The man approaching me looked utterly unremarkable. He could have been a fast-talking merchant, a lecherous royal, a vagrant. His features were too bland, as though an artist had outlined the basics of a human man’s face and forgotten to fill in the rest.
“There’s no need for that,” he said amiably, gesturing at my axe. “Not with all the delicious magic you can use instead.”
I paused, and he chuckled at my expression. “Did you think I wouldn’t smell it? Oh, but I haven’t had a good taste of magic in so long. I have been searching for a morsel, and here a feast has presented itself to me.”
“What are you?” I held the axe between us as I maneuvered away.
“Hungry,” he said. “Starving, actually. You understand. I can feel your hunger, too.” He moved toward me, unperturbed when I slashed the axe in warning. He sighed. “I much preferred eating Lukubi magic, back when they had it. Jasadis are too much trouble.”
“I do not have any magic for you to eat. Whatever you are smelling is from this room.” I glanced at the door. A few more steps. Fighting in an enclosed home with a tree plunging through the middle was not a recipe for success.
“Nonsense. Your magic is ripe. Fragrant.” He inhaled deeply. “Much better than anything these pitiful fools ever possessed.”
I was being goaded. Fully aware of this, I let my temper flare anyway.
“For a hungry man, you seem to have energy for quite the abundance of stupidity.”
His features vanished for a second, as though his face had blinked from existence. When they returned, he wore a sneer. “I glutted myself on Jasad as it burned. Nothing compares to the flavor of magic used in desperation. I sated myself on the ruins of the kingdom, and no one bothered to stop me.” He took another step toward me. “I fed on the Jasad Heir’s magic before it left her cooling body. Hers was bitter, left behind a terrible taste. Like Niphran herself.”
My hold on the axe wavered. “Y-you killed her?”
“Me? Darling, my kind could not even enter Jasad until the fortress collapsed. Poor Niphran was already slain in her lonely little tower when I arrived.”
“Be quiet!” I shouted. The door pressed against my back, yet I could not make my legs carry me away. “You will not malign the Jasad Heir in this village.”
“But this is Dar al Mansi, isn’t it?” he purred. “And who was more forgotten than Niphran?”
My cuffs were burning vises, magic pulsing to the tune of my rage. His nostrils flared, reptilian gaze widening. “Oh,” he murmured, and licked his lips.
I had had my fill of his chattering. The axe caught him in the stomach, slicing a thick gash across his belly. It should have emptied his innards onto the floor. He didn’t even flinch.
“I would have liked to feed on the Malik and Malika. Even Niphran’s little bastard daughter. Instead, I had to settle for the likes of these.” He waved at the destroyed home. “Such a shame, that the weakest kingdom retained magic the longest.”
My magic roared, and my arms moved with preternatural speed in cleaving the axe into his throat. I yanked it from the clench of sinew and muscle.
The man’s features melted as his body began to warp. Hairy, elongated bovine legs replaced human ones, and six long, curved spider limbs erupted from his stretching torso. Three heads burst from his expanding neck, then joined together with a head at the top and two at the bottom.
“Dulhath.” The one creature even Hanim had not dared summon. I dodged the pointed tips of its many spider legs and brought my foot down on the nearest tip. It cracked, and the dulhath’s shriek pierced my ears. I hacked the limb swooping from the right.
Another leg swiped my feet out from under me. The world spun, and I knocked my head against the tree. Blinding pain exploded in my temple as a pile of shattered glass broke my fall. Viscous sludge dripped from teeth sharper than knives, gnashing in my face. I flipped to my feet, tearing open the sleeves of my tunic on the glass.
The dulhath surged toward me. I raised my hand, finally relenting to the battering demand of my magic. It wailed as its heads began to unwind from each other, white goo strung between each slab of head as it moved. I snapped my fingers, and the heads tore in separate directions, ripping its massive body into three.
I severed the bottom of a spidery leg and roped it around my thigh with a strip of the abandoned quilt. I sneered at the dulhath’s quivering heads, tossing the infant’s rattle onto where I hoped its face was.
“The only weak thing to die in this house is you.”
After checking the gloomy sky for Al Anqa’a, I sprinted at full speed past the bracket of shops, leaping over craters teeming with munban nests and tarnished pots. At the looming silhouette of Al Anqa’a, I rushed through the narrow crevice separating a butcher’s shop from a cluster of sapling trees. I glanced over my shoulder as I rounded the edge.
A springy wall slammed me to the ground, sending my axe flying. I squinted, adjusting my sight in the shade. A strangled cry slipped from my lips before I could stop myself.
A zulal undulated around Mehti’s body. Only his head was visible from the massive worm’s winding embrace. Death clouded eyes that hours ago had danced with mischief. The zulal throbbed around the Omal Champion, suckling the moisture from his body in its deadly coil. When the worm finished, it would leave behind his desiccated, shriveled carcass and slither away to lie in wait for its next meal.
My axe had fallen partially under the zulal. I crawled toward it, extending my fingers as far as they could go. When the handle eluded me, I crawled a little closer.
The zulal abruptly stopped rippling around Mehti’s corpse. Damn it to the tombs! Abandoning the axe, I sprinted away as the top half of the white worm unraveled with a wet sucking noise. I did not glance back to see if it was slithering after me. I pulled out the dagger hidden in my tunic, its lightness an unpleasant contrast to the axe’s satisfying heft.
When Al Anqa’a finished its next circuit, I pushed off the building. Not far ahead, the trees reverted to their natural clusters as Dar al Mansi ended and Essam Woods began. From there, it would be a fifteen-minute hike to where the masses waited to greet the returning Champions.
I weaved through a flower garden, the bottom of my boot collecting mud and moldering petals. By the time I reached the border, I hadn’t encountered another creature. The prospect of doubling back for the zulal and looking into Mehti’s sallow face appalled my common sense. There had to be another creature this close to the border, right?
A rustle from the right spun me around. I lifted the dagger, flexing my arm in preparation. One clean strike, and I would be done with the second trial forever. A man stumbled from over the tree line, disheveled and limping. My fingers tensed on the handle. Another dulhath?
The man lifted his chin, giving our surroundings a glazed glance.
I didn’t recognize him at first.
The years hadn’t treated him gently. The strong brown arms that swung me out of trees and lifted me onto his shoulders were withered. Lines burrowed in his proud forehead, and it seemed to take everything at his disposal to raise his head.