The Tower of Fear (16 page)

“There is so much smoke we can’t see twenty yards. They tell us if we want clean air we’re going to have to take the top of the hill. But the stubborn damned veydeen won’t stop fighting. We just fought off a band of old men and boys armed with tools and kitchen knives. What is the matter with the veydeen? Do we have to massacre every man, woman, and child?”

No,
the Witch thought.
You have to slay one man, Nakar, my husband, and all the killing will stop. The smoke will clear and the rains fall and the fires die and the death and devastation prove to be less widespread than everyone imagined. But it will be terrible enough to leave everyone’s thirst for murder slaked.

She nudged the memory of the Dartar Shadid.

“The Herodians have begun to move. This part looks like it might get to be house-to-house. We are drawing random missile fire from the rooftops. It’s more a nuisance than a danger. The snipers can’t find their targets in the smoke. There is a smell of burnt flesh in it strong, now. Now … Now…”

The Witch did not press. This stutter was a warning that the end was near. The soul remembered and did not want to get any closer to the pain. She asked questions to fix the place and time.

She had no reason to believe that information might be useful, yet she recorded it all in hopes of charting a pattern.

Mostly, she found cause for ever-increasing fear.

A lot of people had died that day. Far more than there had been babies born. So far it looked like only the strongest souls had attached to new flesh immediately. But suppose that was an illusion? Suppose luck and proximity were equally crucial? In this instance the Dartar had died on the doorstep of a woman in labor.

She seldom knew enough, or unearthed enough, to see the transition so clearly.

Cautiously, she put Shadid to sleep and reawakened Histabel, restored him to his proper age, then told him to rest.

This had been an easy regression. Very little resistance. A pity all of them did not go as smoothly. A greater pity none of them ever turned up anyone more important than this.

If she could not unearth Nakar, her husband, then she wanted to find his murderer, Ala-eh-din Beyh.

“Torgo,” she called weakly. “I’m done.”

The eunuch appeared immediately. He had been outside the tent recording everything, in case her fragile, drug-sodden memory played pranks on her. “A Dartar,” he said, disgusted.

“Yes.”

“I suppose we can say we are a step closer to our goal, my lady. We knew it wouldn’t be easy when we started.”

For the first time she felt a spark of real resentment of the eunuch’s ritual reassurances. “Get me out of here before I go mad. I got too much of the smoke again.”

“Perhaps you should space the regressions more widely, my lady. So much concentrated exposure to the fumes cannot be healthy.”

“I want him back, Torgo. I don’t want to waste a minute I don’t have to waste.”

“And if a minute not taken now means having to pay with an hour or a day later on?”

His solicitude touched something deep. She flew into an instantaneous unreasoning fury. “You stop your fussing and nagging and do your damned job, Torgo! Let
me
worry about me. Get me to my bed. Bring me food and drink. Now!”

Inside the facade there was a very frightened woman.

The facade was starting to crack.

She ate and she drank and then she retreated into that place of warm sleep and pleasant dreams she found only after exposure to the drugged fumes. A still small but blossoming part of her fear was that she had begun to look forward to those hours of surcease.

*   *   *

“You sure favor that balcony these days,” Meryel said.

Bel-Sidek turned, smiled. “It’s a good place for thinking.”

“For brooding, you mean. What is it tonight? The new civil governor?”

“Nothing so obvious and mundane. This morning I learned that there might be a traitor of relatively high station among the Living.”

Meryel gasped.

“You’re not at risk. We seem to have identified him. He’s not in my organization. He’s in the old man’s.”

“You’re sure?”

“Not entirely. It’s under examination, you might say. We’ve set it up so the man will betray himself if he’s guilty. The ironic thing is, we found out on the very day he was to have been promoted to a level where he would know enough to pull the whole movement down. And we learned that he was suspect only because of a personal calamity that’s befallen him already.” Bel-Sidek decided not to go into that. “I almost feel sorry for the guy. Till yesterday everything was going perfectly for him. By tomorrow, probably, his whole world will have collapsed around him.”

“You have to leave again?”

“Yes. I may have that to attend to, and the old man has a policy meeting set. I could come back afterward. If you want me to.”

“So coy. So shy. So ingenuous. Of course. Now, I’ve had a feast laid on especially for you. Why don’t we see if we can’t do that justice before we fuss ourselves about lesser things?”

Bel-Sidek seldom ate well, unless at Meryel’s. “Let’s have at it, then.”

7

Aaron slid away, just leaving a hand lying upon Laella’s breast. Their mingled sweat began to dry. He shivered with a sudden chill.

It had not been very good. They were both too distracted. And having Stafa waken in the middle of it and jump on his back and yell, “Giddap, Dad!” was not something to ignite uncontrollable passion. Neither was having the yell alert the rest of the household to what was going on.

Mish was particularly intrigued by what happened between men and women in the dark. Her interest disconcerted him, and at times touched him with thoughts and temptations that left him aghast at what could happen inside a man’s mind. That left him so ashamed he could not face Laella for hours after he caught himself thinking them.

If she just wouldn’t try to spy!

Laella got Stafa back to sleep. She moved in next to him, whispered, “I think I should tell Reyha.”

“No. That would be too much of a burden for her. She’d end up calling him on it. Then how long would it take for him to find out where she got the idea?”

After a while, she said, “That could be dangerous, couldn’t it?”

“Scared men are desperate and desperate men are dangerous. And unpredictable. He might get the idea he could cover up.”

“Then why don’t you tell bel-Sidek? Everybody says he has something to do with the Living.”

“If he really does, then Reyha would be alone in the world.”

“Maybe they wouldn’t…”

“They’d kill him, Laella. They’re hard men. They kill people every day for crimes less than Naszif’s. For him it might be a very prolonged and unpleasant death.”

“Then there’s no way out, is there?”

“Not without choosing who gets hurt. And I don’t want that on my conscience.”

*   *   *

The old man watched bel-Sidek slip into the house, barely in time to get the stage set for the meeting. “Did you have an enjoyable dinner with our lady of the ships, Khadifa?”

“Yes sir. She was highly amused by what she called today’s preposterous circumstances. Meaning her sense of irony got fat because the Living completed its biggest weapons-smuggling operation ever virtually without risk because of Herodian arrogance. If the new governor and his escorts hadn’t bulled through the traffic waiting to enter the straits her ships would have come in first and we would have had to dodge and trick customs men all morning.”

“Perhaps one of those very weapons will cut the pig’s throat.”

“You know him, sir?”

“I remember his father. They say this Sullo is identical to the beast that sired him. Your man is being watched. If the letter he received doesn’t send him running to Bruda he’s innocent.”

“Yes sir. Did you eat, sir?”

“It can wait.”

“You have to develop some regular eating habits, sir.”

“I’m sure. Your mothering can wait, too. Answer the door.”

Bel-Sidek had not heard the discreet knock. He went to the door expecting to find King early as usual. Instead, Salom Edgit greeted him. Bel-Sidek stepped aside. Edgit came in very carefully. He looked awful. The news about Ortbal Sagdet must have given him no peace.

Edgit went to his usual place and settled. Though he was early he had nothing to say.

Hadribel arrived next. He exchanged looks and nods with the old man. Guided by bel-Sidek he took the place usually occupied by Sagdet, If Edgit noticed he showed no sign.

Then came King Dabdahd. He looked as ragged as Edgit. Then the fanatics, together again and looking smug about recent events.

The General surveyed the lot. “As stated previously, the khadifa of the Hahr is with us tonight.” He did not introduce Hadribel. He and bel-Sidek were the only ones supposed to know the names of everyone there—though, of course, everyone knew everyone. They had all been officers together in the same small army.

“New business. The arrival of a new civil governor. His advent appears to have confounded and exasperated our oppressors as much as it has surprised us. This intelligence should be of interest to you all: he has in his train a sorceress of modest talent named Annalaya. She hails from Petra or some such place on the Allurican coast, where they make so many minor witches. Does anyone have anything to tell us about the new governor?”

King said, “One of my men heard that Sullo refuses to stay in the Residence.” The Residence was the seat of the Herodian civil governors. Like Government House, it was in the acropolis, just a quarter mile away. Before the conquest it had been the main temple of Aram the Flame. “He wants a place in the hills east of the city. My man suspected him of a superstitious dread of a place where so many villains met their fate.”

“Keep an eye on that. Also under new business. Has anyone got any idea what Fa’tad is up to, invading the Shu labyrinth, other than tugging Cado’s mustache?”

Headshakes.

“Salom? You have resources among those who work in the Dartar compound. What do they have to tell us?”

“Nothing yet, sir. It’s too soon. But I’ll bet there’ll be nothing. Fa’tad is close. So close he doesn’t tell his captains what he’s doing half the time. Sometimes he doesn’t know himself. Something catches his fancy, like a shiny coin fascinates a crow, and he plays with it. Sometimes he’s like a kid pulling the strings on a knit garment. He just wants to see what will happen.”

The old man ignored a pain that nipped at him like a malicious puppy. “We’ll table that. Anything else new? No? Old business, then. We continue to become less apparent among the people of Qushmarrah. We lull the oppressor with the thought that time and frustration are disarming us. We begin a phase less active toward Herod but more attentive toward Qushmarrah.”

He winced. The pain was particularly persistent. “Sometime soon an event will transpire which will make possible a serious attempt to reclaim our heritage. I have no control over when. It could be as soon as next week or as distant as six months from now. But the result will be very much in the hands of the movement to exploit. Comes that day we will launch the general uprising some of our brothers find so attractive.

“Your orders are these: reduce conflict with the oppressor and our own people. Expend the energies of your people in identifying the widest possible body of sympathizers. When the day comes we will be able to arm hundreds beyond our own number. I would prefer to offer those arms to men of known persuasion. The first hours, while the news spreads and the oppressor responds, will be critical. We must confuse and unbalance the enemy well enough and long enough for the insurrection to generalize. There will come a point where Cado and Fa’tad will not be able to cope.”

Why am I making this speech? They had heard it till they were sick. “I am repeating myself. I apologize. The message is this. We are gathering our strength against an indefinite someday no longer. The date itself is not fixed but it is not likely to be more than six months away. You must prepare for it, and at the same time create the illusion that it is farther away than ever. One final word. You will tell no one the day is coming. No one. No exceptions. No excuses. He who speaks, and whoever hears him, will immediately join the former khadifa of the Hahr. Silence is that important to me. Do you understand?”

He did not get a chance to force acknowledgments. Someone knocked at the door, and yelled. Irritated, the old man waved at bel-Sidek, then gestured the others into the bedroom.

Bel-Sidek opened the door a crack and mumbled with someone. He closed up, came to the old man. “A boy, about ten, with this. For you, I assume.”

The General looked at the folded paper with the sparrow on the outside. “Open it. Place it so I can read it.” He willed his eyes to work well enough.

His correspondent had taken his disabilities into account. The message was written in large block print. He grunted and read it again, then found the shape he recognized as bel-Sidek. “Khadifa, you were right. Your man is visiting Government House right now.” He offered the message to bel-Sidek. “Handle it as you see fit.”

*   *   *

Bel-Sidek read the message twice himself, then remained contemplative for several minutes. It meant a great deal more than an enemy agent reaching a place of high trust within the movement. It could mean that all the guilt of those who had failed at Dak-es-Souetta, and the search for atonement and redemption implicit in their commitment to the movement, was moot, if not a prideful arrogance of false guilt.
Had
Qushmarrah fallen because an apprentice metalworker of no breeding or standing whatsoever had lost his nerve during the course of something that wasn’t even a battle?

No. True or not, it wouldn’t do. Too many great men and great families had too much emotion invested in the legends already in place. It had to stay quiet. But, even so, it had to be handled. The simple and final way would be to get rid of the man. But why discard a perfectly usable tool just because it had caused you injury? Why not retain it and use it with a little more caution?

“The khadifa of the Hahr has not yet assumed his new nor broken with his old district. If he could dip into that and loan me a dozen reliable soldiers who can be counted on to forget tonight’s doings before tomorrow’s dawn?”