Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04

by Chaz Brenchley

  Which made it all the more urgent to forestall him, to snatch the bait but not to spring the trap; which was why she walked the streets of Selussin this morning, before the sun could rise so high that it would burn down even into the narrow, shadowed alleys of the township and drive all the inhabitants withindoors.

  There was little enough traffic even at this time of day, and less chance of her finding any satisfaction from what few people were abroad. Once this place must have been open and outward-looking, welcoming to strangers, an oasis of the mind as much as of the body, a caravanserai to the world; now that it was isolated, cut off from the steady run of commerce and conversation, it had closed in on itself like a desert flower against the heat, preserving what it held. The houses and the people both were secretive, withdrawn: high walls and locked gates, shrouded faces.

  By an hour after dawn, Elisande knew, all the boys of Selussin would have been already in their schools, chanting together as they memorised their holy books under a teachers stinging rod. The women and the girls would have been out in the fields, tending crops and harvesting the wiry grey-green reeds that flourished in what was marshland in the spring, when the rains ran down from the hills. Like everyone here, Elisande had slept beneath the shelter of a reed-thatch roof last night, on a mat of woven reeds. The tough fibres of those same reeds could be beaten and twisted into cords and rope, plaited to make belts and sandals, knotted into nets or mixed with mud to give strength to bricks. They pervaded this dreary life more thoroughly even than the teachings of religion; the only surprise was that the Selussids didn't eat them too. Or perhaps - remembering the tasteless stringiness of last night's vegetable stew, the effort it demanded to chew and swallow - perhaps they did that too, and simply didn't say so.

  The women and children were accounted for, then, in schools and fields till noon; that left only the men. It was a man that Elisande was in search of: a priest, rather, an imam. But every man here was an imam, or seemed so: dressed in heavy formality with swinging chains and amulets above dark and decorated robes, bearded and remote, scowling normally, hurrying between school and temple, between lessons and prayer. There must be others, she supposed, old men and idle men, butchers and herdsmen, dealers in reeds. None that she could see, though, none that found any business outside his house at this time of a morning; nor that she had seen since they came here. The man they'd rented their house from was a teacher and a priest, but he wouldn't speak to Elisande.

  Neither, apparently, would any of his brethren under God. She'd had small hope of that, indeed, but still she had to try. And had to fail, and so to try again ...

  'Excuse me, sir—'

  A glare, from beneath eyebrows like bushy crags; a quickened scurry of reed-soled feet in the dust. 'Pardon me, holy father—'

  A hiss of indrawn breath, a tightening of the hood that hid the beard, a back as swiftly turned to the importunate indecency of girl, even girl as politely veiled and swathed as she was. It was girlness, femininity that offended, clearly, not a specificity of girl: not her in herself but in her body. Perhaps she should throw off the woman's dress and ape a boy again. Except that then no doubt she would be beaten for truancy, and dragged by the ear to her lessons ...

  Still, she would and did try again and yet again, she had to: waylaying every man that passed, chasing after every dim-glimpsed distant shadow that moved, being rebuffed and spat upon and never winning a coherent word but yet not giving up, haunted by the image of her friend so close in the castle above, so unattainable by magic means that her own strength was all she had to fall back on, her strength of will and body that lacked only the one thing that these men could give her, except that not one of them would.

  Her hopeless pursuit led her from the tight twist of alleys to the wide and empty marketplace where there hardly seemed to be a market any more, and on into the shadow of the greatest temple of Selussin, a three-sided tower — of course, three-sided - built of mud reinforced by a framework of wooden beams, whose ends jutted irregularly from the heat-baked, crumbling walls. In this high hot season, every day left its debris; every winter, or so she'd heard, the people would slather fresh mud between the beams to repair the ravages of another summer's sun.

  There were more men here, coming and going through the low dark doorway, but still they dodged her or ignored her, importunate as she was.

  At last, falling back yet again from the stiff outrage of a male back and trembling on the edge of acceptance, of defeat, she heard a soft chuckle from behind her.

  And wheeled around in a fury - did they laugh at her, these silent men? they'd be sorry if they did - and found herself face to face with Jemel.

  'Have you been following me?'

  His hands waved in a calming gesture that could not gentle her, not while he was grinning so broadly.

  'Only for a little, Lisan. I came to find what you were at.'

  'Well, you have seen.' And had found it funny, seen a joke in her desperation which amused her not in the least.

  'Seen, but not understood. I cannot see your thoughts, that drive you to such an effort.'

  She took a slow breath against her rage, decided that he could perhaps be forgiven, if not quite yet — and made a point of looking past him, for one that she knew already was not there.

  'Where's Marron, what have you done with him?' Why aren't you sitting at his feet as usual, or shadowing his steps if he's about?

  'I left him sleeping.'

  There were two questions she might have asked to that, why did you leave him? and why is he sleeping now, at this hour of the day, when he's had all nightfor that and besides I thought he never slept? One answer she could guess at, though, and didn't want to; the other she could perhaps discover without asking. Days of dealing with Esren had taught her to be wary of too many questions.

  So she said nothing, only waited until he put a question on his own account.

  'What is it you seek, from these men who will not speak to you? You know they will not speak.'

  'Yes, I know. But it's such a small thing to them, so important to me, and they make me so angry...' She hesitated a moment longer, then confessed. 'I want one of them to bless my knives for me, that's all.'

  'To bless your knives?'

  'To make them effective, against 'ifrit.'

  What else? She didn't need to say it. He knew she wasn't a believer, in his God or any other.

  She said it none the less, though, for his fee, payment in kind and in advance; so that he could say, 'Are you expecting to meet 'ifrit, Elisande?' and she could say, 'Were you expecting to meet 'ifrit at Rhabat, Jemel?' and he could smile and say, 'Give me your blades, then, and I will ask. And lay my scimitar beside them, in case I too should unfortunately meet 'ifrit all unexpected. I wish you had told me your thought before you came out,' he added, frowning.

  'Why, so that you could have saved me this humiliation, begging in the street to no avail? So do I, then.' Perhaps. Though she'd have come out anyway, she thought, dogging his heels in another humiliation, sooner than stay and do nothing at the house where Marron slept and Coren thought his private thoughts about his daughter and would not share them with her.

  'No, I enjoyed that,' with the flashing grin again, that came and went in moments. 'But I could have brought Dard also, for the blessing.'

  'Marron doesn't need an enchantment on his sword, to slay an 'ifrit.' He was skilled enough - she thought, she hoped - to do it with a bare blade unblessed, a straight thrust to the hot red eye; or else he had the Daughter, he always had the Daughter. 'Besides, he doesn't like to kill.'

  'I know,' Jemel said, his eyes briefly shadowed. 'Not even 'ifrit. He may have to, though, before all this is over. He might try not to kill, but if he did not know his blade was blessed, it might save him anyway'

  She could see what he imagined, Marrons deliberately not thrusting at an eye, expecting his sword to skitter off invulnerable chitin. But, 'He's stupid, Jemel,' - of course he's stupid he's a boy— 'but not that stupi
d.' Not that cruel - she thought, she hoped again - to leave them both bereft. 'And the Daughter wouldn't let it happen anyway. The Ghost Walker is very hard to kill, remember? Trust its good sense, if you can't trust his. Anyway, he'd know, I think, if you had Dard blessed behind his back. He knows more than he ought to, more than he thinks he knows.' And more, far more than was good for him.

  'Well. Give me your knives.'

  It was the only choice she had, but still she hesitated. 'They're my blades. I want to see ...'

  He nodded. There was a bond between a weapon and its owner, of course there was, how not? Why else would so many give a name to steel? 'It will be done in the temple here, if I can find a man to do it. Unbelievers are forbidden to enter, but women are not, and the veil hides your race. Follow us inside. With luck, the imam will not know you.' The imam, she thought, would likely not even notice her. 'There will be a screen in the eastern quarter; watch through the lattice. You'll see as much as I do. It will be brief, in any case. These are busy men, these imams.'

  There was a cynical note to his voice; she gazed at him curiously, remembering how many mornings she'd seen him leave even Marron and go off alone to say his prayers in the Sands. Mornings and evenings both, but it was the mornings she remembered: the pale light, the cool breeze and himself a silhouette against the new-made sun, all pride and purpose ...

  'Don't you mind?' she asked. 'That I'm there, I mean, if it's forbidden to me?'

  'It is for God to mind, not me,' he said, oddly quiet. 'It may be that He will mind both of us, you and me. If so, no doubt He will make His displeasure known. If I can walk safely under His roof, then be assured, so can you.'

  Boys, she thought. They always wanted to take the sins of the world onto their shoulders — and what were Jemel's sins, except perhaps that he had recently missed a prayer or two? His love for Marron was no sin in his own eyes, nor his tribe's, though he was tribeless now. Perhaps she'd ask him sometime; but not now.

  Now she only slipped her knives from her belt and passed them to him, hilt-first. He took them respectfully, as though they had as proud a lineage as Dard that Marron carried; he stowed them in his own belt and stepped away from her, waiting a little distance off to show that they were unconnected, she and he. She tinned her head the other way to emphasise the point, and watched him only through the heavy veil, from the corner of one eye.

  A minute later, along came another of those ubiquitous imams, hustle hustle in his weighty robe. Like bees around a hive she thought they were, in and out of the temple in ones and twos and clusters, each intent on his own private mystery and little concerned with any others.

  Jemel tried to detain this one with a word, and failed as she had every time. Jemel was bolder than she'd dared to be, though, with the immunity of his sex; he gripped the man's arm and pulled him abruptly to a halt.

  The priest was furious, all but muted with rage, spluttering incoherently; Jemel's voice cut easily across the gabble, loud enough for Elisande to hear even from her distance.

  'Your pardon, holy brother, I do but ask a service of your wisdom. There is a fee ...'

  Whether it was the sight of silver coins in Jemel's left hand that stilled the imam's protest, Elisande couldn't say. It might have been what else that sight revealed, the missing little finger, coupled with what Jemel's clothes proclaimed, that he was Sharai but tribeless; no desert priest would offend a man who might be sworn to the Sand Dancers, even if he didn't wear their customary black. That confident 'brother' might have helped too, implying that they both served not only the same God, but the same cause also.

  'What service? Brother?'

  'Your blessing, on my blades.'

  A moment's pause, just long enough for those coins to be passed from one hand to another; then, 'Come,' and the imam ducked in through the temple door, with Jemel on his heels.

  Elisande waited for the space of a few steadying breaths, before she followed.

  If Selussin's prime purpose was to teach, then its high temple was a lesson in itself, she thought, that the surface of a thing gave few clues to its innermost heart.

  From the outside, the building was crudely made and eccentric, speaking more to the weakness of its people than the power of its priests. The difference inside was startling, all the more so because the materials remained the same.

  The floor was pounded earth, and sandy near the door where the constant passage of feet dragged in the dirt of the town's streets. Further in, she saw a small boy with an aspergill sprinkling water where he walked: not enough to muddy the ground, just to dampen it and quell the dust. It kept the air cool too, and a little moist; she was reminded of the boys in the Sultan's gardens at Bar'ath Tazore, doing much the same out in the open to keep a jungle thriving under desert sun. The purpose here was subtly similar, she thought: to keep mysterious the place where power lived, to let no one pass from there to here without seeing, touching, breathing the change from that to this.

  As Jemel had promised, there was a carved and pierced screen to her right, dividing the eastern angle from the body of the temple. She walked in that direction, obedient to his instructions, but with her eyes neither cast down in humility as they probably properly should have been, nor watching his back and the imam's where they stood and then knelt before the altar in the centre of the floor, the focus of all this space.

  Instead, Elisande let her feet find their way unguided, while she stared upward: up and up, into twisted height and darkness.

  There must, she supposed, be a roof; otherwise she'd see light and sky even through all the tangle in between, and this would be a burning-house at noon. If she climbed, no doubt she'd find it eventually, and even Julianne could make that climb; but from the ground that necessary roof was hidden by more than shadows.

  She'd expected a ceiling, probably quite low, and stairs or a ladder climbing to an upper chamber, a succession of chambers one above another. So much height and space in the tower, in such a low-built town, she'd been sure they'd use it all.

  And perhaps they did, but not for speech or sleep or storage. She thought of a candle's flame, the small hot glow at the heart of it where the wick burned, and then the rising column of light.

  The temple-tower was a single vaulting chamber, undivided; and all that high-leaping space was criss-crossed by an intricate and eye-defeating maze of blackened wood. From outside she had seen the beam-ends and thought them strange enough, an irregular studding, a scaffold to give shape and strength to the friable mud of the walls. Here were the beams themselves. Tall trees they must have been to run as they did from wall to wall, clear across the temple at unpredictable angles, in no pattern or design that she could discern from the lights of many lamps and braziers. They made a baffling knotwork that drew the eye in and up, and wanted never to release it.

  She stared, she frankly gawped; and was glad for once to be a girl, and so ignored by all of the men who prayed or murmured heads together, or else had other business here.

  She was meant, she remembered at last, to be watching two such men who had such business, and that concerned herself. Coming at last behind the women's screen, she dragged her gaze downward from the heights, found herself alone and so nudged her veil aside, hooked her fingers through the narrow piercings and set her eyes to the widest space that she could discover.

  There were Jemel and the imam, kneeling before the simple altar, a rough block of black stone with a burning charcoal brazier set atop. For a wonder the stone had been hewn square, and the brazier was round; even the Selussids, it seemed, would not defy tradition so far as to give three corners to the focus of their faith.

  There were the men, and laid on the floor before them were the weapons, hers and Jemel's, faintly gleaming in the smoky light.

  The imam spread his hands above the blades and probably began a prayer, some well-used form of words. She couldn't hear, and had trouble believing that any blessing so lightly, so cheaply bought could truly prove effective. She'd seen sanctified wea
pons shear through where normal steel rebounded; that was more of a mystery to her than other, stronger magic that she'd met. She might not understand the Daughter but it was real, she couldn't dispute its existence and she knew what it did. A priest's blessing on a blade, though, when she gave his God no credence — it challenged her true faith, that the world was well-made whoever it was that made it. She might have believed that a priest's wisdom could invest some power in what he touched; but this distracted man with his wispy beard and his crass self-satisfaction? Jemel had more wisdom in his missing finger, and yet Jemel could not make a sword bite through 'ifrit armour.

  Perhaps the imam could not do it either, and this was wasted time that would draw her into danger later. Perhaps she should not think of her blades as blessed after all...

  'Lisan.' A voice spoke suddenly, shockingly in her ear; she choked on a gasp that might easily have come out-as a scream, and twisted round.

  And saw no one, though she wheeled in a circle to be sure. Good sense took a moment to catch up her racing heart and make her look again, more closely.

  Esren was a spinning shadow among shadows, a finger's length of dust and gleaming darkness amid the confusion of light as it fell through the complications of the screen.