The Crystal Empire (36 page)

Knife Thrower and Traveling Short Bear stopped.

The latter appeared fascinated by Ayesha’s pet, Sagheer. Traveling Short Bear spoke a word in polite Comanche. Knife Thrower, po
s
sessing no command of Arabic, waved an arm at Fireclaw, who rose, grateful of di
s
traction, and strode to meet them. In any case, he could always use another chance to try his week-old Arabic.

Before he got there, Traveling Short Bear reached a blunt, curious hand out to Sagheer, who chittered at the man in fury, dashing his little face against the outstretched hand. The Ute jumped back with an excl
a
mation—not quite as polite as before, and in his own tongue—held one injured hand in the other. He stepped forward again, bending, not to seize the little animal but to calm it.

His fingers were arched backward in a patting gesture, his gravelly words were soft. Yet the words and gestures of one people are not a
l
ways those of another, nor easily understood across the barriers of la
n
guage and culture. From out of nowhere, Marya produced a long, sle
n
der, gleaming dagger. Her hand rose over the stooping Ute, fell—in a skewed arc as Knife Thrower’s own blade rose for her belly, where it had entered to the hilt, up to her breastbone, making ripping, sucking noises. The woman pitched forward upon the blanket.

Ayesha screamed.

The entire camp erupted as Fireclaw rushed toward the Saracen women. The blanket rapidly grew sodden, scarlet. He shouted at ever
y
one—the sailors and the Saracens had weapons out, even Shulieman had dropped his writings to leap to his feet—to stay back. Fireclaw left his greatsword u
n
drawn, but placed himself between his Comanche brother-in-law and M
o
chamet al Rotshild, who, despite his apparent age, had somehow appeared at Ayesha’s side, his tiny pistol nearly swallowed by his great fist, as if he’d been smoke carried upon the wind.

His companion, Lishabha, was close beside him.

Mochamet al Rotshild spoke.

A cracked and whining voice intruded itself: “They want to know why this barbarian hath murdered one of their party.” Oln Woeck had also joined the group.

“I know what he wants, old man,” Fireclaw answered. “Shut up. Stay out of this. ’Tis a bad enough situation.”

And a bad beginning for a voyage, Fireclaw thought to himself. He ran a hand over his naked scalp, wondering whether he’d ever see the ending of all this and get back home.

Oln Woeck stepped back for the moment, the fire always buried deep within his black-rimmed eyes threatening to blast forth furnace-white. An equally dangerous look from the younger Helvetian persuaded the old man to contain himself.

Fireclaw turned to Knife Thrower.

“What’s happened here, my brother?”

“This,”
the Comanche answered, nudging the dead woman with a disdainful toe, “attempted clumsily to skewer Traveling Short Bear. Let this be a lesson to us, husband-of-my-sister. It is what comes of letting women have their own way.” This time Fireclaw could see that the wa
r
rior’s words were not mere humorous banter. Momentarily he sensed the gulf that their friendship usually spanned. The Comanche looked down at the blade still dripping in his hands. “I had not time to treat the o
f
fense more gently.”

Fireclaw nodded. “I see.”

He switched to faltering Arabic. “Girl, why did your servant strike at this man?”

David Shulieman, who had joined her, stiffened, and the Saracen Princess’ eyes widened at being addressed thus, but she swallowed it with better courtesy than Oln Woeck.

“I—I think she feared for my life. She did not understand what...what this other man wanted with Sagheer.”

Fireclaw nodded again, passing Ayesha’s words along to Knife Thrower.

The Comanche warrior shook his head.

“Stupid. Traveling Short Bear, have you been offended?”

The Ute had risen, having been shoved out of harm’s way by the Comanche chief, and was dusting off his knees.

“Why should I be, friend Knife Thrower? It was an accident of judgment which certainly did me no lasting harm, all thanks to you. In any case it has been scrubbed away with the blood of the offender. I am sorry that it happened. Have Fireclaw tell that to the girl.”

In due course these sentiments were relayed to the Princess, who, naturally enough, was little mollified, but took them in such dignity and unde
r
standing as she could impose upon herself. Her teacher spoke with her. Her eyes were large, her olive skin gone ashen. Later, Fireclaw thought, the reckoning tears would come, but not, if he understood Ay
e
sha, in front of strangers.

The camp began to settle into place again. He tended to the washing and bandaging of Traveling Short Bear’s injured hand himself. It was a deep and ragged wound, ugly, very much like the bite of a man—of which he’d suffered and delivered many in the heat of combat—and would surely fester if improperly cleansed.

Oln Woeck sat beneath his gnarled tree again intent upon his thoughts as if, Fireclaw believed, calculating what might be made of this mishap the way a merchant might calculate the possible profits and los
s
es of some e
n
terprise.

Mochamet al Rotshild, having ordered Kabeer and the sailors to pr
e
pare a cairn of stones—the ground was much too hard this high in the mountains to bury Marya—and asked the rabbi to prepare to say the words which were appropriate in the circumstances, observed Knife Thrower washing his gore-smeared weapon as Fireclaw washed the Ute chief’s hand.

He turned to Lishabha.

“Formidable fighters, these Red devils. I did not so much as see him draw the knife.”

Fireclaw, who’d overheard the remark, turned to face the elderly Sa
r
acen captain.

“Yes, ’twas what my brother had in mind when he acted. Had Trave
l
ing Short Bear been worse injured, or considered this mistake an insult, we would now be at their mercy.”

Mochamet al Rotshild raised his eyebrows.

“How so, mighty Fireclaw?”

Fireclaw pointed at the blue-tinted apex of the next range of hills, across the canyon.

Mochamet, squinting against distance and age, took in a deep breath.

“My word, have they been with us the entire morning?”

He pointed out what he’d seen.

Lishabha started, snarled, placed a hand upon the hilt of the large dagger she carried, and tossed a glance toward her rifle, leaning against a tree too far away to be of any use.

Mochamet put a large, hairy hand over her tiny smooth one.

Fireclaw laughed as the entire crest of the next hill rippled, shortened itself by the height of the solid rank of Red Men who’d seen peace r
e
turn to the Saracen camp and were now going away.

“So close.” The Helvetian exhaled forcefully. “Too close.

Tell me if I am saying this aright in your language, Mochamet al Rotshild: I think not well of a people who send little girls into such peril for reasons of politics.”

The Saracen grinned and shook his head.

“Well spoken indeed, Sedrich-called-Fireclaw. I could not have put it better. However, we have a proverb in my native land, ‘It is the water which cleanses, not the soap,’ meaning that one man cannot change the nature of society nor the times, only masses of people and great events can—and that one should not destroy oneself trying.”

“My mother had a saying of her own,” Fireclaw countered, transla
t
ing an old thought into new words. “’Tis the wave which moves, and not the water,’ meaning that the only source of change is the individual.”

Mochamet al Rotshild looked surprised.

“Yes, I had forgotten, Fireclaw, that you know the sea—and that, in effect, you invented the vessel upon which we came inland to your d
o
main. I shall try to remember better in future.”

With these words, the last of the Ute warriors had disappeared. M
o
chamet al Rotshild and Lishabha went to tend their own affairs.

“A lucky resolution,” Knife Thrower offered in the special dialect private to the men of his tribe, “to what might have been a massacre.”

Fireclaw grunted agreement, answering in the same language.

“Never were truer words spoken. Daughters deserve better fathers, brother-of-my-wife. For the first time in a long while, I find myself ca
r
ing whether we survive or not.”

Knife Thrower was puzzled.

“A peculiar thing to say, Fireclaw.”

“Perhaps.”

He brushed at the small knife swinging in its scabbard from the thong about his neck.

“You accused me of being sentimental. Well, learn this morning what I learned five days ago, from the lips of your own sister. In some respects she knows her place well enough e’en to suit your prejudices.”

Knife Thrower shook his head.

“The mystery only grows deeper with this kind of explanation, my brother.”

“No mystery at all. In the spring Dove Blossom will at last bear me a child.”

On the Helvetian’s face, Knife Thrower realized, he saw an expre
s
sion he had never seen on the man’s face before.

It was embarrassment.

“I find,” he told his woman’s brother, “that I wish more than an
y
thing to live long enough to see that child born.”

David Shulieman began an eerie, alien chanting. Westward, ye
l
low-white lightning lashed the overhanging clouds of indigo, and muted thunder rolled about them where they stood.

Oln Woeck sat beneath his tree and watched.

“Certainly the dwellers in the Thicket were evildoers, and We took vengeance
on them.”—
The
Koran,
Sura XV

Overhead, the sky itself
was a pale, luminous frosty gray, so full was it of stars.

For each solitary point of light that punctuated the blackness upon ordinary nights, this night perhaps a thousand scintillated above, pe
r
haps a hundred thousand. They glowed. Each pulsing gray-green dro
p
let in the misty hor
i
zon-filling canopy was enveloped in a pearlescent halo of its own: star-vapor, co
m
posed, perhaps, of still yet other stars, too far away, too tiny, to be seen.

And this mist of stars which filled the heavens
—
was alive.

Every moment, every quarter of the sky, was filled with motion. Stars stirred and writhed, here and there forming short-lived patterns which faded or yet formed another. Here, a single star traversed half of hea
v
en’s arc, leaving behind a tracery of itself, like dewdrops upon the invi
s
ible webwork of some celestial eight-legged spinner. There, a spindle coalesced of star-glow, reeling, throbbing with a pent-up energy which sent it dan
c
ing with a dozen other of its kind before it shattered without sound, into the mist from which it had condensed.

Ships there were, translucent sky-vessels, woven of phosphorescent luster, hurrying about incomprehensible errands. Now and then, vague silhouettes of sky-beasts hinted at a manlike form before dissolving into vapor once again.

And every bit of this, and more, transpired all at once, each fraction of a second showering down more fresh wonders upon the stunned b
e
holder than he might take in within a lifetime’s span of years. It was a profligate display, wasted a thousand times over upon anyone who po
s
sessed but a single pair of eyes to see it, a single mouth to gasp each time some new miracle flared, danced, transformed itself into yet anot
h
er, or a single mind to batter into some pitiable semblance of awed a
p
preciation.

It was the antithesis of nightmare
—
in its own way, far worse
—
a spectacle so wordlessly wonderful that awakening from it became pu
n
ishment for some terrible sin no mere human being could ever have committed. It was one dream of which she never had told anyone. Words were powerless to convey more than a millionth of the whirling gra
n
deur she beheld upon those three or four occ
a
sions in her remembrance when it had come to her.

Using words, she feared
—
and the fear somehow, was for her life
—
even attempting to, might drive this dream away forever.