Zur’adi was huffing impatiently below down at the base of the sycamore. Rays of sunlight streamed through the forest canopy. As soon as I rose, Zu’radi began to hoof at the earth.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I called down to her. There was dirt across my cheek, and some insect hidden inside the leaves had bitten my arms.
I led Zur’adi to the stream, and sat down to my own last scrap of bread that remained from the food we’d brought from Cypress House. As I ate, I realized that a part of me had somehow looked forward to returning there, as if it was a home I was returning to.
But that could no longer be.
I set out again with Zur’adi down a path through the forest, but at a crossroads, I stopped. One path led ahead high in the distance towards the right, where I could glimpse the Arch nestled between the mountains. I did not know where the other direction led. But what would be the point of heading there?
But could I head in the same direction as the other three, now that they had distanced away from me? I did not want to encounter them again at the Arch by happenstance — that would be awkward indeed.
I rode beyond the crest of the hill. If I happened to encounter them, so be it. They knew I was heading in the same direction now. There was no turning back anymore.
The path opened out into a vast field, mountains flanking us on both sides. Heading through the mountains, the path grew narrower. Zur’adi’s hooves clambered through dense overgrowth, tangled roots and slippery rocky paths. Up above, the arch grew closer, silhouetted against the blue sky, appearing to be a beacon for miles across.
And soon there it was ahead of us: Aged tree trunks, one on each side, had fallen from one hill and collapsed to the other hill opposite it. From there, another tree had begun to grow, attaching itself to the trunk over time, intertwining over each other and creating the arch. Overgrown with fragmented lichen and vines reaching down, they appeared to have become a part of the hills themselves, embedded in them.
“They haven’t fallen in hundreds of years or more,” Imraan had told me when I asked about the route. “No one knows what happened, but my guess is an earthquake or landslide. Many a battle in early times found armies cleverly positioned under this arch, out of sight, before the Asman peoples separated themselves and the region.”
Strands of moss reached down to caress my head when I passed beneath it. The bleak sunlight filtered through the gaps between the trunks, throwing dappled bars of light and shadow upon the earth.
“I always felt as if at any moment, it will collapse upon me, when I pass beneath it,” Imraan had said. “Hundreds of years of being suspended in the air, only to crush a retired carpet-weaver.” He laughed. “Imagine the stories. Imraan the Traitor, finally defeated by an old rotting tree.”
I had stifled a smile. “It would make for quite the song,” I said, straight-faced and level-toned.
He'd taken one look at my stolid expression and replied, “How enchanting of you to think so. I appreciate your support.”
What was that story Imraan had been telling me? I thought. The urchin boy Nazim — what had happened to him?
He had stopped as if it would be blasphemy to speak the next words out loud. The great traitorous Imraan was thus first a tapestry weaver, and before that a street urchin; and before that?
At what point had the multiple Imraans of his fate taken a wrong turn, turned a direction thinking of safety, of trust, of — and what had happened?
No other footfalls or hooves sounded upon the hill. “I guess it is just you and me, Zur’adi,” I said to the horse. The horse nickered lightly in response, as if having accepted her fate being stuck with me and making the most of it. “We will have to find our own way through. Do you know the way?”
Zur’adi huffed.
“I assume not.”
The road followed a rough rocky path overgrown with the same lichen, opening out into long groves.
I did not blame Surayyah, not really. Would I have trusted myself with a stranger if I was going home to help my people? No, I would not care about much else besides the certainty of anyone who could help — and leave behind anyone who would be a liability.
No, I understood Surayyah.
And what was I going to do with these abilities I myself did not understand? I had not yet full control of it, I could not channel it nor could I suppress it.
I realized then that I had been banished as dangerous by the very man that was deemed the most dangerous of all in the realm. What did that make me then?
I began to laugh in the midst of the clove-strewn road, so that Zur’adi jumped in surprise.
____________________________________________
It was getting to be near evening now, the sun nearly gone.
In the midst of an outcrop of mountain shrubs with great steppes overlooking the landscape, a circular compound stood in the center of the plains. A caravan-house.
Surayyah had not mentioned anything of a caravan-house — perhaps they did not know of it nor heading towards it. Or perhaps that is precisely what they were heading for. I had to hope it was the former.
“Let’s go, Zur’adi,” I called, and the horse rode onwards.
From the central stone-paved inner courtyard, the doorways of the caravan-house spread out all around in a circle, each entrance leading to another section, the teahouse, the baths, sleeping quarters, scattered with traders of spices, textiles, messengers and diplomatic travelers.
In the center of the dining hall, a riotous crowd cheered on two fighters locked in a furious wrestle. A woman in green and yellow-lined robes locked arms against a bearded man with silver rings in his long, knotted hair. With each flurry of motion as they whirled this way and that about the room, the crowd backed away to avoid their rough dance, roaring with each turn of events.
The dim lights of the caravan-house felt as if they too swayed with the fighters, flickering against the adobe walls.
The woman was impressive, the swift movement of her limbs, the way she stopped the silver-ringed man with one swish of her legs, halted him in his tracks, the fluidity, the knowing self.
I wished to feel as utterly in control of my abilities as this woman appeared to be. I watched the woman, her grip firm and steady and unrelenting.
The fighters landed on the ground in a struggle. The woman in green pinned the bearded man’s arms against his back and held him there, and the crowd roared. Some banged on the tables, and slivers of coins went up in the air in celebration, glinting in the lantern light.
I stood by the entranceway watching the spectacle. Across the circular hall, a group entered, pulling down their hoods. It was them: a tall woman with her face covered, a dark-haired man, and a man in spectacles. I cursed, pulling up my hood.
The owner of the caravan-house, a man with a wide mustache and a belly to match approached the three newcomers, shaking his head as he half-watched the celebrations behind him. He nodded a salaam to Surayyah and Tariq.
“Salaam, dear brother Khan. Kutulun is still at it, then?” I heard Surayyah’s voice faintly between the roars.
I moved along the edges of the wall, hiding my face behind a group of uproarious young men who wore silver rings in their long knotted hair similar to the fighter’s. They slapped each other’s shoulders, laughing and jumping at this turn of events, as the woman named Kutulun reached out a hand to the man in the center of the room.
“Unfortunately,” said the caravan-house owner, scratching his beard. “That is Risham son of Hisham she’s fighting today. I will be honest, I took quite a liking to the lad. Her mother and I told her, just this once, for the love of the Creator, just pretend to lose. But alas.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The shouts quieted as Kutulun held her hand to the man. “Sorry, my dear Risham, not today,” she said, smiling.
Risham grasped her offered arm and stood up. He looked around at the gathered crowd. “Alas, this darned woman is an undefeated champion by far.” He laughed a big belly laugh and raised her arm over the crowd, and they rose again in a fervent cheer.
I took the opportunity to take a seat at a corner bench that faced the wall. One hot meal, one night’s sleep, some rest and hay for Zur’adi, and I could leave before they noticed me.
The crowd had waned and guests began to retire to their rooms after the excitement.
“I don’t know what I will do,” Khan was saying. He motioned for several servants to take their belongings to the rooms. “I have been trying to get my daughter married for years now, but she refuses every one,” said Khan. “She got so sick of the suitors that she came up with a ridiculous offer.”
“If they can beat me at wrestling, then I will marry them,” a voice came. Kutulun approached her father with a grin. “That is the offer. It is not ridiculous, Baba.”
Her father groaned. “Or they pay ten horses, yes yes. We’ve gained over a hundred horses at this rate! But no groom.” He shook his head. “Kutulun, my dear, you know one of these days, you will have to be married?”
“Oh, father, don’t be so hopeless and dramatic. I am sure there will come a day when you’ll have your son-in-law.”
Another heaping of supper was being served out for the night travelers, and a boy came to fill my drink.
A moment later, after Khan must have shown them to their rooms, the three of them returned to the main hall.
I leaned forward over my plate, my hood cloaking my face.
“So how many of these admirers have you left heartbroken and wrist-broken?” Imraan’s voice came from behind me at the table. He seemed to be digging into a heaping plate of kebabs and naan.
The adobe bricks kept the interior of the caravan-house cool, and the light reflected off a tan color of the earth.
“Don’t forget horse-less,” Surayyah’s voice added.
“The last man was so confident he offered fifty horses. We sold nearly all of them. It is not my fault they make such ludicrous offers,” Kutulun said.
Khan sat down next to her and said, “At this rate, we will be making more income from her horses than the caravan-house.”
The boy returned to me with lamb kebabs, spiced eggplants and roasted stuffed peppers.
“Where are you all off to then?” Kutulun asked. “At least twice a year I see Surayyah passing through. Always traveling back and forth, this woman.”
“Have to maintain the business, Kutulun,” Surayyah said. “But that is not what we are traveling for this time.”
“We are…on our way to Arassan,” Imraan said. “To the Abbasid’s Keep.”
A quiet fell.
“Have you heard of what has happened up north in Arassan? To the Jhansari?” asked Tariq. “Have you had any news?”
A servant brought a fresh pot of chai to one of them. It must have been Kutulun, whose silky smooth voice murmured a thanks as the scent of the rich cardamom-laced tea wafted over to me.
I dug into my own food, hiding my face. The lamb was too salty but the eggplant tasted rich, thick and warm. There were several other men in silver-ringed hair on my right side, eying me curiously from down the table as they ate.
“The word has not spread too far yet I believe, but yes, we have heard. Merchants passing through here from Arassan brought the word.”
“We have heard so many alternating accounts by now, I don’t know what is what,” Khan said.
“But death – death has visited the city of Arassan, that we can say,” Kutulun said.
“What are you heading to that death-land now for?” Khan asked.
“Is that what it is called now?” Imraan said. “Once it used to be known as quite a great land. I didn’t know we were already erasing that off the history books.”
“The Shayfahan and the Emir have forgotten that,” Khan grumbled. A shadow crossed his face, and they grew quiet.
“Salman has forgotten many things,” Kutulun said gruffly.
“Yes, including how much our family served the bastard, what we did for him, for this land,” Kaidu grunted. “My daughter fought for the damn emir’s army, she dedicated her life to —”
“Baba, don’t speak of that,” Kutulun’s voice had gone hard.
I put down my naan. From the periphery of my vision, I saw Kutulun’s gaze fixed on the rim of her cup. Surayyah watched her carefully, facing away from where I sat. Imraan, too, chewed slowly, silently as he looked at her. Tariq, on the other hand, seemed disinterested in the talk of military affairs and was diving into another plate of the eggplant.
Across the hall somewhere, someone was smoking tobacco through a long pipe, and the smoke filled the room, winding down over the night-guests.
“I still see their faces, you know, after all these years,” Kutulun said, in a lower voice that was barely perceptible to me. She lowered her voice further to something I could not make out. “…understood, what they say, about living with many faces in your head at night.”
“You should still come, fight with us,” Imraan was saying.
“…when I questioned,” Kutulun continued, “Whether I truly believed what Salman told us, what the Ministrels said, of the people we raided, killed, burned. Sometimes I wondered if I cared.”
The eggplant had become tasteless in my mouth. I stopped eating, pushing the plate away. The smell of the lamb was overpowering suddenly. I felt sick at the thought of it. It smelled of meat, of blood, of death.
“But the thing is,” Kutulun said. “I can blame it all I want to on the Shayfahan, but I am still to blame for the deaths that I wrought with my own hands. I can try to convince myself that, but it does not change that we killed hundreds of innocents in those days.”
I gripped the glass of my drink tightly in my hands. The flickering light of the oil lamps in the drafty hall seemed closer, somehow, burning my skin. I could feel it, searing.
“In one of the towns, there was an old woman, I don’t remember any of the other faces, but I remember her vividly. I remember her more vividly than my own mother’s face sometimes. She wore light green silks.” Kutulun’s voice drifted down now along the hall, empty of life, drifting out of her as if her soul had left her. “It was in Thankar.”
The clattering of the plates had ceased at the table. I had the vague sense that the men at the other end of my table were drawing closer, still eying me, but they had faded into a blur in my vision.
The smoke from the tobacco somewhere seemed to shroud the whole room.
“The old woman did not know what was happening, none of them ever did really,” Kutulun continued. “But I think she — she did not have her mind, she did not know where she was. I think she was looking for her family, but she could not remember who they were. She grabbed my hand and she asked me to help her find her family. In the breath in which I stared at her, one of my comrades struck her down from behind, and she lay there. They say that you remember everything as you are dying. But as she choked on her blood, I wondered if she remembered her children, or if she died not knowing who she was, who loved her, or if she died thinking that is all there ever had been, with no one to love, no one to know her. Then I strode off down the road, following my comrades, knocking down doors and bashing in heads.”
A furious wind blew in from the open entrance to the courtyard, flickering the lanterns along the walls. They blew out. Darkness surrounded us.
Shouts of surprise, laughter, fumbling in the darkness, Khan calling for one of the servants to light the lanterns again, footfalls upon the stone. I rose.
A single flame rose amidst the darkness, and when the light returned, Kutulun stared at me in my dusty blue-green robes. I stood over her, a small thin silver blade in my hand against Kutulun’s throat.
“You sit there, a murderer, continuing your life in peace, without shame,” my voice came steady, the burning had reached my eyes now. My hands did not shake as I held the dagger there at the champion fighter’s neck.
Kutulun did not move.
“Rahena?” Imraan whispered.
Surayyah rushed up in a second, her own blade out.
The servants had lit the other lanterns, and the light filled the hall again. The men at the other tables stared at them.
Kutulun held my gaze. A knowing look was in her eyes. “You are wrong,” Kutulun said. “Not in peace, and not without shame.”
I pushed the point of the dagger deeper, just a centimeter, enough to prick.
“Who are you?” Kaidu Khan demanded, standing up and beginning to call for his servantman. Kutulun stopped him, holding up a hand to her father.
Staring into my eyes, Kutulun said, “I know you are the one with the blade, but I could whip it around on you and slice you in a moment’s worth if I wanted to.” She tilted her head forward just a little bit, digging the point of the dagger deeper into her own neck, a dribble of red now trickling down her skin. “But I won’t. Do you know why?”
I did not say anything. Why did the damned woman pierce herself on the dagger? Why did she appear calm, utterly unbothered by the weapon at her throat. It bothered me. I wanted to see fear in the woman’s eyes. I watched the trickle of blood down the woman’s skin, seeping into the red of her tunic. My breathing was growing shallow, and I wanted to drive the blade deep into the woman, despite what words came out of her mouth.
“Because I know you have every right to do it, if you wanted to,” Kutulun continued. “And I wouldn’t stop you. I wouldn’t defend myself.”
“Kutulun,” Surayyah’s voice whispered. “Stop it.”
I held the blade a moment longer. Then I pulled it away.
I thrust the dagger back into my robes and rushed out of the hall.
Above, a sharp crescent moon glowed in the dark night. It lit the stone-paved circle of space. A horse tied at the edge of a column slept, eerily standing still in the darkness.
I knelt down upon the rough earth, sobs choking my throat.
Footsteps crunched along the rocky path from the caravan-house entrance. Surayyah appeared in the moonlight. She pulled down her veil from her face, revealing a somber face, a slender nose.
I stood quickly, brushing my eyes and facing the midnight-clad woman.
“What do you want?” I asked.
Surayyah did not respond, although her eyes roved over my features.
“Just tell me,” I said. “Say what you want to me, but you cannot banish me from heading on my own path, even if it collides with yours. I must do what I need to do. I do not care to interfere with yours. But do not stop me.”
“I should not have been harsh with you before,” the woman finally spoke. Her robes brushed against the ground as she approached closer. “I — I apologize. I know I keep imposing my doubts on you. I merely — I have had to learn to be cautious, to be wary.”
I grunted. “I thought Imraan would be the one to be wary, considering there is a bounty on his head.”
Surayyah smiled. “He is too nonchalant for his own good,” she said. “And sometimes I feel I have to be careful for him. But— forgive me. I do understand when I see someone who has suffered the pain of their peoples. I have known it for a long time myself.” She hesitated. “So you must understand when I say this, Kutulun is not who she used to be. You do not know her, of course, and you do not have to forgive her. But —”
“I don’t want to hear of her.”
“Will you join us again? We are headed the same way after all, as you said. I would like the company of another fellow sister with us.” She smiled. “I am tired of the men.”
I considered the woman. She was sincere, the smile touching her eyes. “Alright,” I said. “But only if you do one thing.”
“What is it?” Surayyah asked, tilting her head.
“Teach me to wield a weapon.”