The birds surround a young woman leaning against a juniper tree, panting. Initially I think her clothed in a fine lace, but as I go nearer, I see her brown skin is webbed by black veins with a thick jumble of red scars between her breasts. Her pupils swallow her eyes, pitching them black. As she stumbles and trembles, the birds descend to peck at her neck, and she shouts unintelligibly.
Eliyas yanks me behind him, eyes widening at the woman. ‘You have to go,’ he instructs me.
‘But this woman needs help and clothes. She’s naked!’ The woman turns at the sound of my voice and Eliyas covers my eyes. I jab my elbow into his gut. ‘I know you are looking, deceitful monk.’
‘This is not a time for humour.’
I push him away. ‘What’s wrong with her?’
He thins his lips. ‘I must summon the monks. This woman is under their care. Nothing for you to be concerned about.’
The woman’s nose raises, and she sniffs like a beast prowling its prey. She catches my eyes and her lips twitch, teeth and nails coated in red. Blood.
Eliyas shoves me away, but the woman bounds forward, so fast it cannot be humanly possible.
Her hands curl around my arms and she wrenches me from Older Brother. ‘M-Mitra,’ she rasps. Spittle lands in my eye as she throttles my shoulders. ‘B-by the Divine – the bond – in the Unseen,’ she cries in a strange dialect.
I lift my hand, instinctively muttering a prayer, and a flicker of white nur dances on the tip of my finger. Summoning has become easier.
But as I summon my nur, the woman’s eyes latch on to the two gold bonds rising from my hand. The only thought that crosses my mind is,if she can see the Heavenly bonds, she must be an Eajiz, before the woman throws me down on to rough bramble, knocking the breath out of my lungs.
Eliyas lunges forward, foot twisting, his leather moccasin slamming into the woman’s sternum. She goes flying into a cluster of wild orchard bushes.
‘By the Divine,’ Eliyas commands, and reaches into his belt, spinning a small red jade pot over his hand. His corded muscles bulge beneath his robes as he leaps forward, reminding me that he is as much warrior as he is monk. His fingers dip into the pot, and I smell the potency: blessed Navian olive oil. Clawing together his fingers, he rakes it down the woman’s forehead in a criss-cross motion, and she convulses and screeches. He yanks his finger across her throat, and slams the butt of his palm into her collarbone while reciting something low and fast before blowing across her. She crumples and does not move.
Eliyas helps me up, scowling. ‘What were you doing? Never summon your affinity against anyone on the palace grounds. There are eyes and ears waiting to sell any information against you!’
‘B-but she attacked me.’
‘You don’t need an affinity to defend yourself against a young woman, when you’ve been training—’ As he crouches before the unconscious woman, slathering her arms in olive oil, he goes on in a lecture. He yanks off his robes, shrouding her naked body. When he tires of berating me, he leans against the juniper tree, shaking his head, the covered woman now in his tremoring arms.
Any objection dies on my tongue. Exorcising the woman must have drained him of energy. But I do not need him to protect me. Training my affinity in secret over the past two years has grown my Heavenly bonds. I should be allowed to use it.
‘Older Brother, it’s my affinity. Subduing the nur is like cleaving half of myself from the other. I want to train openly, without fear of the Zahrs targeting me in envy. Surely they wouldn’t now.’
His eyes darken. ‘You would not be the first sibling murdered in envy despite being our kin.’
My mind drifts to last evening. After incense and remembrance, I questioned the most senior monk if there was more to Eajiz training. He quietly admitted that monasteries in Azadniabad were finite in their knowledge about Eajizi. Not even our most remote monasteries could be of help, because ancient Eajiz texts were all horded in enemy lands: the Sajamistan Empire and their army. Begrudgingly, in my weakest moments, I wondered about the Eajiz schools in Sajamistan.
Eliyas’s deceptively pleasant voice returns me to the present. ‘If you’re desperate to train in the open, perhaps we should send you away again, to the remote north. I heard the mystic schools are smaller, but if you’re so eager...’
‘Not again,’ I yelp.
‘I thought so.’ Eliyas begins to trudge forward with the unconscious woman in his arms. ‘Did she hurt you?’
I follow at his heels; my gaze flits to the old scars ribboning her collarbone. ‘I’m fine. But is she dead?’
‘No. The oil only burns the jinn inside her. My hand against her neck is a spiritual strike to behead the jinn, but it inflicts very little mortal damage.’
‘She’s possessed?’
‘Yes, by foul jinn, a shai’tan like the ifrit. Only the wickedest jinn-folk can possess a human like that and damage their soul. She is under the monks’ care. They perform exorcisms, but the possessing jinn makes the mortal flee rampant.’
In the monastery, I’d seen possessed persons seeking a priest’s help, but never someone like her, as if their insides had been thoroughly blackened.
‘The woman saw my Heavenly bonds. She must be an Eajiz,’ I say.
‘She is?’ Eliyas asks – but without intonation. He must already know this.
