Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 (45 page)

He'd also felt a lashing fire, a fierce vortex that surged and burned. He'd been slowly, dimly aware that there was a battle that raged between the two, and that he was not a simple spectator here, but a victim also; they fought each other, but their fighting injured him.

He'd been aware o
f that but only vaguely, distantl
y. He

was crushed and burned, and he could care about neither. There was a pointlessness to their passiona
te warring, as there was a pointl
essness to his life. He didn't know where he was, and lacked the curiosity to open his eyes. Or try to. He didn't know if he had eyes, if he was still in his or any body. Perhaps heaven hurt, very likely there was pain in hell.

Certainly there was pain here, which didn't seem right, it was so very much not what he was used to; but there was that distancing also, as though he felt it acutely but a long way off. It didn't seem to matter.

And then the pain had gone, the fire had gone and there had been nothing to hold him any longer, nothing for him to do but fall. Which he had done, subsiding under the chill grey weight of the world and struggling not at all, having no sense that he could struggle. Where everything was distant, nothing could be further off than anything else; he'd remembered a boy from his childhood who had fallen through ice on a frozen winter river, who had been carried like a pale shadow beneath his own feet where he had stood terrified on the glassy, cracking surface. Or perhaps he was that boy, perhaps he always had been.

Except that that boy was dead, and he was not. He felt the heaviness disperse before it could entirely entomb him, he felt the cold recede. It seemed to him that there were currents of warmth that seeped slowly through his body and carried him with them, so that at last he reached all the way to his skin and all of it was his own again, more so than it had been for a long, long time.

It might have been soon after that or it might not, he had no way of telling, but a time came when he could reach out even beyond his skin and take note of the world around. He heard voices, though he felt still too far away to listen. He was aware of softness underneath him and warmth above, warmth that lay across him like a blanket. Not desert heat, which he regretted; this was something gentler, that felt to him like something hollow, a mockery-thing, far less than it ought to have been.

He felt much the same way about himself, though he had hopes of altering that. If he lay still long enough, he thought he might remember all his story, and its proper order; he might know where he was, and what had happened to him. He thought he'd have the patience to do that, he thought that patience might be his greatest gift. There seemed to be no urgency anywhere, in his body or his mind. There was a question that he thought he ought to ask, but he wasn't sure what it was, nor whether it really mattered in the least; it could wait.

So he lay and waited also, feeling as light and hollow as the sunlight, an egg sucked dry; or better would be a
shell remade and ready to be fil
led with meat or matter. He had come through the fire and the chill, he had taken all the weight of the world on his shoulders, on his soul. Perhaps he was a saint, cast back into his martyred body for a miracle that should punish the unbelieving heathen. Something was missing, though, more than the story of his days: perhaps he had been a saint and made miracles, and now for his reward he was made again to be a normal man, to live without the holy fire in his blood and die at last and never live again.

He knew his name but little more except a lack of wholeness, something lacked, like the answer to a question not yet voiced. He waited, perhaps for the hand or spirit of the God to touch his mind with understanding as it had touched his body with warmth; but the only hand he felt was outside him, on his skin.

Perhaps that should be miracle enough, that he could feel, that he could be touched. Perhaps he should be content, live hollow and contented
...

He opened his eyes, because he thought he ought to.

There was a sky of pure pale blue, which was all wrong. There was a sun to dazzle, to make him blink and squint; it had burned the sky white all around the fierce beaten gold of its own face, and all of that was wrong.

Then there was a shadow, a silhouette between him and the light. It eased his eyes but left them seeing only darkness, so he let them close again. He had other senses, all his body was his own to use: he could feel the dry, warm touch of fingers on his brow, a palm against his cheek; he could smell the spicy desert tang of unwashed robes and a dust-washed body beneath
..
.

'Jemel,' he said, recognising the shape of it in his mouth as he said the word, recognising the meaning of it in his head.

His own, 'Marron,' was given back to him in answer, in a cracked and broken whisper; and that might be the difference, the only difference, that he said the one name and was answered by the other. To anyone else they might be indistinguishable, might as well be one.

He opened his eyes again and this time saw a face in the shadow as it hung above him, now that he knew what to look for. A sharp nose, dark sunken eyes, black curls, skin the colour of an ageing bruise: it was the details he found rather than the face complete, just the proud curve of the nose or the gleam of light reflected in the intensity of an eye. They were enough to jolt him into memory of Jemel and therefore of himself, his recent self; that rush of memories was enough to teach him all the differences that lay between them, how easily they could be told apart.

Above all, the one great difference:
he is Sand Dancer, of a sort; I am Ghost Walker, of a kind—

—And there, just there it all broke down, as he realised what it was that he had lost, what had been stripped from him, blood and brain. Eyes too, the red cast of it was gone from his eyes, so that his sight was both clearer and more blurred, both at once.

'Where is it?' he asked, and yes, that was the question.

'I do not know. The Princip took it from you, and healed your arm after he had healed your sickness, so that it could not go back. He sang a
sodar
to make it sleep, and then Lisan carried it when they went away. I do not know where they have gone. Do you want it back, Marron?'

He wasn't sure.
What am I, what are we when I
am not the Ghost Walker
?’ Was
Jemel a Sand Dancer still, did his oaths count for anything? And what lay behind the oaths, what mattered so much more - would that endure, or would it be fractured or broken or abandoned altogether, another measurement of loss?

'Do you want me to take it back?'
Do you need me to? Or do I.
..
?
Jemel had only ever known him as the Walker, marked out by more than red eyes and an unhealing wound. If he was to be his simple self again, the boy he used to be — well, that boy had been Sieur Anton's entirely, and not Jemel's at all
...

Jemel only shrugged in echo of Marron's own confusion and shifted his head a little, as if to break the contact of their eyes. The sun's glare was a sudden, unbearable dazzle; Marron turned his head to escape it, turned away from Jemel and couldn't bear that either.

He sat up with an effort that left him dizzy and weak, a stranger in his own body now that his strong companion was gone. He reached out for his friend's support - and checked the movement abruptly, drawing back his arm. His left arm
...

There were all the scarred ridges of his wounding, nothing could heal those now; but the heart of it, where it had lain open all this time, was sealed over with fresh pink skin. He prodded at it experimentally. It was soft and smooth, untouched by sun or dirt, and the flesh was firm beneath. There was no pain, no matter how he worked it.

Black stars sparkled behind his eyes; his mind whirled. His arms were wooden suddenly, too heavy to hold or move. He felt himself sway, begin to fall, could do nothing to prevent it. Other hands gripped his shoulders, held him upright while a strained voice
murmured urgentl
y, 'You should lie down, you have been very sick
...'

Healed or not, he felt sick still; even his tongue tingled strangely, and it was hard to speak. There were more questions now, though, and these might win an answer, could at least do no more damage.

He did lie down, though not quite on the pallet. He wriggled sideways — against little resistance - until his head lay nested in Jemel's lap. Then he said, 'How did I get sick, Jemel - how could I, with the Daughter to protect me? And where are we now, why did you move me? We were in Selussin, I remember that
...'

And that name, that memory brought others again, so that he could almost have answered one of his own questions. He remembered faces in a market, a silent threat; he remembered releasing the Daughter himself, and then a cold invasion.

"There was an 'ifrit,' Jemel said, or something of an 'ifrit, some
little
poison of itself. It found entrance through your hurt, and what you carry - what you
carried
then fought with it, until we brought you here. This is Surayon, the Princip's house. He has freed you from the 'ifrit's shadow, and from the other too; but Rudel is dead, and Hasan has been gravely hurt, and there is war all around us, you can smell it on the wind.'

Whether he meant that literally or not, Marron sniffed for the scent of it, for the direction and the distance; then closed his eyes for a moment, shook his head on the Sharai boy's knees and said, 'No, I can't. Not any more. I could have done, before.'

'You can now. I can. There is smoke in the air.'

'You have a desert nose, Jemel, to match your desert eyes.'

'Perhaps. The air is dry in the Sands, and scents carry, we learn to read the wind. But these fires are close, even this wet breeze will say so. You could smell them if you tried. Wet your nose with your finger, and stretch to catch the upper air where it moves
...'

‘I
need not try, so long as I have you to do it for me. Besides, you told me to lie here and be still. If I sit up again, I will likely faint and you will be angry with me.' And then, losing his smile in a moment, before he could even see whether it was returned, 'Tell me, Jemel. How is Rudel dead, and Hasan hurt? How long have I been ill, for so much to happen? And how have we come to the Folded Land, and war followed us?'

He had to wait, while Jemel fetched a beaker of cool fruit-juice and propped his head up just far enough to enable him to
drink; and then again for the ti
me it took to persuade his friend that no, he was not hungry, the juice was enough for now, he couldn't possibly eat.

At last, though, with his head cushioned once more in the warm lap and Jemel's fingers playing lightly with his hair, all his questions were answered — or all except the one that he couldn't bring himself to ask again, for fear of hearing in his voice what his words would not say,
‘
want it back.

Jemel's husky voice spelled out the situation, all of it — or as much as he could tell - in a quiet, neutral tone, much like a messenger reporting to his lord. Like the King's Shadow reporting to the King, perhaps: if ever he did it so, if the King didn't simply pluck the information from his Shadow's mind. Marron almost smiled at the picture his mind made, of the elegant silver-haired Coren standing or kneeling beside a throne like a page-boy waiting to serve — but no, there was nothing funny about it. Coren had the pride of his station, to be sure, but that was all reflected, he had none of his own. He wouldn't balk at a page's duties, running errands and pouring wine; he would do that service or any other if he thought it right or needful.

Not funny, and not important now. Marron knew why his mind was drifting, why he was letting it drift. He still had half his mind on Jemel's voice, he was still listening, but he didn't want the images that came with it, neither the hushed and desperate flight of his friends nor the brutality of war that trailed them.