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

  'A woman, from the marketplace. When you cried out and left us, we went there, not knowing which way you had gone; and found the market deserted and her lying there, while her neighbours watched from a distance. They gabbled of a demon, as your children did. We assumed that Marron had been there, and that her sickness was in some measure due to him. There was nothing we could do to his benefit, and we couldn't simply leave her to her death. I persuaded some of those watching to bring her home' - whether with coin or a sword, he didn't say and Jemel didn't ask — 'and have been trying to cure her since, but she has defeated me. Or rather, what has possessed her is defeating me. Be quiet now.'

  He drew a slow breath, and Jemel wondered at the trembling in his hands as he reached to lay them on the woman's scrawny chest.

  Jemel had seen Rudel's daughter heal him of a wound that should have killed him; he had heard her confess, however reluctantly, that her father's gift was stronger than her own. Despite Rudel's protestations and Coren's silence, he waited to see the woman stir and rise.

  Waited and waited, and saw only the sweat that gleamed on Rudel's brow, the vacant stare of his eyes that was worse somehow than the vacant stare of the woman's. It was a moment out of time, a moment that stretched almost beyond his bearing. Coren sat over his aromatic water and did nothing but stir it lightly with a finger; Jemel stood and did nothing at all; Rudel hunched above the woman and seemed also to be doing nothing, at least in his own body.

  The witchfire light faded slowly, but that was all one with the woman's slow and irredeemable dying, Rudel's failing struggle to save her. Coren's finger fell still in the water.

  Eventually, Rudel blinked.

  Blinked and sighed, unless he was only breathing and it was because no one had done that for so long that it sounded so loud; and lifted his hands from the woman with a soft gasp, as though it hurt like tearing a clotted bandage from a wound, and pressed them to his sweat-slick face and seemed not to be able to stop himself from shaking.

  The other two went on waiting, for entirely different reasons now. Even Jemel s urgency seemed to fall back from him a little, in the face of Rudels extreme distress.

  At length the Surayonnaise dropped his hands into his lap, or let them fall rather, as though he lacked the strength to hold them up longer. His head he could lift and turn, seemingly, into the perfumed air, and appeared to take some relief from it; the witchlight flared brighter suddenly. All he said, though, was, 'I don't think your taranth-water will do her any good, Coren, where my touch does nothing.'

  'This is for you, Rudel,' was the answer, in a voice as quiet as his own had been. 'Bend over the bowl here and breathe the steam, while I find a cloth that's not so rancid as to destroy all its virtue.'

  In the end it was Coren's own sleeve that provided the cloth, although Jemel offered his own; perhaps that was too rancid with camel-spit, he thought when Coren rejected it, and surprised himself with an inward smile before he went back to waiting.

  He waited while Coren wiped Rudel's face and hands, while he talked too soft to hear; waited until the one man was sure that the other was sufficiently restored to make a move. By then Jemel was at the door, fidgeting and fretful, conscious of the boys still lingering outside in hopes of yet more bounty but far more conscious of the stars' turning overhead, of Hasan's summons going unanswered, above all of Marron's imprisonment, his sickness and pain that were worse far than Rudel's weakness.

  Through all of that he was conscious yet of the old woman on the bed in the corner, not dead yet but snared within her dying, beyond all help that any of them could offer except perhaps the swift kiss of a knife to send her on her way; and none of them could offer that bar Rudel who had tried so hard to save her, and he would not. Even now his head kept turning back, and there was a mute despair on his face.

  'I was like a man abroad in a blizzard,' he murmured, 'searching for another where I knew there was no hope, and only my own death promised if I stayed. Almost I lost the way back, I went so far...'

  'That I had been afraid of,' Coren said. 'If she's gone or going, then let her go. Death is not so terrible. You know that, better than most.'

  'Hers might be. It was terrible to come even as close as I did, and that not close enough to find her. I've never known a feeling like it...' And he shuddered again, and needed to grip both hands tightly together to still their trembling.

  'We should go,' Jemel whispered, half-hoping that they would not hear; he felt like a child on the fringes of an adult world, mystified and demanding. Of course death was terrible, how not? And Marron might be dying even now, and still they only talked over the dying of a woman they couldn't even put a name to ...

  Coren nodded, and reached to help Rudel to his feet, swaying a little under the other man's weight before he found balance for them both.

  'We should go back to your house, Jemel, so that Rudel may ride. Can you find the way from here?'

  No need for that, his loyal servants attended him still and he had coins left to buy their services. He thought that Rudel might be better walking than fighting his camel's wilfulness, but kept that private. He wanted to be moving, that was all: moving towards Hasan and ultimately Marron, however slowly they must go.

  They went at last, although they had almost to pull Rudel through the doorway and he would not leave until the woman had been covered over, though she was so cold to the touch that her rags were useless to her; and they did indeed go slowly, behind their persistent guides. Rudel recovered a little in the night air, but not enough to quiet Coren's anxiety. Neither Jemel's, though his had a different source: childlike again, he burst out, 'If Marron's sickness is like the widows—'

  'Widow, was she?' Rudel interrupted in a broken mutter. 'I didn't know. What was her name, boy?'

  'Holet, the boys said. But listen, if Marron is sick as she was, and you could not help her .. .'

  'If so, then you are right, I cannot help him either. Failure has taught me nothing except how to fail. And how the thing is done, of course, what it looks like, how to recognise it. I expect I shall fail faster, next time.'

  Try less hard and less often, he meant; try hardly at all, perhaps, for Marron. Rudel would still far sooner see him dead than flying loose, so long as he could control the Daughter after.

  Jemel wanted to seize the man, to shake him, to drive his own intense spirit into that flagging body and that bitter mind. No point in it, though, he was no magician to possess another with even a fragment of himself; besides, Coren was ahead of him, and wiser far in his approach.

  'You are too tired to see clearly, Rudel. You have found the path to failure, yes, and it has exhausted you; rest and reconsideration may show you the path to success. A night's sleep will restore you.'

  Rudel snorted. 'You think I or any of us will sleep tonight?'

  'You will, yes. I will insist on it - and make it happen, if I must. Do you know where we are now, Jemel?'

  'What? Oh, yes. Yes, I do. But

  'Pay off these boys, then, and send them home. Otherwise they will follow us to the gate, and maybe further. Let's see them safe, at least.'

  It was a wise precaution; at their age, Jemel would certainly have sneaked out at the tail of the army to see what passed on the heights. To crush any hope of further gain, he loosed purse from belt and tossed it unopened to the eldest boy. With luck, they'd be too busy arguing over the division of the spoils to think of dogging him further.

  Another few minutes brought them to the house. They found the camel sleeping; as he'd guessed, she was vicious when she woke, and he doubted any man's ability to stay on her back.

  Coren soothed her, though, with a hand on her muzzle and a few words spoken into her ear. Magic again, Jemel thought; all the Sharai fancied themselves to be camel-masters, and he'd known a few who seemed to have a genuine charm in touch and voice, but none that worked so swiftly or so well.

  He fetched saddle and harness and riding-stick, and saw Rudel mounted before he unhitched the hobble
to let the beast stand. Still suspicious of her sudden docility and wary of her riders weakness, he offered to lead her to the gate, but received a contemptuous snort for his pains.

  'I may be weary, Jemel, but I'm not helpless. Besides, you can see, she's dozier than I am, thanks to Coren whispering her into a maze. She'll sleep on her feet all the way. You walk behind, and poke her if she starts to snore ...'

  'More likely it'll be you that snores first,' Coren said, falsely cheerful. 'We'd be better off walking one either side, to catch you when you fall. Now come, we've wasted too much time already'

  In fact it was he who led the way, with Rudel urging the camel on behind him. Jemel did walk a little while watchfully beside the beast, till he was sure Coren had been joking; then as an antidote to his own impatience, to keep his feet from racing ahead of his companions he forced himself to lag behind, glancing back a time or two to be sure that those curious and acquisitive boys weren't still following him.

  The western gate should have been closed since nightfall, and was not; in the open ground beyond there was a mill of men and camels, bright torches blazing. He let out a huff of relief, and now could and did run on past Rudel, past Coren to seek Hasan.

  He found him where he'd expected, out on the road and furthest from the gate, with only a few trusted men about him. Hasan would give precedence to the chiefs in council, but not on the field of battle, not where it was his own presence that had brought the tribes this far.

  Besides, this was his own battle, for his own wife and friends. Of course he would lead; of course they would follow, if only because Hasan could not be allowed to ride alone or die alone for his own private reasons when he had all his people to die for

  Jemel surprised himself with that touch of cynicism, and then again, with a touch of pity for the man. That felt like heresy, Hasan had seemed so godlike to him just a few months ago; but heretical or not, the thought wouldn't be denied. Better to have no destiny, to carry nothing in your hands: better to be like Jemel himself, free to come and go without shaking worlds as you pass, free to live as you chose and to die if you wanted to, to ride over a cliff in the dark or drink bad water or have a foolish, fatal quarrel with a friend...

  Except that Jemel's friend whom he had chosen to live with and would share any of those deaths with quite happily once one or two other small matters had been attended to, Marron was sick and hurt and quite possibly dying, alone and apart; and Marron was one of those world-shakers whom God noticed, and Jemel mattered to him and so perhaps to God also, and was in any case not free after all. Pity anyone, he might as well pity himself, and that was poindess.

  And yet he did still feel pity for Hasan, who would have a long lifetime of this, who would always be too important to let go. Marron could always leave by virtue of what he was, and wanted to, and would, or Jemel thought so. Had tried it once already, perhaps, those days they'd had just wandering in the land of the djinn. And he'd taken Jemel with him, and come back of his own will when Lisan had asked it, and that was important too. If he could run away from Sieur Anton - and he had - then no one could hold him against his will. Except when he was sick as he was now, and they must be very sure he'd not recover, they'd never dare to touch him else .. .

  "Where are they, Jemel?' The question snapped at him like a lash and he could pity no one but himself for a moment under the full force of Hasans glare, and marvel at his own insolence in pitying such a man.

  "They are here,' with the jerk of a thumb back over his shoulder.

  Hasan peered into the darkness, shielding his eyes from the glare of torchlight, but even from camelback could apparently not make out the men he sought in the throng. Still, he accepted Jemel's word and said only, 'We ride, then. There are spare mounts among the men; seek them out, and bring Coren and Rudel to join me as soon as you may.'

  Then he wheeled and cried out, loud and strong, drawing all men's eyes to him; he raised his riding-stick and gestured forward, up the road; he kicked his camel into a run and rode away without a backward glance. Jemel stood and watched for a minute, caught up in the thrill of it as the gathered chiefs swept past him with their retinues. So far from pitying Hasan now, he envied him: not the power but the confidence, the certainty that all these quarrelsome and divided men would follow him, here and wherever he might lead them.

  He saw the Saren sheikh pass by with never a glance down, snared like so many by Hasan’s personality or else obedient to an idea that drove them both, a vision of a world restored. Then he remembered his own obedience, and dived back into the churning multitude in search of riderless camels and the old men who were his own particular charge.

  When both were found and brought together, he tried at first to lead them up the narrow road at a camel-canter. Rudel's beast was still half-stupefied, though, and couldn't match his mount's pace nor Coren's.

  'Can't you rouse her now?' he yelled at the King's Shadow, more agitated than politic. 'Hasan said—'

  'Hasan has not seen. Rudel would fall, and only slow us further. I thought patience was a virtue of the Sharai?'

  So it was, ordinarily, but Hasan had shown little sign of it tonight. And the thought of Marron burned in Jemel's blood, so that he had none to call on; and then there were the girls, and he didn't, couldn't believe that Coren was truly so calm, or Rudel so weak.

  Nothing he could do, though, but rein back. Lisan's father swayed in the saddle as their way steepened, and did look now in genuine danger of falling. Jemel thought he might have left him or sent him back to sleep the night in Selussin: if he had been Hasan, if he had seen, if Rudel was the kind of man who'd listen and obey any such command ...

  None of those applied, and so they came last and laggardly to the plateau where the castle stood, its great rough walls looming high against the stars and its gates closed hard against them.

  The Sharai had spread themselves already, the men from each tribe watching a portion of the walls and raising tents, building fires while they watched. Hasan had been wise to bring only a small part of his army, Jemel thought; they'd circled the entire castle and still there was barely space enough for these, with their camps set uncomfortably close. He might have been wiser to have brought only his own tribe, the Beni Rus - except that then he might have lost the others, all the tribes else. Why should they wait down by the town, while the Beni Rus stole the fun of battle and the chance of loot? What were they here for, to dance attendance and applaud? They might, might well, almost certainly would have packed and mounted and departed to the Sands, and most likely Hasan would never have been able to bring them together again. This way they would all stay, though this way there was the constant risk of arguments and bloodshed before ever they faced what lay behind the gates. Where the sheikhs went, there went the tribes: into battle for Hasan or with each other, or possibly over the mountains and on into Outremer. Possibly, probably — certainly it was what the men left below tonight would be urging tomorrow, the only real argument for their having come this far. Hasan had never needed such an army to win back his wife, they'd all of them always known that Whether Julianne lived or died — and Elisande and Marron and himself, whether any of them lived or died — that issue would be decided by these comparative few who coiled like a serpent around the castle walls.

  And would be decided soon, Jemel thought. If there'd been a Patric army mewed up in there, the Sharai would have been willing to stay for a long siege and months of bloody fighting, as they had before to deny the infidel a foothold on the margins of the Sands, a firm grasp of the holy schools at Selussin. As it was only a stolen wife and a renegade Sand Dancer who held her, they'd expect Hasan to settle the matter swiftly, by parley or by force.

  The Sand Dancer was the one who counted, in Jemel's mind and so he was sure in the minds of all the Sharai. It was the Sand Dancer who had stolen Julianne, he was known and named. The other people in there were Patrics or Catari out of Outremer, farmers and peasants, not worth dwelling on. Though they had stolen Marron, or s
o it seemed, and done so with a power that could silence or turn his Daughter: it wasn't, it couldn't be their own power to do such a thing, no mortal magic, and so he could still dismiss them. And then there was the 'ifrit, and that was curiously hard to think about at all; it shifted shape in his mind, fluid as a cat and insubstantial as its shadow, he could get no kind of grip on it. How could you think about a creature that might know what you were thinking, and so change ... ?

  So when he thought about what might happen beyond those concealing gates, he thought about killing Morakh, all the many ways he wanted to kill Morakh. Let older heads and wiser minds consider the 'Ifrit and how to defeat it when it knew your plans and all your moves already, let them consider the strangeness of the band from Outremer. He would kill Morakh, then kill anyone else who came between him and Marron; he would kill everyone in the castle if he had to, if that was the only way to break the spell that gripped his friend.

  Or see them dead, at least. He couldn't kill them all alone, which was why he needed Hasan and his troops. Hasan, it seemed, needed old wise heads; Hasan had snapped at him already for being slow of delivery, and now was turning and twisting his camel before the gates, heedless of the chance of arrows from above as he called to Jemel's companions in a fret, almost a frenzy of impatience.

  'Where have you beent I sent for you to meet me at the gates of Selussin—'

  '—And so we did, but there was all your army between us~~—'

  '—And then to join me at the head, did the boy not say?'

  "There would have been no point in his saying; we could not have reached you with Rudel. Better to travel carefully, and to arrive.'

  'What is the matter with Rudel?' The warlord seemed suddenly to register how quietly the older man sat his quiet camel, and how unusual that was. 'Is he sick too?'

  'Sick of a great sickness,' Rudel said himself, surprising Jemel as much as Hasan; they were the first words he'd uttered in a while, and the voice at least was stronger than it had been in the town. 'I have met a darkness tonight, and all but lost myself in it. I need to think...'