The Family Tree (8 page)

We stood in a sunlit and paved courtyard with passages leading outward, toward the smell of blossoms, toward the smell of cooking, toward the smell of stables and the challenging mutter of umminhi. Soaz went in the umminhic direction, and I trotted along behind, through the unlocked gate and into a cobbled yard that smelled like a stable, like grandfather’s farm when I’d been there as a child, outside the city, a day’s ride to the east. One thing about umminhi, they stank. If they couldn’t run like the wind, nobody would keep umminhi, for no one would put up with the stench.

The prince was already mounted amid a troop of silent attendants and guards. A dozen smaller pack animals stood in a vacant-eyed chain, managed by two kapric handlers. Another handler held the reins of two tall riding umminhi, stallion and gelding, saddled, but without riders. These were racing creatures, taller than any I had ever seen, much less ridden upon, their glossy hides set off by their silver collars and green breeder’s tags. The breeding of umminhi, so my father had told me, was a monopoly, and no animal could be bought or sold without the proper tags.

Without a word, Soaz tossed me high into the gelding’s saddle, gave my pack to one of the handlers, and went up the slanting ladder to his own saddle, quick and agile despite his bulk. On the farm, I had ridden astride, holding on to the umminha’s mane, but she had been a mare, smaller and better natured. Here I settled myself into the cushions of the comfortable scuinic style box-saddle and leaned against the padded arms and back. I lowered the saddle bar into place, took the blinker reins into my hands and placed them as the others had them, tightly through the center notch of the bar. In this position, the spring-mounted blinkers were open, allowing the umminha to see in any direction.

I hoped my mount was well disposed toward its rider. Sometimes umminhi were not at all well disposed. Stal
lions were said to attack riders, female riders particularly. Breeding mares were too heavy to make good riding animals, though some persons used older females for pack animals. Even the old ones could carry quite large burdens. Sometimes, however, a steed took an outright dislike to one person or one kind of person, and then there was war between them. So I had been told.

This umminha seemed inclined to ignore me, as did the assembled people. No one looked at me. No one said anything to me. The prince let his eyes slide across me with only a hint of a nod, then gave a signal to one of the older persons, evidently the way-master, who leaned forward and spoke to his umminha. The steed thought it over for a moment—if umminhi can be said to think—blinking its eyes and working its jaws methodically before ambling toward the long barrel-vaulted masonry tunnel that led to the gate. Its shod feet thudded on the hollow planking, like an ominous drum that fell silent when they emerged from the gate. None of the palace windows looked outward, so this emergence marked the first time in almost six years that I had seen the city. From this roadway, high on the side of palace hill, I could look down on a thousand red-tiled rooftops, smell the hazy smoke of several thousand cook fires, see gardens green with trees, the whole protected by high walls with pheledic guards walking upon them five abreast, calling out the hours. This was lovely Tavor, gem of the orchard lands.

It was a Tavor seen as a blur, for at a signal from the way-master the umminhi ran, faster than I had known any creature could run, the walls spinning by, the streets like whirling shadows, the people mere smears of color, the soft thuds of umminhi feet making one continuous sound, like rushing water, and themselves arrowing toward the city walls, aimed at the dark gullet of the city gate, where they plunged into shadow and were spat out again, onto the sunlit road and away.

There, after a moment, everything slowed down. I looked up to see the prince riding beside me and re
garding me with an amused expression. “You can unclench your jaw,” he said.

I tried, finding it somewhat difficult. “They went so fast!”

“A bit of diversion,” he remarked. “So no one could see who exactly we were, or where exactly we’d come from, or where exactly we were going. Though everyone knew we came from the court—only the nobles can afford to buy or maintain umminhi like this—they don’t know who exactly we may be. The banner isn’t the royal banner. Father hopes most of them will think it’s some minor official, escorted by troops.”

“You don’t want anyone to know you’re gone?”

“Some think it wisest.”

“Sultan Tummyfat?”

He looked loftily amused. “We don’t call him that out here. That’s a palace name. A pet name. Like your own, or mine. Out here I am not Keen Nose. I’m the Prince Sahir. And you are my companion, Nassif.”

“Nassif?” I asked, wonderingly.

“Don’t be stupid, girl. Your father and mother did not call you Opalears.”

It was true. They had not. “They called me Nassifeh. How did you know?”

“It was in the records.”

“It was Bluethumb who first called me Opalears.”

“A palace habit. A leisurely, female-ish habit. Inside the palace, we all have soft, affectionate names, regardless of our tribe, even people like your father who live outside but work within. It lends a kind of informality that erases our separate tribes and castes, making relationships seem less rigorous and more familial. But we do not permit it out here, where convention reigns.”

“What is your father called, out here?”

“The sultan. That is quite enough. There are those who say ‘His Effulgence’ or ‘His Mightiness,’ but such is unnecessary. When you speak to me, you say, my prince. When you speak of me, you say, the Prince Sahir. Unless you are talking to strangers, in which case
you will call me simply Sahir, who is a not very important someone with the fruit-marketing bureau.

“When I speak to you, I say Nassif, remembering to leave off the little girl
eh
at the end. When I speak of you, I say, my faithful Nassif.”

“And will I be faithful?” I asked, wonderingly.

“One hopes,” he sneered. “One always hopes.” He rode from my side to the head of the column and stayed there, ignoring me. Soaz dropped into the place he had vacated.

“Are we going outside Tavor?” I asked him.

“Of course.” He looked surprised at the question. “We would have to, wouldn’t we?”

“I didn’t know.”

“Then you don’t know much about Tavor.”

“Almost nothing,” I admitted. “My father never told me very much about the world. We always talked of other things.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, we talked about animals. I love animals. I used to love the farm, because there were so many. And we talked about people, too. People he had met in his work. But we never really talked about the world. I never have figured out all the different tribes and the places that they came from.”

“I will remedy the lack,” he said, proceeding to do so at some length.

“Long ago, before the great Farsaki War of Conquest (of which it is now generally conceded there will be no end until the world is conquered), and before the prophets of Korè were so widespread among us, guiding us to righteousness, the tribes lived mostly in isolation, one from the other. Some were forest people, dwelling in the tree lands north and west of Sworp, like the armakfatidi and the scuini and my own people, the pheledas. Some lived in the jungles south of Isfoin, like the sitidian people and your own ancestors. Some lived on the prairies, like the kannic and kapriel people, and some near the water, like the kasturi, the onchiki and the Onchik-Dau.
Among these people, some were settled town folk and some were people living in family groups and some, like the scuinic people of Tavor, roamed as nomads over a mixed grass and woodland in the far west, among scattered tribes of kapriel folk. Unfortunately, this wide stretch of country lay in the road of the ersuniel raiders of Farsak.

“Though the scuinic tribes cherish many traditions involving fierce personal combat among males, the race as a whole is not bellicose, and it was soon overrun. At that time the Farsakian raiders were cannibalistic, as ersuniel tribes sometimes are, or were, so the scuinic people of Tavor thought it prudent to flee.

“Moving swiftly, mostly by night, the Tavorians traveled eastward, up toward the glacial ice of the Sharbak Mountains. Here, there were no Farsaki to pursue and they could take time to provision themselves by collecting fruits and nutritious root vegetables in the fertile passes of the high range. They then made a more leisurely way down into the desert provinces, past the western and southern side of what is now the Four Realms, which edge upon the marshes of Palmia. Here they rested for some years around the kasturic marsh-town of Durbos, where they sought advice from travelers. Following the suggestions of several nomadic peoples, they then swung to the east, surmounted the Big Stonies, crossed the valley of Wycos by the almost hidden fords of River Roq, then traveled over the Little Stonies, coming in time to this wide plain, this land well watered by the tributaries of the Scurry, this land grown up in wild fruit trees, root vegetables, and fields of grain. At that time, it was virtually uninhabited. Farsak was nowhere near, and here at the southern end of the great plain, the survivors made their homes.”

“And built Tavor?” I offered.

Soaz shook his head. “The scuinic tribes have always been nomadic people. They are not skilled builders. They lived in this valley, moving occasionally south toward Isfoin, for several generations. By that time the
various tribes had multiplied; their people had spread out; they began to encounter one another at the edges of their territories; they began to trade and mix and establish multitribal communities which expanded into city-states and then into the nations we know today.

“It was then that people began to wander down the Scurry and build settlements along the flow. After another few generations enough of them had accumulated to erect our city of New Tavor. It was named, as the people were, after a revered sultan, one of the Six Revered Ancestors of Tummyfat, from ages long gone.”

My father had often remarked that scuinic people did not labor. They considered it beneath them, except for earthworks, which they did very well. “What people built the city?”

Soaz nodded judiciously. “Oh, people who filtered in over the years: pheledic herdsmen following their flocks, kasturic people who followed the Scurry up from the lower plains, ponjic and sitidian farmers seeking land, armakfatidian merchants and peddlers who came over this pass or down that river from Palmia or Isfoin or even from far Estafan, where your family once lived.”

“I never heard my father mention Estafan,” I said. “I never heard of it until you spoke of it.”

“There’s no particular reason your father would have referred to it at all,” said Soaz. “It was your great-great-grandparents who came from there. They were welcome, for a sensible country needs the talents of a varied people in order to get all the things done that must be done. Your family’s history is in the archives. Your father’s and mother’s sides both came from Estafan, which is a strange, weird country where the ponji walk upside down.”

“Where is it?” I wanted to know.

“West of here. Over the Sharbak Range, near Sworp and Finial, on the shores of the Crawling Sea. Near our own line of travel, in fact.”

“Will we see it? Will we see the people walk upside down?”

When he laughed, I knew he was teasing me, and I shut my mouth tightly, much annoyed.

“Oh, girl, Opalears…no, I must say, Nassif. You must let me tickle your naïveté a little. We will go through the country of Estafan, though it may no longer be a kingdom. Everything north of the mountains and along the sea has been taken over by the Farsakian Empire.” He fell silent, brooding, his eyes fixed on the horizon.

Since he was in a talkative mood, I asked another question, which had been bothering me ever since St. Weel had been mentioned.

“Why are we really going, Soaz? Surely there are physicians nearer than St. Weel. It seems a dreadful long and dangerous way to go.”

“The prince’s health is only an excuse,” he murmured to me, watching the prince from the corner of his eye. “We are actually going because of an old oracle the sultan met in his travels, years ago, when Great-tooth was minding the throne.”

I put on a slightly interested look, just enough to encourage him.

“The sultan tells me he was in the desert, far east of Isfoin. He’d been traveling for days in that blinding heat before he came to an oasis which encircled the ruins of a vast, ancient caravansary. In the ruins, off in one dusty corner, an old gray female had built herself a little hut, quite snug and safe and protected from the desert winds. She wasn’t of the sultan’s race. She was ponjic, and, like all of you, she was clever with her hands….”

“Which is why we make such good slaves and servants,” I said in a snippy voice, quoting my father.

“True,” said Soaz, raising his eyebrows. “But she was neither a slave nor a servant. She wore the garb of a free person, and she said she had come originally from Sworp by way of Palmia and the Wycos Valley. The sultan gave her some food and spices, less from charity than from surprise at finding anyone there, and in return, she gave him a reading of the bones. From the pattern
the bones made in falling, she could read, so she said, the sultan’s future, and the future of his people.”

“An interesting tale,” I murmured in a casual way, though in fact I was avid to hear the rest.

Soaz nodded and went on. “When she had peered at the bones for a very long time, she said, ‘I have an instruction and a talisman for you. You must keep the talisman safe, unopened. If you go into danger, put it in a place of safety. You must not look at it until time of need.’”

“What did she give him?”

“He told me it was a fortune. One of those folded parchment ones the onchiki use for money. Then she said, ‘Sultan, are you true to the faith of your ancestors?’

“The sultan told her he was Korèsan born and bred, a faithful son of that faith. ‘I see Korè being threatened,’ she said. ‘I see darkness coming. I hear trumpets blaring war and the umminhi screaming beside the picket fires. I feel treachery and a death of peoples, worse than a death, an unbeing. When that day approaches, help may be found at St. Weel.’