A Man of His Word

by The Complete Series 01-04 (epub)

  And out of it. As Wind along the Waste,

  I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.

  Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (§29-30, 1879)

  ELEVEN

  Wilderness were paradise

  1

  “This bread is remarkably good, Fooni,” Azak said. He wiped one last fragment of bread around his bowl, popped it in his mouth, and simultaneously belched loudly. Inos winced. Such vulgarity was a compliment in Zark, she knew, but there were some local customs that she found harder to accept than others.

  Azak and Inos, Kade and little Fooni—the four of them were sitting cross-legged on rugs, on the ground outside their tent. First Lionslayer and his family. The sun was setting, the temperature falling like a stooping falcon. The tents had been pitched in the lee of a steep rocky bank, but even there they all flapped and surged in the wind that howled through the pass. The night would be noisy; but Inos never had trouble sleeping these days.

  Apparently Fooni was not going to comment on the bread.

  “How fast it cools off!” Inos said, pulling her coat closed and fastening it. By day Gaunt Pass was a furnace, the rocky walls tossing the sun’s heat back and forth. By night it felt like winter in Krasnegar. At sunset everyone donned warm mountain garb, heavy garments that Elkarath had purchased in the little foothill settlements during the past few weeks. She wondered if he would haul them all the way through the Central Desert to Ullacarn, or sell them again on the west side of the mountains. The big fleecy boots she had pulled on a few minutes ago might have crossed the range a dozen times already.

  “Did your mother teach you to make such good bread, Fooni?” Azak inquired.

  Inos shot him a puzzled glance. Why this sudden interest in cooking? He normally never bothered with trivia. The bread had not been specially good. In fact it had been poor stuff, flat and tasteless, made from a gritty meal paste spread on hot rocks. That and goat stew were standard fare for the camel folk. Tonight there had also been some sour wine as a special treat.

  Hard bread and sour wine, distant laughter and the clanking of camel bells, braziers twinkling and a cithern twanging—these things were all very familiar to her now. Watch out for snakes in the bedding and scorpions anywhere; she was learning. Hair full of dried sweat, air full of flies. She could handle a camel quite adequately and erect a tent no floppier than her neighbors’.

  Fooni was scowling and still saying nothing. Fooni was a miserable little pest, and Inos was planning to be rid of Fooni very shortly. She had served her purpose and soon could be sent off to travel with her great-grandfather, who would not have to tolerate her snide remarks and snappy temper.

  Eastward, the first stars twinkled above blood-red crags. Gaunt Pass had turned out to be spectacular beyond Inos’s farthest expectations. For days the caravan had been trekking over scrubby hills and through barren valleys, gradually losing altitude as it neared the western slopes of the Agoniste range, and yet all those hills and valleys had been mere wrinkles in the floor of the pass itself. On either hand a dreamscape of real mountains soared up in incredible cliffs and faces of rock to far-off icy peaks. The sheer scale of the scenery had astounded her. Her eye refused to comprehend it. It was a land for Gods, under a sky immeasurably huge.

  Of course Kade enthused about this interesting experience, as she always did about anything, and for once Inos was inclined to agree with her. All her life she would remember this journey.

  Everywhere were signs of a long and bloody history. Ruins of cities long forgotten sprawled in the mouths of tributary valleys; the wind wailed around derelict remains of castles on jutting spurs of the mountains. No one lived here now except goat herders, and perhaps bandits. She would have liked to have explored some of the ruins, but the caravan must keep moving.

  If Azak slept at all, he must be doing so during the day, on his camel. If he did come to the tent, Inos never heard him. She suspected he prowled the campsite all night long. Early in the journey, he had worried only about petty pilfering in the settlements. In this lawless mountain land, all the lionslayers were becoming red-eyed and grumpy, and that was not from fear of fast-fingered village urchins.

  Another spectacular belch rang through the twilight.

  Inos discovered that her jaw had fallen open and she closed it quickly. That obscene noise appeared to have come from—

  “Yes, the bread was delicious,” Kade remarked softly.

  Azak raised one eyebrow. He looked at Inos, then at Fooni.

  “It wasn’t me made it,” Fooni muttered. “It was her!”

  Azak coughed. “Congratulations, wife. Quite excellent.”

  “I didn’t think it was much!” Fooni shouted. “Only bread! Too much salt! Any wife ought to be able to make better than that—my mother could! I can! What’s so wonderful about a woman grinding meal and making rotten bread?” She leaped to her feet and went running off.

  Inos watched her departure with satisfaction. “That child deserves a good spanking!”

  Azak chuckled. “Why? Was she responsible for this atrocious bread?”

  She glared. He grinned wickedly through his brigand’s red beard. She glared harder, he began to laugh, then they laughed together, and even Kade joined in with a chuckle.

  Inos had never heard Azak laugh in Arakkaran. Being a lionslayer must be less stressful than being a sultan. But this was her chance to dispose of the odious Fooni.

  “No, I made the bread. However, these petty tantrums of hers are becoming very wearing! She snaps and gripes all the time.”

  “Ah! But you must make allowances for her.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “Lionslayers are romantic figures to a child of her years. Me especially, of course.”

  “You mean she … That’s absurd! She’s far too young!”

  “No, she isn’t,” Azak said firmly.

  Inos choked. “Forgive me! I keep forgetting that you are an expert in such matters! I suppose you have bedded several girls of her age?”

  “Quite a few,” he agreed complacently.

  “Time for dishes!” Kade began gathering up the bowls and beakers in a hasty clatter.

  “I’ll do that, Aunt!”

  “My turn,” Kade insisted.

  “Come walk with me, Inos.” Azak rose, inhumanly tall against the sunset, holding out a hand.

  Inos hesitated, then accepted when she saw that he was wearing thick sheepskin gloves. Just for a moment, some trick of the twilight and the heavy clothes and she could have sworn he was a winter-garbed jotunn. Some jotnar had red beards. He pulled her up effortlessly, then he took off at a run, and she found herself being hauled at high speed up the bank, as if being towed by a horse, rocks rattling and rolling under Azak’s great boots.

  When they reached the crest the wind struck them like a flying iceberg, and Inos staggered. Azak transferred his grip to her elbow to steady her. Below them, in the shelter of the slope, the braziers of the camp were spread in a long line like a string of fire jewels. At their backs, the sunset was drawing to a peaceful conclusion on the peaks.

  “Idiots!” Azak said. “I tell them—and they camp all spread out like that! How can I defend them if they will not listen to common sense?”

  “Can’t the sheik make them?”

  “Bah! He just smiles. He does not seem to care. How he has survived this journey so many times, I cannot imagine. The Gods tolerate his follies, it would seem.”

  Inos shivered at the bite of the wind, watching the long grass and wispy bushes writhe, as if in pain. Kade was plodding over to the spring, going to wash the pots. That was an excuse for a gossip, of course, or she would have made do with sand. Bells jingled in the distance, where the hobbled camels grazed.

  “We’ve done it, haven’t we?” she said. “Three weeks? There can’t be any doubt now. Can there?”

  Azak was studying her face instead of the scenery. “I expect so. There are very few passes, so I thought she might look f
or us here. But we seem to have slipped by …” He shrugged himself into silence, and gazed up at the stars.

  “Why did you drag me up here?” she demanded, shivering.

  “Is Krasnegar colder than this?”

  She laughed. “This? There are times when you can spit ice in Krasnegar.”

  “Mmm,” he said, noncommittally.

  He did look like a jotunn in the twilight. It was his height, and the clothing. The distant peaks shone with ice, and ice also reminded her of home, although Krasnegar’s hills were nothing like these ranges. A great adventure, this, but she was homesick still.

  “Azak?”

  “Mmm?”

  “How long? When will we ever get to Hub?”

  “Why? Are you not enjoying the journey?”

  “Well, some of it. But I’m impatient! I hate this dawdling through Zark when terrible things may be happening. It’s taking so long!”

  He sighed. “I am enjoying it!” His grip on her elbow tightened. “Be patient, little one! The world moves slowly. The imperor may still not know anything about Krasnegar, unless the wardens have told him. Even the Imperial post takes weeks and weeks to cross the Impire. Armies rarely march more than eight leagues a day. You must learn to be patient.”

  Now it was she who said, “Mmm!” Then she asked again, “Why did you bring me up here? Because if you don’t have—”

  “To ask a question. Have you ever been in love, Inosolan?”

  Love? Startled, she stared at him, but he was gazing at the last glimmer on the distant peaks. Alarm bells began to clamor in her mind.

  “Once I thought I was. I’d been bewitched. I told you about Sir Andor.”

  “Just once?”

  “Well, puppy love, maybe. There was a boy I was very fond of, when I was young. The one Rasha copied for that apparition she sent to haunt me, the first night on the trail, remember?”

  Azak grunted. “I wondered why a stableboy upset you so much.”

  “Oh, no!” Inos said. “Don’t start that! That was no stableboy! I can handle stableboys. It was a wraith, or seemed to be. Don’t accuse me of—”

  “Fooni is not the only one who has been snappish lately.”

  “Well, you’re not getting enough sleep …” Mention of Fooni roused Inos’s temper again. The child herself was bad enough, and Azak’s suggestion that she was lusting after him was pure barnyard disgusting. “But talk to the sheik. Mayhap he will include her with your wages when we reach Ullacarn.”

  Azak turned to face her and took both her shoulders in his big hands. Huge hands, in their massive gloves. He stared intently at her for a moment and suddenly her heart started beating very hard.

  “Love is an impish notion,” he said. “It is not a Zarkian custom.”

  “I have noticed.”

  “I never thought it could happen to a djinn.”

  “I’m sure it doesn’t.”

  “Yes, it does. I have fallen in love, Inos. Imagine such a thing happening to a sultan of Arakkaran!”

  She dropped her eyes and said nothing. Oh, Gods!

  “You once told me you would marry a goblin if your people’s welfare required it.”

  “Er … Yes.”

  “You also said that any imp would be better than a goblin.”

  “I did?”

  “You did.”

  She kept her eyes down and hoped the gloom hid her blushes. His grip on her shoulders was almost painful.

  “How would you rank an imp and a djinn, Inosolan?”

  “Azak! This is madness!”

  “Yes, it is. But the poets say that all love is madness. The God of Lovers is the God of Fools, they say. Answer.”

  Answer how? Why had she let this take her unaware?

  Because the idea was so absurd?

  “Anything but a goblin,” she admitted.

  “So? A djinn also would be an outsider. Neither imps nor jotnar could object to a djinn. A royal djinn, Inos. A very suitable husband for a queen of Krasnegar.”

  “The climate would kill—”

  “Heat has not killed you.”

  She tried to imagine Azak in Krasnegar and it was impossible. He would go mad with boredom. Would he kill off the burgesses if they annoyed him? Would he try to buy their daughters?

  No, he wouldn’t. Azak was not a fool. He had obviously thought about this. Now she recalled how he had been asking a lot of questions about Krasnegar lately. He had also been laughing a lot, and smiling a lot, and cracking jokes. She should have guessed.

  And Kade must have, because Kade had been making some very odd remarks about Azak lately, very catty remarks for her.

  “You have a kingdom of your own. A duty of your own.”

  “Arakkaran has many princes. Krasnegar has only one queen.”

  Why had she not foreseen this? And none of her Kinvale training had explained how to handle a giant barbarian swordsman intent on wooing. Think, woman! Think!

  “What of your sons?”

  “They can take their chances, as I did. My father died when I was seven. He was poisoned.” After a moment, Azak added, “Or I could send for them, if you didn’t mind.”

  God of Fools! She was trembling, and his grip on her shoulders would tell him that. Marry Azak? He was a barbarian! A peerless specimen of manhood, maybe, but a killer. Ruthless. Deadly.

  “Azak, this is very sudden. I have never even considered such a possibility. It has never crossed my mind.”

  “Then why do you snap at Fooni so much?”

  Incredible arrogance! “Because she is a nasty, ill-mannered little slut. Not because of you, I assure you! I was snapping at her, as you put it, the first day we met.”

  “Yes.”

  Azak thought she was jealous of Fooni? Nothing she could say would change that—she had never met a man so stubborn … or maybe one … Was she fated always to consort with obstinate men? She shied away from that line of thinking, and that comparison.

  “What are you suggesting?” Her voice came out much too shrill.

  “That when we go before the wardens to ask for justice, we go as man and wife. My curse lifted, your throne restored. I will relinquish Arakkaran for the woman I love.”

  Love? How to explain the problem tactfully? There wasn’t any tactful way. Despite the chill of the wailing wind, she was sweating. “Love? Azak, Rasha’s curse has deprived you of—”

  He squeezed so hard that she yelped. His eyes seemed to flash in the dusk. His red beard bristled.

  “Do you think I don’t know the difference? Of course I need a woman. Desperately! I burn for the touch of a woman, my hands on her body, her flesh against mine. But what I feel for you is something else, something more, something I have never known till now. It is love! It is as the impish poets say, both joy and agony together. I can think of nothing else. I have eyes only for you. I am miserable except when I am with you. I will do anything, just to see you smile. This has never happened to me before.”

  Probably it had never happened because any other woman he had ever wanted had been his for the taking. Why had Inos not seen that this might happen? She had worried that she had no hold over Azak. Now she had too much of a hold over him. Love spurned could turn to hatred.

  “I have never met a woman like you, Inos!” He was almost shouting. “That day you rode Evil, I could not believe it. I had not known a woman could behave like that. Your courage, your spirit—” He released her shoulders. “Why do you think I came?”

  “Wh-what?”

  “To tell the wardens that there is a sorceress in Zark?” He sneered. “Do you think I could not have trusted Kar with that message?”

  “I …” Inos was speechless.

  “And do you think I would have trusted Kar with you?”

  Why had she not seen that? Blind, foolish, stupid—

  Azak sank down on one knee. “Inosolan, my beloved, will you marry me?”

  She muttered prayers to all the Gods. When had Azak last knelt to anyone? What would
he do if she refused? His intensity terrified her. He was a killer. He was capable of anything. She might learn to love a hard man, a fighter, but only if he had some gentleness in him somewhere. And some respect for her womanhood. Azak had neither. A djinn? Who would reign in Krasnegar—the queen or her husband?

  Azak’s arrogance had no limits at all. He knew he was the ultimate male. He would never understand a woman refusing such a mate.

  “Azak, when I marry, I must not jump into … I mean … Oh, Azak! Please stand up.”

  Reluctantly he rose, towering over her again.

  Trust in love! the God had told her.

  It was crazy, but it was also horribly logical. Azak was a perfect solution to Krasnegar’s problem. After all the trouble with legionaries, and perhaps with jotnar, the city would need a firmer rule than Holindarn’s. The ideal monarch would be strong, impartial, and experienced. Azak was all of those. Gods!

  Think, woman, think!

  “Azak, there are too many things we don’t know! Krasnegar may have been seized by Kalkor, or taken over by the Impire, or razed and butchered. The wardens may not want to help.” He started to speak and she shouted, “You expect me to marry a man who can’t even touch me? Who can’t kiss me, or hold my hand?”

  He groaned, as if in pain. “A promise—”

  “No! You are being unfair.”

  “Tell me that you care, then.”

  Not looking at him, Inos said, “I admire you. I am very grateful for all your help, and I promise I will think very hard about this. Anything more … I need time to think. Please, Azak?”

  He sighed, and shivered.

  “I shall start spitting ice soon. Let’s go down,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  He took her by the hand, and they started down the slope.

  There were weeks and months of desert ahead of her and Azak would be at her side all the way.

  She did not love Azak ak’Azakar. Not now.

  Could she learn to do so? Or could he persuade her? She had watched wooing done at Kinvale, she had seen maiden won against long odds. Hearts could be won, or won over. Love Azak? She did not think she had ever known love, not real love. Maybe if … but he had only been a stableboy. What would Foronod and Yaltauri have said to a stableboy! None of the eligible young men at Kinvale … Andor had been a delusion.