Unholy War (60 page)
The column clattered into a plaza where a Dom-al’Ahm faced the buttress of a keep built from pinkish sandstone blocks. The Kirkegarde’s unearthly steeds reared in unison, driving the press of people to the fringes, allowing Grandmaster Tullesque to canter over the flagstones unimpeded, right to the gates. Wisely, they were open, and the local lord stood waiting humbly, without even a bodyguard. Emir Mekmud bin al’Azhir, head of the ruling house, was a barrel-chested man with a tough reputation, but he offered no threat.
The crowd were
that
close to rioting, but the Kirkegarde were used to hostile mobs. Some rocks were thrown, but when gnosis-fire was kindled, the people drew back.
Rutt rode through the swirl of horsemen at Tullesque’s back, Mara just behind. The Grandmaster remained mounted, peering down at the emir with condescension all over his face. Mekmud bin al’Azhir remained impassive as Tullesque motioned Rutt forward. ‘You speak the language? Tell them I require his palace. We will make it our base while searching for the Anborn woman.’
Rutt did as he was bid, awkwardly but apparently effectively. He’d used the gnosis to learn the Jhafi tongue, though he seldom practised.
‘The slayer of King Olfuss,’ Emir Mekmud welcomed Rutt sarcastically. They’d met once before, when Gurvon’s new bodyguards had been welcomed to Brochena, more than six years ago now. ‘My house is yours.’ He turned on his heel and marched away contemptuously. His soldiers watched stony-faced from the walls.
It took almost an hour to get everyone inside and to ensure all of the emir’s men were out. Only servants were permitted to remain; the women among them were relatively safe as the Kirkegarde would not rape Noorie women – not out of pity, but to protect their own sanctity. The servants still looked terrified; they probably had no idea they were not pure enough for the holy soldiers.
I don’t like this
, Rutt thought as they entered the palace.
It’s too much like putting one’s head into a lion’s mouth.
But Gurvon had put Tullesque in charge and he didn’t have to like it, he just had to obey.
*
Elena watched the Kirkegarde enter Lybis from a balcony on a large house on the far side of the lake. The famed Gulabi Zenana, the Pink Palace, housed the emir’s many wives. It had one hundred windows, all facing the lake, and each had a tiny room behind where the emir’s wives had roughly ten square metres each to themselves. It was usually abuzz with music and singing and the babble of female voices. The top level was a pleasure suite, where the emir consorted with his wives; that was where she and Kazim had been housed.
She was still staring out over the lake when the emir arrived. Kazim was off somewhere, sulking over their argument.
I guess I’m sulking too
, she admitted to herself. Being apart from him hurt; their auras were straining for each other.
‘Lady Alhana?’ Mekmud’s hard face regarded her evenly, but there were flickers of doubt in his eyes.
He knows I’ve been crying. He thinks I’m weak.
She rose, bowed like a man. ‘Emir, we are ready.’
‘You are resolved to make your strike here, Lady?’
‘Yes, Emir. But are you ready also? This is a big step: open rebellion against the Dorobon. Even the Nesti have not done so. There will be repercussions.’
Mekmud made a dismissive gesture. ‘They think they can come here, to my city, and demand my house. They take my rooms and eat off my plates. One hundred and twenty men, in a city of thirty thousand souls. The arrogance steals my breath. The insult to the honour of my fathers stuns me. Had you not counselled me to do otherwise, the gates of the city would have been closed to them and we would have fought. My people demand it, for the honour of Cera Nesti. They believe she will reach down from Paradise to aid us. So it is time to teach these Rondians that the Jhafi are not craven and the men of Lybis least of all.’
‘They have seven magi: three Kirkegarde, two Dorobon and two mercenary. The magi alone could bring your palace down around your ears if this goes badly.’
‘I would rather be a lord of rubble than allow them another night of peace, Lady Alhana,’ the emir growled. ‘I do not count the cost. A man cannot, when honour is at stake.’
I won’t debate that point with you right now
.
‘Your young man reminds me of my younger self,’ Mekmud noted. He looked away, coughing a little, as he did when discussing something personal. ‘You and he are lovers, yes?’
‘We are,’ she replied, hoping that was still the case.
‘I have Hadishah contacts, Lady. They say Kazim Makani is a renegade, not to be trusted.’
‘I trust him with my life.’
And my heart
.
Mekmud looked at her appraisingly. ‘You argued, earlier.’
The whole city probably heard us
. ‘A small matter.’ She sipped some rose sharbat, and sought a new topic. ‘How do you view the execution of the queen, Emir?’
He shrugged. ‘She is a martyr.’
‘And the charges against her?’
Mekmud scowled. ‘Lies, probably.’ He glanced about him. ‘Lady Alhana, I have many wives and they dwell here in this palace, the Gulabi Zenana. When I wish to see one, she is summoned to this upper suite, for me to enjoy her yoni. I have favourites, but few of my wives have any great wit or conversation; most were selected to pacify certain key allies and rivals. Some I see perhaps once a year. They live their entire lives in this place, forbidden to see anyone but each other. They have their own hierarchy and politics, I do not doubt. They have no understanding of my world, and I have no understanding of theirs. If I were to learn that some
entertain
each other in private, I might be concerned, but I do not go out of my way to know. So long as the only lingam that enters their yoni is mine, and no one’s honour is called into question, little else matters.’
Elena nodded slowly.
That’s probably as liberal and open an attitude as any male has in this age and place
, she reflected.
Any male at all, actually, regardless of his faith
.
He raised a finger. ‘This does not mean that I condone such debaucheries, Lady Alhana. But if a ruler is to avoid falling overly under the influence of the clergy, they
must
retain a healthy sense of scepticism. Otherwise a holy man will twist you around his fingers, because he has the ultimate argument at his disposal: that he speaks for his god. A ruler
must
view clerics as
fallible humans
, not a mouthpiece for the divine. Otherwise the ruler will become a tool of that cleric.’
Mekmud picked up his own sharbat and took a sip. ‘So when I hear that a woman is to be tried and condemned by clerics, I perceive weakness on the part of her family. Her guilt is for the family to decide, and the punishment also. Cera Nesti killed an infidel usurper: her name should be being trumpeted to the throne of Ahm, not decried by Acmed’s brood! Acmed is bargaining with Shaitan himself – that is what is clear to me.’
‘All three faiths united to condemn her,’ Elena noted.
‘But the people on the street see more clearly than the clergy,’ Mekmud replied. ‘It is as I say: the holy men are fallible. But rest assured,’ he added dryly, ‘I am not.’
She smiled. ‘Then how can we fail?’
Mekmud raised his cup. ‘To our success, Lady Alhana. The struggle for freedom starts here.’
*
Rutt Sordell and Mara Secordin were given small suites next to each other and overlooking the lake, with stairs down to private bathing ghats. Bathing in this particular lake was supposed to wash away sin – a ridiculous notion, in Rutt’s view: the water was thick with mud and floating offerings of flowers rotting in the water. He wouldn’t bathe in it even if he was caked in shit.
The lake was fed by trickling snow-fed streams but warmed by the summer sun. Bathing was part of Javon’s religious culture, and on the far side he could see masses of locals, dark-skinned people of all ages, mingling on the public ghats, their colourful clothing laid out on the stone to dry in the sun. The communal nature of it stirred something unexpected in him. He’d been a solitary man all his life, living for the gnosis: the thrill of a successful divination, or the prising of knowledge from a trapped soul, these were his pleasures. He was an explorer at the edges of awareness and consciousness, a pioneer of the mind. These weeks on the road had cost him much research time and he resented every second, especially as he knew he needed to read the spirit world if he was to find a way to free Gurvon.
As he stared out of the barred window he saw Mara emerging below. She waddled down the stairs, one of her pythons still wrapped about her. He had no desire to see her disrobe, and no real interest in the commotion that would ensue soon on the far side when a swimmer on the edge of the crowd was pulled under and never emerged again, not when there was finally time to light his brazier and enter the unknown.
With a slightly martyred sigh he turned his back on the light and life outside and began to set up his tripod. To the heated bowl he added special powders that eased contact with the spirit world while he chanted a repetitive mantra, a form of self-hypnosis to get himself into the right frame of mind. He inhaled the smoky air and closed his eyes.
‘Elena Anborn,’ he said, dropping the name into the void, where it was heard by the hundreds of prickling intellects that listened in the aether, some of the millions of tiny nodes of awareness that formed the web of souls. ‘Where is Elena Anborn?’
The spirits began their whispered replies, sibilant hisses and half-heard sighs that bypassed his ears and bedded in his mind. Minutes crawled by like hours. Then his eyes flew open.
She’s here!
*
Elena drifted about in the water, wrapped in a bekira-shroud to mask her colouring. She had on only a thin shift over her undergarments so as not to hamper her movement. There were Jhafi all around her, washing, praying, playing, but none took notice of her, repelled by a subtle gnostic working that made her uninteresting, not worth looking at. Her eyes were fixed on the far bank.
I should’ve kept my mouth shut. He didn’t need to know that shit.
It was their first real argument since they’d become lovers, and it was as if the magical bubble around them had been pricked. Suddenly everything about their relationship felt like it was built on flimsy foundations. Lying in the pleasure suite of the Gulabi Zenana, on the same bed but not touching, was worse than going into battle. She desperately wanted his arms about her, but they were both too angry to try and make up. And the threads linking their auras, which had been becoming so entwined, had severed as if a knife had passed between them.
We’re too different. Our love can’t last.
Losing him terrified her, but she didn’t know how to go about making up, so instead she swallowed her bile and focused on the task at hand. She was about to take a huge gamble, taking on Mara Secordin in her primary habitat.
Mara’s favoured aquatic shape was that of a huge water-beast, a thing the coastal villagers of Yuros called a shark. It was a shape she had taken so often and for so long that she had lost most of what made her human. Some days she could barely talk, and even the faintest trace of blood could drive her mad. She was also one of the deadliest beings Elena had ever met. Mara was purpose made flesh; her combination of Hermetic and Water-gnosis gave her access to Animagery, Healing and Shaping – so her body could take huge punishment and still recover. That combined with her ability to rip a man or even a horse to pieces in an eye-blink meant that even pure-bloods who had tried to stop her had invariably died. If she was trouble on land, in the water she was even worse, where the elegantly brutal body of the shark allowed her an attack speed of more than forty-five feet per second. Elena had seen the effects for herself several times.
I must be insane.
But water was also where Mara would be least wary, for she regarded herself as invulnerable there. Elena’s theory was that it would be in her natural element that Mara might be vulnerable, for in water she lost all reason and humanity and reverted completely to the beast inside.
So as the mountain of flesh on the far side of the lake descended the stairs, peeled off her snakes and her clothing and lowered herself into the water, Elena pushed off from the ghat and slid from her bekira-shroud as she went under, away from the shore to the deeper waters where the silt and muck below was undisturbed. Her Water-gnosis supplied breathable air and her fingers and toes webbed a little, to speed her passage. The Jhafi bathers fell behind her and within moments she was quite alone. Gnostic sight allowed her a kind of vision, based on the aura of living things, or their absence. She groped through the filthy depths, seeking what she’d planted there the previous night.
She found it quickly: a small, distended body, a Jhafi boy of maybe eight years old, a hole in the aura of life. It was emptied of blood and spells had been laid on the flesh so that the eels and fish would leave it untouched. A chain ran from out of his mouth towards the shore. Mekmud had obtained his body for her; he’d been an orphan, doomed for an unmarked grave. To use him this way was repugnant, but necessary.
Carefully, she unsheathed her dagger and put it between her teeth, then pulled a small vial from her bodice and unstoppered it. Red fluid radiated out into the water and dissipated:
blood – her own blood
. They said that in the ocean, a shark could sense blood in the water over very great distances.
About half a minute later, from over a hundred yards away, a giant water-beast quivered at the taste of the fluid and its eyes went from black to red.
*