Vizier Gyan’s bhuta guards throw open the door and march inside. The vizier surveys my protectors and barks, “All of you, leave us.”
Indah, Pons, and our guards go, filing past Vizier Gyan stationed at the door. His nose and eyes are red from crying.
“My niece is dead,” he states with bitterness.
“The trial-tournament proceedings are over,” Ashwin replies evenly. “I understand the sultan is no longer willing to offer us aid, so I’ll take my people and go.”
“You’ll go nowhere,” counters the vizier. A guard drags Natesa through the open door and shoves her to her knees.
“I’m sorry,” she weeps, begging my forgiveness. “He threatened to kill Yatin. Don’t give him what he wants, he—” Vizier Gyan hits Natesa square in the face, and she crumples to the floor.
“Leave her alone,” I exclaim. “She’s a servant, nothing more.”
“She proved valuable to me.” Vizier Gyan holds up a book, and my heart retracts in on itself.
The Zhaleh.
“Your servant insisted she doesn’t know where the vessel is hidden.” Vizier Gyan crosses to my bed, the Zhaleh firm in his grasp. Ashwin tries to block him, but the vizier shoves him out of the way and bends over me, his glare frightening. “Where is the vessel?”
“I don’t have it.”
He raises his fist to strike me, and Ashwin calls out.
“Here.” He lifts the necklace from under his shirt, the vessel dangling. “Let us go, and I’ll give it to you.”
“You’re in no position to bargain, boy,” the vizier sneers. “We have your people, your army, and, soon, your palace.” Ashwin balks. Ridicule fills the vizier’s long, cruel face. “Our troops are nearly to Vanhi. I’ll soon join them to deliver the vessel and the Zhaleh to Hastin. Now hand it to me.”
Ashwin rips the chain free from his neck and holds it out beside him. “Come any closer and I’ll crush it.”
Vizier Gyan signals to his soldiers. They manhandle the vessel from Ashwin and pass it to the vizier.
No, no, no.
The vizier gazes at both powers in his hands. I fear he will take them and go, but he hesitates. Can he hear the call of the Voider? He opens the Zhaleh and flips to the incantation. He runs his fingers over the page, enthralled. Desire builds in his greedy gaze. He desires the power of the Voider. He seeks the promised favor for himself.
But the incantation is written in ancient runes. His lips start to move, and a warning blares inside me. “You can read runes?” I ask.
He smirks, an arrogant twist of his lips. “I’ve studied the language of the gods. Haven’t you?”
Ashwin yanks himself from the guards’ grasp, his expression distraught.
Vizier Gyan lifts his palm from the book, his stare firm with resolve. “I don’t think I will pass this on to Hastin after all.”
He has succumbed to the call of the Voider.
I tense to attack, but I have no powers to stop him. My abilities were expended in the arena, and my sheathed daggers are hanging off my bedpost. I can almost reach them with the foot of my leg that is not broken, but I cannot sit up to grab them.
Vizier Gyan lays the book at the end of the bed and flips open the vial. Ashwin springs at him, but the guards drag him back. The vizier drinks the blood, and then, with his lips stained crimson, he reads the incantation. “Fire to smoke and smoke to—”
“One scream and the palace guards will be here,” I cry, drowning out his voice. He pauses, but darkness flows out of the open book like black fog. “What will Sultan Kuval say when he finds out you’re betraying him?”
Vizier Gyan sets the vial beside the book and grabs my throat. “Don’t be noble, Burner. I have drunk the blood and spoken the first words of the incantation. I cannot be stopped.”
Choking for breath, I kick the bedpost with my good leg and foot. My toes knock down my daggers, drawing the attention of the guards. Ashwin rounds on the nearest one, slamming him in the chest with his shoulder and seizing the sword. Lifting the blade against the second soldier, Ashwin backs up against the bed. His free hand darts out and rips the page with the incantation on it from the Zhaleh, and then, with the same hand, he fists the discarded vial.
Vizier Gyan lets up on his grip slightly. I gasp, gulping in air, and his crazed gaze snaps to Ashwin. “You waste your strength, boy.”
Ashwin tosses the khanda on the floor. Thunderstruck, I watch him take the incantation in both hands to rip the parchment in half.
The guards move to charge the unarmed prince, but Vizier Gyan waves them off. “Give it to me or your kindred will die.”
Ashwin scans the loose parchment. It smokes, though I see no flames. “I want justice for bhutas too,” he says. “But this is not the way.”
“Where was justice when Tarek was slaughtering my people?” the vizier yells, his bloodshot eyes frenzied. “Where was mercy when my sister was killed? My legacy is of the gods. Your legacy is of treachery and butchery.”
“I love my empire,” Ashwin proclaims.
“Your empire has fallen.” The vizier’s grasp remains on my gullet. I dare not move to oppose him. He is overcome with the call of the Voider, desperate to finish the incantation. Leaving it unfinished will drive him mad. He growls, “Give me back what belongs to my people, or I will grind the kindred’s bones to powder.”
He means his threat, and Ashwin cannot stop him. Ruining the incantation is a temporary diversion. The darkness is coming; the fog rolling off the parchment is inescapable. Vizier Gyan will unleash the Voider, and we will lose more than the empire—we will lose the world.
Ashwin’s face falls. He has foreseen the same devastating future.
“Gods, forgive me.” He tears the incantation in two and drops the pieces.
Vizier Gyan lunges for the fluttering sections. While he is down, Ashwin licks the bloody rim of the vessel and says, “Fire to smoke, and smoke to dark. Let the light fall and the night rise. Shadows be one. Darkness open the Void and awaken the evernight.”
Coils of shadow shoot out from the torn incantation in the vizier’s hands and splay across the chamber like crooked, grasping fingers.
I gawk at Ashwin. He finished the incantation. He must have memorized it.
A malevolent chuckle echoes around us, and more darkness slinks in from the fringes of the chamber. Ashwin steps over to me, paling with fright. Vizier Gyan’s guards try to flee, but they are lost in the voracious shadows. They scream as spiny threads of the dark whip out, strangling their cries to helpless gurgles.
Vizier Gyan scrambles back to the door, but the shadows seize him with grasping claws. The ground trembles, and cracks snake up the wall from his feeble attempts to retaliate. I lose sight of the vizier and his dying soldiers in the blinding dimness, and then the trembling stops.
Shadows eclipse the light, smothering my senses in bone-chilling obscurity. Despair crawls far inside me and expands into my bones. We are lost to the evernight.