The Desert Spear

defy curfew—but he found no one.
    As it should be,
he mused.
They are all in lower levels, barred from within, as is the law. You were a fool to come. Ashan was right. You play games with your duty in order to satisfy your own curiosity. Men are dying in the night while you skulk about your own home.
    He was about to leave, heading back to the Maze, when he caught a sound coming from his bedchambers. The noise grew louder as he padded closer. He peeked around a curtain and saw two
kai’Sharum
bearing the white sash of the Andrah’s personal guard standing before the door to his bedroom. The sounds became clearer, and he realized what they were.
    Inevera’s cries.
    Rage flared in him, hotter than he had ever imagined possible. Before he even realized he was moving, his fist was shattering the spine of one of the
kai’Sharum.
The man grunted, but it was quickly silenced as he struck the floor and Jardir crushed his throat with a stomp of his heel.
    The other warrior spun deftly, moving with the grace one would expect from a
Sharum
trained in Sharik Hora, but Jardir’s rage knew no bounds. The warrior tried to grapple, but Jardir ducked his outstretched arms and came up behind him, gripping the man’s chin with one hand and the back of his head with another. A sharp twist, and the man was falling to the carpet, dead.
    Jardir spun, kicking hard against the door. It was barred from within, but he only gritted his teeth and kicked again, this time knocking out the braces and sending the door slamming inward.
    He pulled up short at the scene before him, feeling as if he had taken a spear in the chest. He had expected to find the Andrah holding Inevera down, forcing himself upon her, but just the opposite, his wife, nude, rode the fat man as wantonly as Qasha had ridden him that morning. The Andrah looked up at him fearfully, but he was pinned by Inevera’s soft weight. She turned to him, and in his rage he wasn’t sure if he imagined it, or if a bit of a smirk touched the corners of her mouth as she took the last bit of honor from him.
    If his anger was a furnace before, it was the fifth layer of Nie ’s abyss now. He strode to the rack on the wall, selecting a short, stabbing spear. When he turned back, the Andrah had struggled out from under Inevera. He stood naked in Jardir’s bedchamber, his flaccid member all but hidden in the shadows of his massive belly. The sight filled Jardir with disgust.
    “Stop! I command you!” the Andrah cried as Jardir charged, but Jardir ignored him, striking the man across the jaw with the butt of the spear.
    “Not even you can deny a husband his rights in this!” Jardir cried as the Andrah hit the floor. “I do Krasia a favor this night!” He raised the spear to impale the man.
    Inevera grabbed his arm. “Fool!” she cried. “You will ruin everything!”
    Jardir pivoted to backhand Inevera across the face, knocking her away. “Have no fear, faithless
jiwah,
” he said, turning back to the Andrah. “My spear will find you soon enough.”
    He raised the spear again and the Andrah screamed, but then everything turned orange and red, and Jardir was struck by an incredible force, knocking him away from his victim. The plates of fired clay sewn within his heavy warrior’s garb took the brunt of the blast, but when he recovered from striking the wall, he found his robes in flames. With a shout, he tore them off.
    He looked to Inevera, holding the fire demon skull she had brought to their first meeting in Sharik Hora. She stood naked before two men with no shame, knowing that even now, her beauty had no equal. Hatred and arousal swirled in him, warring for dominance.
    “Stop this foolishness!” she snapped.
    “I take no more orders from you,” Jardir said. “Burn down this whole palace if you wish, I will still kill that fat pig and take you on his corpse!” The Andrah whimpered, but Jardir snarled, silencing him.
    Inevera did not even flinch, producing a small object in her other hand. It looked like a lump of coal until the ward carved upon it flared, and Jardir realized that it, too, was
alagai hora.
The blackened piece of bone crackled, and silver magic leapt from it, like a bolt of lightning, to strike Jardir.
    Jardir was lifted from his feet and thrown back into the wall, his body racked with agony beyond anything he could imagine. He tried to open himself to it, but the pain ended as quickly as it had begun, leaving only a stark terror in its wake. He turned