We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya #1)(90)

This was nothing like the sands of Sharr, which whispered of ruin and sorrow. This sand sprawled over the ground the way snow did in Demenhur. It churned with the feet wading through it. It clung to the alabaster walls. It was everywhere.

Where am I?

“I was beginning to think you would never ask.”

Zafira’s vision faltered before she could turn toward the voice. When it righted, she was no longer on the dhow but on land.

She turned a full circle, noting the people who shuffled along, some hurrying, others moving slowly and leisurely. No one acknowledged her existence.

It was almost as if she didn’t exist at all.

A camel chewing on a reed sauntered past, and Zafira searched for a flash of silver among the crowd, a cloak that hooded bone-white hair and a crimson smile, but her searching brought her to a different pair of eyes, umber, feline, and lazy. Half a fig in his hand.

Benyamin leaned against a date palm, dappled sunlight splotching his skin. He was overdressed as always: a black robe decked with gold over a white thobe, a checkered keffiyah on his head, calfskin sandals on his feet.

“You can read minds,” she said.

He tilted his head and licked the remains of the fig from his fingers. “That would be a silly affinity, laa? And quite a pain, if you really pondered upon it. Alas, you asked the question aloud, Huntress.”

Had she? She couldn’t recall. “Just tell me where I am.”

Benyamin carefully tugged at the keffiyah, adjusting it beneath a black circlet before he pushed away from the tree and sauntered toward her with sinuous grace. She found it surprising he didn’t have a tail to curl around his feet.

“This is the Arawiya of old. Before the snows blanketed Demenhur, before the sands of Sarasin darkened and Zaram was cut off from the sea. Before the ever-fertile lands of Pelusia were sickened, dulling their great minds.”

“This?” she whispered. It was a desert, it was almost exactly like Sharr, but it throbbed with life. The people were exuberant, the architecture astounding, and the climate warmed every fiber of her being. This Arawiya was alive. This was true Arawiya, before the Sisters’ final battle with the Lion of the Night swept aberration across the kingdom like a plague. “I’m in the past?”

He shook his head, avoiding her gaze. “Quite current, I’m afraid. This is Alderamin.”

She sniffed. “So you brought me here to shove your privilege in my face?”

He tilted his head again, this time meeting her eyes. “Aren’t you going to ask how you got to Alderamin?”

“That was my next question,” she snapped, suddenly annoyed.

She had merely momentarily forgotten. Because she was in Alderamin, the caliphate of dreams. Of everything everywhere else was not.

His question settled on her shoulders. Laa, it slapped her in the face, and her breath froze. “How did I get to Alderamin?”

Triumph glowed in his gaze. “Now that is the reaction I was hoping for.”

Zafira huffed. Him and his extra words.

“You’re not in Alderamin,” he said. He gestured to their surroundings, where people bustled and the dry wind wove between the creamy buildings.

Somewhere in the distance, a bird cried. Zafira couldn’t breathe past the delight expanding in her chest.

Benyamin twirled his finger, and Zafira’s sight shimmered and settled again. She hadn’t moved—there hadn’t even been a stir in the air—but now they were on a balcony. Bereft, she reached for the cool, burnished railing and peered into the curtained room behind her, glimpsing a massive dining hall. Ornate chandeliers were lit with flames, the light amplified by mirrors. Engineering done by the Pelusians. Aesthetics by the artistic eye of the Demenhune. A majlis with cushions of deep red was flush with the floor, arranged around a gold rug, where a fancy-spouted dallah and cups sat on a tray.

She turned back to Benyamin.

“Then where—” She stopped. From their height, a scene from an artist’s canvas unfolded beyond the railing.

The sands glittered far below. Farther ahead, the sea—the Baransea, she realized with a start—lapped the shore with lazy waves. To her left sprawled a masterpiece of stone, a mosaic of blue pieced together to create domes that rivaled the clear skies. Slender spires ended in the diamonds she had seen throughout the landscape. One tower stood out from the rest, its stained-glass windows at the very top dark and forlorn without magic. The royal minaret.

“This is Almas, our capital,” Benyamin said wryly beside her.

Fitting that the Alder safin had branded their capital with a name that meant “diamond.”

“And this magnificence behind us is the calipha’s palace. Who happens to be my mother.” It was no wonder he carried himself in such a princely way. He leaned against the railing and tapped a finger to his head. “I cannot read minds, but what I can do is related to the mind.”

“Will you please stop baiting me?”

“Sabar, sabar,” he soothed, asking for patience. A breeze lifted her hair, the first time her surroundings reacted with her. “Not counting anomalies, you do know our affinities are generally classified into two groups, yes?”

She shook her head. She knew very little of magic, let alone the classifications of them.

“There are the Jismi, whose affinities pertain to the body and mind—seers, healers, miragis. Then there are the Ensuri, whose affinities pertain to the elements—firehearts, aquifers, blacksmiths. The wielders of light and shadow. Jismi use magic to pull from themselves, Ensuri use magic to pull from the environment. Like you, I am among the Jismi. I’m a dreamwalker.”