Post by Seek on Sept 24, 2015 3:10:16 GMT 10
Title: The Breath of the Dragon
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Dog Days, (#91)
Summary: Qasim ibn Zirhud's first encounter with the King's Own coincides with two children of the Sunset Dragon going missing.
Notes: Set in the The Heart of Your Brother series, which focuses on the Bazhir. Companion to The Strength of Lions (forthcoming). I credit Max's excellent fic, The Fox Boy for the mention of Pearlmouth as the Dana'a.
-
It was late in the year, as the Bazhir reckoned, and the arid winds blew across the desert from the southwest: bringing, or so Qasim imagined, just the faintest hint of sea-salt from where the Emerald Ocean met the Great Inland Sea on the coastline.
They had a name for these winds, in his tribe: the Breath of the Dragon. It was said the dragon’s breath sucked all the moisture from a man’s tongue and scourged bones dry with the sands it carried. When the Breath of the Dragon came, it marked the beginning of the trading season, when the Sunset Dragon packed up their tents and made the yearly journey to the cooler lands of the south to the Dana’a to trade for Tyran spices and coffee and fragrant woods, incense and other goods.
They would camp there, just beyond where the desert yielded grudgingly to the coastal hills, for several slow months, until the season turned, the dragon slumbering once again, and then they began their journey north once more.
Many of the other tribes made similar journeys. Far to the south, the Sleeping Lion, too, traded at the Dana’a, but also with other towns along the coastline, sometimes even travelling to where Tyra sat, where the branches of the Drell flowed onwards into the the Great Inland Sea. Far closer to the traditional ranging grounds of the Sunset Dragon, the Sandrunners simply went north, to Persopolis and the camps of the hill country. There was no love lost between the tribes and the hillmen, but their work with metal and leather was unparalleled, and many a time, the Sandrunners traded intricately-worked brooches and bangles and knives with the Sunset Dragon.
His father had well-worn hillman-crafted sandals that withstood the harsh wear of the desert far better than the soft goat-hide many of their tribe favoured. The next year, he had said, he would see if the Sandrunners brought with them anything that was suitable for Qasim. Qasim understood what he meant: they were not poor. But they were not wealthy, either. Half the time, his feet jutted out from his fraying goat-hide sandals, no matter how he did his best to mend them, and Zirhud ibn Tuhal was not fool enough to throw away gold on hillman-leather until his son stopped outgrowing what he was wearing within a few weeks.
That year, the Sunset Dragon lingered in its traditional grounds far longer that it usually did. The Breath of the Dragon raked across the village, and many kept their tents open to the fullest extent, for it was terribly stuffy within the tent, despite the shade. One evening, as he kept his eye to the goats grazing on the sparse grasses amongst the dunes, Qasim spied a figure in the distance. The sun was against him; he shaded his eyes with his free hand, trying to make out who it was.
A group of riders, he concluded. Sunlight gleamed off steel, but he was yet too distant for Qasim to make out if they were wearing any colours, or even the red armband that signalled truce, or at least peaceable intention. Riders, though, often never boded well. The hillmen who turned bandit often did not range this far into the desert, but it ill-paid to be overconfident. He reached out to thumb the goat-hide sling that he’d looped through his belt, and then made sure that the pebbles he’d retrieved—all of them sand-smoothened and elongated, perfect for throwing—were still where he’d left them.
One of the goats bleated, and regarded him with eyes the colour of bark. The dyed thread twined about one of its horns indicated that it belonged to his father. Qasim sighed. Watching the goats wasn’t the most exciting of chores, but it was important, all the same. Last year, Amman Kemail had cuffed Sarid and punished him because he’d chosen to sneak into Munirah’s tent instead of watching the goats, as he was supposed to. He hadn’t seen the roc until it’d carried off fully a tenth of the tribe’s livestock.
“Who do you think that is?”
That was Ashraf. He, too, had noticed the riders. He stood up, leaning against his spear. Ashraf was several years older than Qasim and well-liked by almost everyone in the tribe. He had, for some reason, taken a liking to Qasim, and while he was just old enough to take his own turn at sentry duty, he had instead elected to accompany Qasim in keeping an eye over the tribe’s goats as they grazed collectively.
It was Ashraf who had noticed the roc carrying away five bleating goats in its claws; it was Ashraf who had sounded the whistle of alarm and hurled a spear at the roc. Nevermind that he hadn’t killed it but only succeeded in annoying the immortal. It was Ashraf who had killed the wild lynx with a flung stone through the eye before it could maul young Husari to death, the way it’d killed his father. Ashraf could hit desertfowl at sixty paces with his sling; he was always smiling, never complained, and he wielded a spear like it was an extension of his arm.
Most of the other boys of the tribe held Ashraf in awe. Qasim had, too, at first.
He had always been alone. Ashraf had changed that.
“I don’t know,” Qasim said. “I think it’s too far to make out anything.”
Ashraf nodded, and fell back with a lazy sigh. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “I bet it’s kingsmen, though.”
Qasim blinked. It was still a new and tenuous thing, he had been told, this peace between the Northern King-Who-Was-Voice and the tribes of the Bazhir. It was a strange idea, thinking of them as one people. The Sandrunners and the Sunset Dragon had more than their share of blood feuds, and it seemed almost impossible that they’d once—a very long time ago—been kin. It was a Northern concept, Zirhud had said, wearily, when he was in one of his moods.
Qasim had very quickly learned that his father was unapproachable when those moods swept over him. His father had never taken his hand to him—at least, not without cause—but when the dark moods came, he became even more distant, drawing closed the hangings that separated his side of the tent from Qasim’s. Sometimes, Qasim heard the soft rasp of a Tyran reed-pen against parchment. But he never dared to look, to attempt to read what his father was writing.
“How do you know?” he asked.
Ashraf smiled. “It’s just a guess,” he said. “But for tribesmen to travel in a group without packhorses or tents is strange. They would know they are venturing into Sunset Dragon territory. They do not carry any goods with them, either.”
He hadn’t noticed.
“We’ll know soon enough,” Ashraf added.
Almost as soon as he spoke, Qasim heard the shrill cry of a sentry’s warning whistle. Two quick notes, then three ascending, indicating he’d spotted a potential threat.
“Come on,” Ashraf said, scooping up his spear. “You know what we’re supposed to do.” When the warning whistle came, they were to immediately begin herding the goats together and moving them swiftly to the holding pens. This was to prevent raiders from cutting the herds off from the tribe’s defences, rendering them easy targets. A tribe’s livestock was its wealth; tribes who lost their goats became impoverished or died out quickly. Their survivors joined other tribes, gave up their old tribe’s name and became blood-kin with their new tribe.
As they began moving the goats—Qasim sustained a kick to his shin from a particularly stubborn goat, and cursed quietly—they heard the whistle indicating that the threat had passed.
Qasim sighed. “Couldn’t they have given that earlier?” he muttered, as he gave up the unequal struggle. The goats bleated happily as they wandered and grazed as they willed.
He’d scattered his slingstones too. He searched for them, setting them back in their neat stack. Ashraf helped. He nodded approvingly as he felt the stones Qasim had chosen. “Good choice,” Ashraf said. “Want to show me some of your sling skills?”
Qasim looked at him. “Where?” he wanted to know.
Ashraf cast about for a suitable target. “What about…there. That rock. The one half-buried in sand.” It looked like a tray, sunk at an angle into the sand. It must have been fifty paces; a respectable distance, for any Bazhir slinger. Still, Qasim raised his eyebrows. The target was wide enough that it was quite certain he would hit it.
“Give,” Ashraf said, holding out his hand. Qasim unlooped the sling from his belt with a light tug and handed it over. Ashraf bent, picked up one of Qasim’s chosen stones and tossed it and caught it in his hand, assessing it. Then, he placed it in the sling’s pouch, frowned at the rock, and began to whirl the sling about, his tongue between his teeth. Qasim watched him. After a full rotation, he released, sending the stone whizzing through the air. It hit the rock at an angle, slid, but then managed to cling to the rock somehow. “There you go,” Ashraf said, with a smile. “Better? Knock that off the rock.”
Qasim nodded appreciatively. That was a much harder task. “How many tries?”
Ashraf nodded to the four stacked stones. “Let us say…as many stones as you have, now.”
“All right,” Qasim said. He knelt, picked up one of the stones. He hefted it, trying to get a feel for the projectile. Ashraf had taught him to use a sling, a long time ago. He knew it should have been his father, who taught him. He knew he should not feel bitter about it.
He slotted it into the sling’s pouch as he eyed the target, trying to visualise what he needed to do. An overhead throw wouldn’t help; his stone had to skid into Ashraf’s, and dislodge it. He swung once, twice, testing, and then he began the rotation-and-release for real. He’d misjudged; his stone slammed into the sand two lengths from the rock, scattering dust in its wake.
Don’t think about it, Qasim told himself, as he picked up the second stone. This one came closer; it jostled Ashraf’s stone. For a moment, he thought Ashraf’s stone might tip and tumble off the rock, but then it simply rocked to and fro and decided to stay put.
Qasim let out a slow, frustrated breath.
Ashraf laughed. “You’re not going to get it off the rock now,” he observed.
Glumly, Qasim acquiesced. “You’re right,” he said. He couldn’t dislodge two stones with a cast stone. He wondered if Ashraf could.
He began the long trudge to collect his slingstones from the rock.
-
Ashraf had been right.
As they led the goats back into the communal pen at nightfall and headed for the evening meal at the fires, Qasim saw a few men—pale, as most Northmen were, with hair that gleamed bright like gold—seated in the place of honour before the fires.
He recognised, as well, the tall, brawny figure of Amman Kemail; the headman of the Sunset Dragon was offering them truce-water, though only one of them had remembered to wear the red.
“Kingsmen,” Ashraf breathed into his ear. He’d seen them too. “D’you see that?”
Qasim looked. “The blue and white and silver?” he asked.
Ashraf nodded. “The king’s colours,” he said. “They’re men of the King’s Own.”
Qasim’s breath caught in his throat. He’d heard about them—how could he not? The men of the King’s Own were infamous among the tribes. Their commander was said to be a giant of a man who had easily beaten Assam Fadim of the Sandrunners in a knife-fight, and Assam Fadim was as swift as a snake and five times as clever.
Most of the southern tribes were wary; they did not entirely trust the King in the North nor the men who swore allegiance to him, for all the decades that had passed. This, Ashraf had once told him, had been because word had not travelled to the southernmost tribes in time for them to be present when the Voice-that-Was, Ali Mukhtab, had passed from the world, leaving the son of the Northern King as the next Voice of the Tribes.
“It is said that Alhaz ibn Shahir had travelled across half the desert to arrive and still he had not made it in time,” Ashraf had said. “And that night he communed with the Voice was his last. He turned back the next day and has been silent ever since.”
Qasim did not understand it; not yet, not quite. Many in their tribe had been unhappy at the word that their Voice was now a Northman, but Amman Kemail had spoken and he had told them that it cost them nothing to wait and see who this new Voice was. “It is folly,” he had said, that night before the fires of the Sunset Dragon, “To judge a man by blood rather than by what he does. And so we shall watch and wait and see what this son of the North does.” For this reason, most of the Sunset Dragon still communed with the Voice. His father had said that the Sleeping Lion no longer did.
Qasim hadn’t been born, then. Neither had Ashraf. He had only heard of that decision from Hassan, but the tribe’s storyteller knew everything, or so Qasim had decided.
“We aren’t the Sandrunners,” Qasim said. He frowned at the kingsmen, wondering what they were doing here. “What d’you think they’re doing here?”
“They must be trying to improve relations with the other tribes,” Ashraf said, thoughtfully. He shrugged. “We’ll find out, in a bit.” He strode forward, pushing between the tents, towards the central fires, Qasim following him.
There were eight kingsmen, all in all. Qasim revised his count to ten as two more joined their comrades, moving from the direction of the horse-pickets. One of them was tall and lean; the other short and brawny, but they spoke amiably with each other, laughing and joking at some joke he could not make out with the air of those who were long friends.
The rest of the tribe were beginning to gather at the central fire. Gossip spread faster among the Bazhir than water spilled into the hungry desert sands; the presence of the kingsmen would’ve been known about from the moment they first set foot into the village proper.
Amman Kemail stood up, immediately drawing all attention to him. Everyone knew and respected Amman Kemail; he was fair, Zirhud had conceded, for all he said little about the man. A headman had to be fair, he had to be judge and mediator among the men and women of his tribe, but Amman Kemail commanded a respect that, Qasim thought privately, few headmen seemed to. Perhaps it had to do with his willingness to admit that he had been too hasty to judge the current Voice, with his willingness to watch and wait and only then judge. Perhaps it had to do with his strong, commanding presence. It was said, once, that two quarrelling tribesmen had fallen silent at Amman’s approach and then swiftly resolved their differences.
Qasim wondered if Ashraf could tell him if that was true.
“These are men of the Northern King,” Amman said. His voice carried across the space easily enough. “You may remember word of the King’s Own riding with the Sandrunners. This season, they have come to live among us for a time.” Qasim noticed that Amman said nothing about the Dana’a, nothing about their delayed journey. He wondered why. “They have been welcomed to our fires and shade, and I have granted them water-right.”
“Probably just the sergeant,” Ashraf remarked, quietly. “Even Amman Kemail would take forever if he had to personally offer each one of them water-right.”
“But it must be done,” Qasim protested, keeping his voice down. Hospitality was sacred to the Balance and every Bazhir was bound to offer those of peaceful intent—whether tribesman or stranger—the triad of fire, shade, and water. Fire and shade could be offered and was in practice often offered by the sentries of a tribe, but everyone knew that the water-right was important, and only the headman of a tribe could offer it. Water-right bound both headman and the guest into a sacred compact; they could not offer violence to each other for a moon without transgressing against the Balance. The days of tribesman against kingsman were long past, but the importance of water-right had been ingrained into Qasim. There were far too many stories of a headman who had failed to offer water-right and the guest had butchered the men of the tribe in their sleep. He could not imagine delaying it, despite how impractical it would have been.
Ashraf shrugged. He, at least, was unperturbed. “Doubtless he will offer the rest of them water-right later on,” he remarked.
By now, Amman Kemail had finished speaking. He offered the leader of the men—Qasim realised that the crimson truce-band around his biceps bore a strange symbol, but could not make it out from this distance in the firelight—a nod.
The dusky-skinned man spoke up. His voice was a light tenor, Qasim thought, the sort that made you think of a breeze moving lightly over desert grass. “I am Lofric of Tirragen, sergeant in the King’s Own.” he said, formally. “On behalf of my men, I thank you for your tribe’s hospitality, Amman Kemail.”
And that was it. The tension—and he was surprised to realise that it had been there in the first place—dissolved out of the watching tribesmen; he smelled the fragrance of food as it was brought out and his stomach growled. The drinking began, and afterwards, old Hassan would recite the stories of the Sunset Dragon to their visitors. It was how things were done.
“That’s it, then,” Ashraf said, clapping Qasim on the shoulder. “Come on, then. Aren’t you hungry?”
-
That night, his father drew the partition hangings and Qasim heard the dry, scratching sound as Zirhud set pen to parchment once again. His father had not spoken to him that day.
He lay on his side and tugged the woven blanket closer about him. For all the dragon’s breath scoured the desert in the day, it was still chilly at night. But less than it would be at the end of the trading season, when they were returning to their usual grazing grounds.
He was beginning to recognise Zirhud’s various silences. This one was the uncomfortable, dark silence: the one that made his father seem worlds away, for all he could draw back the colourful woven hanging and—
And what?
Look into his father’s eyes? See the stranger gazing out of them, back at him?
Qasim hid his sigh, and tried to sleep. One day, he thought, he would understand his father better. He would know what the man wrote about, in the dark, inscrutable hours of the moonless night before dawn. He wished, sometimes, that his mother had not died. He barely remembered her. He had been told by old Hassan that Faiza Bashir had died in a hurrock attack on the tribe; this had been during the Immortal Wars, when it was still possible for sentries to be taken by surprise. None of them had expected an attack from the skies, and not at dusk.
“She protected you,” Hassan had said. Qasim did not understand the expression in the old man’s eyes. Hassan said, “We thought you were dead. Then we heard a faint cry and realised you were beneath her.” He shook his head tiredly. “Even then, you gave us a scare. We saw the blood and thought you had been injured. But it had all been hers.”
“And then what happened?” Qasim had asked, with the thirst of a boy who had never known; whose father had always ignored questions about his mother.
Hassan shook his head. “Amman Kemail came,” he said, simply. “He set up sentries through the camp and had you taken to Surai Imran’s tent. Ibn Tuhal was not among the Sunset Dragon at that time, and so you remained with her until he returned.”
“Why was he away?” Qasim had asked.
Hassan hesitated. At long last, the tribe’s storyteller had said, “He was with the kingsmen, fighting. I do not know why. That is a story only he has the right to tell.”
-
That night, Qasim twitched awake. He lay on his back, trying to figure what had woken him up—it had been a distant sound, he realised. He thought he’d heard the laughter of a hyena, of all things.
There were no hyenas here; just jackals and wild desert dogs and foxes with the occasional lynx. He wasn’t sure if the knowledge made him feel any better.
He was, however, extremely tired. The next moment, he had drifted back to sleep again.
-
The next morning, it was discovered that the young children of Sirhan Parsha had vanished without a trace. The latter was not unusual in the desert; the wind often erased traces of passage, making tracking difficult.
The visitors were eyed with wary suspicion—had they not come among the tribe the night before? Had Hakim Parsha and Maryam Parsha not disappeared only this morning?
Sirhan Parsha led the outcry against the kingsmen, his white-knuckled hands never far from his sword-hilt. Zirhud only shook his head grimly and joined the tribesmen combing the area for any sign of where the children might have wandered off to.
“Children wander,” Lofric of Tirragen said, carefully. He was standing beside Amman Kemail.
The headman shook his head. “Not ours. Not like this,” he said, simply. “The desert is dangerous.”
“So is a city,” Lofric replied. “But I do not contest your knowledge of your own. The King’s Own will offer whatever assistance we can.”
Amman looked at him. “Have your men stay out of our way,” he said, bluntly. “I’ll post a guard with them at all times. We are capable of taking care of our own.”
Lofric said, “As you wish.”
Amman added, “It is best to take precautions to prevent any rash action.”
Lofric bowed his head. “Headman,” he acknowledged.
Qasim slipped away, trying to make sense of the conversation. Lofric had been offered water-right; the previous night, Amman Kemail had personally gone to each of the sergeant’s men and offered them water-right as well. It wasn’t against the Balance per se if they had kidnapped or killed the missing children because they hadn’t been Amman Kemail’s children but it was still extremely frowned upon. By extending them water-right, it was as if Amman Kemail, too, had attacked the children.
If they had done it.
He didn’t know what to think.
Why had Hakim and Maryam gone missing? He worried at the puzzle as he gathered water to bring back to his tent and hurriedly washed up and dragged a comb through his hair. Surai Imran would nag at him if she caught him like this.
There was no sign of Ashraf either; Qasim supposed he had joined the search parties. He wandered out of the tent. He was somewhat too young to help, being not yet of the age where he would be permitted to take up the spear, much less participate in the Moment of the Voice.
“Qasim!” He had been wandering around the camp; Surai Imran’s voice drew him back with a start.
“Yes, Surai?” he asked.
The veiled woman crossed over to him. With one hand, she tugged her askew veil back into place; with the other, she bore a tray of steaming food. “Bring this to our visitors,” she said. “You know where to get the rest?”
“Your tent, Surai.”
She nodded to him. “Get moving, then,” she said. Qasim accepted the tray, but hesitated.
“Have they found them?”
Surai shook her head. “They have not,” she said. “But the headman has reminded us that having offered them guest-right, we are bound to treat them with courtesy.” Qasim wondered if she, too, believed that the kingsmen had done the deed. He did not dare ask; instead, he headed off in the direction of the kingsmen’s tents.
-
They did not have tents big enough for ten men. So the men of the Sunset Dragon had taken the second-best option: they had set up two tents of woven goat’s hair, next to each other, and removed some of the abutting material, so that both tents connected to each other and the kingsmen shared their quarters. Ghalib and Talib stood guard by the tents, the flap down, despite the heat of the dragon’s breath. Ghalib blinked as he noticed Qasim. “What are you doing here?” he wanted to know, his arms folded across his chest. The spear was propped against the tent-frame.
His brother, Talib, added, “It’s not safe, Ibn Zirhud. Stay where someone can keep an eye on you.” He leaned easily on his spear, smiling beatifically.
Qasim frowned, and made no attempt to conceal his irritation. His voice had broken not too long ago, and he had begun to put on the whipcord muscle that would one day be needed for the spear, but Talib Zefri was of an age with Ashraf and enjoyed rubbing his newfound adulthood in the faces of the other boys. “That’s what you and your spear are for, Talib,” he replied, with a smile that was more a flash of teeth. “After all, let it not be said that a man of the tribe let a boy get killed as he was standing guard outside the tents.”
Talib’s fingers tightened around the haft of his spear. “Keep hiding behind men, Ibn Zirhud,” he ground out. Ghalib casually shifted a few paces and draped a restraining hand over his younger brother’s shoulder.
“Do you have business here, Ibn Zirhud?” he asked, his voice deceptively casual.
“Surai Imran sent me,” Qasim replied, indicating the tray of food he carried. “I’m to bring them breakfast.”
“Breakfast?” Talib muttered, shaking his head. “I haven’t even had breakfast.”
Ghalib said, “It can’t be helped. The missing Parsha children…” his voice trailed off. “Barely over a decade ago, we would have searched the camp, but we would have known what the cause was, and we would have written them off as lost.”
“Why?” Qasim could not decide if he had asked the question, or if Talib had.
Ghalib looked at both of them. “You’re both too young to remember,” he said, matter-of-factly, “But there was a time before the Black City was purged.” They both shivered as he spoke the name; Ghalib turned aside and spat into the sand and then made the Sign to ward off the eye of evil. “The Nameless Ones who dwelled there called to the young of the tribes. If he were not tied, a boy could easily wander north to the Black City, to his death.” He shook his head darkly. “If you knew the signs, you could tie him, to keep him back from the City’s call, but he would starve to death, all the same, wasting away slowly. When the Nameless Ones drive their hooks into the young, they do not easily let go.”
Qasim said, “Then why bind them here?”
Ghalib said, sternly, “It is a more merciful end, to waste to death in the company of brothers, than to die alone, devoured by demons in the Black City. In any case, the City was cleansed and its evil destroyed. Now, Amman Kemail is wise to rouse the tribe, for we know it could not be the Nameless Ones who are responsible for the missing Parsha children.”
“How?” Talib demanded. “Perhaps the Northern King lies. Perhaps his bi—”
Ghalib’s fist casually smashed into his younger brother’s jaw. “Truly,” he murmured, “You must learn to control your tongue, little Talib, or our father will be ashamed to know he has raised a barbarian who speaks no differently from the Stone Dogs.”
Talib lifted his chin, defiantly. Qasim could already see the shadow of a bruise darkening his tanned skin. “Bas ibn Murrahad is a fine leader of men, and I would never be ashamed to have my name uttered in the same breath as his.”
“Ghalib?” Qasim asked. The older man eyed him.
“Yes?”
“How do we know it isn’t the B—the Nameless Ones?” his tongue danced and stuttered over the name of the Black City. “No one goes there, all the same. My father calls it an accursed place.”
Ghalib shook his head. “There has been no word, no unaccounted for disappearances. No tribe has brought these to attention during a Gathering. And those who lived when the Black City was a constant scourge remember. The Called often went insane; they chewed through ropes, they walked their feet to tatters, still struggling to make their way to the Black City. None of the signs were present. No, I perceive that our missing children have run afoul of one of the desert’s many dangers.”
Qasim’s skin crawled. He remembered he still held the tray. “May I go in?”
Ghalib shrugged. “Amman Kemail did not say no one was to enter,” he remarked, settling back on his heels. “He only said the northmen were not to leave unaccompanied.”
Taking that for a yes, Qasim thanked him and lifted the flap of the first tent and carefully bore the tray in. He did not carry enough food for ten men; he would have to make several trips to and from Surai Imran’s tent.
The kingsmen looked up as he entered. He counted five of them in this tent, with Sergeant Lofric among them. He was sprawled lazily on a colourful woven rug, and he held a feather in his hand. For a few moments, Qasim was puzzled—until he realised that it was some form of pen, and the man was writing into a leatherbound book with it.
He had seldom seen books. Few among the Sunset Dragon had use for them. But Zirhud did, Qasim thought. He had a few of them, some with clever drawings in coloured inks. Sometimes, his father let him peer at them. He would tell him what a thing was in the old language: perhaps a rose, or a cloud. There was a particular book, which Zirhud often read, with an impression of a starry night stamped into the worn leather cover. His callused hands were strangely gentle on the book’s bindings, as he peeled delicate, thin pages apart.
Two of the men—the ones Qasim had seen join the tribe from the horse-pickets—sat on cushions and rolled bone dice. The third was with them. The tall man looked up, first. Now that he was closer, Qasim noticed, fascinated, that he wore his dark hair in long braids, with plain ivory beads at the end. They clacked as he moved and grinned at Qasim. “What’re you doing here, boy?” There was a hint of an accent to his voice, Qasim realised. He didn’t sound like Lofric had, or the folk at the Dana’a, who weren’t Bazhir.
He held out the tray by way of answer. “I’m Qasim ibn Zirhud,” he said. “I was asked to bring you food.”
Lofric looked up. “That’s an awfully small tray, Qasim ben Zir—what?”
“Ibn Zirhud,” Qasim repeated, pronouncing the syllables slowly and carefully. These northmen, he thought, rolling his eyes.
Lofric looked flatly at the other kingsmen. The man with the braids carefully hid his grin with the flat of his hand. “Not another one,” he said, at last.
“Ibn Zirhud,” the other man Qasim had seen the previous night said, with a mocking smile. “Really, Lofric, it isn’t that hard—”
“Really, Vasen,” Lofric retorted, “It isn’t really that hard to keep your mouth shut before you end up with ten laps, isn’t it?”
Vasen sighed, and grudgingly got to his feet in a graceful, fluid movement which Qasim admired. He offered the sergeant an elaborate bow. “At once, Sarge. Do try to get the boy’s name right before breakfast, won’t you?” He sat back down.
“He won’t,” said the third man with them, with the grave air of a prophet who had foreseen only tragedy. “What’s more, we’ll have to hear him fail, every time.” He turned to Qasim. “Did you know that he spent half the afternoon trying to memorise and pronounce the names of all the Sandrunners? And he got all of them wrong.”
Qasim choked back amusement, mingled with horror.
“Actually,” the braided man said, interjecting before Lofric could open his mouth to manage a response, “Why are you called ‘ibn Zirhud’, Qasim? The other Bazhir seem to have only two names. Your headman is named Amman Kemail, the father of the missing children is named Sirhan Parsha…” his voice trailed off.
Reminded of the missing children, Qasim glanced around the tent as he sat down the food tray by the men playing dice. There was no sign of anywhere missing children could have been secreted: only the usual hangings and furnishings of a desertman’s tent.
“It is the name of my father,” he said at last, ducking his head. “So I am ‘ibn Zirhud’, or the son of Zirhud.” He bit his lip and decided to venture the question after all. “Did you take the children?”
The third man rolled his eyes. “Of course we did,” he said, “Here, have a look, we’re keeping them under the carpet.”
“Tarlin!” Lofric snapped. He turned to Qasim. “We did not,” he said, firmly. “We have nothing to do with the vanished children, and we offered your headman our assistance. He refused, citing concerns for our safety that our involvement with the search could bring.”
Qasim had not overheard that. “Oh,” he said.
“They have not found them?”
“Not since I last heard.”
Lofric closed his book. His expression had turned grave. “Has this happened before?”
“Not often.”
“My men are trackers,” Lofric said. “I fear that they were taken.”
“What do you mean?” Qasim asked.
“There are Immortals such as the spidren,” Lofric explained, “Which prefer to lair in caves and then venture out to seek prey. They often attack isolated and vulnerable targets—so lone humans, and particularly the old and children.” A fleeting look of disgust crossed his face. “Especially children.”
“We have sentries,” Qasim pointed out. “Even at night. The spidren would have had to pass the sentries undetected.”
He shuddered, in spite of himself. He had heard tales of spidren, for all that they were not common to the desert. No, the dangers in the desert were other creatures entirely.
“Qasim has a point, Lofric,” the braided man said.
Lofric nodded. “Even so,” he said.
“You just dislike the idea of us sitting around idle on our backsides when we’re supposed to be helping,” Vasen muttered.
“Is there anything wrong with that?” Lofric demanded.
“No,” the braided man replied. “Not at all.” He sighed. “The Commander’s going to have a fit when he hears about this.”
“The Commander? Is it true that he beat Assad Fadim in a knife-fight?”
The braided man nodded sharply, grinning. “Fadim’s good,” he said. “But the Commander’s better. Fadim’s fast, like a snake—“ he made a sinuous, wriggling gesture with his hand. “So the Commander knew he had to end it, fast. He gave Fadim an opening and forced him to come in close to take it. And then he wrestled Fadim to the ground. Bigger man usually wins.”
Qasim made a small, astonished ‘o’ with his mouth. “You saw it?”
“The Own was with the Sandrunners, before our squad was sent to visit your tribe,” the braided man explained. He casually scooped up the bone dice and slipped them away into a pocket. Tarlin made a grumbled sound but made no further complaint.
“Why did you come?”
Lofric and the braided man exchanged a long glance. A look passed between them—a cautionary one, Qasim thought. As if they were trying to decide what could and what could not be said. “Building bridges,” Lofric said, at last. “The Commander’s ties are to the Sandrunners. But the King’s Own is meant to serve all the realm, and it will only be an effective peacekeeping force if it is perceived as serving all the realm.”
The braided man groaned. “You’ve lost him now, Lofric.”
“Give the boy a chance, Volorin.”
Qasim said, “You want to show everyone you can help—and that includes helping us?”
Lofric smiled, smugly. “That’s it,” he said. “And that’s why we were rather disappointed that your headman preferred we remain here.”
Qasim shrugged, uncomfortably. The headman did not dictate a course to the entire tribe; the adults of the tribe were free to argue with him before the central fires, or to bring a matter to the Voice for adjudication. Few chose to do so in these days. Even so, Amman Kemail was so widely respected, none would have thought of contesting him. “He has his reasons,” he ventured.
“We know he does, Qasim,” Volorin said, gently. “All we’re saying is, it’s not easy sitting by on the sidelines doing nothing.”
An awkward silence descended upon them. Qasim shifted his feet. He could see the buckle of his goat-hide sandals beginning to loosen once again. Quickly, he bent to fix it with a hasty tug. Repairs would have to wait until later.
“I’ll get the rest of the trays,” he said, quietly. He did so.
-
The hunters returned to the camp without having found the children. A set of footprints had been detected by the horse-picket, leading outward, past the old well and out into the open desert. They were in luck; the picket had provided some buffer from the wind, allowing the tracked sand to be preserved.
But although the groups had searched the direction the tracks led in, they could not find any sign of the children nor where they might have ended up.
Frustrated, Sirhan Parsha strode to the kingsmen’s tents and demanded entrance. Amman Kemail placed a restraining hand on the man’s shoulder but was roughly shrugged off.
Eventually, Lofric emerged, instead. “We did not take them,” he said, bluntly, to Sirhan’s face. “And we have already offered your headman our assistance numerous times.” His eyes went to Amman Kemail, who nodded, slightly, confirming the man’s words.
“Then explain how they vanished the night you entered our camp!” Sirhan shouted, shoving the kingsman back a step.
Lofric swayed with the blow, like a reed, and then straightened up again. His eyes were cold. “Need I say it? There are many creatures that would consider helpless children excellent prey. Spidren. Hurrocks. Serpards. Do not blame us, Sirhan Parsha. We are not responsible for all the evils of the world.”
It was cold comfort, Qasim thought, and Lofric must have known that. His mangling Sirhan’s name likely did not affect the man’s temperament, as Sirhan snarled and reached to his belt, only to find Amman Kemail’s hand closed tightly around his wrist.
Ghalib grabbed Sirhan’s other shoulder, ensuring the man was restrained. He glanced at the headman for further instructions.
“You are overwrought,” Amman Kemail said, quietly. “I understand why this is so. You have lost a daughter and a son this day, and we have found no sign of them. It is a difficult thing, to lose children, and the whole of the tribe feels your loss. This does not excuse the fact that your actions are those of a child, not a man.” He glanced over at the assembled tribesmen, expectantly.
To Qasim’s surprise, his father broke free of the crowd and strode forward, crossing the intervening space in a few swift steps.
“Ibn Tuhal,” Amman Kemail said, acknowledging his father with a nod. “Take him, and keep an eye on him. See to it that he does no further folly.”
Zirhud ibn Tuhal nodded sharply as Amman Kemail relenquished his grip on Sirhan’s wrist and the man tried, almost instantaneously, to draw, to twist about, and to strike at Lofric. Instead, Zirhud stepped smoothly into the space that the headman had vacated, grabbed Sirhan’s arm, and moved him into a tight hold. Sirhan ground his teeth together, and was forced to follow Zirhud as the man half-dragged, half-manhandled him along.
“Amman Kemail,” said Farhi Parsha, eventually. It was impossible to know what sort of expression her face might have carried, for her features were concealed by the veil she wore. “You give your word that these northmen do not lie?”
“I do,” the headman said, calmly. They looked at each other, for a long, slow moment. The other tribesmen were silent.
Farhi Parsha nodded, then. A short, sharp movement. “I believe you,” she said, at last, and then turned around and swept away.
“What of the children?” someone else asked.
Amman Kemail said, “I believe they are lost.” He held up a hand to forestall any protests. “Hear me: we have combed the desert for as much as we were able. No horses were missing; all tracks vanished. Were we decades younger, I would claim that they had fallen prey to that of which we do not speak.” His other hand twitched by his side, as though he longed to make the Sign. “In these days, I am forced to conclude it was a roc, or some other creature of the air.”
There were a few sullen mutters at this, directed not at the headman, but at the creatures that might have committed such a deed. Most of the Sunset Dragon remembered the abducted goats. Sarid was there, and he ducked his head in remembered shame, his ears burning.
“Who was on sentry duty last night?” Surai Imran wanted to know.
The discussion was going nowhere, Qasim decided; indeed, a number of the tribe had returned to their regular tasks. He looked around him, but he could not pick Ashraf out of the crowd of gathered tribesmen. Perhaps he had not managed to evade sentry duty after all; the village’s security would only be heightened by the missing children. As names were shouted and the discussion raged as though it was the Moment of the Voice all over again, he retreated to his father’s tent, to do the chores that needed doing.
-
That night, Qasim woke up sick.
Perhaps it had been the food, Qasim thought, as his stomach cramped fiercely and he gagged and bent over, trying not to throw up in the tent. Finally, he managed to stagger to his feet and out of the tent where he threw up most of his dinner onto the sand.
He sat back on his haunches, and tried not to moan as his stomach felt like it was kicking somersaults in his body.
“Qasim. Are you ill?”
He looked up. Limned in the pale moonlight, the figure that stood over him was none other than Ashraf. His spear was nowhere in sight. Ashraf wrinkled his nose as he eyed the mess in the sand. “D’you need help cleaning that up?”
“I can manage,” Qasim gritted, as he rose to his feet and began kicking sand over his mess. With Ashraf’s help, he managed to bury it.
“I think you need to get some water,” Ashraf said. “And then I’ll take you to the shaman.”
Qasim stared at him. “Safri Abidrah is going to kill me,” he moaned, bending over and resisting the urge to throw up yet again. He shivered, not from the chilly night air, and grabbed tightly onto Ashraf’s offered arm. His friend slung Qasim’s free arm around his shoulder and helped him straighten up.
“She’s not that bad,” Ashraf said, with a faint smile. “An unholy terror of the gods, yes, but you need help, Qasim.”
“All right,” he conceded, grudgingly, as another spasm came and went. “But let’s get some water first. I want to get the taste of this out of my mouth.”
-
With Ashraf’s help, Qasim managed to make his way to the old well. For some reason, the sentries who ought to have been by the horse pickets were nowhere in sight. Probably changing shift, Qasim thought.
“You’re sweating,” Ashraf said, distractedly, as he felt Qasim’s forehead. “This was a bad idea.”
The well was a short distane from the village and the horse-pickets, but the path to it was well-trodden. It was an old well, lined with stones and bricks of red clay, from a distant canyon, dug out painstakingly by a distant ancestor of the Sunset Dragon. Wells were precious among the Bazhir, and each tribe had at some point in the past dug their own wells to suit their caravan routes. Yet another reason why Amman Kemail had no doubt delayed the journey south. For all the kingsmen were their friends, he seemed uneasy about revealing to them the locations of the ancestral wells.
Qasim leaned against the side of the well for a moment as the cramping wracked him. Sweat dripped down his face, cool in the night air. The bricks and stone dug into his hands.
There was a wooden bucket, left to the side of the well. Qasim bent to retrieve it and gazed into the depths of the well. Moonlight glinted off the water, but also—
Pale ivory, like the clacking beads of Volorin’s braids.
He bit his lip. There were bones there, and Qasim was fairly certain they hadn’t been there since the last time the tribesmen drew water. When had that been?
He turned, mouth open, already about to call Ashraf to take a look at his discovery.
Sharp claws dug into his skin, ripped across his throat.
His blood, Qasim thought, as he staggered back. There was an awful, ragged warmth at his throat and his blood sprayed in the air, dark red.
Ashraf smiled.
His mouth was full of needle-sharp fangs, and blood dripped from his claws.
Qasim’s mouth worked. He struggled to utter words, found that his throat was hurting so badly, but somehow he was still breathing, still alive.
Ashraf threw himself at Qasim in a flash of movement; all sinuous, deadly grace. Ashraf had never moved like that, had never—pain blossomed in Qasim’s shoulder as he gasped, rolled about, and tried to get away. He’d never learned to wrestle the way the other boys did; they’d always left him out of their games, the not-quite-welcome stranger. Only Ashraf had cared, only Ashraf had taught him, even when his father should have but hadn’t because Zirhud ibn Tuhal had left a part of him on a distant battlefield and had returned to the Sunset Dragon a dead man, cast off from the Sleeping Lion.
No. He mustn’t think that, shouldn’t—it wasn’t fair.
He twisted about with great effort, slamming his forearm into Ashraf’s throat. But Ashraf was bigger and heavier, and claws scrabbled at Qasim, ripping through skin and muscle and into bone.
He was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it.
All of a sudden, there was a loud roar, and Ashraf was ripped off him. Qasim lay on his back and gasped, and tried to roll over to see what was going on. His blood pounded; his heartbeat felt like a drum in his ears. He had expected to die.
Zirhud ibn Tuhal slammed a longknife through Ashraf’s throat; Ashraf’s claws slashed at his vulnerable stomach, for Qasim’s father wore nothing but his loincloth, but Zirhud blocked him with a raised forearm. Claws scraped loudly against bone.
“No one,” Zirhud snarled, “Touches my son.”
He tore the knife free, and Ashraf fell, was falling down to the sand, and Zirhud instantly ran over to him. “Qasim,” he said, and for the first time, his face was an open book to Qasim; like the gaudy inks of the sketches, Qasim read concern-worry-fear-love, and it was already far too late. The world was going dark.
A shadow loomed behind Zirhud. Qasim tried to scream; could not utter a single sound.
A sword flashed through the air.
He saw, in that last moment, Volorin (for he recognised the ivory-bead-threaded braids) behind the shadow—his hands gripping the hilt of a sword, his expression urgent but determined. “Qasim!” Zirhud called, and Qasim felt his father scoop him up, gently, as though carrying an infant, and his head lolled back against the hard muscle of his father’s chest and his eyes drifted shut.
-
Qasim swam back to consciousness several times. He remembered Safri Abidrah frowning down at him, her hands glowing a powerful golden yellow, like syrupy honey, murmuring to him, drawing him back into sleep. He remembered one of the kingsmen by his side; a hand flaring pale green. “He’s not ready,” said an accented voice. “If he turns, he’ll undo the stitches again.” “Put him under already!”
He slept, and dreamed of wells in the deep desert, of water, of stars falling from the night sky.
And at the end of it all, he dreamed of his father: of Zirhud ibn Tuhal and his knife, his father’s serious eyes, the moment when the distance between them fell away.
When he woke for the last time, his father was sitting by his side, head bent over. He must have uttered some sound—a soft croak, perhaps, from his damaged throat. His father looked up; never had Qasim seen his father look so desperate, so raw, so haggard before.
“Don’t try to speak,” Zirhud said, at last. “The ghūl almost tore your throat out, and the shaman and the kingsman say you lost a great deal of blood. They spent a long time mending your wounds.”
He tried anyway, and Zirhud frowned at him. “Ashraf?”
“Devoured,” Zirhud said. He reached over to the tray resting beside him and picked up a clay cup. “Safri Abidrah says you must drink this.” He helped Qasim, gently, to sit up, and put the clay cup to his lips. It was some sort of herbal tisane, and Qasim yelped and almost choked and spluttered and spilled it. It was a vile, bitter concoction, but Zirhud’s grip was unforgiving and Qasim forced the rest of it down. “Better,” Zirhud said, calmly. He set the cup back down on the tray. “We do not know how the ghūl found our camp or slipped past the sentries.”
“What happened?”
“Perhaps it is best to start from the beginning,” Zirhud said, thoughtfully. “The ghūl came, somehow. It hid itself in the well and it slew the Parsha children as they went for a drink. We found their bones at the bottom of the well, with Ashraf’s. The ghūl may have assumed their appearance as Ashraf was searching for them, or perhaps he discovered it and fought but was slain. The kingsmen found a snapped spear, buried beneath the sand. Blood was on the shaft.”
Qasim’s cheek was wet. If his father noticed, he made no comment. “It is a shame,” Zirhud said, eventually. “But ghilan are known to spread disease and woundrot with their fangs and claws. Fully half the clan was sick, two nights ago.”
“Two nights?” Qasim’s voice hit a squeak that pained him.
“You’ve rested,” Zirhud said. “You needed it.”
“You killed the ghūl.” His memories seemed fragmented, shattered into several contradictory pieces.
“Actually, I did not,” Zirhud said. “It was the kingsman.” He shook his head. “I had been away from the desert during the war, and our tribe has never encountered ghilan. Rocs, yes, and wild lynxes, and all these other dangers of the desert, old and new. But we have never contended with ghilan, and for all the warning the Sandrunners gave us, I did not realise that ghilan can only be slain by dismemberment, beheading, fire, or a blade through the heart.”
“They are Immortals, then?”
Zirhud nodded. “They are.” His voice hardened. “They feed on the young and vulnerable,” he said, “And take on the appearance of their last victim.” His own eyes gleamed, wetly. “I nearly lost you,” he murmured. He brushed his thumb over Qasim’s knuckles. “The ghūl was trying to lure you to somewhere quiet and kill you, and it would have gone unnoticed had I not drank a little too much date wine the previous night and woken up thirsty.”
“And the kingsman?”
Zirhud shrugged uncomfortably. “Who can say? His squadmate saved you. Safri Adidrah could not have done it alone. You were badly wounded.”
“But he saved you,” Qasim remembered.
“Yes,” Zirhud ibn Tuhal said. “Yes, he did.”
-
Two days later, Qasim was finally allowed to return to his daily tasks. Things had not yet been fixed between him and his father, but things were slowly being set to rights. Zirhud had asked the tribe’s blacksmith to fashion Qasim a knife, and told Qasim firmly that he would be teaching him to use it when it was done.
Things were not perfect. He did not yet know what his father wrote of. Perhaps it had to do with his time fighting for the king. But they were getting better. He was trying. And Zirhud ibn Tuhal was trying. If good had come out of the run-in with the ghūl, it was that.
The kingsmen were leaving. He watched as the tribesmen took down their tents and returned the materials to the stores, and then ran for the picket line. It felt good to run, to feel the wind in his hair. The gut stitches had mostly dissolved, and the healing had worked wonders.
Lofric of Tirragen gave him a sardonic wave. He was busy buckling his saddle; his horse was fighting him, sucking in air. But Qasim had not come to speak with Lofric, although he saved a moment of thanks for Vasen, the squad’s healer.
Instead, he found himself walking over to where Volorin was checking his saddlebags, making sure nothing was missing.
Without missing a beat, Volorin looked up. “Qasim, isn’t it?” he asked. He grinned. “Good to see you’re doing better.” One of the beads in his hair had a pattern now, Qasim noticed. He strained to try to see what it was. “It’s a skull,” Volorin said, cheerfully. “I thought I’d have the bead carved, for each life I’ve managed to save.”
Qasim did not thank him. It would not quite have been right, he thought. It was Zirhud ibn Tuhal who owed the debt, and it was surely Zirhud ibn Tuhal who had already expressed his gratitude.
“You saved his life.”
Volorin shrugged. “It’s what we do,” he said, firmly. “We’re the King’s Own. Everyone in the Realm is entitled to protection, and we make sure they get it. Oftentimes, we end up going in where armies and guardsmen fail.”
“You’re leaving already?”
“Gotten fond of us, have you?”
Qasim swallowed. “I’m curious.”
Volorin left off with his saddlebags and turned to face Qasim now, his back to his horse. “Well,” he said, at last. “The incident with the ghūl definitely requires a report, for one. For another, word has come in from the Sandrunners. There’s been an earthquake at Harbourmouth, just south of Port Legann. We’re needed to look for survivors and to bring what order we can.”
“The gods go with you, then.”
Volorin nodded. Slyly, he said, “Perhaps one day we’ll see you, boy.”
“Me?”
“Why not?” Volorin asked, with a wink. “The King’s Own is recruiting, after all. Would be nice to see some Bazhir faces among our ranks. Think about it. There’s always room for brave hearts among us, no matter where you come from.”
“I’m going to be checking that saddle, Volorin,” Lofric warned.
“Be my guest,” Volorin said. “Just as soon as you can talk Stomper into behaving.” He indicated Lofric’s horse, who, uncontent with mere uncooperation, had started to trot away from him.
The rest of the King’s Own laughed—and to his own surprise, Qasim found himself joining in.
It felt good.
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Dog Days, (#91)
Summary: Qasim ibn Zirhud's first encounter with the King's Own coincides with two children of the Sunset Dragon going missing.
Notes: Set in the The Heart of Your Brother series, which focuses on the Bazhir. Companion to The Strength of Lions (forthcoming). I credit Max's excellent fic, The Fox Boy for the mention of Pearlmouth as the Dana'a.
-
It was late in the year, as the Bazhir reckoned, and the arid winds blew across the desert from the southwest: bringing, or so Qasim imagined, just the faintest hint of sea-salt from where the Emerald Ocean met the Great Inland Sea on the coastline.
They had a name for these winds, in his tribe: the Breath of the Dragon. It was said the dragon’s breath sucked all the moisture from a man’s tongue and scourged bones dry with the sands it carried. When the Breath of the Dragon came, it marked the beginning of the trading season, when the Sunset Dragon packed up their tents and made the yearly journey to the cooler lands of the south to the Dana’a to trade for Tyran spices and coffee and fragrant woods, incense and other goods.
They would camp there, just beyond where the desert yielded grudgingly to the coastal hills, for several slow months, until the season turned, the dragon slumbering once again, and then they began their journey north once more.
Many of the other tribes made similar journeys. Far to the south, the Sleeping Lion, too, traded at the Dana’a, but also with other towns along the coastline, sometimes even travelling to where Tyra sat, where the branches of the Drell flowed onwards into the the Great Inland Sea. Far closer to the traditional ranging grounds of the Sunset Dragon, the Sandrunners simply went north, to Persopolis and the camps of the hill country. There was no love lost between the tribes and the hillmen, but their work with metal and leather was unparalleled, and many a time, the Sandrunners traded intricately-worked brooches and bangles and knives with the Sunset Dragon.
His father had well-worn hillman-crafted sandals that withstood the harsh wear of the desert far better than the soft goat-hide many of their tribe favoured. The next year, he had said, he would see if the Sandrunners brought with them anything that was suitable for Qasim. Qasim understood what he meant: they were not poor. But they were not wealthy, either. Half the time, his feet jutted out from his fraying goat-hide sandals, no matter how he did his best to mend them, and Zirhud ibn Tuhal was not fool enough to throw away gold on hillman-leather until his son stopped outgrowing what he was wearing within a few weeks.
That year, the Sunset Dragon lingered in its traditional grounds far longer that it usually did. The Breath of the Dragon raked across the village, and many kept their tents open to the fullest extent, for it was terribly stuffy within the tent, despite the shade. One evening, as he kept his eye to the goats grazing on the sparse grasses amongst the dunes, Qasim spied a figure in the distance. The sun was against him; he shaded his eyes with his free hand, trying to make out who it was.
A group of riders, he concluded. Sunlight gleamed off steel, but he was yet too distant for Qasim to make out if they were wearing any colours, or even the red armband that signalled truce, or at least peaceable intention. Riders, though, often never boded well. The hillmen who turned bandit often did not range this far into the desert, but it ill-paid to be overconfident. He reached out to thumb the goat-hide sling that he’d looped through his belt, and then made sure that the pebbles he’d retrieved—all of them sand-smoothened and elongated, perfect for throwing—were still where he’d left them.
One of the goats bleated, and regarded him with eyes the colour of bark. The dyed thread twined about one of its horns indicated that it belonged to his father. Qasim sighed. Watching the goats wasn’t the most exciting of chores, but it was important, all the same. Last year, Amman Kemail had cuffed Sarid and punished him because he’d chosen to sneak into Munirah’s tent instead of watching the goats, as he was supposed to. He hadn’t seen the roc until it’d carried off fully a tenth of the tribe’s livestock.
“Who do you think that is?”
That was Ashraf. He, too, had noticed the riders. He stood up, leaning against his spear. Ashraf was several years older than Qasim and well-liked by almost everyone in the tribe. He had, for some reason, taken a liking to Qasim, and while he was just old enough to take his own turn at sentry duty, he had instead elected to accompany Qasim in keeping an eye over the tribe’s goats as they grazed collectively.
It was Ashraf who had noticed the roc carrying away five bleating goats in its claws; it was Ashraf who had sounded the whistle of alarm and hurled a spear at the roc. Nevermind that he hadn’t killed it but only succeeded in annoying the immortal. It was Ashraf who had killed the wild lynx with a flung stone through the eye before it could maul young Husari to death, the way it’d killed his father. Ashraf could hit desertfowl at sixty paces with his sling; he was always smiling, never complained, and he wielded a spear like it was an extension of his arm.
Most of the other boys of the tribe held Ashraf in awe. Qasim had, too, at first.
He had always been alone. Ashraf had changed that.
“I don’t know,” Qasim said. “I think it’s too far to make out anything.”
Ashraf nodded, and fell back with a lazy sigh. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “I bet it’s kingsmen, though.”
Qasim blinked. It was still a new and tenuous thing, he had been told, this peace between the Northern King-Who-Was-Voice and the tribes of the Bazhir. It was a strange idea, thinking of them as one people. The Sandrunners and the Sunset Dragon had more than their share of blood feuds, and it seemed almost impossible that they’d once—a very long time ago—been kin. It was a Northern concept, Zirhud had said, wearily, when he was in one of his moods.
Qasim had very quickly learned that his father was unapproachable when those moods swept over him. His father had never taken his hand to him—at least, not without cause—but when the dark moods came, he became even more distant, drawing closed the hangings that separated his side of the tent from Qasim’s. Sometimes, Qasim heard the soft rasp of a Tyran reed-pen against parchment. But he never dared to look, to attempt to read what his father was writing.
“How do you know?” he asked.
Ashraf smiled. “It’s just a guess,” he said. “But for tribesmen to travel in a group without packhorses or tents is strange. They would know they are venturing into Sunset Dragon territory. They do not carry any goods with them, either.”
He hadn’t noticed.
“We’ll know soon enough,” Ashraf added.
Almost as soon as he spoke, Qasim heard the shrill cry of a sentry’s warning whistle. Two quick notes, then three ascending, indicating he’d spotted a potential threat.
“Come on,” Ashraf said, scooping up his spear. “You know what we’re supposed to do.” When the warning whistle came, they were to immediately begin herding the goats together and moving them swiftly to the holding pens. This was to prevent raiders from cutting the herds off from the tribe’s defences, rendering them easy targets. A tribe’s livestock was its wealth; tribes who lost their goats became impoverished or died out quickly. Their survivors joined other tribes, gave up their old tribe’s name and became blood-kin with their new tribe.
As they began moving the goats—Qasim sustained a kick to his shin from a particularly stubborn goat, and cursed quietly—they heard the whistle indicating that the threat had passed.
Qasim sighed. “Couldn’t they have given that earlier?” he muttered, as he gave up the unequal struggle. The goats bleated happily as they wandered and grazed as they willed.
He’d scattered his slingstones too. He searched for them, setting them back in their neat stack. Ashraf helped. He nodded approvingly as he felt the stones Qasim had chosen. “Good choice,” Ashraf said. “Want to show me some of your sling skills?”
Qasim looked at him. “Where?” he wanted to know.
Ashraf cast about for a suitable target. “What about…there. That rock. The one half-buried in sand.” It looked like a tray, sunk at an angle into the sand. It must have been fifty paces; a respectable distance, for any Bazhir slinger. Still, Qasim raised his eyebrows. The target was wide enough that it was quite certain he would hit it.
“Give,” Ashraf said, holding out his hand. Qasim unlooped the sling from his belt with a light tug and handed it over. Ashraf bent, picked up one of Qasim’s chosen stones and tossed it and caught it in his hand, assessing it. Then, he placed it in the sling’s pouch, frowned at the rock, and began to whirl the sling about, his tongue between his teeth. Qasim watched him. After a full rotation, he released, sending the stone whizzing through the air. It hit the rock at an angle, slid, but then managed to cling to the rock somehow. “There you go,” Ashraf said, with a smile. “Better? Knock that off the rock.”
Qasim nodded appreciatively. That was a much harder task. “How many tries?”
Ashraf nodded to the four stacked stones. “Let us say…as many stones as you have, now.”
“All right,” Qasim said. He knelt, picked up one of the stones. He hefted it, trying to get a feel for the projectile. Ashraf had taught him to use a sling, a long time ago. He knew it should have been his father, who taught him. He knew he should not feel bitter about it.
He slotted it into the sling’s pouch as he eyed the target, trying to visualise what he needed to do. An overhead throw wouldn’t help; his stone had to skid into Ashraf’s, and dislodge it. He swung once, twice, testing, and then he began the rotation-and-release for real. He’d misjudged; his stone slammed into the sand two lengths from the rock, scattering dust in its wake.
Don’t think about it, Qasim told himself, as he picked up the second stone. This one came closer; it jostled Ashraf’s stone. For a moment, he thought Ashraf’s stone might tip and tumble off the rock, but then it simply rocked to and fro and decided to stay put.
Qasim let out a slow, frustrated breath.
Ashraf laughed. “You’re not going to get it off the rock now,” he observed.
Glumly, Qasim acquiesced. “You’re right,” he said. He couldn’t dislodge two stones with a cast stone. He wondered if Ashraf could.
He began the long trudge to collect his slingstones from the rock.
-
Ashraf had been right.
As they led the goats back into the communal pen at nightfall and headed for the evening meal at the fires, Qasim saw a few men—pale, as most Northmen were, with hair that gleamed bright like gold—seated in the place of honour before the fires.
He recognised, as well, the tall, brawny figure of Amman Kemail; the headman of the Sunset Dragon was offering them truce-water, though only one of them had remembered to wear the red.
“Kingsmen,” Ashraf breathed into his ear. He’d seen them too. “D’you see that?”
Qasim looked. “The blue and white and silver?” he asked.
Ashraf nodded. “The king’s colours,” he said. “They’re men of the King’s Own.”
Qasim’s breath caught in his throat. He’d heard about them—how could he not? The men of the King’s Own were infamous among the tribes. Their commander was said to be a giant of a man who had easily beaten Assam Fadim of the Sandrunners in a knife-fight, and Assam Fadim was as swift as a snake and five times as clever.
Most of the southern tribes were wary; they did not entirely trust the King in the North nor the men who swore allegiance to him, for all the decades that had passed. This, Ashraf had once told him, had been because word had not travelled to the southernmost tribes in time for them to be present when the Voice-that-Was, Ali Mukhtab, had passed from the world, leaving the son of the Northern King as the next Voice of the Tribes.
“It is said that Alhaz ibn Shahir had travelled across half the desert to arrive and still he had not made it in time,” Ashraf had said. “And that night he communed with the Voice was his last. He turned back the next day and has been silent ever since.”
Qasim did not understand it; not yet, not quite. Many in their tribe had been unhappy at the word that their Voice was now a Northman, but Amman Kemail had spoken and he had told them that it cost them nothing to wait and see who this new Voice was. “It is folly,” he had said, that night before the fires of the Sunset Dragon, “To judge a man by blood rather than by what he does. And so we shall watch and wait and see what this son of the North does.” For this reason, most of the Sunset Dragon still communed with the Voice. His father had said that the Sleeping Lion no longer did.
Qasim hadn’t been born, then. Neither had Ashraf. He had only heard of that decision from Hassan, but the tribe’s storyteller knew everything, or so Qasim had decided.
“We aren’t the Sandrunners,” Qasim said. He frowned at the kingsmen, wondering what they were doing here. “What d’you think they’re doing here?”
“They must be trying to improve relations with the other tribes,” Ashraf said, thoughtfully. He shrugged. “We’ll find out, in a bit.” He strode forward, pushing between the tents, towards the central fires, Qasim following him.
There were eight kingsmen, all in all. Qasim revised his count to ten as two more joined their comrades, moving from the direction of the horse-pickets. One of them was tall and lean; the other short and brawny, but they spoke amiably with each other, laughing and joking at some joke he could not make out with the air of those who were long friends.
The rest of the tribe were beginning to gather at the central fire. Gossip spread faster among the Bazhir than water spilled into the hungry desert sands; the presence of the kingsmen would’ve been known about from the moment they first set foot into the village proper.
Amman Kemail stood up, immediately drawing all attention to him. Everyone knew and respected Amman Kemail; he was fair, Zirhud had conceded, for all he said little about the man. A headman had to be fair, he had to be judge and mediator among the men and women of his tribe, but Amman Kemail commanded a respect that, Qasim thought privately, few headmen seemed to. Perhaps it had to do with his willingness to admit that he had been too hasty to judge the current Voice, with his willingness to watch and wait and only then judge. Perhaps it had to do with his strong, commanding presence. It was said, once, that two quarrelling tribesmen had fallen silent at Amman’s approach and then swiftly resolved their differences.
Qasim wondered if Ashraf could tell him if that was true.
“These are men of the Northern King,” Amman said. His voice carried across the space easily enough. “You may remember word of the King’s Own riding with the Sandrunners. This season, they have come to live among us for a time.” Qasim noticed that Amman said nothing about the Dana’a, nothing about their delayed journey. He wondered why. “They have been welcomed to our fires and shade, and I have granted them water-right.”
“Probably just the sergeant,” Ashraf remarked, quietly. “Even Amman Kemail would take forever if he had to personally offer each one of them water-right.”
“But it must be done,” Qasim protested, keeping his voice down. Hospitality was sacred to the Balance and every Bazhir was bound to offer those of peaceful intent—whether tribesman or stranger—the triad of fire, shade, and water. Fire and shade could be offered and was in practice often offered by the sentries of a tribe, but everyone knew that the water-right was important, and only the headman of a tribe could offer it. Water-right bound both headman and the guest into a sacred compact; they could not offer violence to each other for a moon without transgressing against the Balance. The days of tribesman against kingsman were long past, but the importance of water-right had been ingrained into Qasim. There were far too many stories of a headman who had failed to offer water-right and the guest had butchered the men of the tribe in their sleep. He could not imagine delaying it, despite how impractical it would have been.
Ashraf shrugged. He, at least, was unperturbed. “Doubtless he will offer the rest of them water-right later on,” he remarked.
By now, Amman Kemail had finished speaking. He offered the leader of the men—Qasim realised that the crimson truce-band around his biceps bore a strange symbol, but could not make it out from this distance in the firelight—a nod.
The dusky-skinned man spoke up. His voice was a light tenor, Qasim thought, the sort that made you think of a breeze moving lightly over desert grass. “I am Lofric of Tirragen, sergeant in the King’s Own.” he said, formally. “On behalf of my men, I thank you for your tribe’s hospitality, Amman Kemail.”
And that was it. The tension—and he was surprised to realise that it had been there in the first place—dissolved out of the watching tribesmen; he smelled the fragrance of food as it was brought out and his stomach growled. The drinking began, and afterwards, old Hassan would recite the stories of the Sunset Dragon to their visitors. It was how things were done.
“That’s it, then,” Ashraf said, clapping Qasim on the shoulder. “Come on, then. Aren’t you hungry?”
-
That night, his father drew the partition hangings and Qasim heard the dry, scratching sound as Zirhud set pen to parchment once again. His father had not spoken to him that day.
He lay on his side and tugged the woven blanket closer about him. For all the dragon’s breath scoured the desert in the day, it was still chilly at night. But less than it would be at the end of the trading season, when they were returning to their usual grazing grounds.
He was beginning to recognise Zirhud’s various silences. This one was the uncomfortable, dark silence: the one that made his father seem worlds away, for all he could draw back the colourful woven hanging and—
And what?
Look into his father’s eyes? See the stranger gazing out of them, back at him?
Qasim hid his sigh, and tried to sleep. One day, he thought, he would understand his father better. He would know what the man wrote about, in the dark, inscrutable hours of the moonless night before dawn. He wished, sometimes, that his mother had not died. He barely remembered her. He had been told by old Hassan that Faiza Bashir had died in a hurrock attack on the tribe; this had been during the Immortal Wars, when it was still possible for sentries to be taken by surprise. None of them had expected an attack from the skies, and not at dusk.
“She protected you,” Hassan had said. Qasim did not understand the expression in the old man’s eyes. Hassan said, “We thought you were dead. Then we heard a faint cry and realised you were beneath her.” He shook his head tiredly. “Even then, you gave us a scare. We saw the blood and thought you had been injured. But it had all been hers.”
“And then what happened?” Qasim had asked, with the thirst of a boy who had never known; whose father had always ignored questions about his mother.
Hassan shook his head. “Amman Kemail came,” he said, simply. “He set up sentries through the camp and had you taken to Surai Imran’s tent. Ibn Tuhal was not among the Sunset Dragon at that time, and so you remained with her until he returned.”
“Why was he away?” Qasim had asked.
Hassan hesitated. At long last, the tribe’s storyteller had said, “He was with the kingsmen, fighting. I do not know why. That is a story only he has the right to tell.”
-
That night, Qasim twitched awake. He lay on his back, trying to figure what had woken him up—it had been a distant sound, he realised. He thought he’d heard the laughter of a hyena, of all things.
There were no hyenas here; just jackals and wild desert dogs and foxes with the occasional lynx. He wasn’t sure if the knowledge made him feel any better.
He was, however, extremely tired. The next moment, he had drifted back to sleep again.
-
The next morning, it was discovered that the young children of Sirhan Parsha had vanished without a trace. The latter was not unusual in the desert; the wind often erased traces of passage, making tracking difficult.
The visitors were eyed with wary suspicion—had they not come among the tribe the night before? Had Hakim Parsha and Maryam Parsha not disappeared only this morning?
Sirhan Parsha led the outcry against the kingsmen, his white-knuckled hands never far from his sword-hilt. Zirhud only shook his head grimly and joined the tribesmen combing the area for any sign of where the children might have wandered off to.
“Children wander,” Lofric of Tirragen said, carefully. He was standing beside Amman Kemail.
The headman shook his head. “Not ours. Not like this,” he said, simply. “The desert is dangerous.”
“So is a city,” Lofric replied. “But I do not contest your knowledge of your own. The King’s Own will offer whatever assistance we can.”
Amman looked at him. “Have your men stay out of our way,” he said, bluntly. “I’ll post a guard with them at all times. We are capable of taking care of our own.”
Lofric said, “As you wish.”
Amman added, “It is best to take precautions to prevent any rash action.”
Lofric bowed his head. “Headman,” he acknowledged.
Qasim slipped away, trying to make sense of the conversation. Lofric had been offered water-right; the previous night, Amman Kemail had personally gone to each of the sergeant’s men and offered them water-right as well. It wasn’t against the Balance per se if they had kidnapped or killed the missing children because they hadn’t been Amman Kemail’s children but it was still extremely frowned upon. By extending them water-right, it was as if Amman Kemail, too, had attacked the children.
If they had done it.
He didn’t know what to think.
Why had Hakim and Maryam gone missing? He worried at the puzzle as he gathered water to bring back to his tent and hurriedly washed up and dragged a comb through his hair. Surai Imran would nag at him if she caught him like this.
There was no sign of Ashraf either; Qasim supposed he had joined the search parties. He wandered out of the tent. He was somewhat too young to help, being not yet of the age where he would be permitted to take up the spear, much less participate in the Moment of the Voice.
“Qasim!” He had been wandering around the camp; Surai Imran’s voice drew him back with a start.
“Yes, Surai?” he asked.
The veiled woman crossed over to him. With one hand, she tugged her askew veil back into place; with the other, she bore a tray of steaming food. “Bring this to our visitors,” she said. “You know where to get the rest?”
“Your tent, Surai.”
She nodded to him. “Get moving, then,” she said. Qasim accepted the tray, but hesitated.
“Have they found them?”
Surai shook her head. “They have not,” she said. “But the headman has reminded us that having offered them guest-right, we are bound to treat them with courtesy.” Qasim wondered if she, too, believed that the kingsmen had done the deed. He did not dare ask; instead, he headed off in the direction of the kingsmen’s tents.
-
They did not have tents big enough for ten men. So the men of the Sunset Dragon had taken the second-best option: they had set up two tents of woven goat’s hair, next to each other, and removed some of the abutting material, so that both tents connected to each other and the kingsmen shared their quarters. Ghalib and Talib stood guard by the tents, the flap down, despite the heat of the dragon’s breath. Ghalib blinked as he noticed Qasim. “What are you doing here?” he wanted to know, his arms folded across his chest. The spear was propped against the tent-frame.
His brother, Talib, added, “It’s not safe, Ibn Zirhud. Stay where someone can keep an eye on you.” He leaned easily on his spear, smiling beatifically.
Qasim frowned, and made no attempt to conceal his irritation. His voice had broken not too long ago, and he had begun to put on the whipcord muscle that would one day be needed for the spear, but Talib Zefri was of an age with Ashraf and enjoyed rubbing his newfound adulthood in the faces of the other boys. “That’s what you and your spear are for, Talib,” he replied, with a smile that was more a flash of teeth. “After all, let it not be said that a man of the tribe let a boy get killed as he was standing guard outside the tents.”
Talib’s fingers tightened around the haft of his spear. “Keep hiding behind men, Ibn Zirhud,” he ground out. Ghalib casually shifted a few paces and draped a restraining hand over his younger brother’s shoulder.
“Do you have business here, Ibn Zirhud?” he asked, his voice deceptively casual.
“Surai Imran sent me,” Qasim replied, indicating the tray of food he carried. “I’m to bring them breakfast.”
“Breakfast?” Talib muttered, shaking his head. “I haven’t even had breakfast.”
Ghalib said, “It can’t be helped. The missing Parsha children…” his voice trailed off. “Barely over a decade ago, we would have searched the camp, but we would have known what the cause was, and we would have written them off as lost.”
“Why?” Qasim could not decide if he had asked the question, or if Talib had.
Ghalib looked at both of them. “You’re both too young to remember,” he said, matter-of-factly, “But there was a time before the Black City was purged.” They both shivered as he spoke the name; Ghalib turned aside and spat into the sand and then made the Sign to ward off the eye of evil. “The Nameless Ones who dwelled there called to the young of the tribes. If he were not tied, a boy could easily wander north to the Black City, to his death.” He shook his head darkly. “If you knew the signs, you could tie him, to keep him back from the City’s call, but he would starve to death, all the same, wasting away slowly. When the Nameless Ones drive their hooks into the young, they do not easily let go.”
Qasim said, “Then why bind them here?”
Ghalib said, sternly, “It is a more merciful end, to waste to death in the company of brothers, than to die alone, devoured by demons in the Black City. In any case, the City was cleansed and its evil destroyed. Now, Amman Kemail is wise to rouse the tribe, for we know it could not be the Nameless Ones who are responsible for the missing Parsha children.”
“How?” Talib demanded. “Perhaps the Northern King lies. Perhaps his bi—”
Ghalib’s fist casually smashed into his younger brother’s jaw. “Truly,” he murmured, “You must learn to control your tongue, little Talib, or our father will be ashamed to know he has raised a barbarian who speaks no differently from the Stone Dogs.”
Talib lifted his chin, defiantly. Qasim could already see the shadow of a bruise darkening his tanned skin. “Bas ibn Murrahad is a fine leader of men, and I would never be ashamed to have my name uttered in the same breath as his.”
“Ghalib?” Qasim asked. The older man eyed him.
“Yes?”
“How do we know it isn’t the B—the Nameless Ones?” his tongue danced and stuttered over the name of the Black City. “No one goes there, all the same. My father calls it an accursed place.”
Ghalib shook his head. “There has been no word, no unaccounted for disappearances. No tribe has brought these to attention during a Gathering. And those who lived when the Black City was a constant scourge remember. The Called often went insane; they chewed through ropes, they walked their feet to tatters, still struggling to make their way to the Black City. None of the signs were present. No, I perceive that our missing children have run afoul of one of the desert’s many dangers.”
Qasim’s skin crawled. He remembered he still held the tray. “May I go in?”
Ghalib shrugged. “Amman Kemail did not say no one was to enter,” he remarked, settling back on his heels. “He only said the northmen were not to leave unaccompanied.”
Taking that for a yes, Qasim thanked him and lifted the flap of the first tent and carefully bore the tray in. He did not carry enough food for ten men; he would have to make several trips to and from Surai Imran’s tent.
The kingsmen looked up as he entered. He counted five of them in this tent, with Sergeant Lofric among them. He was sprawled lazily on a colourful woven rug, and he held a feather in his hand. For a few moments, Qasim was puzzled—until he realised that it was some form of pen, and the man was writing into a leatherbound book with it.
He had seldom seen books. Few among the Sunset Dragon had use for them. But Zirhud did, Qasim thought. He had a few of them, some with clever drawings in coloured inks. Sometimes, his father let him peer at them. He would tell him what a thing was in the old language: perhaps a rose, or a cloud. There was a particular book, which Zirhud often read, with an impression of a starry night stamped into the worn leather cover. His callused hands were strangely gentle on the book’s bindings, as he peeled delicate, thin pages apart.
Two of the men—the ones Qasim had seen join the tribe from the horse-pickets—sat on cushions and rolled bone dice. The third was with them. The tall man looked up, first. Now that he was closer, Qasim noticed, fascinated, that he wore his dark hair in long braids, with plain ivory beads at the end. They clacked as he moved and grinned at Qasim. “What’re you doing here, boy?” There was a hint of an accent to his voice, Qasim realised. He didn’t sound like Lofric had, or the folk at the Dana’a, who weren’t Bazhir.
He held out the tray by way of answer. “I’m Qasim ibn Zirhud,” he said. “I was asked to bring you food.”
Lofric looked up. “That’s an awfully small tray, Qasim ben Zir—what?”
“Ibn Zirhud,” Qasim repeated, pronouncing the syllables slowly and carefully. These northmen, he thought, rolling his eyes.
Lofric looked flatly at the other kingsmen. The man with the braids carefully hid his grin with the flat of his hand. “Not another one,” he said, at last.
“Ibn Zirhud,” the other man Qasim had seen the previous night said, with a mocking smile. “Really, Lofric, it isn’t that hard—”
“Really, Vasen,” Lofric retorted, “It isn’t really that hard to keep your mouth shut before you end up with ten laps, isn’t it?”
Vasen sighed, and grudgingly got to his feet in a graceful, fluid movement which Qasim admired. He offered the sergeant an elaborate bow. “At once, Sarge. Do try to get the boy’s name right before breakfast, won’t you?” He sat back down.
“He won’t,” said the third man with them, with the grave air of a prophet who had foreseen only tragedy. “What’s more, we’ll have to hear him fail, every time.” He turned to Qasim. “Did you know that he spent half the afternoon trying to memorise and pronounce the names of all the Sandrunners? And he got all of them wrong.”
Qasim choked back amusement, mingled with horror.
“Actually,” the braided man said, interjecting before Lofric could open his mouth to manage a response, “Why are you called ‘ibn Zirhud’, Qasim? The other Bazhir seem to have only two names. Your headman is named Amman Kemail, the father of the missing children is named Sirhan Parsha…” his voice trailed off.
Reminded of the missing children, Qasim glanced around the tent as he sat down the food tray by the men playing dice. There was no sign of anywhere missing children could have been secreted: only the usual hangings and furnishings of a desertman’s tent.
“It is the name of my father,” he said at last, ducking his head. “So I am ‘ibn Zirhud’, or the son of Zirhud.” He bit his lip and decided to venture the question after all. “Did you take the children?”
The third man rolled his eyes. “Of course we did,” he said, “Here, have a look, we’re keeping them under the carpet.”
“Tarlin!” Lofric snapped. He turned to Qasim. “We did not,” he said, firmly. “We have nothing to do with the vanished children, and we offered your headman our assistance. He refused, citing concerns for our safety that our involvement with the search could bring.”
Qasim had not overheard that. “Oh,” he said.
“They have not found them?”
“Not since I last heard.”
Lofric closed his book. His expression had turned grave. “Has this happened before?”
“Not often.”
“My men are trackers,” Lofric said. “I fear that they were taken.”
“What do you mean?” Qasim asked.
“There are Immortals such as the spidren,” Lofric explained, “Which prefer to lair in caves and then venture out to seek prey. They often attack isolated and vulnerable targets—so lone humans, and particularly the old and children.” A fleeting look of disgust crossed his face. “Especially children.”
“We have sentries,” Qasim pointed out. “Even at night. The spidren would have had to pass the sentries undetected.”
He shuddered, in spite of himself. He had heard tales of spidren, for all that they were not common to the desert. No, the dangers in the desert were other creatures entirely.
“Qasim has a point, Lofric,” the braided man said.
Lofric nodded. “Even so,” he said.
“You just dislike the idea of us sitting around idle on our backsides when we’re supposed to be helping,” Vasen muttered.
“Is there anything wrong with that?” Lofric demanded.
“No,” the braided man replied. “Not at all.” He sighed. “The Commander’s going to have a fit when he hears about this.”
“The Commander? Is it true that he beat Assad Fadim in a knife-fight?”
The braided man nodded sharply, grinning. “Fadim’s good,” he said. “But the Commander’s better. Fadim’s fast, like a snake—“ he made a sinuous, wriggling gesture with his hand. “So the Commander knew he had to end it, fast. He gave Fadim an opening and forced him to come in close to take it. And then he wrestled Fadim to the ground. Bigger man usually wins.”
Qasim made a small, astonished ‘o’ with his mouth. “You saw it?”
“The Own was with the Sandrunners, before our squad was sent to visit your tribe,” the braided man explained. He casually scooped up the bone dice and slipped them away into a pocket. Tarlin made a grumbled sound but made no further complaint.
“Why did you come?”
Lofric and the braided man exchanged a long glance. A look passed between them—a cautionary one, Qasim thought. As if they were trying to decide what could and what could not be said. “Building bridges,” Lofric said, at last. “The Commander’s ties are to the Sandrunners. But the King’s Own is meant to serve all the realm, and it will only be an effective peacekeeping force if it is perceived as serving all the realm.”
The braided man groaned. “You’ve lost him now, Lofric.”
“Give the boy a chance, Volorin.”
Qasim said, “You want to show everyone you can help—and that includes helping us?”
Lofric smiled, smugly. “That’s it,” he said. “And that’s why we were rather disappointed that your headman preferred we remain here.”
Qasim shrugged, uncomfortably. The headman did not dictate a course to the entire tribe; the adults of the tribe were free to argue with him before the central fires, or to bring a matter to the Voice for adjudication. Few chose to do so in these days. Even so, Amman Kemail was so widely respected, none would have thought of contesting him. “He has his reasons,” he ventured.
“We know he does, Qasim,” Volorin said, gently. “All we’re saying is, it’s not easy sitting by on the sidelines doing nothing.”
An awkward silence descended upon them. Qasim shifted his feet. He could see the buckle of his goat-hide sandals beginning to loosen once again. Quickly, he bent to fix it with a hasty tug. Repairs would have to wait until later.
“I’ll get the rest of the trays,” he said, quietly. He did so.
-
The hunters returned to the camp without having found the children. A set of footprints had been detected by the horse-picket, leading outward, past the old well and out into the open desert. They were in luck; the picket had provided some buffer from the wind, allowing the tracked sand to be preserved.
But although the groups had searched the direction the tracks led in, they could not find any sign of the children nor where they might have ended up.
Frustrated, Sirhan Parsha strode to the kingsmen’s tents and demanded entrance. Amman Kemail placed a restraining hand on the man’s shoulder but was roughly shrugged off.
Eventually, Lofric emerged, instead. “We did not take them,” he said, bluntly, to Sirhan’s face. “And we have already offered your headman our assistance numerous times.” His eyes went to Amman Kemail, who nodded, slightly, confirming the man’s words.
“Then explain how they vanished the night you entered our camp!” Sirhan shouted, shoving the kingsman back a step.
Lofric swayed with the blow, like a reed, and then straightened up again. His eyes were cold. “Need I say it? There are many creatures that would consider helpless children excellent prey. Spidren. Hurrocks. Serpards. Do not blame us, Sirhan Parsha. We are not responsible for all the evils of the world.”
It was cold comfort, Qasim thought, and Lofric must have known that. His mangling Sirhan’s name likely did not affect the man’s temperament, as Sirhan snarled and reached to his belt, only to find Amman Kemail’s hand closed tightly around his wrist.
Ghalib grabbed Sirhan’s other shoulder, ensuring the man was restrained. He glanced at the headman for further instructions.
“You are overwrought,” Amman Kemail said, quietly. “I understand why this is so. You have lost a daughter and a son this day, and we have found no sign of them. It is a difficult thing, to lose children, and the whole of the tribe feels your loss. This does not excuse the fact that your actions are those of a child, not a man.” He glanced over at the assembled tribesmen, expectantly.
To Qasim’s surprise, his father broke free of the crowd and strode forward, crossing the intervening space in a few swift steps.
“Ibn Tuhal,” Amman Kemail said, acknowledging his father with a nod. “Take him, and keep an eye on him. See to it that he does no further folly.”
Zirhud ibn Tuhal nodded sharply as Amman Kemail relenquished his grip on Sirhan’s wrist and the man tried, almost instantaneously, to draw, to twist about, and to strike at Lofric. Instead, Zirhud stepped smoothly into the space that the headman had vacated, grabbed Sirhan’s arm, and moved him into a tight hold. Sirhan ground his teeth together, and was forced to follow Zirhud as the man half-dragged, half-manhandled him along.
“Amman Kemail,” said Farhi Parsha, eventually. It was impossible to know what sort of expression her face might have carried, for her features were concealed by the veil she wore. “You give your word that these northmen do not lie?”
“I do,” the headman said, calmly. They looked at each other, for a long, slow moment. The other tribesmen were silent.
Farhi Parsha nodded, then. A short, sharp movement. “I believe you,” she said, at last, and then turned around and swept away.
“What of the children?” someone else asked.
Amman Kemail said, “I believe they are lost.” He held up a hand to forestall any protests. “Hear me: we have combed the desert for as much as we were able. No horses were missing; all tracks vanished. Were we decades younger, I would claim that they had fallen prey to that of which we do not speak.” His other hand twitched by his side, as though he longed to make the Sign. “In these days, I am forced to conclude it was a roc, or some other creature of the air.”
There were a few sullen mutters at this, directed not at the headman, but at the creatures that might have committed such a deed. Most of the Sunset Dragon remembered the abducted goats. Sarid was there, and he ducked his head in remembered shame, his ears burning.
“Who was on sentry duty last night?” Surai Imran wanted to know.
The discussion was going nowhere, Qasim decided; indeed, a number of the tribe had returned to their regular tasks. He looked around him, but he could not pick Ashraf out of the crowd of gathered tribesmen. Perhaps he had not managed to evade sentry duty after all; the village’s security would only be heightened by the missing children. As names were shouted and the discussion raged as though it was the Moment of the Voice all over again, he retreated to his father’s tent, to do the chores that needed doing.
-
That night, Qasim woke up sick.
Perhaps it had been the food, Qasim thought, as his stomach cramped fiercely and he gagged and bent over, trying not to throw up in the tent. Finally, he managed to stagger to his feet and out of the tent where he threw up most of his dinner onto the sand.
He sat back on his haunches, and tried not to moan as his stomach felt like it was kicking somersaults in his body.
“Qasim. Are you ill?”
He looked up. Limned in the pale moonlight, the figure that stood over him was none other than Ashraf. His spear was nowhere in sight. Ashraf wrinkled his nose as he eyed the mess in the sand. “D’you need help cleaning that up?”
“I can manage,” Qasim gritted, as he rose to his feet and began kicking sand over his mess. With Ashraf’s help, he managed to bury it.
“I think you need to get some water,” Ashraf said. “And then I’ll take you to the shaman.”
Qasim stared at him. “Safri Abidrah is going to kill me,” he moaned, bending over and resisting the urge to throw up yet again. He shivered, not from the chilly night air, and grabbed tightly onto Ashraf’s offered arm. His friend slung Qasim’s free arm around his shoulder and helped him straighten up.
“She’s not that bad,” Ashraf said, with a faint smile. “An unholy terror of the gods, yes, but you need help, Qasim.”
“All right,” he conceded, grudgingly, as another spasm came and went. “But let’s get some water first. I want to get the taste of this out of my mouth.”
-
With Ashraf’s help, Qasim managed to make his way to the old well. For some reason, the sentries who ought to have been by the horse pickets were nowhere in sight. Probably changing shift, Qasim thought.
“You’re sweating,” Ashraf said, distractedly, as he felt Qasim’s forehead. “This was a bad idea.”
The well was a short distane from the village and the horse-pickets, but the path to it was well-trodden. It was an old well, lined with stones and bricks of red clay, from a distant canyon, dug out painstakingly by a distant ancestor of the Sunset Dragon. Wells were precious among the Bazhir, and each tribe had at some point in the past dug their own wells to suit their caravan routes. Yet another reason why Amman Kemail had no doubt delayed the journey south. For all the kingsmen were their friends, he seemed uneasy about revealing to them the locations of the ancestral wells.
Qasim leaned against the side of the well for a moment as the cramping wracked him. Sweat dripped down his face, cool in the night air. The bricks and stone dug into his hands.
There was a wooden bucket, left to the side of the well. Qasim bent to retrieve it and gazed into the depths of the well. Moonlight glinted off the water, but also—
Pale ivory, like the clacking beads of Volorin’s braids.
He bit his lip. There were bones there, and Qasim was fairly certain they hadn’t been there since the last time the tribesmen drew water. When had that been?
He turned, mouth open, already about to call Ashraf to take a look at his discovery.
Sharp claws dug into his skin, ripped across his throat.
His blood, Qasim thought, as he staggered back. There was an awful, ragged warmth at his throat and his blood sprayed in the air, dark red.
Ashraf smiled.
His mouth was full of needle-sharp fangs, and blood dripped from his claws.
Qasim’s mouth worked. He struggled to utter words, found that his throat was hurting so badly, but somehow he was still breathing, still alive.
Ashraf threw himself at Qasim in a flash of movement; all sinuous, deadly grace. Ashraf had never moved like that, had never—pain blossomed in Qasim’s shoulder as he gasped, rolled about, and tried to get away. He’d never learned to wrestle the way the other boys did; they’d always left him out of their games, the not-quite-welcome stranger. Only Ashraf had cared, only Ashraf had taught him, even when his father should have but hadn’t because Zirhud ibn Tuhal had left a part of him on a distant battlefield and had returned to the Sunset Dragon a dead man, cast off from the Sleeping Lion.
No. He mustn’t think that, shouldn’t—it wasn’t fair.
He twisted about with great effort, slamming his forearm into Ashraf’s throat. But Ashraf was bigger and heavier, and claws scrabbled at Qasim, ripping through skin and muscle and into bone.
He was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it.
All of a sudden, there was a loud roar, and Ashraf was ripped off him. Qasim lay on his back and gasped, and tried to roll over to see what was going on. His blood pounded; his heartbeat felt like a drum in his ears. He had expected to die.
Zirhud ibn Tuhal slammed a longknife through Ashraf’s throat; Ashraf’s claws slashed at his vulnerable stomach, for Qasim’s father wore nothing but his loincloth, but Zirhud blocked him with a raised forearm. Claws scraped loudly against bone.
“No one,” Zirhud snarled, “Touches my son.”
He tore the knife free, and Ashraf fell, was falling down to the sand, and Zirhud instantly ran over to him. “Qasim,” he said, and for the first time, his face was an open book to Qasim; like the gaudy inks of the sketches, Qasim read concern-worry-fear-love, and it was already far too late. The world was going dark.
A shadow loomed behind Zirhud. Qasim tried to scream; could not utter a single sound.
A sword flashed through the air.
He saw, in that last moment, Volorin (for he recognised the ivory-bead-threaded braids) behind the shadow—his hands gripping the hilt of a sword, his expression urgent but determined. “Qasim!” Zirhud called, and Qasim felt his father scoop him up, gently, as though carrying an infant, and his head lolled back against the hard muscle of his father’s chest and his eyes drifted shut.
-
Qasim swam back to consciousness several times. He remembered Safri Abidrah frowning down at him, her hands glowing a powerful golden yellow, like syrupy honey, murmuring to him, drawing him back into sleep. He remembered one of the kingsmen by his side; a hand flaring pale green. “He’s not ready,” said an accented voice. “If he turns, he’ll undo the stitches again.” “Put him under already!”
He slept, and dreamed of wells in the deep desert, of water, of stars falling from the night sky.
And at the end of it all, he dreamed of his father: of Zirhud ibn Tuhal and his knife, his father’s serious eyes, the moment when the distance between them fell away.
When he woke for the last time, his father was sitting by his side, head bent over. He must have uttered some sound—a soft croak, perhaps, from his damaged throat. His father looked up; never had Qasim seen his father look so desperate, so raw, so haggard before.
“Don’t try to speak,” Zirhud said, at last. “The ghūl almost tore your throat out, and the shaman and the kingsman say you lost a great deal of blood. They spent a long time mending your wounds.”
He tried anyway, and Zirhud frowned at him. “Ashraf?”
“Devoured,” Zirhud said. He reached over to the tray resting beside him and picked up a clay cup. “Safri Abidrah says you must drink this.” He helped Qasim, gently, to sit up, and put the clay cup to his lips. It was some sort of herbal tisane, and Qasim yelped and almost choked and spluttered and spilled it. It was a vile, bitter concoction, but Zirhud’s grip was unforgiving and Qasim forced the rest of it down. “Better,” Zirhud said, calmly. He set the cup back down on the tray. “We do not know how the ghūl found our camp or slipped past the sentries.”
“What happened?”
“Perhaps it is best to start from the beginning,” Zirhud said, thoughtfully. “The ghūl came, somehow. It hid itself in the well and it slew the Parsha children as they went for a drink. We found their bones at the bottom of the well, with Ashraf’s. The ghūl may have assumed their appearance as Ashraf was searching for them, or perhaps he discovered it and fought but was slain. The kingsmen found a snapped spear, buried beneath the sand. Blood was on the shaft.”
Qasim’s cheek was wet. If his father noticed, he made no comment. “It is a shame,” Zirhud said, eventually. “But ghilan are known to spread disease and woundrot with their fangs and claws. Fully half the clan was sick, two nights ago.”
“Two nights?” Qasim’s voice hit a squeak that pained him.
“You’ve rested,” Zirhud said. “You needed it.”
“You killed the ghūl.” His memories seemed fragmented, shattered into several contradictory pieces.
“Actually, I did not,” Zirhud said. “It was the kingsman.” He shook his head. “I had been away from the desert during the war, and our tribe has never encountered ghilan. Rocs, yes, and wild lynxes, and all these other dangers of the desert, old and new. But we have never contended with ghilan, and for all the warning the Sandrunners gave us, I did not realise that ghilan can only be slain by dismemberment, beheading, fire, or a blade through the heart.”
“They are Immortals, then?”
Zirhud nodded. “They are.” His voice hardened. “They feed on the young and vulnerable,” he said, “And take on the appearance of their last victim.” His own eyes gleamed, wetly. “I nearly lost you,” he murmured. He brushed his thumb over Qasim’s knuckles. “The ghūl was trying to lure you to somewhere quiet and kill you, and it would have gone unnoticed had I not drank a little too much date wine the previous night and woken up thirsty.”
“And the kingsman?”
Zirhud shrugged uncomfortably. “Who can say? His squadmate saved you. Safri Adidrah could not have done it alone. You were badly wounded.”
“But he saved you,” Qasim remembered.
“Yes,” Zirhud ibn Tuhal said. “Yes, he did.”
-
Two days later, Qasim was finally allowed to return to his daily tasks. Things had not yet been fixed between him and his father, but things were slowly being set to rights. Zirhud had asked the tribe’s blacksmith to fashion Qasim a knife, and told Qasim firmly that he would be teaching him to use it when it was done.
Things were not perfect. He did not yet know what his father wrote of. Perhaps it had to do with his time fighting for the king. But they were getting better. He was trying. And Zirhud ibn Tuhal was trying. If good had come out of the run-in with the ghūl, it was that.
The kingsmen were leaving. He watched as the tribesmen took down their tents and returned the materials to the stores, and then ran for the picket line. It felt good to run, to feel the wind in his hair. The gut stitches had mostly dissolved, and the healing had worked wonders.
Lofric of Tirragen gave him a sardonic wave. He was busy buckling his saddle; his horse was fighting him, sucking in air. But Qasim had not come to speak with Lofric, although he saved a moment of thanks for Vasen, the squad’s healer.
Instead, he found himself walking over to where Volorin was checking his saddlebags, making sure nothing was missing.
Without missing a beat, Volorin looked up. “Qasim, isn’t it?” he asked. He grinned. “Good to see you’re doing better.” One of the beads in his hair had a pattern now, Qasim noticed. He strained to try to see what it was. “It’s a skull,” Volorin said, cheerfully. “I thought I’d have the bead carved, for each life I’ve managed to save.”
Qasim did not thank him. It would not quite have been right, he thought. It was Zirhud ibn Tuhal who owed the debt, and it was surely Zirhud ibn Tuhal who had already expressed his gratitude.
“You saved his life.”
Volorin shrugged. “It’s what we do,” he said, firmly. “We’re the King’s Own. Everyone in the Realm is entitled to protection, and we make sure they get it. Oftentimes, we end up going in where armies and guardsmen fail.”
“You’re leaving already?”
“Gotten fond of us, have you?”
Qasim swallowed. “I’m curious.”
Volorin left off with his saddlebags and turned to face Qasim now, his back to his horse. “Well,” he said, at last. “The incident with the ghūl definitely requires a report, for one. For another, word has come in from the Sandrunners. There’s been an earthquake at Harbourmouth, just south of Port Legann. We’re needed to look for survivors and to bring what order we can.”
“The gods go with you, then.”
Volorin nodded. Slyly, he said, “Perhaps one day we’ll see you, boy.”
“Me?”
“Why not?” Volorin asked, with a wink. “The King’s Own is recruiting, after all. Would be nice to see some Bazhir faces among our ranks. Think about it. There’s always room for brave hearts among us, no matter where you come from.”
“I’m going to be checking that saddle, Volorin,” Lofric warned.
“Be my guest,” Volorin said. “Just as soon as you can talk Stomper into behaving.” He indicated Lofric’s horse, who, uncontent with mere uncooperation, had started to trot away from him.
The rest of the King’s Own laughed—and to his own surprise, Qasim found himself joining in.
It felt good.
Maybe once we'd have seen it during Smackdown!