Zal and Zara and the Great Race of Azamed

by Kit Downes

  “Are you here for any reason,” Zal said, “other than to mock me?” He turned away and began collecting up the handkerchiefs.

  “Would I come out here willingly?” Zara said. “Your father wants you in the workshop. You need to finish the racing carpet.”

  “What? I finished weaving it yesterday evening.”

  Zal had devoted an hour to the carpet after dinner the night before. He didn’t like carpet-weaving and so always worked fast in order to finish as soon as possible. The consequence of this was that he had become by far the fastest carpet-weaver in Azamed.

  “All that needs doing is for the magic to be put in,” he said.

  “Yes. That’s what I’m here for,” said Zara, who was one of the few children to be born in Azamed each year with the gift of magic. She attended the school of Azamed’s Guild of Magicians and was halfway through her time there.

  “Then what do I need to come in for?” said Zal. “I’ve got practice to do.”

  Zal had no interest in becoming a carpet-weaver once he grew up. The fact that the last eighteen generations of the Thesa family had been weavers meant little to him. His ambition was to join the Caliph’s Citadel Guard – the fearless soldiers who policed the streets of Azamed having daring, hair-raising adventures by the day. To that end, Zal spent three hours every morning practising swordsmanship.

  “I don’t particularly want you there either,” said Zara. “But they do. So come on.”

  “Oh, I don’t believe this!”

  Zal pushed his sword back into its scabbard, making the metal shriek. Zara stood up and walked back into the house with Rip in her arms, Zal stomping up the steps behind her. The Thesa house was large but plain, with just a few pieces of furniture and decoration to make it a home. Its greatest feature was the patchwork of dozens of multicoloured carpets spread across the floors and stairs, making it very uneven underfoot. They passed through the kitchen and sitting room and into the large workroom behind the shop where the carpets were sold. Zal’s father, Augur Thesa, and Zara’s father, Arna Aura, were waiting for them.

  “Ah! There you are!” boomed Arna, slapping his hands to the sides of his large, round stomach.

  “Hello, Mr Aura,” said Zal. “Dad. Do you really need me here for this?”

  It was obvious that Augur was expecting this, and had prepared for it, but he made a very good show of looking shocked.

  “Zal! This is your carpet! Of course you need to be here! You’ve been working at it for weeks.”

  “Yes,” said Zal, trying to sound patient and reasonable. “But I finished it last night.”

  The carpet in question was stretched out on the floor between the parents and the children. It was a rectangle (no other shape could be made to fly), about ten feet long and five feet wide, and was woven with clear patterns which Zal had taken some time over, just to please his father. It contained six colours: blue, red, yellow, violet, green and orange.

  “Zal,” repeated Augur, “this is your carpet. You should be there at every stage in its weaving. The enchanting is the most important part. What is a carpet without an enchantment? It is nothing more than a rug. Of course you need to be here.”

  “But there’s nothing for me to do!” Zal said.

  “Well, no,” said Augur, “except watch how the magic flows through your knots to see how you can improve them on your next carpet.”

  “Oh, come on!”

  “You’re also here to provide moral support to your future wife,” suggested Arna.

  “WE ARE NOT GETTING MARRIED!”

  Zal and Zara yelled so loudly that everything in the room seemed to flinch. Rip jumped in the air, barking. Both fathers recoiled and tried to hide behind each other. Zal and Zara simmered and trembled like boiling cooking pots.

  “All right. All right. It’s OK,” said Augur.

  “Yes! Yes!” said Arna. “It’s fine.”

  There was a moment’s pause.

  “You’re not getting married,” Arna said. “Just yet.”

  “NO!” they exploded again.

  “Not now!”

  “Not ever!”

  “NO!”

  Both parents remained hopeful that the eventual marriage would be a success. Augur and Arna were very much family men, but both were widowers and they were keen to ensure that their children were successful in life. Marrying Zara’s magical talents to Zal’s weaving ability would produce a formidable duo in the carpet business.

  “Fine,” said Augur from behind Arna. “We’ll say no more about it. Zara, perhaps you should start?”

  Zara gave her father another ferocious look and then nodded.

  “I’m going to carry on practising,” said Zal in a voice that defied anyone to challenge him. He stalked to an empty space at the end of the workroom, between two racks of threads. He drew his scimitar with a flourish and began a slow sword fight with an imaginary opponent.

  Zara shook her head and sat down on the floor at one end of the racing carpet, cross-legged with her back to Zal and their fathers, who watched over her shoulders. She gazed at the carpet. Despite his indifferent attitude, Zal had put some effort into it. The sequence of colours had been well thought out.

  Magic worked in colours, and there were seven – the same as appeared in a rainbow. Each had its own strengths and weaknesses; Zal’s choices would make this carpet a very fine one. The red would carry energy through it. The yellow would balance it in the air, riding it along the beams of sunlight. The violet would let it touch the air all around it, not just fly through. The blue would keep it steady in rain and storms. Green would give it power over the greatest enemy: gravity. Orange would give it a tremendous burst of speed. The carpet would never be able to accelerate quite as fast as if indigo had been included, but it would be far steadier when it reached its top speed.

  Overall, the combination was excellent. Six-colour carpets were easy to weave but hard to enchant: there were too few magicians who could wield six colours, let alone manipulate them all at once to fill a carpet with magic. Zara, who had been born with all seven colours of magic within her, found it easy. Arna had often remarked that it was a shame seven-colour carpets were impossible.

  “Light the incense, please.”

  Augur lit a long taper from an oil lamp and carried it over to an incense-burner. Thin blue smoke that smelled of dried flowers and mountain forests was soon drifting from it and dissipating around the room, clearing Zara’s head and helping her to both relax and concentrate. Behind them, Zal mimed a parry; the only sounds were the muffled movements of his clothing. Zara stretched out her hands, spreading her fingers, and placed them along the tasselled edge of the carpet. Rip trotted round her, panting with excitement.

  Zara took a slow, deep breath and began. Her magic came alive, the way a fireplace smoulders, then bursts into life. Magic flowed through her fingertips and into the carpet like warm water. It flooded through the threads, spiralling and weaving along the lines and patterns. The colours, which had been plain and ordinary, became vibrant, shining and sparkling with magic. The transformation raced from one end of the carpet to the other as the dawn light had raced across the desert, pushing back the night’s darkness. It reached the end, trembling along the tassels, and then the carpet lifted off the floor, rising several inches into the air. Rip yipped with excitement. Augur and Arna gasped and clapped their hands. The carpet shuddered, steadied and floated evenly in the air.

  “Splendid! Wondrous!” Arna ruffled Zara’s hair as he laughed.

  “Excellent! Absolute excellence. From both of you … Zal!”

  Zal cut down his phantom enemy and turned to look at the carpet for the first time.

  “Very nice,” he said and raised his scimitar again. Zara sighed with irritation and resumed scratching Rip.

  “You made it,” said Augur. “You two together. And you did it very well.”

  “Thank you,” said Zal, slashing the air. “Can I go now?”

  Augur looked aghast.r />
  “Zal! You’re going to be racing on it—”

  “What?” Zal spun round. “We had a deal. I wove the racing carpet and I could have my sword sharpened by a proper blacksmith. We never said anything about me racing on it.”

  “You don’t want to?” asked his father.

  “No!” said Zal firmly.

  “Well, whoever’s riding it, I want to be co-pilot,” said Zara. “It wouldn’t be off the ground without me.” She stepped onto the floating carpet. It rippled, but supported her. She sat down on it, cross-legged. Rip hopped on and off beside her, yapping in delight.

  “Come along, Zal. You wove it, so you should ride it.”

  “It is, after all, the Great Race…” said Arna.

  “The race!” Zal exploded angrily. “It’s all anyone talks about for weeks before and months after. It’s like the most important thing in the universe. I’m sick and tired of going through the race every year.”

  “Zal,” said Augur. “You’re twelve. You’re eligible to race. Our family have been competing …”

  “… in an unbroken line for seventeen generations and you’ve done it every year since you were twelve,” Zal recited. “That’s another thing I’m sick and tired of: our ancestors and all their heroics on carpets. But I don’t want to be a weaver or a racer. I want to be a guardsman. Is that really so bad?”

  “No, of course it isn’t,” said Augur. “It’s a respectable career, sometimes prestigious. But…”

  “You’ve won seven times,” said Zal. “Try and make it eight while I practise the skills I’m going to need for what I want to do.”

  “All right,” said Augur. “If you don’t want to race, I won’t force you.”

  “Nothing will make me compete in the race.”

  With that, Zal sheathed his scimitar and marched, guardsman-like, out of the room. Rip jumped down from the hovering carpet and chased after his master. Arna sighed with relief and Augur sighed with sadness.

  “Dad,” said Zara, “I need to get on with my homework.”

  “Of course, my dear. Go ahead,” said her father.

  As Zara stepped off the carpet, it drifted lazily back down to the floor like a falling leaf. She went through to the kitchen.

  “Now, don’t lose heart, my friend.” Arna placed a comforting hand on Augur’s shoulder. “He is twelve. He’s meant to be angry and rebellious.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Augur. “He doesn’t understand how special magic carpets are. Do you know, there are lands where they’re nothing more than legends? It’s such a shame he doesn’t realize his own talent. Certainly he’s a fine swordsman, but he can weave faster than anyone I have ever seen. He always contents himself with the minimum of effort; if he tried, his work could be wondrous. And of course, I apologize for the insults he continues to heap on your daughter.”

  “That is unnecessary. She heaps almost the same amount on him! Maybe you will have to be the racer again this year, but I’m sure your son will be happy for you if you win. And Zara will not let either of you down. Who knows, he might yet change his mind.”

  “No,” said Zal, coming back in. He had returned to collect his seven handkerchiefs. “Nothing – nothing – will make me compete in the race.”

  Night had fallen and Azamed lay sleeping. The sky was black and dusted with countless stars. A crescent moon glowed down on the city. The streets were empty, all the shops shut up for the night. Everything was still.

  A grappling hook, wrapped in cloth to make no sound, flew through the air and hooked over the Thesas’ garden wall. Shar’s head peered over a few seconds later. He looked around, then clambered up.

  He dropped onto the grass in near silence and then crept up to the apple tree, moving like a cat. Producing a small wooden whistle from a hidden pocket, Shar raised it to his lips and blew three notes: an almost perfect impression of a desert owl’s mating call. Haragan climbed over the wall and joined him by the tree. Four more Shadow Society members followed, each laden with climbing tools and weapons beneath their disguises. They hurried up to the house, their feet making little noise on the grass and none on the steps. One of the four, Dari, crouched on the top step and drew out some long, slender lock-picking tools.

  Haragan stood behind Dari as he fiddled and tweaked at the door lock, and looked around him in distaste. It was a nice garden. In his mind’s eye, Haragan could see children playing and laughing within its walls: running round the tree, peeping into the pond and scrambling up the ivy on the wall. Doing all the things children were meant to do with their endless hours. It was a long way removed from the childhood he’d enjoyed – but that did not matter. She and her Thesa boyfriend might have had the idyllic upbringing, but he was about to have the last laugh.

  Haragan had been certain that he would enjoy this from the moment he had come up with the idea. It would be more fun than when he had stolen the hair from the nineteenth Medicine Minister’s head and taken his eyebrows for good measure. It was already more thrilling than breaking into Azamed’s revenue building to put paper-eating beetles in with the records of all the taxes the Shadow Society had evaded. And while it wasn’t as dangerous as kidnapping one hundred and fifty children at once, a feat of which he had been particularly proud, it was far more devious. By the time Dari had got the lock undone, Haragan was grinning.

  Upstairs, Zal was dreaming.

  “Do you, Zal Thesa, take this woman as your wife?”

  “I d—”

  “AAARGH!” Zal sat bolt upright in bed, almost tearing the blanket with his clenched hands. Rip, who had been sleeping curled at the foot of the bed, looked up and gave a tired, groggy yip.

  “Sorry, sorry,” said Zal. “Just a dream. A horrible, horrible dream.”

  He got out of bed, still in his nightgown, to get a glass of water. Rip yapped again, raised himself on his tired, unsteady paws and followed.

  “No. No, boy. It’s not morning yet.”

  “Wruff!”

  “Oh, all right.” Zal gave up and let Rip follow him in the darkness down the corridor to the bathroom. They were halfway there, just passing the door of the first spare bedroom, when two strange noises came from downstairs. The first was Dari tripping over a chair in the workroom and just managing to catch it before it toppled over. The second was Haragan slapping Dari across the back of the head and causing him to drop the chair anyway. It landed with a loud, clattering crash.

  Zal stood, trying to decide if he’d imagined the sounds. The door to the spare room opened, revealing Zara.

  “AAARGH!” Zal screamed for a second time. Zara’s sudden appearance and white nightgown had made him think for a moment that his dream had come true. What had actually happened was that Augur and Arna had been up late into the evening reviewing their carpet orders for the next six months: Augur had invited Arna and Zara to spend the night to save them the long walk home. Zal, who had been sulking in the garden at Zara’s continued presence throughout the day, had missed the invitation.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “What are you playing at?” Zara said. “What’s all the noise?”

  “You heard it too?”

  Rip, now wide awake, began growling.

  Downstairs, the Shadow Society realized they had been discovered. All thoughts of stealth were forgotten and they rushed about their tasks.

  Hearing them, Zal and Zara made their decision without speaking. Zal snatched up his sword, which had been resting close to hand on a side table. Zara picked up an oil lamp and ignited it with a whisper of magic. The pair then hurried downstairs side by side and gasped in horror as they rushed into the workroom.

  Their six-colour racing carpet had been cut into small, ragged pieces. Every other carpet in the workroom, and through into the shop, had been destroyed – slashed with sharp daggers. All of the unfinished carpets, spare wool and weaving tools had been piled up in the middle of the room and doused with oil, ready to be burned. The six Shadow Society members were frozen in their p
ositions as Zal and Zara looked around in horror, and not without a little bemusement. Shadow Society procedure taught that when a disguise was necessary, a bizarre one was best. If a Shadow dressed as a slipper-maker committed fraud, burglary or vandalism, the Guard would begin their search for the culprit at the Guild of Slipper-Makers. But if the Shadow did it dressed in a wolf costume, the Guard would have a harder time finding somewhere to start. Zal and Zara were confronted by six figures dressed as the Celestial Stork, the Cosmos Vulture and four of Azamed’s minor gods: the Spring Sparrow, the Forest Flamingo, the River Robin and the Precipice Pelican.

  Then Zara’s eyes met with one of them. “Haragan!” Her horror changed into furious rage.

  Haragan moved as fast as a cobra. A jet of blue magic shot from his hand and flew at Zara’s face. She summoned a strange red light into her right palm and knocked the blue aside with it, using her left hand to send a green jet back at him. Rip launched himself forward and sunk his teeth into Shar’s feather-covered leg. Dari and the other three drew large curved daggers from under their wings and charged at Zal.

  Zal’s scimitar was out of its scabbard before they’d crossed half the distance. He spun, jumped and ducked, fighting off all four at once. Their blades scraped and clashed together. White sparks and severed feathers flew, mixing with the storm of magic being exchanged between Zara and Haragan. Bolts and jets of all colours flew and deflected, burning holes in the floor and ceiling. Zara ground her teeth, her face locked in a scowl. Haragan! How dare he? How dare he do this! Of all their previous encounters, of every dirty trick he had ever concocted, this was the worst! But she couldn’t allow herself to get too angry. That would damage her concentration and give him the edge. She put more energy into her next bolt and it came very close to breaking his defences.

  Haragan, too, was furious. She was here! How could he not have thought of it? He’d known she was engaged to the Thesa heir. The wedding was years away, but why hadn’t he thought of it? Why hadn’t he planned for the possibility? Here she was again, with her cruel luck, taking his careful, brilliant plans and tearing them asunder. How dare she. She would not win! He pressed his magic home with renewed vigour.