They slew all thirty men in that raiding party.
The king of Jaloña had been cut down by one of the Ragosans before his identity was known. They had wanted to throw him onto the nearest of the fires, but ibn Khairan, swearing like a fisherman when he saw who it was, made them carry King Bermudo’s body back to the city. He would have been far more useful alive, but there were still things that could be done.
The cleric from Ferrieres was nailed to one of the wooden beams he had been instrumental in having raised. All of Esperaña was coming south, it had by then become evident, and the Ferrieres clerics were stridently invoking a holy war. It was not a time for ransoms or the courtesies normally offered pious men.
There had been a brief flickering of hope in Ragosa that the shocking disappearance of their king might lead the enemy to withdraw. It was not to be.
Queen Fruela, who had insisted on accompanying the invading army, took control of the Jaloñan forces with her eldest son, Beñedo. By the time that army reached the walls of Ragosa, a great many farmers and fisherfolk had been captured on sweeps through the countryside. These had not been killed. Instead, the besieging army set about mutilating them, one by one, within sight of the city, at sunrise and sundown while the Jaddites prayed to their golden god of light.
After four days of this, it was King Badir who made the decision to show the body of King Bermudo from the city walls. It was indicated by a herald that the corpse would be desecrated if the torturing continued outside. Queen Fruela, afire with holy zeal, appeared inclined to continue nonetheless but her young son, the new king of Jaloña, prevailed in this matter. The prisoners outside the walls were all killed the next morning, without ceremony. The body of King Bermudo was burned in Ragosa. The Jaddites, watching the smoke of that pyre rise up, took solace in knowing that since he had died in the midst of a war against the infidels, his soul was already dwelling with the god in light.
As a consequence of all this, it was understood from the beginning of the siege of Ragosa that a negotiated surrender was not an option. No one in the city was going to be permitted to live if it fell. In a way that made things simpler for those inside the walls. It removed an otherwise distracting possibility.
It had, in fact, been ibn Khairan who foretold this. “If it comes to an ending,” he had said to Mazur ben Avren on the spring morning he rode back west with Jehane bet Ishak, “try, any way you can, to surrender to Valledo.”
Unexpected words, and both the king and his chancellor saw them as such, but they became rather more explicable after the very different occupations of Fezana and Salos later that summer.
Unfortunately, there seemed no obvious way to negotiate such a surrender, and ibn Khairan himself—the ka’id of Cartada’s armies now—was engaged in making life as miserable as he could for the Valledans as they approached Lonza. If King Ramiro had begun this invasion in a tolerant cast of mind, he might well be abandoning that attitude by now, under the deadly, morale-sapping raids of Cartada’s brilliant commander, and with autumn and the rains coming on.
King Badir’s servant built up the fire again and then deftly refilled the glasses of both men. They could still hear the rain outside. A companionable silence descended.
The chancellor felt his thoughts drifting. He found himself taking note of the trappings of this, the king’s most private room. He looked, as if for the first time, at the fireplace with its mantel carved in a pattern of grapes and leaves. He gazed at the wine itself, and the beautifully worked goblets, at the white candles in their gold sconces, the tapestries from Elvira, the carved ivory figures on sideboard and mantelpiece. He smelled the incense imported from Soriyya, burning in a copper dish, observed the etched windows over the garden, the gilt-edged mirror on the opposite wall, the intricately woven carpets . . .
In a way, Mazur ben Avren thought, all these delicate things were bulwarks, the innermost defenses of civilized man against the rain and dark, and ignorance.
The Jaddites outside the walls did not understand that. Neither, to an even greater degree, did the veiled ones from the desert—the longed-for saviors of everyone’s prayers.
It was too bitter a truth even for irony. These things in Badir’s room—these measures of having found the space to strive for and value beauty in the world—were seen by those to north and south as the markers of corruption, decadence, frivolity. Impiety. Dangerous earthly distractions from a properly humble, cringing appeasement of a blazing god of the sun, or a far, cold deity behind the stars.
“The lady Zabira,” he said, shifting position to ease his hip, “has offered to present herself as a gift to the young king of Jaloña.”
Badir looked up. He had been gazing into the fire.
“She believes she might be able to kill him,” ben Avren added, by way of explanation.
King Badir shook his head. “No point. A brave offer, but that young man means little to his army. What is he, sixteen? And his mother would have Zabira torn apart before she came anywhere near the boy.”
“My thought as well, my lord. I thanked her and declined, on your behalf.” He smiled. “I told her she could present herself to you, instead, but that I needed her more with winter coming.”
The king returned the smile, briefly.
“Do we make it to the winter?” he asked.
Ben Avren sipped his wine before answering. He had been hoping this would not be asked. “I would rather we didn’t have to, to be honest. It will be a near thing. We need an army from the desert to at least land in Al-Rassan, to put the Jaloñans on warning that they are at risk of being trapped outside walls and shelter. They might withdraw then.”
“They should have taken Fibaz before besieging us.”
“Of course they should have. Give thanks to Ashar and I’ll offer a libation to the moons.”
The king didn’t smile this time. “And if the Muwardis don’t land?”
Ben Avren shrugged. “What can I say, my lord? No city is ever safe from betrayal. Especially as supplies begin to dwindle. And you do have a principal advisor who is one of the hated, evil Kindath. If the Jaloñans ever offer a measure of clemency . . .”
“They will not.”
“But if they did? If we then had something to offer back to them, in partial redress of their king’s death . . . ?”
Badir scowled. “We have been through this. Do not vex me again. I will not accept your resignation, your departure, your sacrifice . . . none of these things. What am I clinging to, so desperately, that I would allow myself to lose you?”
“Life? The lives of your people?”
Badir shook his head. “I am too old to clutch like that. If the veiled ones come, my people may survive . . . after a fashion. This city—as we built it—will not.”
He gestured around the room. “We made this together, my friend. If it goes, one way or another, I will make an end drinking my wine with you. Do not speak of this again. I regard the subject as a . . . betrayal.”
Ben Avren’s expression was grave. “It is not that, my lord.”
“It is. We find a way out together, or we do not. Are you not proud of what we have achieved, we two? Is it not a denial of our very lives to speak as you are speaking now? I will not cling to some miserable form of existence at the price of all we have been.”
His chancellor said nothing. The king, after a pause, said, “Mazur, are there not some things we have made here, some things we have done, that are worthy to have been in Silvenes, even in the golden age?”
And Mazur ben Avren, with rare emotion in the deep voice, replied, “There has been a king here, at the least, my lord, more than worthy to have been a khalif in the Al-Fontina in those most shining days.”
Another silence. King Badir said, at length, very softly, “Then speak no more, old friend, of my losing you. I cannot.”
Ben Avren inclined his head. “I will speak of it no more,” he said. “My lord.”
They finished their wine. The chancellor rose, with some diffi
culty, and bade his king good night. He went down the long palace corridors, his slippers silent on the marble floors, walking under torches and past tapestries, listening to the rain.
Zabira was asleep. She had left one candle burning on a table with a flask of wine and another of water, and a glass for him, already filled. He smiled, looking down upon her—as beautiful in sleep as she was awake.
The northerners, he thought, the desert tribes: how could they even comprehend a place and time—a world—that had produced a woman such as this? She would be a symbol of corruption for them both. They would kill her or degrade her, he knew. They would have no idea what else to do with Zabira of Cartada or the music that she made, moving in the world.
He sat down with a sigh in the carved, deep-cushioned wooden chair he’d commissioned from a Jaddite craftsman in the city. He drank a glass of wine, and then, eventually, another, not really sleepy, deep in thought.
No real regrets, he told himself. And realized it was true.
Before he undressed for bed he went to the inner window and opened it and looked out, breathing the night air. The rain had stopped. Water dripped from the leaves of the trees to the garden below.
A long way to the south and west another man was awake that same night, beneath a very different sky.
Past the peaks of the Serrana; past Lonza, huddled and afraid behind its walls, waiting for the Valledans to come; past Ronizza whose lacework was known through all the world; past arrogant Cartada in the valley of its power where the red dye was made; past Aljais and the canals of Elvira, and Silvenes where ghosts and ghostly music were said still to drift among the ruins; past, even, Tudesca at the mouth of the Guadiara, where ships put out to sea with the wealth of Al-Rassan and brought eastern treasures home.
Past all of these and beyond the waters of the straits, outside the walls of Abirab at the northern tip of the Majriti sands, Yazir ibn Q’arif, lord of the tribes of the desert, Sword of Ashar in the West, breathed the salt air from the sea and, sitting alone on an outspread cloak, looked up at a clear sky strewn with the stars of his god.
The Zuhrites had been taught by the sage who had come to them that there were as many stars as there were sands in the desert. Twenty years ago, new to belief, Yazir used to try to comprehend what that meant. He would run grains of sand through his hand while gazing at the heavens.
He was beyond such testing now. Understanding of the god was only for one such as Ashar, worthy of the gift of vision. What could a simple warrior do but bow his head and worship before such unimaginable vastness?
Stars of the heavens like the sands of the desert? What could any man do but humble himself and serve, praying by day and night for mercy and grace, understanding that he was only a part—less than a grain in the drifting sands—of the larger, unheard purpose of the god.
How could men grow swollen with pride, nourish delusions of their worth or the worth of the frail, vain things they made, if they truly believed in Ashar and the stars? That, Yazir ibn Q’arif thought, was a question he would like to ask the kings of Al-Rassan.
The night was mild, though Yazir could sense a hint of winter to come in the wind from the sea. Not long now. Two moons were riding among the stars, the blue one waxing and the white one a waning crescent in the west beyond the last of the land.
Looking at the moons, he was thinking about the Kindath, as it happened.
He had only met one of them in all his life, a barefoot wanderer in a belted robe who had come ashore years ago at a trading station on the coast east of Abeneven. The man had asked to meet the leader of the tribes and had been brought, eventually, to Yazir.
The Kindath had not been a man as most men were; he was not even typical of his own people. He had said as much to Yazir at their first meeting on the sands. Hardened by years of travel, his skin burnt dark and weathered by wind and sun, he reminded Yazir of no one so much as ibn Rashid, the wadji who had come to the Zuhrites long ago—heretical as such a thought might have been. He had the same long, untended white beard, the same clear eyes that seemed to look at something behind or beyond what other men saw.
He was journeying through many lands, the Kindath said, writing of his travels, recording the glorious places of creation, speaking with men of all faiths and beliefs. Not to preach or cajole as the wadjis did, but to deepen his own sense of wonder at the splendor of the world. He laughed often, that Kindath traveler, frequently at himself, telling tales of his own ignorance and helplessness in countries of which Yazir had not even known the names.
He spoke, during his sojourn with Yazir’s people, of the world as having been made by more than one god, and as only one dwelling place among many for the children of creation. This was heresy beyond comprehension. Yazir remembered wondering if even to hear it condemned him to the darkness far from Paradise when he died.
It appeared that there was a sect of the Kindath, an ancient tribe, that taught of these other worlds scattered among the stars, far beyond the moons that wandered the night.
Ashar’s starry visions had been right, the traveler confided to Yazir, but so were the wiser prophets of Jad, and so, in truth, were the Kindath sages who had seen goddesses in the moons. All these teachings revealed a part—but only a part—of the mystery.
There were other deities, other worlds. There was one god above all, ruler of stars and sun and moons, of all the worlds. No man knew the name of this most high lord. Only in the world that had been made first, the world all others—including their own—had followed into Time was that name known and spoken.
Only there did the Supreme One allow knowledge of himself, and there the gods did him homage.
They had broken bread together for several mornings and nights, and spoken of many things. Then the Kindath traveler had begged leave to go alone from Yazir’s camp that he might travel the vast and mighty Majriti desert and worship the splendor thereof.
Ghalib, who had been listening to some of what had been said over the past days, had asked Yazir’s permission—unusual, for him—to follow and kill the man because of his impieties. Yazir, torn by the burden of a host towards a guest and the spiritual duties of a leader to his people, had given his consent, reluctantly. One more transgression for which Ashar would have to grant forgiveness when Yazir’s time came to be judged.
That strange man had been the only one of the Kindath he’d ever met.
Two days ago a letter had come, delivered by a tribesman crossing back to the desert from Tudesca. It had been carried before that by messengers across most of Al-Rassan. It had begun as a note tied to a pigeon’s leg, carried out from besieged Ragosa.
It was from the sorcerer himself, Mazur ben Avren.
After it had been read to him, three times, by a scribe, Yazir had walked from his tent and mounted a camel and ridden into the desert alone to think.
He was still thinking, tonight under the stars. He had a decision to make—one that might shape the destiny of his people—and no more time for delay. To delay further was to decide.
Ghalib was ready to cross to Al-Rassan, Yazir knew that. Ghalib wanted to go where there was already war, to test himself and his tribesmen. To die, if it came to that, with a red sword in his hand, battling in Ashar’s name. The surest path to Paradise.
The Kindath traveler, years ago, hadn’t named that first world where the one true god reigned. He’d said the name was another mystery. Yazir wished he’d never heard the tale. It refused to leave him, still.
Ragosa will not hold out until winter, as matters now stand, Mazur ben Avren had written. But if you so much as land at Tudesca, and come no further this autumn than Aljais or Cartada, the Jaloñans here will be greatly afraid and our people will take heart. I believe we can endure if this happens, and in spring we may turn them back.
Ghalib had said the same thing. He wanted to land before winter, to let the Jaddites fear their presence and push forward no further. Yazir had been inclined to wait—for more ships, more men, and most of all, for
tidings from Soriyya, towards which a Jaddite army was sailing even now.
What did a pious man do when he was asked, desperately, for aid in two different fields of holy war?
It has come to me as a thought, Mazur ben Avren’s letter went on, that one reason you hesitate to relieve us from this peril is my own presence in Ragosa. King Badir is a good man and a wise king, beloved of his people. If it will ease the burden of decision that lies upon you, know that I am ready to leave this city should you send word.
Leave the city? One did not leave besieged cities. Unless . . .
I will walk into the Jaddite camp so soon as word comes from you that you have elected to cross to Al-Rassan and cleanse it of those who must be driven back lest this land be lost to Ashar and the Star-born.
It was a Kindath saying this, offering this.
Yazir imagined his reply being carried north and east, one rider after another, city to city, and then a carrier bird loosed from hills near Ragosa. He imagined that bird landing in the city, his scribe-crafted note carried to the sorcerer. Yazir pictured him reading it.
Strange, strangest thing of all: he never doubted for a moment that the man would do what he said.
The king will not take happily to my presuming to send this letter, and I beg your own forgiveness for my impertinence. Should you agree with my unworthy thoughts, O Sword of Ashar, leader of all the tribes, send only the words “It shall be as has been written,” and I alone will understand and offer thanks to you and act as I have said. May whatever sins Ragosa holds in Ashar’s sight and your own be deemed to rest upon my head as I walk out. My own people in this city honor their Asharite king and know their proper place. If there has been arrogance and presumption it has been my own, and I am prepared to make atonement.
The crescent of the white moon lay almost upon the sea. Yazir watched as it slipped down and out of sight. The innumerable stars were everywhere in the sky and the innumerable sands were about him.