by Melanie Rawn
The village elder, Abb Ferrhan, and Azzad’s own employer, Bazir al-Gallidh, respectfully invited the father to explain why the peace of Sihabbah had been invaded by knife-wielding strangers. With every word more and more people crowded around; this was the best entertainment since a vagabond troupe of acrobats and mimes had come through at the last harvest festival.
“And then what did she do,” cried the father, “when her mother asked if she’d been with him, but weep and cry out that she had not?”
“A woman protecting her lover,” said Abb Ferrhan, stroking his scraggly white beard, “as plain as the sun in the sky.”
“Or a woman telling the truth,” mused Bazir al-Gallidh, whose family was the richest in Sihabbah and whose name was a byword for exquisite manners. “If he were the guilty one and if she wanted him for her husband, would she not admit to his name?”
“It could have been no one else, I tell you!” the father raged, unable in his fury to accord the nobleman proper respect.
“You could wait and see if the child looks like him!” someone in the crowd called out, to general laughter and the wronged family’s increased humiliation.
“Better like him than like the mother,” muttered Mazzud, one of the stable hands, who had no manners at all and had never seen the need for any that Azzad could tell.
“Ayia, Azzad?” asked Bazir. “Did you sire this woman’s child?”
“No!” He struggled to sit up and repeated, “No! By my hope for Acuyib’s Light and Glory when I die, I did not.”
“Liar!” shrieked her father. He and his kinsmen had to be physically restrained from slicing into Azzad. Some of them had brought two knives.
“What’s all this?” demanded a new voice. “Brother, what goes on here?”
“Zellim,” said Bazir, “you are come at the right moment, as always. We have need of a legal turn of mind.”
The situation was explained to the eminent mou’ammi, who practiced law in faraway Hazganni. Zellim al-Gallidh listened, eyed Azzad and then the girl, pursed his lips, and shrugged elegant shoulders beneath a snowy white robe.
The father folded his arms across his chest. “Now that you have heard all, you must agree—they will marry at once!”
The girl burst into renewed tears. Zellim—not quite so polite as his brother—winced at the volume. The father, belatedly realizing the foolishness of annoying the most important people he had ever met, snarled at her to be silent.
“Stop that!” Azzad ordered before he could think about it.
“You see? You see? He protects her! Defends her! He is her lover!”
“What I see,” said Zellim in forbidding tones that had resounded in the law courts of Hazganni for thirty years, “is a man objecting to abuse of a woman. This is only right and decent.” Approaching the girl, he bowed his head as if to a noble lady and said, “What is your claim in this matter, Lady?”
She sobbed louder.
“Azzad, stand up,” said Bazir.
He did, with a helping hand from Mazzud, and brushed stable yard debris from his clothing. As he bent to pick straw off his trousers, he reflected sourly that no one would recognize the famously fastidious Azzad al-Ma’aliq in the unkempt, threadbare stable hand he had become. Not only was he reduced to poverty and namelessness, he was about to be forced into marrying a fool of a girl who couldn’t even do what all other women did as easily as they breathed: lie about a lover.
“I ask again,” Bazir al-Gallidh said. “Did you get this lady with child?”
“No, I did not,” he replied, flicking a last bit of goat-dung from his knee. As he straightened, the Shagara charm about his neck swung free of his torn shirt. Bazir’s dark eyes narrowed; this was the only reaction Azzad saw. But within moments murmurs circulated through the crowd.
“He tells the truth—”
“He is not the father—”
“There is a liar here, but it is not Azzad—”
Abb Ferrhan held up a quelling hand. Everyone was silent—Azzad most profoundly of all. He knew he was telling the truth, but why did they think so? They had no reason to believe him—and yet they did.
“I find he speaks truth,” said Abb Ferrhan. “He is not the father of the child.”
“What?” roared the father, rounding on his weeping daughter.
“I tried to tell you!” the girl gasped, flinching back. “It was our cousin, in the tents one night—”
“But how can this be?”
“In the way of a young woman with a young man, I should think,” the lawyer Zellim observed dryly. “Azzad, what have you to say of this?”
Bazir al-Gallidh was still looking at him strangely. Azzad addressed his employer with humility, as was fitting. None except Azzad knew that deference for the nobleman was coupled with profound gratitude for the miraculous ways of Acuyib.
And, he was realizing, the Shagara.
“Al-Gallidh,” he said, “it is as she states. I was not the one to lie with her. It was her cousin, whom she loves, and it is my belief that they ought to marry.”
“Yes, have the lovers marry!” a sentimental woman called out.
“Let the girl marry the one she loves!”
“He must be more beautiful than the dawn for her to prefer him over Azzad!”
“He must be blind,” muttered Azzad’s friend Mazzud.
Once more Abb Ferrhan gestured for silence. “Is this your wish, my child?” he asked the girl. When she wiped her nose, sniffled, and nodded, he lifted both hands in the manner of a pronouncement. “Ayia. It is none of our affair, here in Sihabbah, but my advice to you, good man, is to take your daughter to this cousin and celebrate a wedding as soon as may be.”
The girl, her father, her brothers, her uncles, and her cousins got back into their wagon. Azzad saw her direct a fulminating look at him—not a featherweight of gratitude in her at all—as the family departed. The crowd dispersed. Abb Ferrhan returned to his forge. After trading an arched brow with his younger brother, Bazir al-Gallidh went back to his library and his account books—for in this land, Azzad had found, it was the men who took care of such things, and it was rare to find a woman who could so much as write her own name. Azzad was left alone in the stable yard with Zellim.
“Shagara,” was all the mou’ammi said.
“I had the honor of guesting with that tribe, yes,” Azzad replied carefully.
A slow nod, a long sigh—and a sharp, shrewd glance. “Should I ever be so unfortunate as to stand against you in the courts, I will be certain first that you wear nothing of the Shagara.” Before Azzad could react to this, Zellim said casually, “My brother and I are the only al-Gallidh now living. But I have a daughter. Gayyid zoubh.”
Faint of voice and wide of eye, Azzad returned the wish for a good morning. Then, touching the finger-length gold plaque at his breast, he murmured a line from long-neglected devotions. “The Ways of Acuyib are Wonderful and Strange. Praise the Ways of Acuyib.” And for himself he added, “And the Shagara.”
Azzad had exactly one marketable skill (success with ladies brought expenditures, not earnings): he could ride as if he and his horse were one being. His expertise had almost gotten him into the elite Qoundi Ammar, but not even his singular way with horses had been enough to negate his al-Ma’aliq origins. At the time of his rejection he’d shrugged, and pretended not to care, and soon thereafter he truly had not, for Khamsin had then been born, and black horses were not allowed in the Qoundi Ammar.
Back in the Gabannah Chaydann, during the earliest days of his exile, he had been confident that his mastery of horsemanship would gain him entry to the first families of any country and yield large sums as he taught the finer points of riding. But that had been before he’d seen these enormous horses that no man in his right mind would dare to saddle. Men rode donkeys. They looked ludicrous, but they rode donkeys. Even the sight of Azzad on Khamsin, galloping through the al-Gallidh meadows, did not inspire them. So much for his grand plan. Throughout the winter he
worked in the stables of Bazir al-Gallidh, gnawing on his thwarted vengeance.
It was boring work—mucking out stalls and cleaning harness, feeding and currying. He wished it was boring to pick out those cauldron-wide hooves and scrape the yellow from those tremendous teeth; smashed bones and missing fingers did not figure in any of his plans. But as fields soaked by winter rain dried in spring sun, and the mountain heights slowly shed their cloaks of snow, he had worked out no plan that led to wealth, influence, and the slow, suffering demise of Nizzira al-Ammarizzad.
And then one day, when clouds seemed to hover within arm’s reach above Sihabbah, he was summoned to the library of Bazir al-Gallidh. The maqtabba was a large room with a high ceiling, stuffed with leather-bound books of a dozen different sizes and colors, the titles stamped in gold on their spines. The furnishings were both beautiful and comfortable: a couch and chair plump with pillows, a stepladder of dark satinwood inlaid with swirling silver wire, a broad table covered in maps and ledgers, a many-branched bronze lamp with shades of paper-fine alabaster. On a low table was a beautiful chadarang service, the red squares and pieces made of carnelian, the green of jasper.
Bazir al-Gallidh lavished money on his horses and his maqtabba, and that was all. The rest of his house was neither large nor richly decorated, and he dressed more simply than any servant of the al-Ma’aliq, but the stainless purity of his robe made Azzad all too aware of his own threadbare condition—him, the most elegant young blade in Dayira Azreyq.
Ayia, that was another life. He did not regret the clothes or the jewels; indeed, he had come to appreciate Bazir’s quiet elegance. At past fifty years of age, al-Gallidh was a man completely at ease with himself and the little world he ruled, wishing for nothing larger or more powerful or more opulent. Azzad, less that half his age, was yet ambitious—but he had specific uses to which he would put money and influence, should he ever succeed in acquiring them.
Still, from Bazir al-Gallidh he learned that distinction did not require flaunting display. For example, the nobleman wore no jewels but a ring on the first finger of his right hand. Azzad recognized the design from the treasure room back at home: silver clasping a stone, in this case a pearl as white as the snow that was the nobleman’s name. The al-Ma’aliq owned several such rings—had owned, he corrected himself with a renewed surge of bitterness such as he had not felt all this winter of placid, mindless, boring work.
“My ring interests you,” said Bazir al-Gallidh.
Abruptly aware that he was staring—and, considering his thoughts, staring rather fiercely—he smoothed his expression and replied, “Your pardon. I have seen several like it in the past. Taken from the northern barbarians, was it not?”
“Yes.” He held out his hand to regard the pearl. “More than a hundred years ago my great-grandfather came down from the mountains—a place much higher than Sihabbah, whence our family’s name—and fought the barbarians. Eventually they were expelled from the coast. My ancestor returned, his head golden with glory, as the old saying goes, and richer by nothing more than this ring.”
“A truly noble man,” Azzad commented.
“Such rings as these are common where you come from?”
“No. But I have seen three or four. The stones were rubies.”
“Ayia, then they were from the fingers of their nobles. Something about protection against storms and lightning, the perils of a sea voyage.”
“I didn’t know that. Is it written in one of these books?” He gestured to the wealth around them.
“In many of them. Those who dwell on the coast suffered greatly when these barbarians came, and tales of those times are of interest to me. From them, I learned that pearls such as this were worn by those pure of heart—the holy ones, the wise ones. Do you take an interest in the past?”
“Only in the future,” he said, and was unable to keep a twinge of bitterness from his voice.
“Which appears to you rather limited, here in Sihabbah.” Bazir al-Gallidh seated himself on the couch and gestured to the chadarang service. “Do you play?”
“Badly, al-Gallidh. My mother taught me, but despaired of my ever becoming a serious player.”
“This is very, very old. My father always said he could imagine that this was the service on which Acuyib and Chaydann Il-Mamnoua’a played to divide up the world into the green lands and the red.”
Azzad nodded. “My mother used to say that chadarang was part of her devotions—it’s the eternal struggle between the desert and the garden.”
Al-Gallidh picked up one of the towers, fingering a broken crenellation on the jasper. “Your mother sounds a wise woman. But I think there are things more subtle here. There are those of us who live in these, safe and stationary—” He set the tower back on its square and touched the carnelian sheyqa’s crowned head. “—and those who have not the grandest title but who rule in truth by moving among the people.” Sitting back, he regarded Azzad thoughtfully. “I am told that you are a good worker.”
“I have tried to be,” Azzad replied.
“I am further told that you are clean, conscientious, do not drink or gamble or follow women about in the marketplace, and indeed have been exemplary.”
Looking into the older man’s eyes, he felt an absurd desire to shuffle his feet and shrug like a little boy.
“How is it then,” asked the nobleman, “that this superlative servant has done my house such grievous wrong?”
Azzad blinked. “I don’t understand. What wrong have I done?”
“Perhaps I ought to say that the wrong was done not by you but by your horse.” Leaning back, he eyed Azzad with a hint of whimsy. “Five of my best mares are with foal by that spindle-legged stallion of yours.”
“Five—?”
“Yes. At about the time you arrived here, they were coming into season and had just been separated from the herd. They were to be covered by my new stud, who was taken to them as planned. But I did not know until today that Khamsin had gotten there before him.”
“But—how?”
“Our horses do not require high fences,” Bazir replied mildly.
It was true. They could sooner fly than jump anything taller than this couch. But Khamsin—faster, lighter—he’d been trying to fly since he’d tottered to his feet and taken his first steps.
“I know,” Bazir continued, “because by this time the mares should be much bigger than they are. I was afraid that I was mistaken when I bought the new stud, that he had no vigor. But—five mares, all of the best bloodlines, all bearing runtlings at the same time? Then I happened to catch sight of your Khamsin galloping across the meadow. He leaped the stream merely for the fun of it.”
Azzad nodded slowly. “I am sorry, al-Gallidh. What can I do to—”
“—rectify the problem? Nothing. I blame myself, in truth, for not recognizing that he would get to the mares any way he could. We just don’t think about horses leaping fences, you see. And so now we have a difficulty.”
Azzad tried not to gulp. This was an appalling thing Khamsin had done, potentially disastrous to the al-Gallidh horses’ reputation, not to speak of whatever profits had been expected in this year’s crop of foals—
But the nobleman did not look angry; indeed, he seemed almost merry. “I need draft animals, not racehorses. What am I to do with these half-breeds?”
Five foals, not as tall or heavy or powerful as their mothers—
“Mazzud says, and I agree, that judging by their smallness inside the womb, they will be much too frail for harnessing.”
—but as light and swift as their sire, perfect for—
“And so how can I use them?”
“Riding,” he heard himself say, and all at once the blurry idea of what seemed like years ago became as polished crystal in his mind. So did his mother’s face. And the estimable Za’avedra el-Ibrafidia stared at him with disgust for his blindness. “Saddle them and ride them,” he said, excitement rising in him the way his manhood rose at the sight of a
beautiful woman.
“We ride donkeys.” A flat statement, admitting no possibility of change.
“And look ridiculous on them!” Azzad exclaimed. “Only see, al-Gallidh, the advantages! They will be bigger than Khamsin, but not so big as your horses. The terrain here demands strength, which they will have—but grace and a sweeter temper as well, and speed—not so fast as he, but much faster than—”
“You speak as if they were already born.”
“I know how they will be, I can see every one of them!” And somehow he could.
“Along with that truth charm about your neck, did the Shagara give you a spell of foreknowledge as well?”
The crystalline images shattered. “A—a spell?”
“My brother Zellim also has interests,” Bazir murmured. “It was he who pointed out to me the charm and deduced its purpose. Through my own reading, I have learned that when our people rode into battle against the barbarians, they wore amulets to protect them—things of gold and silver made by the Shagara.”
“I did not know that, either.”
“And now that you do know, you do not believe?”
Azzad opened his mouth and found he had no words. In the matter of the pregnant girl, the people of Sihabbah had believed him. So, he realized suddenly, had the shepherds in that village, who had been ready to kill him; but after he had told them he meant no harm, Abb Sharouf, standing close to him, had believed him. Believed, and let him go. For no reason whatsoever.
Except the Shagara gold around his neck.
“Al-Gallidh,” he said at last, “I do not know. The Shagara were a peculiarity to me—kind and welcoming, skilled in medicine as everyone knows, but their ways were . . . eccentric.”
“So I have heard. So I have not read—which is curious, if they were so important in driving out the invaders. Their name is mentioned in the books, and that is all. Nothing of their ways, their lands, their customs. They crafted armbands and rings, a few shields for the nobility, necklaces—and that is all anyone knows.”
Azzad had not seen shields being made. Perhaps the Shagara made such things only in times of war. If, as Fadhil had told him, there was no war here—
