'If you would call me so.'
'It is your name, Blaise. You have been far from it, perhaps, but you own it yet. As you do your rank of sergeant. Come back, and all your life awaits you, as it was; serve this creature and you imperil all, as well as your immortal soul.'
'It has touched me, it has claimed me; there is no life that can compare with that. I will go with it—'
'—And betray your masters once again, and betray the God. Blaise, you once asked, no, you begged to call me Magister. I granted that as a sign of your redemption, your returning to the wider brotherhood of faith. If you denied me now, I should be sorry'
'I cannot help your sorrow.'
Anton almost had to choke down a laugh at that, so apt a reply from a man who had never been quick-witted till now. The humour lasted only a moment, though, as the implications of the thought sunk in. This was not Blaise — not quite? not at all, more like, another spirit entirely, just clothed in Blaise's body — and he was afraid that Marshal Fulke would forget that.
The marshal surprised him, though, and not for the first time. He showed no sign of temper, there was only reason in his voice as he said, 'You could dismiss it entirely, if you chose to come with me. Back to your own world, Blaise, even if your old life holds no attractions. You cannot live here; this place was never made for mortal man.'
'I can live in a djinni's shadow, until it choose to let me die.'
'That is no life for a man - and I think this is no man's true voice that I am hearing, djinni. His mouth, your words, I fancy.'
'That is not as true as you think The choice is his, to stay or to leave; he would live in either case, but he will choose to stay. Just as those who are touched by the 'ifrit will choose to die. Perhaps you would have had me let him be.'
'Perhaps I would. Better to die, than to trade this half-life for his immortal soul. That is a deadly bargain.'
T do not see how serving me will cost the man his soul, if he should have one. But I will not argue theology with a Marshal Commander of the Order of Ransom; that is a fruitless occupation.'
'Begone then, demon — but leave my man, I conjure you, by the power of the God!'
That was bluster only, Anton thought; and the djinni thought so too, he guessed. At least it surprised him, it surprised them both by laughing, a sound like a high-tuned peal of bells.
'Oh, I will leave you your man, Marshal Fulke. But I will take my own.'
'We will meet again, Marshal Fulke,' Blaise said unexpectedly; and to Anton's ears it was much like hearing the djinni speak through the sergeant's voice, with just the same cadence to it.
Before Fulke could draw breath to reply, the man was moving away across the plateau - moving but not walking, not running, seeming to glide rather as though the djinni were sweeping him away on an invisible cushion of air.
The two Ransomers, marshal and knight stood and watched, fascinated and helpless as the spirit-creature and its captive - or its convert, perhaps? - dwindled into the distance. It was hard to be sure, but Anton thought that they reached the edge of the plateau and simply carried on, not falling but truly flying now.
When they were utterly gone from sight, when he could no longer make out even a dot against the horizon, he stirred and rubbed his strained eyes, and looked about him. There was a sign left behind, he saw, to show that this had not all been some fantastic illusion; Anton was almost grateful for it, as he stepped forward and stooped to pick up the broken candle.
'Blaise must have fallen on it, in his sickness.'
'Indeed.' Fulke's voice was cold and distant; his eyes had still not left the far horizon, and it seemed that neither had his thoughts. 'I had heard tales, of course, before I came to this country, but I never thought to meet any of the demon-kind. I was never sure till now that the tales were even true.'
'Sergeant Blaise reported meeting a djinni, on his way to the Roq.'
'Yes. I thought it merely a heat-dream, no more than that. Blaise was the type to insist, against all logic... But no matter. We know the truth now, or some little of it, and Blaise is enslaved to that creature. Remember, Sieur Anton, that all demon-spawn are the children of lies.'
'The djinn do not lie, according to all the stories I ever heard. It said so itself...'
'Precisely so. It said so; it was lying. That is axiomatic' Well, maybe so. Anton wouldn't argue the point with his commander. He was both wonderstruck and exhausted; he wanted nothing but to get back to the encampment, and to bed.
Fulke had another matter on his mind, though, that he wanted to settle immediately. 'Explain to me how it was, Sieur Anton, that you followed me to this place.'
Anton sighed and offered his prepared excuse again, the undeniable summons; and then confessed his curiosity again, as a good and obedient Ransomer should.
Fulke made an impatient sound. 'I did not mean your motives; those I understand and even applaud, although I do not condone your stealing the candle from my tent. I mean how you contrived to follow me through the King's Eye to this spot. I looked into the Eye and saw where Blaise would be, and came to him; but you lack that skill. If you'd simply lit the candle and said the prayer, you should have stayed on the site of the encampment.'
'That I cannot explain, Magister. I lit the candle and recited the words, much as Blaise did, I expect, knowing nothing of their meaning; and the way opened, and I stepped through here. Perhaps I was so close behind you that the wind of your passage carried me in your wake?'
'Perhaps,' though the marshal sounded quite unsatisfied. 'Or perhaps we should not enquire too deeply into mystery. It is not named the King's Eye for nothing; he watches all of us within his Kingdom, and he may have had his reasons to send you after me. This message, for example. It may be important...'
Important, surely, to have the commander of the guard send for the marshal in the deepest hour of the night, when even Fulke might have been sleeping. But important enough to have the King in his far palace twist the nature of the world to send a discredited knight across a magical realm in pursuit of his superior officer, simply to ensure its prompt delivery? Anton said nothing, but his mind balked.
'Blow out your candle, Sieur Anton, and we will go to investigate.'
Startled, Anton glanced down at his hands, to confirm that he was indeed still holding the candle. Its flame burned quite normally now, pale in the opalescent light of this place. He drew a breath in obedience, but then hesitated, struck by a wandering thought.
'Why didn't Blaise go back to the world we know, when he fell on his candle and extinguished it?'
'That I cannot say either. Perhaps the King required his presence too, for what reasons we cannot guess; or perhaps that — creature — worked some casting of its own, to hold him here in its snare. You must let go of Blaise, Sieur Anton, as I have already. A man lost is a man mourned, but no more than that. Blow out your candle.'
Anton hesitated no longer, but did as he was bidden; and found himself abruptly back on the hillside above the road, and blinking against the dark.
A moment later, there was a transitory gleam of gold and Marshal Fulke stood once again at his side.
*
They walked back to the encampment in silence, through the sleeping soldiery and the horse-lines, past the officers' tents and on, till they came at last to the guard-fires that marked the border.
It was the attitude of the guards that first alerted Anton to some great change. They stood in unaccustomed huddles, speaking in nervous murmurs; as the two men passed they fell silent, and some abandoned their posts to drift along behind. Anton waited to hear their sergeants call them back, and heard nothing; he waited then for Fulke to snap an order, and again waited in vain.
The man in command of this watch came running, as soon as he saw the marshal's familiar figure in the fires' light.
'Magister, I am so glad that you have come ...' 'You sent for me?'
'Yes, but that was before... There was a voice, a creature, spirit or demon I know not, I c
ould see nothing but a flickering light, like a marsh-phantom; but it spoke to me and said to send for you, and so I did. But—'
'But what?'
'Look, Magister. See what has happened since, just in the last few minutes
Fulke looked where the desperate man was pointing, across the border; and so did Anton.
Even in the dark, with only the faintest line of light in the east to promise a new dawn rising, he could see now what it was that had changed.
The border had been a terrible thing but a constant, immaterial and yet dreadfully real, a line torn across the natural world. By daylight or at night, it had been equally clear: a rift in the hills' march, a shift in the fall of sunlight, a break even in the unending pattern of the stars.
Now there was nothing, it was gone. Now they stood on the road and saw that road follow its proper course, running onward along the bank of a stream that they had not dared to drink from, because it flowed from an invisible and accursed source. Now they could see its path glinting beneath the restored sky, they could see where it met the road and how before that it came plunging down a high hill that had simply not been there when Anton left his place of duty a bare hour since.
They could see how the road wound on around the base of the hill, and vanished into shadow — and they knew what lay beyond that shadow, and that even so much shadow could not linger now, would be burned away with the rising of the sun.
In short, they could see the way to Surayon, that they had waited for and prayed for all this time.
'Rouse the men,' Fulke said, after a swift murmur of blessing, gratitude to the God which should also be proof against any lingering, leaking corruption from the cesspool that was Surayon. 'See them fed, and then break camp. We ride at sun-up.'
Not knowing what they rode into, except that it was accursed; none in their ranks could remember — or would admit to - passing through Surayon in the years before it was Folded. Not knowing what would result either, except that there would be a cleansing, a great scouring of the poison that oozed from Surayon to infect all of Outremer.
Poisoned flesh must be cut out, the doctors taught; Anton had seen the truth of that, time and again. Trying to save a rotten limb could kill a man. Better to seem harsh than kind; better to strike, swift: and sure in certainty, than to meddle and hope with doubt.
The land lay before them, the breeze was fresh and the night was paling; there would be blood and death before this new day was over, and that only the first of many days. It would be a hard and a cruel time that people would still speak of generations hence, as they spoke yet of the winning of Ascariel, where bodies had floated on the pools and lakes of their own bleeding.
Anton couldn't wait.
Coren had been here before, of course. He was the King's Shadow, and the King bestrode this land from northern march to southern sand, from western sea to eastern height where Coren was standing now. The King sat in Ascariel and never left his palace, but his Shadow fell wherever his will might glance; in forty years that will had pried into every secret corner of this country, and much that lay outside its borders too.
But Coren had known this pass even before he was the King's Shadow, even before there was a King. At that time it had been a killing-ground, where they had hounded the Sharai through the mountains and back into the desert.
Ten years later it had been a way of trade, a constant passage between Surayon and the Sands. By then, though, Surayon was already anathema to its neighbour states, and its dealings with the Sharai only further evidence of its debasement. All of Outremer traded across its borders, it had to in order to survive; but the other states traded only goods, what could be bought and sold from camel trains. Surayon traded in knowledge, the arcane wisdom of its Princip and his court for the witchcraft and indecent practices of the Sharai. That was heresy and should have been forbidden, only that the King was silent on the subject. There had been worse rumours too, even that the lords of Surayon traded in people also: not the slavery that was common throughout the country, but their own children sold to sorcerers deep in the desert, apprenticed to the blackest of the arts.
And then Surayon had Folded itself away before the other states could bring the Gods clean justice down upon it, and like every path across the border, this road had passed into nothingness and out the other side of Surayon.
And so Coren had seen it for the past thirty years, like every traveller who came this way. As the Kings Shadow he could come and go throughout this land, no work of man could bar him, but his eyes still saw what other mortals saw.
He'd always hoped to see it again as the God had made it, the high pass running down into the broad, deep cleft of the valley principality. He'd never truly expected it, though; he was too wise in the ways of his people. Mistrust and bigotry fed off each other and could thrive for generations, building higher and stronger walls even than these mountains. He hadn't dared to hope that Surayon would unfold itself in his lifetime, and he'd been sure that no outside force could break in through the Folding.
He'd been sure, and he'd been wrong.
For all the King's insight and his own, for all their knowledge and their great anticipation, he could never have imagined that he'd find himself here like this, in the road with the Folding dissolved and gone, an army from the Sands marching towards him and the body of his friend laid out in the dust at his side.
He'd insisted on that, against Julianne’s tearful pleading and Elisande's tight silence. 'I'll bring him home,' he'd said, 'as soon as I may. That I promise. But the Sharai respected Rudel while he lived, and they respect the dead who died bravely. If I cannot persuade them to turn back, it may be that Rudel can. Without Hasan's determination to drive them on, they might choose not to pass his body; it could win us a few days' grace, if nothing more.'
Privately he thought that the opposite was more likely, that finding the road open and having pursued Hasan this far, the Sharai would pursue him further, all the way to Surayon town and the Princip s palace. This was a desperate cast of a die that was weighted against him, against them all; but he'd still seize any slight chance that he could. The sheikhs might at least honour Rudel's memory far enough to turn back to the fork in the road and ride for Ascariel instead. That would be a small, if a bitter victory; the King held a special fondness for Surayon, as did Coren also. And Ascariel at least mounted an army, which Surayon did not. Perhaps the tribes' love of battle would draw them that way; perhaps in Hasan's absence, the sheikhs would yearn to show that he was not needed, that they could achieve what he had not. Sharai ambition had won many a fight for the Patrics, before this.
But they were coming now, and he was dreaming. This was a situation that might more properly call for prayer, though he made none: neither to the God he had long since ceased to worship - though not to believe in; he had seen too much to allow of any doubt, but too much also to allow of any praise — nor to the King whose hearing he was more sure of, whose help he might have hoped for. He had learned long since that such hopes were commonly vain. The King ruled, but left his country for his Shadow to administer.
Coren stood foursquare in the road beside the body of his friend and waited while the long shadow that was only the outriders of the Sharai army came slowly down the defile from the mountains. It would be past dawn on the Sands, he knew, but not yet in Surayon; there were still stars to be seen above him, though they were fading now. Light was creeping into the sky, but matters here would still be decided in the dark However they fell out, the sun would look down on a new-made world by the time it had climbed above the mountain wall; he doubted if that world would be better made.
It was as ever the sheikhs themselves who led the line of march with their immediate retinues, young men of their close families. He knew them all by more than name and reputation. He knew their tempers and their temperaments, their pride and ambition, their quarrelsome natures and every quarrel that lay between them. Under other circumstances, he would have been confident in playing one aga
inst another until their unity was shattered and the best that they could hope for was a chaotic withdrawal, the worst a pitched battle between their tribes. Here, though, on the very borders of the country that was as holy to them as to his own people, he felt himself weak and helpless. His own reputation would protect him personally, not one among them would raise a blade against the Kings Shadow, but he thought that nothing could protect the land or the people at his back.
Nothing unless it was the King himself: now would be a good time for him to guard his realm with an earthquake or a vision of fire, something to terrify or tear apart these long files of desert men, rip the courage from their hearts or the ground from beneath their camels' feet.
But the King did not and would not work that way. Sometimes even Coren did not understand the King, although he'd known him longest and best. Except for the Princip of Surayon, of course, always excepting him. Maybe even the King would make an exception for the Princip ...
But he did not, and Coren had still not expected him to. The leading sheikhs rode up and reined in, three abreast, as many as could be accommodated without crowding on the road.
Coren read their mood on their faces - exhaustion, anticipation, exaltation - and almost stepped aside without a word, almost bowed and waved them on their way. The smoothest voice in Outremer, which was his, would do him no good here. He held his ground, though, scrabbling after every little minute he could buy for Surayon; he folded his arms passively, impassively, and awaited their questions.
'What has happened here?'
'Rudel has been murdered, by Morakh the Sand Dancer, while he was working us a passage into Surayon. As you see, that has undone the Folding. Also, we were attacked by an 'ifrit. We slew them both, spirit and Dancer; Morakh's body is over yonder,' a casual wave of his arm towards the rocks beyond the road's limit, 'if you wish to bury your man before you continue on your way.'
A general hissing, hands touched to scimitar-hilts, and, 'Morakh was not our man!' from several throats at once.
Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 Page 25