Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04

by Chaz Brenchley

  Morakh had left few marks, but marks there were, enough to make a trail. It did lead past the store-rooms to the far end of the passage, to the cistern. The air was cool and damp; Sherett’s lamplight showed her a low roof above a dark, still pool. The water looked deep, and chilly. She suppressed a shiver as she gazed about. The cistern was encompassed by a narrow walkway; to left and right, it was overhung by spouts carved from the rock of the walls. Above each spout was black emptiness, where the light could not penetrate. An agile man could haul himself up, a strong man no doubt could boost a girl so high; a thin man could insinuate himself into either of those channels. Could he drag a girl behind him? Well, perhaps ...

  Where a thin man and a tall girl could go, so could a skinny short girl. She thought about that, and shivered again. Looked lower, to see if she could find that trail again, and found her eye caught by the water.

  And laughed, a little shrilly perhaps, and said, 'Esren.'

  A shimmer in the lamplight, an intricate coil of air as fine as her friends hair plaited; the djinni was there at her word. 'Lisan.'

  'I think you will know where Julianne has been taken.' It was a quick-learned habit, almost second nature now not to ask questions.

  'You are right.'

  'Go after her, and fetch her back. If you had to slay the Sand Dancer to achieve it, I would not much mind that.'

  'Neither would I; but I may not do it.'

  That was a surprise, but don't ask why not! 'Well, so long as you restore my friend to me, that one can die later.' At her dagger's point, for preference.

  *I meant that I may not do what you require. The daughter of the King's Shadow must seek help from otherwhere.'

  Elisande gaped. Her mouth moved soundlessly for a moment; no need for Sherett's urgent hand on her arm, she had no questions to ask. Then, slowly finding words, finding an almost-anger to drive them, she said, 'Spirit, you swore to obey me —'

  'I swore to come when you called me and to act at your command. That is not necessarily to say that I would obey your commands.'

  Was it not? Well, perhaps not; but the difference was as fine as a single one of Julianne's hairs, and should have been as easy to snap except that Elisande had a question now, why will you not obey me in this, as you have whatever I asked before? and it burned so brightly in her head, so hotly on her tongue that she could think of no way not to ask it.

  And then had no need to ask, because the djinni offered her an answer regardless. 'Lisan, close your eyes.'

  Starded, she did so; and heard its thin voice again, 'Tell me what you see.'

  'Nothing. A darkness ...'

  'Show it to me.'

  'I cannot!' Her eyes snapped open again, glaring.

  'No. It is neither day nor night, it has no existence outside your own mind; and yet you see it, it is there. Similarly, I cannot walk in the place where the Sand Dancer has taken the Shadow's daughter. He took her from here to the plateau above; but now they are not quite in this world, nor yet in the land of the djinn.'

  'I don't understand.'

  'You have seen how the Sand Dancers can move when they choose, unseen from one place to another’

  'Yes.' They flicked in and out of view, they were here and then they were there without seeming to cross the ground between; but, 'Only short distances, though, only moments of time,' only just long enough to pass from one man to another and be behind each of them in turn, convenient to cut their throats.

  'Yes. The effort costs them, and they grow uncertain of finding their way back to the world, if they linger. This one is half-mad, though, and knows he will be hunted. He has risked much to seize the Shadows daughter; he is risking more to keep her.'

  It was the risk to Julianne that concerned Elisande. She said, 'I still don't understand where they are, that you cannot reach them.'

  'You know of four directions in your world, north and south, west and east. Conceive of a fifth that has no name, that stands an equal distance from each ...'

  That made sense to her, suddenly. 'I know of this; it is how we have folded my land, out of the reach of our neighbours. But the djinn can visit us in Surayon, when they choose to.'

  'Indeed. Surayon exists where it always has, within its borders, and we can find it there. The border, though, where the shift is active - neither human nor spirit can find that. The Dancer Folds the land as he goes, and he walks within the crease. As long as he does so, he is beyond me.'

  Elisande still found it hard to credit, she'd grown so used to djinni omniscience. Djinni honesty, though, was an article of faith; Esren would not, could not lie. So she gave one more glance to the darkness of the narrow rain-channels, and felt a shudder of relief that she need not claw her way through those in pursuit of her friend. Then she thought suddenly of Julianne's being trapped within a worse darkness, sucked helpless into the space behind her eyes. Dizzy and confused perhaps, terrified certainly...

  'Esren, wherever they are now, they must be heading somewhere, Morakh must have an ambition in this world. However mad he is, he must come back to what is solid,' he must bring Julianne back, 'and you can surely see where he will touch ground again.'

  'Perhaps; though I have been long detached from the spirit-weft, and my vision is uncertain.'

  'If we get closer, you may see more clearly. They went to the plateau, you said. Take me there, Esren. Quickly, before the men get so far.'

  She felt herself swept up and almost closed her eyes again, against the expected swirl of dark as Esren opened some strange pathway to the stars. Except that she was afraid of that particular darkness now behind her lids, and so she held them wide; and so she saw the rush of Sherett's lamp and the racing shadows of the passage beyond as she was carried back, all the way back to Hasan's chamber. She saw a blur of startled, bearded faces, his men, the man himself.

  No time to speak to him, to any. She was carried out of the open window, into the night and up, high above the narrow valley. Briefly she did have time to think how Julianne would have hated this hellride, and yet to yearn hopelessly to have that girl beside her, and to wonder what use a djinni was if it could not bring her the miracle she sought. Then the broad stretch of the plateau lay below her, blacklit by a blaze of stars.

  Before the men get so far, she'd said, because this was her hunt, she'd thought, and hers alone; even Hasan had less claim than her. She'd been too slow, though, despite her urgency. One man stood alone, a shadow on the bare rock; her mind caught hold of the word, a Shadow indeed and she whispered, 'Esren, set me down. With him.'

  It was strange, how she seemed constantly to forget about Julianne's father, constantly to discount one of the most powerful men in Outremer and so constantly to be surprised by him. Or else it was not so strange, because he was such a self-effacing man in many ways, he seemed almost to discount himself until he was needed or felt an urge to intervene; and then again it was perhaps not strange at all, because a girl could get into the habit of discounting fathers altogether. It was a hard thing to remember that some mattered, and to their daughters too.

  She set bare foot to chilling rock and stood beside the King's Shadow with her djinni at her shoulder, a golden glitter in the dark. At least she knew how he had come here ahead of her, long ahead of all the rumpus; with his title came his power, or some of it. Like the Dancers, he could cover distances in a single step; unlike the Dancers — or so it seemed, or why else would Morakh have wriggled his way through narrow channels to reach this height? - he could step through air or rock or whatever stood in his way. Sometimes, she thought, he stepped through his daughter; in him, she could not quite contrive to resent it.

  Sometimes, as now, he seemed to step out of his title and power and all to be a man again; usually, she thought, to be a father.

  'Coren? Can you tell which way they are going? Esren can’t.

  'Can it not?' A question, but aimed at her even in his distraction; he was not a man to be careless, at such a time or anywhen. Even so there was a note of sur
prise, almost disbelief in his voice, and his eyes did seek the djinni for a moment.

  'It says not. It says they walk in the crease where the world Folds, which is like the dark behind your eyes, nowhere at all, it says it cannot find them

  'Well. I wasn't aware that the djinn had such poetic tongues.'

  'The djinn do not have tongues at all,' Esren said, unless they choose to do so. Like human poets, though, they sometimes seek to describe what is, in words that their listeners can understand.'

  Elisande felt that she hadn't understood one word in three, but that wasn't important now, though Coren seemed to feel that it was. She called him back to what truly mattered, repeating her question impatiently. 'Do you know where they have gone?'

  'West,' he said certainly, turning to face towards the Dead Waters. 'That much I can feel, though Djinni Tachur is right, they have touched this land only fleetingly.'

  'Can you follow them? And take me with you, if Esren cannot?'

  'I can follow, but not I think as fast as they are moving. Definitely not, if I have to carry you. It's been a long night, Elisande, and I will not risk your life.' As Morakh is risking Juliannes were the words he did not add, because he did not need to.

  'Well, you go, then,' enough of this standing around, 'and Esren and I will follow you, as best we can. Or,' another thought, suddenly, 'Julianne said that the King could place you anywhere,' like a chess-piece, she had said. 'Can you not ask him ... ?'

  'The King could lift me up and put me exactly where they will next touch to earth,' Coren confirmed wearily. 'But this is not his Kingdom; and no, I cannot ask him. He acts as he pleases. My daughters health and welfare are perhaps not his priority. Let us see what there is to be seen, from the rim of the plateau ...'

  The Kings Shadow stepped into a hazy golden light, and was gone. Elisande half-moved to go after him, but checked herself as the light dwindled; instead she called to Esren, and rode the wind to the high escarpment where she and Julianne had stood the previous day to watch how the djinni sucked up the waters of the sea.

  Quickly though they'd come, Julianne's father was once again there before them, standing on the extreme edge of the cliff.

  Perhaps he'd heard the rush of their coming, perhaps it was the sound of her tight breathing that alerted him; whichever, he spoke without turning his head, without shifting his gaze from the dark glimmer of the still-restless water far below.

  'Djinni Tachur, I cannot be certain, but it is my impression that they came to this place, that they stood exactly here. I would be interested to know whether you can divine the truth of that, more clearly than I.'

  'It is so. If I have lost the ability to foretell what may be to come, I can yet see what has been. The man and the girl were here, and they climbed down.'

  'No,' Elisande blurted instantly, 'she could not, she is terrified of heights ...'

  Even as she said it, though, she remembered Julianne's glazed wonder at herself just hours earlier, her stunned murmur, Elisande, I climbed a mountain, and how the proof of that had been embedded in her hands: cracked and broken nails, skinned palms ...

  'What she could do once, she can do again,' her father said, as though he could read Elisandes thoughts without even looking at her face. Perhaps he could. 'If the djinni says she climbed, I think we must believe it. They are in any case not here, and he could not have carried her. Shall we go down?'

  He went, without waiting for a reply. Again the night shone with the light of his leaving, again Elisande followed by her djinni's grace, gliding down almost within arms-reach of the cliff. She found some measure of consolation in the thought that Julianne would have had to climb only some of the way, from perhaps halfway there were steps that had been carved into the rock centuries before, to give access to the caves that pitted its face.

  But still, the image of her tall friend stumbling down at Morakh’s heels, bent one way or another to his will - no, there was small consolation in that.

  Less still when she thought where they must have been headed, where they must have gone after they reached the long-redundant quayside where she stood now, where Julianne's father had once again arrived before her.

  Again he was looking out over the water, seemed almost to be listening to the surge and the swell of it. How long would it take, she wondered, to calm a sea after it had been ripped from its bed and let run back? Less time, she thought, than it would take to calm Coren de Rance, who had had his daughter ripped from him and did not yet have her bade

  This time he did at least turn his head to acknowledge her, seeming entirely calm as he said, 'There are no boats on the Dead Waters.'

  'No.' For how much longer, she couldn't say. The djinni Esren had destroyed all traffic on the waters, all fish within; but the djinni Esren was with her now. Perhaps if Hasan and the other tribal leaders fetched living fish, fetched wood for hulls, perhaps some new life could come to what was dead. But the waters were foul still, she doubted anything except a malignant djinni could survive them long. And the Sharai were not made for boats, would stay she thought a long time frightened by so much water; and Rhabat was ruined, almost, and its people would be leaving with the tribes ...

  'There is no trail from here that I can sense, only that call to westward; but I do not believe that even a Sand Dancer can dance across water, any more than he could dance down a cliff.'

  You had no trouble, coming down that cliff without climbing. Could you not have passed something on to your daughter, more than stubbornness and guile... ‘They must have gone the other way, up the tunnel.'

  Julianne's father was the soul of patience, or so Elisande had thought him. Tonight, it seemed he lacked the patience to pace even the shortish distance past the gully's mouth to the further end of the quay. He walked in light and took only a moment or two to do it, to be not here now but there, she could see the fading glimmer of his arrival.

  Elisande balked at turning to Esren for so little service. She ran instead; and if she seemed lighter on her feet than she expected, if each leaping step seemed to lift her higher and carry her further — well, no doubt anxiety and strangeness and urgency could explain that.

  It was only the rank and salt-soaked air that made her gasp a little, when she reached his side. She thought he'd already opened the hidden door to the climbing tunnel, but he denied it: 'No, I found it so. Proof positive, I think, that they came this way, even if they didn't climb with mortal feet. Sand Dancers trace their steps in strange country, but they still need an earthly path to follow.'

  Which you do not, so why can you not hunt them quicker than they can flee? No point in posing the question, he was as elusive as the djinn, and as dangerous to hold a debt. Besides, it didn't matter why. It was the case, nothing else counted. If it had not been the case, he would have been hot in his daughter's pursuit by now; his every move betrayed him, as did his stillness between one movement and the next.

  She gazed blindly into the absolute black of the tunnel's opening, and spoke hesitandy. 'There was an 'ifrit, Marron said, guarding the further end ...'

  'I do not think it will have kept its watch.'

  'And if you are wrong? Esren cannot kill it, face to face.' That was the wrong way to say it, the djinni had no face, but the words were true regardless. Spirit could not touch spirit and survive; it had needed the waters force to wreak its fierce will in the valley.

  'If I am wrong, then I will meet it. Face to face. I have slain an 'ifrit before this. But if I am wrong, if it lingered past the flood, then it seems likely to me that it stayed to meet Morakh and my daughter. By arrangement, or otherwise. Like the djinn, the 'ifrit have some sense of what will come.'

  Like most of the djinn, perhaps. Not like Esren, or not much. That one was stunted still, after its long imprisonment; stunted again, perhaps, by its sworn service to Elisande. She turned her head to find it, meaning to discover whether it knew if the 'ifrit waited for them or not; before she could sort the words out in her head, though, the King's Shad
ow had made them redundant.

  His misty light, his brisk step into it, his sudden absence, gone before the light was gone: she pictured its hurrying to catch him as he strode doggedly in the space between worlds, hurrying to slip ahead, to be ready to receive him, to light his path when he stepped back onto the height above.

  No easy walk through light for her, to rise from sea to peak. Rather a blind and sickening rush, turning and turning until her stomach rebelled. It was a long slow ride down this tunnel that had brought them into Rhabat, their way lit by guttering, failing torches. Now Esren dragged her in the opposite direction at terrible speed. Her desperate eyes sought something, anything to fix on in the utter dark, and found only the thin golden rod that was the djinni at her shoulder. But that too was spinning, spinning against the twist of the tunnel in a way that jerked her eyes out of rhythm with her belly, and she thought she might vomit indeed. So she closed her eyes, swallowing a thin and sour saliva as it trickled into her mouth. It was like being drunk, she thought, when the walls of the chamber would spin around her; she could survive that without disgracing herself.

  Usually, she could survive that...

  Just in time, something solid kicked cruelly at her bare feet, and kicked again. Her starded eyes sprung open and she saw rock, solid rock plunging beneath her. No, it was she who was plunging, staggering, falling towards it - except that she felt the djinni's strength grip her body and hold her upright until she could catch hold of a tentative balance.

  At least she didn't feel sick any longer, only giddy and furious. She drew herself up cautiously, tried to outglare the djinni and said hissingly, 'Esren, when I asked you to take me up, I meant straight up through the air, as you had brought me down

  'Indeed. I wanted to try the tunnel.'