Chapter 232 Sweet Dunya

The smile started at the corner of his mouth and spread across his face.

A low sound came out of it.

It was a chuckle.

"Unfortunately..."

Malik spoke to the cloud, and the pillars, and the whole spotless house.

"I do not belong here either."

He had also said it to the True Sultan.

A parting gift, the old man had told him.

But just this once, you’ll belong. It had been kindly meant. He believed that. It was the kindest thing anyone with a crown had ever said to him. Claiming that he belonged in a realm like Heaven.

It had also expired.

Under his boots, the cloud went soft.

The pearl-colored floor warmed, then thinned, like frost under a thumb. The statue of the blindfolded woman wavered at the edge of his vision, her scale hanging level in the light.

The pillars bent backward, a fountain tipped over its own ribbon of water and poured it sideways into the sky.

Then the plaza was gone, and the whole of Heaven was falling away above him.

Malik was not afraid.

He watched the white terraces shrink to a smudge, and the silver flowers to a handful of sparks.

The light cooled and turned slowly blue as wind came screaming up past his ears.

His gold hair streamed upward, and he had a strange, detached moment of looking at his own boots and thinking, with great clarity, that an Angel falling out of Heaven was an extremely bad omen for somebody.

Below him, the Abyss opened its black mouth.

It drew him down into its near-unending depths.

He watched the rim of it widen, a thin ring of clouds around it.

For one heartbeat, the pit lay directly under his chest, and he felt an even hungrier pull, as if the thing at the bottom had turned its face up to look.

Malik fell into the Abyss.

Though only for a Blink.

The air swung, and he was suddenly upon... Devil’s Maw.

Rukh had returned him to his home.

Not so far below, the ground rose to meet him.

He saw the top of a gray dune with a small coin of water shining on its crest.

Malik spread his arms, calling on his first Rune, Ember’s Touch.

Fire answered, gently catching the wind under his shoulders like a hand under a falling child.

His descent slowed, thinning the roar to a whisper. The ground arrived slowly and his boots touched the earth with no more sound than a leaf.

Malik stood still.

Wind moved over the hill.

A warm light fell across it, and somewhere in the thorn bushes a lizard dashed from one stone to another.

This lake he fell beside had water so clear that he could count the pebbles at the bottom.

There weren’t many places like this one.

Especially not atop a Dune.

He knew this place.

Yes, he knew it down to the grain of the sand.

It was the same hill where he had first opened his eyes in this world, choking on seawater, with a body that was not quite his own.

Or so he thought at the time, courtesy of his momentary memory loss.

It was the same dune he had crawled onto, coughing, with two Suns burning in the sky.

There had been a reflection in that water, a towering man in a black tunic with hair like a gold rat tail and eyes that shone.

He walked to the same edge and looked down.

The same man looked up.

A dangerous-looking man.

The jaw was squarer than he remembered, the beard was new, but the eyes held the most change, appearing somewhat older, a great deal more tired than they had the first time.

The shoulders were the same, as was the long gold tail of hair, and the faintly dubious expression.

’Full circle.’

That thought sat in his mind for a moment.

A boy with a stick for a cane lived anew in Zawaya.

A man from a different world met a most ridiculous death.

It was the death of dogs.

Their Souls became one, allowing them to survive their Fate.

Forced by the world’s Divine Laws, he was to undergo his penance.

Penance that would take far too long to complete.

But time he did not have.

Thus, penance was broken.

And thus, a punishment was bestowed.

Gold chains shackled his power once more.

A stranger woke up here, drowning, and walked into a war.

Now the same stranger stood on the same shore, whole, strong, and a great deal more alive than he had ever expected to be.

He had returned to his full strength.

It should have been the most important thing on the hill.

Yet it was not.

A small figure sat on a flat stone at the far edge of the lake.

She had been there the whole time.

He had missed her because she was so very still.

She sat with her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around them.

A plain black cloak fell around her in folds; her dark hair hung in a loose tail down her back.

Her chin rested on her knees, and she was staring at the water as if it were a letter she had read a hundred times.

Her head came up.

It happened slowly... rather, he perceived it slowly.

Her eyes were a bright purple, the color of the last light after a storm, and they moved across the shore, and the white-gold of his hair, and the broad new shape of his shoulders.

They widened.

They did not stop widening.

Fear.

There was obvious fear in her face.

But the woman did not scream at his sight.

She remained seated on her stone with her mouth slightly open.

The whole world seemed to wait.

Malik lifted his left hand.

Then he lifted his right hand.

She watched the fingers uncurl, one at a time.

The arm was whole, healed, and alive.

It was still attached to him.

And it faced her.

Palm open.

They welcomed her.

Welcomed her to his embrace.

"Come here, Sweet Dunya."