Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 (65 page)

The Princip had given orders last night, that no man go into the field without his weapons blessed. Jemel had known men who had ignored similar ord
ers in the Sands. Dead men, mostl
y. He would likely know others before sunset. Hasan had been weakened by more than his wound; the sheikhs had rediscovered their own voices in his absence, and had tasted blood and smoke all yesterday. Hasan might be listened to yet, but would he be obeyed? That was no small band of sworn brothers he was leading now, it was all the tribes together, dangerously close-camped and ready to kill. They might kill Patrics, they might kill Surayonnaise, they might just kill each other; Jemel wouldn't care to be the one who told them to wait, to hold, not to kill at all. And to speak of imams, and a need to bless — the Sharai endured imams for their God's sake, but did not travel with them nor seek them out. Nor fight with them, especially not that.

Once in his life he had seen an imam employed in the Sands, seen the tribes respect him; that was at Rhabat, before Hasan led his war-party against the Roq. Then there had been a blessing of weapons indeed, but 'ifrit had been in no one's mind. It had been the only way to bring the tribes together, Jemel thought now, to make it a holy war: to tell them that they fought for God, and not for land or loot. It was a general's trick, that had perhaps saved and surely reshaped Jemel's life altogether; without a blessed arrow he couldn't have saved Julianne's and so would not have met Marron, wouldn't have been in place to save Hasan's life with that same arrow later. But the general's trick hadn't won the
battle
, and wouldn't win any hearts now.

Even if Hasan could find an imam, the tribes would never stand in line a second time to have their weapons touched and prayed upon. They would laugh, rather, with all the scorn of the proud Sharai. With a day's burning and looting at their backs, their robes rank with dried blood, an army or two of Patrics ahead of them and a river to fight over, more good water than any of them had seen in their lives before, what need an imam, a blessing, a warning to beware? They'd know where their blades were bound; come the
battle
they would rely on a strong arm and a scimitar's edge, as they always had. Jemel thought they would die in numbers, as they so often did.

Men were waiting while his thoughts ran like molten wax, wasted, useless. They had laid their weapons on the chapel floor; they looked to him to do the same. Would a Patric blessing hold, on a Sharai blade that was blessed already? He didn't know, but now would be a good time to find out and a bad, perhaps a very bad time to refuse.

He had a bow on his shoulder, too, and a quiver of arrows hung Patric-style at his back; he set them on the tiles beside the scimitar. There were extra knives in his belt, all Patric in make; he added those. And felt the weight of one more at the back, heavier than he would ever have picked out for himself. He drew it forth and added that too, managing something close to a smile at the thought of an outcast Saren boy slaying a Saren sheikh with the sheikh's own blade, after it had been blessed by a Patric priest. Perhaps he wouldn't need a killing blow, even: perhaps the merest prick would act on Bhisrat as it would on an 'ifrit, slide into flesh as if it were nothing but smoke, seek out the soul of him and send it down to hell.

Or perhaps the blade would curl and smoke like parchment in a fire, when the priest reached out to touch it. For all that Jemel knew, it might have been blessed already by an imam, as his scimitar definitely had been. Set one God's blessing against another's, in the same narrow steel — it was like setting Patric and Catari in the same narrow strip of land. Which the Gods had done, of course
...

If there were Gods, if there could be two where each religion preached one alone. Jemel had ceased to worship, not to believe; he just wasn't sure any longer whether his belief could hold fast against the equal faith and seemingly equal miracles of the Patrics. If their priests' blessings worked as well as his imams' - and if he could respect and fear their fierce priests, where he felt
little
more than contempt for any imam he had met — then where was the truth of any teaching?

Here in Surayon, perhaps. It must yet be a godly land; this chapel was no disused relic of a dead faith. The paintings were fresh on the ceiling, the tiles underfoot were worn with use but still clean and uncracked, the wood that panelled the walls smelled spicy with a long generation of incense. And these men had filed in easily, familiarly, as if from regular habit. Jemel looked for another man to come, perhaps from another door; he didn't know how Patric priests dressed when they weren't armed and booted, but surely in robes as the imams did, to proclaim their difference from the common people
...

He was doubly taken aback when no priest appeared. Rather, one of his companions stepped forward, and he not even their officer, just one of the men. He turned to face them, and spread his arms wide like a priest inviting the congregation to kneel. Jemel would not, could not, but neither did any of the men about him. Even the Sharai - who made such a virtue of their haughtiness, their refusal to stoop before their enemies or the many hardships of their lives in the Sands - even they prostrated themselves before God; but not these, apparently.

They did bow their heads, in respect rather than humility, he thought; and they responded in quiet, firm voices as the man before them prayed. Jemel couldn't follow the words. Marron had said that there was a language the Patrics used to speak only to their God; Jemel suspected that the Princip had used that old tongue to write a new religion for this land, as he had written the law.

If a man wrote his own religion, could he find a god that would adopt it? Or was there just the one God, whom any form of worship would satisfy? However Jemel phrased the question, it made as little sense as the words he heard spoken or the actions that accompanied them, the turning and bowing to east and west, to where the dark rose up at sunset and where it retreated come the dawn. It must be retreating now in the world outside this windowless chamber, with its own painted views of another world entirely. Perhaps all religions looked toward a world not real; but then, Jemel had walked in a world different from this, and had found no gods in it and little enough else.

The man who led the prayers reached down to touch and bless the blades laid out before him, but what power did he claim, to give them virtue? When he was done, Jemel retrieved his own weapons and examined them suspiciously. They were as heavy to his hand as they had been before and as sharp to his fingers touch, as bright to his eye and nothing more.

He'd distrusted the imam in Selussin, but believed in the prayers and blessings none the less; God would not punish a man for choosing a poor intermediary. Here, though, he doubted the man and the God and the prayers, all three. Where there was no tradition and no ceremony, nothing to distinguish a holy man from any other, how could there be any blessing worth more than the words that were said?

Like his fellow Sharai, he thought he would be riding into battle with nothing to rely on but the strength of his arm and the edge of his scimitar, the speed of whatever broken-down animal these men could find to carry him.

'Esren.'

Elisande said the name softly, almost sighed it on a simple exhalation, where Julianne would have expected her to scream it. She might have been summoning the djinni in her common casual manner, except that it was already there. Still there, after fetching them from the palace and bringing them, depositing them here; still hanging in the air beside Elisande's shoulder, playing the obedient servant with its usual mockery implicit. It had lingered as though it knew that if it left, it would be hailed back again - but then presumably it did know. It was a djinni, some part of its awareness should forerun it like a wisp of smoke on an unfelt breeze. Even if it were as blind as it claimed, if it lacked any true sense of the future, it must still have guessed how Elisande would react to this. It had said what it had said, it had done what it had done; it had lifted them up like hope, like a promise, and it had brought them here.

Julianne had guessed, had been certain what to expect, was flinching yet - and all in vain, as Elisandes voice made an absolute point of its calmness, its control.

'Esren, I said to bring us somewhere we could be useful.'

'You did; and so I have.'

Elisande gazed deliberately about her, and so did Julianne; it was irresistible.

They were standing on an island, rough rock and wild grasses, in the middle of the icy rushing waters that divided the valley state, the river whose path they had overflown all the way from the mountain pass to the palace. It divided the valley and divided itself about them, north and south; on either side the stream was too strong to swim, too wild to row or raft, far too broad to leap. It might have been bridged, but was not. A little way upstream there were abutments on the banks to suggest that a bridge had stoo
d there once, and perhaps recentl
y; it was not there now.

Simple to cross from bank to bank, of course, with the aid of an amenable djinni. If they had only had one.

Instead, they had Esren. Any minute now, a regular hissing, raging Elisande would have reminded it that it had sworn to serve and obey her; it would have replied with some portentous enigma, which by the time it was untwisted would mean only
‘
choose not to do so,
or else more simply
never trust a djinni.
This new patient Elisande -
diplomatic, perhaps I should say, and can she have been learning lessons from me?
- took a second glance around, just to make the point
the stronger, before she said, ‘I
do not see what use we can be to anyone, if you abandon us here with a gulf on every side.'

'There would be
little
point in that,' it said, which sounded almost like agreement, 'and so I would not do it. Nor would I expect you to see what use you will be; you lack the sense.' Which might have been a common insult, or else a plain statement of fact, that she didn't have its ability to foresee what needs might come; the djinni was quite capable of either, or of turning the one into the other and so saving time and effort.

Whichever it meant, the familiar Elisande would have taken it as insult, and laughed. This one seemed to take it the other way; at any rate she nodded, and was silent. And looked about her one more time, as though she were struggling to see what was impossible for her, how events might fall out in a way that would give value to their presence here; and shrugged at last, and said, 'Very well, Esren. Leave us, if you will.'

It would and it did, although Julianne did not believe it had been waiting for permission.

In its absence, Elisande reverted. She heaved a huge groaning sigh that had nothing of patience about it, and then stooped to heave a rock up from the ground at her feet and hurl it into the swift-rushing water that encompassed them.

'I could kill it,' she said conversationally, above the splash. 'If I had the strength, the speed, the skill, whatever it takes, the
knowledge -
I could kill that spirit, and feel not a moment's guilt.'

Julianne smiled gentl
y. 'Of course you could. And you do have what it takes. It's never said so, but I think a blessed weapon will kill a djinni as easily as an 'ifrit.'

Elisande touched the knife in he
r belt, in a moment's pure startl
ement; then she scowled and said, 'You call that easy? You want to go up against those monsters with just a dagger in your hand, blessed or not, you're welcome to it. I'll stand back and applaud.'

'Of course you will, what else? But we won't be going up against anything, 'ifrit or djinni or plain bad man, so long as we're stuck here on our own. We need them to come to us for slaughter. How can we best arrange that, do you think?'

'With Esren it's supposed to be easy, it's meant to come when I call it. And stop humouring me, or I'll wind up killing you instead.'

'What, after you showed off all that wonderful patience? Shame to spoil the effect now, don't you think?'

'Ah, maybe so. All right, you're reprieved. Not pardoned, mind. You win pardon by telling me why in hell that creature deposited us here.'

'I'd need to be a djinni myself to know that, sweet. There must be something, though - something to find, or something to wait for.'

'What do we do, then? Wait, or look?' 'Look while we're waiting, don't you think? It passes time or saves it, and either one is useful.'

Such light-hearted talk, instinctive and almost meaningless, sliding with a feather's touch over what was dark and turbulent, darker and more turbulent even than the water that scoured the sides of their small island - that talk was useful also, only that they could neither one of them keep it up. They did look around while they waited, and they lapsed into silence while they looked; and the looking couldn't do what the talking did, it couldn't even seem to buoy them up. They looked, and saw, and dark waters closed above their heads.

What they saw was a broad, flat stretch of meadow grasses, studded with boulders and meadow flowers, rising to a peak of rock at the easterly end. With a bridge to either bank, the island would surely have been given over to pasture as the banks were; its isolation had kept it wild, and beautiful in a way that those tamed acres never could be.