Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 Read online

  Perhaps, if she really tried, she could see it even as an omen of success.

  'Lets go, then,' she said firmly. 'Quickly, before Marron comes looking for you, or Coren for me.' It would be that way round, it would have to be, but almost - almost! - she didn't care.

  There were three sides to Selussin. The wall that gripped the town was shaped like an arrowhead, and the point of it faced the desert. Raiding Sharai would break like a wave around it; raiding Patrics would meet the opposing wall head-on, like a hammer. For both cultures, that seemed appropriate to Elisande.

  Each wall had a curve to it, an inward bowing that would allow defenders to target any attacker along its length; each wall also had its gate at the centre, which must have allowed easy access for the traders who used to come in such numbers but would place any attacking force at the heart of the field of fire. For what good that would do. It looked well, she thought as she trailed Jemel out through the westerly gate, dogging his heels like the very picture of an obedient Catari girl, as Selussin was the very picture of a well-defended settlement - but she couldn't picture those priests and boys up on the walls and making any kind of fight to protect their schools and temples.

  There had been no need in recent history, or at any rate no attempt. Sharai and Patric armies both had been intent on the castle; they'd simply absorbed the town into their temporary possession, riding like conquerors through wisely-opened gates in search of food but largely ignoring it else. Neither side had stationed a garrison there. The priests could count themselves lucky, perhaps, to have faced no Ransomer fanatics; the Duke of Ascariel was said to be a religious man, but not a foolish one. He'd let the temples stand and the schools survive, for the sake of peace.

  Abandoned as the landscape, empty as the Sands before it and the hills behind — abandoned long since save for birds and spiders, adventurous children, presumably now one girl, one zealot, one evil clad in chitin — the castle loured none the less above the town, a thundercloud of threat, and all the more so once they'd passed outside the shielding walls. It seemed almost to stoop from its height like a vulture on a crag, not so much guarding as inspecting what lay open and vulnerable below, picking over what might be worth the scavenging.

  A vulture with battered and dusty feathers it might be, and yet it stood out before the broken hills that made its backdrop, thrust itself forward indeed, made its declaration. Mine! What you see from where you stand, all of this is mine, and Selussin was only a morsel, it seemed to suggest, and might not abide there long.

  And yet the town was ancient and the castle was new-made by any standards that were not Patric and so new-made themselves; the town thrived, where the castle stood forlorn; the town's walls were high and whole while the castle's were crumbling. Even from this distance, Elisande could see gaps in the parapet where stones had fallen in. More than single stones, surely, for her to make out their absence this far away, great mounds of rubble there should be, she hoped there would be in the inner courts. Jemel must be right, that Morakh would watch the gate; she'd like to be proved right in her turn, that they could climb in over the wall and behind his back, now that her djinni had proved unreliable. The more damage the better, as far as she was concerned. Going up or coming down, she'd sooner clamber than climb.

  There were patches of cultivated ground all around the walls, where the women and children grew what food they could while their men studied and prayed the days away. Beyond the parched green of those fields lay another harvest, though it looked like nothing better than coils of grey-green wire, running in tangled, matted blankets to the first slope of the hills. Halfa-reeds: even the word seemed strange, to a mind grown accustomed to desert drought. But there were marshes here after the spring rains, where the mountain runoff pooled; the reeds grew tall, then wilted under the summer sun. Tough and fibrous but shallow-rooted, they could be pulled by the smallest child, then worked in a dozen different ways or else bound into bales and traded with what caravans still came this way.

  Between the fields and the halfa-beds a road ran, dangerously below the castle's overlooking eye: Morakh's eye, if he were on the watch. Perhaps Elisande should have asked the djinni to carry them into the hills unseen; but Esren was so wary of the 'ifrit, it might have refused even so much help.

  Well, too late now. If Morakh were watching, he would have seen them already. And could have seen nothing, after all, bar a man in local dress with a woman submissive at his heels. Not so unusual, surely. Except that no one else was moving or even visible, they were alone in the landscape; with the sun rising to its height, the fields had been abandoned. None who lived here was fool enough to carry water to the crops or sweat to pull halfa in the heat and glare of noon, why would they?

  Tm sorry, Jemel, I should have thought — we must stand out like ants on white linen down here, in our robes against this road ...'

  'Do you want to go back?'

  'No.'

  'No, of course you don't. Well then, shall we go up and walk in at the open gates after all? We might as well.'

  And fight their way past a Dancer - at least one Dancer — only to be confronted by an 'ifrit that would know they were coming, that would be ready and waiting as the Dancer was? But then the 'ifrit would know anyway, however careful or clever they were. It was too much to wind her head around the complexities. Enemies that sensed the future were beyond all reason. Friends that did the same were as bad or worse; she thought evil things of Esren, and said, 'Jemel, beat me.'

  'Do what?'

  'Beat me,' with a nod towards the stick that he carried in his belt like all true Sharai among settled folk, to show that they were camel-riders and no pastoralists, 'as if I were a lazy girl who hadn't done her morning's work. Then stand over me, while I gather reeds; we'll make our way across the bed there and into that cleft, where we'll be out of sight of the castle. Then we can climb, and find our way across the hill and around. If he is watching, it'll be the road that he watches.'

  'With good reason,' Jemel murmured, surveying the rough crag. 'It'll be a hard climb, and worse going after. And you'll be sore. Are you sure?'

  'You dont have to beat me hard,' she growled. 'Just make it look good, from a distance. And yes, I'm sure.' It was that or go back, there were no other options; and to go back meant failure, today and tomorrow. Jemel would tell Marron; Marron would tell Coren, those two were suddenly close as cousins; and Coren would look anxious and forbid her to try again, and never give her the chance anyway.

  Jemel shrugged, and made great play of drawing his riding-stick as though it were his scimitar. She thought he made rather too much of it, indeed, flailing it through the air a few times before he gripped her shoulder and brought it whipping down across her back. She flinched as she heard its whistle, fearing that he'd entered altogether too willingly into his role; but the rod only stung when it struck her, and that lightly. She'd been beaten enough in her life, in various guises, to know the true cut of a cane; he must be holding his stroke at the last moment, doing all for effect.

  Even so, half a dozen such strokes left her smarting, aching, having to bite down on her tongue to stop herself yelping; wishing almost for observers within earshot so that she could let go those yelps, sob and plead and play the beaten girl as vigorously as he played her husband, brother, whichever he'd decided in his arrogant male head ...

  'Enough,' she muttered, glaring up at him over her shoulder as he raised the stick again. 'Hit me again and you'll feel my blessed knife in your ribs, I swear it.'

  He grinned, and let her go. 'I said you'd be sore. Go on, then,' with another great flourish of the stick, this time using it to point towards the reed-beds. 'Go and gather, girl. I'll stroll behind, I need the rest. It's hard labour, disciplining a recalcitrant sister...'

  Sister, was it? That would make better sense than wife, she supposed. To him at least, and maybe also to her. Well, she could play his browbeaten, back-beaten sister, for any eyes that watched their comedy.

  And did: hu
nched over to emphasise her pain, cowering from his shadow, she scuttled to the edge of the reeds. Bent lower to claw her fingers into the dry, knotted mat, and tugged. Ripped up a poor handful, and felt a stinging in her palm; gaped down at it and saw blood, saw how the skin was sliced.

  Cursed the superstition that forbade the reeds to be cut by any blade, blessed or otherwise, and showed her hand surreptitiously to Jemel.

  'Its tough as wire, and as sharp. How do they ever make cloth out of this?'

  'By dint of much soaking and beating. But have you tried wearing it? As well wear woven wire. That's why they trade for wool, this makes better rope than robes. Just pretend,' he urged her, 'make a show of it, that's all we need. And you'll want your hands whole, for climbing.'

  She would; she did. She made her bent way crabwise towards the crag and the cleft that would hide them, never quite facing the direction her feet were taking her; facing her feet, indeed, stooped over like a crone and swinging one arm like a monkey, down and up in great looping movements like a fool's imitation of a harvest. With luck, no one would see from any distance that her hand came up as empty as it fell, that the arm she held crooked in her body's shadow held no gathered crop.

  Jemel paced slowly behind her, occasionally tapping shoulder or thigh with his stick like a man who drove a donkey; she thought she might turn and bite him soon, like a donkey driven too far.

  'How do little children ever pull this stuff?' she murmured out loud, if for no other reason than to remind him that she had a voice, and a mind behind it. 'The women here have hands like hide, as women everywhere; but children ...'

  'There'll be a trick to it, a twist of the wrist; but their grandfathers stitch them palm-guards out of camel-leather, haven't you seen? It's holy work, if it keeps the women busy and the little girls at their heels.'

  She had seen old men on their doorsteps plying needle and thread, and had thought it more practical than praying, and the first useful work she'd seen any man do in Selussin. She'd just assumed they'd be making a piece of harness or mending a shoe, though, as men did in other towns.

  Foolish assumption, in this town; she should have known. Too bad that she couldn't blame Jemel for knowing about the palm-guards and not fetching one along, but some levels of unfairness were beyond her. Beyond even her, her father would have said. She thought her father would like it here when he came; she was glad he couldn't see her now, he'd love this, and wish more strength to Jemel's arm ...

  'If we disappear into that cleft and don't come out again, Morakhs going to wonder what we're up to. Isn't he?'

  'Not necessarily.' There was a pause in the steady pace of Jemel's footfalls, the sudden pop of a cork; she glanced back to see him drink from a water-flask, making a great pantomime of being hot and weary. Then his stick urged her on again, as he said, 'With luck, he'll think we're just resting in the shade. It'll be an hour or two before he starts to worry, if he doesn't forget about us altogether. By then we should be safely up and out of sight of the castle gate.'

  Somewhere round the back of the castle, indeed, and looking for a way in or over; it was an odd definition of safety, she thought. But Julianne's need was pressing against her thoughts again, urgent and imperative. She moved on until the walls of the cleft grew high around her, until cool black shadow cut off any chance of their being overlooked. Then she straightened slowly, easing her sore shoulders and stiff back while she gazed upward at the climb that awaited them.

  Height held no fears for her, she'd climbed often in the quiet valleys of her home and again in the Sands, with the Sharai. Here on the desert's rim, though, in the shelter of the cleft, neither rains nor sandstorms had softened the sharp edges of the rock. She chewed her lip for a moment, looking at the holds, and said, 'I wish you'd bought two pairs of those palm-guards, Jemel.'

  'I didn't know we'd need them.'

  She knew that, she'd only been talking for its own sake, to postpone the moment. Her one hand was cut already; the other would be leaving its own trail of blood before they'd hauled themselves out of the cleft and onto the broken ridge above.

  She led the way, knowing that Jemel would follow; she stayed determinedly ahead of him all the way, although it was like climbing on knives. She tried not to think about her fingers, nor about how Esren could have lifted them both up in a moment. Instead she forced her mind to focus on Julianne, thinking how her friend would have hated and feared this climb but how her courage would have driven her to it despite that, if it had been Elisande who needed rescue; wondering how that courage was holding up after days of captivity, whether she still clung to hope or felt herself abandoned. Whether she might hope for abandonment, indeed, knowing herself to be bait in a trap ...

  Too bad, if so. The others might abandon her, but Elisande not. She climbed until she could drag herself over the crag's edge, and into the shelter of a massive boulder. She waited until Jemel had joined her there, then spent a little time and a little strength that she could ill afford to take his hands in hers and still the bleeding, knit torn flesh together. She heard him gasp softly, at the warmth of her healing touch; all he said, though, was, 'What of your own? They're worse than mine.'

  'Alas,' she said with a thin smile, 'that I can't do anything about. We may be witches, we Surayonnaise, but we cannot spell ourselves.' Healing was a journey into another's body; if anyone had learned the art of journeying within themselves, she'd never heard it. Now that the strain of the climb was behind her, she could feel every gash in her throbbing, blood-slick hands. Nothing she could do, though, except allow Jemel to tear strips from his robe to wrap them crudely.

  Above them lay a slope of loose boulder-strewn shale. Scrambling over that tested her again as stones turned and slid away beneath her feet, forcing her to grab for insecure holds with stinging palms, eventually to crawl like a spider. Resisting the impulse to look behind and see how Jemel was coping took her mind from her own gracelessness until she'd reached the top; once there, she fell gasping on her back and called it generosity to stay so until he joined her.

  From this new vantage-point they could look down on the path that came up from Selussin, look up to see the castle, with its gate standing open as they'd been told. They kept flat to avoid being seen in their turn, watched for any sign of Morakh on the walls and saw none. Had it been wasted effort, then, that savage climb? She couldn't be sure, there was any number of places where a man could stand concealed behind an embrasure or an arrow-slit and still have a view of the town and the way up.

  She was busy mapping the landscape in her mind, plotting a route that would lead them around in secrecy to the rear of the castle, when Jemel nudged her suddenly.

  'Look...'

  She followed the direction of his nod and saw movement on the road that came down from the mountains, from Outremer. Movement that resolved itself quickly into a line of people, dark against the dust. Briefly she thought it was an army, men on the march in defiance of the abiding truce.

  Another minute's watching, though, and she was only confused. The people were organised like an army, running steadily in two long files behind a single man; but they were all afoot and there was no glitter of armour among them, barely the glint of a sword's blade where they ran in sunshine. And she could see women and children among their number...

  'Who are they?'

  'Your people,' Jemel murmured, 'not mine. You tell me.'

  That she couldn't do, but she wasn't sure that he was right in any case. Some, many looked to be Catari, even if none was dressed like the Sharai. The only certainty was that they were bound for the castle; she huddled low in the shade of a rock and watched as they turned in at the gate. Perhaps half of them were inside before she thought to count. There were more than a hundred, though, she was sure of that. And still no sign of Morakh. Could he have been expecting them, not an invasion but a reinforcement? These were not Sand Dancers, but still...

  'This changes things’ she said positively. 'Coren needs to be told.'


  'Yes. We'll go back.'

  'No, not both of us. You go, Jemel. Julianne still needs our help; it may even be easier for me to sneak around in there, with so many others to confuse Morakh and the 'ifrit.'

  'I said before, I won't let you go in there alone.'

  "There isn't any choice now. If we go in together, how long will it be before Marron comes blundering in after us, looking for you? He'll be anxious already, you know that. And there's no telling who he might meet, or what might happen after. Or Coren might come, and stumble straight into trouble. They've got to be warned, Jemel; and I've got to go in. Remember, I've always got Esren to whisk me away if I get caught. You don't have that protection, you're not safe in the way that I am ...'

  That was a direct lie, but she thought, she hoped he wouldn't recognise it.

  Nor did he; he only grunted unhappily, and said, 'Be careful, then. Don't do anything stupid, don't fight Morakh and the 'ifrit by yourself. Just learn what you can, find out who these people are and what they want, and then come back.'

  She promised, lying again; and waited while he slid away on his belly, watched while he slid back down the slope, raising a cloud of dust and a small landslide as he went. Then she turned her eyes and mind back to the castle, to her quietest way in. It meant another climb with her hurting hands, but she was prepared for that. She tried to prepare herself too for what she might find inside, what further surprise awaited - and was none too surprised, not really surprised at all when she saw the gate swing shut against her, against the world.

  7

  Out of the Sands

  Marron stared at Jemel — blood on his hands and on his robe where he had heedlessly wiped them, sweat in his hair who almost never sweated, news that sounded like betrayal on his tongue - and felt his anger rise to meet the Daughter who had risen already. Controlling that was nearly too much for him; controlling his temper too was altogether too much.