The Diviner (golden key)

by Melanie Rawn

25

  It was as Solanna had seen it.

  The army of tents and carpets, white horses and red banners, encamped on the floodplain. The red and gold of autumn trees. The second army behind a hill to the north, made up of Tza’ab and Cazdeyyan, Ibrayanzan, Qayshi, Andaluz, even Joharran. For Sheyqir Allil had at last realized his mistake and sent his troops to join the fight against Rimmal Madar. Or so he said. But whether they had been ordered there by their commander or came of their own accord, the Joharrans were indeed present.

  The Sheyqa’s forces now included many who, having learned what it was to be conquered, joined with her rather than be slaughtered. Some probably hoped that this would earn them the right to be left alone; others, that they might even enlarge what they owned, as Allil had done. All of them were afraid. It was their fear that Solanna proposed to exploit.

  “Letters,” she told her husband as they left their little valley and rode south. “You can send them letters, permeated with magic, that would—”

  “No. I’m sorry, qarassia, but I cannot.”

  “But you don’t have to harm them—just make them afraid. Didn’t your uncles suggest that very thing to your grandfather? Didn’t they offer to make hazziri to terrify the al-Ammarad?”

  “They did, but he decided otherwise.”

  “Eiha, it sounds to me like a very good way to accomplish—”

  “No, Solanna.”

  “It isn’t as if you were making them ill, or physically hurting them, causing them pain—it would only be to enhance what they already feel, the fear and tension they must be feeling, to be in the army of the Sheyqa. We know their names,” she coaxed. “All that need happen is that they touch the letters—”

  He shook his head.

  “Would your mother hesitate?”

  It was the first time she had ever acknowledged that his mother and the Empress of Tza’ab Rih were one and the same woman, but he had no inclination to exclaim upon it now. “If the Shagara could choose to die rather than betray their beliefs, I cannot dishonor them.”

  “But this is different! You’d be using their knowledge to stop people from fighting!”

  “A meticulous distinction,” he admitted. “I will think about it.”

  They rode on in silence for a little while. Then she said, “I know where your thoughts take you, Qamar. Even if their qabda’ans are taken ill, the soldiers will fight anyway—and die. But if they withdraw—or try to—”

  “The Sheyqa, and especially her Qoundi Ammar, will kill them. There are so many reasons not to do as you suggest. But in the end there is only one that matters. How could I have made this book, and then do this? How could I write these things, and then use them to kill? Because people will die, Solanna, we both know it. I cannot shame those Shagara who sacrificed their lives to keep us safe.”

  She had said nothing more about it, not during all the long journey to the broad plain where the two armies would meet.

  Miqelo’s hawk, gift from the King of Cazdeyya, soared sometimes overhead, and to Qamar it was yet another sign from Acuyib. He had rarely believed in such things before, but now it seemed that every turn of his head, every thought that occurred to him, held in it something of destiny. It seemed a hundred years ago that Challa Leyliah had told him the story Azzad had told about a hawk in the desert—ayia, how Ab’ya Alessid had rolled his eyes, and reminded her that the tale had grown more and more elaborate through the years about the hawk that had warned him about the gazelle and led him through the desert to the Shagara. Eventually the tale came to be that the hawk had alighted on his shoulder and guided him with cries and flapping wings to the rockslide; eventually, too, the very same hawk had flown ahead of him and Khamsin, dropping a feather here and there to make sure he reached the Shagara camp.

  Qamar knew that this hawk was the very same one Solanna had seen flying over the opposing armies. And after they reached the hills above the plain, and Miqelo had found acquaintances among the Cazdeyyans, Qamar knew on the afternoon he saw the hawk flying overhead once more that the eve of battle had come.

  He sought the shelter of a thicket of willow trees, private as the Sheyqa’s own tent. He sat in the dirt with a single lamp beside him, his whole collection of inks in a case that formed a desk of sorts, the green book open atop it. So beautiful a binding, plain and yet luxurious, worthy of the unique papers within. He could only hope that the words were as beautiful, as valuable.

  He leafed through the book, all the way to the back where he had tucked a few loose pages. They were one of his more interesting papers, made after much thought and careful collection of ingredients. The cypress in particular had been difficult to obtain; he owed it to Miqelo, of course, who had collected such fascinating things for him on his travels. Cypress, which local lore connected with longevity. Comfort. Health. Youthfulness. The immortal Soul.

  He closed the book, set it aside. Opening the case of inks, he trailed his fingertips across the stoppers of each. They were as crucial as the paper. The colors, the composition—dragon’s blood for power, vervain for enchantment, fern for magic, lavender for luck, yellow poppy for success . . . Qamar contemplated the largest bottle, full of black ink, and heard across the years Zario’s voice: “For wisdom and control, resilience and discipline. And although it is the most emphatic of colors, it has this curious quality: Black is the color that hides your thoughts and motives from others.”

  More esoteric was the inclusion of fir bark, which symbolized time. But the commonest ingredients, white heather and acorns, were the most powerfully ambitious. Ground to powder, carefully mixed, each signified immortality.

  Qamar was overreaching himself, he knew. There was in all likelihood a very good reason why no Shagara had ever sought to create the results he intended from these papers and inks, these talishann and his own blood. But whenever he thought about the first pages of that book, written in a controlled frenzy, he actually felt humbled: his selfish impulse of so many years ago, his determination to live, had turned out to have a greater purpose. The life he wanted so much was meant to be spent enlightening the peoples of two separate lands. Acuyib had shown him how to make the killings cease. And to do it, he must live. This was what he had been preparing for, this was why he was destined to succeed. Solanna had seen him old. He would succeed.

  “Qamar? What in the world are you doing down here?”

  The curtain of willow branches rustled opened, and Miqelo sidled in, an expression both worried and whimsical on his face.

  “Not as grand as the Sheyqa’s tent, but just as useful,” Qamar said, smiling. “And much prettier, don’t you think? Wonderful inside, but I’d imagine that from the outside it looks rather like a lantern with a green beaded shade.”

  The older man crouched down on the other side of the lamp. “We’ve caught a spy.”

  “Really? Whose?”

  “I’m not sure he knows,” Miqelo admitted. “Of course, that’s not particularly unusual around here, is it?”

  “I would think that their Mother and Son are conferring with our Acuyib, trying to sort out whose believers are in which army.”

  “And where their loyalties truly lie.”

  “Are we interested in this spy, or he merely a curiosity?”

  “He says he’s Grijalva.”

  Qamar sat up straighter, eyes wide. “Have you told Solanna?”

  “I thought I’d bring him here first. In case he says things she might not wish to hear.”

  About her family, her home, her people who ought to have been at home making their beautiful painted tiles, who might be fighting on the wrong side tomorrow. Nodding, he said, “That was thoughtfully done.”

  Miqelo stood, swept aside branches, and called softly, “Tanielo!” Then he took up a position beside and slightly behind where Qamar sat: guarding him. His brother Yberrio’s words whispered with the movement of leaves. “Make sure this man lives.”

  There was nothing about the young man to connect him in feature with Solanna ex
cept for the wild curling of his hair. A considerable nose, a very long jaw, a rather too-wide mouth—not a handsome face at all. Moreover, the eyes were of a color Qamar had rarely seen before: they were blue. Startlingly so, with the long black eyelashes and dark skin, those eyes met his without defiance, anxiety, fear, or indeed anything one might have expected to see in the eyes of a captured spy. Instead, as he took in Qamar’s face with one coldly appraising stare, an emotion more familiar to Qamar tightened the thin lips. He had seen it a thousand times: the resentment of a conspicuously homely man for a conspicuously beautiful one.

  Qamar addressed him in his own language, fully aware that his accent would mark him as one who had learned from a resident of Grijalva lands. “A pleasant evening, is it not? You seem to have strayed a bit.”

  A shrug of skinny shoulders. But the expected surprise flashed across his face as he recognized the accent.

  “My friend says you call yourself a Grijalva. But I think there must be something of Ghillas in your background, eiha?”

  There was open astonishment in the blue eyes now. “My grandmother’s grandmother,” he said, then looked just as startled that he’d actually responded to the question.

  “And her name was Ysabielle, wasn’t it?”

  His jaw dropped open.

  Qamar smiled. “I’ve been interested in the Grijalva family for quite some time. From Ysabielle came blue eyes in some, fair hair in others. Have you a first name?”

  “J-Jaqiano,” he stammered. “But how did you—?”

  “The art of the Grijalva tiles is known to me—as it is to everyone with an eye for beauty. Please, sit down. I cannot offer you a chair, but the ground is soft enough.”

  The young man dropped as if his knees had suddenly given out, and then hastily arranged long limbs in a more dignified position. “You know my name—what’s yours?”

  “Qamar.”

  “If you’re a soldier of the Tza’ab, where’s your armor?”

  “What makes you think I’m a soldier of the Tza’ab?”

  “Your name. Your skin.”

  “But haven’t we just established that while your name is Cazdeyyan, your eyes are not? There are Tza’ab and Tza’ab—just as there are Joharrans and Joharrans, these days. Perhaps the one thing we can agree upon is that there is only one type when it comes to Rimmal Madar.” He paused. “Or perhaps I should say one type with three variations.”

  “Three—?”

  “The regular soldiers. The elite cavalry. The assassins.”

  Jaqiano was silent for a moment. Then: “You know too much about them not to be camped with them, ready to fight for them tomorrow.”

  “Too much? Not nearly enough. But that doesn’t matter.” Nothing else had mattered the instant Miqelo had said Grijalva. “Tell me, Jaqiano—did you lose your sketchbook?”

  And he nearly laughed aloud when shock scrawled itself across the young face.

  Jaqiano Grijalva was precisely what Qamar had hoped he was. What he had known he would be from the instant he heard the name. Since the night he had spent writing, writing, he had felt the touch of Acuyib at his elbow, urging him gently onward. He had been mistaken about which autumn would be the decisive one. He had not been mistaken that Acuyib would provide.

  The Grijalva craft was tilemaking. Wherever clay deposits were found, there also were Grijalva workshops. Some of them mixed clay to the correct consistency; others blended glazes; the women had charge of forming the tiles, and the men oversaw the kilns. At his age, Jaqiano would have been taught the basics of all of it. But Qamar had made a guess that was not truly a guess when he asked about the sketchbook. Jaqiano’s long-boned, sensitive hands showed no scars from burns, as a kiln worker would have, but there were stains of a dozen different colors on his fingers. They were days from any workshops, and yet his fingers were stained. Qamar had hoped, and he had been right. The colors were paint, and Jaqiano was an artist.

  Moreover, he was the son and grandson of artists, and proud of it. “We’d just won the commission to make the tiles for the new palace at Shagarra,” he told Qamar. “But while we were there to plan it and take the dimensions, the Sheyqa came, and we were stranded, my father and I. It took us all spring to find any kind of armed resistance we could join—”

  “I can well imagine. More qawah?” He poured from the pitcher Tanielo had brought. “So you found an army. Whose?”

  “No one’s. At first there were only about fifty of us, then twice that, and then we found another group—they were from Qaysh—it was all very tangled, and everyone argued about where to go, except then we happened upon a troop of real soldiers from Andaluz. And now we’re here, and there are thousands of us!”

  “We are on the same side, you know,” Qamar said.

  “Are we? Who do you hate most?”

  Qamar understood very well what he meant. The Sheyqa Nizhria was at the top of the list; once she was defeated, the Tza’ab would be next. And then the peoples of this land would all fall upon each other, and lay waste whatever they touched. He could stop this. He could show them how futile it all was. He would do it. Solanna had seen him old; he would succeed.

  “Do you draw patterns or scenes?” Both figured in Grijalva tiles, designs and landscapes.

  Bewildered by the abrupt change of subject, Jaqiano took a moment to reply. When he did, it was with pride bordering on arrogance. “I can do all of it, and more besides. I’ve been sketching the soldiers—”

  “—and they encouraged you to do their individual portraits to take home,” Qamar murmured, “or to send home, just in case. Which is a thing nobody talks about, of course.”

  “How did you know that? How do you know any of this?”

  “If I told you that it’s necessary, all of it is necessary, you wouldn’t understand. So you have learned how to draw the human face and form. Are you any good?” He asked the question only for effect. He already knew the boy was talented. He would not be here otherwise. Acuyib had provided.

  “If I had my sketchbook, I’d show you. The sentries took it. I was only making the drawings for—”

  Qamar waited, hiding a smile. At length, when the boy said nothing more, he finished for him, “For the grand great tile wall that will tell the story of victory over the Sheyqa. You are ambitious. Tanielo!” he called. “Find the guards who found this young man, and restore to him his sketchbook!”

  “At once, Sh—Qamar,” he amended hastily, for as adamant as Qamar had been about his title before, now he had given even stricter instructions that no one call him anything but his name.

  Turning his attention back to the boy, he asked, “Do you mix your own glazes? Or perhaps the inks for your drawings?”

  “I am an artist. There’s no more imagination goes into mixing colors than there is in boiling water.”

  “I think you may be wrong about that.” He opened the case of inks and pulled out a bottle. “Have you ever seen this color, for instance? Or this?”

  The boy was indeed an artist. His blue eyes lit with longing at the diversity of inks, and his fingers actually reached for them before he remembered they were not his. Not yet his, Qamar thought. Not quite yet.

  “You may be interested in the recipes, Jaqiano, for when you create your depiction of victory.”

  “Not just that—not just a single scene. I’ll do a whole wall, as you said, but it will be the whole battle, a series of images, each tile moving seamlessly into the next.”

  Qamar remembered the beautiful garden of tiles his grandfather had ordered and the fountain that had not worked, and then had worked, and then had died once again. And the Haddiyat who had died in agony with the burning of a page.

  Jaqiano mistook his silence for skepticism. “I can do it,” he stated. “I will do it.”

  “I haven’t a single doubt that you will. But perhaps you will oblige me, do me a great favor.” He gave the boy a self-deprecating smile, a shrug. “Before you return to your fellow soldiers, would you be so kind . . . ?
”

  The portrait looked exactly like him. Not that he had expected anything else, but still—it was an extraordinary experience, looking into one’s own face. Nothing like a mirror, he discovered: when he felt his own brows arch and his own eyes widen with surprise, the portrait did not respond as a reflection would. And all the tiny flaws that inevitably distorted glass were not to be found here. It was his perfect face he saw. Perfect.

  Jaqiano watched him react, a smug grin spreading across his face. He had reason for his arrogance. Each subtle black line that delineated face and body was a stroke of brilliance. Delicate washes of ink defined golden skin and dark eyes, the flush of blood in cheeks and lips, the threads of silver in black hair, the shadows that marked the bones of his face. These were Qamar’s eyes, dark and beautiful; these were his shoulders, his hands, down to the tiny scar left by a burning feather so many years ago. Down to the topaz leaf ring and the al-Gallidh pearl.

  Yet there was more to the artist’s self-satisfaction than pride in his own skill. It was as if this young man with the not-quite-ugly face had, in replicating the beauty of another, taken some of that beauty unto himself. The perfection of this portrait could not exist without him. He could rightly claim a share in that perfection.

  Equally fine was the rendering of Qamar’s plain white tunic, the brown trousers of lightweight wool. Feeling their softness against his body, he was convinced that a fingertip touched to their likenesses would feel just as soft. The gleam of polished leather boots was also taken from life, but the sash around his waist—white with green and glittering gold stripes—was entirely of Jaqiano’s doing, suggested by Qamar and interpreted by imagination.

  There was no background to the portrait, not even the suggestion of the willow leaves that sheltered him. Only darkness. In all the long hours of the night that it had taken to complete the picture, the lamplight had not wavered, providing a steady soft glow. The work contained time, for it had taken time to make—yet there was no sense of time within it, no specific shadows that would mean morning or afternoon or evening.