The Story So Far: Sole survivor of the destruction of Shadi, the world's oldest city, the priestess and daughter of King Amar-Sin, Ilati, seeks to avenge her people and end the rule of Nysra and his dark gods. Abandoned by her goddess, she sought out a new deity in the desert and connected with K'adau, the Mother of Demons. After traveling months with the Sut Resi, nomadic horse warriors, a one-eyed sorcerer named Eigou, and a charioteer of Magan named Menes, she fought and bested a demon at Sa Dul. Now they are traveling to seek allies in the Kingdom of Sarru, but that task will not be easy even with the possible help of Kulziya, Captain of the Royal Guard in Ulmanna. To make matters worse, one of the men responsible for Shadi's destruction will be present as a protected diplomat: Commander Sarhad of Nadar. 

***

The reactions of King Tudhaliya’s servants to the strangers in their midst told Ilati everything she could have asked for. They gazed wide-eyed at the barbarians entering the palace for only a moment before dropping their  gazes and scurrying about to complete their tasks. Many men seeking audience with their king peeled away from the throngs of people when Eigou appeared, more interested in the sorcerer’s counsel than the strangers he surrounded himself with. Kulziya stayed near the one-eyed man’s side, directing servants to escort the wild women to the baths. Menes remained with Eigou. The idea of sharing a bath with any of them was perhaps more immodest to a man of Magan than even he could stand.

No one seemed thrilled with the arrangement, least of all Shir Del, who grumbled fiercely as she followed Ilati with one hand firmly on Roshanak’s shoulder. “Skittish beasts,” the warrior woman muttered when one of the handmaidens flinched away from her glare. 

Ilati smiled despite herself. “As far as they know, Shir Del, your people are cannibalistic barbarians who eat their victims raw and slay whoever offends them. Of course they are wary of you.” 

Shir Del looked annoyed. “And when have you ever known me to consume the flesh of men?” 

“Stories are often exaggerated, and it is not as though the Sut Resi have ever sought to correct those who tell them. There are advantages to being feared on the field of battle, no?” Ilati inhaled sharply as they passed through the cedar doors into the baths, the distinctive smell of frankincense and sandalwood filling her nose. Rose petals floated on the surface of the baths, set into the stone floor. The pools staggered down like naturally formed springs, each one fed by the one above it. At the top was a small channel of water that filled the slow cascade, no doubt diverted from either a spring within the hill or an aquifer. At the bottom of the arrangement, water followed channels out through open doors into verdant gardens, where they served as irrigation for fruit trees and many other plants.

Compared to the great hanging gardens of Shadi, these were little more than planters surrounded by channels, but Ilati still saw the beauty in them. It demonstrated Lugal’s favor, if nothing else, as the ability to cultivate such growing life in such an urban setting relied upon water gods.

Shir Del wrinkled her nose at the scents of perfume. “Extravagant and indulgent,” she muttered. “Must we even smell like them?” 

The poet smiled with a trace of amusement. “It is the King’s hospitality. Refusing would invite disadvantage. Besides, if Tudhaliya is anything like his reputation, he is hoping you will balk and make a beast of yourself.” 

The warrior woman sighed and looked over at her daughter, who seemed absolutely fascinated by the flow of water through the garden-enclosed pools. There would be no keeping Roshanak from the water in another minute or two. “I do not like this, priestess.” 

“I know.” It was hard to keep her amusement out of her voice, but Ilati managed. She stripped down at the edge of the water, taking the time to examine herself for a moment.

Her battle scars still showed bold and red even with the wounds closed, raised and twisted strands of stretched skin. For the first time since the destruction of Shadi, Ilati allowed herself to see her body. Hard living and training relentlessly had changed it from what she remembered, in ways far beyond the disfiguring marks left by demonic claws. She could see the outline of toughened muscle instead of soft curves as she traced the swell of her calves and thighs with her eyes, feel the ripple of it as she moved her shoulders. Her abdomen had flattened, the softness there mostly gone. Her hands bore rows of calluses, nails worn or broken short and uneven, and her dark hair had taken on a slightly lighter, reddish quality from exposure to the sun. Even her skin had changed, bronzed by sun without the shade of palace walls and gardens to spare it. 

She was no longer a pampered, sheltered woman of privilege, kept inside Zu’s own house or the palace like a child’s cloth doll. To actually see the change, though, was a strange and almost indescribable feeling. For a moment, she could feel every mile between her and Shadi here, across the knotted map of her skin. Ilati discarded her clothes to the side and turned her attention back to her companions at the sound of a particularly raucous splash. “Roshanak, you are supposed to undress first, and enter with a step, not a leap.” 

The girl turned in the pool, beaming with an excitement only matched in intensity by the looks of shock on the handmaidens’ faces. “But it’s almost deep enough to dive!” 

Shir Del laughed in the way Ilati had come to associate with the Sut Resi: from deep in the belly rather than the tittering of court women. The Sut Resi warrior seemed to mightily enjoy the reaction to her daughter’s antics. “That will save me the trouble of trying to explain how to wash your clothes, I suppose.” The warrior woman unstrung her bow first and wrapped the sinew string away in a leather pouch treated with grease to keep water out, then placed both her weapons and her clothes away from the water’s edge, with Ilati’s. Roshanak had left her bow well away from the pool, but still had her little knapped flint dagger on her. 

One of the younger handmaidens edged slightly closer to inspect their animal-skin clothes once the warrior herself stepped into the baths to pursue Roshanak. Ilati turned to face her and spoke in the tongue of their hosts. “You cannot wash that as you wash fabric or you will ruin it. Leave it to us to tend.” 

The servants all blinked in surprise. “You speak with a civilized tongue,” the bold handmaiden marveled. “We thought you Sut Resi.” 

Ilati supposed it was a fair assumption. She was wearing Sut Resi clothes, carrying a Sut Resi bow, and had not spoken anything but the wild peoples’ tongue so far in this company. Her conversations with Shir Del and Roshanak had stayed strictly in their speech since they parted ways with the others and she’d spoken little else inside the palace. “I find it is useful to speak many languages.” Ilati could practically see the questions burning on the lips of the others, but they were careful to avoid eye contact and maintain their meekness. 

The youngest, though, forged ahead. “You do not mark your face and body with those strange paints either, the ones that stain until they do not wash.” 

Ilati glanced over at Shir Del and Roshanak. It was true and an oversight on her part: the Sut Resi were famous for marking their bodies and faces with tattoos, and the absence of them on her was telling. She had also chosen to wear her hair loose rather than in the braid common to the Sut Resi. “No, I do not.” 

“Where are you from, stranger? What place birthed a woman warrior besides the silver-grass steppe?”

The priestess’s expression hardened. While the questions could be innocent, it was also possible that Commander Sarhad had people inside the court who sought information. “The Desert of Kings.”

“Surely not,” the handmaiden said, recoiling from Ilati’s clothes like she expected them to contain a scorpion. “We have heard tell of this place, where demons stalk the barren sands.” She made a sign with her hands, something Ilati assumed was to avert the evil eye. “There is no water, no life, nothing may grow. All that is alive perishes to the gnawing of the evil ones in that accursed place.”

“This is so,” Ilati said, turning and stepping into the cool, refreshing waters of the bath. If Sarhad wanted rumors, he would most certainly have one now. 

“Have you not seen those scars?” one of the older handmaidens hissed to the youngest, just low enough in volume to be barely within Ilati’s hearing. “They did not come from a lion!” 

“How do you know that?” the bold one replied petulantly. 

“Number those on her shoulder and you will see the lines from seven claws upon one paw. She is marked by demons!” 

Ilati gave no sign that she had heard either the comments or the gasp of horror from the young one now rapidly scrambling away from her belongings. Instead, she scrubbed over herself, trying to work away the dirt and sweat, massaging around the hard tissue of the scars. It felt so good to soak that she lost herself in the sensation, dunking her head below the water. By the time she resurfaced, the handmaidens had withdrawn to what they presumed was a safe distance and Shir Del had finally managed to finish stripping Roshanak in the bath. 

“They seem more frightened of you now,” the warrior woman commented with something approaching a secret glee as she looked over at Ilati, scrubbing away at Roshanak despite the girl’s squawks of protest. Ilati knew that Shir Del, despite her pride, had learned to speak the languages of the settled peoples of Kullah and Sarru both. The exchange was entirely within her comprehension. “Eigou will be pleased.” 

“News will travel quickly,” Ilati said. “The great stone house of a king is not so different from a Sut Resi camp when it comes to rumors. Well, except that it is easier to learn the truth among your people. One need only ask. It is not so simple in places like this.”

“Those who build their houses from stone rather than the skins they have hunted are always careful to keep two faces and three hearts,” Shir Del said with scorn. 

Ilati thought of all the intrigues she had seen both in the palace and the temple in Shadi. “Perhaps that is true of some. Perhaps most. Not all. Even soft clay can be hardened in a fire until it is like stone, yes?” 

The warrior woman gave her a hard look, not angry, but shrewd. “I suppose you are proof enough of that, priestess,” Shir Del said more thoughtfully. “Yet sometimes I wonder how well even I know your measure.” 

“I’m no Eigou.” 

The Sut Resi warrior shrugged. “All things have their nature. Eigou is like the deepest parts of the Great Forest: full of many hidden spaces, secret things, and ancient powers. So it is fitting, what you said to them: I see the burning sands in you, the fiery sun, the unrelenting howl of the night winds.” 

Ilati shook her head slightly. “You know me, Shir Del.” 

“As you are now, but beyond? The sands shift. It is in their nature.” Shir Del’s hooded eyes of lapis lazuli were almost as piercing as Roshanak’s gaze had been when the spirit looked at her. “Even when we met, you were not what you appeared, and you change more and more in my dreams now with every passing moon.” 

That alarmed Ilati. “What am I becoming?”

Shir Del shrugged. “It is subtle. I could not say, but perhaps Roshanak could. Second-souled children see more clearly than even we who can stride among dreams.” Shelooked down at her daughter expectantly. 

Roshanak squinted up at Ilati, expression fiercely concentrating for a moment. It was an expression that very much matched her mother’s most thoughtful scowl.

“Well?” Shir Del prompted after a long moment, flicking her daughter’s braid. 

The second-souled girl blinked and her expression returned to normal. “I don’t know. I don’t see anything different.” 

Ilati shook her head slightly. “Don’t look at me with those eyes, Roshanak,” she said quietly before touching the center of the girl’s forehead, where she’d seen the glowing eye of the spirit within Roshanak using her own sight beyond sight. “Look at me with this one.”

The girl hesitated, fingers rubbing along the concentric rings of the tattoo on the back of her neck. “Are you sure?”

Now even more apprehensive, the priestess still nodded. “I would know what I am becoming if it is changing my spirit too.”

Roshanak nodded. This time she closed her eyes. Instead of the strained concentration, her face smoothed into the composure of a corpse and even her breathing slowed almost to a stop. 

Ilati felt an itch at the back of her neck, a sense of being observed not just by Roshanak, but by many eyes all around. It was a feeling she’d experienced before, but it took her a moment to place it: Shadi, when through lifeless, glassy eyes the dead had watched her stagger through city streets alone. 

Shir Del twisted her thumb ring into position automatically, even without her bow, responding to a threat she could feel, but not see. “Roshanak, that is enough.” An urgent caution ran through Shir Del’s speech like the River Esharra’s fast-moving current. 

Roshanak’s eyes opened, devoid of the spark of life. They did not move their gaze, fixed instead on Ilati. Her words came as a whisper through teeth, like the wind through a hollow skull. It was distinctly not Roshanak’s girlish voice, but instead a chorus of thousands speaking at once, though not as the thunderous roar it had been the last time Ilati heard it. The words were not spoken in Sut Resi, nor in Sarrian, nor even in the tongue of Kullah. They came without need of the ears, instead a frigid cold setting into the bones. 

“Hail Ilati of Kullah, Queen of Thorns, Lady of the Floodwaters.
Hail the Devastator, the Destroyer, who breaks chains and kingdoms alike in her teeth.
Hail the Exile who shatters the cages of her people.
Hail the Mother of Havoc who stirs the dead from Ersetu and sets mountains aflame.”

Ilati surged forward in the water, catching Roshanak as she collapsed once the words were spoken, looking to Shir Del. “What was that?”

For the first time since they’d met, Shir Del’s eyes widened with distress. “I do not know. Help me get her out of the pool.” 

Together they hoisted Roshanak out, ignoring the confusion of the onlooking handmaidens. “I have heard those words before, in the Desert of Kings, just before the Mother of Demons appeared to me,” Ilati admitted, voice low.

“Demons?” Shir Del said as she fussed over her daughter, pulling over a large square of cloth to dry off Roshanak and then wrap her. “This has not happened before. She is cold as death.” 

Ilati wished she had an answer for Shir Del. “I should not have pushed her.” 

Shir Del leaned down, studying her daughter’s face with one hand over Roshanak’s heart. “She is breathing, but not awake.” She hesitated for a second, still watching the utter lack of movement on the girl’s face. Not even her eyelashes were fluttering. “She does not dream. Tahmasp would know what to do, but he is not here.” Shir Del hissed in frustration. “Fetch Eigou, sister of battle. He is a skilled healer and knows much of things beyond mortal ken. I will try to wake her in your absence.” 

Ilati nodded, rising from her kneeling position at the edge of the pool to dress swiftly in the clothes laid out for them: it was cloth that Shir Del would likely refuse, a simple white dress bordered in blue that gathered at one shoulder with a pin, leaving the arms and most of the shoulder bare. Ilati’s scars from Ezezu were still on full display. 

A matronly handmaiden broke from the whispering group at the sight of the girl in distress, an older woman with coiled gray hair and a soft, heart-shaped face. They had been well out of earshot of the whisper. “What happened? Shall we fetch the one who knows oils?” 

Ilati shook her head. “Take me to Eigou,” she said firmly. “He is here in the palace and we need him at once.” 

The older woman nodded and immediately started walking swiftly, though she had her own questions for Ilati still. “The soothsayer? Her affliction is magical?”

“He is a healer of great skill as well.” Ilati appreciated the fact that the older woman was moving with speed and purpose. Together they departed the baths for the main palace halls, drawing many eyes as they went. Ilati knew she probably looked a frightful sight between her wet, tangled hair and the fearsome scars across her face and arms. “Hurry. When even her mother has not seen her this way, it is serious.” 

With a nod, the servant sped her pace until it was almost a lope through the halls, Ilati right beside her. They found Eigou in a smaller dining hall across from Prince Hattusa, Menes and Kulziya still at his side. Those who had sought the sorcerer’s counsel were otherwise gone, no doubt dismissed by their crown prince. 

“...so he is worse than even I thought–” Eigou cut himself off as they arrived, looking over at Ilati. His brow furrowed. “Is something the matter?” 

“Roshanak took unwell,” Ilati said, aware they had an audience. She was not ignorant of Hattusa’s stare at her scarred shoulder and arm. “We need you at the baths.” 

Menes sprang up at once, nearly knocking his chair over backwards. Eigou was only barely slower, probably only because of age’s hindrance. Both had a significant soft spot for the girl. “What happened?” the warrior of Magan asked, all thought of impropriety yielding to worry.

“She fainted.” Ilati wasn’t certain if it would be safe to speak the truth in the company of strangers, particularly with Sarhad in the palace. 

Together the small group made their way to the baths, followed by Kulziya and a concerned Prince Hattusa. It was the crown prince who could not leave the matter lie at Ilati’s simple explanation. “What is the nature of the malady? Has it happened before?” 

“Not like this, not as far as I know,” Ilati said. She cursed herself for putting Roshanak at risk even as she looked to the one-eyed sorcerer and spoke the truth of what had happened in the Sut Resi tongue. “It was my fault, Eigou. She was trying to discern things about me and something overcame her.” 

“Gazing with her second-souled eyes?” The old man picked up his pace, practically running through the palace. “Likely overexertion, but it could be more.” 

When they arrived, Shir Del had Roshanak cradled in her arms, forehead pressed to the girl’s. “Come back to me, sweet one,” the Sut Resi woman crooned to her daughter as she rocked the girl back and forth. She didn’t look up at the sound of their footfalls, her panic barely contained by a facade of calm. “Do not listen to the shades that call to you.” 

Roshanak’s eyes fluttered like a fevered dreamer’s, the only part of her body in motion except for the shallow rise and fall of her chest. 

“What has happened, Shir Del? Is it dream magic?” Eigou asked, kneeling beside the frantic Sut Resi mother. 

The warrior woman looked up at him. “She dreams of the restless dead calling her to join them. They are hungry, twisted things.” 

“She would be more sensitive, given what she is,” Eigou said, scowling. “But dead beyond Ersetu? How could such a thing–”

“The unburied of Shadi,” Ilati said quietly. “I see them in my dreams.” 

Eigou’s expression hardened. “That is a great many spirits to confront. They will not heed me, but they might heed you, priestess. I can bridge the gap, but you must contend with them before they take Roshanak away.” Without waiting for an answer, he fished around in the satchel of herbs he carried, pulling out a pouch of myrrh and another of cedar bark. 

“I will not let them take your daughter, Shir Del,” Ilati promised as Eigou conjured a flame in his hand and touched it to the cedar bark. “This is my fault, but I will make it right.” 

Shir Del nodded and reached out a hand, squeezing Ilati’s fingers in a crushing grip. “Good hunting, sister,” she said fiercely. “Bring my daughter back.” 

Ilati watched as Eigou added the myrrh to his small fire beside the pool, fragrant smoke rising from the dancing flames. “What do I do?”

“Breathe deep and open your eyes as she did, Ilati. I will sustain it for as long as I can, but we have little time.” 

The priestess lowered herself to her knees beside Shir Del, breathing deeply of the smoke as she placed her hand on Roshanak’s forehead. She let her awareness of the world fall away, opening her inner eye again as she had when speaking with Lugal. 

Whatever Ilati had expected, she was not ready for what she saw.