"Get it, will you?"
He shoved me at the guard who was watching us carefully, holding my bow with both hands.
"You'll get it back when you're outside, fellow."
I gestured at the compound entrance. "I'm already outside."
"Outside the gate! Beyond the wall! There'll be no trouble while I'm on duty."
Mujahid demanded in a grinding voice, "Are you another of the Bayt Ali bodyguard?"
". . . What's it to you?" The guard herded me toward the northern gate. "Yes, I am."
"Are all Shaykh Salah's bodyguard of the Bayt Ali?"
"Not yet. You're wasting time."
Mujahid's feet kicked up fine dust as he strode the distance to the city gate. I followed, trying not to let the guard rush me. Beyond the gate a horse was tethered to a wooden peg and another team of scrawny donkeys waited sleepily for the stunned discomfort of midday to pass. The cultivated fields looked wilted. Against a sky as bleak and shining as a polished blade the kite and the scavenger eagle described their separate paths, wheeling out over the fields, then banking and stroking the exhausted air with their wings once or twice and sailing back across the market square.
The guard held out the bow. I took it.
"Don't bring it back inside the walls, sonny."
I almost assured him that if I did he'd be dead before he saw me: a childish threat: actually I'd never loosed an arrow at a man. But Mujahid, impatient as though driven by a demon, snarled something under his breath and jerked my sleeve and set off at a pace just short of a run, following the city wall westward. So I swallowed my empty retort and chased after him.
The wall angled south, taking us out of sight and hearing of the gate and the guard. Mujahid stopped.
"The spirit world's getting impatient, Talal. If I fail this obligation I'll wish a jinn curse had fallen on me."
"You won't fail it," I said reasonably. "He's got three days to clear out. We'll follow till the escort leaves him and then—"
"We'd risk losing him on the road, or being attacked by the bodyguard in a careless moment. We have to kill him the moment he's outside the walls."
"That's crazy. We'd have to kill the bodyguard too."
"How many can there be? Three? Two? They'll probably leave by the side gate when the main gates are closed at sunset — maybe even today. We can do it! — with no one to see or raise the alarm."
"The side gate hasn't been opened in years —"
"The shaykh could order it opened. He's protecting Kadhim, he'd want him to leave secretly —"
"We'd blacken his face. He'd hunt us down."
"He'll never know. We'll bury the bodies and take their mounts. Salah may wonder when the escort doesn't come back, but what do we care what he thinks? He has the honor of a maggot, his justice is corrupt. D'you know why he won't act against the Bayt Ali in Mabruka's mother's complaint? Because he's in collusion with them. I heard the crowd talking before the di-wan. Most of his personal bodyguard are Bayt Ali warriors."
"What abut Nur?"
"What about her?"
"We'd blacken her face too. Kadhim's under the protection of all Ahl al-Hilal..."
He shoved me in the chest with both hands. I slammed back against the city wall.
"What do you care? The Hilalis are strangers. Nur's just a woman . . ."
"You're her guest. You owe her . . ."
"I owe my father more!"
"You'd do Hasan justice by dishonoring him?"
He shoved me again, more violently. I tripped over my feet, twisted, hit the wall with the point of my shoulder. The wall took it well but I yelled in pain. This was more than brotherly roughness.
"Are you trying to tell me my duties to my father'? You don't even have a father. What do you know?"
"Are you trying to break my arm? D'you want to go against them alone?" I hugged my shoulder. The arm below it had gone numb. "Great Goddess, you've been following Kadhim for weeks, you've just caught up with him, how can you talk of the spirit world getting impatient?"
"Didn't you see how much blood was on the arrow this time? Goddess, almost the whole shaft, as thick and fresh as if I'd just pulled it out of the heart of a gazelle." His eyes widened. His voice dropped to a wondering whisper. "Whose blood, Talal?"
I stopped kneading my shoulder. I forgot to try working the paralyzed fingers at the end of my paralyzed arm. I just stared at him, and he stared back, waiting for an answer.
"Mujahid! I'm not Umar bin Auda. What do I know about the spirit world?"
He asked hoarsely, "Is it mine? My own blood?"
Which was no sillier than the rest had been but something was clearly wrong. He'd never been one to fret about the invisible world. He avoided places known to be haunted, until yesterday had managed to stay clear of ausaj bushes, and carried a she-cat's or a fox's tooth to protect him from demons. Who didn't? The world beyond the world was inhabited by arbitrary and capricious powers, and you had to defend yourself against them with what you could. Mujahid's luck probably meant the continuing influence of some hidden power which might now be extracting hideous payment: anyone could guess, but who could know? I doubted even Umar bin Auda really knew, for all his knowing talk about the Gods having patterns to create. So I swallowed hard, made what I hoped was a calming gesture, and tried to sound reassuring and ordinary.
"I only know this, Mujahid. Hasan was a good man. Nothing in either world could force him to make unreasonable demands of anyone, especially you. You were his only son."
"But I betrayed him. I should have gone with him to see Kadhim . . ."
"How were you to know? If he'd thought it necessary he'd have asked you to —"
"Don't understand, do you? I wasn't available. I was doing something more important. When he went to talk to Kadhim I was in the village in the gardener's hut, doing what Kadhim only wanted to do — lying with Filwa myself."
I didn't say anything. Neither did he. We just stood there, sweating.
My brain had congealed like tallow at the base of a candle, muffling thought and feeling, sealing off shock and disappointment which, if felt, might have proved too painful to bear. It would have yesterday. Yesterday Filwa had dominated my dreams. Not that I wanted her to. She was as far above me as the evening star was above the empty plain. As Hasan had been my father, she was my father's wife. As she had been Mu-jahid's father's wife but he had apparently not let that bother him and that, curiously enough, was the greatest disappointment. Not that slender, lovely Filwa had played the wanton behind her husband's back but that Mujahid had been the one to take advantage of it. The brother I loved had betrayed the father I loved.
I felt a distant surge of pity for Mujahid — and a simultaneous urge to hurt him.
So I said calmly, "How was she?"
Slowly the fire of anguish left him. His sigh was an echoing emptiness. He shrugged.
"Reluctant. What would you expect? But I am Mujahid: charming, good with words . . . and above all lucky." His mouth twisted on the word. "Don't I always get what I want? And what I wanted was Filwa, on a sudden whim when I walked through the orchard that afternoon and found her talking to the gardener in charge. Suddenly she was just another man's pretty wife. So I sent the gardener off on an errand, and then I was never so amusing, never so persuasive, but I think she only gave in to keep us friends, because I was Hasan's son. I took her on the floor of the gardener's hut, expecting her to relent, expecting her to admit she loved it, and me. My luck wouldn't go that far. Maybe that's when it started dying."
My turn to shrug.
"Your luck's all right or we'd have lost Kadhim long ago." Which might even be true. "You simply asked too much of it that time." Plain now why he hadn't claimed Filwa for himself.
He said, as though he hadn't heard me, "That's why Hasan demands vengeance of me, not an army of relatives — and no more waiting."
"No."
"Talal. . .why?"
"Partly
because Hasan wouldn't make this demand, mostly because I won't blacken Nur's face. Or Shaykh Salah's. I have to be able to come back here."
"What for?"
"For Mabruka."
After a short pause he laughed.
"What makes you think she'd welcome you?"
"She already has."
He looked briefly startled, then gave me a slow bemused look.
"You young thief. You've decided not to be any use at all, haven't you? Give me back my knife belt."
I unbuckled it. He took it impatiently.
"All right, Talal. I don't need you."
"You can't do it alone. . . ."
"Watch me." He started back toward the northern gate.
"Mujahid —"
"Who are you, son of no one? If you follow me I'll crack your head open. Leave me alone."
"He'll kill you. Then I'll have to do the job alone."
"It's not yours to do."
That wasn't what he'd said last night.
He disappeared around the bend in the wall.
I was so much of two minds I was almost two people: one a rejected child, the other a furious adult. Unsought responsibility was piling up. Being a brother wasn't easy.
In his present mood Mujahid might do something stupid; I ought to keep an eye on him. The scarfaced guard wouldn't let me in through the northern gate so I cursed and hiked through the glaring torpor of midday the length of the city wall and around and back through the southern gate and the twisted streets and the trapped breathless air to the first market square.
Animals dozed. A few trading stalls were open with vendors nodding off behind their merchandise. No one I talked to had seen anyone who looked like Mujahid. I approached the palace from the stables side, then ducked between the palace and the city wall to see the second square without showing myself to the guard. The door into the palace yard was closed. No sign of the man himself. His replacement was settling down on his hams, leaning back against the door in the narrow strip of shadow the wall was beginning to throw into the square now that noon was past. Still no Mujahid. I ducked back into the alley when the new guard began looking around, went back to the first square and entered the covered bazaar, where no one could remember seeing him either. I don't think anyone was interested enough to give the question much thought. Anyway what would I say to Mujahid if I found him? Supposing he made good his threat to crack my head open? Finally I went back to the san-dalmaker's and through the crooked door into the alley that led to Salman's place.
He told me in his hard, genderless voice that Mabruka had already left — and seemed to wait for me to ask him something else. I had no other questions, at least none that Mabruka would not already have asked, and besides I still found his challenging manner unsettling, so I awkwardly took my leave and retraced my steps to the southern gate and back onto the trail that ran between the valley wall and the farmlands.
Out of the glare a horseman came galloping at me. With no one to show off for, he wasn't mistreating the horse as badly as this morning, but he wasn't being gentle either. Zuhayr of the heavy hands, on his big roan.
He thundered past, then wheeled around in a quick storm of hooves and flying dust, too close to ignore. I took a quick look back over my shoulder, met a pair of savage eyes in a face twisted with anger before he dragged the horse's head back toward the city and galloped away.
Nur's place blazed quietly in the afternoon glare but I heard voices. I called to Mabruka. Latifa came out of Nur's room and invited me in with a grin of few teeth but much goodwill. Nur sat at a loom on which a handspan of pale sandy cloth had been completed. Mabruka, still in her dusty plum-colored dress, sat on a carpet nearby with a basket of wool by her knee and a wooden drop spindle in her lap.
Latifa followed me inside. When the outside glare had left my eyes I saw Mabruka's warm secret smile. But Nur looked tense, her face drawn as fine as carved bone, her eyes glowing darkly.
"Well, Talal!" She turned from her loom, setting down her shuttle stick. "I hear that certain things have been settled between you two. I'm pleased. But you've come at a worrisome time."
"Is anyone worried except Zuhayr?" I shed my bow and quiver and sat down beside Mabruka. "I met him on the road. He would've liked to run me down."
"He came to warn us against you," Nur explained. "He said your friend Mujahid was clearly a sorcerer, and that Shaykh Salah was convinced that your skill with the bow isn't natural. He had you disarmed when you disrupted the diwan."
"Zuhayr is a liar." I told them briefly what had happened at the diwan. "Did he also tell you that Kadhim has three days to enjoy the shaykh's hospitality, then has to accept an escort out of the territory?"
Mabruka's lip curled.
"Mostly he told us how comfortable I would be as his wife," she said. "Under Ghassani law, of course. And that I should be thinking about things like that because Ahl al-Hilal was only tolerated here and the life we'd known could collapse at any time like a tent in a gale. So I told him about us. He almost choked on his own spit."
"I went back to Salman's looking for you."
"I went back to the palace entrance looking for you. That guard was closing the doors. He asked me what I was doing wasting time with riffraff like you. I told him he'd never understand."
"He's Bayt Ali. Most of Salah's bodyguard are. Did Salman mention that?"
"Yes. He believes the other clans have been intimidated into preventing their men from taking bodyguard work."
"That's what Salah's afraid of, then! Of becoming a Bayt Ali puppet! He can't take on too many of his own clan: he could be accused of building a personal army to impose his will on the whole tribe. He may feel he can't take on any of them."
"There's more," Nur said abruptly.
"It's a rumor," Mabruka said, "but Salman thinks it's true. It says the Bayt Ali are trying to get the agreement between Bani Ghassan and Ahl al-Hilal set aside. They want us out, our right to water our herds at Ghassani wells cancelled, our lands surrendered. Hil-alis who want to stay in the valley can do so — working as peasants on Ghassani land."
"The motive is pure Bayt Ali greed," Nur said. "They say Bani Ghassan are more numerous now, they don't need Hilali manpower for defense, so why shouldn't the Ghassanis have all the riches for themselves?"
I said slowly, "It may be only a rumor but I think Zuhayr believes it. He works for your Shaykh Harith. Does Harith know anything?"
"I'll go and ask him," Nur said. "Where's your friend Mujahid?"
"We had a . . . disagreement."
She looked faintly startled.
"He still has a duty to perform. He won't try to do it alone, will he?"
"He'd better not. All he's got with him is his dagger. Besides, he's a man of honor; he wouldn't violate hospitality and embarrass his hostess."
"No, of course not." Nur stood up in a rustle of clothing. "Child, get this man something to eat. Come on, Latifa, I'm sure these young people want to be alone; you and I will go and see Shaykh Harith. If I don't appear with a servant in train he'll think something's wrong, I've lost status. If he can pretend I'm nobody I won't get much out of him."
A derisive cackle came from Latifa.
"These shaykhs get a little authority, right away they start thinking they're something. Maybe we need a shaykha instead of a shaykh, eh, Talal? What d'you think of that idea?" Another cackle of laughter left her wheezing and gasping. "But the traditions say we tried it long ago. And the shaykhas are no better! Eventually they set themselves just as far above the people, and to make sure other tribes take them seriously they become more warlike than the men!"
"No one said being a chief was easy," Nur said.
The laughter began again, raucous and good-natured.
"The chicken just laid a square egg," Mabruka told me.
"A chicken, am I?" Latifa cackled. "Feed me today, wring my neck tomorrow, I know how that goes! But you'll find me tough and stringy! . . . Now where's tha
t mantle of mine? I'm not going out into that sun unprotected. —Ah, there it is. Well?"
"Let's go," Nur said equably, throwing a light shawl over her head and pulling it forward to shade her face.
The two women left, Latifa closing the lightweight door before padding away, chuckling.
Their voices faded into silence.
In the dim light filtering into the room Mabruka turned to me and studied me with calm intensity. I found myself anticipating being trapped in a crystalline moment of stopped time like last night with the candle flame reflected as twin golden blades in the depths of her eyes, or like this morning in another unfamiliar room with my sense of self dissipating like smoke under Salman's magic. But none of this happened. I was seated firmly on firm ground, heartbeat steady and familiar under my ribs, senses alert, thoughts clear, entirely myself.
Mabruka stood up in a single movement, poured a splash of water from a clay jug onto a wadded-up kerchief, came back and knelt and mopped my face.
"Are you hungry, Talal?"
"Not for food."
I took the cloth from her hand, shook it out and washed her face and neck, then moved behind her to reach it more easily inside the embroidered neck of her dress to cool her breasts and armpits. When I withdrew it she stood up and turned to face me, unfastening her gazelle-skin belt, dropping it at her feet.
She wasn't doing anything magical but in that dim room a vagrant thread of light pricked color from the embroidery at her neck and her eyes were dark and enormous and deeper than any well and for a fleeting moment I had the dizzying conviction I was floating above years of unrolling time in the presence of a power to summon lightning and govern whirlwinds and control the destinies of tribes, but it was brief, so brief I couldn't be sure I hadn't imagined it, and didn't even ask about it later; and what she was doing now was pulling the plum-colored dress over her head.
It was late afternoon when Nur and Latifa came back.
The sun had lost its malevolence, the air was like a caress. The sky had softened, to a gentle blue through which the sun was dropping toward the valley's western rim. The late day was soft and pretty as a flower.
Weird Tales - Summer 1990 Page 23