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“Not really,” she repeated carelessly. “Ragosa, Cartada … Silvenes, of course. What’s left of it. Those are the great cities. Seria is beautiful. There is nothing marvellous about Fezana. It has always been too close to the tagra lands to afford the luxury of display. You won’t be seeing it tomorrow?”
“We’re leaving in the morning.” Again, Alvar had the unpleasant sense that he was struggling to stay afloat in waters closing over his head. “The Captain just told us. I’m not sure why. I think because the Muwardis came.”
“Well, of course. Look around you. The parias gold is here. They don’t want to open the gates tomorrow, and they particularly won’t want Jaddite soldiers in the city. Not with what happened today.”
“So we’re just going to turn around and—”
“I’m afraid so, lad.” It was the Captain. “No taste of decadent Al-Rassan for you this time.” Alvar felt himself flushing.
“Well, the women are mostly outside the walls this year,” the doctor said, with a demure expression. She was looking at Ser Rodrigo, not at Alvar.
The Captain swore. “Don’t tell my men that! Alvar, you are bound to secrecy. I don’t want anyone crossing the river. Any man who leaves camp walks home.”
“Yes, sir,” Alvar said hastily.
“Which reminds me,” the Captain said to him, with a sidelong glance at the doctor, “you might as well lower your stirrups now. For the ride back.”
And with those words, for the first time in a long while, Alvar felt a little more like his usual self. He’d been waiting for this moment since they’d left Valledo behind.
“Must I, Captain?” he asked, keeping his expression innocent. “I’m just getting used to them this way. I thought I’d even try bringing them up a bit higher, with your approval.”
The Captain looked at the doctor again. He cleared his throat. “Well, no, Alvar. It isn’t really … I don’t think …”
“I thought, if I had my knees up high enough, really high, I might be able to rest my chin on them when I rode, and that would keep me fresher on a long ride. If that makes sense to you, Captain?”
Alvar de Pellino had his reward, then, for uncharacteristic silence and biding his time. He saw the doctor smile slowly at him, and then look with arched eyebrows of inquiry at the Captain.
Rodrigo Belmonte was, however, a man unlikely to be long discomfited by this sort of thing. He looked at Alvar for a moment, then he, too, broke into a smile.
“Your father?” he asked.
Alvar nodded his head. “He did warn me of some things I might encounter as a soldier.”
“And you chose to accept the stirrup business nonetheless? To say nothing at all?”
“It was you who did it, Captain. And I want to remain in your company.”
The Kindath doctor’s amusement was obvious. Ser Rodrigo’s brow darkened. “In Jad’s name, boy, were you humoring me?”
“Yes, sir,” said Alvar happily.
The woman he had decided he would love forever threw back her head and laughed aloud. A moment later, the Captain he wanted to serve all his days did exactly the same thing.
Alvar decided it hadn’t been such a terrible night, after all.
“Do you see how clever my men are?” Rodrigo said to the doctor as their laughter subsided. “You are quite certain you won’t reconsider and join us?”
“You tempt me,” the doctor said, still smiling. “I do like clever men.” Her expression changed. “But Esperaña is no place for a Kindath, Ser Rodrigo. You know that as well as I.”
“It will make no difference with us,” the Captain said. “If you can sew a sword wound and ease a bowel gripe you will be welcome among my company.”
“I can do both those things, but your company, clever as its men may be, is not the wider world.” There was no amusement in her eyes any more. “Do you remember what your Queen Vasca said of us, when Esperaña was the whole peninsula, before the Asharites came and penned you in the north?”
“That was more than three hundred years ago, doctor.”
“I know that. Do you remember?”
“I do, of course, but—”
“Do you?” She turned to Alvar. She was angry now. Mutely, he shook his head.
“She said the Kindath were animals, to be hunted down and burned from the face of the earth.”
Alvar could think of nothing to say.
“Jehane,” the Captain said, “I can only repeat, that was three hundred years ago. She is long dead and gone.”
“Not gone! You dare say that? Where is she?” She glared at Alvar, as if he were to blame for this, somehow. “Where is Queen Vasca’s resting place?”
Alvar swallowed. “On the Isle,” he whispered. “Vasca’s Isle.”
“Which is a shrine! A place of pilgrimage, where Jaddites from all three of your kingdoms and countries beyond the mountains come, on their knees, to beg miracles from the spirit of the woman who said that thing. I will make a wager that half this so-clever company have family members who have made that journey to plead for blessed Vasca’s intercession.”
Alvar kept his mouth firmly shut. So, too, this time, did the Captain.
“And you would tell me,” Jehane of the Kindath went on bitterly, “that so long as I do my tasks well enough it will not matter what faith I profess in Esperañan lands?”
For a long time Ser Rodrigo did not answer. Alvar became aware that the merchant, ibn Musa, had come up to join them. He was standing on the other side of the fire listening. All through the camp Alvar could now hear the sounds and see the movements of men preparing themselves for sleep. It was very late.
At length, the Captain murmured, “We live in a fallen and imperfect world, Jehane bet Ishak. I am a man who kills much of the time, for his livelihood. I will not presume to give you answers. I have a question, though. What, think you, will happen to the Kindath in Al-Rassan if the Muwardis come?”
“The Muwardis are here. They were in Fezana today. In this camp tonight.”
“Mercenaries, Jehane. Perhaps five thousand of them in the whole peninsula.”
Her turn to be silent. The silk merchant came nearer. Alvar saw her glance up at him and then back at the Captain.
“What are you saying?” she asked.
Rodrigo crouched down now beside Alvar and plucked some blades of grass before answering.
“You spoke very bluntly a little while ago about our coming south to take Fezana one day. What do you think Almalik of Cartada and the other kings would do if they saw us coming down through the tagra lands and besieging Asharite cities?”
Again, the doctor said nothing. Her brow was knitted in thought.
“It would be the wadjis, first,” said Husari ibn Musa softly. “They would begin it. Not the kings.”
Rodrigo nodded agreement. “I imagine that is so.”
“What would they begin?” Alvar asked.
“The process of summoning the tribes from the Majriti,” said the Captain. He looked gravely at Jehane. “What happens to the Kindath if the city-kings of Al-Rassan are mastered? If Yazir and Ghalib come north across the straits with twenty thousand men? Will the desert warriors fight us and then go quietly home?”
For a long time she didn’t answer, sitting motionless in thought, and the men around the fire kept silent, waiting for her. Behind her, to the west, Alvar saw the white moon low in the sky, as if resting above the long sweep of the plain. It was a strange moment for him; looking back, after, he would say that he grew older during the course of that long night by Fezana, that the doors and windows of an uncomplicated life were opened and the shadowed complexity of things was first made known to him. Not the answers, of course, just the difficulty of the questions.
“These are the options, then?” Jehane the physician asked, breaking the stillness. “The Veiled Ones or the Horsemen of Jad? This is what the world holds in store?”
“We will not see the glory of the Khalifate again,” Husari ibn Musa said softly, a shadow against the sky. “The days of Rahman the Golden and his sons or even ibn Zair amid the fountains of the Al-Fontina are gone.”
Alvar de Pellino could not have said why this saddened him so much. He had spent his childhood playing games of imagined conquest among the evil Asharites, dreaming of the sack of Silvenes, dreading the swords and short bows of Al-Rassan. Rashid ibn Zair, last of the great khalifs, had put the Esperañan provinces of Valledo and Ruenda to fire and sword in campaign after campaign when Alvar’s father was a boy and then a soldier. But here under the moons and the late night stars the sad, sweet voice of the silk merchant seemed to conjure forth resonances of unimaginable loss.
“Could Almalik in Cartada be strong enough?” The doctor was looking at the merchant, and even Alvar, who knew nothing of the background to this, could see how hard this particular question was for her.
Ibn Musa shook his head. “He will not be allowed to be.” He gestured to the chests of gold and the mules that had brought them into the camp. “Even with his mercenaries, which he can scarcely afford, he cannot avoid the payment of the parias. He is no lion, in truth. Only the strongest of the petty-kings. And he already needs the Muwardis to keep him that way.”
“So what you intend to do, what I hope to do … are simply things that will hasten the end of Al-Rassan?”
Husari ibn Musa crouched down beside them. He smiled gently. “Ashar taught that the deeds of men are as footprints in the desert. You know that.”
She tried, but failed, to return the smile. “And the Kindath say that nothing under the circling moons is fated to last. That we who call ourselves the Wanderers are the symbol of the life of all mankind.” She turned then, after a moment, to the Captain. “And you?” she asked.
And softly Rodrigo Belmonte said, “Even the sun goes down, my lady.” And then, “Will you not come with us?”
With a queer, unexpected sadness, Alvar watched her slowly shake her head. He saw that some strands of her brown hair had come free of the covering stole. He wanted to push them back, as gently as he could.
“I cannot truly tell you why,” she said, “but it feels important that I go east. I would see King Badir’s court, and speak with Mazur ben Avren, and walk under the arches of the palace of Ragosa. Before those arches fall like those of Silvenes.”
“And that is why you left Fezana?” Ser Rodrigo asked.
She shook her head again. “If so, I didn’t know it. I am here because of an oath I swore to myself, and to no one else, when I learned what Almalik had done today.” Her expression changed. “And I will make a wager with my old friend Husari—that I will deal with Almalik of Cartada before he does.”
“If someone doesn’t do it before either of us,” ibn Musa said soberly.
“Who?” Ser Rodrigo asked. A soldier’s question, pulling them back from a mood shaped of sorrow and starlight. But the merchant only shook his head and made no reply.
“I must sleep,” the doctor said then, “if only to let Velaz do so.” She gestured and Alvar saw her old servant standing wearily a discreet distance away, where the firelight died in darkness.
All around them the camp had grown quiet as soldiers settled in for the night. The doctor looked at Rodrigo. “You said you are sending men to attend to the dead of Orvilla in the morning. I will ride with them, to do what I can for the living, then Velaz and I will be on our way.”
Alvar saw Velaz gesture to Jehane, and then noticed where the servant had made up a pallet for her. She walked over towards it. Alvar, after a moment, sketched an awkward bow she did not see, and went the other way, to where he usually slept near Martín and Ludus, the outriders. They were wrapped in their blankets, asleep.
He unfolded his own saddle blanket and lay down. Sleep eluded him. He had far too many things chasing and tumbling through his mind. He remembered the pride in his mother’s voice the day she recounted the details of her first pilgrimage to seek Blessed Vasca’s intercession for her brave son as he left home for the world of warring men. He remembered her telling how she had gone the last part of the journey on her hands and knees over the stones to kiss the feet of the statue of the queen before her tomb.
Animals, to be hunted down and burned from the face of the earth.
He had killed his first man tonight. A good sword blow from horseback, slicing down through the collarbone of a running man. A motion he had practised so many times, with friends or alone as a child under his father’s eye, then drilled by the king’s foul-tongued sergeants in the tiltyard at Esteren. Exactly the same motion, no different at all. And a man had fallen to the summer earth, bleeding his life away.
The deeds of men, as footprints in the desert.
He had won himself a splendid horse tonight, and armor better by far than his own, with more to come. The beginnings of wealth, a soldier’s honor, perhaps an enduring place among the company of Rodrigo Belmonte. He had drawn laughter and approval from the man who might truly become his Captain now.
Nothing under the circling moons is fated to last.
He had crouched by a fire on this dark plain and heard an Asharite and a Kindath woman of beauty and intelligence far beyond his experience, and Ser Rodrigo himself, as they spoke in Alvar’s presence of the past and future of the peninsula.
Alvar de Pellino made his decision then, more easily than he would ever have imagined. And he also knew, awake under the stars and a more perceptive man than he had been this same morning, that he would be permitted to do this thing. Only then, as if this resolution had been the key to the doorway of sleep, did Alvar’s mind slow its whirlwind of thought enough to allow him rest. Even then he dreamed: a dream of Silvenes, which he had never seen, of the Al-Fontina in the glorious days of the Khalifate, which were over before he was born.
Alvar saw himself walking in that palace; he saw towers and domes of burnished gold, marble columns and arches, gleaming in the light. He saw gardens with flower beds and splashing fountains and statues in the shade, heard a distant, otherworldly music, was aware of the tall green trees rustling in the breeze, offering shelter from the sun. He smelled lemons and almonds and an elusive eastern perfume he could not have named.
He was alone, though, in that place. Whatever paths he walked, past water and tree and cool stone arcade, were serenely, perfectly empty. Passing through high-ceilinged rooms with many-colored cushions on the mosaic-inlaid floors he saw wall hangings of silk and carvings of alabaster and olive wood. He saw golden and silver coffrets set with jewels, and crystal glasses of dark red wine, some filled, some almost empty—as if they had only that moment been set down. But no one was there, no voices could be heard. Only that hint of perfume in the air as he went from room to room, and the music—ahead of him and behind, tantalizing in its purity—alluded to the presence of other men and women in the Al-Fontina of Silvenes, and Alvar never saw them. Not in the dream, not ever in his life.
Even the sun goes down.
PART TWO
CHAPTER V
“There’s trouble coming,” said Diego, as he ran past the stables and looked in briefly on the open stall. A soft rain was falling.
“What is it?” his mother asked, glancing quickly over her shoulder. She stood up.
“Don’t know. A lot of men.”
“Where’s Fernan?”
“Gone to meet it, with some of the others. I told him already.” Diego, having said what seemed necessary, turned to go.
“Wait!” his mother called. “Where’s your father?”
Diego’s expression was withering. “How would I know? Heading for Esteren, I guess, if he isn’t there already. They must have got the parias, by now.”
His mother, feeling foolish, and irritated because of that, said, “Don’t use that tone with me. You sometimes do know, Diego.”
“And when I do, I tell you,” he said. “Got to run, Mother. Fernan will need me. He said to lock the gates and get everyone up on the walls.”
With the swift, lethal grin that left her almost helpless—his father’s smile—Diego was gone.
I am being ordered about by my sons now, thought Miranda Belmonte d’Alveda. Another adjustment in life, another measure of time passing. It was odd; she didn’t feel old enough for this to be happening. She looked over at the frightened groom who was helping her with the mare.
“I’ll finish here. You heard what he said. Tell Dario to get everyone up on the wall-walk. Including the women. Bring whatever weapons you can find. Build up the kitchen fires, we’ll want boiling water if this is an attack.” The old groom nodded anxiously and went off, moving as quickly as he could on a bad leg.
Miranda ran the back of a muddy hand across her forehead, leaving a streak of grime. She turned again, already murmuring to the laboring mare in the stall. The birth of a colt on a Valledan ranch was not a matter that could be superseded. It was the cornerstone of their fortune and their lives, of their whole society, really. The Horsemen of Jad, they were called, and with reason. A moment later the woman said to be the most beautiful in Valledo was on her knees again in the straw, her hands on the mare’s belly, helping to bring another stallion of Belmonte’s breed into the world.
She was distracted and worried, however. Not surprisingly. Diego was seldom wrong in his warnings, and almost never so when the vision had to do with trouble close to home. They had learned that, over the years.
When he’d been younger, still a child, and these fore-knowings had begun it had been hard, even for him, to tell them apart from nightmares or childhood fears.
Once, memorably, he had awakened screaming in the middle of the night, crying that his father was in terrible danger, threatened by ambush. Rodrigo had been campaigning in Ruenda that year, during the bitter War of the Brothers, and everyone in the ranch house had sat awake the rest of a long night watching a shivering, blank-eyed boy, waiting to see if any further visions were vouchsafed him. Just before dawn, Diego’s features had relaxed. “I was wrong,” he’d said, gazing at his mother. “They aren’t fighting yet. He’s all right. I guess it was a dream. Sorry.” He’d fallen fast asleep with the last apologetic word.
