Hero at the Fall

I understood what he was about to do a second before the Abdals turned to face him, summoning their own fire against his.

‘No!’ The scream tore out of my throat. But I was too late. Noorsham’s power swelled to meet that of the Abdals even as they flooded the mountain. Man-made stolen Djinni fire rushing to meet Noorsham’s Demdji-given gift of destruction. I ran towards him, knowing there was nothing I could do. No way to stop what was going to happen.

It was as if a new sun were being born.

The explosion bloomed bright and violent, invading everything, even the air around it. It slammed into me like a javelin of heat and light, knocking me down, blinding me. But I could still smell the burning. I could taste blood.

Then, I tasted ash.

I woke violently out of unconsciousness. I couldn’t have been out long. My ears were still ringing with the aftershock of the explosion, my lungs burning. I pushed myself up agonisingly. The pain was nothing, though, compared to the heat still rising from my skin. Even my Demdji side was struggling to fight off this heat. But I found my way to my feet all the same.

The battlefield of fire had turned dark and cold.

The soldiers, who had been flesh and blood, were nothing but dust now. There was no sign of their tents or of the camp they had built here. All of it had been razed. But there were pieces of Abdals left in the wreckage. The bronze had fused to the stones, like shiny scars on the mountain. I saw a bronze face, some of its features still intact, its nose protruding away from the stone, its mouth twisted by the heat into some grotesque scream.

I half staggered, half ran across the remnants of the brief and bloodless fight to the one body that was not metal or ash, where Noorsham was sprawled amid the destruction he had made.

I dropped to my knees next to him. His chest was rising and falling with shallow breathing. He was badly burned, half his face blackened and unrecognisable. We were Demdji; we weren’t supposed to burn so easily. But this was Djinni fire, and we were only half-Djinn. Our other halves were terribly mortal.

He didn’t look anything like the weapon I’d first come face to face with on that train. Or like the man leading all the people in his cult towards righteousness. He just looked like a desert boy, young and helpless and dying. Eyes like the sky stared up at me, wide and scared, like he couldn’t understand what was happening. Like he wanted me to explain, to comfort him. Like he needed a sister.

‘What are you doing here?’ My lips were blistered, and my fingertips burned against the heat of his skin as I cradled him. I ought to be screaming. I remembered after Imin had died, Hala’s grief had all come out in one strangled cry that filled the Hidden House. That had been the last noise she’d made before she hadn’t spoken for days.

‘We came to save you,’ his voice rasped out, his one good eye struggling to find me.

Even after I had betrayed him. After we had chained him up. After Jin had undoubtedly dragged him up this mountain as a prisoner. After all that, still, Noorsham had chosen to save us.

‘Well, that was stupid.’ I wanted to put my hand against his heart to make it keep beating by sheer will alone, but it was pumping too slow already.

I couldn’t take this. Not another Demdji burning out so young, like Hala and Imin and Hawa and Ashra. Not my brother falling now in a fight that wasn’t his when he had survived so much.

A shadow fell across his face. I looked up, expecting to find Jin or Shazad or someone who could help me. Instead, Zaahir stood over me, watching with cruel impassiveness. I wanted to scream at him that this was not fair. But Djinn didn’t deal in fair. They dealt in trades and wants and desires. And the Sin Maker wanted one thing.

‘Save him,’ I said. ‘You made a promise to me to do what I want, and I want to save him. Do that and we’ll end this. I’ll set you free. Please.’

Zaahir watched Noorsham struggle for a moment longer, his breathing coming out ragged from his scorched lungs, each breath counting down to his last. ‘His body is too broken,’ he said. ‘I cannot repair this.’

‘I don’t care.’ The sob that tore out of me came from the oldest part of me, the part of my soul that was immortal, that used not to know death. The part that understood what the First Beings had felt when they watched the first of their number die and become stars and meet their own end, when grief and despair and rage and hopelessness were all born in a single moment. ‘I want to save him. Save him and I’ll free you. Save him and we’ll end this here. Please. I’m begging you. Save him and I’ll release you.’

Finally Zaahir inclined his head ever so slightly. He didn’t look as pitiless as he had a moment ago. He knew what it was like to lose someone when you weren’t ready to. ‘We have a deal, daughter of Bahadur.’

The sun glared down on us from high above. Zaahir pushed me back from my brother without touching me. It was as if the air clasped me gently by the shoulders, drawing me away. Like a kindly relative pulling me from a sickbed so a Holy Man could work. So I didn’t have to see the worst of it.

He lifted Noorsham the same way, without touching him. I stuffed the protest down my throat that he was hurting him. That he was too weak to survive being moved.

And then … it was as if his body simply fell away, disappearing into the air like sand scattering on the wind, leaving Noorsham there, but instead of flesh and blood and bone, he was made of light. Like Ashra’s Wall.