Already, simply from the taste in his mouth and the knowledge of its being in his body, Jemel could lift his head, straighten his spine, look around him. Julianne looked a little startled at the change; she would be more so shortly.
He touched his tongue to his lips, to catch what drops had slipped from the flask or from his own loose mouth before he'd swallowed. For a moment he closed his eyes, savouring, welcoming. Not to judge: this brew was not of Saren making, but that was immaterial. It had come into the world, and come to him. Besides, he was no longer Saren himself.
Words were still difficult; he should probably drink water to ease his throat. But he would have to ask for it, apparently, neither girl had thought to pass a skin. If he had to speak anyway, he might as well ask his real question.
'Where is Marron?'
Not where am I? or how did I get here?or any of the other puzzlements. He thought they could all be answered by the one, or else they did not matter.
The girls looked at each other. It was Elisande who won that exchange, or lost it; she said, 'He went north.' Where you cannot follow him was inherent. Neither one of them needed to glance at the raging river, or the great gulf between here and the bank. She made a point of not doing so, indeed; he had seen it already, and was starting to answer where am I? on his own account. On an island, clearly, surrounded by a terrible force of water. The spray of it was cool on his skin, hanging in the air like a mist that the sun could not burn off.
He looked to Julianne, who had an overrun of words where Lisan hoarded hers as close as water. He supposed that in this country, no one would hoard water; but words were treasures, meanings were gifts.
'Marron brought you to us,' she amplified, speaking hurriedly against his silence. 'You must have been in a great fight, you were horribly wounded, but I think you must have won the fight. He said he took you from some of our people, but none of your hurts were sword-wounds, so you cannot have been fighting them?'
'I was fighting 'ifrit,' he murmured, remembering. 'Many
'ifrit like serpents, or one that had made itself many; I do not know if they can do that, but they each seemed small-minded, easy to kill. It was only the numbers that defeated us. We were defeated, I think. I fought beside your people, Lisan, but they were mostly dead before yours came, Julianne. Perhaps they rescued me. I was small-minded myself by then, I could not think; only remember that there was a Patric I had to fight when I was finished with the 'ifrit, or they with me. I thought I had found him, tall and white and cloaked in black, but he said not, he said his name was Karlheim ...'
Julianne gasped, but quite silently; he only felt it because she had her arm around his shoulders still.
It was Lisan who pressed him. 'Was he a young man, blond-headed?'
'I suppose. He wore a helmet, and all Patrics are blond to me.'
'Was he hurt?' That was Julianne, picking at the ground like a child, trying to look as though it mattered not at all.
'He seemed well. I did not kill him, at least. I thought I might die in his arms, which was very wrong.' And something else was wrong too. He was coming at it all askance, but in the end the most sidewise shuffle must bring a man to the place where he must stand. He said, 'Marron came to fetch me? I do not remember that.'
'You had swooned before he brought you here,' Elisande observed neutrally.
'Before then, I think, before he found me. How did he find me?' Jemel didn't believe in the calling power of love; he had heard of too many men and women too who lost themselves in the Sands, searching for those who were lost already.
Besides, this was Marron. There was no telling whom he would have called for, or whose calling voice he would have heard.
'He knew, he said. Where you were, where we were. And so he brought you.'
Which was all the answer he needed, to all the questions that he needed to ask. Meanings were gifts and gifts could be poison, did they not know that, these girls? He'd no more asked them than he would have asked a djinni, has Marron taken the Daughter back? — but they'd told him regardless, and now he had that to deal with as well as another certainty. He went north to find Sieur Anton, didn't he? Once he'd found me...
'Give me more jereth,' he said.
'Oh, no,' Lisan objected. 'It's my turn, if either of us is to have treats.'
'Not a treat, it's needful. You don't know...' He would pay for it later, he would overtax his body to the breaking-point, but he had somehow to go north.
'Give it him,' came another voice, unexpected and startling, none of theirs.
Briefly they stared at each other, then around the tiny flat landscape of the island where nothing could hide.
Nor was it in hiding, only small and unlikely and hard to see in the bright light and the dense spray from the dashing river. Elisande found it first, but seemed to have lost her tongue with the surprise of its arrival; she simply gestured, and then glowered furiously up at where it hung like a trick of the sun in the wet air, betrayed by water-drops.
It was Julianne who spoke to it; Jemel saw no need for conversation, it had said what they should do and he thought that ought to be enough. But they were Patrics and they were girls, and so they would be elaborately cautious and take terrible risks and never know it. Even Elisande, who thought herself so wise in the ways of the desert and its peoples - even she was a child at play among scorpions, when she dabbled with the djinn.
‘It is unusual to see you, Djinni Tachur, where you have not been summoned.'
‘It is impossible to see me, Julianne de Ranee, where I do not wish to be seen. But time presses, the river is in flood and cannot be Folded away. Give the boy what he wants; and Lisan, do you be ready to follow as he drinks. It will take you deep, so keep a thought always for your way back.'
'You mean— I have done all I can for Jemel, for anyone just now. I have no strength left ...'
'That is true, but you need none. Enough of healing, he will endure now; but wake the jereth to reinforce his spirit, or he will sleep when he must needs be fighting.'
‘I don't understand. He should sleep, he's exhausted and he's lost more blood than I thought a thrifty Sharai would carry with him. I don't know of any other cure but sleep.'
'Not a cure, no - but a crippled man may ride a horse, and so travel far and fast. Wake the jereth, Lisan. There is good cause to do it.'
'Maybe there is, but I don't know what that means. Find someone else to ride your horse, and let Jemel rest.'
'There is no one else. Follow as he drinks, you will know what to do when you see it. It takes only a touch.'
'Do it yourself, then,' but her reluctance was suddenly unconvincing, stubbornness for the sake of show, no more.
‘I cannot touch him, or he dies. You know this.'
Yes, she knew - and he had had enough, more than enough of all this talking while Marron ran wild somewhere out of his sight. He snatched the flask from Julianne and upended it into his mouth.
No more than Lisan did he know what the djinni meant; no more than she was he going to ask. But he felt her hand suddenly on his chest, and that was welcome. He felt her spirit, her awareness slide in under his skin and that was oddly welcome too. She was become a familiar stranger in his body, like an imam in the Sands: alien but known, uninvited but recognised.
He felt the moment when she met jereth and touched it; he felt the change. Always before - even taken properly, considered and known for what it was, all its virtues and dangers for body and mind together - it had seemed like a fire contained, sunlight held in glass. Now abruptly it was a fire released, coursing through all his body at once, a spark that became an inferno; he thought his hair should be ablaze, his ragged blood-soaked garment charring as he stared. He thought everything he looked upon should burn.
Lisan made a soft and sudden noise and fell away from him all in a rush, though that couldn't be his fault, he hadn't even been looking at her.
'What did that do? she demanded, if a shocked whisper can be demanding, which in her
it could.
'What did you do?' Julianne countered, when it became obvious that neither Jemel nor the djinni thought the question addressed to them. Jemel was barely curious enough to listen.
'I don't know. Touched the jereth, as the djinni said. Things look different in there, and it seemed broken, somehow. Unwhole. So I touched it as if it were damaged tissue, to start the healing; and a touch was enough. I don't have a word, for what it did. Or - yes, I do. It unFoIded. Like that, like a bud opening into a flower, as big a change as that. I don't know what the flower is, what it turned into, what it does. What it's doing to Jemel...'
What it was doing was just what he needed; it was giving him the strength and the heart to lift his dull body, to drive it as though it were someone else's altogether. What it took to do such a thing, what it was burning to generate such heat, how much and how long he would have to pay later: these were questions that concerned him no more than they did the djinni. Flesh was a tool, and he would use it until it was entirely broken, if he had to. He wondered if this was how Marron felt, sharing his body with the Daughter. If so, it was no great surprise that he had gone back to it, that they were twinned again. In Jemel this could not last, he would burn it off like oil in a lamp, and miss it badly when it was gone and only the price of it lingered; to have been gifted this and more, and to have it always within reach, always there to call on - that would be a prize to kill for. Jemel felt not invulnerable but something close to that, powerful beyond measure. For what little time the jereth could keep him so, before it burned away. And to think he'd been scorning the girls and all their culture just minutes earlier, for not knowing the proper uses of jereth... He should add himself and his own people to that list of the scorned. For how many generations had they been making the liquor and trading it for common things, for cloth and gold and spices? All this time, all those long lives wasted through ignorance, when so much potency was here and needed only a healer's touch to waken it. They could have driven the Patrics into the sea long since, with an army that had drunk of this. They could do it in a day.
But not today. Today there was only him that knew, and the girls who might be guessing; today there was another fight, and there was Marron somewhere in the midst of it. Marron in pursuit of his Sieur Anton, which was a chase that Jemel would very much like to join. If they never caught the knight, that was one thing, and no bad outcome; if they did, then that was something else, and a resolution would come of it. There might be a truce declared between the Patrics and the Sharai, while they battled 'ifrit together; that was what last night had been about, and it might or might not work. Jemel had declared no truce on his own account. Last night he might have fought with the sheikh of the Saren; today he might fight with d'Escrivey. If not, he would certainly fight with both tomorrow.
He stood up, swift and sure. Both girls were staring; he thought that one at least might be looking to see the colour of his eyes. Green and gold, he thought, and smiled privately: gold for the fire in his bones and green for everything that grew and changed, that included him. One was sweet and the other was bitter, and both were strong; mix the two together - in a barrel, in the mouth, in him — and it should be no surprise if they came out the colour of blood. And perhaps his eyes would be red after all, to say so. Perhaps he and Marron could find each other out in the dark, by dint of how their eyes shone crimson.
He and Marron could find each other in the dark anyway, simply by reaching. He meant to keep it that way. And this was daylight, when finding Marron was harder, and more urgent.
He said, 'Esren, take me to where Marron is.' The djinni said, 'What you have now, you should not waste. I will take you where I choose.' 'That's not what I—'
He felt the djinni's grip close around his chest, like a child's fingers locking into a fist around its toy, like a boy's grip on his knife before he's truly learned the way of it. He felt himself lifted, so that there was no ground beneath his feet; he felt so potent and so furious, he thought he might fight with the djinni first before ever he came to the men he needed to kill. He did move his hand towards his scimitar, only to find the belt slack of its weight, the scabbard empty.
Lost in his fighting before, or taken since? Taken by the Patrics or deliberately left behind by Marron, who wished so fervently that neither one of them need fight? Any of those might be the truth of it; the reality was that he was being carried to a war, and he was weaponless.
Not quite weaponless. The bow was gone too, but he still had a quiver full of arrows over his shoulder; his daggers were gone, but he still had the sheikh's knife tucked into the back of his belt. He'd meant to keep that for killing the sheikh; he might need it sooner now.
He might have used it now to unpick the intangible seams of the djinni's mortal body. He might have done that out of simple rage, except that he was not born a fool and even now, even like this he could control his temper. Angry men were careless men, and careless men were dead men in the Sands.
Besides, the djinni was carrying him high above the river; if it dropped him now, he was a dead man indeed. Dead and messy in the grass, or dead and lost, dead and sodden and drowned in the river. That was a thought to make him shudder, that a man might meet his death in too much water. Perhaps that was why the river hurried so, perhaps it was in perennial hunt for victims, for bodies it could roll and tumble down its course, for meat to feed its marshy fish ...
Do not drop me, djinni. But it would not, or it would not have picked him up; just as he would not kill it while they flew, or it would not have picked him up. Just as wherever it was taking him, that mattered, and what he did there would matter too. Besides, unless he did the djinni's work and left it living, how could he hope to find Marron afterwards?
His eyes had always been sharp, but up here he felt truly eagle-sighted. He could see just how impossible it would be for one man afoot to find another, even in this narrow valley. He could run all the length and the width of it, he thought, both sides of the river before the jereth's influence was drained; but so could Marron, and further yet. And there was the interlocking pattern of the walled fields, a bewildering maze even from above; and the broad river margins were dotted everywhere with men and horses, living and dead. And with 'ifrit, all living. And then there were the smouldering ruins of yesterdays burning, and the wooded slopes behind the walls, and the canyons and blind vales that ran up deep into the mountain ranges, where the people of Surayon had taken shelter... One man could hunt another for a week in this country, and never meet him. Jemel would need the djinni, it seemed that he would need to persuade the djinni; at the moment, he was persuaded that the djinni needed him.
It allowed him just a minute of that high view, perhaps to impress on him how lost he would be without its help. Then it swooped low over the grassland, low and fast, picking a weaving route between the knots of fighting men and spirits.
There were 'ifrit everywhere, so black they swallowed sunlight where they did not shrug it off like water. There were men who were organised in opposition, in defence, and men who were not; men who were effective, and men who were not. So far as Jemel could see, they were all dying anyway. Even those not doing so actively, not crushed or bleeding to death, not dangling screaming from the jaws of a demon, not dragging their mutilated bodies among their confreres and begging for a swift death, a sudden death -even those who were strong and determined, still mounted and fighting well with weapons that were fit for the work, Jemel thought that they were white bones walking, only that they hadn't realised or accepted the truth of it yet.
There were too many 'ifrit and too few men, that was all. It was a time to stand off with arrows, strike and run in the Sharai way; but these were not Sharai. Nor Surayonnaise, who were not too proud to learn from other peoples. These were Patrics, mosdy Ransomers in black, the army that had come down from the north.
The djinni carried him among the fallen, where the crippled horses in their agony moved him more than the men; it skirted every scattered battle unti
l at last it brought him to the ruins of the field-wall. No wall now, only broken stands of masonry and mounds of fallen rubble. That must have been the 'ifrit, surely, that toppled it; nothing fleshly could have done so much damage, so swiftly.
There were still 'ifrit seething out from the hidden ways behind the wreckage of the wall, but here at least they had met men who could stand against them. Unhorsed but still organised, a troop of Ransomers was holding the line with savage determination.
It was a line of dead horses they were defending, the great chargers of the Patrics hauled bodily into a rampart. It gave them an illusion of shelter, at least. That was pure Patric thinking, they always looked to build and to hold ground. Even now one of their knights was leading a sortie across the horseflesh barricade, seeking to drive back or destroy the 'Ifrit between there and the rubble of the fallen wall. He would make his stand, because he knew nothing else to do. He was doing it well enough, to Jemel's inexperienced eye; while he and his companions hacked and danced and set steel edge against chitin — steel and blessed, and the blessing was the sharper edge, cutting clean and deep, the only reason they had survived this long - others had tumbled over the awkward barricade to heave and drag at yet more corpses, to keep the ground clear and build up what defence they had. If they built it higher in their minds than in reality, so much the better. Patric soldiers found the same comfort in a wall that the Sharai did in a horse and open land to ride it.
These soldiers hauled at one of their destriers, rolling it over so that Jemel could see how its belly had been ripped open, how its guts were trailing. A wall of them made a greater obstacle for the 'ifrit, if not for long. They could scramble over it fast enough; given a little longer, they could chop or chew their way through. Only meat, after all, and he'd seen them eating rock.
Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 Page 55
