Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04

by Chaz Brenchley

  'Julianne's father is here,' Jemel said suddenly, pointedly. 'Where is yours?' His voice carried generations of tradition, of certainty in what was right and proper.

  'He is with Hasan. For all I know he may be arguing still against bringing war to Outremer; if so, he wastes his breath.'

  'He should be here, then. Why is he not here?'

  'I have a knife. He has a throat.'

  And that certainly was right, and wise in both of them. Elisande was as drawn as an overtight cable, and her father could make her snap at any time; at such a time as this, she might truly let fly with a blade where honed words would have contented her before. If not, his presence would still divide this little party into two, his and hers. Marron and Jemel would stand with Elisande, the King's Shadow with Rudel; youth would divorce experience, fire would fight with ice and they would travel more slowly and learn less.

  Let him use his skills elsewhere, then, let him work yet on Hasan, thus far and no further, pursue your wife but not your dreams, learn to live with Outremer... It would do no good, Marron thought, one man's voice couldn't turn a tide; but let him try, at least.

  It seemed that Jemel was thinking the same way, though Jemel would be hoping for what his friends most dreaded, Rudel's failure and Hasan's war. At any rate, he grunted his understanding and turned the conversation abruptly, urgently to a more compelling issue. 'Do you have any food?'

  Elisande flashed him a sympathetic smile, her mood shifting in a moment to match his. She'd been in the land of the djinn, and for longer than Jemel; she knew, none better, how appetite was a stranger there but how it returned full force in this world. Even Marron felt hungry now, at the mere mention.

  'Yes, of course. I'm sorry, I should have thought. There's plenty, Jemel - we've got bread, cold meat, cheese, fruit. Good bread too, not desert bake. Esren fetches it for us, with our fuel and water.'

  'You use a djinni to fetch water?' This time, his tone was sheer incredulity, too startled even to be outraged.

  'We have to; we've no camels, and we can't carry as much as we need.' She was busy as she spoke, passing over a water-skin and crouching above a pack, so that Marron had only her voice and the set of her shoulders to read. He knew her well enough, he thought, that he could do that. What she said made perfect sense, but there was more to it. Esren had let her down, through weakness or malice or for whatever reason; she was seeking anyway she could to use it in humiliation, ageless and potent spirit reduced to a handservant...

  They said little more after that. For a while their mouths were too busy, Jemel's and his own, they couldn't chew nor swallow fast enough to meet the demands of their raging stomachs; Elisande sliced meat and cheese for them, tore bread, found cups for water.

  Then the simple weight of food inside them made them sleepy, just as her own long day, her several weary days and sleep-short nights all too visibly caught up with her. The night was cold, and she offered them her blanket, but they wouldn't take it. Jemel had slept out colder nights than this, he said, and sat out colder still with only rags to huddle in, no robe such as he wore now. Besides, the warmth of the other world was with him still, crept deep into the marrow of his bones. With Marron at his one side and the fireglow at his other, he'd be content as any sheikh within his tent...

  Marron, of course, was never cold at all. He had his own otherworldly warmth that went deeper than his marrow, went to his soul except that what it found there, it could never warm.

  So they arranged themselves, he and Jemel this side of the fire and Elisande that, lying close to the King's Shadow who still hadn't moved and who still, Marron thought, was not asleep. Better that way, perhaps: a man of his age and cunning ought to be wakeful, thinking, conceiving and plotting. Ought not to be chasing hard across an empty desert in pursuit of a long-vanished phantom and a captured girl. Let his mind run free in the hunt, and perhaps his body would fail at last to follow; perhaps he'd be so weary come the morning, they could legitimately turn on him all together, prove he was unnecessary, send him back to Rhabat to rest...

  Come the morning, Marron woke to find that old and exhausted man on his feet and active while their other companions still slept.

  He had been active, rather; fresh young flames were licking at new-laid cakes of camel-dung among the ashes of last nights fire. Now he was standing atop a dune-crest at some little distance, standing like a monolith with its face set towards Outremer, when he should surely have been sitting close and taking in what heat he could to set against the ache in his bones and the morning's early chill.

  Marron peeled himself carefully away from the huddled warmth of JemePs back, with a silent apology for leaving it so exposed. He stood up and walked softly over the sand, feeling how the dawn wind whipped it against his ankles as he climbed the dune. Joining Julianne's father, he saw their two shadows strike a clear path due west, as though they laid a path that men should follow. Greyish dust swirled high on the gusting wind, while tawny sand skittered beneath in the slow, endless progress of the desert. Give it a few thousand years more, Marron thought, and Hasan won't need his army no need of all that fighting and dying that Jemel's so hungry for. The Sands will swallow Outremer, and none but the Sharai will have the heart or the wisdom to live there then ...

  He watched the shadows' long run in the low light, and might almost have been talking to one of them, certainly didn't turn his head to face the man beside him as he said, 'Shadow? Tell me about the King.'

  'My name is Coren.'

  'I know, but—'

  'But you have trouble calling men by their given names, when they carry tides. Respect is no bad sign in a young man; none the less, Marron, call me Coren if you can turn your tongue around the word. You are at least as important as any of us, and I would prefer it so. Jemel will follow your lead; Elisande is there already'

  'Elisande gives no respect to anyone. Not even to the djinni...'

  'That is not entirely true, though she'd like to know you think it. Come, this is not so much to ask, where there are so few of us caught in such a turmoil.'

  'Well, I will try. Must I call the King also by his name, to make you answer my question?'

  That barb drew a quiet chuckle in response. 'No, I'll not ask that much of you. I don't ask it of myself, though I used to once. Long ago, when we were two adventurers together. I used to call him Marc, and quarrel with him for the sheer love of losing in a fight. These days, not — though one would, still lose. Assuredly, one would lose.'

  'Tell me about him.'

  'What would you have me say?'

  'Is he a man?'

  'Oh, yes.' The question didn't draw a laugh, though, as it surely must have done if it were as stupid as it sounded. 'Trust me in this, Marron, he is most certainly a man. I've seen him bleed; I've made him bleed, more than once. I've seen him eat and sleep, defecate and fornicate, which are the four prime motivations of mankind. If that's been worrying you, rest easy. He may be King of Outremer, with all that that implies, but he's human yet.'

  'I don't understand, then. All the stories I've heard, from you and others - how can he do what you say he does, if he's just a man like any other?'

  'I didn't say that. He was never very much like other men. He's ten years older than I, so I never really knew him as a boy; even as a youth, though, he had talents that singled him out. His father was a powerful man, but he was the youngest son of five, so had no hope of inheriting land or title. He spent his early manhood in a monastery, but was, ah, persuaded out of it; then he discovered an interest in travel and soldiery, making war against pirates and bandit lords. He took me with him, me and others; we hung at his tail like daglocks from a sheep, we little boys, we worshipped him. But so did older men, all those who followed him.

  'When the cry went up for an army to reclaim the Sanctuary Land for the God, he was the obvious man to lead it. He was created Due de Charelles for that purpose, because the lords and churchmen who declared themselves for the venture would yield to no lesse
r rank. It's a courtesy tide, Charelles is a lump of rock in the ocean which offers no better harvest than gull-droppings, but a duke is a duke regardless.

  'So he went to war again, this time with thousands in his train, but I was closest. It was a hard journey, and a harder fight: many battles, many deaths, a great deal of evil on both sides. But he held the army together, lords and church, until we had won Outremer. The Ekhed had governed the land for centuries but they couldn't stand against us, they retreated to their kingdom in the south; the Sharai fought us tribe by tribe, and tribe by tribe we drove them back into the desert.

  'Then there would have been trouble, as all those ambitious men fell to quarrelling over the spoils; but my lord and friend summoned the Conclave. He called the nobles and prelates into one building, the Dir'al Shahan that had been the greatest temple in Ascariel; he made them leave their weapons in the porch, he locked the doors with his own hands and pocketed the key, and he made his own divisions of the land. He told them who would govern where, he showed them on maps, he drew the boundaries himself. In the course of one day he created the five states that you know and gave them to the most powerful of the lords. To the Church he gave nothing. He knew what trouble that would bring, and so he allowed the Ransomers their castles, and he made his own son Duke of Ascariel; that boy was always the Church's man, more than his father's.

  'Himself he declared King of Outremer and demanded oaths of allegiance and fealty from all, would let no one leave till they had sworn. Then he sent them out, and locked the doors again behind them. All that year, while the Kingdom settled into its new name, he was seen seldom outside the Dir'al Shahan; since then, never. For forty years he has ruled from isolation. I am his Shadow, I speak for him, but even I see him rarely and only when he summons me. I used to be his friend, but now? I am not sure.'

  How does he eat and dress, Marron wanted to ask, who serves him? The question seemed trivial, though, against the sense of loss he heard in the others voice; so he asked another, an easier question instead. 'You have named him a man, a warrior and a diplomat; how was he made a magician, then, where does he take his power from?'

  'That I do not know. I've never had the temerity to ask,' and neither should you, if I do not. 'He has great power, but the source of it is as secret as his life. He summons me, or more commonly he sends me; I do as I am bid, no more than that.'

  'And if he summon you today, this morning, now? Would you go, would you abandon your daughter to serve your King?' It was a question that turned and turned in Marron's mind, duty against love. He had answered it himself, he thought, both one way and the other; both had felt wrong, treacherous, bringing a deformity to the world. Both had broken what should have been most strong, had spilled what was most precious.

  'Marron, when he summons me, he doesn't offer choices. I have abandoned my daughter before, remember? On the road to the Roq, and at other times too often to count. Not to such peril, I confess — but yes, I would go. I would have to.'

  All the more reason to find Julianne quickly, then, and rescue her if they could. Marron had another thought, though, another question. He didn't believe that the King's Shadow had not had the same thought himself, but still he had to ask. 'Can you speak to him? From here, I mean, right now?'

  'Not outside the Kingdom, no. He speaks to me, where and when he chooses. He has sent me from Marasson to Rhabat and further; I am only his Shadow, with a shadows strength.'

  'Well, if he speaks to you before we have her safe, could you not ask him to summon Julianne, the way he summons you?'

  Coren smiled faintly. 'Oh, I could ask. I will ask, if the occasion arises. But will he answer me? I do not know. Years ago, yes - he would have risked his own life, perhaps his whole army for a child in danger. He has changed, though, since he came into his new title. Great strength and great responsibility will change any man; you know that, Marron, you have been changed yourself. Believe me, when I say that his alteration outweighs yours by all the distance of age and authority that lies between you.'

  Forty years, and a Kingdom: Marron could believe that, without difficulty. He thought it ought to change a man beyond recognition; he thought that perhaps it had, by the touch of regret in Coren's voice. A friend lost, and perhaps a daughter too - they ought to command more than a touch, but the King's Shadow kept his humanity as hidden as his master, or tried to.

  He was speaking again now, as his eyes remained fixed on the far horizon. 'It occurs to me, Marron, that I may perhaps be able to guess where Julianne has been taken. If they are wise, they will not cross the border; I do not know how the King would react to that, so certainly neither does Morakh, nor any 'ifrit. There is a place, though, that lies on this line, and a little outside the Kingdom. I don't understand why they would head there, but every bare sign we find suggests

  it. There is nowhere else, at least, and I don't believe that they are running aimlessly, although I cannot see their purpose. Wake Elisande; this day may bring us answers, of a sort.'

  4

  Spirit Snares

  Julianne knew where she was, now, at last; she knew what she had to fear.

  She'd been frightened before - or had she? — when her body had not been her own, neither her thoughts: when she had felt her bones and muscles pull and shift all out of her control while her mind kept barely a thread's connection to what was real in the world, while it swam and sank in sickening oils, a haze of colours and shapes that meant nothing and touched her nowhere and yet were sickening regardless. She'd had no use of eyes or feet or fingers, her own skin had been alien to her and there was nothing in her head that she could claim. She had known somehow that she was moving; had she known also that she was afraid?

  She couldn't say. What had come later - after she had been allowed her body again, after she had been let slip back inside her skin, when she had fallen back on rough rock and shivered frantically for more than the cold bite of the night and sobbed at the taste of harsh dusty air against her tongue and throat — what came then had been terrifying too, or so she thought now, looking back. There had been a creature, hard to see it clearly because of the way its black body sheened in the starglow but certainly it had been an 'ifrit, an 'ifrit with wings, longer and broader she thought than those that had attacked at Rhabat. Morakh had spoken to it, though she hadn't heard it speak nor ever heard that such spirits could; and then it had spread those wings and leaped from the clifftop - which was when she'd realised that there was a clifftop, and they were too close to the edge of it. Staring around in starlight she recognised the place, high above Rhabat and the Dead Waters, close to the temple and the tunnel's mouth. Marron had mentioned an 'ifrit, she thought, and a dead imam — but that was days before, and the 'ifrit had been defeated. Hadn't they ... ?

  This one not, as it seemed. It had soared high, and swooped low; Morakh had hauled her to her feet, and she'd felt long claws bind themselves about her like a whip's coils as her body jerked like a whipped girl's, her neck snapped back, she was snatched abruptly into the air.

  No comfort that Morakh was beside her, that they had this terror to share. She had dangled helplessly, eyes tighdy shut, an unknown distance above a ground she could not bear to look upon; she had filled her mind with a constant repetition, a desperate litany, ‘ have climbed a mountain. Besides, they want me living or the 'ifrit would not have made one cause with the Dancer Morakh nor he with it, therefore it will not let me fall Besides, it is dark down there and I could see nothing even if my eyes were open which they are not, therefore there is nothing to fear. My father taught me not to be afraid of the unknown, neither of anything I cannot change. Why fear a fall, where there is nothing I can do to prevent it? Besides — as my eyes are shut and the land is dark below — perhaps it is not so far below, perhaps this creature skims the dunes as a sea-bird skims the waves, and if I fall it'll be no further and no worse than falling from Merissa. I miss Merissa. She gave me a smoother ride than this, and faster too; I was never scared to fall from her.
Besides, I climbed a mountain...

  But had she been truly afraid or simply falling back into old habits, hiding from what was new, being scared of heights because that was so much easier than being scared of an 'ifrits claws around her belly, a dark and uncertain future? She couldn't say. All she knew was that the steady chant of her own voice inside her skull had lasted her from those first moments of flying until she was dropped on the sand, had kept her silent, had possibly kept her sane. If anything in this madness could have driven her mad, it was that first flight, and she'd survived it. Therefore - perhaps - she could survive whatever else might come, until her friends or her father or either of her husbands came to save her, as they must; for the only real certainty was that she couldn't save herself.

  She had been dropped onto sand, and had opened her eyes at the shock of it to see the sun just rising over a rolling sea of dun and dusty dunes. Morakh was getting to his feet beside her; the 'ifrit was crouching a little distance off, fierce red eyes glowing in a body from a child's nightmare, glistening black and shaped for evil, too many legs and wings that wouldn't fold as they ought to in any creature of nature.

  Morakh had slipped straps from his shoulders, dropping a faggot of fuel, a waterskin, a bag of flour. He'd lit a small fire and baked desert bread on a stone; he'd tossed a portion to her and she'd choked it down like an obedient prisoner, despite its rank taste and her utter lack of appetite. Food was important, strength mattered. Might matter, at least, if ever she had the chance to call upon it. Water too, and so she'd swallowed grimly from the skin when he passed it to her, although the skin had smelled rotten and the water's sliminess had almost closed her throat against it.

  He'd lain down to sleep, and so had she. No question of his binding her arms or legs to keep her there, no need for it; the 'ifrit had been watching, and spirit never slept.