Page 110 of The Lustrous Dark
“Zubie,” Iman said, concerned when perhaps she should have been fearful. She found it hard to believe the nights she'd provided her shoulder to be cried upon, the hours of listening over tea, always assuring her friend she deserved better, had meant nothing. Hadn't they baked until they ran out of sugar? Hadn't they laughed until they wept? Hadn't they danced under the stars for the pure joy of being alive? “Did you partake of some elixir?”
“Just a special powder Jawad is testing out,” Zubeda said. There was almost a hum beneath her voice, as if her vocal cords, as if all the muscles in her body, were strung a bit too tight. “It gives your Shawafa a boost.”
Iman glared at Jawad, raising her eyebrows, quite certain this powder would prove to be as risky as the other formulas he'd come up with. Didn't Zubeda understand she was being used as a human experiment? “I thought you wanted magic to go the way of dragons?”
Jawad shrugged. “Sometimes, you have to use a bit of venom to create a cure.”
Rabia eyed Zubeda's glowing hands with growing apprehension, her own fingers barely producing the smallest filaments of green. “You understand that the punishment for using your Shawafa to harm another woman is having it rescinded, don't you?”
“Those are your rules.” Zubeda laughed haughtily, gesturing to all four sister-rulers. “They won't matter if you step down.”
Iman felt the very blood inside her body begin to freeze, slowing to a slog through her veins. Rasha, who had spurred them to action moments ago, nowsat on the cave floor as though too weak to stand. Whatever Zubeda was doing, she seemed to direct it with precision so it only affected the Lallat in front of her, not the men above, or Jawad, who stood behind her.
Iman touched the Shawafa inside her lightly. She drew on Waswasmin, the spirit speaker aspect of her silver pantheon. It allowed her to sense the exhaustion rolling off her sister-rulers. Rabia's aspects of healing and plant magic were particularly affected by the sudden brumal temperature. Rasha's attempts to draw water from the cave walls only made it colder.
It would have made sense for Noor to call on her fire powers to warm them, but she had enough strength to focus upon only a single aspect. She chose Hamsamin, shield power, but not for herself. She passed the protection to Iman, while her own energy dipped lower.
At the time, Iman puzzled over this choice. She concluded that Noor wanted her to take responsibility for her mistake in revealing their location by being the one to fight back. Later, when she would ask, Noor would say it was because she herself was so enraged, she feared she would burn every one of the twelve men to cinders. That would have made them martyrs and endeared them to the hearts of the people. It would have led to more men rising in their place.
She'd trusted Iman to be more judicious.
It was a mistaken call.
Renewed by Noor's immunity, Iman tapped into her Shawafa again, this time feeling for any creatures in the cave who had not yet fled the bitter chill. Some ally of the animal variety. She found only the lingering spirit of a species long extinct. Somehow, its ghostly residue was enough for her to draw upon.
She transformed only partially. Just enough to taste the release of acrid chemicals from her digestive tract as they spewed into her throat, feel the sharp spark as they mixed with an enzyme secreted from her teeth. Enough for her breath to turn to dragon's fire when it left her mouth.
Iman didn't aim this fire at her sweet Zubeda. She couldn't. Not when she'd been manipulated, led astray. She directed this torrent of flame straight at Jawad's smug countenance. It melted half his face before Zubeda could pivotand send a cooling spray of ice to douse the fire. Jawad howled and writhed in torment.
The men who had been watching jumped into action, drawing bows and arrows that dripped viscous black with an unknown substance.
“Wait!” Zubeda screeched. The light in her hands blinked out all at once as she retracted her Shawafa. “Jawad said we would only apprehend them. They might yet willingly comply.”
But whatever Jawad had said no longer mattered. He was passed out from the shock and pain. The stench of his crackling flesh slathered the air in putrid musk. The men had received prior instructions of what to do if things escalated.
The arrows found their targets, delivering the tainted blood to the Lallat's vital organs, where it swiftly took effect.
Did Zubeda come to regret her betrayal? Iman would never know. Surely, her friend was long released unto death by now, granted a closure to this cycle of life and admittance to whatever punishment or reward awaited her. Meanwhile, Iman's spirit stayed trapped in the cave with her sister-rulers. Their only hope was that one day the people would realize they had been lied to, that someone would remember them.
That someone would come back.
A beam of moonlight shines down where a section of the roof has collapsed. The pillars have vanished. The floor is strewn with rocks and scattered with ashes like petals on a grave. Walid drifts about the cavern like a ghost, his arms heaped with the bones he keeps finding everywhere.
The girls sit up. They blink haze from their eyes and rub the various aches that plague them. They brush their sleeves. The hjabats have gone dim. The Lallat have not awakened.
Unless they left. Departed to attend such important business as confronting the rulers who trapped them and committed unspeakable atrocities intheir absence. Shay gazes hopefully at the hole in the ceiling. But then, whose bones are those Walid is collecting?
No, the Lallat have not returned, at least not in the way Shay expected. She examines her companions more closely as she whispers to them and they to her about their shared vision. Or was it a memory? They all experienced it.The Last Battle.It was like they'd been there.
No one wants to be the first to mention the changes.
Small vines grow from Yara's scalp and twine through her dark hair like braids. A red stain darkens Marjan's lips, a crop of freckles sprinkling across the apples of her cheeks. Khawla's eyes have completely switched color, from mellow brown to eggshell blue.
Shay sees herself, too. In the sly glances of her companions, their rapid flashes of disbelief. She knows it without a mirror, how silver threads her hair like streaking stardust.
A clattering. Walid stands frozen in place, staring at them with wide eyes. His mouth opens and closes in soundless shock. The girls stand to help him pick up the bones he has dropped in a jumbled scatter.
He bows and lowers his head in reverence. He whispers hoarsely, speaking into existence the words the girls are not yet prepared to hear: “I, Walid Jelassi, am honored to be the first to pledge my fealty to the new Lallat.”
