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‘That they’re good with a bow when they have to be?’
‘You’re teasing, aren’t you?’ Arkazo was grinning at him.
‘Yes, of course I am,’ Warkannan said. ‘If you mean, do they sleep with men they fancy when they want to, yes. But here’s another true saying – make a comnee man jealous, and you’ll have a knife fight on your hands. Kindly don’t go propositioning girls who belong to someone else. We don’t need any more trouble on this trip than we have already.’
Warkannan was about to say more when he heard someone approaching through the raspy grass – Soutan. He was wearing clean clothes, pale khaki in the same loose cut that the Kazraks were wearing, and carrying his other things wet.
‘There is just something about a bath,’ Soutan announced. ‘Here’s your soap back, gentlemen, and I thank you.’
On the morrow they reached the Great River, where, late in the afternoon, they ran across an unusually large comnee of some thirty families. Their chief, Lanador, greeted them as hospitably as always, but he warned them that the comnee would be riding west on the morrow.
‘You’re welcome to ride with us, of course, if your road takes you that way.’
‘Well, thank you,’ Warkannan said. ‘But we’re heading south. I’m looking for someone, you see. Zayn the Kazrak. Someone told us he rides with Apanador’s comnee.’
Lanador blinked twice; then his face went expressionless.
‘Ah. Well, come have a bowl of keese with me.’
Lanador took them in to his enormous tent, where blue-and-green tent bags hung on the orange and red walls. The chief sat them down on leather cushions, then poured keese into the ritual skull-cup. Warkannan took a sip and passed it to Arkazo, who ran a finger over rough bone and nearly dropped it. Tareev grabbed it from him just in time.
‘Drink from it,’ Warkannan whispered in Kazraki. ‘Skull or not.’ Arkazo took it back, forced out a smile, and drank. Much to Warkannan’s relief, the chief raised one broad hand and pretended to cough, covering a laugh rather than taking insult. Lanador was just handing round the ordinary bowls when an old man lifted the tent flap and came in to join them. He was gaunt, with prominent cheekbones and long bony fingers; his grey hair hung down to his shoulders in greasy strands. The saurskin cloak and the true-hawk feather in his ear marked him for a witchman. He refused a bowl of keese and squatted down next to Warkannan.
‘Why are you looking for Zayn?’
‘He’s a friend of mine. I want to see if he’ll come home with me instead of living in exile.’
The old man’s eyes caught him. Warkannan could neither move nor speak until the spirit rider looked away, his mouth twisted in something like disgust.
‘Do you know where Zayn is?’ Warkannan said.
‘No.’ The spirit rider got up and left the tent.
Lanador rose, muttered a few excuses, and followed him outside. Soutan leaned over and grabbed Warkannan’s arm.
‘You idiot!’ Soutan spoke in Kazraki. ‘You never should have lied to him. Witchfolk can practically smell lies.’
‘What was I supposed to say?’ Warkannan shook his hand off. ‘That I’m going to kill Zayn when I find him?’
‘Imph, well. You have a point –’ Soutan broke off.
Lanador was lifting the tent flap. He came in, smiled vaguely at his guests, and sat down. As the afternoon wore on, he was as gravely courteous as if the incident had never happened. A few at a time, the other men in the comnee came in to take their place in the circle and drink. Warkannan noticed one of them studying him. A handsome, almost girlishly pretty young man, he carried the long knife in his belt that marked him for a warrior, and on his face were the green and yellow marks of old bruises.
That evening, to honour their guests the comnee cooked a communal feast over several different fires. Everyone ate standing up, carrying bowls of food with them while they drifted from friend to friend to talk. Warkannan noticed a pair of comnee girls, both in their teens, staring at Tareev and Arkazo and giggling behind raised hands. As the feast wore on, the two girls began to follow the two young Kazraks, always at a discreet distance, always giggling. Warkannan eventually pointed them out to Soutan.
‘Where are their mothers, I wonder?’ Warkannan said.
‘Trying to ignore the whole thing, most likely,’ Soutan said. ‘Do you know what they’re giggling about?’
‘No.’
‘Neither do I.’ Soutan shrugged. ‘Doubtless nothing in particular. We should be asking questions about this Zayn, not worrying about other people’s morals.’
‘True enough.’
But when Warkannan mingled with the comnee, everyone he asked claimed never to have heard of Zayn – not that he believed them. Since the comnees despised lying, their lack of practice showed. Warkannan let the matter drop and talked only of the weather and the ChaMeech. Some of the men in the comnee had sighted ChaMeech a few days past, but only three females.
‘Three females without any males?’ Soutan said. ‘That’s really peculiar.’
Their informant, a beefy young comnee man, nodded his agreement. ‘We left them alone,’ he went on. ‘They weren’t likely to give anyone any trouble.’
‘They wouldn’t, no, not females,’ Soutan said. ‘And travelling this time of year? Odd. Very odd.’
The comnee man drifted away, and Warkannan glanced around – no one within earshot. There was also no sign of either Arkazo or Tareev.
‘We need to talk about things,’ Warkannan whispered in Kazraki. ‘I’ll just collect our young colts.’
‘They can find our camp on their own,’ Soutan said. ‘I have no doubt that those girls are satisfying their curiosity.’
‘Their what?’
‘I finally heard what the little sluts were giggling about. Both of our boys have big noses. The girls were wondering if other –er – features are commensurately large. You know, the old folk superstition about organ size.’
‘Shaitan!’ Warkannan felt himself blushing. ‘Of all the immodest –! Their mothers should beat them within an inch of their lives.’
‘I quite agree. The mothers wouldn’t. Shall we go? The boys will come staggering back at dawn, most likely.’
Warkannan led the way downriver to their little camp, which he’d set up out of earshot of the comnee. While Soutan lounged on the grass, Warkannan built and lit a tiny fire of dried horse dung around a few pieces of oak charcoal, then sat down near it for the light.
‘There’s one good thing,’ Warkannan said. ‘If Zayn’s still with this comnee, he’s not off in the east, stumbling over Jezro Khan.’
‘If he really is the spy from the Chosen. We can’t be sure.’
Warkannan was about to answer when he heard footsteps crackle in the grass. He was expecting Arkazo, but the comnee man with the bruised face stepped into the pool of firelight.
‘Come walk with me,’ he said to Warkannan. ‘I can’t risk being seen here.’
Warkannan followed him through the dark night to the fern trees along the river. The comnee man leaned close to whisper.
‘My name is Palindor. Why do you want to find Zayn? The Spirit Rider says you’re lying when you say he’s your friend, so don’t tell me that again.’
When Warkannan hesitated, Palindor laughed, a cold mutter under his breath.
‘I hate him, and I think you do, too.’
The venom in his voice rang so true that Warkannan decided to trust him.
‘Yes, I do. The woman he dishonoured was my sister. I’m going to kill him when I find him.’
Palindor laughed. ‘He’s about twenty miles south of here, and riding this way. Look, he’s going to make a vision quest out in the Mistlands. Do you know what that means?’
‘Oh yes. He’ll be alone out there, in a place where it’s damned hard to see someone coming. Huh – if his comnee’s riding upriver, it’ll camp on the southern edge.’
‘Where the river flows out. The quests always start there.’
‘Good.’ Warkannan laid his hand on his coin pouch. ‘A hundred thanks. Can I give –’
‘Keep your money, Kazrak. Just help me kill him.’
In the middle of the grasslands lay a vast swamp, a semi-earth of bog and stream nearly eighty miles across, fed by underground springs. The Kazraki scholars taught that God had created the Mistlands to provide water for the horses no matter how hot the summer. When Zayn repeated this theory to Ammadin, she laughed, much to his annoyance.
‘I guess that means you don’t believe me,’ he said.
‘You’re not the person to believe or disbelieve,’ Ammadin said. ‘You’re only repeating what you’ve been told.’
‘Who do you think created them, then?’
‘I don’t have the slightest idea, myself. Now, in the Cantons some of their sorcerers are called loremasters. One of them came to buy a horse from me some years back. When we talked, she told me that in the Mistlands, the earth’s beginning to tear apart. There’s water underneath, and it comes up through the holes.’
‘That’s ridiculous!’
‘Is it? Consider the earthquakes. The ground moves then, doesn’t it?’
‘Well, yes, but –’ Zayn paused, thinking. ‘Well, I hadn’t thought of it that way before.’
Whatever their origins, and Zayn was by then thoroughly caught between the conflicting theories, the Mistlands breathed an aura of the holy. Not the comfortable holiness of a gilded mosque, but the stomach-wrenching trembling holiness that bespoke the left hand of God – or the dark gods, if the Tribes had the right of it. On the day that the comnee reached the Mistlands, Zayn saw the fog from miles away, a grey brooding, blending into the purple horizon to the north. The closer they rode, the more the air turned damp, and the dampness became a smell, a foetid coolness of mud and rotting things. Like clouds piling up for a storm, the grey canopy grew larger and larger as the riders approached. At the place where the comnee stopped to make camp, the canopy seemed to arch over half the sky. With sundown it grew larger still, spreading grey tendrils like reaching fingers into the twilight.
Since he was fasting, Zayn walked to the edge of the camp while the others ate. When he looked into the mist, he saw points of bluish light drifting close to the ground – spirits, or so the mullahs would call them, gennies and evil spirits. Ammadin called them spirits but nothing evil, just spirits, who existed as men and animals did, with neither malice nor good will. She had been teaching him the ways of her gods, to prepare him for his quest. In the darkening swirls of mist, it seemed he saw vast figures striding and drifting: Ty-Onar, the god of the swamps, all green and crested like a lizard; Hirrel of the high places, slender and black, with bright pink gills along his sides. Deep within the mists other figures seemed to gather, but never close enough for him to identify. Tomorrow he would be among them, asking for a vision.
Sharply Zayn reminded himself that he was a Kazrak and a follower of the one true god. He was only undergoing this ordeal to keep the confidence of the comnee, because if he lost that confidence, he would have a hard time reaching the Cantons. To a fifteen-year-old boy, he supposed, the quest would be terrifying, the first and likely the only time in his life that a comnee boy would be alone. Doubtless the terror blended with the fasting and the simple pride of becoming a man to produce the visions they were supposed to see out there. Thanks to his studies of Tribal customs, Zayn could make up a convincing vision to tell Ammadin, something that would satisfy these primitive people. That was all there was to it. Superstitious nonsense. Of course. But out in the mists the blue lights danced, brighter in the thickening night. He felt a cold seep into his heart that had little to do with the dampness of the air.
Zayn hurried back to Dallador’s fire, but since he was fasting he refused the usual keese. Maradin and the child were visiting friends. They sat together silently and watched the pale flames. After some while Dallador went into the tent and came back with a long knife in a sheath inlaid with red leather. He handed it to Zayn.
‘Your father’s not here to give you one,’ Dallador said. ‘Take it.’
‘Thank you. I can’t thank you enough – I mean that.’
Dallador merely smiled.
‘I didn’t think a comnee man would have an extra knife,’ Zayn went on.
‘I won that one in a fight. Some loudmouth from another comnee insulted Maradin.’
‘Ah. To get this away from him you must have killed him.’
‘Oh yes.’ Dallador smiled at the memory. ‘No one’s said a wrong word to her since.’
Zayn unbuckled his belt, slid off the sheath of his Kazrak hunting knife, and replaced it with the long knife. Settling this new weapon at his hip made him feel like a different man. As for the old knife – he picked it up and offered it to Dallador.
‘It’ll be a curiosity to show around, if nothing else.’
Dallador hesitated for a moment, then took it. He looked so solemn that Zayn realized they’d just bound themselves together in some ritual way. It was a mistake, he supposed, making a friend, but he refused to go back on it now.
That night Zayn took his bedroll and slept outside far from the camp. Just at dawn, Apanador and Ammadin came to waken him. Since he’d slept fully dressed, Zayn started to pull on his boots, but Apanador stopped him.
‘The rocks are too slippery. Your boots could drown you out there.’
‘All right.’ Zayn laid them aside. ‘Can I take my knife?’
‘Of course. At the end of this, you’ll either be a man or dead. If you die, we’ll bury you with the knife so you can protect yourself in the spirit world.’
‘All right,’ Zayn said. ‘I like that way of thinking.’
‘Good.’ Ammadin handed him a long, smooth pole, sharpened to a point at one end and bound at the other with a blue thread, two true-hawk feathers, and a silver talisman. ‘This is a spirit staff. Don’t lose it. Now kneel on the ground for a moment.’
When Zayn knelt, she held up a tiny ground-stone jar.
‘Go to the gods. Beg them for your true name.’ She paused to dip a bit of rag into the jar, which turned out to hold a pale pink ointment. ‘Either return with your vision, or pray that Ty-Onar drowns you. How can a man with no vision live his life? How can a man with no name be a man?’
She marked his forehead with a smear of the ointment, then rubbed it into his skin. The warmth of the rag – or was it the ointment? – was disturbing, far too hot for normal cloth. Zayn felt as if the warmth were boring into his forehead and spreading through every nerve in his body. She dipped the rag into the ointment again and wiped it across his lips. Reflexively he licked them, and she smiled, pleased. Slowly the warmth faded, but he saw with different eyes. Every blade of grass, every detail of her face and clothing, were so vivid that he nearly cried out. He turned his head and saw that Apanador seemed to be standing in a cloud of bright light.
‘Walk in as a boy,’ Apanador said. ‘Then ride as a man ever after.’
Alone, carrying the spirit wand in both hands like a quarterstaff, Zayn headed towards the Mistlands. He was just out of sight of the camp when he came to the first stream, running slowly, clogged with purple tendrils of weed and pale, lavender scum in little backwaters. He stepped in cautiously, but the bed proved to be firm sand and stone. As he crossed stream after stream, the ground began to turn spongy. Even when the ground rose above the water, his bare feet made a sucking, squelching noise on the short hummocky grass. He used the spirit staff to tap his way through the marshy ground, where here and there stagnant pools of water oozed among lush red-orange lichens. Slowly the mist came to meet him, arching up and covering the sky like a tent, the torn edges gleaming in the sunlight. When he walked under the cool greyness, he could see it lying on the ground ahead as thick as a wall. The air turned cold; drops beaded on his shirt. His view shrank as the greyness built an ever-receding wall some yards ahead. Near him everything looked abnormally clear and significant: each hummock of grass, each ooze of water carried an urgent if unreadable message. His hearing, too, seemed sharper than ever before. From the mist came the sound of water slapping and splashing in slow movements, each sound like the cry of some live thing.
As he was tapping his way along, the mist swirled to reveal a darker grey. Ahead stretched one of the lakes, a flat rippled sheet of shallow water, disappearing into the white drift. Red rushes grew sharp and dark, like strokes drawn with a scribe’s pen. Among them stood a grey flying creature of the species called cranes. With a squat body, a long slender neck, and enormous wings of naked skin, furled close to the body at the moment, it perched on one thin, pink leg and looked at him with beady yellow eyes.
‘Little brother,’ Zayn said. ‘Ask the gods to bless me.’
Even as he spoke, Zayn wondered why he’d say such a thing – him, a rational man, educated at the best school in Haz Kazrak. The crane, however, bobbed its head to him, then spread great wings to reveal the pair of vestigial arms that dangled underneath. It flew off with a slap against the heavy air, its pink feet and lashing tail trailing awkwardly after. Zayn followed as it circled the edge of the lake, but soon he lost it in the mist. He began to wonder how many boys camped right here and never dared to go further into the unnerving not-quite-silence.
He stopped at the place where the lakeshore bulged out in a muddy spit of land, pointing to a hummock out in the water. Testing his way with his staff, Zayn stepped off the spit and into the lake. He nearly cried out in surprise: the water was warm. So was the muddy bottom as it clung to his bare feet. He slogged his way out to the hummock, and from this higher ground, he could see a good ways out into the mist-shrouded lake.
Lumps of sodden land lay like a chain of tiny islands and seemed to lead to deeper water. He was debating whether to go further when he saw the crane, perched on a hummock just at the limit of his sight. He stepped off and began making his way towards it, going from hummock to hummock, but spending most of his time in the turgid water, which grew warmer and warmer the farther in he went. It was hard going, fighting the water, testing every inch of muddy ground, clambering from one soft lump to another. Every time he grew close to the crane, it would fly off again, leading him further. As the water grew warmer, a strange kind of slimy plant, dark red and no more than half an inch high, replaced the purple grass.
What felt like hours passed before Zayn paused to look back. The shore had disappeared, wrapped in mist. Ahead, the water stretched out smooth and empty, rippling in the light wind, but to his left stood a hummock big enough to qualify as a tiny island. Zayn splashed his way over and climbed onto the stretch of slimy moss-covered rock, about fifty yards long and maybe twenty at its widest point. On the far side grew a huge stand of a different sort of reed, of a mottled purple-brown colour, each one about as thick as his wrist. Zayn knelt down and cupped water in his hands; it tasted medicinal and sharp, full of mineral salts, he supposed. He drank it sparingly.
When he looked up, the mist swirled and lightened, and this time, he did cry out. For a moment he thought that he was seeing a city looming out of the endless fogs: shining towers, great mounds of houses, some pale green, some horizontally striped in browns and tans, but most as white and shiny as salt. Huge billowy domes, edged in opaque icicles, loomed over flat terraces. Crazy-tilting roofs hung, caught in mid-fall over what seemed to be open squares while rope ladders and twisted balconies marched down glittering walls. Far larger than even Haz Kazrak, on and on this broken cityscape stretched, reaching back into the surging clouds and walls of mist, reaching up into the temporary gilding of the sun beyond the fog. As he stared in open-mouthed awe, he found himself remembering every old tale or fable he’d ever heard as a boy about the wondrous cities and huge flying ships of the Ancestors, lost forever, or so everyone said, in their ruined homeland.
Then, when the entire wrapping of mist blew sideways for a few brief moments, he realized that water was trickling out of the towers and sheeting down, that the supposed buildings were vast deposits of minerals and salts, accreted over the Lord only knew how many endless centuries or aeons, from the outlets for the mineral springs under the Mistlands. He grunted aloud in sheer disappointment as the mists came back, a blanket raised by the wind’s hands and just as quickly dropped.
His reason reasserted itself. The hot springs would boil up inside those deposits, he supposed, to produce the huge quantities of fog when the steam hit the cooler air. The moisture would then run down its own accretions, leaving a further residue of salts. How far the travertines stretched he couldn’t see – a long, long way, far beyond the limit of his mist-shortened view. For a moment he considered wading over to explore, but the crane came flapping back. It settled, plopping into the water, and turned to block his way. When it opened its beak, he saw tiny spikes of teeth.
‘You want me to stay, don’t you, little brother? All right. I’ll make my vigil here.’
The crane tucked up one leg and began to study the water, head a little to one side, long beak ready. Zayn sat down on the rocks nearby and shivered in his soaked clothes. He looked at the spirit staff in his lap, ran his hands along it and found it comforting that Ammadin’s hands had bound the thread and tied the talisman. Just beyond the mists, she and the members of the comnee were waiting for him with food and warm blankets. He wondered how long he was going to have to stay out here to prove his manhood to the comnee.
‘They have a hard way with their boys, these people.’
