Snare (80 page)

Jezro looked at the empty air when he spoke again. ‘Isn’t this handy? Now I can pretend that you’re only going to fetch Kaz back, and if something should happen to Soutan, I won’t even need to know. Unfortunately, that’s so much sheepshit.’ He turned to look Zayn straight in the face. ‘If you can, kill him, Hassan. And may God forgive me!’

The camp woke before dawn, and the warparty – one Chur Vocho, ten Chur, and one H’mai – assembled out down by the river to wolf down breakfast. Ammadin and Loy sat nearby, backs to the men, and searched for Soutan in their crystals. While they never actually saw him, they did spot a tendril of smoke; it seemed to come from a cave mouth on a cliff perhaps two miles north of Sibyl’s location.

‘That’s as good a place to start as any,’ Zayn said. ‘But don’t worry, we’ll find him, sooner or later.’

‘I hope so.’ Loy looked and sounded weary. ‘I keep thinking that maybe Rozi can be healthy again, someday anyway, if she knows he’s dead or at least in prison.’

‘Maybe so.’ Zayn glanced at Stronghunter Man. ‘I’d better go get my horse.’

‘No horse,’ Stronghunter Man said. ‘Keep-never up with Chur. We move-next fast, steady.’ He pointed to a young Chur whom Zayn had assumed to be a servant. ‘Ride.’

The Chur lowered his head submissively. ‘I speak some Comnee speak.’ His voice, a deep baritone, was high enough to be easily heard. ‘When Stronghunter Man speak, I repeat.’

‘All right,’ Zayn said. ‘But a saddle’s not going to fit you. Can you stand wearing a halter? I’ll sling my saddlebags over my head. The bedroll – I can tie that on somehow.’

The Chur looked at Stronghunter Man and whined.

‘Halter, yes,’ Stronghunter Man said firmly. He dropped his voice to a pitch that fell below Zayn’s ability to hear, but the young Chur repeated his words. ‘H’mai need hang on. Zayn, get-now your gear. One other of us carry bedroll. All carry things but not Stronghunter Man.’

‘All right. What’s your name?’

The young Chur thought for a moment, then answered in Hirl-Onglay. ‘Fifth Out.’

‘Fifth Out? Out of what?’

‘The ocean, when the change come-then and some of us, we leave-then the ocean for land. Young Chur get real names later, when we see if we be michi or vocho.’

Zayn nearly blurted, ‘You mean you don’t know yet?’ He managed to turn the blurt into a cough. None of the strange revelations he’d heard lately had surprised him as much as this, that a sapient being might not have the slightest idea whether it was male or female.

Zayn had left his gear at Warkannan and Jezro’s fire, and Warkannan stood nearby, waiting for him. The khan and Water Woman were walking back and forth nearby and talking about the journey ahead. When Zayn knelt by his saddlebags, Warkannan joined him.

‘I’ll do my best to keep Arkazo safe,’ Zayn said.

‘I know you will,’ Warkannan said. ‘But it’s in God’s hands.’

‘Be glad. He has better hands than mine.’

Warkannan managed to smile at that. Zayn opened his saddlebags and looked over the contents. He could lighten them by leaving things with Warkannan, but you never knew when some
piece of equipment or weapon would save your life or make your kill. He still regretted leaving his bow behind at the dookis’s manor. He closed them up, tied them loosely together, and pulled them over his head to hang over his chest and back. The two men stood up, turning to look at the khan, still deep in his conversation with the Chiri Michi.

‘Jezro’s already learning how to rule,’ Warkannan said, ‘or what it’s going to cost him, anyway.’

‘What it’s going to cost all of us,’ Zayn said. ‘If I do manage to kill Soutan, do you think Jezro’s going to see me the same way as he always did? I’ll always have a smear of his guilt on my face.’

Warkannan winced with a little shake of his head.

‘Doesn’t matter much,’ Zayn went on. ‘I won’t be going back to Kazrajistan.’

‘I was beginning to get that impression. Because of Ammadin, I suppose.’

‘She’s part of it, yes.’

‘Only part?’

‘Yes. I learned something this summer. I don’t really know how to explain, but I belong in the comnees.’

‘What? Why? They worship those false idols. They’re not even civilized.’

‘No, they’re not, but neither am I, not any more. The Chosen saw to that.’

After the warparty left camp, the rest of the expedition lingered to let them get a head start on the trail north. Warkannan realized that if he didn’t get control of himself, he would plunge over some inner cliff of worry and break at the bottom of it. Only God knew what would happen to Arkazo, he reminded himself, or to Zayn, for that matter. The remaining Chur and the two female servants were wandering around the campsite, picking up bundles, putting some down, loading others onto each other’s backs. Warkannan carried his gear down to the shade of the twistrees, where the murmur and splash of water in the canal soothed his nerves. With his back comfortably against a tree trunk, he got out the
Mirror
and began leafing through the pages, glancing at a passage here and there. The simple sight of the holy words offered comfort.

Warkannan had just begun to read in earnest when Water
Woman came lumbering down to join him. She waved a pseudo-hand in greeting, then haunched opposite. She lowered her head and looked over her wedge of cartilage with her double eyes.

‘I interrupt, I know. But that book you read-always, Warkannan Captain. Ammadin Witchwoman tell-just-now me it be a holy book. Your god write-then it?’

‘Not precisely,’ Warkannan said. ‘He dictated it to the First Prophet, and the First Prophet spoke it aloud to his followers, who wrote it down.’

‘Ah. Your people say there be one god, not many. Right not right?’

‘Right.’

‘Our gods be many. I think. I know-not-no-more. We Chof, we believe-long-time-then the gods live up in the Silverlands. We know-now the Silverlands be a group of suns like that sun.’ She pointed vaguely at the sky. ‘We make-long-time beautiful statues of our gods. We tell-always beautiful stories about them, too. They still do-never nothing for us. We pray, they answer-not. We argue argue argue but they give-not us a sign.’

‘Well, they’re not real gods, that’s why. They’re just idols. I mean – sorry, I don’t want to insult you.’

‘It be all right.’ She heaved an enormous sigh that made her throat sac flutter. ‘I think-many-times now same thing. So do Great Mother, so do we all.’

Warkannan felt a rising panic that had nothing to do with Arkazo. It was his duty as a believer to tell these receptive infidels about the one true god, but he had no training, no skill with words – what if he, out of simple clumsiness, turned her against the faith? He swallowed heavily and took a deep breath.

‘I could read to you from our book,’ he said. ‘If you’d like to hear some of it.’

‘Your god be-only a god of the H’mai, not the Chof.’

‘I don’t see why.’ He could only pray that he wasn’t wandering into heresy. ‘I’ve learned something new about your people, just lately. You’re as much H’mai as we are. Well, no, I don’t mean that exactly.’

Water Woman raised a forefoot and stamped. ‘I think I understand-now you, Warkannan Captain. I say, you be as Chof as we be. But I hear-many-times, you Karshaks think men lead-must women. We think opposite. Your god, he like-not like that?’

‘I honestly don’t think that would matter to the Lord.’ A new thought struck him with the force of a blow. ‘After all, He must have created you to be the way you are just like He created us to be what we are. And the same would go for all the other peoples in the universe, too, now that we know there are some. I’m sorry, I’m not being very coherent, am I?’

‘You make-now sense, Captain. But I think of the comnees. Their women be-not led by males. In Cantons, both males and females lead. But they all be H’mai.’

‘Well, those are their ways, not Kazraki ways. I suppose it comes down to that, at any rate. Some of our women would like to be more like the Canton women.’

‘And your god, he get angry at them?’

‘I honestly don’t know. In fact, I’ve never much thought about it before.’ He found himself remembering Lubahva, and her occasional pointed remark about such matters. ‘If I live to get home, maybe I should talk about it with my woman.’

‘Maybe?
Maybe?
What sort woman she be? Beautiful?’

‘Very.’ Warkannan smiled at the memory. ‘And strong-minded. Brave, too, really. Without her, I’d never have been able to bring the khan home.’

‘A good match for you, then?’

‘Yes, yes she is.’ Warkannan found himself remembering Lubahva’s tears when they’d parted. He was shocked at how deeply the memory affected him. He would have given a year off his life to be able to soothe her fears. ‘You know, I love her, now that I think about it.’

‘H’mai men, you be very strange.’ Water Woman raised a coy pseudo-hand. ‘Ah but it be-not my business, as H’mai say. This all be very interesting.’ Water Woman raised her head and looked back towards camp. ‘It be time we leave-now here and start-next going to Sibyl. But tonight, we stop, and you tell-next me more about this god. Yes?’

‘Yes, certainly. I’ll be glad to.’

The warparty set out at a steady lope, heading north-west across the plateau. Meadows of wild grass gave way to wheatian fields, some roughly square, others rambling and amorphous. Low fences made of sticks and ropes of braided grass marked them off one from another, and naked Chur sat beside them or wandered back
and forth on the wild grass between. At the sight of the warparty these Chur would boom or thrum, then turn and run in the opposite direction. If they were guards, Zayn thought, they were doing one hell of a bad job.

At noon the warparty stopped to eat on the shores of a small circular lake, framed by two curved stands of Midas trees. Out in the water, on a circular island, sat a small structure made of white flexstone pillars topped with a black dome. When Zayn walked down to the water’s edge, he heard a high-pitched whine and a rhythmic throb coming from inside the structure – a pump, he figured. Stronghunter Man, through Fifth Out, confirmed his guess.

‘The Settlers must have built this,’ Zayn said.

‘They start-then it, build-then lake and house. Chof finish-then canal, when the Settlers stop building.’

‘Why did they stop?’

‘I know-not.’ Stronghunter Man bobbed his round head twice, and the young Chur did the same. ‘No one know. Settlers build-then the way down, too.’

‘The way down?’

‘From this tableland, yes. You see-soon-very.’ Stronghunter Man pointed to the north-west, and again, Fifth Out mimicked him as he passed the message along. ‘Or maybe you see-now. H’mai eyes be better than Chof eyes for things far off.’

Zayn shaded his eyes with his hand and followed the point. At some distance a glittering structure, white and round, rose from purple grass.

‘I can see something, all right. It looks like a dome.’

‘Half of one,’ Stronghunter Man said. ‘It stand over the way down. Or the way up, depending, of course.’

Whether up or down, the way turned out to be a spiral ramp, constructed from flexstone but coated in some black substance that allowed for traction. Zayn insisted on walking down, partly to spare Fifth Out’s back, but mostly because the ramp lacked any kind of safety railing, and he preferred his own feet for the trip. In the dim light filtering down from the domed entrance, and up from what appeared to be a similar exit below, they spiralled down and around until Zayn lost track of distance and direction both.

They came out into bright sun that had him blinking until he shaded his eyes. A quick look around confirmed that they were back in the farmlands of N’Dosha, on the western side of the traps.

‘Ammadin told us that Soutan was in the east valley,’ Zayn said.

‘I know.’ Fifth Out relayed Stronghunter Man’s words. ‘There be-not a way east from that tableland back up there. We go-must through N’Dosha.’

The Chur Vocho swung his pseudo-arm around in a half-circle and pointed to a break between two of the traps, about a mile away.

‘N’Dosha’s on the other side of that canyon?’ Zayn said.

‘No. N’Dosha – it be the canyon. Get on and ride again. We show-now you.’

Zayn settled himself on Fifth Out’s back, and the warparty set off at a steady walk. As they approached the entrance, a river of green poured out to meet them. For several miles from the canyon’s wide mouth green life predominated, not merely green grass, but green shrubs and bushes, green vines twining over green-leafed trees, little green plants with yellow and white flowers, taller florals with dark green leaves, and green mounds made of thorny canes, dotted with tiny red spheres.

‘Grapes?’ Zayn said.

‘No. Fwambah.’ Stronghunter Man spoke these words himself. ‘Good to eat.’

A path, paved once, crumbling now, led into the canyon itself. As the Chur strode along, Zayn had the sudden feeling that the Settlers had transplanted here a little bit of Old Earth, green, cool in the hot sun, perfumed with the fresh smell of growing things. The canyon seemed a road through a wild garden that would magically lead into that lost world. Here and there water welled up in white basins and spilled over into thick carpets woven of green life – grasses and leaves, stems and branches, all green except for a scatter in the grass of tiny white flowers. Back by the shaded canyon walls, green moss, as soft as velvet, covered rocks; green ferns clustered between. Zayn was so entranced by the verdure that he never looked up to see the canyon walls until Stronghunter Man told him to do so.

‘My God!’ Zayn whispered.

Above and around him towered the pale soft tufa cliffs, their surface transformed into something as intricate as the lace on a court official’s robes, with caves for openwork and stone pillars and arches for threads. Cut into the living rock, stairways rose to ledges and landings where the mouths of caves yawned, hundreds
of them, leading back into darkness. Some of the caves were large enough to contain the porches and facades of what appeared to be entire houses carved right out of the stone. Others were mere square holes, perhaps ventilation, perhaps windows for hidden dwellings. On both sides the cliff faces displayed this elaborate architecture, chipped and dug from the soft rock.