Chapter : 807
A new, frustrating kind of silence settled between them in the evenings that followed. They had a destination, but no path. The clinic, which had been a buzzing hive of revolutionary discovery and clandestine research, now felt like a prison cell. They were two brilliant minds, trapped by the brutal, physical realities of politics and power.
Sumaiya, who had been so energized by her successful investigation, now grew quiet and withdrawn. Lloyd would watch her as she worked, seeing the frustration etched in the tense line of her shoulders, in the way she would stare off into the distance, her mind clearly miles away, wrestling with the impossible problem. She had become his advocate, his champion, and now she felt the crushing weight of her own inability to deliver on her promise.
Lloyd knew he had to let her struggle. He had to let her exhaust every possible conventional solution in her own mind. He had to let her arrive at the conclusion that there was no logical, political, or financial path to their goal. He had to let her reach a state of absolute, complete desperation. Only then would she be receptive to the insane, unconventional solution he was about to propose.
He played his part with a quiet, scholarly melancholy. He would spend hours with his crystal calculator, sighing with a deep, theatrical frustration. He would talk aloud to himself, musing on the magnificent diagnostic tools he could build, the countless lives he could save, if only he had the right materials. He was a constant, gentle, and heartbreaking reminder of the beautiful future that was being held hostage by the tyranny of the present.
The breaking point came a week after her discovery. She was sitting at the small table, trying to mend a tear in her tunic, but her hands were clumsy, her mind clearly elsewhere. She suddenly threw the needle down with a clatter of pure, unadulterated frustration.
“It’s hopeless,” she said, her voice a low, bitter murmur. “Utterly, completely hopeless.”
Lloyd looked up from the anatomical text he was pretending to read, his expression one of gentle, sympathetic sorrow. “Sumaiya…”
“Don’t,” she interrupted, her voice sharp. “Don’t placate me, Zayn. I have spent the last week considering every angle. Bribery? The guards of the royal mine are not common city watchmen. They are fanatics, loyal only to the Crown. Their integrity is absolute. A political petition? On what grounds? ‘A humble slum doctor requires a priceless state asset for a theoretical project’? We would be laughed out of the palace and thrown in a dungeon for our impertinence. Theft?” She let out a short, harsh laugh. “The Jahl fortress is said to be warded by the Archmage of the kingdom himself. To try and break in would be suicide.”
She had walked down every logical path and had found every one to be a dead end. She was trapped. She looked at him, her dark eyes filled with a desperate, pleading frustration. “There is no way,” she whispered. “Your dream… it is impossible.”
Lloyd closed his book. The time was right. The ground had been perfectly prepared. He had led her to the edge of the abyss, and now he would show her the single, terrifying, thread-like bridge that spanned it.
“You are correct, Sumaiya,” he said, his voice a low, serious hum. “There is no conventional way. The systems of power in this kingdom—wealth, politics, military might—are all designed to protect that secret. To try and use those same systems to acquire it is, as you say, hopeless.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his desk, his fingers steepled before him. “But we are not conventional people, are we? We are thinkers. Innovators. When the old roads are closed, a true innovator does not give up. They forge a new path.”
He then asked the question that would change everything, his tone one of pure, detached, academic curiosity. “Tell me, as a student of the court, how does a commoner, a person of no rank or station, acquire great wealth or status in this kingdom? Not through inheritance or marriage. Through merit. How does a man like me, a man with only his own skill to his name, legitimately earn a prize of a value that is beyond the reach of even the great lords?”
The question was a subtle, brilliant piece of misdirection. He was reframing their problem. It was no longer a matter of taking the stones; it was a matter of earning them.
Chapter : 808
Sumaiya stared at him, her brow furrowed, her mind shifting from the problem of infiltration to this new, abstract, economic inquiry. “There are… very few paths,” she said slowly, thinking it through. “A man could become a great military hero, be granted a title and lands by the Sultan for his service. Or he could invent something of such profound, revolutionary value to the kingdom that he is granted a royal patent and a share of the profits. Or…”
She paused, a new, strange, and deeply unsettling thought occurring to her. There was one other path. A path of blood and stone. A path so brutal, so archaic, so famously suicidal, that it was less a path and more a public execution.
“…or there is the Jahl Challenge,” she finished, the words coming out in a flat, toneless whisper, as if she were afraid that speaking the name aloud would summon the demon it was associated with.
---
Lloyd feigned a look of polite, scholarly ignorance. “The Jahl Challenge?” he repeated, his tone one of mild curiosity. “I am not familiar with the term. Is it some kind of artisan’s competition?”
Sumaiya let out a short, sharp, and utterly mirthless laugh. “An artisan’s competition,” she repeated, her voice dripping with a dark, bitter irony. “Yes, you could call it that. If the art is evisceration, and the primary medium is your own entrails.”
She rose from her stool and began to pace the clinic, her movements now agitated, a stark contrast to her earlier, defeated stillness. She was no longer a strategist; she was a storyteller, recounting a tale of horror.
“It is not a competition,” she said, her voice low and intense. “It is a spectacle. A brutal, archaic tradition that dates back to the Unification Wars. When the first Sultan finally conquered the Jahl mountain clans, he took their Fire God—a powerful, ancient Demon—as a prisoner. He did not kill it. He had it bound by the Archmage in the great arena in the capital, to serve as a permanent, living symbol of the Crown’s absolute power over the old, wild magic of the land.”
She stopped her pacing and turned to face him, her dark eyes wide with the remembered horror of the stories. “Once a year, during the summer festival, the Demon, whose name is Ifrit, is… awoken. And the Sultan offers a challenge. Any warrior in the kingdom, from the highest-born knight to the lowest peasant, can enter the arena and test their mettle against it. It is a public display of martial prowess, a way for ambitious men to win fame and glory.”
“And do they win?” Lloyd asked, his voice a quiet, neutral prompt.
“Almost never,” she replied, her voice flat and cold. “The Demon is a Transcendent-level entity, a being of pure, untamed fire and rage. Most challengers are incinerated before they can even get within twenty feet of it. The few who have managed to land a blow, to actually wound the beast, are hailed as legendary heroes. But in the three hundred years of the Challenge, no one has ever come close to defeating it. The entire affair is a piece of political theater, a way for the Sultan to remind the world of his power. It is a path not to glory, but to a very public and very gruesome death.”
She looked at him, her expression now one of profound, almost desperate warning. She had brought up this terrible tradition, and now she was trying to shove it back into the box, to impress upon him the sheer, suicidal insanity of it.
Lloyd, however, remained focused on the original question. He was a scholar, pursuing a line of economic inquiry. “An interesting, if barbaric, tradition,” he said, his tone still one of detached, academic interest. “But what of the prize? You said it was a path to wealth and status. What does a warrior win for surviving a few moments against this… Ifrit?”
“The rewards are… substantial,” she conceded, her reluctance to even speak of it a palpable thing. “The Sultan is always generous. There is gold, of course. A title of minor nobility. A commission in the Royal Army. Enough to elevate a common man to a life of comfort and respect, if he survives to claim it. But no one who is sane considers it a viable path. The risk is absolute. The reward, while great, is not worth a fiery death.”