The exodus had begun from Gaffar’s camp, and he was worried. Yet he was afraid to go, an inarticulate fear. He knew that he and Geyl would have to leave eventually, he even told her so, but they kept putting it off. She did not want to go either, and he feared losing her unless they stayed. As the food ran ever thinner, leaving was the only thing they ever talked about; but inertia held sway, and they could not summon up the resolution to go.
Finally, one night, Gaffar found himself returning home empty-handed; his foray had not turned up a scrap to eat. This decided him once and for all: He would take Geyl by the hand and they would leave the doomed camp. They would make a life for themselves on the open road.
With that decision hot in his mind, he reached the camp and found it destroyed by the Tnemghadi.
Everything had been trampled under their horses’ hooves. The hovels made of hide or branches had been torched; some of them were still smoking quietly. The campsite was strewn with mangled bodies, left right where they’d fallen. No one would bury them; they would rot in the sun.
Gaffar stood frozen for an endless moment. What he had so carefully decided was shattered, but he could not make the effort to reassemble anything in his mind. His eyes dumbly scanned across the scene .of carnage. He could hear moans, and in the moonlight, here and there, a limb would weakly move.
He simply could neither absorb it nor do anything about it. He did not shake or weep. He did not scream out Geyl’s name, he did not search for her among the dying injured. She might have been whimpering for help at his feet, but all he could do was look on with blank eyes, and then he turned away and kept on walking down the road.
Gaffar would someday come to understand what he had done that night, in walking away from the wrecked encampment and from the people, including his own Geyl, who might have been salvaged from it. That night all faith, all love, all sense of humanity, were cauterized out of him by bitter fire.
That dark night was long, but not endless. Gaffar grew away from it, but he did not forget the night he had left those people, and his Geyl, and left his own faith among their mangled bodies.
Those poor souls of the camp could never be redeemed. But the same was not true of Gaffar’s spirit.
16
“KIRDAHI!”
The tall, moustachioed dungeon guard heard his name called out as he plodded through the corridors. As a rule, the guards ignored the howlings of the prisoners. But the one who had called out was Jehan Henghmani; and Kirdahi stopped.
“Kirdahi—I want to talk to you.”
“You do, eh?” The guardsman attempted condescending sarcasm, but it was half-hearted. Despite the bolted door separating him from the prisoner, Kirdahi, like everyone, feared Jehan Henghmani.
“What’s your first name, Kirdahi?”
“What do you need to know that for?”
“Is it a secret? Just tell me your name, that’s all.”
“It’s Jephos,” the guardsman answered grudgingly.
“Jephos Kirdahi . . .” Jehan pronounced the name slowly, exaggerating the stress on the final syllable. “So now I know the full name of the man who murdered my daughter Tsevni.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Surely you remember. It was only a couple of years ago when you cut her down with your knife. When you killed my little daughter.”
“It was really Grebzreh,” Kirdahi argued, chilled by this sudden mention of the nearly forgotten detail. “I did only what he ordered. She was going to die one way or another; what did it matter which one of us held the sword?”
“But it was you, Jephos Kirdahi. And for that, I’m going to kill you.”
Kirdahi sucked in his breath.
“I killed your executioner, and a couple more of you dogs since then. I haven’t gotten you yet, Jephos Kirdahi, but you’ve just been lucky up to now. Next to Silver Nose, you’re the one I most want to get my hands on. Silver Nose always keeps his distance, but you can’t do that, and one of these days, I’m going to get you. However, you do have an alternative.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look, Kirdahi—I want vengeance, but what I want much more than that is freedom. You can give me freedom, and if you do, your crime will be expiated. My hatred for you will be replaced by gratitude. What does it benefit either of us to remain enemies? Let us in fact become allies. In here I may be nothing, but on the outside, I can be everything. So join me—for your own sake.”
Kirdahi pondered this. “If I help you to escape, what’s to stop you from turning around and taking your revenge on me anyway?”
“You are shrewd, but think on this: I want more than just freedom. I want everything, do you understand? Everything! I will need an army—literally. I will need tough men like you. But if you fear me that much, then you needn’t come with me. Surely if you fear my vengeance, you are better off if I am gone from here; so just give me the key.
“You see, Kirdahi, your choice is pretty simple. You will either help me, or you will die. I swear it.”
The guard snickered. “You swear to kill me, yet you expect me to set you free. No thanks. I’ll take my chances with you locked up.”
Kirdahi had heard enough. He walked swiftly away, glad to put some distance between Jehan and himself. The cell door, and Jehan’s chains, provided Kirdahi with little sense of safety; the man trembled.
Afterward, Kirdahi sweat cold buttons every time he passed that cell, and Jehan Henghmani even haunted his dreams. The worst of it came whenever it was Kirdahi’s task to work the torture on Jehan. Yet somehow, the guardsman couldn’t think of running away. He was bound into Jehan’s nightmare as tightly as Jehan himself.
They all were prisoners: Jehan, the silver-nosed Grebzreh, the guards. Kirdahi sometimes thought it was an insane dance-macabre being performed by the warden and Jehan, the warden tearing up Jehan’s flesh, but tearing up his own soul. Grebzreh became so maniacal in his obsession that the guards began to fear him almost as much as they feared Jehan. The nightmare seemed endless and all-consuming.
Jehan’s threat to Kirdahi was no idle one. The day came when the guardsman clumsily approached too close.
Quick as a beast of prey, Jehan seized Kirdahi’s throat in his teeth. The man screamed and flailed. Others rushed to rain blows upon the prisoner, but he ground his teeth around his victim’s larynx. Finally, one of the guards pulled Kirdahi away by the shoulders; Jehan was left with part of Kirdahi’s torn neck in his mouth. The guardsman was lucky to escape with his life.
He was the guard, and Jehan was the prisoner—but Kirdahi knew that it was he himself who was the condemned man.
Soon afterward he came in the dead of night to Jehan’s cell with a key.
It was not quite dawn; the grass was wet and the sky streaked pink and gray. Along part of the horizon there was still blue darkness, and a few stars glimmered.
Silhouetted against that sky were the great blockish walls, bulking purple-black, the walls of Ksiritsa, the City of the Dragon. Built by three hundred thousand Urhemmedhin slaves, those walls had endured for seven centuries. Unconquerable, they loomed as a cliff against the early morning sky.
Behind the walls, its tallest buildings peeping up, was the city itself. It was barely stirring at this hour, a slumbering behemoth.
The sun was coming up, splashing white and crimson on the city, showing up its angularities of planes of light and stark black shadows. The hill behind the walls was coming into view, and rising from it were the spires and towers of the Palace of the Heavens. They seemed so far away that they were not within the realm of Man. On those marble palace walls and copper roofs, the beginning sunlight burned with fiery incandescence.
Jehan Henghmani looked back upon this dazzling scene. Here, he had spent three years that seemed forever. He had seen this vista only once before, when he was carried up the road tied like a b
undle in an open cart; and he hadn’t imagined that he’d ever see it, or any other sight, again.
But now he was looking on it once more, leaving it. He was still alive; alive again, and more than ever.
He kept his gaze on the glowing city. The vision was arresting, and for more than just its beauty.
“Ksiritsa,” he pronounced solemnly. He held his arm out toward the city, saluting it, and taking leave of it.
And then, wondering if he would ever look upon its walls again, Jehan Henghmani turned from gloried Ksiritsa.
Book Two
Zidneppa
1
JEHAN HENGHMANI LOOKED with a glittering eye upon the green hills of Taroloweh.
Only one eye was left to him after his thousand days of horror in the dungeon. Looking upon these hills, a landscape once so comfortably familiar, it was difficult to imagine that the last three years had really happened.
But there were plenty of souvenirs attesting to those years’ reality. He had literally left part of himself at Ksiritsa, and Ksiritsa had left itself with him. The pain was not left behind; it lashed him with every step he took, burned him every waking moment and assailed his nights. There was no help for it; he would suffer as long as he might live.
And if he’d left part of his very flesh at the Dragon City, so too was there part of him buried in these soft hills. “Three years ago,” he said, “I was a man to reckon with in these hills. I had an army of a hundred, and the fear of the entire province.”
“And now,” said Jephos Kirdahi, “you have nothing.”
“No. It was then that I had nothing. Now, I have everything.”
“I don’t see what you mean.”
“Not even with your two eyes? But when I had two eyes, I didn’t see either.”
Kirdahi shrugged and squatted in the grass, to watch Jehan stand like a monument with his eye fixed on the horizon.
Strangely, its magnetism for Jehan was heightened by the way he’d once raped this land. Throughout the years in the dungeon, these hills had pulled at him. He had dreamed of this day, and it had sustained him through the torment. And yet, to be once more in the hills of Taroloweh seemed very much a miracle, something he should never have dared hope for.
His hand encircled the purple landscape, and then he pointed. “In that direction lies Arbadakhar. And over there, Zidneppa, and the sea. We aren’t ready for them yet; but there is a village a few lim from here, named Sratamzar. It will do for now.”
Kirdahi nodded, and hefted up their sack of belongings. He had decided to follow Jehan with grave misgivings. This was to save his neck, lest his complicity in the escape he discovered. Out of fear, he had fled Ksiritsa, and he was likewise afraid to flee Jehan. Kirdahi was now an outlaw, and there was at least some safety in Jehan’s experience at outlawry. And he was afraid to run away, too, lest Jehan come after him.
Since the escape, Jehan had never mentioned Tsevni. While he had promised to absolve Kirdahi in return for setting him free, Jehan had never uttered the words of absolution. Kirdahi still feared the monster would kill him.
It was night when the pair arrived at Sratamzar, in the northeast corner of the province. The town was nestled along a dirt road between two hills, like a locket hung between a woman’s breasts. It had no street but the dirt road; Sratamzar was scattered desultorily on either side of it. The town had very little, but it did have a run-down inn.
They knocked at its door, and it was opened by a white-haired old cripple. What he saw was a pair of road-worn men, matted with yellow dust. Their clothes were threadbare and faded, patched in places, their faces burnt dark by the sun and grown with rough beards. Their only possessions were in a small sack slung over Kirdahi’s shoulder.
But even so, Jehan was a sight to behold. Enormous in size, his face a labyrinth of mutilations, he was an apparition that would have stricken the innkeeper speechless, even had there never been a Jehan Henghmani. And of course, Jehan Henghmani had not been forgotten in Sratamzar. The old innkeeper’s eyes bulged.
“What are you gawking at, old fool?” snapped Jehan.
“N-nothing, sir. I’m sorry.”
“My name,” Jehan said, “is Brashir Atokhad, and my companion is Sahyid Rama. Do you have lodging for the night, or perhaps a few days?”
The innkeeper peered hard at “Brashir Atokhad,” studying the scarred features. Then he prostrated himself in a deep bow. “Yes, honored guests, it will be a privilege to give you the finest accommodations in our humble town, and without charge.”
“What are you babbling, old man? Honored guests? What an idea! You must be mistaken. We haven’t much money, but we will pay for our lodging.”
“Just as you wish, good sir, whatever you say. A room for each of you. And please tell me if there’s anything else you need?”
“A woman,” said Jehan.
“Yes, that can be arranged, certainly.”
“How much?”
“The youngest and the prettiest, only two tayel apiece.” “Good,” said Jehan.
Upstairs, Kirdahi came to Jehan’s room and grabbed him urgently by the arm. “What folly; you’re known here! The innkeeper recognized you. Some of the others in the inn have recognized you too, I’ll wager!”
“I hope so,” Jehan replied evenly.
“Then what’s the point of using false names?”
“I want these people to know who I really am; but my purposes must remain concealed. So, let them believe I want to hide my true identity. Whatever falsehoods people believe about me are to my advantage.”
“But word of your being here will reach the authorities!”
“Yes. But it should reach certain others first; criminals are always smarter than the authorities.”
“Who is it that you hope to meet?”
“We will know when they come. We’ll give it two days; if nothing happens, then we’ll move on.”
“But the Tnemghadi are sure to come after us, once they’ve got this lead.”
“I hope so. It mustn’t be suspected that I’m in the Emperor’s pay. I must convince people that I wasn’t set free to spy for the Tnemghadi.”
“Then what about me?” protested Kirdahi. “I am a Tnemghadi.”
“Yes,” said Jehan, with an enigmatic smile.
Later that night, there was a knock on Jehan’s door.
“I am Araxa,” came a female voice. “I was sent for.”
Jehan pulled her by the arm into his room. “I am Brashir Atokhad,” he said, but the girl made no reply; she was petrified to look at him in the candle-light. Never in her life had she seen anyone so huge, or so horrible a face. Her impulse was to turn and run, but she steeled herself, remembering what she’d been told about this special customer. While she thought the ogre might strangle her in his bed for sport, she was too afraid of him to run away.
So, stiff with fright and revulsion, Araxa sat down on Jehan’s bed and removed her clothes. Then she lay back and closed her eyes, hiding her clenched hands beneath her. She lay rigid as Jehan came to her.
And he came at once, and in a moment took his great body off her. He’d had no contact with any woman since unwillingly defiling his daughter Maiya. All he could think about, suddenly, was Maiya.
He shoved Araxa’s clothes into her hands, together with a silver coin.
“Is that all?” she asked, perplexed.
“Don’t ask me questions. Just go.”
The girl hastily donned her clothes, and then looked at the coin Jehan had given her. It was a pastari piece, which he’d robbed from some traveler.
“But this is too much money,” she argued.
“Just go!” Jehan said with barely contained fury.
Araxa hurried out.
2
IN THE MORNING, Jehan and Kirdahi came from their rooms into the modest main hall of the inn. A
few of the wooden tables were occupied by people eating breakfast; a pair was playing cards and another man was stretched out asleep. Jehan took a table and motioned Kirdahi into a seat.
The moustachioed man leaned forward and whispered, “Well, what now?”
“We are going to have some food, and then we are going to play dominoes.” And indeed, after a meal of rice cereal with gaar’s milk, the innkeeper was asked to provide the dominoes. A well-used set was brought out, with cracked, stained, faded tiles.
The pair spent the day playing dominoes, breaking only for another meal late in the afternoon. Hardly a word was exchanged between them. Only whenever someone new entered the room would their eyes flicker up briefly.
Travelers came in and out, through the door and down the stairs, asking directions or seeking other information. A few came in to buy a meal; or to deliver stores of food, wine, candles, and other necessaries; or just to pass the time of day with the old innkeeper. Jehan glanced at all of them, only to return his attention to the dominoes. But all of them looked long and hard at the huge, disfigured guest. They stared at him, stopped cold with boggled eyes, but no one dared speak to him.
“Don’t turn around,” Kirdahi whispered once. “That man who just came in is talking to the innkeeper in a low voice, and he pointed at you.”
“Good,” Jehan said, and put another domino down on the table.
So went their first day in Sratamzar.
On the morning of the second, they came down once more into the main room. The card-playing pair and a few others of the previous day had left. But there were four new arrivals: one who sat alone, and a trio sitting at a table with two conspicuously vacant chairs.
These three were the men for whom Jehan was waiting.
One of them, a swarthy fellow with unkempt hair, was a stranger. But the second, Jehan knew well: he was Hnayim Yahu, a heavyset thug who had been a member of Jehan’s old bandit army. This Yahu was a violenceprone bully with a crude personal magnetism, whose loyalty to Jehan had been nevertheless deep-seated.
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