by Carol Berg
“His sister ... the one who ... ?” Aleksander seemed to forget his anger for a moment.
I nodded, my eyes shifting from Elinor’s boots to the table to the hanging lantern—anywhere but her face. “Mistress Elinor, you’ve guessed correctly. I would like to present His Highness, Aleksander zha Denischkar, late of Zhagad and more recently of everywhere his enemies haven’t thought to look, including a slaver’s harness. By coming here we’ve placed our lives in your hands, and I ask your patience as well as your protection. We’ve had a difficult journey and no sleep for more than a day. We need to speak with Blaise, and then we’ll leave, if you or he or Prince Aleksander still wish it.” Now I had to look her in the eye, else she would have every right to ignore my words. “I swear on the life most precious to us both that my lord Aleksander himself is no threat to your followers. As to other concerns ... if it will improve your own sleep, you may confine me as you think best.” Her dark eyes were not filled with horror, only anger. Good enough. I could live with anger.
Elinor sat on the stool beside her table and propped her chin on her folded hands, the one finger tapping rapidly on the others, the only sign of her agitation. “Blaise should be here soon,” she said. “I’ll advise him to take the two of you deep into the desert and leave you there.” She glared at me, as if I had brought plague to her household, though she no longer wore a matron’s apron. Around the waist of her dark blue tunic and skirt, she wore a woven leather girdle with a knife sheath hanging from it, boldly displayed. Her thick, dark braid was bound tightly around her head, save for a few wisps that had escaped and were stuck to her high forehead by the damp.
So many emotions spilled out and gathered in again. Fortunately a soft “pardon, Mistress Elinor” from outside the tent prevented the need for further conversation. Elinor bade the newcomer enter, and a young girl brought in a wooden tray and set it on the table. On the tray were dates, a loaf of bread, a small mound of goat cheese, a clay pitcher, and three cups.
“Thank you, Melia,” said Elinor. The girl glanced curiously at the three of us, then left the tent.
Aleksander stood motionless beside me. With no crutch or stick, and his stubborn refusal to use my shoulder, he was probably about to topple over. “May we sit down?” I said. “Until Blaise comes at least?”
“Of course. Eat and drink as you will.” Elinor motioned us to the wooden stools where her companions had been seated, but instead we chose the woven mat that lay over the dirt floor.
We were both filthy. Roche had given Aleksander a ragged haffai as we rode through the desert, but the garment hung open to reveal his bloodstained breeches and lack of shirt, stockings, or boots. He had tied his hair in a knot at the back of his head while we stayed in Andassar, and so it remained, now matted with blood from the battle. I was slightly better dressed, but my clothes were stiff with gore.
The food was good. Neither Aleksander’s pique nor my tongue-tied embarrassment in front of Elinor could forestall the demands of hunger, and before two minutes had passed we were eyeing each other over the last date. My belly growled in half-sated pleasure. I could have eaten ten times the amount.
“I can get more,” said Elinor, jumping up from her stool as if she had read my mind.
“Only what you can spare,” I said. “But we’d be most grateful.”
She nodded and ducked hurriedly through the doorway of the tent. She didn’t seem to find it necessary to leave a guard with us. I supposed that, for the moment at least, our obvious vulnerability on the most human point of hunger soothed her concerns as to our intentions.
Once she was gone, Aleksander’s glance fell on me like a smith’s hammer, and not because of an orphaned date.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly when I accepted that he wasn’t going to let matters rest until I said something. “This seemed the only reasonable course.”
“Was I to have nothing to say about it?”
“You need time and safety to get your leg strong again. You need to stop running for a while, so you can think clearly about what to do next. I can’t stay with you much longer. I believe you will find your way, and I want to help you, but I—” Despite my reluctance, the time had come to speak of the siffaru. I ran my fingers through my filthy hair and tried to formulate the telling. “—I have to decide what to do about Kir‘Navarrin. I know who’s waiting now. The siffaru took me to Tyrrad Nor, and I talked with him.”
“You’ve lost your mind.”
“Very possibly.” I attempted a smile, though it likely came out weak. “But I believe not. Not yet, at least. I was right about one bit: the prisoner in the fortress is only a man, a powerful sorcerer who can touch my dreams. But everything else—My lord, he is a soul of such complexity, such depth of feeling, such magnificence of power and spirit, altogether different than I imagined.” Despite all my misgivings, the feelings poured out of me as strong as ever. “He’s dangerous, yes. But I’m half mad to go there and learn more of him.”
“Dangerous and magnificent? After a few days of a desert boy’s vision—some mind-tangling weed he fed you, no doubt—my ever-cautious friend is ‘half mad’ to stick his head in a noose? No wonder you wouldn’t tell me.”
Something struck the outside of the tent softly, and a group of laughing children came to retrieve whatever it was. Only when their bubbling merriment had receded into the workaday noises of a busy camp did I go on. “What I experienced was not just a vision. Whatever Qeb’s gift or his herbs, my own power worked with it to take me to Kir‘Navarrin. I spoke with the prisoner, walked with him, heard his story. I touched the wall that holds him. And I believe that perhaps I can—” Impossible to speak of it. “I told him I’d come back. He’s muddling my head, so I don’t know if I dare confront him. But if I decide that’s where this path leads, then I need to get on with it while I can, while I have some hope of success.”
“I told you to go if you needed.” Behind the echoes of anger and bitterness and humiliation was true concern. “But I think you’re risking your soul to do it.”
“Well, if so, you’ll take care of it, right? Back in Drafa you promised me that you’d not let me live a monster, and I have infinite faith in you.”
“Even for you, that’s a bad joke. So when will you go?”
“I won’t leave you alone.”
“And so you think to abandon me with people who despise me?”
I grinned. “When has that ever bothered you?”
He snorted and snatched the last date, just as Blaise hurried into the tent. “Seyonne! Stars of heaven, I’ve been worried about you.” I jumped to my feet, and he clasped my hands, probing my depths with a gaze so intense I could not meet it. Between his scrutiny and Aleksander‘s, my skin felt raw. “When I heard what happened in Zhagad ... and after ... Are you all right?”
“Surviving. In control.” I smiled and moved out from between him and the Prince. “You remember Prince Aleksander.”
Blaise’s lean face grew wary, but he displayed no evidence of Elinor’s hostility. He bowed slightly. “Of course.”
Last time these two had met, Blaise had pledged fealty to the Empire and agreed to halt his raiding, thus allowing Aleksander to avert civil war. In return, Aleksander had revoked his orders condemning the riders of the Yvor Lukash to death and had taken the first steps to change the prerogatives of slave owners. They had made these concessions, not in deference to each other, but because I had asked them to. Now I needed them to build that same trust with each other.
A noise from the rear of the tent interrupted the delicate confrontation. “Linnie?” said Blaise, peering into the stacked clutter of baskets and bags.
Elinor emerged from the shadows unabashed, carrying a basket of bread and cheese. Clearly she had been eavesdropping. Though I was uncomfortable at the thought of her hearing my confession to Aleksander, I couldn’t blame her. “Blaise, we can’t have him here,” she said, jerking her head toward Aleksander. “We’ve no right. We’ve sworn to the others�
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Blaise laid a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s hear him first.” He fixed his attention on the Prince. “What is it you wish from us, Lord Aleksander?” he said. “I hope you’ve not come to enforce the oath I gave you. Circumstances have changed, and my purposes can no longer lie fallow.” Blaise’s tone was not hostile. Only clear.
I stilled my tongue. Aleksander’s charge had been valid. He needed to speak for his own life.
The Prince shifted awkwardly to get up from the matting, refusing my offered hand. “Circumstances have indeed changed,” he said once he’d gotten to his feet and returned Blaise’s stiff bow. Even leaning on the table, he was half a head taller than Blaise. “Many things have changed. This damned Ezzarian keeps insisting that I think about what I’m doing, but, unlikely as it seems for anyone who knows me, I’ve done a great deal of thinking these past months. You are an outlaw who has made secret war upon this Empire, who has disrupted its stability and helped bring it to the brink of ruin. I will not argue justice or right, for men may agree upon a cause while disagreeing about its cure. Indeed, I want nothing from you”—the Prince paused and took a deep breath—“but it appears I must ask anyway. I seem to have misplaced my empire, and so I’m in need of sanctuary. My own people will not have me. So what of you? Will you take me in?”
Blaise’s disposition was sublimely serene. I had always envied him that. Passion and reason had found a healthy balance in him, shepherded by an inner confidence that inspired faith and a generous heart that inspired love. But as Aleksander spoke, the hand Blaise had laid so soothingly on his sister’s shoulder tightened. Anger, indignation, and disdain played across the outlaw’s hollow cheeks and angled eyes in those few moments. But in the end, he nodded and said, “You may stay and share our provisions for as long as you have need. I look forward to further discussions of these matters.”
Elinor shook off her brother’s hand, dropped her basket of food on the brass tray, and left.
Blaise moved to follow her, but checked himself abruptly. “Rarely do I dispute my sister’s judgment,” he said. “She’s far better than I at weighing consequences. I hope I don’t regret this.”
Blaise himself walked us across the vale of Taíne Keddar, a blue-green gem in the midst of desolation. Besides feeding off of the deep clear well for which it was named, the high, grassy basin caught whatever moisture was baked out of the surrounding leagues of desert and returned to earth in the form of daily afternoon showers. Groves of fragrant cedars and gray-green olive trees graced a rocky garden of grass and flowers, locked that morning in a watery haze.
Blaise told us that the valley was one of two, nestled high in the rocky spine of the Azhaki wasteland. The legend of two lush, hidden valleys had flourished among the desert peoples for hundreds of years, he said. But the location was so remote, and access so difficult, that no one had been able to say for certain where they lay or even that they existed at all. With his ability to change into a hunting bird and travel where he would, and needing exactly such a place to hide his followers, Blaise had found it.
I was astounded at the number of people abroad in the damp morning. Men and women hurried here and there, hauling wood and water, and carrying baskets of bread from a squat brick building. From the tantalizing smells wafting overhead, I guessed the building housed common ovens. Children chased goats and chickens, carried pails of milk, and led horses to a wooden shed that rang with a blacksmith’s hammer. Men were smoothing logs and hammering together a small house to join the scattered mix of old and new dwellings of stone and wood. A number of canvas tents were set up in the lee of a rocky prominence, one of them the headquarters we had just left.
“Sorry I can offer no better accommodation. We’re a bit short on roofs at the moment,” Blaise said to Aleksander as he led us down a path through an ancient olive grove to a small stone hut. The place was no more than a single windowless room with a dirt floor and a wooden roof—built for storing olives, I guessed. “But this ... I thought you might be willing to put up with the cramped space in trade for privacy. Seyonne can stay with Farrol and me, or sleep in the barracks, whatever the two of you decide. And we can give you clothes. You both look like you need a change. They won’t be fine—”
“No need to keep apologizing.” Aleksander leaned on the door frame and surveyed the dismal little shelter. “I’m fully aware of my position and have no expectations. Though I would appreciate boots if they’re to be had. I’m unsteady enough without rough ground tripping me up.”
Blaise nodded. “Seyonne, you remember Cafazz. He can help with boots. And Sufrah rules the food supplies as before. But this evening . . . and every evening ... I’d like you to eat with me.”
I protested, sure that Blaise was forgetting the awkwardness of forcing our company upon Elinor. “We can do for ourselves,” I said. “We’ve been accustomed to it for a while now.”
But he wouldn’t hear my excuses. “I think it would be wise,” he said, “for many reasons that you can likely come up with for yourselves. Everyone in the valley knows of the Derzhi and the Ezzarian shapeshifter by now. Many know Seyonne and trust him. But I’ve no doubt that half my people have guessed your identity already, Lord Aleksander, and none have any reason to love you. If you are to be accepted here, then they must see that I consider you no threat.” He smiled ruefully. “My companions are quite protective of me. A few of them tend to be a bit overzealous.” He entirely understated the matter.
In the hour after Blaise left us, Aleksander took charge of our accommodations, mumbling that he might as well learn to be useful. He found a stick of olive wood to hold himself up, a leafy branch for sweeping out the stone house, and a stand of dried grass to gather for pallets. While he took care of these tasks, I went off in search of water and whatever might be available in the way of clothes. I met several acquaintances from my sojourn with Blaise in Karesh, and though they had surely heard of my mad rage on the night of Gordain’s death, none seemed particularly afraid of me. Wary, certainly, especially of my companion. They didn’t ask about him directly, but danced about the subject. You’ve brought a friend back with you, eh? A Basran someone said... Heard it was quite a fight at Andassar. Your friend seemed to know his way around a sword... We’ve missed your sword training, Seyonne. Will you be staying long enough to start it up again? Or perhaps this companion of yours has other ideas ... ?
I thanked them for their help; I took back an armload of breeches, shirts, leggings, towels, cups, cloaks, two blankets, a water jar, a sharpening stone, and a pair of boots I thought might fit Aleksander. But in answer to their probing, I said only that I had known my friend a long time, that he was recovering from a severe injury, and that we would stay at least a few days until he was more mobile. All other questions I deferred to Blaise.
As I started back to the olive grove with my load, light footsteps raced down the path behind me. “Master Seyonne! Is it really you?”
I peered around the stack of clothing, precariously perched on top of a water jar, and saw a pair of bright blue eyes shining beneath an unruly shock of blond hair. No wariness here. No fear or holding back. “Mattei! Holy stars, lad, you’re as tall as me.”
“Cafazz told me you were here.” The boy grabbed the water jar from under my stack and hoisted it on his shoulder. “I’m learning to sword fight now. I’ve ridden on three raids already—more sneaking than fighting, but it’s coming. Now you can teach me proper.”
The Kuvai youth’s greeting was as fine a welcome as I’d had anywhere. Outside of Blaise and Farrol, Mattei was the only person in the outlaw band whom I could truly call a friend.
Five years previous, a Derzhi baron had decided to divert the water from Mattei’s village well to make a pond at his Kuvai estate. For daring to question the order which would leave the villagers’ crops and animals parched, Mattei’s parents had been tied together and burned alive in their own house. Blaise brought a raiding party to stop the execution, but arrived too late. But he found
the ten-year-old boy huddled in the root cellar, where he’d hidden, forced to listen to his parents screaming as they died. For the next four years, the boy had not spoken a word.
When I’d come to live with him in Karesh, Blaise asked me to teach Mattei some fighting skills. Blaise believed that if the boy could learn to defend himself and others, it might help heal the terrible wounding that kept him silent. Beset with grief and guilt and soul-sickness after my journey of revelation, I could scarcely bring my own self to speak, but I agreed and began teaching Mattei the rudiments of hand combat. The boy was quick, strong, and ferocious, though his eyes were an abyss of pain as he fought.
One evening after several weeks of practice, I told Mattei of Kyor, the boy of his own age who had died following my command to bring Blaise to the gateway of Dasiet Homol. I told him how I blamed myself for Kyor’s death, though my hand had not held the knife that killed him. But I said that, although it was very hard, I was coming to see that I had given Kyor a duty and a purpose, and that I should not regret his ending. Kyor had saved Blaise’s reason, and all the good that Blaise had done and would do was a gift Kyor had given to the world. Perhaps, I said, Mattei’s parents had died, not blaming their son for hiding in that root cellar, but rejoicing in his safety and the thought of all the good he could do in the world.
Together Mattei and I walked into the wilderness that night, and I showed him how Ezzarians built a ring of holy fire. I explained how we felt close to the gods when we knelt within it, as Verdonne had done in her long siege trapped between heaven and earth. When our fire blazed high, I prayed aloud for wisdom and strength, and asked the gods to comfort Kyor and tell him of the good that had come from his sacrifice. And Mattei, breaking his long silence, whispered his own prayer for the gods to tell Nasia and Rudolf that he missed them terribly, and that he would strive to be their worthy son. We had both begun a healing in that ring of fire. Mattei’s excitement at my arrival, and the smiles and bantering that followed him as we walked through the camp, told me he had come farther than I.
