A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,91

Jinnaat with me. But ever after, she was never content to remain in the wood. A strange mood would overcome her, she would strap her blades across her back and wander, a warrior-poet who found a home wherever she laid her head.

The first time she disappeared from the Waiting Place, I searched and searched until I found her draped in the branches of a Gandifur tree in the far west, trading poetry with the Jadna tribe—the forebears of the Jaduna.

She drifted thousands of miles south, to the Ankanese, and taught them the language of the stars. Then she sang stories with the first Kehannis of the Tribes, teaching them to draw magic from words. She found those Tribespeople who saw the dead and instructed them on the Mysteries they would later use to pass ghosts.

“Why,” I asked her, exasperated, “do you always wander so far? Why can you not remain in the Sher Jinnaat?”

Her smile pulled at my heart, for there was a deep sadness to it. “You have found your purpose, my king. You have much magic in you. I still seek mine. When I find my power, I will return. This, I vow.”

It had not occurred to me that she lacked magic, for to me, she burned with life and wit, humor and beauty.

One day, weeks after she’d disappeared again, I woke from sleep. Her anguished voice called to me across hundreds of miles. I made for an island empty of human life, but teeming with every other kind. The ocean was peaceful, a brilliant azure, the winds sweet as summer cherries.

I found Rehmat along the northern coast of the island. She wore her human form, brown-skinned and brown-eyed, with black hair woven into a plait. She rocked back and forth, her arms clasped tight about her legs.

“Rehmat?” I cradled her to me, and she dropped her head against my heart.

“This is an island of death, Meherya,” she whispered. “Many ghosts will pass from here. It will not be you who passes them, but another who has not yet come. And you will call her traitor, though she meant no harm.”

She screamed, her dark eyes burning into mine. “The Ember will walk these sands, and here the seeds of his defiance will flower, but for naught, for the forest will call him and suffering will sunder him.”

Thus did we learn Rehmat’s power, one far more treacherous than anything we had yet encountered. She foresaw the future. My own ability to scry was limited to impressions, brief images. Rehmat saw possibility after possibility.

She returned to the Sher Jinnaat, as she promised. But the price was high. She locked herself away in her home and spoke to no one but me. I begged Mauth to free her from the torment of her magic. But he spoke less and less. We were created to pass the ghosts. Our powers had their uses—and though we might not like it, hers had a purpose too.

“If only I could master it,” she whispered to me once after a particularly difficult episode. “I would teach others. This, I vow.”

I cared for her during those difficult months, and something kindled between us, a soul-deep fire that others had found but that had, until then, eluded me. My heart was hers, and I knew that if she did not wish to become my queen, I would never have one.

In time, she learned to understand and control her magic. As she promised, when other flames kindled and discovered they were haunted by the curse of foresight, it was Rehmat who taught them to see it as a gift.

After she made peace with her visions, she found her poetry again. But now she shared it with me alone, whispering it into the deepest chambers of my heart.

When she consented to be my queen, the Sher Jinnaat celebrated for a month. And when we brought our own little flames to the world, the entire city turned out to sing the song of welcome. All was well.

Until the Scholars came.

After they murdered our children, Rehmat donned her blades once more. She spoke strength into the jinn who yet lived. She used centuries of experience to outwit the Scholars in battle.

But it was not enough. Even as Cain’s accursed coven plotted to chain the jinn, Rehmat fell in combat near the Duskan Sea, where I first beheld her. I pulled her to me as her flame flickered into darkness, and she fixed her liquid-fire eyes on my face.

“You are strong,” I said.