Glen Cook - Splinter Of The Mind's Eye

Megelin joined him, and walked beside him, sharing a silence no words could give more meaning.

Before dawn arrived the column vanished into the Great Erg, unmarked by a single unfriendly eye.

Angel

S tunned by unexpected shifts of fortune, El Murid retreated into his fastness in Sebil el Selib. He did but one thing before further retreating into the fastnesses of his mind: he summoned Nassef from the Throyen front. He did so in a message sufficiently strong that it would be subject to no misinterpretation. Nassef must appear or face the wrath of the Harish.

Nassef made record time, urged on more by the Disciple's tone than by what he actually said. He feared El Murid might fall apart. He was not reassured when he arrived. His brother-in-law acted as if he did not exist.

For six days the Disciple sat on the Malachite Throne and ignored everyone. He drank little and ate less while venturing deep into labyrinths of self. Both Nassef and Meryem became deeply disturbed.

Nassef. Cynical Nassef. Unbelieving Nassef. He was half the problem. He was an infidel in the service of the Lord. El Murid prayed that his God forgive him for compromising. He should have shed the man a decade ago. But there was Meryem to reckon with, and there was Nassef's unmatched skill as a general. And, finally, there was the grim chance that some of the Invincibles now felt more loyal to their commander than to their prophet. It had been a mistake to hand them over to Nassef.

But the heretics within would have to wait till he had cast down the foes of the Lord without.

But Nassef... He took bribes from Royalists willing to buy their lives. He sold pardons. He appropriated properties for himself and his henchmen. He was building a personal following. If only indirectly, he was suborning the Movement. Someday he might try to grab it all. Nassef was the Evil One's Disciple within the Lord's camp.

But no spiritual malaise had driven El Murid into the wasteland of his soul. No. Nor was it so much the debacle before the Eastern Fortress. That hadn't proven as bad a defeat as it had seemed at the time. The enemy had loafed at the pursuit, fearing another ambush. The cause of his inturning was the decampment of the Wahlig of el Aswad.

It had come too suddenly, and was too out of character. The man was a sticker, a fighter, not a runner. Flight made no sense after his having resisted so bitterly for so long.

Yousif's withdrawal left the Disciple without focus. His plans, for so long, had been thwarted by one man's stubbornness, that he had given up looking beyond Yousif's defeat. He did not know what to do.

Yousif was gone, but he remained foremost in El Murid's mind. Why had he gone? What did he know? Finally, the Disciple summoned Nassef and put the question.

"I don't know," Nassef replied. "I've interviewed el Nadim and Hali repeatedly. I've talked to most of the men. I've lost a week's sleep over it. And I can't tell you a thing. Aboud certainly didn't summon him. Nothing is happening at Al Rhemish." Nothing that transpired in the capital escaped Nassef. He had an agent in the Royal tent itself.

"Then he knows only what we do," El Murid mused. "What fact is he interpreting differently?"

"That foreign devil Radetic is behind it."

"Perhaps. The outland idolaters must hate me. They must sense the hand of God upon me. They must feel, in His wrath, the knowledge that I shall be the instrument of their chastisement. They are the slaves of the Evil One, struggling to prolong his sway over their wicked kingdoms."

Was that a suppressed smirk on Nassef's lips?

"Papa?"

The girl was skipping. His first impulse was to swat her for insolemnity before the fanes. But it had been an age since he had given her any attention.

Nassef remarked, "The child is a savage sometimes."

"And when was laughter an abomination unto the Lord? Leave us." He let her slide into his lap. "What is it, darling?" She was nearly twelve now.

Had it been that long? Life was whistling by, and he seemed little nearer fulfilling his destiny. That unholy Yousif. Nassef had had so many successes, but they had meant nothing as long as the Wahlig had kept the Movement bottled up in Sebil el Selib.

"Oh, nothing. I just wanted to see if you were done thinking yet." She snuggled, moving in his lap.

He was shamed by the impulse the Evil One sent fluttering across his mind. Dark-winged vampire. Not with his own daughter.

She was on the precipice: womanhood was but a moment away. Soon her breasts would begin to swell, her hips to broaden. She would be marriageable. Already his followers were scandalized because he allowed her the run of Sebil el Selib, unveiled, and often permitted her to accompany Nassef on his safer journies.

He suspected Nassef wanted her himself.

And still she had no name.

"You know I don't believe that, sweetheart. Something besides your grouchy old papa brought you here." He was acutely aware of the disapproval of the priests tending the shrines.

"Well... "

"I can't say yes or no till you tell me."

In a staccato burst, "Fatima promised me she'd teach me to dance if you said it was okay. Please? Oh, please, Papa, can I? Please?"

"Slow down. Slow down."

Fatima was Meryem's body servant, and a successful piece of propaganda. A reformed prostitute, she was living proof that all who came seeking were found worthy in the eyes of El Murid's Lord. Even women.

It was El Murid's most radical departure from orthodox dogma, and he was having trouble selling it still.

Women had been doubly disadvantaged since the Fall. A woman had brought the nation to its present desperate plight. Now the most rigidly fundamentalist of men allowed their wives in their presence only for purposes of procreation. Even relative liberals like Yousif of el Aswad kept their women cloistered and on the extreme fringes of their lives. The daughters of the poor were sometimes strangled at birth, or sold to slavers who trained them for resale as prostitutes.

A prostitute, socially, was as far beneath a wife as a wife was beneath a husband.

Yet even in Hammad al Nakir Nature had her way with the young. "This is serious." Little girls seldom became interested in dances unless also interested in interesting boys in girls. Then they were little girls no more. And the boys were no longer boys.

It was time to speak to Meryem about veils.

"Time, he rides a swift steed, little one." He sighed. "So soon come and gone. Everything past in the wink of an eye."

She began twisting her face into a pout, sure she was about to be refused.

"Let me think. Give me a few days, will you?"

"All right," she said brightly. His asking for a delay was, inevitably, the prelude to his giving in. She kissed him, scooted off his lap, became all skinny, windmilling arms and legs as she ran away.

Disapproving priestly stares followed her passage.

"Hadj!" El Murid called to his chief bodyguard. "We're going to make a journey. Prepare."

Far south of Sebil el Selib, south of el Aswad, stood a mountain rising slightly separate from the mother range called Jebal al Alf Dhulquarneni. It was called Jebal al Djinn, Mountain of Demons, or, sometimes, the Horned Mountain. When seen from the southwest it resembled a great horned head rising from the desert. It was there El Murid met his angel when he felt lost enough to require face to face advice. He'd never wondered why the Lord's messenger had chosen a meeting place so remote and of such evil repute.

The Disciple's faith in his angel was tried severely during a long, solitary ascent which left his body feeling tortured. Would the messenger even respond after all this time? El Murid had not come seeking him since before his ill-starred visit to Al Rhemish. But the angel had promised. On Jebal al Djinn, though, even the promises of angels seemed suspect. The mountain was not a good place. It was cursed. No one knew why any longer, but the evil inhabiting the stones and trees remained, palpably beating upon any intruder. Each visit more than the last, El Murid wished his mentor had chosen somewhere more benevolent.