FIVE

The Word of Kings

 

Lahmia, The City of the Dawn, in the 76th year of Djaf the Terrible

(-1599 Imperial Reckoning)

 

Arkhan the Black dreamt of riding beneath an endless desert sky, with nothing but the stars and the gleaming moon to watch over him. The Bhagarite stallion seemed to float across the rolling dunes, its hooves thudding softly like the beat of a living heart. Silver bells were woven into the stallion’s mane, jangling a fine counterpoint to the horse’s stride, and a dry wind caressed his skin, smelling of dust and faded spice.

There was no end to the sands, no end to the emptiness of the desert night. It was a benediction, a gift that he knew he did not deserve. And yet, when rough hands seized Arkhan and shook him awake, the pain of the longing he felt was worse than any wound he’d ever known.

He found himself lying on his side, cheek pressed against the grimy floor of the king’s hidden sanctum. His eyelids felt stiff and brittle, like old paper. The immortal opened them with effort and peered up at the robed figure kneeling beside him.

W’soran’s bald, bony head and long neck reminded Arkhan of nothing so much as a vulture. His wrinkled face, with its deep-set eyes, hooked nose and receding chin, would not have looked out of place on a statue of the Scavenger God himself. Once upon a time, he might have even been a priest of Ualatp. Arkhan knew that the man had come to Lahmia from the ruined city of Mahrak, more than a hundred years before, and had ultimately thrown himself on the generosity of Lamashizzar’s court when none of the city temples would have anything to do with him. Without doubt he possessed a wealth of arcane knowledge and sorcerous ability that none of Lamashizzar’s other allies could equal, which explained how he’d found his way so quickly into the king’s secret cabal.

Cold, black eyes studied Arkhan with dispassionate interest. “It’s taking more effort to wake him with each passing night,” W’soran observed. He gripped Arkhan’s shoulders and upper arms, testing the rigidity of the immortal’s muscles and joints. “No obvious signs of morbidity, but his vigour is clearly waning,” he said with a sour expression.

Arkhan heard sounds of movement at the far end of the room. An oil lamp flared, filling the space with orange light and the faint reek of melting tallow. “Perhaps we’re giving him too much lotus these days,” he heard Lamashizzar say.

W’soran grunted, bending closer and peering into Arkhan’s eyes as though searching for signs of deception. “He’s being given the same amount as always,” he stated flatly. “So, therefore, his ability to recover from its effects has diminished. He’s weakening.” His small, dark eyes narrowed. “Or…”

Arkhan heard footsteps draw nearer. A wine bowl clunked down onto a nearby table, followed by the dry rustle of papers. “What?” the king said irritably.

W’soran stared into the immortal’s eyes for several long moments, as though he could reach inside Arkhan’s mind and read its contents like a dusty scroll. Arkhan gave the man a flat, predatory stare. His expression was unequivocal. Given half a chance, I’d tear your head off your scrawny neck.

It was nothing that W’soran hadn’t seen every night for decades. What he didn’t know was that, for the first time in a century and a half, Arkhan was strong enough to actually do it.

W’soran straightened, his knees popping noisily. He’d been well advanced in years when he’d first come to Lahmia, and Lamashizzar’s elixir could not completely halt the implacable march of time. He shrugged his knobby shoulders.

“Perhaps the elixir is less effective as the physical body ages,” W’soran muttered, turning his back on the immortal. “His flesh and organs are four hundred years old. It’s possible that we are approaching the limits of your arcane prowess.”

There was no mistaking the accusatory tone in W’soran’s voice. Lamashizzar did not reply at first, but Arkhan could feel the sudden tension in the air between the two men.

“Come here, Arkhan,” the king said coldly.

The immortal’s eyes narrowed in concentration as he drew his legs up underneath him and pushed himself to his feet. His limbs were stiff and clumsy—not due to the effects of the lotus root, but rather the months of hixa stings he’d been receiving from Neferata. The wasp’s venom collected in his muscles rather than passing away as it would in a living body, making even the simplest movements difficult. He tried to turn its debilitating effects to his advantage, letting it slow his movements to something approximating the lassitude that the king and his cohorts had come to expect. If Lamashizzar had even the slightest suspicion that he no longer had complete control over his prisoner, Neferata’s scheme would come to naught, and he would never be free again.

The king was standing before a long, wooden table set just a few feet to one side of the room’s ritual circle, his expression preoccupied as he tried to bring some kind of order to the pile of papers and scrolls spread before him. More figures moved about in the shadows at the far end of the room, murmuring in low voices and passing jars of wine between one another. Lamashizzar was accompanied by nearly his entire cabal: beside W’soran, the immortal recognised the tall, muscular outline of Abhorash, the king’s champion, as well as the reclining forms of Ankhat and Ushoran, his oldest and most powerful allies at court. The king’s grand vizier, Ubaid, stood apart from the other men, politely refusing offers of drink and waiting to do the king’s bidding. Opposite the doorway, young Zuhras poked at the banked coals of a brazier with the point of his dagger, stirring them back to life. Grinning slyly, he speared one of the small coals on the point of his knife and used it to light the small, clay pipe dangling from his lips. The acrid scent of Eastern pipe smoke began to spread throughout the chamber.

That left only the two libertines, Adio and Khenti. Arkhan suspected they were chasing whores or losing their money in the gambling dens of the Red Silk District. Likely they would stumble in later, reeking of sour wine and cackling like hyenas to claim their share of Lamashizzar’s elixir. Why the king hadn’t lost patience with them and had their throats cut remained a mystery to Arkhan. He knew all too well that Lamashizzar would turn on anyone that he considered a threat.

Iron chain links rattled dully as Arkhan shuffled across the floor to stand before the king. Arkhan studied the man warily. Outwardly, Lamashizzar had aged somewhat, with grey hair streaking his temples and a fleshiness to his face that bespoke years of self-indulgence, but he still held himself with the easy assurance of a younger, fitter man. The effects of the elixir had left its mark on the king in more ways than one, Arkhan knew. He could see it in Lamashizzar’s stiff shoulders and the swift, almost furtive movements of his eyes. The immortal had seen that look many times, in the court of the Undying King. The hunger for immortality turned the strongest men into beasts, making them savage, suspicious and unpredictable. If what the queen had told him was true, Lamashizzar cared little for the fortunes of his kingdom anymore. Mastering Nagash’s terrible incantations was his one and only obsession, which made him very dangerous indeed.

Arkhan clasped his hands together and bowed his head. The iron rim of the collar dug into his scarred neck. “How may I serve, great one?” he asked his captor. The words burned like molten lead on his tongue.

“Is it true?” the king asked. He never took his eyes from the occult diagrams laid out on the table. “Does the elixir no longer sustain you as it once did?”

The immortal considered his answer carefully. He knew that the moment he was no longer useful to Lamashizzar, the king would have him killed. “I do not deny that it is harder to shake off the effects of the lotus,” Arkhan replied. “It is possible that the learned W’soran is right. Certainly there is much more to be learned from Nagash’s tomes. You have scarcely scratched the surface of the Undying King’s power.”

From the moment that he had awakened in the cellars of the royal palace, Arkhan knew that his only hope of survival was to give up Nagash’s secrets grudgingly, giving Lamashizzar just enough power to whet the king’s appetite while he waited for an opportunity to escape. But Lamashizzar was no fool, he saw to it that Arkhan had no personal access to Nagash’s books, and the only sustenance allowed to him was the same thin gruel that the king and his cohorts drank. It left him with barely enough strength to move, much less break free from the iron collar that the king had riveted about his neck. Even the black lotus had given him little relief; he was so weak that the potion brought no dreams, only cold oblivion.

W’soran seized on Arkhan’s reply. “Listen to him, great one,” he said. “We must go back to the source and start again.” He stepped forward and laid a hand on one of Nagash’s books. “Follow the Usurper’s instructions to the letter. We know that the rituals work—Arkhan here is proof of that!”

“And they also led to the Usurper’s downfall!” Lamashizzar snapped. “Everyone knows the horrors that took place in Khemri before the war. How long do you think we could prey upon palace servants and criminals before people began to take notice?”

“You can buy slaves from the East!” W’soran exclaimed. “No one would care what you did with them! Or round up the hundreds of beggars clogging the streets in the lower districts! You’re the king, or have you forgotten?”

The words had scarcely passed W’soran’s lips when there was a rasp of metal and suddenly Abhorash was standing beside the king, his iron sword held loosely at his side. There was no expression on the champion’s broad, heavy-boned face: he had the look of a man about to kill a snake that had slipped inside his house.

Lamashizzar said nothing to either of the two men. He simply met the older man’s stare until W’soran finally looked away.

“I apologise, great one,” W’soran growled. “My words were intemperate and ill-considered. I meant no disrespect.”

“Of course,” the king replied, but there was an edge to his smile that belied the graciousness of the answer. He gave a sidelong glance to Abhorash, and the warrior obediently—although not without some reluctance—slid his sword back into its scabbard. It was only then that Arkhan realised how tense he had become. His hands had curled into fists, and his jagged teeth were on edge. Just like Nagash’s court, so long ago, he thought. How we circled each other then, like hungry jackals, ready to sink our teeth into the weak the minute their back was exposed.

Arkhan saw the champion relax slightly. Lamashizzar returned his attention to the papers on the table, and just when it seemed that he confrontation was over, Lord Ushoran took a sip from his wine bowl and said, somewhat offhandedly, “Our guest from Mahrak does have a point, cousin.”

The king turned, as did Abhorash, both of them with almost the same look of irritation on their faces. W’soran’s eyes narrowed as he tried to divine the real purpose behind Ushoran’s words. Lord Ushoran was infamous for his intrigues, both in and out of court; mostly the king tolerated it because Ushoran came from one of the oldest families in Lahmia, and because the nobleman was smart enough not to involve any members of the royal family in his schemes.

Though distantly related to the king’s household, Ushoran wasn’t blessed with Asaph’s gifts of beauty and charm; he had the sort of face that blended easily into a crowd, with close-cropped dark hair and unremarkable brown eyes. Arkhan gathered that Ushoran had gone to some effort over the decades to keep the cabal’s activities out of the public eye. Lamashizzar believed him capable of anything.

“Do you now question my claim to the throne?” the king asked with a brittle smile.

Ushoran chuckled. “Certainly not, cousin. I merely wish to point out that our progress has been almost nonexistent these past fifty years. We continue to age, albeit very, very slowly, and possess nothing like the power that his ilk—” the nobleman gestured to Arkhan with his wine bowl, “—displayed during the war.” He shifted slightly on the divan. “It cannot be argued that you aren’t following Nagash’s incantations as they were intended.”

“Blood is blood!” Lamashizzar snapped, giving in to his anger at last. “It carries life in it, whether it’s from a goat or from a man! And no one will raise a hue and cry if we decide to sacrifice an animal once a month—if anything, they’ll likely laud us for our piety! This way raises less suspicion. You all know that.”

Next to Ushoran, Lord Ankhat straightened and swung his legs over the edge of the divan. He was less, the dilettante than Ushoran, though his family name was just as old and respected. Though small in stature, he was still trim and physically fit, with piercing eyes and a sharp mind that has hampered only by his notorious impatience. “I know that power is meant to be used, or else it is worthless.” Ankhat said, fixing the king with a steady gaze. “If we had the full power of the Usurper at our command, we wouldn’t need to fear the other cities.”

“I’m certain Nagash thought the same thing,” Lamashizzar retorted, glancing back at Arkhan as if for confirmation. When the immortal gave no obvious sign of agreement, the king continued.

“It’s different now,” Ankhat persisted. “The other great cities are but a shadow of their former glory, and the power of the priesthood is broken forever. They wouldn’t dare defy us.”

“Not separately, perhaps, but together?” Lamashizzar shook his head. “An alliance of the great cities would destroy us as surely as it doomed Nagash.”

Ankhat snorted in disgust. “Who would lead such an alliance? All the great kings are dead. All except you, that is.”

The king ignored Ankhat’s clumsy praise. “All we need is time,” he said. “Every passing year, the cities of Nehekhara grow ever more dependant on our trade with the East. Our influence reaches all the way to distant Zandri, and as far south as Ka-Sabar. In another hundred years, perhaps two, no one will dare to move against us. There is no need for bloody gambles and ruinous wars. All we have to do is wait, and everything we want will fall into our hands.”

For a moment, no one spoke. Even the stolid Abhorash seemed uncomfortable with the king’s vision. The very idea of restraint was alien to these men, who were accustomed to getting what they wanted with a snap of their fingers. Yet they could not bring themselves to gainsay the king. At least, not for now.

But for how much longer, Arkhan wondered. How long until they start to feel the creeping approach of time, and become obsessed with their fading vitality? How long until they realise that Lamashizzar’s carefully reasoned caution is a mask for something far more simple and straightforward. The man is weak. He inherited his power from Lamasheptra, and the one time he tried to gamble with it, he lost his nerve. If I hadn’t arrived at his tent outside Mahrak, he might never have committed his army to battle at all, and Nagash would very likely have won.

It still galled the immortal that he’d let Lamashizzar turn the tables on him inside the Black Pyramid. Even a weak man can be dangerous in the right circumstances, he reminded himself. Greed can sometimes be a courage all its own.

W’soran took a deep breath and folded his hands at his waist, not unlike a priest lecturing a group of acolytes. “You mention animal sacrifice and piety, great one,” he said. “Yet you fail to mention that the greatest of holy rites specify the spilling of human blood instead.” He spread his hands. “If the lifeblood of a goat is no more potent than that of a man, then why do the gods make a distinction?”

The king turned and glared at W’soran, his brow furrowing as he searched for a proper rebuttal, but here the former libertine was out of his depth. Finally he turned to Arkhan.

“Is he right?” Lamashizzar asked.

The immortal affected a shrug. “I’m no more a priest than you are, great one,” he answered carefully. He was treading in dangerous waters now. If Lamashizzar ever bothered to read Nagash’s commentaries more attentively, he would see the truth of what W’soran was getting at right away. “It’s certainly possible that W’soran has the right of it, but that isn’t really the point, is it? The question is whether creating the elixir from animal blood is potent enough to grant immortality or not. And that is something we have yet to prove one way or the other.” Arkhan gave the king a black-toothed smile. “Certainly there is still room for improvement in your performance of the incantations.”

Lamashizzar gave Arkhan a hard, penetrating stare, and for a moment the immortal thought he’d overplayed his hand. Then, abruptly, the king grinned ruefully. “There you have it,” he said, turning back to his cohorts. “It’s all my fault.”

Ushoran chuckled politely. “Spoken like a true king,” he said, raising his wine bowl in salute. The others joined in, and Arkhan allowed himself to relax. He approached the table and pretended to study the ritual symbols. He could see places where he could suggest miniscule changes to the geometries that would suggest areas of improvement without providing any real benefit to the elixir.

The immortal bowed to the king, and smiled his ghoulish smile.

“Shall we begin, great one?” he said.

 

Raw, burning pain gnawed at Arkhan’s nerves, banishing the thick fog of the lotus root. His muscles quivered like plucked bowstrings. Arkhan groaned, baring his ruined teeth against the pounding agony, and with an effort of will forced his stiff eyelids open.

She was standing over him, bathed in warm light from the oil lamp in her right hand. A tiny frown pulled at the corners of her perfect lips.

“Are you well?” Neferata asked. Her voice was dusky and sweet, like rich honey. Even in his wretched state, the sound of it was riveting. Large, almond-shaped eyes narrowed in concern. She raised a slender hand, and for a moment, the immortal thought she might actually reach out and lay her palm against his head, like a mother might to a sick child. The queen seemed to catch herself at the last moment, her hand pausing scant inches from his brow.

“It is nothing,” Arkhan grated. Even his jaw muscles were stiff now, despite the taste of the king’s elixir he’d received little more than an hour ago.

The immortal tore his gaze away from the queen’s face and used the end of the iron chain to pull himself to his feet. For a moment he leaned against the grimy wall and tried to orient himself. It felt as though he’d only just choked down the bitter bowl of wine and lotus root that W’soran had forced on him. He blinked in the dim light, still expecting to see the king and his cohorts moving about the chamber. “What time is it?” he mumbled.

“Scarcely an hour before dawn,” the queen replied, a note of tension creeping into her voice. “The king was here much longer than usual. I had to hide in an adjoining room until he and W’soran left. I think they were arguing.”

Arkhan managed a nod. “W’soran is growing impatient,” he said. “The old vulture covets not just Nagash’s elixir, but the rest of his incantations as well. The others are starting to agree with him.”

Neferata’s dark eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “All of them?” she asked. She turned and walked back to the paper-strewn worktable where her husband had stood just a couple of hours before. Every movement was sensuous and fluid, almost hypnotic. Like one of Asaph’s sacred serpents, Arkhan thought. The sight of her filled him with a bewildering mix of wonderment, hunger and terrible dread.

She was so like Neferem, he thought, and yet so unlike her at the same time. The women of Lahmia were famous for their seductive beauty, but the daughters of the king bore the likeness of the goddess herself. But where Neferem’s staggering beauty had been tempered by her role as the Daughter of the Sun, Neferata’s allure was darker and far wilder, like Asaph herself. A single look from her could topple kingdoms, the immortal thought. No wonder the kings of Lahmia keep their daughters locked away and their queens hidden behind golden masks.

“Well, Abhorash still seems loyal, but that’s to be expected,” Arkhan said. “Ushoran and Ankhat, on the other hand, are tired of Lamashizzar’s half-measures. They were at Mahrak. They know how feeble the king’s elixir truly is.”

Neferata stood beside the table and studied the arrangement of the papers carefully, noting their precise order carefully before picking through the pile. Lamashizzar would know if a single sheet was out of place when he returned the following night. “What of Ubaid?”

The immortal shrugged. “I confess I do not know. Lamashizzar only brought him into the cabal because he needed the grand vizier’s help to maintain his secret. Since then he’s been very circumspect with his opinions.”

“Typical,” the queen observed. “But somewhat encouraging, nonetheless. And the others?”

Arkhan snorted. “The young libertines? Irrelevant. Their loyalties belong to whoever supplies them with the elixir. Frankly, you would be better off without them.”

Neferata carefully peeled back several pages until she came to a yellowed sheet depicting a complex ritual circle. It was one of several versions of the Incantation of Immortality that Arkhan had tried to recreate from Nagash’s books. To the immortal’s unending irritation, the Undying King had not committed a definitive version of the ritual to paper, no doubt to keep its secrets firmly under his control. Lamashizzar could scarcely tell the difference between one page and the next without Arkhan’s help, but Neferata’s training with the priestesses of Neru gave her a degree of insight that her brother lacked.

Since she’d begun her secret tutelage under Arkhan, some eight months before, the queen’s skill in the necromantic arts had grown by leaps and bounds. Sneaking into the cabal’s sanctum each night, right on the heels of the king and his cohorts, she learned more in a few stolen hours than Lamashizzar had managed in more than a century.

Of course, it helped that Neferata was far less squeamish about the nature of the blood she used.

The queen studied the page intently. After a few moments, she took a piece of chalk from a clay bowl on a nearby shelf and began making precise adjustments to the circle laid out on the sanctum floor.

“Things are coming to a head quicker than I expected,” she said as she worked. “We must be ready very soon now.”

Arkhan caught himself staring at the queen, watching the way her body moved in the lamplight. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “If this ritual succeeds, then you will have all the power you need,” he told her. Together, they had already created versions of the elixir that were several times more potent than anything the king had made. The immortal licked his lips. “Much depends on the quality of the base material, of course.”

Neferata gave Arkhan a sharp look. “The blood of a royal handmaiden is sufficient, I should think.”

The immortal smiled. “Younger is better than older,” he said. “Of course, a live victim is better still.”

The queen made one last change to the circle and rose to her feet. “And why is that?” she asked, as she inspected her work.

“The more youthful the blood, the more of life’s vigour it contains, of course,” Arkhan replied.

“And using a live victim in the ritual grants even more vigour?”

Arkhan hesitated, uncertain how much he should reveal. Neferata had already gleaned far more secrets from him than he’d been willing to share. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“Well, that will have to wait for another day,” the queen said. “For now, we must be content with what we have.”

She moved past him, to a table at the far end of the room—one well out of reach of his iron chain, Arkhan could not help but note. Neferata picked up a small ceramic jar, not much larger than a nobleman’s wine bowl, and carried it to the centre of the ritual circle. The immortal felt his turgid pulse quicken. Neferata never told him how she obtained the blood from her handmaidens, and, in truth, he didn’t really care.

Neferata knelt beside the jar and placed a number of additional marks around its circumference, then retreated to the edge of the circle. “The sun will rise soon,” she said, raising her arms towards the ceiling. “Let us begin.”

Arkhan moved to the far side of the circle, taking care not to drag his iron chain across the sorcerous glyphs. He raised his own arms—stiff and yet trembling, all the same—to mirror Neferata’s own. And then, together, they began to chant.

The words of power now rolled easily off Neferata’s tongue, and the air began to crackle with invisible energies, harnessed to a force of will as great as any Arkhan had ever known save for Nagash himself. The immortal echoed every syllable, adding his will to her own, until the ritual circle seethed with power.

The incantation was long and complex, stretching for many long minutes, and Arkhan felt the energies of the ritual building to a furious crescendo. The jar began to tremble, its lid rattling maniacally as gusts of steam billowed from the contents within. His lips peeled back in a ghastly, feral snarl as he smelled the fragrant odour of the rapidly quickening elixir. Arkhan threw back his head and cried out the words of the incantation in an exultant voice. The centuries seemed to unwind within him, and for a single instant he was once more a mighty warrior, a master of magic and conqueror who once made all Nehekhara tremble with fear.

And then, immortal and queen cried out as one, and the ritual culminated in a shower of lambent sparks from the glyphs inscribed on the surface of the jar. Neferata staggered, momentarily stunned by the force of the power she’d commanded, but Arkhan’s senses were razor-sharp. In an instant he was inside the circle, feeling the residual energies of the incantation burn across his skin as his hands closed about the curved surface of the jar.

He felt the queen’s eyes upon him. They cut through his raging thirst like a knife. He clutched the jar tightly, imagining that he could feel the strength of the elixir through the glazed walls of clay. If he drank it dry, it might give him the strength enough to tear open the collar and finally escape.

Then again, it might not, and then where would he be? Neferata would not take such a betrayal lightly. And she already knew more than enough to continue studying Nagash’s books without him, whether she realised it yet or not.

Arkhan sank slowly to his knees. With an effort of supreme will, he raised the jar to Neferata, as a servant might proffer wine to his master. “Here, great one,” he said in a hollow voice. “Drink of the fruits of your labour. Drink, and be restored.”

Neferata smiled at him, and Arkhan was secretly ashamed how it made his dead heart lurch in his chest. She came to him, graceful as a serpent, and took the jar from his unwilling hands.

The queen raised the steaming vessel to her lips and took a long draught. A delicious shudder went through her slender frame. “Oh,” she whispered. “Oh!”

Arkhan watched in silence, gripped by a helpless despair. She would drink it all. He knew it. Months ago, she’d sworn to share every draught of elixir they made, just as Lamashizzar had promised him long ago. But promises meant nothing to kings and queens, except when it suited them. Nagash had taught him that lesson well.

He was surprised, therefore, when the queen lowered the jar to him once more. “Here, favoured servant,” she said with a regal smile, her lips red with the sweet wine of stolen life. “Take your due.”

It took all the remaining willpower he had not to snatch the jar from Neferata’s hands. Still, they trembled as he brought the rim of the jar to his lips and drank.

The elixir flowed into his mouth like molten metal, setting every nerve alight. He stiffened, gulping greedily, as he felt a fraction of the old power return to his wasted limbs. It was a shadow of what he’d once felt as the Undying King’s right hand, but it was still greater by far than anything Lamashizzar had wrought.

When he was done he sat back on his heels, gasping for breath. The queen was studying him, her dark eyes thoughtful. He met her gaze directly, too intoxicated for the moment to be cowed by her supernatural beauty.

“Why, great one?” he asked. “What do you wish to gain from all this?”

Neferata’s lips curved in a crooked smile. “Besides eternal youth and power?” she asked.

“Yes.”

The queen’s smile faded. “Lahmia is in peril,” Neferata replied, “and her king is too weak and too foolish to protect her. So I must instead.” She cocked her head and regarded him appraisingly. “What of you? What do you wish, now that Nagash is dead and gone?”

Arkhan did not reply for a moment. He felt the power coursing through his veins and drew a heavy breath. “What do I want? I want to ride a horse again, and cross the desert sands beneath the moonlight.”

Neferata quirked a delicate eyebrow. “Is that all?”

The immortal gave her a tight-lipped smile and hefted a length of iron chain. “Forty-seven links,” he said. “That equates to exactly twenty-three and a half paces. For the past one hundred and forty years, that has been the length and breadth of my entire world. What I wish for, great one, is nothing less than paradise.”

Neferata considered this, and then, to Arkhan’s utter surprise, she reached down and laid a hand upon his cheek. Her skin smelled of sandalwood, and was warm as a summer breeze.

She bent close to him, and her eyes seemed to swallow him whole. “I know what it’s like to live every day as a prisoner,” she said softly. “Keep your oath to me, Arkhan the Black, and I swear you will see your wish fulfilled.”

Then she was gone, retreating from the circle and returning the ritual materials to the way they were as Lamashizzar had left them. Arkhan hadn’t felt her pluck the jar from his hands. He hadn’t even noticed it was gone until minutes after she’d departed.

It was a long time before Arkhan crawled from the circle and curled up like a dog at the base of the sanctum wall. When his mind finally quieted enough to let him sleep, he dreamt of endless, moonlit sands, and the music of silver bells. The warm desert air caressed his face, smelling of sandalwood.