The Diviner (golden key)

by Melanie Rawn

Despite the commands and the threats of Sheyqa Nizzira that no one—no one—know of the mutilations, rumors spread. What was whispered in the streets about why, and how, and by whom, was voiced aloud in the secure seclusion of private houses—though softly still, and with caution, and only to those one trusted absolutely: “Azzad lives! An al-Ma’aliq yet lives!” And without Azzad’s knowing of it, his name became the stuff of ballad and legend.

  It also began to be whispered that there yet lived another alMa’aliq—if not by name, certainly by blood. Her name came to adorn ballads and legends, too. But, unlike those songs and stories about Azzad, which dealt with past deeds, the name of the young Sayyida el-Ammarizzad was coupled with hope for the future. The daughter of Ammineh al-Ma’aliq listened, and smiled.

  —FERRHAN MUALEEF, Deeds of Il-Kadiri, 654

  10

  The Geysh Dushann renewed their attacks. They cared no more for subtlety. For their pride’s sake, it no longer mattered to them whether or not the Shagara knew who killed Azzad al-Ma’aliq.

  But Azzad was not killed. And if he had had any lingering doubts of the effectiveness of Fadhil’s hazziri, he had none at all after one would-be assassin fell from a second-floor balcony and was gutted by his own ax. Viewing broken railings the next morning, Azzad traced with one finger the talishann painted on the wood. For a few moments he debated asking Fadhil to tell him exactly what protections had been added to the house, but two things stopped him. The ways of the hazziri were the deepest secrets of the Shagara, and he didn’t want to put his friend in a position where he must refuse to answer. Also, he recalled very well what Fadhil had told him long ago: If one knew the hazzir’s precise meaning, too much trust would be placed in it, and the wisdom of ordinary caution would fly away. “Not even the Shagara can protect against stupidity.” Azzad concluded that whereas belief could increase the power of the magic, one could in fact believe too much.

  The Geysh Dushann came, singly and in pairs, openly and in disguise. Every one of them failed. Jemilha was true to her word; no reproach ever passed her lips for the danger. But her eyes grew larger and larger in her weary face with the strain of her fear and the new pregnancy.

  Fadhil made new hazziri for her and the children. He repainted the protections in and around the house in his own blood. He sent to Abb Shagara informing him of events, and by way of reply came six young Shagara men, who worked for eight days reinforcing Fadhil’s work with their own. A letter from Abb Shagara said that if the noble Lady Jemilha grew bored in Sihabbah, she was very welcome to visit his tents and stay as long as she liked. A note from Meryem was less tactful: She recommended that Fadhil tell Azzad not to be more of a fool than Acuyib had made him and get his wife and children out of Sihabbah at once. Azzad sent a letter back with the six young men, thanking Abb Shagara for his care. But he did not leave Sihabbah.

  There were attempts at the house, at the stables, in the town. The Geysh Dushann sabotaged saddles and bridles, poisoned provisions, dusted the insides of gloves with toxic powder, and ignited na’ar al-dushanna that filled rooms with noxious smoke.

  A little furry creature, oddly manlike about the hands and eyes and ears, was caught in the kitchen while putting something into the soup. Alessid made a pet of him, teaching him to add sugar to his mother’s qawah and training him to do many other tricks. But the animal sickened during the cold weather and died. By then Alessid had a new pet: the deadly snake he found slithering across his room one morning. With its poison sacs removed, it was an oddly affectionate creature, and Alessid’s hunting skills grew apace when it turned out the snake preferred succulent pasture-fed mice to the grain-eaters of the barns.

  Nothing the Geysh Dushann did could touch Azzad or his family. Yet by midwinter in the new year of 630, the perspective of Sihabbah’s people began to change. Outrage at these offenses became annoyance at their continuance—and this was but a step away from anger directed at Azzad. None among them had been injured, but it was hard to live in a place where every stranger must be suspected of intent to commit murder.

  Azzad humbly consulted Abb Ferrhan—past eighty and more sternly judgmental than ever—and apologized for the ruination of Sihabbah’s peace, promising that when Jemilha was delivered of her child and could safely travel, he would take his family elsewhere.

  “But you say she isn’t due until spring!” Abb Ferrhan protested.

  “I am sorry. But she cannot be taken great distances in her condition.”

  This was not strictly true. Though this pregnancy was giving her trouble, when none of the others had, still she was perfectly capable of a journey if taken slowly. Azzad simply had no intention of running away. And he trusted to Fadhil’s hazziri to continue protecting him and his, as they had through nearly five months of unsuccessful strikes by the Geysh Dushann.

  And then the assaults ceased.

  Spring came, and Jemilha gave birth to a healthy girl, duly named Oannisia as Azzad had promised to Acuyib. All the children grew and progressed well in their lessons. Kallad, serious and bookish, was obviously destined to become a scholar. Zellim showed an aptitude for music, Bazir for mathematics. Yuzuf was the charmer of the brood, with a pair of huge brown eyes, soft and sweet as a fawn’s, that allowed him to escape nearly all punishment for boyish misdeeds. Azzifa and Meryem were lovely, carefree, their father’s delight. And Alessid, his firstborn—ayia, Alessid would soon be a man, and a fine one, tall and strong and handsome, who would be sought after as a husband by every girl in every town and village between here and the great northern ocean.

  All of Azzad’s world was perfectly at peace. Trade was as good as ever, perhaps better; Khamsin’s last foals were born and thrived.

  But Fadhil, Azzad saw one afternoon in early summer, had become old.

  They were on the way to a house outside Sihabbah’s boundaries. Fadhil had chosen to walk rather than ride, and Azzad went along with him to carry his satchel of medicines.

  “You don’t have to act as my apprentice,” Fadhil said irritably.

  “You were favoring your right shoulder last night,” Azzad replied, “and you never walk unless your back is aching so much that you can’t ride. I’m not the only one who observes symptoms, Fadhil.”

  “And pleased with yourself for it, too, Chal Azzad,” the Shagara answered with a little smile. “Very well. Yes, my shoulder is troubling me, and I believe I rode too far with the boys the other day, which is why my back hurts.”

  “Can’t you cure yourself?”

  “Sometimes it’s wiser to allow the pain to work itself out. If it does, good. If it doesn’t, there may be something else wrong that curing the first might mask.”

  “You’re the tabbib,” Azzad said, shrugging.

  “Indeed I am.”

  Their destination was a cottage just outside town—one of the prettiest properties in all Sihabbah, in fact. Nestled beneath a stand of towering pines, with a view down the whole valley, it was the home built for Feyrah this spring when she had given over the entirety of the family business to her daughters and nieces. She and her sister now lived there, tending for amusement and pleasure a garden of exotic herbs that Azzad had ordered for them from the barbarian lands to the north.

  Except for trees, which were the most important of all Acuyib’s gifts, plants rather bored Azzad. He appreciated flowers because of Jemilha’s delight when he gave her a bouquet; he acknowledged the usefulness of herbs for healing; he had his favorites among the spices that flavored his food; he valued the grains that fed his horses. But all these required constant care and cosseting, season after season. A tree, once established, settled down and went about the business of growing. If not an eternal thing, the way a mountain’s bulk or a desert’s vastness was eternal, a tree was as permanent as a mere man could wish to see. It simply was, and continued, and for reasons he didn’t understand he found this notion a comfort.

  But this garden of Feyrah’s interested him, and the interesting thing about it was the fascination it inspire
d in Alessid. The boy liked nothing better than to ride up here after lessons and help the ladies tend the plants. For someone as physically restive as Alessid, a liking for the gentle occupation of gardening was perhaps the last thing one might expect. Azzad had asked him about it once, and received a muddled sort of reply that boiled down to: I like to find out the differences and the samenesses. An interesting boy, to be sure. Azzad sometimes wasn’t quite sure what to make of him, but knew he’d enjoy watching what the boy made of himself.

  The ladies welcomed their visitors with all the usual warmth, plus that bit extra always reserved for Fadhil. A new harvesting of herbs was produced and exclaimed over; there were significant hopes for a powerful painkiller from an infusion Fadhil spent a great deal of time discussing with Feyrah, and this told Azzad much about the reason for this long walk today.

  As qawah was served—outside on the patch of grass, for it was a lovely day—and the newest recipes for smallcakes were sampled, Azzad watched his old friend with worry in his heart. Fadhil moved with a kind of studied grace these days, as if his brain must constantly remind his body what walking and reaching and shrugging looked like to others so that no one would notice his pain. It was only when the younger ladies arrived for their daily visit that Azzad pushed aside his concern and exerted himself to be charming.

  They had news for him.

  “Yet another one, al-Ma’aliq, we can scarcely credit it!” Yaminna told him as he selected the choicest cakes for her as a gentleman ought. “He wasn’t like the one who came this winter—”

  “His hair didn’t have that reddish cast,” Lalla interrupted. “I mean, it did, but it was obviously hennah.” She giggled suddenly. “Yaminna, do you remember the time you had a notion to become a redhead—”

  “And I had a terrible time correcting the damage,” Fadhil said. “Shame upon you, Yaminna, trying to improve on the glory Acuyib gave you.”

  “I repented, Chal Fadhil,” she replied, laughing. “Ayia, how I repented!”

  “Something else about this man,” Lalla said. “He had dyed his skin as well as his hair. The brown was all over his body, but in a few places not as well applied as in others. If you understand what I mean! But the point is that he was a stranger, though not one of them, even though he tried to seem so. His natural skin was golden, like Chal Fadhil’s.” She sat back on her heels with a What do you think of that? look on her face.

  Shagara pretending to be Geysh Dushann? Ridiculous. But Azzad was too polite to say so. “I shall watch most carefully for a man with badly hennah’d hair,” he assured her.

  In the normal course of things, the two men would have whiled away the afternoon most pleasantly. But Azzad, alert to his friend’s attempts to hide pain, saw suddenly that he was also attempting to disguise unease. He was halfway through a gallant speech of reluctance to leave the ladies’ company when Yaminna leaned closer to Fadhil and whispered something in his ear.

  He smiled at her and shook his head. “I thank you, but no. I am too weary to do you justice, I fear.”

  On the walk back to town through the golden dusk, Azzad confronted him. “Tell me the truth. Are you ill?”

  “No.”

  “You look ill,” Azzad said bluntly.

  “As you said earlier, I am the tabbib.”

  “Fadhil—”

  “I would rather speak of the Shagara who has disguised himself as an al-Ammarad—for can you doubt, from the description, that this is what he is?”

  “Fadhil!”

  A long, quiet sigh. “Very well. How old are you this year, Azzad?”

  “Thirty-nine—and don’t remind me! The gray hairs in my head and beard—caused by my children, I swear it by Great Acuyib!—my age sneers at me from every mirror!”

  “Would you like some of what I use to hide mine?” Fadhil gave him a sidelong smile. “No danger to one’s hair, unlike that awful stuff Yaminna tried—”

  “What?” Azzad stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

  Fadhil kicked at a stone in the path. “Among the Shagara, such cosmetics are not necessary. We know. We understand. But here—ayia, no one would believe that I am two years your junior if I did not dye my hair and beard. I am afraid, though, that in the last year or two, the lines on my face have betrayed me.” He glanced over at Azzad with another tiny smile. “There is no hiding them, you know.”

  “Betrayed you?”

  “Yes. They show what I am.”

  “Everyone knows you’re Shagara—”

  “There are Shagara and Shagara, as you know. At least, you know a part of it.” He held a pine branch out of Azzad’s way.

  Azzad stopped, staring at his friend. “You mean about not being able to sire children?”

  “That is an aspect of it. In the next year, my shoulder and my back will not be my only aches. I am fortunate in that my hands remain strong and free of pain.” He let the branch drop, and sighed again. “How old do you think Chal Kabir was when he died in 614?”

  Recalling the tabbib’s appearance the year before, when Azzad had taken Farrasha and Haddid to the Shagara camp, he said, “More than seventy, less than eighty.”

  “He was forty-one.”

  Azzad felt his jaw fall open.

  “Forty-one,” Fadhil repeated softly. “You have not seen Abb Shagara in many years, Azzad. He is my age—we were born almost on the same day. When I visited last summer, I saw what the cares of being Abb Shagara can do. His hair and beard are now almost completely white.”

  “Ayia!” Azzad breathed. “Then you—and Abb Shagara, and those like you—”

  “Within the tribe, we are called Haddiyat.”

  “You use yourselves up in service to others,” Azzad heard himself say, the words coming from the instinctive place that was wiser than his conscious mind. Grief and guilt crushed his heart. “The cares of caring for us—what you’ve done for me and mine, especially since last spring—all the hazziri, and your blood in the paints—all the things that keep us safe from the Geysh Dushann—”

  “Do not, Aqq Azzad,” Fadhil said swiftly, his fine, strong hands clasping Azzad’s shoulders. “It would happen wherever I lived, whatever I did. Some of the Haddiyat spend themselves in making hazziri for strangers, in healing strangers. I have been singularly blessed by Acuyib, because my work is done for people I love, for a woman and children I cherish as if they were my own—and a man who is my brother more than any Shagara could have been. How better should I spend myself than for love of you and yours, who are also in some ways mine?”

  Azzad had no words now. He embraced Fadhil, remembering at the last moment not to grasp too strongly lest he cause pain. They had been young together, and Azzad had always assumed they would grow old the same way. He could not imagine growing old without Fadhil at his side.

  “How long?” Azzad grated. “How long will you—”

  Fadhil deliberately misunderstood him. “I will work as long as I can.”

  “How long?”

  This time he did not pretend. He sighed quietly against Azzad’s shoulder. “Do not grieve over me yet, my friend. I am alive and as well as any Haddiyat can expect to be at my age. I have never regretted what I am. And Acuyib has favored me beyond human reckoning. I have a good life, and it is not yet over.” He drew back a little, to smile into Azzad’s stricken face. Lines there were on his golden skin, and the frail dry wrinkles of a man half again his age, and a depth of weariness to him that now frightened Azzad. “Another secret to keep, to be locked away with all the others.”

  “I won’t tell Jemilha,” he said thickly, letting Fadhil go. “Or the children.”

  “I didn’t think you would.” His gentle smile widened to a grin. “Only please, Azzad, do take that pitiful expression from your face before we get home! Jemilha is no fool—and neither are your children.”

  “But Sheyqa Nizzira is,” another voice said behind them. Both men whirled to confront a man unknown to them: young, perhaps twenty-two years of age, with a s
canty beard and a reddish glint to his thick black hair. “You don’t recognize me, I suppose, Chal Fadhil. I was only a child when you left the Shagara tents. My name is Haffiz, son of Murrah, and I have come to warn you.”

  “Warn of what?” Azzad asked warily.

  “May we speak of this in a place more private?”

  They walked on in silence, to a side path leading to a rocky promontory overlooking the valley. It had been one of Jemilha’s favorite sites since childhood; she had herself built the knee-high pebble castle, endearingly lopsided, next to a bench put there for her father and uncle. Azzad sat on the bench now, with a glance for the shadows sliding across the hills. Soon the nightly promise of Acuyib’s Glory that was the sunset would paint the land in fabulous colors, intimations of the splendor that awaited the faithful after death. A few hundred feet below, clinging to the side of the mountains, was Sihabbah; below it was the estate still known as the House of al-Gallidh. All at once Azzad felt the threat to its peace deep in his bones, an ache like unto the pain Fadhil had finally admitted today. Fadhil stood behind him, watchful and silent, as Haffiz turned his back on the valley and faced them to tell his tale. He had recently journeyed to the coast, with hazziri for the zouqs in several towns there. In one place, he heard of a party of al-Ammarad merchants, also there for trade, and put himself by way of observing them.

  “But if they were merchants,” he said flatly, “I am the next Sheyqa of Rimmal Madar.”

  “Geysh Dushann?” Azzad asked.

  Haffiz nodded. “The same. And with much time to spare before their assigned kill, or so I thought, for they were drinking like horses ridden hard for three days. I disguised myself, as you see—” He gestured to his hair. “—and pretended to be an Ammarad trader, long resident in this land. They drank, and I drank, but I was wearing this to protect me from drunkenness.” He held up his left first finger, encircled by a silver ring set with an amethyst. “What I heard when we all stumbled back to their lodgings is what I will tell you now.”