Chapter 4

There is an army of mirages – countless dead from Malkira's conquered kingdoms, turned into ghouls. They stand at the border of Lotan, scimitars, spears, and shields on their rotting pennants of flesh that flop raw in a cruel wind. The peri fly above to protect their home, armed with fairy fire in their now-burning caravans. The djinn are boiling over with lava-made pikes, obsidian weapons at the ready. Even the griffins are biting at their harnesses, ridden by spirits aplenty. Izad has summoned the dead, and skeletons dance behind us, hundreds of animals and spirits and humans who fell prey to Lotan's harsh desert, which nurtures a select few but kills many more. Izad rides the skeleton of a dragon, and it breathes killing simoom winds, flying beside me. I am perched above everyone with Ghazal spiraling up a thermal, my arrows and his beak dipped in Israfel's tears.

Malkira is at the forefront of his army. He rides a giant basilisk that gnashes its venomous fangs. It is tall enough to strike Ghazal out of the sky, but we are faster than it, and I am bloodthirsty as Hannibal on his conquering elephants.

Malkira raises his scimitar and readies the charge. The ghouls come running on bone feet, the djinn train their fiery whips and obsidian weapons, and all hell breaks loose. The ghouls smell of decay and Izad is chanting and marking sigils in his bare chest and arms to direct the dead in a dance. His own ghouls fight the skeletons of Lotan, who pierce the zombies with ribs and sharp rocks, bashing molding brains out. I aim my arrows at the ghouls' hearts, the only sure way of taking them out with Israfel's tears, and the bones of Izad's dead are misted with the tears as well – only enough tears for a few hundred, but they will not break easily with Israfel's blessing.

His dancing dead circle and isolate the ghouls, and they fall by the dozens. Ghazal and I dive down to snap the hearts out of the ghoul's bodies and my arrows continue to fly. Malkira's pussing eyes roll in his head, and he is roaring in his guttural thunder orders to destroy. His basilisk kills by the score, falling djinn and peri alike, and Malkira eats the leftover meat of his vanquished, growing hungry for the dead. I wince as he falls Daja, and in anger I scream, moving Ghazal so that he flies directly into the melee.

Malkira swallows down Daja's fiery heart and the anger inside me could not be captured in any song or poem. It is too brutal, too raw, my almost-rapist killing my best friend in all of Lotan.

"Now, Ghazal!" I scream. "Aim for the basilisk's throat!"

Malkira laughs like chains in a graveyard. "Little slender-ankled Rani. Queen of the Ruins, what a delight. How delicately I will break you when I have you as my bride."

"I would rather roast on Iblis' pike for the rest of my days!" I scream, aiming an arrow straight at his heart. The basilisk hisses and swerves to avoid his rider's ruin.

The arrow misses, hitting him in his gray maggot-ridden shoulder. Malkira hisses and pulls it out. "You little bitch. I will not break you delicately, no, I shall make you bleed like you did on our beautiful almost-wedding day."

He throws his scimitar straight at Ghazal.

Ghazal snaps back, but it is too late, and the scimitar buries deep in his breast. He shrieks a falcon cry and plummets towards the ground.

"Ghazal!"

"Habibi…" Ghazal chokes up blood, flapping his wings askew to crash land in a dune. Malkira laughs up pus and his basilisk advances.

I dismount Ghazal and run reckless through the dead, dodging blows, and pull the poisoned scimitar from Ghazal's downy breast. His yellow irises dull, and suddenly the basilisk's tail lashes my back like a whip. I scream.

Ghazal cries out in fury as the basilisk's tail wraps itself around me, shaming me by ridding me of my abaya. Before his slit-pupil eyes roll back into his head, he snaps the basilisk's tail with his giant beak.

"Habibi, you were always the thermal under my wings," Ghazal sings, collapsing. I scream in rage as I fall in slick scaly tangles in the severed serpent tail. Grabbing Malkira's poisoned scimitar, I wave it in abandon.

"Izad!" I scream, my scimitar glinting off the sun. The necromancer swoops down from the clouds aback his undead dragon and tussles with the tailless basilisk.

"My sword!" Malkira shrieks. "Damn you, you idiot girl, give it back. It will poison my rosy bride on her wedding night – we can't have your virginal flesh sullied before my feast."

"Allah curse you for every life, in every kingdom, for a thousand and one eternities!" I slash down ghouls left and right, and the djinn and peris and dakinis rally behind me, griffin mounts raising bitter sand.

Malkira's words are true – the blade is poisoning me, but I have an Ifrit fire inside me now, adrenaline like strong wine. Senseless, I grab onto the basilisk that is avoiding Izad's dead and the simoom winds of his mount and plunge the poisoned blade into it with all my fury.

The basilisk hisses wildly, and Malkira falls from his mount headfirst into the sand. He roars as he rights himself, undead flesh impervious to harm – impervious to all but his own venom, for Malkira, or Samael, is the Poison of God, from whom the simoom wind takes its desolate name.

The first of the fallen malakhim is tearing apart the opponents that stand in his way with brutish strength, stuffing guts and hearts into his mouth then spitting them out. He licks his tongue at me and kicks a dead child out of the way who got caught in the fray.

"You will be mine, impudent poetess! I will lock you in a cage on my bed like the king his nightingale!"

"My most famous poem will be the ballad of your slaughter!" I scream, and I run senseless towards him, his poison making me froth at the mouth. My vision is dimming, but this is worth dying for.

I get close, closer, enough for him to squeeze me and caress me, and I drop the blade.

"Little beloved poetesses have no fight in them after all – better for the breaking."

He is squeezing the life out of me, but it is his life who is forfeit in the end.

"You will never break me, fool."

Samael laughs low. "We shall see."

He plunges his poison tongue down my throat in a repulsive kiss, unthinking. The headstrong malakh drinks down death as my spit meets his flesh, and now he is poisoned too.

The gall of death stretches in me, my limbs turn to lead, and my vision swims. I become limp.

"Goodbye, Malkira. Better to swallow your own venom than spit it out like your damn basilisk. Or was it the other way around?"

His puss eyes open in shock, so wide the globes fall out and hang by bloody flesh strings. "What? No! You desert whore!"

He drops me like hot lead.

The last thing I see is my dear Ghazal, dead.

I join my roc in sweet revenge.