“The merchant?” Laín Nunez asked urgently, swinging down from his horse. “They came for him?” And Alvar abruptly remembered that the plump Asharite had been marked to die in Fezana’s castle that day.
The Captain was shaking his head slowly. “The merchant,” he said, “is no more.”
“Rot their souls!” Laín Nunez swore violently. “By Jad’s fingers and toes, I hate the Muwardis!”
“Instead of the merchant,” the Captain went on placidly, “we appear to have a new outrider to join Martín and Ludus. We’ll have to work some weight off him before he’s much use, mind you.”
Laín Nunez gave his sharp bark of laughter as a ponderous figure rose from the far side of the fire, clad—barely—in the garb of a Jaddite Horseman. Husari ibn Musa seemed, improbably, quite at ease.
“I’ve been a wadji already today,” he said calmly, speaking passable Esperañan. “This is no more of a stretch, I suppose.”
“Untrue,” the Captain murmured. “Looking at Ramon’s clothing on you, I’d call it a big stretch.” There was laughter. The merchant smiled, and patted his stomach cheerfully.
Alvar, joining uncertainly in the amusement, saw the Kindath doctor, Jehane, sitting on a saddle blanket by the fire, hands about her drawn-up knees. She was looking into the flames.
“How many of the desert dogs were here?” Laín Nunez asked.
“Only ten, Martín says. Which is why they didn’t come to Orvilla.”
“He told them we were dealing with it?”
“Yes. They are obviously under orders to give us our gold and hope we leave quickly.”
Laín Nunez removed his hat and ran a hand through his thinning grey hair. “And are we? Leaving?”
“I think so,” the Captain said. “I can’t think of a point to make down here. There’s nothing but trouble in Fezana right now.”
“And trouble heading home.”
“Well, walking home.”
“They’ll get there eventually.”
Rodrigo grimaced. “What would you have had me do?”
His lieutenant shrugged, and then spat carefully into the grass. “We leave at first light, then?” he asked, without answering the question.
The Captain looked at him closely for a moment longer, opened his mouth as if to say something more, but in the end he merely shook his head. “The Muwardis will be watching us. We leave, but not in any hurry. We can take our time about breaking camp. You can pick a dozen men to ride back to Orvilla in the morning. Spend the day working there and catch us up later. There are men and women to be buried, among other things.”
Alvar dismounted and walked over to the fire where the doctor was sitting. “Is there . . . can I help you with anything?”
She looked very tired, but she did favor him with a quick smile. “Not really, thank you.” She hesitated. “This is your first time in Al-Rassan?”
Alvar nodded. He sank down on his haunches beside her. “I was hoping to see Fezana tomorrow,” he said. He wished he spoke better Asharic, but he tried. “I am told it is a city of marvels.”
“Not really,” she repeated carelessly. “Ragosa, Cartada . . . Silvenes, of course. What’s left of it. Those are the great cities. Seria is beautiful. There is nothing marvelous about Fezana. It has always been too close to the tagra lands to afford the luxury of display. You won’t be seeing it tomorrow?”
“We’re leaving in the morning.” Again, Alvar had the unpleasant sense that he was struggling to stay afloat in waters closing over his head. “The Captain just told us. I’m not sure why. I think because the Muwardis came.”
“Well, of course. Look around you. The parias gold is here. They don’t want to open the gates tomorrow, and they particularly won’t want Jaddite soldiers in the city. Not with what happened today.”
“So we’re just going to turn around and—”
“I’m afraid so, lad.” It was the Captain. “No taste of decadent Al-Rassan for you this time.” Alvar felt himself flushing.
“Well, the women are mostly outside the walls this year,” the doctor said, with a demure expression. She was looking at Ser Rodrigo, not at Alvar.
The Captain swore. “Don’t tell my men that! Alvar, you are bound to secrecy. I don’t want anyone crossing the river. Any man who leaves camp walks home.”
“Yes, sir,” Alvar said hastily.
“Which reminds me,” the Captain said to him, with a sidelong glance at the doctor, “you might as well lower your stirrups now. For the ride back.”
And with those words, for the first time in a long while, Alvar felt a little more like his usual self. He’d been waiting for this moment since they’d left Valledo behind.
“Must I, Captain?” he asked, keeping his expression innocent. “I’m just getting used to them this way. I thought I’d even try bringing them up a bit higher, with your approval.”
The Captain looked at the doctor again. He cleared his throat. “Well, no, Alvar. It isn’t really . . . I don’t think . . .”
“I thought, if I had my knees up high enough, really high, I might be able to rest my chin on them when I rode, and that would keep me fresher on a long ride. If that makes sense to you, Captain?”
Alvar de Pellino had his reward, then, for uncharacteristic silence and biding his time. He saw the doctor smile slowly at him, and then look with arched eyebrows of inquiry at the Captain.
Rodrigo Belmonte was, however, a man unlikely to be long discomfited by this sort of thing. He looked at Alvar for a moment, then he, too, broke into a smile.
“Your father?” he asked.
Alvar nodded his head. “He did warn me of some things I might encounter as a soldier.”
“And you chose to accept the stirrup business nonetheless? To say nothing at all?”
“It was you who did it, Captain. And I want to remain in your company.”
The Kindath doctors amusement was obvious. Ser Rodrigo’s brow darkened. “In Jad’s name, boy, were you humoring me?”
“Yes, sir,” said Alvar happily.
The woman he had decided he would love forever threw back her head and laughed aloud. A moment later, the Captain he wanted to serve all his days did exactly the same thing.
Alvar decided it hadn’t been such a terrible night, after all.
“Do you see how clever my men are?” Rodrigo said to the doctor as their laughter subsided. “You are quite certain you won’t reconsider and join us?”
“You tempt me,” the doctor said, still smiling. “I do like clever men.” Her expression changed. “But Esperaña is no place for a Kindath, Ser Rodrigo. You know that as well as I.”
“It will make no difference with us,” the Captain said. “If you can sew a sword wound and ease a bowel gripe you will be welcome among my company.”
“I can do both those things, but your company, clever as its men may be, is not the wider world.” There was no amusement in her eyes any more. “Do you remember what your Queen Vasca said of us, when Esperaña was the whole peninsula, before the Asharites came and penned you in the north?”
“That was more than three hundred years ago, doctor.”
“I know that. Do you remember?”
“I do, of course, but—”
“Do you?” She turned to Alvar. She was angry now. Mutely, he shook his head.
“She said the Kindath were animals, to be hunted down and burned from the face of the earth.”
Alvar could think of nothing to say.
“Jehane,” the Captain said, “I can only repeat, that was three hundred years ago. She is long dead and gone.”
“Not gone! You dare say that? Where is she?” She glared at Alvar, as if he were to blame for this, somehow. “Where is Queen Vasca’s resting place?”
Alvar swallowed. “On the Isle,” he whispered. “Vasca’s Isle.”
“Which is a shrine! A place of pilgrimage, where Jaddites from all three of your kingdoms and countries beyond the mountains come, on their knees, to beg miracl
es from the spirit of the woman who said that thing. I will make a wager that half this so-clever company have family members who have made that journey to plead for blessed Vasca’s intercession.”
Alvar kept his mouth firmly shut. So, too, this time, did the Captain.
“And you would tell me,” Jehane of the Kindath went on bitterly, “that so long as I do my tasks well enough it will not matter what faith I profess in Esperañan lands?”
For a long time Ser Rodrigo did not answer. Alvar became aware that the merchant, ibn Musa, had come up to join them. He was standing on the other side of the fire listening. All through the camp Alvar could now hear the sounds and see the movements of men preparing themselves for sleep. It was very late.
At length, the Captain murmured, “We live in a fallen and imperfect world, Jehane bet Ishak. I am a man who kills much of the time, for his livelihood. I will not presume to give you answers. I have a question, though. What, think you, will happen to the Kindath in Al-Rassan if the Muwardis come?”
“The Muwardis are here. They were in Fezana today. In this camp tonight.”
“Mercenaries, Jehane. Perhaps five thousand of them in the whole peninsula.”
Her turn to be silent. The silk merchant came nearer. Alvar saw her glance up at him and then back at the Captain.
“What are you saying?” she asked.
Rodrigo crouched down now beside Alvar and plucked some blades of grass before answering.
“You spoke very bluntly a little while ago about our coming south to take Fezana one day. What do you think Almalik of Cartada and the other kings would do if they saw us coming down through the tagra lands and besieging Asharite cities?”
Again, the doctor said nothing. Her brow was knitted in thought.
“It would be the wadjis, first,” said Husari ibn Musa softly. “They would begin it. Not the kings.”
Rodrigo nodded agreement. “I imagine that is so.”
“What would they begin?” Alvar asked.
“The process of summoning the tribes from the Majriti,” said the Captain. He looked gravely at Jehane. “What happens to the Kindath if the city-kings of Al-Rassan are mastered? If Yazir and Ghalib come north across the straits with twenty thousand men? Will the desert warriors fight us and then go quietly home?”
For a long time she didn’t answer, sitting motionless in thought, and the men around the fire kept silent, waiting for her. Behind her, to the west, Alvar saw the white moon low in the sky, as if resting above the long sweep of the plain. It was a strange moment for him; looking back, after, he would say that he grew older during the course of that long night by Fezana, that the doors and windows of an uncomplicated life were opened and the shadowed complexity of things was first made known to him. Not the answers, of course, just the difficulty of the questions.
“These are the options, then?” Jehane the physician asked, breaking the stillness. “The Veiled Ones or the Horsemen of Jad? This is what the world holds in store?”
“We will not see the glory of the Khalifate again,” Husari ibn Musa said softly, a shadow against the sky. “The days of Rahman the Golden and his sons or even ibn Zair amid the fountains of the Al-Fontina are gone.”
Alvar de Pellino could not have said why this saddened him so much. He had spent his childhood playing games of imagined conquest among the evil Asharites, dreaming of the sack of Silvenes, dreading the swords and short bows of Al-Rassan. Rashid ibn Zair, last of the great khalifs, had put the Esperañan provinces of Valledo and Ruenda to fire and sword in campaign after campaign when Alvar’s father was a boy and then a soldier. But here under the moons and the late night stars the sad, sweet voice of the silk merchant seemed to conjure forth resonances of unimaginable loss.
“Could Almalik in Cartada be strong enough?” The doctor was looking at the merchant, and even Alvar, who knew nothing of the background to this, could see how hard this particular question was for her.
Ibn Musa shook his head. “He will not be allowed to be.” He gestured to the chests of gold and the mules that had brought them into the camp. “Even with his mercenaries, which he can scarcely afford, he cannot avoid the payment of the parias. He is no lion, in truth. Only the strongest of the petty-kings. And he already needs the Muwardis to keep him that way.”
“So what you intend to do, what I hope to do . . . are simply things that will hasten the end of Al-Rassan?”
Husari ibn Musa crouched down beside them. He smiled gently. “Ashar taught that the deeds of men are as footprints in the desert. You know that.”
She tried, but failed, to return the smile. “And the Kindath say that nothing under the circling moons is fated to last. That we who call ourselves the Wanderers are the symbol of the life of all mankind.” She turned then, after a moment, to the Captain. “And you?” she asked.
And softly Rodrigo Belmonte said, “Even the sun goes down, my lady.” And then, “Will you not come with us?”
With a queer, unexpected sadness, Alvar watched her slowly shake her head. He saw that some strands of her brown hair had come free of the covering stole. He wanted to push them back, as gently as he could.
“I cannot truly tell you why,” she said, “but it feels important that I go east. I would see King Badir’s court, and speak with Mazur ben Avren, and walk under the arches of the palace of Ragosa. Before those arches fall like those of Silvenes.”
“And that is why you left Fezana?” Ser Rodrigo asked.
She shook her head again. “If so, I didn’t know it. I am here because of an oath I swore to myself, and to no one else, when I learned what Almalik had done today.” Her expression changed. “And I will make a wager with my old friend Husari—that I will deal with Almalik of Cartada before he does.”
“If someone doesn’t do it before either of us,” ibn Musa said soberly.
“Who?” Ser Rodrigo asked. A soldier’s question, pulling them back from a mood shaped of sorrow and starlight. But the merchant only shook his head and made no reply.
“I must sleep,” the doctor said then, “if only to let Velaz do so.” She gestured and Alvar saw her old servant standing wearily a discreet distance away, where the firelight died in darkness.
All around them the camp had grown quiet as soldiers settled in for the night. The doctor looked at Rodrigo. “You said you are sending men to attend to the dead of Orvilla in the morning. I will ride with them, to do what I can for the living, then Velaz and I will be on our way.”
Alvar saw Velaz gesture to Jehane, and then noticed where the servant had made up a pallet for her. She walked over towards it. Alvar, after a moment, sketched an awkward bow she did not see, and went the other way, to where he usually slept near Martín and Ludus, the outriders. They were wrapped in their blankets, asleep.
He unfolded his own saddle blanket and lay down. Sleep eluded him. He had far too many things chasing and tumbling through his mind. He remembered the pride in his mother’s voice the day she recounted the details of her first pilgrimage to seek Blessed Vasca’s intercession for her brave son as he left home for the world of warring men. He remembered her telling how she had gone the last part of the journey on her hands and knees over the stones to kiss the feet of the statue of the queen before her tomb.
Animals, to be hunted down and burned from the face of the earth.
He had killed his first man tonight. A good sword blow from horseback, slicing down through the collarbone of a running man. A motion he had practiced so many times, with friends or alone as a child under his father’s eye, then drilled by the king’s foul-tongued sergeants in the tiltyard at Esteren. Exactly the same motion, no different at all. And a man had fallen to the summer earth, bleeding his life away.
The deeds of men, as footprints in the desert.
He had won himself a splendid horse tonight, and armor better by far than his own, with more to come. The beginnings of wealth, a soldier’s honor, perhaps an enduring place among the company of Rodrigo Belmonte. He had drawn laught
er and approval from the man who might truly become his Captain now.
Nothing under the circling moons is fated to last.
He had crouched by a fire on this dark plain and heard an Asharite and a Kindath woman of beauty and intelligence far beyond his experience, and Ser Rodrigo himself, as they spoke in Alvar’s presence of the past and future of the peninsula.
Alvar de Pellino made his decision then, more easily than he would ever have imagined. And he also knew, awake under the stars and a more perceptive man than he had been this same morning, that he would be permitted to do this thing. Only then, as if this resolution had been the key to the doorway of sleep, did Alvar’s mind slow its whirlwind of thought enough to allow him rest. Even then he dreamed: a dream of Silvenes, which he had never seen, of the Al-Fontina in the glorious days of the Khalifate, which were over before he was born.
Alvar saw himself walking in that palace; he saw towers and domes of burnished gold, marble columns and arches, gleaming in the light. He saw gardens with flower beds and splashing fountains and statues in the shade, heard a distant, otherworldly music, was aware of the tall green trees rustling in the breeze, offering shelter from the sun. He smelled lemons and almonds and an elusive eastern perfume he could not have named.
He was alone, though, in that place. Whatever paths he walked, past water and tree and cool stone arcade, were serenely, perfectly empty. Passing through high-ceilinged rooms with many-colored cushions on the mosaic-inlaid floors he saw wall hangings of silk and carvings of alabaster and olive wood. He saw golden and silver coffrets set with jewels, and crystal glasses of dark red wine, some filled, some almost empty—as if they had only that moment been set down. But no one was there, no voices could be heard. Only that hint of perfume in the air as he went from room to room, and the music—ahead of him and behind, tantalizing in its purity—alluded to the presence of other men and women in the Al-Fontina of Silvenes, and Alvar never saw them. Not in the dream, not ever in his life.
Even the sun goes down.
Part II
Five