The Prophet of Akhran

by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman

  No man would have been permitted to enter this tent, Mathew thought bitterly, closing the flap behind him. But a madman—a man who chose to hide himself in the clothes of a woman rather than face an honorable death, a man they shun, a man they consider harmless—me they will allow inside.

  An honorable death. The words caused his heart to constrict painfully. Khardan would die before he let his people brand their Calif a coward. That must not happen.

  We will see how “harmless” I am, Mathew resolved.

  Zohra sat crosslegged on the bare tent floor. There were cushions in the tent, but after one look and a wrinkling of his nose, Mathew understood why she had tossed them into a comer rather than use them for her comfort. She glanced up at him without welcome or hope.

  “What do you want?” she asked dully.

  “I came to bring you a change of clothing,” said Mathew for the guard’s benefit.

  Zohra made a disdainful movement with her hand, started to speak, then stopped as Mathew swiftly put his finger to his lips.

  “Shhh,” he warned. Kneeling down beside her, he unfolded the garments.

  “A knife?” Zohra whispered eagerly, but the fire in her eyes faded when she saw what the bundle contained. “Goatskin?” she said in disgust, lifting the limp pieces of cured skin with a thumb and forefinger.

  “Shhh!” Mathew hissed urgently. Kohl, used to outline the eyes, and several falcon feathers tumbled out onto the floor. Seeing them, Zohra understood. The dark eyes flared. “Scrolls!”

  “Yes,” said Mathew, breathing his words into her ear.

  “I have a plan.”

  “Good!” Zohra smiled and lifted a feather whose quill had been sharpened to a fine point. “Teach me the scrolls of death!”

  “No, no!” Mathew checked an exasperated sigh. He should have known this would happen. He considered telling Zohra that he could not take a human life, that the ways of his people were peaceful. He considered the notion briefly and, sighing, dismissed it just as fast. He could imagine Zohra’s reaction. She already thought him crazy. “You will make scrolls of water,” he whispered patiently.

  Zohra scowled. “Water! Bah! I will kill them. Kill them all! Beginning with that sniveling swine, my father—”

  “Water!” said Mathew sternly. “My plan is this—”

  He was about to explain when voices came from outside.

  “Let me in,” demanded a grating voice at the nearby tent. “I will see the prisoner.”

  Mathew, drawing aside the tent flap ever so slightly, peeped outside.

  It was Majiid, talking to Khardan’s guard.

  “Leave us,” the old man ordered the guards. “I will not be in any danger and he will not run away. Not again.”

  Swiftly Mathew drew back. He and Zohra heard the guards’ footsteps crunch over the sand. There was a moment’s pause and Mathew could imagine Majiid glowering at the unmoving Auda, then they heard the tent flap thrown aside and Khardan’s voice respectfully—if somewhat ironically—welcoming his father.

  Zohra’s guards were talking this over in low tones. Exchanging meaningful glances, both Zohra and Mathew crawled quietly to the rear of her tent. It stood close to Khardan’s and, holding their breaths, they were able to hear much of the conversation between father and son.

  “Have the Sheykhs determined my fate?”

  “No,” growled Majiid. “We meet tonight. You will be allowed to speak.”

  “Then why are you here?” Khardan’s voice sounded weary, and Mathew wondered if he had been asleep.

  There was silence as if the old man was struggling to speak the words. When they finally came out, they blurted forth, forced out past some great obstacle. “Tell them that the witch ensorcelled you. Tell them that it was her scheme to destroy our tribe. The Sheykhs will judge in your favor since you acted under the constraint of magic. Your honor will be restored.”

  Khardan was silent. Zohra’s face was pale, but cool and impassive. Her eyes were liquid night. But she was not as calm as she seemed. Involuntarily she reached out and caught hold of Mathew’s hand with her own. He squeezed it tightly, offering what poor comfort he could.

  After all, Majiid had asked nothing of Khardan but that he speak the truth.

  “What will happen to my wife?”

  “What do you care?” Majiid demanded angrily. “She was never wife to you!”

  “What will happen?” Khardan’s voice had an edge of steel.

  “She still be stoned to death—the fate of women who practice evil magic!”

  They heard a rustling, as if Khardan rose to his feet. “No, father. I will not say this to the Sheykhs.”

  “Then your fate is in the hands of Akhran!” snarled Majiid bitterly, and they heard him storm from the tent, yelling loudly to the guards to take up their posts again as he left.

  Mathew and Zohra started to return to their work when they heard Khardan speaking again—not to a human, but to his God. “My fate is in your hands, Hazrat Akbran,” said the Calif reverently. “You took my life and gave it back to me for a reason. My people are in danger. Humbly I come before you and I beg you to show me how I may help them! If it means sacrificing my life, I will do so gladly! Help me, Akhran! Help me to help them!”

  His voice died. A tear fell hot on Mathew’s hand. Looking up, he saw its mate slide down Zohra’s pallid cheek.

  “I talk of killing them,” she murmured. “He talks of saving them. Akhran forgive me.”

  She did not bother to wipe the tear away but moved swiftly and soundlessly back to the center of the tent. Taking up the quill she rubbed it in kohl, and bending over the goatskin, keeping it hidden from view in case anyone entered the tent, she began to laboriously trace out the arcane words that would bring water out of sand.

  Chapter 5

  The council convened shortly after Majiid left Khardan’s tent, or at least Mathew assumed that this was the reason for a loud burst of raised voices and vehement arguing that carried clearly in the still night air. When he had first begun working on his scroll, he feared they might not have enough time to complete the work. But gradually, as the hours passed and the haranguing continued, Mathew relaxed. From the occasional shout, he gathered that the Sheykhs were fighting over whose side of the camp should hold the judgment and which Sheykh and whose akasul should preside.

  Zeid claimed that since he was not near kin to any of the parties involved, he should be the one who sat in judgment. This precipitated an hour’s shouting match over whether a father’s mother’s sister’s seventh son’s brother’s son related to Majiid on the father’s side was considered near kin. By the time this dispute was resolved (Mathew never did find out how), the argument over the site began again with an entirely new set of issues involved.

  But though the bickering bought them time, Mathew found his feeling of ease seeping away. The yelling and the clamoring rasped on his nerves like a wood mason’s file going across the grain. He found it increasingly hard to concentrate, and when he had ruined his second scroll by misspelling a word he had known how to spell since the age of six, he tossed down the quill in exasperation.

  “After all, why should we hurry?” he said abruptly, startling Zohra. “They’re not going to decide anything for a week! They couldn’t agree on the number of suns in the sky! Jaafar would say it was one, Majiid would swear it was two and one was invisible, and Zeid would claim them both wrong and state that there were no suns in the sky and he would slit the throat of anyone who accused him of lying!”

  “All will be determined by morning,” returned Zohra softly. She knelt upon the floor, bent nearly double to trace the letters upon the goatskin. Her lips slowly and deliberately formed the sound of each letter she drew, as though this would somehow aid her hand in executing the symbol.

  Executing. The word made Mathew’s hand tremble, and he hastily clasped one over the other. “How do you know?” he asked irritably.

  “Because they have it all decided in their minds already,
” Zohra returned, shrugging. She glanced up at Mathew, her eyes dark pools in the lamplight. “This is a serious matter. How would it look to the people if they made a decision in only a few hours?”

  A sudden clashing of steel made Mathew jump and almost spring to his feet, thinking that they were coming for them. Zohra went on writing, however, and Mathew—realizing the sound was confined to the council tent—supposed bitterly that this matter of putting to death their Calif and his wife was so serious that the Sheykhs needed to shed some of their own blood first.

  Maybe they’ll all kill each other, he thought. Savages! Why do I bother? What do these barbarians matter to me? They think I’m mad! They are kind to me only out of superstition. I will always be some sort of strange and rare creature to them, never accepted. I will always be alone!

  Mathew did not know his despairing thoughts were stamped plainly upon his face until an arm stole around his shoulders.

  “Do not fear, Mathew,” said Zohra gently. “Your plan is a good one! All will be well!”

  Mathew clung to her, letting her touch comfort him until he became aware that her caressing fingers were no longer soothing but arousing. Hastily gulping, he sat back and looked at her with a wild hope beating in his chest. There was caring in the dark eyes, but not the kind for which he longed. The smooth face was expressive of worry, concern, nothing more.

  But what more did he want? How could one be in love with two people at the same time?

  Two people one could never have. . .

  A groan escaped Mathew’s lips.

  “Are you sick again?” Zohra drew near, and Mathew, cringing, repelled her with an upraised hand.

  “A slight pain. It will pass,” he gasped.

  “Where?” Zohra persisted.

  “Here.” Mathew sighed, and pressed his hand over his heart. “I’ve had it before. There is nothing you can do. Nothing anyone can do.” That, at least, was truth enough. “We had better finish the magic if we are to be ready by morning,” he added.

  She still seemed inclined to speak, then checked herself and, after gazing intently at the young man, returned silently to her work.

  She knows, he realized forlornly. She knows but does not know what to say. Perhaps she loved me once, or rather wanted me, but that was when I first came and she and I were both frightened and weak and lost. But now she has found what she sought; she is sure of herself, strong in her love for Khardan. She doesn’t know it yet, she won’t admit it. But it is there, like a rod of iron in her soul, and it is giving her strength.

  And Khardan loves her, though he has armored himself against that love and fights it at every turn.

  What can I do, who love them both?

  “You can give them each other,” came a voice soft and sad, echoing his heartbreak, yet with a kind of deep joy in it that he didn’t understand.

  “What did you say?” he asked Zohra.

  “Nothing!” She glanced at him worriedly. “I said nothing. Are you sure you are all right, Mathew?”

  He nodded, rubbing the back of his neck, trying to rid himself of a tickling sensation, as of feathers brushing against his skin.

  Chapter 6

  The following dawn the sun’s first rays skimmed across the desert, crept through the holes in Majiid’s tent, bringing silence with them. The arguing ceased. Zohra and Mathew glanced at each other. Her eyes were shadowed and redrimmed from lack of sleep and the concentration she had devoted to her work. Mathew knew his must look the same or perhaps worse.

  The silence of the morning was suddenly broken by the sound of feet crunching over sand. They heard the guards outside scramble to their feet, the sound of footsteps draw nearer. Both Mathew and Zohra were ready, each had been ready for over an hour now, ever since first light. Zohra was clad in the women’s clothes Mathew had brought for her. They were not the fine silk she was accustomed to wearing, only a simple chador of white cotton that had been worn by the second wife in a poor man’s household. Its simplicity became her, enhancing the newfound gravity of bearing. A plain white mantle covered her head and face, shoulders and hands. Held tightly in her hands, hidden by the folds of her veil, were several pieces of carefully rolledup goatskin.

  Mathew was dressed in the black robes he had acquired in Castle Zhakrin. Since he was able to come and go freely, he had left the tent in the middle of the night and searched the camp in the moonlit darkness until he found the camels they had ridden. Their baggage had been removed from the beasts, thrown down, and left to lie in the sand as though cursed. Mathew could have wished the robes—retrieved by Auda from their campsite on the shores of the Kurdin Sea—cleaner and less worse for wear, but he hoped that even stained and wrinkled they must still look impressive to these people who had never seen sorcerer’s garb before.

  Stealing back to the tent once he had changed his clothes, Mathew noted the figure of the Black Paladin sitting unmoving before Khardan’s tent. The slender white hand, shining in the moonlight as if it had some kind of light of its own, beckoned to him. Mathew hesitated, casting a worried glance at the watchful guards. Auda beckoned again, more insistently, and Mathew reluctantly approached him.

  “Do not worry, Blossom,” the man said easily, “they will not prevent us from speaking. After all, I am a guest and you are insane.”

  “What do you want?” Mathew whispered, squirming beneath the scrutiny of the flat, dispassionate eyes.

  Auda’s hand caught hold of the hem of Mathew’s black robes, rubbing the velvet between his fingers. “You are planning something.”

  “Yes,” said Mathew uncomfortably, with another glance at the guards.

  “That is good, Blossom,” said Auda softly, slowly twisting the black cloth. “You are an ingenious and resourceful young man. Your life was obviously spared for a purpose. I will be watching and waiting. You may count upon me.”

  He released the cloth from his grasp, smiled, and settled back comfortably. Mathew left, returning to Zohra’s tent, uncertain whether to feel relieved or more worried.

  The eyes of the guards opened wide when Mathew, clad in his black robes, emerged from the tent into the first light of day. The young wizard had brushed and combed his long red hair until it blazed like flame in the sunshine. The cabalistic marks, etched into the velvet in such a way that they could not be seen except in direct light, caught the sun’s rays and appeared to leap out suddenly from the black cloth, astonishing all viewers.

  Mathew’s hands—gripping his own scrolls—were concealed in the long, flowing sleeves. He walked forward without saying a word or looking at anyone, keeping his eyes staring straight ahead. He saw, without seeming to, Khardan leave his tent, saw the puzzled look the man cast him. Mathew dared not respond or risk breaking the show of mystery he was wrapping around himself.

  What the Archmagus would have said had he seen his pupil now came to Mathew’s mind, and a wan smile nearly destroyed the illusion. “Cheap theatrics! Worthy of those who use magic to trap the gullible!” He could hear his old teacher rage on, as he had once a year at the beginning of First Quarter. “The true magus needs no black robes or conical hat! He could practice magic naked in the wilderness”—since no one dared laugh in the presence of the Archmagus, this statement always occasioned sudden coughing fits among the students and was later the source of whispered jokes for many nights to come“practice magic naked in the wilderness if he has only the knowledge of his craft and Sul in his heart!”

  Naked in the wilderness. Mathew sighed. The Archmagus was dead now, slaughtered by Auda’s goums. The young wizard hoped the old man would understand and forgive what his pupil was about to do.

  Looking neither to the right nor the left, Mathew made his way through the camp, past the ranks of staring nomads, and walked straight to the Tel. He seemed to travel blindly (although in reality he was watching where he was going and carefully avoided large obstacles), occasionally stumbling most convincingly over small rocks and other debris in his path.

  Behind him
he could hear the men following after him, the Sheykhs questioning everyone as to what was going on, the nomads responding with confused answers.

  “This is ridiculous!” Zeid said angrily. “Why doesn’t someone stop him?”

  “He is mad,” muttered Majiid sullenly.

  “You stop him,” suggested Jaafar.

  “Very well, I will!” humphed Zeid.

  The short, pudgy Sheykh—hands raised, mouth openplanted himself in front of Mathew. The wizard, staring straight ahead, kept walking and would have run the Sheykh down had not Zeid—at the last moment—scrambled to get out of his way.

  “He didn’t even see me!” gasped the Sheykh.

  “He is being led by the God!” cried Jaafar in an awed voice.

  “He is being led by the God!” The word spread through the crowd like flame cast on oil, and Mathew blessed the man in his heart.

  Hoping everyone—including Khardan—was following him, but not daring to look behind, Mathew reached the Tel and begin to climb it, slipping and falling among the rocks and the scragglylooking Rose of the Prophet. When he was about halfway up, he faced around and spread his arms wide, keeping the goatskin scrolls concealed by turning his palms away from his audience.

  “People of the Akar, the Hrana, and the Aran, attend to my words,” he shouted in a voice as deep as he could possibly make it.

  Standing at the foot of the Tel directly below him was Zohra. Khardan, held by his guards, was staring darkly at Mathew, perhaps convinced that the young man had now truly gone mad. Near him, Auda—face covered by his haik—watched with a glint of a smile in his dark eyes and his hand near his dagger. The sight of him made Mathew nervous, and he quickly shifted his gaze.

  “Madman, come down!” Majiid sounded impatient. “We have no time for this—”

  “No time for the word of Akhran?” Mathew called out sternly.

  The crowd muttered. Heads came together.

  “Get him down from there, and let’s get on with the judgment,” ordered Zeid, waving at several of his men.