Throne of the Crescent Moon

by Saladin Ahmed

  A few minutes later Raseed returned, silent as ever but betrayed by the noise the mules made as he led them. The beasts themselves seemed to be unharmed, praise God’s small providences. Adoulla had always found mules to be admirable animals—intelligent and suspicious of authority, but maligned as obstinate and ill-tempered. Not unlike me.

  The boy produced a small bronze cookpot and prepared a simple soup over a sputtering fire. Out in the cold night, something small squealed as it died. Perhaps the girl is out there hunting up supper, Adoulla mused, not sure if he was joking.

  Raseed was clearly preoccupied as they set to their bread and broth. There was more to it than the horrors and wonders they’d seen today. Adoulla knew the cause, though he doubted the boy had yet admitted it to himself.

  The girl.

  No doubt the dervish was twisting himself in knots trying to square the circle of his pious oaths with a young man’s natural reactions, and only half aware he was doing so. When Adoulla was a young man, he would have told the girl that she had a lovely face and been done with it. Though this particular girl did not have a lovely face, exactly.

  No, the girl was not what anyone would call pretty, but she had a rough, vital energy that clearly spoke to Raseed. But the boy was incapable of being honest with himself, let alone with a woman. Adoulla faulted the rigid Lodge of God, which had trained the boy into being a sword of a man.

  Then again, Adoulla himself hadn’t known a woman’s touch in a while. He glanced and occasionally winked at young women but he felt awkward doing anything more. And among the older women, there was only one who mattered to him.

  Miri.

  Before he fell asleep, Adoulla let his thoughts linger for a while on Miri Almoussa. The great love of his life’s warm, welcoming curves danced before his mind’s eye, and he could almost hear her heavy, husky voice whispering loving taunts in his ear and offering him teacakes. His eyes fluttered shut, and he drifted toward sleep, already half-dreaming of swaying hips and sugar frosting.

  And again a small animal cried a death-cry out in the darkness.

  The war is upon us. The slaughtered calf screams.

  And thieves in the night have stolen my dreams.

  The line from Ismi Shihab’s Leaves of Palm came to Adoulla unbidden. With a dejected snort he rolled over and resigned himself to sleeping alone on a pallet on the cold, hard ground.

  Chapter 6

  ZAMIA BANU LAITH BADAWI stretched and flexed her muscles by the light of the still rising sun. She sipped from her waterskin, pulled on her gazelle-hide boots, and packed her bedroll.

  Just as her thoughts went to last night’s battle and to her new allies, she caught the approaching scent of the dervish Raseed. A half moment later, the lithe little holy man peeled himself from the shadows of a rock not ten feet away. She felt a flash of shame—no man or animal had ever gotten so close to her without her scenting them before! The last traces of the ghul pack’s corrupt stench had blown away on the night wind, and she was better rested than she had been the night before. She had no excuse! But when she did get a clear scent on the dervish she was shocked out of her self-scolding.

  Ministering Angels help me! She had never been in the presence of a scent that was so strong, yet so clean. Zamia found her shame deepening, but for new reasons. It was all she could do to keep from staring at the pure-smelling, clean-shaven little man in blue. She made a small, surprised noise.

  “God’s peace,” the holy man said by way of greeting, his angular face unreadable.

  “God’s peace,” Zamia repeated. The morning air felt warm and thick in her lungs.

  “I apologize if I startled you,” the dervish said flatly. “We are packing up and will leave soon now.”

  She snorted. “You didn’t startle me. And, as you can see, I am ready to leave already.”

  The dervish bowed his turbaned head. “Of course.” Even standing at ease here, he had an air of war about him. Zamia would have known that the little man could fight even had she not seen his handiwork against the ghuls the night before. The dervish’s confident grace as he moved, the hardness in his tilted eyes, the way his hand rested naturally on his sword-hilt—these were signs her father had taught her to recognize in an enemy or an ally.

  Though she could not say why, Zamia found herself recalling the taunts that two of the boys in her band had made—never to her face—about her rough, ugly looks. They had been jealous of her power and renown, no doubt, but…. It had never mattered to her before whether their insults were rooted in truth.

  The dervish was staring at her.

  She scowled at the little man. “What is it?”

  A tiny lizard darted across the rocky ground between them. Raseed eyed it for a moment but looked directly at her when he spoke. “I have been wondering about something, Zamia Banu Laith Badawi. From what the Doctor has told me, it is not your people’s way to seek help from the outside. I know that you have lost your band, but why have you not sought out the help of the other bands in your tribe? Angel-touched or no, you are young to be on your own so.”

  “Young! I am five and ten! How much older are you, little man? Two years at most?” Zamia sucked her teeth in annoyance. But he is straightforward, at least, not like the Doctor with all of his words and smiles. The dervish held her eyes with his, and something powerful moved through her body.

  “At our last tribal council my father’s band was water-shunned by the other bands of the tribe,” she said finally. “Because of me. Because he dared to name a girlchild Protector of the Band. And now—” she laughed bitterly, despite herself—“now I can’t even avenge my band, for no Badawi will answer my rally. And so I have failed as Protector.” Zamia finally stopped herself, not quite believing she had just spoken those words. Why are you telling this stranger about this? Because his scent is clean? Because you will fight beside him? The tribe’s business is the tribe’s, the band’s business is the band’s!

  The dervish scratched beneath his blue turban. “But you—”

  “We will speak no more of this,” she said firmly. “What of you, Raseed bas Raseed? Where is your kin? Why have you no family name?” She found that she could not quite keep the scorn from her voice. “No kin? No band? No tribe?” Her stomach clenched as she realized that the same could now be said about her.

  The dervish sighed and then recited what seemed familiar words with a quiet intensity. “My name is Raseed bas Raseed—the old way of saying ‘Raseed, only Raseed.’ I am a dervish of the Order. I need no father among men, I need no brother among men, I need no son among men.” He drew up to his full height, which somehow seemed taller now. “God is my father, the forked swords of the Order are my brothers, virtue is my son.”

  They were mad words, Zamia knew—for what was a person without family? Yet she found herself moved by them, and intrigued by their stern-faced speaker. Again shame crept up within her, wearing the bloody bodies of her kin. She had no right to be looking at a man so. She was the Protector of the Band, and she had failed. All that was left was giving up her life for vengeance. The road of wife and mother was not hers to walk.

  But what if—God forgive her for daring to think it—what if she lived? She was the last of the Banu Laith Badawi and she bore the burden of keeping her band from dying out. She would need to marry and bear children for that to happen….

  The confusing, shameful thoughts fled as Zamia scented the Doctor’s approach. A moment later she saw his big, white-clad bulk trundling under the rock overhang.

  “All-Merciful God, is the holy man spitting pious sayings at you already?” he asked. “The sun is barely up! Don’t misunderstand me—his laconic little jewels are all inspiring enough the first couple of times you hear them. But after that they start to sound a bit pompous.”

  Raseed made a small, unhappy noise in his throat. “Doctor. Please.” He sounded like a bullied boy.

  The ghul hunter waved a conciliatory hand, and when he spoke Zamia heard annoyance and affection
dance in his voice. “Oh, to be sure, Raseed is most useful to have around. The boy can cross a room in the space of a breath and—God is my witness!—I’ve even seen him kill a Cyklop!”

  A Cyklop? Truly? Zamia’s desert-bound people knew little of the one-eyed giants of the mountains, but she had heard tales of their legendary strength. She risked a brief, impressed glance at Raseed. The dervish stood stock still, saying nothing.

  The Doctor went on. “But, you see, Raseed thinks he is ‘wise beyond his years.’ I will tell you this, girl: There is no such thing as being wise beyond your years. One can only know as much as one has lived to know, though it is certainly possible to learn a great deal less than this. The boy entered the Order at a young age and has had a hard dervish’s life. He is more serious than most young men his age. How many of them, after all, learned to split rocks with their fists before they learned to shave? But rock-splitter or no, he is a young man who would do well to remember that fact more often.”

  Fifty different feelings filled her. She kept her eyes on the ground and said, “We should be going.”

  Seeming to speak to no one in particular, the dervish said quietly, “I am a young man, but as there is an elder amongst our number, one of us at least ought to act in a proper manner.” Zamia looked up and saw a tiny smile on the dervish’s pretty, birdlike face. Then he walked away, heading for the mules.

  Clearly such retorts were rare, for the old man just stood there for a moment blinking in shocked silence, watching the dervish walk away. The ghul hunter turned to Zamia and let out a laugh that shook his broad shoulders and big gut. “Ha! ‘One of us ought to!’ Hee hee! ‘Dignified and proper!’” He shouted at Raseed’s back, “Indeed, boy, indeed! And since it clearly isn’t going to be me, it might as well be you!” The Doctor waggled his bushy grey eyebrows and gave Zamia a conspiratorial wink. “He hates it that I call him ‘boy,’ you know.”

  “And I hate your calling me ‘girl,’” Doctor.

  The old man gave an offended sniff. “Bah. I’ll tell you like I tell him—I call you youngsters as I like! I am, after all, old enough to be your grand-uncle, my dear.”

  Zamia felt anger flare inside her as they turned to follow Raseed. “Before he died, my grand-uncle called me Protector of the Band.” Her mind’s eye conjured an image of her gnarled gray grand-uncle Mahloud, whose age had not diminished his skill at water-finding. The ghuls had killed him, too.

  Again the memories hit her like a hammer blow to the stomach. Why could she not shut them out? She could not sit here and make herself sick with this mourning every few hours. Vengeance would never come from such weakness.

  The old man said something, apparently repeating himself. The third time, Zamia actually heard him. “Are you all right, Zamia?”

  She growled, low and long. She shoved weakness to the side. “I am fine, Doctor. Why are we standing here chattering? Were we not about to depart?”

  The old man sighed a tired sigh and fell quiet. Zamia looked at him more closely.

  She had watched as he destroyed three of the foul creatures which had so easily slain the fierce warriors of her band. She knew that he wielded great power. But as she looked at him now, a fat old man sweating heavily though the sun was hardly up, she saw none of the sorts of signs her father had taught her to watch for in a warrior. Being honest with herself, she knew she would not have been able to slay that massive ghul had its attention not been focused on the Doctor. But why had he seemed so helpless? Whistling and looking like he was half ready to die without caring whether he took his enemies with him. Having a ghul hunter on her side would improve her chances for revenge—she was not fool enough to think she needed no allies. But this old man….

  And then there was the dervish. The Badawi were not as coy as villagers about the truths of man and woman. Though Zamia was Protector of the Band, the older women had taught her, the same as they had the other girls, of the things she had to look forward to. The things she would feel when she looked at a man, and the things she would do when wed. When she looked at Raseed, though, what she felt was confusion. The dervish was a powerful ally but a distraction. Her mind spun with contradictions.

  Over the course of the morning they made their way along a road of packed dirt that grew broader and smoother the farther they went. The dervish offered her his mule. He meant no insult, she supposed. How could he know that a Badawi would ride nothing but a pureblood horse? Walking on a road was compromise enough.

  Zamia walked two steps behind her new allies, trying to train her feet to the hard earth of the road. And trying to keep her troubled mind from spinning. The little party walked in silence, and Zamia found herself almost missing the Doctor’s inane, griping banter. Better than being alone with the painful pictures in her head.

  They traveled for hours, the old man and Raseed occasionally exchanging a few words. Zamia largely ignored them as she dwelled on the knife in her pocket. She would never wield it herself, of course, but in a strange way it had become the most important thing on God’s great earth.

  It was just afternoon when a strong wind-shift brought Zamia out of her grim thoughts. They were coming upon a large mass of men’s scents. A few minutes later the road—already the broadest Zamia had ever seen—passed between two large rocks to join another road, twice as wide. And it was as if they had stepped into a sandstorm of people. Zamia tried to look everywhere at once, the threatening scents of a dozen different strangers assaulting her. It was all she could do not to take the lion-shape. What is wrong with you? Did you react this way when the trading caravans met up with the band? She was without her father’s guidance now, but that was no excuse. Focus. You cannot panic at every pack of men that passes.

  The three of them were absorbed into a dense but quick moving line of travelers that snaked its way toward Dhamsawaat. Zamia could see that the road continued straight ahead for a long stretch, then rose at a sharp angle with a massive, shrubby dune. The shrubs more or less covered the dunes now, instead of dotting them, which meant that they were coming close to water. A good deal of it, Zamia guessed from the increasingly dense web of brown-green. The River of Tigers, she thought. It must be nearby indeed.

  A moment later, she saw the thick green ribbon of it in the distance. Zamia knew that outsiders thought the Badawi dazzled by the smallest stream. The idiots knew nothing of the beautiful brooks and springs that nurtured the great oases of the Empty Kingdom. But this big river, with its boats and the men fishing it…Zamia was dazzled, though she did all she could to hide it.

  Across the river, were the farms and orchards that, as her father had taught her, sent their yields year in and year out to the hungry hordes of Dhamsawaat. Olives, dates, wheat, waxy earth-apples, small fields for pasture. This was as close as Zamia had ever come to Dhamsawaat. The Banu Laith Badawi were—had been, she corrected herself painfully—fiercely independent even for Badawi. Her band had had little contact with townsmen. But even an independent band sometimes needed things from other peoples—tools, fruits and grains, and, when wild pasture was hard to find, grazing for their animals. The Protector of the Band was expected to advise on all aspects of the band’s health, and she had accompanied her father several times to trade at the fairs that were sometimes held near here. But this close to Dhamsawaat, something was different. There was a…life that came from the city, and Zamia could already sense it.

  They pressed on. The incline of the road was steep enough now, and the sun hot enough, that thick rivulets of sweat were pouring down the Doctor’s face. Zamia wondered again about doing battle alongside this fat old man. For the moment, she reminded herself, you have little choice—these two are the only allies you have in the world. It was a disturbing thought, but it soon flew from her mind. For then, the road crested the dune, and Dhamsawaat, King of Cities, lay before her.

  Zamia stopped dead in her tracks and, for several long moments, could not speak. I see why this place is called the Jewel of Abassen, she thought, seeing the gleami
ng domes of turquoise and gold and white that dotted the carpet of buildings. I always thought father’s stories were exaggerated, but now I see he did not do the horrible size of this place justice.

  It almost made her swoon. The buildings! She did not know how to begin counting them—flat, peaked, and domed, in stone and tile, a dozen different shades. And rising up as high as mountains! Above it all, near what seemed to be the center of the jumble—if it had a center—rose a huge white dome. Zamia was not much used to buildings and had trouble gauging the dome’s size, but she was certain that whatever building it topped must be bigger than some of the trade villages she had seen.

  It had to be the legendary Crescent Moon Palace, the opulent home and stronghold of the Khalif and his family. Zamia’s people knew little of, and cared little for, the supposed ruler of all Abassen. The Badawi limited their interactions with city men as much as possible, wary of becoming bakgam tokens at best, or slaves at worst. Yet even among the Badawi the magnificence of the palace was known, and the few who had seen Dhamsawaat had confirmed that the stories did not exaggerate the splendor of the palace. Even from this distance Zamia could see that they had spoken truly.

  Outside the great city walls, they came to two long buildings that stank powerfully of horses. There the Doctor handed the mules over to a stooped man wearing ridiculous city clothes. They then proceeded on foot, making their way through the city’s massive gates and into an even denser press of people. Zamia had to remind herself that this was not some feverish dream. There is so much stone and brick. The very air is thick with it! She forced herself to stop staring about like a sun-dazzled child.

  More astonishing than the buildings were the people. If she had thought there was a great mass of them on the road into the city, she saw a hundred times more of them now as she passed through the streets. The densest gatherings of men Zamia had ever seen were the village and pilgrimage sites to the northeast. She’d been shocked when she saw those places, with their hundred roofs and buildings of two stories. But this—this was impossible. A riotous mix of clothing and complexions. It was terrifying. Men’s and women’s scents bled together with a thousand others, and countless people darted in and out of her peripheral vision.