Aranthur was frustrated.
“You do not think I can do it?”
Vilna shrugged. “I do not think it is your duty. Your duty is here. I cannot command these people. You can. You are not a scout, not a lone hero. You are our centark.”
“They would take orders from you.”
“Not the Safian gentleman. Not Myr Tarkas. Not the Zhouian.” The Steppe man shrugged. “I know what I’m saying. Please believe me. We are deep in a hostile land, syr. We do not need to ‘muck about.’”
Aranthur grunted. But he remounted, and rode back to the others.
Jalu’d nodded at him, almost as if he’d heard every word.
“Tonight I will show you something. But now, we need to stay on this path.”
“What path?” Aranthur asked.
“The one at our feet. Look, it runs along this ridge, so that we cannot be seen from the east, and we can see anyone coming from the west. Follow me.”
Aranthur suddenly realised with a shock that Jalu’d was mounted on Ariadne, and his cheeks flushed.
“That’s my horse!” he spat.
Jalu’d smiled. “Ah. A fine animal. The best.” He shrugged expansively. “Your people said to take whichever horse I liked. I like this one.” His smile broadened into a clown’s grin. “Besides, you cannot own a horse. They have their own likes and dislikes, like people. She says—”
He gave a start and suddenly slid off the saddle.
“She says she belongs to you,” he said, all contrition.
Aranthur rolled his eyes. “We should follow this mountebank?” he asked Qna Liras.
Qna Liras looked tired. But he managed half a smile.
“Yes. There are many forms of power.”
Aranthur frowned, while Jalu’d grinned.
“Very well. And you may ride Ariadne—if she will have you.”
“You are the very soul of kindness, and your wisdom flows from your mouth like the rivers of Shariz,” Jalu’d said.
Sasan barked a laugh.
The column turned and started south along the ridge, and Sasan rose in his stirrups and trotted to Aranthur’s side.
“Shariz is at the edge of a desert,” he said.
Aranthur laughed. “Well, he’s got me pegged. That’s exactly how wise I feel.”
But Vilna merely nodded.
2
Southern Safi
The ridge grew higher, and still the ground below them was green. A hundred fields of barley and rye stretched out along a watercourse that was too straight to have been made by nature. But the ridge was arid, a taste of what awaited them.
’Asid reported that there were horsemen to the west.
Jalu’d knew where to find a trail, and where to find water. He led them south, over two deep gullies, and then down a third to a huge pool of clean water flowing over gravel. The walls of the gorge were white marble, and entirely carved in runes.
Sasan paused to run his fingers over the runes in wonder. Interspersed with the runes were glyphs—pictures and symbols. Aranthur saw them with something like awe.
“Old Varestan,” he said. He looked at Jalu’d.
Jalu’d nodded. “One of their outdoor temples. Or perhaps just a public bath.”
“What does it say?” Dahlia pushed her horse forward.
“No idea,” Sasan said. “They say our language comes from Varestan, but I can’t make it out, and the glyphs…”
Mir Jalu’d shook his head. “It is a good place, full of peace. But I cannot read this either. A little of the Varestan, but none of the glyphs.” He made a motion. “I could entertain you with some intelligent lies, if you like.”
Dahlia grinned. “I’ll bet you could at that. I know one of those glyphs. It’s water! I have it in my grimoire.”
Aranthur glanced at Dahlia.
“We had that in Sigils.” He looked closely at the glyph. “It is a working. The whole thing. It’s incredibly complex.”
Qna Liras pushed forward. “By Aploun!”
He fell to his knees, but it was not to worship. He was kneeling on the fine white sand, reading the lower glyphs. He ran a hand over them, and it was as if the letters and glyphs filled with ink. Suddenly they were perfectly visible.
The ink glittered and became gold.
Jalu’d stood with his arms crossed, unperturbed, but the Nomadi and the Safians flinched, and backed their horses.
“Amazing,” Qna Liras said. “I don’t even know what it is. But it works. It is keeping the water clean, and it is…” He shook his head in awe. “It is very old.”
The golden letters and symbols subsided, and once again it was carved stone. But now Aranthur noted the clever design. The inscription was carved directly into the natural rock face that leant out, so that the inscription was well hidden, and formed a sort of cave, so that the weather could not get at it.
“How old?” Ansu asked.
Qna Liras looked at Jalu’d.
Jalu’d shrugged. “Now I teeter on the razor edge between an intelligent lie and an educated guess. I am eager to impress the clever beauty, but I do not feel that this is a good time for a falsehood, however inspired.”
Aranthur smiled at Sasan. “He’s growing on me.”
“They say whatever comes into their heads,” Sasan muttered. “It’s not always good.”
Qna Liras stood up and made a sign, very like the eagle. Aranthur made the sign of the eagle as well, from habit.
“Varestan was the language of this land two thousand years before Tirase spoke at Megara,” Qna Liras said.
Dahlia was concentrating on one glyph.
“I will trace this while you water my horse,” she said to Sasan. “I would wager that this… was that old when Varestan was the language of the land.”
“Six thousand years old?” Aranthur asked.
“Impossible,” Sasan said.
Jalu’d chuckled. “Hich kas’ ukda’i as kar-I-jihan baz na kard, Har ki amad girihi chand barin tar fuzud.” He glanced at Aranthur. “Does thy scholarship include this?”
Aranthur shook his head. “No.”
It was very old Safiri, and too complicated. A knot? A tangle?
Sasan sighed. “I’ll try,” he said.
“No one yet hath unravelled a knot,
from the skein of the universe,
and each one came,
and essayed the same,
but made the tangle worse.”
Aranthur smiled as he puzzled through the words.
“Beautiful.”
Qna Liras smiled back. “Too true. Regardless, we can water the horses, drink it, even bathe. It’s safe.”
The dark-skinned Magos leant over, cupped a handful of sparkling water and drank it.
He was silent for a moment. Then he smiled.
“Delicious.”
“I have drunk it many times,” Jalu’d said, as if they were all fools.
With exaggerated care, the Nomadi brought horses to drink.
“This is a malas place,” Chimeg said.
“Tell me a word for ‘blessed,’” Aranthur said.
“‘Blessed’?” Chimeg asked. “What is this?”
“When the gods make something to help you, to make life better?”
Chimeg was holding her canteen in her hand, as if weighing her options.
“We worship different gods. On the Steppe, there is no ‘blessed.’ Only malas.” She looked around the echoing chamber of the pool. “It is beautiful, but so are many deadly things.”
They laid Kilij down at the edge of the pool so that the two horses bearing him could have a rest. The Nomadi were still very careful of the water; the Safians less so.
“We need to move,” Aranthur said to Vilna.
Jalu’d nodded. “But you go to the desert, yes? And I have something to show you, Bahadur.” He used the title “hero” in a way that left some doubt as to his sincerity. “In the desert there is no water. You should fill every container here—this is the best water
. And we should travel at night.”
Vilna nodded. “It’s true. How far to the Kuh?”
Jalu’d raised an eyebrow. “One might say we were already in the outstretched fingers of the Kuh. The valleys are still Safi. The ridges are already Kuh. Here we have shade and cover. No one can see us from outside.”
Aranthur scratched his chin. He felt dirty; days of riding, and never changing his clothes or shaving, made him feel more tired than he really was.
Vilna nodded, a very small nod of agreement.
Dahlia smiled. “I’m for it. I’ll get the whole inscription, and a bath.”
Aranthur got slowly to his feet.
“Dahlia, will you…? I want that inscription—it could really cast… meaning… on part of my school project.” He felt the flush spread on his cheeks and he smiled. “School. Can you imagine?”
Dahlia laughed. “It seems incredibly far away.” She put a hand on his—a friendly, reassuring gesture, and the first time she’d touched him for a while. “Don’t worry. I’ll get it.”
“Good. I have to continue pretending I’m the officer.”
“You are a pretty good officer.”
Aranthur stepped away, unable to hide his grin of pleasure.
“Chimeg,” he called. “Are you up for a scout? So these folks can bathe in peace?”
She shrugged. “Let’s scout.”
The two of them climbed back out of the cleft and they lay on the sun-drenched rocks until their eyes adjusted. ’Asid was on watch.
“There was dust,” he said. “Way off there.”
He pointed west, to the foothills of the mountains, but it was no longer possible to trace clear lines; the hills seemed to tumble together.
“Easy place to get lost,” the scarred man said.
Aranthur nodded. “I’ll go across the valley and up that peak. Chimeg, have a look east.”
She nodded, and led her horse down the ridge, headed east towards the deep desert.
He went west, down the steep hillside into the valley below. It had once been fertile. There were old irrigation ditches, and weed-choked fields that should still have been rich. A pair of lonely mud-brick houses sat by a pond, its dam broken.
He passed the houses and the garbage of a dozen ruined lives: a doll; a pair of votive idols to Potnia; a scrap of garish cotton faded…
He flinched when he saw what the cotton was stuck to, and his pony spooked.
And then up the far ridge. He dismounted, tied his pony to an old stone wall and crawled carefully to the crest, which was farther than he’d expected. He looked back and saw ’Asid wave, smaller than an ant, a mere flash of movement.
Finally, after a long climb that filled his boots with gravel, he got to the top. On the other side, he could see for parasangs—well to the west, there was a column of dust. Below him, and to the right, an eagle circled.
He watched the dust for half an hour. From time to time he rolled on his back and watched Chimeg scouring the valley below them, and then the ridge off to the south. He was thinking about the Ars Magika—about glyphs and sigils, and the bewildering number of them used at the pool below him. He lay there, pondering what it meant to be able to write changes in the code of nature directly on reality, without the intervening failures of human thought—what that implied about speed and exactness.
A single glyph for a complex action, instead of a long sentence.
His Ulmaghest had long lists of glyphs at the “back.” And the complex manipulation he called the Safian Enhancement was very close to the “front.” He thought about it all, and then he thought about Dahlia. And the Academy, and Nenia and Alfia and Lecne, and his parents, and his sister, and home.
Nenia would enjoy working through Varestan, he thought. And a wave of homesickness struck him like a physical thing. His eyes filled with tears, and he lay on his stomach, as stricken as if he’d taken a punch.
Eventually, he recovered. He writhed a little in the dust, and looked again at the hills below him.
The dust that might or might not mark his enemies moved steadily south, towards the desert. If they were following him, they were in the wrong valley system and several hours away.
He got to his feet, dusted himself off, and slid down the scree to the gully he’d climbed. Then he made his way down to Ariadne as the sun was setting in the west.
Back at the marble cleft, the rocks above the pool were festooned with an entire company’s laundry, shining in the last of the sun. The rocks and the dry air were baking the clothes dry with the speed of an oven. Chimeg was already in the water with fifteen other bathers, and Aranthur stripped and jumped in. The water was incredibly cold, and he had a headache immediately, but he put his head under anyway, whooped, and made himself clean. Then, as Sasan cooked salt fish from their rations, Aranthur shaved and changed his shirt.
He felt like a new man. At first, that seemed natural, but after fifteen minutes he realised the wound that he’d taken to his wrist wasn’t stiff. He was so used to the pain and ache there that its absence was obvious.
“Now I show you something, Bahadur.”
Jalu’d took him by the hand, and he followed, collecting his khaftan and his trousers from the rock.
Aranthur waved at Vilna, who was up in the “coopla” watching the valleys.
“I’m going for a walk,” he said.
“A ride,” Jalu’d said. “We will be an hour.”
Vilna nodded. “Not too far,” he cautioned.
Aranthur took Ariadne and Jalu’d had to content himself with a Pindari mare, a pretty horse that probably had some Nissean. They rode up the ridge, back to the west in silence, the only sound the horses’ hooves on the loose rock and sand. Jalu’d left the track and went almost due east, up the ridge that had covered them all day. They climbed for long enough that the first stars came out, and then the darkness fell rapidly. Off to the west, Aranthur could see a pair of campfires burning. If that was a force looking for his column, they were not afraid to show a fire.
Aranthur was still looking west when they came to the crest of the great ridge. Earlier in the day it had been high enough. Now it was as if they’d climbed to the top of the world, and they were high enough that far off to the west, the edge of the sky was still light.
To the north was the vastness of the plains of Safi, all the way to the Effrathes River. The richest part of Safi stretched away east; to the west, the rolling hills they’d crossed rose and became mountains.
Aranthur couldn’t see the mountains, but he could see the woods and foothills and stands of tall trees in the clear air and the last light of the sun, and a long line of dust moving west.
Jalu’d sat on his horse, murmuring to her in a series of chants, humming and tapping a rhythm on her neck with the flat of his hand.
“Safi,” Aranthur said, mostly to say something.
He looked east, and then back west. The dust worried him.
“Wait,” Jalu’d said. “Contemplate on a Being greater than thee.”
Aranthur was not sure, as was usual with Jalu’d, whether he was being mocked.
Suddenly a tiny tongue of flame licked out in the Safian darkness, and then another. Before he could fully draw breath, there were hundreds of points of light down along the great river. Hundreds, and then more hundreds.
“An army,” Jalu’d said. “An army of Darkness, yet we can see them by the lights they shine into the natural dark.”
Aranthur couldn’t count the lights, but he knew what they were—the campfires of an army. An army that covered half of the foothills of Safi, marching west.
He whistled. “Fifty thousand?” He was awestruck. “How did we pass through them?”
Jalu’d shrugged. “This is what I wanted to show you,” he said agreeably.
“But how?”
Jalu’d smiled. “They march west. You go south. With a good guide, you passed behind them.” He sounded smug.
Aranthur was still looking at the field of fires, which se
emed to mirror the stars above. He imagined General Tribane’s map; they moved due west from his present position.
“They’re going to Antioke,” he said. “Or following the General, but she’s three days gone already—they’ll never catch her.”
Jalu’d nodded. “What will be, will be.”
Aranthur spat. “Easy to say. What does it mean?”
Jalu’d smiled and turned his horse and rode down the ridge, moving faster than Aranthur would have thought possible. Aranthur picked his way more carefully, even on Ariadne, and when he made it back to the track, the sky was dark. The moons were not yet up, and the starlight seemed very bright at the edge of the desert, yet not enough to keep him from rolling to his death if Ariadne misstepped.
And in the middle of the sky, the Dark Forge was like a black mouth, a hole in the field of stars.
Vilna had the column ready when Aranthur rode up, and he saluted stiffly. The horses looked good; most of the people were smiling.
“A good place,” Chimeg admitted. She handed him a bowl of fish stew. “Horses like it.”
This seemed to represent her highest level of compliment.
He dismounted, the stew bowl in his hand, and went down into the ancient pool. When he was there, he withdrew the golden wand that the General had given him. He looked at it for a long heartbeat, and then he broke it.
“General!” he said.
There was no response.
“The Safian reserve army that you predicted is marching west to Antioke, or perhaps to the Armean plain,” he said. “More than ten thousand warriors. I could only see campfires.”
The sticks emitted a buzzing, and then one grew hot. Aranthur dropped them into the pool, and they vanished.
He drank a little of the water, and then he climbed back out and found the column.
“What was that about?” Vilna demanded.
Aranthur smiled, but ignored the man.
“You lead,” he said to Chimeg.
She nodded, and turned her mount.
They rode south. For two hours, as the moon rose, they were still on the ridge, which now ran down gradually to the desert below them. And they rode the rocky outcroppings all the way to their very end, where five tall pillars of granite rose out of the sand and cast long black shadows in the moonlight.
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