THE BROKEN WORDS ARE NOW MADE WHOLE! THEIR TRUTH FOR EVERY EYE AND SOUL!
It was the voice of Yaseer the spell-seller, coming from the workshop. Raseed cursed his own incompetence. How could the man have entered the house without Raseed seeing him?
But when he shot into the workshop, ready to kill if need be, there was no fat spell-seller there. The Doctor and Dawoud both followed him in, looking sleepy-eyed and unalarmed.
“Doctor, I heard an intruder’s voice!”
The Doctor looked at him sleepily, as if wondering who Raseed was.
“There’s no intruder, Raseed,” Litaz told him as she, too, entered the workshop, Zamia trailing behind her. The alkhemist wore her houserobe, but Zamia was already clad in her Badawi camel-calf suede. “That’s just Yaseer’s signature. A reminder, when the spell has done its work, of the man who crafted it.”
Raseed kept his eyes from meeting Zamia’s. He looked to the workshop table and saw that the scroll the Doctor had brought from Miri Almoussa’s was now glowing faintly. Beside it, atop a pile of what looked like burnt parchment, was the scroll case Litaz had been carrying.
Dawoud picked up the intact scroll and unfurled it, whistling an impressed whistle. “That Yaseer may be a sack of unprincipled scum, but he does good work, there is no denying. The scroll has been deciphered.”
“Now let us see if it’s got anything worth telling us,” the Doctor said.
They all settled into seats as Dawoud read aloud.
“No one knows how the Throne of the Crescent Moon was made. And few know that it was once called the Cobra Throne. Its great curved-moon back, which was once carved in the shape of the Cobra God’s spread hood, takes no mark or burn. The Kemeti Books of Brass, lost to us now, claimed that the Faroes, called also the Cobra Kings of Kem, sat upon it for their coronations, just as the Khalifs would come to do. But though the Khalifs have sat on it in coronation for centuries, there are those who say they know not its true power. That the throne was ensorcelled with unseen death-diagrams; bewitched by the Dead Gods, who loved treachery. That this power could be called only by spilling the blood of a ruler’s eldest heir upon it on the shortest day of the year. The Books of Brass claimed that he who managed to drink blood so spilled would be granted command of the most terrible death magics the world has ever known—master of the captive souls of untold numbers of long-dead slaves. The dark arts of the Cobra Kings, scoured from the world by God, would return.”
“It ends there.” The magus rolled the scroll and set it down.
The Doctor buried his face in his hands and let out a low groan. “Litaz, my dear, tell me, in the Name of Almighty God, who is Our Only Refuge, that you have some good, strong cardamom tea.”
A quarter hour later, they all sat planning in the greeting room, the elders drinking tea and smoking, the smell of apple tobacco wafting up from a water pipe.
“I do not want to do this,” the Doctor said. “We had a fine feast last night, and to open the morning with this dark talk…. But, I’ve been beaten and bruised, and my home lies burnt and ruined. I have lost my one true beloved and the promise of a peaceful life. I won’t lose my whole city as well. I won’t.”
He gestured with the pipe’s long mouthpiece at Dawoud. “But perhaps it won’t even come to that,” he said, sounding to Raseed as if he were trying to convince himself. “Do you think this Orshado is even capable of this? To break into the palace, let alone to wrest control of it from the watchmen and murder the Khalif’s son? Even to one such as I, who has seen his share of impossibilities, these seem near-impossible tasks. He would need allies within the palace, a dozen age-old incantations to get past its ward-spells—not to mention that there must be a thousand men guarding the Khalif.” The Doctor passed the pipe’s mouthpiece to Litaz.
Dawoud looked at the Doctor. “You don’t understand, brother-of-mine. You didn’t feel this ghul of ghuls. His cruelty. His power. How much these enable him to do when the Traitorous Angel works through him.”
“But even with war spells and death-diagrams,” Litaz broke in, exhaling smoke, “a throne is but a symbol. Without an army, without watchmen, his bloody design will only get him an angry mob storming the palace.”
“No,” the Doctor said, and Raseed saw the reluctant resolve rise in his eyes. “No, my dear, your husband is right. It’s not that simple. These are not dinar-grade magics we are dealing with here—no spells to rob houses or to make a murder look like an accident. These are the sorts of death spells the old books speak of—cruel magics through which every child, woman, and man in Dhamsawaat—aye, even the birds and the beasts—would wake one day to find themselves drowning on air, their lungs bursting like rotted fruit. The sorts of war spells that would allow one man to slay a horde, that would make an attacking army’s blood turn to boiling venom, that would turn a whole mob’s intestines into cobras. But it is even more than that. Such magics work as a… a focus. A man who knows how to use that magic could kill thousands in the space of a day. And then he would cull the foul power from those unwilling sacrifices to kill more men.”
Litaz’s expression was one of pure horror, and Raseed had no doubt that his own face wore the same look. “Madness,” she said at last. “Madness! Even if—God forbid it—even if he murdered all of Dhamsawaat, every other realm would rise against him. The Soo would send our mercenary legions, the Heavenly Army of Rughal-ba would—”
The Doctor’s eyes were cold as stone now. The water pipe’s flaming coal fizzled and died. “If he seizes the throne, he will not have to worry about these things. He will become the Traitorous Angel’s Regent-in-the-World. Armies will not be able to stop him.”
“But why?” Zamia asked. “Why would any man—even a cruel man—do these things? What could he possibly gain?”
“Power,” the Doctor answered without hesitation. “The same thing that a man gains when he murders one of his fellow men. The same thing that a ruler gains when he sends his armies to kill and die. Power and the promise of a name that will live forever. What the Traitorous Angel offers his servants is no different. Though this man’s ambition is as a sea next to the puddles and ponds of earthly killers.”
Raseed spoke quietly “Praise be to God that the Khalifs of Abassen have been secure enough in their majesty that they have never used these foul powers.”
The Doctor farted loudly. “Oh! Pardon me! But perhaps my body responded of its own accord to your foolish suggestion.” He wagged a finger at Raseed. “Do you really believe, boy, that the Khalifs have never used this power because they have righteously chosen not to? No. Men do not pass up power, least of all Khalifs. No doubt the powers of the throne were never known to them. The Court magi have always been puffed-up thugs, confident in the simple brute force of their own magery. They have never been great readers or researchers. The coronation likely lives on as an ignorant inheritance, a reason for royal pomp and ostentation in which power is nominally passed from one generation to the next. But my guess is—and for this I do praise All-Merciful God—my guess is that this scroll hasn’t been read in hundreds of years.”
Litaz kneaded her forehead with a knuckle. “Until now,” she said. “Until now, when it has been read not only by a half-cracked would-be usurper but by a powerful servant of the Traitorous Angel—more than that, a man who carries a true shard of the Traitorous Angel within his soul.”
Zamia took a sip of tea. “But if this scroll’s knowledge has been so secret, how is it this Orshado knows of it?”