The Diviner Read online

  “It is,” Fadhil agreed pointedly, and left the tent.

  The Shagara, were they? The word meant tree—a singularly inappropriate name for desert nomads. But upon consideration, Azzad thought he understood. The tree was a sacred thing that meant life and water and growth and greenery, and for people wandering a wasteland, a single tree could mean salvation. By extension, the wounds of the desert could be healed by this Tree of Life.

  And they allowed their women to learn the healing arts. That was interesting. In his world, clever highborn women were taught to rule families, not sickrooms. They supervised the concerns of a business or farm, an extended kin network, and sometimes—as in his own mother’s case—a whole tribe. Or, as Sheyqa Nizzira did, an entire country. But healing was a traditionally masculine art in Rimmal Madar. Long years of study and training interfered with a woman’s real work: to choose a husband and bear the children that would establish her dominance, for many daughters and sons ensured the survival of the family and extension of its influence, while managing the household’s wealth. Because the men took care of the children, healing was more naturally their concern.

  But that was the world Azzad had left behind, the world he could not think about again until he was ready to exact his revenge.

  The next night Fadhil entered the darkened tent just as Azzad was ready to shove the flap aside and go where he pleased, damn the consequences.

  “You’re out of bed,” the young healer observed. “Good. Abb Shagara wishes to speak to you.”

  “May Acuyib bless him for not coming here to me!” Azzad said, reaching eagerly for the black wool cloak Fadhil had brought. “I was starting to believe there was nothing to the world at all except the inside of this tent!”

  “Abb Shagara goes to no one. All come to him.”

  “I would have it no other way.” Wrapping himself in the rough garment against the night chill, Azzad gestured to the tent flap. “Lead me, Fadhil, to Abb Shagara.”

  He knew why they took him from the tent by darkness. They didn’t trust him—especially now that he’d regained most of his strength. He wondered what they thought he’d do: seize one of their maidens, leap onto Khamsin’s unsaddled back, and gallop off into the desert?

  There certainly weren’t any maidens around—nor matrons, nor men, nor children, nor even a stray sheep. A couple of rangy yellow-brown dogs lay beside a tent, gnawing on bones; a cat was teaching her six brindled kittens to hunt, but these were the only living things he saw. Pale tents and glowing fire pits, at least fifty of them, studded the landscape; presumably everyone had been ordered to hide from him. It was confirmed when a tent flap twitched, and a small, round-eyed face peered out, and a women’s beringed hand grabbed a braid of black hair and tugged the child back inside.

  He knew where Khamsin was by the scent on the wind. Good clean horse-smell; they took care of their animals, at any rate, not allowing them to mill around in their own droppings. There was a difference to the aroma, however—something he could only describe as a wildness not found in a civilized stable. Perhaps it was due to diet. He’d demand to see Khamsin tomorrow and get a look at these cart-drawing horses for himself.

  Abb Shagara’s tent was no larger than the rest, and it was the same pale sandy color. All that distinguished it from the others was the size of the wind chime hanging from a carved pole outside. The breeze toyed with finger-sized brass and tin plaques hammered with designs. Fadhil bent nearly double as he opened the flap, bowing to whoever was inside. Azzad considered it polite to incline his body the precise degree due his own venerable grandfather—but when his eyes adjusted to the brightness of a score of lamps within, he felt his jaw drop. Abb Shagara was no grandfather. He was scarcely old enough to grow a beard.

  Was this some sort of joke? Did they mock him by sending him to this stripling youth rather than the true head of the tribe?

  The boy—perhaps eighteen, perhaps not—tilted his head to one side, a smile quirking his full lips. Long-limbed, slender beneath flowing silvery-gray robes, he sat erect and casually self-confident on a high-piled rainbow of cushions. His jewelry was all of gold. A broad cuff caught his long black curls at the left shoulder. His left ear was decorated by an earring in the shape of an ibis holding a sapphire in its beak. At his breast rested a small plaque crowded with a whirl of colored gems. He was more regal, Azzad thought suddenly, than Sheyqa Nizzira el-Ammarizzad had ever looked in full regalia on the Moonrise Throne.

  Azzad bowed once more, thinking that this must be Abb Shagara’s favorite son, or his heir, or something of the sort, that this was a preliminary encounter that would lead to a meeting with the real power in this tribe. Certainly the most important of the Shagara would not receive a stranger alone, with no guards but one skinny apprentice healer who carried only his surgical knives. Chal Kabir had said there would be many tests. Perhaps this was one of politeness.

  “I am pleased,” the young man said, “to see you recovered.”

  “By your graciousness,” Azzad replied, “and the skill of your healers.”

  A nod, a graceful gesture to be seated on a plump green pillow. Azzad sat, glancing at Fadhil, who stood with lowered head and folded hands.

  “Will you drink?” asked his host. “What is your pleasure? There is wine, qawah, the juice of various fruits. . . .”

  “Whatever is most agreeable to yourself.”

  “Qawah, then.” The boy leaned forward and confided with a grin, “I must warn you, I prefer it very strong and very sweet and tinged with cardamom.”

  Azzad was about to speak a polite lie—that this was how he liked it, too—but what came out of his mouth was, “I am partial to strong qawah but without that flavoring.”

  “Ayia, but you must try it this way. Most stimulating.”

  Fadhil busied himself preparing what turned out to be a viscous black fluid that tasted like honeyed tar. Azzad sipped the required three times, sternly controlling his expression. Then, resting one elbow on a drawn-up knee, the rim of the silver cup balanced delicately between his thumb and the tip of his middle finger (his father, a stickler for elegant manners in his children, would have been proud of him), he regarded his host with raised brows.

  “Ayia, you have many questions,” the boy said. “Before you ask them, I have one of my own. May we know your name?”

  He could answer with the “Zaqir” he’d used before, but he suddenly found he had no wish to lie to these people. “Azzad al-Ma’aliq.”

  The boy seemed to be waiting for something else. An explanation, perhaps. At length he asked, “Why do you say this as if all should know the name?”

  “You have not heard of me?” Ayia, that was rude—there was such a thing as too blatant an honesty.

  But the young man only laughed softly and sipped qawah, rocking lightly back and forth on his throne of cushions. “You come from some faraway place where your name is renowned. For what reason, I could not say; you may be a famous musician, or a great warlord, or a notorious criminal. You will find, Azzad al-Ma’aliq, that such things as are vitally significant in other lands have less than no meaning here. Where do you come from?”

  “My country is called Rimmal Madar. You have never heard of it?”

  “Should I have? A land of sand and rain sounds both dangerous and pleasant.” After a slight pause: “ ‘King of Lions’—that is your name, yes?”

  “My mother’s choice,” Azzad replied, embarrassed as he had not been since his first days in the play yard of the madraza, when all the other boys had teased him.

  “But it is a noble name,” came the protest. “Mine, on the other hand—” He laughed once more, light as a starling’s flight through clear blue sky. “My own beloved mother afflicted me with—I hope you are ready—‘Akkil Akkem Akkim Akkar,’ by which one assumes she meant ‘intelligent ruler whose wisdom flows like water.’” With a smile, he concluded, “You are invited to laugh, Friend Lion. Luckily, now that I am Abb Shagara, I need hear none of these names anymore�
��except from my mother when she is furious with me!”

  Azzad choked. This child really was the leader of his whole tribe?

  “No strangers to us believe it,” mourned Abb Shagara, correctly reading his expression. “They look at me, then look around for my father or elder brother. But I assure you it is true. Perhaps one day you will come to know why a boy of my scant years rules so many. But for now, I see you grow tired. And, as my mother would say, it is long past my own bedtime!”

  “If I grow weary, it is not of Abb Shagara’s company.” This, too, was the truth.

  The boy nodded approvingly. “Wherever you come from, Friend Lion, you were taught manners.”

  “Thus I have hesitated to ask, but I must. When may I see my horse?”

  “Ayia, that spindle-legged stud that causes so much trouble? Tomorrow, I think. Yes. And perhaps you can calm him. None of our boys are able to do more than stare at him—and run very fast when he glares right back!”

  “Khamsin frets if I am not close by. I regret any difficulties he has caused. I thank Abb Shagara.”

  Fadhil came to his side and, after more bowing, they left the tent. When they were inside the healing tent, Fadhil turned a wry look on him.

  “I told you that you would go to Abb Shagara. I can’t help it if you didn’t believe me.”

  “It’s a strange tribe, your Shagara,” Azzad retorted. “A youth of no more than eighteen leading all your people, women learning the healing arts—”

  The humor died in Fadhil’s black eyes. “I also said you were never to speak of that. Do you want to die?”

  “It’s that forbidden, is it?” He decided to change directions. “Why does Abb Shagara have no guards?”

  This restored Fadhil’s good humor for reasons Azzad didn’t begin to understand. “He needs no guard.”

  “Everyone needs protection.”

  “Did I say he had none?”

  “But there was no guard,” Azzad maintained stubbornly.

  “No,” Fadhil agreed. “No guard.”

  “Then how—?”

  “He wears the ways of the Abb Shagara at his heart. They are all the protection he needs.”

  Sheyqa Nizzira sent to the winter camp of her kinsmen, the Ammarad, her two eldest sons, three of the Qoundi Ammar, and a wagon of gifts. But so long ago had her foremothers left the desert that she had no notion of what was valued by the ancestral tribe. The Ammarad stared as the Qoundi Ammar unloaded fine wooden tables inlaid with marble, silken tapestries, and great pottery vessels filled with honey and wine and oil.

  Abb Ammarad informed the Sheyqa’s sons that the gifts were unnecessary. Azzad al-Ma’aliq would be hunted down and killed for the honor of their tribe. Then he commanded a feast, which was laid out on the tapestries and used up much of the honey and oil and all of the wine. And during the feast, when he admired the fine, fast horses of the Sheyqa, the sons instantly comprehended. Thus it was that one proud sheyqir and three even prouder Qoundi Ammar rode back to Dayira Azreyq on unsaddled brown donkeys.

  The Ammarad had use of the Sheyqa’s horses for less than a season, and their insistence that the mare ridden by one of her sons be included in the “gift” was a tragic error. Two stallions died in battle over

  the Ammarad mare, one of the bite of a poisonous snake. Such was the size of the half-Ammarad foal inside her that the mare was ripped apart, and her get died with her.

  The soldiers of the Qoundi Ammar—forced by the Sheyqa’s sons to ride home on donkeys, deprived of the horses that were more beloved than their wives—never forgave the loss and the insult.

  —FERRHAN MUALEEF, Deeds of Il-Kadiri, 654

  3

  The following morning Azzad was allowed outside. He immediately went to see Khamsin. Along the way, he got his first good look at the Shagara. They were a handsome, black-eyed people, slim and long-legged, dressed in various desert shades of fawn and ivory and cream. But not all of them were Shagara by birth, or at least not wholly Shagara; Azzad was able to distinguish outsiders very easily by their skin tone. The merciless sun did not darken the Shagara; they looked as if gilded, and the contrast of black eyes and black hair with golden skin was fascinating.

  He seemed to fascinate them as well. Some glanced sidelong, others openly stared, but no one ignored him. When he passed by, children stopped playing, and whispered and giggled and pointed—until the old men watching them scolded their rudeness. The Shagara went about their tasks of fetching water and cooking, braiding new ropes and mending boots and suchlike with quiet efficiency. It was altogether unlike the raucous streets of Dayira Azreyq, where men did nothing without discussion, speculation, argument, and commentary—usually at the top of their lungs.

  The one familiarity was unexpected: the sound of hammers working metal, just as in Zoqalo Zaffiha at home. Sure enough, Fadhil led him around a cluster of tents to workshops set up beneath wool awnings. Thirty or so men sat cross-legged in the shade, each whispering under his breath, pounding designs into brass, copper, and tin. Some of the men were as ancient as Chal Kabir; others were Fadhil’s age. The polished metal bowls, goblets, plates, armbands, finger rings, earrings, and pendants—dazzling even in the shadows of the awning—made Azzad blink. Nearby, beneath another pale woolen roof, a group of boys about fourteen years old watched a very old woman trace a symbol into a large clay tablet propped on a stand so all could see.

  “Here you see the talishann for ‘wealth of sheep.’ Note its difference from that for ‘wealth of sons’—and remember that a man will not be pleased if his ewes bear dozens of woolly lambs when he is expecting his wife to have lots of little boys!”

  The children laughed as they copied the device onto their own clay tablets, which were then held up for the mouallima’s inspection. After a few corrective comments, she moved on to the next talishann.

  As they continued past the school session, Azzad said to Fadhil, “That is the most interesting madraza I’ve ever seen. They’re making good luck charms, I take it?”

  “For sale at the zouqs. I should mention that one of the master crafters has expressed an interest in making something for your stallion’s saddle.”

  “That’s extremely kind, but I have no means of payment.” He thought of the pearls, but they were to provide money for a new start. Come to think of it, he had no idea where the pearls were at the moment, but didn’t suspect for even a fraction of an instant that they were anything other than perfectly safe and waiting for him to claim them. Traditions of hospitality aside, the Shagara would never steal anything so useless to them as a few dozen pearls.

  “Ayia, no matter,” Fadhil was saying. “He wants no payment. He says he’s never made anything to protect a riding horse before, and the experience would be worth the work.” He sounded as if he truly believed that a piece of brass or tin or copper could give a man many sons—or many sheep. Azzad hid a smile.

  Khamsin was alone in a chest-high pen of thorny rails, with scarcely enough room to turn around. No wonder he was fractious, Azzad thought angrily, reaching through dagger-long spikes to offer a caressing hand.

  Khamsin snapped at him.

  “Well, yes, I know you’re unhappy,” Azzad soothed. “But I do still have need of those fingers. Fadhil,” he said over his shoulder, “he needs exercise. Where’s my saddle?”

  “So beautiful an animal. Why would you wish to put a seat on him and ride him like a donkey?”

  “Donkey!” Only children rode donkeys, and then only for their first riding lessons. The picture of a grown man with his legs dangling to the ground was too insulting to contemplate. But he realized something about the Shagara then and perhaps about the rest of the people in this strange country that as yet had no name—and in truth seemed not to be a country at all. Horses were for hauling and donkeys were for riding, no matter how ridiculous one looked. There was an idea in there somewhere, if he could but find it.

  Fadhil was eyeing Khamsin warily. “He’s so tall! A donkey is close to the groun
d, with nowhere much to go if you fall off. Of course, your Khamsin is not so big as our own horses, but still—”

  “Show them to me,” Azzad said. When the young man arched a satirical eyebrow, he recognized the peremptory tone—for the first time in his life, it must be said—and added rather gracelessly, “Please.”

  A long walk around the perimeter of the camp—much larger than he’d thought, more than a hundred tents—led them to the thorn-guarded pen for the Shagara horses. Azzad saw immediately why no one rode these monstrous beasts. Half again Khamsin’s bulk, at least two hands taller at the shoulder, with backs wide enough for a man to sleep on and legs the size of young tree trunks—he gaped at dozens of mares, colts, and fillies whose muscles shifted powerfully beneath glossy hides. The colors of sand and clouds, they were, with thick white manes and tails. Their eyes, huge and dark with lashes long as a man’s thumb, held a warning glint of dangerous temper. Azzad had to admit these horses were beautiful in their massive way, but his thighs ached at the very thought of riding one.

  Again the half-formed idea teased at him. Again Fadhil interrupted his thoughts. “The stallions are kept apart, as Khamsin is. Our wallad izzahni are careful about bloodlines.”

  “The boys who tend your horses are to be commended,” Azzad replied, frowning. A good thing this pen was downwind from Khamsin; several of the mares were ready to be bred.

  “Perhaps if your stallion requires exercise, you can do as we do—run him at the end of a long rope.”

  Khamsin wouldn’t like it—he’d graduated from that training exercise years ago—but it was better than nothing. The rest of the morning was spent thus, with Khamsin galloping in circles and every so often testing the rope’s strength with a lunge. At the end of the exercise session the muscles of Azzad’s back were stretched to breaking, and his arms felt ready to pop out of their shoulder sockets. But he walked Khamsin until the horse cooled, then rubbed him down with handfuls of dry fodder.