In four weeks, an estimated seventy thousand Jinn had gathered in Mesti, the royal city, and in the provinces just beyond. Every day this number grew. Despite his mother’s well-warranted fears, the Jinn had arrived peacefully – for they’d arrived oblivious to their queen’s injury. Cyrus had managed to conceal this fact through nothing short of a miracle, for the Diviners had consented to remain silent on the subject of Alizeh – only in the interest of protecting the greater peace. Even so, it was a risk, for the priests and priestesses were incapable of speaking falsehoods and would not lie if asked a direct question. In fact, the magic that bound Diviners to truth was of the same strain that enabled them to detect a falsehood. The latter was a talent that Cyrus, too, possessed to some degree, though his education in the priesthood was incomplete, and as a result his skills, too, were imperfect.
Still, he knew better than to try to deceive a Diviner.
They’d questioned him that terrible morning. Hazan on his heels, he’d met the trio of Diviners in a receiving room, the sight of their legendary, liquid-black cloaks sending twin pangs of dread and longing through him.In another life he would’ve been one of them, would’ve forsaken rank and prestige to occupy instead the liminal spaces of existence, where ego was eclipsed by the spheres of alchemy and prophecy. It was what he’d always wanted: to devote his life to the distillation ofbeing.
He’d stared at them, at their hooded faces, their perfect stillness. They’d emanated a calm, tightly coiled energy, that steady pulse of magic beating within them like a second heart. Powerful and nameless, Diviners were an enigma to most; in fact, many found them terrifying. Yet Cyrus knew that those who were drawn to divination were often reserved and passionate, satisfied to spend their lives asking questions of the earth. Even so, it’d been so long since he’d stood in the presence of a Diviner that he’d been unnerved.
The southern king had greeted them as he once did – bowing his head as he pressed his hands to his chest – and though they’d returned the gesture, their disapproval was palpable.
He was not one of them.
Even then Cyrus had desired nothing more than to shave his head and shirk the world; he longed for their freedom. Longed for the hours he’d once spent in companionable quiet, for the backbreaking mornings excavating magic from the mountains, for the sun-soaked summer evenings cleansing and sorting the fresh crop of crystals.
Cyrus had learned years ago how to refine the precious material, how to gently conjure the magic free from the stone, whispering incantations under his breath when he was still too inexperienced to do so soundlessly.Thousands of times he’d injured himself in the process, nearly severing his right arm when he’d once summoned the power too quickly. Indeed, convincing magic to leave its crystal and enter the chaotic world was a great deal like taming a wild dragon. It was brutal and terrifying, and demanded not only immeasurable self-restraint, but tremendous heart – for the power was wise and would not release peacefully into the hands of any it deemed unworthy.
Bel nekan nostad, nektoon bidad.
Once released, magic proved a gentle presence. It had the energy of a cat in repose, weight like a lick of wind that curled around its keeper’s neck, humming with pleasure.
Cyrus was the rare king on earth who knew this sensation.
Most royals had spent their lives as soldiers, or else engaged in merriment and frivolity; traditionally they received doses of magic from the Diviners as gifts, often in the form of comestibles, reinforced weaponry, or enchanted garments. Cyrus’s years in the priesthood had earned him a rare authority and independence as a sovereign. He had access to great stores of magic while requiring no intercession from a Diviner; as a result there was no one to interrogate the ways in which he used his power. He was in fact so skilled at bonding with this precious matter that he lived much as the Diviners did: always ready to cast a spell.
And there remained bedrocks of magic yet untouched.
The most powerful crystals were so volatile they were nearly impossible to handle; the more potent the core, the more difficult the stone was to quarry. Some varieties were so temperamental they’d explode if so much as touched by the wrong person,causing an entire mine to collapse. Over the years, thousands had died in the effort to excavate these venerated strains from the earth – and Cyrus had long suspected that Alizeh’s magic was of this untouchable stock. Even the greatest Diviners of Ardunia had been unable to access the crystals of the Arya mountains, and if the stories were true – if Alizeh were indeed able to unearth such power – she would be recognized by every holy order on earth as the greatest Diviner of their time. Her supremacy would be unmatched.
The world would bow to her.
Every day, this improbable theory grew stronger. Jinn everywhere had initiated a mass exodus. Those who could were fleeing their homes, traversing great distances to reach their queen. Already Cyrus had received thinly veiled warnings from neighboring allies and bald threats of attack from distant nations – simply for harboring her.
The existence of a Jinn queen was all but a promise of revolution.
Alizeh was a threat to the incumbent systems of oppression, to the cheap labor these empires received from those incarcerated, to the social order established on earth for a millennia. Few other kingdoms allowed their Jinn any measure of freedom; most were horribly persecuted, plainly hunted in the streets, subject to caste systems that denied them basic humanities, or else forced into prison camps where their powers were controlled by magicked shackles and systematic dehydration; thus, they were exploited for profit;there, they lived and died and bore their children. The empires of the world couldn’t allow someone like Alizeh to rise. And though the southern king knew his truce with Ardunia to be little more than a sham, the rest of the world saw it as a political maneuver. Cyrus’s pending marriage to an insurgent leader, coupled with his recent alliance with a force as mighty as Ardunia, had made him and his humble kingdom a target for malice.
He didn’t know how long he might stave off an attack from an enraged empire, but the pact between Tulan and Ardunia had proven both a problem and a protection, for while this alliance had sent tremors of unease throughout the world, it was also the silent might of Ardunia’s fabled army that currently kept Alizeh safe within Tulan.
It had become clearer to him, in these agonizing weeks, why her parents had kept her in hiding, and why the devil had been so adamant about this marriage. From birth, she had been marked. Without an ally, without an army, without an empire and resources and magic andwater, Alizeh could not have withstood these external forces on her own. Great and necessary change had always been born in the blood of calamity.
Her life would be in danger for as long as she lived.
He’d been ruminating on this fact that wretched morning, imagining the real and figurative target on her back even as he’d stood before the Diviners, his body humming with apprehension.
Why is he here?
Cyrus had heard the voice in his head with a start, for it was one he recognized.The priesthood demanded a dissolution of the material life and its mortal titles – over time, even given names were lost – but a man once known to him as Mozafer had stepped forward to speak.
“He insisted on coming,” Cyrus explained. He’d glanced at Hazan, whose glower was almost violent. “He’s concerned for his queen.”
There’s no time for thiswas the response.
At once, the receiving room disappeared; they were submerged in a smoky darkness where naught but four forms lit by an unseen light source. Hazan had not been allowed to join them.
Mozafer did not tarry.
The situation is grave, he’d said silently.The girl will not heal.
Cyrus, who’d expected terrible news, still sustained a savage pain at these words. “What do you mean?”
