There was nothing. No beating hearts beyond the walls, no coughs or billowing lungs. No people. Instead, a biting wind, like the breath of an errant cloud, swept over the nape of her neck.
Nahri broke, sprinting for her room. She yanked open the door, lunged through the entrance …
And stepped directly onto an icy cliff.
She took one look at the impossible landscape before her: snow-draped mountains and jagged black rocks set against a pale sky—where her bed should have been—and abruptly turned around, reaching for the door.
It was gone. All that was there now was a smooth expanse of ice, a gleaming wall that stretched in every direction.
Before Nahri could panic, her mind unable to process what in God’s name had just happened, she was thrown into shadow. A creature had landed behind her, large enough to block the cloud-veiled sun. Nahri spun, slipping on the ice.
A shedu stared back at her.
37
ALI
Growing up, Ali had heard stories of hell that painted it as a misery of blazing fires and scorching winds. A place that would have been crowded and loud, with the souls of evildoers and their awful cries.
He was beginning to fear that was wrong. But there could be no term more apt than hell to describe the silent, empty realm beneath the sea in which he was trapped.
There was no day, no night. No sky. Only a heavy encroaching blackness that loomed overhead, so solid and foreboding that Ali couldn’t look up without getting dizzy and feeling like he was about to be crushed. The only light came from the glow of the eerie teal water that flooded the ground, revealing the ruins of what appeared to have once been a city even larger than Daevabad—one seemingly destroyed and abandoned eons ago. A lost city, at the bottom of the world, in which Ali was the only inhabitant and time had no meaning.
He limped through yet another narrow pass, pushing past the towering, barnacle-encrusted walls. “Fiza!” he cried, his parched throat protesting. “Fiza!”
His voice echoed back, her name bouncing in fading waves. There was no response. There had been no response, no other sound since Ali woke up alone on the flooded sand, covered in bloody gashes, with one ankle badly twisted and what felt like a cracked rib stabbing him in the side. Some of the gashes had begun to heal—at least the ones that didn’t pull open when he walked, turning the blood-crusted wounds into his only way of measuring time. With every breath and step, his ankle and rib protested, and yet Ali didn’t stop walking, desperate to find a way out of this place. To give up would be to invite madness.
Maybe this is my punishment. Maybe Tiamat had taken one look at Ali, seen that he’d given away Suleiman’s seal, and then tossed him here to suffer. And he would suffer. He was a djinn. It would take him weeks to starve to death, and it would be wretched.
The narrow pass widened, and Ali gasped as the water that had been sloshing around his ankles was suddenly at his throat. He submerged, getting a mouthful of salty liquid before he recovered enough to swim, new muscles aching in response. His zulfiqar floated in its sheath, banging against his hip. He had given up trying to keep the blade dry.
In the heavy silence, his every splash sounded thunderous as he passed stone reliefs of bizarre creatures: bulls with wings and the faces of bearded men, lion-headed warriors with maces and whips. And not just creatures, but faded scenes of gardens and warring armies, peculiar round ships and careful hunters. The reliefs had fascinated Ali at first, with their lines of undecipherable script and mysterious images. He’d wondered who’d carved them, if this city had belonged to the marid or to mortals.
Now he didn’t care. All he wanted to do was escape. To drink water that didn’t taste like the sea and enjoy a minute free of pain.
“Fiza,” he yelled again. The thought of his friend tossed into this awful labyrinth, pushed him on. “Fiza!”
The pool ended in crumbling steps that led to a flat expanse of flooded ground, an arena perhaps, with the seats of an enormous amphitheater melting into the darkness. Ali staggered onto the sand and fell to his knees. The water was low enough here that he could lie down without it passing over his face, and dear God, did he need a rest.
Please let Fiza be alive, he begged. Let us get out of here.
Let this all matter.
Ali shivered in the damp chill, curling in on himself. He just wanted to be dry. Warm. He’d never felt more like a fire-blooded djinn than he did in this awful, lightless place of water and ruin. He ached to hold a flame, to whisper the word in his mind and see fire blossom between his fingers.
And then, as though his magic hadn’t been stripped away when he’d been pushed into Daevabad’s lake, heat sparked in his hand.
Ali scrambled up, staring in shock at the conjured flames dancing in his palm. His magic. His djinn magic; the abilities that had nourished him since he was a child, the ones that weren’t tainted with his possession on the lake or some horrible family secret. He was on his feet the next second, pain be damned as he yanked his zulfiqar from its sheath.
“Brighten,” he whispered.
The zulfiqar burst into flames. Glorious, swirling flames of gold and green that raced down the gleaming copper blade. The light exploded outward, attacking the smothering dark.
And illuminating the hundreds of armed warriors who’d been waiting for him.
Ali dropped into a fighting stance, but none of them moved. They were statues, he realized. Creations of stone and shell so lifelike it seemed impossible, garbed in the dress of a dizzying array of nations and times. Short tunics and pleated skirts, armor the likes of which he’d never seen, and a dozen varieties of helmets and shields. And while
