Cemil and I share a look.
‘This was an ambush,’ I say.
‘Will all of the villagers be like this?’ His voice is strained.
I gather the first boy and stride away. ‘On to the next corridor,’ I say.
I emerge from the citadel to find Khor in a chaos of smoke. The villagers are screaming and scattering as our squadrons engage the Azadnian militia. I sprint up toward the western gates, the boy’s body jostling in my arms. The clangs and screams of battle carry outside the city gates.
Back at the makeshift encampment, Squadron Three leads away the villagers they recovered. Many unconscious bodies are aligned in rows and as we approach them, the trembling begins.
Yabghu whirls, understanding before I can warn him.
Limbs slacken and mouths yawn open, low sounds stuttering out from the bodies possessed by jinn-folk. I pounce on a woman, but I am too late as her skin stretches, throwing me off. Eyes rolling black, her body merges into another body, and another, until a dozen are swallowed into a slick oily beast with a long black neck.
My head pounds. Another dîv.
Behind me, Katayoun cries out in horror. ‘Do we kill it?’
‘Yes,’ Yabghu orders. But hesitation flies between our ranks, unsure how much of the creature is man or jinn-folk.
Yabghu crouches and barks at me. ‘Return to the fortress and help Cemil; Katayoun and I will hold it here.’
I retreat as warriors wave what little incense they have and wield senna leaves and oils, trying to subdue the jinn-folk through the herbs instead of inflicting mortal damage with their blades. It’s useless.
Through the gates, I watch the waves of fleeing villagers. Khorinites run toward our encampment and the grounds tremble from the near-stampede of it all, some carrying the wounded, others simply not caring who they trample with their focus on escape.
The cacophony of cries mingling with the blood and sweat only grows. I try to move forward, but my stomach turns. My head pounds more. I back into a hovel of pens full of waste. I cannot hold it in. I vomit all over the ground, arms trembling from supporting my weight before I face-plant into my sick.
This was us; my tribe and me. But so much worse.The Night of Tezmi’a, they did not stop at fire arrows. They chased after us, even when we fled. They chased us as one languidly pursues a spider weaving up a wall, before being squashed under the heel of a palm merely for existing. They killed us for the rush of crushing the small.
My hands cling to one of the pen’s walls.I cannot save them.The past intertwines with the present and I cannot tell them apart because time doesn’t heal wounds.
My senses slip as I stumble away from the hovel.
‘Khamilla?’ Cemil bursts out from the small fortress and his eyes narrow on me as he closes the distance. His hand grips my chin, leaning down to my face. ‘Hold yourself together.’
‘It’s my—’ My gasps sputter.
‘They need us. You have seen this before, but,’ his expression wavers, ‘even surrounded by death,we cannot flinch.’
I nod and he releases me. One step forward. And then another. Until we are running toward the gates where Alif Adel commands the remaining squadron to form two converging flanks, to cover the northern and southern villages within the township. The air ripples and bends.
‘Retreat, it’s in the moat!’ Adel shouts, and from the northern moat, a long lashing tail snakes out, so tall it obscures the sun.
The air tremors like a plucked string. I blink. The tail crushes the entire left flank into crimson ruin. It lifts again, a great black shadow swallowing us before slamming on to the hovels. With a screech, the falak tears itself free from the moat, dozens of milky white irises flitting left and right: as if the creature is unsure if it wishes to appear more human or jinn. Human heads wave upon its neck before shuddering and rolling out of its skin into scaly figures. One grabs a fleeing villager, biting into the soft flesh of his chest...
‘Ghûls inside the falak. They’ve saved the worst to guard Khor,’ Adel says grimly. Though outnumbered, the Alif rotates his hand, funnelling debris into a dense vortex of cosmic currents, creating a wide berth before the falak.
At his signal, we charge toward the serpent. I lunge low, my nur swathing my khanjar as it pierces a ghûl, red veins pumping through the neck. For a second, something very human wavers in its eyes.
The ghûl does not die. I engage it again, then cut through two more, who scatter at the eruption of blistering nur before simply knitting back together. I remember the Sepahbad saying we must kill each creature as many times as the number of souls used to summon it.
Darting back, I summon my shoulder bonds. Instead of attacking me, a dozen ghûls whir past in the opposite direction, toward the ziggurat. Spinning fast, I spot their target. A cluster of robed monks and children shrieking from the stairs of the sandstone structure. I begin to run after the ghûls.
Suddenly, vines sprout from the burnt monastic gardens and tangle around the creatures like a cage before piercing thorns into their eyes.
A Brother-Nature affinity. My feet stumble at it, but I reassure myself. It’s a coincidence. Yet, instinct makes my eyes dart around that monastery, where the monks and children escape through a web of flora.
