I would observe the flickering of movement beneath the thin papery veil of his eyelids; I would reach inside his dreams — of a frozen valley, bodies in hundreds and thousands lined up inside sculptures of rising ice, each one with gaping holes where the eyes should be, open mouths filled with grits of ice, their jaws pulled tight against their necks, staring out into oblivion.

I would reach inside his dreams and dig it out with my hand; I would tear it out of him, pulled with the skeins of his head; but it would be a sphere of ice, the frost growing rapidly along my hands and up to my arms, my chest, my mouth; and it would choke me until the frost climbed my eyes —

I had always wondered if I could do it, when I found him. And here he was, here he had been all these years.

________________________________________________

“I thank you all for coming to celebrate the release of the Tenth Interpretations,” the Head of the Light Scholars announced. Haitham ibn Bursan was a thin old man who seemed to be disappearing in his light linen robes. “Our Light Scholars have been working tirelessly to compile this holy work.”

“As have our calligraphers!” Master Farhan called out from the other end of the dais at the head of the courtroom hall.

“Yes, of course,” Scholar Haitham said, clearing his throat. Master Farhan’s lips tightened into a line of disapproval.

The sky was grey outside. Scholars, historians and scientists from across the realm, priests and Royal Ministrels in long traveling robes and wrapped shawls gathered in the courtroom, a sea of anticipated faces staring back at us as if they were to behold a miracle itself.

I had once been worried of standing before these faces, but I had no space left in me for that any longer. I no longer cared.

Along the walls of the hall, rock reliefs ran along from floor to ceiling, riders charging for battle. Kings and old dynasties hovered around us.

Against the side of the wall, a fireplace roared in its hearth. At the head of the dais sat the Light Scholars and the Interpretations committee in a row.

Zakariyyah was with the Light Scholars, and Master Farhan sat at the edge of the table.

Ardashir sat at the center, surrounded by Jabir ibn Hayyan and his men. His hands rested on Jabir ibn Hayyan’s arm as he leaned towards him — the hands that had beaten my father, killed my people. He was whispering something — the mouth from which words, declarations were accepted, believed as if they were God’s own; words damning and defaming, casting into the depths of a hell created by him alone.

Before the dais, I stood with the calligraphers, ready to bring forth the copy of Interpretations. Sulayman held the completed copy wrapped in cloth.

A silence fell upon the hall, so silent that the fire crackled in its hearth like something that was on the verge of combustion.

“The Tenth Interpretation addresses the trials our realm has faced in the past several decades,” Scholar Haitham announced. “Forces of evil work beneath the fabric of our realm, which we must fight together. Forces of chaos seek to disband our communities, as we have seen recently with the riots and, eh — attempts to infiltrate the prayer houses by figures unwelcome. We will now —”

A creak sounded against the floor of the dais. Someone had pushed a chair back and risen.

“Zakariyyah?” Haitham said. The calligraphers and I turned to see Zakariyyah standing there in the middle of all the scholars. A murmur of confused whispers ran along the courtroom.

“I must say something,” Zakariyyah declared in a wavering voice.

“This is not the time —” Haitham began.

“I have been thinking for a while now, and I believe it is my duty as a Light Scholar to point out possible problems and flaws in our collection of the Interpretations,” Zakariyyah said.

“What in the name of Ardth is he doing?” Sulayman muttered next to me. Bilal was frowning but seemed curious to see what Zakariyyah would say, his eyes held by the son of the Chief of Ifsharan.

For a mere moment, I forgot about my own plan and could only watch Zakariyyah.

“What are you speaking of?” Ardashir asked.

Zakariyyah walked around the dais to the center, standing before everyone. His voice had lost its hesitance now, and he stood straight, looking the courtroom in the eyes. “Our Book speaks of the Oneness of the Creator, of the unity of his Creatures.” He strode down the aisle between the courtroom, each pair of stunned eyes watching him. A Royal Ministrel in an earthen-red cowl began to write furiously in a notebook.

“Yet — no matter how much we deny it,” Zakariyyah continued, “We see God in our male likeness, even as we recite the scriptures, ‘There is none like unto God.’ We convince ourselves that the Creator of the Worlds prides us as men above all else. We see ourselves in God — what are we worshiping then but our own ego?” The pace of his speech came faster and faster as if he was afraid that if he slowed down, he would not be able to continue.

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He spread his hands wide. “We’ve convinced the entire realm, all the peoples, to believe in this and we’ve done it all in the name of the Creator.”

No one spoke, and Zakariyyah took a deep breath. “My brothers, we have been sanctifying man’s Interpretation of the Revelation, of the Qitab itself, and equating it to Divinity. We’ve fabricated a lie to ourselves and allowed it to dictate our reality, everyone’s realities.” From the center of the courtroom where he stood surrounded by the people, his eyes flickered over mine for a mere moment.

Had he been thinking of our words in the library?

“And we cannot allow this holy lie wrought in our own words to justify a Third Purge,” Zakariyyah said.

The silence stretched on until it felt it would rupture the air.

“I’m not sitting here to listen to this absurdity,” a Light Scholar in dark spectacles pushed back his chair on the dais.

“Where are you deriving this nonsense from?” Haitham demanded.

“That will do, Zakariyyah,” Ardashir said quietly. “You are young, and do not understand the ways of the Interpretations.”

Zakariyyah’s eyes darkened the way I had seen so many times when his father had shut him down. “What I understand is that the Creator does not shun his Creations unequally —”

“That is enough, Zakariyyah!” Ardashir shouted, his voice bounding out over the hall. His words reigned over the hall with a finality as it always had. I could not look at him for fear that I would not be able to do what I had set for myself to do. “You will not disrupt this court. We will continue.”

Zakariyyah stood there in the center of the room a moment longer, before climbing back up on the dais to take his seat again with the Light Scholars, his face ashen.

Ardashir motioned for Haitham to continue.

Haitham cleared his throat. “With this copy of the Tenth Interpretations as an exchange of art with the Orasanis, they will aid us in purging rebels from our land once and for all.” Haitham motioned to the men along the table. “We shall bring forth the final work. Our Light Scholars have worked steadfastly. May the Creator bless them.”

Master Farhan spoke from his end of the table: “And May the Creator bless our calligraphers for inscribing such important work. Without their writing, this would not be possible.”

Haitham smiled at him. “And without our scholars’ deep insightful thinking, there would be no Interpretations, would there?’

Master Farhan rose immediately, and motioned towards us. “Bring forth the Tenth Interpretations, please, calligraphers.”

Haitham’s mouth turned as if he had tasted something sour.

Sulayman began to uncover the linen cloth from the book, stepping forward, but I held his arm. He looked at me strangely, frowning. “Give me the book, Sulayman,” I said.

“But I—” he began.

“Give it to me,” I whispered, leaning towards him and holding his gaze. There was a hardness in my eyes, and I knew he had seen it in the past several days; he handed me the book gingerly.

I took the book and stepped in the center of the room, facing the scholars on the dais. Murmurs ran across the courtroom. What a sight it must have been to them, a woman presenting the copy of the Interpretations they had arrived from across the realm to see.

“This is the special copy of the Tenth Interpretations which I have wrought with my own hands. My fellow calligraphers have wrought it with their own hands.” I raised the book above me. “Do you know how many people will die at our hands with these word, this treaty? How many have already died?”

An awkward silence fell.

“Rahena, what are you…” Master Farhan started, his face beginning to redden.

“I saw it with my own eyes, what you’ve done. What we’ve done. I saw the dead in the eastern village,” I said, my heart pounding inside my chest. “The Chief of Ifsharan is bent on killing our own people, this Third Purging—”

“A Purging meant to destroy rebels, calligrapher Suryan,” Haitham said, a satisfied smile upon his face, as Master Farhan looked on ashamed. “Now why don’t you let important men speak, please —”

“—In the First and Second Purging,” I declared. “They took my people, they killed us like we were nothing.”

Haitham stared at me with his mouth opening and closing as if he had not expected to be disobeyed.

“And they were led by the White Rider, Aziz Ardashir,” I turned to him, my eyes burning from suffocating tears or with rage, I did not know.

Ardashir watched me as if intrigued by the movements of a gazelle.

“Aziz Ardashir committed murder in the name of protecting the realm. Your great White Rider,” I laughed.

“You call Aziz Ardashir the White Rider?” Haitham said. The courtroom exploded with an upheaval of shouts and confused murmurs. The Royal Ministrel had stopped writing and merely stared.

Ardashir stood up and the crowd quieted, waiting for him to speak. “Do you think you have caught me in something, Suryan?” he laughed, his voice smooth.

“Baba?” Zakariyyah said. “Why are you not countering her accusations —”

“Your father,” Jabir ibn Hayyan said. “The White Rider is a hero who weeded out rebels from the realm. He single-handedly weakened Imraan the Traitor’s claim by defeating his Rebellion.” He turned his gaze to me. “Suryan, you speak the words of a traitor.”

“Look at you all,” I waved my hand across the room. “His reputation, his holy authority is more important to you all than any crimes he will ever commit.”

Jabir ibn Hayyan raised a hand, “You dare to speak of the Chief in such a manner?”

I laughed. “How untouchable is the Great Chief.”

I saw something else enter Ardashir’s eyes, a blackness so deep that if something went into it, it would never emerge again. It would be lost within it forever, trapped like an animal. And for a moment, as Ardashir looked at me and I looked back, I thought I would be unable to escape from the blackness in his gaze —

I went to the hearth and picked up a kindling next to it, holding it in the fire until flames caught. I saw Ardashir rise from the corner of my eyes, shouting an order to the guards.

But before anyone could move, I held the kindling to the Tenth Interpretations until the pages burst into flames.

From the corner of my eyes, I saw Yusuf lurch towards me.

—And I hurled the book into the hearth.

Shouts filled the courtroom, a flurry of movement. Yusuf’s angry eyes turned to bewilderment. “What in the name of the Creator is wrong with you, woman?”

Sulayman and Bilal’s gaze said I had betrayed them. I had taken all of theirs’ and my own months of work and obliterated it in one second. I did not blame them for looking at me the way they did — they did not know, they could not know.

A guard launched towards me, throwing me to the floor. Cold stone struck my face. From the ground, I saw a servant rushing to recover the book from the fire.

I struggled in the grip of the guard, a young man with youthful eyes akin to Bilal or Sahan. The man could have been my brother, the same playful boy running through fields of the countryside — and as his arm touched mine, I saw him holding the hand of a young girl, his sister, running through the streets of Ifsharan, laughing. The image surged through me.

But there was something else, too — something rising, cutting through my own fury and grief. And as the man held me down, everything and everyone I had ever felt surged through me to him.

I could see the pain of it all in the man’s eyes, glazed over as he felt it, and his arms went slack. The guard went rigid, eyes empty and hollow. He collapsed, his eyes staring out into nothing.

And I saw the same mizaran-armored soldier in Bayrun, with the same blank eyes, fallen on the ground.

Everything was beginning to blur. Sahan on the stone floor, lying there, my little sister. Everything was becoming enmeshed and I could not tell who was who anymore.

The servant was scrambling up, holding the leather book, half singed.

Ardashir stood before me, and I saw the silhouette of the White Rider framed against the grey sky through the windows, the roaring of the light outside.

“Not of Sakkar then, are you Suryan?” Ardashir said, bending down to me. “I must say, I do feel betrayed.” He tilted his head as if he found something curious. “I have seen you do that before. Yes, I remember now, it had to be you, wasn’t it?” He rose, declaring to the courtroom, “The sorceress of Bayrun, who killed a mizaran soldier. Your father was a miserable traitor.”

Master Farhan had rushed down, standing with his gnarled, aged hands at his sides; as if the hands that had known all these years the use of the grand pen to inscribe the language of the cosmos, of infinity itself — did not know what they were to do now. I could not distinguish whether he looked at me with dismay or disgust.

A second guard was shaking the body of his comrade on the floor, checking his wrist. “There’s a pulse,” he called. “Ghariz? Ghariz, can you hear me?” In confusion, he looked up. “He’s alive, but he — he’s not there.”

Ardashir rose over the hall. “Rahena Ansary — you are stripped of the privileged position of a Calligrapher and are hereby a Traitor to Khardin.” He motioned to the guards. “You are sentenced to the punishment of a Traitor decreed by the Emir.”

This time, I did not resist.

Down the hall, past a stone relief of warriors. Their faces laughed, mocked, distorting into shapes rising on each side.