Snare (20 page)

Ammadin packed up her crystals and rode back to camp as fast as the heat would allow. She realized that she’d been right to hurry when she found Maradin waiting, pacing back and forth at the edge of the horse herd.

‘I’ll take care of your horse,’ Maradin said. ‘There’s some men from Lanador’s comnee here, asking about Palindor. They’re in Apanador’s tent.’

When Ammadin entered, she found four young men sitting stiffly across from the chief, who was pouring keese as casually as if this were only a friendly visit. She recognized one of them, Varrador, the husband of Palindor’s sister.

‘Ah, there you are, Spirit Rider,’ Apanador said. Ammadin sat down beside the chief and accepted a bowl of keese. Apanador handed out the other four bowls before he continued. ‘Our friends here have a problem,’ Apanador said, ‘and I think you can solve it for them.’

‘I hope so, anyway.’ Varrador seemed more puzzled than angry. ‘My wife’s brother has disappeared. I thought maybe he’d come back to your comnee.’

‘No,’ Ammadin said. ‘He’s dead.’

Varrador winced, then had a sip of keese to steady his nerves. The other three men leaned forward and watched him as if they were waiting for a signal.

‘Why did he leave your comnee?’ Ammadin said. ‘Do you know?’

‘No,’ Varrador said. ‘He rode away about two weeks ago, but he didn’t tell anybody where he was going. Just before that, some Kazraks came to our comnee and said they were looking for your servant, Zayn. Our spirit rider – Makador, I’m sure you know him – anyway, he told us to keep our mouths shut, so we did, and in the morning they were gone. The next day Palindor left. A little later, one of the Kazraks brought Palindor’s horse back. He said they’d found it wandering near the Mistlands. He said he didn’t know whose horse it was, but then why did they bring it straight to us? The Kazrak mentioned that he’d heard your servant was
questing in the Mistlands. My wife tells me that Zayn and Palindor hated each other.’

‘Yes, they did. Palindor attacked when Zayn was questing. He broke Bane, and Zayn killed him for it. Apanador, give them back Palindor’s weapons.’

The chief reached behind him, retrieved the bow and quiver, and handed them over. Varrador examined them, his face immobile, his eyes expressionless. His men turned to him, their hands tight on their drinking bowls.

‘Those Kazraks were lying to you,’ Ammadin went on. ‘I think we can all figure out what must have happened. Palindor must have seen that they meant Zayn no good and ridden off with them. They tried to kill Zayn; they failed. When that fellow brought Palindor’s horse back to you, he was probably hoping you’d want vengeance, so you’d do his murdering for him.’

‘Sounds like Kazraks, yes.’ Varrador tossed his head once. ‘My poor wife!’

‘It’ll be worse for her mother,’ Ammadin said. ‘You don’t want to think your son would do something as rotten as this.’

‘I wanted to take the Kazraks prisoner, but the chief said we didn’t have the right to.’

‘Sooner or later we’ll deal with them,’ Apanador broke in. ‘Together, I hope.’

‘That’s not for me to say.’ Varrador laid the bow aside, then finished his keese in one long swallow. ‘But I can’t believe that Lanador would turn that offer down.’

Apanador smiled and saluted him with his bowl.

‘Let’s go out to my herd,’ Ammadin said. ‘Pick out any mare you want and take her back to Palindor’s mother.’

Varrador chose a chestnut four-year-old. Ammadin waved farewell as they rode away, then returned to camp. At Dallador and Maradin’s tent she raised the flap and stepped inside. On the far side of the hearth stone, Zayn and Dallador were sitting on the double bedroll, or rather Zayn was sitting, cross-legged and stiff-backed, while Dallador was lounging on his side, his shirt off in the heat. A naked little Benno lay asleep in the curl of his arm.

‘You can come out now,’ Ammadin said. ‘They’re not holding anything against you.’

‘Thank God!’ Zayn said. ‘I didn’t want to cause trouble for the comnee.’

‘What about trouble for yourself?’ Ammadin said. ‘You were in a lot more danger than the rest of us.’

‘Well, I –’ Zayn paused and glanced Dallador’s way, as if asking for help.

Dallador, however, laughed. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘what about yourself? I’ve never met a man who worried less about his own safety.’

Zayn started to speak, then shrugged.

‘Never mind,’ Ammadin said, smiling. ‘I’m going back to our tent to work, so leave me alone until the evening meal.’

In the grass behind her tent Ammadin took out her crystals. Much to her relief, the Riders were still above the horizon. At the northern edge of Spirit Eyes’ range, grey smoke stained the sky – a campfire. Nearby, tethered horses grazed, and men stood talking, two men with dark curly hair, one of them with a full black beard: Kazraks. Beyond them by about a hundred yards, she could see someone or something sitting in the grass.

At her chant, Spirit Eyes moved the vision directly over a middle-aged man with shoulder-length grey hair, bound by a jewelled headband. A peculiar bluish light sparkled around his body and danced on his clothing, a pair of dirty white Kazraki trousers and a loose shirt. He was sitting cross-legged and staring into another crystal, which he held in bony, wrinkled hands. So! He was a witchman, or as they called his kind in the Cantons, a sorcerer, and Zayn’s enemies had magic on their side.

Sentry began to hum, then rang a soft note, over and over – his warning of magic turned her way. Most likely the sorcerer was watching the comnee even as she watched him and his Kazraks. Sure enough, she saw him pick up a pouch lying in the grass beside him and slide a second crystal out. She picked up Long Voice.

‘Open listen to, open listen to.’

Only an angry chirp answered her command.

‘Open listen for. Open listen for.’

The spirit sang out. At first she thought she’d once again given it the wrong command, because she heard a humming sound like a second Sentry. Then she realized that she was hearing the sorcerer’s crystal and then, his voice.

Open hide me. Open hide me.

Spirit Eyes showed only grassland. Long Voice fell silent.

‘You thrush-foot gelding!’ Ammadin muttered. ‘But I wonder –’
She took a deep breath and chanted. ‘Sentry, open hide me. Open hide me.’

The crystal sang three joyous-sounding notes. Although she had no way of testing her theory, Ammadin was guessing that she’d hidden herself from the sorcerer just as he’d hidden himself from her. An impasse, then – neither had lost, neither had won.

‘But I did win something,’ she said aloud. ‘I know a new command.’ She’d also gained ideas as valuable as steel: her spirits owned powers beyond those her teacher had identified, and the Cantons sorcerers knew more about crystals than spirit riders did. In Nannes, the trading precinct, she’d seen a bookshop, which might have books on magic. Such treasures had always lain beyond her reach, because she couldn’t read. But now she had a Kazraki servant, who could.

Thanks to Soutan’s scanning crystals, Warkannan and his men had been keeping track of the comnee from a safe distance. Rather than follow, they were riding parallel, some four miles north of the comnee’s course, in the hopes that the spirit rider wouldn’t look their way. When the comnee camped, they camped; when it moved on, so did they. Regularly during the day, Soutan would go off alone into the grass to scan, then return with news. On this particular afternoon, however, he came back ashen and shaking.

‘Well, that was alarming,’ Soutan said, shuddering. ‘That spirit rider – I told you she had to be a woman of great power, didn’t I? Well, she’s seen us, and for a moment I thought she’d managed to kill one of my crystals.’

‘Sounds serious. What should we do about it?’

‘There’s nothing you can do. I need to be much more careful, is all. Especially once the comnee starts riding again.’

‘I hope to God they get on the road soon! How far are we from the Rift?’

‘A hundred miles or so.’

‘This damned comnee we’re following, by the Prophet’s name! They’re the slowest of the slow. They can’t be travelling more than ten lousy miles a day.’

‘Maybe we can use the time to our advantage. It would be better to kill our spy before we reach Jezro.’

‘If we can.’

Warkannan waited for him to go on. Soutan inserted an unsanitary-looking fingernail under his gold headband and began scratching his forehead.

‘That headband must be rubbing you raw,’ Warkannan said. ‘You’re always scratching.’

‘Oh damn you!’ Soutan stalked away without another word.

All that afternoon Soutan kept to himself. Even after he returned for the evening meal, Warkannan at times caught him peering up at the sky, as if he were expecting to see eyes there, looking back. Every now and then, he would start to scratch under the headband, then jerk his hand away as if by force of will.

Before the evening meal Ammadin and Apanador walked together along the riverbank. In the cool twilight frogs called back and forth, lizards buzzed and rasped. Clouds of greenbuhs rose over the magenta fern trees and swarmed so thickly that they looked like thunderheads.

‘There’s trouble on its way,’ Ammadin said.

‘Zayn’s enemies?’

‘Yes. I finally got a good look at them. Two Kazraks –’

‘Is that all?’

‘– and a sorcerer from the Cantons.’

Apanador swore and turned to spit into the river. ‘This sorcerer – why haven’t we heard of him before? How did he manage to get all the way to Kazrajistan?’ The chief sounded personally affronted. ‘Magic or not, he should have ended his trip in a ChaMeech stomach.’

‘You’d think so. He must be pretty powerful, with a lot of spirits to protect him. I’ll keep an eye on him from now on.’

‘Speaking of Zayn,’ Apanador glanced away with studied casu-alness. ‘The men are riding out to hunt tomorrow. They might well find a good-sized bull grassar. The horns this time of year –’

‘I am not going to marry Zayn. By all the gods at once! Have you been talking to Maradin?’

‘Oh, just a few words, here and there.’ Apanador was trying to suppress a smile. ‘And to my wife, of course.’

Ammadin turned on her heel and strode off.

When she reached her tent, Zayn was kneeling in front of it and cleaning a pair of fish with his long knife. She sat down and watched. He’d chop off the head with its two shiny pairs of eyes,
then slice off the six long fins, slit open the belly, and pull out the thick white strip of cartilage and nerve tissue that connected the tail to the brain node lying above the heart.

‘Roasted in the coals?’ he said. ‘Or seared on a hot stone?’

‘Roasted would be fine. You’re getting to be a really good cook.’

Zayn looked up with a quick grin that was almost shy. Ammadin had to admit that she found it pleasant to sit with him, sharing a companionable silence in front of their tent, instead of being a guest at someone else’s fire.

‘How long will we stay in camp?’ Zayn said.

‘Not very. We’ll be heading east soon.’

Zayn smiled, a sudden flash of anticipation.

‘Are you as curious about the Cantons as all that?’ Ammadin said.

‘Oh well.’ He was concentrating on wrapping the gutted fish in leaves fresh from the riverbank. ‘You hear such strange tales about them back home.’

‘I suppose you would, yes. Do you know their language?’

‘Only a few words. In school we didn’t study the Cantons much, so most of what I know is just hearsay – tales of evil sorcerers, that kind of nonsense. I do know that they’re people of the book.’

‘What? Does that mean they use writing?’

‘That too.’ Zayn gave her an easy grin. ‘But it really means that they believe in only one god, like we do. It must be the same god, no matter what they call him. If there’s only one, then there’s only one, right?’

‘If there’s only one.’

‘Well, true.’ Zayn ducked his head as if apologizing. ‘But anyway, they have a holy book about God. Mohammed, blessed be his name, read it back in ancient times and said that it was worthy of respect.’

‘So you Kazraks still respect it? After all these years?’

‘Well, of course. The teaching doesn’t change. It’s eternal.’

‘But wasn’t your First Prophet a H’mai?’

‘Of course he was, but the Qur’an comes from God. Mohammed heard His words from an angel.’

‘Wait a minute. When you say heard, you mean the angel came to him in a vision?’

‘No, the angel Jubal came to him and dictated the verses, and the Prophet spoke them to his companions, who wrote them
down. But he heard the voice of God, too, not just the angel’s.’

‘He actually heard the voice of his god?’

‘Yes. I suppose this all must sound pretty strange to you.’

‘Strange? No.’ Ammadin looked away, her mouth slack. ‘I envy him. I can’t tell you how much I envy him.’

For a moment she felt close to tears. Zayn tactfully looked away; he picked up a long spine from a poker tree and began using it to dig trenches in the coals of the fire. Ammadin waited till he’d laid the wrapped fish into them.

‘So, in this holy book the Cantonneurs have,’ Ammadin said, ‘did God speak to their prophets, too?’

‘So I’ve been told. I’ve never read it. Which reminds me. Do you know the language of the Cantons?’

‘Daccor.’ She paused to smile at him. ‘That means yes, you see. I know enough to trade and ask polite questions. It’s called Vranz.’

‘If you wouldn’t mind teaching me what you know, I’ll pick the rest of it up fast enough.’

‘The reading part, too? If I bought a book there, would you read it to me?’

‘Daccor.’ It was Zayn’s turn for the smile, but his face suddenly darkened. ‘Well, uh, if I can. If someone can help me learn how to read Vranz, I mean.’

He meant a great deal more than that. Ammadin smelled lying, a sudden acrid burst that made her nose wrinkle.

‘I forgot to get salt from the wagons.’ He stood up fast. ‘I’ll be right back.’

‘Don’t!’ She scrambled up after him. ‘Zayn, come back here.’

He stopped, stood hesitating in the broad space between the back of Maradin’s tent and the front of hers. In the glow of the cooking fire she could see him shaking.