Along the Zeyandeh River’s edge, textilemakers drifted down to the water loaded with the fabrics they had designed, each intricate detail inlaid from the mind of a craftsperson. The textilemakers washed the fabrics in the flow of the river, cleansing them of impurities. The remnants of the colors ran along the water in pinks and blues, diluted pastel.
They were hypnotic, the comings-and-goings of people. It returned some semblance of sanity, to watch the routines, the patterns.
Imraan and I took our way along the riverside, returning from our meeting with Marouf.
Birds fluttered against the blue skies, and sounds from the city on the other side of the river carried along in the wind, the pounding of anvils and hammers. From here, it was as if no one had heard of the whispers brewing in the city, of war.
In the growing dusk, we walked back to the city through a street of narrow alleys.
Along a road scattered with orange peels littering the roads, I saw a fleeting flash of auburn. It was followed by the silhouette of a fox.
“What is it?” Imraan asked when I halted.
“I could have sworn I saw a – friend.” But was Nurbayn a friend? I ran down to the corner of the alley after the red-and-white phantom.
And this time, there stood Nurbayn. Her back was turned, but I recognized her silhouette. The red fox stood at her side, fangs bared, growling at me when I attempted to step closer.
The silhouette placed her hands on the fox, and it halted its growling.
“Nurbayn?” I called.
With her back still turned, Nurbayn turned her head just enough so that her profile was lit by the dwindling light in the darkness.
“I heard what Ardashir did to you,” Nurbayn said, her voice impassive and steady as trickling river-water. There was a stiffness to her, a stoicism hardened by limbs steadfast on the ground, arms at her sides. Yet there was a fleeting quality to the nature of her stillness, as if at any moment she would take flight from the eyes of another’s presence. Only the fox could mirror her movements, could get within close reach of her. It shifted and turned as she did, stilled as she did – besides the eyes. In its large brown eyes, the fox held them, watching warily. “I should not have gotten you involved,” Nurbayn said.
“You didn’t force my hand, Nurbayn,” I said. I could feel Imraan’s confusion as he stood beside me. “You lied to me before, didn’t you? I asked you if you knew Ardashir. You didn’t tell me what you were planning to do.”
“I prefer to work on my own.”
“Damnit, Nurbayn,” I said. “We come from the same land, you and I. You are of Bayruni blood, sister. Why won’t you admit it? Why do you not care?”
Nurbayn finally turned around to face me. Half of her face was covered at the bottom with a black cloth. She pulled it off, revealing a dark full unrelenting mouth. “I don’t feel as if I am of any mortal blood any longer,” she said. “My home does not exist beyond my memory. Do not speak to me of it.” For a mere fraction of a second, there was a fracture within her stoic, hard features; it vanished quickly.
I understood.
“Imraan ibn Hunayn,” said Nurbayn, turning to him with penetrating eyes as if she saw him as clearly as pebbles beneath clear riverwater. “You are called the most dangerous man of all, Traitor of Khardin — according to the Shayfahan.”
“And how about according to you?” Imraan said.
“If you are who they say you are, then — what will you do? What will you do as Salman tries to burn everyone in his path?”
“Now why would you be interested in what I am going to do?” Imraan asked her.
“I am interested in anyone who can bring him down,” said Nurbayn. “Particularly those who seem to have a chance at it. But I need to know if you are the same as him. If you merely disguise yourself as different from them.” She watched him through narrow eyes, studying him. “Some say you are a monster, some say you are a warrior fighting for the people. Which identity do you call yourself by?”
Imraan laughed. “I don’t think it matters anymore what I call myself, it only matters what others do.”
“It always matters what you call yourself,” Nurbayn said, tilting her head slightly, her veil fluttering around the frame of her face as a gust of wind blew through the alleyway, fluttering leaves and dust all around them. “The real question is are you lying to yourself about who you are, what you are doing and why you are doing it – or are you trying to desperately hold on to yourself while everyone else around you try to strip it away from you? That is all the difference in the world.”
“And what do you call yourself then?” Imraan asked. “For you are known across Ifsharan now as the madwoman from the mosque who tried to murder Ardashir in cold blood.”
Nurbayn let out something that could have been a laugh. “What difference is it if you try to murder him on the battlefield or in the city when he least expects it? I did not attempt to murder him. I could easily have done so if I wanted.” Nurbayn raised her arms up in the air. “You see, I no longer care what anyone says about me. I am finally free of that burden. I do not care if anyone understands me, how they tarnish or distort me in their image, what words they hurl to beat me to the lowest depths of the earth, what they think I was doing or why I was doing it. I am no longer a part of their petty realm. I care only that I know my own self.”
“Will you care when they try to come for you?” I said. “Because you know Ardashir will.”
“I know his every move before he does,” Nurbayn said, leaning forward now and turning away from them. The fox beside her turned away from us too, as if deciding we were no longer of any importance.
“If you decide you don’t want to roam alone any longer,” I called. “Come to us, to the House of Cypress. At the top of the hill, the physician Al-Ghazan’s house.”
“I have told you – I prefer to work alone,” Nurbayn said, leaping up over the wall and disappearing over the other side of the alley.
“What a strange woman,” Imraan said. “Yet very curious.”
“Anyone’s actions can seem strange and unexplainable when you have not seen through their eyes,” I said, watching the wall where Nurbayn had vanished.
The sun had nearly set as we reached the hill towards Cypress House. The sounds of the anvils and hammers on the other side of the river began to fade, and from the distance came the rising call to prayer.
Hayya-a-las-salah, Hayya-a-las-salah. Hasten to the prayer, Hasten to the prayer. The call rose from the top of the turrets in the city and drifted out over the evening air, taking the place of the sounds of the working day. The faithful would be heading for prayer, yet the numbers had dwindled.
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As we began the climb up the hill, and faint screams slammed inside my head.
Behind a door, I was a boy, a red shirt, cold stone floor, a slant of light and shadow, a fleeting movement of a hand, and then — thrown apart against the walls.
“Rahena!” Imraan’s voice sounded faint. “Rahena, look at me.” I climbed out from beyond the abyss, crawled through the dark that pulled — and with an effort, I looked at him. His face steadied me long enough for me to get up from the ground, and I stumbled away from him, down the hill towards the south. Or was it north towards the city that I should run for? I could not distinguish it, I could not pin it down.
Behind her, Imraan was screaming, “Rahena, where are you going?”
I had to find him, the child, I knew he was somewhere here.
I ran and ran, for so long that my legs almost gave out. Ahead, a cluster of huts were nestled nearby a forest.
Only a hollow echo, sliding underneath consciousness, just below the surface.
Imraan came panting behind me.
My eyes were beginning to shut from the pain, but I could feel it — he was here. I ran, from door to door, bursting open doors, knocking furiously. Imraan ran behind me, apologizing to the people inside, who peered out fearfully, confused. “Rahena, what are you doing!”
I kicked open a wooden door at the end of the row of houses, and inside, a boy huddled in a corner of the room. He wore a red tunic and shivered.
I knew his face. It was the boy from the streets, hurling a rock at the Shayfahan soldier.
The boy looked behind him as if expecting someone to enter at any moment. I knelt down and whispered, “Come.” He looked at me with eyes stricken with terror. I held out a hand. A man’s voice shouted in the background from another room, and the boy jumped. “Come to me,” I said. Gingerly, he touched her hand with his fingertips, soft as a feather.
A tall man barged in mid-shout, and found the boy’s hand reaching out to me. The child ran into my arms.
I cradled the boy and ran as far away as I could, back through the trees, back up the hill.
***
The boy would not speak.
He hid in a corner of the room, hugging his knees and refusing to trust Al-Ghazan, who tried to take the boy’s temperature. He was as stubborn as the first day I had met him in the square.
Finally, after I gave him some bread, lentils and water, leaving it by his corner, he ate and dropped off to sleep. His dark hair was flecked with light strands, like the hazel of his eyes.
It took several days before his fever dropped, and he murmured his name name to me: “Ali.”
He would not eat at the table with the others, overwhelmed by all the noise of people talking, dishes clattering. So I ate with him in the kitchens, where he felt more comfortable. The kitchen maids and servants, Layla, Zahir and Selena ate in another corner, laughing to themselves. When Layla tried to play with Ali and offer his sweets, he ran off.
Only Zahir the manservant could get him to laugh besides Rahena. Zahir took him outside when he worked on the grounds, trimming the grass or washing the floors, telling Ali stories as he worked.
Maryam and Omar were curious about this new boy who had taken so much attention, but Ali would run from them too. “I don’t trust him,” Maryam would mutter, a hand on her chin. “What’s wrong with him? Why doesn’t he speak?”
“There is nothing wrong with him, Maryam,” Al-Ghazan would tell her sternly. “Leave the boy alone. Let him grow comfortable.” But Maryam stared after him suspiciously.
The day after I returned, Al-Ghazan insisted on sitting me down by the fire in the evening to take my temperature.
“Did Imraan put you up to this?” I asked, brushing away the tools from my face.
Al-Ghazan cleared his throat. “He said not to tell you —”
“—I need to ask you something, Al-Ghazan uncle. What do you know of the Raqini?” I asked.
Seeing the seriousness of my gaze, Al-Ghazan set down the tube he was holding. He rested his hands on his knees, sitting stiff, uncertain. “The Raqini are what everyone knows them to be, Rahena. They were illustrators, artists.”
“Why are they known to be mad now?”
Al-Ghazan sighed. “It is nearly myth,” he began. “They were artists, yes. But an Order of artists that came in possession of a kind of relic. No one knows if they were born with the power, and the Raqini stone merely taps into that with which they were born, or if the stone itself imbues them with that power. There are others who say that it does not give them the power, but helps them in tempering the madness that comes with the power. But it changes them, indeed. I do not really know why, I could not tell you.”
I thought of Al-Yaser’s words: It was not supposed to make them go mad, it was supposed to aid in coping with the madness.
“Al-Yaser in Arassan told me something of a man named Ilyas…but she died before she could tell me what he did. Who was he?”
“It’s a cursed shame, what they did to her,” Al-Ghazan shook his head. “She was the last voice of the Raqinis.” He set down his satchel. “Yes, there is a legend of how the Raqini stone came to be…that a man named Ilyas Rahman, eons ago, had been so driven to madness by his visions or power or whatever it was that he had within him — that he searched all across the Ardth for a cure. And from each land, from seven corners of the Ardth, he gathered soil, and imbued it within the stone. Some say that the Creator guided him in this, to help him through the sickness.”
Al-Ghazan pursed his lips, and I knew he was holding back. “What is it? I need to know.”
“People also say that…that the Wraithknife was later created from the Raqini stone.” The words came from him gingerly, slowly, almost a whisper.
Terror ran through me. So Waqar Marouf’s words were true. “But…how?” I asked. “How can something that is supposed to be healing…create something so…evil?”
“By man, of course,” Al-Ghazan said grimly. Dusk was settling, the skies darkening through the windows, casting shadows in the room. Al-Ghazan stood up to light a candle. “The stone was never meant to be used for power. It was simply not its nature. If it was meant to be pure, to heal, to guide — then the distortion of its nature into a means for destruction…well, it exploded into rampant disease; that is how the Wraithknife came to exist. People exploited it as a weapon. It became a literal sickness, a disease of both humans and the earth itself.”
He flicked his finger back and forth over the light flame of the candle. “Just before the invasion of the Wraithknife War, the Dirigeant leaders in Alderien heard of this ‘supernatural’ power. They didn’t know what it was. No one truly knew, perhaps not even the Raqinis themselves who experienced it. When they attempted to strip the Ardth-stone from the Raqinis, it was distorted into something dark that became violent, tainted.”
The stone-creature throbbed at my heart, and I wanted to hurl it away from me.
“There were a few rogue Raqinis from the original Order in Khardin who joined them,” Al-Ghazan said. “For they too were pulled by the hunger for the self. The Raqini power, to an extent, became imbued within the stone itself. So the Wraithknife was created by distortions of power stolen and tainted from the Raqinis, used for Destruction rather than Creation. The Destructor faction, you see, believes that man is invincible for his capacity to create, to destroy – that it is their right by God. It is egoistic. The Creation faction sought to use it for to summon healing, everything beyond the ego.”
Al-Ghazan leaned against the stone wall, watching the flames. “Since then, many sought to find the Raqini stone to create another Wraithknife. To find the Wraithknife itself. Some began to believe it was buried deep within the earth during the wars. No one knows if it was buried in Khardin land or in Altharin. You are right, by itself it was supposed to be sacred, yes. But the drive for power, unfortunately, is in human nature; and so it began to reflect us.”
I felt any moment that my shallow breathing would give me away.
“Did something happen in Arassan?” Al-Ghazan asked.
“I— no,” I murmured. “I just…meeting Al-Yaser, I wondered why she killed herself before they could.”
I pressed my fingers into her eyes.
Al-Ghazan examined my features. “The powers for which Ardashir imprisoned you…for which they call you sorceress…they are Raqini powers, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” I said hesitantly.
Al-Ghazan nodded. “Then it is a relief, Al-Yaser was not the last of her kind.”
“It is not relief to me,” I said. “For the love of the Creator, you just — you just revealed to me that the Wraithknife, of all things, was made of the Raqini stone. What does that mean for me? What if I become…polluted by this darkness? What if I become like them, Uncle Al-Ghazan?”
“That you are asking this question, Rahena, is enough to show you could never become them.”
“But what if I do?” I said. What if instead of summoning the Liyyisin dimension, all I am capable of is destruction?
He leaned towards me, and I could smell cinnamon and cloves. His mane of golden hair looked a halo against the firelight behind him. “If it is any consolation, I do not see that darkness in you.”
He rose and the halo moved away from me. “I’ve missed my afternoon cup of tea, and that just will not do,” he said, stretching his arms. He picked up the satchel. “If you’ll so stubbornly refuse to be examined, I shall go make myself a cup of tea then. Would you like some?”
I shook my head.
“Good night then, Rahena,” he said, and headed off down to the kitchens.
I gazed up at the ceiling in the bleak dusklight.
The holy, the beautiful, the pure — tainted by ego, polluted beyond recognition. Even God had become tainted by man’s ego on the earth. The green fields turned into blood-soaked ruins; love tainted by violence; the bluest of oceans tainted into endless black.
But what if I, too, let myself be tainted by that blackness?