The Lions of Al-Rassan

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  Carnival was quieter in Ozra’s, though not the less interesting for that. The masks led people to perform in ways they might never have ventured, exposed as themselves. Some of the most celebrated artists of the city had, over the years, come to this unassuming tavern on Carnival night to gauge the response their work might elicit with the aura of fame and fashion removed.

  They had not always been pleased with the results. Tonight’s was a difficult, sophisticated audience and they, too, were masked.

  Amusing things happened, sometimes. It was still remembered how, a decade ago, one of the wadjis had taken the performer’s stool, disguised as a crow, and chanted a savage lampoon against Mazur ben Avren. An attempt, clearly, to take their campaign against the Kindath chancellor to a different level.

  The wadji had had a good voice, and even played his instrument passably well, but he’d refused the customary performer’s glass of wine far too awkwardly, and he had also neglected to remove the traditional sandals of the wadjis, modeled on those Ashar had worn in the desert. From the moment he’d sat down everyone in the tavern knew exactly what he was, and the diversion the knowledge offered had quite removed the sting from the lampoon.

  The next year three crows appeared in Ozra’s, and each of them wore wadjis’ sandals. They drank in unison, however, and then performed together and there was nothing devout about that perfor-mance. The satire, this time, was directed at the wadjis—to great and remembered success.

  Ragosa was a city that valued cleverness.

  It also respected the rituals of this night, though, and the performer now taking his place on the stool between the four candles in their tall black holders was granted polite attention. He was effectively disguised: the full-face mask of a greyhound above nondescript clothing that revealed nothing. No one knew who he was. That was, of course, the point.

  He settled himself, without an instrument, and looked around the crowded room. Ozra di Cozari, once of Eschalou in Jaloña, but long since at home here in Al-Rassan, watched from behind his bar as the man on the stool appeared to notice someone. The greyhound hesitated, then inclined his head in a greeting. Ozra followed the glance. The figure so saluted, standing by the doorway, had come in some time ago, remaining near the entranceway. He must have had to duck his head to enter, because of the branching tines of his horns. Beneath the exquisite stag mask that hid his eyes and the upper part of his face, he appeared to smile in return.

  Ozra turned back to the greyhound between the candles, and listened. As it happened, he knew who this was. The poet began without title or preamble.

  Shall we linger in Ragosa amid spring flowers,

  Between the white diamond of the lake

  And the blue necklace of the river

  Sliding away south to the sea,

  As pearls run through a woman’s fingers?

  Shall we linger to sing the praises of this city?

  And shall we not remember as we do

  Silvenes in the time of lions?

  In the fountains of the Al-Fontina, it is told,

  Twenty thousand loaves of bread fed the fish

  Each and every day.

  In Silvenes of the khalifs,

  In the fountains of the Al-Fontina.

  There was a stir in the tavern. This was something unexpected, in structure and in tone. The poet, whoever he was, paused and sipped from the glass at his elbow. He looked around again, waiting for stillness, then resumed.

  Shall we linger here amid this fragile beauty,

  Admiring the fall of light on ivory?

  Shall we ask ourselves

  What will become of Al-Rassan,

  Beloved of Ashar and the stars?

  What has become of Silvenes?

  Where are the centers of wisdom and the teachers?

  Where are the dancing girls with slender ankles,

  And where the music beneath the almond trees?

  Where is the palace whence the khalifs of all-fame

  Thundered forth with armies?

  What wild beasts wander now at will

  Between the ruined pillars?

  Wolves are seen by white moonlight there.

  Another stir, quickly suppressed, for the poet had not paused this time.

  Ask in stem-walled Cartada for news of Silvenes,

  but ask here in Ragosa about Al-Rassan.

  Ask of ourselves, between river and lake,

  if we will suffer the stars to be blotted out.

  Ask of the river, ask of the lake,

  ask of the wine that flows tonight

  between the torches and the stars.

  The poet ended. He rose without ceremony and stepped down from the dais. He could not avoid the applause, however, the sound of genuine appreciation, nor the speculative glances that followed him to the bar.

  Ozra, following tradition here as well, offered him a glass of his best white wine. He usually made a quip at this time, but could think of nothing to say.

  Ask of the wine that flows tonight.

  Ozra di Cozari was seldom moved by what was read or sung in his tavern, but there was something about what he had just heard. The man in the greyhound disguise lifted the glass and saluted him briefly, before drinking. It was with no great surprise that Ozra noticed, just then, that the stag had come in from the doorway and was standing beside them.

  The greyhound turned and looked at him. They were of a height, the two men, though the horns of the stag made him seem taller.

  Very softly, so that Ozra di Cazari was almost certain he was the only other man to hear, the seven-tined stag said, “Beloved of Ashar?”

  The poet laughed, quietly. “Ah, well. What would you have me do?”

  Ozra didn’t understand, but he hadn’t expected to.

  The other man said, “Exactly what you did do, I suppose.” His eyes were completely hidden behind his mask. He said, “It was very fine. Dark thoughts for a Carnival.”

  “I know.” The greyhound hesitated. “There is a darker side to Carnivals, in my experience.”

  “In mine, as well.”

  “Are we to have a verse from you?”

  “I think not. I am humbled by what I have just heard.”

  The greyhound inclined his head. “You are far too generous. Are you enjoying the night?”

  “A pleasant beginning. I gather it has only begun.”

  “For some.”

  “Not you? Will you not come wandering? With me?”

  Another hesitation. “Thank you, no. I will drink a little more of Ozra’s good wine and listen to the verses and the music a while before bed.”

  “Are we expecting any crows tonight?”

  The greyhound laughed again. “You heard about that? We never expect anything at Carnival, and so hope never to be disappointed and never greatly surprised.”

  The stag lifted its head. “We differ there, at least. I am always, endlessly, hoping to be surprised.”

  “Then I wish it for you.”

  They exchanged a glance, then the stag turned away and found a passage to the doorway and out into the street. A black bull had taken the dais now, holding a small harp.

  “I think,” said the greyhound, “I will have another glass, Ozra, if you will.”

  “Yes, my lord,” said Ozra, before he could stop himself. He’d said it softly though, and didn’t think anyone had heard.

  As he poured the wine he saw the first of the women approaching the poet where he stood at the bar. This always happened, too, at Carnival.

  “Might we talk a moment in private?” asked the lioness softly. The greyhound turned to look at her. So did Ozra. It was not a woman’s voice.

  “Private speech is difficult to arrange tonight,” the poet said.

  “I’m certain you can manage it. I have some information for you.”

  “Indeed?”

  “I will want something in return.”

  “Imagine my astonishment.” The greyhound sipped from his wine, eyeing the newcome
r carefully. The lioness laughed, a deep, disconcerting sound beneath the mask.

  Ozra felt a flicker of unease. From the tone of this, this man masked as a woman knew exactly who the poet was, which posed more than a measure of danger.

  “You do not trust yourself with me?”

  “If I knew who you were, I might. Why have you worn a mask to change your sex?”

  Only the briefest hesitation. “It amused me. There is no beast more fierce, in the legends, in defense of her young.”

  The greyhound carefully laid down his glass.

  “I see,” he said finally. “You are very bold. I must say, I am surprised, after all.” He looked at Ozra. “Is there a room upstairs?”

  “Use mine,” said the innkeeper. He reached beneath the counter and handed across a key. The greyhound and the lioness moved together across the room and up the stairs. A number of eyes watched them go, as the black bull on the dais finished tuning his instrument and began to play.

  “How did you find me?” Mazur ben Avren asked, removing the greyhound mask in the small bedchamber.

  The other man struggled with his own mask a moment, then pulled it off. “I was led to you,” he said. “I had a choice of two people to follow, and made the right choice. The stag brought me here.”

  “You knew him?”

  “I tend to know men by how they move as much as how they look. Yes, I knew him,” said Tarif ibn Hassan, scratching at his chin where the full white beard had been shaved away. He smiled.

  So, too, after a moment, did the chancellor of Ragosa.

  “I had not ever thought to meet you,” he said. “You know there is a price on your life here?”

  “Of course I do. I am offended by it: Cartada has offered more.”

  “Cartada has suffered more.”

  “I suppose. Shall I rectify that?”

  “Shall I let you leave the city?”

  “How would you stop me if I killed you now?”

  The chancellor appeared to be considering that. After a moment, he moved to a small table and picked up a beaker of wine sitting there. There were glasses, as well. He gestured with the wine.

  “As you will perhaps have realized, I have an arrangement here with the innkeeper. We are private, but not entirely alone. I hope you will not require me to demonstrate.”

  The outlaw looked around then and noted the inner door ajar and another door to the balcony. “I see,” he said. “I ought to have expected this.”

  “I suppose so. I do have responsibilities, and cannot be entirely reckless, even tonight.”

  Ibn Hassan accepted the glass the chancellor offered. “If I wanted to kill you I could still do it. If you wanted to take me, you could have done so by now.”

  “You mentioned tidings. And a price. I am curious.”

  “The price you ought to know.” Ibn Hassan looked pointedly over at his discarded mask.

  “Ah,” said the chancellor. “Of course. Your sons?”

  “My sons. I find I miss them in my old age.”

  “I can understand that. Good sons are a great comfort. They are fine men, we enjoy having them with us.”

  “They are missed in Arbastro.”

  “The sad fortunes of war,” said ben Avren calmly. “What is it you have to tell me?”

  Tarif ibn Hassan drank deeply and held out his glass. The chancellor refilled it.

  “The Muwardis have been building boats all winter. In the new shipyards at Abeneven. Hazem ibn Almalik is still with them. He has lost a hand. I don’t know how, or why.”

  Mazur’s turn to drink, thoughtfully. “That is all?”

  “Hardly. I try to offer fair coinage when I make a request. Almalik II of Cartada has been seeding rumors about the Kindath of Fezana. I do not know to what purpose. There is growing tension there, however.”

  The chancellor set down the beaker of wine. “How do you know this?”

  Tarif shrugged. “I know a good deal of what happens in lands controlled by Cartada. They have a large price on my life, remember?”

  Mazur looked at him a long moment. “Almalik is anxious,” he said finally. “He feels exposed. But he is clever and unpredictable. I will admit I have no great certainty about what he will do.”

  “Nor I,” the outlaw chieftain agreed. “Does it matter? If it comes to armies?”

  “Perhaps not. Have you anything more? Brighter coinage?”

  “I have given good weight already, I think. But one more thing. Not brighter, though. The Jaddite army in Batiara. It is sailing for Soriyya after all. I never thought it would. I thought they would feed on each other over the winter and fall apart.”

  “So did I. It is not so?”

  “It is not so.”

  There was a silence.

  It was the outlaw, this time, who refilled both glasses. “I heard your verse,” he said. “It seemed to me, listening, that you had a knowledge of these things already.”

  Ben Avren looked at him. “No. An apprehension, perhaps. My people have a custom, a superstition really. We voice our fears as a talisman: by bringing them into the open, we hope to make them untrue.”

  “Talismans,” said Tarif ibn Hassan, “don’t usually work.”

  “I know,” said the chancellor. His voice turned brisk. “You have given, as promised, good weight. In truth, it hardly matters if you reveal the tale of the Emin ha’Nazar now. I can’t readily imagine you would, in any case. The offer made to you there still stands: do you want to be part of the army that takes Cartada?”

  “That tries to take Cartada.”

  “With your aid, I have great hopes that we would.”

  The old chieftain stroked the stubble of his chin. “I fear I will have little enough choice. Both my sons want to do this thing, and I have not the strength to overrule them together.”

  “That I do not believe,” Mazur smiled. “But if you wish to put it in this way, it is no matter to me. Meet us north of Lonza. I will send heralds to you to arrange the exact timing, but we ride from here at the white full moon.”

  “So soon?”

  “Even more urgently now, with what you have told me. If other armies are setting forth, we had best be first in the field, don’t you think?”

  “Are you covered at your back? In Fibaz?”

  “That’s where I spent the money the world thinks you stole from the parias party.”

  “Walls?”

  “And soldiers. Two thousand from Karch and Waleska.”

  “And they will be loyal against Jaddites?”

  “If I pay them, I believe they will be.”

  “What about Belmonte? Is Ser Rodrigo with you?”

  Mazur looked thoughtful again. “He is, for now. If Ramiro of Valledo takes the field, I will not say I am sure of him.”

  “A dangerous man.”

  “Most useful men are dangerous.” The chancellor’s smile was wry. “Including beardless outlaws who want their sons back. I will send for them. Right now, in fact. It might be safest if you left tonight.”

  “I thought the same. I took the precaution of finding them before I looked for you. They are waiting for me outside the walls.”

  Mazur looked startled for the first time. He set down his glass. “You have them already? Then why . . . ?”

  “I wanted to meet you,” the bandit chieftain said. His smile was grim. “After so many years. I also have a dislike for breaking my sworn word, though that might surprise you. They were granted their lives by ibn Khairan and Belmonte on our oath to accept their being hostages. Abir’s life was given back to him by their physician.”

  “My physician,” said the chancellor quickly.

  Tarif raised his eyebrows. “As you please. In any case, I would have been unhappy to simply steal them away. It might have confirmed your worst thoughts of me.”

  “And instead?”

  Ibn Hassan laughed. “I have probably confirmed your worst thoughts of me.”

  “Pretty much,” said the chancellor of Ragosa.
After a moment, though, he extended his hand. Ibn Hassan took it. “I am pleased to have spoken with you,” Mazur said. “Neither of us is young. It might not have happened.”

  “I’m not planning on making an end soon,” said ibn Hassan. “Perhaps next year I’ll offer a verse here, at Carnival.”

  “That,” said ben Avren, a hand at his own beard, “might be a revelation.”

  He sat alone for some time after the chieftain from Arbastro had donned his mask and left. He had no intention of telling anyone, but the news about the army sailing east struck him as almost unimaginably bad.

  And rumors being spread about his Kindath brethren in Fezana—that was terrifying. He had literally no idea what Almalik II of Cartada had in mind, but it was clear that the man felt frightened and alone and was lashing out. Frightened men were the hardest of all to read, sometimes.

  Ibn Hassan had asked about Rodrigo Belmonte, but not about the other one. The other one was just as much at issue, and in a way, he mattered even more.

  “I wish,” muttered Mazur ben Avren testily, “that I really were a sorcerer, whatever that is.”

  He felt tired suddenly, and his hip was bothering him again. It seemed to him that there ought to be orders to give to the bowmen on the balcony or the guards in the adjacent room, but there weren’t.

  It was Carnival. He could hear the noise from the street. It overwhelmed the harp music from below. The night was growing louder, wilder. Shouts and laughter. The sharp, high whirring of those noise-makers he hated. He wondered, suddenly, where the stag had gone.

  Then he remembered what Zabira had told him, in bed the night before.

  Fourteen

  In fact, it was the cat that found Alvar, late in the wild night, well after the blue moon had risen and was shining down, a wandering presence among the stars.

  He had separated from the others some time before. Laín had been dragged off, protesting unconvincingly, by a cluster of field mice. Their giggling gave them away: they were the girls who served at the tables in the favorite tavern of Rodrigo’s men. Bristling old Laín had been the object of their teasing—and warnings about his fate tonight—for some time.