Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 (9 page)

His own red eye was caught at last by the slightest gleam, a smudge of red light among the dunes. He was barely sure of it, so faint it was; the djinni, though, must have been certain because they were descending suddenly, fast and straight. As he blinked into the stinging wind, the glow resolved itself into a dying fire, with a single figure sitting huddled beside. Another lay on the ground at a little distance, sleeping as it seemed.

The djinni brought them down to the fire, and set them lightly on the sand. The figure lifted its head and was Elisande, a blanket around her shoulders and an exhausted tension in her face, in her voice too as she said, 'Thank you, Esren.'

'Indeed.' It said no more than that but stayed, a single golden thread in a gloomy tapestry. Its service done, it was only an observer now: curious, perhaps, if the djinn felt curiosity. This one might.

Elisande stood, and came slowly to him. He still had one arm around Jemel, but she rested her cheek briefly against his other shoulder and said, 'You, too. Thank you for coming. Both of you.'

'What else should we have done?'
We
should have
stayed and left you to your own
concerns, we should have broken free—
but friendship was a snare, a cord that tightened against a struggle and would not break easily. Oaths he could break and had, but not this simpler binding.

She drew breath beside him, intending perhaps to answer what he hadn't really meant to be a question. Seeming not to find the words she needed, she just sighed and shook her head, touched his arm with chilly fingers and turned back to the fire.

'Tell us what happened, Elisande.' That was Jemel, making some
little
play to claim his own place here, both as Marron's companion and one among her certain friends.

Again she took a breath, again she tried to speak. This time there were words, but weariness and worry held her spirit in defeat; she could tell them little more than the djinni had already. Julianne had been taken, on the night of her wedding, three nights since. The djinni had been unable to track Morakh and his captive; she and the King's Shadow had tried, were trying yet, but were having little joy of the hunt.

'We've scoured the Sands, by Esren's grace,' she said, 'and all we've found is the remains of a fire here, some signs that were hard to read, and this.' She slipped something from her wrist and held it out to show him: a golden bangle studded with little gems. 'It might have been one of Juli
anne's wedding-gifts. Coren thi
nks so, at least. We believe that they are with an 'ifrit; if it took a winged shape, it could have carried them anywhere by now. We didn't find this place until this evening, and the fire was cold by days. They must have stopped to rest and eat, an 'ifrit can't fly at Esren
’
s speed, but

But they were long gone from here, so much was obvious. The chase was futile; and yet Marron could understand the need for it, the urge to be doing something. 'Would they have crossed into Outremer?'

'Coren says not, he says that the King could find them if they went within his borders. He may be right,' though her tone suggested doubt, either of the Shadow or possibly of the King himself. 'But there is endless country they could hide in, this side of the border; and Coren's so tired, we both are. Speak softly, don't wake him. He didn't want me to send for you but I had to, I couldn't carry this alone

The King's Shadow might be tired, might be worn out indeed from his own anxiety as Elisande was from hers, but Marron was suspicious of his sleeping. He could hear the man's soft, steady breathing, and thought he could sense a wakeful, listening mind behind it.

'Why did Hasan leave the two of you,' a girl and an ageing man, albeit a djinni s companion and a man of rare abilities and rarer friends, 'to do his hunting for him?'

Elisande smiled slightly, where in a lighter mood she would have laughed aloud. Marron missed the laughter, had been consciously trying for it; he knew the answer before he asked the question. 'Oh, he didn't. We left him, he couldn't keep up. The camels died, all of them, in the flood. Horses, too, though he couldn't have brought horses over this,' and she sifted sand between her fingers while her other arm waved at what must be dark to her despite the stars, to show him the windblown dunes that ran to every horizon. 'He went back to Rhabat, to try to keep the tribes together. He says that the theft of his bride from their own citadel is an insult to all the Sharai, not simply a matter for the Beni Rus. He says that if there are 'ifrit involved, it may need many warriors to retrieve her; he says that he will gather what camels he can from the local tribes, if he has to spend all the wealth in Rhabat to do it. Then he will follow, as quickly as may be. Esren carries messages between us, so he will know where to come. But we have to find Julianne first. If we fail, then Hasan will have his army at the gates of Outremer' —
at the gates of
Surayon
she meant, or so Marron heard her — 'and he will not waste that opportunity, with his men hot for fighting. Even if we do find Julianne and rescue her, he will still be there, with his army at his back; I don't think even her pleading could hold his hand. There will be war, Marron, unless we can find her and rescue her ourselves before he come. That's why I wanted you, in case
...
But I think there will be war.'

So did Marron; so perhaps did the silent djinni, which would explain her hopelessness if it had been less silent earlier. A spirit with some sense of the future could spell doom to any prophet.

'Julianne's father is here,' Jemel said suddenly, pointedly. 'Where is yours?' His voice carried generations of tradition, of certainty in what was right and proper.

'He is with Hasan. For all I know he may be arguing still against bringing war to Outremer; if so, he wastes his breath.'

'He should be here, then. Why is he not here?'

'I have a knife. He has a throat.'

And that certainly was right, and wise in both of them. Elisande was as drawn as an overtight cable, and her father could make her snap at any time; at such a time as this, she might truly let fly with a blade where honed words would have contented her before. If not, his presence would still divide this little party into two, his and hers. Marron and Jemel would stand with Elisande, the King's Shadow with Rudel; youth would divorce experience, fire would fight with ice and they would travel more slowly and learn less.

Let him use his skills elsewhere, then, let him work yet on Hasan,
thus far and no further, pursue your wife but not your dreams, learn to live with Outremer
...
It would do no good, Marron thought, one man's voice couldn't turn a tide; but let him try, at least.

It seemed that Jemel was thinking the same way, though Jemel would be hoping for what his friends most dreaded, Rudel's failure and Hasan's war. At any rate, he grunted his understanding and turned the conversation abruptly, urgently to a more compelling issue. 'Do you have any food?'

Elisande flashed him a sympathetic smile, her mood shifting in a moment to match his. She'd been in the land of the djinn, and for longer than Jemel; she knew, none better, how appetite was a stranger there but how it returned full force in this world. Even Marron felt hungry now, at the mere mention.

'Yes, of course. I'm sorry, I should have thought. There's plenty, Jemel - we've got bread, cold meat, cheese, fruit. Good bread too, not desert bake. Esren fetches it for us, with our fuel and water.'

'You use a djinni to fetch water?' This time, his tone was sheer incredulity, too startled even to be outraged.

'We have to; we've no camels, and we can't carry as much as we need.' She was busy as she spoke, passing over a water-skin and crouching above a pack, so that Marron had only her voice and the set of her shoulders to read. He knew her well enough, he thought, that he could do that. What she said made perfect sense, but there was more to it. Esren had let her down, through weakness or malice or for whatever reason; she was seeking anyway she could to use it in humiliation, ageless and potent spirit reduced to a handservant
...

They said little more after that. For a while their mouths were too busy, Jemel's and his own, they couldn't chew nor swallow fast enough to meet the demands of their raging stomachs; Elisande sliced meat and cheese for them, tore bread, found cups for water.

Then the simple weight of food inside them made them sleepy, just as her own long day, her several weary days and sleep-short nights all too visibly caught up with her. The night was cold, and she offered them her blanket, but they wouldn't take it. Jemel had slept out colder nights than this, he said, and sat out colder still with only rags to huddle in, no robe such as he wore now. Besides, the warmth of the other world was with him still, crept deep into the marrow of his bones. With Marron at his one side and the fireglow at his other, he'd be content as any sheikh within his tent
...

Marron, of course, was never cold at all. He had his own otherworldly warmth that went deeper than his marrow, went to his soul except that what it found there, it could never warm.

So they arranged themselves, he and Jemel this side of the fire and Elisande that, lying close to the King's Shadow who still hadn't moved and who still,
Marron
thought, was not asleep. Better that way, perhaps: a man of his age and cunning ought to be wakeful, thinking, conceiving and plotting. Ought not to be chasing hard across an empty desert in pursuit of a long-vanished phantom and a captured girl. Let his mind run free in the hunt, and perhaps his body would fail at last to follow; perhaps he'd be so weary come the morning, they could legitimately turn on him all together, prove he was unnecessary, send him back to Rhabat to rest
...

Come the morning, Marron woke to find that old and exhausted man on his feet and active while their other companions still slept.

He had been active, rather; fresh young flames were licking at new-laid cakes of camel-dung among the ashes of last nights fire. Now he was standing atop a dune-crest at some little distance, standing like a monolith with its face set towards Outremer, when he should surely have been sitting close and taking in what heat he could to set against the ache in his bones and the morning's early chill.

Marron peeled himself carefully away from the huddled warmth of JemePs back, with a silent apology for leaving it so exposed. He stood up and walked softly over the sand, feeling how the dawn wind whipped it against his ankles as he climbed the dune. Joining Julianne's father, he saw their two shadows strike a clear path due west, as though they laid a path that men should follow. Greyish dust swirled high on the gusting wind, while tawny sand skittered beneath in the slow, endless progress of the desert.
Give it a few thousand years more,
Marron thought,
and Hasan won't need his army no need of
all that
fighting and dying that Jemel's so hungry for. The Sands will swallow Outremer, and none but the Sharai will have the heart or the wisdom to live there then
...

He watched the shadows' long run in the low light, and might almost have been talking to one of them, certainly didn't turn his head to face the man beside him as he said, 'Shadow? Tell me about the King.'

'My name is Coren.'

'I know, but—'

'But you have trouble calling men by their given names, when they carry tides. Respect is no bad sign in a young man; none the less, Marron, call me Coren if you can turn your tongue around the word. You are at least as important as any of us, and I would prefer it so. Jemel will follow your lead; Elisande is there already'

'Elisande gives no respect to anyone. Not even to the djinni
...'

'That is not entirely true, though she'd like to know you think it. Come, this is not so much to ask, where there are so few of us caught in such a turmoil.'

'Well, I will try. Must I call the King also by his name, to make you answer my question?'

That barb drew a quiet chuckle in response. 'No, I'll not ask that much of you. I don't ask it of myself, though I used to once. Long ago, when we were two adventurers together. I used to call him Marc, and quarrel with him for the sheer love of losing in a fight. These days, not — though one would, still lose. Assuredly, one would lose.'

'Tell me about him.'

'What would you have me say?'

'Is he a man?'

'Oh, yes.' The question didn't draw a laugh, though, as it surely must have done if it were as stupid as it sounded. 'Trust me in this, Marron, he is most certainly a man. I've seen him bleed; I've
made
him bleed, more than once. I've seen him eat and sleep, defecate and fornicate, which are the four prime motivations of mankind. If that's been worrying you, rest easy. He may be King of Outremer, with all that that implies, but he's human yet.'

'I don't understand, then. All the stories I've heard, from you and others - how can he do what you say he does, if he's just a man like any other?'

'I didn't say that. He was never very much like other men. He's ten years older than I, so I never really knew him as a boy; even as a youth, though, he had talents that singled him out. His father was a powerful man, but he was the youngest son of five, so had n
o hope of inheriting land or titl
e. He spent his early manhood in a monastery, but was, ah, persuaded out of it; then he discovered an interest in travel and soldiery, making war against pirates and bandit lords. He took me with him, me and others; we hung at his tail like daglocks from a sheep, we little boys, we worshipped him. But so did older men, all those who followed him.