‘You’re following my orders, you stupid young fool. We’ve got to get out of here. I don’t like doing this any more than you do. Now get out of the way.’
His hand on his cheek, Arkazo moved. As he was lowering Tareev into the water, Warkannan felt a tightness in his throat, but many another good man would die before the khan claimed the throne. He allowed himself a brief thought of Kareem, who would never see his son’s grave.
‘Come on,’ Warkannan said. ‘We’ve got to get back to shore. We’ll deal with Zayn later.’
Sullenly Arkazo followed when Warkannan stepped back into the lake. Bows at the ready, they slogged their way across the open water, heading roughly north-east. Warkannan stayed on guard, listening for every small sound, watching for every small trace of movement in the shifting view. At last, when the twilight was turning the Mistlands grey and featureless, they staggered out of the water onto the spongy lake shore. In this relative safety Warkannan turned to have a word with Arkazo and found him in tears. He left him alone with it and led the way down the bank.
A few miles down the shore stood a tangle of orange and russet fern trees, bent and twisted by the constant wind. Nearby, on a stretch of drier ground, the horses were tethered, and Soutan paced back and forth. When he saw them, Soutan hurried forward to meet them.
‘Zayn’s our man, all right,’ Warkannan said. ‘Palindor and Tareev are dead. The Chosen teach their men how to defend themselves.’
‘That’s horrible.’ Soutan was whispering. ‘So horrible about Tareev – I’m sorry, Arkazo. Truly sorry.’
Arkazo stared at him as if he hadn’t heard.
‘Well,’ Warkannan said, ‘we’ll get our revenge for this. It’s the only comfort we’re going to have, but we’ll get it.’
‘Oh yes.’ Soutan nodded firmly. ‘You see, before Zayn went under the fog cap, I saw him. I know what he looks like now.’
‘Which is?’
‘Mostly he looks Kazraki.’ Soutan paused, thinking. ‘A somewhat flatter nose than usual, and darker skin. Deep-set eyes. Tall, very straight back. I’m assuming he was in the cavalry.’
‘A lot of the Chosen were, yes, or still are. I’m glad you’ve got him pegged. I want another shot at him. But this time, we’re going to be damned careful.’
That night they made a miserable camp a few miles out of the swamps proper. Overhead the fog turned the dark dome of night into a ceiling, hanging close above their heads. After they finished eating, Arkazo went some ten feet out into the grass and sat unmoving, staring out into the dark plains. Soutan took a book and a small cloth pouch out of his saddlebags, then sat down by the fire.
‘What’s that?’ Warkannan said.
‘The oracle.’ Soutan smiled with a flash of tooth. ‘I see no harm in showing it to you. It requires no particular magic to cast.’
Warkannan leaned forward for a look. He could see the title, stamped in black on a pale leather cover, but he found it incomprehensible.
‘It’s written in the old language of the Cantons,’ Soutan said. ‘Which was, in fact, its original language, but a Kazraki translation exists. It’s The Sibylline Prophecies.’
‘Shaitan! But I don’t know why I’m surprised. It seems logical, using heresy to work sorcery.’
Soutan laughed, then opened the pouch and shook out six bronze discs. ‘Ordinary coins,’ he remarked. ‘Heads count one, tails two, and there’s a way of adding them up.’
Warkannan watched while he shook the coins in both hands, then strewed them on the ground. In the firelight the sorcerer leaned forward, peering at them, muttering to himself. He repeated the throw six times, then opened the book, flipped through the pale pink pages, and finally laid one finger on a passage.
‘Could you put a bit more fuel onto that fire?’ Soutan said. ‘This print is large, but still –’
‘What? I thought you sorcerers could make light when you needed it.’
Soutan ignored him. Warkannan added more dried horse dung and blew on the fire to bring up the flames. Soutan hunched close, his lips working as he read over the passage the coins had indicated. Finally he swore – in the language of the Cantons, but Warkannan could guess his frame of mind well enough.
‘Bad news?’ Warkannan said.
‘No, merely completely irrelevant. I must be too tired.’ He shut the book with a snap. ‘Or else I misread the coins in the bad light. I’ll try again after sunrise.’
‘What did it say?’
‘Oh, some rambling drivel about the Fourth Prophet being close at hand. Do you know about that? No, I see you don’t, pious soul that you are. The oracle claims that a fourth prophet will come to the people of Kazrajistan just as the others did, arising out of humble circumstances amid signs from God and so on in the usual way of prophets.’
‘Well, I suppose it could happen. Prophets do appear now and then.’ Warkannan held up one hand and ticked the names off on his fingers. ‘Mohammed, blessed be he, who wrote the true faith into a book. Agvar, who led us out of our bondage in the demon-lands. Kaleel Mahmet, who carved a khanate in our new home with the cavalry for his knife.’ He lowered his hand. ‘And there have been plenty of minor prophets over the years, too many to count, really.’
‘Indeed, whenever the khanate found it convenient to be proph-esied at.’ Soutan paused for an unpleasant smile. ‘But this one is supposed to be a major prophet, the final fulfilment of the law, and a woman as well.’
‘Oh. It’s nonsense, then. Drivel, as you said.’
‘You’re sure of that? Your women pray, they read the holy books.’
Warkannan hesitated, thinking. ‘That’s true,’ he said at last. ‘But it strikes me wrong. Men aren’t going to listen to a female prophet. Why would God waste His time?’
‘You Kazraks are amazing, really amazing.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘The things you attribute to God, such as worrying about wasted time. Do you think he’s always winding his clocks like you people do?’
Warkannan caught himself on the verge of bad temper. ‘Ah well,’ he said instead. ‘You’re right, if you mean that ordinary men can’t understand what God may do or what He’s like. But the true prophets –’
‘– may be just as wrong. Consider Hajji Agvar and this business of living as the First Prophet lived, for instance. You don’t do anything of the sort. The First Prophet lived what? just over thirtysix hundred years ago, by your reckoning, when H’mai lived disgustingly primitive lives. Do you think his tribe had printing presses and carriages and all those other fancy things you people use every day?’
‘What do carriages have to do with it? I can’t imagine that God cares if our women ride in carriages.’
‘Oh, indubitably. Then what were your ancestors fleeing when they chose to come here? What did they want?’
At first Warkannan thought the sorcerer was merely baiting him, but Soutan was waiting for the answer, his head cocked a little to one side, his eyes perfectly serious.
‘Well, a simpler life than we had back in the Homelands,’ Warkannan said. ‘Huh, I begin to see your point about those carriages. But it wasn’t just the luxuries that drove us out. It was the evil magicks and pollutions of the blood.’
‘Magicks like what? Your books do mention “unspeakable practices”, but since they never speak about them, I don’t have the slightest idea what the authors mean.’
At that Warkannan had to laugh. ‘I had the same reaction when I was a boy,’ he said. ‘One explanation I heard was the infidels back in the Homelands bred demons.’
‘Bred demons?’
‘Yes, they learned how to mingle the blood of men and animals, somehow, to produce new creatures. The mullahs called these demons.’
‘I see.’ Soutan thought for a long moment. ‘I wonder what that really means?’
‘What it says, I suppose. The mullahs don’t lie.’
Soutan shook his head in mock despair.
‘Well,’ Warkannan snapp
ed. ‘Do you think they’re lying?’
‘No. I merely think that they don’t know what they’re talking about.’
‘Now here! You’re getting close to blasphemy.’
‘Oh, no doubt, no doubt. I’ll stop. God forbid I make you think!’ Soutan rolled his eyes, a gesture that Warkannan was beginning to hate. The sorcerer stood up, then looked across the fire and out to Arkazo’s silent back. ‘Will he be all right?’
‘Eventually. He’s never seen a dead man before.’
‘Ah.’ Soutan considered this for a moment. ‘Well, if we do bring Jezro back to Kazrajistan, he’d better get used to it.’
The sorcerer walked over to his gear and squatted down to put his book away. Warkannan reminded himself several times that he needed Soutan to get across the Rift. Strangling the irritating little bastard would be counter-productive.
That night Warkannan dreamt of Tareev’s body, floating to the surface of the shallow Mistlands lake. He and Kareem stood together and watched as it drifted out of sight, and Kareem wept as bitterly as a woman. When Warkannan woke, he felt as exhausted as if he’d not slept at all.
Zayn woke from a long dream of the Mistlands to a light so cold and grey that for a moment he thought himself still dreaming. He rolled over onto his side and lifted the tent wall a few inches for a look out. Over the patchwork tents and orange wagons the fog lay thick. He sat up, pushing his blankets back, and glanced around. Ammadin’s bedroll lay neatly rolled under her tent bags. From outside the noise of the camp filtered in – dogs barking, children laughing and calling, adult voices passing by. He had slept late, then. He got up, pulled on his trousers, and noticed the rag stuck on the ridge pole where Ammadin had left it the night before. In the morning light he could see the reddish-brown streaks of sap, congealed and dry, their phosphorescence long gone.
The night before. Ammadin. The memory of their talk came back like a slap in the face; he tossed his head as if to shake off the blow. He had told her everything. He had been an utter fool. He started to shiver, grabbed his shirt and put it on, still felt the gooseflesh run down his back. You’re not in the khanate, he reminded himself. You’re safe here. No one cares about the damned demons and their talents. But Ammadin might mention his secrets to someone else, and that someone might talk about them in front of a Kazrak at the next horse fair.
The tent flap rustled, shook, and lifted. Ammadin came in, then let the flap drop behind her. She set her hands on her hips and studied his face.
‘What’s wrong?’ she said. ‘Did you have bad dreams?’
‘In a way,’ Zayn said. ‘Uh, what I told you? About the demon spawn and all of that?’
‘I’m not going to mention it to anyone else. I don’t want to see you stoned at a horse fair because someone slipped and told your secret to a Kazrak.’
The fear left him, and he managed to return her smile. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘That was on my mind, all right.’
‘I thought it might be.’
‘But they wouldn’t stone me. They’d turn me over to the Council, and I’d be burned alive.’
‘It’s hard to say which would be worse.’
‘Well, yes. I’d just as soon not have to choose.’
Ammadin smiled briefly. ‘Tell me something,’ she said. ‘Your father. You said he was still alive, right?’
‘Yes. He’s become a hermit.’
‘A what?’
‘A holy man. He lives in the hills near the border, in fact, in a hut. It’s near a mosque, and the men in charge bring him food and keep an eye on him.’
‘How very strange! Why did he do that? Do you know?’
‘Yes, I asked him when I went to see him. He says it’s in penance for having fathered me.’
‘Oh gods! I’ll never understand you people.’ Ammadin paused, her mouth twisted in disgust; then she shrugged. ‘About your supposed demon blood – is your memory for words your only talent?’
‘No. I can draw pictures, too.’
‘So? A lot of people can do that, some badly, some well.’
‘I mean, I can glance at something like a diagram in a book or a decoration on a wall and then draw it again months later. It’s odd. I can see the design in my mind, and then if someone hands me some rushi and a pen, I can sort of push the design out through my eyes onto the rushi and copy over it.’
Ammadin considered this for a moment. ‘That is odd,’ she said at last. ‘Not demonic, mind, but odd. It’s still a memory talent, though.’
‘Yes. I can learn just about anything fast. I can repeat whatever it is, word for word, picture for picture – even if I don’t understand it. And music, if I hear a song or something like that once, I can sing it back.’
‘What else is on that list?’ She paused for a smile. ‘I’m assuming you can remember.’
Zayn laughed, astonished that he could laugh, and so easily, over a joke that would have seemed deadly just the day before.
‘I can, yes,’ he said. In his mind he could see the page in one of his father’s holy books, black letters, as curved as sabres, damning him. ‘The twelve forbidden talents of memory, the twelve forbidden warrior talents, the forbidden talents of perception, and so on. I can recite them all, if you’d like.’
‘I would. I – what’s that?’
Outside someone was calling her name. She raised the tent flap and peered out.
‘Maddi, he’s awake, yes,’ Ammadin called in return. She dropped the flap and turned back to him. ‘They want to strike this tent and pack it. You’d better go eat. We’re riding out as soon as the wagons are loaded.’
‘All right.’
As he left the tent, Zayn was hoping that she’d just forget about the rest of the impure talents. Merely thinking of them filled him with a profound unease, born of long years of fear and scorn. You’re a man like any other, just with an odd turn of mind – or so she said. He looked up at the silver sky.
‘Oh God,’ he whispered. ‘Can it really be true?’
No answer sounded in a booming voice, no lettered banner appeared in the fog. He laughed at himself and went to find Dallador.
The Great River ran shallow where it issued from the Mistlands, allowing the comnee to ford safely and head east. As usual Ammadin rode at some distance ahead, but she kept watch for Zayn’s enemies. One of her spirit crystals, the one she’d named Sentry, made a humming sound whenever the Riders appeared in the sky, even during the day when no one could actually see them. At the sound Ammadin would halt her horse and dismount. She’d take another crystal, Spirit Eyes, out of her saddlebags and unwrap it. For as long as the Riders were overhead, Spirit Eyes would show her a vision of the territory around her, as much as a walking person might cover in a morning. Once the Riders had passed below the horizon, the spirit in the crystal would fall asleep and refuse to wake, no matter how many times she chanted the magical commands.
In the crystal Ammadin would see a circle of purple grassland, overlaid with pale yellow numbers that seemed to float in the air. She would see her horse and herself as a tiny black dot in the centre of the field of vision. The moving comnee, a tiny blotch of herds and wagons, would appear just at the edge, under one of the spirit numbers etched around the crystal’s equator. If she called that number, the view would shift, and the comnee would reappear in the centre of the circle. She could then see the country around them on all sides, or she could refocus her eyes and magnify the image in the centre until it seemed large enough to show every detail. Once she’d finished her scan, she would carry the crystal in one hand as she rode on, holding it up to let the spirit feed on the sunlight as its reward. A shaman who forgot to feed her spirits would soon find herself with dead crystals.
Three days out from the Mistlands, Sentry sounded his alarm not long after she’d left the comnee behind. As she stared into Spirit Eyes, Ammadin thought she saw a group of figures, or their smudged, tiny images, riding and leading pack horses at some long distance from the comnee. When she tried to transfer
the vision to look straight down at them, Spirit Eyes made a sharp chirping little cry.
‘You can’t see that far?’ Ammadin said. ‘Or is nothing really there?’
Once more she tried to scan; once more the crystal chirped.
‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘If they’re that far away, they’re not a real threat anyway.’
The next time that the Riders appeared overhead, Ammadin saw a far stranger sight than the men who might have been Zayn’s enemies. Her crystal showed her three ChaMeech loping along through the grass, again, at the very edge of its range. Although she coaxed the spirit with commands and praise both, it simply could not show her more than three tiny ChaMeech shapes moving fast. From then on she kept a watch for them as well. That afternoon, not long before sunset, they reached the Blue Stone River, running from the north-east to the south-west. Near the river lay a regular Tribal campsite, but the surrounding grass, standing high and untrampled, told them that no one had passed that way for months. While the women tethered out the horses, the men began cutting down the grass to clear the areas around the stone fire-pits. The comnee would be making a full camp and raising all the tents. Apanador and Ammadin walked into the meagre shade of a stand of spear trees to talk.
‘My wife says that some of the mares are ready to drop their foals,’ he told her. ‘And there’s no meat left. We’ll have to stay here for a couple of days.’
‘Good. I have some work I need to do.’
‘What about those Kazraks? Zayn’s enemies.’
‘They’re following us, but they’re clever. I only catch glimpses of them now and then.’
‘I’ll tell Zayn to stick close to the other men when he goes hunting.’
Once the men finished raising the tents, Ammadin carried her saddlebags into hers. Zayn had already laid the floor cloth and spread out her blankets on one side of hearth stones under the smokehole and his own bedroll on the other. She set up the god figures on their rug, then sat down on her blankets and took out her crystals.