THE LEGION OF THE DEAD
Somewhere in the Desert of Dreams 20th day of the Month of Song 3 months into Queen Shayla’s reign
1
GUL
When the bounty hunter finds me, I’m squatting behind the partially broken wall of an outdoor restroom in Tavan, bare from the waist down, my skin prickling in the cold light of a yellow half moon. I hear him first—his breaths heavy and ragged—before I catch him peering at me from behind the wall, his gaunt face coated with a layer of shimmering Dream Dust. His spell nicks the tip of my earlobe, leaving behind a cut that could have severed my whole ear had I not rolled out of the way, my bladder growing taut and painful, every urge to urinate gone.
A grunt, followed by another spell in the dark. Debris strewn across the wet floor sticks to my palms as I crawl over it: the broken shards of a tile, grit, gravel, and goddess knows what else. My heart beats out a scattered rhythm as the restroom glows again with red light, more tiles clattering to the ground. I hold in a breath, not daring to make a sound.
If only I could get to my daggers.
Right now, they’re sheathed in my belt, which hangs on the wall—two seaglass blades shaped like the curling horns of a shadowlynx—in full view of anyone taking aim from the outside. The star-shaped birthmark on my right arm grows warm. My magic, as always, senses the danger I’m in. I know I could fight the bounty hunter magically, without my daggers. I also know that, by doing so, I could potentially rupture an organ or injure myself in some other stupid way, making it easier for him to take me to Queen Shayla and claim the five thousand swarnas she has offered for my capture.
“Is someone there?” I say under my breath.
I’m not looking for an alive someone; certainly, I’m not hoping to draw the attention of the bounty hunter. But a living specter or two might be lingering nearby. Each chained to our world by a single, desperate wish, living specters are spirits of the dead that remain invisible to magi and non-magi. Though everyone can hear and feel the presence of the specters, only half magi like Cavas can see them. Over the past twenty years, Tavan’s specters have protected its boundary, circling the golden bars the Pashu king Subodh magically erected to protect the city. The combined powers of the bars and the specters keep the city not only invisible but also unbreachable by outsiders.
So how did a bounty hunter show up here? I wonder. Are the specters fading?
Specters could fade, disappearing for good from the living world once their most desperate wish was fulfilled. Without spectral magic, the golden bars can vanish, creating gaps in Tavan’s boundary like holes in an aging tapestry.
Esther, the only other half magus in Tavan, warned me about this possibility many times over the past three months. “Our specters won’t hold on forever,” she said. “Yes, it’s true that most have remained behind to protect the city because I asked them to. But spectral magic isn’t something I control. It is solely guided by the spirit’s own will. Many of these specters were marked women and girls from Tavan, who were tortured to death. They simply wished for King Lohar to die. Now that he’s gone, few will be willing to stay behind.”
My breath rushes out—a sound that makes the bounty hunter mutter. His looming shadow sways erratically against the bathroom floor. I wonder if he’s feeling dizzy, a common aftereffect of the Dream Dust. Inhaling too much of the Dust can make you question what you see with your own eyes—a solid advantage in my favor right now. But I don’t dare look up to confirm this. The bounty hunter is still armed. I can’t predict how the Dust will affect his aim.
I’m not sure about my own aim, either. I haven’t practiced death magic once in these three months, though I’ve carried my dagger belt everywhere like a shackle binding my hips.
If you’d listened to Esther, you wouldn’t be in this state right now, my conscience chides. Heat shoots up my right arm, my fingertips glowing a dull orange. If we were still talking, Cavas would have likely told me about the specters’ fading. But Cavas has barely spoken to or looked at me since our fight last month, ignoring every attempt I’ve made at reconciliation.
A rock clatters outside, followed by a man’s enraged shout.
I crane my neck up, risking a peek through the hole in the bathroom wall. Instead of the bounty hunter, I see only the night sky—as starry and cloudless as the sky goddess’s eyes in my dreams.
Are you there, Goddess? I think. Can you hear me?
But the goddess remains silent, the way she has ever since we arrived in Tavan.
A breath brushes my injured ear, sending burning pinpricks over my skin. A childish giggle, followed by a familiar singsongy voice: “Wallowing in self-pity again? Shame. What if the Legion saw their Star Warrior now?”
“Whosssit?” the bounty hunter shouts from somewhere beyond the wall, his words slurring together. “Ssssat you, marked witch?”
“Indu,” I whisper, ignoring him. Indu is a living specter, who died as a young girl. She helped me and Cavas several times in the past, leading us to Tavan after we fled Ambar Fort. Relief floods my aching limbs. “Indu, can you raise an alarm?”
“I already have, silly girl,” the specter says. “I did it the moment this man and his troop slipped in.”
His troop? “There are more?” I demand, horrified.
“What do you think?” Indu snorts. “They’re not as Dust-addled as this one, either. Are you going to fight him now, or do you want me to hand your daggers to you?”
Good point. I can’t hide in this musty bathroom forever.
Heart in throat, I rise in a leap, expecting to be shot at any moment. Luck favors me—the bounty hunter shoots but lops off only a few strands of my braid. I unsheathe my daggers, tightening my slippery hands around a pair of familiar hilts. Magic pours through me in a rush, the seaglass blades expelling a burst of green fire.
My first two spells miss their target, but my third one shapes itself into an arrow that impales the bounty hunter’s left eye and flies out the back of his turbaned skull in a cloud of blood, cloth, and bone fragments.
“Thank the goddess,” Indu says. “You’re not completely out of touch.”
Yes, I think, relief mingling with nausea. My magic, so unpredictable since I was a girl, did exactly what I wanted it to today.
“You said there were more bounty hunters. Where are they?” I ask Indu, ignoring the shivers running down my limbs.
“At the southern boundary—next to the reservoir. Esther, Kali, and the boy are holding them off for now while Raja Subodh checks on the other city borders. Hurry, Star Warrior!”
The boy. There is only one boy in Tavan right now, and that’s Cavas, his face flashing before me in various imagined stages of death.
No, I think as I race southward. Cavas may hate me right now—certainly, he can’t stand the sight of me—but I am not going to let him die tonight. Or any other night on my watch.
Screams and jets of red light announce the battle happening near the reservoir, now a dark rectangle of water in the distance. I see Kali first, dressed in her sleep tunic, shooting spells with her daggers, barely holding off three bounty hunters. Behind them, another masked figure laughs as Cavas struggles to dodge his spells behind a rusty, old metal shield. Next to Cavas, over a dozen other figures struggle against more bounty hunters—stick-wielding Tavani women from the Legion of the Star Warrior, the army Esther trained herself and named in my honor. I scan them now, doing a rough body count—fifty women from the Legion against a little over twenty bounty hunters. The numbers are clearly on our side.
But the magic isn’t. The women of Tavan were drained of their magic by King Lohar’s troops years ago.
As if sensing my approach, Cavas spins around, his brown eyes widening.
“Get out of here!” he shouts as my spell hits the bounty hunter making a grab for his shoulder.
The spell is effective: Almost instantly, the bounty hunter lets go. But my anger has always acted like a jambiya when it comes to death magic—double-edged and deadly. My focused green spellfire blooms red, setting fire to the bounty hunter’s hand and Cavas’s arm, forcing them both to the ground to douse the flames.
Queen’s curses.
“Cavas!” I shout. “Cavas, are you hurt?”
“Gul, watch out!” Kali yells a second before a jet of red light takes off another chunk of my hair. There is no time to check on Cavas to see if he’s okay. There is no time to think about anything except the three spells heading my way, nothing except protect, protect, protect.
My shield explodes in a glow of orange light, rebounding the bounty hunters’ spells and nearly throwing me flat on my back. Sweat breaks out over my chest and ribs. My bladder is aching again, and my lungs no longer feel like they can process air.
There are simply too many bounty hunters.
So? Attack them first, fool. Amira’s voice echoes in my head—a memory from an old training session in Javeribad. Amira, who is now imprisoned at Ambar Fort with Juhi and probably being tortured because she tried to save me.
I raise my daggers high. My spell elongates, shapes itself into two green talwars, their blades killing one bounty hunter and forcing the other two back.
My head pounds and my nostrils prick with the scent of blood—my own. Using death magic again after so long has left me shaking at the knees and soon enough the bounty hunters will see it, too.
I think I’m about to collapse when a roar thunders behind me.
Subodh!
The Pashu king lunges forward, a giant golden mace held in his front paws, his teeth bared in a snarl. The sight of his furious, leonine face unnerves the remaining bounty hunters, though most still stand their ground, their attention now split between me and Subodh. Soon enough, it’s clear who the bigger threat is. Subodh’s reptilian tail swats off spells like flies; his spiked mace rings eerily in the air right before cracking over a bounty hunter’s head.
“Legion, to me!” a woman commands. I make out Esther’s tall form raising a lathi and rallying the two other women in blue. “Charge!” Esther shouts.
Subodh’s entering the fray seems to have simultaneously revived the Legion’s confidence and unnerved the enemy. The surviving bounty hunters flee toward the boundary—through the too-wide gap between the golden bars that I see only now. Subodh follows to the edge, raising his mace over his head. For a moment, I think he’s going to send a killing spell their way, but he simply aims the weapon at the sand from which another golden bar rises, up, up, and up, disappearing into the night sky.
“Indu,” Subodh commands between pants, his rumbling voice vibrating in the silence.
“The barrier is now protected, Pashuraj,” Indu replies.
The new golden bar does not flicker or move. It continues holding firm, no new bodies slipping in.
Subodh turns to me, his large tongue lolling to the side, his great yellow eyes reflecting the moon.
“Nice to see you finally make an appearance, Star Warrior,” he says.
Text copyright © 2021 by Tanaz Bhathena
