But such a decision would tear the Beyzade’s little party of adventurers apart as surely as a man quartered between horses. And what they did was important. They conquered dangers no one else could even approach.
One of the dead horses stalked up. Bijou was only a few canes distant from Salamander now. “Keep backing up,” Bijou called. Another four steps, five, and they would be side by side.
“They’re almost upon you,” Kaulas called. Ambrosias reared up and rattled itself mightily, sending a warning shiver of sound across the sand.
Salamander gasped with effort, leaning forward in her determination, her open hands thrust wide. Through gritted teeth, she panted, “Too many of them. I can’t…hold the shadows back.”
As if a giant pressed against Salamander’s palms, her elbows folded. She could fall back no further: with every step she gave, the shadows took two. They loomed close enough now that Bijou could see the gaunt shapes within, the yellow eyes gleaming with gathered moonlight. In the shadows, she couldn’t make out individuals: just a black silhouette of pricked ears and clawed hands, yearning.
Bijou made the dead horse whirl and kick, but it was slow and clumsy. In such things, she was a puppeteer at best, and these were not moves she had practiced.
“Let me,” Kaulas called.
Normally, she’d hesitate to encourage him to raise up the shade of something so far decayed, but this was war. She released the wizardry with which she bound the horse-corpse, and felt Kaulas effortlessly pick up the threads before it could fall. Now the undead steed came alive, dry neck arching, hooves thumping the earth in a manner that could only be interpreted as a gesture of war. It threw up its head and shook out the sad, strawtick remnants of its mane. From its motion, Bijou imagined the fierce war-whistle of an angry stallion, but only the rattle of sinew and bone reached her ears.
The arrogant prance and kick of long, clean legs weathered down to brown bone broke her heart as no puppet-mastered corpse ever could.
The ghuls were not afraid of dead things. But even they must respect the flashing hooves of an angry horse—two, when the second corpse joined the first. A mare, Bijou thought, watching this one standing stolid and low-headed, sand blown from the jagged cavities where its nostrils once had flared. The shadows still stretched to encompass the defiant horses, though, and Bijou saw the undead mare twist her bony neck around and snap at a ghul-hand that clawed her shoulder.
Bijou reached out and grasped Salamander’s shoulder, her fingers bunching cloth and sliding over the firm muscle beneath. Bijou saw Ambrosias’s ferret-skulled head snap forward and rattle back, muzzle stained darker now, and wished—not for the last time—that she had thought to give it venom. As if Bijou’s touch gave her strength, Salamander incrementally managed to straighten her arms again. Bijou leaned forward, heart hammering, willing the other woman strength.
The pressure did not push the shadows back. But it pushed Salamander away from them, into Bijou’s arms. With that grip and the rear-guard of the horses and Ambrosias, Bijou managed to pull Salamander in retreat before the rising shadows. Shoes scuffling, sand sifting down over the tops of their boots, the women regained the circle of their allies.
As soon as Bijou and Salamander were clear, Ambrosias turned like a twisted ribbon and came back, legs wearing a rippled track in the sand. As Bijou released her grip on Salamander, Ambrosias swarmed up its mistress’ leg and spine until it hooded her head, knocking her hat on its strings down her back and rearing up like a pharaoh’s cobra crown.
The shadows lapped higher. Salamander, fumbling in her pocket, pulled out the torch. But before her thumb found the switch, Maledysaunte stepped into the gap in the circle, up to the edge of the ringing dark, and with her hands fisted at her sides cried out in a voice and a tongue that curled Bijou’s soul like a dry leaf and made her hot blood as ash in her veins.
The words were ancient and oily, liquid and barbed. Bijou’s stomach tightened against them. She could not get a breath. It was as if all life and light died within her, scraped from her body like nectar from a flower, leaving only the husk behind.
The shadows broke like waves on stone. Then they began to heap, climbing impossibly, as if piled against a wall of glass. They rose quickly as water running into a cistern when the gate is raised. Bijou saw Maledysaunte take a breath and square her shoulders, and more terrible words ripped from her like a torrent of wind.
The shadows before her were torn back, blown aside as if by an explosion. The corpse of the valiant mare, still snorting and kicking savagely as the shadows heaped over her, was blasted to splinters.
Bijou saw the ghuls clearly as their shrouds of darkness were ripped from them. The words did not seem to harm them, creatures of Ancient Erem that they were, only shredded them clean—but they seemed ridiculous in the naked moonlight. Nude, gaunt creatures that walked on a dog’s misshapen paws, long ears cringing over the projecting bones of their shoulders, velvet-fuzzed grey skin mole-soft and defenseless. Their claws and teeth shone terrible, but their faces and bodies were frail. They minded Bijou of the big-eyed, hairless hounds some very rich men kept as evidence of their wealth: pitiful things that could bear neither sun nor cold without protection.
In the aftermath of the power of Maledysaunte’s words, the ghuls straightened slowly, facing her, quiet with fear or surprise. What remained of the shadows they had commanded crazed, cracked, fell to dust and rolled back into the night. The red and ivory moons shone bright as lamps between stars that gleamed like the fires of a distant army, and all that light spilled down over a scene as still and orderly as an army of statues. Even the wind had died, and with it the ceaseless sifting of one sand grain over another.
“That was the language of Erem,” Kaulas whispered. It carried in the silence. “How can you read it and see? How can you speak it and live?”
Maledysaunte turned her head and spat three rotten teeth upon the ground. The strands of her black hair that had blown across her face were bleached white and brittle. When she wiped her mouth, the back of her hand streaked dark and Bijou caught the rust-reek of clotted blood. Her lips, never lush, had withered like an old woman’s, her youthful skin drawn up crêpey and puckered as if she were the toothless hag legend held her.
Four
Maledysaunte glanced at Kaulas and touched her throat with two fingers, shaking her head lightly.
“She can’t speak now,” Riordan translated unnecessarily. “Not until her voice grows back.”
“Grows…back?”
The bard spoke as mildly as butter. “She is an immortal, Wizard Kaulas. She will heal.”
Bijou would have given anything to see the expression on Kaulas’ face behind the veil. Just a glimpse of the thin band of nakedness revealing his eyes showed her awe and avarice.
He glanced quickly aside, as if he did not care to see her reading him. “It wasn’t this bad last time,” he said, voice still muffled by his veil.
“Indeed.” Prince Salih pulled a fold of cloth across his face as if in unconscious imitation of the necromancer. “Would you say that something has their guard up?”
“I’d say,” said Salamander. She reached to take Maledysaunte’s arm. The necromancer shook her off and stepped forward, making a hooking gesture with her left hand. Follow.
She led them across the trampled sand, down into the center of Ancient Erem. The ghuls drew back before her. They lined the path, enormous eyes staring. Bijou found herself walking with the others, three abreast in two ranks. They measured their strides. The stamping, undead stallion followed them, shying and switching his tail as if the flies had not long ago had their way with him. Ambrosias lay flat and scrunched its forelegs into the cushion of Bijou’s hair.