The Midnight Sea (The Fourth Element #1) (13 page)

Darius staggered as the necromancer he fought slammed the flat of his blade into Darius’s withered arm. He sank to one knee, getting his own sword back up just in time to avoid a killing stroke. The tide was turning in their favor, I realized with a sickening dread.

And then I heard the sound of hoof beats.

“The heart!” Ilyas screamed. “Through the heart!”

“I already tried that!” I yelled back through gritted teeth. “It doesn’t—”

“At the same time! Both of them at the same time!”

Darius leapt to his feet and I felt a final burst of shared energy through the bond. We pressed our backs together. I caught a flash of golden hair, a familiar rolling gait, as Tommas came, followed by Tijah and Myrri. The necromancers howled as they were lifted in bonds of air. When they floated directly over our sword points, the daēvas let them go.

Darius grunted under the weight of the Antimagi as it was impaled on his sword, but the angle was true—straight through the heart. At first, I thought I had miscalculated with mine. It fell onto the blade but the substance of it was like air. Then I realized that I must have been fighting the shadow twin, whatever that was. The thing’s soul, perhaps, if it still had one. Either way, our enemy was finally dead.

I threw my sword down for what seemed the first time in hours and groped frantically along the inner rim of the collar. Suddenly, I couldn’t bear to feel that repulsive metal against my skin for another second.

“Let me,” Darius said quietly, and I stilled, pulse racing, as his fingers brushed the nape of my neck. The collar clicked open and he flung it to the ground. Then he spat on it, and I felt like kissing him, strange as that sounds.

“How did you figure it out?” I asked Tommas. He looked terrible, but then we all did.

“The hard way,” he said. “We finally got lucky.”

“Not luck,” Ilyas growled, making the sign of the flame. “The will of the Holy Father.”

Tommas nodded, his eyes wary. “Of course,” he said.

“The soldiers from the Barbican?” Darius asked.

“All dead,” Ilyas said shortly.

“And the daēvas?”

“Five bodies wearing the blue accounted for. But we need to make a formal tally. Of the Antimagi too.” His eyes roved across the dome. I wondered if he had found the fire. But I knew that if he did, it would be in his hands. It was too dangerous to leave lying around.

“Well, let us do it fast, because I think the ceiling is about to fall down,” Tijah observed dryly.

I looked up and saw she was right. Whether it had been constructed by the daēvas or the necromancers, they were dead now, and the sandstorm—whose fury hadn’t abated—was starting to billow inward. The magical defense was ebbing.

“I might be able to hold it—” Tommas started to say.

I frowned as he turned and looked behind him. The boy stood there. It was the one the necromancer had killed. His eyes were hard black almonds in his face, and he held the same knife that had taken his own life. I opened my mouth to scream as he plunged the blade deep into Tommas’s thigh.

The daēva’s emerald eyes flew wide with shock. He staggered but didn’t fall.

“Wight!” The voice was high, cracked, and it took me a moment to realize it was my own.

An instant later, the boy’s head was gone. Ilyas threw his sword down and just managed to catch Tommas as his legs failed beneath him.

“All right, all right,” Ilyas said soothingly, cradling Tommas in his arms. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with.” He lifted the tunic and his face froze.

“He’ll heal, won’t he?” I said, dropping to my knees beside them. Tijah, Myrri and Darius all crowded round. It hadn’t seemed such a serious wound. Not a stab to the heart or neck or any other vital organ.

But I could see the spreading pool of blood in the dirt. Ilyas ripped his
qarha
off and wound it tightly around Tommas’s thigh.

“Tijah, Myrri, go behead the rest of the dead,” Ilyas barked. “Now!”

Tijah nodded, her face tight with worry, and they ran off.

“Darius, Nazafareen, help me…” He looked lost suddenly. Blood was pumping through the tourniquet, and I realized that the knife had pierced the large vein in Tommas’s leg. “Push it back into him. Use the power!” Ilyas screamed at Darius.

“I…I’ll try,” Darius said. “But I don’t know how to work with living tissue. It’s too delicate…”

“Just do something!”

I pulled off my own
qarha
and wrapped it over Ilyas’s. Darius stared at the wound and I felt a delicate flow of power through the bond. Still, the pool grew larger. Finally, I felt him let the power go. He looked at me and shook his head slightly.

Then Tommas’s eyes fluttered open. “Ilyas?”

“Yes, yes, I’m here.” Ilyas took his daēva’s hand, cupping it gently.

“I…I would like to go to the sea. Once more.”

“The sea?” Ilyas blinked in confusion.

“The Middle Sea. I’ve missed it…all these years.”

Ilyas’s face crumpled. “Please don’t go,” he whispered. “I’ll take you there, I swear it. Just…don’t leave me.”

It took Tommas another six minutes to die. He was unconscious for most of it. No more words were spoken between them. But I suddenly understood what had been obvious all along, if I had only seen it.

Ilyas loved his daēva more than anything in the world. Loved him deeply and passionately. And hated himself for it. Hated them both.

It wasn’t because Tommas was male. There was no shame in a man loving another man. But Tommas wasn’t a man. And that was the heart of the matter.

I wept for Tommas, because I had loved him too. And I wept for Ilyas. But I also wept for the rest of us, who were still alive. Because the last thing that had made our captain human was now gone.

Chapter Fifteen

I
lyas sat with the body for a long time, not moving or speaking or crying, just rubbing the cuff around his wrist. Compulsively, as if doing so would somehow bring his daēva back to life. He seemed to have forgotten that anyone else was there.

Myrri and Darius took turns holding the dome in place while Tijah and I dragged the Revenants into a pile. It was disgusting work, but I needed to do something that didn’t require thought. I felt utterly empty, weightless. Like I would blow away if I stepped through those invisible walls into the storm.

The moment she saw Tommas’s body, Myrri had gone to that nothing place of the nexus. Other than Tijah, Tommas had been her only real friend. I knew she would have to face her grief eventually. It would wait for her like a spurned lover, demanding to be heard. But I couldn’t blame her for choosing numbness right now. I wanted the same thing.

Tijah said a quiet prayer for him in the language of her own gods, then got to work. None of us was strong enough to leave until the storm abated. We would have to stay here until the dawn, which meant clearing a campsite that didn’t reek of death.

The soldiers from the Barbican had been killed to a man. We laid them out in rows, far from the Druj. Then we did the same for the guards from Gorgon-e Gaz. I thought they should rest with the daēvas they had sacrificed everything for, and Tijah agreed. But we only found five corpses wearing the blue. All were charred beyond recognition.

Likewise, we only found four dead necromancers.

A daēva and an Antimagus were missing, and so was the holy fire.

But I didn’t want to think about any of that.

I used my sword to sever the hands of every necromancer, and removed each collar from their victims. We placed the bodies with the soldiers from Barbican.

All told, thirty-nine humans had been killed by the Druj, and five daēvas. Six, counting Tommas.

The only survivors were the woman and the Purified I had freed when I cut the necromancer’s hand off. The woman was in a similar state to Ilyas. There, but not there. She looked like a grandmother, with pure white hair that hung down her bony back. I was surprised the necromancer had chosen someone so old as a slave, but maybe a person’s strength didn’t depend on their age. I knew women in the Four-Legs Clan who made the trek over the mountains long past their seventieth year and were still as spry and nimble as the herds.

Or perhaps she had been young when he’d taken her. The necromancers were like ticks, feeding on their captives through the chains until their bodies were empty husks. I hoped this woman would recover in time, but for now she sat staring into space. Tijah had tried to give her water. It dribbled past her lips and down the front of her stained tunic, and she gave no sign that she even knew Tijah was there.

The Purified was in better shape, mentally at least. He had only been enslaved for a short time. When he saw what we were doing with the bodies, he came and started to help without a word. He was the younger of the pair from the Barbican, with dark hair shaved to short stubble and a narrow, fine-boned face. I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to do with him and Ilyas wasn’t giving any orders. I knew this man was a traitor, but I didn’t have the energy to care. In truth, I was just glad for the extra pair of hands.

“What’s your name?” I asked him.

“Yari,” he said.

“I’m Nazafareen.”

He nodded warily. His hands only bore a few burn scars, not like the other Purified I had seen at the Barbican. Yari must have been fairly new to the robes.

“Tend to the horses,” I said. “The ones you can find that are still living. Put any that are badly injured out of their misery.”

“Have you seen my brother magus?” he asked plaintively. “His name is Mahvar.”

“I really don’t know,” I replied, and I didn’t. I’d been dealing with corpses for the last hour straight, and I could no longer remember much besides blood and gore and my own horror. One thought kept running through my mind. Tommas, and the fact that we hadn’t cut his head off. I knew Ilyas would never let us do it, and I didn’t want to, but if he came back as a wight, I thought my mind would snap. I didn’t want to remember him that way. Like I remembered Ashraf.

I tried to push the worry from my mind, but to be ready if it happened.

When we were done with our grim task, I went and sat down next to Darius. He’d thrown his walls up again, but it was clear he felt guilty that he’d been unable to stanch the bleeding. It wasn’t his fault. When the large vein of the leg is opened, death comes too swiftly for anyone to stop it.

“Why are you smiling?” he asked me.

I looked at him and felt a rush of very strong emotion that he was still alive. I didn’t know what I would do if I lost him. Once, I had hated his presence in my mind. He was so strong, I’d been afraid I would lose myself. Now that strength was a comfort. Yes, he had darkness in him, but it no longer frightened me. Because he also had light, and goodness, even if he refused to see it.

“I just remembered something. The first morning after I came to Tel Khalujah, Tommas found me washing up in the horse trough. I didn’t know about the bath houses. I’d never seen plumbing before.”

“What did he do?”

“You know Tommas. He didn’t want to embarrass me. So he joined in. You should have seen Ilyas’s face when he found us.”

Darius laughed. And we started swapping our memories of Tommas. We laughed and we cried, and for a little while, our friend came back to us. Tijah came over, and Myrri when her turn to hold the barrier was over. Her fog seemed to lift a little as she listened to us talk, pointy chin propped on one hand, her eyes dark and luminous in the twilight.

“What about you?” I said to her. “I think of all of us, you knew him best.”

Myrri thought for a moment, and then her hands started to flash. Tijah translated, pausing every few moments to find the right words.

“She says there is a story Tommas used to tell her. His first master was one of the richest merchants in the empire, with influence at court, which is why he had been given a daēva by the King. He had a large fleet of ships. They sailed not only the Middle Sea, but the southern gulf as well. When Tommas was a boy, he served this man by calling the wind, but also as a diver. He could sense the pearls hiding in their secret beds. With practice, he learned to go deeper and deeper on a single breath. The human divers could not follow him, and he would explore the depths alone. His master didn’t mind because he always brought back the largest and finest pearls.

“One day, Tommas swam through a canyon and discovered a city, sunk beneath the waves. It had marble palaces and gardens of coral, but whoever had dwelt there was long gone. The seabed with littered with fragments of statues, their empty eyes staring into the gloom with only fish for company.”

I listened to Tijah’s words, but it was Myrri’s face and hands I watched. She performed an eerie pantomime of Tommas treading water with an expression of fear and wonder, and for an instant, I could see it myself, this drowned city. The crabs scuttling along the bottom of cracked fountains. The domes and towers coated green with algae.

“Tommas thought that perhaps it was the place the daēvas came from, but they had angered the Holy Father and he had taken away their gills so they could never return.” Myrri shook her head and made a sign I recognized as
wrong
, one palm pressed down flat against the other.

“I told him I did not believe it. We are not fish, although it sounds pleasant under the sea. There is no fire to worry about. But the daēvas have three talents—air, earth, water—for a reason. We do have a home, but I think it must be someplace far from here.” She smiled and pursed her lips. Then she made a circle with thumb and forefinger and held it up. Tijah’s eyes shone with unshed tears as she translated.

“Perhaps Tommas walks there now, whistling in the moonlight.”

We sat quietly for a while after that. Ilyas never stirred from his daēva’s side. He still held Tommas’s hand in his own, although it had grown cold. Sometimes it is those who appear the hardest that are the most brittle underneath. I thought, somewhat bitterly, that Ilyas did not care to join us because he had so few glad memories to share, but this wasn’t entirely true. Other than that single slap in the stables, I had never seen him physically abuse his daēva. In fact, if Tommas took an injury, even a minor one, Ilyas would fuss over him like a nursemaid.

I remembered how he would watch from the window of his room as Tommas sparred in the courtyard, and yet when we were all together, he almost never even looked at him. And now I understood what he meant when he said he fought a war inside himself. It was not general sin he was speaking of, but a very specific one.

He sees much of himself in you
, Tommas had told me.

Not that Ilyas desired me, as I had so foolishly believed. He recognized my feelings for Darius, because he had the same ones for Tommas.

I thought of this as Darius rinsed and bound my wounds. Then I did the same for him, although his were already scabbing over. I tried to control my reaction when he touched me. I knew what to expect now. But it still burned me, flushing my skin and making my heart skip. Here I sat, surrounded by death, aching all over and one of the few people I loved in the world gone, and Darius could still make me want him. Desperately.

For that’s what it was. I couldn’t pretend otherwise any longer. Against my will, I saw him as he stood that day by the river, the clean lines of his body as he performed the water blessing. The way the early morning sun lit his eyes, making them glow like sapphires. And then I remembered his palm sliding under my tunic. The intense heat coming off him in waves, and most of all, the way I could feel his desire as he touched me.

I could count on one hand the number of times Darius had allowed the leash on himself to slip. That moment on the mountain was one of them.

And I wondered what it would be like with nothing between us at all. Just skin, and his mouth on mine.

I almost laughed, and not from joy. As if I didn’t have enough problems already. We needed to get to Persepolae, and I dreaded giving the King the news we brought.

I was just about to check on Ilyas when a man walked out of the storm.

Straight through the barrier, as if it wasn’t there. He had thick black hair, cropped short, and the shoulders of a bull. A darkly handsome man, with a square jaw and sensuous mouth. He wore a light blue tunic. Beneath the bloodstains, I could just make out a triangle and slash embroidered on the breast.

He looked us over. I’m sure we appeared a sorry bunch. “Where is it?” he asked flatly.

The sight of him roused Ilyas from his stupor. He growled and launched himself at the man, and was instantly thrown back, as if he’d struck an invisible wall.

I reached for my sword, eyes scanning his hands. Victor’s infirmity was three missing fingers. But this man appeared normal. Then I remembered what the High Magus said. When the bond was broken, the daēva would become whole.

I couldn’t be sure it was Victor, but some part of me knew.

“Where is it?” he asked again, more harshly. “I could kill you all where you stand right now, in a heartbeat. But all I want is the urn. Give it to me and I’ll spare your lives. If only for killing the Antimagi that hunted me.”

Ilyas tried to rise, was batted back again with air, like swatting a fly.

“Take him!” Ilyas screamed, his face twisted in rage.

Victor ignored Ilyas completely, his gaze now fixed on Darius. I felt my daēva reach for the power.

“Don’t,” Victor said in a dead voice.

I saw Darius notice his lack of a cuff, felt his shock, and I realized that in my grief over Tommas, I had forgotten to tell him about the fire. To tell any of them. Tijah had her scimitar in her hand, but she wasn’t moving. Neither was I. We both knew this wasn’t our fight. The Purified just watched, his face unreadable.

“The holy fire was stolen from the Barbican,” I said, loud enough for all to hear. “It doesn’t just forge the cuffs. It breaks them. The daēvas had it, but it seems they lost it.”

Ilyas shot me a furious glare, which I returned calmly. Even he had to see it was too late for secrets now.

“
Where is the fire
?” Victor roared, and then all hell broke loose as Darius hurled him back and they started to duel. The earth cracked beneath our feet, wind and sand whipped our faces. I managed to crawl a little ways away, ducking as one of the Revenants’ huge swords hurtled over my head and planted itself in a rock like a knife slicing through butter.

Myrri couldn’t help. She was keeping the barrier in place, although I wondered how long it would hold under the onslaught of magic inside the dome. I made the sign of the flame, fear gripping my heart that Darius had finally met his match.

The Purified—whose name I had already forgotten—dragged the old woman away and sheltered her with his body. Tijah lay next to me, eyes squeezed shut. I looked for Ilyas, hoping he wasn’t crazy enough to get between them. I wouldn’t put it past him to try to stab Victor himself. But he was sprawled on his back next to Tommas, unmoving. I didn’t see any injuries and assumed he had been knocked out.

The wind reached a fever pitch, tearing at my hair. And then it died as suddenly as it had started. The dust cleared. I lifted my face and saw Victor pinned in the air, feet dangling, as the storm raged just inches behind him.

Darius stood with his head lowered, jaw clenched tight with effort. A thin line of blood ran from his nose. I could feel the damage he’d done to himself. It was a wonder he was still conscious.

Victor coughed. He too was bleeding inside, for it stained his lips red.

“You’re strong,” he whispered. And he smiled, a crooked, bitter smile.

Darius swayed on his feet. I knew what it was costing him to hold this daēva. The man who had cracked Gorgon-e Gaz in half. Who was no longer cuffed and we had no means of controlling. No means of bringing back. Darius knew it. He started to squeeze tighter.