Trinity Rising: Book Two of the Wild Hunt (Wild Hunt Trilogy 2) (40 page)

‘There’s more to it than that. I have other gifts,’ he said. ‘Ones the Church doesn’t care for.’

‘Ah.’

‘Does that disturb you?’

‘I have known Alderan for a long time. My soul is at peace.’ N’ril tilted his head to one side. ‘May I ask, are you a man of faith?’

Helping himself to more water, Gair considered his response. Once, he would not have had to think before answering a question like that. ‘I was raised by Goddess-fearing folk, if that’s what you mean.’

The desertman flashed a smile. ‘It is close enough.’

‘And you? What do you believe in?’

‘I believe my father sired me, my mother birthed me and my land sustains me. The sun rises and the rains fall whether I will it or no. That is enough for me.’ Gair offered him the borrowed
qatan
, but he shook his head. ‘Keep it for now. Like Shahe, it has no master.’

Of course. Red and black, like Shahe’s harness. Now he realised the significance of the scar on N’ril’s arm. ‘It belonged to your brother.’

‘Once. He has no further use for it now.’ N’ril sketched a bow. ‘Sleep well and rise happy, my friend,’ he said, and walked away into the gathering dusk.

A hand on Gair’s shoulder dragged him out of his dreams. He scrubbed sleep from his eyes and sat up, peering into the dark to see who had woken him.

A pearly glim popped into being, making him shield his eyes with his hand. ‘Time to go,’ said Alderan.

‘What time is it?’

‘Later than I would have liked. As near Third as makes no difference.’ The old man enlarged the glim until the whole room was bright as day. He was dressed in the loose trousers, long divided tunic and voluminous
barouk
of the inner desert. ‘There’s desert clothes for you on the chair. Get dressed and meet me in the stable-yard with your gear.’

A distant shriek, abruptly cut off, galvanised Gair out of the low bed and onto his feet. ‘What was that?’

Alderan looked grim. ‘There’s been trouble,’ was all he would say. ‘You’d best hurry.’

Gair washed and dressed as quickly as he could. A ruddy glow around the edge of the shutters proved, when he looked outside, to be a fire elsewhere in the city; either the warehouse was still burning or another building in the same district had been fired. The cool night air tasted charred.

N’ril arrived when he was almost done dressing with a pot of strong tea and some pastries. He quickly demonstrated how Gair should secure the
qatan
in his sash and fasten the complicated loops and twists of the
kaif
headdress, securing it with a circular enamelled pin in the Feqqin house colours of green and gold. Then, with two cups of tea scalding his stomach and his pack over his shoulder, Gair hurried out to the stables.

Alderan had the horses already saddled, an elegant grey for himself and Shahe for Gair, who was visible in the darkness only by the silver ornaments on her tack.

‘Do you know your horse bites?’ the old man said, rubbing his arm. ‘Mount up. I want to be well away from the city before dawn. It’s no longer safe here for northerners.’

Gair swung into the saddle. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Apparently warehouses are not enough for the Cult. Two imperial merchants’ houses have been put to the torch, and some people have been killed,’ said N’ril, securing Gair’s pack and a bedroll behind his saddle. He wrapped the longsword’s baldric around its scabbard. ‘You should leave this here. It betrays you even more than your height.’

‘Will you keep it for me until I can come back for it?’ Gair rested his hand on the hilt of the borrowed
qatan
. ‘A blade for a blade?’

‘With pleasure.’

Then the desertman loped across the yard to the gates and swung them wide. The alley outside was empty but for a stray dog nosing through some refuse, but the breeze brought distant shouting.

Alderan paused at the gate and leaned down from his saddle to grip N’ril’s shoulder. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Keep yourself safe. Your mother’s buried enough sons.’

White teeth shone in the dark. ‘I will be careful.’

To Gair, N’ril said, ‘May it please God that you have no need of what I taught you yesterday, but if you do, make it tell, and honour my brother’s memory.’

‘I’ll try.’ Gair clasped his hand. ‘I hope we meet again.’

‘We will, I am sure of it. We have swords to exchange. Now go!’

The moon-silvered streets of Zhiman-dar were quiet but strangely watchful, as if the people inside the shuttered houses were wide-eyed and uneasy, waiting for the mob to move on to another part of the city. Alderan led them the length of the alley then paused where it joined a main street, looking around carefully before urging his horse across the thoroughfare. The jumbled roofs of the houses opposite stood silhouetted against flickering orange light. A dull rumble as of a discontented hive came from a few streets away.

‘We’ll have to be quick,’ Alderan muttered. ‘I think it’ll get worse before it gets better.’

‘N’ril said the Cult is not well liked here.’

‘Even a desertman can be wrong about his own people sometimes.’

Another cross-street, then down another alley, black as pitch with the moon hidden by the city’s buildings. Gair’s pulse quickened as he rode. It was all he could do to keep Shahe to a fast walk; the mare was eager to be gone as well and burst into a bouncing trot at the least touch of his heels. In the dusty alleys she made little sound, but on the stone-flagged wider streets her steel shoes rang shockingly loud.

A pale tower loomed over the buildings ahead. The square shape looked familiar. ‘Is that a church?’ Gair whispered.

Alderan nodded, then swore as the bell began to ring. Cheering erupted from the next street and Gair smelled the tang of burning paper. Quick as a man half his age, Alderan swung down from his horse and ran ahead to the next intersection to peer around the corner. Firelight gilded his face, making him duck back into the shadows. Gair grabbed the grey’s reins and walked Shahe over to him.

‘What’s happening?’

Alderan was scowling. ‘I thought men had outgrown book-burning,’ he growled. ‘Look for yourself.’

Gair dismounted and edged his head around the corner of the building. The church stood on the far side of a square, its splintered doors hanging askew like broken teeth in a beaten man’s mouth. White-robed figures hurried in and out, carrying armloads of books to a bonfire blazing at the foot of the steps. In its leaping yellow light another figure, massively tall and bearded, exhorted a whooping, cheering crowd of two hundred or more citizens clustered around the fire.

The man’s arms were spread wide, his head jerking as he delivered a torrent of Gimraeli in a booming voice. Gair could barely recognise a word of it but the anger and hatred needed no translation. He watched, horrified, as two figures emerged from the church carrying a single large book between them. The Cultist zealot swung around, pointing, and the two men held up the book, open at a gorgeously illuminated page for all to see.

‘That’s the Book of Eador!’ Gair exclaimed.

With the crowd roaring its approbation, the zealot strode to his two helpers and began to wrench pages from the book, flinging them into the flames. Then the three men hurled the entire book onto the bonfire in a gout of sparks and smoke. The zealot’s voice rose in pitch and he jabbed his finger at the curling pages, spittle flying from his lips.

Gair felt sick. ‘They’re burning holy books, Alderan! How dare they? How—’

Alderan dragged him away from the square and pushed Shahe’s reins into his hands. ‘We have to leave now. Quickly, before they realise we don’t belong here and we go the same way as those books.’

Gair mounted, still reeling from what he had witnessed. ‘Which way?’

‘Across the square, then hard left and south as fast as you can.’

The old man dug in his heels, sending the grey leaping forwards. Shahe needed no encouragement to follow. A few shouts of surprise rang out from the church steps. Even over the sound of the horses’ hooves Gair heard the tattoo of running feet and imagined the mob surging after him. He bent low on the mare’s neck and pushed her to a gallop.

Street after street flew past with no sign of another human being. Here and there shutters squeaked or a door banged closed as the two horsemen clattered by, hoofbeats echoing down the moon-shadowed thoroughfares. Sounds of pursuit quickly fell behind, but Gair could still hear the Cultist zealot’s voice, his hate harsh as acid; could still see the hand-lettered pages of the Book crinkling into ash.

The plaza before the south gate stood silver in the moonlight. Torches burned on the squat gatehouse and the gates themselves were closed. At the sound of horses, four men spilled from the gatehouse doorway with more torches – city guards in boiled-leather cuirasses with scimitars at their hips. Hastily Gair pulled his sand-veil up over his face.

‘Who goes there?’ The guard captain held his torch aloft, squinting into the night.

Alderan cantered his horse across the plaza, dust swirling around the grey’s hooves. ‘Open the gates!’ he barked. He used the common speech but had adopted a heavy Gimraeli accent. ‘Courier coming through!’

‘Hold!’ The captain of the guard came forward with his torch high. ‘I said
hold
, curse you!’

Alderan had to rein back or run the man down. Behind him Gair pulled Shahe up with some difficulty, the mare dancing from foot to foot. Under his robe, he gripped the hilt of the
qatan
.

‘Stand aside! Messenger for his Highness,’ said Alderan.

‘On whose orders?’ the captain asked. His men glanced uncertainly from the distant glow of flames to the two horsemen in front of them and fingered their weapons.

‘Imbecile! Do you see his colours? You will answer to Lord Kierim if his personal courier is delayed!’

‘The city is under curfew. No one goes in or out and I don’t care who—’

A squeeze of Gair’s calves and a tug on the reins were all it took to bring Shahe into an impressive rear. Tassels swinging, long mane floating on the night air, she pawed her hooves just inches from the captain’s face, forcing him and his squad to back off a pace. The instant her feet touched the ground, Gair had his
qatan
levelled at the captain’s neck, burnished gold in the torchlight.

The man gulped. ‘Your pardon,
sayyar
. I did not see your colours in the dark.’ He pushed his men towards the gatehouse. ‘Quickly, there! Open the gates!’

A windlass groaned and chains clanked as the thick gates swung open, revealing the pale ribbon of the road. Gair sheathed his sword and followed Alderan as he spurred his grey out into the night.

The old man set a brisk pace, alternating cantering and walking to keep the horses fresh. Outside the city the chill of a desert night enfolded them, crisping the stars like frost. Lumiel was halfway to setting in the black sky, silvering the road ahead, with Simiel already creeping up behind her.

Orchards of date palms rustled in the restless breeze. Goat pens and dusty fields webbed with irrigation canals gave way to thorn scrub and dry gullies, with here and there a gleam of moonlight reflected in the river. Then all signs of habitation fell behind and they had only the road and whirling sand-devils for company.

Alderan finally called a halt beside a straggle of flat-topped trees. Overhead, the eastern horizon was brightening, the last skeins of stars beginning to fade. Gair dismounted and took a drink from his canteen to rinse the dust from his throat. Then he filled a leather bucket from a water-skin for the horses, though Shahe was more interested in looking around her than drinking, her ears pricking at every cricket-chirp and lizard-scuttle.

‘That was quick thinking back there,’ Alderan said, and drank from his own flask. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘We should push on further whilst it’s still cool. It’s about three days to El Maqqam.’

‘Will it be the same there? Book-burning, mobs in the streets?’

‘Possibly.’ The old man sighed and slapped the stopper back into the flask. ‘Probably worse. The capital stands right on the edge of the inner desert and the Cult is strongest amongst the remote tribes. We will have to be careful.’

‘What are you hoping to find?’

‘We need to know where the starseed was taken when Corlainn surrendered it after the battle. The purges that followed his arrest threw the Suvaeon into chaos. Our records from that time are patchy at best, but we know a number of gifted Knights fled south to the Daughterhouse in El Maqqam. I’m hoping there’s something in the books and papers they took with them, or that they left records while they were there.’

Gair stared at him. ‘You mean you don’t know whether there’s anything useful to find?’

‘Not for certain, no, but there were always rumours. It’s a more likely place to start than anywhere else.’

‘You dragged me down here on the strength of
rumours
, and now you want to throw me into a Suvaeon Daughterhouse? Blood and stones, Alderan!’ Renewed anger tightened Gair’s chest.
All this time wasted on a hunch!

‘Do you fancy your chances of getting into the Suvaeon archives in Dremen instead?’ Alderan snapped. ‘That’s the next place we’ll have to look if we come up dry here. The fate of the Veil could rest on that stone, Gair. We have to find it before anyone else does.’