The Lions of Al-Rassan

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  He wondered if anything would ever reach through to him again.

  “Oh, dear Jad,” he heard someone say sharply. Ramiro, the king of Valledo. “Oh, not this, in the name of what is holy!”

  Rodrigo looked over. Something in the king’s voice.

  New torches, more riders approaching. From the north. Not the king’s party that had met them by the river and the walls. The other direction. Valledan banners, lit by flames.

  They came nearer and stopped. He saw the queen of Valledo, Ines.

  He saw his wife dismount to stand there, looking straight towards him, motionless. Without defense.

  He had no idea why Miranda was here. Why any of them were here. He had to move, though, to try to spare her a small part of this, at least. If he could.

  Gently, gently, he laid Diego down again on the cold ground and rose, stumbling, blood soaking his clothing, and went towards Miranda between the fires and slain men.

  He rubbed at his eyes, his face. His hands seemed to belong to someone else. There were words needed now, but he didn’t have them. It was a dream. He would never wake from this.

  “Please tell me he is only hurt,” his wife said very quietly. “Rodrigo, please say he is only hurt.”

  He opened his mouth and closed it. He shook his head.

  Miranda screamed then. The name. Only the name. The same as he had done. It went into him the way a spear enters.

  He reached out to take her in his arms. She went past him, running, to where Diego lay. There were other people around him now, Rodrigo saw, turning. Jehane had come up. She was kneeling beside his son. Another man from the queen’s party, someone he didn’t recognize, was on the other side. Miranda stopped beside them.

  “Oh, please?” she said, in a small voice he had never heard before. “Please?”

  She knelt beside Jehane and gathered Diego’s hands between her own.

  He saw Fernan coming back from the river with ibn Khairan. He would have heard his mother scream. Fernan was crying now, his face distorted. A wind, blowing right through him.

  Only this morning, riding towards Fezana, Rodrigo Belmonte would have said, if asked, that the world was a hard place but an interesting one, and he would have named himself a man blessed beyond his worth by the god, with love and companionship and tasks worthy of a man.

  He’d had two sons this morning, though.

  He came back to where Diego lay. Someone—the king, it appeared—had placed his own cloak over the mutilated body of Gonzalez de Rada nearby. Fernan was standing behind his mother. He was not asking for comfort, Rodrigo saw. He was keeping very still, weeping, with a hand on Miranda’s shoulder, looking down at his brother. He was thirteen years old.

  Jehane finished what she was doing. She looked up at Rodrigo. “He isn’t dead but I’m afraid he’s dying.” Her face was white. Her clothing was still wet from the river, he saw. It was all so dreamlike. “Rodrigo, I’m so sorry. The blow has broken his head, here. There is too much pressure. He will not wake up. It will not be long.” She looked at the other woman beside her, the child’s hands in hers. “He is . . . he is not in pain now, my lady.”

  He’d had a dream once in Ragosa, such a strange one, of the two of them—Miranda and Jehane—standing at sunset somewhere. Not speaking, no clear details, only standing together at the end of a day.

  It was dark here, however, and they were kneeling on the ground. Miranda said nothing at all, made no movement, eyes on her child. Then she did move, freeing one of her hands and laying it, so softly, against the broken place on Diego’s head.

  Jehane looked up at him again, and Rodrigo saw the sorrow in her eyes, and the rage. The physician’s rage at what they could not defeat, the things that claimed human lives too soon, leaving doctors helpless. She looked across Diego’s body at the other man.

  “You are a doctor?” she asked.

  He nodded. “To the queen, formerly with the army.”

  “I will aid you here, then,” she said quietly. “There may be others who need our services. Surely they are not all dead. There may be some we can save.”

  “You would do this?” the man asked. “For a Jaddite army?”

  A spasm of impatience crossed Jehane’s face. “As to that,” she said, “I am physician to the company of Rodrigo Belmonte. After tonight, I have no idea, but for the moment I am yours to command.”

  “May I hold him?” Miranda, whispering, to Jehane. As if no one else had spoken.

  Rodrigo took another step forward, helplessly.

  “You can do no harm to him at all, my lady.” Jehane’s voice was as gentle as he had ever heard it. “Of course you may hold him.” She hesitated, then repeated, “He is not in pain.”

  She made as if to rise.

  “Jehane, wait.” Another voice, from behind them. A woman’s voice. Rodrigo turned, very slowly. “Your father wishes to examine the boy,” said Eliane bet Danel.

  In Al-Rassan, in Esperaña, Ferrieres, Karch, Batiara—even, in time, in the far-off eastern homelands of the Asharites—what happened that night in a burning hamlet near Fezana became legend, told so often among physicians, courts, military companies, in universities, taverns, places of worship, that it became imbued with the aura of magic and the supernatural.

  It was not, of course, supernatural. What Ishak ben Yonannon did—blind under the white moon and stars and the torches brought for those who assisted him—was as precise and carefully worked out as what he had done five years before in Cartada, delivering the last child of Almalik I, and it was as wondrous as that.

  Indeed, it was more than that had been. Sightless, unable to communicate except through his wife who understood every mangled syllable he spoke, handling a surgeon’s blades and implements for the first time since his blinding, working by touch and memory and instinct, ben Yonannon did something even Galinus had only hinted might possibly be done.

  He carved an opening in the skull of Diego Belmonte, around the place where the Muwardi blow had broken the boy’s head, and he drew forth the shattered bone that had been driven down into what was shockingly exposed beneath the peeled-back scalp and the opened skull. The intruded fragment of bone that would have killed Rodrigo’s son before the blue moon joined the white one in the sky.

  Trepanning, it was called in the text of Galinus. Jehane knew that, and so, it appeared, did Bernart d’Iñigo, the Jaddite physician assisting them. And they both knew, as well, that it had never been done.

  She would have never even tried, Jehane was aware, all through what happened. Never have thought to try, or dreamed it was possible. With awe, fighting back the desire to cry all the time, she watched her father’s sure, steady hands probe and define the wound, circumscribe it, then wield the small saw and chisel with which he cut a hole in Diego Belmonte’s head.

  He gave them instructions when he needed to; her mother, standing above them, under a torch held by the king of Valledo himself, translated his words. Jehane or Bernart moved, as ordered, to offer a blade, a saw, a clamp, to sponge away the heavily flowing blood where Ishak had peeled back the skin of the boy’s scalp. Diego was being held in a sitting position, that the blood might drain away and not into the wound.

  It was his father who was holding him.

  Rodrigo’s eyes were closed most of the time, concentrating on keeping utterly still, which Ishak, through Eliane, had said was imperative. Perhaps he was praying. Jehane didn’t know. She did know, moved beyond words, that Diego never budged. Rodrigo held his child rock-steady, without shifting his position once through the whole of that impossible, blind surgery on the plain.

  Jehane had a strange illusion at one point: that Rodrigo could have sat like this with his child in his arms forever if need be. That he might almost want to do that. A stone, a statue, a father doing the one thing left for him to do, and allowed.

  The shattered bone of the skull came out in one ugly, jagged piece. Ishak had Jehane probe the open wound to be sure he had it all. She found two small fr
agments and removed them with pincers d’Iñigo handed her. Then she and the Valledan doctor sutured the flaps of skin and bandaged the wound and when that was done they remained, on their knees, on either side of the boy.

  They laid Diego down then, Rodrigo moving to stand silently above him beside Miranda. The brother—Fernan—was behind his mother. To Jehane’s eyes he had an obvious need for something to make him sleep. She doubted he would accept it.

  The white moon was directly overhead by then, the blue climbing in the eastern sky. The fires had been put out. Other doctors had come, summoned from the body of the army north of them. They were dealing with the survivors. There didn’t appear to be very many of those.

  A great deal of time seemed to have passed, Jehane realized. Ishak, guided by Eliane and Ammar, had moved a little apart, to a camp stool provided for him.

  Jehane and the Jaddite doctor, d’Iñigo, looked at each other across the body of the boy. D’Iñigo had an unfortunate face but kind eyes, Jehane thought. He had been calmly competent all through what had just been done. She hadn’t expected that of a Valledan physician.

  He cleared his throat, struggling with fatigue and emotion.

  “Whatever . . .” he began, and then stopped. He swallowed. “Whatever happens to me, whatever else I do, this will always be the proudest moment of my life as a doctor. To have been a small part of this. With your father, who is my . . . who I respect so much. In his writings, and . . .” He stopped, overcome.

  Jehane discovered that she was overwhelmingly tired. Her father must be exhausted. It hadn’t shown. If she wasn’t careful she would begin remembering what had happened in Fezana, before all this, and that wouldn’t do. Not yet. She had to stay in control.

  She said, “He may not survive. You know that.”

  D’Iñigo shook his head. “He will. He will survive! That is the wonder of it. You saw what was done as well as I. The bone came out! It was flawless.”

  “And we have no idea whether anyone can live through an opening up of their skull like that.”

  “Galinus said—”

  “Galinus never did it! It was sacrilege to him. To the Asharites, the Kindath. To all of us. You know that!” She hadn’t meant to raise her voice. People looked over at them.

  Jehane gazed back down at the unconscious boy. He was lying now on a pallet and pillow, covered in blankets. He was utterly white, from the loss of so much blood. That was one of the dangers now. One of them. Jehane laid her fingers against his throat. The pulse was steady, if too fast. But even as she did this and studied Diego’s face, Jehane realized that she, too, was certain he would live. It was unprofessional, hopelessly emotional.

  It was an absolute conviction.

  She looked up, at Rodrigo, and the wife he loved, the mother of this child, and she nodded her head. “He is doing well. As well as we could hope,” she said. Then she rose and went to where her father and mother were. Ammar was with them, which was good. It was very good.

  Jehane knelt at Ishak’s feet and laid her head in his lap, the way she used to when she was a child, and she felt her father’s hands—his strong, calm, steady hands—come to rest upon her head.

  After a time she stood up—because she was not, in truth, a little girl any more, dwelling in her parents’ house—and she turned to the man she loved among all others in the world and Ammar opened his arms for her and she let him draw away a little of what had happened to her people in the city that night, with his touch.

  Seventeen

  After holding a steady torch over Diego Belmonte in the dark of that night, Alvar de Pellino watched Jehane’s father walk wearily with his wife to the edge of the village and then stumble alone through the eastern gate out into the grass. There he knelt down and, rocking slowly back and forth on his knees, began to pray.

  It was Husari, coming to stand with Alvar, stained with blood and ash and sweat—as Alvar knew himself to be—who murmured, softly, “This will be the Kindath lament. Under both moons. For the dead.”

  “In Fezana?”

  “Of course. But if I know this man he is offering a part of it for Velaz.”

  Alvar winced. He looked back out at the shape of the man on his knees in darkness. He had, shamefully, forgotten about Velaz. Jehane’s parents would only have heard those tidings tonight. Watching the old physician rocking slowly back and forth, Alvar felt an unexpected renewal, quiet and sure, of what he had begun to realize on the ride west: he was not going to be a soldier, after all.

  He could kill, well enough it seemed, lacking neither in courage nor calm nor skill, but he had no heart for the butchery of war. He could not name it as the singers did: a pageantry, a contest, a glorious field whereon men could search out and find their honor.

  He had no idea what the alternatives were or might be, but he knew that this wasn’t the night to sort through that. He heard a sound from behind and turned. Rodrigo walked up to them.

  “Alvar, I’d be grateful if you’d come with me.” His tone was grave; there was a bone-weariness at the bottom of it. Diego was still unconscious; Jehane had said he would probably be so all night and into the morning. “I think I want a witness for what happens next. Are you all right?”

  “Of course,” Alvar said quickly. “But what is . . . ?”

  “The king has asked to speak with me.”

  Alvar swallowed. “And you want me to . . .”

  “I do. I need one of my men.” Rodrigo flashed the faint ghost of a smile. “Unless you have a need to urinate?”

  Memory, vivid as a shaft of light.

  He walked over with Rodrigo to where the king stood, conferring with outriders. Ramiro saw them approaching, raised his eyebrows briefly at Alvar.

  “You wish a third man with us?” he asked.

  “If you do not object, my lord. Do you know Pellino de Damon’s son? One of my most trusted men.” There was—Alvar heard it—an edge to Rodrigo’s voice now.

  “I do not,” said his king, “but if you value him so highly, I hope to know him well in days to come.”

  Alvar bowed. “Thank you, my lord.” He was conscious that he must look a fearsome sight. Like a fighting man.

  Ramiro dismissed the outriders and the three of them walked towards the northern fence of the hamlet and then, as Alvar opened a gate, out onto the plain.

  A wind was blowing. They carried no torches. The fires were behind them and had mostly died. The moons and the stars shone above the wide land all around them. It was too dark for Alvar to read the expressions of the other two men. He kept silent. A witness. To what, he knew not.

  “I am pleased you are back. You will have questions. Ask me,” said Ramiro of Valledo. “Then I will tell you some other things you do not know.”

  Rodrigo said coldly, “Very well. Start with my sons. How came they here? You may not be glad of my presence for long, my lord king, depending on the answers.”

  “Your cleric wrote a letter to Geraud de Chervalles, a High Cleric from Ferrieres, wintering with us on his pilgrimage to Vasca’s Isle. He was preaching a holy war, along with his fellows in Eschalou and Orvedo. You know the army in Batiara has sailed?”

  “I do. What sort of letter?”

  “Explaining about your son’s gift. Suggesting it might be of aid to us in a war against the infidels.”

  “Ibero did that!”

  “I will show you the letter, Ser Rodrigo. Was it a betrayal?”

  “It was.”

  The king said, “He has been punished.”

  “Not by me.”

  “Does it matter? He was a holy man. Jad will judge him.”

  There was a silence.

  “Go on. The letter arrived in Esteren?”

  “And de Chervalles asked my permission to send for the boy. This was after what had happened at Carcasia. You heard about that?”

  Rodrigo nodded. “A little.”

  The king said, “In the wake of those events, I ordered the army to assemble and I sent men to fetch your so
n. His brother insisted on coming. Your lady wife followed, joining the queen. Am I, also, to be punished, Ser Rodrigo?”

  The tone of both men was cold, precise. In the darkness, in that keen wind, Alvar had a sense that he was listening to the first notes of an exchange that had been waiting to happen for a long time.

  “I don’t know yet,” said Rodrigo Belmonte flatly. Alvar blinked. The Captain was speaking to his anointed monarch. “What happened at Carcasia? You had best tell me about that.”

  “I intended to. Almalik II used a spy at the court of my brother of Ruenda to try to kill the queen. His purpose was subtle and nearly succeeded. If the queen had died and I blamed Sanchez it would have shattered any alliance and sent us to war against each other. I nearly rode against Ruenda. I would have, had she died.”

  “But?”

  “The physician, d’Iñigo—who assisted with your boy tonight—was able to save the queen where her own doctors could not. He realized, from the nature of the wound, that there had been poison on the arrow, and provided the remedy.”

  “We owe him a great deal, then,” said Rodrigo.

  “We do. He said he learned of that poison from the writings of a certain Kindath physician in Fezana.”

  Another silence. Alvar saw a star fall across the sky in the west. A birth, a death. One or the other, in the folk tales at home. He was far from home.

  “I see. I had intended to ask you,” said Rodrigo, “whatever else happens, to look to the well-being of Ser Ishak and his family.”

  “You need not ask,” said the king. “It is done. For the queen’s sake, and your son’s. Whatever else happens.”

  Alvar saw Rodrigo incline his head in the moonlight. A cloud drifted across the face of the white moon, deepening the darkness.

  “D’Iñigo also told me something else,” the king said quietly. “He said the poison used was one known only in Al-Rassan. The Ruendans would have had no ready access to it, or knowledge of it.”

  “I see.” Rodrigo’s tone changed. “You wrote to your brother of Ruenda?”