Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04

by Chaz Brenchley

  She had eaten, she had drunk; she'd tried to sleep as well, but her body wouldn't be forced despite its aching weariness, nor would her mind be still. She had seen small creatures frozen in terror before a stalking cat; she had heard of captives so numbed with shock that they slept and slept and could hardly be roused, and seemed to sleepwalk when they were. She had envied them, yearned to imitate, but could not; might as well have been 'ifrit herself for all the rest she had.

  Not that she would have been let sleep very long, not long enough. Morakh had allowed himself only two or three hours before he stirred, grunted, rose. Julianne had kept her head down, watching in disbelief as he'd assembled his baggage and slung the straps about him, not moving herself, not rearing up in protest until he'd kicked her to it.

  'You can't mean to move now. Under that,' with a sweeping gesture to where the sun had been climbing towards its highest and its hottest. Already the horizon had been blurring till she could barely see where sand faded into sky; already the air was drying and burning her throat as the light dried and burned her eyes. No one moved on the desert, while their shadows were this short.

  'We will be followed,' Morakh had said abruptly, the first words he'd spoken to her since he took her from Hasan’s chamber so long ago, last night. 'While they rest, we move. This will weary them.'

  'Weary them, perhaps; it will kill us. Me, at least. Perhaps you can live on a mouthful of water in a killing heat, but I cannot.'

  'It is cooler, in the air. We will fly high.'

  Had that been meant to reassure her? Probably not. To discomfort her, perhaps; he might have noticed how shy she was of heights. But if he cared little for her reassurance, he likely cared no more for her discomfort. She was a duty to him - as she had been to Blaise on the road to Rhabat, and that really was a long time ago, half a lifetime it felt, two marriages — and he would shoulder her until she could be relinquished. Information only, she'd thought his conversation was, no hidden meanings either way.

  She'd still had a bangle on her wrist, part of the bridal treasure that she'd been playing with when Morakh had seized her; she let that slip to the sand as a sign to whoever came in pursuit, and otherwise stood quiescent beside her captor and simply waited as he did for the 'ifrit's claws to snatch them again into the air.

  And so it had gone, on and on: flights in sunlight and in the dark, with her body dangling and her eyes tight shut, her mind focused on simple breathing, on staying alive. They'd come to ground more often than she'd expected, though it could never be often enough for her. At every halt she had been given water; at sunset and sunrise the Dancer had made a fire, and baked bread. Her stomach had revolted, her throat had clamped, but she could be strong in this at least, she could force the vile stuff down. She'd tried to leave some token each time, though she had no more jewellery and the simple robe she wore had offered nothing that was clearly hers. A few threads picked from its hem and twisted together with hairs plucked from her scalp, the resultant string knotted into a crude double loop, the sign of the God in whom she had no faith at all: that had been the best that she could manage. Any woman of the tribes who travelled in the Sands would wear such a robe, of that deepest blue that filled the spaces between the stars; her people—Julianne's people now that she was married, married again, so newly married and how careless her husband was of her, to lose her so very quickly — the Sharai claimed it for their own colour, a gift from their own God. Any woman of the Sharai might have hair of such a length, and only a few shades darker than Julianne's; not for the first time in her life she could have wished to be a golden blonde, to leave a clearer message. But surely no woman else would leave the God's sign in this land, for any friendly eye that could find and read it...

  So she had done what little she could and suffered all else that had come to her, bad food and bad water and the constant, dreadful stare of the 'ifrit, which had seemed to see no more of her leavings than Morakh did, though she'd held her breath in terror every time she dropped another tiny tangle of thread and hair. Every time its claws closed about her she had held her breath again, not to scream aloud as she was wrenched from the grip of solid ground. The effort of forcing air into her constricted lungs had been a blessing, almost, like the effort of keeping her eyes closed against any sight of the long long fall below.

  By the time Morakh had used the last of his fuel, there had been scant water left in his skin and less she thought in hers; she'd felt parched and withered, wrinkled like a raisin. Either they must seek a well and a source of firewood, or else they were close to journey's end.

  The weight of what was to come had hung over her; she'd felt almost as numb and quiescent as she pretended. She'd known that their direction was westward, ever westward, but not what that might mean. She'd had no vision of the land they travelled over, nor of what might lie ahead. Her inner sight had been as blinded as her eyes, and almost as deliberately.

  It had been late and getting later in the day when she realised that they'd finally arrived. She'd learned by then to tell when they were climbing, when flying level and when falling - no, not falling, coming down to land. It hadn't all been chaos and terror in the air; now it could be terror understood, precisely calibrated.

  So she'd known that the 'ifrit was descending, but what of that? It had done the same a dozen times already. She'd waited for the impact of crusted sand beneath her bare feet, the jolt that would knock her to her knees or send her sprawling. This time, though, they had plunged into a sudden, utterly unexpected shadow a moment or two before they hit; and what they hit had not been sand. Sandy, to be sure, but there had been level stone beneath the grit. The shock of it had made her yelp aloud; it had also jerked her eyes open against her will, as she'd fallen and rolled. She'd glimpsed walls, sky, more walls before she came to rest on her belly, aching and shaking all over.

  Some kind of courtyard, long disused: they were stone flags that she had landed on, but they were cracked and broken under their coat of sand. Desert cold had been at them, since they were laid. Sitting up slowly, Julianne had seen rough-worked stones strewn around, where they had fallen from the height of the walls. Likely an earthquake had done that damage: it would take generations of frosts to do so much, cracking the mortar and shifting the stones fraction by fraction with every year that passed. She didn't think these walls had stood long enough. Even in the deep shadows of the courtyard there were tool-marks to be seen, the scars of axe and chisel surviving on the stones; they looked quite fresh, cruder work than the Ransomers had made of the Roq but surely no older ...

  Then she'd felt Morakh's deformed hand grip the back of her neck. She had shuddered, once for the simple chill of his touch and again for what must follow, what she had experienced once already, when once had proved too much for any girl to bear.

  His four fingers had seemed to sink through her skin and flesh, altogether into the bone of her; she'd thought she could feel his mind whisper against the beat of her blood, an alien rhythm that overrode her own. She'd felt uprooted, disinherited, soul thrust from its native throne; she'd lost all possession of her body, as she had in the water-channels and on the cliffs of Rhabat.

  The sickness had closed in on her in swirling pools of colour, colours that ought not to exist, that she could not have given a name to if she tried. Perhaps she ought to try, perhaps she should list all the colours that she knew, give a focus to her thoughts: no, that is not violet, nor umber. She couldn't do it, though, could only slip and fall through oily nothingness, fall endlessly where there was nothing solid to be clung to ...

  It had been a long time, the longest time imaginable before she realised that she had ceased to fall. The stillness that engulfed her after was so absolute and so welcome, it took her a while longer to understand it. Only a sudden, desperate need dragged her mind back from its drifting; she felt herself shaking, gasping, rearing up against a terrible weight, and only as she dropped back, only the lancing pain as her head cracked against stone told her that her body w
as her own again. That was the heaviness she felt, the weight of bone and muscle. She'd forgotten almost how to breathe; that had been the need that had seized her.

  She lay quite still again, but consciously so now, deliberately taking all the time necessary to fit body and mind together, to make them one again, her own, herself. For a while she did nothing but breathe, forcing herself not to pant for it: to take in air and expel it slowly, steadily, to enjoy it as she never had before. It tasted dull, dusty, stale, but no matter. She could enjoy that too.

  Then she reached out into the extremities of her skin, fingers and toes, stirring them lightly, checking that each twitched and danced to her own command and no ones else.

  Satisfied, she opened her eyes at last; and thought herself blind, perhaps, thought Morakh had stolen her sight from her and kept it for himself. She needed yet more time to understand that it was dark in here, wherever here was; and that she was lying on her side and facing what might be a wall or a corner. She couldn't see it, but she reached out a cautious hand to check and was thrilled beyond measure when her fingers' tips touched stone just a hand's span from her face.

  It took an effort, a tremendous effort to move more than that. She was scared of shaking herself loose from her body again, she felt so ill-attached. But she edged over onto her back and stared upward, and saw light.

  Only a little light, a high horizontal bar of blurry grey, that was enough for now, that was dazzling glory. She thought that any more would have burned her.

  She turned her head the other way and saw two glowing red coals looming high above her, set in uttermost black; and that was the opposite of glory, that was despair, to recognise that she shared her cell with the 'ifrit.

  It didn't move, and neither did she. It didn't blink, although she had to; trying to outstare a monster was no game for a grown woman, but she played it regardless, if only to prove to herself that she wasn't scared. She'd never been alone with the creature before, but her sudden shortness of breath was just a brief slip of control, no more than that. She'd tried too much, too soon; she was still uncertain in her body, forgetful of what used to happen naturally. She could breathe like a normal girl, if she concentrated: in and out, in and out, there, like that. She wasn't afraid of the thing, why should she be? If it hadn't killed her in the days they'd spent en route, it wouldn't do so now. They were alone together, but nothing else had changed ...

  Were they alone? She wondered, briefly. There was no sign or sound of Morakh in the dim light and the dead air of this chamber, but he could be still when he chose, he could be sitting directly behind her ...

  She was proud of herself for not jerking round to see, for sitting up slowly and turning her head as though there were no hurry in the world. There was certainly no Morakh. Now that her eyes were adjusting, she could make out the low shape of a door in the wall at her back, but nothing else. She had been right, then, this was a cell and she was a prisoner; and her guard shared the cell with her, its glossy, ill-formed body cramped and awkward in this enclosed space. It had crouched as best it could into a corner but still took up half the floor, more. It made no sound, no creak of shifting chitin, no scrape of claw on stone, no stir of breath; its hot gaze never moved from Julianne.

  She wasn't afraid of it, no. She was just slow, that was all, still disorientated, uncertain of her strength and its uses; no other reason why it seemed so hard to move herself, to stand and walk those few short paces to the door. Of course she didn't think the 'ifrit would pounce as soon as she twitched a muscle, of course she knew it wasn't going to eat her...

  She'd seen a man, a known thief downed by a trained hound once in Marasson. She'd seen, felt, smelled his terror at the steady rumble of its growling, the bared fangs an inch from his throat and held back only by its obedience. Many times she'd seen the palace cats and the mice they played with, how often there'd been no pleasure in the game because the little things wouldn't scamper but only stood immobile, fixed with fear. But she was not a mouse, far from it; and this spirit-creature might desire her death — if spirit could know desire - but it would not kill her now. Orders or instinct or plotting restrained it. She was captive, bait perhaps, a ransom-prize but no worse than that. Not a victim, not a corpse.

  Not yet a corpse, and moving would not make her so. And so at last she stood, deliberately with her back to the 'ifrit to show how very much she scorned it, how little she was afraid. Those messages might be too subtle for the thing to read, but not for her; right now she mattered more.

  She stood - a little dizzy, a little off-balance, her body still seeming not to fit too well - and shuffled her way to the door. It was locked or barred, of course, she was a prisoner. The 'ifrit too, then: but the 'ifrit apparently had no reason to leave, so long as she was there.

  Questing fingers and eyes that squinted in the gloom could find no handle and no hinge, only the heavy wooden planking and the iron studs that held it all together. Patiently she picked at each with her nails, hoping to find one loose enough to draw out, a spike to make a weapon that might dim those fierce eyes that watched her as she picked. They were an 'ifrit's only weakness unless you had a blade blessed by a priest, which she did not. Or unless you were a djinni with a sea at your command, which she was not. She wasn't sure that a door-nail would be enough to kill the creature, and was fairly sure that it would kill her first in any case; still, she thought she might like the chance to try. If things turned out that way, if there came no sign of friends, husbands, rescue...

  No surprise, though, that none of the nails would come to the picking of her own. It was a well-made door: solid timber neither green nor ancient, no hint of worm or rot that her fingers could discover and no sign of any give when she leaned all her weight against it.

  She didn't pound her fists or kick it, nothing so petulant; she'd found what she expected and felt almost satisfied by that, almost pleased that her enemies hadn't let her down. She liked a puzzle, a challenge, something worthy of her father’s daughter. Which was why she wouldn't simply sit and wait for rescue after all; Elisande would not, and she couldn't bear to be thought more feeble than her friend. Besides, what better way to prove that she was not scared of the 'ifrit, than to kill it or evade its guard?

  With the door so solidly closed against her and the light so high out of reach — and barred too, she saw, staring upward: it was a window the length of a man's arm, perhaps, and half that height, and barred with iron to prevent her leaving even if she stood on the 'ifrit's back to get there - she wondered why she was being quite so closely watched. No surprise that the 'ifrit were single-minded, she'd never thought of them as subtle creatures; but she could see no way out of here, so why did it waste its time? It might have all of time to play with, but even so ...

  She sat against the wall, as far as she could come from those eyes, and closed her own to shut them out, and thought about it. Not long, no need to strain, she hadn't turned stupid yet. Among her rescuers — if she waited for them, if they came — she could count three at least who could walk into a locked cell to claim her and then lead her out without chipping wood or stone or iron, without leaving a mark to show that they'd been. Her own father might step out of a golden nimbus at any moment, and she was a little surprised that he hadn't yet, she'd not thought him so slow.

  Marron could cross back and forth between one world and another; she'd like to visit the land of the djinn, she thought, even with that boy for company. And then there was Elisande, whose temper might not break down doors of its own accord, but certainly could when it was allied to her djinni's. They could come like Marron from that other world, and spirit her away there; she thought it more likely that they would come through the wall, and leave more than a mark behind.

  Except, of course, that the 'ifrit was here, and the djinni at least should know that if the others didn't. Elisande's Djinni Tachur liked to present itself as a poor stunted creature, cut off from the intangible current of spirit knowledge; Julianne wasn't at all convinced.
She thought if that were true, then the djinni would have appeared long ago, riding the storm of her friend's fury to snatch her back to safety. That it hadn't come must surely mean that it knew an 'ifrit was keeping her company. A djinni and an 'ifrit couldn't meet in anger, without both being destroyed.

  So no, as long as the 'ifrit was guarding her, she thought that the djinni would not come. Nor her father, nor Marron: the 'ifrit would be ready for either. It had changed its shape, she saw, as her eyes opened of their own accord to assess it better, to understand its threat. The cumbersome wings had gone, been resorbed into the body of the beast; it was armed now with giant claws like a lobster's, poised to grip and crush any man that ventured here in the moment of his appearance. She hoped that she was right about the djinni, that it would know and warn her friends; she'd rather be abandoned to her fate than see them come and try to save her, try and die ...

  She wouldn't abandon herself, though. If she couldn't be rescued, she'd simply have to escape. Despite the 'ifrit, despite Morakh's lurking presence somewhere beyond the door, despite whatever else might come.

  The 'ifrit were said to share the djinns foreknowledge; perhaps it knew in advance what she might try, and would forestall her. Perhaps it knew that its simple watchful presence would be enough. A never-sleeping monster should be adequate to guard an unarmed girl.

  But no prescience was absolute, even the djinn could be mistaken or misunderstand. She would think and watch and plan, however fancifully. The 'ifrit might leave her alone eventually, Morakh might leave the door unlocked and unguarded, she might find a hidden tunnel beneath the flags she sat on where a slender girl could wriggle out and her dreadful guardian not. There might be another earthquake, to bring the walls down and crush her captors and let her walk away ...

  Or not; but anything might happen, and she swore to be ready if it did. In the meantime she rested, she closed her eyes once more against the glare of the 'ifrit, she forced her mind to think.