The Dead God's Due (The Eye of the Lion Saga Book 1) (4 page)

Yazid smiled to himself. There
were still a few things the boy would need to be taught, it seemed.

Ahmed looked up at the sound of
approaching footsteps. “Yazid!” he called, his dark face
brightening with excitement and hope as he closed the distance
between the two of them in three huge bounds. “What does the
prince say?”

Yazid laid an arm around his
ward, turning him toward the steps as he continued downward, feeling
considerably older than he had when he entered the Rock. “He
says we must go to Aviar. We will find men there to aid us in our
cause.”

Ahmed froze in mid stride,
gaping in astonishment and glee. “Truly? We journey to
barbarian lands?”

“Aye.”

Ahmed placed a hand upon his
sword, his eyes growing hard and grim. “And will we slay
them?”

“If they give us cause,”
Yazid chuckled. “But they won’t, most likely. Most of
them fear us.”

“And well they should!”

Yazid nodded agreement. “But first, we must make ready for the
journey. Come, we have much work to do.”

The trip to Aviar was not
nearly as exciting as Ahmed had hoped, and less than comfortable in
armor. Yazid had promised that the journey would have its share of
wonders to a young man who had never left the desert, but Ahmed was
beginning to have doubts. There had been no sandstorm, no raider
attack, merely mile after monotonous mile over the desert, the
clopping of the horses’ hooves on the stonework road growing
ever more maddening. Ahmed began to look forward to the brief
respites when they traveled over sections buried by sand. How could
a warrior bear such drudgery?

“A warrior must be
patient,” Yazid counseled. “Impatience leads to
mistakes. Mistakes lead to death.”

Ahmed tried to accept the
lesson, but the impatience was like a devil within him. It was not
so easy to exercise as Yazid suggested. At best, he could silence
it, so that Yazid would not know. That, he supposed, was a good
start.

Gradually, many miles from
Bagdreme, the landscape began to change. The sand grew more densely
packed, and rose toward distant mountains.

“Talifa’s Teeth,”
Yazid declared, pointing.

“Why are they white at
the top?”

Snow was a difficult concept to
grasp, and a somewhat unnerving one, but it was, as Yazid had
promised, a wonder. Ahmed had been looking forward to the
opportunities that climbing the mountains would bring, chances to
prove himself against the elements, or perhaps even fighting a dread
beast like a hippopotamus, a creature he had heard of only through
books. But the prospect of traveling in snow was a daunting one. Ice
should no more fall from the sky than gold. It was unnatural. He was
as relieved as he was disappointed to learn that they would not be
climbing the towering mountains at all, but would instead make use
of a pass. He would only see snow at a distance. Someday, he
promised himself, he would walk upon it. Someday.

On the other side of the pass,
the land changed again, and Ahmed gasped in amazement. There was
grass and growing things everywhere he looked. There were entire map
grids covered with so many trees that Ahmed could not see through to
the other side. Creatures stirred within the foliage and flew
overhead. It was like the great gardens of Bagdreme, but without
walls!

“Who could tend such a
garden, Yazid?” he asked in awe. “It would take an
army!”

“There is no gardener.
Such is nature in the barbarian lands.”

“It is like the work of a
god!”

“Aye,” Yazid
agreed. “More than like.”

They traveled many miles
through the great garden, at last emerging onto a rolling savannah.
It, too, was green, but the trees were fewer. Many more miles passed
in this flat land, when Yazid pointed to a darkening on the horizon.
“Aviar.”

As they approached, Ahmed
conceded with chagrin that it did indeed appear to truly be a
city
,
not a pathetic village as he had imagined. It was not as large as
Bagdreme, and it had no wall, but it was still very considerable.
“Are the Aviarans mad?” Ahmed wondered out loud. “Why
is there no wall, no fortifications?”

Yazid nodded, smiling, clearly
pleased with the question. “It is a free city. They cannot
stand against the might of a nation, so they do not bother to try.”

“But there are other
threats. Bandits. Rebels. Pirates.”

Yazid chuckled. “What do
you know of pirates?”

“Nothing. But the sea is
near. Perhaps we will kill some on the trip to Prima, eh?”

“You speak more truth
than you realize,” Yazid said, growing somber again. “But
as for why there is no wall, you must understand that Aviar gives
certain things to the nations, and she is in turn protected by
them.” He paused a moment, then muttered, “Usually.”

“A port city left free?
Hard to believe. What does she offer that holds the nations at bay?”

“Entertainment. Neutral
ground. A place to hide. And then there is the history of it.
Alexander launched his ships from here. If Xanthia tried to seize
Aviar, we would be at war with Gruppenwald, Laurea, and Alexandria,
all at once. And the same would go for any of the others.”

Ahmed nodded. It made sense.
“Now explain the ‘usually’.”

Yazid turned and cast a cool
glance at his student, one eyebrow raised in appreciation. “I
thought perhaps you had missed that. I will answer your question,
but you must see some things within the city first to understand.”

Ahmed felt ever more foolish as
they pressed onward. He had imagined the barbarian lands filled with
pale skinned men in poorly cured animal hides, armed with spears or
stone axes. And yet it was not so. They were pale enough, it was
true, but they wore clothes just as any Xanthian. And as for
weapons, he was shocked to see that no more than one in ten even
went armed, but those that did carried steel, not wood or stone.
They were, Ahmed thought, curiously normal looking, save for their
deathly pallor.

He stared shamelessly at each
member of a passing caravan, trying to absorb the essence of the
barbarians, to understand them and reconcile the reality with his
own childish notions. A pale barbarian child in one of the wagons
stuck out his tongue at Ahmed. Ahmed twisted his own face into a
fierce mask, and the child ducked beneath a tarp, squealing in fear.

They came upon a guard station
of sorts, several obviously bored sentries surveying the crowd,
stopping this or that group, waving some through. A group of armed
and armored men on horseback, bearing a black banner with a red
dagger piercing a crown, passed without raising any notice at all. A
group of women and children, following closely behind the men, were
stopped and questioned. To Ahmed’s eye, there seemed no rhyme
or reason to their choices. He wondered what questions the barbarian
guards would ask, but they chose not to ask anything at all, waving
Ahmed and Yazid past with barely a second glance.

As they rode their horses
deeper into the city, Yazid leading him like a blind man, Ahmed
tried to make sense of everything about him, to understand these
barbarians who did not seem so barbaric. Their buildings, mostly two
stories and built close together, were hardly primitive. The roads
might have been better maintained, cleared of horse droppings more
regularly, perhaps, but the fact that there were roads at all was
problematic. How could barbarians have built roads? How could they
build houses of wood and stone? Should not barbarians live in hovels
of straw and wattle, dirt floors and glassless windows, and walk
poorly marked trails?

Even the air was unnatural, it
seemed. It carried a strange scent, salty and decaying, yet fresh.
Ahmed found it simultaneously exhilarating and foul. “What is
it?” he asked, sniffing

“The sea,” Yazid
answered

Ahmed felt his heart in his
mouth at this. “I would see it!”

“Soon. It is close. And
we will answer your question, too.”

Ahmed waited in silence,
knowing from experience that it was useless to pressure Yazid for
details. At best, he would achieve nothing. More likely, if he made
a nuisance of himself, he’d wind up carrying an imprint of
Yazid’s palm burning on his cheek for hours. He passed the
time by watching the people, marveling at how similar they were, and
yet how different. Here, too, most of the men went without arms or
armor. “Why are they unarmed? Are they cowards?”

“They are a superstitious
lot,” Yazid declared. “They look to talismans and
rituals to keep themselves safe. They write how they wish for men to
behave upon special paper, mark it with a seal of power, and wave
their hands about, as if this would compel all men to obey. They
call it law.”

Ahmed laughed out loud. “But
that is madness!”

“And yet it works for
them, much of the time. Even the Laureans practice such rituals, and
they are civilized men, cowards though they be.”

“But it is not true
sorcery?”

“No,” Yazid
chuckled. “It is mass delusion. But they believe in it, so it
has power over them. It is much the same way with many primitive
beliefs. True sorcery is a rare thing.”

“Rare, but it exists? You
have seen such things?”

Yazid's face hardened briefly,
then quickly returned to normal. “Aye, once, in Rellith. I
went fists against a Gruppenwalder while we were both riding in a
rented carriage. Can’t even remember the reason, now, but we
both fell from the thing and were trampled by horses. He was killed,
and I was near death. They brought me to a healer, but I did not
know at the time that the man was a
sorcerer
.”
He shuddered at the memory. “I should almost have preferred to
die. One look in that man’s eyes was all it took to see he was
half mad, and getting worse. There was little I could recognize as
human in that gaze. I heard later that he did go mad, that he killed
a lot of people before being put down.”

Yazid said nothing for a long
while, and Ahmed asked no more questions. It was only as they
approached the end of the road they were on that Yazid broken the
silence. “There,” he said, pointing. “Do you see
it?”

At first, Ahmed saw nothing. A
line of buildings stood at the end of the road, nothing remarkable.
Then he saw it, sun glinting between two buildings, and he could not
suppress a gasp of awe. “The sea!”

“Aye. Come, we are going
to a market there. There is something I would show you.”

They continued past the end of
the road, cutting between the two buildings to reach the shore. A
frail, white-haired old barbarian leaned from a window in one of the
buildings and shook his fist, showering them with curses, but Yazid
ignored him.

Ahmed dismounted and walked
slowly and deliberately across the stretch of sandy beach, trying to
take in the magnitude of the great body of water. He removed his
boots and walked into the surf, letting it lap at his feet. It was
inconceivable that so much water could exist, and yet it did,
stretching to the horizon. Like sand, Ahmed thought. Like the
desert, but in motion. They were opposites, and yet the same. “It
tastes of salt!” he declared in surprise. “Why?”

Yazid shrugged. “All seas
are so.” He gestured for Ahmed to come out of the water.
“There is one more thing I would show you. You will have long
to look at the sea, boy, longer than you will want, I promise.”

Ahmed knew it was true, but it
pained him to leave, just the same. He marveled at the spinning,
crying gulls over head as he made his way back to his horse,
wondering what it must be like to live in such an amazing place.
“How far?” he asked as he pulled on his boots.

“Not far. You can see it,
the building at the end of that pier.”

Ahmed threw a leg over his
horse and snapped the reigns. “And what is there that is so
important?”

Yazid answered him with
silence. Ahmed scowled at the older man’s back, feeling the
impulse to curse him for his cryptic showmanship, but he was well
aware of the price he would pay for such foolishness. He waited for
Yazid to lead, but Yazid simply turned back and looked at him. “Go.”

“I am following you.”

“I said go, boy. Alone.
See.”

“How can I go on when I
don’t know what I am supposed to see?”

“You will know. Now go.”
Yazid raised a fist, no real threat since Ahmed was out of arm’s
reach, but a clear indication that further debate was not going to
be productive.

Ahmed’s horse surged
forward at his urging, eager to run. Sand flew from hooves as Ahmed
pushed the beast to a full gallop. He laughed out loud as groups of
beachgoers scattered, many screaming curses as he thundered by.

In the distance, he could see
that the ‘building’ was in fact some sort of bazaar,
with many people wandering about. Another hundred yards, and it
became more clear: it was a prison on the beach side of a pier, open
to the air, with many captives inside, shuffling back and forth.
Ahmed drew to a stop, fairly certain that this was the lesson Yazid
intended for him. He watched quietly, trying to understand what was
going on.

There was a ship moored along
the pier. A long line of small, brown people, men, women, even a few
children, were being escorted by armed, pale skinned barbarians into
the prison. The brown men were a bit like some of the lighter
Xanthians in skin tone and hair, but they were shorter, with flatter
features, and their eyes seemed dull. But that was likely due to
their defeat, Ahmed thought. Some of them were even weeping.

At the head of the pier, many
barbarians were gathering about a long platform of dark, well worn
wood. There was a podium at the front. Along the back of the
platform, running along its length, was a waist high rail. Ten sets
of chains hung from it at evenly spaced intervals, each a spot where
a prisoner might be held fast. Clearly, Ahmed thought, this was a
courtroom, where prisoners of war were judged. That would explain
the outdoor prison. It was but a temporary thing, and the prisoners
would soon be freed or put to death.