Snare

by Katharine Kerr

  It was after dark, and all through the camp small fires were blooming, when Ammadin finally returned to her tent. Zayn had been keeping her share of the porridge warm in an iron pot near the fire. He scooped it into a clean bowl and handed it to her. For a few minutes she ate steadily, then set the half-full bowl down beside her.

  ‘Isn’t it all right?’ Zayn said.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Ammadin said. ‘I’ll finish it in a bit. Tell me something. When your people came to Kazrajistan, did the Tribes come with them, or were we already here?’

  ‘What?’ Zayn sat back on his heels and smiled at her. ‘Now you’re the one who’s being curious. That’s a strange question.’

  ‘True enough. But do you know?’

  ‘I was always told that when our people came, they met the ChaMeech first, and then, once we’d explored to the east, we found your people. But –’ He hesitated and looked away. In his mind he could see the pages of a book and mentally turned them, flipping through till he found what he needed. ‘Most people believe that you were already here, but some historians don’t. They say they have evidence that we all came at the same time, but the book doesn’t say what the evidence was.’

  ‘Here’s another strange question. Do your people ever call yourselves Karshaks?’

  ‘Not that I know of. But the old country was called New Karashi. Why?’

  ‘Someone told me that you did.’

  ‘Well, they’ve got it wrong, then. We’re Kazraks.’

  ‘But were you always? A lot of lore seems to have changed, over the years.’ For a brief moment Ammadin looked furious; then she shrugged. ‘That list of the forbidden talents. I never asked you to recite the whole thing.’

  ‘I can do it now, if you’d like. They’re divided into groups, so each entry starts out with the words, the three forbidden talents of…’

  ‘You can skip that part.’

  ‘All right. It doesn’t make sense, anyway, because there’s generally a lot more than three in each group.’ He looked away and saw, floating between him and the landscape, a pale pink area much like a page of rushi. Upon it words formed. ‘I’ll tell you the main headings first. Memory. Perception. Warfare. Illness.’

  ‘Start with the ones for perception.’

  ‘Talents of vision. The hearing of sounds. Talents of the sense of smell –’ He stopped, struck by his own words.

  ‘That sounds like something that applies to me, doesn’t it?’ Ammadin said. ‘Do they break them down further?’

  ‘Yes. The forbidden talents of vision. Seeing at night but not in complete darkness. The seeing of heat from living things. The seeing of things too small for other men to see. The seeing of small things as if they were large things. Hearing. The hearing of faint sounds. The hearing of voices from the world beyond. The hearing of voices too low or too high for other men to hear.’ He paused, thinking. ‘Here’s one I’ve never understood. The hearing of words when other men hear only babble.’

  ‘I don’t understand it either. Go on.’

  ‘Smell. The discrimination of bodily odours. There’s one I didn’t understand before, but I sure do now.’

  Ammadin smiled faintly.

  ‘The perception of smells from a far distance,’ Zayn continued. ‘The discrimination of natural odours. The discrimination of chemical odours.’

  ‘What an odd lot!’

  ‘Yes, it is. Do you match them?’

  ‘I suppose so. I have no idea what they mean about words from babble, and I’ve never run across anything called chemical odours, but as for the rest, yes, they fit me.’ For a long moment she was silent. ‘I know perfectly well that there aren’t any demons among my ancestors.’

  ‘Do you want to hear the rest of the list?’

  ‘Not right now. The holy men who branded them impure and forbidden – they lived in ancient times, right?’

  ‘It was Mullah Agvar himself, blessed be he.’

  ‘Well, then. If your people and my people have some of the same talents, we’re more alike than we think.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true.’

  ‘And maybe it means that we all arrived here together. But arrived from where? Do you know?’

  Zayn shrugged. ‘Over the seas somewhere. I’ve never much thought about it. We’re here now, and the mullahs say we can’t go back because the demons destroyed Karashi, so that’s that.’

  ‘It’s odd that you’re so curious about so many things, but never thought to question the mullahs about your homeland.’

  ‘I did ask when I was a child. Questioning the mullahs was a good way to get into trouble, so I learned to keep my mouth shut. I’d already embarrassed my father enough.’

  ‘I can’t say that my heart bleeds for him.’ Ammadin picked up her bowl of porridge. ‘This is all becoming very interesting.’

  Though Zayn waited for her to go on, she merely ate her dinner. After a while he got up and went to drink with the men.

  In the morning the comnee packed up and followed the crumbling road east, but they travelled only until some hours after noon. To let the horses have a long graze and a rest, they camped for the night near a ruin that Ammadin called simply ‘the fort’. When he’d finished his chores, Zayn walked over for a closer look.

  Behind a crumbling wall of corroded brass wire tangled with dead thorn vine stood a pair of grassy mounds that marked, by their precisely rectangular outlines, the remains of buildings. Zayn jumped the knee-high wall and walked into the middle of the compound, where a square, white building stood, some hundred feet on a side and pierced with regularly placed narrow windows. He found an opening that once had held a door and walked in. Fire had gutted the place quite recently to judge by the smell of rot and mildew that greeted him. Through a hole in the thatched roof, the light streamed in and picked out heaps of charred rubble, scattered with animal droppings and hung with white strands of fungus. Rain, however, had washed the exposed parts of the walls, both inside and out, back to a smooth and pristine white, as slick yet metallic as the roundel on the pillar he’d seen at the end of the road. When he ran a hand across it, the material felt more like a saur’s scales than metal, but despite all the evidence of a really horrendous fire, he couldn’t find a trace of charring or blistering.

  ‘Zayn!’ It was Ammadin’s voice. ‘Zayn, where are you?’

  She came jogging across the compound and joined him inside. ‘Have you lost your mind?’ she snapped. ‘You shouldn’t wander off alone.’

  ‘I just wanted a look around. Looks like the ChaMeech have been raiding.’

  ‘Maybe. The last time I saw this place, there were five families camped in here.’ She poked at a pile of charred rubble with the toe of her boot. ‘They’d built bamboid walls to divide the space up, and then they had cooking fires, and so you can imagine how easy it would be for the whole thing to go up.’

  ‘Why were they camping here?’

  ‘They had nowhere else to go, they said, because they had no money. There are people like that in the Cantons. They lose their farm or money or something, and they end up drifting around, dragging their children with them.’

  ‘Doesn’t anyone give them charity?’

  Ammadin shrugged with a profound lack of interest. ‘The loremasters say that the ancestors of the Cantonneurs used this building to guard the Riftgate when they were building it. That’s why it’s still called the fort.’

  Zayn gaped.

  ‘Sounds like nonsense, doesn’t it?’ Ammadin said.

  ‘That would have been what, eight hundred years ago at least, when they arrived here. You’d think it would have all crumbled into dust by now.’ Zayn touched the nearest wall with the flat of his hand. ‘But I don’t think there’s anyone alive today who could make this white stuff.’

  ‘Eight hundred years, yes, a Cantonneur told me once that they’d been here that long. They came with your people.’

  ‘Well, so I was told. The demons had destroyed their part of the homeland too.’

&n
bsp; ‘You and your damned demons! That doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘How’s this? They also taught us in school that the Cantonneurs came here in flying ships.’

  ‘Oh please! If you Kazraks believe that, you’ll believe anything.’

  ‘I didn’t say I believe it. I said my teacher told it.’

  ‘That’s an important difference, yes. My own teacher told me a few things that have turned out to be untrue. But look, if the Tribes did come here with everyone else, why have we always thought that we didn’t?’

  ‘Vanity?’

  Ammadin laughed and nodded her agreement. ‘Maybe so,’ she said, still smiling. ‘It’s very flattering to think that the gods went out of their way to create your people.’

  When she smiled, her face softened. Her long braids were slipping from their coil; she reached up and began pulling out the bone pins to let the braids tumble down her back. The gesture made her shirt ride up, exposing a stripe of pale skin. Zayn stepped closer, expecting her to move away, but she merely shoved the handful of pins into the pocket of her leather trousers. Another step – she looked up, still smiling. He raised his hand and touched her cheek with his fingertips. For a moment she hesitated, but when he bent his head to kiss her, she turned away.

  ‘Neither of us should be standing out here,’ she said. ‘Let’s get back to camp.’

  ‘Ah damn it!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know damn well what.’ He stepped up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Ammi –’

  He could feel how tense she was, tense and wary, but when he pulled her a little closer, she rested in his grasp.

  ‘Are you really as cold to me as you act?’ He softened his voice.

  ‘No.’ With a sudden twist she broke away and walked a few paces off. ‘But it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?’

  ‘Just that. I’m not going to sleep with you.’

  ‘What? Why not?’

  ‘Because you keep lying to me. Or not really lying, but you dance along the edge of the truth. I can’t trust you.’

  Zayn winced.

  ‘I promised you I wouldn’t pry,’ Ammadin went on, ‘and I won’t. But if you can’t be honest with me, then I’m not going to let you close to me.’

  ‘All right.’ He could think of a hundred arguments, but he knew she’d demolish them all. ‘That’s fair.’

  ‘Now let’s get back to the comnee. When I scanned this morning, I didn’t see that sorcerer and his murderous friends, but for all I know he’s got another crystal and can hide himself again.’

  As he followed her back to camp, Zayn realized how right her worry was. He turned a little cold, wondering why he’d risked his life by wandering off just as if he hadn’t an enemy in the world. It was an elementary mistake that no member of the Chosen should ever have made, and a mistake that he’d never made before. He felt safe in the comnee, he realized, and a feeling of safety was the greatest danger in his world.

  ‘I have got to get a new crystal,’ Soutan said. ‘This is ridiculous! For all I know our stupid barbarians could be one mile away or a hundred.’

  ‘It’s a bad situation, all right,’ Warkannan said. ‘What can we do about it?’

  Soutan shrugged and sat down on the far side of their campfire. He took his saddlebags into his lap and opened them. Arkazo was kneeling in the pool of firelight, sharpening his hunting knife on a small flat whetstone.

  ‘That noise!’ Soutan snapped. ‘It could drive a man crazy.’

  ‘What?’ Arkazo looked up. ‘Isn’t it too late for you?’

  ‘You insolent young lout!’

  ‘Shush!’ Warkannan said. ‘Both of you, just drop it.’

  Soutan ostentatiously scowled into his saddlebags. Arkazo went back to work on the blade.

  They had camped for the night some twenty miles east of the fort. Soutan had led them to a clearing in a forest the like of which Warkannan had never seen. Ancient true-oaks, twined round with orange vines, grew amidst a wild tangle of purple and red ferns and shrubs. In the deep shade yellow fungi sent swollen fingers up from the litter of decaying leaves. The oldest oaks, too big for a man’s arms to reach around, sported festoons of dark red strands beaded with orange swellings. The nodes gave out a phosphorescent light, as if this stretch of forest were a nightmare version of the Great Khan’s gardens. Soutan had warned them to leave both growths strictly alone, particularly the festoons, which the Canton people called Death’s Necklace. High up in the trees, small maroon reptiles with six legs and long, narrow heads chirped and clambered – eating the leaves, Warkannan assumed, or chasing the shiny blue insects that swarmed around the fungus. At irregular intervals something in the deep forest shrieked, a ghastly half-human sound that made Warkannan jump every time. Whether it was predator or prey he didn’t want to know.

  ‘Well, what about that crystal?’ Warkannan said. ‘I don’t suppose you can just find one in the marketplace.’

  ‘Sometimes you can, actually,’ Soutan said, ‘especially in the trading precinct. Spirit riders will pay high for them.’

  ‘Well, then, we should ride into town and ask around.’

  ‘I can’t!’ Soutan’s voice rose and squeaked. ‘I cannot go into any town in Bredanee, you idiot! I told you that.’

  ‘You did, but you never told me why.’

  Soutan looked away, his mouth twisted in a pout. Warkannan waited without speaking.

  ‘It’s because of my enemies,’ Soutan said at last. ‘They laid false charges against me, and there’s a warrant out for my arrest.’

  ‘What kind of charges?’

  ‘They induced one of my students to lie and say I’d raped her.’

  ‘Students? This is the first time I’ve heard about any students.’

  ‘I used to teach in a school run by the sorcerers’ guild, but this lying little bitch lost me my job. Rape!’ Soutan snorted in disgust. ‘She seduced me, the little whore, and then she lied when her mother found out about it. They must have bribed her to stick to her story before the magistrates.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘My enemies!’ Soutan snapped. ‘The people who envied my position in the sorcerers’ guild.’

  ‘And this was in Bredanee?’

  ‘No, in Dordan. But all the Cantons have an extradition treaty.’ Soutan paused to take the lightwand out of a saddlebag. ‘I do have an ally of sorts who lives near here. He may be able to procure a crystal for me, he may not. At the least, he’ll put us up for the night.’

  ‘What is he, another ChaMeech?’

  ‘Oh no, he’s as human as we are, except on Sevenday.’ Soutan suddenly laughed, a cackling sort of sound.

  ‘And what is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It’s his holy day, Sevenday.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Don’t you try to interrogate me, Captain.’ Soutan scrambled to his feet. ‘I need to be alone. I have work to do.’ He grabbed his saddlebags and stalked off.

  At the edge of the clearing Soutan snapped out a word that started the wand glowing, casting a dim circle at his feet. Warkannan watched the light swaying through the trees until it shone more faintly than the pale blue beads of light among the oak leaves. Arkazo tested the knife blade on his thumb, then sheathed it with a satisfied nod.

  ‘Uncle, do you think he really raped that girl?’

  ‘I have no idea. A young woman who’s caught polluting herself with a man often does lie about it, trying to save her honour.’

  ‘Are the Canton women like ours or like the comnee girls?’

  ‘Good point. If there’s no penalty for losing her virginity, why would she lie? I don’t know their laws, but they’re infidels here – people of the book, mind, but infidels nonetheless.’

  ‘That’s true.’ Arkazo sounded hopeful. ‘Maybe their women see things like comnee women do.’

  ‘Maybe, yes. But if he did commit rape, I’d just as soon
carry out the First Prophet’s law and be rid of him. On the other hand, we need him, Jezro needs him, and so, Kazrajistan needs him. I’ll have to leave his head on his shoulders whether he’s guilty or not.’

  The comnee left the fort about mid-morning on a day so sweaty-hot with the approach of a summer storm that no one felt inclined to hurry their balky horses. To make matters worse, the land here began to rise – not much of a slope, but noticeable, turning the road into a long slow climb up. It was another reason, Dallador told Zayn, that the comnees brought only essentials with them when they rode to the Cantons.

  ‘There must be mountains farther east,’ Zayn said. ‘Or at least hill country.’

  ‘So I’ve been told,’ Dallador said. ‘You can’t see them from Nannes, though.’

  Riders and horse herd both ambled down the road in a line so untidy that Zayn caught himself wishing, with a grim kind of humour, that Warkannan could see it – their slovenly progress would have had him scarlet with rage. Around noon, Zayn noticed a dark mass on the horizon ahead, too static to be storm clouds. He rode up next to Dallador and pointed it out.

  ‘It’s a forest,’ Dallador told him. ‘I’ve heard that the Cantonneurs planted it when they got here, but they sure haven’t done much with it since. We scrounge dead wood at the edge, but no one ever goes into it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s dangerous. Bandits, for one thing. Every now and then one of the people who live around here just disappears.’

  Some hours before sunset the comnee reached a spread of purple meadow crossed by a clear-running stream. Apanador called for a halt, then gathered the comnee, still mounted, around him.

  ‘We’ll make camp early,’ the chief said. ‘The spirit rider has some business to attend to at the White Ruins.’

  In a swirl of confusion, the members of the comnee spread out to dismount. Zayn rose in his stirrups and looked around for Ammadin, finally spotting her at the wagon, where she was searching for something in the load. He dismounted and led his horse over to join her just as she pulled her saurskin cloak out of a tent bag.