by Melanie Rawn
Solanna fidgeted for a moment, then said, “I know it is very silly of me to ask, for we are an obscure family, but—have you heard anything, anything at all, about anyone named Grijalva?”
“Never heard of them,” said the talkative shepherd, at the same time as the oldest was saying, “The tile makers?”
“Yes!” She rewarded him with her most ravishing smile. “Do you know them?”
“Their work. But I’m sorry, I know nothing current about them.”
Late that night, as Qamar made ready for bed in his workroom—having given their usual hut to the visiting shepherds, who after all had built it—he watched his wife brush out her hair and pondered how best to ask his questions. At last he shrugged and decided on the direct approach.
“You haven’t seen any of your family in years and never felt the lack that I’ve ever been able to tell. Why ask about them tonight? Are you worried for your aunt?”
“Yes,” she answered. “If the women and boys now calling themselves Grijalva had been caught and discovered to be what they truly are, wouldn’t the Grijalva name have been connected with the news? That nothing has been heard about them means there’s nothing to hear.”
He hoped she was right. All this long summer he had been too preoccupied to worry much about the other Shagara. To learn that the mountain fortress had not yet fallen to the Sheyqa was incredible news. But they must be running out of food, and as clever as the Haddiyat were, they could not make bread out of a few talishann and a drop or two of blood. Those who had taken the Grijalva name could be halfway to Ghillas by now. He had to believe, with Solanna, that if no one was talking about them, there must be nothing to talk about.
The shepherds were with them for three days. They left with their flocks after slaughtering two fat lambs as additional thanks for the hazziri. Tanielo and Solanna rode with them down to the narrow neck of the valley, and Qamar waited until they were out of sight before seating himself at his worktable.
Even after so many years absence from his home and family, it came to him every so often how amused his parents would be to see him now. Everyone had always said he was Azzad al-Ma’aliq all over again: a capricious, charming wastrel. It was interesting to him that he seemed to have taken on certain aspects of Ab’ya Alessid’s personality now: the single-minded dedication, the commitment to a goal.
It was odd, how purely personal, purely selfish acts had such unexpected consequences to the larger world. If Azzad had not taken his vengeance on Sheyqa Nizzira, the army of Rimmal Madar would not be in this land right now. The sequence was clear. Nizzira’s obliteration of the al-Ma’aliq; Azzad’s revenge for it; his death at the hands of the Shagara faction that did not approve of his actions; the conquest of lands that would become Tza’ab Rih by Rimmal Madar; Alessid’s retaking of those lands using Shagara magic; the exile of still more who deplored what they saw as misuse of their arts; the establishment of first a nation and then an empire; the jealousy of a rapacious new Sheyqa, named for the old one, that led to invasion.
Very little of it could be attributed to anything resembling a noble motive. And Qamar came to see it as a linkage of death. So many deaths: the al-Ma’aliq, Nizzira’s sons and grandsons; Azzad; the people caught in the middle of Rimmal Madar’s invasion; the soldiers of the Za’aba Izim who died to establish Tza’ab Rih; the Shagara who had died on their way to this land; more Tza’ab troops and more people here, killed in battles that created the Empire; thousands who had died and would die before the Sheyqa was defeated.
Death connected to death, death causing death. It was endless. Inescapable.
But he would bring an end to it. He would escape. And so would those who heeded him.
He was the codifier the Shagara needed. He was the one who could recognize all the separate parts of their magic and relate them each to all the others. But more than that, he was an outsider who discerned the correlation between the magic and the land. When he had first mentioned this idea, casually and rather diffidently, to Zario, the startlement in the old man’s face had told him all he needed to know. The concept was alien enough, coming from him. He never dared tell anyone that it had come first from Alessid al-Ma’aliq.
Air, water, soil, and the plants that provided food and medicines. These things became part of the people who lived in a particular place. An army might invade and conquer; farmers and crafters and merchants and all the different sorts of people who made up a thriving population might come and settle; but a place did not belong to someone simply because his house was built upon it. It was a mutual growing together, an entwining of water with blood, soil with flesh. This country had almost killed him with poisoned thorns, for he did not belong here—never mind that anyone foolish enough to grasp those thorns was in danger of death. The point was that he hadn’t known not to touch. But medication concocted here had saved his life, and with the poison and the cure he had in some way taken part of the land into himself.
Curiously enough, the wine he had nearly succeeded in killing himself with had not been the product of this country. He had never been able to stand the slightly tarry taste of what no one with any perception at all would term “vintages.” He had gotten drunk night after night on wines imported from Tza’ab Rih. He supposed, looking back, that his own land had almost killed him, too. But the cure had come to him here, in the form of Solanna, whose ancestors had lived here forever, and Zario, a man whose magic originated in another country but who had learned to adapt as this land demanded. Solanna’s sight had found him; Zario’s paper and ink had combined with the talishann of the desert to heal him.
As Qamar sorted and wrote and made a hundred decisions each day about what was vital and what was not, the interrelation of land and people was always in his mind. The colors, for example. Surely there were just as many at home, but who had ever thought to delineate them in such fine detail? No one had ever needed to. Their symbolism had been contained in other things, things unavailable here. The plants and flowers and herbs—such an obvious connection, land to herbs to medicine or food to people. This was nothing new to him. But paper—ayia, paper was intriguing, both for its own properties and for what it had led him to discover about trees. He’d heard, now and then, that paper made from a particular kind of wood was better for certain magic. From the paper to the tree was a simple step. He was surprised no one had ever figured this out before.
That it had never been guessed that there could be a connection between realistic drawings and magic did not surprise him at all.
And the inks—they especially fascinated him, for he saw them as akin to blood. They were blood he could manipulate, change, cause to do what he desired. And mixing his own blood into them had produced astounding results.
But he had never told anyone about the new knowledge he was adding to the Shagara wisdom. They were traditionalists, these distant cousins of his. Adjusting mixtures to accommodate different plants, learning how to make paper and ink, these things they had done of necessity. Had the same things been available to them here that their forebears had known in the desert, they never would have made any discoveries at all. But the real clue to their conservatism was in their unfading hatred of Azzad and Alessid alMa’aliq for perverting Shagara ways. Change born of inescapable circumstances was one thing. Change for its own sake was quite another. They would not have been pleased, even if he had demonstrated the usefulness of his discoveries, simply because he was the one to have made them. Shagara he was, Haddiyat he was—but also al-Ma’aliq.
Besides, they must not know his ultimate aim. Not until he could prove it.
There were so many possibilities, so many combinations of symbols and influences, medical certainties and hidden meanings. This country had saved his life twice. It would do so again.
Qamar had settled into the rhythms of this tiny world. Leisha made sure the huts were clean, the bedding aired, the meals appetizing, the clothes washed. Tanielo gathered firewood, cared for the horses, brought water from the strea
m. Solanna worked sometimes with Leisha after she had read Qamar’s work of the previous day for clarity, and she spent her afternoons tending the garden. Within days of their arrival she had planted vegetables that by the end of summer were almost ready to be eaten. Nissim helped everyone with everything, but his major duties were with Qamar. His tasks ranged from sharpening pens to serving as Qamar’s extra memory regarding what information was in which sheaf of notes. The days melted together, each very like the last. Only the inexorable northward shift of the sun from that notch in the crags reminded him that he must hurry, hurry.
Tanielo was also responsible for catching small animals for the cookpot, and when Qamar had no need of Nissim, the boy learned the fine art of setting snares. Squirrels and rabbits soon avoided the area around the huts—no matter how tempting the above-ground vegetables were—and thus traps were laid down farther and farther away. One morning Qamar was waiting impatiently for the pair to return from checking the night’s pickings, for he needed Nissim’s help in finding a particular reference to verbena that the boy had located only the day before, when a hawk appeared in the southern sky. Qamar watched it circle slowly, then settle on a treetop to preen its wings.
“Qamar? Someone’s coming.”
He looked down the valley to where Solanna pointed.
“And he’s jingling,” she went on, wringing out a shirt and handing it to Leisha for the drying line.
“More like ringing, isn’t it?” Leisha asked. “Bells.”
Qamar didn’t admit that he could not hear what they did. He didn’t even admit it to himself, any more than he admitted that their eyes at a distance were much better than his. The rider was discernable to him only because of the bright yellow shirt he wore.
“Wait a moment—isn’t that Miqelo?” Solanna shook her hands free of water and started down the rise to the stream. After another moment she raised her arm and waved and called out his name.
At the same moment he let out a shrill whistle. The hawk bolted down from its perch and circled him once, then settled onto Miqelo’s outstretched arm. Squinting, Qamar could just make out the gift of a scrap of meat and the skillful hooding of the bird.
“I won’t ask whether or not I’m welcome,” Miqelo began abruptly as he dismounted, the hawk still on his arm. The jingling had come from the bells decorating the ties of the leather hood. “That doesn’t matter. But why in Acuyib’s Holy Name are you unguarded? Where is my son?”
“Collecting dinner,” Solanna said. “And a good thing, too, with an extra mouth to feed. Whatever your news, Miqelo, and I suspect it cannot be good, you are always welcome for yourself.”
He searched her face for a moment, then bowed his head. “Thank you. Leisha, I would not turn away from a very large cup of water.”
Qamar stayed where he was at his worktable, silent, watchful. While Miqelo downed first one cup of water and then two, he began tidying his pages and stoppering his ink bottles. Whatever had brought Miqelo here, he knew there would be no more work done today.
After coaxing the hawk to settle on the top rail of the chair Leisha brought for him, Miqelo sat and pulled off his riding gloves. “It’s quite a distance from the Cazdeyyan court in exile,” he remarked. “I was given this bird by the king.”
“In exchange for?” Qamar asked.
“She hunts while I’m on the road,” he went on, ignoring the question. “Very convenient, having roast pigeon or sparrow every night—and someone to talk to. The king is Baetrizia’s nephew, by the way. She sends greetings, Solanna, and hopes to see you again before very long.”
“She was always very kind.” Solanna set a cup of spiced qawah before Qamar. “The nephew would be Bertolio?”
“Pedreyo. He’s leading the Cazdeyyans south right now.”
Qamar turned to his wife. “It cannot be this year. We’re not ready. I’m not ready.”
“Eiha, it begins to look as though we’ll have to be ready.” She nodded at the hooded hawk.
Miqelo looked from one to the other of them, then caught his breath. “So you did see something that night!”
“I swear to you, Miqelo,” Qamar told him through gritted teeth, “if you do that to her again—”
“Do you know what’s happening out there?” the older man cried. “Constant, pointless, tawdry little brawls from Ibrayanza to Elleon and all places between—eiha, except for Joharra, of course! Sheyqir Allil sits in the palace and redraws his maps to include pieces of other lands, but tells the Empress that she’d better send an army soon or there’ll be nothing left to be Empress of! Yes, they’re marching, the Tza’ab—”
“My mother is not such a fool!”
“Possibly not, but what does that matter when her sisters and nieces reach back to their desert blood connections and create their own armies? Azwadh, Tariq, Tallib—they come north to ride with the Queen of Qaysh, or Shagarra, or Ibrayanza—”
“Cazdeyya will join with them?” Leisha asked. “Against our common enemy?”
“Which enemy we have in common depends on who you hate more, the Sheyqa or the Tza’ab.” Miqelo leaned forward in his chair, so vehemently that it rocked, disturbing the hawk. She unfurled one wing to keep her balance, then settled again. “Did you see the armies, Solanna? Could you tell who was fighting on whose side?”
Slowly she shook her head. “I saw the Sheyqa’s tents and the white horses that Qamar tells me are the special privilege of her personal cavalry, the Qoundi Ammar. On the other side of the hill were our people—and, yes, there were Tza’ab among them. And Shagara. But whether they were the soldiers of the Empress, or those belonging to Ibrayanza or Qaysh, I don’t know.”
“But the battle itself—did you see it? Do you know who will win?”
“No,” Qamar answered for her. “And she will not look again, Miqelo,” he warned. “If it is this autumn, and not next, then I will manage. But there will be only one copy, and that’s not nearly enough—” He broke off, frowning. “The fortress. Does it stand?”
“A few walls of it, yes.”
Briefly he closed his eyes. After a moment he whispered, “How many dead?”
“Almost all. It turns out the Sheyqa’s troops did not need their ballisdas. All they required was enough time to dig beneath the walls. And even then they did not need to go very far. When their tunnels began to fill with water, they used poisons that seeped back into the wells. There were very few wounds for the healers to treat, Qamar. Almost everyone was poisoned.”
“Those who survived?”
“Told to create the magic required by the Sheyqa, or die. They died.” He hesitated. “But not before torturing them revealed there were others who had left the fortress.”
“Geysh Dushann,” Qamar murmured.
“What?”
“A special group of assassins, kin of the al-Ammarizzad. The poison used by Sheyqa Nizzira on the al-Ma’aliq was of their making, or so Azzad always understood. They tried many, many times to kill him, but no one succeeded—until you Shagara,” he finished bitterly.
Miqelo stiffened. “Not everyone agreed with what happened—”
“It doesn’t matter. The poison released into the groundwater seeped into the wells. That was Geysh Dushann.” He laughed without mirth. “Just like before!”
“Only now it is not the al-Ma’aliq but the Shagara—”
“Vengeance!” Qamar pushed himself to his feet, fists clenched. “That’s how it all started, don’t you see that? Over and over and over, people killing, ordering others killed, people dying in battle or when their towns burn—”
“Qamar,” Solanna asked in a soft voice, “are you saying Azzad al-Ma’aliq was wrong to avenge the slaughter of his entire family?”
“Ayia, the chain reaches farther back than that. Nizzira hated the al-Ma’aliq for their power, for being beloved of the people. They hated her family for seizing the Moonrise Throne based on lies—claiming the al-Ammarizzad were responsible for what al-Ma’aliq warriors did, when the barbar
ians were thrown out of Rimmal Madar. Yes, barbarians—the same thing the Tza’ab call you!” He began to pace. “A chain I termed it, and a chain it is. Iron chains, fetters, shackles—every generation forging more links, and doing it willingly! Death following death following death—by Acuyib, does it never stop? Does the ground have to be soaked in blood before it stops?”
Words came to him then, with such suddenness that it made him breathless, unable to speak. So many words, crowding his mind, demanding to be written. No one but Solanna noticed it, because Tanielo and Nissim had returned, and the young man recognized his father and ran to greet him. But Qamar knew that Solanna saw it in his face, in his eyes. He could sense her watching him as he turned away, wrapped his arms around his ribs, shook his head as if to clear it of the words.
He made no excuses, simply walked away from them all into his workroom and lit all the lamps. He had left blank the first few pages of the green leather book, believing that once he was finished he would write an introduction to guide students through what followed. He had believed wrongly. It was not an introduction but a justification, an argument addressed to everyone, not just the Shagara.
It took him all night to write it. In the morning, Solanna brought him heated wine and made him drink it.
“It will help you sleep, and sleep is what you need after all that,” she told him, gesturing to the tightly filled pages. “Don’t quarrel with me, Qamar. You may not be unconscious, the way it happens to me, but you have seen things, and you need sleep and quiet just as I always do.”
He felt himself stagger as she helped him into their stone shelter and had to admit she was right. After so long an abstinence, the wine hit him like a sandstorm in the desert. He slept all that day and into the next. And when he woke, it didn’t particularly surprise him that for the first time, he felt old.
Solanna was sitting beside their bed when he finally woke. In her lap was the green book. As his gaze met hers, he saw that there were tears in her eyes.