The Tower of Fear (32 page)

Aaron glanced at the prisoner. The man was numb, sitting there waiting to be executed.

“We’ll deal with him later. So these child-stealers are very careful about giving anything away, are well paid, and were known criminals before becoming involved. Except Rose, who does not fit the pattern. He’s been our agent for five years and the Dartar testimony would suggest he was an occasional visitor to the place in Char Street we now believe to have housed General Hanno bel-Karba and his chief of staff, Colonel Sisu bel-Sidek. We seem to have conflicting possibilities if we look for a connection between the Living and the crimes. Mr. Habid, would you tell us your story?”

Aaron jumped. The inevitable had come and still he was not ready. He sat there like a lump, tongue-tied.

Laella took it for some benighted, romantic, patriotic refusal to betray Qushmarrah and the Living. “Aaron! You tell them what they want to know! You don’t owe the Living anything!” She glanced at her mother.

He did so, wondering how he could have acted so positively and violently just a few hours ago, when he’d never committed such a violence in his life, and now he could not open his mouth.

He forced himself to croak, “I owe Herod. And so do you.”

“Damn what happened six years ago! This is about tonight! This is about our son! The Herodians will pay for their crimes when they walk through the Flame.”

He opened his mouth.

“And you tell all of it. Hear?”

The slight sneer on Naszif’s face galvanized him.

He started clear back at the Seven Towers. Each time his story touched upon Naszif he spoke with the utmost contempt. Once he invoked a Dartar proverb, “Beware the man who betrays your enemy unto you, for he will betray you unto your enemy,” but the bolt missed its mark entirely and fell among scowling Dartars. He went on through Colonel Bruda’s arrival in his home.

Laella beamed at him, sort of.

General Cado frowned. “That’s an interesting story. As an oral journal. But it sheds very little light on our problem.” He was pensive for a moment. “Colonel Bruda will read you a list of names. Interrupt if you recognize any of them. You and your wife, too, Colonel bel-Abek. Colonel Bruda?”

Bruda read a long list.

Only Reyha interrupted. She mistook one of the women’s names for someone she knew who had the same name.

“I was afraid of that,” General Cado said. “Let me ask you this, Mr. Habid. Do you personally know anyone besides Colonel bel-Abek who has lost a child?”

Aaron shook his head.

“Do you, Colonel bel-Abek?”

“Only Mr. Habid, sir.”

“I thought so. So. We have no obvious common denominator.” He spoke directly to Aaron. “Those were the names of parents who have lost children over the past three months. There is nothing to tie them together. They come from a variety of classes and trades. They live all over the city. None have ever served the Herodian name. Only two have ever been suspected of dealing with the Living. None were at the Seven Towers though most bore arms during the conflict. Our man Rose is the only male Qushmarrahan I know who claims he didn’t, which makes me doubt his veracity. You and your wife, and Colonel bel-Abek and his wife, are the only parents we can find with ties of any kind, however strained. That would seem to argue that the children themselves are indeed what the thing is all about. But we can’t see that they have anything in common, either.”

Aaron felt General Cado was looking at him as though he expected him to have the answer. All he could do was shrug.

A silence set in. Laella finally broke it. “They were born the same day.”

“What?” General Cado asked.

“Arif and Zouki. They were born the same day. They have that in common.” Laella did not look up at the Herodian.

“That’s reaching for it. But … When were they born?”

“The last day of the fighting. The seventh day of the Moon of Ripening. Malach in the calendar of the Old Gods. I don’t know what your people call it.”

“We use a different calendar. What do you think, Colonel Bruda?”

Bruda was leafing through his documents. “I only have two dates of birth. They didn’t seem much use at the time. But. One is down as seventh Malach, the other as the seventh day of the Moon of Ripening. Both children six years old. I only have four children on the list who aren’t six. Those are all older. Ransom was demanded and paid. No ransom demands were made in any of the other cases though several of the children have been found and restored to their parents.”

Colonel Bruda looked at General Cado. General Cado looked at Colonel Bruda. Everyone else looked at them. Cado said, “Get the dates of birth checked tomorrow. For now we’ll assume they’re the critical connection. But that just sets up a whole new puzzle. Why does being born that day make them important enough to round up?”

Naszif had been translating everything for Sullo’s benefit. Sullo’s witch had listened but with apparent scant attention.

She rattled a sudden question in Herodian.

General Cado said, “She wants to know what state the restored children were in. Colonel Bruda doesn’t know.”

Aaron recalled what Billygoat had told him. “I heard about a couple who were found wandering along Goat Creek. They had lost their memories of almost everything.”

Fa’tad, in Qushmarrahan dialect, said, “My men found several such children this week. They were as the veydeen says, blank stretches of sand.”

Aaron watched the witch as Naszif translated. She became increasingly agitated. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead. She asked a question when Naszif finished.

“She wants to know who died that day,” Fa’tad said. “What great man.”

Most everyone knew but no one spoke till Aaron, puzzled, said, “Ala-eh-din Beyh and Nakar the Abomination.”

The witch moaned. For a moment it looked like she would faint. Then she pulled herself together and began rattling away in shaky Herodian.

*   *   *

Bel-Sidek had laid himself down certain he was too tense to sleep, but invidious slumber had slipped up and taken him unawares. The touch of a hand awakened him. He jerked up, flailing around after a weapon.

“Easy. It’s Meryel.”

He relaxed, searched her face in the wan light of the lone candle she had brought into the room. “Bad news?”

“It isn’t good. The Herodians are rushing around everywhere. Colonel Bruda’s men. They’ve been through your place on Char Street. They raided Hadribel’s house. He got out a step ahead. They tore apart a place in Rhatiq Lane that was used by a criminal named Ishabal bel-Shaduk. They hit a hostel operated by a man named Muma and arrested everyone there, but Muma and his family had fled. They’re still very busy in the Shu, rounding up suspected members of the movement.”

“The traitor didn’t stay in line. My fault. I shouldn’t have pressed his wife so hard.”

“They’ve arrested him, too. And everyone involved in the fight in Char Street. A child was stolen.”

“I know.”

“There’s something big going on at Government House. Cado brought in Sullo and Fa’tad.”

Bel-Sidek thought a moment. “It has to be the traitor. He’s given them something to make them think they can break us. We’ll have to fight back. I don’t want to start a bloodbath but we can’t stand still and take it.” Zenobel would launch the counterattack. His men were the best prepared and his quarter held the greatest number of sympathizers ready to spring to arms.

That was the traditional plan. Let Zenobel begin, draw the Herodians, then loose Carza. While those two were embattled the men of the weaker quarters would massacre all Herodians, soldier or civilian, and sympathizers in their quarters before adding their weight to the forces of Zenobel and Carza.

“Did they actually put troops aboard their ships?”

“About twenty-five hundred. Including all their Herodian cavalry. Marco is in command. They sail with the morning tide.”

Good. That left him facing only one legion and some odds and ends, plus the balance of the Dartars. “I’ll move after the Dartars are back in their compound tonight.”

If the thing was to start at night, as preferred, Zenobel’s first objective would be to seize the Gate of Autumn so the Dartars could not become a factor in the fighting.

His one question was, had the traitor been able to betray the strategy?

Unlikely. Only the khadifas were completely informed. Only Carza and Zenobel had tactical roles so narrowly defined they had had to give their underlings some information about what ought to happen.

“I’ll need writing materials and someone to carry messages. Damn! It has to come now, when the ruling council is in disarray and we’re all on the run.”

He could have Hadribel stay at the reins in the Shu and could cover the waterfront himself. That would leave the Hahr one big piece of unknown territory right in the middle of the city, and he could only hope the organization there would take flame and do its part.

“You’re sure you want to do this?”

“No. I don’t want to. But I don’t see any alternative.”

Meryel went for writing materials. She seemed sad that the hour had come. He got himself up and together. He was sad himself, though he’d always known that only fire and blood would loosen Herod’s chokehold on the city he loved.

Meryel was a long time coming back. He raised a questioning eyebrow. She said, “One of my underworld contacts dropped by. I had to see him.”

“And?”

“He knew of no organized child-stealing operation. But he knew the name Azel.” She shivered.

“And?”

“Azel is a professional killer. The most dreaded in Qushmarrah. Nobody knows who he is. Azel probably isn’t his real name since Azel is the name of one of the seven demons who spring forth from Gorloch’s navel to work his will in the world. Azel the Destroyer.”

Bel-Sidek nodded. “Like Nakar the Abomination,” He knew the mythology, though he had been born to a family that followed Aram. By the time of the conquest most of the ruling class had, though they had kept the ancient names awarded them during the primacy of Gorloch to distinguish themselves from the masses.

Meryel said, “This Azel learned his trade working for Nakar. He may have committed as many as a hundred murders on Nakar’s behalf. He survived the conquest. A year later he seems to have gone into business for himself, but doing only the biggest jobs. Some people think he killed most of the civil governors. But since nobody knows who he is and he seems to have no associates to talk, nobody knows who paid him. Opinion divides up between Cado and the Living. Except for the thing in the Hahr the other day, which may have been an imitation of his style, he’s been quiet for the past six months.”

Bel-Sidek sat quietly, thinking, for so long she finally snapped, “Well? Don’t you have anything to say?”

“Yes. I want to go out on the balcony.”

He did not notice her exasperated shrug, just followed her outside, stood above the fog staring at the black hulk of the citadel of Nakar the Abomination. After ten minutes of silence, he said, “The murder was no imitation. The man was working for the General. I actually met him this morning.” He related the circumstances.

“Why are you so troubled?”

“Because now I think I see the General’s great secret plan for delivering Qushmarrah. And it’s a plan with both feet firmly planted in insanity. He meant to conjure Nakar, and restore him, so he could unleash his evil wrath upon the forces of Herod.”

He saw Meryel looking at him like he was more than a little crazy himself.

“What do you know about sorcery?” he asked.

“Nothing. And I want to keep it that way.”

“I’m no sorcerer. Never wanted to be one. But I’ve heard things here and there.” He jerked off onto a different tack. “I knew the boy who was carried off tonight. He was born the day Nakar was killed. His mother always mentions that when she talks about him. Not coincidentally, the traitor’s son was born the same day. I’d wager most of the children taken this summer were born that day.”

Her look had not grown more understanding.

“They’re looking for the traveling soul.”

“The what?”

“In the agony of death the soul forgets and flees the dying flesh. After a time it seeks out flesh in the agony of birth and attaches itself to a baby being born. It has forgotten its past life, yet it carries within it memories of all previous lives forever. A skilled sorcerer can reawaken those memories and restore someone who has died.”

Meryel shuddered. Her expression now was one of doubt.

“They’re looking for the traveling soul of Nakar the Abomination up there.”

“Who is?”

“His wife. The Witch. And Azel the Destroyer, They’re stirring through the souls of children, looking for Nakar. And judging from the effort they mounted tonight they think they’ve found him. She must have had a bitter falling out with the General if it was enough to make her come out and kill him.”

“I’ll trust you, Sisu. I’ll do what you think needs doing. But I don’t believe all that.”

“But don’t you see? It’s the only way it all hangs together.”

“They’re all dead up there, Sisu. And they have been for a long time.”

“We don’t know that at all. We don’t know what happened that day except that Nakar and Ala-eh-din Beyh killed each other. I think the Witch survived. I think she’s been biding her time till the moment was ripe.”

“You may be right.” She was going to humor him. “But you have more practical problems right now. You’re going to war in eighteen hours. Remember?”

He remembered. He went inside and began composing messages. But his thoughts remained on Nakar and the General’s mad scheme for freeing Qushmarrah.

And as he thought, he gradually became aware that he had come face-to-face with the great moral choice of his life.

The General had loved Qushmarrah completely, unreservedly, blindly, and no price had been too great to pay to rid its streets of the tread of foreign soldiers. Bel-Sidek had loved that old man as blindly, but did he love him so much that he would allow his nightmare dream to come true?

*   *   *

Aaron stood at General Cado’s right on a balcony high on the face of Government House. Cado stared through the drizzle at the citadel. Naszif stood at Cado’s left. No one else was there. Aaron was not sure why the Herodian had brought them up, into the rain.