and knocked him into the water. He’d turned to face the others before a splash even sounded.
Daevas, three of them. Another archer—a woman with a long black braid—and two men armed with a broadsword and a mace. They looked taken aback by his arrival, aghast at their comrade’s death. But not afraid.
And they reacted a lot faster than he would have imagined.
The first drew his broadsword, the acrid smell warning Ali of iron before it sparked hard against his zulfiqar. The man danced back, careful to avoid the poisoned flame. It was a move Ali associated with other Geziris, with warriors who’d trained against zulfiqars.
Where had a Daeva man learned that?
Ali ducked, narrowly avoiding the studded mace that swung past his face. The Daevas neatly fanned out to surround him, moving in perfect unison without saying a word.
Then the remaining archer hissed in Djinnistani. “It’s the Afshin-slayer.” She let out a mocking laugh. “Bit of a disingenuous title, sand fly.”
The swordsman lunged forward, forcing Ali to block him, and again the mace-bearer used the distraction to attack. This time the mace clipped Ali’s shoulder, the studs tearing out a patch of flesh.
Ali gasped at the burn, and one of the Daeva men leered at him. “They’ll eat you alive, you know,” he said, gesturing to the ghouls below. “Not us, of course. Orders and all. But I bet they smell your blood on the air right now. I bet it’s making them ravenous.”
The three warriors stepped closer, forcing Ali to the edge of the wall. He didn’t know who had trained the Daevas, but they’d done a damn good job, the soldiers moving as if they were of one mind.
But then the swordsman pressed too close. Ali dropped, seeing his opening and lunging at the man holding the mace. He caught him clean across one thigh, the poisoned flames leaving a line of swiftly blackening flesh in their wake.
“Bahram!” the archer cried in horror. The man looked shocked, his hand going to the fatal wound. Then he glanced at Ali, his eyes wild.
“For the Banu Nahida,” he whispered and rushed forward.
Caught completely off guard by the man’s declaration, Ali was ill-prepared for his desperate charge. He raised his zulfiqar in defense, but it didn’t matter. The man took the strike through the stomach, throwing himself on Ali and sending them both tumbling over the wall.
Ali landed with a bone-jarring impact on the wet sand. A wave passed over his face, and he choked on the water, his shoulder throbbing. His zulfiqar was gone, stuck in the body of the Daeva man he’d killed, now lying deeper in the shallows.
A high-pitched moan had him struggling to his knees, the hungry whines and tongueless shrieks of the undead ghouls growing louder. Ali turned his head.
His eyes went wide. There were scores of ghouls running for him—some bloated corpses of putrefied flesh and bloody teeth, others reduced to skeletons, their clawed hands sharp as knives. And they were only seconds away from closing in. They’d eat him alive, rip him apart, and be waiting for his friends—the few who survived the archer he saw even now nocking an arrow.
No. This couldn’t be their fate. His family, his city. Ali thrust his hands into the wet sand, the water surging through his fingers.
“Help me!” he begged, crying out to the marid. The ancient monsters had already used him; he knew their assistance would come with a terrible price, but right now Ali didn’t care. “Please!”
Nothing. The water stayed silent and lifeless. The marid were gone.
But in a small corner of his mind, something stirred. Not the alien presence he expected, but one that was familiar and comforting. The part of Ali that delighted in wading through the flooded fields of Bir Nabat and watching the way the water made life bloom. The memory of the little boy whose mother had carefully taught him to swim. The protective instinct that had saved him from countless assassins.
A part of him that he denied, a power that frightened him. For the first time since falling in the lake that awful night … Ali embraced it.
When the next wave broke, the world was quiet. Soft and slow and gray. Suddenly, it didn’t matter if he didn’t have his zulfiqar at hand. If he was outnumbered.
Because Ali had everything else. The water at his feet that was like a deadly, angry animal pacing its cage. The moisture in the air that was thick and heady, coating every surface. The