Snare

‘What’s wrong?’ she said. ‘Did you have bad dreams?’

‘In a way,’ Zayn said. ‘Uh, what I told you? About the demon spawn and all of that?’

‘I’m not going to mention it to anyone else. I don’t want to see you stoned at a horse fair because someone slipped and told your secret to a Kazrak.’

The fear left him, and he managed to return her smile. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘That was on my mind, all right.’

‘I thought it might be.’

‘But they wouldn’t stone me. They’d turn me over to the Council, and I’d be burned alive.’

‘It’s hard to say which would be worse.’

‘Well, yes. I’d just as soon not have to choose.’

Ammadin smiled briefly. ‘Tell me something,’ she said. ‘Your father. You said he was still alive, right?’

‘Yes. He’s become a hermit.’

‘A what?’

‘A holy man. He lives in the hills near the border, in fact, in a hut. It’s near a mosque, and the men in charge bring him food and keep an eye on him.’

‘How very strange! Why did he do that? Do you know?’

‘Yes, I asked him when I went to see him. He says it’s in penance for having fathered me.’

‘Oh gods! I’ll never understand you people.’ Ammadin paused, her mouth twisted in disgust; then she shrugged. ‘About your supposed demon blood – is your memory for words your only talent?’

‘No. I can draw pictures, too.’

‘So? A lot of people can do that, some badly, some well.’

‘I mean, I can glance at something like a diagram in a book or a decoration on a wall and then draw it again months later. It’s odd. I can see the design in my mind, and then if someone hands me some rushi and a pen, I can sort of push the design out through my eyes onto the rushi and copy over it.’

Ammadin considered this for a moment. ‘That is odd,’ she said at last. ‘Not demonic, mind, but odd. It’s still a memory talent, though.’

‘Yes. I can learn just about anything fast. I can repeat whatever it is, word for word, picture for picture – even if I don’t understand it. And music, if I hear a song or something like that once, I can sing it back.’

‘What else is on that list?’ She paused for a smile. ‘I’m assuming you can remember.’

Zayn laughed, astonished that he could laugh, and so easily, over a joke that would have seemed deadly just the day before.

‘I can, yes,’ he said. In his mind he could see the page in one of his father’s holy books, black letters, as curved as sabres, damning him. ‘The twelve forbidden talents of memory, the twelve forbidden warrior talents, the forbidden talents of perception, and so on. I can recite them all, if you’d like.’

‘I would. I – what’s that?’

Outside someone was calling her name. She raised the tent flap and peered out.

‘Maddi, he’s awake, yes,’ Ammadin called in return. She dropped the flap and turned back to him. ‘They want to strike this tent and pack it. You’d better go eat. We’re riding out as soon as the wagons are loaded.’

‘All right.’

As he left the tent, Zayn was hoping that she’d just forget about the rest of the impure talents. Merely thinking of them filled him with a profound unease, born of long years of fear and scorn. You’re a man like any other, just with an odd turn of mind – or so she said. He looked up at the silver sky.

‘Oh God,’ he whispered. ‘Can it really be true?’

No answer sounded in a booming voice, no lettered banner appeared in the fog. He laughed at himself and went to find Dallador.

The Great River ran shallow where it issued from the Mistlands, allowing the comnee to ford safely and head east. As usual Ammadin rode at some distance ahead, but she kept watch for Zayn’s enemies. One of her spirit crystals, the one she’d named Sentry, made a humming sound whenever the Riders appeared in the sky, even during the day when no one could actually see them. At the sound Ammadin would halt her horse and dismount. She’d take another crystal, Spirit Eyes, out of her saddlebags and unwrap it. For as long as the Riders were overhead, Spirit Eyes would show her a vision of the territory around her, as much as a walking person might cover in a morning. Once the Riders had passed below the horizon, the spirit in the crystal would fall asleep and refuse to wake, no matter how many times she chanted the magical commands.

In the crystal Ammadin would see a circle of purple grassland, overlaid with pale yellow numbers that seemed to float in the air. She would see her horse and herself as a tiny black dot in the centre of the field of vision. The moving comnee, a tiny blotch of herds and wagons, would appear just at the edge, under one of the spirit numbers etched around the crystal’s equator. If she called that number, the view would shift, and the comnee would reappear in the centre of the circle. She could then see the country around them on all sides, or she could refocus her eyes and magnify the image in the centre until it seemed large enough to show every detail. Once she’d finished her scan, she would carry the crystal in one hand as she rode on, holding it up to let the spirit feed on the sunlight as its reward. A shaman who forgot to feed her spirits would soon find herself with dead crystals.

Three days out from the Mistlands, Sentry sounded his alarm not long after she’d left the comnee behind. As she stared into Spirit Eyes, Ammadin thought she saw a group of figures, or their smudged, tiny images, riding and leading pack horses at some long distance from the comnee. When she tried to transfer the vision to look straight down at them, Spirit Eyes made a sharp chirping little cry.

‘You can’t see that far?’ Ammadin said. ‘Or is nothing really there?’

Once more she tried to scan; once more the crystal chirped.

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘If they’re that far away, they’re not a real threat anyway.’

The next time that the Riders appeared overhead, Ammadin saw a far stranger sight than the men who might have been Zayn’s enemies. Her crystal showed her three ChaMeech loping along through the grass, again, at the very edge of its range. Although she coaxed the spirit with commands and praise both, it simply could not show her more than three tiny ChaMeech shapes moving fast. From then on she kept a watch for them as well. That afternoon, not long before sunset, they reached the Blue Stone River, running from the north-east to the south-west. Near the river lay a regular Tribal campsite, but the surrounding grass, standing high and untrampled, told them that no one had passed that way for months. While the women tethered out the horses, the men began cutting down the grass to clear the areas around the stone fire-pits. The comnee would be making a full camp and raising all the tents. Apanador and Ammadin walked into the meagre shade of a stand of spear trees to talk.

‘My wife says that some of the mares are ready to drop their foals,’ he told her. ‘And there’s no meat left. We’ll have to stay here for a couple of days.’

‘Good. I have some work I need to do.’

‘What about those Kazraks? Zayn’s enemies.’

‘They’re following us, but they’re clever. I only catch glimpses of them now and then.’

‘I’ll tell Zayn to stick close to the other men when he goes hunting.’

Once the men finished raising the tents, Ammadin carried her saddlebags into hers. Zayn had already laid the floor cloth and spread out her blankets on one side of hearth stones under the smokehole and his own bedroll on the other. She set up the god figures on their rug, then sat down on her blankets and took out her crystals.

She owned eight, each etched with a belt of different symbols. Five had been gifts from her teacher, though normally she only used four of them – Sentry, Spirit Eyes, Rain Child, and Earth Prince. The fifth, Death Chanter, she brought out only when a person had been gravely injured or lay ill with extreme old age. If Death Chanter glowed when she laid him on the victim’s chest, the sufferer would most likely recover. If he remained dull, it was time for her to start instructing the victim about the road to the Deathworld.

The last three crystals she had found in the trading precinct over in the Cantons, one at a time and at intervals of years. Where the merchants had got them, they refused to say, but they had known their value and bargained hard over them. These three still glowed with life every time Ammadin took them into the sunlight, but since she didn’t know their command words, the spirits had stubbornly stayed asleep.

The work she’d mentioned to Apanador involved the three crystals and Water Woman, the spirit who had called to her some days past. Perhaps here, near another river, Water Woman would do so again, and perhaps one of the sleeping crystals might let her answer.

‘Spirit Rider?’ Zayn lifted the tent flap and stuck his head in. ‘Do you want me to bring you some light?’

‘Please, yes.’

In a few minutes Zayn returned, carrying a stone oil lamp that he’d lit at someone’s fire. He set it down on the hearth stones. By the flickering golden light she began wrapping the crystals and stowing them in their usual saddlebag. He sat down opposite her and watched.

‘Are you hungry?’ Zayn said. ‘We’ve got some jerky left, but Dallador’s down at the river, catching fish.’

‘I’ll wait, then,’ Ammadin said. ‘He’s really good at finding food, Dallador.’

Zayn nodded, smiling a little as he watched her wrap her crystals. He was sitting cross-legged, his hands resting on his thighs, broad hands but somehow fine, with long fingers that might have belonged to a craftsman or even a scholar back in the khanate. Soon enough they would become scarred, calloused, and blunted, she supposed, as the hands of all the comnee men did, sooner or later. For the first time, though, she noticed his wrists. At first she thought them tattooed, then realized that a thick line of pale scar tissue circled each, as if his hands had been bound together by something that had rubbed him raw.

‘We haven’t had much chance to talk, this last few days,’ Ammadin said. ‘Have you been thinking about your vision quest?’

‘Every day. A lot.’

‘Good.’

Ammadin put the last crystal into the saddlebags, then set the bags down at the head of her bed.

‘Tell me something,’ she went on. ‘Your father, did he threaten to kill you?’

‘Often.’ Zayn looked down at the floor cloth as if he found it suddenly fascinating. ‘Whenever I slipped. That is, whenever I did something that showed I had the talents.’

‘But you Kazraks have laws against murder. Or didn’t you realize that as a child?’

‘Of course I did. But they wouldn’t have applied to me. I wasn’t human. I was demon spawn, and killing me would have been like killing an animal.’

‘How horrible! Is that why you didn’t go asking him awkward questions about demons and the like?’

‘Yes. I don’t suppose you blame me for keeping my mouth shut.’

‘No, I don’t. Zayn, it’s hard to blame you for anything after the things you’ve told me.’

His reaction took her utterly off-guard. He sat stone-still, and the scent of fear wreathed around him.

‘What’s wrong?’ Ammadin said.

‘Nothing.’ Zayn scrambled to his feet. ‘I just remembered that I promised Dallador I’d help him net those fish.’

In two strides he reached the tent flap and ducked out without looking back. Now what had brought that on? She considered asking him outright – no one in the Tribes would have dared refuse to answer such questions from a spirit rider – but she had seen real pain in his eyes. She would wait and watch, she decided, rather than press on some old wound. Still, she got up and left the tent.

Outside the sunset still glimmered in the sky, and the air was turning cool. Since there was no Bane against a woman watching men fish, she walked down to the river, flecked with light like gold coins, and saw Zayn and Dallador working side by side in the waist-deep shallows among dark red water reeds. Their clothes lay on the bank. As she watched they began hauling in the net, heavy with fish to judge by the silver roil in the water. With each pull they took a step back, dragging the fish to their doom in the open air. Water streamed down their shoulders and backs and highlighted the criss-cross of whip scars on Zayn’s dark skin. Dallador’s pale hair gleamed, fiery in the sunset light.

From behind her she heard someone walking up and turned to see Maradin, bringing a stack of big baskets to carry the fish to camp.

‘Oh, it’s you, Ammi!’ Maradin smiled in obvious relief. She set the baskets down and laid a hand on her shirt, over the charm that protected her from jealousy. ‘I didn’t know who was down here.’

‘And you thought she was watching your husband?’ Ammadin smiled at her.

‘Well, yes, I know I’m awful. The charm has really helped, though.’ Maradin gave her a sly smile. ‘I’ll bet you came down to watch Zayn.’

‘No, I came down because I’m worried about Zayn. A broken spirit quest is a really dangerous thing.’

‘I just bet.’

‘Maddi!’

‘Oh all right, I’ll stop, I’ll stop.’ Maradin turned her attention to the river. ‘You know, I think we’d better go back to the tents. Zayn’s not going to want to come out of the water while we’re here. He’s a Kazrak, after all.’

‘You’re right. Let’s go.’

In the morning Ammadin left the camp and rode a couple of miles upstream to look for spirit pearls. Where purple rushes grew high in the water, she dismounted and began searching, but although she walked a good distance along the bank, she saw none. Normally, this early in the summer, she should have found several clutches or at the least the occasional lone specimen. She unsaddled her horse and let him roll, then slacked the bit to let him drink. She set him to graze, then sat on the bank beside her saddle and saddlebags and considered the swift-flowing water, murmuring as it trembled the thick stands of reeds. Occasionally she saw a flash of silver or brown as a fish darted among them.

Without spirit pearls nearby, would Water Woman try to reach her? Would she even be listening if Ammadin called out to her? There was of course only one way to find out. Ammadin took the three sleeping crystals out of her saddlebag, unwrapped them, laid the wrappings on the ground, and set the crystals carefully upon those, not the ground itself. Sunlight fell across them and flashed like lightning as the spirits began to wake. Within each crystal she could now see the spirit as a fine silver line spinning around the device’s centre. While they fed, she considered how to phrase her command. To make a spirit serve her, the shaman had to chant the exact right words in the spirits’ ancient language in a particular way, sounding each syllable in a deep, vibrating voice.

Ammadin could remember how Water Woman had addressed her and decided to try turning her words into the command formula. She rose to her knees, took a deep breath, and began to intone.

‘Spirit, awake! Open hear me. Open hear me.’

Nothing. All three spirits merely spun, feeding on the sunlight. What exactly am I trying to do? Ammadin asked herself. She tried again.

‘Spirit, awake! Open call out. Open call out.’

In one crystal the spirit swelled into a silver spiral, but it chirped rather than singing a note. A start, at any rate – Ammadin wrapped the other two crystals up, slipped them into their pouches, and put them safely away into her saddlebags. By the time she finished, the third spirit had returned to the shape of a spinning line. She let it feed for a few minutes, then tried a variant of her previous chant.

‘Spirit, awake! Open call for. Open call for.’

The spirit sang a note and formed itself into a silver sphere, turning slowly inside the crystal. Ammadin felt like laughing in triumph, but the sound would only confuse the spirit.

‘Open call for,’ she repeated. ‘Call for Water Woman.’

The spirit made three loud angry chirps. It wouldn’t know who Water Woman was, Ammadin realized. But when Water Woman had called to her from some long distance away, no doubt she was using a spirit crystal, too. There was a good chance that the two spirits would recognize each other and respond – if Water Woman made the first move.

‘Spirit,’ Ammadin chanted. ‘Open take name. Open take name. I name you Long Voice.’

The spirit chimed in answer. There! Ammadin thought. That’s one of them tamed, anyway.

It was close to noon when the Riders returned to the sky. Ammadin took out Spirit Eyes and looked into it, focusing first on the camp. At the edge of the circle of tents stood four tethered horses, and beside them their saddles, laden with gear, sat on the ground. Horses she’d not seen before – strangers had come to the comnee. Zayn’s Kazraks?

Ammadin packed up her crystals and rode back to camp as fast as the heat would allow. She realized that she’d been right to hurry when she found Maradin waiting, pacing back and forth at the edge of the horse herd.

‘I’ll take care of your horse,’ Maradin said. ‘There’s some men from Lanador’s comnee here, asking about Palindor. They’re in Apanador’s tent.’

When Ammadin entered, she found four young men sitting stiffly across from the chief, who was pouring keese as casually as if this were only a friendly visit. She recognized one of them, Varrador, the husband of Palindor’s sister.

‘Ah, there you are, Spirit Rider,’ Apanador said. Ammadin sat down beside the chief and accepted a bowl of keese. Apanador handed out the other four bowls before he continued. ‘Our friends here have a problem,’ Apanador said, ‘and I think you can solve it for them.’

‘I hope so, anyway.’ Varrador seemed more puzzled than angry. ‘My wife’s brother has disappeared. I thought maybe he’d come back to your comnee.’

‘No,’ Ammadin said. ‘He’s dead.’

Varrador winced, then had a sip of keese to steady his nerves. The other three men leaned forward and watched him as if they were waiting for a signal.

‘Why did he leave your comnee?’ Ammadin said. ‘Do you know?’

‘No,’ Varrador said. ‘He rode away about two weeks ago, but he didn’t tell anybody where he was going. Just before that, some Kazraks came to our comnee and said they were looking for your servant, Zayn. Our spirit rider – Makador, I’m sure you know him – anyway, he told us to keep our mouths shut, so we did, and in the morning they were gone. The next day Palindor left. A little later, one of the Kazraks brought Palindor’s horse back. He said they’d found it wandering near the Mistlands. He said he didn’t know whose horse it was, but then why did they bring it straight to us? The Kazrak mentioned that he’d heard your servant was questing in the Mistlands. My wife tells me that Zayn and Palindor hated each other.’

‘Yes, they did. Palindor attacked when Zayn was questing. He broke Bane, and Zayn killed him for it. Apanador, give them back Palindor’s weapons.’

The chief reached behind him, retrieved the bow and quiver, and handed them over. Varrador examined them, his face immobile, his eyes expressionless. His men turned to him, their hands tight on their drinking bowls.

‘Those Kazraks were lying to you,’ Ammadin went on. ‘I think we can all figure out what must have happened. Palindor must have seen that they meant Zayn no good and ridden off with them. They tried to kill Zayn; they failed. When that fellow brought Palindor’s horse back to you, he was probably hoping you’d want vengeance, so you’d do his murdering for him.’

‘Sounds like Kazraks, yes.’ Varrador tossed his head once. ‘My poor wife!’

‘It’ll be worse for her mother,’ Ammadin said. ‘You don’t want to think your son would do something as rotten as this.’

‘I wanted to take the Kazraks prisoner, but the chief said we didn’t have the right to.’

‘Sooner or later we’ll deal with them,’ Apanador broke in. ‘Together, I hope.’

‘That’s not for me to say.’ Varrador laid the bow aside, then finished his keese in one long swallow. ‘But I can’t believe that Lanador would turn that offer down.’

Apanador smiled and saluted him with his bowl.

‘Let’s go out to my herd,’ Ammadin said. ‘Pick out any mare you want and take her back to Palindor’s mother.’

Varrador chose a chestnut four-year-old. Ammadin waved farewell as they rode away, then returned to camp. At Dallador and Maradin’s tent she raised the flap and stepped inside. On the far side of the hearth stone, Zayn and Dallador were sitting on the double bedroll, or rather Zayn was sitting, cross-legged and stiff-backed, while Dallador was lounging on his side, his shirt off in the heat. A naked little Benno lay asleep in the curl of his arm.

‘You can come out now,’ Ammadin said. ‘They’re not holding anything against you.’

‘Thank God!’ Zayn said. ‘I didn’t want to cause trouble for the comnee.’

‘What about trouble for yourself?’ Ammadin said. ‘You were in a lot more danger than the rest of us.’

‘Well, I –’ Zayn paused and glanced Dallador’s way, as if asking for help.

Dallador, however, laughed. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘what about yourself? I’ve never met a man who worried less about his own safety.’

Zayn started to speak, then shrugged.

‘Never mind,’ Ammadin said, smiling. ‘I’m going back to our tent to work, so leave me alone until the evening meal.’

In the grass behind her tent Ammadin took out her crystals. Much to her relief, the Riders were still above the horizon. At the northern edge of Spirit Eyes’ range, grey smoke stained the sky – a campfire. Nearby, tethered horses grazed, and men stood talking, two men with dark curly hair, one of them with a full black beard: Kazraks. Beyond them by about a hundred yards, she could see someone or something sitting in the grass.

At her chant, Spirit Eyes moved the vision directly over a middle-aged man with shoulder-length grey hair, bound by a jewelled headband. A peculiar bluish light sparkled around his body and danced on his clothing, a pair of dirty white Kazraki trousers and a loose shirt. He was sitting cross-legged and staring into another crystal, which he held in bony, wrinkled hands. So! He was a witchman, or as they called his kind in the Cantons, a sorcerer, and Zayn’s enemies had magic on their side.

Sentry began to hum, then rang a soft note, over and over – his warning of magic turned her way. Most likely the sorcerer was watching the comnee even as she watched him and his Kazraks. Sure enough, she saw him pick up a pouch lying in the grass beside him and slide a second crystal out. She picked up Long Voice.

‘Open listen to, open listen to.’

Only an angry chirp answered her command.

‘Open listen for. Open listen for.’

The spirit sang out. At first she thought she’d once again given it the wrong command, because she heard a humming sound like a second Sentry. Then she realized that she was hearing the sorcerer’s crystal and then, his voice.

Open hide me. Open hide me.

Spirit Eyes showed only grassland. Long Voice fell silent.

‘You thrush-foot gelding!’ Ammadin muttered. ‘But I wonder –’ She took a deep breath and chanted. ‘Sentry, open hide me. Open hide me.’

The crystal sang three joyous-sounding notes. Although she had no way of testing her theory, Ammadin was guessing that she’d hidden herself from the sorcerer just as he’d hidden himself from her. An impasse, then – neither had lost, neither had won.

‘But I did win something,’ she said aloud. ‘I know a new command.’

She’d also gained ideas as valuable as steel: her spirits owned powers beyond those her teacher had identified, and the Cantons sorcerers knew more about crystals than spirit riders did. In Nannes, the trading precinct, she’d seen a bookshop, which might have books on magic. Such treasures had always lain beyond her reach, because she couldn’t read. But now she had a Kazraki servant, who could.

Thanks to Soutan’s scanning crystals, Warkannan and his men had been keeping track of the comnee from a safe distance. Rather than follow, they were riding parallel, some four miles north of the comnee’s course, in the hopes that the spirit rider wouldn’t look their way. When the comnee camped, they camped; when it moved on, so did they. Regularly during the day, Soutan would go off alone into the grass to scan, then return with news. On this particular afternoon, however, he came back ashen and shaking.