Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04

by Chaz Brenchley

  His eyes were dragged upward in simple startlement. He saw black shapes against the sky, and remembered 'ifrit in flight; and tried to set an arrow to his bow-string as he ran, and nearly tripped himself. Stumbled, but kept running: and saw monstrous creatures swoop low ahead of him, to snatch up the Dancers where they stood.

  Not 'ifrit, these were ghuls with wings, slaves to their spirit overlords. The Dancers didn't try to run, or to resist; they looked as though they had been waiting for exactly this.

  Another ghul, lower and closer; this one swooped on the running sheikh, and took him as an eagle takes a rabbit. Jemel cried out in frustration then and did stop running at last, did nock his arrow to the string; and was bringing the bow up to aim a desperate shot when he felt a tremendous blow on his back that should have flattened him, except that great claws had curled around his body in that same moment and so he was lifted up from ground and swept away.

  There were seven ghuls, and four men: two Dancers, one sheikh, and Jemel. He could still count at least, despite the bruising strike, the buffeting flight, the shock.

  He could look down and see the river, the plain, the war far below him; that battle already behind him and the mountains rising ahead. After a little while, he preferred to look forward. He did not think the ghul would drop him now, but as a means of transport it was less reassuring even than the djinni. He felt very little supported, despite the curl of claws that caged him. Besides, it stank, and groaned to itself with every effortful stroke of its wings that sent another blast of foul air down into Jemel's face.

  He watched the ghuls, and the men they carried; he saw them suddenly stretch their beating wings wide and soar, rising like vultures on an uplift of air.

  He felt his own ghul do the same, and felt the change immediately. Flight was smooth and easy now, he wasn't being shaken flesh from bone. And there across the mountains was the margin of the Sands, his own country like a glimpse of blessing .. .

  He ought perhaps to call the djinni, try if it would wrestle him from the ghul and take him back. But his mind was working at last, catching up with his body: seven ghuls, and four men. At first he hadn't thought at all, he'd been as stiff and stupid as a rabbit in an eagle's claws. Then he'd assumed that he was of course a captive, a rabbit in an eagle's claws, being carried off to imprisonment or death.

  There was little sense in that, though — he had no value as a prisoner, and why delay his death? — and ghuls were notoriously slow of mind, slower even than he had been, and less likely to catch up. He thought the ghuls had been sent by 'ifrit, their masters, to collect whoever survived among the Dancers and the sheikh. Death defied foresight, they wouldn't know how many. He thought they had seen men in Sharai robes, running from the Parries; if those big horse-eyes were sharper than they looked, they might have checked for maimed hands, missing fingers.

  He thought they had seized him alongside those he chased, mistaking him for just another Dancer; and now were carrying him to wherever the Dancers were being sent. Out of the valley, and into the Sands: he didn't understand it, but no matter.

  He had a right grip yet on the Patric bow, and arrows in his quiver. He knew he could trust the arrows, where the abandoned scimitar had betrayed him. These long glides gave him a chance to aim; the ghul s tight grip held him steady.

  It might of course realise what he was doing, and simply let go. If it did, he would shriek for Esren and see what befell, whether he did. But he thought the ghul would not open its claws. Dull terror and enforced obedience, the stone in its tongue — he was sure that it had one — would keep it numbly on its course, whatever he did.

  He hoped.

  Without his feet on solid ground, he couldn't draw the bow as it was meant to be drawn, standing and a full arm's draw to the ear. Sharai bows were far shorter, lighter in weight, meant to be used on horse or camelback; that was his skill, and he thought he could replicate it even in a ghul's grip, while his blood still tingled and his body felt steel-sprung, inexhaustible.

  He held the bow horizontally against his locked left arm, and drew it to the chin. With his first shot, he thought his strength and eye would be good enough, he'd been shooting from the saddle all his life; he loosed at the nearest of the Dancers and saw his arrow drift wide, far wide and fall uselessly lost to the sand below.

  One he could afford; more would come expensive. He worked another carefully out of the quiver and nocked it to the string, puzzled and thinking hard. He'd missed by so much, an unblooded boy could have done better. As an unblooded boy, he had certainly done better from his first day with a bow.

  He had stood on towers and on clifftops, and felt winds when the air below was not moving at all. Up here, he thought there must be a wind indeed: wind enough to give the ghuls lift, burdened as they were with the weight of men. His movement, the Dancer's movement, he had allowed for both - but the air between, that must be moving too, and fiercely. The jereth's fault, that he was unaware.

  He drew the bow again and this time made allowance, an estimate - a wild guess in truth, he could do no better - for a wind he could not feel. And loosed, and saw the arrow fly; and saw it strike, hard home into the belly of the Dancer.

  That man screamed, and writhed around the shaft; then something seemed to leave him quite abruptly, nothing that Jemel could see but it was not quite like a death, and the abandoned body slumped in the ghul’s talons.

  The ghul flew on, unheeding.

  The other Dancer, the sheikh, both had heard the scream; they stared around, saw the man dangling, saw the arrow.

  And could do nothing, they seemed not to have a voice between them to cry to the creatures that bore them, if crying would do any good. It was 'ifrit that controlled these beasts, Jemel thought, not the men they carried.

  He took another arrow, and a careful aim. It was less than a perfect shot; it struck not the Dancer, but the ghul above. The creature bellowed, and buckled, and fell out of the sky.

  Jemel watched it shrink below, and thought he saw it drop the Dancer as it fell. It was possible, he thought, that they would both survive the drop. Not likely, but possible. If so, though, they should still be separated and alone in the Sands, a long way from comfort or aid. No trouble to him, at least

  And then there was the sheikh, and Jemel would not kill that one with an arrow at a distance, though he had countless opportunities as they flew.

  They flew, and as they went he used his remaining arrows to pick off the other ghuls one by one, till there were only the two left, his and the sheikhs. They paid no attention to their nestmates' sudden disappearances, slaved as they were to a distant will, a single driving urge. There was a mission here, Jemel thought, and it was the sheikhs now to perform; the ghuls were not even messengers in this, only beasts for transport.

  The Sands were broken up with outcrops, ridges of black rock rising. It was hard to be sure of his ground from this unimagined angle, but he knew their direction from the sun and thought he could recognise what tribal lands lay below. He had travelled those lands once with Jazra and then again bare weeks ago, with and without Marron.

  Then he saw a landmark that was unmistakable, and he knew exactly where they were and where they were heading, though not why.

  The Pillar of Lives rose like a pinnacle above a ridge of rock.

  From a distance it might have been a natural finger of stone upthrust, one of the many bizarre formations that God had set in the desert, or else that wind and sand together had shaped in defiance of God's original creation. Come closer, though, and it could be seen to be man's work entirely, built of countless gathered stones into a needle-shape, an arch for an eye and then a high, high tower.

  Jemel knew it well, he had climbed it once and left his own contribution, his own stone at the top.

  It was the top of it now that the ghuls brought them to. Brought them and left them, dropping them heedlessly onto the uneven surface and then flying on without ever touching the rock themselves.

  Jemel was
the swifter to recover, if only barely; he would just have had the time to fling himself onto the sheikh's back and sink the man's own dagger into his ribs.

  He was curious, though; he wanted to see what the man did, why they had been brought to this of all places. The Pillar of Lives was a Sand Dancer creation, one stone for every Dancer who had ever taken the oaths and forfeited a finger in signature. It was also the place where Marron had first learned to control the Daughter, where he and Jemel had first stepped through the eye into the land of the djinn.

  The sheikh got to his feet, with never a glance towards Jemel. He walked the few paces to the pillar's centre, where a few stones rose above the general level as though in a cairn. Topmost of those was the one that Jemel himself had laid there, one that he had brought back from the other world and carried up here in defiance of the Dancer Morakh and everyone else, in defiance of the world it had felt at the time; and it was that stone that the sheikh reached to lift.

  He staggered, under more than the stones weight; his face was suddenly flushed and glistening with sweat, and his breath came in brutal gasps. He lurched towards the pillar's edge — and stopped, finding Jemel suddenly between him and the drop.

  'Take another,' Jemel said softly. 'You can cast down any stone else, you can dismantle the Pillar entirely and consign every man that helped to build it into hell, for all I care - but not that stone. That's mine, my oath, and it stays here until my word is broken. Put it back.'

  The sheikh seemed not to understand the words, not actually to hear them; his expression didn't change, until he set down the stone quite carefully at his feet. Then the twisted pain left his features, and they fell into a neutral, assessing stare.

  For a moment his eyes seemed entirely black, and Jemel couldn't suppress a shiver.

  Then the sheikh drew a scimitar, and Jemel laughed.

  'Those don't work,' he taunted, 'didn't you know? They cut, but it doesn't keep. Besides, you and I, we have a promise to meet. I have your knife, you have mine

  The sheikh responded not at all to that, only moving forward with the wary confidence of a skilled swordsman. Better than skilled today, Jemel thought: inhumanly strong, inexhaustible, as the Dancers were.

  As he was himself, today.

  But he had no sword to meet and match the sheikh's blade, only a heavy knife that he found ill-balanced and unnatural in his hand. This couldn't be a fight. He tossed the knife in his hand, and then from one hand to the other, testing the weight of it and its balance in flight; then he took the blade between his fingers and cocked his arm, cocked all his body in readiness to throw.

  An alert man, a watchful man can dodge a thrown knife, if he sees it thrown. Less easy from this close distance, perhaps, but the sheikh was alert, watchful, would be abnormally fast. Jemel feinted once, twice; the sheikh swayed side to side, never fully committed, eyes never leaving the hand that held the knife.

  Then Jemel made his move. One more feint and he threw not the knife but himself: he rolled forward over the cobbles while the sheikhs arms were both stretched out to the sides, while his scimitar was so far out of line. Rolled inside the reach of that scimitar and came neatly to his feet like a tumbler at a fair, with the knife gripped by its haft now and the blade a bare hand s-span from its owner's chest.

  A bare hands-span, and then not so much; then nothing at all, less than nothing, buried its own length deep between his ribs.

  Jemel thought he would not recover from that. He twisted the blade in the wound in any case, for satisfaction's sake; and saw more than the life-light die in the sheikh's eyes. He saw a wisp of black smoke eddy from his lips and seem to quest a moment before it dissipated into the heat of the desert day.

  Jemel threw the body over the edge after he had stripped it of anything valuable, silver rings and ornaments, a buckle of gold. Then he restored his rock to its place on the cairn's height and stood staring at it for a while, wondering what was its importance here; remembering how Esren would not come near any rock fetched to this world from the other, for fear of being trapped again as it had been in the Dead Waters.

  When he was tired of puzzling over that he gazed west and southerly, feeling the jereth's edge begin to fade now, so that his sight was little better than it ever was. That was very good, though, and this was a high spot, and the desert air was clear, he would see someone coming from a distance, from a great distance off. Whether it was a figure running or a figure flying by a djinni s courtesy, he would see it against the sand or against the sky, so long as he was looking. So he would look, and so he did, and gave not a thought to leaving this place, to seeking water or shelter as any man of sense would have done. He looked for someone to come, and when he was tired of straining his eyes to see a dot that was not there, he turned back to his stone again and looked at that, and the puzzle of it.

  Jemel had dropped the flask after he had drained it. Julianne picked it up after he had left.

  A last sticky dribble had accumulated in the bottom. Julianne was curious but reluctant; Elisande insisted; the flask was at last uptilted, and the residue dripped out onto Julianne's waiting tongue. One precious, cherished moment to linger over the taste of it in her mouth, and she swallowed.

  Elisande was there, at her side and somehow inside her also, both at once. She felt her like a sprite, a spirit of mischief: wicked but not malign, alien but welcome, tender and sharp and surprising.

  Then Elisande touched the jereth to life inside her, such a tiny drop of it there was, and it was like touching fire to the finest tissue, a flame that overswept everything at a gasp, except that it left no harm where it had passed. Rather it lingered, consuming only what was drab or weak or tired within her. She felt unexpectedly well, and better than well; she felt bright and clear, both as sparkling and as strong as the water in the river: fresh from a mountain spring, deep and full of character, understanding the darkness and breaking into light.

  She felt Elisande slip outside her skin again, and could almost have gone with her, simply for the fascination of the thing. She thought she could see how it was done now, she thought she could do it herself at need. Another time, though: for now she had her own whole body to explore. She felt as though she'd barely been here before, as though she'd lived all her life in purdah and was suddenly free of the harem and all a busy city lay before her.

  She became aware that Elisande was looking at her a little doubtfully, a little quizzically; she laughed, and found it unexpectedly hard to stop laughing.

  ‘I’m sorry,' she said, chuckling still. 'This is... a revelation.'

  Elisande shook her head. 'And all this time we've just been using it as a drink. Think how much we've wasted ... But no one ever told us. Can we use that as excuse?'

  'Sweetheart, I don't believe that anyone knew. Even the Sharai who brewed it. Jemel was - startled, wouldn't you say?'

  'Mmm. Jemel had a flaskful. If it's done this to you, what in the world has it done to him?'

  'And where's he gone, and what's he doing with it? I thought that djinni of yours had taught you not to ask questions. There's no point in them - or no point in putting them to me. I can't give you answers.'

  'Are you sure? Have a look, see if you can't spot him. He went north, and he's chasing after Marron.'

  The suggestion was absurd. However much the valley was laid open around them like a bowl, however much the war was displayed in smudgy smoke and distant figures' manoeuvrings, it would be impossible to tell individuals at this distance, which figure was who. Hard enough, almost impossible to say that those to the north there were Ransomers, hard beset by 'ifrit...

  Except that it wasn't impossible at all, now that she looked more carefully. Those were clearly Ransomers, the dress was unmistakable, and the way they fought. She could see that as clearly as she could see Sieur Anton, filthy with blood and work, standing high on a mound of dead horses and exhorting his troops to another greater effort, she could almost hear his voice ...

  It wasn't possible, and
yet she was certain. She could see what forms the 'ifrit had taken, where they had been evil shadow-shapes before, blurred and unreadable; she could see how the men had built themselves a crude defence-work of slaughtered horseflesh, which Sieur Anton bestrode with the artful balance of a natural sailor; she could see every separate man fighting for his life or his brothers' lives as they sought to keep the 'ifrit penned in. She wondered why the spirit-creatures didn't break out further down the wall, where there were no men to oppose them; and even as she wondered, she saw the wall bulge and fall at half a dozen sites at once, and a horde come forth.

  Julianne gasped at the size of that army, so many, enough to swamp all the defenders she could see. Those Ransomers must be lost, surely - unless the hard work of last night could pay off even at this late hour, this desperate time. There was a movement, a line of darker blue amid the blue smoke-haze horizon to the east; it broke through and rolled in across the plain, like a ripple of shadow sliding across the still surface of a pond. Behind it came another such ripple, and then another.

  Julianne stretched her new acuity of sight to another degree of impossibility, to confirm more than what she'd already guessed. Beside her, Elisande didn't need such clarity of vision to be equally certain.

  'It's the tribes, Julianne. The tribes are riding.' And then, a moment later, 'Can you see him?'

  It was Jemel she was supposed to be looking for, and she didn't misunderstand her friend for an instant; the question was can you see Marron?

  And when she answered, 'Yes,' she knew that she would be equally understood. She didn't need to add of course, Hasan is leading, where else would he be?

  'That's good,' but it wasn't, plainly it wasn't. Elisande wanted to be Jemel, invigorated and away to search for the boy they both loved. She'd had to give the best gift she had to her utmost rival; she'd had to give the last least trace of it to her friend, who would of course misuse it in searching for the wrong man entirely. The wrong men: Julianne turned and gazed southerly, searched all the southern slopes of the valley from riverspout to marshbeds, as far as she could see in every direction, far up into the trees beyond the palace, and still could not find her Imber. Jemel had suggested that he might be far to the west, beyond where the valley bent; she tried to bore her sight through the elbow of ancient rock, but even these new eyes would not oblige her there.