A Big Shiny Blue Marble Ch. 43

"Djinn queen want war?" she asked in a mocking tone and then she nodded with a quiet chuckle, "Dakhete can give it.

First," she smiled as she raised her spear to point it toward Nasira, "You fight me."

The feline royals hunkered down to cower for a second, but Saddiq roared then and they stood to answer him because they had to. That didn't happen either. Before any of them could act, they began to fall, one after another, starting with the king, Saddiq's father. Before he was dead, his neck broken as thought bitten through by some huge and unseen jaws, the last sibling was well into her own death struggles. A moment later, the rest of the cats began to filter out and away from the jebel to stand with Saddiq.

Nasira looked to be ready to explode when she finally saw Sha-sha clearly. She tried to turn and flee inside the mountain, but the girl cried out and held her shield aloft. The action bound Nasira instantly and she hung immobile as Sha-sha turned the stricken queen to face her with her mind.

"YOU!" she screamed as she shook her shield, "You NOT RUN!

You stand and you fight ME!

I remember you now!" Sha-sha shouted.

She thrust the butt of the spear into the dust as she howled, "I see what you did!"

Shockwaves rippled out from the spot where the butt of the spear struck the ground and the disturbed sand looked like a thin golden fog around her, a few inches high.

Nasira began to shake and whimper, mumbling of all of the unfairness and difficulty of being a queen and of having to be faced with unpleasant choices all of her life as she'd ruled. But Sha-sha wasn't listening.

Nasira found herself standing suddenly at the base of the mountain on open sandy dirt with nothing to hide behind.

Dakhete's army was gone, all but the archers who stood in lines off to the sides and chanted quietly, rhythmically, eerily as they danced in place to give Sha-sha their support.

"I see you that night," Sha-sha snarled with a nod, "I see you laugh. You smile when father dead."

She lowered her head and glowered from under her eyebrows. "Djinn queen was foolish. Not look to see. My father not the last. Mother lived for a time. She not the last. There is one more, and I am here for you.

Come and try to kill the last."

What came from her wasn't loud, but everyone including Nasira heard it clearly.

"You fight me now and you die."

Whatever Sha-sha had in her mind wasn't shared by Nasira when she found that she could move. She moved her hands and threw everything that she could think of to keep the furious girl off-balance while she summoned up the same incantation which she'd used to kill many of the Forgotten Ones herself, adding everything that she could to its intensity.

Sheershepsut called out a warning to Sha-sha and then she gave three words of command to her women. The chanting stopped instantly as more than three thousand bows were drawn back and a thick rain of arrows began to arc through the air to distract Nasira in the same manner as she tried to distract Sha-sha. None of the arrows reached their mark, but the queen of the jebel had to deal with them as she worked and it slowed her a little.

But she'd forgotten the true purpose of the shield bearing the tattered old cheetah hide, never having seen the artifact herself and everything was either deflected back at her or just absorbed. As the wind of the Djinn queen's wrath began to blow around her, she rose into the air, shouting her indignant conjuration as she went higher and higher.

Sha-sha began to run toward the column of sand, as though she knew what would be sent to blind her in her wrath. Nasira saw her come and worked faster, but as she lifted her hand to bring what she did to fruition and reality, Sha-sha threw the spear, almost falling into the dirt with the force of the throw.

As it left her slender hand, the tip of the spear glowed white-hot and from its point, a pencil-thin line shot out which transfixed the insane Djinn and she hung there frozen as her doom came to her as a blazing streak.

There was a peal and crash of thunder as it struck her and lightning came out of the cloudless sky to snap and snarl over the body hanging in the air. With nothing to stop them now, the rain of arrows found Nasira as well. Nasira screamed for a brief instant, and then she was gone as pieces of her rained over the landscape.

The wind died instantly and the sand fell to earth as the dust cloud drifted off. Sha-sha turned to walk back, her spear in her hand somehow, but her face now wasn't wearing the mask of her fury any longer. She looked up as she stepped into Dakhete's arms and wept softly.

Khyan stepped forward, placing his hand on the girl's shoulder, "I'm sorry, Sha-sha, I didn't know."

She looked up at him with a sniffle and she smiled a little, "I not know either. I remember. I was small. Hide with my mother. See everything. Not angry, Khyan."

She straightened and wiped her face," We go now. We find your sisters."

She took a breath to let out her tension, "Sha-sha must see Khyan's sisters. All must be free."

When she turned, she saw the fierce leader of the archers waiting for her.

"I say thanks to bow –women," the girl said, and Sheershepsut grinned. "I will tell them. When this is past, I would ask to hunt with you. I hunted often before and I have none to go with me now. I see how you hunt and I do not always want to shout at young learners in the dirt."

Sha-sha agreed and they parted, the legendary archer trotting back to her ranks as they faded out of sight.

It took a while for him to lead Dakhete, Sha-sha and Yasmin to the cells. It seemed as though there was another Djinn or two around almost every corner, wanting to know what had happened. Khyan had to offer the condensed version a hundred times or more it seemed before they came at last to stand near the bars of a foul-smelling dungeon as four jailors stood to bar their way. They grunted in shock and surprise as they hung from where Dakhete held them with her mind.

"The queen – " one of them began.

"Queen Nasira is dead," Dakhete said through her teeth, "King Khyan bint el-Jebel rules now." She leaned closer, "You are not a Djinn." She looked from one to the next. They were all lower demons from out of a pit somewhere, having barely enough intelligence to know if it was the time to shit or to eat.

"What is your task here?" she asked.

"We answer to the queen," the largest said.

By the time that she'd finished slamming him from the wall to the bars of the cells and back several times before she held him against the ceiling, the others were a little more ready to answer her.

She looked up at the large one and saw that he was dying. She helped the work of gravity by slamming him to the floor. Dakhete hadn't moved during this time. The body slid into a pile out of the way against the wall.

"What is your task here?" she asked again, "There are three of you left, and I might expect at least one answer today."

"We give pleasure to the queen," one of them said nervously, "and we feed these ones."

"Well, your task is over," she smiled as she left them hanging.

All that they could see in the darkness was a large lump which whimpered and keened in a pair of fearful voices. But at the sound of their brother's young voice, the lump became two lumps which came slowly closer as he spoke to tell them that he was there to take them away.

Dakhete joined Khyan at the enchanted bars. It took many minutes for him to calm the two inside and explain what had happened. The pair wept and thanked them endlessly, even though they were not free yet.

"These three here and the one that I killed," Dakhete said, "They said that they were to feed you. From what I see, they ate more than they passed through the bars."

At once, four thin arms were reaching for the jailors through the bars and the shrieking began as they tried to grasp across the distance. It was all that Dakhete needed to see.

The fat demons stood in shock, looking around and spinning fearfully after finding themselves inside the cells with the prisoners. They lasted less than two minutes.

Dakhete looked at the dirty and filth encrusted bars for a moment and decided that they functioned to contain any who were at least partly demon, and Khyan's sisters fit that well enough from what Nasira had said of their heritage. When she dispelled them, the bars ceased to exist and the dirt and debris of thousands of years fell to the floor a moment later.

Khyan led the pair slowly to the queen's chambers and minutes later, the sisters had their first bath in their long adult lives. The process had to be repeated twice before Dakhete was satisfied, and for a time, she and Yasmin were both helping to get them clean enough to leave.

With the dirt and the filth removed from their bodies, Dakhete began to heal what she could, though she knew that fresh air and light would work the final wonders. Both of them were beautiful, though they were far from their best at the moment, covered in sores as they were.

They looked a little closer to Djinn than demons, but their demonic heritage was there all the same. They were twins, and were very nearly identical, but there was one rather startling difference and it lay in the nature of their wings.

One had perfect demonic wings, leathery and lovely. The other's wings were just as large and wondrous, but they were feathered.

Dakhete held out a pair of cloaks as the nervous females stood wet and shaking while Sha-sha and Yasmin helped Khyan to towel them gently, "You will come with us away from this place – at least for a time. To do that, you must walk out of this mountain and into the daylight. The Djinn people know what was done to you and they would soon have removed Nasira themselves over this and other things.

But even so," she said, "you are princesses, and it will not do to have the princesses of a people walk out of here looking like lepers. We will help you put these cloaks on. You must hide your faces under the hoods, and when we say, you must close your eyes. The sun shines brightly outside, and you will need to get used to its warmth, but the light in eyes that have known only darkness, well, ... you must keep your eyes closed when we say.

Khyan has said that I am another queen. It is so, but your brother will be with you. We go to my lands, where we can help you better, away from here for a time until you are well."

Khyan had to do a lot of explaining, but at length, they agreed. Perhaps the strongest voice which persuaded them came from Sha-sha when she struggled to make herself understood, explaining who she was and what she'd done.

"Dakhete say you are high ones. You should be free, outside," she pointed, "Poor ones go free there. See things. Do things – what you want to do there - anything. Not live inside now. You come, I help you. Khyan want you outside. All want you outside. You come."

Ghibli and Siroc, their names were – two words from different languages for the same hot southeasterly wind which roars out of the Sahara at often hurricane speeds. They crept forward uncertainly as they were led out and they clamped their eyes shut tightly when Dakhete told them to. Even so, they saw only bright red through their eyelids and had to keep their faces down.

When they felt the heat of the sun on their bodies for the first time in their lives, it was amazing to them for they felt and heard no fire nearby. But what astounded them far more than that were the roaring cheers of the Djinn people to see them.

The two were afraid at first, until Khyan explained that the people were overjoyed to see the princesses at long last and the princesses themselves were overcome and clung to Khyan as they stood weeping.