The Midnight Sea (The Fourth Element #1) (9 page)

When the Numerators found anyone without the mark, they dragged that person to the nearest fire temple. Not to burn them. To see what would happen as they approached the braziers. Humans, of course, would be unaffected. But within six feet of the altar, daēvas would start to feel the pull. Three feet and they’d be fighting not to reach for the wild, ferocious power of the flames. Much closer than that and the blood would boil in their veins.

So Tommas and Myrri stood guard at the edge of the light while we curled up in our blankets. He was singing softly to her, a haunting, melancholy tune in a tongue unfamiliar to me. Most of the other daēvas at Tel Khalujah shunned Myrri. I think her muteness disturbed them. Tommas was the only one who sought her out. He didn’t seem to care if she could talk or not. Perhaps silence was a relief after dealing with Ilyas all day.

Tommas knew how to whistle a hundred different birdcalls, and Myrri would make hand signs telling him which ones she wanted to hear. Other than Tijah, he was the only person who could make her smile.

As I drifted off, I could sense Darius out there somewhere in the cold and dark, scouting the trail ahead. My daēva only slept two or three hours a night lately, if he bothered to at all. I wondered if he was thinking about the runners. About what would happen when we caught up with them. If he secretly pitied them.

He would have to kill these daēvas. All of them. I knew in my heart that we’d never take them alive. They were too fast. Too strong. In this way, they were like gods. A law unto themselves.

Chapter Ten

W
e rode the next day from first light until it was too dark to continue. Ilyas wanted to keep going. He didn’t know these mountains, not like I did. I explained to him that there were hidden chasms, that I had seen men fall to their deaths from one step to the next and in broad daylight. That it was suicide to try to cross in darkness. Finally, Tommas said something to him in a low voice and he reluctantly agreed to stop, but there was a desperate light in his eyes. If Ilyas had been alone, I think he would have foregone sleep entirely. He would have kept riding until he caught them or the mountains killed him.

He said he didn’t know why the guards had turned traitor, and maybe he didn’t, but I kept thinking of those Water Dogs in Tel Rasul, only a few months past. They too had tried to run, although they hadn’t made it out of the barracks. Was there some connection between the two events? I’d believed the cuffs were infallible, but of course they had an obvious weak point. The
human
bonded of the pair. And I think that troubled Ilyas more than anything else. That our own kind would betray us. As much as he wanted the daēvas, he wanted their guards even more.

On the fourth day, it started to snow. We were coming into the final, deadliest passes. The temperature, already freezing, dropped even lower. I showed Tijah how to wrap her hands to ward off frostbite. Gloves were no good. The fingers would stay warmer if they touched each other.

She had started complaining of a terrible headache that wouldn’t go away. Now she doubled over in her saddle, coughing. I winced at the harsh, racking sound of it. Myrri patted her back, brown eyes bright with fear.

I knew Tijah was getting the mountain sickness. Her body just wasn’t made to handle the thin air of the high cols. If we didn’t get over them soon, she could die.

According to Darius, our quarry was still a half day ahead. But soon they would reach the plains, and our lead would vanish.

“Which way, Nazafareen?” Ilyas demanded.

I hesitated. I did know a way. The shortcut my people had taken for generations. But it was not a place I ever wanted to see again.

“Which way?” Ilyas repeated. His eyes were bloodshot. He’d barely slept in days and looked almost as bad as Tijah. Our captain had become a man possessed, by demons of his own making. I didn’t know what it would do to him if we failed in this mission. Even Tommas, usually cheerful, had adopted his master’s demeanor and slumped in the saddle, silent and careworn.

“Follow me,” I said finally, leading them into a narrow crevice in the rock. We climbed a steep rise, the flurries coming thick and fast now.

To the others, I’m sure the trail looked no different than the one we’d been following. Barren and rocky, devoid of life. But in my mind’s eye, I kept seeing a long train of people, driving their herds of sheep and goats onward to the grasslands that lay in the foothills beyond. Each step was horribly familiar.

And then we came around a bend and I saw the exact spot where I had stopped walking all those years ago. Where I’d tried to take the puppy from Ashraf.

I’m as strong as you, Nazafareen.

I paused for a brief moment to pay my respects. The snow drifted sideways, stinging my eyes.

“What is it?” Ilyas called behind me.

“Nothing.” I pressed my knees into the horse’s flanks and started climbing again.

When we stopped that night, I waited for Ilyas to fall asleep. Then I left the fire and went to sit with Darius. We were…well, not friends. There was no equality between us. But we had once enjoyed the other’s company, and I thought we might do so again.

His
qarha
was wound tight, so all I could see were two blue eyes. Despite the bone-deep chill, my daēva was relaxed, arms propped on his knees. He controlled his body temperature by slowing everything down like a hibernating bear. I could feel his heart beating once every ten or fifteen seconds. My own wanted to keep pace with it but I’d learned long ago to crush that impulse. It would kill me if I let it.

I settled into the shelter of the rock. The weather had cleared and the stars looked close enough to touch, a spray of frozen dewdrops against the dark mantle of the sky.

“The Holy Father’s army,” I said, pointing to the heavens. “The magus says they’re angels that will come down to earth when the final battle is fought against the Druj.”

Darius looked at me. I sensed amusement. “Perhaps,” he said.

“What?”

“Well, they may be angels, but they are also suns, like ours. Just very far away.”

I frowned. “How could you possibly know that?”

“I know. I can feel what they’re made of.” He shifted uneasily. “A terrible fire.”

“But they look cold,” I protested.

“Trust me, they’re not.”

“You feel them through the…the nexus?”

“Yes.”

“I still have no idea what that is,” I confessed. “Both Tommas and magus tried to explain it, but I never truly understood.”

He hesitated. “It’s hard to describe in words. But there is a sameness to all things. An underlying order at the smallest level. It is in me, and you, and those stars. We call it the nexus.”

“Why can’t I feel it too?”

“I don’t know. It’s a sense you humans seem to lack, perhaps because you have to still yourself to notice it. Let go of who you are. Or who you
think
you are.” He touched his chest. “My name is Darius. I am twenty years old, and I am a Water Dog. I am daēva.” I felt him grin. “I hate figs. But to touch the nexus, I have to forget all of those things. I have to be nothing at all. And then I am everything. And it responds to my will. Do you see?”

“Not really. But I do sense it through the cuff. Is that where you used to go? When you sat beneath the pear tree?”

“You came there once.”

“I was curious. But I didn’t want to bother you.”

“It’s a peaceful place,” he said, and I wasn’t sure if he meant the orchard or the nexus or both. “More peaceful when I have no desire to use it for the power, but just to be quiet.” Darius released a long breath, and it trailed from his mouth like smoke in the cold air. “What happened, Nazafareen?” he asked.

At first, I thought he meant the fact that I was gripping his power again. I searched for a way to explain it that wouldn’t offend him. It wasn’t personal. But I’d let myself forget the first rule of the Water Dogs: stay in control. Maybe something in the bond, some flaw we didn’t know about, had allowed the daēvas to turn their guards. To corrupt them. I didn’t believe Darius would do that to me, but I couldn’t take the chance.

“Back there,” he said. “When you stopped.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

I hugged my knees and the words tumbled out. “It was a long time ago. My sister was taken by a wight. I watched her die.”

“I’m sorry.”

And he was. But that didn’t change matters.

“Do you remember Gorgon-e Gaz?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.

“Not really. I was only an infant when they took me to Karnopolis.”

“What was it like, growing up with the magi?”

I felt his walls go up, pushing me away. “You may not have noticed, but your feet are frozen,” Darius said. “If you don’t warm them by the fire, they’ll probably turn black and fall off, and then I’ll have to carry you over these mountains, which sounds like a lot of trouble.”

I smiled. “Goodnight then, Darius.”

“Goodnight, Nazafareen.”

I rolled up in my blankets and listened to the wind moaning in the high passes. The hiss of the flames as the fire burned low. We all had our ghosts, I thought. People we had loved—or hated—so much that they had become a part of us. No one’s choices in this life were really their own. Even our brave captain was driven by desires and insecurities that had more to do with the accident of his birth than anything else.

But Darius said he lost himself when he touched the power. Became nothing. Just a thread in the great tapestry of the universe. And I wondered for the first time if being daēva was truly a curse, or a blessing in disguise.

On the fifth day, we came through the last of the high passes. It had snowed on and off all morning, but now the skies cleared and the sun shone bright. I could see green foothills and beyond them, the Great Salt Plain, stretching like a calm sea to the horizon. Not a single tree, not a blade of grass, broke that expanse of white.

The Four-Legs clan would winter at the edge of it, many leagues farther south from where we were now. But they never ventured far. The mountains might have been unforgiving, but the Great Salt Plain was death. It boiled in summer, turned to quicksand in spring, and was a parched wasteland the rest of the time.

“Hold,” Ilyas called.

I reined up. Darius gazed across the landscape, the wind ruffling his hair. I freed his power, let him search for the trail. We all expected it to turn north, following the spine of the mountains toward the border with Bactria. They would either join Neblis, or continue west over land to Eskander’s army.

“What it is?” Ilyas asked. “Where are they?”

Darius’s eyes fixed on a distant point, deep in the Great Salt Plain. He held up his right hand.

“That way. Perhaps four hours ahead.”

I thought Ilyas would be pleased that we had gained so much ground, but he was frowning.

“Are you sure?” he asked Darius.

“Yes.”

Ilyas pulled a map from his saddlebags, shielding his eyes from the glare. We were still well above the snow line and the sun was dazzling. He traced a finger across the map. When he looked up, the blood had drained from his face.

“They’re heading for the Barbican,” Ilyas said. “It’s the only thing out there.”

I exchanged a look with Tijah. She seemed stronger, and I wondered if Myrri had used the bond to help in her some way.

“The Barbican?” Tijah said. “Isn’t that where…?”

“They forge the cuffs,” Ilyas said grimly.

The news shocked us all into silence. I didn’t know much about the Barbican. Like Gorgon-e Gaz, it was isolated, in the middle of nowhere. The secret to the daēvas’ enslavement was jealously guarded, but I knew it had something to do with the Holy Flame, a special kind of fire discovered by the Prophet two hundred years ago.

Darius shifted behind me. “But it’s the most heavily fortified place in the empire outside the King’s palace in Persepolae,” he said.

“So was Gorgon-e Gaz,” Ilyas pointed out. “And that didn’t stop them.”

“But what could they want there?” I wondered, looking out at the Great Salt Plain and the stronghold that lay somewhere over the horizon.

“There’s only one possibility,” Ilyas said. “To destroy it.” He rubbed his jaw. “I can’t see how though. They are daēva. The flames the Purified use at the Barbican are even holier and more powerful than a fire altar. They can’t get near.”

“They might not have to,” Darius said quietly. “And don’t forget the humans who are helping them. The guards aren’t bound by the same constraints.”

Ilyas rolled up the map and shoved it into his saddlebag.

“Then we must catch them on the plain,” he growled. “We must!”

Ilyas wheeled his mount toward the slope. I had just started to follow when Darius’s head whipped around. He stared at a distant ridgeline. I squinted, but saw nothing.

“What is it?” I whispered.

“I don’t know,” he muttered. “Something living. Something powerful.”

“One of the runners?” I scanned the ridgeline again and thought I glimpsed a tiny figure, just a dark speck against the snow. The hair on my arms rose.

Darius shook his head in frustration. “I can’t tell. Ilyas! Tommas!”

They were already partway down the slope, Tijah and Myrri at their heels.

“We’ve got to—” Darius began, but he didn’t get any further because at that moment, I heard a dull roaring sound from above. The snow around us started to crack, then break into great slabs. Our horse whinnied in terror as the snowpack began to slide, slowly at first but gaining speed.

Darius reached for the power and I let it go, but it was too late. We were swept into the raging torrent. I tumbled from my saddle. The world hurtled past in dizzying flashes: sky, snow, sky, snow, and finally, eerie black silence, broken only by the sound of my own labored wheezing.

I couldn’t move. Not an eyelash. The weight of it pressed down on me like a mountain. I felt my mind drifting away, unmoored. The only thing that tethered me to my body was the bond, and the demon on the other end of it. He would come for me.

The minutes passed, and my breath turned to a thin shell of ice on my face. I tried to spit. It took a while to summon enough moisture, but I finally managed it. I discovered that I was more or less upright, one arm flung above my head. This was a lucky thing, because it had created an air pocket. Not a large one. Just a fist-sized gap. But it was enough to keep me going, for a little while at least.

On such small coincidences do our lives hinge sometimes.

As my limbs grew numb, and Darius didn’t come, I had a thought that would have made me laugh if I’d had enough air in my lungs. Of all the Druj I’d fought, in the end, it would still be the damned mountains that killed me.