Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 (17 page)

'Don't you mind?' she asked. 'That I'm there, I mean, if it's forbidden to me?'

'It is for God to mind, not me,' he said, oddly quiet. 'It may be that He will mind both of us, you and me. If so, no doubt He will make His displeasure known. If I can walk safely under His roof, then be assured, so can you.'

Boys,
she thought. They always wanted to take the sins of the world onto their shoulders — and what were Jemel's sins, except perhaps that he had recently missed a prayer or two? His love for Marron was no sin in his own eyes, nor his tribe's, though he was tribeless now. Perhaps she'd ask him sometime; but not now.

Now she only slipped her knives from her belt and passed them to him, hilt-first. He took them respectfully, as though they had as proud a lineage as Dard that
Marron
carried; he stowed them in his own belt and stepped away from her, waiting a little distance off to show that they were unconnected, she and he. She tinned her head the other way to emphasise the point, and watched him only through the heavy veil, from the corner of one eye.

A minute later, along came another
of those ubiquitous imams, hustle hustl
e in his weighty robe. Like bees around a hive she thought they were, in and out of the temple in ones and twos and clusters, each intent on his own private mystery and little concerned with any others.

Jemel tried to detain this one with a word, and failed as she had every time. Jemel was bolder than she'd dared to be, though, with the immunity of his sex; he gripped the man's arm and pulle
d him abruptl
y to a halt.

The priest was furious, all but muted wi
th rage, spluttering incoherentl
y; Jemel's voice cut easily across the gabble, loud enough for Elisande to hear even from her distance.

'Your pardon, holy brother, I do but ask a service of your wisdom. There is a fee
...'

Whether it was the sight of silver coins in Jemel's left hand that stilled the imam's protest, Elisande couldn't say. It might have been what else that sight revealed, the missing little finger, coupled with what Jemel's clothes proclaimed, that he was Sharai but tribeless; no desert priest would offend a man who might be sworn to the Sand Dancers, even if he didn't wear their customary black. That confident 'brother' might have helped too, implying that they both served not only the same God, but the same cause also.

'What service? Brother?'

'Your blessing, on my blades.'

A moment's pause, just long enough for those coins to be passed from one hand to another; then, 'Come,' and the imam ducked in through the temple door, with Jemel on his heels.

Elisande waited for the space of a few steadying breaths, before she followed.

If Selussin's prime purpose was to teach, then its high temple was a lesson in itself, she thought, that the surface of a thing gave few clues to its innermost heart.

From the outside, the building was crudely made and eccentric, speaking more to the weakness of its people than the power of its priests. The difference inside was startling, all the more so because the materials remained the same.

The floor was pounded earth, and sandy near the door where the constant passage of feet dragged in the dirt of the town's streets. Further in, she saw a small boy with an aspergill sprinkling water where he walked: not enough to muddy the ground, just to dampen it and quell the dust. It kept the air cool too, and a little moist; she was reminded of the boys in the Sultan's gardens at Bar'ath Tazore, doing much the same out in the open to keep a jungle thriving under desert sun. The purpose here was subtly similar, she thought: to keep mysterious the place where power lived, to let no one pass from there to here without seeing, touching, breathing the change from that to this.

As Jemel had promised, there was a carved and pierced screen to her right, dividing the eastern angle from the body of the temple. She walked in that direction, obedient to his instructions, but with her eyes neither cast down in humility as they probably properly should have been, nor watching his back and the imam's where they stood and then knelt before the altar in the centre of the floor, the focus of all this space.

Instead, Elisande let her feet find their way unguided, while she stared upward: up and up, into twisted height and darkness.

There must, she supposed, be a roof; otherwise she'd see light and sky even through all the tangle in between, and this would be a burning-house at noon. If she climbed, no doubt she'd find it eventually, and even Julianne could make that climb; but from the ground that necessary roof was hidden by more than shadows.

She'd expected a ceiling, probably quite low, and stairs or a ladder climbing to an upper chamber, a succession of chambers one above another. So much height and space in the tower, in such a low-built town, she'd been sure they'd use it all.

And perhaps they did, but not for speech or sleep or storage. She thought of a candle's flame, the small hot glow at the heart of it where the wick burned, and then the rising column of light.

The temple-tower was a single vaulting chamber, undivided; and all that high-leaping space was criss-crossed by an intricate and eye-defeating maze of blackened wood. From outside she had seen the beam-ends and thought them strange enough, an irregular studding, a scaffold to give shape and strength to the friable mud of the walls. Here were the beams themselves. Tall trees they must have been to run as they did from wall to wall, clear across the temple at unpredictable angles, in no pattern or design that she could discern from the lights of many lamps and braziers. They made a baffling knotwork that drew the eye in and up, and wanted never to release it.

She stared, she frankly gawped; and was glad for once to be a girl, and so ignored by all of the men who prayed or murmured heads together, or else had other business here.

She was meant, she remembered at last, to be watching two such men who had such business, and that concerned herself. Coming at last behind the women's screen, she dragged her gaze downward from the heights, found herself alone and so nudged her veil aside, hooked her fingers through the narrow piercings and set her eyes to the widest space that she could discover.

There were Jemel and the imam, kneeling before the simple altar, a rough block of black stone with a burning charcoal brazier set atop. For a wonder the stone had been hewn square, and the brazier was round; even the Selussids, it seemed, would not defy tradition so far as to give three corners to the focus of their faith.

There were the men, and laid on the floor before them were the weapons, hers and Jemel's, faintly gleaming in the smoky light.

The imam spread his hands above the blades and probably began a prayer, some well-used form of words. She couldn't hear, and had trouble believing that any blessing so lightly, so cheaply bought could truly prove effective. She'd seen sanctified weapons shear through where normal steel rebounded; that was more of a mystery to her than other, stronger magic that she'd met. She might not understand the Daughter but it was real, she couldn't dispute its existence and she knew what it did. A priest's blessing on a blade, though, when she gave his God no credence — it challenged her true faith, that the world was well-made whoever it was that made it. She might have believed that a priest's wisdom could invest some power in what he touched; but this dist
racted man with his wispy beard
and his crass self-satisfaction? Jemel had more wisdom in his missing finger, and yet Jemel could not make a sword bite through 'ifrit armour.

Perhaps the imam could not do it either, and this was wasted time that would draw her into danger later. Perhaps she should not think of her blades as blessed after all
...

'Lisan.' A voice spoke suddenly, shockingly in her ear; she choked on a gasp that might easily have come out-as a scream, and twisted round.

And saw no one, though she wheeled in a circle to be sure. Good sense took a moment to catch up her racing heart and make her look again, more closely.

Esren was a spinning shadow among shadows, a finger's length of dust and gleaming darkness amid the confusion of light as it fell through the complications of the screen.

Second nature now to bite back the hot and perilous question,
what are you doing here?
Instead she took a slow breath and then another, as much time as she needed; when she was ready, in a hissing whisper, she said, 'Esren, I did not summon you.'

'Indeed not. I came. I was curious.'

About what, she wondered - the temple, the blessing, something else? No way to guess; if it wanted her to learn, then it would tell her. Obliquely, like as not.

'I don't suppose the djinn go often into church,' she said, trying to be oblique in her turn.

'I go where I choose.'
Now,
unspoken but ever there between them, that deep and ever-resented debt it owed to her, that it repaid with grudging and disputatious service. 'The same is true of all my kind.'

'But you don't worship this God, or any other; so
...'

'Neither does this God or any other worship us. So far as we know. It may be a nonsense, a game of men to defeat the dark with lies and promises; but a blessed blade will still strike home, Lisan, as though it had the wrath of God behind it.'

'Tell me if those blades are truly blessed,' she said. She had visions in her head, knives hurled at iron-black body, hurled and bouncing back.

'They are. Any hedge-priest can do this work; his touch will be as potent as a saint's,' and the imam was touching the weapons now, she saw, one finger to each still blade. 'Have a care with those knives, Lisan. They may slay more than an 'ifrit.'

As ever, she looked for deeper meaning beneath its words; as ever, she ended up drowning in uncertainty. Would the knives be potent against other creatures of the spirit world -against the djinn themselves, maybe? Was it nervous for itself, could she cut the thread of its long long life and send it spinning into dissolution? It was not immortal, that she knew; a djinni could be slain. And yet it seemed to have no solid body to attack, being made of wind and whispers. Perhaps a blade charged with power could seek out some inner core, unravel what was wound so tight; perhaps it was afraid of her
...

More likely of her ignorance, she thought, and set that thought aside. Grimly, for later consideration.

'I suppose it must be magic, then. Like laying a spell on the metal.' Or on a man's mind, such as she could do herself, laying a Fold in the pathway of his thought
s such that he could look directl
y at her and see her not at all. She couldn't keep the disappointment out of her voice. She might not believe in her peoples God or any other, but still she'd always hoped that their earthly manifestations, all the little miracles of churchly life sprang from some source unknown, perhaps unknowable: a fount of mysterious power, to set against the slow-won understanding that defined her own kind of magic She wanted to believe that faith could balance schooling, even where it was faith misplaced
...

'You use words that have no meaning. That is magic; your hidden home is magic; I am a creature of magic,' said with a rich contempt, as it spun and sparkled in the air. 'It exists, Surayon exists, I exist; in that sense we are all alike, and so, yes, the imam's blessing is a kind of magic. But Lisan, so do you exist, and the mud floor that you stand on, and the flea that bites you.'

'I don't have — ow!' She slapped at her leg, decided not to lift up the skirt of her robe in pursuit: undignified under a holy roof, too likely to draw attention to her Patric skin -and Patric manners, she thought ruefully — and probably futile in any case. Sand fleas didn't linger. Their eggs did, though; she'd best get Julianne to check her over. Inch by inch, from scalp to toenails. In a day or two, of course, when Julianne was rescued. The eggs were easier to spot in any case, once they'd had a chance to harden and darken under the skin —

She flinched from the thought, and hissed, 'If that's all the use of your foreknowledge, to tell me I'm going to get bitten an eye-blink before it happens, then you might as well keep it to yourself.'

'Knowledge is always better than ignorance, Lisan. If you must be bitten, better to be aware and prepared. What I see is a flea-bite, to what I used to see: use it or not, as you choose. But that is the distinction, I think, between your magic and that priests, perhaps all priests'. Yours is founded on knowledge; the people of Surayon understand more than most how the worlds are shaped, and so they can make a little difference to that shaping. The churches work in ignorance, and never try to penetrate the cloak of it. Miracles happen, and they are content with that. If their prayers are spells, such that anyone could use them - well, they preserve them to the priesthood, and condemn a thief for heresy. Mystery and shadow suit them well.'

Wise and experienced as she was, Elisande found that she could still blush. The shadows of the temple suited her too just then, as the veil did, and the veiling screen, though she was sure the djinni could see through them all as easily as it saw through her. It was right to scorn mystery, of course it was - and yet she still craved a little mystery. There could be too much light in the world, an overweight of knowledge . . .

She'd never known Esren say so much, so very much to the purpose. Whatever its reasons - and if she treasured life's mysteries, Esren's motivations were surely enough for one girl's puzzled lifetime — it disappeared from her shoulder without warning, without another word. She was becoming used to that, but not used enough; she still wasted a moment in glancing around, to be sure.