Julianne sat on the floor by his head, as still as her husband and fading just as fast. Elisande thought that she should be similarly sitting beside Marron, grieving as deeply and as silently, except that Jemel had claimed that place, and had a far better claim to it than she could muster. It had been his aching distress that had driven her out onto the terrace, as much as her own unacknowledged pain; she envied him his honesty, and its legitimacy.
In the Princip's absence, other men had come to tend the patients: old men, wise men, helpless men. They had touched and probed, had laid hands on Marron and Hasan individually and then by twos together, then all at once. And had shaken their heads, spoken in soft voices, advised patience until their lord's return.
Patience was a slow, grinding torment to them all. A table in the far corner had been laid with refreshments, quite untouched; Elisande went over there to pour a beaker of well-watered wine, and carry that to Julianne.
'Here, sweet. You won't eat, I know, and I won't press you to it; but you could drink, at least, you still remember how to swallow.'
'You're not eating either.'
'No. But I'll share your drink.'
Julianne sipped without interest, then looked a little surprised at what she tasted. 'I thought it would be jereth, to tempt my appetite?'
'No. Not for this. We'll drink jereth later, when they're well. And I won't share a drop of mine with you.'
The badinage was unthinking, meaningless except to say we have a friendship that goes deep, deeper than pain, and we will recover it. Later. When they're well...
Julianne shook her head. 'When they're well,' she said slowly, borrowing Elisande's determination only to show how weak it was, 'we still won't want to celebrate. Only to weep together, for how much we've lost.' But her eyes moved to the view of the far horizon, the far side of the valley, and suddenly she sounded weak herself, weak as a child's arguments, as though she had completely misunderstood herself. 'He will come, won't he?'
'Of course he'll come, sweet. He lives here, this is his home.' She wrapped her arms around her friend, chin on shoulder for a tight hug and said, 'He will come, Julianne, I promise. He promised. As soon as he can. But he doesn't have the King's Eye,' though he has the next best thing out on the terrace there, whatever spells he's woven on the wind to bring far-sightedness, 'and all his country is under attack, he had to go out to see . ..'
'Of course he did,' on a sigh, reaching a faltering hand out to stroke the bitter cold of Hasan's brow and then snatching it back, as though to touch him hurt as much as not to touch him. 'And perhaps he also had to go out to be alone an hour, after the other news you brought him. Rudel was his son, as well as being your father. You can’t mourn him properly, you're so tied up inside. I can't, because - because of Hasan, I can't feel anything clearly. Someone has to.'
Men should not outlive their children, she was saying, though old men did it as a matter of course in time of war or famine or disease, which meant in Outremer and in the Sands. Not in Surayon. Julianne was right, of course, or partly right, and Grandfer might indeed prefer to shed his tears ahorseback, hidden behind a riding-veil or a visor. But Elisande could be mulish, even now.
'He was a soldier before he was — well, what he is now. Princip, sorcerer, philosopher, what you like. As your own father was, Julianne. Coren kept his tears back and would use Rudel's body if he could; my grandfer would have done the same. Of course they will mourn, but not yet. Not when there's fighting today and a battle tomorrow, and all this country lies beneath the sword.'
If Julianne thought her cold or hard, so be it; at least it would give the girl something fresh to think about. Elisande might crave such a heart-whole pain as Julianne was feeling, but she knew too the exhausting weight of it.
By the same token, she supposed she ought to welcome her own distractedness, her fear for Marron offset by her fear for Surayon, and both of them outmatched by the unexpected ache of grieving for Rudel. She couldn't do it, though, she could find no sense of balance. Any one of them would have been enough, too much to carry; the three together she thought would crush her. She yearned to be like Julianne, like Jemel, utterly absorbed in their distress; and was not, and couldn't fake it even to herself.
Restless anxiety dragged her to her feet again, away from her friend. She barely glanced towards Marron and his attendant Sharai, she couldn't take a step in that direction. Instead she went back to the doorway and on to the terrace again, desperate and driven. He will come, but she needed him, they all needed him to come soon; and yet he had the defence of all this land to organise, against forces too powerful for a peaceful people to resist. Their troubles were small and individual, his were vast and overmastering. They shouldn't be so selfish as to look for him; and yet they were, she most of all. He might be Princip of a state that stood on the very edge of destruction, but he was still her grandfather, her beloved Grandfer who had been her secret treasure, her sustaining family all these years. And now when she wanted him most, she couldn't have him; and that knowledge detracted not one grain's weight from her wanting.
She gripped the parapet with both hands, glad of roughness against her skin, something to rub against, something to feel. She stared out across the valley, scanning, searching. There were fires on the flanks of the northern hills, and when she squinted she thought she could see terror beneath the smoke, running men being ridden down. When she stretched all her senses, she thought she could smell burned flesh and hear screaming that was not the screams of men.
She drew back suddenly, letting that extended awareness slip rather than bear witness to the unbearable. It must have been imagination, surely, she was fantasising, turning nightmare tales into truth in her foolish, stupefied head. Or else that had been the screaming of horses, perhaps, trapped in a burning barn. Not women, no, surely not children ...
The preceptor had burned children at the Roq, she remembered bleakly, chillingly. But these were her own people here, and their own people too, they were all Panics. Even the most devout Ransomers would not burn their own. Would they... ?
She remembered Marshal Fulke's preaching against Surayon, and couldn't doubt it longer. And turned, shuddering, to look eastward for her grandfather; and saw instead - or thought she saw - the tribes of the Sharai spread out from wall to mountain wall, doing wicked work with scimitars for the greater glory of their God.
And didn't want to look any more, westward or anywhere; didn't want to go back inside either, to face the other tragedy of the day and try to persuade herself again that it was lesser, when it hurt as fiercely and as deeply. So she stayed, she stood where she was and closed her eyes against the terrors before her, and found no rest and no hope of evasion there either, only her father's dreadful death played out freshly behind her lids, a tragedy too many.
When an arm laid itself across her shoulders, when iron fingers gripped her tightly through the sleeve of her robe, she could have screamed from sheer startlement if she hadn't been so fathoms-deep in weeping. Instead she choked painfully on a sob that was hard as a pebble and filled her throat as thoroughly; she twisted vainly against the strength that pulled her close against soft fabric cloaking a man's body. A small, lean body - that was the second surprise, that had her blinking upward to find his face and know him, when she'd been just about to topple into the security of his hug except that suddenly he was not the man she'd thought him.
'Coren?' Well, Coren was good enough, a splendid second-best; she'd let him hug her as much as he chose and dry her tears willingly against his shoulder, so long as he promised to mention them to no one else.
'Aye, lass. I've brought your father home.'
Which made her choke again, because it could never be home again without him and without her loathing of him, a necessary counterbalance to her love for house and country, grandfather and folk.
But choking made her turn her face away from his, and turning made her see. Another man had come out onto the terrace from the cluttered, chaotic library where
no one went without the Princip's direct authority, and was standing gazing at her. Built like a woodcutter, short and broad, with a barrel chest and legs like firkins; crowned with thick white curls beneath his hood and bearded like a hedge in snow; scratching at that beard now with thick, spatulate fingers that looked so much better suited to gripping an axe than a pen or even the sword that he wore half-hidden under his cloak. ..
'Grandfer!'
Elisande wrenched free of Coren, who laughed softly as he let her go. She flew into her grandfather's arms, and no matter that he was wearing chain mail too beneath his sur-coat. Even if he couldn't mend what was irrevocably broken, he was still a solidity that she could cling to, where all else had proved so frail. She did cling, and might have cried again now that she'd found access to such a well of tears, except that through her mindless mutterings and his gentle soothing she heard something else, Julianne's voice say, 'Elisande ... ?'
She turned against her grandfather's rough hand where it was stroking her hair in animal comfort. Her friend was standing in the solarium doorway, leaning against the stonework as though that were all that was keeping her upright. Coren moved swiftly to his daughter's side, to take that duty on himself; for a moment, gazing at their matched elegance, Elisande was sharply aware of the contrast. She had always secredy enjoyed her grandfather's peasant appearance, been glad of his rude strength. She'd inherited his lack of height, but her mother's elfin bones; that had been one more thing to welcome, to thrust like a banner in her father’s face.
All the bitter triumph of those memories was ashen now, though - as ashen as her friend, who hung on to her own father's arm much as Elisande herself was hanging on to her grandfather: two girls who had come too far under too great a burden, and needed now to have it lifted from them. Despite everything that was happening in Surayon, the Princip had made time to return to them; Elisande tried to find some hope in that as she lifted her eyes to her grandfather and said, 'Please, you can help them, can't you, Marron and Hasan? Say that you can
'I can try,' he said, which was far short of the promise that she was looking for. She'd tried herself, others had tried and failed; Rudel had declined even to try. But the Princip was stronger, wiser, more practised than any. She'd believed in him all her life, when faith was such a hard thing for her to achieve; surely he couldn't let her down now.
'Take me to them,' he said, for all the world as though he were the guest here rather than the host. Elisande unwound herself from him, except for keeping tight grip on one arm; she led him past Julianne and Coren and into the bright solarium, thinking that desolation ought never to be so well tit.
For a minute, her grandfather only stood and looked down on the two sick men, where they lay on their pallets in the sunshine.
When he spoke, his voice was quiet and conversational. 'A wise man would do nothing,' he said, 'for either of these, except perhaps to help them into their deaths. The boy is a danger to himself and all around him, a greater clanger to the King whom I still serve; the man is the leader of that army, one of those armies that are laying my own land waste. If he is restored, he will seek to destroy Outremer itself, and he is likely the only man who could do that. Without him the tribes will splinter, loot and scatter. Why should I save his life, even assuming that I can?'
'Because he saved mine, and all ours,' Elisande said quickly, desperately. 'We were attacked by ghuls at the Dead Waters, but Marron fetched Hasan' - she couldn't resist slipping in a small word for her own boy, in hopes of its having weight later — 'and he slew them, he and his men . ..'
'Well. That is a reason, certainly, if not a good one. It may not be enough. Honour is a tentative idea, in times of war.'
'He is my husband,' Julianne said, her voice as faint as her colour. 'Perhaps, if I speak to him, he will lead the Sharai out of your land for my sake.'
'Perhaps, though I doubt it. That is a better reason. His sense of honour may be greater than mine. Now if you had said, "He is my husband and I love him," that would have been sufficient without the other.'
Julianne's eyes widened. 'Do you want me to say that?'
'No need, little one,' though she overtopped him by a hand's breadth or more. 'It is written all through you; he has left you as marked as the 'ifrit has left him. I hope you will find a way to be glad of it, though I think that journey will be a hard one. Keep back, now. There is danger in this. Hope too, you may certainly hope if you wish to; without that, you wouldn't have brought him to me, and the 'ifrit's work would have been wasted. But that creature has left something of itself inside him, and it may be fit for mischief yet.'
There was something in that which Elisande simply didn't understand, and no more did Julianne by the look on her face; but they'd been fogged in confusion for a long time now, it was beginning to feel like the natural order of the world. Besides, the Princip had a serious aversion to answering questions.
Conversely, when he volunteered information, it was wise to pay attention. He had said this would be unsafe; she took Julianne's arm and hauled her bodily backwards.
Not too far: she wanted still to be able to see, and she wanted Julianne to see also. Success or failure, life or death, it seemed important that they both stand witness. If Hasan did not survive, it would be too easy for trouble-minded tongues to spread lies about the manner of his death under Patric hands.
Easier than she'd imagined, even: she blinked, when she saw what her grandfather did. Kneeling down beside Hasan's pallet, he touched the Sharai's grey face, and sighed. Elisande knew how cold and lifeless that skin felt; she shivered a little in sympathy for him, for his having to send even his strong spirit into that chilly body.
Except that he didn't, or not immediately. First, he drew a dagger from his belt and a gasp from his granddaughter as he laid it against Hasan's unresponsive wrist and cut swiftly.
The blood followed the blade, but sluggishly. It seemed unnaturally dark in the vivid sunlight, just as it had seemed dead black in the lamplight and shadows of the tent outside Revanchard; it was certainly slower to run than it ought to be, as though it were thickening inside Hasan's body, almost starting to clot.
Julianne made one soft, unstructured sound that was none the less perfectly articulate. Elisande scowled ferociously, reached up to snatch the hand that Julianne was now biting on to save her giving herself away further, held it tightly in both her own and hissed, 'Show some faith, girl -that's my grandfather over there! I've been telling you for months how he's not a man at all, he's a demigod ...'
'You have. Wiser than the djinn, was it, and tougher than the mountains at their roots? He still wants to let Hasan die.'
'No, he doesn't - that's the one thing he wants not to do. He was desperate for you to feed him an excuse. If you hadn't, he'd have done it anyway, just out of curiosity to meet the great Hasan; I know my grandfer. Though he might have locked him somewhere very safe afterwards, for all the rest of his life. He might do that yet, unless you plead for him.' Whether you plead for him or not was what she actually meant - she knew her grandfer — but this wasn't the rime for Julianne to learn that particular lesson.
'Well, whatever he wants or doesn't want, Hasan's going to die in any case. See how he bleeds? That's not human harm, that's sorcery...'
'Of course it is, it came from an 'ifrit. That's why we brought him to the greatest sorcerer in the Kingdom for his healing. Grandfer may look like an old braggart soldier your cooks wouldn't welcome in your kitchen; that's because he is an old braggart soldier your cooks wouldn't welcome in your kitchen, but he could still chew up an 'ifrit and spit the shells out. He'd pick his teeth after, mind, he's really uncouth that way. Hush now, hush and watch.'
Now the Princip did what she'd expected him to do first thing. He spread his hands across Hasan's chest, every fingertip on a separate rib; he took a slow, careful breath and closed his eyes and sent his thoughts, his will, his spirit questing for the source of so much damage.
Elisande knew that journey well.
She knew how hard it could be to seek out the subtleties of invasion, how easy it was to become lost. She felt her muscles tense and her thoughts try to follow her grandfather. Hopeless at this distance, not even touching, but still she was dizzy at the spiralling down and down, still she was sick at the cloying, engulfing surge of corrupted blood.
You are not there, you are not him ...
It was the phrase all her teachers had used as they showed her how to begin this healing, as she first tasted the exhilarating terror-slide into the beat of another's life; it was an anchor and a chain for an over-anxious, over-eager girl who might otherwise have plunged so deep she forgot herself entirely. Today it had a special piquancy, because she really wasn't there; she was neither the Princip seeking nor the helpless Hasan, and she would do well to remember it.
Julianne had taken a bears grip on her, crushing. Nothing to do but stand, then, support her friend and trust her grandfather. So she did, she did both and felt herself rewarded, or at least relieved beyond measure, to see at last a hint of smoke rise from the coagulating blood on Hasans wrist.
The Princip grunted, clamped his hands tight around the Sharai's chest, twisted his face into a dreadful grimace; the wisp of smoke thickened and tightened, drawing itself together even as it was forced out of its stolen body.
Except that it was black, it looked almost like the thread of a djinni s assumed body, hanging in the air above Hasan. Some fragment of an 'ifrit, with at least some vestige of life left in it: and yes, she believed her grandfather entirely when he said that this was still dangerous. It was still dangerously close to him, and he looked exhausted suddenly, slumping where he sat.
She couldn't bear, she couldn't abide his loss on such a day, when so much had been lost already. She had a knife that was blessed, and now she might have pushed Julianne on to her father and hurtled forward to defend the Princip -but what use was a blade, however strengthened, against a creature that was virtually bodiless, an emanation of evil, nothing but smoke?
Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 Page 28