Dragons on the Sea of Night (29 page)

Moichi nodded. ‘Take the ring, brother.'

Still, Hamaan hesitated. Then he snatched the ring from Bjork, enclosed it in a white-knuckled fist.

Almost immediately, a man appeared. He was garbed in the black robes of an Adenese Al Rafaar. He stood, looking around him for a moment, then, spotting Hamaan, he made a tiny genuflecting bow. ‘Qa'tach,' he said. ‘Where am I? What has happened to me?'

‘Never mind that,' Bjork said. ‘Tell us who you are. You need fear nothing. We are all Iskamen here or allies of Iskael.'

‘I am not in Aden,' the man said. ‘Qa'tach?'

Hamaan, ashen-faced, had dropped the ring. ‘No, you are no longer in Aden,' he said in a voice at first shaky but quickly regaining strength. ‘Tell these people who you are.'

‘I am Kh'aligg,' the man in Al Rafaar robes said. ‘I am a member of the Fe'edjinn.'

‘And who is your direct control?' Bjork said.

‘Qa'tach Hamaan,' Kh'aligg said. ‘He trained me himself.'

‘To do what?' Bjork asked gently.

‘To infiltrate the Al Rafaar.'

‘And …'

He looked at her in confusion.

‘What has been your specific mission most recently?'

Kh'aligg looked at Hamaan, panic-stricken.

Hamaan, staring into Moichi's eyes, said, ‘Tell them, Kh'aligg. There is no shame in it. You are a patriot.'

‘I became a kind of middle-man,' Kh'aligg said, licking his dry lips. ‘I sold White Lotus to Al Rafaar.'

‘And wher.e did the White Lotus come from?' Bjork asked.

‘I do not know.'

‘Tell them,' Hamaan said.

‘It … it came from you, Qa'tach. You led two parties into Syrinx in order to obtain it.'

Moichi, stunned, said, ‘Hamaan, have you lost your mind?
Why?
'

‘You know why,' Bjork said briskly, picking up the ring. Kh'aligg vanished. ‘The Qa'tachs believed that Al Rafaar berserker attacks inside Iskael's borders – within the capital itself – would win them unanimous support for their holy war against Aden.' Bjork leveled her gaze at Hamaan. ‘But the plan did not go as you envisioned, did it, Qa'tach?'

‘Hamaan,' Moichi pleaded. ‘Tell them this is all a lie.'

Now Hamaan's eyes seemed to glaze over. ‘We were almost there,' he whispered. ‘Our avowed goal was just within our grasp. The Qa'tachs met in secret and it was decided that a more specific, more horrific goad was required. They allowed me the grace of abstaining.'

Moichi, his voice seemingly squeezed out of his mouth, said, ‘Did you?'

‘I did my duty.'

‘Your
duty
?' Moichi felt the rage building inside him. Could this actually be the man with whom he had reconciled? The brother with whom he had agreed to forget the past? What kind of monster had he become?

‘I am a patriot!' Hamaan cried. ‘My sacred duty as Fe'edjinn is to make Iskael safe.'

‘And you did this by providing Al Rafaar with White Lotus?' Moichi said incredulously.

‘It was not fully refined,' Hamaan explained. ‘I knew this. The Adenese who ingested it died within a week.'

‘And how many innocent Iskamen were murdered in the interim, while you let the Al Rafaar berserkers loose inside Iskael?'

‘It was a distasteful but ultimately necessary step in order to achieve our goal.' Hamaan's face was flushed with fervid emotion; at this moment he seemed incapable of remorse. ‘Brother, listen to me, we have never been free of the Adenese yoke. Not really. You have been away a long time. Decades, centuries have passed since God let us through the Mu'ad. But always the Adenese have sought ways to punish us, closing down our trade routes, undermining our negotiations with other countries, destroying our wide-ranging caravans. It has been war by attrition ever since they realized we had not died in the Mu'ad. And then we began to terraform Iskael with such success that their jealousies were aroused. They have coveted the port of Ala'arat for decades. Don't you see, we are locked in a death-spiral? It is us or them. That was why the Fe'edjinn came into being.'

‘No,' Moichi said. ‘The Fe'edjinn were created by a small cadre of warriors chafing under the burden of peace. They no longer knew what to do with themselves and, worse, in peacetime they discovered that their powers had eroded. What status can a warrior expect when the one thing that gives him power no longer exists?'

Hamaan shook his head. ‘You do not know how wrong you are.'

‘The proof of what I say, brother, is right here, right now. Look at what you have done. You have put your own country at risk, allowed your citizenry to be slaughtered, to live in fear of Al Rafaar terrorists.'

‘All for the glory of the God of our fathers, who brought us through the Mu'ad.'

Moichi slapped his brother so hard across the face that Hamaan staggered. ‘Do not use God's name to legitimize your foul work. The Qa'tachs usurped power, fed on it like Chaos beings, until they – like you – have become unrecognizable.'

‘We did what we had to do. We–'

‘
You sick bastard, have you any idea what you've done? You murdered your own sister!
'

Moichi struck Hamaan again, but this time it was with his fist. Hamaan stumbled backward, blood flying from a split lip, and went down on one knee. Immediately, he picked up his knife, brandished it, point first. ‘Come on,' he said, spitting out a tooth. ‘Come on, brother. Why do I even bother with explanations? I always knew deep down that this was the way it would end for us. It was inevitable, wasn't it? You never understood me. You never understood that the Fe'edjinn's ministry of fear was necessary to keep Al Rafaar at bay. At least I know what I stand for. You have nothing. You
are
nothing.'

Moichi drew a dirk. Sardonyx, seeing this, took a step toward him, but a warning glance from Bjork caused her to stay her hand. ‘This must be played out,' Bjork said, ‘to the very end.'

‘But they both might die.'

Bjork nodded. ‘So be it, then. It is not within our purview to intervene.'

Sardonyx threw her a stricken look, but she shook her head firmly.

Moichi struck first, slashing open an oblique line across Hamaan's shoulder. Hamaan leapt to his feet, kicking out. The heel of his left boot caught Moichi on the side of the knee and he went down. Immediately, Hamaan was on him, maneuvering for position and leverage. Moichi slashed upward, but this time Hamaan was ready for him. He parried the blow with the guard of his knife as he smashed the edge of his hand into Moichi's windpipe.

Moichi convulsed. Black lights pulsed behind his eyes and there was a terrible roaring in his ears. His lungs fought for breath as he struggled to keep conscious. Dimly, he saw the knifeblade stabbing down at his shoulder, and he jammed an elbow into Hamaan's ribcage, succeeding in deflecting the strike just enough so that the blade punctured the meat of his arm and not his shoulder. He cried out, slammed the heel of his hand under Hamaan's chin. But his brother twisted away, stabbed him again and again in the muscle of his right arm.

Red rage now supplanted the pulsing black spots and in a titanic adrenaline surge Moichi managed to heave his brother off his chest. They rolled over and, as they did so, Moichi hammered the knife out of Hamaan's fist with the copper butt of his dirk. Then he threw his own weapon away and, using his hands, beat Hamaan insensate.

He crouched over his brother, panting and bleeding. Rage and the rush of endorphins pulsed a strong tattoo through his body. At length, he became aware that Bjork was holding out his dirk to him. As he took it, she said, ‘Will you kill him now?'

‘I do not know.'

‘He slaughtered a Shakra, murdered his own people.' She bent over. ‘He gave his consent for the assassination of your sister.'

‘Bjork, stop it!' Sardonyx said. ‘This has gone on long enough. How can you torture him so?'

She would have gone on but Bjork held up a hand in warning. ‘Remember,' she said softly, ‘who is the master and who the pupil.' Then, turning back to Moichi, ‘Well, what are you waiting for? He has been accused, tried and convicted by his own words and independent corroborating evidence. Pass sentence, Moichi. It is your duty. Your responsibility.'

Moichi held the dirk above Hamaan's throat. Then, reversing it, he slammed it home into its sheath. ‘No,' he said, rising and pulling his brother up beside him. ‘If, as you say, I am fated to journey to the summit of the Mountain Sin'hai then Hamaan will accompany me into the House of the Holy. Let God pass what judgement He may on my brother. That is His province, not mine.'

FOURTEEN

C
LOUDLAND

It would have been painful to climb
this multi-spined volcanic rockface under the most ideal conditions. The fact that both Moichi and Hamaan hurt from a host of wounds only exacerbated the fact.

Sin'hai had always been an intimidating mountain, but never more so than when one was assaulting its ebon basalt slopes. Some were almost vertical, rising like icy spires into a cloudland so dense the climbers could already feel the weight of the storm-charged atmosphere, an acrid taste at the back of their throats from the ozone thrown off by the pink lightning that forked high over their heads, rumbling down the mountain face with the force of an avalanche.

Bjork and Sardonyx had worked hard overnight to stanch, disinfect and cauterize the combatants' wounds, but Bjork had been meticulous in remaining aloof from the tension that wreathed both brothers.

Once, while both Moichi and Hamaan tossed in dream-laden slumber, Sardonyx had asked, ‘What was the point, Bjork? Their hatred is alive and breeding like some kind of hideous animal.'

Bjork looked off to the fulminating summit of the Mountain Sin'hai, alight and alive with the pink lightning so powerful it pierced even the heavy cloud cover. Three or four major earth temblors had shaken Syrinx in the hours following twilight. ‘For the moment, the hate is fuel that will serve them well on their ascent.' Her gaze swung to Sardonyx. ‘I have grave misgivings about you accompanying them. Even I do not know what they will encounter at the summit. It is more than possible that they will not survive to make the journey back down.'

Sardonyx allowed Bjork's words sufficient time to sink in before she answered. ‘I made up my mind a long time ago, when Moichi first came to the land of the Opal Moon.'

‘I do not have to tell you the consequences of your decision.'

‘No,' she said quietly, glancing briefly at Moichi, placing her hand alongside his cheek, calming him in his restless sleep. ‘But what else can I do? My heart surely turns to stone when I am not with him. For good or ill, he has become part of me.'

‘Have you told him about yourself?'

‘He knows most of it,' Sardonyx said. ‘He does not need to know it all.'

‘At some point, perhaps sooner than you think,' Bjork said with no little gravity, ‘he will.'

They began their assault at first light. Bjork provided Moichi with a map of the lower part of the eastern face up which they must climb. She had also provided such equipment and foodstuffs as they might require. She estimated three days to Cloudland; then they were in terra incognita, on their own to the summit.

The black basalt of the Mountain Sin'hai was without erosion. Though it had existed for millennia still the myriad peaks and rills were as sharply defined as they had been the moment it thrust itself out of the molten mantle of the earth below. This was both good and bad. The face was studded with excellent hand- and foot-holds for their ascent but the mountain possessed none of the weather-smoothed areas of other peaks so that, without respite, they were obliged to climb up vertical rock chimneys and traverse treacherous rifts that plunged thousands of feet past ragged outcroppings into blue shadow so deep it was impossible to discern the bottom.

The higher they climbed, the more often they were obliged to pause to catch their breath. It would have been far more prudent, Moichi knew, to stop and make camp more often to allow them to accustom themselves to the rarefied atmosphere, but he chose to push ever upward, driven by his fears of Chaos streaming through the Portal, marching into the world of man to reclaim what it believed belonged to it. The thought of being possessed by some Chaos creature like the Makkon or, God forbid, the Dolman was enough to keep him awake and sweating at night.

For his part, Hamaan had said almost nothing since they began. He had taken his defeat like the good soldier he was. ‘I consider myself a prisoner of war,' he said, stolidly refusing to look his brother in the eye. ‘I will follow your orders but I consider you the enemy and I will escape as quickly as I am able.'

Moichi tried to talk him out of this rigid mind-set of military code, but all entreaties proved useless. Therefore, he was obliged to tie Hamaan up at night to ensure that he would not escape or slit Moichi's throat. Moichi no longer knew what he thought of his brother. He had returned home to a waking nightmare. Aufeya was dead and Sardonyx had taken her place. Then, he had discovered that his brother Jesah was Fe'edjinn and henceforth known as Hamaan, a Qa'tach responsible for unspeakable crimes committed in the name of patriotism and God. At night, when he knew he would not be seen, he sat facing the sheer drop-offs that were never far from them and, putting his face in his hands, tried to blank his mind from the horror.

On their second night on the Mountain Sin'hai, while he was thus occupied, Sardonyx checked Hamaan's bonds for any sign he had been trying to loosen them. Since he always was, she retied some of the knots more tightly then, stepping over him, stood for many minutes looking at Moichi's bowed back.

At length, she crossed the narrow rock ledge on which they had made cramped camp and, putting her arms around him, crouched behind him. For a long time, they remained in that position. Then Moichi sighed. ‘How is it, after all that has happened, I still want to love him?'