Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04

by Chaz Brenchley

  One man stepped forward, confident in the weight and authority of his office. 'Hasan is in conference, with his council and ours; they may not be disturbed. This house is closed. Give up your weapon, and await judgement for your intrusion.'

  'I said my news is urgent. Hasan will not thank you for delaying me; it touches on his friends.'

  'Hasan will not hear of this. It is our laws that you offend, and all the laws of hospitality besides. The deliberations of the councils are more important than gossip overheard by a camel-boy, I would not pass you through if you bore letters of state.'

  'No? I bear something sharper than a letter,' and now he did draw his scimitar, 'and will use it if I must. One way or another, I will see Hasan. Go to him, tell him Jemel is here; he will come.'

  'There are six of us, boy, and none will carry your message. Do not add stupidity to your offences.'

  'Six indeed, and I am alone; but I am no camel-boy despite my youth and dress. I am Sharai, of the deep desert. And I am a Sand Dancer, see my hand?' as he held it up palm out against the house's lights. 'And more than all of these, I am the chosen companion of the Ghost Walker, of whom you may have heard. I have killed men, Sand Dancers like myself, I have killed ghuls; I have killed 'ifrit. I would not willingly harm one of you, but I will kill all six if I must. My news concerns the Ghost Walker, who is my friend and Hasan's; it is not I who is being stupid here. Will you go, or must we fight?'

  At last there was some doubt among the men he faced, some uneasy shuffling and sidelong glances. It was like such men, he thought, to be afraid of words where they hadn't the sense to be afraid of a blade.

  Their leader said, 'Those are not words or names to bandy with at a time like this. We will take you before the council, and let them judge; Hasan may speak for you, if he will. But if you are playing with us, your punishment will be severe.'

  'Trust me,' Jemel said, trying to sound grateful, 'this is no game.'

  He went to sheathe his blade, but the man checked him. 'You must give up your weapon. I will not take you armed before my council or your own, if you are as dangerous as you say'

  And there, of course, lay the penalty of boasting, and being taken at one's word. Jemel had lost too much time already, in argument; he laughed and reversed the scimitar in his hand, presenting its haft as he walked forward. The man took it warily, his own blade still upraised.

  He didn't know much about the Sharai, if he thought Jemel disarmed or rendered harmless. There was a knife in plain view hanging from his belt-rope, which was neither ceremonial nor used solely for eating. Jemel stepped closer to the man, to distract his eyes from dropping so low, and said, 'If you hold my blade, you should hold my name alongside. That you have, but I do not know yours. How am I to find you, after I leave the chiefs?'

  'Ask for Limen, if you still have a tongue to ask with. I cannot speak for the Sharai, but the elders of Selussin will silence a man who speaks against their wisdom. Nor would I count on your own lords to protect you. They may ride over our lands, but they will make a show at least of respect towards our laws.'

  'No doubt they will, and I have no lords in any case, among the Sharai; I am outcast, tribeless,' which Limen should have known, Jemel wore his condition so loudly. Any Catari should be able to read it from his dress. 'Some of the chiefs would sooner kill me than hear me,' he went on cheerfully. 'There is only Hasan to speak for me, and him I once swore a blood-oath against, which is why we are so dear to each other now.'

  Limen could find nothing to say to that. He only beckoned with a jerk of his head, and led the way into the house.

  At least, they called it a house as Rudel had; to Jemel it was a palace. This was the first glimpse he'd had, perhaps the only surviving memory of Selussin's fabled wealth. His bare feet walked on cool and coloured tiles, while the walls were richly hung to hide their simple brickwork; jewels sparkled in tapestries that were faded with age, but still vivid within their folds. One room they passed was lined from floor to ceiling with more books than he had ever seen in his life before, more than he had imagined to be within the world. Reading was a slow and a difficult art to him, but he did understand its power; he gave a snort that was pure Sharai and pure deception also — of what use or conceivable interest is so much dry and dusty paper, to a man whose life is given to the Sands? — and went on without a glance back, trying to hurry the men around him where they would not be hurried.

  At last they brought him to a pair of high, massive doors, closed doors. They were bronze as the gate had been, made and decorated he thought by the same craftsmen. No one stood on guard here; they were guard enough, Jemel supposed, for the privacies beyond. Limen paused before them, seeming to summon his courage before he pushed them open.

  The doors swung apart slowly and silently, at the first pressure from Limens hands. Their interwoven patterns glimmered and shifted in the changing light, speaking of mutability in permanence — like the Sands, Jemel thought, that changed daily and were never changed - while their imperious movement spoke of weight, of balance, perhaps of God. And, of course, of expense beyond measure, beyond any man’s needs for a lifetime. Jemel — who liked to count wealth only in camels and had none at the moment, had never had more than he needed for bare survival, which was not wealth at all - felt himself staring and could do nothing about it, caught up as he was in their vast and dull indifference. He gazed in fascination at the steady sweep of their lower edges over priceless rugs, the brazen lustre of their exposed hinges, the perfect moment of their halting.

  Only when they were still again could he pull eyes and wits together, as he needed. Show him something he could neither eat nor carry, something that in the desert could have only cost and no value, and he gaped and drooled like a baby. Too much time spent with Patrics had infected him, perhaps, with their own watery vision of the world ...

  No matter. He turned his eyes into the chamber that lay beyond those wonderful doors; he straightened his back and lifted his head and walked in alone, ahead of the hesitant Limen. It was as though the ponderous opening of those doors had crushed all talking; he walked into a silence as heavy, as intractable as stone, and about as welcoming.

  He walked boldly to the centre of the room, which was the centre of a circle of seated men. With each step he felt the silky softness of ancient carpets beneath his soles, the lulling smokiness of perfumed air against his throat, the height of the ceiling above him and the vanishing distance of the walls on every side. Over all, though, he felt the weight of the eyes that watched him come, the pent breath of those who waited to hear him.

  Only that one would not wait or did not care. Not Hasan who rose, and no words of welcome or enquiry: rather a hiss of fury, a dagger drawn and flung so that it bit deep into the piled carpets and stood erect, barely a hand s span before his feet.

  And this was so like it had been before, when he had been brought before the council in Rhabat and had been met by a dagger tossed to greet him; and it was the same knife, he thought, and certainly the same man who threw it, who faced him now before a wider band of witnesses and with a hint of triumph underlying his contempt.

  'You are a fool to break in upon us, boy.'

  'Maybe so, but I am a fool with news. Hasan—'

  'Hasan cannot help you here.' And indeed Hasan stayed where he sat, cross-legged on the rugs, and made only a small gesture of regret to confirm his helplessness. War-leader he might be, but this was a council of chiefs and imams, and he was neither. 'Nor will the King's Shadow come wandering in this time to save your worthless skin. You have affronted our hosts, and for that alone you stand condemned; but you were condemned already, your very existence is an affront to me. I have waited, and I see no reason to wait longer. You gift me my excuse.'

  It was true, Jemel supposed. The man was sheikh of the Saren, who had once been Jemel's own tribe. If any man wanted his death this was the one, in payment for oaths of fealty broken. He could pick up the knife and throw it back, and so accept the challenge;
he could ignore it, and so be shamed before all the chiefs and the imams of Selussin also. This was no time to be fighting, but...

  'It would seem a shame,' he said softly, 'to stain this beauty with blood, yours or mine.'

  'Yours, renegade, it would all be yours.' Likely it would, too. The Saren was younger than most tribal chiefs, barely in his middle years, and broader than most Sharai, heavier and stronger far than Jemel. 'I will kill you in the courtyard if you prefer it, as a courtesy to our hosts. Unless you have your fellow creature in wait for me outside, that abomination you call the Ghost Walker, that should have been killed in Rhabat along with you. I will not walk into a trap.'

  'Neither would I lay one. Marron is sick, in pain and captured; he has been taken to the castle. I don't know why' There, at least he had said what he came to say; he saw Hasan receive the news, puzzled and concerned.

  'All the better. We can hope that he will die there.'

  'If he die in the castle,' Jemel said, 'Morakh the Sand Dancer will be the new Ghost Walker. Is that what you want?'

  'Better a Sand Dancer than a Patric heretic' Better war than a corrupted peace, he meant, and none here would dispute that. Not even Hasan; especially not Hasan, who had led the tribes at last towards his war. If Marron's death was the price of it, Jemel thought their friend would pay it.

  His own death was still the price of the message. He fingered the livid scar on his neck, where Morakh had so nearly claimed that death already, and said, 'The Sand Dancer sides with the 'ifrit, who killed so many of your people — all your peoples, sheikhs - at Rhabat. Will you join with him, with them now? Any of you? Will the Saren ride with demons, and do their bidding?'

  'They will not — and you are damned again, for saying so.'

  ‘I am damned in any case, if I return your knife. If I slew you, the Saren would not rest until they had my blood for it.

  'If you do not return my knife, I will kill you anyway, for the coward that you are. Choose, tribeless - but swiftly. You rub my patience thin.'

  'Oh, I will fight you, sheikh - but not here, and not yet. I have other battles first, that I deem more important.' And he stooped, pulled the sheikh's dagger from the carpets and thrust it into his belt, drawing his own knife instead and tossing that to the sheikh's feet. 'Do you keep my blade, and I yours. We'll exchange them later, once Hasan's wife is free and the insult to all Sharai has been redeemed. Then let our blades decide.'

  Trying to sound as casual as his words and trying to look entirely uninterested after, striving to remember how to breathe as he waited. At length - and it seemed a long, long wait - the man who had once been his sheikh and would now be his executioner stooped to pick up the knife. He examined it scornfully, then slipped it inside his robe.

  'Very well, I will let you live a little longer - but do not try to run, or I will hunt you like a hare and drag your naked body on a rope at my saddle's bow.'

  'I will not run from you, or any man,' Jemel said flady. He turned his back on the sheikh - another insult, another cause to fight me, let him add it to the list; he can only kill me once- and found Hasan at last rising to his feet.

  'Jemel, where did you take Rudel?'

  'To speak with Coren.'

  'And where is Coren?'

  'I don't know. Not in the house now, either of them. They didn't come here, they didn't follow me to the gate, to the castle road ...'

  'There is another way for those men, to the castle or anywhere. Coren can walk his friends through shadow-paths.'

  Not so shadowy, more golden and alight; besides, 'If he wouldn't do so to bring his own daughter out, nor Rudel's, why would he go for Marron?'

  'Perhaps if he thought the Ghost Walker more important than my wife, or her friend? It's possible.'

  It was possible. Jemel held the other's gaze with a surging hope - then crushed it, with a slow and deliberate shake of his head. 'No. The 'ifrit would know and be ready for them, whoever they went for. That's why they've left the girls, because they cannot help them. The same must be true for Marron. It's something else they're doing...'

  'Then go and find them, Jemel. Don't bring them here; we'll rally by the western gate. I hadn't meant to move tonight, but I'll let Morakh know we're here at the least, that he can't bring any further of his friends inside, nor steal any more of us. Before you go, though, tell me how it was with Marron. I don't understand how he can be hurt, he's the Ghost Walker ...'

  'He can still be hurt,' Jemel said, who had seen the truth of that too often. 'But I don't understand this either. Not hurt, sick, the children said. I didn't see what happened, but they said that what he carries — his demon, they called it — turned on him ...'

  Jemel wasn't sure where to look, even where to start looking for the old men. As he left the imams' house, though -through the gate this time rather than over it, with a silent Limen swinging one leaf open for him, handing back his blade - he found the boys who'd brought him news of Marron lingering outside. He hadn't realised that they'd followed him this far, but of course they would have done; he'd probably given them the most excitement they'd known thus far in their young lives, and certainly the most money.

  Well, he still had coins, and they were welcome to those also. He touched a suggestive hand to the pouch, all the hint they'd need, and said, 'The old man, the father of my house, and the guest who came today — where can I find them, do you know? Or can you learn?'

  'Wait here,' was all they said before they scampered off in three different directions, sending strange high calls to each other as they vanished into the dark Jemel recognised the tone, if not the meaning: he and his cohorts had had a similar language when they were small, designed to carry across the cliff-face of his home and further.

  He waited long enough for the gates to swing wide at his back, and all the chiefs to come riding out. Even Hasan passed without a word; he rode straight towards the western wall, while the others turned south, heading no doubt to find the camps of their own tribes and stir their men to unexpected action.

  He watched the gates close behind them, conscious of Limen's hard stare through the narrowing gap. There was no boom as the two leaves met, no grate of lock or bolt; they were as well made and as well hung as the doors within, preserved through generations of conquest by the simple expedient of never being closed against the conquerors.

  Only against him, he thought, as so many ways were being closed to him. His old life was lost now, sacrificed in a moments determination at Bar'ath Tazore; his new life had been given to Marron, and might be lost in its turn if that boy died. He didn't know where he'd go then. No tribeless man could live long in the Sands. He had friends from Outremer, but Hasan meant to destroy that country and reclaim the land for the Catari and their God, under the governance of the Sharai. Perhaps it would be as well if the Saren sheikh did kill him, so long as he could contrive Sieur Anton's death first, to redeem at least one of his oaths ...

  He waited, immersed in gloomy imaginings and barely aware of the occasional eerie cry rising from the darkness of the town around him. Soon though they were louder, shriller, coming closer; he peered into the night, and saw first one and then the other boys come racing back.

  'The men you seek are in the woman Holet's house,' the eldest said triumphantly.

  'Will you take me there?'

  'We will.'

  They didn't move, though. Jemel grinned, and worked his pouch open with sore fingers.

  He couldn't see and wouldn't really have known the value of the coins he handed across. The boys knew, though, and were more than content, to judge by the flashing white of their smiles.

  'Come, this way. It is not far. The widow Holet is sick, and your fathers are tending to her.'

  It seemed a curious priority, at such a time. Jemel asked no questions, though. He only followed the small figures through a bewildering network of lanes until they brought him to a ramshackle house, little more than a hut crammed in among its neighbours. A low door opened directly onto the
filthy alley. A dim light burned within, oddly blue; as he ducked beneath the lintel he saw a globe of witchlight hanging below the ceiling.

  Coren and Rudel were both there, as he had been promised. The man from Surayon was crouched over a bed of rags; Jemel had to look twice before he saw the dark shadow of a woman lying on die bed. Coren was crushing herbs into a bowl of warm water, scenting the air with a sweet savour. He glanced up and said, 'Jemel. What's afoot in the town?'

  'More to the point, where's Marron?' Rudel grunted, without looking round.

  'You don't know?'

  'We heard stories. I'd sooner hear them from you, they'll be less garbled.'

  Not much so, if at all; he could tell them only what he'd been told himself by the children, and then what bare glimpse he'd had of figures hurrying away up the road to the castle. He added that he'd been to the imams' house, and told Hasan; he didn't mention what had passed between him and the sheikh.

  Coren asked what Hasan meant to do.

  'He will lead some men up to invest the castle tonight. He asks that you two meet him by the west gate.'

  'Well, we will go,' Rudel said, his voice as grim as Jemel had ever heard it, 'but not before I have tried once more here.'

  'What are you doing?'

  'Failing to save this woman's life, I think. I cannot find the beat of her mind, the paths of her body nor the cause of her sickness. She confounds me; and I confess, that terrifies me every time I lay hands against her skin. But I must try. Once more, I will try once more before we abandon her.'

  Jemel leaned forward to peer over Rudel's broad shoulder, and saw that it wasn't only the pallid blue of the light that had made the woman seem so shadowy. All her skin was grey, true grey between her wrinkles, and the shape of her bones showed beneath it as though her muscles had lost any lingering touch of life. He watched, and couldn't see her breathing.

  'Is she not dead already?'

  'She might as well be, for all the good I can do her.' 'Who is she?'