The Will of the Wanderer

by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman

  He had planted his spy there, but he had heard nothing from her. Each day, with growing impatience, he demanded of Yamina if Meryem had made her report.

  He waited many days in vain.

  Meryem was having problems of her own. She was not, as she claimed to be, a daughter of the Sultan. Rather, she was a daughter of the Emperor—her mother having been one of his many hundred concubines. She had been given to the Amir as a present by the Emperor and thus came into Qannadi’s harem. Much to Meryem’s disappointment, the Amir had not married her but had merely taken her as his concubine. She was, as Qannadi told Feisal, an ambitious girl. She wanted the position of wife to the Amir, and it was this that induced her to take the dangerous role of spy when Yamina offered it to her.

  The danger Meryem had foreseen. But not the discomfort. Accustomed to a life of luxury in the Emperor’s grand palace in the capital city of Khandar, then to life in the rich palace of the late Sultan in Kich, Meryem found life in the desert disgusting, dirty, and appalling.

  She was, had she known it, the pampered pet of Sheykh Majiid’s harem. Her gentleness and beauty, plus her scandalous stories of life in the Sultan’s court, made her a favorite with Majiid’s wives and daughters. Badia, Majiid’s head wife, spared Meryem from doing truly hard tasks, such as herding the horses, milking goats, drawing water, hauling firewood. But Meryem was expected to earn her keep in the harem. After twenty years of doing nothing except gossiping and lounging around ornamental pools, Meryem found this hateful in the extreme.

  Plus, she was increasingly frustrated in being unable to get near Khardan and thus find out the information she had been sent here to gather. She repeated her woes to Yamina.

  “You have no idea how wretched my life is here,” Meryem said bitterly.

  Alone in her tent, she held in her hands what appeared to be a mirror in a gilt frame. If anyone came in (which was unlikely considering the late hour of the night), they would have seen her admiring her face, nothing more.

  In reality the mirror was a device of great magical power that allowed the sorceress who possessed it to summon the image of another sorceress onto its surface and thereby communicate with her.

  “I live in a tent so small that I must crouch to enter. The smell is unbelievable. I was sick with it for three days after I came here. I am forced to wait on the men hand and foot like a common house slave. My beautiful clothes are in tatters. There is nothing to eat except mutton and gazelle, bread and rice. No fresh fruit, no vegetables. No wine, nothing to drink but tea and coffee—”

  “Surely you have some diversions that make up for these inconveniences,” interrupted Yamina with a distinct lack of sympathy. “I saw the Calif, you recall. A handsome young man. I was impressed, quite impressed. Such a man must make one’s nights exciting. Anticipation of pleasure in the darkness makes the hours of daylight go by swiftly.”

  “The only thing I anticipate in the night is the pleasure of being bitten to death by bugs,” said Meryem bitterly.

  “What?” Yamina appeared truly startled. “You have not yet seduced this man?”

  “It isn’t as if I haven’t tried,” said Meryem petulantly. She could not bear to see Yamina—who had once been jealous of the younger, prettier girl—gazing at her smugly. “This man has notions of honor. He promised to marry me before taking me, and I fear he truly means it! And only by marrying him can I truly discover what is going on in this camp. I tried spying on the meetings of the Sheykhs, but they stop talking every time I enter. If we were married, however, I know I could persuade him to tell me what they were planning—”

  “Then marry him! What is stopping you?”

  Briefly, Meryem related her tale, elaborating on Zohra’s interference but leaving out the fact that she—Meryem—had been replaced in Khardan’s harem by a young man. That choice bit of information would become the joke of the seraglio! It was a blow from which Meryem’s pride would never recover—a blow that she promised herself would someday be avenged.

  “There is but one thing to do,” Yamina said crisply, having heard the tale. “You know what that is.”

  “Yes,” Meryem replied with seeming reluctance and hesitation, though inwardly rejoicing. “Such a thing goes against the teachings of the Imam, however. If he were to find out. . .”

  “And how is he to find out?” Yamina demanded. “If you do it properly, no one will know, not even the woman’s kin.

  “Still,” persisted Meryem stubbornly, “I want your sanction on this.”

  Yamina was silent, her lips pursed in displeasure.

  Meryem, abject and humble, awaited the answer. She knew that Yamina was quite capable of betraying her by turning her over to the Imam. Forcing Yamina to give her sanction to murder would put the blame upon her; she must keep it secret, and Meryem would be safe.

  “You know,” Meryem added softly, “that the mirror is quite capable of recalling faces and the words they have spoken in the past, as well as transmitting those of the present.”

  “I am aware of that! Very well, I sanction it,” Yamina said in a tight voice. “But only after all other means have failed. Men think with their loins. The Calif ‘s honor will come to mean little enough to him when he holds you in his arms. And the marriage bed is not the only bed where business can be discussed, my dear. Or could it be”—Yamina added sweetly—”that your charms are fading, that you have attempted this and failed? Perhaps this Zohra or the other wife holds greater attraction for him than you do?”

  “I have failed in nothing!” Meryem retorted angrily. “It is me whom he loves. He spends his nights alone.”

  “Then there should be no problem enticing him to spend his nights in your tent, Meryem, my child.” Yamina’s voice hardened. “The sands in the hourglass dwindle. The Amir grows impatient. Already he has mentioned his disappointment in you. Do not let that disappointment grow to displeasure.”

  The mirror in Meryem’s hands went dark—almost as dark as the girl’s scowling face. Beneath her anger and her hurt pride ran an undercurrent of fear. Unlike a wife, a concubine was at the mercy of her master. The Amir would never mistreat her—she was the Emperor’s daughter, after all—but he was at liberty to give her away as one might give away a singing bird. And there was a certain one-eyed, fat captain—a friend of the general’s— who had been casting that one eye in her direction. . .

  No, Meryem would have Khardan. Never before had she doubted her charms—they had worked on many men, not just the Amir. But this man, this Calif, was different. He could be the rare exception to Yamina’s rule. He would not be easy to seduce. Still, as long as she was careful and did not play the harlot but the innocent, loving victim, Meryem thought she might just succeed. . .

  Putting away the magical mirror, the Amir’s concubine went to her bed, falling asleep with a sweet and not altogether innocent smile upon her face.

  The other newcomer to a harem was leading a life almost as easy as Meryem’s, though not for the same reasons.

  The life of a madman was not an unpleasant one among the nomads. Mathew no longer lived with the fear of imminent and terrible death (except from the bite of the qarakurt, for though he never saw one, Pukah’s description of the deadly black spider haunted him). He was not shunned, as he had feared, or kept shut up away from other people. In this he had to admit that these barbarians were more humane in their treatment of the insane than those of his own land, who locked the mentally ill away in foul places that were little better (and many times worse) than prisons.

  The tribesmen went out of their way to be kind to him—always rather cautiously and warily but kind nonetheless—speaking to him and bowing as they passed, bringing him small gifts of food such as rice balls or shish kabab. Some of the women, finding that he had no jewelry of his own, gave him theirs (Zohra would have adorned him head to toe had he allowed it). Mathew would have returned it had not Zohra told him that, in this way, the women were making certain that Mathew would have some money of his own should he
ever find himself a “widow.”

  Children stared at him wide-eyed, and he was often approached by young mothers with requests to hold their newborn infants, if only for a few moments. At first Mathew was touched by all this attention and was beginning to consider that he had misjudged these people whom he had thought uncouth savages. One day, however, Zohra opened his eyes to the truth.

  “I am pleased that your people seem to like me,” Mathew said to her shyly one morning as they walked to the oasis to draw water for the day’s usage.

  “They don’t like you,” she said, glancing at him in amusement, “any more than they like me. They are frightened.”

  “Of me?” Mathew stared at her in astonishment.

  “No, no! Of course not. Who could be frightened of you?” Zohra said, casting a scornful glance at Mathew’s frail figure. “They fear the wrath of Hazrat Akhran. You see, the souls of babies waiting to be born sleep in the heavens, in a beautiful land where they are tended by the djinniyeh. The Wandering God visits each babe, bestowing his blessing upon it. Now, most babies sleep through this visit, but sometimes there is one who awakens, opens his eyes, and gazes on the face of God. The radiance dazzles him. He takes leave of his senses and thus is he born here upon the world.”

  “That’s what Khardan meant when he told them I’d seen the face of the God,” Mathew murmured.

  “Yes, and that is why they dare not harm you. That is why the gifts and attention. You have seen the God and so will recognize him when you return to him. The rest of us will not know him. The people hope that when they die and reach the heavens, you will introduce them.”

  “And I’m supposed to get there before them?”

  Zohra nodded gravely. “They consider it likely. You are, after all, a sickly looking thing.”

  “And holding the infants. Is this some kind of blessing? . . .”

  “You are warding off the evil eye.”

  Mathew stared in disbelief. “The what?”

  “The evil eye—the eye of envy—which, we believe, can kill a living thing. So that other mothers will not be envious of her newborn infant, the mother puts the babe in your arms, for who could envy a child that has been held by a madman?”

  Mathew had no answer to this and began to wish he hadn’t asked. The gifts and kindnesses suddenly took on a new and sinister aspect. These people were all eagerly waiting for him to die!

  “Oh, not eagerly,” Zohra said off-handedly. “They don’t particularly care one way or the other. They just want to make certain that you will remember them to the God, and—in this harsh land of ours—it is best not to take chances.”

  A harsh land, a harsh people. Not cruel and savage, Mathew was beginning to realize, as he struggled to align his nature to their way of thinking. But resigned, accepting of their fate—no, even proud of it. Death was a fact, as much a part of life as birth and attended with rather less ceremony.

  In Mathew’s homeland death was accompanied by solemn ritual—the gathering of priests and weeping family around the dying person, the gift of prayer to carry the soul heavenward, an elaborate funeral with burial in the sacred cathedral grounds, a strict period of mourning observed by friends and family.

  In the desert, among the nomads, the dead were placed in shallow, generally unmarked graves scattered along the roads the nomads wandered. Only the resting places of a particularly heroic batir or a Sheykh were commemorated by covering the grave with small stones. These became almost like shrines; each passing tribe paid tribute by adding a stone to the grave.

  And that was all. Death in the desert was the same as life in the desert—stark, frightening, and comfortless. Mathew had made his decision. He had chosen to live. Why? Out of cowardice, he presumed. But deep down, he knew that wasn’t the reason.

  It was Khardan.

  Khardan had seen that he was dying inside. Mathew recalled the Calif ‘s words, spoken during that wild, sublime, terrifying moment of rescue. Come alive, damn you! Come back to life! Khardan’s arms had carried him from the grasp of his captors. Khardan’s hand had stayed the hand of his would-be executioner. Khardan’s will had drawn him into making the choice. Mathew did not love Khardan, as Zohra had suggested. The young man’s heart had been torn open, the wound was fresh, raw and bleeding. Until it healed, he could not feel strongly about anything or anyone.

  “But because of Khardan, I am alive,” Mathew said to himself in the darkness of his tent. “I do not know yet what that means. I do not know but that death would have been preferable. All I know is that Khardan gave me my life, and in return, I pledge this life of mine—poor and unworthy as it may be—to him.”

  Chapter 15

  Once again an uneasy alliance was created between the tribes of the Tel. The Sheykhs and the Calif called a meeting of the aksakal, the tribal elders, of both Hrana and Akar and presented to them the proposal to raid Kich. A torch tossed on an oil-soaked tent would have caused no greater conflagration.

  No one trusted anyone. No one could agree on anything, from the merits of the plan itself to the division of spoils that had yet to be taken. No one could make a decision. One side or another stormed out in a rage. Everyone constantly changed views. First the Akar were for it and the Hrana opposed. Then the Hrana came out for it and the Akar decided it was nonsense. The Sheykhs changed their minds according to who presented the best argument at the particular moment, and like a horse that has eaten moonweed, everyone galloped around in a circle and got nowhere very fast.

  Life in the camps around the Tel continued much the same. The Rose of the Prophet did not die, but it didn’t bloom either. Not that anyone, thought about it now or paid much attention to it anymore, their minds being preoccupied with the rumors of war against someone—Zeid, the Amir, each other—that flew around the camp like vultures.

  In the realm of the immortals, Sond spent much of his time moping about his lamp in a fit of gloom. Usti, terrified to leave the charcoal brazier lest Zohra catch a glimpse of him, remained hidden from view and lost considerable weight. Pukah made his daily trip south, watching Zeid’s numbers increase daily and trying desperately to think of a way to extricate himself from this mess.

  In the mortal realm, Meryem watched and waited for a chance to work her charms on Khardan, and Zohra taught Mathew to ride a horse.

  At last Zohra had discovered a companion to share her lonely rides. Mathew had not been in camp two days before she made him come with her. Zohra’s reasons for this were not entirely selfish; she was truly concerned about the state of the young man’s health.

  The fact that she should care about him astonished her. At first it displeased her as well. It was a sign of weakness. She had meant merely to use the young man to inflict further wounds on Khardan. Then she admitted that it was pleasing, for a change, to have someone to talk to, someone interesting and different, someone to whom—at the same time—she could still feel herself the superior. It was, she thought, very much like having a second wife in the harem. And of course, there was always the possibility he was telling her the truth about at least some of his skills in magic. She might actually learn from him.

  What Zohra did not admit to herself was that she saw in Mathew someone as lonely as she was. This and their shared, secret admiration for Khardan formed a bond between them that neither was to know—for a time—existed.

  Watching Mathew closely, Zohra became increasingly concerned for his health. The frail body and too-sensitive mind would not last long in this world. Riding would provide exercise, it was a useful skill to acquire, and it would keep the young wizard from his unfortunate tendency to brood too much on things that could not be changed and should—according to those of the desert—therefore be accepted.

  Mathew agreed to go riding at first because he was thankful for anything to keep from longing for his home. And he had to admit that it certainly occupied his mind. First he had to overcome his fear of the animal itself—more intelligent than a camel, the horse (so Mathew imagined) took an instan
t dislike to him, gazing at him with a distinctly unfriendly eye. Then he had to concentrate on staying in the saddle. After a few tumbles onto the hard granite, his mind was occupied with something else—pain.

  “This is the end,” he told himself, trudging back into camp, so stiff and sore he could barely walk. “This time I was lucky. Next time I will break my neck.”

  Limping along, he looked up to see Khardan standing before him.

  The Calif had been out hunting; he wore the mask of the haik to protect him from wind and sand. All Mathew could see of his face were the piercing black eyes, and they were grave and solemn.

  Fearful he had done something wrong—he was dressed, after all, in men’s clothing, Zohra having insisted on this—Mathew flushed and began to stammer out an apology.

  “No, no,” Khardan interrupted him. “I am pleased to see that you are learning to ride. It is a man’s skill and one that is blessed by Akhran. Perhaps, someday, I will take you out and teach you what I know. Until then”—his gaze went to Zohra, standing slightly apart, her own face concealed by the mask of the head covering—”you are with a teacher almost as skilled.”

  Pleased at Khardan’s words and the unusual fact that the Calif had actually stopped to speak to him, Mathew saw that Zohra was no less astonished at his unexpected praise and that the ordinarily fierce eyes of the woman were introspective and thoughtful as she returned to her tent.

  To gain Khardan’s respect was a goal worth risking one’s life for, Mathew decided, and he vowed to learn to ride if it killed him—which seemed not unlikely. It also gave him the opportunity to discuss magic with Zohra, something that he feared to do when they were in camp. The young man had discovered that his powers and skills in the art—which, in his country, made him an apprentice—were far greater than anything the women of the desert could ever have dreamed.