The Sable City

by M. Edward McNally

  *

  Uriako Shikashe’s voice awoke Zeb while the canvas sides of his tent were still dark. Zeb was splayed on his back more comfortably than was usual in the tent he shared with Phin Phoarty, and after a moment he realized it was because he was alone. Amatesu was talking to Shikashe now, outside. Zeb rolled over and started to snuggle deeper under his blanket, but had the thought that Nesha-tari might have woken the others up early. She might actually be standing outside right now. Zeb slithered out of his bedding and the tent, stumbled up to his feet and looked around.

  Still dark night, and no Nesha-tari. Shikashe stood nearby and frowned at Zeb with his arms crossed and his long black topknot all unbound so that his hair fell around his shoulders. As the samurai slept only in a long shirt of embroidered silk he had at moment a slightly womanly appearance, apart from the mustache. Not that Zeb was going to tell him so.

  Amatesu had rekindled the fire and was kneeling on the far side. Zeb stepped over to see what she was about, and blinked in surprise for Phin was lying on the ground before her as though dead. Amatesu had turned his limp head sideways by the chin, and was gently probing his brown hair with her fingers. When she pulled them back they were red and wet in the firelight.

  “What the hells happened?” Zeb shouted, snapping fully awake and scampering over to kneel next to Amatesu.

  “I struck him in the head,” the woman said with a frown. “Too hard, I think.”

  Zeb stared at her. “You did what?”

  Amatesu did not answer but worked her fingers into Phin’s hair at the back of his skull. She closed her eyes and lifted her chin, then released a long, soft breath. She looked just like she had when Zeb had first met her, when the shukenja had jammed her fingers into the ruins of his elbow and withdrawn them with the joint repaired.

  Phin stirred, then jerked and blinked his eyes. Amatesu stood up and wiped her bloody fingers together, looking around the campsite for the water bucket.

  “What…” Phin looked up at Zeb and stammered. “Where am I…what?”

  “Amatesu hit you in the head.” Zeb turned to the shukenja as she crossed to the bucket. “Amatesu, why did you hit Phin in the head?” The fellow wasn’t a bad sort really, Zeb had come to think. Phoarty had a nose-in-the-air snootiness about him that Zeb supposed was typical for a mage, but he had been loosening up for the last week or so.

  “He was trying to break into the Madame Nesha-tari’s bed chamber,” Amatesu said, dunking a cloth in the bucket.

  Zeb’s eyes widened and he stood up. Phin had rolled to all fours and was starting to rise groggily, but Zeb put a foot on his ribs and knocked him back to his side.

  “You were doing what?” Zeb hissed down at him.

  “Zebulon!” Amatesu snapped, in the exact tone of voice that the matrons had used at him when he was a boy in the Baj Nif Drom. But he didn’t hear her. Zeb’s hands were balled in fists at his sides and they were shaking.

  “Get up!” he barked at Phoarty and Phin did so rapidly, lunging at Zeb from his knees until Amatesu snagged the mage’s collar and dragged him back. Zeb took a step forward raising a fist, but Shikashe snaked an arm that felt like a tree limb with muscles around Zeb’s neck and squeezed. Zeb actually felt his eyeballs bugging out as he grabbed Shikashe’s arm.

  “Both of you, stop it!” Amatesu ordered, still holding Phin’s collar while the red-faced mage clawed in the air toward Zeb.

  “I will blast you to Hades!” he sputtered furiously, and Zeb answered with an equally enraged though less comprehensible gasp and wheeze.

  Amatesu met Shikashe’s eyes and nodded, then she jerked Phin back to put her own arm around his neck. Zeb could not really see it as his vision was starting to swim. The Far Westerners throttled the Wizard and the Minauan until both were going limp, their faces almost purple, then each let their patient go. Zeb and Phin collapsed to all fours and almost knocked their heads together, gasping for breath. The fury had drained out of both of them.

  “Enough?” Amatesu asked. Phin nodded and Zeb tapped the ground like he was surrendering a wrestling match. When the two men were breathing more normally they looked up at each other from inches away.

  “She’s a witch,” Phin croaked.

  “Who…who is a witch?” Zeb panted.

  “Nesh…Nesha-tari.”

  “Nesha-tari is not a witch.” Amatesu said calmly.

  She still stood behind Phin, so he flopped to his back while gulping air to look the shukenja in the eye.

  “She is. She has put a spell on me.” He raised a trembling hand and pointed at Zeb. “On him, too.”

  Zeb groaned and thumped to his side. His throat felt as though it was the diameter of a straw of wheat. Shikashe had ambled back to his tent and was pulling on trousers, paying no particular attention to the others as though this was a typical morning.

  “It is not a spell, as such,” Amatesu said. Her brow furrowed and lips pursed as she thought. “It is something we think is…part of what Madame Nesha-tari is. Zebulon, how do you say, when an aspect is just a part of a thing? As flight to a bird or a bite to a snake?”

  “Natural?” Zeb wheezed, and Amatesu nodded.

  “Yes. The manner in which men are attracted to Nesha-tari Hrilamae may be a form of magic, but it is not a spell she has cast. It is natural to her.”

  Zeb managed to push himself up to his elbows. “Look…if you’re saying she is…hot as a just-fired pistol…then I agree.”

  Amatesu turned to Phin, who almost had his breathing back to normal though he was rubbing his neck.

  “Phinneas?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Please describe the Madame Nesha-tari.”

  Phin looked at her, then over to Zeb. He shrugged.

  “I haven’t seen much of her, truth be told. She is tiny, I mean small built. Alabaster skin. Long blonde hair, like a princess of Exland. In a story.”

  Zeb stared at him, then turned to Amatesu.

  “I think you broke his brain.”

  “Zebulon?” Amatesu asked.

  “Nesha-tari is tall,” Zeb said. “Almost my height. She’s not pale, her complexion is more like a coffee with a lot of milk. She has blue eyes, bluest you ever saw, and a gorgeous, magnificent…” Zeb sat up and raised his hands beside his head. “Mane of rich, red hair, with a curl. Like a native of Phohnassa.”

  Phin got to his elbows and looked at Zeb. “Strawberry blonde?”

  “No. Wine-dark. Kind of hair you want to bury your nose in. For a week.”

  The two men looked at each other, profoundly confused. They turned back to Amatesu who held up a hand with a thumb and finger slightly apart.

  “The Madame Nesha-tari is about this much taller than I. Her hair falls just to her shoulders. It is light brown. Her skin is darker, though a bit lighter than is typical for a Zantish person, I think. She does have blue eyes, though.”

  Zeb and Phin’s breathing had returned to normal, but now neither had anything to say. They just kept staring at Amatesu.

  “Men see Nesha-tari as they would,” the shukenja explained. “Not as she is.”

  “Just men?” Phin asked, and Amatesu nodded.

  “I think it is so.”

  Zeb looked across the fire to where Shikashe had settled on a camp stool, watching the others with his hands on his knees.

  “Does she look like a Far Western girl to him?” Zeb asked Amatesu but the samurai answered for himself, speaking a single word that sounded like a name. “Matsuko.”

  Amatesu dropped her gaze to the ground and Zeb thought for a moment she looked pained. She spoke in a very quiet voice.

  “For his Lordship Uriako Shikashe-sama, the Madame Nesha-tari appears much like his wife, Uriako Matsuko-sana.”

  Zeb looked back across the fire at Shikashe. “You are married?”

  Amatesu had not looked up yet, and her voice became even quieter.

  “His Lordship’s wife was slain long ago in Korusbo, along with their children. Their loss pain
s him greatly, and it is why he has come to this place. Far from the memory of them.”

  Zeb blinked and looked back at Shikashe, whose face was as always impassive though he now stared into the fire rather than looking at any of the others.

  “Condolences,” Zeb said. “I am sorry.”

  “Wait a minute,” Phin pushed himself to a seat on the grass and raised a hand. He spoke to Amatesu slowly in a manner Zeb had found condescending, though just at present he was unsure how much anything he thought or felt lately was a byproduct of Nesha-tari’s weird juju.

  “What, exactly, do you think that Nesha-tari is?”

  The shukenja finally raised her eyes from between her feet.

  “I do not know. I am not yet familiar with the many creatures of this land.”

  “Creatures?” Zeb asked.

  “Yes.” Amatesu looked at him steadily. “Whatever she is, the Madame Nesha-tari is not human. Not altogether.”

  “And the reason,” Phin glanced at Zeb. “The reason we were at each other’s throats a minute ago…You think that is part of whatever magic Nesha-tari possesses as well?”

  Amatesu nodded. “This is not the first time on our journey that men near to the Madame Nesha-tari have come to fight. Though this time Uriako-sama and myself saw it early enough to intervene.”

  Zeb winced. “This time?” Amatesu nodded.

  “We needed your services as the translator who had begun with us in Ayzantu City was killed by a sailor aboard our first ship.”

  Zeb and Phin exchanged another long look. There had been a moment there, Zeb thought, where if he had been able to get a fist on Phin he might not have stopped hitting him.

  Amatesu allowed the two men a long silence before speaking.

  “It is our hope now that you two have an awareness, that the effect of Nesha-tari’s presence may not be so strong.” She frowned. “Though it does seem to be growing stronger, of lately.”

  Phin looked off toward the inn, but Zeb looked between the two Far Westerners.

  “Why are the two of you even with that…woman? And why hasn’t Shikashe tried to kill me yet?”

  “Uriako-sama is a man of formidable will. As to your first question…” Amatesu gave a shrug, which Zeb thought may have been a gesture she picked up from him.

  “We two have found ourselves in many situations most strange since leaving Korusbo, and the West. This is not, for us, much more different.”

  Zeb looked at the shukenja, and shook his head faintly.

  “I think you should start telling me stories while we are on the march.”

  Amatesu gave no answer, other than to lower her gaze back to the ground.