The rage was Bhisrat's and his alone, and it made him add his voice to the tumult in a bellow. That companion, with his one hand gripping Hasan and his other raising high the vile thing it carried - that was the tribeless boy, the oath-breaker who offended all the tribes but the Saren specially, he who followed the bastard Patric Ghost Walker and should have died twice by now, twice at least. And he had given a finger to join the Sand Dancers and still he was let live, he was let walk into camp as into Selussin and Rhabat and this folly had to end, how long must Bhisrat endure it... ?
The boy walked into the firelight, into the heart of the elders' council, and didn't even pretend to be there simply as a prop to the sick Hasan. He settled his master carefully in the heat, to be sure - but then he straightened himself and turned a full circle, showing what he held to every man that watched.
It was a ghul's head, female and monstrous at the same time. Hewn from its owner after death, it must have been; it had needed more than one stroke to separate that from the neck it had inhabited before. Bhisrat guessed furiously at what blade had been used to do the work, and saw his guess confirmed as the nameless, shameless boy dropped the head and then knelt beside it, with Bhisrat's own good knife in his hand.
There would be no honour in slaying the boy, it was only a necessary duty owed to the dignity of the tribe, a restoration. He would do it in the Sands, on Saren land and under Saren eyes. Even so, this blatant parading called for some response. Half the men around him were waiting for it, he thought, even while they babbled questions at Hasan and were entirely ignored.
'Enough!' he cried, into the general clamour of rising voices; and sure enough, those voices fell silent too quickly to be trusted. Urgent as they were with their own demands, the sheikhs all wanted to hear from him, to see what he would do. Perhaps they thought, very likely some of them hoped that he would heap shame upon shame, take out his temper on the boy's flesh in utter disregard of Hasan, of the situation, of his own oaths and promises.
He did not. He impressed himself with his own forbearance; he spoke to Hasan and said, 'There are many questions, and we will ask them all; but first, tell me how it is that you allow that outcast to strut at your side, even here at the heart of our camp? This is the third time he has forced himself into our councils. His arrogance will earn him brief reward, when the time is right, but I do not understand why you give him your support.'
'It was rather the other way about,' Hasan said softly, drily. 'And is that your chief concern, this night? Well, let it be. He is here because he has something to show you, that I think you ought to see.'
A ghul's head? I have seen one before.'
'Not the head alone, something more.'
'You could have shown us yourself, why let the boy bring it?'
'He slew it,' mildly.
'Better it had slain him, saved me the work.' 'See him as a prop to my weakness, if that is easier for you, and a bearer of burdens. I could not have carried that head tonight, and you needed to see it. All of you need to see it. Show them, Jemel.'
The boy wrenched open the dead thing's mouth - too long for a human jaw and too pointed, but still disturbingly female, as though in deliberate mockery - and slipped the blade inside. His hands worked, one gripping while the other sawed; they emerged with the tongue of the ghul hanging like a miscarried foetus, dark and dripping.
'So the boy is an incompetent butcher. And what?'
'Look
The boy himself had still said nothing, and he said nothing still. He probed the point of the blade into the heavy wet meat of the tongue, found something, grunted his satisfaction.
And cut it out, and held it up for all to see: not a growth, nothing that could be natural even to so unnatural a thing as a ghul. A small stone, a large seed: something like an olive-pit, except that it was itself the size of an olive.
'What is that?'
'A spell, an enchantment; a whip, perhaps. Break it, Jemel, or Esren leaves you stranded here.'
The boy placed it on a broad, flat stone near the fire, that had been used an hour before for baking bread. He still held the dagger, Bhisrat's own blade in his other hand; now he reversed it, and brought the pommel slamming down. Bhisrat cried out in protest at seeing his knife so abused, but this time he was ignored.
The little thing had been a stone indeed, and had broken open under the blow. Stained dark on the outside by the body or the blood of the creature it had inhabited, it showed its golden heart in the firelight. Now half a dozen voices asked the same question again while the boy went on silently, heedlessly ruining the daggers fine hilt, using the weight of it to crush the stone to powder.
'What is that?' the voices asked, and answered themselves in a ragged and rising chorus. 'It’s a stone, that's all, just a piece of rock, what was it doing in that thing's tongue, what's this about?'
'It was fetched over from the land of the djinn,' Hasan said; and quiet, tired as he was, his voice cut through the sheikhs' uproar as they all sought to outshout each other.
They gaped at him, so many fools with their beards hanging loose. Bhisrat wore no beard, but still he could feel his own startlement writ large on his face in the firelight. No way to recover that, only a brief opportunity to seize leadership again, before another man stepped into the silence.
'Hasan, I - we - do not understand.'
'It is, it was a pebble from the land of the djinn,' he said again, more clearly, 'fetched over by the 'ifrit to be a tool, to make the ghul a tool to their will. There is some virtue if you would call it that, some glamour in the rock of that place, that gives it power here. The 'ifrit have used it to bind a djinn, the same that brought us here — but you know that, you were in Rhabat and saw what came of it. They use it also to bind ghuls. Those are ghuls that haunt the borders of your camp tonight, but they are ghuls with a stronger mind behind them. They are being driven against you, and it's the 'ifrit that drive them. I do not know why, but the 'ifrit have attacked us before; they have attacked others along this river this day.'
'It is obvious why,' Bhisrat growled. 'The 'ifrit are bound or in allegiance to these Patrics of Surayon, and are sent against their enemies.'
'It was the Patrics of Surayon that saved my life today,' Hasan returned mildly, and an 'ifrit that threatened it.'
'Seeming so. And as a result you come to us, you are returned to us - to say what? I do not think to lead us to Ascariel, or to plunder. Have they turned your head, Hasan?'
'Have they? No, I don't believe they have. You are right, though, Bhisrat of the Saren. This much I am convinced of, that the 'ifrit are the greater enemy and the greater cause tonight. We must fight and defeat them before we think to fight further for our land, that the Patrics stole from us. Not to forget that, but to put it aside for now; and if that means we must fight alongside the Patrics for a short time, then let it be. When men ride out against the spirit world, they do well to ride in numbers. And I do not think it will be for long.'
Bhisrat snorted, was ready to say that he did not think it would be at all, that the Sharai were too wise to be so trapped. He was forestalled, though, by the oathbreaker.
'Bhisrat of the Saren,' the boy murmured, loud enough to carry. 'Yes, indeed. And where are your Saren tonight, Bhisrat? I remember all their faces, and I don't see any of them hereabouts ...'
He could not have seen in the dark, in the crush of bodies packing in around the firelit circle. He must have known before; and of course he did, because he had come with Hasan, which meant he had come from those Patrics who had snared the Saren in their cursed labyrinth. True warriors of the tribe, of the Sharai, and they were being sneered at by this boy of shifting allegiance, who had long since forgotten how to spell his loyalty or what oaths he'd broken and to whom.
Bhisrat's roar of fury was building in him like sand blown in a storm against the tent of his resistance. He must break his own oaths now, at any moment, he must draw his scimitar and smite that reckless, feckless boys head from his dishonest
shoulders, let it fall down beside the ghul's and lie there, kind by kind ...
But again Hasan cut in, just a moment before Bhisrat must have lost control; again the breathy fragility of his voice was somehow a quality that must be listened to.
'Jemel, enough. Don't be petty. Go and fetch them now.'
'Very well, Hasan.'
With half a smile and a mysterious glance that was meant surely to infuriate further, as it surely did, the boy rose easily to his feet and began to walk towards the wall that hid the ensnaring maze. That route took him directly towards Bhisrat, who had chosen that place explicitly so that he could be seen not to give even a glance at the wall.
They came face to face and Jemel said nothing, only waited politely for Bhisrat to move aside.
Instead, he stood four-square in the boy's path and — almost choking on the effort to speak, grinding the words out - he said, 'You know where they are.'
'Oh, yes.' For a moment, he held that same mocking smile; and then, relenting, 'They are not dead, Bhisrat, only lost and wandering; and they have been my brothers all my life, till now. I will fetch them out.'
'They are my tribe, outcast. I will fetch them.'
'Oh? Go, then,' with a courteous gesture. 'I will wait with Hasan; he needs me, if the Saren do not.'
'You know I cannot fetch them without your help.'
'And you should know that I will not help you to fetch them. What, shall I lead you through your confusion, while you dog obediendy at my heels?'
That was another reason to kill the boy, that insult flung so casually, so contemptuously at him, and in public hearing too. But the tribe's safety lay between them, in this strange and unknowable land; he swallowed his fury and said, 'You need not watch your back, so long as I walk behind you. When I kill you, trust that it will be face to face and blade to blade, as I promised before.'
'That was not my concern; I had not thought to fear my own knife at my back.' Even from you was not spoken, it did not need to be; only Bhisrat among all the Sharai, his voice suggested, could be so dishonourable as to conceive of the idea. A murmur among his audience seemed to confirm it, although half these thieves and liars would slit their own brothers' throats for a camel and a press of dates. 'What I fear rather,' the boy went on, raising his voice and looking around, playing to his listeners now, 'is seeing you restored to the trust of your tribe, as you come from the dark to lead them free. A sheikh should be wise and temperate, and you are neither. I care yet for the Saren, and I would not see them endangered at your hands. You have lost them once on this adventure; where will you lead them next? Or send them, rather?'
There was laughter all around. Some surely must be at the very idea of a Sharai sheikh being wise or temperate, that was a known joke, but most of it was purely aimed at Bhisrat.
'Stay, Bhisrat,' Hasan said mildly from the fire. 'Let the boy fetch your people; he has your blade for his authority, they will follow him out of the trap they're in. Stay, and aid our councils here; we need wisdom, we must talk about the threats we face and how we're best to meet them.'
He had no choice; he stepped aside and let the boy slip smiling into the dark. But his voice would be wasted now, as his searching would have been before: every time Hasan mentioned wisdom, he knew, everyone who heard would remember the oathbreaker's jibe and discount Bhisrat as foolish and intemperate. If they had plotted that whole scene between them, they could not have played it better. Already Hasan was talking defensively about meeting threat, not about advance or assault, and already the sheikhs were listening.
And the boy was right, Bhisrat would lose more than the respect of other sheikhs by this nights work. The Saren too would be eyeing him askance, and less inclined to listen or to follow. Tribes had risen against their sheikhs before now, on lesser provocation; and that boy would provoke them mightily as he led them out of the labyrinth, he had the tongue and the knowledge to do it and to do it well.
Oh, they were clever - but there would still come that moment, a circle of bodies and a stretch of sand, where the boy met Bhisrat’s steel and choked on it. That would make much worthwhile.
In the meantime, Hasan was tipping the baking-stone towards the fire, brushing the golden dust of crushed stone into the flames like so much wasted flour. It was not such heavy work, but the strain of it showed; another man asked him why he did it.
'The djinni would not come, while even that dust lingered in the air.'
'Djinni? What djinni?' A hundred voices now, hushed by his gesture as they always had been.
'This,' he said; and, 'Esren .. .'
The djinni came like a break in the darkness, like a fault in a rockface that showed the glitter of hidden wealth, unattainable wealth beneath. Bhisrat heard the rushing whisper on all sides, where has he been, that he comes back with command over the djinn?
They were fools to be impressed, twice fools to trust him now. He had been with sorcerers, and there were too many spirits in this story; Bhisrat smelled the stink of betrayal in the air, and dared not say it against so many true believers.
'Esren, when Jemel comes out of the fields with the Saren lost, I want you to take him back to the palace.'
'He will not want to go.'
‘I know that. Marron went with the Ransomers; this is his stubbornness, that he means to go with the Sharai. I mean him to go back, he causes nothing but division here. Tell him Marron will return shortly'
'The djinn do not lie, Hasan.'
‘I hope that it will not be a lie.'
'Neither do the djinn hope. I cannot see what Marron means to do.'
'Well, tell him nothing, then — but take him anyway. Regardless of his protests. Lisan told you to obey me, not him. Take him away from here, and back to her.'
Ronan de Montclair had expected miracles and wonders
Hasan was speaking to the sheikhs now, speaking of 'ifrit, but Bhisrat would not listen. He had his own thoughts, his own suspicions; he would make his own plans, if he could only find some men to follow him. ever since he came to the Sanctuary Land, and had been sadly disappointed for more than twenty years already.
He'd learned to live with older men laughing at his fancies, and boys too, boys born in Outremer and wise within their world; before long, he'd learned to keep his dreams private even from his friends. He'd never learned to stop looking. The priests' teachings and the old legends both were burned into the bone of him. He knew that the God had walked this country and blessed it in His passing, and he believed also that there were spirits and demons here that his homeland had never seen. He watched trees and rocks and rivers, he prayed with his eyes on the stars, and - like his homeland - he had never yet seen a shadow not cast by the sun, a shimmer not made by wind on water or a fire not struck from a flint. He had sat on his horse on a hilltop and seen what he thought was the gleam of sunlight on the domes of Ascariel, the God's own city; but he had never come closer than that far view, and even he couldn't read a distant glitter as even the promise of a charm. That had been when he was a youngster still, a squire in his lord's retinue. Now he held his own land in his own name, directly from the Duke. It was what he had come for, but it had made a farmer of him, where he could have been a knight; he had earth under his fingernails and his feet had sprouted invisible roots, which his father might have called a miracle indeed but he would not. Married with children, twice tethered to his holding, he still prayed at all the proper hours and at other times too, when he was abroad in his fields; he still watched for strangeness, for any sign that creatures not mortal had visited his land; he still saw nothing but what he had always seen: the actions of light and weather, the flights of birds, no angels.
It was good land he was granted, fertile and well-watered. It should have gone to a man of better blood than his, but that it lay close to the road north and the northern border of the dukedom, that strange dislocation where lay the Folded Land.
He had never gone that far, either, not though the ride would promise a touch of magic
at its end. Some wonders were accursed, and he would not willingly seek them out.
He could face them, though, if the need arose. When messengers rode wildly south from the borders guards, when a small and hasty army came marching north in response — the way is open, Surayon lies where it always lay; to arms, to arms and march! — he didn't hesitate to join it. All of Outremer might be vulnerable to the Princip's spellcasting; his own land was vulnerable to any evil that might have been breeding in darkness this thirty years, that might issue forth this night or any. The Church might call him, his liege lord might send him, but he rode for himself and his family, the land he held for his sons and their sons to come.
From the moment they crossed the border, he had expected to see sorceries levied against them, fiends and ghasts and foulness; all day and half the night, he had again been disappointed. He had seen houses, herds and crops, and he had seen them all laid waste. He had seen groves and orchards that reminded him of his childhood home, so much softer the climate seemed in this closed valley; he had seen men at the trees with axes and with fire. There were many years of wrath banked up behind those blades and torches, but he thought that wrath belonged to their masters, their lords and bishops; he thought that wrath unleashed them, but that it was fear that carried the men themselves in their hectic rush to hack and burn. Wrath licensed a destruction that fear compelled.
Nor was it only trees that suffered, or only crops and cattle. Those same axes had hewn at men; those same flames had burned women in their cottages, women and children too. Ronan had no wrath, but his own touch of fear survived; he had watched every death warily, only waiting to see the first strike of evil in response from the dead or dying. After so many years of watching the border road in anticipation of some demon-led invasion, he couldn't believe that these heretics and sorcerers would simply die as they did die, like farmers and families or any mortal folk, as though they had no spells to protect themselves any longer, no magic in the world.
Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 Page 44