The Diviner (49 page)

Qamar couldn't help it. Laughter rendered him breathless for a few moments, while Solanna glared and the other students wondered what was so funny. At last he managed, “I would dearly love to hear you call Ra'abi that to her face!”

“As I was about to say,” she went on, tight-lipped, “all real power rested with the husband of the Empress because the Empress, of course, was incapable of governing. She was, in
fact
, entirely mad.”

Qamar felt the smile freeze on his face.

“They will tell you, in Tza'ab Rih, that she withdrew from public life to devote herself to prayer. This is not true. She was of the Shagara tribe, like all of you, and her shame at the uses to which her people's knowledge had been put by her power-hungry husband was at last too much for her. She agreed with your ancestors, in
fact
, that Shagara gifts ought not to be used for evil purposes but for healing and protection and all the other things you're learning how to do. And it serves as a warning, I think, to adhere strictly to these ways and not allow yourselves to be corrupted. Remember always how the Empress, unable to bear the wickedness her husband accomplished with the help of the Shagara, in the end lost her sanity.”

Qamar discovered he was on his feet, and trembling. “You will apologize.”

“I will not. It's true.” She met his gaze calmly. “I saw it.”

Everyone in the fortress knew what she claimed to be. That she had located Qamar and brought him back proved it. Qamar himself, however, kept recalling their first encounter, when she'd been surprised that he was young and handsome, not old and scarred. He didn't care for her visions, frankly. It wasn't so much that he doubted that she had indeed seen his grandmother somehow; it was that she was so wrong about why it had happened.

But it wasn't something he could tell the truth about. He knew that, even as he drew breath to do so. All around him, staring with astonishment, sat a broad sampling of the population of the fortress, here to learn Solanna's language. Children, young women and men, older people wanting to keep their minds alert—and mothers. If he corrected Solanna's interpretation of his grandmother's . . . difficulty . . . he would have to admit that it was not the shame of seeing her heritage misused but the misery of having birthed Haddiyat sons. There had to be at least one woman in this classroom who would know exactly what that meant, who had felt the unique anguish of knowing a son would die early and in pain. And even if there were no such mothers here tonight, everyone knew everyone else in the fortress, and he would not be thanked for bringing up a subject no one ever discussed. The women had to feel it; of course they felt it, before schooling themselves to feel only pride in having given birth to so valuable a son who would maintain Shagara traditions for one generation more.

Solanna was watching him through narrowed eyes. “You had a comment to make, Qamar?”

“Yes,” he said softly. “Empress Mirzah was an unhappy woman, but not for the reason you give. She . . . she very much disliked living in palaces. She missed the desert tents.” It was the truth, just not all of it.

“How would
you
know how she lived or how she felt about it?”

He looked her straight in the eye, and in the language of Tza'ab Rih—and of the Shagara—said, “She was my grandmother. You will excuse me, I trust. Sururi annam,” he added to the class in general and walked out.

By the time he reached his own quarters—a few twisting alleys off the big eastern courtyard, which the locals called a zoqallo—he was shaking again with anger. Acuyib curse the girl, what business did she have telling her distorted version of history? And how dare she compel him to the unspeakable vulgarity of reminding her who he was and why he knew much better than she what went on in the palaces of Tza'ab Rih? The class had watched with fascination or amusement or boredom as their varying natures prompted, but he'd sensed a flinch run through every one of them at the reminder that this charming young man who lived in their fortress and studied their ways and was a gifted Shagara male was, in fact, a sheyqir of Tza'ab Rih.

Climbing the stone stairs three at a time to his second-floor room, he slammed the door shut behind him and fell across his bed without bothering to light the candle. What was he doing here, anyway? He could be at home, lolling on silk pillows, nibbling wine-soaked pears, and his most worrisome thought would be deciding which woman to invite to his bed that night. He did not belong here. This country was not his.

He lit the bedside candle, then the three-armed branch on the desk by the window. The light would glow down into the alley. He picked up a sheaf of notes on the uses of flowering plants found above a certain altitude in the mountains, read five words, and threw it aside.

She wasn't coming, not to apologize or to continue the argument or even to rebuke him for being rude.

He opened the folder of notes from Zario Shagara's class and began sorting through to find the first page so he could begin copying his one- or two-word prompts into sentences that actually made sense. For a moment he thought he'd lost the sheets and cursed aloud.

She wasn't coming.

Not that he had any reason to expect her. Still, their discussions often continued as they walked through the fortress passageways, until he took the turning that led to the eastern zoqallo. He still didn't know exactly where she lived. And how she could possibly go home tonight and sleep after insulting him so appallingly, he really didn't know—

Qamar's eye and his whole mind were suddenly fixed on the single word written in very large letters on his page of notes from this morning.

WILL
.

Zario had said something different when it came time for his usual cautions about blood being insufficient—and indeed completely inadequate—if the work had not been properly prepared.

“It is not the paper, nor the talishann written on it, nor the ink in which they are written, that secure the achievement of your goals. It is not even the addition of your own blood. None of these things can do what your own mind can do. You must
will
your work into being. You must believe that all these things so meticulously chosen shall combine at your bidding to do your will.
You
are the most powerful ingredient of any magic. Not just your blood, not just your knowledge, but your
will
.”

Qamar heard the words echo in his head. This was not something a Shagara of Tza'ab Rih would have said. They were the conduits of magic. They crafted the hazziri or concocted the medicines and took justifiable pride in their work. But they were not
part
of the magic. They contributed nothing of themselves except their blood. They would not agree that one man's force of will could play even the smallest part in his creations.

Yet Zario Shagara, only two generations removed from the desert, had spoken of that very thing. Of
willing
one's work into being.

Qamar happened to agree. And for the first time, he began to think that he might truly belong here. So intent was he on this thought, and others that followed after it, that he did not hear the soft, tentative tapping at his door.

Nor the less gentle knocking that followed.

He did hear a woman's voice call out his name. He turned in his chair, wondering bemusedly why she was coming to visit him at this hour.

“Qamar—I'm sorry, all right?”

Frowning, he tried to think what she might be apologizing for.

“I shouldn't have said that about—about the Empress.”

He remembered now. He stood, about to walk the ten paces to the door—it was a much larger room than the one he'd lived in before—when she spoke again.

“It's just—I forget sometimes that you weren't born here. That you're one of them.”

He unlatched and hauled open the door. “Say that again.”

“What?”

“What you just said. Repeat it.”

“I'm sorry for what I—”

“No, not that, who cares about that? Say what you said just now.”

“That you're one of them?”

“Exactly. I wasn't born here. I don't belong here. I'm one of them.” He grinned at her befuddlement. “Don't you see? So were the Shagara when they first got here. Yet you wouldn't call them foreigners
now
, would you? Different from the rest of the populace, to be sure, but not outsiders, not anymore. You originally came here to get them to work with you against the Tza'ab. That's not something you do with people you don't trust.”

“Thanks to your grandfather's example!” she retorted.

“Exactly!” he said again. Then he paused, and frowned down at her. “You admit that it happened the way I said it happened?”

“I said the invasion was unprovoked and dishonorable. I said nothing about the reasons why it happened.”

Qamar laughed again. He could see things, too: long, contentious talks with this girl, arguing out the finest details and most obscure implications.

“I find nothing amusing about any of this.”

“Of course you don't. I haven't explained it yet.” Then he had to admit, “I'm not sure I understand much of it myself—yet.”

Solanna regarded him as if suspecting that despite all the healing Zario had done and the precautionary talishann around his room, he'd deliberately plunged head-first into a wine vat and drunk his way out, with predictable effects on his reason.

Grinning at her, he went on, “Would it help if I told you that you were right? What you said about the Tza'ab not belonging here.”

“You're admitting to
that?
”

“Of course. You were right. But what came next—you were wrong, and the Shagara here are the proof. They were strangers here once. Generations ago. In the time since, they've married and had children with local women and men, haven't they? Of course they have—names like ‘Zario' and ‘Evetta' confirm it.”

“Just because their blood is mixed with—”

“You're not
seeing
it.”

She stiffened with insult, aware that he had used that word deliberately. When he laughed again, she turned for the door.

“No, wait—you haven't heard—”

“I have heard more than enough. And I have
seen
more than enough as well!”

“Have you? More than me, wallowing in wine?”

And then something else occurred to him. She had seen him
old
. She had seen him with—what, lines on his face? White hair? She had said scars, but couldn't they just have been wrinkles? It didn't matter. She had seen him
old
.

It meant he would succeed. It had to mean that. It must meant he would grow old the way other men grew old, and if he didn't actually conquer death, then at least he and his kind would no longer have to die too young.

“Wallowing with your whores, you mean,” she snapped. “You were disgusting, and I don't know why I bothered to bring you back here. Filthy from your hair to your toenails, and the ugliest thing I've ever seen.”

With difficulty he dragged his attention away from his glorious new realization. What he saw in her eyes was just as glorious. He knew that the damage of that autumn and winter was long gone. Bloodshot eyes, puffy face, thickened body—ayia, he
had
been ugly. But he wasn't ugly now, and he knew it.

“Why
did
you bring me back here?” he asked softly. “And why do you stay?”

Her back was to him, and he spent the moments of her silence admiring the coil of pale hair at her nape and the way curling tendrils escaped down her neck.

“What else have you seen, Solanna?”

“Myself,” she whispered, not facing him. “Here. As a young woman, as I am now, and—and as a very old woman. I know what it means. I will spend most if not all my life here.” Turning, she gave an unconvincing shrug of indifference. “So it would be absurd to leave, wouldn't it, for I will only return again. Why put myself through the bother of the long journey to my home, when I already know—”

“It's farther to the seacoast, where I was, than it is to Cazdeyya,” he pointed out. He was enjoying this far too much, he knew, but he owed her a few moments of discomfort. Time to bring in another contender for the dominant emotion in her eyes, he told himself. “Did you see anyone with you, when you were old? Did you see
me
, Solanna?”

The victor turned out to be fury. He hadn't expected that. She took the four steps separating them, slapped him full in the face, and was gone before he could do anything more than gasp.

That slap was most inconvenient to the rest of his evening. The impatient and at times fretful exploration of new and puzzling ideas was interrupted by a stinging pain every time he grinned or laughed when another suspicion became a certainty. He managed to work out quite a bit of it all the same, even while being reminded of another puzzle he had some very good ideas about how to solve. And each time he thought this, he grinned again, and laid a hand to his cheek.