Issue #334 • July 15, 2021

“The Lingering Weight of Estrian Steel,” by Rajan Khanna

“A Land of Saints and Monsters,” by Isabel Cañas

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THE LINGERING WEIGHT OF ESTRIAN STEEL

by Rajan Khanna

        The news of the stranger’s coming rippled through the village of Ofra like a strong wind tousling the pines. That the stranger rode a horse only lent it intensity.

        Stafe heard the news while picking through fruit at a market stall and was intrigued. Horses weren’t native to the region, though they occasionally came to the village through trade, or in Stafe’s case, happenstance. His stallion, Callus, had fed half the village when he died.

        It had been almost a year since the last trader had passed through, and Stafe wondered what this one might bring. He began to hope for a small taste of his homeland. He had settled into his life in the village, and was happy there, but the thought of a book from Estria, or a bag of sweetnuts—no matter how stale—sparked a thrill inside him.

        Naran met him just outside their hut, his dark brown skin shining with perspiration. Stafe felt a boyish thrill at his husband’s unexpected appearance until he noticed the tight expression on Naran’s face. “The stranger?” Stafe asked, unease settling into the pit of his stomach.

        Naran nodded. “They ride a horse.”

        “I know.”

        “And wear mail.”

        He’d picked up that word from Stafe. The Ofrans never worked metal armor and viewed it as a curiosity. The stranger’s mail not only marked them as from the East; it meant that they were either expecting combat, or wore armor habitually. Neither option was comforting.

        “Have they come for you?” Naran asked.

        “After all this time?” It seemed absurd, but Stafe couldn’t be sure. He’d lost count of the time since he’d stumbled down the mountain, burnt and bloody. His first few months after recovering had been tense, constantly awaiting an expedition from Estria to fetch him back to the land of his birth. When none came, he’d started to relax. He’d grown certain they thought him dead, and with good reason. He had left to kill a dragon. Not many returned from such quests. The attempt had almost killed him.

        “They may stay in the village.” Naran placed a calloused hand on Stafe’s cheek. “I think you should hide.”

        “Hide?” Stafe said, incredulous. “I’m a knight of Estria.”

        “You were. Once. That is precisely why you should stay away.”

        “They could be from anywhere back East.”

        “Just so,” Naran said. “But why poke the bear to see if it’s sleeping? Let them come, let us learn why.”

        Stafe wanted to ask what threat this foreigner could pose to him with the whole village behind him, but his mind supplied the answer. One man in mail, armed with steel, and trained by the weaponmasters of Estria, could shed considerable blood before greater numbers overcame him. The thought sent a chill right through the center of him.

        “Stay here when they arrive,” Naran said. “I’ll make sure everyone knows to keep silent about your presence.”

        Stafe lowered his head and nodded.

        Naran lifted Stafe’s head, his touch, as always, gentle. He pulled Stafe into a tight embrace, kissing him. Stafe inhaled the scent of his husband, the smell of sweat and wood and sap. “I will see you soon,” Naran said.

        Stafe watched him go, knowing Naran would speak to every inhabitant of the village, enlisting their support. He loved his husband for that. Stafe, however, needed to make his own preparations. He entered their hut and, after putting away the melon he’d bought that morning, he pulled up the panel in the floor. Inside, carefully wrapped, were the remnants of his own mail. The armor had been shredded in battle with the dragon and was of no use, though that wasn’t what he sought. He likewise ignored the sword of Estrian steel where it lay in its well-worn scabbard. Instead, he pulled out the dagger in its leather sheath and tucked that inside his trousers where it wouldn’t be obvious but would be easy to draw. It was the weapon of cutpurses and murderers, he thought with a touch of shame, but it seemed the suitable choice.

        Feeling sufficiently armed, Stafe spent the next few hours trying to act as if it were any other day. Truth was, there wasn’t much for him to do at this time of the season. The hunting of the mountain elk had tapered off as the herds moved south to escape the coming winter, and it was now the fishermen and the boat hunters who fed the village.

        In the end, he sat in the hut’s doorway, stewing in his own apprehension, the weight of the dagger the only thing that brought him reassurance.

* * *

        When the time came, however, and the stranger arrived, Stafe couldn’t stay away.

        The village welcomed the stranger with fermented sap and the blessings of the Four Winds, as was the Ofra custom. The Estrian man was fair and stained by the dust and dirt of his travels. Beneath it, Stafe judged him to be at least thirty years of age, which would fit with the trappings of his clothing and armor that marked him as a Knight of Merit and Commander of military forces. The knight accepted the Ofran gifts with respect, though a tightness in his face betrayed his weariness from the long journey. Indeed, the first thing he did was to barter for lodging, trading several bolts of cloth and a steel hunting knife from his second horse for a vacant hut and food for his stay.

        Stafe watched it all from inside Mariyah’s hut, hidden by a cloth overhang. Mariyah, his oldest friend in the village, noted his tension and handed him a cup of steaming kala tea.

        “When will you go to him?” she asked.

        He turned to her in surprise, the realization of what he must do having just occurred to him.

        She smiled at his expression. “You are often slow to recognize your own thoughts.” She sipped at her tea. “I’ve learned to see them, clear as silverfish in the sun.”

        It was true that she knew him better than anyone else, even Naran. She’d found him on his nightmarish descent down the mountain and had nursed him back to health over those long, painful months.

        “I’ll meet him in private,” Stafe said. “As soon as he’s settled in his hut.” His hand traced the outline of the dagger against his scarred stomach.

        “Why?”

        “I can’t just hide. I’m a knight of Estria.”

        “Are you?”

        “I used to be. And he is, without a doubt. Naran means well, but no one here understands how a mind like that thinks, or what lurks behind his words. I do.”

        Mariyah drank more of her tea. “So you do this for us?”

        “Yes. And myself.” He shook his head in frustration. “I need to find out why he’s here.”

        “And after that?”

        “After that, we’ll see.”

* * *

        By the time the knight had retired, Stafe found his body reluctant to obey. His legs felt leaden as he stood. He flexed his hands as if to revitalize them.

        “Just remember,” Mariyah said. “He is the outsider. You no longer are.”

        Stafe forced himself out of the hut, trying to keep his breathing regular, his heart slow. He held his hands loose at his sides, calling up the fighting readiness of his youth, the years of training that he now used only for the hunt.

        The knight knelt in his borrowed hut, rifling through a saddle bag. He looked up as he noticed Stafe’s shadow, and Stafe recognized the coiled tension there, obvious only to his trained eyes. This knight was accustomed to danger and ready for action in the face of it. He would not be taken easily.

        The knight’s eyes moved to Stafe’s face, then widened in surprise. He rose gracefully to his feet. “Why, you’re Estrian,” he said, and despite himself, Stafe felt comforted by the familiar cadences of his homeland.

        The knight’s posture straightened. “I am Viktor Sloat, Knight in the Order of the Lightspear, Commander of the Red Brigade, now knight-errant to the King.”

        There, facing him, Stafe knew that he couldn’t maintain a subterfuge that he was anything other than himself. There was too much of the knight still left in him. He mirrored Viktor’s stance. “I am Stafe Sorentin, former Knight in the Order of the Reed, former knight-errant to the King, now hunter for the Ofra.”

        Viktor’s mouth fell open and his rigid stance momentarily slackened. He stepped forward.

        Stafe moved his hand to where he could easily reach the dagger. Viktor was mailed, but Stafe knew places where he could strike to cause injury—the armpit, the groin, and, since Viktor was unhelmed, the neck.

        But Viktor’s arms fell on Stafe’s shoulders and he shook his head in wonder. “By the goddess, Stafe Sorentin! Shades, man, we thought you were dead!” Then, remembering himself, he pulled away and resumed his upright stance. “How long have you been here?”

        “I don’t know for certain,” Stafe said. “More than a year.”

        “You rode forth from Telos on Evenstar Day, almost two years ago.”

        “Then I have been here for almost that long,” Stafe said. “I was forty-one days on horseback to reach the mountain, six more to rest and prepare before ascending the mountain to find the dragon.”

        Viktor’s face grew tight. “And did you?”

        Stafe’s heart beat faster as the memory of that day came back to him. “I did,” he said, his mouth dry.

        “Damn it, man, what happened?”

        Images from Stafe’s nightmares swam before his eyes. Impenetrable scales. Claws as long and hard as swords, but sharper still. A tail that moved like lightning.

        “I failed. I barely escaped the dragon’s nest alive. I fell down the mountain, mere bloody meat with the faint memory of a mind. A woman named Mariyah found me. She cared for me and nursed me back to health. It took months for my skin to knit, for my bones to mend. Even longer for my mind to find respite.”

        “And afterward?”

        “Afterward, I stayed here,” Stafe said, feeling a new, acrid bitterness at the admission.

        Something similar seemed mirrored in Viktor’s eyes.

        He was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “Much has changed since you left Estria. We went to war with Tacea.”

        “What?” Stafe remembered visiting Tacea just after becoming a knight, after the king had elevated him and he’d had decent coin for the first time in his life. He had stayed on an estate near vineyards and alternated between drinking his fill of Tacean wine and riding through the hills on his old charger. “Why?”

        Viktor shrugged. “The king was unhappy with the way the Prince Regent of Tacea governed. The Prince Regent couldn’t secure his borders, and there was unrest in the countryside, disrupting trade and sparking violence. The army put much of Tacea to the torch. It was a sad business.”

        Stafe imagined those same vineyards burnt and shriveled, blackened and choked with ash. He knew what the Estrian army was capable of.

        “The king appointed a Chancellor to succeed the Prince Regent, but now we are assailed by refugees all along the western border. I passed through on my way here. It was clogged with poor, filthy wretches. There’s often no choice but to put them to the sword.”

        The thought of it nauseated Stafe, and he felt all the careful work he’d done to put that world behind him starting to unravel. He could almost smell the burnt fields and the unwashed and desperate who ran from them.

        “The king’s health has declined,” Viktor continued, his voice grave. “We still hold out hope for his recovery, but he suffered a bad infection in his leg. Some say he will never regain its full use, even with the dragon remedy.”

        Stafe winced at this, and the implied blame in it. He’d been sent to obtain the dragon’s organs for the king’s cure. Because he hadn’t returned, the king had worsened and now might never be made whole.

        As if sensing his thoughts, Viktor added, “I’d reckon that if you returned to Estria, you would not be greeted warmly.”

        It was a fair point, and he’d never intended to return, but somehow it still stung. Enough that he felt the desire to protest, to defend himself. But for what?

        “I should let you rest,” Stafe said. “You’ve had a long journey.”

        “We will talk again,” Viktor said, as Stafe walked out of the hut. His shadow stretched out behind him, longer than he’d remembered.

* * *

        Naran was waiting for him at Mariyah’s hut, a hurt expression on his face. “We agreed you’d stay hidden.”

        “I couldn’t.”

        “I tried to explain it to him,” Mariyah said as she prepared a pot of tea.

        “He needs to explain it,” Naran said.

        “Would you let your men cut wood with a snake underfoot? No. You would discover if it was poisonous. Only I can do that.”

        “And is he poisonous?” Worry edged Naran’s words.

        “He’s Estrian. Of course he’s poisonous. But he’s not here for me. He’s here to kill the dragon.”

        Naran shook his head in disgust.

        “More folly,” Mariyah said.

        “The king yet lives, but his condition’s worsening. They’re still after a cure.”

        “At what cost?” Naran asked.

        “Not ours, if we’re lucky,” Stafe said. “He’ll try, and he’ll either succeed, and leave, or else Sukkora will get the better of him.”

        “You survived her,” Mariyah said.

        “Only with your help,” Stafe said. “And if that happens... A poisonous snake is dangerous enough, but an injured one must be dealt with.”

        “You would—kill him?” Naran asked, shocked.

        Stafe shook his head, suddenly weary. “I’m not saying that. I don’t want to. But if he threatens anyone in this village, I will.”

        “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Mariyah said.

        Stafe recalled the words of a former commander: “Plant your hopes in the ground, but don’t expect them to take root.” He prayed the ground here among the Ofra was more fertile.

* * *

        That night the village invited Viktor to a welcome meal, as was also Ofran custom. They assembled around the town’s central fire and roasted fish and seal and steamed vegetables in broad tilika leaves.

        Viktor sat near the fire, still armored, though he’d changed his surcoat to one unstained by travel. In the firelight, and without the dust on his face, Stafe realized he was even younger than Stafe had originally thought. Very fair, and very handsome, though Stafe’s tastes did not run quite that pretty.

        “You seem almost a native,” Viktor said, after he’d tasted the village’s offerings. “You must truly have love for these people.”

        “Yes,” Stafe said. “And one in particular.”

        “Ah.” Viktor nodded to himself. “The picture becomes clear. I judge that one of these women is your wife? Perhaps the one, pardon me for forgetting the name, who nursed you back to health?”

        Stafe smiled, but it felt thin. He stood behind Naran and placed his hands on his husband’s shoulders. “Not a wife, but yes.”

        Viktor cocked his head in surprise, but then returned to the remains of his meal. “Then things are different here.”

        “In many ways,” Stafe said.

        Naran gently pulled Stafe down to the seat beside him. “Might I have the company of your eyes for a while? They have been on our visitor for most of the evening.”

        “Sorry,” Stafe said. “I just—”

        “I know.” Naran squeezed Stafe’s hand. “But it is a welcome festival. It is for us to enjoy as well.”

        “You’re right.” Stafe threaded his fingers through Naran’s and beckoned for a plate of spikefruit.

        Later that night, Mariyah accompanied Stafe and Naran as they walked home. “He is young,” she said. “And strong. Do you think he can kill Sukkora?”

        Stafe shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t seen him fight. He seems capable, but then I thought I was, too.”

        “Though you were not quite so young,” Naran said, the teasing evident in his voice.

        “No,” Stafe said. “And maybe that will make the difference.” He was surprised by the bitterness that arose with his remark. The jealousy there.

        “And he will move on if he kills Sukkora?”

        “The king has urgent need of the dragon’s organs. Viktor will need to butcher it quickly, before its blood cools, and pack the organs in special vessels. The vessels are protected by enchantments, but they will only last so long. If he doesn’t return to Estria in time, it will be for nothing.”

        “Good,” Naran said.

        What Stafe left unspoken was what had been gnawing at him since he’d met Viktor. The reason the dagger still nestled against his ribs. By remaining in Ofra, Stafe had become a traitor to the Crown. As he’d been on the King’s own errand, it was the gravest of betrayals. Viktor, if he chose to be an upstanding and honorable knight, could right that wrong. Killing Stafe would be the easiest way and in keeping with the urgency of the mission. Stafe’s head could sit beside the dragon’s organs for the journey home and would surely earn Viktor more titles, lands, and the king’s favor.

        The Ofrans would come to Stafe’s defense, but there would be casualties. Stafe couldn’t allow that to happen. It might be moot if the dragon had her way, but the uncertainty of it all was maddening.

        Back at their hut, Stafe offered Mariyah some pine tea. She shook her head. “I ate and drank plenty at the gathering.” She placed a brown palm on Stafe’s cheek, like she had so often when he was healing. “You may not remember, but you talked much about your homeland when you were feverish. I know this outsider’s arrival can’t be easy for you.”

        He reached up and placed his hand on top of hers. “It helps to have you at my side,” he said. He reached for Naran’s hand as well. “Both of you.”

        Mariyah nodded. “Try to get some sleep,” she said, then walked off to her own hut.

        Stafe washed his face and hands, then disrobed and slipped beneath the furs of their bed. He’d needed time to adjust to the warm furs and cushions of goose down—so unlike the thin linen and hard mattresses of Estria—but now the bed was as welcoming as a nest.

        Naran joined him soon after, shivering a little as he settled beneath the furs. “Autumn is coming fast,” he said. “There is already a night chill.”

        “I’ll keep you warm,” Stafe said, wrapping his arms around his husband. Naran kissed him, cradling his face.

        “I will protect you,” Naran said. “If it comes to that.”

        The thought terrified Stafe. Naran was large, and strong from years of woodcutting, but he wasn’t a fighter. He had no instinct to do harm. No, if any violence were to happen, it would be at Stafe’s hands.

        Instead of talking, Stafe kissed Naran, and soon they were making love, with the tension, fear, and anxiety of the day helping to fuel a frantic yet tender coupling that left them both sweaty and gasping.

        As Naran faded off to sleep, Stafe lay his head on his husband’s warm, damp barrel of a chest and listened to his breathing, hoping it would lull him to sleep.

        When sleep did come, it came with the nightmares. They contained no real moments, just impressions, of the dragon and their confrontation. The rasp of its scales against the stony ground, the hot fetid breath as it roared its challenge, and the sense of the pale unmoving shape behind it, somehow more terrifying. Then the feeling of being rent, the pain of being split in two, carved up like...

        He awoke, gasping, his skin slick, his heart pounding. He held Naran close, trying to believe that his husband’s presence could protect him from the memories.

* * *

        The next morning, Viktor came to Stafe in his hut. Naran had already left for the day’s cutting, and Stafe was brewing silver-needle tea. Stafe kept his expression pleasant as Viktor entered. “Would you like some tea? It’s fresh.”

        “No,” Viktor said.

        “Then I hope you don’t mind if I have some.” He poured the hot tea into an earthenware mug and waited for it to cool. “Sleep well?”

        Viktor shrugged. “I’ve learned to rest when and where I can. It was enough.”

        Stafe tested the heat of the tea. “What else can I do for you?”

        “I’m in need of a guide up the mountain. To the dragon’s nest.”

        Stafe swallowed reflexively, the still-hot tea burning the back of his throat. “I made a vow, never again to return to its nest. Not after the last time.”

        “Well, we both know how well you honor your vows.”

        The words cut as deftly and deeply as any sword Viktor might wield. A stony silence settled into the space between them.

        “I will make it simple,” Viktor said at last. “Guide me to the nest, and I’ll return to the king with his treasures and tell him you are dead. You can live out the rest of your days here with these people, in peace.”

        “You would lie to your king?”

        He shrugged. “Only a half-truth. You have done what you can to kill your former self, to bury that knight-errant in an Ofran grave. I can complete the job. I am loyal to my king, but I am not cruel. You have value as a prisoner, true, but you are more valuable as a guide. The dragon is my priority. Help me, and you can keep this life.”

        “And if refuse?” Stafe’s hands pressed hard around the earthenware cup.

        “If you refuse, I will be forced to carry out the king’s law and execute you as a traitor, though I would take no pleasure from it.”

        “The Ofrans accept me as one of their own,” Stafe said. “They wouldn’t permit you to kill me.”

        “Come now,” Viktor said. “You wouldn’t allow that. You love these people, I’ve seen it. Let them shed tears rather than blood.”

        Stafe saw it play out in his mind. Viktor in mail, sword in hand, as Naran led a charge against him. He knew the tactics that Viktor would use, one man against a larger group of enemies. He imagined it blow by blow, the way he used to envision battles in his head. It ended with Ofran bodies bleeding on the ground. Even if they eventually overwhelmed him, the cost would be too high.

        “When do we embark?” Stafe asked.

        Viktor nodded. “Good man. At first light tomorrow. We’ll prepare today. I brought supplies from home, but I’ll need your help in deciding what to carry.”

        Stafe chewed on his lip. “I’ll gather some of my own supplies. I’ll meet you around midday to discuss. At your hut?”

        “Perfect,” Viktor said.

        So Stafe went about making his preparations, packing a bag with tools and furs to guard against the cold winds of the mountain. At midday he met with Viktor to plan their ascent. “The mountain can be extremely steep in places, and there are a few locations difficult to traverse. It would be best to travel as lightly as possible.”

        “Do you expect me to go without armor?”

        “I’d suggest you carry it,” Stafe said. “It will mean a quicker ascent, and you won’t be as tired when you reach the dragon. You can put it on when we reach the nest.”

        “And if it hears us and emerges? The books all say dragons have excellent hearing.”

        “They do. And the rattling of mail is hard to disguise. But would you rather she hear you while you’re scaling a rock face? Or when you have solid ground beneath your feet.”

        “I’ll make do with a chain shirt,” Viktor said. “I’ll not go completely exposed.”

        Stafe nodded. “With weapons, armor, and climbing gear, there will only be room left for the enchanted vessels.”

        “You can carry those,” Viktor said, lifting a protected leather case that made a faint tinkling sound.

        “Very well,” Stafe said. The padding of the case muffled the noise of the vessels, but Stafe remembered the ringing and clanking of the specially prepared glass containers from when he’d carried them. He’d have to be careful that the dragon didn’t hear them on their climb.

        “What happened to your vessels?” Viktor asked.

        Stafe shrugged. “Probably in pieces at the top of the mountain. Along with pieces of my armor and the rest of my gear.”

        “I don’t think that’s all you left on that mountain,” Viktor said.

        Stafe turned away. “I have a few more arrangements to make, and I’d like to say my goodbyes. Just in case.”

        “I understand.”

        “I’ll meet you at the northern trail, an hour after dawn. The lower slopes of the mountain will be warm enough then. The hard going doesn’t start until we get farther up.”

        “I’ll expect you there,” Viktor said.

* * *

        Mariyah greeted Stafe with a warm hug and an offer of tea, which he declined. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

        “Viktor wants me to take him up the mountain.”

        “I see.” She settled into a chair. “And what did you say?”

        “I said I would.”

        “Stafe.”

        “I have no choice, Mariyah. It’s either that or he delivers the king’s justice.”

        “He would do that?”

        “Apparently,” Stafe said.

        “And you can’t beat him.”

        “No.” Stafe sank into a chair opposite her. “Maybe one time I might have, but even if that were true, that was a long time ago. He’s younger, he’s stronger, and he’s dangerous.”

        “You know the village would defend you,” she said.

        “I know. And Naran would be the first into the fray. I can’t allow that to happen.” He shook his head. “I can’t risk it.”

        Mariyah searched his face, then nodded. She grabbed a stoppered bottle from a nearby shelf, opened it, took a quick swig, and passed it to Stafe. He smelled the strong odor of fermented sap and took a long pull. The bittersweet liquid coated and warmed his throat and stomach. “Thank you.”

        “When are you going to tell him?” Mariyah asked.

        “When he’s back from cutting.”

        “He won’t like it.”

        “I’ll just have to convince him,” Stafe said.

        Mariyah reached for the bottle and Stafe passed it back. She took another quick gulp. “I’ve known Naran a long time. He’s a good man, a man of conviction. And he’s strong. A few years before you came to the village, his friend, Kavi, felt wronged by another man. Kavi stayed up all night drinking strongsap and lillywine and got it in his head to settle his grievance violently. Naran, who had been consoling Kavi and listening to his woes, knew better than to let this happen. So he stopped Kavi the only way he could. He wrapped Kavi up in those tree trunk arms of his and pinned him to the ground for hours, until Kavi calmed down and started listening to reason.” Mariyah held out the bottle to Stafe again. “Do you think he wouldn’t do the same to you, the man he loves, if he thought it best?”

        Stafe snatched up the bottle and took another long pull. She was right. Even if Naran couldn’t restrain him—and Stafe was fairly sure he could—then he would make things difficult. It might even spur him to some noble but foolhardy act. “So you’re saying I shouldn’t tell him.”

        Mariyah shrugged. “I don’t take lying lightly.”

        “I know.”

        “But you know Naran. I think you’re right that he could get hurt, and I don’t want to see that any more than you.”

        “Do you think I should go?” Stafe asked.

        Mariyah sighed. “I do not want to see Sukkora killed. She is something rare and wonderful in this world. That your people sent you both to do this is abhorrent. On the other hand, she has survived this long by being savvy, and strong. My concern is for you.”

        She leaned forward and placed one hand on Stafe’s leg, the other on his cheek. “I know what you saw in that cave, and I know what it reminded you of. I often think the sins of your past left deeper scars than the dragon did. Your spirit is steeped in guilt. It weighs you down.” She gave him a sad smile. “If this task can shed some of it from you, if it can help free you, then I welcome it. But you must survive and come back to us. Survive both Viktor and the dragon.” She gently slapped his cheek. “I don’t want to have to sew you together again. Your job is to stay alive. Whatever it takes.”

        Stafe nodded and prepared himself for what he would need to do.

* * *

        That night, Stafe acted as he normally would when Naran returned from the day’s cutting. They ate together, they slept together. Stafe was only forced to lie once, when Naran asked about Viktor. “He’s preparing for the journey up the mountain,” Stafe said.

        “And he hasn’t accosted you?” Naran asked.

        “I talked to him,” Stafe said. “He asked me questions about my time on the mountain.”

        Naran shook his head. “I can’t imagine getting the idea of trying to kill a dragon.”

        “The stories back home, in Estria, say a dragon’s organs have power. Power that can be used to heal or strengthen. I’ve seen books containing recipes and instructions for wondrous things.”

        “But at what cost?” Naran propped himself up on his elbows. “You almost died. This Sloat may die.”

        “I’ve told you how strict duty is in Estria. We’re trained to obey. The army and knighthood only intensify that. You don’t just learn to serve the king, you do so eagerly. You learn to enjoy it. So when he asks you to undertake a special quest... it’s hard to say no.”

        Then Naran said something that chilled Stafe for the rest of the night. “The way you talk about your homeland, I wonder why the king doesn’t just send one of his armies to kill the dragon.”

        “There is a mountain pass east of here that would be hard to navigate with an army. And his soldiers are always occupied,” Stafe said, but he wondered. Would the king’s situation ever be desperate enough for him to try?

        Stafe slept curled close against Naran’s warmth, trying, for just a moment, to feel the way he usually did in his husband’s arms.

        In the morning, Stafe waited while Naran dressed and left the hut, then quickly rose and dressed for climbing. Before leaving, he left the note he’d carefully written out. At its end he begged for Naran’s forgiveness, and he repeated the words aloud before gathering his gear and leaving.

        His Estrian sword, once as familiar to him as one of his own limbs, felt cumbersome as it slapped against his leg. But they were going to face a dragon, and a knife was no protection against a creature like that. A sword was barely better, truth be told. It was a contingency, nothing else. Stafe didn’t intend to take part in any battle if he could help it.

        As he knew from Naran, the woodcutters had moved their work to the western slopes of the mountain, where the timber was thicker and dryer. So the first person Stafe saw after leaving his hut was Viktor. He wore a mail shirt, as he’d intended, beneath furs. The rest of his armor must have been stashed in the large pack he carried.

        Viktor held out the other pack with the alchemical vessels. “Yours,” he said.

        The contents of the pack faintly clinked as Stafe strapped it across his back, evoking memories of his ride from Estria. “Magister Falkan’s work?”

        “The same,” Viktor said. “You’d find him little changed, I’d wager. Perhaps the slightest bit more wrinkled and dry. But still as tough as leather.”

        “I was a little afraid of him before we’d met,” Stafe said. “I’d heard the stories about his studies and experiments. But his constant fretting soon convinced me that all he cared about were his bottles and jars.”

        “I would venture he’s even more of a mother hen now. He fussed over that pack you’re holding for over an hour.”

        Stafe shook his head, then flushed with guilt, realizing how he’d been relaxing, almost enjoying the exchange. “We’d best get on,” he said, and pushed ahead.

        Hours later, they reached the upper slopes of the mountain. Viktor had moved confidently up the lower slopes and now seemed undaunted by the rockier, steeper ground ahead.

        “Don’t the Ofrans fear the dragon?” Viktor asked, reaching for a handhold.

        “They are wary, to be sure,” Stafe said. “They don’t hunt or cut wood on this side of the mountain, and no one travels up this far.” Stafe pulled himself up to an outcrop, then clapped the dust and grit from his hands. “It doesn’t bother them much, the dragon. Occasionally, it makes off with a goat or pig, but it usually hunts the seals on the coastline and leaves the village alone.”

        “I can’t imagine living so long under the shadow of such a beast,” Viktor said.

        Can’t you? Stafe thought.

        Viktor wiped dirt from his surcoat. “Is it true that they worship it?”

        “Not worship,” Stafe said. “More of a healthy respect. They know it is an ancient and unique creature. They feel blessed to live in the dragon’s shadow.”

        “It is unique,” Viktor said, pressing on. “A relic. But even if its kind hadn’t been killed off long ago, Estria wouldn’t permit one inside its bounds.”

        “And yet this one is of vital importance to Estria’s king.”

        “Yes.”

        “It could be said that we often kill without thinking through the consequences,” Stafe said.

        Viktor didn’t respond.

        Soon after, the terrain became more treacherous, and they were forced to resort to ropes. Stafe offered to go first and secure the climbing spikes, but Viktor insisted on taking the lead.

        “You know, you’re still remembered back in Estria,” Viktor said. “And not just for the dragon.”

        “Oh?” Stafe asked, searching for a place to put his foot.

        “Do you remember Kerrick Lorei?”

        “The name is familiar,” Stafe said.

        “Have you forgotten so much of your old life already? He remembers you. He was at the Battle of Dumant. He talks often about how you led your men to victory over a much larger and better-armed force. Do you remember that at least?”

        Stafe’s hand trembled as it reached for the next hold. Of course he remembered Dumant. He had wrested victory from the grasp of certain death, but only through cunning and savagery. It had been his first command, and much rode on the outcome, for Estria and himself. He faced a superior force ensconced within a stronghold, opposed only by his paltry cavalry and weary soldiers, many of whom lacked the necessary experience. War had already shown him the hypocrisy of knightly honor—the carnage a knight was required to inflict on the enemy, or on their own troops, was rarely honorable—so he had told his second to unleash the men and let them run wild through the territory.

        The ploy had been successful. The enemy had not been prepared for the brutality of the Estrian troops, and it lured them out from their walls into the villages, where Stafe redirected that same brutality against them. It had been a desperate gamble, but it had won him the city.  

        Stafe hadn’t been naïve—he was aware of the cost of such savagery—but the savagery was largely removed, presented to him as categories and numbers. History would remember it as that, if at all. Even as Stafe rode into the city at the head of his troops, Dumanti citizens lined the road holding out flower garlands or gifts of bread or alcohol, hoping to endear themselves to the Estrians. Stafe found himself drawn to one woman, an undecipherable expression on her dirty, tear-streaked face. She, too, held out a bundle to him, but inside was a baby, maybe only a few months old, soaked in blood, its head crushed. Killed, most likely, by his men.

        To Stafe’s everlasting shame, he had spurred his horse forward, avoiding the woman’s gaze. That night the troops celebrated and feasted, yet despite all he drank, and despite the young man he’d found to share his bed, he couldn’t banish the sight of that baby, on that day or any other since.

        “Do you?” Viktor asked. “Remember?”

        “Yes,” Stafe said, and no more.

* * *

        The climbing was slow going with their burdens and Viktor’s mail, and nightfall was fast approaching as they reached the wide ledge that lay below the dragon’s nest, the last resting spot before the ascent to their quarry. “We should stop here to rest,” Stafe said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “Tackle the final leg at first light.”

        “I don’t want to wait,” Viktor said.

        “But she is most active at night,” Stafe said. “And we’re tired from the climb.”

        “No!” Viktor slapped his hand on a boulder. “I won’t stop now. Not to sleep in the cold and wake up cramped and sluggish. And risk you slinking off in the night.” A raised hand waved off Stafe’s oncoming protest. “I feel the fire in my blood now. Yes, the climb took some of our strength, but we are here together. With Estrian steel in our hands.”

        Stafe beckoned Viktor to the rim of the ledge. Viktor tensed but complied. There, in a shallow depression in the stone, were piled hundreds of old bones, cracked and yellowed, long stripped clean of any flesh. “Some of remains of Sukkora’s feasting.”

        Viktor stepped forward in morbid fascination, peering at the bones. Up close, the damage was more evident—many of them crushed or scorched. Some were animal bones, seals or wild goats maybe, but others were clearly human.

        “Is that mail?” Viktor asked.

        “It is,” Stafe said. “I make out Celantine work, Amarek, and even Estrian.” He let his words sink in. “We are not the first to come seeking this creature.”

        Viktor met Stafe’s eyes. “But we will be the last.”

        “Can you be sure?” Stafe waved at the bones. “People have been sent here for generations, judging by the armor, tossing lives away for the dragon’s treasures. We are not heroes. We are, each of us, a toss of the dice, a throw of the dart. They gamble with us like we’re coin.”

        Viktor was silent for a long moment, though his eyes stayed locked on Stafe’s. “Does your honor depend so greatly on others?” he said at last. “I’m no fool. I know that to some, my life is currency. I serve my king loyally, and well, and I do this task for him. But I also do it for me. I am no wealthy scion, heir to a noble house. I had to build myself up, like you. I must create myself daily as the man I wish to be, and my honor is the foundation of all of it.”

        He grabbed Stafe by the shoulders. “Join me. Reverse the failures of your past. Restore your honor. Help me kill this beast, then let me return to Estria to tell them you’re dead. Live your life here in peace knowing that in the end, you served your king. Knowing you are finally free.”

        Stafe thought of Mariyah’s words, the weight. He felt it keenly now. To be able to set it down...

        He nodded.

        Victor clapped his hands together, eyes gleaming. “Yes! Two knights of Estria, swords joined in the service of our king. I welcome your help, brother.” He clasped Stafe’s hand.

        They moved on with renewed vigor, closing on the dragon’s nest, which lay in a cave near the summit. Stafe stopped Viktor when they were near, as the last amber wisps of sunset colored the sky. “It’s just over that rise.”

        Viktor shrugged off his pack and began removing the other pieces of his armor. He held out a gauntlet to Stafe. “Help me?”

        Stafe helped Viktor strap on his armor, and the smell of cold metal and leather and oil took him back to his days as squire, just one step in the long climb to knighthood. His fingers moved without thought, securing buckles and tightening straps. For just a moment, he felt naked.

        “You better stay in the rear,” Viktor said, donning his half-helm. “Only attack if you see an opportunity. I’ll try to keep its attention on me.”

        Stafe nodded. An honorable knight to the last. He was getting ready to draw his sword when there was the sound of rocks being crunched and scattered. Then a massive shadow passed over them.

        “She’s on the wing!” Stafe hissed. “Fuck the goddess!”

        “No,” Viktor said, a bright gleam in his eyes. “This is fortuitous.”

        “How?”

        “It must return to its nest, no? We can prepare for that. Turn its lair to our advantage. How long will it be gone?”

        Stafe shrugged. “As long as it takes her to hunt. Maybe an hour. Maybe more.”

        “Time enough for us to cut some trees, build some defenses. But first, let me see this nest.”

        Viktor pressed on to the cave that served as the dragon’s nest and Stafe followed, numbly. It now seemed smaller than he remembered but just as dark. At the entrance, Viktor raised a hand to his nose. The smell brought Stafe back to that first time—the stink of something animal, of long years spent nesting in the cave. For a moment he was back then, clad in mail, sword in hand, filled with a fire that felt the rival of anything the dragon could muster. The sighing of its breath, the scrape of its claws. The large wedged head and those terrible reptilian eyes. Still, he had strode into the cave, shield up, weapon out.

        Then the dragon had shifted, and what he’d seen behind her made him falter. A pale shape, ovoid, larger than a man. It was just a moment, fleeting and swift as a starling, then the beast was upon him and he never stood a chance.

        “The lantern,” Stafe urged, and Viktor unshuttered it, lighting up the interior of the cave. Stafe’s eyes immediately sought the rear, where he had seen it, but there was nothing there.

        Had he imagined it?

        As if in answer, a scream came from their left. Viktor swiveled the lantern and Stafe drew his sword, heart hammering, pulse pounding. His body recognized the dragon’s roar before his mind did, only it was weaker, and pitched much higher. The light fell on a shape that didn’t make sense at first. A wedged head, reptilian eyes, and claws, yes, but much smaller. Too small. A juvenile, hatched from the egg Stafe had seen when he’d confronted the dragon.

        Viktor’s lips curled back in a smile. “A hatchling,” he said, in awe. “Do you know how rare that is? And how lucky?”

        Stafe did know how rare it was. He had read the same books Viktor had, and he knew what Viktor was thinking. This was still a dragon—in possession of the same organs, containing the same essence that alchemy could transmute into a cure for the king—only it was far easier prey. Two Estrian knights against a dragon barely larger than a courser. Could it even breathe fire?

        “Stay alert,” Viktor said. “If we’re smart, we can be gone before the mother returns.”

        Stafe stepped forward as Viktor assumed a fighting stance, sword arm raised high. Stafe shifted his sword to his left hand. His eyes were fixed on the young dragon backed up against the wall, screaming in defiance, and yet there was fear there, too. A creature of another era, falling victim to a legacy not of its making.

        “Get the alchemical vessels ready,” Viktor said. The tone of his voice was confident. He knew he could take this fledgling.

        Stafe shrugged the pack free, letting it fall to the ground. The glass within tinkled.

        “Quick, now!” Viktor urged.

        Stafe threw open the case, revealing the metal and glass objects within. He laid his sword on the ground, hoping he wasn’t making a mistake. Then he grabbed for the vessels, two in each hand, and hurled them at the cave entrance. The glass cracked, the metal rang out.

        Viktor’s head snapped around. “Why?” he screamed, even as Stafe threw four more of the vessels at the cave entrance.

        Viktor moved toward Stafe, his sword raised to attack. Stafe threw the whole pack now at the entrance, setting off more cracks and tinkles and pings. Stafe had a moment to wonder if it would be enough, and then Viktor was upon him.

        Stafe slashed wildly, hoping to keep Viktor back, but Viktor parried and slammed a mailed fist into Stafe’s shoulder, knocking him back.

        Stafe tried to push aside the pain but was keenly aware of his lack of armor and Viktor’s superior prowess with the sword.

        Viktor’s expression was one of utter hurt and betrayal. “I thought you wanted to restore your honor!”

        “Not by killing a helpless creature,” Stafe said through gritted teeth.

        “It’s a beast!”

        Stafe shook his head. “The true beast sits atop the Estrian throne. The damage he’s done is far greater.”

        Viktor shook his head in disbelief. “You’re mad.” His expression turned from shock to disgust to anger, and he came at Stafe, his sword swinging with savage fury. Stafe only just managed to parry the strike, feeling the impact jar him to the bone. The clang of metal on metal rang out inside the cave.

        Stafe’s sword arm was already numb, but still Viktor swung at him, his face a mask of ferocity. Stafe did his best to stand his ground, but the onslaught forced him back, and his boot caught a patch of loose rock or earth. He went down, desperately holding up his sword to ward off the killing blow.

        Viktor shifted his stance to seize the opportunity. At the same time, Stafe heard a great heaving, as if by great wings, and he did the thing neither of them expected. He scrambled toward the cave entrance.

        “Coward!” Viktor screamed.

        But his words were soon drowned out by the roar of the mother dragon as she descended. Stafe was only just clearing the entrance as her dark bulk blocked out the stars.

        Fear seized every part of him—the memory of the dragon and her savagery sinking its claws into muscle and bone, mind and mettle, spirit and soul. All thoughts of Viktor were lost as Stafe threw himself clear. A moment later, he heard its fiery breath, felt the searing heat scorch over him, and he shut his eyes tight, sliding, slipping, and scraping down the side of the mountain.

        He slammed hard against the stone ledge. He crawled to the pile of bones, collapsing there, still and silent, as if he were one of the likewise dead.

* * *

        Stafe awoke a few hours before dawn, his body protesting in pain from the bruises and cuts that covered it. Beneath him dangled the ropes from their climb. There was no sign of Viktor.

        Stafe descended, the sun at its zenith as he reached the lower slopes of the mountain bloodied and bruised, his clothing in tatters. His Estrian sword had been lost in his fall, another fossil in the mountain’s bounty.

        He managed to make his way to Mariyah’s hut before passing out again. When he opened his eyes, her face was hovering above his, full of concern. “At least you fared better this time.” She clasped his hand. “Thankfully.”

        Stafe clasped her back. “Thank you. Again.”

        “What happened?”

        “I led him to the cave.” Stafe closed his eyes. “Then I left him to the dragon.”

        “So he’s dead?”

        “If he isn’t here, I think he must be.”

        Mariyah nodded. “You did what you had to do.”

        “Have you spoken to Naran?”

        “He’s very hurt.”

        “Yes,” Stafe said. “He would be.”

        “You’ll have to convince him,” Mariyah said.

        Stafe grasped for her hand again. Tears spilled down his cheeks. “It’s the only thing I’ll do. It’s the only thing that matters now.”

        Yet the next morning, he knew his words to be false. It wasn’t the only thing that mattered. As he watched the sun rise, Stafe couldn’t help think of what lay to the east, the scores of knights who might one day take up the challenge to slay the dragon. Every day he would try to convince his husband to forgive him, and every night he would wish death on the man he once served, the Estrian king, each time hoping that the past could truly find rest.

Copyright © 2021 Rajan Khanna

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Rajan Khanna is an author, reviewer, podcaster, musician, and narrator. His three novels, Falling Sky, Rising Tide, and Raining Fire, take place in a post-apocalyptic world of airships and floating cities. His short fiction has appeared in Analog, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and multiple anthologies. His articles and reviews have appeared at Tor.com and LitReactor.com, and his podcast narrations can be heard at Podcastle, Escape Pod, PseudoPod, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Lightspeed . He lives in Brooklyn, where he’s a member of the Altered Fluid writing group. His personal website is www.rajankhanna.com/ and he tweets, @rajanyk.

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A LAND OF SAINTS AND MONSTERS

by Isabel Cañas

Northeastern Rûm, 487 Hicri (1094 AD)

        Rûm. In these open, sun-white steppes west of the caliphate, these black craggy mountains, saints like the dervish Ilyas and I run wild. Our hair free and bleached red, our cheeks stung by wind, our powers unseen and unfettered.

        And so we would remain, if we chose solitude and the wilderness. If we choose otherwise, Ilyas once warned, we pay the price.

        I chose Armen. And I paid that price with my freedom.

        Legend says the caliph gave Melik Dani_mend his own banner to raise as he and his warrior gazis set out west from Baghdad. To Rûm the pious king rode, and with the black standard high, he and his raiding cavalry devoured the land between Melitene and Sebastia. His conquests swept to Evdokia. To Amaseia, which he named Har_ana.

        To me.

        And it is easy to claim a young woman as bounty. Easier still for a warrior of the faith to bind a saint to his cause, when he knows verses heavier than any shackles.

        A part of me cannot begrudge his actions. It was the decision of a canny leader, to enslave a saint. He saw what burned in me, took my uncalloused hands, and put a mace in them. He made me a warrior. He made me more than that.

        I became his weapon.

        And as Melik Dani_mend’s conquests brought him closer to the shores of the Pontic Sea, where mist-girdled mountains studded with Roman fortresses dove into dagger-edge valleys, I learned that it was wise to have such a weapon.

        For these forests are home to monsters.

* * *

        “We’re being stalked.”

        It’s dawn, cold and sheathed in mist blue as steel, when Armen appears before Melik Dani_mend to give his report. I stand a half step behind Melik, a slave’s respectful distance from the king, but I peer unabashedly at Armen. Rations are lean and night watches long near the end of campaign season, but I hunger for the sight of him more than any hot meal or uninterrupted rest. For the certainty of his presence near me. For the opportunity, however brief, to see how he is faring.

        Badly, it seems; though the hold of his shoulders is resolute, sleeplessness weighs beneath his eyes like a bruise. His dark hair is tied away from his face, premature hollows and deep lines around his usually easy mouth. Though I see him too little to know if this exhaustion is due to the end of the season or something worse, I fear it is the latter.

        Around us, tents and sleeping pallets collapse in on themselves with haste. Horses toss their heads; they taste the bite of anxiety on the autumn air and stamp impatiently. Gazi warriors cast glances over their shoulders, bark at one another to be quicker. Their tempers have the short burn of men who know they are being watched.

        The men standing guard saw something in the night, Armen reports; unlike other nights, however, all the gazis are accounted for. Melik Dani_mend’s brow furrows. We are four days’ ride yet from Sivas, the name the Turks have given Sebastia. That means three nights without the protection of its walls.

        “Be alert,” the king tells me.

        I nod my assent, but my eyes fix on Armen’s retreating back. He never once looked at me once as he spoke to Melik. The awareness of this aches dully in my breast, a thumb pressed into a yellowing bruise.

        Before we ride, the men turn south and Melik leads them in prayer. I hang back with the horses, pretending to occupy myself with mending a stirrup leather damaged in our last raid. I listen to the sweep of their clothing as foreheads bow to earth; to the fear humming on the air, lacing the prayers with a sick melody.

        Armen is among them. I know why he avoids me—to protect me from Melik’s ire. The words we exchange are skittish, ginger. It feels as if a limb has been broken off, this distance between us.

        You’re home, we once swore to one another, the warmth of our breath mingling in the dark of the fortress courtyard.

        I know guilt keeps him from my side. In a way, they are his fault, these shackles of mine. My place at Melik’s side. How I was strapped to a stake in a fortress not unlike the ones we have since helped the king sack. In my hour of direst need, when my own father called me a demon, when smoke blackened my throat as I screamed for help, Armen was already gone.

        Yes, it is Armen’s fault I was left alone. But when I was saved, when I was given shelter, I was the one who chose to turn my back on the other saints.

        I chose Armen.

        The fault for what befell me afterwards is all my own.

* * *

        “Efromiya!”

        A voice shatters my uneasy sleep. That is my name since I became a slave—no longer Eumorphia but Efromiya, a typical Turki mangling of syllables—and it is sharp with panic: “Efromiya!”

        I am on my feet, reaching for my boots and mace in the dark. I don’t have time to strap on my sword. It could be Romans. It could be worse. Either way, I don’t need a weapon. But I feel safer with its weight against my palm as I tear through the tent opening and sprint toward my name.

        I nearly collide with Melik Dani_mend; I gasp and fall back a step. My bow is shallow with haste.

        He is a head taller than me, his shoulders broad from a decade of campaigning. Gray streaks his beard and his hair, which is loose around his drawn face; a shirt of light mail was thrown haphazardly over what looks like a sleeping shirt. He was roused as suddenly as I, and like me, he is armed: he grips a long spear in one hand.

        The spear is tipped with silver. It winks in the torchlight held by another gazi at his side—Ömer, the king’s standard-bearer, a friend of Armen.

        Ah. So it has come to a head. That which has been stalking us has made itself known. My focus sharpens; the fingers of my free hand uncurl, fan into a stretch, and recurl as a loose fist. My weight shifts to my toes, ready to sprint after quarry. This was why I was awakened, after all: it is time to send the saint after the monster. The eagerness of the hunt builds in my belly as I await the king’s command.

        The torchlight carves Melik’s grim expression deep. “Armen is gone.”

        My stomach drops out beneath me.

        My eyes flick to the silver-tipped spear, then back to Melik’s face.

        No.

        Armen can’t have been taken. No one is found after disappearances like that.

        It is a death sentence.

        “Where?” A ragged, desperate demand: let me get him.

        Melik points to the north end of camp, nearest to us. “He was on second watch, and—”

        I dive into the dark.

        Our camp fills a clearing among the thickening trees. Its weak halo of yellow light—torches, the embers of cooking fires—is powerless against the night, and the sickle moon is long set. My desperation is a rope tied fast to Armen, and on it I am a drowning sailor; one hand follows the other, one step after another. I will find him. I must. He is my home, and always has been. The one soul I cling to though I have lost everything else.

        Twigs sting my face. I pump my legs as hard as I can, clawing my way through the forest. Low branches pummel my arms; I break them back with my mace.

        I follow instinct into the darkness, then I hear it: a weak cry, the snarling of a beast. A wet, sick sucking.

        I still at once; my boots sink into soft earth as the hairs on the back of my neck stand erect. “Armen?”

        A violent hiss slices the dark. Suddenly, there is a burn of red eyes in the black. Red like a storm dawn; red like a splatter of blood.

        They are fixed on me.

        Every mortal part of me screams flee. I, too, am prey. But there is a stronger force in me: anger washes over feral knowledge. A deluge, a flood of fire.

        This monster took Armen.

        I plant my feet apart in a firm stance. Throw down my mace. It hits the ground with a thick thud.

        I hold out my hands before me and shut my eyes.

        I feel.

        I am tendrils in the dark, seeking the white of bones, seeking the monster, seeking hunting craving to break.

        I find my quarry.

        Me, my power—I, it—together seize the monster’s body, trace its ribs, its spine, its tenderly bent arms. My power would unleash on the monster’s all, but I have a different plan.

        I hold all fifty-four bones of the monster’s two hands in my mind and, with a surge of will, I shatter them.

        A deadweight thump; the cracking of twigs. A man’s scream splits the forest.

        Not Armen’s scream.

        Now that my power knows the taste of the monster’s bones, it flies like an arrow to the marks I set it: one thighbone snaps, wet as the cracking of a green branch. The body hits the undergrowth; the howls are ceaseless now. My power snakes up over the arch of the hips, up the stairs of the spine to the ribcage.

        It took Armen.

        I fasten my power on one rib, not allowing it to snap—not yet, not yet—but pressing with gradually increasing pressure until it splinters. What soft things it wounds inside the monster’s body are beyond my knowing; all I taste is the shape of the white, the stark curve of bones.

        I move to the next rib. The monster is shrieking now, its pitch searing the night.

        I press harder. I want it to be in agony for taking Armen.

                Shouts; crescendoing footsteps. I am faintly aware of Melik and his men approaching; I sense the movement of their bones as if through a thick fog.

        But I am focused on the next rib. Slow, slow, shatter. I have seven left, and I swear I will break every single—

        “Efromiya.”

        I open my eyes. The panicked leaping of torchlight cuts through the trees. It illuminates the scene before me: two bodies in the undergrowth, one limp, its front drenched with blood. Armen. The other writhing in pain, wrenching away from the light.

        The monster. I hold my pressure on the rib in my power’s grasp. The monster’s steel-on-stone shrieking continues; every other nighttime sound is drowning in it. It fills the valley, it strikes the distant mountains.

        I look down.

        Its face is that of a young man.

        Perhaps it was once handsome, but now it is gaunt, its jaundiced hollows carved deeper by the torchlight, its skin scarred and scabbed and tanned like hide by sun and wind. Its clothes—for the monster still wears clothes, remnants of a once-life—are tattered, stiff with blackened gore. Its face contorts in agony, its mouth wide and gaping, bearing fangs as long as a wolf’s and jagged at the edges for slicing flesh.

        The teeth shine with blood. Armen’s blood. The monster’s chin is slick with it.

        I release the rib. My power snakes up the monster’s spine, and I and it—my power and the rage building inside me like a blacksmith’s furnace—snap the monster’s neck.

        The shrieking cuts off.

        Silence presses on my eardrums, firm muffling hands.

        Someone steps forward from the group behind me. It’s Melik. Though the night is cold, sweat glistens along his hairline. His chest rises and falls from the exertion of pursuit.

        He nudges the body with the tip of his boot.

        An arm twitches. Fast as a reflex, my power halves its bone; the crack splits the silence. Melik flinches. Everyone behind me jumps.

        Then Melik raises the spear. A whispered bismillah, a falcon-swift strike, and the silver tip is buried in the monster’s neck, pinning it to the earth.

        A final shriek rips the night, sharp claws shredding the veil between us and the unknown. A wind rises, impossibly, from among the trees; I fight the urge to fall back from the acrid smell it whips around us. The monster’s body turns to ash, lifts, dissipates.

        Behind me, men murmur verses of protection. Calloused fingers brush amulets—tiny Qurans in metal cases worn around their necks, verses inked in cloth. Beneath their mail are talismanic shirts embroidered with protective verses by loving mothers and sisters. Protection from infidels and monsters alike.

        I shift my stance; as my outstretched hands fall and my power shifts into rest, the last thing I feel is the bodies of men leaning away from me.

        Perhaps they pray for protection from saints as well.

        One man has come forward and fallen to his knees. Ömer. He cries out once, soft and desperate, at the sight before him and begins fumbling for bandages from a bag at his side.

        Armen.

        My home. My beacon. Men with torches creep forward, illuminating frank splatters of blood and torn flesh. No. The front of Armen’s shoulder is an open wound, as if he has been mauled by a wolf where neck meets breast.

        Armen. He is my whole world, and now his eyes are closed, his face drained and hollow. The fevered voices around me dull to noise, my guts a wet slick inside me. There is nothing but Armen’s face in the frantic leaping light of the torches. The rise and fall of his breathing: shallow, labored, wet.

        I can’t keep my hands from trembling. How can I help him? Bones, I know. I shatter I crack I splinter. But other parts of the body? I am powerless. My mother—she was a saint in all but name, her unearthly gifts disguised by poultices and incense and prayers. But she is dead six winters.

        I should fall to his side to help staunch the blood. I can’t. Anything my mother taught me has been cleared and written over with combat footwork and grips on a hilt, with the new sinew to strike with a mace from a gallop, with the focus required to hold the skulls of seventeen Romans in my mind and break them in a fell blow.

        I am destruction. I cannot nurture. That part of me died when Melik made me a weapon.

        My hands hang useless at my sides as Ömer binds Armen’s wounds and directs men to lift him. As the torches move back to camp through the dark.

        Melik is the only one who remains by my side. “Well done.”

        The words glance off me, arrows turned by a thick shield. Every word of praise from Melik is currency, one coin closer to a freedom that—if he deems me worthy—I may be mercifully granted before he dies. Otherwise I am like a jinni trapped in a ring, bound to him until his dying breath, my first and most explicit command to prevent him from dying in the first place.

        Yet I don’t care. My mind is full of Armen. Armen’s flesh ripped open. Armen in the stable in the castle in Amaseia. Armen running beside my fat gray pony as he taught me to ride years ago. The rich summer sun reddening his hair, gilding his skin like an idol. I knew then there was no one for me but him, though I never said so aloud. Everything that was expected of me in those days—skirts, piety, submission—made me want to rip my dresses off. With Armen I could always just be.

        But then he left.

        He was bringing horses in from pasture when he spied a lone traveler resting beneath a tree, a great man with a thick gray beard and hawk-like pale eyes: Melik Ahmet Dani_mend. Ahmet the wise, Ahmet of the far-sight, a warrior king from the caliphate who claimed to see the future in dreams not because he was a saint, but because he was God-touched. He offered Armen freedom, bounty, land. A chance to win a world of his own.

        He promised Armen me.

        When he told me this, Armen said he feared there was no other future for us. He was the orphaned son of a nomad; my father was a lord who betrothed me to a stranger twice my age. My wedding was on the horizon; our time together grew lean.

        So he accepted Melik’s offer.

        But when he begged me to run with him, my limbs cooled with fear. The gazis were our enemy. They swept in from the east like the Scythians of legend, burning castles and stealing women and boys to be sold in the markets of Aleppo and Baghdad.

        I didn’t leave with him.

        That was my first mistake.

        Melik’s words break into my thoughts. “You need to go to him.”

        I murmur something in the affirmative, even as dull pain fans across my shoulder blades. An attack like this always costs me. Tomorrow I will be wooden in the saddle, spine stiff and curled as a crone.

        There will be no tomorrow if Armen dies.

        I will go and sit at his side, and... and do what? Watch as he expires before me, as the one home I have ever known slips through my powerless fingers?

        “You must keep watch,” Melik says. “If he shows signs of becoming one of them, you must kill him.”

        I whirl on the king, too stunned to speak. Then his command finds its hold in my chest; an answer ignites between my ribs. “You can’t make me do that.”

        Ah, but he can. I can already feel his words curling through me like roots, the magic woven into them as real as my own. These are the words of a master to a slave. These are my reward, the price I paid for leaving the dervish, Ilyas. For Armen.

        Grief is heavy in Melik’s eyes. He looks down at me with something so achingly close to pity I want to strip it away and tear it in two. The king is fond of Armen, despite his transgressions. Everyone is fond of Armen. They’re fond of his easy, lopsided smile, the one that shows his chipped incisor. How his clear voice lifts hearts when he sings yearning ballads in his mother’s tongue, as we walk our horses up rocky winding paths in the mountains. Armen is no saint, not the way I am, but he holds a gentle power over people I will never understand.

        You must kill him.

        A cruel fist closes around my throat. I can’t breathe. My eyes sting with the smoke of Melik’s torch. With something hot.

        “My dreams are not clear, Efromiya. There is a chance yet he may survive.” His voice is softer. I can feel it is meant to be comforting, and I loathe it more for the gesture. “But I cannot risk this sickness spreading among my army. Nor Sivas. It is never easy when the fallen are men like Armen, but we must think of the many.”

        Damn the many. I would let them all burn for Armen.

        “You must protect my men. Is that understood?”

        The commands scrape over my clavicles and rest around my neck, their weight an iron chain. I curl stiffening hands into fists. “Understood, my king.”

* * *

        I walk straight to Armen’s tent. I would never dare this on any other day. Thanks to Armen’s love songs, everyone knows what we are, he and I: forged together by fire but ultimately, unmarried. The irony that Melik frets over my virtue while sending me to slaughter his enemies has never escaped me.

        I pull aside the tent opening without announcing myself. Ömer and Gülnu_ Banu—Melik’s wife, skilled in dressing wounds—hover over Armen, their fingers smeared with blood diluted by water. They look up at me in one gesture.

        Their fear strikes me like a cold draft, brittle.

        Our abode is transitory, the dervish Ilyas once warned me. Our life therein but a loan.  The memory of splinters digging into my back as I am tied to a stake is never far from my mind; the ripples of heat rising between me and the crowd, the faces that look on me in fear and disgust. This was why Ilyas cautioned me to stay away from people: the powers of saints cannot be explained by the books or clergy of cross nor crescent. For this, we are either worshipped or burned. We cannot live among them for long.

        Ömer rises, murmurs something to Gülnu_, and brushes past me into the night.

        Gülnu_ pats the earth at her side. Even if she fears me, she has never been unkind. It’s impossible for Gülnu_ to be unkind to anyone. I want to thank her—for this, for understanding what Armen is to me without prying into why we avoid one another—but my tongue sticks to the top of my mouth. I sit back on my heels, mute.

        Armen’s neck is thick with bandages; his skin has a clammy sheen. His pupils flutter beneath closed eyelids, but he does not wake as Gülnu_ dabs his brow with a damp cloth.

        “Did Ahmet say he dreamt about this?” Gülnu_ wonders. As Melik’s wife, she’s the only one who calls him that. As a fellow once-captive, she is the only one apart from Armen who speaks to me in our native tongue.

        I part my dry lips. My voice is raw from shouting Armen’s name. Armen. “Only that it’s not clear.”

        She looses a quiet sigh. When I cast a glance at her, her eyes are distant, lost in thought. She was also the daughter of a Roman castle lord, traveling between fortresses when her caravan was attacked for its riches. She, too, was stolen, but once she had a taste of life on the road with the gazis, a spark lit in her. She converted and married the king and campaigns with him for months at a time, her hands ever busy mending or healing, her cheeks red from wind and laughter, her mouth full of song over the dinner fires. I know what it’s like to live in a fortress and be without use; with Melik, she has purpose, and she crackles merrily with it.

        All my new purpose has ever made me want to do is lay down beneath a tree and never rise again. The knowledge that Armen fights by the king’s side and needs my protection hauls me to my feet every morning. But now...

        “Be careful.” Gülnu_ turns to me now, her posture stiff with concern. “Keep watch.”

        “For what?” I don’t want to know. I don’t want it to be true.

        The corners of her mouth twist softly; she shoots Armen a mournful look. “You’ll know.”

        She stands, wiping her hands on her skirts. Fabric swishes, brushes my back, as she leaves.

        If he shows signs of becoming one of them, kill him.

        A metallic tang sours my mouth: the promise of nausea.

        Armen was convinced there was a way to bend Melik’s power over me. What if I twisted the king’s words in my own mind, or believed an incorrect interpretation of them so fervently I had no choice to act as Melik did not intend? Could that free me from my shackles?

        Fleeing camp last spring was our first trial of Armen’s theory.

        We galloped hard. We knew we’d be followed. I’d been kidnapped before and recaptured at great cost. I am the king’s prized weapon, the mace of the gazis, an infidel girl paving the road of conquest with shattered bones.

        Neither of us fully understood Melik’s ferocity until he and the gazis bore down on us like a landslide. Some commands, it turns out, cannot be bent: Melik ordered me to stop, and I could not move. When attacked, Armen hesitated rather than strike the men he had fought alongside; for this, Melik lessened his punishment. Even in battle, Armen’s gentleness endears people to him.

        I have no such affect on men.

        The lashes had me on my stomach on the raw flagstones of Sivas’s citadel for nearly a week. My broken bones heal with saintly grace, but my flesh festers like any other mortal’s.

        Armen was forbidden from visiting my cell. He came anyway, with poultice and sweet words, Melik’s retribution be damned. “This is my fault,” he whispered. His lips on my hair were as firm as his promise: “I’ll free you if it kills me.”

        Gülnu_ and Ömer have taken off his blood-soaked mail, and without its weight, Armen’s chest rises and falls rhythmically, peacefully. I put a hand over his heart; its beat brushes my palm. I’m overcome with a need for it to fill me, to consume me, to prove to me that Armen is alive and always will be. I bend over and place my ear on his chest; the small bones of my ear vibrate tenderly with each thrum and its echo.    

        We spent so many honey-gold afternoons like this, in the fields outside Amaseia, sleeping off the heat beneath a tree’s shade. I glance up, past the bandages at his throat; my chest contracts with grief. I half expect him to open his eyes and look down at me through dark lashes, a soft, contented smile drawing at his lips. Just like he used to.

        “Wake up.” My voice barely makes it past my lips; it’s then I notice they’re trembling, that tears well in my eyes. My fingers curl into his shirt, over splotches of stiffening blood.

        Our breaths are numbered, Ilyas once said. Our abode is transitory.

        It was Ilyas who saved me from the fire, who heard a fellow saint’s cries and sent his jinni companion, Menüçehr, to rescue me. In the dervish lodge, he taught me about what we were, and the truth of monsters. About how we were created to control the other, the creatures that lurked in the shadowed valleys of the Taurus Mountains and prowled the Pontic coast. These were unnameable creatures, born of the ash of the world’s youth; of these perversions, the gluttonous oburs, the blood-hungry, were an affliction that could spread to and transform men, believer and infidel alike.

        Who was the monster I killed today? Did he have a family? When he was attacked and fell sick, did he remember his name? Himself?

        I don’t know how long I sit there. A dark stain of tears grows on Armen’s shirt. Voices approach and pass the tent; fade. The camp quiets.

        I don’t remember falling asleep, but suddenly I am aware of the woodenness of my spine. My left arm tingles from being pinned beneath me. The torch illuminating Armen’s tent has burned low—I must have been asleep for two hours, maybe three. Dawn has not yet broken; the camp lays cocooned in silence.

        I look down at Armen. The bandages at his neck have soaked through with blood. I lurch up, grasping for the basket of clean rags Gülnu_ left behind, but I don’t know how to replace them, how to clean the wound to prevent infection. I’m paralyzed. What if removing the bandages means he bleeds away quicker than I can replace them? What do I do?

        At least he is breathing easily. That’s good.

        No—he breathes too easily. Even though his face is grey in the dim light, the bandages dark with the glint of new blood.

        I have seen men die. I have seen how blood slips from their lips, staining their teeth and beards as they strike the earth.

        The amount of blood Armen has lost would bring any gazi to his knees, then to his Creator.

        Yet he breathes.

        This realization opens sourly before me, a fruit with a rotten pit. I killed the monster, but I came too late. The damage is done.

        You’ll know.

        Melik’s commands hang around my neck.

        I cannot wait for Armen to get sicker. For Melik’s words to take hold of my bones and force my hands on the person I sacrificed my freedom to be near.

        You must stay, Ilyas told me.

        Ilyas. Ilyas is old as the mountains, old enough to have been the teacher of Iskender, a saint made immortal by legend if not by his search for the waters of eternal life. Ilyas healed my wounds after Menüçehr saved me from fire.

        Perhaps he can save Armen from this.

        If he shows signs of becoming one of them...

        My only boon in this nightmare is that, contrary to Gülnü_ Banu’s words, I don’t know the signs.

        You must protect my men.

        Armen is one of his men.

        Dawn grays as I haphazardly wrap more bandages around Armen’s neck, and lift him one arm slung over my neck.

        In this way, I bend the king’s command: I know the only way I can protect Armen from his wounds is to take him to Ilyas.

* * *

        My warhorse was bred to carry an armored gazi outfitted with weapons and supplies swiftly across an eastern steppe, but still she struggles with our weight as I urge her into a canter. She can’t keep this pace for long, but if my plan works, she won’t have to. Armen slumps before me; I tighten my left arm around his belly, my right on the reins.

        I know we’ll be followed, but I can’t let them stop me. If we are captured and I am made to follow Melik’s command...

        Nothing will tether me to this world anymore.

        I press into Armen’s back and pray. Not to a god, for what god of believers or infidels has a place for monsters in his heart? I reach for a presence I have seen before, someone who once lifted me from heat and smoke. I threw my spirit into the wind that day. I do so now. Desperation is a prayer in all tongues, and the only one that tastes real on mine.

        The jinni Menüçehr whirls out of the air beside me.

        My horse shies violently; I thrust my heels down in the stirrups to brace, clutching Armen’s dead weight as I steady her to a halt.

        She trembles beneath me in the presence of the jinni. I would, too, if I did not know who he was; he appears to mortals as a tangle of vines and branches, his skin mossy and dappled like a fawns. Vines weave through exposed ribs. His head rests higher than any mortal man’s, his face ever-shifting, that of a predator: it is fox, it is wolf, it is brown and green and growing, crowned with the sweep of gazelle’s horns. His legs are a deer’s, hooved and graceful, and his arms are the roots of an oak.

        Eumorphia. A rumbling that sets my horse’s ears flat against her skull: Menüçehr speaks my given name. It settles into my chest like an amulet. Mine, that name is mine. It wakes a part of me that I thought died with my freedom. My hope is an atrophied muscle, but it lifts weakly as the jinni continues. Your friend is unwell.

        “I need help.” My voice cracks over the words. “Will you take us to Ilyas?”

        Menüçehr’s attention turns on Armen. I feel and understand his apprehension more than see it; what mortal could read emotions in a face like that?

        “Please,” I gasp. “He’s...” I tighten my arm around Armen’s middle, aching for the reassuring thrum of his heart. “He’s all I have.”

        Branches creak as Menüçehr shifts his weight, as he turns his ever-shifting face to the east and smells the dawn. Light silvers his horns like dew.

        For a long moment, he is still as a deer. Then, as in dreams, the color of the air shifts; everything beyond his silhouette blurs.

        My horse’s nostrils flare; her ribs expand sharp with panicked breaths. She senses what’s coming. I do too, and relief fills me like wine when Menüçehr speaks it into being:

        Come.

        A cold wind rises. Menüçehr breaks apart into it, and soon, like smoke, so do we.

* * *

        The wind stills. My poor warhorse shies again, throwing up her head in surprise as she takes in a world of new smells.

        A river runs behind us, driving the familiar click of a mill. Ilyas’s dervish lodge stands before us: along, low building at the foot of a mountain, its silhouette stark against the increasingly light eastern sky.

        Memories course through me like water: warmth and a firm roof and the hum of zikr rising and falling like a current as I fall asleep in my small rooms on the other side of the building.

        The day I was strapped to a stake, Ilyas heard my cries and sent Menüçehr to bring me here. Ilyas put poultices on my burns, eased my coughing with dark tea. I learned later his healing abilities were beyond compare: after long centuries of maturing in his powers, Ilyas was capable of miracles prophets would envy.

        He left me one scar. The too-smooth flesh on my calf, puckered and pink at its edges, was meant to remind me of the price any saint paid to be among the people. Why it was prudent—necessary—to live apart.

        “Such is our fate,” he told me then, one hand on his staff, the other on my shoulder, watching dawn sweep into the valley as the sheep milled around us. Appear, perform miracles, vanish again: this was the purpose of our creation, this was how we maintained balance. That, or risk enslavement, like the ancient saint H1z1r—once worshipped as a pagan god of spring, he was now a shadow chained to the throne of a sultan in Ikonion. Or worse, be murdered like Isa of Syria, whose belief in his own invincibility could not save him from the banal cruelty of men.

        “This is why you must stay,” Ilyas said. “To live free and maintain balance.”

        Then, I did not appreciate how precious plentiful food was, nor the luxury of sleeping without a mace by my side, but I loved the tranquility of the lodge. It was a place of quiet routine, where my assumed eventual conversion was not rushed; where I was taught to read and write in Persian and speak Turki, to wake to the rhythm of the dervishes’ prayers at dawn, to be at peace sitting on a rock with my thoughts as I watched the sheep.

        But Armen’s absence was a wound Ilyas could not heal. It festered and wept, its infection creeping red up my arms. It was a mistake, not running with him when I had the chance. Armen strode into my every daydream like a prophet, weaving up the rocky paths of the valley with a lamb tucked beneath one arm and a song on his lips.

        So I left.

        I disguised myself as a boy and walked for three days until I found a village with people who could show me the road to Sivas, the city of the Turks, the seat of the rule of Melik Dani_mend. As I grew closer to Sivas, I asked farmers and shepherds after the king’s army.

        A week after I left the lodge, I ran out of food. I dozed beneath the back awning of a caravanserai, hiding from the spring rains and the night, wondering if I should give up and return to Ilyas in defeat.

        Then I felt the movement of bones; the approach of people, their intent locked on me.

        I opened my eyes. A group of Turks, cloaked and hooded against the rain, the torches of the caravanserai and its stable throwing their faces into deep shadow. I leapt to my feet and held out my hands. My power reached out, tasting their number, their presence, and it touched something tender, something so familiar I gasped.

        One of the men threw back his hood. “Morfia?”

        I dropped my hands. Only one person has ever called me that.

        Armen.

        His embrace knocked the breath out of me. He was bigger than I remembered, or perhaps it was the cloak, the leather armor on his chest, the short beard on his jaw. The heaviness of a sword at his hip. He smelled like campfire and the road, but when I buried my face into his neck he was Armen. My Armen.

        “I thought I lost you,” he said, voice trembling against my hair. “Amaseia, and your father...” He tightened his arms. He must have seen the plume of smoke rising from the castle we once called home, the rumors of my witchcraft. “Everyone said you were dead.”

        I pulled away, took his face in my hands. Tears glistened on his face in the torchlight. They were warm as I wiped them away.

        “I’m fine,” was all I could manage.

        “Is this her?” a man asked in Turki.

        Armen turned; my hands fell from his face, hung loose at my side.

        A broad man with pale eyes took stock of me. The others fanned behind him like a peacock’s tail; this was their leader, this was the man who had tempted Armen away from the castle so many months ago. My fingers flexed. I sized him up as he did me, running my sight over his bones: many were once broken, gnarled from how they had healed. This was a man who had survived much combat.

        Armen switched seamlessly to Turki. “This is Eumorphia, daughter of the tekfur of Har_ana.” To me, in our tongue, he said: “This is the king Dani_mend.”

        The king held out a hand to me—to be kissed, no doubt, as was custom. I held his gaze, narrow-eyed, until he retracted it with a low, thoughtful noise.

        Then he began to recite.

        I recognized the Arabic from the prayers of the dervishes but did not understand what he was saying; only that at once I could not breathe, there was a weight around my neck like chains, and it dragged me down, down...

        My skull rattled as my knees struck earth; I choked, gasping for breath.

        “What are you doing?” Armen’s panic echoed as if from far away, so far, even as he took me by the arm and lifted me, supported my dead weight.

        Darkness suffocated like smoke. Through the black, each brassy strike of Arabic took a face, took a shape, settling into my marrow with meaning: Efromiya of Har_ana, with these words I bind you to my service until the day of my death...

        “You’re making her your slave?” Armen’s voice cracked in horror. “You lied to me! You lied!”

        As my senses dulled to nothing, I thought: Ilyas was right all along.

* * *

        Now I stand in the dawn, facing Ilyas’s lodge as if I had never left. The turn of the mill wheel counts the seconds as I nudge my horse forward toward the door. Insect chitter busily to themselves. Dew crystalizes on the grass in the strengthening light.

        We halt before the door. I slide from the saddle and nearly collapse as Armen’s weight hits me.

        “Sorry,” he murmurs. “So sorry.”

        His voice is like a draught of wine: a sudden flush of warmth in the cold morning. Will he live? “Hush,” I whisper. “Can you walk?”

        He grunts—affirmative. I don’t quite believe him. His head lolls against my shoulder; his forehead brushes my cheek. I expected him to be feverish, but as his skin touches mine, it is too cool.

        I quell my rising panic by telling myself that Ilyas will be able to heal him. There is nothing Ilyas isn’t capable of.

        I half-carry him the last steps to the door. There is no lock; it swings open into warmth, into honeyed light, into the great central room of the lodge. Deep red rugs with geometric patterns cover the walls; low pillows line the edges of the room. For months, this peaceful place was home. It still feels like it.

        A group of dervishes emerge from the prayer room at the sound of the door. When they see me, recognize me despite the mud and the blood, they blink in surprise, as if rising from the thickness of a dream.

        One pushes forward to the front, his sharp aquiline nose and beard illuminated by the gray light spilling into the lodge from the doorway.

        Ilyas.

        I open my mouth to speak, but he cuts me off with a sharp gesture. His eyes are on Armen, and they burn, stoked embers of hatred. “What have you brought here?”

        “My... my friend is sick,” I say. My thighs are burning from the effort of holding Armen upright with his arm slung over my shoulders. “I need help.”

        “A saint seeking to help an obur?” Ilyas’s posture is wide-footed, a defense between me and the dervishes. “No monster crosses this threshold.” Acid is thick on his voice: that is a threat.

        “He’s not—!” I gasp. I can’t bring myself to form my lips around the word. “He’s alive. Please, I can’t lose him. Can’t you heal him?”

        Ilyas holds out a single hand for silence. A moment passes; his eyes rake over Armen. At last he steps forward. Even being in his presence makes the hairs rise on the back of my neck: within this man is lightning curled waiting to strike, a humming power that eclipses my own like clouds swallowing a sickle moon.

        He puts a hand on Armen’s brow, pushing away sweat-stiff hair. He makes an indistinct noise, the lines at the corners of his mouth deepening in thought. “He’s the reason you left, isn’t he?”

        I keep my eyes downcast. Shame and hope twine up my spine. The first because yes, Ilyas is right. I feel it keenly, standing in the presence of all the good Ilyas gave me, all the peace I turned my back on. The second because I feel Ilyas’s energy shifting. My skin tingles in anticipation: he will heal Armen.

        “Yes, pîram,” I murmur in respectful Persian.

        “I should not be sur...” Ilyas begins.

        Then his forearm inadvertently brushes my cheek.

        He jerks back as if stung, his eyes widening like my warhorse’s in surprise.

        In fear.

        “You’re a slave!” Grief clouds his eyes; then it’s gone, swept away by a storm wind’s charge. Thunder is all that’s left. “Is this a trap? Have you led your master here?”

        “No! I swear I would never...”

        “I cannot trust you.” He’s talking over me, backing away, his rage building in the lodge like smoke. “So long as you remain enslaved, you must never return. I will make sure of that.”

        No. He was about to heal Armen. I can’t lose that. “But he needs you! I’ll go, but let me leave him with you, and—”

        “When you left, you chose attachment to the mortal world.” Ilyas’s expression is stone. In the past, I saw flashes of his true ancient self, div-like, flames fanned by his own protective ferocity. A resolute sentinel for the world of men, its lone guard against starving shadows. I once felt safe behind his walls.

        Now, he turns against me.

        “Today you learn the lesson all saints face: that world is transient. Men die.”

        “No, please!”

        “I pray you outlive your enslavement.”

        With a taut gesture, Ilyas holds out his arms, then brings them forcefully together, palms outstretched. A rush of wind; everything dissolves. The lodge, the dervishes, the mountain, the mill.

        We are back in the woods. Not precisely where we left—the trees grow too thickly here. I don’t know where we are. I do know I have no provisions; that the shadows at my back hang close after the openness of the valley.

        Armen groans. I barely hear it. I am numb as I stare at the forest, Armen’s weight so heavy it will drag me down, down, drown me where I stand...

        Eumorphia.

        I look sharply to my right, past Armen’s graying face. Menüçehr is still with me. A soft breeze lifts as his head tilts to the side, his unknowable face towards me. Awareness of his pity sears through me, visceral as the snap of wet bone.

        “He could have healed him,” I cry. “He could have.” It bursts forth on a wave of sobbing. I sway from the force of it, clutching Armen’s arm as if he could steady me, comfort me as he has so many times in our life.

        I do not know if that is true, Menüçehr says carefully. Ease his death, perhaps, but...

        “He is not going to die,” I snap. The strength of my denial, how it strikes like a reflex, shows the truth in stark relief.

        Armen is leaving me. Again.

        I learned my lesson the last time, but now, I do not even have the choice to follow. What can I do?

        Nothing.

        Ease his death, perhaps.

        I am powerless to heal him, but my hands are capable of swift, painless death.

        Yet the thought of taking Armen’s bones, so precious to me, so familiar, in my tender hold and snapping—

        Grief hollows my chest. Its dull, sure strike leaves an empty grave in its wake.

        There is a chance he survives, Menüçehr says slowly.

        But as what? My Armen, my home, a monster?

        I realize I am sobbing. I tremble through each deep inhale I take to steady myself, my chest aching from the effort. I hate weeping. I hate how it hurts.

        He will never be as he was, Menüçehr adds. But there is a chance he may keep what he is.

        When I have found my voice, I ask, “What do you mean?”

        I know oburs, he says. This alone does not shock me. The jinn see all the world’s ugliness, what lurks in its nooks and veiled shadows. But how could one know a monster? I have met those afflicted who keep their minds. In Constantinople. In Baghdad. They act as humans do, even live among one another as humans do, hidden from sight.

        “How?”

        His shrug is sharp, birdlike. The oburs keep their own counsel. But I suspect it is their proximity to men that stays madness, for they are not forced to seek their... sustenance from beasts.

        The prim delicacy with which this jinni—himself so otherworldly, so monstrous—refers to obur bloodlust shocks a wet bark of laughter from my chest. “You think feeding on humanity keeps them human.”

        The only thing I know for certain is what makes them mad, Menüçehr says. Loneliness breaks men, Eumorphia. In the wild, they risk losing their humanity. Perhaps saints, too.

        I swallow the lump thickening my throat as Menüçehr straightens, sniffing the air.

        This farewell is not forever, he says. He bows his great head to me and vanishes.

* * *

        I stumble downhill, the reins in one hand and Armen’s dead weight across my shoulders, my chest pierced by sob-sharp breaths.

        Once, he murmurs my name. But he never fully wakes.

        When I cannot carry him any longer, I scan the forest for a place to rest. We will be well-hidden here; Menüçehr taking us to the dervishes and Ilyas turning us out broke our trail, making us difficult to track.

        Ahead—a jut of rock as tall as two men, the first knuckle of mountain. It’s a solid wall to put my back to, its overhang enough to shelter us from rain. I drop my warhorse’s reins and stumble forward the last few strides with Armen, shifting my weight to soften our fall.

        I roll him onto his back. His breathing is shallower now, the bandages newly wet with blood. Too much blood.

        He can’t survive this. He won’t survive this. My ribs bend with the ache of grief.

        Ease his passing, perhaps.

        I think of the Armen I knew before he left my father’s castle, the one who lifted a hand to shade his sight as he looked over Amaseia’s glittering river, his eyes clouded with billowing dreams. He hungered to prove himself, to win me, to make a world where we could be together. So he risked joining the Muslims.

        Armen left all he knew and changed his creed for a chance for more. For life.

        But the dark glint of blood spells his fate, the fell stroke of a geomancer’s reed: life is no longer a choice. It will end, one way or another.

        I stand. Stiff, unsteady, I return to my warhorse and lead her slightly away from where Armen rests. I loosen her girth and remove what slim supplies are attached to her saddle: two blankets, small and worn. A leather flask of water, stale.

        Wheezing coughs draw me sprinting back to Armen’s side. His eyes are still closed and a trail of blood trickles from the corner of his mouth. Twigs and dead leaves beneath him crinkle and crack as his back arches sharply.

        I cast aside the supplies, my hands outstretched, my power rising. Nausea rises after the reflex. It feels as if I am drawing a sword on myself. It feels wrong.

        I remember the face of the obur that attacked Armen, its lines stark with agony. Beneath the blood splattered on its chin was the face of someone who was once loved. Someone who had a mother, a home.

        Perhaps that monster was afraid.

        And I killed it.

        What makes a monster?

        My hands break bone, shatter skulls. I have swept Rûm like a plague, carving a trail of widows in my wake. I have encountered more monsters protecting Melik’s men than most people see in their lifetime. And yet I know so little of them.

        All I know is that their bones snap like a man’s. I know how silver scorches them. How to defend myself from them.

        Armen looses a soft groan. My heart splits for him, giving like flesh beneath steel. I drop my hands.       He gambled with fate for a new life, and this was what fate gave him. Sweat beads at his hairline, pink foam at his lips; his breaths are wet and gasping.

        He cries out again, pupils flickering frantically beneath his eyelids. His hands rise sharp from his sides, then paw at his neck. I tense, ready to stay his hands and keep them from ruining his bandages. Then I see what he’s doing.

        Months ago, Melik gave him a talisman: a tiny Quran, small enough to fit in his palm, encased in a lacquered box. It hangs around his neck on a chain, for protection in battle.

        A silver chain. It is the silver that is hurting him, though it didn’t before.

        You’ll know, Gülnü_ Banu said.

        In the slick turn of a moment, I know: he is changing. Becoming a monster.

        The weight of Melik’s command slams onto my clavicles. My vision darkens around the edges; flecks of stars drift before me.

        If he shows signs of becoming one of them...

        My wrists twitch, itching to obey. Heat prickles across my shoulders, first thorny, then sharp. The command sinks into me like claws, and my hands rise.

        I clench my jaw. “No.” It’s half grunt, half prayer. The command in my shoulders spreads like roots as instead, I lower my hands to Armen’s neck. My power rises.

        Kill him.

        If there is a way to bend that order, I don’t know it. I am not wise like Ilyas. I have no inexplicable power like Menüçehr.

        I am a weapon.

        Bones are my maces, and spears the thundering hooves of my army. I am a saint of slaughter and splinters; my word to bones supersedes any command of man or god.

        I turn my power on myself.

        I fill my own bones with my will, force my fingers to untangle the talisman from Armen’s clothes and slip it over his head. I cast it aside.

        His skin has gone gray, like steel left in the snow.

        “Shh.” I rock back and forth, watching his face. Still he twitches. “I’m here.”

        Kill him.

        I put my hands in my lap and curl them into fists, so hard they ache. So hard the fragile bones snap. My vision is nothing but stars.

        No.

        I begin to sing, a song he wrote for me; haltingly at first, stumbling over the words of his mother’s tongue. When it ends, I start again. White pain shoots through my hands as they restitch themselves, and snap again.

        I am here, singing in a ragged voice, until the man I would raze Rûm to defend breathes his last.

        It is so quiet I almost miss it: an inhale, an exhale. No more.

        The weight of Melik’s command melts off my shoulders.

        “Armen?”

        I lower my head to his chest. Press my ear to his shirt.

        Silence.

        “You’re home,” I whisper. “You’re home.”

        Tears slip down my cheeks. My own breathing hitches; his never returns. His chest is still. For what feels like hours, it is still, and I lie there, grief thickening my bones like tar, curling them in on themselves.

        Morning strengthens. Distantly, I hear birds. The scuttle of small creatures over dry leaves.

        Then a soft heartbeat.

        Its echo.

        I open my eyes.

        Armen’s face is alert. His eyes are open, staring at the trees above.

        But he died.

        Shock moves through me like a cold wave, raising me to my feet, forcing me back on unsteady legs.

        Leaves crunch under my boots as I retreat, but Armen doesn’t seem to notice. He lifts a hand. Looks at it. Slowly turns it over. A sliver of pale morning light breaks through the thickness of the forest; he flinches, and curls into a fetal position, his back to me.

        My heart is at flat gallop. My fingers curl of their own accord as I think of red eyes in the black, the sound of sucking...

        Armen sits up. Cracks his neck to the right, a soft pop. The way he always used to.

        “Armen?” It’s more croak than name, too timid to be hopeful, too longing to be afraid.

        He turns.

        The difference shimmers in his eyes. There was a time I thought they looked almost red, when he squinted in direct sunlight, their brown dyed amber by the gold of the afternoon. Now they truly are red: red like a storm dawn, red like a splatter of blood.

        They fix on me.

        I hear my own heartbeat like a war drum. Once. Twice.

        His face resettles, softens. “Morfia.”

        He knows me.

        He rises. He sways there a moment, then speaks again: “I feel faint.” His voice is hoarse, but it’s his. “I need... I don’t understand.” His strange eyes are distant, clouded—then they focus with a predator’s precision over my shoulder.

        At my warhorse, tethered among the trees.

        I move through Menüçehr’s words more than remember them. As I rise, I am bending Melik’s commands, breaking them to my need. I plant myself between Armen and the horse, my stance firm.

        He fought for me. I fight for him.

        “Look at me,” I snap. Again, with more force: “Look at me.”

        He does, and I’m keenly aware of how much broader he is than he used to be, how the months fighting with the gazis have made him light on his feet and fatal. If we went mace to mace in a clean fight, there would be no contest.

        But this isn’t a clean fight.

        I draw my dagger, rip my left sleeve up past my elbow, and press point to flesh. Rubies well along the steel, slipping down my skin.

        Armen’s attention is immediately on my arm. Instinct pulls him to his knees. I look away as his cool lips brush my forearm, and I brace for pain.

        There isn’t any, not how I expect. Armen’s touch envelops me like incense. My world is a heady sweep, like wine to the head: too-sweet, vertiginous, dizziness catching in thick, crystalizing honey.

        I don’t know how much time passes, nor notice that I’ve lost my balance until the trees spin.

        Armen’s surprised cry feels far away.

        I hit his arms heavily, limp as he guides me to my knees. Distantly, I feel him take my dagger and cut away any clean bandages that remain on his body, fumbling as he binds them over my cut. His hands shake violently; he curses softly, the same word over and over.

        Something strikes my forearm, wet and warm. It’s not blood—Armen weeps as he lifts my arm above my heart to slow the bleeding.

        He leans his forehead against mine. His nose is cool against mine. “Forgive me.” His lips have the iron-salt smell of blood as he presses them softly to my cheek, my temple.

        I wrap my right arm around him. Though his back shudders with tears, I can still feel the beat of his reborn heart.

        He’s not human, but he’s him.

        “You’re home,” I murmur. “You’re home.”

Copyright © 2021 Isabel Cañas

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Isabel Cañas is a Mexican-American speculative fiction writer and graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. She is completing her PhD in Ottoman and Turkish Studies at the University of Chicago. Her debut novel The Hacienda, a tale of witchcraft and suspense set in 1820s Mexico, is forthcoming from Berkley in May 2022. To find out more, visit www.isabelcanas.com.

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COVER ART

“Rabbit House,” by Avant Choi

Avant Choi is a concept artist and illustrator based in South Korea, working in the gaming industry. View more of his artwork at his gallery on Art Station.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

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