Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 (31 page)

Distantly she heard noises coming from the tent above the babble of the men who surrounded her: sudden shouts, she thought the hiss of arrows. Before she could cry out in warning, she saw something emerge at last — but it was not, it was far from the human figures she'd been watching for.

Something black and long, so long: its body was snakelike, she thought, except that it seemed to move on twig-thin legs. It moved last, whatever it was, gone into the dark before she could raise an arm to point it out; and it left her in terror for what might have happened in the tent, what new tragedy they would come to tell her of while she knelt helpless, nursing a boy she could not heal.

Too late there was a yell from the castle gates and a figure racing out, sprinting after the creature. That was Jemel, inevitably — cocksure in his own courage, determined to be first and foremost in the battle. At least he had the weapon for it if battle there proved to be, he'd had his scimitar blessed alongside her smaller blades; but unless the creature waited for him, he simply wouldn't have the speed. Young and agile as he was, he couldn't hope to match that insect scutding.

Nor did he. For a minute, Elisande was torn desperately between desires. She wanted to watch for him and also watch the tent with its sudden crush of frantic men outside it, shouting and gesticulating and almost coming to knives, and she still didn't know why, what the monster had wrought inside; she wanted to run to discover, to find her friends — and, yes, even her father — to be sure that they were safe, at the same time as she wanted to run after Jemel in case he did have his battle after all and one scimitar proved not to be enough, blessed or otherwise. Julianne had one of her blades but Elisande still kept the other, she could help. And she wanted also to stay just exactly where she was, Marron's head in her lap; she couldn't leave him, not possibly, so she wanted everyone to come to her with news and comfort and succour for the grievously ill, all at once and now
...

Her eyes flitted from side to side, seeking friends, seeking reassurance, finding none. She thought seriously about screaming, loud as she could, simply to silence the babble briefly so that she could drop her questions and demands into that space she made. Almost, she took a breath to do it; but then there was movement where she'd been looking for it, beyond the firelight, and there stood Jemel. He looked briefly defeated, before he saw all the fuss and excitement around Hasan
’
s tent. He started to walk, had a word with a standing guard, started to run.

Soon he was close enough to hear Elisande, without her having to scream.

'Jemel! Over here, I have Marron
...'

That was safe to fetch him, and it did. He stood staring down at his unconscious friend, and even with his back to the firelight she could see how his complexion changed; even through the hard panting of a young man who had run too far and too fast, she could hear his sudden breathlessness.

'Sit down, Jemel,' she ordered roughly.

Somewhat to her surprise, the tough young Sharai obeyed her: of necessity, she thought, his legs giving way entirely beneath the weight of his distress.

'I have been searching for him, in the castle.'

'I thought you must have been. Esren brought us out,' and she could almost have smiled at the absurdity of it — Jemel running in at one door, no doubt, while they flew out of another - if Marron hadn't been so ill and both of them so anxious, if the memory of that swift flight to freedom hadn't been overlaid by the sight of heaped bodies in the
castle
forecourt.

'Will he live?' The voice was gruff, the question brusque, the truth of his feelings entirely betrayed by the way one hand reached out and lay hesitantly in the air above Marion
’
s face, just a fingertip short of touching.

'I
don't know,' she answered honestl
y. 'He's lived this
long,
rather against her expectations, though nothing could make her say it, not to him, so there must be hope. I can't help him; I sent Julianne to fetch Rudel, but somethings happened in that tent. You saw the 'ifrit come out,' and she couldn't think how that had come about, as she was sure no 'ifrit had been seen to go in, 'and there's been no sign of anyone since.' Not that anyone else had had a chance, with that great scrum of men around the doorway, but her heart was full of misgiving. That at least she wasn't afraid to admit to. 'I'm scared, Jemel. I want to know what went on in there, but I couldn't leave Marron
...'

'Go now,' he said. 'I will stay. But send Rudel, as swiftly as you can.'

'I will,' she promised.
If he still lives
...

She pushed herself to her feet, a harder effort than she'd imagined; her own legs were none too steady.

She turned
an ungainly stagger into a gentl
e trot, and soon reached the pack of excited Sharai who had made such a wedge at the tent's mouth. Being small was useful for once as she squeezed between them; so was having sharp elbows and a woman's voice. The guards at the doorway had clearly been in no mind to let anyone through, but here recognition helped, as perhaps did the memory that she had a djinni at her beck and call. They made no move to stop her, as she slipped beneath their drawn blades and stepped into the tent.

She'd been dreading what she might find here, how many dead. There was a moment's sheer relief as she saw only one man down and Coren, Rudel, Julianne all unharmed; she thought she ought to feel relief too for her country's sake when she realised that the figure slumped on the carpet was Hasan.

For her friend's sake, though, she couldn't do it. Julia
nne held her husband's head nestl
ed in her lap, much as Elisande had held Marron's a short minute earlier; her own face was bowed and hidden, but Elisande could see black gashes on Hasan's cheek. Even clotted blood should never look so dark, she thought. Nor should such disfiguring but trivial wounds leave a man looking as Hasan looked now, sick unto death, again much like Marron; nor should they have left a powerful healer like Rudel looking so defeated.

He acknowledged her first, with a glance and a few quick words that stole her breath away.

'Elisande. I'm glad you're here, we need you.'

She gaped, she couldn't help it; then, recovering her voice, she demanded, 'What happened here, where did that 'ifrit come from, what has it done to Hasan?'

'Hasn't that djinni of yours taught you not to ask questions yet?' He sounded exhausted and troubled in equal measure. 'I'll tell it all, but not now. Hasan is beyond me; he would be beyond you too, or the both of us together, so don't suggest it. Call up your djinni. The only hope that I can see is to take him to your grandfather, as fast as that spirit can carry us, if it will.'

'Oh, it will.' Her grandfather could work miracles, she'd always been confident of that. And seeking her grandfather meant Surayon, and home; for a moment her soul rejoiced, despite the circumstances. Then, "There's Marron too, he has something of the same sickness, I'd guess
...'

'Can the djinni carry them both, and us too?'

'Esren carried all the Dead Waters at once, don't you remember?'

'Then we will take them both. Why not? The two greatest threats our homeland faces, and we will carry them to the heart of it to save them if we can. Never tell me that the gods have no sense of humour. Swiftly now, Elisande. Minutes matter.'

Not as much as he thought, perhaps; but just then Julianne lifted her head like a blind creature seeking the sun. One glance at her face, tear-stained and racked with grief, and Elisande dropped to her friends side, put both arms around her and said, 'Don't mourn the living, sweet. Save your tears for where they're needed.'

Julianne gave her a wry glance -
and you've shed none for Marron?—
but her voice was sour barrens as she said, 'He's as dead as need be, if Rudel cannot wake him. The 'ifrit might have killed him utterly, just as easily; it left him this way, I think, to make me suffer the more.'

'Then it made a mistake. Two mistakes. One, to think you so weak; and again, to think Hasan as good as dead. Whatever it's done to him, my grandfer will undo it. Trust him, if you don't trust me. And hold tight, we're going to hurry'

Julianne clenched her hands tight in Hasan's robe, but then straightened suddenly, as if she'd only just realised what was meant. 'Your grandfather - but he's in Surayon, isn't he? And Surayon is
...
gone. Closed, Folded
...'

'There's always a way in, love, for those who know it. We'll be with him by daybreak. Esren!'

The djinni was there at her call, silent for once; she said, 'Take us along the road, to the border with Surayon. Me, Hasan, Julianne, Rudel. Marron too, we must collect him. And probably Jemel with him. Coren?'

'Yes. I will go with my daughter.'

'All of us, then.' And with an idea of making the ride a little easier for Julianne this time, that she not have to ride on empty air, 'Esren, take us on the carpet.'

'As you command.'

The rug beneath them rippled and rose, began to move towards the tent's doorway. The other men not named, all those haughty and useless sheikhs crowded hastily back to give it room; the crowd outside fell over itself to make way. There would be more quarrels shortly, Elisande thought, as an essential balm to wounded pride, unless the wonder of a flying carpet were balm enough to soothe the humiliation of crawling in the dust. Somehow, she doubted that it would be.

Marron and Jemel: and of course they couldn't have one without the other, and she wasn't even resentful any more. She could even yield up what had been her place at Marron's head to the Sharai boy, and do it with a good grace yet, though it meant her sitting instead beside her father.

As she had nothing to accuse him of, they both sat in their customary silence. She poked experimentally at the rug she sat on, feeling how it was not stiff in itself like a boat's boards, nor was it laid over solidity like a rug laid over boards; it gave just a little beneath her finger as it did beneath her weight, as though it floated on something more sustaining than water. As it did: it wasn't the rug that flew, Esren simply carried that as it carried them, on a soft firm cushion of nothing at all. It would help Julianne, that was all, not to see the ground rushing by below them. That girl had her head bent low above Hasan's again, she wouldn't be seeing anything just now bar his ruined face, but she'd look up sometime, look around. Better, Elisande thought, if she couldn't also look down.

Darkness would help also, and it was entirely dark now except for the stars and the horizon's hint of a moon to rise shortly. She glanced back, and saw the fires of the Sharai dwindling behind them.

'What will they do?'

'The tribes? Come after us, of course. We have Hasan; they followed him this far, they'll follow him a little further. Besides, there's no point their watching an empty
castle
.'

'Morakh,' she objected, remembering him for the first time in a while, though he'd been the cause and motivator of so much. 'It's not empty, Morakh's there

'You think so? Still? Use your mind, Elisande.'

That stung, as it was meant to. She thought briefly, bitterly, and said, 'No. He would not linger. Either he has what he wanted' - Hasan not dead but sick unto death, and Marron the same, perhaps — 'or he has abandoned his plans. Either way, the tribes will not find him in the
castle
.'

'They won't even look. Hasan hunted Morakh for Julianne's sake; they followed Hasan for his sake, and their own, and perhaps for Outremer. The sheikhs will follow immediately, with their retinues. The army will come after, as quickly as it may. All the way to the Surayon border they will come, more than have ever been massed against us before.'

'They can't get in,' she said, trying to sound certain, to believe herself.

'No, probably not. But they will see all the rest of Outremer spread before them, and no army there to hold them back. And no Hasan. What do you think they will do, Elisande? When we fought them tribe by tribe forty years ago, we barely defeated them; they know that. The
y are together now, if not exactl
y united. Even without Hasan, they can hold together a few days longer. Long enough to march on Ascariel, at least.'

She told herself firmly that she ought not to care, that Ascariel was her enemy also; but that was impossible to sustain. 'Should we have left him, then, and let him die? Let Julianne be a widow, for Outremer?'

'Julianne can still be a wife if she chooses, to the Baron Imber. And many would say t
hat we should have done exactl
y that.' He sighed, and went on, 'I might say it myself, I'm afraid we will all have cause to say it in the days ahead. I couldn't have done it, though, any more than you.'

'There must be some hope,' she said stubbornly, 'some way to stop them.'

'Must there? Well, then, maybe there is. There's Coren.'

'Coren? But—'

Her eyes shifted, she couldn't help it, across the carpet to where that venerable old man sat beyond Marron, beyond Hasan but still not far away, not far enough. Of course he had heard; his eyes twinkled at her, though he didn't speak.