when there was only night.

But that sun was also a measure of how much time she had left
until Azad's return, so she quickly recovered herself and started rummaging through the room as she had once done in her mother's chambers, not long ago. She began with the chest where he had retrieved the rope last night, but it held only tools that were appropriate for living in a mountain—chisels, pickax heads, more rope.

She overturned all the rugs next, careful to replace them when she was finished, then went to the table where the map still lay. She could look at the wooden figures on the map more clearly now, white and red figures clashing at various points along the borders of Atashar. She dimly remembered seeing a similar map, with the same areas marked.
Those marks are where the divs have attacked in the last few years,
Sorush had explained to her.
It's almost as if they're
practicing
for something.
Soraya was tempted to knock the map off the table, but she restrained herself, instead carefully lifting a corner to look underneath.

There was a short hall off to the side of the room, which Soraya followed to a doorway at its end. Inside was a smaller chamber, roughly the same size as her own, and nearly as simple—a table, some candles, and a pallet that served as a bed, without even a blanket.
This is where he sleeps,
she thought. She couldn't make herself go into the room. There was too much of him there.

Back in the main chamber, though, she had run out of places to search. She walked through the room carefully, checking for anything she may have missed, and stopped at the massive fireplace.
Would he have—?

With a growing sense of dread, Soraya knelt down in front of the fireplace and began to sift through the ashes. Would he have destroyed his only chance of becoming human again? He had said he had no interest in living a human life, but his treasury of mementos from his reign said otherwise. Soraya's fingertips were becoming gray, but she kept digging through the soot, until a flash of green caught her eye, reminding her too much of the last time she had dug this same feather out of the embers of a fire.

Soraya uncovered the remains of the simorgh's feather, a few green barbs that became ash as soon as she touched them.

It was over, then. Their only chance at defeating the Shahmar—Soraya's only chance at saving her family and Parvaneh—had crumbled into nothing.

Soraya remained kneeling by the fireplace, looking at the ashes that had once been the simorgh's feather as if they would regenerate through whatever magic gave the feather its power. It seemed ridiculous that the feather had the power to heal anything except itself. But the yatu had warned her, his words more prophetic than she had known: in any fire other than the Royal Fire, he had said, the feather would simply burn.

She shut her eyes, letting the breeze cool her face, the back of her neck …

Her face
and
the back of her neck?

Soraya's eyes snapped open, and she acknowledged that yes, she felt the breeze from two directions at once, both from the window behind her—and from the fireplace in front of her.

She reached a hand out to the back of the fireplace, trying to find the source of the air. Her hand touched brick, and when she pushed at the surface of the wall, it budged. The fireplace was large enough that she could stand inside it at her full height, and so she rose to her feet and walked into the mouth of it, then pressed both hands against the brick wall with all of her strength. The wall moved inward, revealing a dark passage beyond.

A secret passageway,
Soraya thought,
built by a clever and paranoid shah.
She shouldn't have been surprised.

The breeze was stronger now, clearly coming from the passageway, which meant that there was likely an opening beyond. An escape route would do her no good at this point, but curiosity and desperation led her farther down the passage, keeping her hand to the wall so she wouldn't lose her way.

It was not as dark as she would have expected, and not just
because of the light coming from the window in the room—there was another light source beyond, again confirming her belief that there was an opening at the end of the passage.

There was only the one path, and the light was growing stronger as she continued. Before long, the passage opened up into a cavern, lit from above by a stream of pale orange light coming in through an opening in the rock. Soraya thought the chamber was empty until she heard a sound like the clinking of chains, and saw something moving against the far wall.

Parvaneh,
she thought at once, a flutter of hope in her chest. Perhaps she had performed the ritual with the hair incorrectly, and her dream had been nothing more than a guilt-induced fantasy. She stepped forward, toward the beam of light, and the prisoner in the shadows.

And then she saw it—saw
her,
the shape of her becoming more distinct as Soraya drew nearer. She was so familiar that Soraya knew her at once, even though the truth of it seemed impossible. Green feathers tipped with orange, a long and graceful neck, her head and body shaped like a peacock's, while her wings had the majesty and breadth of an eagle. All of the theories about her disappearance had been wrong; none of them had prepared Soraya to find the simorgh hidden in this chamber inside Mount Arzur.

Heavy chains around her legs kept her bound to the rock, and the only items within reach were a bowl of water and another bowl that was currently empty. All this time, Azad had been holding her captive, keeping her alive—but why? Why not kill her as some people believed he had done? Parvaneh had wondered the same during her captivity, and her words returned to Soraya now:
He had captured me … refused to release me until I told him something useful.
What did the simorgh have that Azad would find useful? If he wanted a feather to retain his humanity, he could have taken it and killed the simorgh long ago. But perhaps it wasn't the feather itself he wanted, but the security it could provide him—if freely given.

He wants the simorgh's protection,
Soraya realized,
and she's refused him all this time.

Soraya tentatively moved closer, wondering if the simorgh knew that Soraya was of her lineage, a lineage that Soraya had rejected and betrayed. The simorgh ruffled her feathers slightly, but showed no reaction to Soraya's presence. In her eyes was an intelligence that was far beyond any bird Soraya had ever seen—but it wasn't human, either. It was as if she already knew all that would come to pass, and was simply waiting for events to unfold. If Soraya detected a touch of reproach in the curve of her brow, she wasn't sure if it was real or if her own guilt was making her see it.
I've been expecting you,
the simorgh's eyes seemed to say.
And you are very, very late
.

“Can you understand me?” Soraya whispered, moving slowly toward the simorgh.

The simorgh didn't speak, of course, but simply bowed her head in a slow nod.

Soraya held up a shaking hand, revealing her seal ring, the simorgh's image etched into it. “Do you know who I am?”

It was a question with many answers, but the simorgh's fierce, unblinking stare made Soraya think that she knew all of them.
I'm your descendant. I'm your betrayer. I'm your rescuer.

The simorgh nodded again, this time emitting a low-throated cooing sound that Soraya thought she could understand.
One of mine.
With a rattle of chains, the simorgh came forward as far as she could go, bringing her a step away from Soraya. She was the size of a large dog or small horse, her head level with Soraya's chest, and yet Soraya felt engulfed by her presence. The simorgh made another gentle cooing sound, and then she stretched out her long, beautiful neck and fluttered her wings, as if in welcome.