their light … when the mountains are made to vanish … when the seas boil over, and when all beings are linked to their deeds …”
Hot white light inside the chamber, the coils of Ilea’s hair catching fire.
“… And when the girl-child that was buried alive is able to ask for what crime she was slain … when the scrolls of your deeds are unfolded … when heaven is laid bare … when the blazing fire is kindled bright, and when paradise is brought into view; on that Day, every human being will come to know what they have prepared for themselves.”
Though chilling in their meaning, the words were curiously devoid of impact.
Then Ilea’s arms jerked forward, forming a V. Her trailing sleeves caught fire, and the fire lanced straight from her arms to cut through Talisman lines. A pale gold tinged with crimson, the fire burned two lines through the camp, searing all in its path. It blazed brightly for an instant—a gilt-edged sword shearing through the final hours of the night. When it vanished, it left two blackened tracks on the ground. She had killed perhaps twenty men all told, but the Talisman rapidly regrouped.
Rukh glared at her. “Is that all?”
Sly acceptance. “That is all.”
He grabbed her shoulders, shaking her.
“Then do it again. Again and again, unto a world without end.”
Daniyar wrested Ilea free of Rukh’s bruising grip. “Even if she did, you would still be facing an army of thousands at your gates.” Rukh paused. Deliberated. Turned his back to them both, a gesture considered offensive at his court. But it was still his court. He may have failed as Dark Mage, but he was still the Prince of Khorasan.
He looked out over the path of Ilea’s deliberate destruction. She had recited verses of the Claim—more in number than Arian and Sinnia combined. Deadly and more threatening than anything he had heard fall from the First Oralist’s lips. Because the Verse of the Throne was an assertion, not a source of annihilation.
Why, then, had Ilea’s recitation had so little impact on his enemy? If Arsalan had been with him in this room, he might have known the answer. Arsalan’s calling to the Claim was sincere, richer and deeper than Rukh’s.
At that, a door opened in Rukh’s mind. He entered a room filled with light. He raised his face into the light—it pushed at him, moved through him, penetrated through to his cells, blinding and calming in the same calamitous instant. Throbbing like the answer to a question he’d forgotten to ask. The light expanded outward into his mind, pricked at his fears, made nonsense of his certainties, mocked him for his stubborn refusal to see it for what it was. Part of him. All of him. That was when he understood.
Ilea’s warning … the taste of Daniyar’s fear … the significance of Arian’s absence. All trace of pretense fell away.
He turned back to Ilea, ignoring the Silver Mage. He raised a hand to untangle the golden coils of her hair, a gesture she allowed. When they’d fallen free of their intricate arrangement, he brushed back a lock from her forehead. Then he pressed his lips to her diadem and whispered, “It isn’t just the words, is it? It’s the qari who recites them—the gift given to the First Oralist.”
She blinked, and he finished softly, “A gift you do not share.”
Bitter acknowledgment in her golden eyes.
“Tell me your truth now, Ilea.”
He had already guessed at the answer. The High Companion could recite verses from the Bloodprint, but without the depths of Arian’s conviction, without the gift for language that had seen Arian rise to the rank of First Oralist, she would never be able to harness the power of the Claim as Arian had done. She couldn’t bend it to her will.
She wound her hands around his wrists, removing them from her hair.
“My gifts are aligned to Hira. Ashfall must rely on the strength of the Dark Mage.”
She told these half-truths to the Black Khan without compunction. Why? Daniyar’s thoughts moved swiftly. Because of Hira. The Black Khan had delayed her return to the Citadel. And with Arian and the High Companion both absent, Hira was at risk. Ilea would know as well as he did that the Black Khan would not relinquish any advantage to his city. Whatever the extent of the Golden Mage’s powers, Rukh would try to keep her at his side.
What Ilea had shown him—what she had done with the Claim—was designed to prove to Rukh that her talents would serve him no further. She couldn’t do what Arian had done.
A misdirection the Black Khan would accept, knowing that of all the Companions of Hira, only Arian’s gifts existed to serve more than her allegiance to the Council. Arian had shown him as much with her defense of the people of Ashfall. Though her Audacy was directed by the High Companion, she had chosen her own means of fulfilling it. And even after Ilea had stripped her of rank, she hadn’t given up the fight. Daniyar felt a fierce throb of pride at Arian’s defiance of Ilea. Her service on behalf of the Council wasn’t that of blind adherence. Her calling was to the Claim—and the ethics that underlined it.
No ritual without purpose, she had whispered to him in another life, the whisper tinged with love.
And he had understood. Without a commitment to the values they espoused, rituals meant little to Arian, a position that often placed her at odds with the Council. Even the story of the Night Journey, a sacred visitation to the heavens, Arian viewed as an allegory, and not as a physical voyage, as so many of her sisters did.
No form without substance. No sacred duty more hallowed than the worth of a single life.
The words had meant more to him after the fall of Candour. They defined them both in opposition to the Talisman.
In whose name was our heritage set to the fire? Daniyar had demanded.
And the Talisman’s acolytes had answered, In the name of the One.
He pushed down the familiar ache caused by Arian’s absence. It was a weakness Ilea would exploit, at the moment he needed to turn her to his purpose. Which was to keep her in Ashfall, until Rukh could learn to harness his abilities as the Dark Mage.
He’d felt something stir at the way Rukh watched him, a prickling of his nerves along the tendrils of his magic. An awakening that the Conference of the Mages would fulfill. He recalled the Conference he’d been summoned to in Timeback, where he’d visited the scriptorium and sifted through its manuscripts, including one where the arguments of theologians had gone around in circles, perhaps like this Conference now. The memory passed from his thoughts as suddenly as it had come.
“Let us return,” he said, holding out Ilea’s chair. She pressed her lips together in refusal.
“Why try again?” Rukh asked. “The High Companion’s powers—”
Daniyar cut him off. “The High Companion lacks the First Oralist’s ability with the Claim, but she is still the Golden Mage. She can awaken your gifts. As she said, Ashfall must rely on itself. It needs the power of its Mage.” And now he made use of the Black Khan’s persistence to further his own resolve. “Your power is merely dormant. I felt it stir, as you must have felt mine.” They could and would hold the Emissary Gate. “The Golden Mage can help to bring your powers to
