by Glen Cook
Yasmid looked like she had bitten into something sour.
Habibullah began to frown. Did he wonder what her problem was? Elwas bin Farout al-Souki had offered her a chance to spark new life into the flames of the Faith.
Habibullah was her slave emotionally but he was, as well, one of the oldest of the Believers. He coughed gently to remind her that the One was watching. This might be His mercy at work.
“Call him back.”
Habibullah was not gone long.
Yasmid looked al-Souki in the eyes, hard. He was not accustomed to that from a woman. His gaze dropped. She said, “You have one hundred days to show me real progress. If Phogedatvitsu is a con artist his corpse will join the hundred thousand already fertilizing Sebil el Selib. No more talk. Habibullah, arrange to house and feed those men.”
Giving Habibullah that task was meant to put both men in their place. She felt petty doing so.
Al-Habor was the well to which social gravity drew the lost souls of the desert. Even the flies and parasites had yielded to despair. Soul-shattered veterans of decades of war haunted al-Habor, shaking, muttering, afraid, or just staring at something only one man could see. They did not talk much. They survived on the charity of Sheyik Hanba al-Medi al-Habor, the local tribal chief. Hanba bore the marks of the wars himself. They had cost him a hand, an eye, and three sons. He could not afford the charity he provided. The wars had seen to that, too.
Still, he did provide.
Al-Habor once was a major crossroads. It was of minor importance still. Trade remained limited because fighting could return any time. The oasis was sweet and reliable and strategically valuable.
Half the mud-brick buildings were abandoned. The best preserved were infested by squatters.
Haroun settled in unremarked. Few would have cared had he announced himself. Al-Habor was the end of the road. No roads led to a future elsewhere. Al-Habor clung to the souls it collected. Haroun found it bleak enough to dampen a brilliant spring day at high noon.
Nobody cared about one more bum fallen into the cauldron. He did not learn much. Lack of care meant a lack of information. Only travelers had any real news. Few of those would waste time on a soul-shattered tramp whose real goal must be to mooch or steal something.
Insidious tendrils of despair shadowed Haroun’s own heart. He should move on before he became lost himself.
There were those who preyed on the lost. The most virulent was a big, stupid man called the Bull. The Bull ran with a timid killer known as the Beetle.
It was unusually cold. Haroun had formed an unspoken alliance with two others. Between them they had found enough fuel for a small fire. They sat round that, no man meeting another’s gaze.
The Beetle and the Bull appeared. The Bull rumbled, “The Bull is hungry.”
Nobody responded. Only Haroun had anything edible. He did not intend to share.
The Bull kicked the little fire apart. “I said…”
Haroun slipped a knife into the back of the Bull’s right calf. He sliced down, then sideways. At first the Bull did not feel pain enough to understand. He tried to turn. His leg did not cooperate. Haroun leaned out of the path of his collapse.
The Bull roared, tried to get up. Haroun’s blade entered his right eye. “Breathe without leave and I’ll take the other, too. Your old friends will have great sport with a blind Bull.”
The Beetle tried something stupid. Haroun disarmed him. He settled beside the Bull, nursing partially severed fingers.
“Would you like to spend your remaining days dependent on the good will of the Beetle?” The Bull abused his partner with only slightly less vigor than he did everyone else. “No? You’re less stupid than I thought. I’ll leave you one eye, then. I’ll take it first time you do something to offend me, though.”
The Bull looked into Haroun’s eyes. He saw no mercy there. He did see a dark future for those who angered the man. He eased back, rose slowly, let the Beetle help him limp away.
One of the others said, “I remember you.” He said nothing more. He lowered his head, went to sleep.
The second man acknowledged events with a nod and a shudder. He placed curds of dried camel dung on the resurrected fire, then lay down on his left side.
Haroun noticed changes next morning. Word had spread. His presence was acknowledged subtly everywhere. Had his fireside companion truly recognized him? If so, it was definitely time to leave. Most of the walking dead here had followed El Murid.
Did he dare reclaim his animals and gear? Would the stable keeper even deal with him now that he could not be distinguished from the sort of man he pretended to be?
Nothing developed, though, except the exchange of whispers amongst the lost. Haroun got the news himself three times. No one named a revenant champion from days gone by. The man from the fire had changed his mind or had not been believed. Either was convenient.
Haroun wakened suddenly. Someone had come too close. He sensed no malice, however. He feigned sleep, let the situation develop. He was seated against an adobe wall in a pool of shadow. Moonlight illuminated what could be seen through cracked eyelids. A breeze tumbled the skeleton of a brushy weed.
Someone settled to his right. The man smelled familiar. He would be the companion who never spoke.
Haroun waited.
A long time passed before the man whispered, “A courier came from Al Rhemish.” The man had trouble talking. He stammered. “He told the Sheyik’s night boy to gather fodder for twenty horses for four days.”
Someone would be coming out from the capital. Haroun could not be the reason. Megelin’s few incompetent shaghûns would waste no time spying on no-account towns awash in human flotsam. It likely meant only that a Royalist band would pass through on its way somewhere to make someone miserable.
Haroun did not respond. His companion did nothing to suggest that a response was necessary.
Next morning the Sheyik’s men came looking for day labor. Haroun joined the volunteers. Some went looking for fodder. Haroun was in the group set to cleaning the Sheyik’s stable and corral. He did not see the point, nor did he learn anything useful.
His companions cared not at all. Shifting horse manure or no, it was all the same. The slower they worked the longer they would be employed.
Haroun wandered off, vacant-eyed, as often as he dared. The Sheyik’s men would find him and bring him back to the corral. He learned nothing about the layout inside the adobe wall screening the Sheyik’s residence, which was a minor fortress built of mud brick.
Back behind his pitchfork, Haroun wondered why he felt compelled to study the place. Because someone had a notion that important things were about to happen? Or because of some unconscious premonition of his own?
He had those infrequently. He had learned to pay attention. But they were not universally trustworthy. A premonition had made him murder an innocent prince and princess.
Someone was coming. Someone with an escort. Who it would be was secret but it had to be someone firmly convinced of his own importance.
Come sundown Haroun’s work party scattered into al-Habor after being fed. Like the others, bin Yousif stuffed himself till his stomach ached and carried away whatever he could hide about his person.
He fell asleep against the same wall behind another tiny fire. The same men shared the warmth. Both had been part of the work party. They were rich tonight, as al-Habor’s lost understood that state.
Haroun drifted off wondering if they three would not now offer too much temptation to the Bulls of al-Habor.
SEVEN: YEAR 1017 AFE
EASTERN EMPIRE
The Lord Ssu-ma Shih-ka’i, Commander, Western Army, second in the Dread Empire, took some time off work.
Shih-ka’i used a portal known only to himself. He stepped out on an island unimaginably far to the east. Ehelebe might once have been its name. He was not sure. Ehelebe was obscure and might have been something else.
He was not looking forward but he was a man who had att
ained his station by meticulous attention to detail, to duty, by genius, by an unsullied reputation for being apolitical, and because he once enjoyed some favor from politicals who used him as a showpiece.
Shih-ka’i believed that his character made him uniquely suited to pull Shinsan together following its late, suicidal internal conflicts. The daughter of the Demon Prince was now the fountainhead of empire but Ssu-ma Shih-ka’i, the pig farmer’s son, was the symbol, device, and guarantor of the new era. And what he wanted to do now, in service to that guarantee, was make sure that a man he had exiled would be reintegrated into Tervola society. Kuo Wen-chin could be of incalculable value if he would stifle his ambition.
Ssu-ma Shih-ka’i owed Kuo. Wen-chin had plucked him from obscurity, as commander of a training legion, and had loosed him on the revenant god of the east. From that triumph he had gone on to glory in the west.
There was no sign of Kuo. The fortress round the old laboratories was deserted. It was morning but little sunlight reached Shih-ka’i. There was no artificial lighting. Dust lay heavy. It filled the air when he moved. He removed his boar mask so he could sneeze.
He did not call out. Even an apolitical Tervola dared not go round shouting the name of a condemned man he had saved. Who knew who might hear you impeach yourself?
Had Kuo escaped?
Not likely, though the man was a genius. And there was a precedent.
The Deliverer had escaped by swimming to the mainland. Then he had walked on west, allied with forces ancient and terrible.
That route was closed, now. No one would survive it again.
Portals were the only way out.
The dust in the staging chamber made it clear that Lord Kuo had not gotten out that way.
The kitchen was the place to start. Kuo had to eat. Miniature portals delivered foodstuffs there, from sources calculated to raise no questions.
Shih-ka’i strained to remember his way. He had visited only briefly a few times, most recently to stash Kuo. It took a while.
The kitchen did show signs of regular use by someone with few skills and no dedication to order.
A remote clatter caught Ssu-ma’s attention.
He found his man down where past tenants had housed their prisoners and monsters. Wen-chin was spoon-feeding a drooling old man.
Shih-ka’i’s advent startled Wen-chin, who, nevertheless, continued feeding the invalid. Kuo said, “I didn’t expect you so soon. Are you here to end the threat?”
“No. I wanted to make sure of your welfare. Who is this?”
“I don’t know. Presumably someone important to the previous regime. I can’t imagine how he survived. He hasn’t much mind left. He is a project filled with challenges, the biggest being to overcome his fears so I can draw him back to the world.”
“Oh?”
“I would’ve gone mad without him.”
“Then him being here was piece of good fortune.” And a grim harbinger, perhaps.
“So. You’re not here to kill me. Then tell me what’s happened out there.”
Shih-ka’i brought him up to date.
Kuo sighed. “The Empire has fared well.”
“Better than we had any right to expect, given the foibles of our class.”
“I hoped, of course. I’m sad that there’s no place for me. But I was resigned to that when I came to you.”
Lord Ssu-ma nodded. “It hasn’t been a long time but it has been busy. A lot changed. Most importantly, the wars are over. Successfully, thanks to your foresight. But the exhaustion of the state and the legions are such that the surviving Tervola have put aside personal ambitions.”
“On the surface, perhaps.”
“No doubt temptation will sway some who can’t see past the Empress’s sex, however sound her leadership and thorough her discipline.”
“What do you want from me, Lord Ssu-ma?”
“Right now, truly, only to see that you’re well. Later, maybe something more. Assuming your own ambitions are now manageable.”
“They were never unmanageable. I did what I did for the Empire.”
“A good thing to know.” Every fallen Tervola would claim the same. Most would believe themselves. “I’ll be back. Probably sooner than this time. Time is less pressing.”
Kuo said, “Lord, I will make any adjustment necessary to get out of here.” Happily, he was not yet desperate enough to do something stupid.
The attempt would have been fatal.
Lord Ssu-ma Shih-ka’i held a low and cynical opinion of his fellow Tervola. He viewed all they did through the lens of that cynicism and his own low birth. But he could and did grant kudos to those who rose above their nature. Kuo was one such man.
The routine in the prison tower remained unchanged. Only the faces of those who brought the meals were different. They talked no more than had their predecessors.
Ragnarson was tempted to attack somebody to force an interaction.
He did not. The beast inside was cunning enough to understand that he would regret that sort of defiance quickly, deeply.
Mist’s remarks during her visit had begun to shape his thinking.
He now spent too much time trying to figure himself out. It was embarrassing. He was glad that his beloved dead could not see him so enfeebled. Haaken, Reskird, Elana, and so many others would never have understood.
He came to fear that his ghosts would understand more and better than he did.
His own philosophy of life had shrunk to a smash-and-grab level.
Once the introspection vice set in nothing was safe from repeated review. Trivial incidents stuck in his head like musical refrains, cycling over and over.
Time flew, then. In sane moments he wondered if this was not just a way to escape the monotony of imprisonment. Then he would recollect an incident or decision that constituted another early brick in his edifice of despair.
Mostly he dwelt on mind-warps that had led him to rush through the Mountains of M’Hand and attack an invincible enemy already determined to exterminate him.
He could not identify the moment when confidence in his own talent and luck had become an irrational conviction that he could never be deprived of good fortune and victory.
He knew the seeds lay in the head butting with Varthlokkur over whether or not to tell Nepanthe what Ethrian was doing in the east.
He concluded, after numerous rehashes, that Varthlokkur was more culpable than he. That old man’s stubbornness, in the face of all evidence, had caused Kavelin’s downfall.
Insofar as Ragnarson knew there had been no softening of the wizard’s attitude. He would not admit that he was wrong.
Ragnarson could do that. Privately. To himself. He did not know if he could confess the failing publicly.
Days fled. Mist did not return. Ragnarson received no news. He could only imagine what was happening at home. Imaging, he could only picture the worst. The worst he pictured was too optimistic.
He lost track of time. Days became weeks. Weeks became seasons.
It seemed like summer out there.
Lord Ssu-ma Shih-ka’i was nervous. He had been called to the Imperial presence. The summons had been there waiting, like an unhappy promise, when he returned from the island in the east.
Reason said it would be Imperial business. Emotion feared that the woman knew what he had done.
And she was scarcely a hundred yards away, now, here in his own army headquarters.
He sent word that he was available and awaiting her convenience.
His messenger brought word that he was to attend her immediately.
Shih-ka’i got no sense of danger but remained uncomfortable.
The guilty flee where none doth pursue.
Shih-ka’i knew the aphorism had a similar form in most all older cultures. It had figured grandly in events leading to the destruction of Ilkazar. The Empire Destroyer had employed that exact formula to frighten the lords men of the old Empire.
The Empress was exhausted and gaunt d
espite the improvement in Shinsan’s fortunes. She beckoned him. She seemed distracted, not angry.
This might not be about Ssu-ma Shih-ka’i after all.
She said, “I know you’re no expert but I trust your wisdom.”
“To what conundrum shall I bend my wise lack of expertise?”
“I have a secret.”
“As do we all. I would like to discuss mine with you someday when you’re feeling particularly generous.”
“I have two things troubling me,” the Empress said. “First, how do I guarantee the safety of my children?” She met his gaze straight on.
Did she imagine him to be a threat? “I may have missed an intermediate step in your thinking. I was only vaguely aware that you have children. Now that you mention them, where are they?”
“That would be the meat of my problem.”
Shih-ka’i tried to seem interested. He was seriously off balance. “I don’t understand.”
“When I returned from exile, during the events that displaced Lord Kuo…” She paused, suddenly remote.
Shih-ka’i took the opportunity to remark, “A good man, at least to me. He allowed me to prove myself against the Deliverer. He was a considerable resource to the Empire.”
The Empress looked puzzled. “Everyone tells me you have no interest in politics.”
“That would be true most of the time. The politics of the moment have to be acknowledged sometimes because they shape everything else. Kuo Wen-chin was my mentor, friend, and the man who let me grow into what I became. The politics around him meant nothing to me except when they interfered with me trying to do my job. But you want to talk about your children.”
She gave him another odd look. “Yes. I do. I have two. Ekaterina and her brother Scalza. Their father gave them those names. No doubt they’re comfortable with them and would rather not assume those secretly preferred by their mother. The girl is the oldest.”
Lord Ssu-ma smiled. “And you intend to stay vague because you’re afraid politics might overtake them.”
“I am. I left them behind because I knew they would be safer where they were. They were with people I trusted.”
Shih-ka’i enjoyed an intuitive moment. “They weren’t people who trusted you.”
