Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 (39 page)

When an arm laid itself across her shoulders, when iron fingers gripped her tightly through the sleeve of her robe, she could have screamed from sheer startlement if she hadn't been so fathoms-deep in weeping. Instead she choked painfully on a sob that was hard as a pebble and filled her throat as thoroughly; she twisted vainly against the strength that pulled her close against soft fabric cloaking a man's body. A small, lean body - that was the second surprise, that had her blinking upward to find his face and know him, when she'd been just about to topple into the security of his hug except that suddenly he was not the man she'd thought him.

'Coren?'
Well, Coren was good enough, a splendid second-best; she'd let him hug her as much as he chose and dry her tears willingly against his shoulder, so long as he promised to mention them to no one else.

'Aye, lass. I've brought your father home.'

Which made her choke again, because it could never be home again without him and without her loathing of him, a necessary counterbalance to her love for house and country, grandfather and folk.

But choking made her turn her face away from his, and turning made her see. Another man had come out onto the terrace from the cluttered, chaotic library where no one went without the Princip's direct authority, and was standing gazing at her. Built like a woodcutter, short and broad, with a barrel chest and legs like firkins; crowned with thick white curls beneath his hood and bearded like a hedge in snow; scratching at that beard now with thick, spatulate fingers that looked so much better suited to gripping an axe than a pen or even the sword that he wore half-hidden under his cloak.
..

'Grandfer!'

Elisande wrenched free of Coren, who laughed softly as he let her go. She flew into her grandfather's arms, and no matter that he was wearing chain mail too beneath his sur-coat. Even if he couldn't mend what was irrevocably broken, he was still a solidity that she could cling to, where all else had proved so frail. She did cling, and might have cried again now that she'd found access to such a well of tears, except that through her
mindless mutterings and his gentl
e soothing she heard something else, Julianne's voice say, 'Elisande
...
?'

She turned against her grandfather's rough hand where it was stroking her hair in animal comfort. Her friend was standing in the solarium doorway, leaning against the stonework as though that were all that was keeping her upright. Coren moved swiftly to his daughter's side, to take that duty on himself; for a moment, gazing at their matched elegance, Elisande was sharply aware of the contrast. She had always secredy enjoyed her grandfather's peasant appearance, been glad of his rude strength. She'd inherited his lack of height, but her mother's elfin bones; that had been one more thing to welcome, to thrust like a banner in her father
’
s face.

All the bitter triumph of those memories was ashen now, though - as ashen as her friend, who hung on to her own father's arm much as Elisande herself was hanging on to her grandfather: two girls who had come too far under too great a burden, and needed now to have it lifted from them. Despite everything that was happening in Surayon, the Princip had made time to return to them; Elisande tried to find some hope in that as she lifted her eyes to her grandfather and said, 'Please, you can help them, can't you, Marron and Hasan? Say that you can

'I can try,' he said, which was far short of the promise that she was looking for. She'd tried herself, others had tried and failed; Rudel had declined even to try. But the Princip was stronger, wiser, more practised than any. She'd believed in him all her life, when faith was such a hard thing for her to achieve; surely he couldn't let her down now.

'Take me to them,' he said, for all the world as though he were the guest here rather than the host. Elisande unwound herself from him, except for keeping tight grip on one arm; she led him past Julianne and Coren and into the bright solarium, thinking that desolation ought never to be so well tit.

For a minute, her grandfather only stood and looked down on the two sick men, where they lay on their pallets in the sunshine.

When he spoke, his voice was quiet and conversational. 'A wise man would do nothing,' he said, 'for either of these, except perhaps to help them into their deaths. The boy is a danger to himself and all around him, a greater clanger to the King whom I still serve; the man is the leader of that army, one of those armies that are laying my own land waste. If he is restored, he will seek to destroy Outremer itself, and he is likely the only man who could do that. Without him the tribes will splinter, loot and scatter. Why should I save his life, even assuming that I can?'

'Because he saved mine, and all ours,' Elisande said quickly, desperately. 'We were attacked by ghuls at the Dead Waters, but Marron fetched Hasan' - she couldn't resist slipping in a small word for her own boy, in hopes of its having weight later — 'and he slew them, he and his men .
..'

'Well. That is a reason, certainly, if not a good one. It may not be enough. Honour is a tentative idea, in times of war.'

'He is my husband,' Julianne said, her voice as faint as her colour. 'Perhaps, if I speak to him, he will lead the Sharai out of your land for my sake.'

'Perhaps, though I doubt it. That is a better reason. His sense of honour may be greater than mine. Now if you had said, "He is my husband and I love him," that would have been sufficient without the other.'

Julianne's eyes widened. 'Do you want me to say that?'

'No need, little one,' though she overtopped him by a hand's breadth or more. 'It is written all through you; he has left you as marked as the 'ifrit has left him. I hope you will find a way to be glad of it, though I think that journey will be a hard one. Keep back, now. There is danger in this. Hope too, you may certainly hope if you wish to; without that, you wouldn't have brought him to me, and the 'ifrit's work would have been wasted. But that creature has left something of itself inside him, and it may be fit for mischief yet.'

There was something in that which Elisande simply didn't understand, and no more did Julianne by the look on her face; but they'd been fogged in confusion for a long time now, it was beginning to feel like the natural order of the world. Besides, the Princip had a serious aversion to answering questions.

Conversely, when he volunteered information, it was wise to pay attention. He had said this would be unsafe; she took Julianne's arm and hauled her bodily backwards.

Not too far: she wanted still to be able to see, and she wanted Julianne to see also. Success or failure, life or death, it seemed important that they both stand witness. If Hasan did not survive, it would be too easy for trouble-minded tongues to spread lies about the manner of his death under Patric hands.

Easier than she'd imagined, even: she blinked, when she saw what her grandfather did. Kneeling down beside Hasan's pallet, he touched the Sharai's grey face, and sighed. Elisande knew how cold and lifeless that skin felt; she shivered a little in sympathy for him, for his having to send even his strong spirit into that chilly body.

Except that he didn't, or not immediately. First, he drew a dagger from his belt and a gasp from his granddaughter as he laid it against Hasan's unresponsive wrist and cut swiftly.

The blood followed the blade, but sluggishly. It seemed unnaturally dark in the vivid sunlight, just as it had seemed dead black in the lamplight and shadows of the tent outside Revanchard; it was certainly slower to run than it ought to be, as though it were thickening inside Hasan's body, almost starting to clot.

Julianne made one soft, unstructured sound that was none the less perfectly articulate. Elisande scowled ferociously, reached up to snatch the hand that Julianne was now biting on to save her giving herself away further, held it tightly in both her own and hissed, 'Show some faith, girl -that's my grandfather over there! I've been telling you for months how he's not a man at all, he's a demigod
...'

'You have. Wiser than the djinn, was it, and tougher than the mountains at their roots? He still wants to let Hasan die.'

'No, he doesn't - that's the one thing he wants not to do. He was desperate for you to feed him an excuse. If you hadn't, he'd have done it anyway, just out of curiosity to meet the great Hasan; I know my grandfer. Though he might have locked him somewhere very safe afterwards, for all the rest of his life. He might do that yet, unless you plead for him.'
Whether you plead for him or not was
what she actually meant - she knew her grandfer — but this wasn't the rime for Julianne to learn that particular lesson.

'Well, whatever he wants or doesn't want, Hasan's going to die in any case. See how he bleeds? That's not human harm, that's sorcery
...'

'Of course it is, it came from an 'ifrit. That's why we brought him to the greatest sorcerer in the Kingdom for his healing. Grandfer may look like an old braggart soldier your cooks wouldn't welcome in your kitchen; that's because he is an old braggart soldier your cooks wouldn't welcome in your kitchen, but he could still chew up an 'ifrit and spit the shells out. He'd pick his teeth after, mind, he's really uncouth that way. Hush now, hush and watch.'

Now the Princip did what she'd expected him to do first thing. He spread his hands across Hasan's chest, every fingertip on a separate rib; he took a slow, careful breath and closed his eyes and sent his thoughts, his will, his spirit questing for the source of so much damage.

Elisande knew that journey well. She knew how hard it could be to seek out the subtleties of invasion, how easy it was to become lost. She felt her muscles tense and her thoughts try to follow her grandfather. Hopeless at this distance, not even touching, but still she was dizzy at the spiralling down and down, still she was sick at the cloying, engulfing surge of corrupted blood.

You are not there, you are not him
...

It was the phrase all her teachers had used as they showed her how to begin this healing, as she first tasted the exhilarating terror-slide into the beat of another's life; it was an anchor and a chain for an over-anxious, over-eager girl who might otherwise have plunged so deep she forgot herself entirely. Today it had a special piquancy, because she really wasn't there; she was neither the Princip seeking nor the helpless Hasan, and she would do well to remember it.

Julianne had taken a bears grip on her, crushing. Nothing to do but stand, then, support her friend and trust her grandfather. So she did, she did both and felt herself rewarded, or at least relieved beyond measure, to see at last a hint of smoke rise from the coagulating blood on Hasans wrist.

The Princip grunted, clamped his hands tight around the Sharai's chest, twisted his face into a dreadful grimace; the wisp of smoke thickened and tightened, drawing itself together even as it was forced out of its stolen body.

Except that it was black, it looked almost like the thread of a djinni s assumed body, hanging in the air above Hasan. Some fragment of an 'ifrit, with at least some vestige of life left in it: and yes, she believed her grandfather entirely when he said that this was still dangerous. It was still dangerously close to him, and he looked exhausted suddenly, slumping where he sat.

She couldn't bear, she couldn't abide his loss on such a day, when so much had been lost already. She had a knife that was blessed, and now she might have pushed Ju
lianne on to her father and hurtl
ed forward to defend the Princip -but what use was a blade, however strengthened, against a creature that was virtually bodiless, an emanation of evil, nothing but smoke?

No need to find out today, no opportunity. She was encumbered, Coren was not; he stepped forward and she saw him make the smallest of gestures, heard him murmur the quietest of words.

Sharper than any dagger, his slender and courtly fingers; more deadly than any imam's blessing, his gentle voice. She saw that corporeal shadow dissipate into shreds and nothing, she heard her own slow sigh of tension released, she felt that she could have copied her grandfather in his boneless collapse if Julianne hadn't been so wrapped around her, still taut as a strung wire. It took all her will to force her head to turn, and her voice was little mo
re than a whisper as she said, ‘I
didn't know you could do that.'

Coren smiled faintly. 'Against such as that, yes. It was only a fragment; malign, but struggling simply to hold itself together in a world not its own. It had no true life, no spirit. It might have sought to infect another body; Marron is always vulnerable, with that open wound on his arm. Even the Daughter could have lost its fight then, and who can say how much we might have regretted that?'

Marron, yes. There was still Marron, and the Princip was exhausted. She stole a glance towards Jemel and saw him sitting beside the young Patric, his eyes fixed on her grandfather, his gaze burning.
Give him time, let him recover, he
's
an old man
- but she couldn't say it aloud, to make a hypocrite of herself. The same urgency was scorching her. Marron might have no time, the Daughter could fail at any moment or his body be laid waste by the battle raging within it. She wanted to run to the Princip herself, as Jemel apparently would not; she wanted to disregard age and weariness and all, haul him over to the other pallet, demand another miracle.