Melanie Rawn: The Diviner

Azzad gave a nod and a slight smile of thanks. He thought about the tabbib’s words as he rode away to the west. His mother would indeed be glad he had survived, he knew that—but what would she think of his means of survival? He’d paid more heed to an illicit tryst than to a royal command, and then he had run away. Still, he was alive, and to squander that gift would be to dishonor those who had died. Azzad vowed to be worthy of survival—and put back on his finger the al-Ma’aliq ring before turning Khamsin south, to the Devil’s Graveyard.

“But who can he be?”

“Besides a fool, you mean?” A clucking of tongue against teeth. “You tell me, Leyliah. What do you learn from looking at him?”

“Rich, of course—”

“His clothes were ragged.”

“But the ring—”

“Stolen.”

Azzad opened his eyes and denied it strenuously—or thought he did. Leyliah’s voice was young; the other woman’s was older. Both were lilting, liquid voices, oddly accented around the r sounds, but he understood them readily enough.

“The horse was stolen, too?” Leyliah asked shrewdly.

“Sometimes you are my favorite student, and at others you make me despair that you will ever learn how to trim a hangnail! Don’t look at the things , Leyliah. Look at the man .”

There was a pause. Azzad called frantically on every muscle in his body. Not a single one responded.

“His hands,” Leyliah said at last. “There are no old calluses—only new ones, from recent blisters.”

“Very good. What else?”

“His feet are rubbed raw where very soft, very fine boot leather has worn away.”

“Therefore . . .”

“Therefore he must be rich, as I said before!”

“Or he stole the boots as well.”

Sightless, frustrated in his need to move, he was forced to use his other senses. Scents of dry wool and sensuous spices; taste of skin-stored water flavored with an herb he couldn’t identify; and, past the voices of the two women, the faint ring of hammers on metal and a light breeze ruffling wind chimes. Not much information; nothing to comfort him. Except that they hadn’t killed him. Yet.

“You were right,” the older woman admitted, “but using the wrong evidence. The ring and the horse and the boots could have been stolen. The clothes tell us nothing. The things tell us nothing. But the body, this tells us all. We have here a spoiled, wealthy, feckless young fool who tried to cross the Gabannah. He has paid for it with heat sickness, scorched skin, feet that will not carry him for at least fifteen days, and the festering claw-marks of a rimmal nimir, bandaged by either an ignorant fool or someone who wanted him dead. Now, the next thing we ask ourselves is why he would attempt so dangerous a journey. He was not ill before he began it, so he cannot be one of those who seek our healing. Have you any answers?”

“None, Challa Meryem. Unless he truly is crazy—in which case we’d better tie him to the tent poles to prevent his doing us or himself any damage.”

“Pampered men such as this one do not stir themselves to folly without good reason. Deadly reason, I suspect. Even a fool must be aware that the Gabannah is death to those who do not know it intimately. So perhaps there is another death behind him, chasing him—one he feared more than the death that nearly found him here.”

Leyliah’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Do you think he killed someone?”

“Ayia, more likely someone wants to kill him. And by the look of him, for seducing a wife or daughter or sister.”

“I’d wondered if you’d noticed! Long eyelashes, long nose, long legs, long—”

Azzad felt sudden heat in his face; had he been able to, he would have turned away in embarrassment. Not at the words of praise, which he knew he deserved; nor that the words came from a woman, for his mistresses had made similar observations; but that the woman who said these things was unknown to him and had seen him naked.

All at once he wondered if she was pretty.

“Keep your eyes in your head, Leyliah, and your tongue between your teeth—and your fingers inside your qufaz when you salve his skin. Who knows what diseases may slither from him to you at contact with his blood?”

“But the texts all say—”

“The texts are no substitute for practical experience. Now, spoon more medicine down his throat, and we’ll leave him to heal.”

A gentle finger inside a whisper-thin leather glove parted Azzad’s lips. Water slid onto his tongue, tasting sticky-sweet with herbs and honey. Again he tried to move, and again failed. Instinct made him swallow against his conscious will. And within a remarkably short time instinct, consciousness, and will all faded away.

When next he woke, it was to the sound of men’s voices. His eyes opened readily enough, and he could shift his muscles, though sluggishly, legacy of whatever the women had given him. It was dim inside the wool tent, and hellishly hot.

“Chal Kabir, he wakes.”

Shuffling footsteps crossed thick carpeting, then sudden light flared as the tent flap was shoved aside. Azzad blinked and put a hand over his eyes. His fingers encountered sweat-sticky hair tumbling down his brow. Running his hand down his face, he was appalled to discover a thick beard. How long had he lain here?

“Eleven days,” said a young man’s voice from an old man’s gray-bearded face. Azzad blinked again. “The date is the second of Ta’awil Annam.”

He had left Dayira Azreyq nearly sixty days ago. Why did he remember so few of them?

“Bad water,” the ancient continued, as if in answer to the unspoken question. He seated himself on a tripod stool beside the heaped carpets that were Azzad’s bed. “It takes the belly in sickness, and the memory as well. Ayia, city boys are too stupid not to fill their bellies at Ma’ar Yazhrad. Worse, they water their horses. The beast died, you know.”

Azzad’s whole body spasmed, and he moaned. “No! Khamsin—!”

Chal Kabir nodded. “You see, Fadhil,” he said over his shoulder, “he cares more for the horse than himself. A good sign.” Then, to Azzad: “Your Khamsin is safe. I told you otherwise as a test. There will be many more before you are allowed out of this tent.”

“Khamsin—?” Azzad managed, relief and suspicion flooding him simultaneously.

“Safe,” Chal Kabir repeated, settling his sand-colored robes around him. An unusual ring of braided silver and gold and copper flashed from his left thumb.

“I want to see him.”

A black brow arched in a parchment-brittle face. “Truly a lordling, accustomed to command.”

“I want to see him! Now!”

It took all his strength to put force into the order—and by the amusement flickering in Chal Kabir’s eyes, the old man knew it. He gestured with one gnarled hand to young Fadhil, who disappeared out the tent flap, brushing against wind chimes as he did so. “He will bring the horse around. A splendid animal. We will accept him in payment for your life.”

Azzad bit back a hot retort. Fear and relief had followed each other too quickly, leaving him dizzy. He must be cautious. Laws of hospitality aside—those same laws that in theory compelled these people to tend him without requiring recompense—Chal Kabir had mentioned tests. This might be another.

It was.

Chal Kabir snorted a laugh. “Ayia, you can control yourself. Good, good.”

Movement in the triangle of light at the tent flap caught Azzad’s gaze. Khamsin: whole and sleek and fractious, needing three boys to hang onto his halter. A whistle from Azzad calmed him at once, and he followed the boys decorously enough out of Azzad’s sight.

“Interesting,” commented Chal Kabir.