He sat deep in the saddle as Ehuani danced and arched her neck, ears swiveling this way and that as she listened to his request and thought about whether or not she might grant it this time. Finally the pert little ears pricked forward and she acquiesced, stepping lightly underneath herself, flowing from ears to tail into a lovely, light canter.
It was like riding a song, like riding the wind. Ismai let the approval flow through him and into her, and felt her respond with a burst of life.
Life.
Grief caught up with him once more. It poured through him like a hot summer rain and tore through his body like a sandstorm, scouring him bare and bloody. His mare pinned her ears and skittered sideways, going all stiff through her back again. He leaned forward in the saddle, pressed his face into her soft mane, and let the tears flow as they would. Ehuani curled her neck and bit him gently on the foot, forgiving his momentary lapse. She slowed to a sweet and ground-eating trot, and he let her go as she pleased, not much caring whether they rode toward the evening, or toward the dawn, or down the throat of a dragon.
His mother would have loved Ehuani, would have run her slender hands over the mare’s silvery hide, would have admired the strength in her and the fire. Likely she would have started planning breedings as soon as she laid eyes on her, in her mind’s eye a line of straight-legged and deep-chested foals trotting one after another. Much as she had done with his older sisters and his brother, he thought, much as she would have done with him.
The sword at his hip tapped lightly against his leg, reminding him that she had made him a gift with her own hands, with her own voice had declared him the son of her heart. She was so beautiful. No woman had ever been so beautiful as his mother, none had given so much of herself to her pride and her children.
They said the babe would live. Another sister, praise Atu. Doubtless they would hold a sharib for her naming. As she grew, every woman in Aish Kalumm would coo and dimple and exclaim that this child was growing up to be as beautiful as her mother.
His heart hurt. He let Ehuani go where she would, and at a pace of her own choosing, much as the Ja’Sajani had done with him since the day a rider brought this fell news from the City of Mothers. East, west, up, down, it did not much matter to him. His heart would not find what it needed most, not in any direction. She had gifted him the sword with her own hands. Her favorite son. He thought of Tammas, whose duties would surely keep him in Aish Kalumm now, he thought of Dennet and Neptara and especially little Rudya, who would be so lost without her Amma. He should go to them. They had said he should go to them, to grieve with his family. To welcome his new little sister into the pride.
His heart rejected the idea. He did not want to see them, any of them, not even little Rudya and certainly not the red and wrinkled bratling whose birth had killed their mother. He wanted… nothing. He wanted nothing. If Ehuani had not been with him, he would not have cared if the stinking bonelord rose from the sand and swallowed him. His heart felt already as if it had been eaten, and the rest of him had staggered on without realizing it was no longer whole.
Since he had given Ehuani her head, it was no real surprise that she took the path to comfort. She was an intelligent horse, even among the asil. For all his dark thinking about the bonelord, Ismai paid some small mind to the world around them, to the ground beneath his mare’s hooves and Akari Sun Dragon high overhead—too high overhead, really. It was late in the day to be taking this path. But he did not turn back. He had Char’s torch in his saddlebag, and tarbok-and-goat pemmican and waterskins enough to last him a handful of days. The blackthorn oasis would provide sufficient water and grass for Ehuani’s comfort…
…and he wanted to see Char again. She was only a child, but she was the gentlest and wisest person Ismai had ever known. Certainly she was nothing like the women in his family, with their bright eyes and sharp tongues and quick strong hands, and neither was she like Sulema, fervid and noisy as a campfire at sharib. She was still and deep, like a secret pool of water sweet enough to soothe and nourish even the sun-baked heart of a lost boy.
Death stalked beside him. Ruh’ayya’s mood had been as black as his own since the news had reached them. The messenger was Zeeravashani, and his sleek golden queen had taken Ruh’ayya away from the humans for a day and a half. When they returned, the other queen fairly shimmered with outrage, and she gave Ismai such a look of green-eyed hate that he had staggered back a few steps. Ruh’ayya had a torn ear, a torn face where claws had raked dangerously close to an eye, and deep gashes and puncture wounds from her muzzle to the tufted end of her tail.
Ismai had ignored his own hurts long enough to tend hers, and she was very stoic about having her wounds cleaned and medicated and stitched up, but when he asked what had happened she would say only that Paraja was angry with her. He did not press the matter.
Before long, Ehuani was pinning her ears and twisting her tail. By the time they arrived at the oasis, she was tucking her chin and threatening to throw him. She was not used to being ridden so far, and it was past her dinnertime. Akari Sun Dragon spread his wings over a wide and glorious day, but Ismai found that his vision was dark about the edges, as if he were peering out at the world from the bottom of a dim and stinking sack, and someone was drawing the top closed.
I will set my tent here, he sent to Ruh’ayya, and let Ehuani graze. Would you please check to see whether there are any greater predators about? Bonelord, he thought but did not say.
There are no predators here besides us. Stupid human, she thought but did not say. I am going to go kill something. With a flick of her tail, she was gone.
Ehuani pretended to be spooked by the cat’s sudden movement and shied violently sideways, nearly unseating him. Ismai gritted his teeth and relaxed his hands, willing himself not to yank on the reins. He dismounted, careful not to kick his horse or to land in a patch of old dried thorns. Then he removed the saddlebags and his mare’s tack, and let her go with a little pat on the rump. She snorted and tossed her head, but waited until he was out of range before kicking both hind legs out to show what she really thought.
He might have chased after her, as it was never a good idea to let a horse get away with such behavior. He might have shrugged it off and laughed. A spirited mare was treasure beyond rubies. Ismai did neither. He simply stood in the sand, a few strides from the oasis, saddlebags slung over one arm, tack in the other, and a shamsi he did not deserve hanging heavy at his side.
It seemed too much to ask, suddenly, that he should take those last strides, and pitch a tent. Drink some water. Eat some food. Check Ehuani’s legs and hooves, brush her hide, scout for predators, try once more to talk to his stubborn hurting vash’ai… it was too much.
He dropped his burdens and stood swaying in the heat, blue robes whipping about him in the wind. He heard Ehuani nicker, and he felt Ruh’ayya’s soft exclamation at the back of his mind, but he could not seem to care enough even to turn his head and see whose feet were whispering through the sand behind him. As if he could not guess. Still, he jumped a little when she laid her skinny little hand on his shoulder.
“Ismai.” Her words were smoke and honey. Smoke from the funeral pyre, honey among the burnt offerings. “Ismai, I am so sorry.”
Then he was able to let go. At the touch of her hand, the touch of her voice, and not a moment before, Ismai dropped to his knees like a puppet whose strings had been cut. She caught him as he fell, strong and tough as old roots, deep and sweet as the night sky. He clutched at her tattered robes, his arms went about her middle and he pressed his face into her belly and he clung to her and he cried like a little boy. The sound of his own voice was so lost, so lost, so wracked with pain and longing that it dragged him over the edge of the well of sorrow and into an endless abyss.
Char stroked his hair, she held him like his mother had held him when he was young and hurt, she rocked back and forth crooning a lullaby, and it was the most beautiful thing in all the world.
Ismai wept until he was empty, until he was hollow, until his body was leaden and his mind as empty as the night sky. When his tears had run dry and been soaked up by the Zeera, he clung to his friend for a short while longer before staggering to his feet. He wiped his face on his sleeve as a child might, and pushed his touar back into place. He felt fragile and strangely light, as if he might float away with the moons’ breeze.
“I am sorry,” he told her.
“Sorry?” Char reached a thin brown hand toward his arm, but her fingertips did not quite brush his robes. “Why sorry?”
“I am sorry to bring my weakness here to your home.” He looked up at the pale sky. Ismai had missed the first star of evening, and now they shone by the handful. “I only wanted to spend a few days alone. Do you mind if I camp here? I will not disturb you.”
“Weakness?” From the corner of his eye, Ismai could see that she smiled. A child’s smile, secret, fleeting. “So strange that you should name yourself weak, Ismai son of Nurati. The desert grieves your loss. The world grieves your loss. The stars grieve your loss.” More softly, she added, “I grieve your loss. You are welcome to stay as long as you like, but I wonder…” She hesitated.
He waited. Delpha was half full, Didi her little sister shone gibbous. They hung in the air with a sense of expectation.
“Would you like to come down to the Valley?” she whispered. “It is very… peaceful. It is a good place to grieve. A healing place. I think you would be welcome.”
Ismai hardly dared to breathe. He had come to the blackthorn oasis several times since their first meeting, but never had Char invited him to her valley. And he had heard the stories. The Valley of Death…
Why not? he thought. “I would like that very much.” He picked up his horse’s tack, and his saddlebags, and shook them free of sand.
It was a short walk, and the harsh winds of day made way for the softer breeze of the evening. Ismai still felt hollowed-out, spent, and so tired he could hardly keep his feet straight. Char reached for Ehuani’s saddle, and after a slight hesitation Ismai handed it to her. His boots and her bare feet whispered shushhhh-shushhhh through the sand, and off to the south and west the dunes began to sing.
Their song filled some of the darker empty corners of his heart, as they had since he was very small, though his heart had never before had such vast empty spaces to fill.
What a beautiful night, he thought. It seemed wrong that there should be a beautiful night after the death of Umm Nurati. But the indigo sky was beautiful, and the torches that lit the path down into Eid Kalmut were merry and welcoming, and the best part was that he did not have to explain any of this to his companion. She walked next to him, and she walked with him, and he was less alone than he had ever been in his whole life.
Then the smell of burning flesh reached him, and Ismai remembered some of the worse stories of Eid Kalmut. He stopped dead in his tracks until Char tugged at his sleeve, urging him forward. “What,” he asked, “is that?”
He thought she might have smiled. “Roast hare and potatoes.”
“Oh.” His heart started up again. “I smelled something burning and I thought…” A nasty suspicion came to him. “Wait… you did that on purpose?”
She laughed and skipped ahead, down the smooth stone path between the torches. The valley to either side of the path, he saw, was thick with grasses and fur-willow and low flowering shrubs. He followed, almost smiling himself.
Since he was a small child, the Mothers had been frightening him with tales of Eid Kalmut, the Valley of Death. Dead kings were buried in this place, it was said, kings and queens and sorcerers and criminals of the worst sort. Wraiths haunted the passages and pathways of Eid Kalmut, bloodmyst and Horned Hunters and worse, lusting for the taste of a young child’s flesh.
The reality was an entirely different story.
The walls of Eid Kalmut were steep and verdant, striated rock in rainbow hues of pink and orange and red, even some greens and blues in the torchlight, festooned like a feast-tent with ribbons and streamers and garlands of living things. A cloud of tiny bats whirred from a crack in the rocks as he passed, circling his head twice as if unsure what to make of him before flittering off into the night in search of bloodsucking insects. Ismai wished them much luck.
As for kings and queens… the walls were riddled with hundreds of hundreds of arched doorways. As Ismai drew near, he could see that there was a person seated in each one, a person long since gone to dry bones and old leather, but dressed in cloaks and robes and furs finer and more elaborate than anything he could remember, even finer than those worn by the Atualonian prince.
Each alcove was sealed with a delicate filigree wall of some shining metal, and the dead people on their carven wood chairs did not look as if they had any intention of rising up and eating his brains, as in the old stories. Rather, they looked… serene. As if they had lived well and died well and were perfectly content with the way things had turned out.
“It is beautiful here,” he whispered. “Who are these people? Are they really kings and queens?” They certainly seemed so, with their fine clothes and haughty bones, and the antlered crowns upon their heads.
“They are my charges,” she answered. “It is my duty to watch over them, just as it is your duty to watch over your pride.”
Ismai said nothing.
“Not your fault,” she told him, stepping more briskly. “Your mother faced a terrible enemy, and she fell. There is nothing you could have done to save her.”
“My mother died in childbirth,” he corrected. “How did you know she had died?”
“You can sleep here, by the fire. Are you hungry?”
He was famished, and three fat rabbits sizzled and crackled over the flames. He set his bags and saddle down, and put his hands on his hips.
“How did you know? What do you mean, enemy? My mother had no enemies. She was beloved of all the prides.”
“The prides are not the whole world, though, are they? Perhaps I spoke of Time, the enemy who defeats us all.” She looked away. “Eat, if you like. I am not hungry, but they were an offering and I do not like to see life wasted.”
“An offering? Whose offering?”
“Eat.”
Ismai made a frustrated sound in his throat, but he sat down and ate. The rabbits were very fat, crisp and dripping with hot juices, and he ate them down to the bones. She pushed the roast potatoes toward him and he ate those too, wondering where she might have gotten such things, but tired of asking questions into the wind. He supposed it was better to simply savor her company, and swallow the mystery.
It occurred to him that his mother might have said such a thing, and another pang took his heart. No less was his grief than it had been, no cooler to touch, but somehow the food and the fire and the company made it more bearable.
And I have found a fat young tarbok, purred Ruh’ayya. I have eaten my fill of his entrails, and tomorrow I will roll in what is left.
You are so gross, he thought, and felt her soft laughter.
Char sat on her heels before the fire, and cocked her head to one side. “You are talking to the young queen?”
He nodded and dug around in his bag for a waterskin. “She has made a kill and is quite pleased with herself.”
“She is very strong, to have survived her first challenge. If she lives, she will be most powerful.”
“Her first challenge?” he asked.
“You know,” he mused, leaning back against his saddlebags. So comfortable. “Sometimes talking to you is like playing riddle games with a rock.”
The shadows did not quite hide her smile. “You play the riddle game with rocks?”
“My mother said it was good practice, if I ever wanted to understand women.”
“You will win the riddle game against a rock before you ever understand women.”
“Sometimes you do not sound much like a child,” he told her.
“Sometimes I do not feel much like a child,” she agreed. “Ismai—how is it you can look at my face?” She turned and faced him fully for the first time.
He shifted uncomfortably. “What do you mean? Your face is your face. I could look away, if you like.”
“No, that is not what I mean. No one has ever looked…” Her voice grew uncertain. “Not without staring, or turning away. Or…” She shook her head slowly. “When you see my face, you see me.”
“Why do you not laugh when I trip over my own feet, or fall off my horse?” He shrugged. “I am sorry you were hurt, and I am very sorry if people hurt you now. But your face is your face.”
“You are a very strange boy.”
“So I have been told.”
“Ismai… wait, no.” She twisted her hands together in her lap. “Wait, yes, yes. Stay right here. You will not follow me?”
“Never,” he told her gently.
She stood and ran off into the dark, a scared little rabbit with a burned-off face.
Ismai bundled up the rabbit bones and threw them into the fire. The greasy black smoke twisted up toward the sky. He thought a small prayer for the rabbits, that their bright little souls might find their way to a pleasant world. The bones crackled and spat at him in their pyre, angry that their lives had been cut short so that he could fill his belly. But such was the life of a rabbit.
The dead kings stared at him across the fire, their eyes empty and solemn.
Somewhere far away a bintshi wailed, and Ismai felt his blood stir in response. He wondered what had drawn it so far from the Seared Lands, and shivered again.
A cloud of the little bats flapped and fluttered overhead, blotting out the pale moons.
Ruh’ayya’s presence was a warm comfort in the back of his mind. She had gorged and rolled in offal, and was well pleased with life.
It must be nice to be a cat, he thought, living only for the present. What matters today, or days past, when one has bathed in the blood of a good kill?
You know nothing, she thought at him, but the thought had no claws in it. He sent a wash of gratitude and affection toward her, to which she responded with quiet amusement.
He was so near sleep that when Char’s face emerged from the gloom, he jumped half out of his skin and kicked a stone into the fire, sending up a shower of sparks. She had pulled a tattered hood up over her head, and in her arms she held a bundle.
“Shssss,” she chided. “He is sleeping.”
Ismai scrambled to his feet, and met her halfway. “What…? What?” He hushed his voice at her sharp look. “You have a child? No—you are too young.”
“I am not as young as I seem.” Her voice was scarce a whisper, and amused. “He is not mine… not really. I had thought to keep him, but…” She looked down at the swaddled child. “This is a resting-place for the dead, not a growing-place for the living. Here, take him.” She held out her burdened arms, though her eyes belied the gesture. “He is broken, but he is not worthless.”
“Broken?” Ismai took the sleeping child. He was heavier than he looked, and warm. Only one fat cheek and a hint of long-lashed sleeping eyes peeked from beneath the coverlet.
Char lifted the blankets aside. This close, Ismai could see the raw flesh above her eyes, and the exposed bone at one temple where an ear should be. He wondered if it hurt—it must—and his heart ached for her pain. Then he looked down at the child.
The little boy was four or five moons old, he guessed, perhaps old enough to fuss over cut teeth and roll about, maybe old enough to scoot around a bit. Rudya had begun crawling when she was just a bit older than this. This child would not be crawling on all fours. The boy was missing an arm just below the elbow. It looked to be a defect of birth, and not the result of some injury.
“Where did you get him?” he whispered, pulling the blankets tight against the chill. The child slept on, blissfully unaware.
“He is not worthless.” Char’s eyes flashed in her ruined face. “He is healthy, and strong. He is one of yours. You should take him home to your people, and never let them hurt him.”
“Hurt him?” Ismai frowned. “We do not hurt children. Only a monster would harm a child.”
Char was silent for a long, long time. Finally she whispered, “Where I come from…”
She did not finish the thought.
Ismai shifted the boy’s weight in his arms. “I will take him, if that is what you truly wish. He will be well looked after—the Mothers are always delighted to have another child to fuss and coo over—and so few boy babies are born to us. He will be welcome.
“So would you, Char. You should come with me, too. As you said, this is a resting-place for the dead, and no place for a child.” He held his breath, fearing a harsh reply, but she only shook her head.
“You are sweet, Ismai. But this is my home now. These are my people. I look after them, and they look after me.” She held up a hand when he would protest. “Please, Ismai. Take the child and go.”
“May I at least spend the night?”
“Best not.” She sighed. “I am glad that you will be taking the boy, really I am, but I am sad, too, and when I am unhappy—” her eyes glittered “—Eid Kalmut is not a safe place to be.”
“The bonelord—”
“Arushdemma will not bother you. He has a belly full of slavers.”
That startled him. “Slavers?”
“Bad men from the river. They were taking the boy to Eid Kalish, to sell him.” Her eyes were as dark as the realm of Eth, those dark places in the sky untouched by any star. “I do not like slavers, Ismai.”
“As you wish,” he agreed slowly. “Ehuani is going to have a fit, you know. And Ruh’ayya may never forgive me.”
I am coming, brother. We need to leave this place. Ruh’ayya’s voice sounded tense. Now.
Char’s eyes glittered. “Please go, Ismai.”
Ismai nodded, and then he did a thing that surprised himself— he stepped as close to Char as he dared, and put an arm about her shoulders, gently, so as not to startle or hurt her. “I hope you know I would never hurt you,” he said in the softest voice. “I hope you know I am your friend.”
“My friend.” A single tear spilled from her eye and trembled down her ruined cheek. “Yes. Please, you should go now.” She ducked from beneath his arm. “I will carry your bags… come on.”
He followed her up the steep path, choosing his way carefully, wondering how under the moons he was going to make the ride back to camp with an infant in his arms. Ehuani was waiting for them at the mouth of the Valley, as was Ruh’ayya. Char saddled his horse, and fastened his bags in place, and held the child as he mounted. He was pleased to see that Ehuani seemed fresh and eager to go, not at all put out by the unexpected journey.
Ismai reached for the infant, and settled him into the crook of one arm. “He is a good sleeper.”
“He is.” Char smiled, tears flowing freely now. “He is a good boy. I will miss him.” She reached up a maimed hand and brushed at the baby’s soft cheek. “Goodbye, Sammai.”
“Sammai?” Ismai was taken aback. “You named him after me?”
“I could hardly name him otherwise.” A dark cloud passed before the moons. “Ismai… go. Do not look back, this time. It is ill luck for you.”
“Jai tu wai, Char.” He laid his leg against Ehuani’s warm side, and his mare stepped out willingly.
Warning or no, as he rode away he looked back and she was watching him. Shrouded in shadow, as always, but the moonslight kissed briefly upon her face. When she saw him watching, she raised her hand in a brief wave, and then she was swallowed by the night.
* * *
Ismai had often puzzled over the strange fact that the road home always seemed shorter than the way out. One could ride all day to get to a place, and then turn around, take three strides, and be back where he had started. This was not such a ride.
For one thing, the babe—though he slept so deeply Ismai began to worry that it was an unnatural sleep or that the boy was ill—was heavy as a bag of stones. Ismai cradled him in the crook of one arm so that he could hold the reins in his other hand, and no matter how he shifted the boy’s weight, his arm alternated between icy cramps and burning knots of pain, and soon his lower back joined the red chorus. Fire blazed a path from shoulder to shoulder and flared brighter with every careful step Ehuani took. Nor did he dare to ask for a faster pace, so walk they did.
The stars and moons were generous with their light, and the night was soft and warm. Ismai knew the way, so the path did not pose a problem. Neither did predators, lesser or greater. He heard no more of the bintshi’s deadly plaintive song, there was no roar or grunt or shriek in the night, and no tangles of refuse rose up from the desert with the fell laugh of a bonelord. Not even the sands sang.
And the Zeera was never silent.
So Ismai rode through the night with most of the muscles in his body on fire, and every sense strained to the point of pain as his ka searched the night sands for the source of disquiet. Every hair along his arms and on the back of his neck prickled with the cold breath of dread, and Ruh’ayya sang a low, whining song under her breath as they crept along. Ehuani, his skittish and hot-blooded horse, was the only thing in the Zeera that seemed untroubled by whatever it was. She stepped along at a sedate walk, flicking her ears occasionally in a lazy manner, and never once offering to pick up the pace.
It was not the worst ride of Ismai’s life, but it certainly seemed the longest.
Akari Sun Dragon had begun his courtship of the eastern sky by the time the three of them dragged into camp, footsore and road-weary. The camp was already ringing with the songs of forge and fire and industry, and the raucous mess finally woke the child from his slumber. The boy scrunched his face and wailed, announcing his outrage to the world. He opened his eyes—they were a greenish-brown and fringed with the softest-looking lashes—took one look at Ismai, and screamed fit to bust a bintshi, showing a fine set of two miniature teeth as he howled.
Make it stop! Ruh’ayya winced and flattened her ears.
How do you propose I do that? Ismai had brought Ehuani to a halt, but was not sure how he would dismount without dropping the now-flailing child. But the cries of an infant brought the camp to dead silence—and then to noisy life as every man there dropped what he was doing and hurried to find its source.
How should I know what a human cub wants? Lick its nose. Lick its butt. Give it a teat… just make it stop. She crouched, showed her fangs in a hissing snarl, and with a lash of her tail she was gone. And it stinks!
Ismai found himself once more the center of unwelcome attention. Tannerman Jorah took Ehuani’s reins and steadied Ismai as he threw a leg over his mare’s back and slid gracelessly to the ground. Mastersmith Hadid put a beefy hand on his shoulder to steady him as he tottered over to sit on a large rock at the fire’s edge. The smith shouted for food and water to be brought for Ismai, and a churra in milk for the child. The entire campful of men milled around for a few moments staring wide-eyed at the boy and the squalling child.
It might have been funny were Ismai not wearied to the bone. He swayed where he sat, but held fast to Sammai, who was in no way grateful.
Loreman Aaraf stepped forward and reached for the child. Ismai held the boy out, surprised at his own reluctance. He took a few swallows of water and a bite of flatbread as the healer unwrapped the furious infant and looked him over. He peered into the child’s wide and wailing mouth, rubbed the small ear between his leathery old fingers, poked his squishy belly, squeezed the dimpled knees and elbows, and finally ran his hand over the chubby half-arm, smiling a little when the boy poked him in the eye with it.
“A fine Zeerani boy, though I have not heard tell of such a child being born among us,” he declared at last, handing him back to Ismai as his apprentice arrived with a bowl of warm churra milk, yellow and thick with sweet fat. “Half an arm will hardly slow that one down, I am thinking. He wants feeding—” he wrinkled his nose as the other men chuckled “—and changing, but for all that he is as healthy a child as we could wish. What tree might you have plucked this fine, fat fruit from, Ismai Ja’Sajani? For I have never heard that such a tree grows in these parts.”
Ismai dipped a corner of bread into the milk, and let some drip into the child’s mouth. It did not take much coaxing for Sammai to latch onto it and cease his bawling. Indeed, the roundness of his belly was soon explained as he gummed and gobbled his way through Ismai’s breakfast. “No tree, Loreman Aaraf. The boy was given to my care by a friend of mine. A girl.”
Mastersmith Hadid lifted both brows at this. “Girl? What girl? Is the child hers, then?” He looked closely at Ismai. “Is he yours? You have not been here long enough to have fathered a child! And where is his mother?”
Boraz Ja’Sajani folded both arms across his chest and scowled fiercely at Ismai.
“Boy?”
Ismai sighed and shifted the child, who was making a happy mess of the last bit of milk-sopped bread and who indeed stank like a three-day-dead lionsnake. Perhaps worse.
“Her name is Char. She is young, and wounded, and very shy. I had hoped to talk her into coming back with us to Aish Kalumm…” He broke off at their stares. “What?”
“Char? Charon?” Aaraf gaped open-mouthed at him, and took a half-step back. “Charon of Eid Kalmut?”
“She lives there, yes. She has no people… what?”
“You met the Guardian,” Hadid whispered. The smith’s eyes were wide and white as a spooked horse’s. “The Guardian of Eid Kalmut.”
Istaz Aadl took a half step forward, and drew his sword. “That is no infant… it is a fell spirit of death.”
Ismai curled his body protectively about Sammai.
Ruh’ayya roared, not far away. I come. Another vash’ai roared an answer to her challenge, and a third.
“You will not harm this child.” Ismai glared at the youthmaster, though he could scarce keep his eyes from the man’s shamsi.
Istaz Aadl bared his teeth. “You insolent—”
Jasin stepped forward and stood between Ismai and the youthmaster. After a moment, Hadid did the same. Aadl shot them both a dark look, but lowered his sword.
“I was abandoned by my people and bought from the slavers’ ships,” Jasin said. He met Ismai’s eyes, and nodded.
“Many of our children are found or boughten,” the loreman agreed. “The Zeeranim do not harm children, Aadl.”
“How do we know this is a child?” Istaz Aadl demanded. “No one has ever spoken to the Guardian and come away untouched. How do we know this is not some fell spirit come to kill us all in our sleep?”
Just then, the boy looked at Ismai, and smiled, and made the strangest face. The silence of the Zeera was split by a terrible noise, and a worse smell. The silence lasted a heartbeat more, and then the entire camp erupted in laughter.
“Ai yeh,” Jasin groaned. “Not even an evil spirit could smell like that.”
“Za fik,” Ismai gasped. “Za fik!” He held the cooing, grinning, stinking infant as far away as his arms could reach.
Ruh’ayya bounded, teeth bared, into the circle, and then stopped and sneezed.
“Well, Aadl, I believe that answers your question.” Hadid laughed and slapped the shorter man on his back. Aadl still scowled, but he sheathed his sword.
“I still say the child is ill luck.”
“Time will tell,” the big smith answered with a shrug, “but I believe we can agree that this is, indeed, a child. Also that young Ismai Ja’Sajani here may have the changing of it. After that, who knows?”
“I will take the babe to Aish Kalumm,” the loremaster offered. “My apprentice and I need to gather river-herbs in any case, and we can take the milk-churra with us. Would you care to accompany us, Ismai Ja’Sajani? The boy was given into your care, after all. What say you?”
Ismai held the baby closer, ignoring the stink, and stroked his soft brown cheek. Sammai grabbed his finger in one fat hand and waved his stump triumphantly, screeching.
Nice fangs, Ruh’ayya laughed.
“Char said there were slavers,” he said slowly. “Slavers in the Zeera, come to steal our children. I say… not on my watch.”
“Slavers,” Hadid growled. “Not on my watch.”
“Not on my watch,” agreed Jasin. His fingers were white where they gripped the hilt of his shamsi.
“I think the loremen should take Sammai to the Mothers, but I would like to stay and hunt for any remaining slavers.” Ismai played with the infant’s tiny, tender fingers. “I would see their blood upon the sand.” He felt foolish even as he said the words, a boy playing at being a man, but it was what his mother would have wanted him to do.
More—it was what he wanted to do.
Makil Ja’Sajani, near the back of the group, raised his shamsi high, so that it flashed in the light of the Sun Dragon.
“Ja’Sajani.”
“Ja’Sajani!” One by one, the other wardens raised their swords in silent salute. Mastersmith Hadid folded his massive arms across his chest and nodded.
Istaz Aadl was last. He looked at Ismai for a long moment, his face unreadable, before pointing his sword first at Ismai and then toward the sun.
“We may make a warden of you yet,” the youthmaster said, and then he grinned. “If we can keep you from falling off your horse.”