Her powers were gone. And then she realized what must have been carved into Ali’s cheek.
Suleiman’s seal.
Dara.
“No!” Nahri climbed to her feet. In the center of the ship, Dara had fallen to his knees just like he had when Ghassan used the seal to reveal her identity. He looked up to see the thing that was Ali towering over him, raising the rusted blade over his head. He attempted to defend himself with the zulfiqar, but even Nahri could see that his movements were slowed.
Ali knocked it away with enough force to send the blade flying into the lake and then raised the rusty scimitar again. He started to bring it down toward Dara’s neck, and Nahri screamed. Ali hesitated. She took a breath.
He changed direction, slashing down, cutting clean through Dara’s left wrist and severing his hand.
Separating the ring.
Dara didn’t make a sound as he fell. She could swear he seemed to look past Ali, to gaze upon her one final time, but she wasn’t certain. It was hard to see his face; he’d grown as dim as smoke, and there was some woman screaming in her ear.
But then Dara grew still—too still—and crumbled to ash before her eyes.
28
Ali
Ali knew he was dying when he crashed through the lake’s placid surface.
The icy water sucked him down and attacked him like a rabid animal, shredding his clothes and tearing at his skin. It scrabbled at his mouth and surged up his nose. A white-hot heat burst inside his head.
He screamed into the water. There was something there, an alien presence rooting through his mind, sifting through his memories like a bored student flipping through a book. His mother singing a Ntaran lullaby, the hilt of a zulfiqar in his hands for the first time, Nahri’s laughter in the library, Darayavahoush raising his bow . . .
Everything stopped.
There was a hiss in his ear. HE IS HERE? the lake itself seemed to demand. The turbulent water stilled, and there was a warm press at his throat and chest as the arrows dissolved.
The relief was temporary. Before Ali could even think about kicking for the surface, something snaked around his left ankle and yanked him down.
He squirmed as waterweeds wrapped his body, the roots digging into his flesh. The images in his mind flashed faster as the lake devoured his memories of Darayavahoush: their duel, the way he’d looked upon Nahri in the infirmary, the fiery light that filled his ring as he charged the ship.
Words burst into his mind again. TELL ME YOUR NAME.
Ali’s lungs burned. Two clams were trying to burrow into his stomach and a pair of toothy jaws clamped down on his shoulder. Please, he begged. Just let me die.
Your name, Alu-baba. The lake crooned the words in his mother’s voice this time, a baby name he’d not heard in years. Give your name or see what shall pass.
The image of the hated Afshin was swept away to be replaced by Daevabad. Or what was once Daevabad and was now little more than a burning ruin, surrounded by an evaporated lake and filled with the ash of its people. His father lay slaughtered on the marble steps of the wrecked royal court, and Muntadhir hung from a smashed window screen. The Citadel collapsed, burying alive Wajed and all the soldiers with whom he’d grown up. The city burned; houses burst into flames and children screamed.
No! Ali writhed in the lake’s grip, but there was no way to stop the awful visions.
Skeletally thin gray beings with vibrant wings bowed down in obedience. Rivers and lakes dried up, their towns overtaken by fire and dust while a land he recognized as Am Gezira was swept away by a poisonous sea. A lonely palace grew from Daevabad’s ashes, spun from fired glass and molten metals. He saw Nahri. Her face was veiled in Nahid white, but her dark eyes were visible and filled with despair. A shadow fell over her, the shape of a man.
Darayavahoush. But with black eyes and a scar across his young face, lacking the handsome grace of a slave. Then his eyes were green again and older, his familiar smug smile briefly returning. His skin flared with fiery light, and his hands turned to coal. His eyes were golden now and utterly alien.
Look. The visions started to repeat, lingering on the images of his murdered family. Muntadhir’s dead eyes snapped open. Say your name, akhi, his brother begged. Please!
Ali’s mind spun. His lungs were empty, the water thick with his blood. His body was shutting down, a fuzzy blackness encroaching on the bloody visions.
NO, the lake hissed, desperate. NOT YET. It shook him hard, and the images grew more vicious. His mother brutalized, given over to hungry crocodiles with the rest of the Ayaanle while a crowd of Daevas cheered. The shafit, rounded up and set on fire in the midan. Their screams filled the air, the scent of crackling flesh making him gag. Muntadhir pushed to his knees and beheaded before the yellow eyes of a jeering group of ifrit. A mass of unknown soldiers pulling Zaynab from her bed and ripping her clothes . . .
No! Oh God, no. Stop this!
Save her, his father’s voice demanded. Save us all. The iron bindings grew weak with rust and then burst apart. Something metallic was pressed into his hand. A hilt.
A pair of bloody hands wrapped around his sister’s throat. Zaynab’s terrified gaze locked on his. Brother, please! she screamed.
Ali broke.
Had he been less certain of his imminent death or had he been raised in the outer provinces where one was taught never to speak their true name, to guard it as they did their very soul, he might have hesitated, the request immediately understood for what it was. But assaulted by the images of his brutalized family and city, he didn’t care why the lake wanted what it must have already learned from his memories.
“Alizayd!” he screamed, the water muffling his words. “Alizayd al Qahtani!”
The pain vanished. His fingers closed around the hilt without him willing them to do so. His body suddenly felt distant. He was barely aware of being released, of being pushed through the water.
Kill the daeva.
Ali broke through the lake’s surface but did not gasp for breath; he did not need it. He climbed up the ship’s hull like a crab and then stood, water streaming from his clothes, his mouth, his eyes.
Kill the daeva. He heard the daeva speak. The air was wrong, empty and dry. He blinked, and something burned on his cheek. The world grew quieter, gray.
The daeva was before him. Part of his mind registered shock in the other man’s green eyes as he raised a blade to defend himself. But his movements were clumsy. Ali knocked his weapon away, and it flew into the dark lake. The djinn soldier in Ali saw his chance, the other man’s neck exposed . . .
The ring! The ring! Ali changed the direction of his blow, bringing it down toward the glowing green gem.
Ali swooned. The ring clattered away, and the sword fell from his hand, now more a rusty artifact than a weapon. Nahri’s screams filled the air.
“Kill the daeva,” he mumbled and collapsed, the blackness finally welcoming him.
Ali was dreaming.
He was back in the harem—in the pleasure gardens of his mother’s people—a small boy with his small sister, hiding in their usual spot under the willow tree. Its bowed branches and thick fronds made a cozy nook next to the canal, hidden from the sight of any interfering grown-ups.
“Do it again!” he begged. “Please, Zaynab!”
His sister sat up with a wicked smile. The water-filled bowl rested in the dust between her skinny crossed legs. She raised her palms over the water. “What will you give me?”