The Lions of Al-Rassan (30 page)

Hazem wiped at his dripping nose. He used his right hand, which was offensive. He cleared his throat. “That tribute is one reason I am here, Excellence. Of course it is forbidden. It is a blasphemy, among so many others. The arrogant Horsemen see no danger in the weak kings of Al-Rassan. Even my father cringes before the Jaddites, though he calls himself a Lion.” He laughed bitterly. Yazir said nothing, listening, observing through hooded eyes. The sand blew past them, tent cloths flapped in the camp. A dog barked.

Their visitor babbled on. “The Jaddites make their demands, and are given all they ask, despite the clear word of Ashar. They take our gold, they take our women, they ride laughing through our streets looking down upon the faithful, mocking our feeble leaders. Little do they know that their danger comes not from godless rulers, but from the true heirs of Ashar, the pure sons of the desert. Will you not come? Will you not cleanse Al-Rassan?”

Ghalib grunted, pulled down his veil, and spat.

“Why?” he said.

Yazir was surprised. His brother was not inclined to demand reasons for war. The prince from over the water seemed more confident suddenly, he sat up straighter on the blanket. It was as if he had needed only their questions. All those who had come to them from Al-Rassan over the years, the wadjis and emissaries, were great talkers. They wore no veils, perhaps that was part of it. Poets, singers, heralds—words ran like water in that land. It was silence that made them uneasy. It was quite clear by now that their visitor did not know his father was dead.

“Who else is there?” Hazem of Cartada asked, and gestured excessively with his hands, almost touching Yazir’s knee. “If you come not, the Horsemen of Jad will rule. In our lifetime. And Al-Rassan will be lost to Ashar and the stars.”

“It is lost already,” Ghalib muttered, surprising Yazir again.

“Then regain it!” said Hazem ibn Almalik quickly. “It is there for you. For us.”

“Us?” Yazir said softly.

The prince visibly checked himself. He looked briefly afraid. He said, “For all of us who grieve for what is happening. Who bear the heavy burden of what Jaddites and Kindath and false, fallen kings are doing to a land once strong in the will of Ashar.” He hesitated. “There is water there, orchards and green grass. Tall grain grows in the fields, rain falls in the spring and ripe, sweet fruits can be plucked wild from the trees. Surely your soldiers have told you this.”

“They have told us many things,” Yazir said repressively, stirred in spite of himself. He believed little of it, in fact. Rivers running through palaces? Did they think he was a fool? He could not even conceive of what kind of a fruit might grow freely, untended, to be taken at will by any man with a thirst. Such things were promised in Paradise, not to men on the sands of earth.

“You sent soldiers to serve my father,” Hazem ibn Almalik said shrilly. “Why will you not lead them to serve Ashar?”

This was offensive. Men had been flayed for less. They had been staked alive in the sun with their skin peeled away.

“Your father has been killed,” Yazir said quickly, before Ghalib could do anything irreversible. “Your brother rules in Cartada.”

“What?”
The young man scrambled to his feet, fear and amazement imprinted on his pallid, exposed features.

Ghalib reached for the spear planted beside him. He swung it with one hand, almost casually, so that the shaft smote the prince behind the knees. There was a cracking sound, swallowed by the empty spaces around them. Hazem ibn Almalik crumpled to the ground, whimpering.

“You do not rise before my brother does,” Ghalib said softly. “It is an insult.” He spoke slowly, as if to someone deficient in his faculties.

He planted his spear again. The handful of warriors who had accompanied them here from the encampment had glanced over at the flurry of movement. Now they looked away again. This talk was boring for them; most things had been boring of late. Autumn and winter were a difficult time for discipline.

Yazir again considered giving the Cartadan to his brother and the soldiers. The prince’s death would offer a diversion and the men needed that. He decided against it. There was more at stake here than an execution to quiet restless warriors. He had the feeling even Ghalib knew that. The shaft of a spear along the back of the knees was an extremely mild response for his brother.

“Sit up,” Yazir said coldly. The prince’s moaning was beginning to grate on him.

It was amusing how quickly the sounds stopped. Hazem ibn Almalik swung himself up to a sitting position. He wiped at his nose. His right hand again. Some men had no idea of manners. But if they denied the god and the visions of Ashar, why should they be expected to know polite, proper behavior? He reminded himself, again, that this man was among the devout.

“It is time for prayers,” Yazir said to the Cartadan prince. “We will go back to the camp. After, we will eat. Then you will tell me all you know about your brother.”

“No, no. No! I must go back home now, Excellence. As quickly as possible.” The man showed a surprising amount of energy for the first time. “With my father dead there is an opportunity. For me, for
all
of us who serve Ashar and the god. I must write to the wadjis of the city! I must—”

“It is time for prayers,” Yazir repeated, and rose.

Ghalib did the same, with a warrior’s grace. The prince scrambled upright. They began walking back. Hazem limped along, still talking, trying to keep pace.

“This is wonderful!” he said. “My accursed father is dead. My brother is weak, with a corrupt, godless advisor—the evil man who killed the last khalif! We can take Cartada easily, Excellence. The people will be with us! I will go home to Al-Rassan, and tell them you are following. Don’t you see, Ashar has given us a gift from the stars!”

Yazir stopped. He didn’t like being distracted as he readied himself for prayer, and this man was clearly going to be a vexing distraction. There was also the distinct possibility that Ghalib would be irked enough to kill him out-of-hand.

Yazir said, “We go to pray. Be silent now. But understand me: we travel nowhere in winter. Neither do you. You will remain with us. You are our guest for this season. In spring we will take counsel again. For the rest of the winter I do not want to hear you speak, unless addressed by one of us.” He paused, tried to sound gentle, soothing. “I say this for your safety, do you understand? You are not in a place where things are as you know them.”

The man’s jaw had dropped open. He reached forward with a hand—his right hand, alas—and clutched at Yazir’s sleeve.

“But I
cannot
stay!” he said. “Excellence, I
must
go back. Before the winter storms. I must be—”

He said no more. He was looking downwards, a blank incredulity in his face. It was very nearly amusing. Ghalib had cut off the offending hand at the wrist. He was already sheathing his sword. Hazem ibn Almalik, prince of Cartada, looked at the bleeding stump where his right hand had been, made a strangled sound in his throat, and fainted.

Ghalib looked down at him expressionlessly.

“Shall I cut out his tongue?” he asked. “We will never endure a winter of his words. He will not survive, brother. Someone will kill him.”

Yazir considered it. Ghalib was almost certainly right. He sighed, shook his head. “No,” he said reluctantly. “We do need to speak with him. We might have need of this man.”

“Man?” Ghalib said. Lowering his veil, he spat.

Yazir shrugged and turned away. “Come. It is time for prayers.”

He turned to walk on. Ghalib looked as if he would protest. In his mind’s eye Yazir could almost see him severing the man’s tongue. The prospect of silence was appealing. He imagined Ghalib kneeling, knife drawn, the Cartadan’s head lifted to rest on his left knee, the tongue pulled out as far as it could go, the blade . . . Ghalib had done this many times. He was good at it. Yazir very nearly changed his mind. Nearly, but not quite.

He didn’t look back. A moment later, he heard his brother following. Most of the time Ghalib still followed. Yazir gestured, and three of the warriors moved to bring the Cartadan. He might die of his wound, but it was unlikely. They knew how to treat such injuries in the desert. Hazem ibn Almalik would live. He would never realize that his life and speech were Yazir’s gift to him. Some people you just couldn’t help, no matter how you tried.

He joined their wadji and the tribesmen in the compound. They had waited for him. The bell was rung, the sound small and fragile in the wind. They lowered their veils and prayed then in the open spaces to the one god and his beloved servant Ashar, their exposed faces turned to where Soriyya was, so far away. They prayed for strength and mercy, for purity of heart and mortal body, for the fulfillment of Ashar’s starlit visions, and for access, at the end of their own days among the sands of earth, to Paradise.

H
e had been forewarned, but not sufficiently. King Ramiro of Valledo, sitting upon his throne set before the triple arches in his newly completed audience chamber, was sharply aware of trouble the moment the visitors entered the hall.

He glanced briefly at his wife and noted the heightened color in her face, which only confirmed his instinct. Ines had taken great pains with her appearance this morning. Not a surprise; these were guests from Ferrieres, which had been her home.

On his other side, one step back from the throne, his constable, Count Gonzalez de Rada, displayed only his customary arrogance to their guests. That was fine, but Ramiro was almost certain that de Rada was oblivious to what these men might actually mean for Valledo.

No real surprise there, either. Gonzalez had a good mind and a direct way of achieving things, but his perceptions extended no further than the three kingdoms of Esperaña. He could make shrewd observations about what King Ramiro’s brother in Ruenda or his uncle in Jaloña might intend, and propose measures to balk them, but clerics from countries across the mountains held no interest for him and therefore shared no part of his thought.

Which was why the warning had been insufficient. Five men of the god, one of them high-ranking, were stopping here at the queen’s invitation, en route to the shrine on Vasca’s Isle. What could that possibly signify? Gonzalez had hardly given it a thought. Neither, to his own swiftly growing regret, had the king.

Betraying no hint of these emerging apprehensions, Ramiro of Valledo gazed politely at the man proceeding down the carpeted approach to the throne, a few telling steps ahead of his fellows. Some men alerted you with their very presence that something of substance was afoot. This was one such.

Geraud de Chervalles, High Cleric of Ferrieres, was tall enough to look down on every man in that room, including the king. His face was shaved smooth as a baby’s, with grey hair swept straight back from his brow, making him seem even taller. His eyes, even at a distance from the throne, were a penetrating blue, set beneath straight eyebrows and above a long nose and a thin, wide mouth. His bearing was patrician, courtly, the manner of an ambassador to a lesser court, not that of a servant of the god appearing before a monarch. Garbed in the blue robes of the Ferrieres clerics, fringed and belted with yellow for the sun, Geraud de Chervalles was an undeniably imposing man.

The king saw no deference at all in that aristocratic face. Nor did he find it—sparing a quick glance—in the expressions of the four lesser clerics who had now come to a halt behind de Chervalles. No hostility or aggression, nothing as ill-bred as that, but clerics didn’t have to be hostile to cause a world of trouble, and Ramiro now, belatedly, had a sense that trouble was what had arrived beneath his arches to stand upon the newly laid carpets and mosaics this cold and drizzly morning in autumn.

It didn’t help to know that his wife had requested their presence.

He pulled his fur-collared robe more closely about himself. Out of the corner of one eye he saw Gonzalez make a discreet gesture and servants hastened to build up the fires. His constable was endlessly solicitous of the king’s comforts in such small matters. Unfortunately he had missed something large here. On the other hand, so had Ramiro himself, and he was not a man to task others for failings he shared.

“Be welcome to Valledo,” he said calmly, as the tall cleric stopped a proper distance before the throne. “In the holy name of Jad.”

Geraud of Ferrieres bowed then—not before, Ramiro noted. The bow was proper, though, a full, formal salutation. He straightened.

“We are honored, my lord king.” The High Cleric’s voice was rich and cultured. He spoke Esperañan flawlessly, even to the patrician lisp. “Honored by the invitation from our own beloved Ines, your most devout queen, and by your royal welcome. Only the prospect of a winter’s comfort here at Esteren’s much-celebrated court could have drawn us forth upon the roads and through the mountains so late in the year.”

No bones about it then. His very first remarks. They were staying. Not really a surprise, though they
might
have been intending to push on to Ruenda. That would have been pleasant. Ramiro was aware of Ines beaming beside him, elegant and desirable. She had been looking forward to this for a long time.

“We shall offer what comforts we may,” the king said, “though we fear we cannot match the fame of Ferrieres for the delights of the flesh.” He smiled, to make clear it was a jest.