Finished, she scrubbed the pot and bowls and put them away. She unrolled her mat close to the coals.
A scorpion tumbled out of its nest of sand and into the light. Kyrin jumped back with a startled squeak, and the old pirate flattened the creature with a grinding stamp. The segmented stinging tail was smashed into pieces. The old pirate grinned, and Kyrin noted Faisal’s smile. The others shook out their mats carefully when they lay down one by one. Nothing else scurried or scuttled. Alaina slept at her back, but Kyrin lay awake. Faisal did not come.
The following night when she bedded down between Tae and Alaina, she unrolled her mat inch by inch.
A great red spider sprang up her hand. Its globular eyes shone jet, and its long legs stirred the hair on her arm. She almost fell backward into the fire, flinging the creature wildly to the sand.
Tae tried to stifle his grin. “It cannot harm you, Kyrin!”
“I don’t care!” She was not comforted—she hated the hairy-legged thing more than a hundred scorpions. Out of earshot, Faisal watched her, unsmiling. She turned from him and ground her heel into the sand, gritting her teeth. “I’ll beg Alaina’s stick from her—”
“Why?” Tae frowned when Kyrin told him of Faisal’s first gift. “A scorpion would make you very sick.” He glanced at Faisal and said low, “But you will not take your staff to him. It would do no good. I will speak to him.”
“It is well,” she gritted out, near to tears.
Abul looked from her glare to Faisal’s impassive face. Kyrin wished Abul could help. But it was not his fight. This fight was hers and the falcon’s. To be free they must conquer the tiger. Kyrin glanced at Umar, a statue before Ali’s tent door. The tiger yet hid within.
§
Kyrin learned all she could of the land and their road. She listened to everything and everyone. One day she waited on Ali’s pleasure in his tent, beside Tae. Their master bargained with an Arab merchant and a steward. The Arab merchant’s round face and heavy eyebrows animated in a most amusing way as he gave Ali news of rival caravans and goods, and possible thieves on the road. Waiting courteously, the steward with the long nose wished to buy slaves for his master, an Egyptian ambassador.
Ali glared at Kyrin until she tore her fascinated gaze from the Egyptian’s kohl-lined eyes and white cotton headdress that framed his thin face and swept to his shoulders. A thick gold band graced his arm, and a strange, thick gold torque his neck. Kyrin touched her throat—she rather thought that cold metal might choke her.
“A rich man indeed, though one like us,” Tae whispered in her ear. Kyrin swallowed. If she held such a torque in her hands . . . this land would not hold her, storms and frail ships or no.
Over his steaming cup of tea the merchant said, “You know the caravan road skirts the Empty Quarter, the Al Ramlah?” He wiped sweat from his chin, shiny with oil. “It is never crossed without cost. Al Ramlah is a bowl of doom in summer.” He nodded sadly.
“It is so. But I need camel drivers, and a dalil.” Ali motioned for Kyrin to offer his guest the platter of dates she held. The merchant took one and gabbled on.
Tae understood enough of his rapid tongue to whisper a translation. Kyrin listened, interested in the road around the great desert. The ocean of sand was a savage barrier between north and south, east and west. It sounded large enough to lose herself in, where myriad shades and shapes of gold, purple, and orange dunes ever-changed. The hardiest nomads took their herds there only in winter. The sands’ edge touched the undulating Hadhramaut, a plateau that stretched its long arm east to the Oman mountains of Ali’s home, and dropped sharp to the Araby Sea and Dhofar on the west. The west, and the coast.
“I desire to reach my house before orange harvest and deep winter.”
The merchant bowed over Ali’s gift of a thick, soft wolf pelt, his round face beaming. “Allah give peace to your road, and may you reach your house before snow.”
After the merchant left, the Egyptian steward began his bargaining.
His voice was soft but deep. He shot glances at Kyrin, fingering his ear, a slight frown between his eyes. Kyrin rather liked him, though she wanted to laugh. The sight of her seemed to worry him. He shook his head, regret in the tension of his mouth.
Ali scowled and waved Kyrin out. “Fetch Abul, worthless one.”
Kyrin laid down the platter and ducked out of the tent, walking fast. Tied near the tent door, the steward’s camel nipped at her. She spun away, and its teeth clicked in her sleeve. She swatted at it, and it sneered at her, then lipped at a tent rope lazily.
Faisal said some camels were raised in the sands by the Bedu, and had rough skin on their wide footpads. Elsewhere the rocks of this land wore the beasts’ feet smooth. So, the sands defeated them unless they were bred to it, as a falcon was bred to fly the forest and the heather? She stepped over the last tent rope and stuck out her tongue at the camel. It pulled back its rabbit lips and small ears. Its teeth were saffron yellow. Kyrin snorted. She supposed she’d have to learn to ride the beast. Faisal was a son of the sand. She was sure he rode well. That jackal’s heart knew the desert. Was riding a camel like riding a horse?
She did not look forward to it, or to more Bedu. Faisal was enough. Well to look upon, ready to speak sweet at a feast, and then to slip some deadly thing under his words.
§
Ali sold Abul and Winfrey to the Egyptian for paper and rice. Kyrin stood at the slaves’ fire beside the other slaves, numb. Faisal would not stop grinning. Kyrin stared at her toes and turned from him. He must not see her tears.
While Abul walked freely beside the steward, Winfrey struggled, and the steward fastened her wrists to a loop he tied around her neck. He made sure the rope did not cut. Winfrey cursed him, and he tugged at her neck rope.
Kyrin called, “Blessings go with you!” and raised her arm. Emptiness grew in her middle. Winfrey and Abul were going where no one knew their names, no one except the one who ruled the stars.
“And his blessing remain with you!” Abul grinned. Kyrin wiped her face and smiled shakily.
“He will keep you!” Tae’s voice rose beside Kyrin, and Winfrey caught sight of him and quit fighting the rope, her face smoothing into an almost smile, though her tears still ran. Kyrin glanced at Tae’s dark face and upraised arm. Confidence welled from him, a rope he threw to Abul and Winfrey. The woman sniffed wetly.
Would they miss Tae reading the Book? Abul had listened these last nights, a summer desert to the whisper of first rain. Kyrin sighed. She had beaten him at practice for the last sevenday, taking the wood blade and “killing” him. She would miss his teasing grin when he dumped her to the ground with a swift leg across her ankles. When she crossed Ali’s threshold would she step as lightly as Abul walked toward his new life?
Thank the one above, Tae kept his figurine of Huen standing tall. Surely Ali would not give up his wager against Tae and sell them apart? If she had another master, Alaina would not smile at her in the morning and talk her out of wanting to pound sense into Faisal. She would have no warm back to lie against, and Tae would never teach her to wield a blade. The falcon would die in chains.
11
Blood Call
For . . . to Him are all things. ~Romans 11:34
Ali’s caravan stretched ahead of Kyrin and Alaina, who packed a last forgotten pot and Ali’s dropped slipper on a beast close to their master. Near the middle of the caravan, Ali reclined on cushions under the cloth-covered framework of a litter strapped to his white Batina camel. The curtained sides were open. Faisal strode by.
Kyrin took a bite of the apple in her hand, the last of breakfast, and pretended not to see him, shoving Ali’s slipper to the bottom of the pack camel’s saddlebag in a wad. Faisal sniffed.
She turned, and her gaze followed his pointing arm. Ali’s other slipper lay on the sand on the far side of the pack camel. Kyrin scowled. The driver who p
acked her master’s tent had been careless. Faisal shifted his feet, and his lips quirked.
Why, you little—
Ali leaned over. “You!”
Faisal’s head swung around, and he trotted to the side of Ali’s beast. “My Munira requires sweeter grazing. She grows thin. Are your ears open?”
“I hear. And obey.” The date Faisal had been munching dropped into the sand before Ali’s camel. Munira snuffed at it and raised her head, demanding. Faisal reluctantly opened his hand, exposing a heap of the sticky fruits. The camel slobbered over his fingers, devouring the gift, crunching down the rock-hard pits. Faisal managed to look disdainful. But he patted Munira’s neck on the side Ali could not see.
“It is well, then.” Ali gave a short nod, dismissing him.
Alaina giggled beside Kyrin. Concealed from Faisal by the pack camel, she held her hands against her head, her fingers sticking up in a crown around her red-gold hair, and stared down her nose. Kyrin choked back her laugh and ducked under the camel’s neck to get their master’s slipper.
The sand was bare, the sea bright blue below the caravan on the hill in the early morning. Fifty camels shifted under their loads of sand-cast pigs of tin, lead, and iron, with sacks of silver brooches and bales of furs traded from the North men or seized from her land. The camels carried an ample supply of dried figs, first ripe dates, barley meal, and waterskins, besides an array of local goods. The lead pigs in the near camel’s sagging hide bag had been her godfather’s. Kyrin’s bite of sweet apple turned to meal on her tongue. She wanted to spit, but she would miss the apple before long. She shoved the slipper into the saddlebag with its fellow.
Faisal joined Kentar, the slight dalil standing beside the lead camel. The caravan leader’s face was smooth as a barkless ironwood tree. Ali had hired seventeen drivers under Kentar, all thin, strong, and weathered as walnuts. Kyrin slapped away her camel’s nipping nose, tracing their route in her mind yet again.
Kentar would take them inland a hundred-odd miles to the wadi trade corridor, then hundreds more south through wilderness toward the Akaba, an arm of the Red Sea. Ali would stop at Kheybar, Yathrib, and Makkah in the Hejaz mountains. The Hejaz divided the fertile west coast from a thousand Eagle-miles of rock, plains, and sand dunes in the heart of Araby. She was glad Ali had decided not to cross it. Then they would climb south to Saa’na, the Hejaz’s highest point. And wend east, down to the Hadhramaut plateau, then Dhofar on the coast, and a short dog-leg inland toward the mountains. And there, in the Oman mountains in a green wadi, lived her mistress. Kyrin rubbed the black earring. No one would rule her long.
Kentar swung his camel stick, disturbing a wave of flies from his camel, then returned to motionlessness. In loose earth-colored trousers and the short tunic of the northern Arab, the dalil had tucked his white kaffiyeh up into a skull-hugging turban. His almond eyes were never still, checking man and beast along the caravan line. He tipped his head toward Faisal, who leaned in to speak with him. Faisal glanced back at her. Kyrin raised her chin.
Ali lifted his arm impatiently. Umar nodded to the Nubian with a small, unpleasant smile, and the Nubian called to Kentar, his voice rising to a brief high note. Sweat layered his thick bull neck, and he cleared his throat. Kyrin glowered at Umar’s back, bit off the last of her apple, and threw away the stem.
The dalil tapped his beast with his stick. The caravan lurched forward, accompanied by scampering children from the black tents, drivers’ calls, and camels’ grumbles and groans. Kyrin did not see any of Abul’s tormentors among the youngsters from the black tents.
The caravan seemed to crawl over the plain toward the gate-way to the mountains—the Akaba descent and the wadi Musa. Gradually falling back with Alaina, Kyrin coughed on billowing dust at the rear. Ali did not give camels to slaves, except to Tae, for he was his hakeem. She would kiss the grumpiest camel this moment if it would carry her.
Harsh cold crushed the day’s heat the moment the sun loosed its last gleam. Umar handed out blankets in place of the worn mats, which he ordered Faisal to burn. The camel drivers used them to kindle a great fire, and handed cups of camel’s milk and tea around the blaze. She and Alaina drank from the small handle-less bronze cups and laughed at each other’s grimaces. The strong cardamom drink cleaned her gritty throat and took her mind from her rubbery legs.
She wondered if Faisal was disappointed Ali did not let him guide the caravan, or if he thanked his Allah at his prayers that Umar set him in charge of scouting for pasture. Faisal always watched them. She thought he noted when Tae set Huen out every evening, never touching her or Alaina. His eyes were on them when they rolled Huen into Tae’s empty blanket in the mornings.
How long and how far would his debt to Tae protect her? He had not touched her. Maybe he stooped only to spiders. He did not bother Alaina, despite her whispered threats those first days to break his other arm. Now she tolerated him.
Fire tongues danced before Kyrin in the skin-tingling breeze, and sparks drifted, shadowing the men’s faces around the fire, floating in the purple dark. She leaned back on her elbows behind the men on the still-warm ground and hugged her blanket, staring at the white stars. If only the tiger would not come tonight.
“Alaina . . .”
“What?”
“What do you know about dreams?”
“Dreams? Many of mine make no sense. Sometimes they scare me. I asked Tae once—”
“Have you ever had a true dream?”
“You mean one that happens?”
“Yes.”
“No, and I’m glad. If I did, I’d have to think about every dream I had, and if it meant something. I did ask Tae about yours—”
“You told him about the tiger—?!”
“No, no! Only the part about your mother and Ali. Tae said the Master of the stars holds all our dreams, but sometimes he sends special ones. But he always makes clear who they are for, and why. Your bad dreams should get less.” Her voice sharpened. “Yours haven’t happened, have they?”
“No.” Kyrin rolled onto her side. Alaina’s face was dim. “I just wish I would not see her falling every night, and the tiger—his breath stinks—”
“Yes, and your feet are stuck in glue or mud, and you can’t run . . .”
“Yes,” Kyrin whispered. Father would make her hot milk and sit with her in his chair before the great hearth and hold her till she fell asleep again. She shivered against the desert chill.
Did he look often at his bow on the wall near Cierheld’s door, did he miss shooting with her in the morning? Had he found out from the signs he read so well what happened to her and her mother? Until he knew, he would never quit searching. In the dark, for a moment, Kyrin felt his arms.
Alaina was silent under the pop and rustle of the fire. Kyrin wiped her wet cheek and laid her palm on the sandy ground. A dry sweetness rose. Her sister would soothe her if the raider or the tiger woke her, ready to give her a warm back. She sighed. The empty dark spread around them. Bits of her were vanishing, some with the dreams and some with her new tunic, or thawb as Ali called it.
This evening she had put on the desert clothes that Alaina had made at their master’s order. Men’s thawbs, not blue as most women’s were. No Bedouin would be tempted to steal Ali’s slave girls and spoil his wager against Tae. Girls with hair the color of the most precious metal were valuable.
The ankle length thawb, a kind of long airy tunic, was comfortable. The cloak, or bisht in Arabic, was warm enough, of dyed camel hair. Her green wool cloak was warmer, but Ali insisted it was “too fine for a Nasrany.”
So her cloak joined her key and girdle-pouch somewhere in Ali’s things, and her ragged, dirty tunic and trousers from Tae ended in the fire. She would make another pouch, one to hang around her neck. It would be harder to take from her.
Ali had not looked at her necklace since he pierced her ear. Wood and seash
ell, however beautiful, held no value against pearls, gold, or silver, and he seemed to find the sigil of the fish distasteful. Did it remind him of loyalty and goodness?
Kyrin traced the shell’s silky edge then tugged her kaffiyeh closer around her ears. It still wanted to fall off at odd times, for she had not learned to coil her hair just so beneath it. The square cotton cloth was folded in twain and a bit of cord bound it to her head. It was very like the linen hair wrap she wore for feast days at home.
But in a sandstorm she would drape the cloth over her head, longer on one side, pull it across her mouth under her nose, and tie it the way the men did here, drawing the longer end around the back of her neck. Then that bit rolled up and tied across the top of her head to the shorter tail of the kaffiyeh, to be tucked into neatness. It left only her eyes visible.
Kyrin touched the earth again. She would get her key and cloak before she left Ali. By all she heard, travel by ship was best. There were ports along the Araby coast. Ali, coward that he was, would stay in every great walled caravanserai that gave food and water for a fee to traveler and beast. Tomorrow they would reach the first deserted lands.
They passed the last village, the fields plowed for sowing. Vague, grey-green humps of pale shrubs and islands of thin grasses clung to the ground. Heat rose from the baked earth. The sun beat down between scattered white clouds with heavy, living hands. She found it difficult to believe the first rains began next moon cycle.
Kyrin grew used to the stony footing, walking beside the plodding camels for mile after mile. She escaped Ali’s notice for hours at a time among the wending line of beasts. Between her duties early and late in Ali’s tent, there were strange animals to glimpse, the meaning of a new Araby word to trick from Faisal, or a landmark to fasten in her mind.
At last they came to the Aqaba. The gateway to the interior descended between sand-rock walls, crusted high up with shale. Rock glittered in darkling piles at the guarding walls’ feet. The way opened onto a plain of dark sand, then a region of high canyons or wadis.
Falcon Heart: Chronicle I an epic young adult fantasy series set in medieval times Page 11