A Path to Coldness of Heart (18 page)

“Exactly. Considering the example of the Nawami revenants in the eastern desert.”

“You’re right. Sahmaman was barely a ghost. I’ll make sure he finds nothing to work with here.”

“The Star Rider needs to be rendered permanently redundant.”

“Have a care with what you say.”

“You disagree?”

“Not at all. I’ll cheerfully entertain suggestions as to how to arrange that. But thousands before us have shared that ambition. Most likely thousands more will do so after we’re gone.”

Mist stared at her father. “It will take a bigger, faster, deadlier rat trap.” Then, “Let’s go back down. This is too depressing. All I really came for was to connect with my children.”

“As you wish.”

She could tell that he considered her prospects doomed.

...

Mist had gone. Neither Scalza nor Ekaterina ever warmed to her.

Varthlokkur settled into that room in the Wind Tower, the curtain back and the dust covers off the dead. He reviewed the terrible memories and tried to deal with questions that Mist had raised.

How did the Princes get into Fangdred without having portals waiting?

He had the entire fortress searched, years after the fact. The search turned up exactly what he expected: nothing.

They could have ridden winged demons. In fact, that seemed likely. But those things made a lot of noise.

The weather that night had been terrible… Previously dissociated elements clicked into place. Of course. That weather had not been natural.

Nepanthe’s brothers must have been involved.

Knowing what to look for let him probe the past and discover that the Storm Kings, and Mist herself, had affected events that night.

Insanity. Mist, and many others, had known that the Princes Thaumaturge would be engaged. Everyone had an interest and each thumbed the situation somewhere, trying to shape the outcome subtly. But there was nothing anywhere to clarify the essential question: How had the brothers gotten into the Wind Tower without receiving portals in place?

There was no choice but to believe either the winged demon hypothesis or that portals, since removed, had been placed for them, in secret, beforehand.

It could be that Old Meddler had made it all happen.

And Varthlokkur was no more comfortable about some other questions Mist had raised.

He had to do something with the dead sorcerers. There was no choice about that.

Nepanthe brought tea. She sat with him, her back to the site of the worst night of a life where most every major memory was a bad one. “Ethrian is having a good day. You should spend more time with him. I think that would help.”

“Yes. Certainly. It would be time better spent than sitting here, despairing of yesterday and tomorrow.”

Nepanthe leaned forward. She rested a hand on his. “Let’s just concern ourselves with what we can do today.”

There was a tear in the corner of his left eye when he said, “That should be the way we live.” They rose. He slipped an arm around her waist as they walked toward the doorway. He glanced back at the dead, just once, as he waited for her to step out.

That once gave him an idea.

†

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SUMMER, YEAR 1017 AFE:

LEGENDARY CONFUSION

H
ammad al Nakir simmered with rumors. Everyone wanted to believe that the King Without a Throne had returned.

His very first action had been to kill Magden Norath, ending the terror underpinning bad king Megelin’s throne!

The desert awaited anxiously what would happen next.

The man who had caused the ferment had no idea what that should be. Taking Norath down, alerting the world to his survival, had not figured in the fantasies he had indulged during his long trek west.

People would start looking for him. Some would just want to know if it was really him. Others would be frightened. Old Meddler would be upset because his intrigue had been aborted before it could be hatched.

Yasmid and Megelin would want to capture him. The Dread Empire and Varthlokkur had to be considered, too.

He could not hide Haroun bin Yousif from those powers. He had to become someone distinctly not Haroun.

He began immediately. He sold his horses. He bought strange clothing. He acquired a donkey and three goats. He left the desert for the east coast. There he bought a cart for his goats to pull. This and that went into the cart, including all his obvious weapons.

The shore of the Sea of Kotsüm was a region where the people followed the Disciple. Bandits and robbers were few.

He came to al-Asadra wearing gaudy apparel and shaved. He had a red demon tattoo on his left cheek and a big blue teardrop falling from the outside corner of his right eye. His own family would not have recognized him.

He had trouble recognizing him, so thoroughly had he dropped into this new character.

He had no long-term plan.

He was an entertainer, now, a role so alien that no one ought ever to look his way with Haroun bin Yousif in mind. He did puppet shows. He used sleight of hand tricks which, due to his lack of skill, compelled him to employ some true sorcery. Carefully. Everyone enjoyed a magic show—so long as they could be sure they were just seeing conjure tricks. And, finally, he told fortunes using a greasy, worn deck found in pawn in the souk where he put on his first show. Their shabbiness lent them credibility.

Divination in any form was illegal but the authorities turned a blind eye so long as the fortuneteller claimed to be an entertainer only.

Cynics would observe that fortunetellers had been around for millennia before El Murid and they would exist still long after El Murid had been forgotten by even the most esoteric historians. People wanted a glimpse of the future, often desperately.

God had written their fates on their foreheads at birth but that was hard to read in a mirror. It was easy to delude oneself into believing that a mummer might, indeed, reveal the divine plan. And the more so when the future one saw oneself was entirely ugly.

“Hai, peoples. Come see.” He performed a conjuring trick that attracted a few urchins. He did the one where he found a dirty green coin behind a six-year-old’s ear. The kid sprinted off to turn his riches into food. The news brought a raucous crowd of children.

His confidence did not improve. He was not accustomed to children. He was not social at all. He wrestled ferocious doubts as he strove to hide from the world by borrowing a persona from a man long dead.

...

“All this ferment because of one unreliable witness,” Yasmid said. “I don’t understand.”

“They want it to be true,” Habibullah replied. “They’re sick of Megelin. He’s a weakling tyrant who spawns disasters. But they’re equally sick of being preached at. They’re hungry for a savior. They are making themselves one out of wishful thinking. The King Without a Throne. The strongman who will bring peace and unity. They forget the facts of the man that was.”

Yasmid knew that. She did not like it.

She disliked its religious implications. She disliked its social implications. Selfishly, she disliked it because it suggested that she could lose her privileged life.

“I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to do anything about it. I don’t want to be seen as concerned about it. Let the fever run its course.”

Habibullah was astonished. “But…”

“We’re going to try a new strategy, old friend. This time, instead of roaring around killing people and screaming about God, we’re just going to ignore it. We’ll leave the world alone so long as the world extends us the same courtesy.”

She watched the old soldier begin to marshal his arguments, then lay them down again before he spoke.

He was tired of the struggle, too.

She asked, “Is it time to go see my father?”

“Yes. Elwas wants us to dine with him and the foreigner.” His disapproval of that Unbeliever never relented.

“Then let us tend to our garden.”

Habibullah frowned, puzzled.

“A sutra from the Book of Reconciliation.” Which was not a book at all but a long letter El Murid had written to persecuted converts when he was still young and visionary. It was included in the greater collection of the Disciple’s Inspired Writings—cynically assembled by Yasmid to help guide and shape the Faith.

“Oh. Yes. Where he tells us to endure our trials. If we live our lives righteously and tend to our gardens, God will tend to us.”

“Very good.”

“My father was there, in that camp, when he wrote that letter.”

Tangled lives, Yasmid thought, with some entanglements going back decades and generations.

She had her women ready her for the public passage across the mile to her father’s tent. Though the hard line imams had been tamed for now she did not want to provoke them. Publicly, she would conform to the standards expected of an important woman.

Those were the unwritten terms of a tacit truce.

It was another in a long parade of fine days. The sky was a brighter blue than in most years. There were clouds up there, stately cumulus caravels like immense, gnarly snowballs edged with silver, numerous enough to be worthy of note. They were uncommon in most summers.

The fakir from Matayanga claimed that the unusual and favorable weather was a consequence of the great war between his homeland and Shinsan.

Yasmid cared only that the weather brought more moisture than usual.

“It’s almost cool today.”

Habibullah misinterpreted. “Getting cold feet?”

“No. I started thinking about Haroun.”

Habibullah sighed.

“I’m sorry. The Evil One has that hold on me. I can’t get the man out of my head.” She took four steps. “I never could.” Several more steps. “He would be away for years. And I would spend most of that time watching the door, waiting for him to come through.” She managed another ten steps. “Habibullah, I could have come home any time I wanted. There was no one to stop me. There was just one old woman with me. But I stayed and watched the door.”

Habibullah faced the mountains behind them. He thought he might shed a tear. He did not want his goddess to see that.

As they approached El Murid’s tent Yasmid halted yet again. “I’m watching the door again. God, have mercy on your weak child.”

“He’s dead, Yasmid. Accept that. The rumors all result from one fevered imagination.”

“I can’t accept that.”

...

Elwas al-Souki met the Lady Yasmid at the entrance to the Disciple’s tent—that being a sprawl of canvas and poles covering several acres.

El Murid had a philosophical resistance to residing in structures built of timber or stone. He would live in tents whenever he could.

This sprawl was a ghost of the canvas palaces he had occupied in his glory days.

Al-Souki said, “Lady, you are punctual. Sadly, we have not been your equal. We have run late all day, getting farther behind by the hour.”

“What are you up to, Elwas?”

The man did not dissemble. “I hoped to show you how your father is progressing while we wait.”

“Why?” She did not want to be here. Whatever prolonged her torment was sure to irk her.

“Because you need to know. Because your wretch of a father is also the Disciple, a shining star to millions. You need to see what we’ve done to resurrect the visionary from the ashes of the man.”

Habibullah averred, “That’s interesting talk, Elwas. Now make it mean something.”

Elwas flashed a happy face and beckoned them to follow.

They reached an open area fifty feet by a hundred with the canvas twenty feet above, supported by an orchard of poles. There were few furnishings. The floor was sawdust and wood chips mixed with strained sand and shredded clay in a groomed flat, soft surface. Thin, creamy light coming through the canvas revealed several men engaged in calisthenics. Swami Phogedatvitsu and his smarmy interpreter walked around them. The swami occasionally swatted one with a switch. No one wore anything but a loincloth. None of those bodies were worthy of flaunting.

Yasmid did not recognize her father.

When Habibullah brought her home—subjective ages ago—Micah al Rhami had been a fat slug, half blind, barely aware that he was alive. His caretakers kept him fat, drugged, and out of sight so he would not interfere in what they did in his name.

Most of those parasites abided with the Evil One now. The Invincibles and Harish had helped clean them out.

“Lady? Are you all right?” Elwas asked. He sounded genuinely concerned.

“I’m fine. I was remembering my return from exile, when I first saw what had become of my father. It was beyond belief.”

“I have heard tell.”

Yasmid glanced his way, unhappy. He was not feeling generous toward her, perhaps because of her profound disgust. That never won favor among men who considered her father the Right Hand of God, however far he had fallen.

Elwas told her, “He is free of the poppy. Heavy exercise is one of Swami Phogedatvitsu’s sharpest tools.”

“Wouldn’t that just aggravate his pain?”

“That is emotion expressed as pain, not actual pain. He feels the loss of your mother physically instead of emotionally.”

Yasmid nodded. An odd way of thinking but it did sound plausible.

“The swami also teaches skills for managing both the need for the poppy and the pain that excuses the need.”

Yasmid sucked in a deep breath, released it in a long sigh. Her father had suffered chronic pain forever. He had sustained severe injuries during his early ministry. Some never healed right. The pain, and the opium he used to control it, clouded his judgment later. Countless needless deaths resulted.

“I do hope that he conquers the poppy, Elwas. I pray for that regularly. But he has beaten it before, only to backslide when life disappointed him.”

“This time will be different. I hope you will let the swami manage your father’s health permanently.”

Habibullah snorted in disdain but did control his tongue.

Yasmid understood. It would be outrageous to hand the Disciple’s health and spiritual well-being over to a heathen mystic. The most coveted treasure a villain could win would be control of the Disciple’s person
.