Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04

by Chaz Brenchley

  He stood shoulder to shoulder with the other man, the two of them a little behind the Preacher. They faced the men whom they had come to see, and Blaise looked at their faces and knew two of them as he had known himself and the lady Julianne, and Fess.

  There was the Kings Shadow, father to the lady Julianne, who had left them by magic on a road long ago, and so all Blaise's troubles had begun; and there at his side was Rudel, who had claimed to be a jongleur at the great castle but was not, though he sang very prettily.

  Both men were gazing at him. Their faces were very still, but he thought that their minds were not.

  He knew Rudel, he knew the King's Shadow as they knew him, which was distantly. The other men in the tent were strangers all, and all of the desert. He remembered their own name for themselves, which was Sharai: Elessans used it, Ransomers used it, he'd known it and used it all his life. It was their blood-kin the Catari who worked the land in Outremer, defeated and tamed and seldom even defiant. The Sharai are Catari, he remembered, but to be Catari is not to be Sharai. Many of those dead in the courtyard had been Catari, by their dress and skin; he thought not one of them would have been Sharai.

  'I am Hasan,' one of the Sharai said then, and Blaise remembered more: the night raid on the castle when he was not allowed to fight, the bodies in the morning sun. Hasan had led that raid, and railed, and been driven back into the badlands. He remembered the sourness of triumph, though not how it had tasted.

  'I am Hasan, and I do not know whether I welcome a friend or an enemy to my tent; but you are welcome to it none the less. You need have no fear for your safety. Guests are sacred to us; the guards are ... precautionary, because there is an 'ifrit in the castle, and they are devious beasts. Should it come to meet us, we are ready. Allow me to name my companions to you: here are the lords of several tribes, and princes also from Outremer

  Blaise remembered the word 'ifrit from childhood stories, from the warnings of his elder brethren when he had been a Ransomer, from campfire tales when he had been a sergeant of Elessi. There had been other words, other creatures spoken of; he remembered that he had never truly believed in any of them, until he saw a djinni on the road to Roq de Rancon. Today he had seen a demon, in the lady Julianne's cell; he supposed that was the 'ifrit, though he would still use his own name for it. There was another demon in his tongue, for which he had no name at all.

  The Sharai Hasan named the men who stood with him, one by one; then he waited, to hear the Preacher name himself and the two who stood behind him. He waited in vain; the Preacher said nothing.

  After a time, Hasan took a breath and asked directly. 'Will you tell us your name? It is the custom, at a parley.'

  'My name is unimportant; I have not come to parley.'

  'Have you not? To what end, then? My wife is captive in that castle, and if those who hold her will not parley, they will die. Do you speak for Morakh the Sand Dancer, or for the 'ifrit, or for all those who came later, or for whom?'

  'I speak for the God I serve, and for none other.'

  Blaise didn't understand or believe either man, though it didn't matter. Unless there was another woman prisoner in the castle, Hasan must be speaking of the lady Julianne; but she was married to the Baron Imber, Blaise had seen that marriage made himself. And the Preacher surely did not serve the God that he proclaimed, a hundred corpses demon-slain could testify to that.

  Unless their deaths were necessary, for a greater good? Innocents died in war, that was universal; but Blaise felt the chill inside his mouth and did not believe there was any good in it, nor in the Preacher who had caused it.

  'How does your presence in the castle serve your God? And why have you come to us? If you want free passage out of the castle for you and your followers, you may have it, so long as you have done no harm to my woman.'

  'I have done no harm to anyone,' which was a lie direct at last, though Blaise could not speak to denounce it. 'I am a healer, blessed by the God and by the relic of a saint. See, I will show you.' He reached inside his robe; Hasan moved not a muscle but the guards tensed, alert for any weapon despite all promises of safety.

  The Preacher produced the black and twisted hand, and held it out in plain view. The guards relaxed slowly, as fascinated as every man there by the way light glistened on its glossy skin. Rudel took half a pace forward, only to be stayed by the King's Shadow with a touch on his sleeve and a murmured word.

  'There is a sickness abroad in the Sanctuary Land,' the Preacher went on, which I have named the King s Evil. It is sent by the God as a reprimand, because the King has allowed heresy and false teachings to thrive within that holy land. Only my prayers and the touch of this relic will cure it. Those that I have healed follow me; I led them here that we may strike together against the greater sickness, which is Surayon.'

  'Surayon is hidden,' Hasan said mildly, 'and you are not many, to make war against a state.'

  'It will be opened to us, and the God's strength is in our arm. Nor will we be alone. I have seen this, and it is sure.'

  'What would you have me do? I have my own quarrel with Outremer, but I am here for my wife, who has been taken by one of our people. I have said that I will let you pass, if you can bring your followers out of the castle; though I am curious to know why the Sand Dancer let you in.'

  'The gates were open, and he welcomed us as you have welcomed me. Perhaps he is not the enemy you think. Or there may be a greater reason than his own, why he has drawn you here. He too is a servant of the God, though he may not know it. And you are an army, poised above Surayon and sworn against the Kingdom; if the Folded Land should open ...'

  If the Folded Land should open, Blaise thought, not Hasan himself could hold his army back, even should he want to; and the glint in his eye said that he would not. He might consort with a Surayonnaise sorcerer, but he would still lay waste to Rudel s land on his way to Ascariel.

  He said nothing, though, and neither did Rudel. It was the King's Shadow who spoke, who said, 'However that may be, you and your people are free within the castle. Would it be possible for you to bring my daughter out, among your number?'

  'There is no need,' the Preacher said. 'Look, where she comes...'

  And indeed she did come, the lady Julianne blundering in through the doorway of the tent, and talking already as she came: calling, but not to her husband, nor yet to her father.

  'Rudel! Rudel, are you here? Oh, Rudel, come quickly! Esren would bring us no closer, I don't know why, but we need you, Marron is dreadfully sick, Elisande is with him but she cannot help, she says she needs your strength

  Not Rudel, but Hasan who reacted first: Hasan who strode forward to claim the girl he spoke of as his wife, while the rest were simply staring. Hasan who had been so careful with his doubtful guest, who forgot all that care in a moment: who passed within a hand's span of the Preacher in his urgency.

  And as he passed, the Preacher struck. Not with a blade, not with a fist: with the distorted black claw that he called a relic.

  He used it like a weapon, not an instrument of healing. He slashed it across Hasan's face and the hooked fingers dug deep, leaving long red weals where the blood rose.

  Briefly, everything was very still within the tent. Even the lady Julianne's pleading voice fell into silence.

  Then three bows sang, and the Preacher wheeled once before he dropped.

  Hasan raised a puzzled hand to his cheek, touched the blood there, made a choking sound and collapsed.

  The lady Julianne cried out incoherently, hurtled forward and dropped to her knees above the fallen Sharai.

  Her father's voice was louder as he called, 'No!' and ran to seize her shoulders, to drag her away.

  She resisted; he said, 'Look, Julianne! Use your eyes, use your mind ...!'

  Her gaze followed his pointing finger; so did every man's in the tent. So did Blaise's.

  The relic, the saint's hand lay where it had fallen on the rug, where the pierced Preacher had dropped it as he died. It
lay there, and it moved.

  As though the life had passed from man to thing, it flexed and squirmed, began to stretch upward. It never had looked much like a hand, so bent the fingers were, so withered the palm; now it seemed more like a blackened plant in hasty growth, reaching for the sun.

  At the same time, a wispy smoke stole from the Preacher's mouth and twined itself around that sprouting darkness, and was absorbed. The thing swelled outward and grew more vigorous.

  The lady Julianne gasped sharply, and flung herself full-length across Hasan's stillness. 'It has eyes!'

  'Indeed.' The King's Shadow confirmed calmly what Blaise too had seen already, red points glowing against the black. No doubt the eyes had always been there even in its shrunken state, though they must have been hidden behind a fold of chitin. 'It's an 'ifrit, daughter — and as far as I'm aware, you're lying on top of the only blessed weapon in the tent.'

  Blaise watched all this dispassionately, as he must; but then his own mouth opened as the dead Preacher's had, and he felt the ice in his tongue uncurl.

  He saw it issue from his mouth, not ice but smoke, black smoke rushing to feed the demon, the 'ifrit. The same was happening to and from the other man at his side, nameless and doomed.

  Blaise remembered terror, agony, despair, he remembered how they felt; he felt them all.

  The pain started in his feet and crept upward, a rotting, consuming fire. He fell quickly, wanting to roll and thresh against the searing; but despair was a lethargy that engulfed him entirely and far more quickly. Screaming was waste of precious air, struggling was purposeless; better to lie still and suffer, and so die . ..

  Except that he was lying on his belly in an enemy's tent, with treachery all around him. Here was neither honour nor justice, and he did not want these people to have the disposal of his body.

  He had no care for any of the chaos above and about his head. He could feel the candle that he carried, pressed against his stomach; despite his pain - or because of his pain, perhaps, a whip to use against black melancholy that might have overcome him else - he could work his hand in to draw it out.

  And when he held it, he could drag himself on his elbows the little distance that he needed, he could hold the wick of it in a puddle of burning oil from a lamp that had tumbled from its tripod and would burn all the rugs and the tent besides if it were not attended to; he could cup his hands around the flame and whisper the words that Magister Fulke had branded into his brain. No matter that his breath came in shudders and his voice too. The soft hiss of it was meant not for mortal ears, but for the God.

  And the God heard: there was a glimmer of gold in the eye-dazzling light, a taste of gold in the air, a touch of gold in the warmth soaking up into his pain-racked body, and he was quite alone and could die so, and would be glad to do so even here where he had been so scared before.

  Elisande was so in dread for Marron's life, she couldn't understand why the djinni had left them here, outside the circle of besieging fires but still a distance short of Hasan's tent. Surely it had understood her urgency, her order ...

  Stranded close and yet not close enough, she'd sent Julianne to run into the tent rather than call Esren back and argue with it. There was little profit anyway, she'd learned, in arguing with a djinni; it would do what it would do, and it always had an answer.

  Instead she waited as patiently as she could, cradling Marron's head in her arms and glaring at the Sharai who gathered uselessly around her, muttering to each other but saying nothing to the point and nothing at all to her. Peering between their pressing bodies, she watched the door of the tent, waiting to see Julianne come racing out with Rudel on her heels - and waited longer than she'd wanted, longer than she'd expected, far longer than she thought Marron could afford. His skin was shifting constantly beneath her touch, ice-cold one minute and burning hot the next, as the Daughter struggled against his strange invader without seeming to care what damage that battle did to its host body.

  Distantly she heard noises coming from the tent above the babble of the men who surrounded her: sudden shouts, she thought the hiss of arrows. Before she could cry out in warning, she saw something emerge at last — but it was not, it was far from the human figures she'd been watching for.

  Something black and long, so long: its body was snakelike, she thought, except that it seemed to move on twig-thin legs. It moved last, whatever it was, gone into the dark before she could raise an arm to point it out; and it left her in terror for what might have happened in the tent, what new tragedy they would come to tell her of while she knelt helpless, nursing a boy she could not heal.

  Too late there was a yell from the castle gates and a figure racing out, sprinting after the creature. That was Jemel, inevitably — cocksure in his own courage, determined to be first and foremost in the battle. At least he had the weapon for it if battle there proved to be, he'd had his scimitar blessed alongside her smaller blades; but unless the creature waited for him, he simply wouldn't have the speed. Young and agile as he was, he couldn't hope to match that insect scutding.

  Nor did he. For a minute, Elisande was torn desperately between desires. She wanted to watch for him and also watch the tent with its sudden crush of frantic men outside it, shouting and gesticulating and almost coming to knives, and she still didn't know why, what the monster had wrought inside; she wanted to run to discover, to find her friends — and, yes, even her father — to be sure that they were safe, at the same time as she wanted to run after Jemel in case he did have his battle after all and one scimitar proved not to be enough, blessed or otherwise. Julianne had one of her blades but Elisande still kept the other, she could help. And she wanted also to stay just exactly where she was, Marron's head in her lap; she couldn't leave him, not possibly, so she wanted everyone to come to her with news and comfort and succour for the grievously ill, all at once and now...

  Her eyes flitted from side to side, seeking friends, seeking reassurance, finding none. She thought seriously about screaming, loud as she could, simply to silence the babble briefly so that she could drop her questions and demands into that space she made. Almost, she took a breath to do it; but then there was movement where she'd been looking for it, beyond the firelight, and there stood Jemel. He looked briefly defeated, before he saw all the fuss and excitement around Hasan’s tent. He started to walk, had a word with a standing guard, started to run.

  Soon he was close enough to hear Elisande, without her having to scream.

  'Jemel! Over here, I have Marron ...'

  That was safe to fetch him, and it did. He stood staring down at his unconscious friend, and even with his back to the firelight she could see how his complexion changed; even through the hard panting of a young man who had run too far and too fast, she could hear his sudden breathlessness.

  'Sit down, Jemel,' she ordered roughly.

  Somewhat to her surprise, the tough young Sharai obeyed her: of necessity, she thought, his legs giving way entirely beneath the weight of his distress.

  'I have been searching for him, in the castle.'

  'I thought you must have been. Esren brought us out,' and she could almost have smiled at the absurdity of it — Jemel running in at one door, no doubt, while they flew out of another - if Marron hadn't been so ill and both of them so anxious, if the memory of that swift flight to freedom hadn't been overlaid by the sight of heaped bodies in the castle forecourt.

  'Will he live?' The voice was gruff, the question brusque, the truth of his feelings entirely betrayed by the way one hand reached out and lay hesitantly in the air above Marion’s face, just a fingertip short of touching.

  'I don't know,' she answered honestly. 'He's lived this long, rather against her expectations, though nothing could make her say it, not to him, so there must be hope. I can't help him; I sent Julianne to fetch Rudel, but somethings happened in that tent. You saw the 'ifrit come out,' and she couldn't think how that had come about, as she was sure no 'ifrit had been seen to go in, 'and there's been no
sign of anyone since.' Not that anyone else had had a chance, with that great scrum of men around the doorway, but her heart was full of misgiving. That at least she wasn't afraid to admit to. 'I'm scared, Jemel. I want to know what went on in there, but I couldn't leave Marron ...'

  'Go now,' he said. 'I will stay. But send Rudel, as swiftly as you can.'

  'I will,' she promised. If he still lives...

  She pushed herself to her feet, a harder effort than she'd imagined; her own legs were none too steady.

  She turned an ungainly stagger into a gentle trot, and soon reached the pack of excited Sharai who had made such a wedge at the tent's mouth. Being small was useful for once as she squeezed between them; so was having sharp elbows and a woman's voice. The guards at the doorway had clearly been in no mind to let anyone through, but here recognition helped, as perhaps did the memory that she had a djinni at her beck and call. They made no move to stop her, as she slipped beneath their drawn blades and stepped into the tent.

  She'd been dreading what she might find here, how many dead. There was a moment's sheer relief as she saw only one man down and Coren, Rudel, Julianne all unharmed; she thought she ought to feel relief too for her country's sake when she realised that the figure slumped on the carpet was Hasan.

  For her friend's sake, though, she couldn't do it. Julianne held her husband's head nestled in her lap, much as Elisande had held Marron's a short minute earlier; her own face was bowed and hidden, but Elisande could see black gashes on Hasan's cheek. Even clotted blood should never look so dark, she thought. Nor should such disfiguring but trivial wounds leave a man looking as Hasan looked now, sick unto death, again much like Marron; nor should they have left a powerful healer like Rudel looking so defeated.

  He acknowledged her first, with a glance and a few quick words that stole her breath away.

  'Elisande. I'm glad you're here, we need you.'

  She gaped, she couldn't help it; then, recovering her voice, she demanded, 'What happened here, where did that 'ifrit come from, what has it done to Hasan?'