“Sister!”
It was Babak. I couldn’t see him; his voice came high and weak from the thick darkness beyond the dust-flecked light that streamed down through the shaft. I waded through frigid, thigh-high water toward the sound. Too slowly my eyes accustomed themselves to the dark. At last I found him, a small, hunched shadow against the rock.
“Are you hurt?” I asked. “Bleeding? Did you break anything? Tell me!”
He said no, but I felt him all over anyway. He did seem to have scraped himself—hands and forearms and maybe other places too. But he was whole. He was alive.
“You might have broken a leg,” I said, “you might have …” My throat stopped up; I put my arms around him and clung to him, just clung.
Shouting up above. Pirouz. Shouting our names, shouting promises, shouting threats. His reedy voice echoed against the rock, sounded very far away. I unclasped myself from Babak and peered back up the shaft. I could see him now, looking down at us, though his face was all in shadow, backlit by the morning sun.
I had been able to see nothing when I looked down; likely he could not see me either. But he kept calling down the hole, urging me to save poor little Babak, urging me to set him in the bucket so Pirouz could haul him up.
“No,” Babak said, very soft. “Please don’t.”
It was cool and still down here. Near the shaft, light rippled across the walls. I scooped up water in my cupped hands and drank greedily, then drank again. Pirouz must have heard something, because his importunings and threats grew louder, more insistent.
“I’ll climb down there and fetch you out,” he said, “I will!”
But he wouldn’t, I didn’t think—nor would Arman. Each would have to trust the other to draw him up again. Still, “We have to go up,” I said.
Babak clung to my arm. “No.”
“We’ll escape another time,” I said.
“No.”
It would be foolish to stay in the qanat. We had no food, no place to rest. Likely there would be a village near the end of the qanat. But how far? This shaft was deep, and the string of mounds had stretched out long across the desert. I had seen no end to them.
I looked up at Pirouz, listened to him plead and rant. There was something snug about watching him from this cool, quiet place, out of his reach and seeing. To put ourselves back into his hands again …
No.
The water made echoey, rippling, purling sounds as we waded downstream. Pirouz’s voice grew faint, and soon we could no longer hear it at all. I breathed in deep. The air was cool and smelled of fresh water: clean, metallic. The walls drew in close about us. Away from the shaft it grew dark. With one hand I felt my way along slippery stone; with the other I hooked fingers with Babak. I yearned for a lamp, but he was no longer afraid. Like a small, wild creature, he was comfortable in the dark.
But now there was light before us: a sheer column sifting down from above, a patch of shimmering gold in the water.
And a rope, with a loop at its bottom, hanging down into the shaft.
Pirouz. He must have gone ahead. He must have guessed that we would not push against the current, moving toward the deeper wells near the mountains, but would walk instead with the flow in the direction of shallower and shallower wells, hoping to reach the place where the water streamed out aboveground.
Babak stopped, tightened his grip on my hand.
“He can’t reach us here,” I said.
“He could come down the rope.”
“He won’t.”
As we drew near, I saw that this shaft was wider than the last. Someone was lying on the ground above, head hung over the lip of the opening. The sun dazzled my eyes, so that I could not make out his features, but I knew from the narrow head and scrawny beard that it was Pirouz.
He must have heard us, or perhaps he could see, for he began to call to us—to wheedle, to plead, to promise—that he would treat us with the respect due to our bloodline, that he would take us straightaway to Suren, that he wanted only a small reward, a mere pittance to fine folks the likes of our kin. I pushed the rope contemptuously aside as we passed. He hissed out a curse.
We moved on, into the dark. Babak’s grip on my hand eased.
“Are you certain he won’t come down here?” Babak asked.
“Yes,” I said, edging my voice with impatience to discourage him from asking again. True, it was likely that Pirouz would not trust Arman to haul him up. But he might ride along the row of qanat openings until he arrived at the place where the underground channel flowed out aboveground. He might enter the qanat and come to meet us, or wait until we emerged.
We were far from safe.
On we waded. The sky grew bright overhead in the shafts, merged in slow gradations from the cool blue of morning to midday’s glaring white. Pirouz offered us no more ropes; he had either given up or gone on ahead. The coolness of the qanat had long since gone grim, driving through skin and flesh to lodge in bone. Often now we stood in the columns of sunlight beneath the shafts, trying to wick light and warmth inside us. My feet were numb stumps in my waterlogged leather boots, and I shivered without cease.
“I’m hungry,” Babak said through chattering teeth. “I’m cold.” I picked him up and held him in the thin slice of sunlight. He was cold. Too cold.
We ought to have taken that rope. I knew it now. With Pirouz we would at least have stood a chance.
Maybe he was still up there, still near. At the next shaft I set down Babak and called up into the light. “Ahaii! Help us! Ahaii!” My voice echoed off the walls and trailed away.
I half expected Babak to object, to plead with me not to let Pirouz know where we were. But he only stood and shivered. His lips had gone blue.
No one answered my call.
I took Babak’s hand, trudged ahead. At every shaft I shouted, going through the motions, now without hope. Before long I had no strength left for shouting.
Soon Babak could walk no longer. I picked him up, slogged wearily on. I could feel death closing in about us, whispering in the water, echoing against the stone. I could feel it beating its soft wings against my cheeks.
I began to pray—first to the Wise God, then to the various gods my mother used to pray to, and then to all the gods at once.
I had doomed us. By refusing the rope, and before that …
Zoya had been right. She had done us a favor, selling Babak to the Magus. We would never have survived on our own, away from the City of the Dead, with the king’s Eyes and Ears searching. If only I had not foolishly gone with Pirouz, we wouldn’t be facing death in this qanat and might still have a chance at Palmyra.
And before that … Babak’s dreams. I had known it was a sin to sell them.
And Suren.
Fearing that the king’s men would force him, by means of pain …
I stumbled, caught myself.
By means of pain …
My feet slowed; they dragged against the bottom of the qanat. They stopped. I leaned my head against the cold, damp wall.
Who do you serve? … We’re more alike than you think.
No.
Remember who you are.
Who was I, then?
A fool who dreamed old dreams of nobility and consequence but in truth would never again have either.
By means of pain …
No, worse than a fool. Worse even than Zoya.
My knees buckled. I sank down into the water. It rose to my waist, numbing me with cold.
“Sister?”
Babak set his hands on my face; I could feel the warmth of his breath. Slowly I forced myself to rise, began to walk again. For now all that mattered was walking, placing one frozen foot before the other.
After a time that seemed at once like forever and like no time at all, Babak lifted his head from my shoulder, his body shot through with alertness. “Listen,” he said.
I stopped. Set him down.
And there it was, so faint I could barely winnow out the sound of it fro
m the soft, steady ripple of the channel. A water sound—not flowing, but a swish … swish … swish, echoing the swish we made as we waded. It did not cease when we stood still, as an echo would do. It kept on.
It seemed to be coming from the direction in which we traveled.
“What is it?” Babak asked.
“I don’t know.” It was constant, neither hastening nor slackening. Coming nearer, though. Coming this way. No clopping sounds, as a donkey or goat would make. Lions, I reassured myself, did not like water. Would never walk through a qanat. And there was a two-leggedness to this sound—one swish, another swish—that said man.
“Is it Pirouz?” Babak asked.
“I don’t know.” I groped for his hand, took it in mine. So cold. “But even if it is, we can’t stay here any longer. We’ll have to go with him.”
“But—”
“We must.”
We began to walk toward the sound again.
The light, when first I saw it, was an oval that flickered and bobbed.
Torchlight.
It divided now into two bright splotches—one in the air, one rippling below, mirrored in the water.
Babak tugged on my hand, signaling me to stop, and I did, for a moment. But the light pulled at me.
My first clear sight of him was sudden, as he rounded a slight bend in the qanat. I had an impression of solidness. Of relentlessness. He seemed taller than I, but not so tall as Pirouz or Pacorus or Giv. He was a youth, probably near my own age.
He stopped. “Who are you, then?” he asked. “Why are you here?”
Such easy questions—and yet, too difficult for me.
“I’m Koosha,” he said. “Son of Ardalan, of the Village of the Red Mountain. We heard you call.”
CHAPTER 29
KOOSHA
He stooped down and held his torch before Babak’s face. Babak blinked in the sudden brightness. Koosha stood, shrugged off his cloak, held it out. I picked up Babak and wrapped it around us both. The cloth was unusually thick and soft, and it had a comforting smell, of animal sweat and leather.
“Come along, then,” Koosha said, and when I did not move, he repeated, “Come.”
I followed. I knew nothing about him—whether or not he was allied with Pirouz or the king’s Eyes and Ears, whether he would prove to be friend or foe. But we could stay no longer in the qanat. Besides, there was something about him, this Koosha. His eyes, when they caught mine in the torchlight, had seemed thoughtful and still. He seemed like someone I might trust.
Still, I had misjudged before.
He led us back the way he had come, his light dancing on the rough-hewn walls and gliding across the water, until we arrived at another shaft, where he pulled out a sheep’s horn and blew a long, low note. The qanat rang with it, as if we stood within a giant bell. “Help’s coming,” he said, then asked again, “Who are you?”
The prospect of sorting out a safe reply weighed me down. My back ached from carrying Babak, who now hung lifeless as a sack of stones. I was weak from hunger and cold. Though the upper part of the shaft shone bright as molten gold, neither heat nor light penetrated to where we stood. I shrugged.
The question remained in Koosha’s eyes, but he did not ask again. He clasped his arms about himself—he, too, must be cold, without his cloak—and settled in to wait.
In some corner of my mind I knew that I ought to scent out whether he intended us good or ill. But it was too much to form the right questions in my mind, too much even to open my mouth to ask.
Before long I heard voices approaching, then a shadow blacked out part of the sunlight above. A man. Someone Koosha seemed to know.
“Did you find them, then?” the man asked.
“Aye, two bo—” Koosha turned to gaze at me, and I couldn’t fathom his look. “Two of them. Savage cold, they are.”
There was more calling back and forth, then a rope shivered down the shaft. Koosha began to tie a loop at the bottom. “’Tis my father and my uncle up yonder,” he said. “Coming home, we heard you call. We were trading in the towns north of here, trading cloth. The cloth of our village is savage soft.” He turned back to the knot, finished it, and tugged on the rope. It occurred to me that he was trying to make us easy with him. To help us trust him.
“So who’ll go first, then?” Koosha asked.
“We will go together.”
He shook his head. “Nay, it isn’t safe. Nothing to anchor the rope. You must go one at a time.”
“Babak.” I jostled him in my arms to wake him. He looked up sleepily as I settled him within the loop. “They’re going to take you out now. Hold on to the rope.”
He clung to my neck. “No. I want to stay with you.”
“I’m coming up next, never you fear. Let go of me now.”
“Is Pirouz there?”
“No,” I said, with a good deal more certainty than I felt. “Now, let go.” Forcibly I pried his hands from around my neck. He let out a piercing wail. “Cling tight to the rope!” I cried. “Hold on!”
He grasped it, his gaze fixed down upon my face as he rose up and up, as if, were he to glance away, some thread that bound us together would snap. So lonely, he looked, dangling from that rope in the blue black gloom of the qanat. It could pull out your heart by the roots.
Someone spoke to him from above. He straightened, looking up, and in the arch of his back I read hope. Voices. Hands reaching down from the light. And then Babak’s voice, very calm.
He would not be calm, I thought, if Pirouz were there.
The rope slithered down again. I returned Koosha’s cloak and slipped into the loop, holding on tight as daylight bloomed overhead, as a wave of warmth beat upon my body. Three shapes against the white-hot sky: A stocky, smiling man with a beard streaked with gray. A worried-looking man. And Babak.
The stocky man wrapped his cloak about me. I sat holding Babak while the two men pulled up Koosha. They spoke softly among themselves, murmuring, murmuring.
I remember someone helping me to my feet. I remember a tent, a sleeping pallet. I remember lying next to Babak, letting the heat of the high desert thaw my bones.
When I awoke, it was dark. I sat up in alarm, saw that I was in a tent. I scanned it for Babak—then heard his voice, along with others, outside. All the past day’s events came back to me: Pirouz and Arman. The qanat. Koosha and his kinsmen. I lay tense and listening, fearful that Babak might have revealed something of who we were.
There was a rustic lilt to their voices, like Giv’s only more pronounced. One of them—Koosha?—seemed to be speaking of their donkeys, of how this one was gentle and that one pricklish. Then Babak told how Gorizpa would purse her lips when you asked her to do something unwelcome, how she would swivel one ear round in the direction of his voice or mine.
The tightness inside me eased. Babak could sense things about people. If he was so easy with these men … Well, it proved nothing. But it was a good sign.
When I came out into the dusk, they all turned to look: Babak and Koosha, by the donkeys; the other two men, by the fire. I expected Babak to run to me, but after a glance he returned to what he had been doing, feeding one of the donkeys. “Babak?” I said. He indulged me with a cool smile. I stared at him, reminded of Suren, who, when younger, had been content to play with me only until the older boys let him join them.
But Koosha abandoned the donkeys, trotted over to me, and asked if I was feeling well. “Yes,” I said. “Much better.”
The stocky man now stood and introduced himself. There was an air of gravity about him, of steady strength, tempered by sadness. His voice was low and sure. He was Ardalan, of the Village of the Red Mountain. And this, the worried-seeming man with deep furrows graven in his brow beside the bridge of his nose, this was his brother, Kouros. “My son Koosha you have met,” Ardalan said. I started to thank them—for the rescue, for the shelter—but Ardalan waved it aside. “Babak has been telling of your capture and your escape. He’s saying you belong to a Magus
.”
Belong!
I almost told him my father’s name, and of our whole noble lineage down to the early Parthian princes. But I clamped my lips shut and nodded.
“Will he be sending a man to search for you, then?” Ardalan asked. “This Magus?”
I considered. Yes, Melchior valued Babak—for his dreams, if nothing else. “I believe he will. One of them is said to have skill at tracking. But the wind swept away all trace of us.”
“A good tracker,” Ardalan said, “can follow a trail despite the wind—though it may take him longer.”
“But the men who abducted us might search for us as well.”
“And so we’ll keep a lookout, then,” Ardalan said.
“Father says we’ll bide here a couple of days,” Koosha said, “so the Magus’ll have time to find you, and after that—”
Ardalan broke in. “After that, we shall see.”
*
They fed us modestly but well: bread and cheese, date cakes and olives. The next morning, after the men had made their devotions to the Wise God, Koosha asked Babak if he would like to help gather thornbush for the fire. Babak jumped to his feet.
“Wait!” I said. “He is weak. He’s … he’s been ill.” I stopped, hearing the pleading in my voice. What was wrong with me? I must remember to behave as a brother would, not as a sister.
“He likes to help,” Koosha said simply, and continued on his way. Babak went tripping after. Koosha stopped and pointed out something in the distance; Babak looked up at him with adoring eyes. And Suren came back to me so strongly—Suren as he used to be, when he was willing to teach me, when I thought he knew everything.
They moved ahead together, Koosha’s hand on Babak’s shoulder. Darkness filled me, a kind of loneliness and shame. Not wanting to be left behind, I tagged along.
We did not stray far, lest Pirouz should appear. But there was plenty of thornbush; even Babak gathered a load nearly as large as he was and proudly dragged it back to the encampment.
Susan Fletcher - Alphabet of Dreams Page 13
