The lady of the household—who would, in fact, have cheerfully killed the lot of them had she been present to learn of their mission—was elsewhere on the estate, the cleric informed them. The leader of the troop showed him the king’s seal and his command. The cleric—Ibero was his name—tore open the seal, read the letter, then surprised them by handing it over to the two boys, who read it together.
They were utterly identical, Ser Rodrigo’s two sons. A few of the horsemen had already made the sign of Jad, discreetly. Magic and witchcraft were said to attend upon such mirrored twins.
“But of course,” said one of the boys, looking up as he finished reading. It was evident that they could read. “If the king believes my . . . gift may be of use, if he wishes me to come, I am honored to do so.”
The captain of the company didn’t know anything about a gift. He didn’t much care; he was simply relieved to find things going smoothly.
“And I,” said the other brother quickly. “Where Diego goes, I also go.”
This was not expected, but it didn’t seem to pose a great problem, and the captain agreed. If the king didn’t want this other brother in Carcasia, for whatever reason, he could send him back. With someone else. The two boys glanced at each other and flashed identical smiles before dashing off to get ready. Some of the soldiers glanced at each other with ironic expressions. Youngsters, everywhere, looked forward to war.
They were very young, and not especially prepossessing either. Slightly built, if anything. Still, it was not a soldier’s place to dwell upon orders, and these were the sons of Rodrigo Belmonte. The riders were offered refreshments, which they accepted, and a night’s lodging, which they courteously declined. It would be imprudent, their captain decided, to push the luck that had caused the lady of Rancho Belmonte to be absent this day. They took a cold lunch, fed and watered the horses, and provisioned themselves.
Ten men, escorting two boys and a squire of little more than the boys’ age, rode west from the ranch house towards mid-afternoon of that same day, passing to the south of a copse of trees, and crossing the stream at a place Rodrigo’s sons suggested. The ranch dogs followed them that far and then went loping back.
Ibero di Vaquez had lived an uneventful, even a sedate life, given the turbulent times into which he had been born. He was fifty-two years old. Raised in what was now Jaloña, he had come west to Esteren to study with the clerics there when quite young. Thirteen years old, in fact.
He was a good acolyte, attentive and disciplined. In his early twenties, he had been sent as part of a holy mission bearing relics of Queen Vasca to the High Clerics in Ferrieres and had lingered there, with permission, for two years, spending most of his time in the magnificent libraries of the great sanctuaries there.
Upon his return to Esperaña he had been assigned—and had cheerfully accepted—the short-term position of cleric to the Belmontes, a moderately important ranching family in the breeding lands of the southeast. The possibilities for advancement were certainly greater in Esteren or one of the larger sanctuaries, but Ibero was not an ambitious man and he had never had much appetite for courts or the equally faction-riven retreats of Jad.
He was a quiet man, somewhat old before his years, but not without a sense of humor or an awareness of how the stern precepts of the god had, at times, to be measured against an awareness of human frailty and passions. The short-term position had turned, as sometimes happened without one’s noticing, into a permanent one. He had been with the Belmontes now for twenty-eight years, since the Captain himself had been a boy. They had built a chapel and a library for him, and then expanded both. He had taught young Rodrigo his letters, and then his wife, and later his sons.
It had been a good, gentle life. Pleasures came from the books he was able to obtain with the sums allocated him; from his herb garden; from correspondents in many places. He had taught himself a little of medicine, and had a reputation for extracting teeth efficiently. Excitement—not inconsiderable—arrived home at intervals with the Captain and his company. Ibero would listen in the dining hall to the tales of warfare and intrigue they brought with them. He’d formed an unlikely friendship with gruff old Laín Nunez, whose profanity masked a generous spirit, in the little cleric’s view.
For Ibero di Vaquez the stories he heard were enough turbulence for him, and more than close enough to real conflict. He liked the seasonal rhythms of existence here, the measured routine of the days and years.
His first intervention on the wider stage of the world, seven years ago, had been a brief, respectful essay on a doctrinal clash between the clerics of Ferrieres and Batiara on the meaning of solar eclipses. That clash, and the battle for precedence it represented, was still unresolved. Ibero’s contribution appeared to have been ignored, so far as he could tell.
His second intervention had been to write a letter, in the late autumn of last year, to the holy person of Geraud de Chervalles, High Cleric of Ferrieres, dwelling in Esteren.
A company of men had arrived this morning in response to that. They had come and had gone, with the boys. And now Ibero, late that same afternoon, stood with his head bowed and trembling hands clasped before him, learning that he, too, was to quit this house. Leave chapel, library, garden, home. After almost thirty years.
He was weeping. He had never been spoken to, in all his life, in the tones with which he was being addressed by Miranda Belmonte in her small sitting room, as the sun went down.
“Understand me perfectly,” she was saying, pacing before the fire, her face bloodless, unheeded tears sparkling on her cheeks. “This was a traitor’s betrayal of our family. The betrayal of a confidence we had reposed in you, regarding Diego. I will not kill you, or order your death. I have known you, and loved you, for too long.” Her voice caught. She stopped her pacing.
“Rodrigo might,” she said. “He might find you, wherever you go, and kill you for this.”
“He will not do that,” the little cleric whispered. It was difficult to speak. It was also hard for him, now, to imagine what he had expected her response might be, back in the autumn, when he wrote that letter to Esteren.
She glared at him. He found it impossible to sustain her glance. It wasn’t the fury, it was the tears.
“No,” Miranda Belmonte said, “no, you’re right, he won’t. He loves you much too dearly. He will simply tell you, or write to you, how you have wounded him.”
Which would break Ibero’s heart. He knew it would.
He tried, again, to explain. “Dearest lady, this is a time of holiness, of men riding beneath the god’s banner. They will be taking ship in Batiara for the east soon. There is hope they may be riding south here, in the name of Jad. In our time, my lady. The Reconquest may begin!”
“And it could begin and continue without my children!” She had clenched her fists at her sides like a man, but he saw that her lips were trembling. “Diego’s is a special gift, a frightening one. Something we have kept to ourselves all his life. You know—you know, Ibero!—that clerics have burned such people. What have you done to him?”
He swallowed hard. He said, “The high lord Geraud de Chervalles is an enlightened man. The king of Valledo is the same. It is my belief that Diego and Fernan will be welcomed with honor into the army. That if Diego is able to help in this holy cause he will win renown in his own name, not simply his father’s.”
“And be named a sorcerer all his life?” Miranda swiped at the tears on her face. “Had you thought of that, Ibero? Had you? What price renown, then? His own, or his father’s?”
Ibero swallowed again. “It will be a holy war, my lady. If he aids in the cause of Jad—”
“Oh, Ibero, you innocent fool! I could kill you, I swear I could! It is not a holy war. If it happens, this will be a Valledan campaign to take Fezana and expand south into the tagra. That is all. King Ramiro has been thinking about this for years. Your precious High Cleric simply showed up at the right time to put a gloss on it. Ibero, this is no Reconquest by a
united Esperaña. There is no Esperaña any more! This is just Valledo expanding. Ramiro is as likely to turn west and besiege his brother in Orvedo as anything else before autumn comes. What does your holy god say to that?”
She was blaspheming, now, and her soul was in his care, but he feared to chide her. It was also possible that she was right about much of this. He was an innocent man, he would never have denied that, but even so . . .
“Kings may err, Miranda, my lady. So may humble clerics. I do what I do, always, in the name of Jad and his holy light.”
She sat down, abruptly, as if the last of her strength had given out. She looked as if she had been physically injured, he saw, and there seemed to be a lost place in her eyes. She had been alone, without Ser Rodrigo, for a long time. His heart ached.
Labeled a sorcerer all his life.
It might be true. He had thought only of the triumph, the glory Diego might accrue should he help the king in battle with his gift of sight.
Miranda said, her voice low now, uninflected. “You were here at Rancho Belmonte to serve Jad and this family. For all these years there has been no conflict in that. Here, for once, it seems there was. You made a choice. You chose, as you say, the god and his light over the needs and the trust of the Belmonte. You are entitled to do so. Perhaps you are required to do so. I don’t know. I only know that you cannot make such a choice and remain here. You will be gone in the morning. I will not see you. Goodbye, Ibero. Leave me now. I wish to cry alone, for my sons.”
He tried, heartsick, to think of something to say. He could not. She would not even look at him. He left the room. He went to his own chambers. He sat in his bedroom for a time, desolate, lost, and then went next door to the chapel. He knelt and prayed, without finding any comfort.
In the morning he packed a very few belongings. In the kitchen, when he went there to say farewell, they gave him food and wine to begin his journey. They asked for his blessing, which he gave, making the sign of the god’s disk over them. They were weeping; so was he. Rain was falling when he went back out; the good, much-needed rain of spring.
Outside the stables there was a horse saddled for him. By the lady’s orders, he was given to understand. She was true to her word, however. She did not come out to see him ride away in the rain.
His heart hammering the way it had in battle, Alvar watched as the grey iguarra spider approached him slowly. The iguarra was poisonous, sometimes fatally so. The son of one of the farm workers had died of a bite. He tried to move, but could not. The spider came up and kissed him on the lips.
Alvar, twisting, managed to free his arms in the press of people and put them around the spider. He kissed her back as best he could from behind his eagle mask. He was improving, he thought. He had learned a great deal since sundown.
The spider stepped back. Some people seemed to have a knack of finding space to maneuver in the crowd. That trick, Alvar hadn’t learned yet.
“Nice. Find me later, eagle,” said the iguarra. She reached downwards and gave him a quick squeeze on his private parts. Alvar hoped the others hadn’t seen.
Not much chance of that.
A hard, bony elbow was driven into his ribs as the spider drifted away. “What I’d give,” cackled Laín Nunez, “to be young and broad-shouldered again! Did she hurt you, child?”
“What do you mean again?” roared Martín, on Alvar’s other side. He was a fox for the Carnival; it suited him. “You were never built like Alvar, except in your dreams!”
“I assume,” said Laín, with dignity, “that you are speaking of his shoulders, and not elsewhere?”
There was a raucous whoop of laughter in response to that. Not that the noise level could possibly get much higher, Alvar thought. Just ahead of them—he had to walk ahead of them, given his spectacular mask—Husari ibn Musa carefully turned around and gave Laín a gesture of encouragement. The normally dour old warrior waved back jauntily. He was a red and green rooster.
They had been drinking since the first stars had come out. There was food everywhere and the smells of cooking: chestnuts roasting, grilled lamb, small-boned fish from the lake, cheeses, sausages, spring melons. And every tavern, thronged to bursting, had opened its doors and was selling wine and ale from booths on the street. Ragosa had been transformed.
Alvar had already been kissed by more women than he’d ever touched in his life. Half a dozen of them had urged him to find them later. The night was becoming a blur already. He was trying to stay alert, though. He was looking for Jehane, however she might be disguised, and, though he certainly wouldn’t tell this to the others, for a certain jungle cat mask. He was sure he’d recognize it, even by torchlight and in the press; there was the golden leash, for one thing.
Jehane was beginning, just a little, to regret that she’d insisted on anonymity and on walking the streets alone tonight.
It was fascinating, certainly, and there was an undeniable excitement to being masked and unknown amid a crowd of similarly unrecognizable people. She didn’t really like drinking so much, though, and couldn’t claim to be thrilled by the number of men—and one or two women—who had already used the license of Carnival to put their arms around her and claim a kiss. No one had really abused the privilege—it was early yet, and the crowds were dense—but Jehane, responding as best she could in the spirit of the night, wouldn’t have said it was a pleasure, either.
Her own fault, if so, she told herself. Her own choice, not to be walking about with Rodrigo’s men, safely escorted through the chaos of the streets. Out for a while, and then home like a good girl, to bed alone.
Her own choice, indeed. No one knew her, unless someone recognized her walk or tilt of head in the flickering of torches. Martín might, she thought, or Ludus: they were good at such things. She hadn’t spotted any of the soldiers yet. She’d know Husari at a distance, of course. There would only be one peacock like that in Ragosa tonight.
She was approached and enveloped by a brown bear. She submitted, good-humoredly, to the bone-crushing hug and a smack on the lips.
“Come with me!” the bear invited. “I like owls!”
“I don’t think so,” Jehane said, gasping for breath. “It’s too early in a long night for broken ribs.”
The bear laughed, patted her on the head with gloved hand, and lumbered on. Jehane looked around, wondering if Ziri was somewhere in the crowd swirling past beneath the wavering torches. He didn’t know her mask, though, and she had exited her house through the back door into the dark.
She couldn’t have said why it was so important to her to be alone tonight. Or no, she probably could have if she demanded an honest answer of herself. She wasn’t about to do that. Carnival wasn’t a time for inward searching, Jehane decided. It was a night for doing the things one only dreamed about all the rest of the year. She looked around. A grey she-wolf and a horse were improbably entwined not far away.
A stag, seven-tined, emerged out of the tumult in front of her. He was holding a leather flask. He offered it to Jehane with a slight bow. A deeper inclination of his head might have impaled her.
“Thank you,” Jehane said politely, holding out a hand for the wine.
“A kiss?” The voice was muffled, soft.
“Fair enough,” said Ishak ben Yonannon’s daughter. It was Carnival. She stepped forward, kissed him lightly, accepted the flask, and drank.
There seemed to be something familiar about this man, but Jehane didn’t pursue the thought: there had been something familiar about half the men who’d kissed her tonight. Masks and imagination and too much wine did that to you.
The stag moved on without speaking again. Jehane watched him go, then realized he’d left her the flask. She called after him but he didn’t turn. She shrugged, looked at the flask, drank again. This wine was good, and scarcely watered, if at all.
“I am going to have to start being careful,” she said aloud.
“Tonight?” said a brown rabbit, laughing beside her. “How absurd. Come w
ith us instead. We’re going down to the boats.” There were four of them, all rabbits, three women and a man with his arm around two of them.
It seemed a reasonable thing to do. As reasonable as anything else. And better, after all, than wandering alone. She shared the leather flask with them on the way to the lake.
Behind the mask, which alone made tonight possible, eyes watched from the shadows of a recessed doorway as a stag was briefly kissed by a white owl and then stalked gracefully away, leaving a flask of wine behind.
The owl hesitated visibly, drank again from the flask, and then went off in another direction with a quartet of rabbits.
The rabbits didn’t matter at all. The stag and the owl were known. The watching one—disguised, on a whim, as a lioness—left the shelter of the doorway and followed the stag.
There were surviving pagan legends, in countries now worshipping either Jad or the stars of Ashar, about a man changed into a stag. In those lands conquered by the followers of the sun god, the man had been so transmuted for having abandoned a battlefield for a woman’s arms. In the east—in Ammuz and Soriyya, before Ashar had changed the world with his visions—the ancient tale was of a hunter who had spied upon a goddess bathing in a forest pool and was altered on the spot.
In each tale, the stag—once a man—was fair game for the hunting dogs and was torn apart in the heart of a dark wood for his sin, his one unforgivable sin.
In the years since Ragosa’s Carnival had begun a number of traditions had emerged. License, of course, was one—and to be expected. Art, its frequent bedfellow, was another.
There was a tavern—Ozra’s—between the palace and the River Gate to the south. Here, under the benevolent eye of the longtime proprietor, the poets and musicians of Ragosa—and those who, masked, wished to be numbered among them, if only for a night—would gather to offer anonymous verse and song to each other and to those who paused in their torchlit careen to listen at the door.
The Lions of Al-Rassan Page 39