There is only a mute silence and the thudding of Sajamistani bodies across the valley – not even the time to cry, to accept and embrace death – that blessing, too, ripped away from the lovers of martyrdom. Everything seems out of reach, out of reality.
I fight a cry blubbering in my throat. These serpents have human -no – have whatwerehumans in them. I stare down at my hands; how many souls were sacrificed to make these creatures? What have I done?
The Sepahbad shuts his eyes, but if he feels the grief, he masks it well as he shoulders forward. Then another realisation: his troops have retreated to the encampment. We cannot take on four serpents alone.
As the falak rages upon the cliffs, the Sepahbad speaks low. ‘The first serpent should be dead from my blows. Which means, according to the theorems of the dark arts, we must slay the creature as many times as the number of souls sacrificed in its creation, and more than one humanwas used to bond it.’ He levels me with a pressing stare. ‘I will have to kill the falak a dozen times over, if not more. The Azadnian garrison is prolonging the melee with these Mitra, to summon reinforcements. If we engage, it’s a losing battle, with our forces stretched thin.’
‘Then we retreat?’
‘No.’ His hazel eyes darken as he looks upwards. ‘I will gamble with Heaven. This will be decisive.’
My gaze narrows. ‘What?’
‘Heed me carefully.’ He faces me. ‘Retreat to the encampment, where the flanks await. Be swift. You have minutes, or you die. Do you follow, underling?’
‘But—’
‘Your life depends on it.’
My protests halt when the serpents scent us. If the vizier wishes to take on four falak, I could not care less, as long as my life is not forfeit. ‘Okay, then,’ I say after a moment. ‘Farewell.’
I begin to stumble along the rocky cliffs. The Sepahbad raises his palms, flipping them upwards before his eyes shut.
‘Third Gate of Heaven,’he recites slowly, and I stiffen at the force of the incantation.
A black blur whizzes above us, and to my astonishment, it’s his raven, who perches upon his shoulder. Its unblinking eyes stare forward, but blue pictograms engrave the air in Adamic glyphs around the bird. Mist unfurls from the green carpet of fern and sets upon the decaying birch of the valley like a shock of silver fire.
Aglow, the Sepahbad’s figure cuts a Heavenly aura and I back away. The glyphs encircle his temple like a thin band as golden lines burst forth, spiralling into seventy-seven bonds.
The sky darkens and the clouds split like a river parting around a rock. A bond descends into the Sepahbad’s chest –a hundredth bond. As if the cosmos are upended. Impossible. The bonds have manifested into the material world.
His body embraces the glow as the calligraphy burns into his forehead, hammered with a vengeance like a blacksmith gone astray. The largest falak, enthralled, swishes in a blurring lunge on the Sepahbad. My eyes widen, but a blast of primordial power staves off the serpent’s attack, as my leader’s mouth chants unfamiliar litanies.
My vision sways, the temporal world threatening to ripple as if the fabric of space and time is being shattered by the Heavens. I do not stop running. Whatever price was paid for that power, the cold truth is, no mortal should have the ability to wield it.
The four falak begin to shriek, the force of their sound making me fall. The Heavens tremble under a weight. Water, as plentiful as the ever-giving seas, pours down.
In the nick of time, I reach the encampment, which is on higher ground sheltered below the mountainous rock, the moans of the wounded carrying all over. But I ignore them, gazing below at the valley, which now looks like a monsoon, the lands flattened except for flood-flung craters. Rain and river weep away the blood, growing more ferocious until they gush over the mountain base.
Bodies, Mitra and filth sweep down the mountainside. The land is excreting its poison as though from a liver, the regurgitation pulled from entombed streams and ancient reservoirs. It does not stop. Above the crashing flood come the wails of dying creatures.
The falak serpents thrash in the waves, drowning one hundred times over, a testament to how many souls were sacrificed to create them. To my ears, their whimpers are exactly that of a babe.
The Unseen is no longer Unseen. The Veil has been lifted and monsters are not nightmares in another microcosm. They walk amongst man.
Around me, Eajiz clutch their heads fruitlessly at the strange power thrumming through the material world, but it is a physical movement against an immaterial force, irrelevant in swaying the command of power. I hear murmurs thrown about.Eight Gates of Heaven.
I cannot help but approach Adel, as I point in disbelief at the valley flattened by the Sepahbad.
‘It’s conceivable for certain Qabl masters,’ he says.
‘But this is impossible. I saw one hundred bonds,’ I say.
He shrugs. ‘In a world where mortals wield powers gifted from the Divine, what is not possible? This is the mastery of the Eight Gates of Heaven. It wrings your affinity dry; it breaks every bond principle, every maxim of human thought, every natural law in Eajizi. This art form bestows one direct bond from a Heavenly Bird that every warrior who has mastered the Eight Gates can access. Today, the Sepahbad has only used the Third Gate, not all eight because of its great cost.’
‘The monks never taught this.’
He barks a laugh. ‘Those monks play fools for the rukhs. What business have rukhs to know the Gates techniques? To summon a bond from one of the three Heavenly Birds?’
