Melanie Rawn: The Diviner

Death connected to death, death causing death. It was endless. Inescapable.

But he would bring an end to it. He would escape. And so would those who heeded him.

He was the codifier the Shagara needed. He was the one who could recognize all the separate parts of their magic and relate them each to all the others. But more than that, he was an outsider who discerned the correlation between the magic and the land. When he had first mentioned this idea, casually and rather diffidently, to Zario, the startlement in the old man’s face had told him all he needed to know. The concept was alien enough, coming from him. He never dared tell anyone that it had come first from Alessid al-Ma’aliq.

Air, water, soil, and the plants that provided food and medicines. These things became part of the people who lived in a particular place. An army might invade and conquer; farmers and crafters and merchants and all the different sorts of people who made up a thriving population might come and settle; but a place did not belong to someone simply because his house was built upon it. It was a mutual growing together, an entwining of water with blood, soil with flesh. This country had almost killed him with poisoned thorns, for he did not belong here—never mind that anyone foolish enough to grasp those thorns was in danger of death. The point was that he hadn’t known not to touch. But medication concocted here had saved his life, and with the poison and the cure he had in some way taken part of the land into himself.

Curiously enough, the wine he had nearly succeeded in killing himself with had not been the product of this country. He had never been able to stand the slightly tarry taste of what no one with any perception at all would term “vintages.” He had gotten drunk night after night on wines imported from Tza’ab Rih. He supposed, looking back, that his own land had almost killed him, too. But the cure had come to him here , in the form of Solanna, whose ancestors had lived here forever, and Zario, a man whose magic originated in another country but who had learned to adapt as this land demanded. Solanna’s sight had found him; Zario’s paper and ink had combined with the talishann of the desert to heal him.

As Qamar sorted and wrote and made a hundred decisions each day about what was vital and what was not, the interrelation of land and people was always in his mind. The colors, for example. Surely there were just as many at home, but who had ever thought to delineate them in such fine detail? No one had ever needed to. Their symbolism had been contained in other things, things unavailable here. The plants and flowers and herbs—such an obvious connection, land to herbs to medicine or food to people. This was nothing new to him. But paper—ayia, paper was intriguing, both for its own properties and for what it had led him to discover about trees. He’d heard, now and then, that paper made from a particular kind of wood was better for certain magic. From the paper to the tree was a simple step. He was surprised no one had ever figured this out before.

That it had never been guessed that there could be a connection between realistic drawings and magic did not surprise him at all.

And the inks—they especially fascinated him, for he saw them as akin to blood. They were blood he could manipulate, change, cause to do what he desired. And mixing his own blood into them had produced astounding results.

But he had never told anyone about the new knowledge he was adding to the Shagara wisdom. They were traditionalists, these distant cousins of his. Adjusting mixtures to accommodate different plants, learning how to make paper and ink, these things they had done of necessity. Had the same things been available to them here that their forebears had known in the desert, they never would have made any discoveries at all. But the real clue to their conservatism was in their unfading hatred of Azzad and Alessid alMa’aliq for perverting Shagara ways. Change born of inescapable circumstances was one thing. Change for its own sake was quite another. They would not have been pleased, even if he had demonstrated the usefulness of his discoveries, simply because he was the one to have made them. Shagara he was, Haddiyat he was—but also al-Ma’aliq.

Besides, they must not know his ultimate aim. Not until he could prove it.

There were so many possibilities, so many combinations of symbols and influences, medical certainties and hidden meanings. This country had saved his life twice. It would do so again.

Qamar had settled into the rhythms of this tiny world. Leisha made sure the huts were clean, the bedding aired, the meals appetizing, the clothes washed. Tanielo gathered firewood, cared for the horses, brought water from the stream. Solanna worked sometimes with Leisha after she had read Qamar’s work of the previous day for clarity, and she spent her afternoons tending the garden. Within days of their arrival she had planted vegetables that by the end of summer were almost ready to be eaten. Nissim helped everyone with everything, but his major duties were with Qamar. His tasks ranged from sharpening pens to serving as Qamar’s extra memory regarding what information was in which sheaf of notes. The days melted together, each very like the last. Only the inexorable northward shift of the sun from that notch in the crags reminded him that he must hurry, hurry.

Tanielo was also responsible for catching small animals for the cookpot, and when Qamar had no need of Nissim, the boy learned the fine art of setting snares. Squirrels and rabbits soon avoided the area around the huts—no matter how tempting the above-ground vegetables were—and thus traps were laid down farther and farther away. One morning Qamar was waiting impatiently for the pair to return from checking the night’s pickings, for he needed Nissim’s help in finding a particular reference to verbena that the boy had located only the day before, when a hawk appeared in the southern sky. Qamar watched it circle slowly, then settle on a treetop to preen its wings.

“Qamar? Someone’s coming.”

He looked down the valley to where Solanna pointed.

“And he’s jingling,” she went on, wringing out a shirt and handing it to Leisha for the drying line.

“More like ringing, isn’t it?” Leisha asked. “Bells.”

Qamar didn’t admit that he could not hear what they did. He didn’t even admit it to himself, any more than he admitted that their eyes at a distance were much better than his. The rider was discernable to him only because of the bright yellow shirt he wore.

“Wait a moment—isn’t that Miqelo?” Solanna shook her hands free of water and started down the rise to the stream. After another moment she raised her arm and waved and called out his name.

At the same moment he let out a shrill whistle. The hawk bolted down from its perch and circled him once, then settled onto Miqelo’s outstretched arm. Squinting, Qamar could just make out the gift of a scrap of meat and the skillful hooding of the bird.

“I won’t ask whether or not I’m welcome,” Miqelo began abruptly as he dismounted, the hawk still on his arm. The jingling had come from the bells decorating the ties of the leather hood. “That doesn’t matter. But why in Acuyib’s Holy Name are you unguarded? Where is my son?”

“Collecting dinner,” Solanna said. “And a good thing, too, with an extra mouth to feed. Whatever your news, Miqelo, and I suspect it cannot be good, you are always welcome for yourself.”

He searched her face for a moment, then bowed his head. “Thank you. Leisha, I would not turn away from a very large cup of water.”

Qamar stayed where he was at his worktable, silent, watchful. While Miqelo downed first one cup of water and then two, he began tidying his pages and stoppering his ink bottles. Whatever had brought Miqelo here, he knew there would be no more work done today.