Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04

by Chaz Brenchley

  Jemel had passed the night as a betrayed man must, or thinks he must: alone, awake, afraid. For all the pictures his mind could draw in darkness, for all the stories he told himself against the silence, there was only the one fact that mattered, that everything turned around. It was the kernel of what was true, at the heart of all his miserable imaginings; it was the cold grit that lay swathed in the veils of the grey pearl, the stake that held the raging lion captive on its leash, the pit that was the point and purpose of the fruit.

  Marron had gone to Sieur Anton, but that was not it. Jemel understood that, could even find it in himself to honour that. He still meant to kill Sieur Anton, and not for Marron's sake; that was an oath that he carried like a pebble in his mouth, unforgettable. He would delay that requital, though, until matters were otherwise resolved in Surayon. He thought that Sieur Anton would not die until he came to kill him; God would be kind, he thought, to one who had been desert-true until he'd left true desert. That had been a mistake, and Jazra had died for it. It had also led Jemel to Marron, and so to uncountable betrayals of God and his people, his tribe and every other oath that had ever mattered to him. And so to the last betrayal, this: that betrayed as he was, he still could not regret his choices or wish them all undone. If a djinni took him back to the Saren, to the spring, and Jazra was alive again and he had the chance to keep him so, to say no, we will not go, let Hasan march with others against the Patric infidels, that is no fight of ours; what, should we die, one or the other or both together, while we are young and the days are long and the nights are longer yet? Let the old men fight their old wars, priests and imams together; we are Sharai and wefight each other, we fight for camels and gold and pride but not for God. We belong in the Sands, He set us here; why would He have us move? — if he were given the choice to say all that and make Jazra attend him and so live, he couldn't be sure that he would do it.

  Jazra but no Marron, and it was a betrayal even to think that Marron with no Jazra was a better thing, even to wonder whether it might be so. It was a betrayal, one of many, Jemel was used to thinking it quite harmless; there was no djinni would work that magic for him, it was only a story and not for telling, an inner dream of grief.

  But no Jazra and no Marron either, and lying in a bed too wide and kept wakeful by the space and the silence and the chill of it: this was the other face of betrayal, and small wonder then that he had risen before the dawn to escape that bed and the constant fact that had shared it with him. Marron had come back from Sieur Anton, and had not come back to him. Jemel would have stayed with the tribes last night only to avoid this, not to have to know; but the djinni had brought him back regardless, and he had had all night to learn and to have that learning underscored by the slow, slow hours during each of which - during each minute, each waiting second of which - Marron still did not come back to him.

  So he had risen into darkness, and carried the darkness with him where he went. In that dull, bitter mood, facing what seemed likely to be interminable days of equal loss and stubbornly ready to ensure it with a few sour and unequivocal words if he could only find Marron to say them to, he had found others and been offered a fight instead of an argument. Had accepted heedlessly, almost joyfully; had run to fetch weapons, more weapons than he was carrying, all the weapons that he owned or claimed; had returned to find himself being led - not without some sideways glances among his new companions, but led none the less - into a place he had never, never imagined himself encouraged or permitted or even physically able to enter.

  He had broken into the imams' house in Selussin, climbed the gate and bullied the guards and shouldered open the door onto the chiefs' private council; he would not have dared, would not have dreamed of coming here despite the ever-open door and the welcome carved into the stone of the lintel, which Marron had read out to him when they passed this place before.

  The men he had met readying themselves for battle were Patrics of course, Surayonnaise of course; and it seemed that the latter was the louder of their voices if they could welcome a Sharai among their number when it might be Sharai they rode against, when certainly Sharai were among the invaders hacking a brutal path through their country's broken peace.

  Startled by their trust — and deeply, disturbingly unsure that he could in fact be trusted - Jemel had followed them unthinkingly along a corridor and through a doorway, beneath that inscription that he could not read; and only then, only when he was through did he stop thinking of war and grief and the grief of war, start thinking about God and faith and another face of loss.

  Too late to turn and walk out, he was here now. Besides, he wanted these men to trust him, to take him with them freely to the war. This might be a test, even, conceived quickly between them while he was fetching weapons: if he will pray with us—if the God will allow it — then he may ride with us. If not, he stays. Or perhaps, if not, he dies.

  Perhaps they thought their God would kill him anyway. He half thought it himself, walking stiff as a brand through the doorway of a Patric chapel; he thought he might burn as a pitch-soaked brand can burn, seemingly from the inside. Their God was fierce, Jemel knew that from Marron, who had confirmed a hundred rumours true. They did burn children, these Patrics; they had done that at the Roq after the attack that failed, the boys who had let down ropes for Hasan had gone to flame and ash along with their ignorant, innocent fellows. And Marron might blame the Ransomers and the cold hearts of their leaders, but Jemel was free where he was not, Jemel could blame their God.

  And so fear their God, and so give that one a credit he denied his own. It had been a long time since he'd prayed, and a longer journey; he was heretic now in his heart, which should go well with being a traitor in his body, if he did find himself fighting the tribes today. He didn't mean or want to do that, he'd still choose his own people over Marron's to hold all this land - if for no reason else, at least the Sharai did not burn children - but there were greater aims at stake, and he'd fight any man who set himself in way of their pursuit.

  Any man, or any God: he glared a challenge at the ceiling. And found his eye caught by decoration, by figures painted in red and gold and green, pictures that perhaps he could read where the letters defeated him; and so was staring upward to decipher their meanings as he walked, and so walked solidly into the back of the man ahead where he was kneeling, and would have sprawled ungainly on the tiled floor if he hadn't been caught and held by the belt, by the man behind.

  'Easy, boy,' in a rough rasp. 'I don't care whether you give the God your prayers, but give Him honour at least in His own house.'

  'I meant no dishonour,' hissed between his teeth as he wrenched himself free, ready to start the clay's fighting here and now if he had to. 'I was—'

  '—Staring up at the saints, I know, instead of watching where you walked. All the Catari do it, when they come in here. Tell truth, lad, I don't care if you gawp or not, and I doubt the God does either; those paintings are there to be seen, or what's the point of 'em? Just don't tread all over Markam as you go, it's disrespectful.'

  To the God or to the man, Jemel wasn't clear, but it didn't after all seem worth fighting over. So long as these men's idea of respect didn't involve his kneeling as Markam was. He wouldn't do that for his own God now, far less anyone's else.

  But then Markam rose, and stepped aside from the central aisle; and now that he was looking down rather than up, Jemel could see what the Patric man had been about. Not praying, or not solely praying; he had laid his weapons on the floor there before the altar, an impressive cluster of blades and only the latest in a line of such clusters.

  The Princip had given orders last night, that no man go into the field without his weapons blessed. Jemel had known men who had ignored similar orders in the Sands. Dead men, mostly. He would likely know others before sunset. Hasan had been weakened by more than his wound; the sheikhs had rediscovered their own voices in his absence, and had tasted blood and smoke all yesterday. Hasan might be listened to yet, but would he
be obeyed? That was no small band of sworn brothers he was leading now, it was all the tribes together, dangerously close-camped and ready to kill. They might kill Patrics, they might kill Surayonnaise, they might just kill each other; Jemel wouldn't care to be the one who told them to wait, to hold, not to kill at all. And to speak of imams, and a need to bless — the Sharai endured imams for their God's sake, but did not travel with them nor seek them out. Nor fight with them, especially not that.

  Once in his life he had seen an imam employed in the Sands, seen the tribes respect him; that was at Rhabat, before Hasan led his war-party against the Roq. Then there had been a blessing of weapons indeed, but 'ifrit had been in no one's mind. It had been the only way to bring the tribes together, Jemel thought now, to make it a holy war: to tell them that they fought for God, and not for land or loot. It was a general's trick, that had perhaps saved and surely reshaped Jemel's life altogether; without a blessed arrow he couldn't have saved Julianne's and so would not have met Marron, wouldn't have been in place to save Hasan's life with that same arrow later. But the general's trick hadn't won the battle, and wouldn't win any hearts now.

  Even if Hasan could find an imam, the tribes would never stand in line a second time to have their weapons touched and prayed upon. They would laugh, rather, with all the scorn of the proud Sharai. With a day's burning and looting at their backs, their robes rank with dried blood, an army or two of Patrics ahead of them and a river to fight over, more good water than any of them had seen in their lives before, what need an imam, a blessing, a warning to beware? They'd know where their blades were bound; come the battle they would rely on a strong arm and a scimitar's edge, as they always had. Jemel thought they would die in numbers, as they so often did.

  Men were waiting while his thoughts ran like molten wax, wasted, useless. They had laid their weapons on the chapel floor; they looked to him to do the same. Would a Patric blessing hold, on a Sharai blade that was blessed already? He didn't know, but now would be a good time to find out and a bad, perhaps a very bad time to refuse.

  He had a bow on his shoulder, too, and a quiver of arrows hung Patric-style at his back; he set them on the tiles beside the scimitar. There were extra knives in his belt, all Patric in make; he added those. And felt the weight of one more at the back, heavier than he would ever have picked out for himself. He drew it forth and added that too, managing something close to a smile at the thought of an outcast Saren boy slaying a Saren sheikh with the sheikh's own blade, after it had been blessed by a Patric priest. Perhaps he wouldn't need a killing blow, even: perhaps the merest prick would act on Bhisrat as it would on an 'ifrit, slide into flesh as if it were nothing but smoke, seek out the soul of him and send it down to hell.

  Or perhaps the blade would curl and smoke like parchment in a fire, when the priest reached out to touch it. For all that Jemel knew, it might have been blessed already by an imam, as his scimitar definitely had been. Set one God's blessing against another's, in the same narrow steel — it was like setting Patric and Catari in the same narrow strip of land. Which the Gods had done, of course...

  If there were Gods, if there could be two where each religion preached one alone. Jemel had ceased to worship, not to believe; he just wasn't sure any longer whether his belief could hold fast against the equal faith and seemingly equal miracles of the Patrics. If their priests' blessings worked as well as his imams' - and if he could respect and fear their fierce priests, where he felt little more than contempt for any imam he had met — then where was the truth of any teaching?

  Here in Surayon, perhaps. It must yet be a godly land; this chapel was no disused relic of a dead faith. The paintings were fresh on the ceiling, the tiles underfoot were worn with use but still clean and uncracked, the wood that panelled the walls smelled spicy with a long generation of incense. And these men had filed in easily, familiarly, as if from regular habit. Jemel looked for another man to come, perhaps from another door; he didn't know how Patric priests dressed when they weren't armed and booted, but surely in robes as the imams did, to proclaim their difference from the common people...

  He was doubly taken aback when no priest appeared. Rather, one of his companions stepped forward, and he not even their officer, just one of the men. He turned to face them, and spread his arms wide like a priest inviting the congregation to kneel. Jemel would not, could not, but neither did any of the men about him. Even the Sharai - who made such a virtue of their haughtiness, their refusal to stoop before their enemies or the many hardships of their lives in the Sands - even they prostrated themselves before God; but not these, apparently.

  They did bow their heads, in respect rather than humility, he thought; and they responded in quiet, firm voices as the man before them prayed. Jemel couldn't follow the words. Marron had said that there was a language the Patrics used to speak only to their God; Jemel suspected that the Princip had used that old tongue to write a new religion for this land, as he had written the law.

  If a man wrote his own religion, could he find a god that would adopt it? Or was there just the one God, whom any form of worship would satisfy? However Jemel phrased the question, it made as little sense as the words he heard spoken or the actions that accompanied them, the turning and bowing to east and west, to where the dark rose up at sunset and where it retreated come the dawn. It must be retreating now in the world outside this windowless chamber, with its own painted views of another world entirely. Perhaps all religions looked toward a world not real; but then, Jemel had walked in a world different from this, and had found no gods in it and little enough else.

  The man who led the prayers reached down to touch and bless the blades laid out before him, but what power did he claim, to give them virtue? When he was done, Jemel retrieved his own weapons and examined them suspiciously. They were as heavy to his hand as they had been before and as sharp to his fingers touch, as bright to his eye and nothing more.

  He'd distrusted the imam in Selussin, but believed in the prayers and blessings none the less; God would not punish a man for choosing a poor intermediary. Here, though, he doubted the man and the God and the prayers, all three. Where there was no tradition and no ceremony, nothing to distinguish a holy man from any other, how could there be any blessing worth more than the words that were said?

  Like his fellow Sharai, he thought he would be riding into battle with nothing to rely on but the strength of his arm and the edge of his scimitar, the speed of whatever broken-down animal these men could find to carry him.

  'Esren.'

  Elisande said the name softly, almost sighed it on a simple exhalation, where Julianne would have expected her to scream it. She might have been summoning the djinni in her common casual manner, except that it was already there. Still there, after fetching them from the palace and bringing them, depositing them here; still hanging in the air beside Elisande's shoulder, playing the obedient servant with its usual mockery implicit. It had lingered as though it knew that if it left, it would be hailed back again - but then presumably it did know. It was a djinni, some part of its awareness should forerun it like a wisp of smoke on an unfelt breeze. Even if it were as blind as it claimed, if it lacked any true sense of the future, it must still have guessed how Elisande would react to this. It had said what it had said, it had done what it had done; it had lifted them up like hope, like a promise, and it had brought them here.

  Julianne had guessed, had been certain what to expect, was flinching yet - and all in vain, as Elisandes voice made an absolute point of its calmness, its control.

  'Esren, I said to bring us somewhere we could be useful.'

  'You did; and so I have.'

  Elisande gazed deliberately about her, and so did Julianne; it was irresistible.

  They were standing on an island, rough rock and wild grasses, in the middle of the icy rushing waters that divided the valley state, the river whose path they had overflown all the way from the mountain pass to the palace. It divided the valley and divided itself about
them, north and south; on either side the stream was too strong to swim, too wild to row or raft, far too broad to leap. It might have been bridged, but was not. A little way upstream there were abutments on the banks to suggest that a bridge had stood there once, and perhaps recently; it was not there now.

  Simple to cross from bank to bank, of course, with the aid of an amenable djinni. If they had only had one.

  Instead, they had Esren. Any minute now, a regular hissing, raging Elisande would have reminded it that it had sworn to serve and obey her; it would have replied with some portentous enigma, which by the time it was untwisted would mean only ‘ choose not to do so, or else more simply never trust a djinni. This new patient Elisande - diplomatic, perhaps I should say, and can she have been learning lessons from me? - took a second glance around, just to make the point the stronger, before she said, ‘I do not see what use we can be to anyone, if you abandon us here with a gulf on every side.'

  'There would be little point in that,' it said, which sounded almost like agreement, 'and so I would not do it. Nor would I expect you to see what use you will be; you lack the sense.' Which might have been a common insult, or else a plain statement of fact, that she didn't have its ability to foresee what needs might come; the djinni was quite capable of either, or of turning the one into the other and so saving time and effort.

  Whichever it meant, the familiar Elisande would have taken it as insult, and laughed. This one seemed to take it the other way; at any rate she nodded, and was silent. And looked about her one more time, as though she were struggling to see what was impossible for her, how events might fall out in a way that would give value to their presence here; and shrugged at last, and said, 'Very well, Esren. Leave us, if you will.'

  It would and it did, although Julianne did not believe it had been waiting for permission.

  In its absence, Elisande reverted. She heaved a huge groaning sigh that had nothing of patience about it, and then stooped to heave a rock up from the ground at her feet and hurl it into the swift-rushing water that encompassed them.