Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 Page 11

  While he was sure that justice must eventually come to Surayon, and that it must come with the God's blessing, Blaise could not see that blessing here. He looked at the disciples and saw the soul-stolen, empty shells. Nor was he alone in that; and yet people followed regardless, and no one questioned the preacher.

  When he came to unbind his foot that night, he ripped scabs away with the rags, wincing at the sudden sting of it and then again at the sight of fresh blood oozing from the cut. He'd been hurt before, and far worse, but a soldier needed his feet in good condition. So, self-evidently, did a spy.

  Still, let it bleed. Let it wash out whatever dust and grit had worked its way inside during the day's march. He'd seen a man with his leg swollen up to the girth of a tree-trunk; when Blaise had cut into it to release the poison, he'd found a speck of black in the flood of yellow pus, a grain of dirt, the pearl in the oyster. Hard to believe that so much harm could come from such a small invader, but so it was, or so the doctors told him. And greater harm even than he'd seen: the man had died despite his rough surgery.

  Perhaps that was what the preacher meant for Surayon, if the preacher meant anything at all, if he saw anything other than himself swathed in lightnings and striking heretics down with a glare. Perhaps he thought that his small force could poison somehow, ulcerate, keep the eyes and minds of the sorcerers turned inward so that they neglected to hide their borders. A greater army could come in to purge the valley princedom - and there was a greater army, that much Blaise knew. Marshal Fulke was marching with the Ransomers and many men else, more daily. That might have been the preacher's plan, it might have been joint strategy except that so far as he knew, the preacher had no inkling of that other force and certainly no contact with it.

  No, there was no organisation in this. The man was mad, was all. Mad and gifted, and a holy fool withal; but a sanctified madman was still mad, and his disciples were the echo of himself, mindless and stumbling towards they knew not what.

  No more did Blaise know; and Magister Fulke would ask him, ask him soon, and he would have no answer. That frightened him, more than any of the company he kept. He wrapped himself up in his blanket and in Fess's too, aware tonight of how cold it could be just the other side of the mountains. They held back the desert as a sea-wall holds the sea, but it seemed to him that desert air was slipping over, slopping over the brim, bringing the touch of desolation with it. He laid his head on good damp soil and smelled dry sand, and shivered. He closed his ears to the murmur of voices where he knew that mothers were speaking uselessly to their lost children, closed his mind to the future, tried to sleep.

  And failed, as he had been certain that he would. His foot throbbed, his soul ached for sick children, deluded adults, himself. He lay on his back, on his side, on his belly; he gazed at the stars, at the dying fire, at nothing at all. Whichever way he lay, he could find no rest; whichever way he looked, he could see no path to glory, no hope for any one of his companions on this mad march. Only failure and death could lie ahead, just as death and failure were all that lay behind him, all his life.

  Almost on the wings of that thought came a touch, a cold and clamping kiss on the sole of his foot. No natural cramp, no twinge of pain: he sat bolt upright, staring, and for a moment there seemed to be an eddy of mist around his blankets, that seemed to be sucked suddenly inward through the weave and through the rags he'd wrapped around his foot, as though the cut there had opened like a mouth to draw it in.

  Demons breath, he thought, as the chill of it surged up the bones of his leg, spreading in an instant through all his body. He opened his mouth to cry it aloud, to wake the sleepers all around him; and felt it reach his mind, clouding his sight and numbing his intelligence with a bitter lethargy.

  Slowly, slowly he lay back down, as the strength ebbed from his muscles. His blankets had fallen away, when he sat up; he was so cold, he thought vaguely that he ought to reach out and pull them up to cover him again. His arm wouldn't respond, though, and he had no will to force it. He was aware yet, he knew who and what he was — I am Blaise, lam a soldier and a spy— but that was all, so little, he felt like a pale flame in a vast night, a spirit cut adrift from his body.

  He lost all sense of time's passing. He could see the stars dimly, as though through a fog, and his eyes tracked their course as they wheeled above him. It signified nothing, he didn't understand that nor the gradual brightening in one quarter of the sky, the sudden swift uprising of the sun. He could find the word for it, he had its name but not its meaning now.

  There were sounds all about him, as there always had been; they made no more sense than the moving lights did, stars and sun. Again he could identify, but find no pattern; what had been breathing, snores, the single bark of a fox became words, voices, talking. He heard the words, but they could not reach him.

  He saw faces, bodies, people leaning above him. These did not talk. He felt himself lifted by many hands. The blueing sky turned over him, or eke he turned beneath it, he did not know; the sun glared at him but could not burn through the mist that cloaked his eyes. After a hectic minute he was laid down again. The hands opened all his clothing, and then withdrew; a single figure loomed at his feet. His mind said preacher, but he did not understand it.

  The figure stooped, reaching a thing towards him. It was black, it glistened like steel where the light struck; it was shaped like a claw, like a ravaged hand, fingers and thumb bent sharply. His mind said relic, though he did not know what that meant.

  He felt one finger catch at his lip, tugging it downward; he felt something, a hint of nothing solid slide into his mouth. Not solid, but sharp regardless: it lay like a breath of ice against the coldness of his tongue, and was colder yet. His mind said demon's breath, and though it was only a name without significance, he still thought it was wrong.

  It sank into his tongue and nested there, and seemed to draw everything that was chill in his body towards itself, and so grow still more chill. He felt the first warmth of the sun against his skin, but did not feel warmed by it, only that what hid in his tongue had stolen all the cold that was in him.

  His eyes cleared; he could see precisely, the preachers face with its sunken eyes and its beaked nose. Beak and claw he thought, and knew this time what he meant: how the preacher was a hawk, an eagle, fierce and predatory.

  'Stand up,' the preacher said, 'and dress yourself.'

  He understood the words, and felt his body stirring to obey, though not at his own command. He watched his own fingers fumble with cloth and ties, slow and awkward like a child's hands at an unaccustomed task. He wanted to show them how easy it was, but could find no way to do so.

  He'd have liked to say his own name, if only to hear it spoken one more time, just the once; but found that he couldn't quite remember it, as though it were freshly lost. He might have liked to say anything at all, he thought, only that his tongue was cold and heavy, a stone in the mouth and not for talking. Something else was heavy, a weight inside his robe, a duty that had been fearful once. There was a man in a hot land, where there was no sun. The weight was candle; he must light the candle and speak to the man. But there were words to speak first above the candle, and he could not pin them down.

  Besides, there was no need to speak where no one listened. His body knew what to do. There were others of its kind all around him, turning now, leading, and it followed, it carried him away.

  All day they marched in line and he with them, the disciples, one of them. He left his bedroll behind, and the boy Fess's too, and the sword also. He felt no pain, no weariness; he felt nothing, not even fear. He could see, he could hear, but he was drifting, unconnected, unconcerned.

  That evening there was no village, no sick ones to be healed, to be drawn in. Only the preacher, standing on a rock where all could see him in the last of the light. The disciples were clustered close around him, but he spoke over their heads, to the others who packed behind.

  'The demon that is in Surayon holds its breath,' he s
aid. 'There will be no more sickness now. Now is the time to run, to be ready to strike when we may. We few will be enough; the God has promised me. Those among you who can keep up, you are welcome; for the rest, follow if you will, do what you can. By the time you reach Surayon, it will lie open before you. Do not be afraid to kill; evil must be burned out, corrupted flesh cut away, or the demon will breathe again.'

  He leaped down from the rock in a swirl of robes and began to run steadily into the gathering dark. His path no longer lay due south but south and east, towards the hills. The disciples followed, silent in their lines, their legs rising and falling, feet pounding all in time with the preachers.

  All through the dark they ran and on into the morning, while the land rose and rose beneath and around them. Sunlight showed them peaks and crags, bitter shadows. They ran on.

  6

  The First Meaning of Flight

  If there were three sides to every question, Elisande had never been particularly interested in discovering the other two. She knew where she stood, sometimes she even knew why she stood there. That had always seemed enough to her, and so it ought to have been enough for others, for everyone else.

  When it wasn't - well, that was when the fights started.

  Where she stood just now, there were three sides to everything, and she hated that. The place even had three names. She thought it stupid, demeaning, and never mind that she had a few herself and had used others freely when she'd needed them; never mind that she had one — her father's daughter, of course she bore his name - that she'd not used in years, that she liked to think of as lying rotted in a grave or in a garden, all overtangled with thorns and rooted through and through, never to be raised up whole again. People were one thing, places something else. Places, she thought, should have just the one name, so that everyone knew where you meant and where you meant to go. This place was called Revanchard by the Patrics, for the castle they'd raised on the crag above; it was called Selussin by the Catari, for the ancient wisdom that it shared with all; its own people called it Torkha, and she had no idea what that meant.

  Time was when the reputation of Selussin had brought princes across deserts, bearing gifts of gold in fee for the insights of the imam-scholars. Sometimes they brought their sons and left: them here a year or two, to acquire religion and wisdom in equal measure. Religion and wisdom and diplomacy; everything here came in threes, and these people could rival Julianne's father in the celebration of manners without commitment. She thought them contemptible. Coren carried power behind his shifting veils, where they carried nothing at all. Empty hands and empty words: they were almost beneath contempt, living on past majesty, the dusty greedy ghosts of better men.

  It was years, generations since they'd traded gold or wisdom. Once, convenience and curiosity had brought the caravan-masters here whatever their direction, north or south, west towards Ascariel or eastward to Rhabat. The Patrics' coming and the constant warfare since had broken all those silken ropes; either side might raid a merchant's train, and why risk goods and men and profit when there is always another way to travel, at a slower but safer distance from the sword?

  The truce might be holding these days, but all truces break at last. The caravans had left Selussin and not returned; old trails blew themselves away across the sand, and far-flung princes sent gold-emblazoned letters but kept their sons at home.

  Daughters were not to be thought of, not considered. Elisande had passed this way once in her life already, when the world was bright and the future bountiful, except for the dark sucking well of bitterness that was her father. Her grandfather - who understood her waking or sleeping, whom she unconditionally adored - had sent her on the first great adventure of her life, to spend a year alone with the Sharai. Away from Rudel had been unspoken, implicit, a golden setting for the jewel. 'Go to Rhabat,' he'd told her, 'and run wild with the children there, while you still have licence to be a child. Let them teach you the city, while their fathers teach you the desert. I have small hope of their mothers teaching you anything a woman ought to know, but they may try. Go to Rhabat, and show them this for surety,' a ring too big for any finger that she owned, so she wore it on a thong around her neck. 'Your way will take you through Selussin; linger there if you like it, but I don't suppose you will. Nor will it like you, unless there's been more change than I can guess at.. .'

  He'd been right, both ways. There were many Catari who'd sought shelter in Surayon, before it had been Folded; she'd grown up with their children, and was as comfortable with their ways as with those of her own people. There were Sharai too, who came slipping in and out through the Fold. Those had intrigued her, and she'd always stolen what time she could to spend it in their company. Little girls could claim what was forbidden to those who were older; she'd understood that, and had expected to find the same among any people who followed the same religion.

  Not so, she'd discovered, in Selussin. There were schools and libraries and temples, more than she'd ever dreamed to find anywhere outside Ascariel; but they were as closed to girls as they were to women. The priests would not speak to her, seemed not to see or hear her when she spoke to them. The little boys told her to tend the fields as their sisters did, and threw stones at her when she refused to go. One day had been enough to learn that this was no place for her; the week she'd been forced to wait until her Sharai guides were ready to move on had been sheer torture to a curious girl denied any opportunity to explore. One day she'd climbed the hill and wandered through the empty castle, but it had held only dust and walls and darkness, no adventure.

  These days it held more, they'd learned that much, though not from the wise ones here. Esren said that it held Julianne.

  Julianne and Morakh, naturally, and the 'ifrit. Everything here came in threes.

  At least there were no doubts, no questions now. This close, Esren could be certain, or so it said. It didn't need to pick its way hesitandy through a dance of future possibilities, out of step amid forgotten music; what was here was laid out like a map, it said, clear and incontrovertible. Julianne was there, in that looming structure that hung above the township like a thundercloud, like an anvil, storm-grey even when the sun lay full upon it. She was there, and so were the Sand Dancer and the 'ifrit; and so was Esren's destruction, the djinni said, if it should try a rescue. And so was Coren's, and Marron's too. Separately or together, it said, they could not bring her out. It was a baited trap, where death waited; death was sure.

  A trap for which of them, and why, it would or could not say. Could not, she thought; its silence was resentful. In its own terms, in its own strange world it staggered about like a drunken beggar, half-blinded and befuddled. That was the impression it gave, at any rate: of a once-proud creature brought low, disabled and disgraced. Even the great djinn were not omniscient, of course - though the one great djinni that she'd met allowed some room for doubt of that, and none for doubt of its abilities - but Esren felt itself stunted, crippled by its long separation from what it called the spirit-weft.

  Julianne was there and they were here and helpless, come so far to so little effect, blocked at every turn of the mind's eye, every leap of hope's imagination. It felt right, she thought, for Selussin: walls on all three sides, and an inaccessible darkness at the heart.

  But she was not Selussid, and she refused to accept their count of what was possible, any more than she would accept Esren's. The 'ifrit could be no more certain than the djinn, of how any rescue attempt would turn out. She'd seen enough of those creatures die, to know that foreknowledge did not bring invulnerability. All they saw was possibilities, no more. If Esren saw three ways to try for Julianne, and each of them a failure - well, perhaps the 'ifrit could see no more. If she could find a fourth, she might surprise them both.

  There was meant to be a fourth already on its way, what they were supposed to be waiting for, why they were wasting so much time and patience in this depressing town. Hasan was coming, with all the tribes of the Sharai. Necessarily he wa
s slow, he lacked a djinni and had to carry water for so many men; it might take him another week to cross the

  Sands. He was coming, though, and like the others she pretended that he brought their hopes with him.

  Like the others, she had small faith in armies. To be sure, such a force could overrun a castle, slay a Sand Dancer and an 'ifrit; but however swift it was, it would be too slow to save Julianne. There needed only moments to slit a girl's soft throat, or pierce her belly with a claw.

  Why Julianne had been taken was a question to which Elisande still had no answers. As bait, clearly — but bait for whom, and to what purpose? There was a fog in her mind, whenever she tried to think about it; even her curiosity didn't blaze bright enough to burn away the shadows. Answers could wait. The fire, the urgency lay in rescue. Rescue soon, rescue now, before Hasan came with his multitudes and his anger, to oversweep good sense and argument.

  And so she was here in the dust and quiet of the morning, with half a plan in her head and small expectation. She'd left her companions in the little house they were renting by the southern gate; Coren had asked where she was going and she'd just said, 'Out, for a walk,' relying on her reputation for impatience and short temper to forestall any further questioning. He had smiled and waved a permissive hand, 'Try not to get into trouble.' Marron had still been chewing slowly on his breakfast bread; his red eyes had watched her leave, but he'd said nothing. Jemel, brewing coffee on the fire in the yard, hadn't bothered even to look up from his scented steam and his simmering, though she'd paused to call a farewell, determined that there should be nothing out of the ordinary for any of them to notice. A restless girl wasting energy while they simply wasted time in waiting, thinking, drifting - nothing unusual in that. It was the story of her life, she thought, and perhaps the story of life itself, that men would do what they wanted in defiance of what needed doing. Coren was more subtle than her father, more astute but no wiser when he should be, when she needed him to be, now. Marron was the opposite, more simple than her father, much wiser and more ignorant, hesitant to the point of immobility. Jemel simply followed Marron, who had no one to lead him; and her father - her blind, bull-stupid, blundering father, the epitome of all men, who could be absolutely relied upon to wait too long and then go roaring after shadows, as though noise and bluster could cover blood and waste — her father Rudel was not here yet but he was coming, with Hasan. He'd enjoy having an army to play with.