The Diviner (golden key)

by Melanie Rawn

  “You have that leave. Shall I tell you what I need, or will you be able to guess?”

  Both young men smiled, and Alessid was content. They had grown in confidence and knowledge during their three years away from the Shagara, and now that they knew what they were, there was a new dignity and consciousness of worth. Whereas it had been difficult at first for him to meet them as men and not as his little boys, now he was glad he had chosen marriage for them instead of the other path.

  The son of a Shagara mother with Haddiyat men in her line had two alternatives on reaching fourteen years of age: try to father a child on a Shagara girl who had chosen to give a baby to the tribe before she married (which many girls did), or wait another year and marry. If, after three years, no child had come of the marriage, the young man was divorced. There were formal tests to determine whether he was truly Haddiyat, but cases where infertility was the woman’s fault were rare.

  The advantage to the marriage option was that a bond was formed with another tribe, the young man saw something of the world outside the Shagara tents, and when he returned to them, he was still only eighteen years old, with another twenty or so years of service ahead of him. The disadvantage was, perhaps, that he spent three years hoping in vain for a child. But every son of a Shagara mother with Haddiyat men in her line knew from childhood that his future might not include offspring.

  All Shagara children were taught to read and write by the age of seven. The boys learned how to work with metals and alloys and jewels and to craft simple hazziri for the Haddiyat to inscribe. Those who showed a gift for the forge, for design, or for cutting or setting gems were apprenticed to special mouallimas, whether they turned out to be Haddiyat or not. The ones who were gifted, however—these were the treasures of the Shagara. When magic was mated with craft, the result was not only true art but true power.

  Alessid had no interest in art.

  He sent his sons to help the herdsmen if help should be needed this night, and he returned to Mirzah’s tent. The girls were asleep. Mirzah should have been packing for the move tomorrow. Instead, she huddled on a pile of rolled and rope-tied carpets, weeping in silence.

  “Wife, what is this?” Alessid knelt beside her, and was astonished when she jerked away from his hand. “Mirzah, what’s wrong?” She refused to look at him. “You must not cry. It’s bad for the child.”

  Her head snapped up. “What about my other children?”

  “Mirzah—” He rocked back on his heels. “Quickly, tell me, is something wrong with the girls?”

  “Ayia! By Chaydann al-Mamnoua’a, you are a fool!” She gave him a look of pure venom. “A mother should not outlive her sons!”

  Alessid stared at her.

  “I suspected—perhaps I even knew—but Abb Shagara came to me this morning and—” She pounded her fists on her thighs. “He made it real, Alessid!”

  “Real?” he echoed stupidly.

  “He said the testing was finished, and my boys—” She choked. “He told me what an honor it was—how pleased I should be! Of course he’d say so—he’s Haddiyat himself! He doesn’t understand!”

  It came to him then, as it had not even when looking his sons in the eyes. Handsome, strong, obedient sons . . . young men who would grow old swiftly, as Fadhil had, and die before the age of forty-five, as Fadhil had.

  Among the Shagara, being Haddiyat was the greatest honor a man could know. For the women who had birthed them . . .

  Compassion ached within him—an unfamiliar emotion. He sought to gather his wife into his embrace. She once more shook him off.

  “When you are busy killing,” she said in the coldest voice he had ever heard from her, “when you are taking back what the al-Ammarad stole, remember who it was who gave you the tools you will use until they are used up. Remember that they are my sons. Mine. Remember whose blood it is that made the blood they will bleed for you until they have no blood left.”

  For the first time in his life, Alessid went onto his knees before another human being; he bowed his head down to the carpet and whispered, “Forgive me.”

  Mirzah was silent a long time; he could feel her watching him. Then there was a murmur of thin silk as she got to her feet, and her voice came from very high over his head.

  “Never.”

  He remained there, having abased himself to no purpose, until long after she had left her tent.

  They rode out in the early evening, the wagons and the warriors. It was midsummer and very hot even at night, and a breeze blew up from the Barrens that could sear the skin on a man’s face. It was a miserable time for travel, but travel they did, northeast toward the mountains.

  At midnight, on the salt flats, at a crossroads only a desert dweller could have identified, the tribe divided. Fifty young men on swift horses stayed with the wagons to guard and warn. The rest went with Alessid: three hundred riders cloaked in pale desert colors, arrayed for battle, gleaming with hazziri, eager for the deaths of their enemies.

  And as they parted from their parents and children and friends, the tribe began to chant. Alessid, having kissed his daughters—and bowed much lower to Mirzah than most men ever did, even to a woman, even to his own wife—rode to the head of the group and glanced back over his shoulder once when first he heard it. A tiny smile touched his mouth beneath the protective scarf over the lower half of his face. He showed no other reaction, and did not look back again. But he heard the chanting long after, and all the way to the village of Ouaraqqa:

  “Ah-less-eed! Ah-less-eed! Ah-less-eed!”

  His people were truly his. Though he had not been born one of them, he had taken their most prized daughter to wife and sired upon her three daughters and three sons, two of them Haddiyat. He had shown the Shagara a new strength in their most ancient ways. And he would soon give them power in this land equal to the power they had bestowed on him.

  Self-critical, self-analytical, Alessid knew precisely why he was doing this. For himself, primarily—which caused him not the slightest shame. He did it to make sure the name al-Ma’aliq was not spoken in the same breath as failure, as disgrace. To regain what belonged to him. To provide for his sons and daughters a heritage unequaled in the history of this land. To give the death blow to Sheyqa Nizzira, who slumped in wheezing decay on the Moonrise Throne, watching with rheumy eyes as those who remained of her offspring who were still men plotted all around her.

  To prove that, unlike his father Azzad, Alessid was not a fool.

  He led his cavalry northward, glancing every so often at the toppled columns and shattered statues strewn over the hilltops. Long ago the Qarrik had been the conquerors here, building temples to their false gods in the towns from which they ruled—for a time, and not so very long a time at that. The people had rebelled, and the Qarrik, who had overreached themselves, had been vanquished. Then had come the Hrumman, fiercer and more warlike, thicker of muscle and more proficient at arms, marching across the land to take what the Qarrik had lost, reconstructing the shrines and reestablishing foreign rule. But in time the Hrumman had also been expelled. All that remained to mark the mastery here of either barbarian nation were a few fallen stones, a few headless statues.

  So would the al-Ammarizzad fall, by Acuyib’s Will. Alessid would be His right hand, and the Shagara would be the sword in Alessid’s hand. But as much as he would use the Shagara and their magic—and his own sons—for his ends, in the same measure he felt bound to bring them to the prominence they deserved. What other people could do what they did? How dared anyone threaten them or the tribes allied to them?

  A hundred and fifty years ago, other barbarians had come, this time from the north, and conquered—for a time even briefer than the Qarrik or Hrumman. The Shagara had been the key to their defeat. As he listened to the cadence of the hooves behind him, Alessid knew that representatives of all the Za’aba Izim rode with him, protecting the Shagara, who in turn protected them. It was a relationship as timeless as the wastes they lived in and as balanced. With the
ir silence, the tribes defended the Shagara, who defended them against sickness, injury, and death. All Alessid had done was show them a new way of defense, necessary because his father had brought them new dangers by being a fool.

  In many ways, he was doing this to apologize.

  When the Qarrik and then the Hrumman and then the northern barbarians had been driven from the land, no one had thought to unite the tribes with the towns and form a true nation. No one had been given the vision given to Alessid by Acuyib: a united country, strong and safe and invulnerable.

  It required the Shagara to accomplish it and, moreover, the Shagara in a position of prominence such as they had never before known. Alessid knew this must be so; Abb Shagara was of a different opinion. But, like all Haddiyat, Abb Shagara had grown rapidly old; he was thirty-seven and by the look of him would not reach forty. Though less than half Sheyqa Nizzira’s age, he was just as feeble and even more inconsequential to events—as irrelevant as the ancient broken columns and demolished statues littering these hills.

  On the third evening, twenty miles from the town of Ouaraqqa, Alessid halted his cavalry for a quick and early meal. They would don dark cloaks and ride again when darkness fell, and circle the garrison by midnight. The Haddiyat had been heroically busy these last months, creating things they had never before been asked to create, with splendid results. Every rider wore a special hazzir, made of silver for magical strength, set with hematite for protection in battle and garnet for protection from wounds, and inscribed with four owls that gave patience, watchfulness, wisdom, and—most importantly in this endeavor—the ability to see in the dark.

  But the subtleties of belief among his warriors affected the hazziri in strange ways. Those who had absolute faith (the Shagara, of course, and some others of the Za’aba Izim) were protected against everything but their own reckless folly. And Alessid did not allow stupid men to ride with him, whether they trusted Haddiyat skills or not. In previous skirmishes—he did not delude himself that these were true battles—the hazziri had protected the uncertain to a lesser extent than those who believed. The openly skeptical had taken a few wounds, which had not promoted certitude in their hearts. So this time, when the hazziri were given out, he let it be known that these were merely for luck. The Shagara, who knew better, kept silent. Alessid’s thought was that ignorance of the true power of these hazziri would prevent specific disbelief and therefore would protect even the men who doubted.

  There was a kind of skewed logic to it, he supposed, smiling wryly as he ate his share of goat cheese and hard bread. If one didn’t know exactly what one was supposed to believe in, one could not disbelieve it. Ayia, he would see this proved or disproved tonight.

  Kemmal and Kammil approached on descendants of Khamsin. His heart swelled at the sight of his sons—tall and handsome and strong, qabda’ans of a hundred riders each, everything a father could wish. For a moment he felt kinship with his own father, knowing that Azzad’s look of pride graced his own features now. And yet—

  Pushing aside memory of Mirzah’s tear-streaked face and icy blame, he addressed his young Haddiyat. “Kemmal will lead the Harirri up from the south. Kammil, take the Tallib down from the north. When you are in position—” He stopped, seeing them exchange glances and tiny smiles in the dimness. “What? Is there a problem? Have you questions?”

  “No, Ab’ya,” said Kammil. “It’s only that we’ve been over this a dozen times.”

  “We know what to do,” Kemmal assured him.

  “Ayia, then—go and do it. Acuyib smile upon you, my sons.”

  “And on you, Ab’ya, always.”

  As they rode off to organize their troops, Alessid berated himself for unnecessary repetition of his orders. His men knew what they were doing. In truth, his faith in his warriors was as absolute as in his hazziri—but he wondered if perhaps he was a little nervous. This was no skirmish with isolated contingents of Qoundi Ammar far from any settlement; this was the first time Alessid had attempted to take an entire town.

  Though he had never been to Ouaraqqa, it was familiar to those of the Shagara who conducted trade for the tribe. He had spoken at length with them and studied the maps they had drawn, so when he gazed upon the town from the top of a hill, it was as if he had already been there a dozen times. Twice the size of Sihabbah, it sprawled at the bottom of a gorge, on the eastern side of a mountain stream that during spring runoff became a torrent. Ancient ruins on the western bank bore mute witness to foreign fools who had built on the flat flood plain rather than the slopes. Part of Ouaraqqa was mud brick, part of it was wood, and some of it—most notably the water mill that ground grain to flour—had been built of toppled stone temples from across the stream. Alessid thought about that for a moment, and smiled; the people of this land had turned the possessions of former conquerors to their own use. He wondered what of Sheyqir Za’aid’s he would employ once the al-Ammarizzad were gone the way of the Qarrik and Hrumman and the northern barbarians. He could think of nothing the al-Ammarad had established in this country but hatred—and indeed they had tried to destroy utterly the one thing about which he and his father Azzad were in accord: the wealth of trees.

  But renewing that wealth would come later. Right now he must take Ouaraqqa.

  Only starlight glinted off the stream, thin in midsummer. The mill was silent, the flocks were gone to high summer pasture, the winding streets were empty of townsfolk. Only the occasional Qoundi Ammar rode through on patrol. All this was reported to him by Jefar Shagara, who despite the objections of his uncle Abb Shagara had been given permission by his parents to accompany Alessid on this assault. He had been given his horse in advance of his fifteenth birthday—a four-year-old half-breed mare named Filfila for the peppery black-and-gray dapples that made her blend into the night shadows. There was no prouder warrior in Alessid’s cavalry. Nor, with the exception of his own sons, one Alessid would do more to keep safe.

  Accordingly, he received the boy’s report and sent him to the rear of the company. Jefar was not happy, but neither was he skilled enough yet with a sword to join in the attack. Alessid stroked Qishtan’s glossy cream-gold neck and waited for his sons’ messengers. When they came,and told him the Tallib and Harirri were arrayed as ordered, Alessid touched the hazzir at his breast and roared the command to charge.

  The Qoundi Ammar in their arrogance and their contempt for the people of this land believed that no one would dare attack a town they held for Sheyqir Za’aid and his exalted mother. Alessid knew with regret that this arrogance would change once this night was over, but he had chosen his target with this in mind. Ouaraqqa was important to its own people only as a prosperous market town, but to the military mind it was vital: It commanded the only pass through this part of the mountains. For this reason, it was garrisoned with a force of two hundred. With this place in his hands, Alessid could isolate the Sheyqir’s warriors who patrolled the south. Without support, without a home position, they would be easy prey for the Tabbor, whose lands they occupied.

  It was risky in some ways; Challa Meryem had warned him that once liberated, the Tabbor might withdraw from the larger campaign. But he had to have Ouaraqqa to deny Sheyqir Za’aid this pass, and so Ouaraqqa must be taken.

  The Tallib, with Kammil as their qabda’an, swept down from the north along the watercourse. And as they did, Alessid led his own troops in from the east, crushing the town on two sides. The Qoundi Ammar were roused from their garrison—the four largest houses in the center of town, commandeered without compensation for the owners. But their horses were not only penned far from the soldiers’ quarters, they were now galloping down the gorge—for, from the south, the Harirri with Kemmal leading them had freed two hundred pure white stallions trained for war.

  “Slaughter,” Kammil said afterward, with admirable succinctness. And it was true.

  Alessid, inspecting the town by dawnlight, heard the cheers of Ouaraqqa’s people and saw their grateful amazement that no one but Qoundi Ammar had been
killed. His warriors had taken only minor wounds—and the ones who had were none of them Shagara. Moreover, they had separated townsfolk from enemy soldier as if they battled in full daylight. The most serious injury, in fact, was to a young Tallib skeptic who had not even been wearing his hazzir; he was knocked in the head by a low-swinging shop sign he hadn’t seen in the dark. After he came back to consciousness and learned how few of his companions had been wounded in the fighting, he was a skeptic no longer.

  Alessid accepted the invitation of the town elders to share their morning meal. As they lauded his courage, his skill, his daring, and his brilliance over strong qawah and the softest bread he had ever eaten, he knew that it would never be this easy again.

  All that autumn and into the first month of winter, the Riders on the Golden Wind swept through the land Sheyqir Za’aid claimed for his mother, Nizzira. By the time he began to be afraid, it was too late to send for more soldiers from home; the sea had succumbed to storms, just as the Qoundi Ammar in town after town succumbed to the warriors of the Za’aba Izim.

  Sheyqir Za’aid saw, as the new year began, that he had lost more than half his territory. The only lands still tight in his grip were the coast and the region around Hazganni. To this city he went, and he ordered four great towers to be built, and walls to link the towers. And in this way he fortified Hazganni as never before and felt himself safe until spring, when the seas calmed and he could apply to his mother for help. All the warriors left to him, he commanded to Hazganni.

  On the day the walls of Hazganni were finished, Alessid rode into Sihabbah, the town of his birth, for the first time in twenty years. He had fled a boy and returned the savior of his people. It was there that he was first called Il-Nazzari, “Bringer of Victories.”