Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 (41 page)

Certainly Coren made no move to trouble it; neither did it appear to trouble him. It wavered in the room's tugs and shifts of air, that she thought would be too light to disturb a falling feather. When her grandfather shifted his position, she took her eyes from it for a moment; when she looked again, she couldn't find it.
Like the Daughter,
she thought, and scanned more closely. But this had been only a haze to begin with, and so far as she could see it was nothing now. It had in truth been nothing all along, she thought grimly, trying to be angry: a charade, a lie, a distraction
..
.

'Grandfer, that can't be all.'
At least tell me straight if you're going to let him die, I don't want your kindness.
And Jemel was Sharai, desert-made, as soft as camel-hide and just as tough. He'd seen one lover go down into death, and had sworn an oath of vengeance that she thought still lingered behind his silences; she feared that he might swear another, if he ever felt he'd been deceived.

'Truly, child, there's nothing in him now that is not his. He was infected by a breat
h, not a blow as Hasan was. The
Daughter had kept it weak and denied it any nesting in his body; now it is driven out and gone. The question is whether I can deny the Daughter its desire to return - and how it will react, if I do so. Keep you back, girl, the danger is not over yet.'

No, that she knew. She tried to look in two directions at once, at her grandfather where he held Marron's arm across his lap and at the Daughter where it was nothing but a hot and heavy cast to the air, as though a forge were venting into that corner of the chamber. The Princip's thumbs were working all along the brutal ridges of Marron's scar, and she desperately wanted to see what he did there; but there was suddenly a turbulence to that dim and smoky redness in the corner opposite, and she thought that someone ought surely to watch that and be ready to cry a warning.

There would be little even her grandfather could do about that scarring on Marron's forearm. He'd left Hasan's claw-scars quite untouched. Torn flesh and broken bones could be encouraged to mend themselves, sickness attacked, even a tumour could be shrivelled in time; but what was already healed solid and knitted-in could no more be shifted than a face could be reshaped. More likely he was trying to feel out what bonds there were connecting Marron and the Daughter, seeing if he could sense some intangible affinity between the wound and the — creature? No, it wasn't quite a creature, though the more she thought about it, the more resemblance she could see between it and what had come out of Hasans blood, that fragment that had seemed to cling to the memory of being an 'ifrit
...

Elisande thought that the affinity was with Marron's blood; she was sure that her grandfather would feel nothing, because there was nothing there that human fingers were capable of feeling. Certainly the Daughter was sensing something, though. More than a stir, there was a violent agitation now throughout the thin cloud of its apparent body. Not enough to draw it back into a full understanding of itself, nor to make it a threat even in its ignorance; it seemed more deranged than dangerous, like an injured insect battering senselessly at door and shutter, so pulled by instinct that it was barely aware that it was hurt or trapped.

Trapped it was for sure, unable to bypass whatever hidden barrier the Princip had created to hold it. It seemed to seethe against a wall of wind, although there was none. Elisande had never been truly frightened of the thing before - more through idiocy than courage: she'd even meant to carry it from the Roq to Surayon, and had given barely a thought to bringing it unclaimed, unstolen through all those miles, all those men between there and here - but she was frightened now. Since it had been - what, hatched? - it had always been Marrons, almost a part of Marron, his will woven in blood and smoke; and she had always somehow trusted
Marron
, even where he was stupid, even where he was blind.

Her grandfather's fingers were moving inward now, into the rawness of the open wound, the flesh that would never skin or scar.

Grandfer, be careful. . .

She knew just what he was doing: how his mind was reaching into the beat of Marron's blood, how it followed that tide and coursed through his body till it found the damage in his arm, how it interfered. She had done the same herself or tried to, but only when the Daughter was in him, and so she had failed again and again. She'd never dared to risk this. She was frightened for all of them, terrified for Marron; she could almost hate her grandfather for taking such a chance, if she hadn't understood him so well.

His fingers moved inside Marron's gaping wound, to mirror how his awareness moved, so much deeper within. Slowly, carefully, thoroughly he would be mending what was ripped, sealing what lay open to the world; slowly, carefully, thoroughly he would be closing off the Daughter's gateway to its human host.

Elisande felt the sun's heat against the back of her neck, and hugged herself hard against a terrible chill.

Sometimes she remembered to breathe, or her body did: great wracking gasps that shook her like sobs, as though she were weeping after all when she was so determined not to do that.

Occasionally she remembered her friends and where they were, around her; she thought she might look about to find them, but she never did. There was a separation between thought and action, between mind and muscle. She was as harshly cut off as the Daughter, lacked the power to move at all.

It was the Princip who released her at last, by moving himself: by sighing, stretching, rising from his place at Marron's side. Even then, though, it was a frustrated freedom that he granted her. She'd barely taken the smallest pace forward before he was glancing at her, glaring at her, gesturing her back beyond the doorway. 'Grandfer
...'

'No, Elisande. There is nothing that you can do in here but harm. The boy is well enough, for now; whether he stays so is not in your hands to determine. Neither yours, Jemel,' sharing his glare around. 'Coren, again I may need you, but wait my call.'

"When the Kings Shadow bowed in acceptance of the command, she could do nothing more than fidget and fret, chew on a fingernail, watch as she had been watching. Her eyes followed the Princip across the chamber, towards where the Daughter billowed against its constraints. Had she thought that there was danger before? She had deceived herself, too scared to see ahead. Now it was truly unfettered, it had no home, no master, and her grandfather was setting himself against it. He couldn't tame it, no man could. It was a wild thing, a spirit, beyond mortal managing. She had no idea what it would do when he released it from its current cage. Perhaps it would flee to Marrons body, find that shelter closed against it and so destroy him in its fury. Or perhaps destroy her grandfather; perhaps it would destroy them all
...

Her breath came in whispers now, and she resented even so much noise. It was louder than the soft grating of the Princip's boots on the grit on the flagstone floor, and that was too loud already. For his sake she wanted utter silence in the world, she wanted the birds on the hillside to stop singing, the wind not to blow.

It
had been an anxious time recentl
y; she could find no nails left to chew. Instead she reached her hand out and snatched at Julianne's -
Hasans asleep, Sherett is coming, you can share my worries
for the next long minute or two, and if you resist me it'll be your nails that I'm chewing, girl-
just as the Princip reached his own hands out towards the Daughter.

In the same moment, his mind must have unpicked the bonds that had held it pinned and confused. It drew together sharply, no longer a diffuse and harmless-seeming cloud but suddenly that familiar insect-shape, sharp and deadly.

She thought it would attack him, mindless and desperate; she felt mindless and desperate herself, knowing that even he could have no defence against it. Instead, it only hung in the ai
r, potent but undriven, apparentl
y adrift.

Her grandfather held his hands high, on either side of the thing, perilously close to touching where the wisps of its blurred edges frayed into the air. At the same time, he star-ded her by starting to sing.

Even before her ears had caught the words, the cadence and rhythm of his voice had sent her mind hurtling back to childhood, to those nights when she was too hot or too excited to sleep. Sometimes her mother had come to her, and that was always good; sometimes her father, and in those days that was better. Sometimes, though, occasionally it had been her grandfather who came, and that was best of all. He'd talk to her a little, cuddle and kiss her out of tearfulness, then he'd lie her down on her tummy and his strong peasant hands would caress her head
and back, rough skin but a gentl
e and tender touch, while his voice sang this same song in a whisper that seemed to gather up her soul and carry it swiftly away into restful dreaming.

At the time, she didn't even understand the words. It wasn't until she'd made the trip to Rhabat and learned much from the women there that she'd finally recognised it as a form of the Sharai
sodar.
Her mother sang her lullabies to help her into sleeping; Rudel used the same strange song as her grandfer with the same soothing touch, and her child's mind had thought it just another kind of lullaby.

Which it was, she supposed, in a way. That it was also tribal magic had been a revelation; that she could find no tribe familiar with that particular song had been a curiosity, a question she'd have liked to put to her grandfather if she'd had any hope of winning an answer from him. By then, she'd been long past questioning her father.

To hear it used now, and to such a purpose, was bewildering. The
sodar
was a way to quiet fretful minds and bodies, to sway them into sleep; surely he didn't think that he could lull the Daughter as he'd lulled a restless girl?

He could, though, and he did. While she watched, aghast, while she listened and still felt the seductive tug of it despite all her apprehension and all the years since she'd last succumbed to its insistent magic, her grandfather sang his song.

To her continuing astonishment, the Daughter felt it too, or appeared to. It contracted slowly, its colour deepening and the lines of its body becoming clearer, more solid-seeming. The Princip's hands closed in around it as it curled into itself, much like an insect withdrawing into its shell; it looked almost as though he were guiding it, even pressing against it as its red skin turned hard and textured
...

Touch was always an important, even the crucial element in the
sodar.
Even so, she couldn't hold back a gasp when she saw that he was touching the Daughter for true, holding it firmly in both hands as his song died in his throat. The lightest touch was lethal, when it was blood-bound and alive. Never mind that she'd seen it handled before in this passive state, never mind that Julianne had carried it all through the Roq, never mind the logic that said her grandfather must be safe or else he would be dead already, she gasped regardless, and then she did the other thing that she'd been aching to do against all wisdom and instruction. If he wouldn't be wise, then neither need she.

She plunged forwa
rd through the doorway; she hurtl
ed across the chamber to her grandfather's side and tried to wrest the thing — the globe, the sphere, the red ochre ball, the Daughter - from his hands.

He held on to it, as though he'd been expecting just such an assault.

'Elisande, stop it. You're being foolish.'

It was the unexpected mildness of the rebuke that stalled her, that quelled the ferocity of her tongue, that left her with nothing to do but stutter feebly, 'If, if you'd been bleeding, anywhere at all; or if you'd touched it at all before it was ready, before you'd made it safe—'

'—Then I'd have died, or else it would have conjoined with me instead of Marron. Yes, I know. But neither of those things happened, and therefore I have made it safe, and therefore I can hold it perfectly well without your help.'

She let go then, realising only as she did so that her fingers had been quietly exploring the ridges and runnels, the glossy segments and the abrasive hollows of the Daughter's enclosing shell. She'd only seen before, she'd never touched. She remembered how it had been before, how Marron had woken it all unknowing; from that memory she found the resilience to scowl at her grandfather and say, 'You still shouldn't hold it like that, you don't know what might happen. You could tread on a nail, bite your tongue, stumble and fall and graze your knee
...
It isn't safe, it's never safe when a man is near it; and you especially, you shouldn't take such risks, your people need you
...'

Especially now,
she meant; and
‘
need you, especially now,
she meant that too.

'It
’
s precisely because I'm fit to take such risks that my people need me as much as they do.'

Its being true, that was hard to argue with. Instead she turned the discussion, chanced one straight question.

'Did you, did you know that the
sodar
w
ould
make it sleep?'

'No, I didn't know. I knew that it had been left this way in the Roq, therefore I knew that the thing could be done; I guessed a while ago that the
sodar—
that particular
sodar —
might be an influence on it. The words are very old and hard to understand, but they clearly amount to more than a convenient way to hush a noisy child. I thought it worth the experiment.'