Ausma Zehanat Khan [Ausma Zehanat Khan] - The Black Khan

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Contents

HarperVoyager

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London SE1 9GF

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First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2018

Copyright Ausma Zehanat Khan 2018

Cover illustration Shutterstock.com

Cover design Micaela Alcaino HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Maps created by Ashley P. Halsey, inspired by Alesha Shaikh

Ausma Zehanat Khan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008171629

Ebook Edition October 2018 ISBN: 9780008171643

Version: 2018-09-17

For Hema,

whose friendship, love, and decency

have saved me all these years

The Khorasan Archives

The Bloodprint

I N THE DESERTED COURTYARD OF THE C LAY M INAR, THE BODIES OF B ASMACHI fighters were gathered in a pile beneath a stunted tree in the shelter of a square stone base. White ribbons streamed down from the trees slender limbs, tied to its branches and twigs. The ribbons were bare of script: the people of Black Aura could not write. The ribbons were meant as a reminder of their sacred traditions; they were desperate, desolate prayers. The bodies piled beneath the tree formed the Authoritans answer to those prayers.

No wind stirred the ribbons or the dying branches. Sunlight blunted the edges of Arians vision, and she found her way around the tree more by instinct than anything else. She knew she was about to be taken inside the house of worship, just as she knew the Authoritan expected a demonstration of her power, a compulsion she had resisted with all the force and determination she was capable of as a Companion of Hira.

There were only three people in the courtyard: Arian, the Authoritan, and his consort, Lania, Arians older sister. Each night since shed been captured in Black Aura attempting to retrieve the Bloodprint, Lania and the Authoritan had brought Arian to this place. They showed her the stunted tree and the bodies moldering beneath it, then coerced her into entering the blue-domed house of worship to test her abilities with the Claim.

Situated on the eastern side of the square, the dome was the pinnacle of a massive structure. Four arcades met at its doubled entrance, each lined with portals decorated with mosaics and glazed bronze brick. At the entrance to the main portal, a sand-colored octahedron with open arches could be reached by a set of stairs. Here great recitations of the Claim had once been addressed to the people of Black Aura, the Bloodless sharing the teachings of the Bloodprint, an ancient and powerful manuscript long believed to be lost. The manuscript that was the oldest, most venerable record of the Claimthe powerful, mysterious magic seeded throughout the history of all the lands of Khorasan, but lost to a people now condemned to a final Age of Ignorance.

Skirting the pulpit, Arian was taken through to the indoor galleries covered by dozens of smaller domes perched on a peristyle. Though well lit, the interior space was cold, and as quiet and deserted as the courtyard.

They stopped at a niche in the wall where multicolored mosaics were arranged in a magnificent declamation. Lania read the words first, verses commonly known to the Companions of Hira, though Lanias inflection was different, the words gathered up in hubris and flung out, outlining the niche in a darkly radiant fire while the Authoritan nodded his approval.

Prodded by her sister, Arian repeated the same words, her strong voice giving them distinctions of grace that coaxed out their inner meaning.

The Authoritan looked down on Arian from the top of a flight of wooden stairs positioned beside the niche. He stood tall and thin, enclosed in his white robes, his ghastly crimson eyes flickering out from a bloodless white face, a nimbus of silver hair floating above the harshly etched bones of his skull. He seemed too frail to do her any damage, yet his hands and voice transmitted his inescapable power.

Now the rest.

His reedy voice was like a needle in Arians ear.

Thats all there is, she said.

You know the conclusion of these verses from your training at the Citadel of Hira. Recite them for us now.

The cold command in his voice whipped at Arians nerves. It was a compulsion to do as he asked or suffer intolerable pain. Yet shed learned that though he could otherwise affect her, he could not compel the Claim to issue from her lips. It was a tiny point of victory that Arian held to herself, infusing her with a strength of self-reliance that was no reproof against the pain.

He raised a bony finger in the air and aimed it at the top of her skull. Recite.

The word stabbed at Arians temples, a sharp, probing injury. She reached for Lanias hand, insisting that her sister acknowledge the injury being done to her. But Lania stepped back, her painted face impassive, the bonds of sisterhood sundered by the tortures she was forced to endure.