Something at the edge of his vision moved toward him. Adoulla spun away from whatever it was. Something heavy struck him across his back.
He went sprawling, the envelope and his satchel flying from his hands. A large form snaked between him and his bag. Stubbornly, he pushed away the pain in his back. He scuttled away from the creature, breathing heavily as he came to his feet.
Adoulla shouted out in shock. Another bone ghul. A massive bone ghul. The largest ghul he’d seen in forty years.
Impossible! To make a creature of that size—along with all of these others! The power involved was incalculable. The creature towered over him, and he was not a small man. Who could make and control this nine-foot monstrosity?
It took a step toward him. Adoulla looked from the thing’s soulless eyes to its broad claws. One of those claws could crush his head like a melon. Indeed, only his half-conscious dodge had saved him from a broken back. And despite the world-weariness with which he faced each day, Adoulla was not ready to have his head crushed like a melon just yet. If nothing else, Raseed needed him.
He stared into the ghul’s flat, pupil-less eyes. Softly, desperately, he began to whistle “Under the Pear Tree, My Sweet.” As soon as the first notes left his lips, the monster froze in its tracks. A confident gaze and the ghul-soothing sound of a favorite song. It was an unreliable, old womanish charm, with none of the power or grace of scripture invocations. Sometimes it didn’t work, and when it did it was effective for only a minute or so. But it had saved his life more than once.
The huge monster’s claws were draped at its sides, and it swayed slowly with the tune. Adoulla tried to whistle, hold the ghul’s eyes, and consider his options, all at the same time. The phrase I am too old kept getting in the way of his thoughts.
Not now! one part of him barked at the other. His satchel, with all of his components, lay on the ground just past the giant ghul. It might as well be in Rughal-ba. If he took a step toward it, he’d break the whistle charm. He kept whistling, but he was coming to the end of the song—and thus the end of the ghul-soothing.
Adoulla prayed that the ghul’s claws would not catch him when he dove for his medicine bag. He didn’t like his chances. This is it, then, Adoulla thought. An ignoble death courtesy of a hissing abomination. He couldn’t say he was surprised. What I wouldn’t give for one last cup of cardamom tea, or one last meal in my townhouse.
He weakly whistled the last note of the tune through dry lips and tensed his muscles. The creature squealed.
Then something leapt at the ghul.
It wasn’t Raseed. Adoulla saw a flash of golden fur and a lashing tail. Some sort of animal had fastened itself to the giant ghul’s back. The monster’s milky white eyes widened and then contracted. It squealed again in pain.
Adoulla shoved melancholic thoughts to the side and tried to gather facts. What had hurt the ghul, and how could Adoulla use it to his advantage?
The gray-green monster twisted as it tried to shake this new attacker from its back. As the ghul turned, Adoulla got a better look at the extraordinary animal that had saved his life. A sleek she-lion with eyes like green fire and an impossibly shimmery gold coat.
Adoulla’s mind raced with remembered lore. Not an animal at all. In fact, if the desert legends were to be believed, a creature such as this was an agent of the Angels’ justice—and thus of God’s. Adoulla said a quick, silent prayer of thanksgiving.
Still, “God helpeth most the man who helpeth himself.” Adoulla risked grabbing for his satchel.
By the time he scooped it up and had his hand in it, though, he saw an invocation would not be needed. His rescuer had snuffed out the false soul within that monstrous mock human frame. As the thing died, it burbled in that manner that still, after all these years, turned Adoulla’s stomach. Then, with a sound like the scrape of a great grave lid, the ghul crumbled, a carpet of cemetery soil and dead coffin-moths spilling forth.
A bright flare of sun-like light rippled out from the lioness’ coat. When the flare subsided, a plain-faced brown girl of perhaps five and ten stood where the lioness had been. She was dressed in the simple sand-colored camel calf suede of the Badawi tribesmen. It was as if Adoulla had blinked and someone had replaced the razor-mawed creature of a moment ago with this green-eyed little girl.
It wasn’t the first time he’d seen such a thing.
The rare, almost-forgotten gift of the lion-shape. He had known another tribesman thus gifted by God many years ago—a good man for a savage, but terrifying to witness when crossed. Adoulla would have to tread carefully here.
“Hello,” he managed.
The girl stared at him with those emerald eyes, wary.
“God’s peace,” he tried.
The girl’s expression softened almost imperceptibly, but she was still hard-faced. “God’s peace,” she said curtly, brushing her coarse, shoulder length hair from her eyes. A girl of her age speaking to a man of Adoulla’s ought to have been more respectful in her tone—at the very least, she should have called him “Uncle.” But the uncouth Badawi showed no decorum to any save their own. The girl followed her first two words with barked questions. “You were fighting these foul creatures? It was you who destroyed the others?”
“Indeed.” Adoulla said, holding back the admonitions that were on the tip of his tongue. “Thank you for your help, child. It has been many years since I’ve been face-to-face with one who was gifted with the lion-shape.”
The girl’s mouth fell open. “You know of the gift? And you do not fear me?”
Adoulla shrugged. “You’re used to dealing with your ignorant fellow tribesmen, no doubt. Feared you even while depending on your powers? Well, I am no ungrateful savage.” The girl growled at the insult to her people, as if she were still a lioness inside.
Adoulla put both hands up placatingly. “I am a scholar of such phenomena and of their dark versions, girl. The lion-shape is a gift given to men by God through the Angels. ‘You true Badawi watch for the Angel-boon—mane of golden sun, claws of silver moon.’ The shape is known to me, and is nothing to fear. Besides, after forty years of ghul hunting it takes more than a child wearing the shape of a lion to frighten me. Though I am surprised. It has been twenty years since I’ve met one of your kind. And I didn’t know that the gift could be visited upon girls.”
Adoulla heard the faintest whisper of noise as Raseed hoisted himself up from the sheer face of the stone. The girl turned at the sound.
“Well, boy, it’s about time!” Adoulla said as the dervish came trotting up. “Leaving an old man to fend for himself up here! Though, as you can see, we are not alone.”
The boy’s sword was already in his hand, but his expression was more incredulous than battle ready. “Who is the girl, Doctor?”
“Well, among other things she was the instrument of God’s Ministering Angels’ preserving my life. But we’ve had no time for proper introductions.” Adoulla turned to the girl, who was studying Raseed. “I am Doctor Adoulla Makhslood, young woman. My assistant is called Raseed.” A cold wind picked up and Adoulla folded his hands beneath his armpits to stay warm.