Hegira (3 page)

It was Bar-Woten's turn to be astonished. Speechless, he stepped away from the bed and walked to the skylight. “Doppelgangers, I think,” he mused softly. Barthel cocked his head. “Do you remember the story?” the Bey asked him.

Barthel nodded, a little shiver going up his back.

Jacome sat in bed with his face frozen, staring stonily at the opposite wall. One finger tapped on the counterpane. He seemed willing to sit that way forever.

Bar-Woten ate a quick breakfast. Barthel joined him on the floor, eating ravenously. His master kept no eye on the penitent, so Barthel observed him closely.

“What does it mean to you?” Jacome finally asked.

“It's an old story,” Bar-Woten answered around a bite of melon. “A fable. The Princess and the Poor Man.”

“It's no story. It happened.”

“I don't doubt that,” Bar-Woten said, turning around on his hindquarters to face the bed. “What was your name then?”

“Kiril.”

“And you felt God was punishing you.”

“She was all I loved.”

“It's ridiculous to believe God would punish someone else for your own wrongdoings. That's ego, not Kristianity.”

“I know that.” Jacome-Kiril flushed like an embarrassed child. “Why did you pull me out of hiding?”

“I don't know,” Bar-Woten said.

“I can't go back.”

“You've never heard the story of the Princess and the Poor Man?”

“No. I never enjoyed children's stories.”

“I doubt it even exists in Mediweva, or someone would have pointed it out to you long ago. It's about a Poor Man who wins a contest for the heart of a great king's daughter. The day before their wedding she's transformed into a silver statue as hard as diamond. The king searches the land for the responsible sorcerer, but never finds him. However, he learns a peasant family had a son born the same day as his daughter. They resembled each other so much they could have been twins. The boy had died at the moment of his daughter's affliction. The Poor Man was stricken with grief.”

“I don't believe you.”

“You might find the end interesting. A seeress tells the Poor Man who won the contest that he must travel very far to save his bride-to-be — to the Land Where Night Is a River. He will find the Princess's male doppelganger, or double, when he crosses over that empty river to the land beyond. When he returns the double to the king's land, the Princess will be restored. He does as he is told, and she comes back to life.”

Kiril stared at Bar-Woten. The pain in his expression was too much for Barthel. He turned his eyes away.

“First you pull me out of my cave, and now you tell me there's some way to bring back my most precious love.”

“How could I have known about your grief?” Bar-Woten asked. “I'm no monster. Ask any Ibisian. It's a story known to all of us.”

“God damn you!” Kiril spat.

Bar-Woten faced the penitent with a stare as implacable as his own. He smiled. “Barthel,” he said without turning, “prepare our belongings and wrap up the rest of the food. We're leaving.” Then, his smile gone, he said, “Perhaps it's an offer, a chance to regain what you've lost.”

“How? By some fantasy?”

“That, or let your body and mind rot in a life you're not suited for. Come with us.”

“You want me to travel with your army?”

“There is no army,” the Ibisian said coldly. “Soon there will be no Sulay. The dirt will absorb us like the end of a river. I owe no allegiance to a dead dream. I've been looking for a reason to go. I now have a reason.”

Barthel was genuinely frightened. The Bey talked nonsense, believing a mad Kristian and thinking a fairy-tale coincidence could point like a beacon! Momad save them all.

“We're both insane,” Kiril said softly. “I pity you more than myself.”

“Pity no one. There's no room for it. I have other reasons to make a journey. Some mysteries to solve.”

“What can possibly mystify a madman?”

“The world. The origin of the flesh. But mostly the world, our world. Why we are Second-born and take our truths from Obelisks.” He sighed and saw that Barthel had finished packing the food and their meager burden of clothes. “Are you well enough to travel?”

“I can walk. You compel me to follow?”

“As one madman to another. I pulled you out of one cave, now I'm obligated to watch over you.”

“It wasn't much of a cave,” Kiril admitted. “I haven't met your companion.”

“This is Barthel, from Khem.” Barthel bowed and almost dropped the sack from his shoulder. “But he won't be my servant for long. I won't force anyone to follow me.”

“Where does the Bey think he will go?” Barthel asked.

“To the Land Where Night Is a River,” he answered. “Or at the very least, to my death.”

“I don't think we're welcome here, Bey,” Barthel said. The horse market was crowding with scowling onlookers.

Kiril swept his tattered robes over his shoulder and tightened the rope that held them together. “Something's in the wind.”

“We'll stay close together,” Bar-Woten said. “I think this trader wants our money more than our necks. I'll bargain. You two keep close watch.” He returned to haggling with the rheumy-eyed horse dealer. The man puffed his cheeks out at Bar-Woten's offer and held up his hands. “Too cheap,” he said. “These mounts are noble beasts worth twice that at least. Let's say four fifty apiece.”

“Robbery,” Bar-Woten said calmly. “Two fifty is all we have for horses today. We will buy elsewhere.”

“Three seventy-five,” the dealer said, not batting an eye.

“Too much.” Bar-Woten turned and motioned for his companions to follow. The dealer ran after them, looking concerned, but a small, portly man waddled from a nearby stall and whispered in his ear. The dealer stopped and raised his bushy gray eyebrows.

“Not too high a price for a hunted man,” he said loudly.

Bar-Woten twisted around and threw a needle stare at the trader. The man squirmed like a pinned insect, then started to back off. The crowd moved in a step at a time, grumbling and milling about.

“Knife,” Bar-Woten said. Barthel quickly passed a blade

under cover of their cloaks. He pressed another into Kiril's hand. “If we don't have a chance, save your skin. But go on your own,” the Ibisian said. “It's your only chance, penitent.”

“Is that too high a price for an Ibisian?” the trader asked contemptuously. “For a butcher?”

“For any sensible man,” Bar-Woten answered, approaching him with a long stride. “Perhaps you'll lower your price with some persuasion?” The trader backed away farther. He looked at the market crowd with darting eyes and held out his hands to them — attack, now! But they did nothing, still advancing slowly.

“Hup!” Bar-Woten shouted. Barthel rushed forward and pushed the trader aside. Kiril followed at his heels. The crowd leaped as one and Bar-Woten swung his curved knife wickedly this way and that, making them flex like a sheet in the wind. Then he ran backward with comic agility, turned at the last moment, and swung onto a horse Barthel had secured for him. Kiril, unaccustomed to his own mount, had trouble controlling the animal's bucking and rearing, but was keeping the mob back. Barthel reached for the Mediwevan's reins and pulled him after as Bar-Woten cut a path through the market. The crowd screamed and grabbed at ankles, stirrups, whatever they could reach. For their efforts they were kicked and cuffed and thrust aside by the running horses. The three broke from the marketplace and rode up an alley, stopping briefly to reconnoiter.

“Which way?” Kiril asked, out of breath and red-faced with exertion.

“The east gate to the left. Farmlands and a road to the forests. The best way,” Bar-Woten said. He urged his horse forward and the others followed. Behind them the market crowd surged up the alley.

There were no troops between them and the gate. In the misty morning light, bright and uniformly gray, they rode up the cobbled streets with forced equanimity. The horses pitched their heads and frothed at the bits, unaccustomed to their new riders and uncertain of the adventure.

Barthel's animal laid its ears back and tried to bite him several times. On the last attempt, just before they passed under the great stone arch, Barthel leaned forward and took an ear between his teeth. The animal bucked and kicked out, narrowly missing an old woman wobbling by in her black robes. But Barthel held on, and the horse decided to be calm.

“Farewell to Madreghb,” Bar-Woten said as they rode under the gate. Kiril looked uncomfortable. Barthel surveyed the green country beyond with dark-eyed nonchalance.

“Does the Bey know where he wants to go?” he asked.

“North. We'll cross the border into Mundus Lucifa as soon as we can. Sulay's met his end, and ours will be close behind if we don't move quickly.”

“Your army generated a lot of good will,” Kiril said.

“Keep on your horse and watch your mouth when you're an outlaw. Honor among thieves is a virtue seldom observed — be glad I'm not often a thief and no longer an Ibisian.”

“And I no longer have God on my side.”

“Your journey is a noble one, penitent. You're off to save your love. We ride hard for an hour or so — hang on!”

The land outside the scattered and crumbling walls of Madreghb was fresh and fertile with spring rains. Almond trees blossomed yellow in groves on either side, and olive orchards hunkered gray-green in aging shadow. The road was a reddish-brown gash infrequently paved with flagstones and Uttered with ruts and puddles. Their horses splashed through at a dead run. The flanks of both mounts and riders were soon sticky with mud. Kiril bounced and growled at growing blisters. “Ride loosely, ride with the horse,” Bar-Woten shouted at him, but he continued to wrap his feet under the horse's belly and soon had welts on his calves, thighs, and buttocks.

He sighed aloud when they stopped at a tumbledown farmhouse to examine a well. “My God, adventure!” Kiril rasped. “I might ask to die after another hour of that.” His vision swam and he wanted to vomit.

“You'll get used to it,” Barthel told him.

“You were whipping yourself only three days ago,” Bar-Woten reminded him. “Which punishment do you prefer?”

The well was full, but the water was brackish. Still, it was drinkable, and they watered their horses, watching carefully that they didn't bloat themselves. Bar-Woten inspected his horse. It was a dapple roan, very different from any he'd ridden in his army. He made sure the shoeing was holding up. The smithy work was rugged and durable, and no stones had worked into the hooves. He did the same for the other mounts and pronounced them fit. “Ready?” he asked.

This time they rode at an even pace. The smell of damp leather and warm horse rose to cheer Bar-Woten and made Barthel feel at home, but Kiril wrinkled his nose. By midafternoon, the Mediwevan was weary but only a little nauseated. His back was still slightly infected. They found a stand of oaks and settled in for a prolonged rest.

Across the valley, no more than three or four kilometers away, a village rested in the late afternoon twilight. The white walls and red brick roads stood out in the dimming golden light like the bones and meat of a freshly-slaughtered steer. Bar-Woten watched it with narrowed eyes. Barthel napped, and Kiril lay on his stomach in the grass and loam, breathing fitfully.

He struggled awake an hour later and stretched painfully, pulling at the lash stripes across his shoulders. “I wish I hadn't been so thorough,” he said. Bar-Woten smoked beside the small fire. Darkness was complete. The Ibisian's face glowed in the firelight, and the reflection of the pipe coals was a bead of red on his nose. “I wish I knew what I was doing here,” Kiril said, “with a savage like yourself and a pagan.”

“You gave up one life,” Bar-Woten mused. “Not so difficult to give up another, especially one with no rewards.”

“I'm a coward, I think,” Kiril said. “I haven't had the conviction to stay with any sort of life.”

Bar-Woten gave a noncommittal nod and put out his pipe, pointing the stem at the village after grinding the ashes into the ground. “We'll pick up supplies there. We have a long trip ahead — several hundred kilometers, maybe, before we leave Mediweva.”

“Less than that,” Kiril said. “What happened in Madreghb? You have any idea?”

“Sulay probably let his guard down. He was getting too old to be vigilant all the time. No doubt he was the last to die, though I think I see him . . . how he died. Not bravely. The way we led our lives, few of us will die bravely now.”

“You . . . think of yourself as a savage?”

“Of course,” Bar-Woten said. “Twenty years of March and battle. How could I be anything but a savage? I haven't married a fine woman or fathered good children, and my religion departed years ago at my own hand. I've killed men brutally. And you're an ass to travel with me.” He grinned.

“Probably,” Kiril admitted.

Barthel woke quickly and doused the embers with urine. They gathered the horses at their tethers near a small, grassy glade and rode into the village under cover of darkness.

“Did you enjoy being a scrittori?” Bar-Woten asked. Kiril nodded and said it had been the finest time of his life.

“Did you ever wish to verify what you read?”

“No. What's written on the Obelisk is taken for truth. Why else would God have gone to so much trouble?”

“Sh,” Barthel hushed. A group of men leading donkeys passed them on the road, briefly flashing a lantern. No words passed between.

Most of the village was shuttered and quiet for the night. A few shops were open still, but the hungry and sleepy owners were grumpy at any customers. They bought food and two small pistols.

Bar-Woten decided it wasn't wise to spend the night in the village. He could almost smell the pursuers.

“When people want you dead, you always assume the worst,” he said. Kiril drew his horse closer to the center of the road as they left the town. Barthel stopped, and his mount pawed the ground impatiently. Bar-Woten turned to the Khemite and also reined in his horse. In the dark, with only a few dim fire doves to light the landscape, he could barely see the road, and he couldn't tell what Barthel was thinking.