The City Beyond the Stars by Zohra Nabi

Author:Zohra Nabi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2024-04-11T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

As Yara watched her go, she felt a pang of regret at having spoken so harshly to Leyla before. She wished she could tell her that she hadn’t meant it – at least not all of it.

She felt Rafi’s hand on her back. ‘We’ll do it,’ he said quietly, ‘the three of us – we’ll find out where they’ve taken Madam Shereen and the Grand High Sorceress, and we’ll find a way to free them.’

‘Can you hear it?’

Yara turned, surprised. Mehnoor was wiping away her tears and looking around with an expression of concentration.

‘What are we supposed to be listening for?’ Aaliya asked.

Rafi glared in her direction. ‘Try being quiet for once and let her think.’

There were a few, long moments of silence as Mehnoor moved to place her hand on a pillar, her eyes squeezed tightly shut in concentration. Then: ‘Oh. Oh.’

‘What? What is it?’

‘Don’t you hear it?’

‘Hear what? There’s nothing there.’

‘Exactly. Nothing. It’s the middle of the night, we’re in the ruins of one of the greatest and most powerful cities ever to have existed, and I can’t hear anything.’

‘No owls,’ said Yara slowly. ‘No crickets, no mosquitoes—’

‘No ghouls,’ said Rafi. He put his own hand on an overturned statue. ‘There’s no one here, but there’s also no moss growing on the stone, no weeds between the cracks.’

‘Manat was the birthplace of sorcery,’ said Mehnoor. ‘I should be able to feel all the magic that lived here once upon a time – the way we could feel it in your mother’s house. There’s nothing. Not even the hungry vortex of magic there was in the Great Library on Istehar Way. There’s just… silence.’

Yara’s stomach lurched as she became suddenly, overwhelmingly aware of what Mehnoor meant. The ruins were so devoid of life that she felt as though her own warmth and strength were fading the longer she stood still. She was reminded of the Settlement when the poison had taken hold, where the air had been so still and so quiet as its hum of magic had flickered and died.

Yara shivered. ‘I don’t like it here.’ Her voice fell flat in the air – there was no echo.

‘Right,’ said Aaliya, clapping her hands together, her brow knitting in a way Yara recognised from her own face. ‘That’s enough sitting around and moping. We have to focus. You said there was magic in the folk tales – what magic?’

‘You’ve changed your tune,’ said Rafi. ‘What happened to them just being bedtime stories?’

‘A great sorceress is never too proud to admit when she is wrong,’ replied Aaliya, with a superior dignity that made Rafi grind his teeth.

‘I suppose they must be connected to the spell we found in the cherry-tree courtyard somehow,’ said Yara, recovering. Despite everything, she felt a small kernel of gratitude that Aaliya was taking charge. ‘That was written out like a story. They must be related somehow – she must have been trying something new with this.’

‘She said she wanted to investigate…’ said Rafi.

‘But how?’ Aaliya pressed.

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