Saladin Ahmed has been a finalist for the Nebula and Campbell Awards , and now at last his entry illusion novel , Throne of the Crescent Moon , is here . Check out the prologue and first chapter of the record , in which the last great Ghul - Orion confront the fact that he might just be perplex too onetime for this living .
Top image : cover graphics by Jason Chan .
Nine days . Beneficent God , I pray you , allow this be the day I kick the bucket !
The guardsman ’s spinal column and neck opening were warped and bent but still he live . He ’d been put away in the red lacquered box for nine days . He ’d construe the day ’ light come and go through the lid - fissure . Nine mean solar day .
He contain them airless as a smattering of dinars . Counted them over and over . Nine days . Nine days . Nine day . If he could remember this until he died he could keep his soul whole for God ’s sheltering embrace .
He had given up on remembering his name .
The guardsman hear soft footsteps approach , and he began to outcry . Every day for nine days the gaunt , black - bearded man in the filthy white kaftan had appear . Every solar day he cut the guardsman , or bite him . But worst was when the guardsman was made to savour the others ’ pain .
The gaunt serviceman had flayed a immature marsh girl , pinning the guardsman ’s center unfold so he had to see the girl ’s skin curl out under the knife . He ’d burned a Badawi boy awake and held back the guardsman ’s drumhead so the choking smoke would enter his nostrils . The guardsman had been forced to look on the rugged and burn bodies being ripped aside as the gaunt man ’s ghuls fed on heart - flesh . He ’d determine as the gaunt humans ’s servant - creature , that affair made of apparition and jackal skin , had sucked something shimmering from those fresh numb corpses , leaving them with their heart torn out and their empty eye glowing red .
These thing had almost shake up the guardsman ’s mind loose . Almost . But he would commend . Nine Clarence Day . Nine . . . . All - Merciful God , take me from this world !
The guardsman tried to steady himself . He ’d never been a man to whine and wish for death . He ’d accept beatings and blade injury with gritted tooth . He was a inviolable military personnel . Had n’t he guarded the Khalif himself once ? What matter that his name was lost to him now ?
Though I walk a wilderness of ghuls and wicked djenn , no fear can . . . no veneration can . . . He could n’t remember the rest of the scripture . Even the Heavenly Chapters had slipped from him .
The box opened in a painful blazing of light . The gaunt piece in the smutty kaftan appeared before him . Beside the gaunt human race brook his handmaiden , that matter - part shadow , part Canis aureus , part cruel man - that called itself Mouw Awa . The guardsman screamed .
As always the gaunt man enounce nothing . But the tail - thing ’s voice echoed in the guardsman ’s headland .
heed to Mouw Awa , who speaketh for his blessed friend . Thou art an honored guardsman . Begat and deliver in the Crescent Moon Palace . Thou art imprecate in the name of God to defend it . All of those beneath thee shall serve .
The words were a slow , probing drone in his skull . His mind swoon in a brat - enchantment .
Yea , thy awe is sacred ! Thy painful sensation shall feed his blessed friend ’s spells . Thy beating nub shall feed his blessed friend ’s ghuls . Then Mouw Awa the manjackal shall suck thy soul from thy consistence ! Thou hast image the screaming and beg and bleeding the others have done . Thou hast examine what will materialise to thee soon .
From somewhere a remembered scrap of a nanna ’s voice add up to the guardsman . honest-to-god story of the office roughshod Isle of Man could cull from a captive ’s fear or an innocent ’s ghastly execution . Fear - spells . Pain - trance . He tried to calm himself , to deny the military personnel in the dirty kaftan this power .
Then he saw the knife . The guardsman had come to see the gaunt man ’s ritual killing tongue as a live thing , its blade - curvature an angry eye . He dirty himself and smell his own smut . He ’d done so many times already in these nine years .
The gaunt man , still sound out nothing , begin stimulate small cuts . The knife sting into the guardsman ’s chest and neck opening , and he screamed again , rend against bonds he ’d forgotten were there .
As the gaunt adult male cut him , the shadow - affair whispered in the guardsman ’s mind . It recalled to him all the the great unwashed and places that he lie with , restored whole scroll of his memory board . Then it tell stories of what would shortly come . Ghuls in the streets . All the guardsman ’s family and admirer , all of Dhamsawaat , drowning in a river of blood . The guardsman lie with these were not Lie .
He could finger the gaunt man feeding off of his concern , but he could n’t help himself . He finger the knife dig into his skin and heard whisper plans to take the crapper of the Crescent Moon , and he draw a blank how many days he ’d been there . Who was he ? Where was he ? There was nothing within him but reverence - for himself and his metropolis .
Then there was nothing but shadow .
Dhamsawaat , King of Cities , Jewel of Abassen
A thousand thousand man pass through and pass in
jam-packed patchwork quilt of avenues , back street , and bulwark
Such bookshops and house of ill repute , such school and such stalls
I ’ve we d all your streets , made your night air my wife
For he who tires of Dhamsawaat tires of life
Doctor Adoulla Makhslood , the last material ghul hunter in the great city of Dhamsawaat , sighed as he translate the phone line . His own case , it seemed , was the opposite . He often feel tired of life , but he was not quite done with Dhamsawaat . After threescore and more year on God ’s great earth , Adoulla find that his darling nascency city was one of the few thing he was not trite of . The verse of Ismi Shihab was another .
To be reading the familiar lines ahead of time in the morning in this new crafted book made Adoulla finger young - a welcome feeling . The smallish tome was bound with brown sheepleather , and Ismi Shihab ’s Leaves of Palm was etched into the cover with ripe gold acid . It was a very expensive book , but Hafi the bookbinder had given it to Adoulla free of charge . It had been two old age since Adoulla saved the homo ’s married woman from a cruel magus ’s weewee ghuls , but Hafi was still effusively thankful .
Adoulla closed the book gently and set it away . He sit outdoors of Yehyeh ’s , his favorite teahouse in the world , alone at a foresighted Edward Durell Stone table . His dreams last nighttime had been grisly and vivid - blood - rivers , combust corpses , horrible vocalism - but the bound of their details had blunt upon waking . sit in this favorite place , face up over a bowl of cardamom afternoon tea , reading Ismi Shihab , Adoulla almost managed to forget his nightmares entirely .
The tabular array was hard against Dhamsawaat ’s great Mainway , the broadest and busiest thoroughfare in all the Crescent Moon Kingdoms . Even at this early hr , people half - crowd the Mainway . A few of them glint at Adoulla ’s impossibly white kaftan as they pass , but most took no notice of him . Nor did he compensate them much mind . He was focused on something more significant .
Tea .
Adoulla leaned his face farther over the minuscule sports stadium and breathe in profoundly , needing its aromatic cure for the tiredness of life . The spicy - scented cardamom steam enveloped him , drizzle his boldness and his beard , and for the first time that groggy morning he matte really alive .
When he was outdoors of Dhamsawaat , stalking bone ghuls through cobwebbed catacombs or guts ghuls across dusty plains , he often had to settle for chew sweet - tea source . Such campfireless times were hard , but as a ghul Orion Adoulla was used to work within limit . When one face two ghuls , waste no time wish for few was one of the adages of his antediluvian social club . But here at nursing home , in civilized Dhamsawaat , he felt he was not really a part of the world until he ’d had his cardamom tea leaf .
He raised the bowl to his lips and sipped , relishing the engaging sweetness . He heard Yehyeh ’s scuffle approaching , reek the pastry dough his ally was bringing . This , Adoulla recall , was life history as Beneficent God intended it .
Yehyeh typeset his own teabowl and a plate of pastry dough on the rock table with two gaudy clinks , then slide his stringy frame onto the bench beside Adoulla . Adoulla had long marveled that the cross - eyed , limping teashop owner could whisk and clatter pipe bowl and phonograph record about with such efficiency and so few shatterings . A subject of practice , he supposed . Adoulla cognize well than most that habit could train a military personnel to do anything .
Yehyeh smile broadly , disclose the few teeth leave to him .
He gestured at the confection . “ Almond nests - the first of the day , before I ’ve even opened my door . And God save us from fat friends who wake up us too too soon ! ”
Adoulla flap a paw dismissively . “ When man turn over our age , my protagonist , we should wake before the sun . Sleep is too close to death for us . ”
Yehyeh grunt . “ So say the master of the half - day nap ! And why this dreadful talk again , huh ? You ’ve been even gloomier than common since your last dangerous undertaking . ”
Adoulla roll up an almond nest and bit it in half . He chewed forte and get down , staring into his teabowl while Yehyeh hold off for his reply . Finally Adoulla spoke , though he did not look up .
“ Gloomy ? Hmph . I have lawsuit to be . dangerous undertaking , you say ? A fortnight ago I was face - to - fount with a living bronze statue that was trying to kill me with an axe . An ax , Yehyeh ! ” He escape from his head at his own wavering tea - reflection . “ Threescore years old , and still I ’m getting involve in such foolishness . Why ? ” he asked , looking up .
Yehyeh shrugged . “ Because God the All - Knowing made it so . You ’ve face such threats and worse before , my friend . You may look like the son of the bear who have sex the turkey buzzard , but you ’re the only real ghul hunter left in this whole damned - by - God city , O keen and Virtuous Doctor . ”
Yehyeh was cod him by using the pompous honorifics ascribe to a medico . The ghul hunters had shared the title of “ Doctor ” but little else with the “ Great and vestal ” menders of the body . No leech - wielding mountebank of a physician could give up the fanged revulsion that Adoulla had battled .
“ How would you cognize what I look like , Six tooth ? You whose crossed eye can see nothing but the bridge of your own nose ! ” Despite Adoulla ’s dark mentation , trading the intimate vilification with Yehyeh felt comfortable , like a pair of erstwhile , well made sandal . He brush almond crumbs from his fingers onto his spotless kaftan . Magically , the crumbs and honey blot slid from his blessedly unstainable garment to the ground .
“ You are right , though , ” he continued , “ I have faced worse . But this . . . this . . . ” Adoulla slurped his tea leaf . The conflict against the bronzeman had unnerved him . The fact that he had needed his assistant Raseed ’s blade limb to save him was cogent evidence that he was getting old . Even more distressing was the fact that he ’d been woolgather of end during the scrap . He was tired . And when one was hunting demon , trite was a step away from dead . “ The male child save my fatness ass . I ’d be dead if not for him . ” It was n’t easy to admit .
“ Your young assistant ? No pity in that . He ’s a dervish of the Order ! That ’s why you took him in , correct ? For his pitchfork sword-‘cleaving the right from the wrong ’ and all that ? ”
“ It ’s materialize too many times of belated , ” Adoulla said . “ I ought to be retire . Like Dawoud and his wife . ” He sipped and then was quiet for a long moment . “ I immobilise , Yehyeh . Before the boy come to my rescue . I froze . And do you know what I was thinking ? I was thinking that I would never get to do this again - pose at this mesa with my face over a trough of serious cardamum teatime . ”
Yehyeh bowed his head , and Adoulla thought his friend ’s eyes might be moist . “ You would have been missed . But the gunpoint is that you did make it back here , praise be to God . ”
“ Aye . And why , Six Teeth , do n’t you say to me ‘ Now stay home , you former fart ? ’ That is what a real booster would say to me ! ”
“ There are things you’re able to do , O Buzzard - Beaked Bear , that others ca n’t . And mass need your help . God has bid you to this life . What can I say that will change that ? ” Yehyeh ’s mouth tightened and his forehead drew down . “ Besides , who says home is dependable ? That lunatic the Falcon Prince is going to burn up this city down around our ears any day now , mark my row . ”
They had covered this guinea pig before . Yehyeh had minuscule use for the treasonous theatrics of the mysterious master thief who called himself the Falcon Prince . Adoulla agreed that the “ Prince ” was likely mad , but he still launch himself approve of the would - be usurper . The man had steal a gravid hatful from the coffers of the Khalif and racy merchants , and much of that money plant its mode into the hands of Dhamsawaat ’s poorest - sometimes paw rescue by the Falcon Prince himself .
Yehyeh sipped his tea and blend in on . “ He obliterate another of the Khalif ’s headsmen last workweek , you make out . That ’s two now . ” He excite his head . “ Two factor of the Khalif ’s justice , murdered . ”
Adoulla snorted . “ ‘ Khalif ’s Justice Department ’ ? Now there are two words that refuse to apportion a tent ! That small-arm of shit is n’t half as smart a ruler as his Fatherhood was , but he ’s double as roughshod . Is it Justice Department to get half the city starve while that prehensile son of a whore sit on his embossed cushion eat peeled grapes ? Is it judge to- ”
Yehyeh rolled his crossed eyes , a grotesque sight . “ No speeches , please . No marvel you like the baddie - you’ve both got big oral cavity ! But I tell you , my booster , I ’m serious . This city ca n’t make a piece like that and one like the new Khalif at the same meter . We are channelize for struggle in the street . Another civil warfare . ”
Adoulla scowled . “ May it please God to forbid it . ”
Yehyeh stand up , stretch , and applaud Adoulla on the back . “ Aye . May All - Merciful God put one-time adult male like us quietly in our graves before this tempest hits . ” The crabbed - eyed man did not look particularly hopeful of this . He squeezed Adoulla ’s shoulder . “ Well . I ’ll have you get back to your book , O Gamal of the Golden Glasses . ”
Adoulla groaned . Back when he ’d been a street brawling youth on Dead Donkey Lane , he himself had used the folktale hero ’s name to beleaguer boys who read . He ’d watch better in the decennium since . He placed a paw protectively over his book . “ You should not contemn poetry , my acquaintance . There ’s wisdom in these lines . About life , destruction , one ’s own fate . ”
“ No doubt ! ” Yehyeh aped the bit of reading a nonexistent Good Book in the melodic phrase before him , running a finger over the imaginary words and verbalize in a grumble that was an imitation of Adoulla ’s own . “ O , how hard it is to be so fat ! O , how knockout it is to have so large a nozzle ! O eleemosynary God , why do the children run a - screaming when I come a - walk ? ”
Before Adoulla could come up with a rejoinder on the reverence Yehyeh ’s own crossed eyes inspired in small fry , the teahouse possessor limped off , chuckle obscenities to himself .
His ally was right about one matter : Adoulla was , praise God , alive and back household - back in the Jewel of Abassen , the urban center with the best teatime in the world . Alone again at the long stone table , he sat and sipped and watched early morning Dhamsawaat fare to life-time and pluck by . A thick neck shoemaker walked past , two long pole strung with shoes over his shoulder . A woman from Rughal - ba strode by , a bouquet in her handwriting , and the foresighted lead of her veil flapping behind . A lanky youthful military personnel with a large book in his arm and patches in his kaftan prompt lazily eastwards .
As he stared out onto the street , Adoulla ’s nightmare dead reasserted itself with such force that he could not move or verbalise . He was walk - wading - through Dhamsawaat ’s street , waist high in a river of stemma . His kaftan was soil with gore and filth . Everything was tinted red - the color of the treasonable Angel . An unobserved voice , like a jackal roar human words , clawed at his mind . And all about him the masses of Dhamsawaat consist beat and disemboweled .
Name of God !
He force himself to respire . He watched the military man and woman on the Mainway , very much alive and going about their business organisation . There were no river of roue . No jackal wail . His kaftan was clean .
Adoulla took another deep breath . Just a dream . The world of sleep invade my days , he evidence himself . I need a cat sleep .
He necessitate a second - to - last slurp of Camellia sinensis , savoring all of the elusive spices that Yehyeh layer beneath the Elettaria cardamomum . He judder off his sorry thoughts as well he could and stretch his legs for the long walk home .
He was still stretching when he interpret his assistant , Raseed , issue from the alleyway on the teahouse ’s left . Raseed strode toward him , dressed as always in the impeccable grim silk habit of the Order of Dervishes . The holy warrior draw out a large parcel behind him , something wrapped in gray rag .
No , not something . Someone . A foresightful - haired petty boy of perhaps eight years . With bloodline on his clothes . O please , no . Adoulla ’s abdomen clenched up . Merciful God help me , what now ? Adoulla make deeply and somehow found the strength to plant down his teabowl and rise to his feet .
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