Glen Cook: The Fire In His Hands

He called her bluff. “Come down here.”

She did so, so he hugged her. It aggravated Nassef and completely flustered the girl.

El Murid laughed.

One of the youths brought his horse. “Thank you.”

So there were seven who began the long trail, the trail of years. El Murid thought it an auspicious number, but the number gave no luck. He would suffer countless nights of frustration and depression before his ministry bore fruit. Too many of the Children of Hammad al Nakir refused him, or were just plain Truth-blind.

But he persisted. And each time he preached he won a heart or two. His following grew, and they too preached.

Chapter Two

Seeds of Hatred, Roots of War

Haroun was six years old when first he encountered El Murid.

His brother Ali had found himself a perch in a gap in the old garden wall. “God’s Whiskers!” Ali squealed. “Khedah. Mustaf. Haroun. Come and look at this.”

Their teacher, Megelin Radetic, scowled. “Ali, come down from there.”

The boy ignored him.

“How am I supposed to pound anything into the heads of these little savages?” Radetic muttered. “Can’t you do anything?” he asked their uncle Fuad.

Fuad’s severe lips formed a thin, wicked smile. Can but won’t, that smile said. He thought his brother Yousif a fool for wasting money on a pansy foreign teacher. “It’s Disharhun. What did you expect?”

Radetic shook his head. That was Fuad’s latest stock answer.

This barbarous holiday. It meant weeks lost in the already hopeless task of training the Wahlig’s brats. They had come damned near three hundred miles, from el Aswad all the way to Al Rhemish, for a festival and prayer. Foolish. True, some important political business would take place behind the scenes.

The scholars of Hellin Daimiel were notorious skeptics. They labeled all faith as farce or fraud.

Megelin Radetic was more skeptical then most. His attitude had generated some bitter arguments with his employer, Yousif, the Wahlig of el Aswad. Fuad had become part of the class scene as a result. Yousif’s younger brother and chief bully remained on hand to assure the children’s insulation from Hellin Daimiel’s stronger heresies.

“Hurry!” Ali insisted. “You’ll miss it.”

All traffic passing through the Royal Compound, from the pilgrim camps to the Most Holy Mrazkim Shrines, had to follow the one dusty street beyond the wall of Radetic’s courtyard-classroom. This was the first time any of his students had joined their fathers during Disharhun. They had never seen Al Rhemish or its holiday displays.

“High Holy Week,” Radetic muttered sourly. “Spring Hosting. Who needs it?”

It was his first visit, too. In his quiet way, he was as excited as the children.

He had taken the teaching position in order to study the primitive political processes going on behind the Sahel. The unprecedented challenge of a messianic type like El Murid promised an interesting study of a culture under stress. His field was the study of the evolution of ideals in government, especially the monolithic state trying to survive by adapting to the changing perceptions of subjects believed to be politically disenfranchised. It was a subtle and tricky area of study, and one’s conclusions were always subject to attack.

His deal with Yousif had been accounted a great coup at his college, the Rebsamen. The secretive people of Hammad al Nakir were a virgin territory for academic exploitation. Radetic had begun to doubt the opportunity was worth the pain.

Only little Haroun remained attentive. The others jostled Ali for vantage points.

“Oh, go on,” Radetic told his one remaining pupil.

Haroun was the sole intellectual candle Radetic had found in this benighted wasteland. Haroun was the only reason Radetic did not tell Yousif to pack up his prejudices and head for Hell. The child had shown tremendous promise.

The rest? Haroun’s brothers and cousins, and the children of Yousif’s favored followers? Doomed. They would become copies of their fathers. Ignorant, superstitious, bloodthirsty savages. New swordbearers in the endless pavane of raid and skirmish these wild men accounted a worthy life.

Radetic would have confessed it to no man, and least of all himself. He loved the imp called Haroun. He followed the boy and for the thousandth time pondered the mystery of the Wahlig.

Yousif’s station roughly equated with that of a duke. He was a cousin of King Aboud. He had every reason to defend the status quo, and much to lose by change. Yet he dreamed of ending the old killing ways, the traditional desert ways, at least in his own demense. In his quieter, less abrasive way, he was as revolutionary as El Murid.

One of the older boys boosted Haroun to the top of the wall. He stared as if smitten by some great wonder.

Radetic’s favorite was slight, dusky, dark-eyed, and hawk-nosed, a child-image of his sire. Even at six he knew his station.

Because he was only a fourth son, Haroun was fated to become his province’s chief shaghûn, the commander of the handful of sorcerer-soldiers serving with the family cavalry.

Yousif’s Wahligate was vast. His forces were numerous, for they nominally included every man able to bear arms. Haroun’s responsibilities would be large, his immersion in wizardry deep.

Already Radetic had to share his pupil with witch-teachers from Jebal al Alf Dhulquarneni, the appropriately named Mountains of a Thousand Sorcerers. The great adepts almost always began their studies at the time they were learning to talk, yet seldom came into the fullness of their power till they had passed their prime mating years. The young years were critical to the learning of self-discipline, which had to be attained before the onset of puberty and accompanying distractions.

Radetic wriggled his way into the pack of children. “I’ll be damned!”

Fuad pulled him back. “Of that there’s no doubt.” He assumed Radetic’s place. “Holy!... A bare-faced woman! Teacher, you might as well turn them loose. They’ll never settle down now. I’d better go tell Yousif that they’re here.” Fuad’s face had taken on the glassy look of a man in rut. Radetic did not doubt that he had an erection.

The ways of the desert were strange, he thought.

Speculation had haunted the Royal Compound for days. Would El Murid really dare come to the Shrines?

Radetic shoved himself into the gap again, staring.

The woman was younger than he had expected. She rode a tall white camel. The fact of her facial nakedness completely eclipsed the presence of the wild-eyed youth on the white mare.

El Murid was, for that matter, overshadowed by the man riding the big black stallion.

That would be Nassef, wouldn’t it? Radetic thought. The brawler who led El Murid’s dramatically named bodyguard, the Invincibles, and who was the brother of the Disciple’s wife.

“El Murid. You’re a bold bandit, son,” Radetic murmured. He found himself admiring the youth’s arrogance. Anyone who thumbed his nose at priesthoods rated with Megelin Radetic.

“Boys. Get down. Go find your fathers. Do you want a whipping?”

Such was the punishment for gazing on a woman’s naked face. His pupils fled.

All but Haroun. “Is that really El Murid? The one Father calls Little Devil?”

Radetic nodded. “That’s him.”

Haroun scampered after his brothers and cousins. “Ali! Wait. Remember when Sabbah came to el Aswad?”

Megelin suspected imminent deviltry. Nothing but bad blood had come of that ill-starred peace conference with Sabbah i Hassan. He stalked his pupils.

He had warned Yousif. He had cast horoscope after horoscope, and each had been blacker than the last. But Yousif had rejected the scientific approach in his own life.