Snare

‘Indeed?’ Soutan snapped. ‘They’re not animals, Captain. They have language, they have feelings.’

‘So?’ Warkannan turned in the saddle to look at him. ‘They also have weapons, and they’ll use them on any H’mai they can.’

‘Horseshit! Do they ever attack the Tribes?’

‘Oh all right, then. They use them on any Kazrak they can.’

‘Now, that’s true enough. Of course, they feel they have reason to. Your southern provinces were theirs, originally.’

‘Well, hell, they weren’t using the land. They turned up there maybe once a year if that.’

‘They don’t farm. Their culture needs land for other things.’

‘Like what? Strolling around admiring the ocean view?’

Soutan rolled his eyes heavenward and sighed with great drama. ‘No, but I doubt if I can convince you,’ he said. ‘There are advantages to seeing things simply, I suppose.’

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Think about it, Captain, think about it.’ Soutan smiled, then nudged his horse with one foot and pulled ahead to end the conversation.

Warkannan exchanged a look of disgust with Arkazo. They rode on without speaking.

Like all members of the Chosen, Zayn Hassan – whose real name was Zahir Benumar – possessed odd talents that set him apart from normal human beings, but something prosaic had recommended him for this particular mission. Before the Chosen had discovered his existence, Zayn had spent six years on the border in the regular cavalry, where he’d known Idres Warkannan well, a useful thing in the eyes of his superiors, and the reason that they hadn’t simply arrested the circle around Councillor Indan and his mysterious sorcerer. When Zayn had insisted that Warkannan would never involve himself in anything the least bit illegal, his superior officers had accepted his opinion, then decided that he was the ideal person to piece together information about Yarl Soutan and Warkannan’s investment group.

Zayn had also learned the Tribes’ language, Hirl-Onglay, which he spoke with no noticeable Kazraki accent. He had a knack for learning that went far beyond any abstract intelligence. Just from meeting comnee women at the horse fairs he had soaked up more information about their customs than ten Kazraki scholars might have done. He knew, for instance, that the comnees admired a man with endurance and that they’d see his supposed adultery as no crime at all. All his superiors had to do was to ensure that his little charade got itself played out at a horse fair. So far, the plan was working splendidly; he’d even had the sheer good luck to be rescued by a shaman, a spirit rider as the Tribes called them.

But many times in the following days, Zayn had to admit that he had never realized just how much that flogging was going to cost him. He had seen men flogged during his days in the cavalry, but they had endured a few quick stripes, four at the most, delivered by a man who knew them and who kept the lashes as light as he could while his commander watched. Their ordeal had been nothing like his.

That first day Zayn could barely stand, and in fact, Orador insisted he lie prone. The pain burned on his back like a fire dancing on oil. Although he could keep control of his own actions, the world around him ceased to make much sense. People came and went, their voices came and went, the sunlight fell or shadows deepened. Orador’s round face would suddenly swim into his field of vision. His broad, scar-flecked hands would shove a piece of leather between Zayn’s teeth for him to bite on, then drizzle stinging keese over the wounds. When Zayn came round from the resulting faint, the apprentice’s hands, slender but still calloused and scarred, would hold a bowl of water so he could drink. Afterwards Zayn would sleep, only to dream of the flogging all over again and wake in a cold sweat.

Finally, somewhere around noon of the second day he realized that the pain was lessening. He was lying on his stomach in Ammadin’s tent when Orador came in, looked over the wounds, and told him that they were scabbing up ‘nicely’, as the healer put it. While they throbbed, they had stopped burning.

‘Don’t sit up yet,’ Orador said. ‘I don’t want you breaking them open again.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Zayn said. ‘Thank you, by the way.’

‘You’re welcome. I’ll be back around sunset.’

‘Wait – can you tell me something? I had a bedroll and some saddlebags when I left the fort.’

‘It’s all right here.’ Orador glanced around, then pointed. ‘Over there by the tent flap. Nobody’s opened them.’

‘Thanks.’ Zayn let out his breath in a long sigh of relief. He carried things in those bags that he wanted no one to see, lock picks and other tools better suited to a thief than a soldier. During his initiation into the Chosen, he’d learned that they’d started out back in the Homelands as special military personnel called commandos during dangerous wars that threatened the existence of entire countries. Now, the battles all seemed to be against their own people, though always, or so he’d been told, in service to the laws of the Great Khan.

After Orador left, Zayn stretched his arms out to either side and laid his face against the blanket under him. He found himself wondering yet again what had made him come up with this wretched idea. It’s for the Great Khan, he told himself, and for the honour of the Chosen. The Chosen had become his whole life and his reason to live. Before his initiation he had been nothing, worthless – worse than worthless, a man set apart by evil secrets. They had rescued him, or so he saw it, and he owed them any amount of suffering in return. He fell asleep to dream that once again he stood bound to the pillar of blue quartz in the fiery room, a masked officer’s glowing knife at his throat, to swear his vow to the Chosen and the Great Khan.

Voices – women’s voices – woke him from the dream. Just outside Ammadin was talking with someone, discussing the horse fair. In a few minutes the other voice stopped, and the Spirit Rider lifted the tent flap and came in, carrying a roll of cloth in one hand. She knelt beside him with a thoughtful glance at his back.

‘Orador says you’re healing,’ Ammadin said.

‘I am, Holy One,’ Zayn said. ‘I can think again.’

‘That’s always good.’ She flashed a brief smile. ‘Don’t push yourself too hard.’ She laid a blue-and-green striped shirt down by his head. ‘This is for you. Don’t put it on until you can stand the feel of it, though.’

‘Thanks. I won’t, don’t worry.’

‘Those cavalry trousers of yours are stained all down the back with blood. Other than that, are they still wearable?’

‘Oh yes. I’ll wash them when I can. I’ve got another pair anyway. And I’ve got a hat for riding.’

‘Good. I’ll let you get back to sleep now.’

Zayn stayed awake, however, to rehearse his new identity. He’d invented all the details of his supposed affair with the official’s wife, just in case someone demanded them. He spent a long time drilling himself on the story, along with his new name. Over and over he repeated, both silently and whispered, ‘Zahir Benumar is dead. I am Zayn Hassan.’ By nightfall he believed it.

When Orador finally allowed him to walk around, Zayn discovered that eighty-three people rode with Ammadin’s comnee, ranging in age from two infants to white-haired Veradin, who at ninety could still ride a horse, provided her great-granddaughter helped her mount. With the single exception of Ammadin, all the women were closely related, but the adult men had all come from other comnees. Even so, the men tended to look much alike. To the eyes of most Kazraks, the people of the Tribes all looked alike, men and women both, with their light-coloured hair and pale eyes, fine noses and thin lips, but a trained observer like Zayn could see plenty of differences.

Zayn pretended to make mistakes anyway and endured some good-natured laughter at his expense. One mistake, however, was an honest one. He came out of Ammadin’s tent and saw a young man walking past – Dallador, he thought, and hailed him as such. The fellow turned and laughed.

‘I’m his cousin,’ he said. ‘Name’s Grenidor.’

‘My mistake!’ Zayn said. ‘I’m sorry.’

As they shook hands, Zayn studied his face. He could have been Dallador’s twin.

‘Your mothers were sisters?’ Zayn said.

‘No, we’re much more distantly related than that.’ Grenidor frowned, thinking. ‘Our grandmothers had the same mother. I think. You’d better ask Dallo.’

‘Oh, doesn’t matter.’

And yet, Zayn felt, it did matter, that two men so distantly related would look so much alike.

After two more days of doing very little, Zayn’s back healed enough for him to take over the job of leading Ammadin’s horses to water; she owned a stallion, fifteen brood mares, four saddle-broken geldings, and twelve colts and fillies. One of the geldings, a sorrel with a white off-fore, would be his riding horse, she told him, for as long as he was her servant. When, some few days later, the comnee packed up and left Blosk, Zayn could ride well enough to keep up with the communal herd and watch over her stock.

Like all comnee men, he was expected to do the cooking for those in his tent. Since Dallador had gone out of his way to befriend him, Zayn asked him to teach him.

‘I don’t know a damn thing about cooking. Back home food is women’s work.’

‘You can’t eat very well, then. What do women know about preparing game?’

‘Well, we don’t eat much game. Sheep and chickens – that’s about it for meat.’

Dallador rolled his eyes in disgust. ‘Not much of a cuisine. Well, come watch me when I’m cooking. You’ll catch on quick enough.’

‘Thanks. I appreciate it. I don’t even know what’s edible out here. We had servants in the officers’ mess who took care of all that.’

Dallador laughed. ‘First lesson: don’t eat anything until I’ve told you it’s not poisonous.’

Since the comnee was hurrying to reach the summer grazing grounds, they never made a full camp at night, but they always raised Ammadin’s tent, because it housed the god figures, they told him, and the chief’s splendid white and red tent, because he was the chief and no reason more. After a meal at one fire or another, Zayn would take his bedroll and go sleep in the summer grass. In the morning he would return, toss his bedroll into a wagon, and make a fire to cook breadmoss porridge. Ammadin would join him, eat in silence, and then, after a few words about the horses, she would leave, saddling one of the geldings and riding alone in advance of the comnee.

In their brief times together, Zayn studied her. Unlike the rest of the comnee women, she wore little jewellery, only a true-hawk feather hanging from a gold stud in one ear. Her long, blonde hair was bound up in heavy braids, like a crown over her soft, bronzed face, oddly pretty and sensual for such a solitary soul. Her eyes, however, showed nothing but the hardness of someone who keeps a distance from the world. Fittingly enough they were the pale grey of steel.

Zayn had no idea of what to think of her magic, but everyone in the comnee believed in it. Ammadin would at times make them charms out of coloured thread and the chitinous portions of various native insects, ‘bugs’ as the first settlers had indiscriminately called the smaller life-forms that came their way. Most of the horses in the herd had bluebuh-claw charms in their halters to ward off lameness and colic; the children in the comnee all wore thongs full of reebuh charms around their necks to keep them healthy and free from evil spirits. Since the good health of the Tribes was legendary, and they had nothing between them and illness but the charms, Zayn could only conclude that somehow or other, the magic worked.

The comnee had been travelling nearly a week before he saw hard evidence that Ammadin did know things beyond the reach of ordinary people. Although the sun shone warm in a clear sky, she announced that it was going to rain.

‘When that happens, we’ll make a real camp and set up all the tents. You can sleep in mine, but you sleep on your side and me on mine. Understand?’

‘Never would I offend you, Holy One.’

During the day’s ride, Zayn would occasionally look up at the clear sky and wonder what Ammadin would say when the sunset came dry. He never found out, because in the middle of the afternoon the wind picked up, rushing in from the south and making the tall grass bow and ripple like the waves of a purple sea. Ammadin galloped back to the comnee; she rode up and down the line of march to shout orders to make camp. When Zayn looked to the south, he saw clouds piling up white and ominously thick on the horizon. By the time the comnee found a decent campsite near a stream, the sky was filling with thunderheads, racing in before the wind.

Everyone rushed to set up the tents and bring the wagons round into a circle. They unloaded the wagons, piled everything helter-skelter into the tents, then ran to tether the horses. The rain began in a warning spatter of big drops. The women as well as the men kept their shirts dry by stripping them off and tossing them into a tent. Just as they finished tethering the stock, the rain began to fall in sheets, sweeping across the open plains like slaps from a hand. The women clustered around Ammadin to ask her if there was going to be lightning that might panic the herds.

‘I don’t know yet, but I’ll find out. Zayn, you can go get dry.’

Zayn trotted back to her tent. He crawled in, stripped the worst of the water out of his hair, and let himself drip a bit before he put his dry shirt back on. Although a few drops came in the smokehole in the centre of the tent, the leather baffles kept the worst of it out. Zayn was pleased with the tents. About twelve feet across, they were solid, dry, and good to look at, too. It wasn’t a bad way to live, he decided, owning only what you could carry. He set to work sorting out their bedrolls, the woven tent bags that hung from hooks on the walls, the floor cloths of thick horsehair felt. When he tried to lay the floor cloths out, the tall grass sprang up and made them billow. He was swearing and trying to tread it down when Dallador joined him.

‘I thought you’d need some help. There’s a sickle in one of the tent bags. You cut the grass and pile it up under your blankets.’

Although the sickle had a bronze blade, not a steel one, it cut grass well enough. Thread-like leaves, tipped with red spores, fringed each long violet stalk. Dallador showed him how to grab a handful of stalks at the ground and harvest them in a smooth stroke. By the time Ammadin returned, they had the tent decently arranged.

‘Will there be lightning?’ Dallador said.

‘None,’ Ammadin said. ‘I’ve already told the women.’

Dallador bowed to her and left.

Ammadin laid two pairs of saddlebags down on her blankets, then knelt beside them. From one set she pulled out a red-and-white rug and the god figures. Zayn saluted them with hands together, then turned his back. It wasn’t his place as a servant to watch her set them out.

‘You’ve got some idea of how we live, I see,’ Ammadin said.

‘Well, I served on the border before. Before this last trip out, I mean.’

‘Ah. All right, I’m done now.’

Zayn turned back. Ammadin sat down on her blankets and undid her braids to let the long tangle of golden hair spill over her shoulders and breasts. Zayn had to summon his will to keep from staring at her. She began to comb out her wet hair with a bone comb while he got an oil lamp and set it on the flat hearth stones under the smokehole. Matches he found in a silver box inside one of the tent bags. As the light brightened, he sat down opposite her and noticed a strange pattern of scars on her left shoulder.

‘How did you get those scars?’ Zayn said. ‘They look like some kind of claw mark.’

‘That’s exactly what they are. The slasher I killed to make my cloak? He got a good swing on me.’

‘You killed it yourself?’

‘Of course. It wouldn’t have any power if someone else did it for me. Spirit riders have to get everything they use for magic by themselves.’

‘Makes sense, I suppose. How did you kill it?’

‘Arrows first, then a couple of spears to finish him off. He broke the first one.’

Zayn looked her over with a curiosity that had nothing to do with lust. She was about as muscled as a woman could get, he supposed; her shoulders and arms were strongly and clearly defined, heavy with sinewy muscles.

‘What’s wrong?’ Ammadin said. ‘You mean your women back home don’t kill saurs?’

‘Not that I ever heard of.’

‘Huh! Your women couldn’t even kill a yellabuh if it flew their way.’

Since she smiled, he allowed himself a laugh. She turned to look at him, and as the lamplight caught them her eyes flashed blood-red and glowed. Another movement, and they returned to their normal grey, leaving him to wonder if he’d imagined the change.

‘You have to do a lot of difficult things if you’re going to ride the Spirit Road,’ Ammadin went on. ‘I knew that from the moment I decided to ride it.’

‘When do you make a decision like that?’

‘When you’re a child, but they give you plenty of chances later to back down. I left my mother’s comnee when I was five to ride with the man who trained me.’

During a lull in the rain, Orador came by to invite Zayn to join the men in Apanador’s enormous tent. After the chief’s wife left to visit friends, the men of the comnee filed in and sat down round the fire burning under the smokehole. The married men sat in order of age nearest the chief; the unmarried men, Zayn among them, sat farthest away with their backs to the draughty door. Apanador opened a wooden box and took out a drinking bowl, gleaming with silver in the firelight. He filled it from a skin of keese, had a sip, then passed it to the man on his left. As it went round, each man took only a small ritual sip before passing the bowl on. When it came to Zayn, he saw that it was a human cranium, silvered on the inside. Zayn took a sip, then passed it to Palindor, who looked him over with cold eyes.

Once they’d emptied the ritual cup, Apanador filled ordinary ground-stone bowls and passed them round. The men drank silently and looked only at the fire unless they were reaching for a skin of keese. This was the right way to drink, Zayn decided, with neither courtly chatter nor the kind of bragging men do just to be bragging. Finally, after everyone had had three bowls, Apanador spoke.

‘It’s time to make some decisions about this summer.’

The unmarried men laid their bowls down and got up to leave. When Zayn followed them out, Palindor caught his arm from behind in the darkness. Out of sheer reflex, Zayn nearly killed him. He had his hunting knife out of his belt and in his hand before he even realized what he was doing, but just in time he caught himself, stepped back, and sheathed it. Palindor smiled at the gesture.

‘Listen, Kazrak. The Holy One was good enough to pick you off the street like a piece of garbage. Treat her with the respect she deserves, or I’ll kill you.’

‘I have every intention of treating her the way I’d treat the Great Khan’s favourite wife.’

‘Good. I’ll make sure you do.’

His tone of voice challenged, but Zayn had trained his emotions too highly to take offence. With a shrug, he walked off in the rain and left the comnee man scowling after him.

In the tent Zayn found Ammadin sitting close to the flickering lamp. Beside her, on a piece of blue cloth, lay four smooth spheres of transparent crystal, each a good size for cupping in a hand. The lamp light shone through one sphere and cast on the tent wall curving shadows of numbers and strange symbols. He focused his mind and captured a memory picture of them. When he returned to the khanate he would draw it for his superiors. Ammadin noticed him staring at the shadow.

‘There are tiny numbers engraved all around each crystal, like a sort of belt,’ she said. ‘That’s what you’re seeing.’

‘Interesting,’ Zayn said. ‘But should I be looking at them? I’ll leave if I’m breaking one of your Banes.’

‘It’s perfectly all right. They’re just glass at the moment. They don’t have any power unless you know the incantations that wake their spirits.’

As he sat down on his bedroll, Zayn tried to look solemn instead of sceptical. In the dim light, the crystals glittered as if they were faceted, but their surfaces appeared perfectly smooth.

‘Can the spirits answer questions?’

‘Oh yes, but only certain kinds.’

‘Can they tell me why Palindor hates me?’

‘What?’ Ammadin looked up with a laugh. ‘I don’t need spirit power to answer that. Palindor wants to marry me, and here you are, sleeping in my tent.’

It was just the sort of thing that might get in the way of his mission.

‘I can sleep outside under a wagon.’

‘Why? I’m not going to marry him, and he’ll have to get used to it. If he gives you any trouble, just tell me. I said you could sleep here, and that’s that.’

‘Look, I’m totally dependent on the comnee’s charity. I don’t want to cause any trouble.’

‘You’re a strange man for a Kazrak. Which reminds me. I’ve been meaning to ask you something. Every other Kazrak I’ve ever known prayed to your god five times a day. You don’t. Why? No one here would say anything against it, if that’s what’s bothering you.’

Zayn froze. He could never tell her the truth, could never admit that men like him were forbidden to pray, that prayers from such a polluted creature would only offend the Lord.

‘Uh well,’ he said at last. ‘I do pray, but silently. Usually we’re riding when the time comes, and I don’t want to advertise my piety or anything like that. The Lord won’t mind.’

‘The Lord? I thought his name was Allah.’

‘That’s not a name, it’s a title. It just means “the lord” in the sacred language.’

Ammadin nodded, then took pieces of cloth from her saddlebags and began wrapping up the spirits. She laid each crystal down in the exact centre of a cloth, then folded the corners over in a precise motion while she murmured a few strange syllables under her breath. Once wrapped, each went into a separate soft leather pouch; while she tied a thong around the mouth, she chanted again. As he watched this long procedure, Zayn felt his body growing aware of her. There they were, in the dim tent together, with the rain drumming a drowsy rhythm on the roof.

She was a comnee woman, not one of the chastity-bound girls at home. Ammadin raised her head and looked at him.

‘No.’

Zayn nearly swore aloud. What had she done, read his thoughts? When she looked him over as if she could see through his eyes and into his soul, all his sexual interest vanished. He got up and busied himself with arranging his bedroll on the far side of the tent.

The rain came down intermittently all night. When the morning broke grey with clouds, the comnee decided to stay in camp. After he tended the horses, Zayn went to Dallador’s tent mostly because Ammadin had told him to leave her alone – to work, she said, and he wondered what strange ritual she had in hand.

A fire burned on the hearth stones under the smokehole, and Dallador sat near it, carving slices of a red animal horn into the little pegs used to fasten shirts and tent bags. His small son sat nearby and watched solemnly and silently where a Kazraki boy would have been pelting his father with questions. Zayn joined them and studied the way Dallador cut peg after peg with no wasted motion.

‘Can I ask you something?’ Zayn said at last.

‘What?’

‘It’s about Ammadin. Uh, is there something odd about her eyes?’

‘Very.’ Dallador looked up with a quick grin. ‘You’ve seen them flash, I’ll bet.’

‘Yes. I certainly did.’

‘That’s the mark of the spirit riders. It shows up when a child’s about as old as Benno here. That’s how the parents know their child’s going to be a spirit rider.’

‘What if a person didn’t have those eyes but wanted to study the lore anyway?’

‘They wouldn’t have a hope in hell. No one would teach them. It’s a sign that they can see things ordinary people can’t. If they have the spirit eyes, then they have spirit ears, too, and they can hear spirits talking.’