by Melanie Rawn
Kammil had died being of use to him.
Alessid was not Azzad. Why should he regret this? He was alive, and he would make his children rulers of vast lands. What had charming, foolish Azzad done to match that?
After a brief and entirely satisfactory little war, Za’arifa became Queen of Granidiya. Two years later, King Joaono do’Trastemar was deposed and killed, and Jemilha became Queen of Ibrayanza. Yet even watching what happened to its neighbors, the land of Joharra resisted conquest by the Riders on the Golden Wind. This was a curious circumstance, for its army had been wiped out and Count Garza killed. But Nadaline yet lived, and her son as well, in the fastness of a mountain castle said to resemble the ancient alMa’aliq lands in Rimmal Madar, and loyalty to the girl and her baby was comparable to that of the people for the al-Ma’aliq. Alessid reluctantly respected this and decided the easier lands would be added to his empire first before he turned his attention to Joharra once and for all.
There was plenty to do in organizing the three countries already acquired. Tza’ab Rih flourished, as did his family. There were four grandsons and seven granddaughters to help Alessid celebrate his fifty-fifth birthday. He loved all of them—but part of his heart was reserved for the children his beloved Mairid would have one day. She was nearly sixteen, and it was time she married. He had kept her with him too long, cherishing her too much to relinquish her.
The day after his birthday banquet, he called her into the great tent in the gardens. He had done the same with her sisters to announce the names of the men from whom they would select their husbands. Ra’abi, Jemilha, and Za’arifa had all dressed in their finest, jingling with hazziri and swirling with silks, aware of the importance of the occasion even though it was private between each girl and her father. Mairid arrived in a plain work tunic and trousers, barefoot and bareheaded, filthy from working in the herb garden.
“I know what you want to say, Ab’ya,” she told him before he could do more than open his mouth. “But I’ve already chosen my husband.”
“Ayia?” was all he could manage.
“Ayia,” she agreed, smiling. “Jefar.”
“Jefar!” Alessid sat up straight on his piled cushions. “He’s twice your age!”
“If that’s your only objection—”
“It is not!” he roared.
She picked dirt from beneath her nails. “I can’t think of a single reason why I shouldn’t marry him. And I really don’t want to hear any that you make up for the occasion. Should you forbid me, I’ll simply take him into my bed. If you don’t want a scandal, Ab’ya, for all of Hazganni to tittle over the way they did over that silly Nadaline girl, then you’d better let me marry him without making a fuss.”
“You won’t be taking anyone anywhere if you’re locked in your rooms,” he said darkly. “And I find it difficult to imagine how you could become pregnant if Jefar is posted to a garrison in Ga’af Shammal.”
“Don’t be silly, Ab’ya,” she scolded, smiling. “You need him here. Don’t you want to know why he’d make a good husband for an Empress?”
“No!”
“He’s beloved of our people. He’s Shagara—and we al-Ma’aliq need a link in this generation, after the Harirri and Azwadh and Tallib marriages. He’s smart, and he’s watched you govern all these years, just as I have, so it isn’t as if I’d have to teach him anything. He’s a brilliant war leader—having proved that at your side time and again—and the troops trust and love him. Just as important, the barbarians in the north have been defeated by him personally, so they’ll know not to make trouble.” She paused, and for the first time a powerful emotion shone in her eyes. “And I love him.”
Alessid felt the air leave his lungs in a rush. She had thought it all through, like the Empress she would one day be—but she was also a young girl in love. He had never denied her anything, but he had to deny her this. Because it hurt him to do so, his voice was rough as he said, “Your feelings have nothing to do with it. You will not marry Jefar Shagara.”
Suddenly she was no future Empress. Her jaw jutted, her eyes ignited, and her fists balled at her sides. “I will marry him! You can’t stop me!” And with that she ran out of the tent.
Alessid jumped up and followed her. “Mairid!” he shouted, aware that it was undignified to be racing through the gardens after his wayward daughter. The workers were trying not to stare. “Mairid!”
She vanished into the stables. Cursing, he went after her, and in the noise and bustle of a hundred splendid horses and their grooms and trainers, he lost her. Grabbing a grizzled veteran of the war against Za’aid al-Ammarizzad, he demanded to know where Sheyqa Mairid had gone. The old man dropped the saddle in his arms, trembling with nerves at this furious aspect of the usually self-possessed al-Ma’aliq. Nothing came out of the aged veteran’s mouth but panicky mumblings. Alessid abandoned him and strode along the alley between stalls. Beneath lofty rafters, magnificent stallions and noble mares looked curiously at him, many of them with Khamsin’s eyes. He reached the last stalls, where Mairid’s favorite filly, munching contentedly on oats, glanced around curiously when Alessid began a string of lurid curses.
Pushing through the back door into the sunlight, Alessid swore anew as he saw a slight figure on horseback galloping across the small paddock toward a fence. She had gone into the stables only to snatch a bridle from the tack room. Tempted to do the same and follow her, Alessid abruptly recalled days in his childhood when he had behaved exactly as Mairid did now. Frustrated, angry, unhappy, or simply bored, how often had he leaped onto a horse and ridden out of Sihabbah, putting speed and wind between him and his troubles?
He had done the same on that horrible night when his father and mother and sisters and brother had died. Escape—was there truly such a thing?
She was like him, his Mairid. She would return when she was ready. She would flee into the croplands, and then the forested hills, but eventually the horse would tire, and she would be back by nightfall. It wasn’t like when he was a boy, and his mother worried about the Geysh Dushann. There were no such dangers in Tza’ab Rih, especially not to its ruler’s favorite daughter.
Mairid did not come back by nightfall. Alessid worried, but told himself that a night spent sleeping on the hard ground wouldn’t do her any harm. She would have sense enough to return home when morning came.
But morning did not come. Instead there blew in from the Barrens to the south a thick, choking wind, laden not with fine white-gold sand but with heavy black grit, thick and sticky. To go outside was madness, yet the daily life of Hazganni demanded that people indeed go outside—bundled in cloaks and veiled in silk and scarcely able to see.
Jefar Shagara went outside, draped from head to foot, his horse protected by thin silk over eyes and nostrils. Alessid waited for him to return with Mairid. He sat in his maqtabba, listening to the whining dark wind, his gaze shifting slowly from lamp to glowing lamp by which he was supposed to be tending the business of his Empire.
At last a servant came in. “Al-Ma’aliq, they’re back.”
Alessid went to the windows that overlooked the courtyard, but of course they were tightly shuttered. Even had they been open he would have seen nothing for the obscuring dirt. He stared grimly at the bubble-distorted glass and the carved screens beyond it, and said, “Send her to her rooms. Let no one see her but the servant who draws her bath and brings her food. If she is hurt, send her grandmother Leyliah to her. But no one else. And she is not to leave her chambers for three days.”
The dark wind died down that night. Windows were gratefully opened to fresh air. Brooms wore out sweeping streets and zoqalos free of dirt. And everyone prayed to Acuyib for a swift rain to wash Hazganni clean.
When Mairid did not emerge from her rooms after the prescribed three days, Alessid surmised she was sulking. She was willful and stubborn, but so was he. Still, he called into his presence the servant who brought her food and water.
“What does she say when you leave her mea
ls at her door?”
“Nothing, al-Ma’aliq. She has not come to the door to accept the food herself. The plates are left outside, and only the water is taken in.”
Scorning him by starving herself was the action of a spoiled child. Mirzah was right; he had given Mairid her own way for too long. But when the fourth day passed and no one saw her, his anger was such that he went upstairs to her rooms and flung open the door, bellowing her name.
She lay on the flowered carpet, a frail little figure in a white nightrobe soaked with sweat and stained with vomit.
When Leyliah saw her—tucked up in bed, mumbling with fever—she turned white to the lips.
Alessid, who sat at his daughter’s side holding her hand, felt his heart stop. “What?” he rasped. “What is this?”
“I cannot be sure,” Leyliah whispered, suddenly looking every one of her seventy-four years.
Mirzah, seated on the other side of the bed, wrung out another cool rag and bathed Mairid’s brow. “No, Mother. You are sure. Tell us.”
Sinking into a chair, the old woman drew in a shaky breath. “Shagara legend tells of a burning dark wind that killed hundreds of our people.”
“When their tents fell on them in the storm,” Alessid reasoned.
“No. It was a disease. Hundreds died—the very old and the very young at first, then—”
“But some survived it.”
Leyliah would not look at him. “Of every ten, four died.”
“Mairid will live.”
“Alessid—”
“She will live.” He stared Leyliah down. “Summon Kemmal. He will make hazziri for his sister. She will live.”
A spark of hope shone in Leyliah’s beautiful eyes. “In that time long ago, there were no Haddiyat—” She stopped, and wonderment spread over her face. “Of the Shagara who survived, within a generation—”
“Then it’s not inevitably fatal. Mairid will live.” He looked at Mirzah. She nodded slightly. For that scant moment, they were in complete harmony.
“Yes. She will live.” Mirzah’s lips tightened as if to hold back other words, but within a moment they escaped, cold and bitter. “Al-Ma’aliq has decreed it.”
At first the illness was confined to the poorer quarters, and people who tended animals, and those who worked in the fields. Not everyone took sick of having been outside, but there was no pattern to immunity. And soon the disease spread, and with it fear as more and more died.
The initial fever was followed by violent purging, as if the body tried desperately to rid itself of sickness. But this only weakened the victim, so that when the fever returned there was no defense. The tongue turned black, and death followed within hours.
Shagara healers were overwhelmed. Alessid sent to their summer encampment for others, but the disease had struck in the wilderness, too.The Haddiyat forsook their usual fine craftsmanship to make hundreds of crude hazziri, and after a time the specific combination of gems, metals, and talishann was discovered that could see a victim through the disease—although the work of some was more effective than the work of others.
But this took many weeks, and all the while people were dying.
—RAFFIQ MURAH, Deeds of Il-Nazzari, 701
17
He did not leave her bedside. He paid no heed to Leyliah, who urged him to eat, to sleep, to guard his own health. Mirzah came and went. She brought news that others were suffering among the family. The whole of Tza’ab Rih was in mourning for the Black Rose. Alessid felt a vague sort of pity. But he was too preoccupied with Mairid, too intent on her every breath and movement, to allow himself to think that soon he might be grieving. The disease ran its course; those who could not withstand it died, and those who were strong and blessed by Acuyib survived. By the twentieth day after the dark and stifling wind swept into Hazganni, no new cases were being reported.
Yet Mairid lay in her bed, fevered and insensible—not dead, praise be to Acuyib, but not recovering, either.
“It is interesting,” Mirzah said one afternoon, while she bathed Mairid’s parched and fevered skin, “that it took this to teach you how much you can love.”
Too weary to contend with her, he said nothing.
“Then again,” Mirzah went on, “if Mairid dies, she is of no use to you.”
“Be silent.”
“Who did you have in mind for her? One of the Tabbors?”
With sudden passion: “She can wed the King of Ghillas if she pleases—if only she will live.”
“Careful. She might have heard that.”
He glared at her over their daughter’s frail body. “Get out.”
“When I am finished here.”
“Now.”
She ignored him, and completed her task, and eventually rose and dried her hands. “Alessid, summon Jefar to her.”
He felt something akin to hatred. Jefar, who had ridden out in the dark wind and stayed as well and healthy as ever. Jefar, whom his daughter loved.
It was bitter for Alessid to see Mairid’s head turn feebly toward the sound of Jefar’s voice. To see her dry lips curve ever-so-slightly in a smile when Jefar took her hand. To see the helpless agony in Jefar’s eyes as he looked upon her fever-wasted face. To know himself supplanted, defeated. A bitter well from which he was compelled to drink deep. He watched them for a time, and then, when he saw in Mairid’s eyes that she was lucid, clasped his own hands around theirs and said, “I betroth you, Mairid my daughter and Jefar my friend.”
It had always been enough to be loved by those few whose love he desired. Now, to watch his daughter turn her eyes to another man, loving him more, Alessid knew there was more to love than being loved. And in proving his for Mairid, he had lost her. But surely, surely there was someone in whose eyes he would see it returned in full unchanging measure, someone in whose heart he would always be first.
His people. Yes. He had created a nation out of nothing. They knew it; they revered him; they loved him without reservation. When Mairid recovered and her marriage to Jefar Shagara was celebrated, their cheers were for Alessid as the bridal party walked through the streets of Hazganni. They cried out his name. It was release from worry and sorrow after the long months of sickness and death, but it was also love for him. For him. He had made them great. He would make them greater still. And he knew how he intended to do it.
Countess Nadaline do’Joharra had resisted Tza’ab Rih since the first Riders on the Golden Wind had destroyed her father and the father of her child. Barricaded in her mountain fortress with those who remained of her father’s warriors—added to those who rallied to her from Qaysh, Granidiya, and Ibrayanza, the conquered lands—she had spent these years raising her son and keeping mostly to herself. Many years later, however, with the boy nearly a man and by all reports an accomplished youth beloved of his people, she had become an irritant. And Alessid was determined to take Joharra once and for all.
“How could we have let it come to this?” Mairid asked on the day word came that the army of Joharra had retaken five important villages from the Tza’ab. “Why wasn’t she killed years ago, and her son with her?”
Alessid shrugged, and resettled himself on carpets in his garden tent. “I had other things to do.”
“Ab’ya, it’s time to give our attention to Joharra,” she replied firmly. “This Countess Nadaline must be dealt with. And especially her son—for he can claim both Joharra and Qaysh.”
“So your sister Ra’abi has been complaining to you, has she?”
“Having heard nothing from you on the subject, naturally the Queen of Qaysh is concerned.” Brisk and efficient, she proceeded to detail options. As Alessid listened, he congratulated himself on choosing her to rule when he was dead. She knew what she wanted and how to plan most effectively to get it; tenacity was an excellent trait in a ruler. In the years since her marriage to Jefar she had borne two daughters and three sons, one of whom might be Haddiyat. The years had proven that all her sisters had birthed gifted Shagara males. It was very
likely Mairid had done the same. But they would have to wait a while to find out—likely until after Alessid was dead.
But he was not dead yet. And Mairid was not so clever as she thought she was. He could still teach her a thing or two.
“All very interesting,” he interrupted suddenly, winning a frown from her lovely brow. “But you forget an asset we have which the Joharrans do not.”
“I’ve already described a plan for using hazziri—”
“I am thinking of something more subtle than magic.”
“Which is?”
To her great and obvious frustration, he only smiled.
Later, alone with his thoughts in his maqtabba, he wrote a private letter to his cousin Sheyqa Kerrima of Rimmal Madar—who had succeeded to her mother Sayyida’s Moonrise Throne earlier this year. What he proposed was not a thing Mairid would have considered. Nor Ra’abi, nor even her husband Zaqir, Kerrima’s brother. But Alessid had thought of it, and that was why he ruled an Empire.
A few months after the delivery of the letter, Alessid had his reply. Countess Nadaline do’Joharra was dead, her son in exile, and all of Joharra firmly in the possession of Alessid’s granddaughter Za’avedra the Younger, eldest child of Queen Za’avedra of Ibrayanza. Though it should have been one of Ra’abi’s daughters, the only one available was but six years old. Thus it was that Joharra finally came into the Empire of Tza’ab Rih.
A little while thereafter, Alessid received in secret a strange and grim young tribesman from the east. He did not bow to the al-Ma’aliq, but the al-Ma’aliq didn’t much mind. Sheyqa Mairid did mind; she frowned but said nothing.
“You allowed the son to escape,” Alessid said.
“No, we did not, for the son was not in Joharra. Had he been, he would not have escaped.”
“Nonetheless, Ra’amon do’Joharra yet lives.” Alessid paused, relishing the moment. “As my father yet lived.”
The Geysh Dushann tensed visibly, but only for an instant. “It was Acuyib’s Will.”