“And you,” the weary princess said.
They walked the long mile from the train station uphill across four intersections to the quiet old neighborhood where the Ohana house stood at the end of a paved street dotted with slender elm trees. Taziri opened the front door and saw the men in the living room.
Alonso was snoring in the armchair in the corner. Little Javier lay sprawled across the young man’s chest, drooling and whimpering.
Yuba sat on the sofa with Menna curled up in his lap. They both looked up from the book they were reading. “Mommy!” Menna dashed across the room and Taziri scooped her up and swung her through the air before crushing the little girl to her chest.
Qhora quietly picked up her baby and Mirari gently woke Alonso, and Taziri backed out of the room with Yuba to give the others a moment alone.
“You’re back.” Yuba smiled and wrapped his arms around them both.
“It took a little longer than I thought. Sorry.”
He kissed her. “You’re here. That’s all that matters. Did it go all right?”
Did it go all right? Flying across the entire continent, chasing criminals, hiding from the authorities, meeting a goddess, and fighting off a cult of assassins with burning swords full of enslaved souls? Did that “go all right”?
Taziri smiled. “Yeah. It went all right. We got the bad guy and came home in one piece.”
“Good work, honey.” He kissed her again.
“I missed you, Mommy,” Menna said. “Did you bring me something?”
Taziri laughed. “No, I’m sorry sweetie, I didn’t bring you anything. But I do have a story for you.” She looked up at Yuba. “And I have a new invention that’s going to pay for all the new greenhouses you could want.”
He smiled. “Sounds nice. How long are you home for?”
She shrugged. “I’m home for good, or until someone else needs my help to save the world.”
“Fair enough.” And he kissed her again.
“Mommy! Tell the story!”
Chapter 32. Qhora
They buried Don Lorenzo Quesada de Gadir on a snow-covered hill in a small churchyard half a mile from the old Diaz estate where the hidalgo had lived and trained with his students. The service was brief but well attended. Most of the neighborhood was there, along with a dozen or so city officials from Madrid. Tradesmen and craftsmen from all over the area came to pay their respects, including a young cobbler, two glovers, a tanner and glazer, three blacksmiths, a silversmith, one elderly horse surgeon, two barbers, and four doctors.
A short line of young men with old-fashioned espadas on their hips stood along one side of the grave during the service as though guarding their dead master. A longer line of young ladies from town stood behind them.
Mirari held Alonso’s hand, except when the young man produced his guitar to sing a short song he had written to mark the day.
Qhora stood alone with Javier bundled up warmly in her arms, listening to the Espani priest leading the gathering in their blessings in old Italian and Hellan.
They sang together in soft, mournful voices.
They made the sign of the triquetra.
In the name of the Father, the Mother, and the Son.
They each came to Qhora to express their condolences.
And one by one, they all left.
Alonso and Mirari lingered by the wrought iron gate of the churchyard, talking to each other but always glancing back toward the grave and their mistress.
Qhora bounced Javier gently. She looked down at the fresh mound of black earth and its thin blanket of fresh white snow. “Good bye, Enzo.”
“Hello, princess.”
She turned slowly and saw him standing in the snow a few feet away. The edge of his figure was hazy and tattered as the wind rippled through the aether, and his boots left no marks on the face of the snow, but it was him. Whole and beautiful and perfect. He smiled.
“Enzo.” She could barely whisper his name. “You’re free. You’re home.”
“Thanks to you. And to our friend, the captain,” he said. “How is our son?”
“He’s fine. He’s perfect.” She swallowed. “What was it like? When you were trapped in the seireiken, did it hurt?”
“No, but it wasn’t pleasant.” He smiled sadly. “It was a bit crowded.”
“I don’t know what to do now, Enzo,” she said. “The boys will all leave soon to find other teachers. I’ll probably sell the house and move south somewhere warmer, and cheaper. But after that, I don’t know what to do. How will we live? I don’t know how to earn a living for us. I don’t know anyone here. We’re all alone now.”
“No, you’re not.” He nodded at the gate where the masked girl and her young man were waiting. “You have them. And you have me. I’ll always be here for you. For both of you.”
She shook her head slowly. “You know that’s not true. And I know that’s not true. Death is still death, even in España.”
“I know.” He nodded at the old medallion on her chest. “But I could touch that triquetra and be with you always. If you asked me to, I would.”
“I know you would. But it wouldn’t be right. Not for you or me or Javier.”
He nodded again.
“I still know a few people at court,” she said. “Perhaps someone could use a Quechua translator for the merchants visiting the New World.”
“Perhaps.” He winked. “See? The future doesn’t look so impossible after all, does it?”
“No,” she said.
Not impossible. Never impossible. Just long and bleak and hard and lonely.
She looked down at the fat-cheeked baby in her arms and then she looked up at the sound of Mirari’s laughter.
Or maybe not so lonely.
“I’ll look in on you, from time to time,” he said.
“I’d like that,” she said.
Enzo came forward, and the shape of his long black hair and long black coat shuddered in the wind as long streamers of aether tore away from him on the freezing wind. He looked down at her and then down at their son. “Good bye, Qhora. I love you.”
She looked up at him and then down at their son. “I love you too, Enzo. Good bye.”
Qhora bent down to kiss Javier, and waited a moment to be sure that her lover’s ghost had vanished before she turned and left to go home.
Preview of
Omar the Immortal
Europa, Book One
Chapter 1. Swordplay
Omar Bakhoum stepped down off the train before it stopped rolling and he surveyed the crowded platform beneath an evening sky stained the color of iron and rust.
One small step closer to Ysland and to unlocking all the mysteries of life, death, and the universe. At last!
The city air stung his nostrils with the mingled scents of sea salt, rotting fish, burnt oil, and dung. The train squealed to a halt behind him, and he heard a chorus of voices rise from his fellow travelers, the men and women from Carthage who spoke more dialects of Mazigh and Eranian than even he could recognize.
As he emerged from the Tingis train station, Omar noted the sun riding low in the western sky beyond a veil of gray clouds and a smoky haze that clung to the city like a filthy spider’s web. The street teemed with bodies in motion. Women in fashionable business suits marched in pairs sharing newspapers. Men in sweat-stained rags staggered beneath crates and barrels on their backs. Striped zebras trotted along with small carts in tow, and mighty spotted sivatheras promenaded proudly with their elaborate carriages rolling smartly behind them. Long brass trolley cars trundled down their tracks with bells clanging and wires sparking. And through the surging tide of people and vehicles, tiny children darted laughing through the streets, dodging wildly in and out of traffic.
Omar paused to look up the hill behind him. Above the train station was another, larger facility where three massive hangars stood wall-to-wall beside a wide grassy field ringed in tall white poles.
Mooring masts. So that’s a Mazigh airfie
ld. But it’s a bit late in the day for introductions, I think. Tomorrow, then.
He looked back down the busy boulevard in front of him as a pair of children collided with his leg. His left hand darted to his sword to pin the weapon in place while his right hand snatched the collar of the closest child and held the boy at arm’s length. Omar smiled into the boy’s terrified eyes. “You should learn to be faster and quieter if you want to prosper as a thief, little one.”
The boy swallowed and nodded.
“You need practice. Are there any stray cats in this place?”
The boy nodded again.
“Good. You should practice sneaking up on the cats. When you can catch a cat, you can catch a purse. All right?” He grinned and let the boy go. The boy stood there a moment, then darted away into the street again.
Omar set out. His thin sandals let him feel every bump in the cobblestones, but his heavy green robes kept out the wintry sea breeze. At the next intersection he paused to run his thumb down the black and gray stubble along his jaw, and then he turned left away from the Tingis harbor.
He soon found himself on another busy street lined with houses of lodging and places to eat, but these were not the rude inns and taverns of his home in Alexandria. Before him stood the gleaming brass and glass facades of Mazigh hotels and Mazigh restaurants, all staffed by smiling young Mazigh men and women in matching uniforms, all bearing food on trays and rolling suitcases on well-oiled trolleys. Omar stepped up to the window of the first restaurant on his left and peered inside at the carefully arranged tables and the overdressed patrons eating with a baffling array of utensils and speaking in such low voices that he couldn’t imagine that any of them could follow what the other was saying. His gaze fell on the menu posted in the window just in front of him, and as he did not recognize any of the dishes listed, he turned away to select a hotel instead.
His command of the Mazigh tongue was out of practice, but with a bit of effort he was able to ask several ladies in the street for a recommendation, and they pointed him in the direction of a tall brick building called The Imperial. Smirking to himself at the presumption of the name, Omar stepped inside and found the interior far brighter than the evening street outside. Electric lights glowed in regular intervals along the walls and countless mirrored panels reflected the lights over and over again across the foyer.
The uniformed woman at the desk winced at the sight of his sword and his sandaled feet, and she stared down at them longer than Omar thought polite. But she took his money and gave him the key for room number seven, and a minute later he was sitting on the third softest bed he had ever encountered in his very long life. Smiling, he lay down on the thick blankets. His stomach growled.
He went downstairs and followed the sounds of plates and glasses to a small bar at the back of the hotel, and there he successfully negotiated the bartender into finding him a plate of roasted chicken, chickpeas, and dates. After supper he slipped out the back door into a wide alley blissfully empty and nearly silent. Only the soft rumble of the evening’s traffic echoed from the street in front of the hotel. Sitting on a sturdy crate, he slipped his pipe from a pocket inside his left sleeve, tapped down a few leaves in its bowl, and set them alight with a Puntish match.
As Omar inhaled the sweet scent of the herbs, he heard a footstep echo from the end of the alley. The stranger walked slowly and confidently with the weight of a grown man, and he made the sharp clacking of an easterner wearing wooden sandals.
The clacking stopped.
Omar exhaled slowly, watching the smoke curl up through the air. “You’re a long way from home, little brother.” He turned to look at the stranger. “A very long way.”
The stranger was short and lean, his spare body hidden within his long brown and white robes. Below his flowing trousers, the man’s bare feet rested on a pair of wooden geta sandals that lifted him several inches above the cobblestones. His hands were hidden inside his voluminous sleeves, which swayed softly around the two swords belted at his waist. He wore no beard, and dark brown eyes stared out from an expressionless face. A straight white scar ran from his left cheek down to his lip, but it failed to twist his mouth into an unpleasant shape. And his dark brown hair was tied back in a single tail that hung to his shoulders.
Omar squinted at him. “I suppose you know who I am.”
“You are Bakhoum-dono of the Temple of Osiris,” the man said, bowing his head. “I am Ito Daisuke, samurai of the Temple of Amaterasu.”
Omar nodded wearily.
A Tiger from our brothers in Nippon. I’d hoped to never see one again. So much for hope.
“What can I do for you, little brother?”
“I have come to challenge the great Master of Alexandria.”
Omar took another long draught from his little pipe, and then set it aside on the crate as he stood up and stepped into the center of the alley. “I’m not sure that it would prove much if you were to beat an old man like me. And I really don’t want to fight you. Are you quite sure about this?”
Daisuke nodded.
Omar coughed and cleared his throat, and then rested his right hand on the hilt of his sword. As he touched the pommel, a soft tide of voices filled his mind and a sea of dim faces appeared before him, floating in midair all around the alleyway stretching out in every direction. Some of the ghosts looked angry or frightened, and some of them were shouting at him, demanding his attention, but Omar ignored them all as he locked eyes with the shade of a grim young man dressed in Old Persian blue silks with a slender scimitar on his hip.
The shadowy youth nodded at him and with a weary voice he said, I am ready to serve as always, Master Bakhoum.
Omar nodded back, but for once he was not entirely certain that the ghost of the young gladiator would be equal to the task at hand. After all, young Merik’s skills were over one thousand years out of date. Still, Omar focused on the living samurai and squared his shoulders. “All right then, little brother. Whenever you’re ready.”
The Tiger of Amaterasu turned his body, set his feet, and rested his right hand on the hilt of the shorter of his two swords. Omar watched his opponent’s eyes, knowing he would see no doubt, no fear, nothing at all. And he didn’t.
He winced.
This is going to hurt.
Daisuke drew his sword and struck in a single fluid motion faster than Omar’s eye could follow. His blade shone like molten gold in the shadows of the alley, painting the walls in splashes of amber light. The dead gladiator Merik guided Omar’s hand, and Omar drew his own sword straight up to block the samurai’s blow. The tip of the golden sword shattered off as the two blades connected.
Instantly the samurai’s blade fell dim and dull, the steel fading to cold gray as a pale aetheric fume billowed up from the broken tip. But Omar’s sword, identical in shape and size, blazed with a perfect white light that bleached all color from the two men and the stone walls around them. Omar reached out to slowly swipe his blade through the smoke rising from his opponent’s weapon, and the vapors swirled into his gleaming white sword, which brightened slightly as it inhaled the fumes and those souls caught in the aether riptide.
Daisuke dropped his broken sword as a thin hint of anger rippled over his scarred lip. His eyes narrowed as he reached for his second, longer sword.
“It’s done,” Omar said. “I hope you found whatever it was you were looking for.”
But the man in brown drew back into his stance once more, his hand resting on his undrawn weapon.
“Don’t be foolish, little brother.” Omar lowered his shining sword to his side. The bright blade hissed and sparked with tiny electric arcs, and the air around it boiled in a rippling cloud that would have steamed were the air not so dry. “Your swordsmanship is excellent. If we had fought with plain steel, you would have killed me easily. But you cannot break my seireiken. Look at it.”
The samurai’s eyes remained fixed on Omar’s face.
“Look at it!”
Daisuke�
�s eyes flickered down for a brief moment and then back up again. “Yes. I can see now that I never had any chance of winning in a contest of seireiken. Mine contained a mere five hundred souls. Yours must contain several thousand.”
Omar nodded. “Yes, it does. Plus most of your five hundred, now.”
“Indeed.”
“Then why is your hand on your other sword, little brother?”
“Because I did not travel halfway around the world merely to fight one of the Sons of Osiris for power or honor. I came here because I have been told you possess that which we all seek. The ultimate truth, the ultimate mastery. The secret of eternal life.”
Omar smiled sadly and glanced up at the darkening sky. “So you came to kill me for it?”
“I came to claim your soul, and with it, the knowledge you possess.”
“That will be difficult now, without your seireiken.”
“Quite.” The samurai slowly drew out his plain steel katana and presented it in an unorthodox one-handed grip. “So now I shall slay you, claim your seireiken, and capture your soul with it.”
Omar shook his head. “You’re making a mistake, little brother. Don’t do it. Walk away. If you don’t leave now, you’re just throwing your life away.”
“Perhaps. We will know in a moment.” Ito Daisuke rotated his foot slightly, his geta sandal grinding on the cobblestones. And then he struck.
His katana flashed in a lightning stroke and Omar barely stumbled back in time to avoid it. With the ghost Merik’s guidance, he raised his blazing white seireiken to hold his opponent at bay, but Daisuke ignored it entirely, checking and turning each slash to avoid touching the burning sword. The silvery katana slashed again and again, each cut perfectly executed at the eyes, at the knees, down the arm, up the leg, and all the while the Tiger of Amaterasu stared at him without a trace of emotion, without a shred of passion.
Omar reeled back, trying over and over to block the attacks, but each time the katana would slip around the seireiken, never making contact with the scorching hot sun-steel roiling with the heat of thousands of stolen souls. And without any contact, the battle proceeded in near silence, broken only by the grunts of the men and the shuffling of their feet.
Halcyon (The Complete Trilogy) Page 91
