Chapter Five

Infidel

Enk shivered in his chair, listening to the deep-running rush of Professor Conteh’s voice with half an ear. He sat beside Ilima in the last row of desks at the back of the classroom, scrutinizing the shadows the oil-lamps bobbled across a large cage draped with a cloth and a chalk board pinned with a jumble of maps and sea charts. A great ache radiated where Professor Sarr’s sword had smashed into his face.

With his tongue, he touched the tender cut within his mouth. He could no longer deny it, something strange was happening to him. It was not normal to peer into another man’s mind, not normal to stop a human heart with nothing but a thought.

I killed him.

He closed quivering fingers into fists, placed them in between his trembling thighs. The reek of ink, smoke, and moldy books became overpowering. He gagged on it, gagged on the memory of what he had done.

“Enk,” Ilima whispered, but rather than respond, the young scion focused on the lecture, ignored his friend. Professor Conteh sulked from desk to desk, his ancient back hunched and his wizened face serious, yet there was kindness in his brown eyes, a glint that twinkled in the gloom.

“If I hammer one thing into your heads,” he was saying, “let it be this, you are not unsurmountable, neither you nor the Empire. We may be God’s Chosen, but beyond the Great Gates there are things far more deadly than our cannons and muskets. Warlocks and daemons and horrors out of myth and legend. Some of your fathers faced the White Worm, the first God-King in two thousand years, during the Second Crusade, and one day you might be called to venture off to battle with another, or something far worse.”

“Worse?” Myron asked, frowning. “Like dragons?”

Professor Conteh waited for the laughter Myron’s comment caused to die down then continued on in a gentle, mocking tone. “No, not dragons. They and most of the Elder Creatures died off during the Great Flood, but I don’t doubt that a few Ahrimen still wander the Ancient World and. . . .” He lowered his voice. “There are rumors that the Unholy Gestalt still—”

Metal clanked at the front of the room.

The sound of shifting chairs.

Enk’s eyes fell upon the shrouded cage, the source of the clanking, and, for an absurd moment, he sensed an echo of the dread that had washed over him when fighting Professor Sarr.

“Oh, it’s awake.” Professor Conteh approached the cage and tore the cloth away. An inhuman creature leered at them—an ape-shaped face covered with crocodilian scales, eyes like yellow lanterns and curved teeth the color of ivory turks. It stood with claw-tipped fingers knotted about the iron bars of its cage.

A Gheber.

Enk leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk. Goosebumps pimpled his arms, crawled up his back. The Gheber met his gaze and snarled; its hooked teeth gleamed with strings of luminous saliva.

Hearts clutched in tandem, his and the monster’s own.

Existence contorted, then reversed, transforming into a world of distorted color, a realm of light and shadow. A sea of glowing faces peered at Enk from a higher vantage. He glanced down at taloned hands wrapped about iron bars, probed an unknown maw with a foreign tongue.

He was inside the Gheber. . . .

Panic swelled. Vomit and gritty, stomach muck threatened. He inhaled, tightened his hold on his cage. Iron screeched.

A boy flung himself back from his desk, overturned his chair and crashed to the floor.

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Tense stillness, then an explosion of nervous laughter—a harsh cacophony that needled Enk’s inhuman ears.

Images arose from the vassal’s mind, memories of drinking fermented mare’s milk and relaxing within the comforting shade of hidden burrows. Kinsmen arrayed in lines, weighed down by loops of massive chains. . . .

A roar like exploding gunpowder.

Enk jerked in his seat, once again back in his own body. Professor Conteh loomed beside him, weathered brow furled, brown eyes expectant.

“Sorry. . . .” Enk moistened his dry mouth. “Did you say something, Professor?”

More skittish laughter.

“Yes, Enk, I did.” Professor Conteh tapped his wrinkled knuckles and Enk’s desk. “I suppose you would like me to repeat the question?”

Enk cleared his throat. “Yes, sir, if you don’t mind.”

“Gheber. What does it mean in High Behdin?”

“Infidel.”

“And why are they called that?”

“Much like how the Sophic Nuns get their power from the Thousand Heavens and their oath to God, the Ancient World’s Warlocks get their abilities from their compact with Shaitan and the Hundred Hells—”

“Very nice,” Professor Conteh said, cutting in, “this proves you haven’t been daydreaming through all of my lessons, but it doesn’t answer my question.”

“I was just getting to that part, if I can continue?”

Professor Conteh smirked and opened his arms. “Go right ahead.”

“There’s a cost for dealing with Shaitan and the Hundred Hells, a cost besides eternal damnation I mean. Ghebers are the offspring of Warlocks, that’s why they their name means infidel in High Behdin.”

Professor Conteh smile widened at the shocked murmurs Enk’s response drew, but before he could speak bells clinked outside the classroom. Wooden limbs scuffed stone as students rose from their chair.

“It seems that will be all for today.” Professor Conteh sighed. “Gently my young lions, there’s no need to push.”

Enk clasped a thick leather-bound book to his chest and joined the flow out of the door. In the hallway, a frowning Ilima fell into step beside him, but he only had a mind for his own concerns. Never in his life had he experienced anything approaching the strangeness of these last few hours.

A certainty burned itself into his bones, a feeling akin to religious rapture.

Somehow he had become something more.

Something powerf—

Ilima wrenched him into an empty classroom, slammed him against the wall. He spluttered, grunted as pain fluttered up his back and spine.

“Sorry, I. . . .” Ilima released Enk and whirled away. A single window plucked cluttered and empty spaces in filtered sunlight, illuminating shelves stacked with leather-bound tomes and white dogs’ skulls.

“What was that for?” Enk asked, rubbing at his aching bones.

“I don’t know.” Ilima kicked a desk, sent it skidding back with his boot. “You’re just so stubborn! You never let me help. This could have ended weeks ago if you had let me go to my father. Professor Sarr could have. . . .” He turned to face Enk with eyes moist with unshed tears.

The scion of House Gueye lowered his gaze, unable to meet the intensity in his friend’s stare. Though only a few steps separated them, it seemed as if they stood on opposite sides of a vast carven. But Ilima was right, he could see that, yet it was just so hard to let anyone help, especially the always fearless and gallant dark-haired boy.

“You’re my best friend, Enk,” Ilima said numbly. “Do you think I want to watch you die?”

Enk remembered Ilima’s first display of heroics, back when moonbeams and rain had made a specter out of the night outside his house, when wailing winds had stolen his black-and-gold kite. “Don’t cry,” Ilima had said, surprising Enk. “I’ll get it back, I swear it, on my honor.”

Thunder had pitted silence. Enk had not expected such a response, but he watched in dismay and in awe as Ilima scaled the wall of his home, flinched with each new searing lance of cracking lightning, whimpered and groaned each time Ilima slipped to dangled precariously.

A fearless boy of six, Ilima grinned down at him, the retrieved kite clutched tight in his hand. Enk stood drenched and coughing, peering up at his friend, wanting so bad to be the one standing on the wet roof it hurt.

Now, staring at Ilima’s boots, Enk felt as he had on that night after the jealousy had faded, battered and ashamed. Once again he was the one in the wrong, the one who wanted to be something he was not.

“Say something,” Ilima spat.

“I can read other people's thoughts,” Enk replied.

Ilima sighed. “Sometimes I wonder what I could have done to make you hate me so.”

“No, it’s true. I know it sounds unbelievable, but I only discovered what I can do last night when Merka—”

“Fine, we don’t have to talk about it.” Ilima threw up his hand in defeat and spun for the door. “Let’s get to. . . .”

“Stop. Turn around. Put your finger in your nose.”

With each command, Enk felt something flutter within him, something that escaped as a mirage of geometric lines of curving light, gleaming swirls that hooked Ilima’s back and breast, only to fade as the dark-haired boy did as decreed. Ilima’s face spasmed into a look of bewilderment.

Enk grinned. “See. I told you.”

“How? How!” Ilima pushed Enk back up against the wall, the veins in his neck bulging, contorted by what appeared equal parts rage and horror.

“I—” Enk began, only to fall silent. In all the years they had known each other, never had he seen his friend so incensed or filled with such righteous indignation.

“Never do that to me again,” Ilima spat, his breath hot against Enk’s face and forehead. “Promise me.”

“I-I . . . promise.”