Читать книгу Snare - Katharine Kerr - Страница 8

‘Yes, except Jezro. The Lord is merciful, blessed be His name.’

Soutan glanced away, his lips pursed as if he were thinking something through. Out in the stream Tareev and Arkazo were still splashing around like schoolboys.

‘All right,’ Warkannan called out. ‘That’s enough. Out of the water! Get your stinking underwear clean, will you?’

Still laughing they climbed out to follow his orders. Soutan picked up his book again and ostentatiously began to read. Soutan’s loose trousers had once been tan, and his tunic blue, but they were spotted and stained with grass and sweat both. His face, oddly enough, looked both unstubbled and clean, but the rest of him stank.

‘Soutan?’ Warkannan said. ‘You can bathe in peace now.’

‘Thank you, but no.’ Soutan kept his gaze on the book. ‘I prefer to bathe in complete privacy. I know this seems strange to you Kazraks, what with your public bath houses and all, but I detest the idea of someone watching me.’

‘To each his own.’ Warkannan raised his hands palms upward. ‘It’ll be dark soon.’

After the evening meal, Soutan did indeed borrow the soap and take himself off downstream. As they sat by their fire, they could hear him splashing and even, at odd moments, singing.

‘Tell me something, Uncle,’ Arkazo said. ‘That girl this afternoon?’

‘What girl?’

‘The one in the comnee’s camp. The pretty one.’

Warkannan suppressed a smile. ‘Most Tribal women are pretty,’ he said.

‘Yes sir,’ Arkazo went on. ‘It’s really something, isn’t it, how all these people look alike? But we meant –’

‘Sir, the one who –’ Tareev interrupted. ‘Well, I thought she was looking me and Kaz over. Those stories you hear about comnee women? Are they true?’

‘That they’re good with a bow when they have to be?’

‘You’re teasing, aren’t you?’ Arkazo was grinning at him.

‘Yes, of course I am,’ Warkannan said. ‘If you mean, do they sleep with men they fancy when they want to, yes. But here’s another true saying – make a comnee man jealous, and you’ll have a knife fight on your hands. Kindly don’t go propositioning girls who belong to someone else. We don’t need any more trouble on this trip than we have already.’

Warkannan was about to say more when he heard someone approaching through the raspy grass – Soutan. He was wearing clean clothes, pale khaki in the same loose cut that the Kazraks were wearing, and carrying his other things wet.

‘There is just something about a bath,’ Soutan announced. ‘Here’s your soap back, gentlemen, and I thank you.’

On the morrow they reached the Great River, where, late in the afternoon, they ran across an unusually large comnee of some thirty families. Their chief, Lanador, greeted them as hospitably as always, but he warned them that the comnee would be riding west on the morrow.

‘You’re welcome to ride with us, of course, if your road takes you that way.’

‘Well, thank you,’ Warkannan said. ‘But we’re heading south. I’m looking for someone, you see. Zayn the Kazrak. Someone told us he rides with Apanador’s comnee.’

Lanador blinked twice; then his face went expressionless.

‘Ah. Well, come have a bowl of keese with me.’

Lanador took them in to his enormous tent, where blue-and-green tent bags hung on the orange and red walls. The chief sat them down on leather cushions, then poured keese into the ritual skull-cup. Warkannan took a sip and passed it to Arkazo, who ran a finger over rough bone and nearly dropped it. Tareev grabbed it from him just in time.

‘Drink from it,’ Warkannan whispered in Kazraki. ‘Skull or not.’ Arkazo took it back, forced out a smile, and drank. Much to Warkannan’s relief, the chief raised one broad hand and pretended to cough, covering a laugh rather than taking insult. Lanador was just handing round the ordinary bowls when an old man lifted the tent flap and came in to join them. He was gaunt, with prominent cheekbones and long bony fingers; his grey hair hung down to his shoulders in greasy strands. The saurskin cloak and the true-hawk feather in his ear marked him for a witchman. He refused a bowl of keese and squatted down next to Warkannan.

‘Why are you looking for Zayn?’

‘He’s a friend of mine. I want to see if he’ll come home with me instead of living in exile.’

The old man’s eyes caught him. Warkannan could neither move nor speak until the spirit rider looked away, his mouth twisted in something like disgust.

‘Do you know where Zayn is?’ Warkannan said.

‘No.’ The spirit rider got up and left the tent.

Lanador rose, muttered a few excuses, and followed him outside. Soutan leaned over and grabbed Warkannan’s arm.

‘You idiot!’ Soutan spoke in Kazraki. ‘You never should have lied to him. Witchfolk can practically smell lies.’

‘What was I supposed to say?’ Warkannan shook his hand off. ‘That I’m going to kill Zayn when I find him?’

‘Imph, well. You have a point –’ Soutan broke off.

Lanador was lifting the tent flap. He came in, smiled vaguely at his guests, and sat down. As the afternoon wore on, he was as gravely courteous as if the incident had never happened. A few at a time, the other men in the comnee came in to take their place in the circle and drink. Warkannan noticed one of them studying him. A handsome, almost girlishly pretty young man, he carried the long knife in his belt that marked him for a warrior, and on his face were the green and yellow marks of old bruises.

That evening, to honour their guests the comnee cooked a communal feast over several different fires. Everyone ate standing up, carrying bowls of food with them while they drifted from friend to friend to talk. Warkannan noticed a pair of comnee girls, both in their teens, staring at Tareev and Arkazo and giggling behind raised hands. As the feast wore on, the two girls began to follow the two young Kazraks, always at a discreet distance, always giggling. Warkannan eventually pointed them out to Soutan.

‘Where are their mothers, I wonder?’ Warkannan said.

‘Trying to ignore the whole thing, most likely,’ Soutan said. ‘Do you know what they’re giggling about?’

‘No.’

‘Neither do I.’ Soutan shrugged. ‘Doubtless nothing in particular. We should be asking questions about this Zayn, not worrying about other people’s morals.’

‘True enough.’

But when Warkannan mingled with the comnee, everyone he asked claimed never to have heard of Zayn – not that he believed them. Since the comnees despised lying, their lack of practice showed. Warkannan let the matter drop and talked only of the weather and the ChaMeech. Some of the men in the comnee had sighted ChaMeech a few days past, but only three females.

‘Three females without any males?’ Soutan said. ‘That’s really peculiar.’

Their informant, a beefy young comnee man, nodded his agreement. ‘We left them alone,’ he went on. ‘They weren’t likely to give anyone any trouble.’

‘They wouldn’t, no, not females,’ Soutan said. ‘And travelling this time of year? Odd. Very odd.’

The comnee man drifted away, and Warkannan glanced around – no one within earshot. There was also no sign of either Arkazo or Tareev.

‘We need to talk about things,’ Warkannan whispered in Kazraki. ‘I’ll just collect our young colts.’

‘They can find our camp on their own,’ Soutan said. ‘I have no doubt that those girls are satisfying their curiosity.’

‘Their what?’

‘I finally heard what the little sluts were giggling about. Both of our boys have big noses. The girls were wondering if other –er – features are commensurately large. You know, the old folk superstition about organ size.’

‘Shaitan!’ Warkannan felt himself blushing. ‘Of all the immodest –! Their mothers should beat them within an inch of their lives.’

‘I quite agree. The mothers wouldn’t. Shall we go? The boys will come staggering back at dawn, most likely.’

Warkannan led the way downriver to their little camp, which he’d set up out of earshot of the comnee. While Soutan lounged on the grass, Warkannan built and lit a tiny fire of dried horse dung around a few pieces of oak charcoal, then sat down near it for the light.

‘There’s one good thing,’ Warkannan said. ‘If Zayn’s still with this comnee, he’s not off in the east, stumbling over Jezro Khan.’

‘If he really is the spy from the Chosen. We can’t be sure.’

Warkannan was about to answer when he heard footsteps crackle in the grass. He was expecting Arkazo, but the comnee man with the bruised face stepped into the pool of firelight.

‘Come walk with me,’ he said to Warkannan. ‘I can’t risk being seen here.’

Warkannan followed him through the dark night to the fern trees along the river. The comnee man leaned close to whisper.

‘My name is Palindor. Why do you want to find Zayn? The Spirit Rider says you’re lying when you say he’s your friend, so don’t tell me that again.’

When Warkannan hesitated, Palindor laughed, a cold mutter under his breath.

‘I hate him, and I think you do, too.’

The venom in his voice rang so true that Warkannan decided to trust him.

‘Yes, I do. The woman he dishonoured was my sister. I’m going to kill him when I find him.’

Palindor laughed. ‘He’s about twenty miles south of here, and riding this way. Look, he’s going to make a vision quest out in the Mistlands. Do you know what that means?’

‘Oh yes. He’ll be alone out there, in a place where it’s damned hard to see someone coming. Huh – if his comnee’s riding upriver, it’ll camp on the southern edge.’

‘Where the river flows out. The quests always start there.’

‘Good.’ Warkannan laid his hand on his coin pouch. ‘A hundred thanks. Can I give –’

‘Keep your money, Kazrak. Just help me kill him.’

In the middle of the grasslands lay a vast swamp, a semi-earth of bog and stream nearly eighty miles across, fed by underground springs. The Kazraki scholars taught that God had created the Mistlands to provide water for the horses no matter how hot the summer. When Zayn repeated this theory to Ammadin, she laughed, much to his annoyance.

‘I guess that means you don’t believe me,’ he said.

‘You’re not the person to believe or disbelieve,’ Ammadin said. ‘You’re only repeating what you’ve been told.’

‘Who do you think created them, then?’

‘I don’t have the slightest idea, myself. Now, in the Cantons some of their sorcerers are called loremasters. One of them came to buy a horse from me some years back. When we talked, she told me that in the Mistlands, the earth’s beginning to tear apart. There’s water underneath, and it comes up through the holes.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’

‘Is it? Consider the earthquakes. The ground moves then, doesn’t it?’

‘Well, yes, but –’ Zayn paused, thinking. ‘Well, I hadn’t thought of it that way before.’

Whatever their origins, and Zayn was by then thoroughly caught between the conflicting theories, the Mistlands breathed an aura of the holy. Not the comfortable holiness of a gilded mosque, but the stomach-wrenching trembling holiness that bespoke the left hand of God – or the dark gods, if the Tribes had the right of it. On the day that the comnee reached the Mistlands, Zayn saw the fog from miles away, a grey brooding, blending into the purple horizon to the north. The closer they rode, the more the air turned damp, and the dampness became a smell, a foetid coolness of mud and rotting things. Like clouds piling up for a storm, the grey canopy grew larger and larger as the riders approached. At the place where the comnee stopped to make camp, the canopy seemed to arch over half the sky. With sundown it grew larger still, spreading grey tendrils like reaching fingers into the twilight.

Since he was fasting, Zayn walked to the edge of the camp while the others ate. When he looked into the mist, he saw points of bluish light drifting close to the ground – spirits, or so the mullahs would call them, gennies and evil spirits. Ammadin called them spirits but nothing evil, just spirits, who existed as men and animals did, with neither malice nor good will. She had been teaching him the ways of her gods, to prepare him for his quest. In the darkening swirls of mist, it seemed he saw vast figures striding and drifting: Ty-Onar, the god of the swamps, all green and crested like a lizard; Hirrel of the high places, slender and black, with bright pink gills along his sides. Deep within the mists other figures seemed to gather, but never close enough for him to identify. Tomorrow he would be among them, asking for a vision.

Sharply Zayn reminded himself that he was a Kazrak and a follower of the one true god. He was only undergoing this ordeal to keep the confidence of the comnee, because if he lost that confidence, he would have a hard time reaching the Cantons. To a fifteen-year-old boy, he supposed, the quest would be terrifying, the first and likely the only time in his life that a comnee boy would be alone. Doubtless the terror blended with the fasting and the simple pride of becoming a man to produce the visions they were supposed to see out there. Thanks to his studies of Tribal customs, Zayn could make up a convincing vision to tell Ammadin, something that would satisfy these primitive people. That was all there was to it. Superstitious nonsense. Of course. But out in the mists the blue lights danced, brighter in the thickening night. He felt a cold seep into his heart that had little to do with the dampness of the air.

Zayn hurried back to Dallador’s fire, but since he was fasting he refused the usual keese. Maradin and the child were visiting friends. They sat together silently and watched the pale flames. After some while Dallador went into the tent and came back with a long knife in a sheath inlaid with red leather. He handed it to Zayn.

‘Your father’s not here to give you one,’ Dallador said. ‘Take it.’

‘Thank you. I can’t thank you enough – I mean that.’

Dallador merely smiled.

‘I didn’t think a comnee man would have an extra knife,’ Zayn went on.

‘I won that one in a fight. Some loudmouth from another comnee insulted Maradin.’

‘Ah. To get this away from him you must have killed him.’

‘Oh yes.’ Dallador smiled at the memory. ‘No one’s said a wrong word to her since.’

Zayn unbuckled his belt, slid off the sheath of his Kazrak hunting knife, and replaced it with the long knife. Settling this new weapon at his hip made him feel like a different man. As for the old knife – he picked it up and offered it to Dallador.

‘It’ll be a curiosity to show around, if nothing else.’

Dallador hesitated for a moment, then took it. He looked so solemn that Zayn realized they’d just bound themselves together in some ritual way. It was a mistake, he supposed, making a friend, but he refused to go back on it now.

That night Zayn took his bedroll and slept outside far from the camp. Just at dawn, Apanador and Ammadin came to waken him. Since he’d slept fully dressed, Zayn started to pull on his boots, but Apanador stopped him.

‘The rocks are too slippery. Your boots could drown you out there.’

‘All right.’ Zayn laid them aside. ‘Can I take my knife?’

‘Of course. At the end of this, you’ll either be a man or dead. If you die, we’ll bury you with the knife so you can protect yourself in the spirit world.’

‘All right,’ Zayn said. ‘I like that way of thinking.’

‘Good.’ Ammadin handed him a long, smooth pole, sharpened to a point at one end and bound at the other with a blue thread, two true-hawk feathers, and a silver talisman. ‘This is a spirit staff. Don’t lose it. Now kneel on the ground for a moment.’

When Zayn knelt, she held up a tiny ground-stone jar.

‘Go to the gods. Beg them for your true name.’ She paused to dip a bit of rag into the jar, which turned out to hold a pale pink ointment. ‘Either return with your vision, or pray that Ty-Onar drowns you. How can a man with no vision live his life? How can a man with no name be a man?’

She marked his forehead with a smear of the ointment, then rubbed it into his skin. The warmth of the rag – or was it the ointment? – was disturbing, far too hot for normal cloth. Zayn felt as if the warmth were boring into his forehead and spreading through every nerve in his body. She dipped the rag into the ointment again and wiped it across his lips. Reflexively he licked them, and she smiled, pleased. Slowly the warmth faded, but he saw with different eyes. Every blade of grass, every detail of her face and clothing, were so vivid that he nearly cried out. He turned his head and saw that Apanador seemed to be standing in a cloud of bright light.

‘Walk in as a boy,’ Apanador said. ‘Then ride as a man ever after.’

Alone, carrying the spirit wand in both hands like a quarterstaff, Zayn headed towards the Mistlands. He was just out of sight of the camp when he came to the first stream, running slowly, clogged with purple tendrils of weed and pale, lavender scum in little backwaters. He stepped in cautiously, but the bed proved to be firm sand and stone. As he crossed stream after stream, the ground began to turn spongy. Even when the ground rose above the water, his bare feet made a sucking, squelching noise on the short hummocky grass. He used the spirit staff to tap his way through the marshy ground, where here and there stagnant pools of water oozed among lush red-orange lichens. Slowly the mist came to meet him, arching up and covering the sky like a tent, the torn edges gleaming in the sunlight. When he walked under the cool greyness, he could see it lying on the ground ahead as thick as a wall. The air turned cold; drops beaded on his shirt. His view shrank as the greyness built an ever-receding wall some yards ahead. Near him everything looked abnormally clear and significant: each hummock of grass, each ooze of water carried an urgent if unreadable message. His hearing, too, seemed sharper than ever before. From the mist came the sound of water slapping and splashing in slow movements, each sound like the cry of some live thing.

As he was tapping his way along, the mist swirled to reveal a darker grey. Ahead stretched one of the lakes, a flat rippled sheet of shallow water, disappearing into the white drift. Red rushes grew sharp and dark, like strokes drawn with a scribe’s pen. Among them stood a grey flying creature of the species called cranes. With a squat body, a long slender neck, and enormous wings of naked skin, furled close to the body at the moment, it perched on one thin, pink leg and looked at him with beady yellow eyes.

‘Little brother,’ Zayn said. ‘Ask the gods to bless me.’

Even as he spoke, Zayn wondered why he’d say such a thing – him, a rational man, educated at the best school in Haz Kazrak. The crane, however, bobbed its head to him, then spread great wings to reveal the pair of vestigial arms that dangled underneath. It flew off with a slap against the heavy air, its pink feet and lashing tail trailing awkwardly after. Zayn followed as it circled the edge of the lake, but soon he lost it in the mist. He began to wonder how many boys camped right here and never dared to go further into the unnerving not-quite-silence.

He stopped at the place where the lakeshore bulged out in a muddy spit of land, pointing to a hummock out in the water. Testing his way with his staff, Zayn stepped off the spit and into the lake. He nearly cried out in surprise: the water was warm. So was the muddy bottom as it clung to his bare feet. He slogged his way out to the hummock, and from this higher ground, he could see a good ways out into the mist-shrouded lake.

Lumps of sodden land lay like a chain of tiny islands and seemed to lead to deeper water. He was debating whether to go further when he saw the crane, perched on a hummock just at the limit of his sight. He stepped off and began making his way towards it, going from hummock to hummock, but spending most of his time in the turgid water, which grew warmer and warmer the farther in he went. It was hard going, fighting the water, testing every inch of muddy ground, clambering from one soft lump to another. Every time he grew close to the crane, it would fly off again, leading him further. As the water grew warmer, a strange kind of slimy plant, dark red and no more than half an inch high, replaced the purple grass.

What felt like hours passed before Zayn paused to look back. The shore had disappeared, wrapped in mist. Ahead, the water stretched out smooth and empty, rippling in the light wind, but to his left stood a hummock big enough to qualify as a tiny island. Zayn splashed his way over and climbed onto the stretch of slimy moss-covered rock, about fifty yards long and maybe twenty at its widest point. On the far side grew a huge stand of a different sort of reed, of a mottled purple-brown colour, each one about as thick as his wrist. Zayn knelt down and cupped water in his hands; it tasted medicinal and sharp, full of mineral salts, he supposed. He drank it sparingly.

When he looked up, the mist swirled and lightened, and this time, he did cry out. For a moment he thought that he was seeing a city looming out of the endless fogs: shining towers, great mounds of houses, some pale green, some horizontally striped in browns and tans, but most as white and shiny as salt. Huge billowy domes, edged in opaque icicles, loomed over flat terraces. Crazy-tilting roofs hung, caught in mid-fall over what seemed to be open squares while rope ladders and twisted balconies marched down glittering walls. Far larger than even Haz Kazrak, on and on this broken cityscape stretched, reaching back into the surging clouds and walls of mist, reaching up into the temporary gilding of the sun beyond the fog. As he stared in open-mouthed awe, he found himself remembering every old tale or fable he’d ever heard as a boy about the wondrous cities and huge flying ships of the Ancestors, lost forever, or so everyone said, in their ruined homeland.

Then, when the entire wrapping of mist blew sideways for a few brief moments, he realized that water was trickling out of the towers and sheeting down, that the supposed buildings were vast deposits of minerals and salts, accreted over the Lord only knew how many endless centuries or aeons, from the outlets for the mineral springs under the Mistlands. He grunted aloud in sheer disappointment as the mists came back, a blanket raised by the wind’s hands and just as quickly dropped.

His reason reasserted itself. The hot springs would boil up inside those deposits, he supposed, to produce the huge quantities of fog when the steam hit the cooler air. The moisture would then run down its own accretions, leaving a further residue of salts. How far the travertines stretched he couldn’t see – a long, long way, far beyond the limit of his mist-shortened view. For a moment he considered wading over to explore, but the crane came flapping back. It settled, plopping into the water, and turned to block his way. When it opened its beak, he saw tiny spikes of teeth.

‘You want me to stay, don’t you, little brother? All right. I’ll make my vigil here.’

The crane tucked up one leg and began to study the water, head a little to one side, long beak ready. Zayn sat down on the rocks nearby and shivered in his soaked clothes. He looked at the spirit staff in his lap, ran his hands along it and found it comforting that Ammadin’s hands had bound the thread and tied the talisman. Just beyond the mists, she and the members of the comnee were waiting for him with food and warm blankets. He wondered how long he was going to have to stay out here to prove his manhood to the comnee.

‘They have a hard way with their boys, these people.’

The crane bobbed its head as if agreeing.

‘My father had the usual ceremonies done over me. Now, my uncle – he took me to a whore-house when he figured I was old enough. The old man was furious enough to kill us both, but my uncle was bigger than him. Good thing, too.’

Zayn found himself remembering his father’s face, but as a young man, not as he was now. He jumped to his feet and swore, because it seemed Father was standing in front of him, vivid and solid. The vision lasted only a moment, but Zayn saw the anger in his eyes, the sharp twist of a mouth that was about to spit curses on his son. Then the vision faded, leaving only the rock, the water rushes, and the crane, raising its head to look at its restless neighbour.

‘I saw that look on his face the whole time I was a child,’ Zayn said. ‘And you know what the worst thing was? I agreed with him. I knew it already, you see, that there was something wrong with me. I was just too young to know what.’

The crane seemed to be considering all this seriously. Zayn started to laugh at himself for talking to a bird, but with a sharp cry, the crane leapt and flew away, leaving only silence and empty water behind it.

‘Come back!’ Zayn called. ‘I’m sorry I laughed at you.’

Well, he’d driven away everyone else who’d tried to befriend him, hadn’t he? He’d always been terrified of letting anyone close. After all, he might have let something slip in some relaxed moment. They might have come to see what he was, barely human at all, an outcast and a pollution.

‘What are you doing?’ he said aloud. ‘Letting your mind run this way!’

You’re just tired and hungry, he told himself. Men do see things when they get that way. Perhaps. There was a cold ripple down his spine that had nothing to do with the damp air. Suddenly he was sure he felt spirits all around him. He knew it, couldn’t talk himself out of it, felt them circling him like a cold wind. He held the spirit staff up like a weapon and stared out into the mist.

In a pale, translucent progression, drifting like bits of torn cloud, they came walking across the water towards him. Smoke-shapes with human faces, they drifted nearer and nearer, staring at him with demon-slit eyes. In the rippling water he heard voices.

‘Zahir,’ they whispered. ‘Zahir Benumar! We see you, Zahir. We know your real name now. Death taught us a good many things.’

‘Who are you?’ Zayn snapped. ‘What do you want?’

‘Don’t you remember me?’ One smoke wisp resolved itself into a middle-aged man, fat and naked. ‘I hanged myself after you went to the Chosen with your tales about me.’

‘You were a traitor!’

‘No, no traitor, only a man who wanted justice for his daughter. Better I died fast than at the hands of the Chosen.’

With a howl of laughter, the spirit disappeared. The others stayed, prowling round and round the island.

‘What do you want with me?’

With a sigh, an inarticulate reproach and murmur, they pressed closer.

‘Remorse.’ A woman appeared out of the smoke. ‘Zahir, don’t you ever feel any remorse?’

‘We all died because of you.’ This spirit seemed to be a young man. ‘For some of us, our dying was a long slow thing.’

‘That had nothing to do with me! I’m just a pair of extra eyes for the Great Khan. I’m just a pair of ears.’

‘Listen to him!’ The spirits began to laugh. ‘Listen to him!’

‘It’s true! I never killed any of you.’

‘You killed all of us.’

One at a time, with a last whisper, the spirits dissolved like a mist before a wind, until only the lake stretched in front of him, rippled and dark. Zayn lowered the staff. For a long while he merely shook. He was so desperate for the sound of a voice that he spoke aloud.

‘This isn’t the kind of vision I can take back to Ammadin, is it? I wonder what she’d think if she knew the truth?’

Zayn sat back down and tried to think of some tale to convince her and the comnee that he’d seen a proper vision. Not the slightest idea came to him. He could at least claim to have seen a spirit crane. Suddenly he wondered if such a claim was the simple truth, because the bird came back, settling into the water nearby.

‘Little brother, did you send those ghosts to me?’

The crane cocked its head and looked at him with oddly intelligent eyes. It was just a bird – it had to be just a bird – but he saw a light around it, a glow like sun in a mist emanating from its scaly skin. The golden eyes seemed to pierce him with a stare like Ammadin’s cold scrutinies.

‘Little brother, send me a vision.’

With a soft cry, the crane flew, circled the island once, then disappeared into the mists. Zayn clutched the spirit staff and sat perfectly still. The hard slimy rock under him, the cold, his hunger – they were nothing to him, who could crouch for hours on his hands and knees in order to overhear some conversation between suspect officers or to see some forbidden meeting. The fog above turned a brighter silver to signal that noon had arrived in the world beyond the Mistlands. The warm and bitter-scented water lapped and splashed at the edge of the island. Zayn waited, staring into the mists.

He was floating in a room or seeing it in a dream; he was never sure which, but the room looked as vivid as if he stood in some sort of brothel, a handsome well-appointed place, anyway, where men sat in a haze of hashish smoke, and unveiled women moved among them with plates of food on silver trays. Sitting in one corner was a man with a military posture and thick streaks of grey in his hair, not a bad-looking fellow for his age, but Zayn hated him the moment he saw him. He looked sober, barely touched by the smoke in his safe little corner, while he peered out at the room with such a knowing little smirk, such a look of contempt for the people he watched that Zayn wanted to kill him. He would be doing the world a favour if he removed this empty husk of a man, who reminded him of nothing so much as a scavenger lizard, feeding off the deaths of others. His hand on the hilt of his knife, Zayn moved towards the fellow, who turned and looked him straight in the face. At that moment, Zayn recognized him: it was himself, the same face that he saw every morning when he shaved, merely some twenty years older.

The sound of a cry broke the vision. Zayn was on his feet, his knife in hand, before he realized that he’d made the cry himself.

‘No! God forgive me! No!’

A terror that he couldn’t understand clutched him as he paced back and forth on the rocky islet. Maybe he should throw himself into the lake to drown, if his life was going to come to that, those sunken eyes, possessed by a simple ugly emptiness, a man with nothing to live for but revenge.

‘I’ll get back at you. I’ll get back at all of you.’

Whom was he talking to? He didn’t know, only knew that he’d lived the promise in that voice for years now, four long years that he suddenly saw as an arrow, flying straight into the future and leading him to the brothel of his vision.

‘It isn’t true. You’re tired. You’re hungry. This place is enough to drive any man crazy. It’s just a kind of dream, like you get when you’re feverish.’

But the memory of the smirk stayed with him, and the bright little eyes of a scavenger – some scrabbling land crab, collecting the droppings of stronger beasts and pushing them back to its lair, as proud as it could be of its collection of dung. His own metaphor made him shudder. He walked round and round the island and looked for the crane.

‘Come back, little brother! Don’t leave me here alone! Please come back, please.’

The water splashed on the rock like one of Ammadin’s incantations, a constant murmur of sound. For all that he desperately tried to talk himself round, Zayn felt magic all around him. It was as if magic were a person who was watching him, spying on him, following every move he made. He felt it as a coldness down his back, a prickling of his skin such as a wild animal must feel when the hunter stalks close.

Abruptly he realized that the noon-glow was long gone and the mists were turning a steely grey. When he thought of staying out all night, he was so frightened that his stomach clenched, and he dropped to his knees to vomit. Since he’d eaten nothing in a long time, all that came up was the lime-bitter water. This spasm of fear convinced him to stay. He’d conquered a hundred other fears; he could conquer this new one, not of death or torture, but of seeing too much. He went to the edge of the island and knelt down, scooping up water in his hands to wash the foamy vomit from his mouth. All at once he heard the crane, shrieking what sounded like a warning overhead. Out of sheer reflex he threw himself to one side.

The arrow sped by him.

It came so fast, hissing through the air, that he thought he’d imagined it until another shaft sped out of the mist and struck with a clatter on the rock just behind him. Zayn screamed a gurgling imitation of a death-cry, then pitched himself head-first into the water. The warm darkness enveloped him, as languid as a bath. In the shallow water he could not swim, but he forced himself down to the bottom and, crawling more than swimming, managed to reach the spread of water rushes. Among them he could half-stand, half-crouch on the muddy bottom with just his face out of the water – an imperfect shelter if his unknown attacker chose to send a volley his way. For a long time he heard nothing but the splash of water; then distantly came the sound of someone laughing. So. The fool thought he’d killed him, did he?

Smiling to himself, Zayn began to crawl sideways, dropping to his knees under the water and holding his breath until his chest ached like fire. At last he risked coming up in the shelter of rocks and water weeds. Out in the lake on the other side of the island, a man was slogging towards him. Even in the mist, he recognized Palindor. The old border adage was holding true: insult a comnee man – fight for your life.

Zayn slipped the long knife free of his belt, then crouched again, leaning back so that his face was barely out of the water. He heard splashing as Palindor climbed onto the island and the wet slapping steps of bare feet as he walked across. When Zayn risked another look, Palindor was standing some twenty feet away.

Slowly, carefully, Zayn began to climb up the rocky bank of the island. His back towards him, Palindor unstrung the bow and began using it like a staff to poke amongst the rushes. Zayn gained the ground and straightened up, his knife ready in his hand.

‘Looking for me?’

When Palindor spun around, Zayn charged, racing across the rocks. Palindor dropped the bow and grabbed at the knife at his side, but Zayn reached him before it was out of the sheath. In a futile attempt to protect himself, Palindor flung up his left arm. Zayn grabbed it, swung him around off-balance, and slipped with his enemy. As they went down, Zayn wrestled him round and fell on top of him. He stabbed with the long knife at the base of the neck, one quick blow that severed the spine. Palindor whimpered, twitched convulsively, then lay still.

‘You stupid little bastard! I’m not even the reason you couldn’t have her.’

Zayn wiped his knife on Palindor’s shirt, then sheathed it. He decided that he’d better not tell the comnee about this, but then it occurred to him that Palindor had committed a grave crime, stalking a man during his vision quest. He took the dropped bow and unbuckled the quiver of arrows hung on Palindor’s belt. They were solid evidence that Palindor intended to murder, not challenge him.

Far off in the mists came a rasping cry that was doubtless meant to sound like a swamp lizard’s croak. Zayn froze, his hands tight on the quiver. That Palindor could find allies for an impious murder was the last thing that Zayn ever would have suspected from the Tribes, but the cry came again, seemingly closer. In the mist and wind it could have come from any direction. Zayn strung the bow and stuck the quiver down the front of his shirt. Crouching low, he trotted to the edge of the island and slid off into waist-deep water, but he held the bow up to keep the bowstring dry. Moving as silently as he could, slipping a bit on the muddy bottom, he started back for the hummock that marked the path to the lake shore. All he wanted was to get out of there before he was forced to kill another comnee man. He heard the false lizard cry again, desperate now, insistent for an answer.

When he reached the first hummock, Zayn stayed in the water. It was too dangerous to clamber up and expose his back to an arrow. But how deep did the water lie here? At that he remembered the spirit staff, left behind on the islet. All his instincts told him to leave it there and run for his life, but he felt that to lose the staff meant losing the manhood he’d come here to gain. He crouched low, holding the bow free of the water, and waited. The mewling cry came loud out of the mists on the far side of the islet. When he looked back, he could just see the dark shape of Palindor’s corpse.

Keeping the island in sight, Zayn circled round in the direction of the cry to stalk the man stalking him. The wall of mist receded ahead of him as he waded through the lake, and slowly there appeared dark shapes that had to be another chain of hummocks and rocks. All at once he saw the spirit crane, standing on a small, sharp rock. The crane spread its wings, bobbed its head, and danced a few threatening steps – guarding a nest, maybe, but Zayn took it as a warning. He crouched down, the water lapping around his chest, but kept the bow up and dry. He waited, fighting the warmth of the water, a drowsy mineral warmth that soothed and relaxed every muscle in his body. He was stifling yawns by the time he saw the man-sized shape, slipping through the water ahead of him some thirty feet away and headed for the islet.

Zayn let the man get a good head-start, then drew and nocked an arrow in his bow and followed him, keeping well back on the edge of his enemy’s visibility. Sliding in the muck, cursing under his breath, the man reached the island and clambered up the rocky bank. Zayn saw him kneel down by Palindor’s body and lay his bow aside. Zayn stood up, the bow ready, and waited. He had no hopes of actually hitting a target with the unfamiliar Tribal bow; he merely hoped to distract the enemy with the shot, then dodge to one side and approach from a new direction. At last the enemy rose, his bow dangling in his hand. Zayn loosed. Much to his shock, the arrow hissed home and struck its target in the side of his chest. The man screamed, twisted and clawed at the shaft, and fell to his knees. By the time Zayn made his way over to the islet, he lay dead with bloody foam crusting on his lips and chin.

Zayn slung his bow over his back, then crouched down by the bleeding corpse and turned him over: a Kazrak. His eyes were pale grey and his straight hair dark, but he was a young Kazrak, all right, with a beaky nose and dark skin, wearing a tunic over his leather trousers. Zayn had never seen him before in his life.

He ran across the island, grabbed the spirit staff, and kept running to the farther bank. He slipped into the water and started back across the lake. He was half-way to the first hummock when he heard another false croak, coming from the opposite direction of the first, as if there were a net of men being drawn around him. As fast as he could, Zayn slogged on. Every now and then he would crouch down and look back, only to see nothing but mist.

By the time he gained the lake shore, it was growing dark. Tapping his way with the staff, desperately looking for the traces he’d left in the morning, he picked his way through the swamp. In the twilight, the only sign of treacherous bogs were little glimmers of silver from standing water. When he realized that he had miles between him and safety, his exhaustion caught him. He would find another islet and sleep. If he died of exposure, then he’d never have to wake up, and at the moment, that seemed a blessing. When he looked back, he saw the bluish lights drifting in the mists behind him, soft round balls, drifting like watchers for the gods. The sight drove him onward.

Zayn went about half a mile on before he saw the light ahead of him, a pale blue fire bobbing as if it were a lantern held in someone’s hand. He fell to one knee, laid the staff down, and nocked an arrow in his bow. As the light came closer, he suddenly wondered if it were an evil spirit; if so, the bow would be useless.

‘Zayn?’ Ammadin called out. ‘Is that you?’

Zayn sighed aloud, a sharp hiss of relief.

‘Yes. Stay where you are! You could be in danger.’

Zayn put the arrow back in the quiver, picked up the spirit staff, and went on, stumbling on the mossy ground. When he finally saw Ammadin, he swore aloud. She was holding her hand shoulder high, and from her fingers streamed a pale bluish light like cold fire. When she spoke, he couldn’t answer: all he could do was stare at the light on her hand.

‘I had the feeling you’d be back at sunset,’ she said. ‘Here – what? By the gods, where did you get that bow?’

Zayn could only shrug and watch the streaming light.

‘Tell me.’ Ammadin grabbed his arm with her other hand. ‘What danger? Are you hurt?’

‘No. The bow? I took it from a man who tried to kill me with it. Someone was hunting me out there.’

‘Who?’

Zayn made an effort and looked away from the magical fire. How could he tell her the truth? Palindor had loved her once.

‘Someone I don’t know. Kazraks.’

‘Don’t lie to me.’ Ammadin’s voice turned hard. ‘Who?’

‘Very well, then. Palindor. But he had a couple of Kazraks with him.’

Ammadin went stiff and still, her hand still tight on his arm.

‘I’m sorry,’ Zayn went on, ‘but he had this bow. He was trying to kill me. I swear it. I’m sorry.’

‘No need for apologies. I believe you. Come along. We’ve got to get back to the others.’

‘But he – I mean Palindor. Aren’t you sorry he’s dead?’

‘I’m sorry he broke the law. There’s no time for chatter. Come on!’

Once he was sitting by a fire with a bowl of stew in his hands, the day turned so dream-like in his mind that he was almost grateful to Palindor, because the death threat at least seemed real, preserving the other memories with it. In a silent grim crowd, the comnee crowded close to hear about his quest. While Ammadin, her hand now stripped of the magical light, told the story, Zayn gobbled stew and let the fire-warmth soak into him. When she finished, Apanador took the captured bow and studied the decoration on it.

‘It’s Palindor’s, all right,’ the chief said. ‘Well, his mother’s comnee is going to have some harsh words about this.’

‘Why should they?’ Dallador rose from his place. ‘Palindor acted like an ugly little coward. He went out there to murder a man with all the odds on his side.’

‘I know that. But will his mother see it that way?’

‘She’ll have to.’ Ammadin turned to Zayn. ‘He broke the laws of the gods as well as our law. When a man goes to vigil in the Mistlands, his life is as sacred as a spirit rider’s. Who would go seek a vision if he thought his enemies would be waiting for him in the holy places?’

The comnee nodded in grim-faced agreement. Dallador sat down, satisfied.

‘And as for these Kazraks,’ Apanador said, ‘they’re no concern of ours. If they come hunting a comnee man, they’ll have to pay the price. Zayn, do you have enemies in the khanate?’

‘I must.’ Zayn picked his words carefully. ‘Maybe it’s that chief whose wife I took. But I don’t understand. That Kazrak I killed? I’ve never seen him before in my whole life. Maybe he was just a friend of Palindor’s who offered to help him.’

‘If another Kazrak were riding with the comnees,’ Apanador said, ‘we would have heard about it long before this. Let me think. Palindor’s mother rides with Lanador’s comnee. I don’t even know where they are – west, I think. Holy One, should we seek them out?’

‘No,’ Ammadin said. ‘She’s better off without a son like that. If the gods will that her path crosses ours, I’ll offer her a horse in restitution. One is about all he was worth.’

‘Do you think she’ll take it?’ Zayn asked.

‘Why not?’ Apanador glanced his way. ‘I know her, and she’ll be pleased to get any kind of blood price. By rights, we don’t have to offer her anything at all since her son was bent on murder.’

‘Zayn?’ Dallador broke in. ‘But do you want retribution? For the broken vision quest, I mean.’

‘No,’ Zayn said. ‘I just wish it hadn’t happened. I didn’t want to kill anyone, much less him.’

Ammadin and Apanador exchanged a satisfied glance. As the crowd broke up, Dallador came over to Zayn and laid a friendly hand on his arm.

‘Not bad,’ Dallador said. ‘A man’s hunting you with a bow, and you’ve only got a knife, but you managed to kill him anyway.’

‘You gave me a good knife, that’s why.’

Dallador grinned.

‘Palindor used to eat at your fire, didn’t he?’ Zayn went on. ‘Am I still a friend of yours?’

‘What happened was between you and him, and he was in the wrong, anyway.’

‘Thanks, but still –’

‘Let me tell you something.’ Dallador held up his hand for silence. ‘The comnees don’t count cowards as men. Palindor was a coward, so he’s no friend of mine, and he’s not worth mourning. Let me warn you: the comnees demand more from a man than you Kazraks ever would.’ He waved his hand vaguely at the encircling darkness. ‘Out here, mistakes mean death. A man who makes mistakes has no place in the comnee. Do you understand?’

‘Oh yes. And I’ll tell you something. I like it.’

They shared an easy smile.

In Ammadin’s tent a ball of pale light hung on the ridge pole like a lantern. As part of the ritual, Zayn had to describe his visions, and as she waited, watching him, her eyes seemed to look through, not at him. Safe, warm at last, well-fed, Zayn was too blurry with sleep-longing to think of any convincing lie.

‘I saw a spirit crane. It met me on the lake shore and took me to the island for my vigil. Then later it kept coming back.’

‘Wonderful! Did it leave you a gift?’

‘No, but I was going to stay all night until the arrows started flying.’

‘Ah, damn Palindor! The crane would have given you a gift if only he and his Kazraks hadn’t got in the way.’

‘Got in the way? That’s one way of putting it.’

‘From now on, cranes are Bane for you,’ Ammadin went on as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘You must never kill one – never, do you hear me? Don’t disturb a nest, either. Any crane you see means an omen, and you must greet them and speak to them. If you find a dead one, you must bury it properly.’

‘I promise, and I mean it, because that crane saved my life out there. It showed me a vision, too. My father came to me.’

‘His ghost? Is he dead?’

‘No. I guess it was just an image of him.’

‘That’s good enough. Did he have some advice for you?’

‘You don’t understand. My father hates me. I was nothing but one disappointment after the other.’

Ammadin stared, visibly shocked. ‘Did he curse you?’ she said at last. ‘In the vision, I mean.’

‘No. He had the usual look on his face, like a man who’s just stepped in fresh horseshit with a bare foot.’

‘Why did he hate you?’

‘The Lord means everything to him. He kept our household as pure as he could make it, until I came along.’

‘Your people can be harsh, when it comes to your religion. It must be that book you read.’

‘He read it all the time, that’s for sure. He wanted me to memorize it, you see, and so I did.’

‘Wait a minute. Why would he get angry if you did what he wanted?’

Zayn felt cold fear clutch him. He’d blundered, and badly. Back in the khanate that lapse might have led to his unmasking and, ultimately, his death. Ammadin raised one eyebrow but waited for him to speak. He wanted a lie, could think of none.

‘Uh well,’ Zayn said. ‘I did it in a single afternoon. I mean, I read through it, and I knew it off by heart, all of it. I was eight, maybe.’

‘Well, so?’

‘Don’t you know what that means?’

‘No. I should think he’d have been proud of you, a child that young, laying up holy words in his heart.’

‘But –’ He hesitated.

‘But what?’ Ammadin leaned forward, staring into his eyes. ‘What does it mean, then?’

Caught – how could he tell her? But how could he refuse? She waited patiently, her expression gentle, concerned.

‘Ah well,’ Zayn said at last. ‘It means I’m demon spawn, of course.’

‘What? That makes no sense at all.’

‘A memory like mine, it’s one of the twelve times twelve forbidden talents. So Father tried to exorcize the demon part of me, and when that didn’t work, he took me on quite a journey. We went to mosque after mosque, holy man after holy man. He was trying to find one who had the power to cure demon blood, you see. Finally I realized what he wanted, and so I pretended I was cured. But he never really trusted me.’

‘I still don’t –’

‘You must have heard of the forbidden talents.’

‘No, I haven’t. Are they like Banes?’

‘Yes, exactly. But –’ Zayn caught himself just in time. Why was he babbling like this? The face of the man in his vision rose in his memory. For a moment he thought he saw it floating like a mask in front of him, a smug face, twisted and gloating over secrets held too long.

‘What’s wrong?’ Ammadin rose to a kneel. ‘Are you going to throw up?’

He shook his head. ‘The talents, they’re Bane, all right,’ he said. ‘But you’re born with them. If you have one, it marks you as demon spawn. Most fathers kill children like that, but I was his only son. So he didn’t. I learned to hide it.’

‘Demon spawn? What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Back in the old country, across the sea where we came from, there were demons. They were impure, and they had the forbidden talents. But some of our women slept with them and had children, impure children. That’s one reason we left the old country and came here, so we could be pure again.’

‘Are the demons supposed to have come with you?’

‘No. It’s just that those women must have hidden some of their children, you see, so the mullahs couldn’t kill them. And those children would have grown up and passed the taint on to their children, and so on. And now, people like me still have demon blood in us. My mother must have carried it.’

Ammadin considered him for so long that he assumed she, like all the others, despised him. Finally she shook her head and spoke. ‘That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Demons can’t sire children. They don’t have bodies.’

He gaped, knew his mouth was hanging open like some idiot child’s, tried to find words, and realized at length that he was shaking.

‘Don’t you believe me?’ Ammadin said.

‘Of course I do. The mullahs and my father – they always warned us against demons, the gennies, they called them. They could look like real people, but they weren’t. They were spirits, and their bodies were just illusions.’

‘Well, then, how is one of these illusions supposed to get a woman pregnant?’

He could only stare at her. He wanted to say ‘of course they can’t, you’re right, it’s ridiculous,’ but his mouth refused to form the words. He hadn’t seen. Why hadn’t he seen? He hadn’t dared to see. What if he’d tried this piece of logic on his father? The old man might have killed him. He’d come close to killing his tainted son as it was, with his beatings and periods of forced starvation.

‘What a waste!’ Ammadin went on. ‘Your people could use a memory like yours. They’ve got so many laws and prayers.’

He nodded. ‘Look, Spirit Rider, Wise One, if I’m not demon spawn, then what am I?’

‘A man like any other, I suppose, with an odd turn of mind. Some men are good with a bow; others can’t shoot to save their lives but ride like they’re half-horse. Some men would forget their own names if they lived alone; others can remember every horse their wives have sold to the Kazraks in the last thirty years.’

‘But the forbidden talents –’

‘– are on some list one of your holy men made up a long time ago. I have no idea why he did it or why he put having an amazing memory on it, but I think he was born a few pages short of a holy book, if you take my meaning.’

Zayn laughed, softly at first, then louder, realized that his eyes were filling with tears, but the laughter kept coming, making him tremble until Ammadin reached over, grabbed him by the shoulders, and shook him.

‘I’m sorry, Wise One.’ He was gasping for breath. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’

‘It’s the shock. You’ve spent your life guarding this evil secret, haven’t you? Wondering what would happen if someone knew?’

‘Just that. Yes.’

‘And now I tell you that it’s not evil and shouldn’t be a secret. Why wouldn’t you be shocked?’

‘I see your point, yes.’ Zayn managed to smile. ‘I wish I could go back to the Mistlands. I never thought I’d say it, but I want to see more.’

‘It’s too dangerous. I haven’t forgotten about those other voices you heard out there. Apanador thinks that we should ride east. Maybe we can throw them off your trail.’

‘I’ve brought you nothing but trouble, haven’t I? It’s good of you to ride just for me.’

‘And wouldn’t we ride for anyone in the comnee? Zayn, you belong to us now.’

Ammadin spoke so quietly that Zayn felt his lies eating at him, simply because her words were perfectly true: part of him would always belong to Apanador’s comnee. He wanted to wash the lie away, to warn her that he’d have to leave the Tribes to fulfil his duty to the Great Khan. But the Chosen – his vow – he could say nothing. Ammadin laid a maternal hand on his arm.

‘You’re exhausted. Go to sleep. We can talk in the morning.’

When he looked at her hand lying on his arm, Zayn shuddered, remembering the way it had dripped fire.

‘What’s wrong?’ Ammadin said.

‘Well, it’s just the light. I mean, the light you had on your hand when you met me. I’m not used to strong magic.’

‘That?’ She paused, laughing at him. ‘It’s the juice of a plant. It only grows in the Mistlands, or you would have seen it before this. When you crush it, the sticky stuff inside glows for quite a while before it fades. Look! I wiped it off onto a rag and stuck it on the ridge pole.’

When Zayn looked, he blushed. The rag was one of those that he used to wash pots and bowls, and here he’d been so sure that the light sprang from magic that he’d never recognized it.

Later, when he was rolled up in his blankets, Zayn remembered that he’d failed to find his true name. He knew that he should tell Ammadin, that in fact he should get up and go find her immediately, but exhaustion took him over, and he slept.

Zayn was well on his way back to the lake shore by the time Warkannan found the bodies. The captain was about half a mile away from Tareev, keeping in contact with Arkazo by croaking like a swamp lizard while he fought the muck and the stinking water. When he heard Arkazo calling, a frantic little string of signals, Warkannan called back and splashed his way through an empty stretch of lake and mist. He finally found him crouched on a muddy hummock.

‘I heard someone scream,’ Arkazo said. ‘Over to the left.’

It was either a good omen or the worst one in the world. For some minutes, Warkannan sent lizard cries through the mist, but no one answered. He nocked an arrow in his bow, told Arkazo to do the same, and set off in the rough direction of the scream. Although he and Arkazo kept calling, they heard nothing from Palindor or Tareev. At last, looming in the mist, Warkannan saw a long rocky stretch of islet, and on it, two dark mounds.

‘Stay here and cover me until I call for you.’

Holding the bow out of water, Warkannan splashed through the waist-deep lake. Constantly he turned his head, looking for a possible enemy, but he saw only a grey crane, perched on one pink leg amongst the tall rushes. Then, from a few feet away, he saw the bodies. Rasping like a fly-lizard struck him as sacrilege.

‘Arkazo! Get over here!’

Without a word, Arkazo came splashing through the water. Together they climbed up the rocky bank.

They lay in a pool of blood, Palindor with his spine efficiently severed, Tareev dead from a Tribal arrow. In his shock, it took Warkannan a moment to realize that Palindor’s bow was gone. Somehow Zayn had killed him with only a knife, taken the bow, and started a hunt of his own.

‘He’s one of the Chosen, all right,’ Warkannan said. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’

Arkazo made no reply. He was crouched down beside Tareev, his hand on his dead friend’s face, staring into Tareev’s unseeing eyes as if he could bring him back to life by force of will.

‘I’m sorry, Kaz,’ Warkannan said, as gently as he could. ‘I know it’s hard, but the only thing you can do for him now is to swear vengeance.’

Arkazo looked up, his mouth set, his eyes blind.

‘Come on now,’ Warkannan said. ‘There’s a dangerous man out there in the mists with a bow. We can’t do a thing for the khan’s cause if we’re dead.’

‘We can’t just leave him here.’

‘We’ve got to.’

Arkazo shook his head in a stubborn no. Warkannan left him, grabbed Palindor’s corpse by the shoulders, and dragged it to the edge of the islet. When he slung him in, Palindor sank into the dark water that would be the only grave he’d ever have. With a long cry of mourning, the crane flapped up from the rushes and flew away. When Warkannan returned for Tareev, Arkazo got up, his hand on his sword hilt, and barred his way. Warkannan slapped Arkazo across the face so hard that the boy staggered back.

‘You’re following my orders, you stupid young fool. We’ve got to get out of here. I don’t like doing this any more than you do. Now get out of the way.’

His hand on his cheek, Arkazo moved. As he was lowering Tareev into the water, Warkannan felt a tightness in his throat, but many another good man would die before the khan claimed the throne. He allowed himself a brief thought of Kareem, who would never see his son’s grave.

‘Come on,’ Warkannan said. ‘We’ve got to get back to shore. We’ll deal with Zayn later.’

Sullenly Arkazo followed when Warkannan stepped back into the lake. Bows at the ready, they slogged their way across the open water, heading roughly north-east. Warkannan stayed on guard, listening for every small sound, watching for every small trace of movement in the shifting view. At last, when the twilight was turning the Mistlands grey and featureless, they staggered out of the water onto the spongy lake shore. In this relative safety Warkannan turned to have a word with Arkazo and found him in tears. He left him alone with it and led the way down the bank.

A few miles down the shore stood a tangle of orange and russet fern trees, bent and twisted by the constant wind. Nearby, on a stretch of drier ground, the horses were tethered, and Soutan paced back and forth. When he saw them, Soutan hurried forward to meet them.

‘Zayn’s our man, all right,’ Warkannan said. ‘Palindor and Tareev are dead. The Chosen teach their men how to defend themselves.’

‘That’s horrible.’ Soutan was whispering. ‘So horrible about Tareev – I’m sorry, Arkazo. Truly sorry.’

Arkazo stared at him as if he hadn’t heard.

‘Well,’ Warkannan said, ‘we’ll get our revenge for this. It’s the only comfort we’re going to have, but we’ll get it.’

‘Oh yes.’ Soutan nodded firmly. ‘You see, before Zayn went under the fog cap, I saw him. I know what he looks like now.’

‘Which is?’

‘Mostly he looks Kazraki.’ Soutan paused, thinking. ‘A somewhat flatter nose than usual, and darker skin. Deep-set eyes. Tall, very straight back. I’m assuming he was in the cavalry.’

‘A lot of the Chosen were, yes, or still are. I’m glad you’ve got him pegged. I want another shot at him. But this time, we’re going to be damned careful.’

That night they made a miserable camp a few miles out of the swamps proper. Overhead the fog turned the dark dome of night into a ceiling, hanging close above their heads. After they finished eating, Arkazo went some ten feet out into the grass and sat unmoving, staring out into the dark plains. Soutan took a book and a small cloth pouch out of his saddlebags, then sat down by the fire.

‘What’s that?’ Warkannan said.

‘The oracle.’ Soutan smiled with a flash of tooth. ‘I see no harm in showing it to you. It requires no particular magic to cast.’

Warkannan leaned forward for a look. He could see the title, stamped in black on a pale leather cover, but he found it incomprehensible.

‘It’s written in the old language of the Cantons,’ Soutan said. ‘Which was, in fact, its original language, but a Kazraki translation exists. It’s The Sibylline Prophecies.’

‘Shaitan! But I don’t know why I’m surprised. It seems logical, using heresy to work sorcery.’

Soutan laughed, then opened the pouch and shook out six bronze discs. ‘Ordinary coins,’ he remarked. ‘Heads count one, tails two, and there’s a way of adding them up.’

Warkannan watched while he shook the coins in both hands, then strewed them on the ground. In the firelight the sorcerer leaned forward, peering at them, muttering to himself. He repeated the throw six times, then opened the book, flipped through the pale pink pages, and finally laid one finger on a passage.

‘Could you put a bit more fuel onto that fire?’ Soutan said. ‘This print is large, but still –’

‘What? I thought you sorcerers could make light when you needed it.’

Soutan ignored him. Warkannan added more dried horse dung and blew on the fire to bring up the flames. Soutan hunched close, his lips working as he read over the passage the coins had indicated. Finally he swore – in the language of the Cantons, but Warkannan could guess his frame of mind well enough.

‘Bad news?’ Warkannan said.

‘No, merely completely irrelevant. I must be too tired.’ He shut the book with a snap. ‘Or else I misread the coins in the bad light. I’ll try again after sunrise.’

‘What did it say?’

‘Oh, some rambling drivel about the Fourth Prophet being close at hand. Do you know about that? No, I see you don’t, pious soul that you are. The oracle claims that a fourth prophet will come to the people of Kazrajistan just as the others did, arising out of humble circumstances amid signs from God and so on in the usual way of prophets.’

‘Well, I suppose it could happen. Prophets do appear now and then.’ Warkannan held up one hand and ticked the names off on his fingers. ‘Mohammed, blessed be he, who wrote the true faith into a book. Agvar, who led us out of our bondage in the demon-lands. Kaleel Mahmet, who carved a khanate in our new home with the cavalry for his knife.’ He lowered his hand. ‘And there have been plenty of minor prophets over the years, too many to count, really.’

‘Indeed, whenever the khanate found it convenient to be prophesied at.’ Soutan paused for an unpleasant smile. ‘But this one is supposed to be a major prophet, the final fulfilment of the law, and a woman as well.’

‘Oh. It’s nonsense, then. Drivel, as you said.’

‘You’re sure of that? Your women pray, they read the holy books.’

Warkannan hesitated, thinking. ‘That’s true,’ he said at last. ‘But it strikes me wrong. Men aren’t going to listen to a female prophet. Why would God waste His time?’

‘You Kazraks are amazing, really amazing.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘The things you attribute to God, such as worrying about wasted time. Do you think he’s always winding his clocks like you people do?’

Warkannan caught himself on the verge of bad temper. ‘Ah well,’ he said instead. ‘You’re right, if you mean that ordinary men can’t understand what God may do or what He’s like. But the true prophets –’

‘– may be just as wrong. Consider Hajji Agvar and this business of living as the First Prophet lived, for instance. You don’t do anything of the sort. The First Prophet lived what? just over thirty-six hundred years ago, by your reckoning, when H’mai lived disgustingly primitive lives. Do you think his tribe had printing presses and carriages and all those other fancy things you people use every day?’

‘What do carriages have to do with it? I can’t imagine that God cares if our women ride in carriages.’

‘Oh, indubitably. Then what were your ancestors fleeing when they chose to come here? What did they want?’

At first Warkannan thought the sorcerer was merely baiting him, but Soutan was waiting for the answer, his head cocked a little to one side, his eyes perfectly serious.

‘Well, a simpler life than we had back in the Homelands,’ Warkannan said. ‘Huh, I begin to see your point about those carriages. But it wasn’t just the luxuries that drove us out. It was the evil magicks and pollutions of the blood.’

‘Magicks like what? Your books do mention “unspeakable practices”, but since they never speak about them, I don’t have the slightest idea what the authors mean.’

At that Warkannan had to laugh. ‘I had the same reaction when I was a boy,’ he said. ‘One explanation I heard was the infidels back in the Homelands bred demons.’

‘Bred demons?’

‘Yes, they learned how to mingle the blood of men and animals, somehow, to produce new creatures. The mullahs called these demons.’

‘I see.’ Soutan thought for a long moment. ‘I wonder what that really means?’

‘What it says, I suppose. The mullahs don’t lie.’

Soutan shook his head in mock despair.

‘Well,’ Warkannan snapped. ‘Do you think they’re lying?’

‘No. I merely think that they don’t know what they’re talking about.’

‘Now here! You’re getting close to blasphemy.’

‘Oh, no doubt, no doubt. I’ll stop. God forbid I make you think!’ Soutan rolled his eyes, a gesture that Warkannan was beginning to hate. The sorcerer stood up, then looked across the fire and out to Arkazo’s silent back. ‘Will he be all right?’

‘Eventually. He’s never seen a dead man before.’

‘Ah.’ Soutan considered this for a moment. ‘Well, if we do bring Jezro back to Kazrajistan, he’d better get used to it.’

The sorcerer walked over to his gear and squatted down to put his book away. Warkannan reminded himself several times that he needed Soutan to get across the Rift. Strangling the irritating little bastard would be counter-productive.

That night Warkannan dreamt of Tareev’s body, floating to the surface of the shallow Mistlands lake. He and Kareem stood together and watched as it drifted out of sight, and Kareem wept as bitterly as a woman. When Warkannan woke, he felt as exhausted as if he’d not slept at all.

Zayn woke from a long dream of the Mistlands to a light so cold and grey that for a moment he thought himself still dreaming. He rolled over onto his side and lifted the tent wall a few inches for a look out. Over the patchwork tents and orange wagons the fog lay thick. He sat up, pushing his blankets back, and glanced around. Ammadin’s bedroll lay neatly rolled under her tent bags. From outside the noise of the camp filtered in – dogs barking, children laughing and calling, adult voices passing by. He had slept late, then. He got up, pulled on his trousers, and noticed the rag stuck on the ridge pole where Ammadin had left it the night before. In the morning light he could see the reddish-brown streaks of sap, congealed and dry, their phosphorescence long gone.

The night before. Ammadin. The memory of their talk came back like a slap in the face; he tossed his head as if to shake off the blow. He had told her everything. He had been an utter fool. He started to shiver, grabbed his shirt and put it on, still felt the gooseflesh run down his back. You’re not in the khanate, he reminded himself. You’re safe here. No one cares about the damned demons and their talents. But Ammadin might mention his secrets to someone else, and that someone might talk about them in front of a Kazrak at the next horse fair.

The tent flap rustled, shook, and lifted. Ammadin came in, then let the flap drop behind her. She set her hands on her hips and studied his face.

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

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

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

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

‘I thought it might be.’

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

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

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

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

‘Yes. He’s become a hermit.’

‘A what?’

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

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

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

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

‘No. I can draw pictures, too.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I would. I – what’s that?’

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

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

‘All right.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Please, yes.’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Every day. A lot.’

‘Good.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What’s wrong?’ Ammadin said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I just bet.’

‘Maddi!’

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

‘You’re right. Let’s go.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No,’ Ammadin said. ‘He’s dead.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apanador smiled and saluted him with his bowl.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zayn started to speak, then shrugged.

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

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

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

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

‘Open listen to, open listen to.’

Only an angry chirp answered her command.

‘Open listen for. Open listen for.’

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

Open hide me. Open hide me.

Spirit Eyes showed only grassland. Long Voice fell silent.

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

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

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

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

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

‘Well, that was alarming,’ Soutan said, shuddering. ‘That spirit rider – I told you she had to be a woman of great power, didn’t I? Well, she’s seen us, and for a moment I thought she’d managed to kill one of my crystals.’

‘Sounds serious. What should we do about it?’

‘There’s nothing you can do. I need to be much more careful, is all. Especially once the comnee starts riding again.’

‘I hope to God they get on the road soon! How far are we from the Rift?’

‘A hundred miles or so.’

‘This damned comnee we’re following, by the Prophet’s name! They’re the slowest of the slow. They can’t be travelling more than ten lousy miles a day.’

‘Maybe we can use the time to our advantage. It would be better to kill our spy before we reach Jezro.’

‘If we can.’

Warkannan waited for him to go on. Soutan inserted an unsanitary-looking fingernail under his gold headband and began scratching his forehead.

‘That headband must be rubbing you raw,’ Warkannan said. ‘You’re always scratching.’

‘Oh damn you!’ Soutan stalked away without another word.

All that afternoon Soutan kept to himself. Even after he returned for the evening meal, Warkannan at times caught him peering up at the sky, as if he were expecting to see eyes there, looking back. Every now and then, he would start to scratch under the headband, then jerk his hand away as if by force of will.

Before the evening meal Ammadin and Apanador walked together along the riverbank. In the cool twilight frogs called back and forth, lizards buzzed and rasped. Clouds of greenbuhs rose over the magenta fern trees and swarmed so thickly that they looked like thunderheads.

‘There’s trouble on its way,’ Ammadin said.

‘Zayn’s enemies?’

‘Yes. I finally got a good look at them. Two Kazraks –’

‘Is that all?’

‘– and a sorcerer from the Cantons.’

Apanador swore and turned to spit into the river. ‘This sorcerer – why haven’t we heard of him before? How did he manage to get all the way to Kazrajistan?’ The chief sounded personally affronted. ‘Magic or not, he should have ended his trip in a ChaMeech stomach.’

‘You’d think so. He must be pretty powerful, with a lot of spirits to protect him. I’ll keep an eye on him from now on.’

‘Speaking of Zayn,’ Apanador glanced away with studied casualness. ‘The men are riding out to hunt tomorrow. They might well find a good-sized bull grassar. The horns this time of year –’

‘I am not going to marry Zayn. By all the gods at once! Have you been talking to Maradin?’

‘Oh, just a few words, here and there.’ Apanador was trying to suppress a smile. ‘And to my wife, of course.’

Ammadin turned on her heel and strode off.

When she reached her tent, Zayn was kneeling in front of it and cleaning a pair of fish with his long knife. She sat down and watched. He’d chop off the head with its two shiny pairs of eyes, then slice off the six long fins, slit open the belly, and pull out the thick white strip of cartilage and nerve tissue that connected the tail to the brain node lying above the heart.

‘Roasted in the coals?’ he said. ‘Or seared on a hot stone?’

‘Roasted would be fine. You’re getting to be a really good cook.’

Zayn looked up with a quick grin that was almost shy. Ammadin had to admit that she found it pleasant to sit with him, sharing a companionable silence in front of their tent, instead of being a guest at someone else’s fire.

‘How long will we stay in camp?’ Zayn said.

‘Not very. We’ll be heading east soon.’

Zayn smiled, a sudden flash of anticipation.

‘Are you as curious about the Cantons as all that?’ Ammadin said.

‘Oh well.’ He was concentrating on wrapping the gutted fish in leaves fresh from the riverbank. ‘You hear such strange tales about them back home.’

‘I suppose you would, yes. Do you know their language?’

‘Only a few words. In school we didn’t study the Cantons much, so most of what I know is just hearsay – tales of evil sorcerers, that kind of nonsense. I do know that they’re people of the book.’

‘What? Does that mean they use writing?’

‘That too.’ Zayn gave her an easy grin. ‘But it really means that they believe in only one god, like we do. It must be the same god, no matter what they call him. If there’s only one, then there’s only one, right?’

‘If there’s only one.’

‘Well, true.’ Zayn ducked his head as if apologizing. ‘But anyway, they have a holy book about God. Mohammed, blessed be his name, read it back in ancient times and said that it was worthy of respect.’

‘So you Kazraks still respect it? After all these years?’

‘Well, of course. The teaching doesn’t change. It’s eternal.’

‘But wasn’t your First Prophet a H’mai?’

‘Of course he was, but the Qur’an comes from God. Mohammed heard His words from an angel.’

‘Wait a minute. When you say heard, you mean the angel came to him in a vision?’

‘No, the angel Jubal came to him and dictated the verses, and the Prophet spoke them to his companions, who wrote them down. But he heard the voice of God, too, not just the angel’s.’

‘He actually heard the voice of his god?’

‘Yes. I suppose this all must sound pretty strange to you.’

‘Strange? No.’ Ammadin looked away, her mouth slack. ‘I envy him. I can’t tell you how much I envy him.’

For a moment she felt close to tears. Zayn tactfully looked away; he picked up a long spine from a poker tree and began using it to dig trenches in the coals of the fire. Ammadin waited till he’d laid the wrapped fish into them.

‘So, in this holy book the Cantonneurs have,’ Ammadin said, ‘did God speak to their prophets, too?’

‘So I’ve been told. I’ve never read it. Which reminds me. Do you know the language of the Cantons?’

‘Daccor.’ She paused to smile at him. ‘That means yes, you see. I know enough to trade and ask polite questions. It’s called Vranz.’

‘If you wouldn’t mind teaching me what you know, I’ll pick the rest of it up fast enough.’

‘The reading part, too? If I bought a book there, would you read it to me?’

‘Daccor.’ It was Zayn’s turn for the smile, but his face suddenly darkened. ‘Well, uh, if I can. If someone can help me learn how to read Vranz, I mean.’

He meant a great deal more than that. Ammadin smelled lying, a sudden acrid burst that made her nose wrinkle.

‘I forgot to get salt from the wagons.’ He stood up fast. ‘I’ll be right back.’

‘Don’t!’ She scrambled up after him. ‘Zayn, come back here.’

He stopped, stood hesitating in the broad space between the back of Maradin’s tent and the front of hers. In the glow of the cooking fire she could see him shaking.

‘Zayn?’ She softened her voice. ‘Come back and tell me what’s wrong.’

He turned around and walked back as slowly as he could manage and still be moving. He was smiling, perfectly composed from the look of him, but she smelled fear so strongly that she half-expected his shirt to be stained with it like sweat.

‘I seem to keep saying things that upset you,’ Ammadin said. ‘If something’s wrong, tell me.’

‘I can’t.’ He was looking her straight in the face. ‘Please! Don’t –’ His voice trailed away.

‘Don’t pry?’

He tossed his head, looked away, then nodded yes.

‘My first responsibility is always to the comnee,’ Ammadin said. ‘This secret of yours? Will it harm them?’

‘No.’ He looked at her again. ‘You know, I think I’d rather die than bring harm to any of you.’

‘You really mean that, don’t you? I can hear it in your voice.’

‘I do, yes.’

‘All right,’ Ammadin said. ‘Then your secret’s no business of mine. You have my word on that.’

He hesitated, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, then came back and knelt by the fire.

‘I lied about that salt,’ he said. ‘We’ve got plenty.’

‘Somehow I figured that.’

They shared a smile, but Ammadin felt that something dangerous had just taken place. She merely wasn’t sure what it might be.

On the morrow the comnee packed up its tents and set out east, travelling steadily but slowly. The weather had turned so hot and dry that the whine of insects in the grass made Zayn think of fat sizzling on a griddle. Every morning, after the horses finished grazing, they would saddle up and ride until mid-afternoon, when they would make camp. Zayn fell into the long rhythms of driving stock, as soothing as drinking, and felt his life shrink to the motion of his horse and the rising and setting of the sun. He found himself thinking a traitor’s thoughts: I could spend my life this way, I could stay here forever. Whenever they rose, he shoved them away.

Inadvertently Ammadin reminded him that the Great Khan’s will still ruled him. They were sitting together in front of the tent when she mentioned that she’d been scanning.

‘Your enemies are tracking us,’ she said. ‘Two Kazraks, one older with a beard, one young with a truly magnificent nose, and then a sorcerer from the Cantons.’

‘A sorcerer?’

‘Just that. A middle-aged man with long grey hair.’

Soutan? Zayn thought. Out here in the plains? But Soutan was young and blond. ‘I don’t know anyone like that,’ he said.

‘Well, then, he must have some reason of his own for joining the Kazraks. Maybe they hired him to help hunt you down.’

‘Maybe.’ Zayn turned his palms up and shrugged. ‘I really don’t understand. I thought the people who live in the Cantons didn’t leave them.’

‘Not often, no.’ Ammadin thought for a moment. ‘I’ve never heard of a sorcerer travelling west, never.’

Zayn’s superiors had never heard of it, either; they’d sent him to gather information about Soutan for just that reason. Now here was a second sorcerer travelling around and following him to boot, along with the two Kazraks who had already tried to kill him.

‘No more ideas?’ Ammadin was watching him, waiting for him to speak.

‘I’m baffled,’ Zayn said, and quite honestly. ‘I don’t know who these men are, or why they’re following me.’

‘Here’s something that’s even stranger. Three female ChaMeech are following them.’

‘Good God!’

‘Unless they’re following you, too.’ Ammadin suddenly smiled. ‘If they are, I don’t think it’s adultery that’s on their minds.’

Zayn laughed. ‘I hope not,’ he said. ‘But ChaMeech are supposed to be fascinated with magic, aren’t they?’

‘That’s true.’

‘Maybe they know this sorcerer has some, then.’

‘Maybe. I –’ Ammadin suddenly paused. ‘Sorry,’ she said at length. ‘I just had a thought about something else. Anyway, I’m not sure what we can do about the sorcerer.’

‘I guess there’s nothing to do, except wait. I’m grateful you’ll keep a lookout for me.’

‘Why wouldn’t I? Every single person in this comnee is my responsibility.’

‘All right. But thank you anyway.’

‘You’re welcome.’ Ammadin stood up. ‘I’ve got work to do. I’ll be down by the stream if anyone needs me.’

‘Will you be safe?’

For an answer she smiled.

‘Sorry,’ Zayn said. ‘Stupid of me.’

With a little wave of her hand she walked off. He watched the fire and considered a new sensation: he cared enough about a woman to worry about her.

The Herd had just risen above the horizon, and in its silver light, Ammadin picked her way through the various roots, rocks, and thorn bushes that would have tripped an ordinary person. She sat down beside a stream and watched the water, glinting in the sky’s glow. Zayn had given her an idea, preposterous at first thought, but just possible upon a second. What if Water Woman were a ChaMeech who had managed to tame a spirit crystal?

By keeping careful track of how much of a spirit’s power she was draining, Ammadin had learned how to use the crystals in darkness. They disliked going hungry all night, but once she’d finished, an oil lamp or fire would feed them enough to tide them over till sunrise. She brought out both Sentry and Long Voice. She’d done some hard thinking about Long Voice’s possible abilities and commands, culled from the lore her teacher had told her as well as from her experiences with Spirit Eyes. She was guessing that the Riders were due to appear, and sure enough, in just a few minutes Sentry began to hum.

‘Long Voice!’ Ammadin said. ‘Open listen for.’

The spirit sang out. In the bone behind her left ear Ammadin heard a strange whispery sound, like sea waves hissing over gravel. She waited, listening to the distant waves rise and fall while the Herd eased itself higher into the sky and the Riders galloped far above her. She was just thinking that they would be setting soon when she heard the voice.

Witchwoman! Witchwoman!

‘Long Voice!’ Ammadin said. ‘Open lock on.’

The spirit sang three bright notes.

‘Long Voice! Lock on!’

Another note, and she smiled. ‘Water Woman,’ she said, ‘can you hear me?’

I hear-now you, Witchwoman, I hear, but faintly.

‘You’re too far away. My name is Ammadin.’

Ammadin. I hear you, Ammadin. Please, talk-soon-next. Water Woman’s voice was growing fainter, fading.

‘Yes, I will. Look to the Riders in the sky.’

Riders – Her voice vanished, swallowed in the long hiss of the strange sea, far off in the land of spirits.

‘Water Woman! Can you hear me?’

No answer, just waves, turning distant gravel. Ammadin closed down her crystals.

Back at camp, out in front of her tent, Zayn had already started a fire. When he saw her coming, he ducked inside and returned with cushions.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘The spirits will need feeding.’

‘I thought so,’ Zayn said. ‘That’s why I made the fire.’

‘Thank you.’ Ammadin smiled at him.

He was beginning to see her needs, a good thing in a servant. And yet, she was so pleased to see him smile in return that she began to wonder if she truly did see him as only a servant. He knelt down and arranged the cushions, then sat back on his heels and looked up. From his scent she knew that lovemaking was very much on his mind. Reluctantly she realized that it was on hers as well. He was watching her with half-closed eyes, smiling a little, as if perhaps he knew that she was weakening.

‘You can go drink with the other men,’ Ammadin said. ‘I won’t need anything more here.’

‘As the Holy One wishes.’ His smile gone, Zayn stood up. He nodded once in her direction, then hurried off into the camp. As she watched him go, she realized that she was as disappointed as he was. You don’t need entanglements, she reminded herself. Especially not when you’re planning a spirit quest. With a long sigh she sat down by the fire and began to unwrap her hungry crystals.

Warkannan woke just at dawn and found Soutan gone from the camp. Beside the dead fire Arkazo still slept, rolled up in a blanket, so sound asleep that Warkannan decided against waking him; they could say their morning prayers a bit late and not offend God. Warkannan pulled on his trousers and his boots, then stood for a moment winding his pocket watch, a morning ritual that dated from his first days on the border. It was comforting, somehow, to know the time, to measure the time, even out here where space seemed so endless that time became irrelevant.

This early in the day the air was cool; he could hear the nearby stream chortling over rocks; a breeze trembled the long purple grass that stretched to the horizon. The silver dawn caught a few streaks of clouds and turned them as crimson as the distant trees. Frogs croaked; tree lizards, as bright as jewels, sang to each other; the hum of constant insects sounded in the brightening light.

‘God, I hate it out here!’ Warkannan muttered. ‘Give me the city any day!’

He seated his watch in his pocket, clipped the chain to his belt, and went to look for Soutan.

Warkannan found him just a few hundred yards away, muttering over his crystals. At Warkannan’s approach, he looked up.

‘What would you say to an old-fashioned ambush?’ Soutan said.

‘Of Zayn, you mean? What did you have in mind?’

‘The comnee seems to be heading due east, and I suspect they’re on their way to the Cantons. They’ll have to pass through the downs to get to the Rift. Comnees always stop in the downs to hunt before they cross over. When we get there, you’ll see what I mean about the terrain – plenty of places to hide and wait for a hunting party with Zayn in it to come along.’

‘All right. I take it you couldn’t come up with some mighty magical spell.’

‘Sneer all you want, but the crystals will give us all the magic we need. When we see him ride out, we can set our trap.’

And that, Warkannan had to admit, was true enough.

As they continued east, Zayn took to riding at the rear of the herd, where he could turn in the saddle now and again to keep watch for his enemies. The land began to rise and fall in long low downs, as if the ground were buckling under the push of a giant hand. In the shallow valleys streams ran through tangles of orange ferns and gold pipeplants.

During the day the high-pitched chitters and whip-lash calls of the bush lizards would fall silent as the comnee approached, only to pick up and swell into a chorus of warning once they passed. Night brought a cacophony of frogs. Zayn learned to separate out the chirps of tiny six-legged hoppers and the booming of the big squat watertoads with their red double tongues. Whenever he heard a crane calling, he would turn in its direction and try to answer. At those moments the Chosen and the khanate both seemed things he had dreamt once, a long time ago.

This slow travelling eventually brought the comnee to a long, broad valley and a chain of small lakes, pale blue against the deep violet of spring grass. Here they set up a full camp to prepare for the journey across the Rift. Zayn was assuming that the danger from ChaMeech would be on everyone’s mind, but much to his surprise no one took it very seriously.

‘They’re a nuisance, sure,’ Dallador told him. ‘Sometimes they try to raid our herds, but they save their bloodlust for the Kazraks. I don’t know why, but they hate your guts.’

‘Yes, we’ve noticed.’

Dallador flashed him a smile. ‘The real problem with going east is taking our own hay for the horses.’

‘Isn’t there grass in the Cantons?’

‘Of course. But there’s a Bane. The horses can eat Canton grass while we’re there, but on the journey out they can only eat hay from the plains.’

‘Why?’

‘We can’t carry any seeds out of the Cantons and into the plains. If the horses ate Canton plants just before we got back and then shat, there could be seeds in it.’

‘That’s damned strange, Dallo. Why –’

‘I don’t know why. It’s just Bane.’

To keep down the amount of hay they had to carry, only part of the comnee would travel east; they would take only their own mounts and the horses to be sold. The women got together to decide who would travel and who would stay. Those leaving appointed trusted friends to tend their children while they were gone; in exchange, they would take along the horses that those staying wanted sold. Some of the men would ride with them as guards, and the spirit rider would bring the gods to keep her people safe from foreign magic in a dangerously different land.

‘At times I still think like a Kazrak,’ Zayn said to Dallador. ‘It’s strange to see the women doing the buying and selling.’

‘Why would men want to? Haggling is women’s work.’

‘But doesn’t it trouble you to have nothing to leave your son?’

‘A man always knows who his mother is. But his father? Who knows what women will do in the dark? So they’re the only ones who know who the blood-kin are, and it’s your blood-kin who should have your horses.’

Preparations for the trip took days. While the women cut grass and spread it to dry into pale blue hay, the men hunted. The big grassars avoided this rough shrubby terrain, but a smaller species, the orange-and-grey striped browzars, flourished in the valleys. Every time someone made a kill, the men stripped the carcass down to bone and smoked the meat into jerky. Zayn spent several days learning how to cut the raw flesh – a job that he found irritating beyond belief. It was tricky work, using the long knife to slice leather-thin strips of meat. Sweat ran down his forehead and got into his eyes. Shiny magenta flies and the ever-present yellabuhs swarmed around, stinging and stealing.

His turn to hunt came as a welcome relief. In the downs, the browzars sought shelter in the valley thickets; once they got into the underbrush, the men would have to take their spears and follow on foot – a dangerous kind of hunting, thanks to venomous snakes and other such creatures in the dense thorn thickets. The best tactic, or so Dallador told him, was to look for a herd that was grazing part-way up the slope of a hill, then get below and chase them towards the crest and open land.

They left camp just at noon. Riding single-file the six hunters worked their way upstream along the riverbank. In a shallow valley, they spotted at last a small herd. The men looped their reins around their saddle horns, then took their bows from their backs. With their quivers on one hip, they walked the horses, guiding with their knees, until they were close enough for the noise to alarm the dominant bull.

It threw up its orange head and bellowed, slapping the ground with its tail. The hunters kicked their horses to a gallop and charged, shrieking a warcry. The browzars lashed out with striped tails, then bounded away, turning uphill. The men loosed their first volley and grabbed for second arrows while the well-trained horses sped after the fleeing prey.

Zayn loosed an arrow, missed badly, and rode hard for the main herd. Arrows arched overhead as the other men shot again. Bleeding and howling, a young female browzar fell. Zayn aimed for another, missed again, and pulled another arrow as they raced up the side of the hill. He swore under his breath – his reflexes were simply all wrong for this sort of bow. Almost directly in front of him a young bull, smarter than most, broke from the herd and headed downhill. With a curse Zayn loosed, missed, and shifted his weight in the saddle to turn his horse after it.

Down through the treacherous tall grass they raced. Zayn was hoping that the thorny brush along the stream would stop the bull and force it to stay in range. He was determined to hit at least one target for the day, and the determination got the better of his common sense. When they reached the flat, Zayn’s horse gained ground, but even from this close a distance Zayn’s arrow sailed wide. The bull gave one last leap and charged into the tangled cover. Cursing, Zayn let his horse come to a halt and swung himself off.

Shrubs rose waist-high among the nodding frond-trees in an infuriating orange and red tangle. Zayn could see the bull pushing its way through ahead of him as it struggled to reach the stream. He would have gone after it with his last two arrows, but from behind him he heard someone yell.

‘Stay right there!’ Dallador shouted. ‘Don’t go in!’

Zayn obeyed. He mounted his horse, but he let it rest while the others rode down. They surrounded him, and he could see the concern on all their faces.

‘What’s wrong?’ Zayn said.

‘Firesnakes, that’s what,’ Dallador said. ‘Don’t you remember what I told you? We’ve already made a kill. You don’t need to risk getting bitten and poisoned to make another one.’

‘Sorry. It just makes me so damn mad that I can’t hit anything with this bow.’

‘You’ll get it eventually. Come on, let’s get the kill back to camp.’

When the men left for the hunt, Ammadin had taken her crystals and walked out into the grass. Over the past few days, she’d been trying at every pass of the Riders to contact Water Woman, but so far she’d failed. On this occasion as well she heard nothing but the mysterious ocean waves that seemed to emanate from somewhere inside Long Voice. Finally she gave up, took Spirit Eyes, and scanned, sweeping outward from the camp in a spiral. Off to the east, at the very limit of the spirit’s power, she saw three figures who looked like ChaMeech, but the image was too indistinct to reveal their gender.

Ammadin did, however, find the hunting party. On one of her sweeps she saw the tiny figures of men on horseback, driving browzars along the crest of a down. All at once a bull broke free and charged downhill with one of the men riding hard after it. She recognized Zayn’s sorrel gelding.

‘Closer!’

Spirit Eyes obliged. The view shifted, and she was looking down as if from a height of some fifty feet. It was Zayn, all right, risking the horse’s legs and his own neck. By the time he reached the flat, the browzar had plunged into the brush, just under mark twelve on the crystal. Zayn started to follow, then pulled up to wait for the other men, riding more cautiously down the hill after him.

‘Go to twelve.’

In the red and gold tangle of foliage she saw the bull shoving its way through the brush. It tossed its head from side to side, raised its muzzle as if it were bellowing, and thrust with its thick shoulders. At last it splashed across the river, burst out on the other side, and rushed off into the grass. The hunters had lost it. Some yards downstream, however, something moved. Someone stood up – a Kazrak, the same older man with a black beard she’d seen before. He held a hunting bow, and he was visibly angry.

‘Long Voice,’ Ammadin said. ‘Listen for.’

Dimly she heard his voice, humming in the bone behind her left ear. Arkazo, come on, we might as well give it up.

Another Kazrak, the young man with the beaky nose, rose from his hiding place some feet away. Although he spoke a few words, his voice was too faint to understand. Apparently Spirit Eyes could see farther than Long Voice could hear. When she shifted the focus back in Zayn’s direction, she saw that he and the other men were riding away, leading a pack horse burdened with a dead browzar cow. They would be heading back to camp, most likely. She closed the vision down.

In about an hour the hunting party rode in. Ammadin hurried out to meet them and watched while they turned their horses into the herd. The younger men, carrying their saddles over one shoulder, led the pack horse with the kill back to the tents. Zayn and Dallador followed more slowly, their arms full of horse gear.

‘I need to talk with you, Zayn,’ Ammadin said. ‘I happened to scan you, and that bull you were chasing? It was leading you into an ambush. I saw your enemies on the far side of the stream.’

Zayn muttered something in Kazraki under his breath.

‘One of them is named Arkazo,’ Ammadin went on. ‘Do you know him?’

‘I don’t, but I’ve heard the name. It’s not all that common.’ Zayn paused, thinking. ‘I can’t place it, though.’ He looked at her blandly. She could smell the change in his scent, but she would have known he was lying even without her shaman’s talents – Zayn with his phenomenal memory, not remember where he’d heard a name? In front of Dallador she said nothing, but she was beginning to regret her earlier gesture, when she’d promised Zayn that she wouldn’t pry into his private affairs.

As for the sorcerer, she had been spending every available moment on working with her crystals, trying out new commands and exploring different ways of using them. Sooner or later, she knew, she would have to test her new knowledge and challenge him.

‘He was so close!’ Arkazo was scowling at the bow in his hands. ‘We had a shot at him. Why –’

‘Five other Tribesmen just happened to be close, too,’ Warkannan said.

‘They were still on top of the hill! And they would have had to dismount, and we could have been out of the underbrush and across the stream before they could come after us.’

‘You’ve forgotten that they have bows. The arrows could have crossed the stream easily enough.’

Arkazo winced and looked down at the ground.

‘Listen, Kaz,’ Warkannan softened his voice. ‘I know how much you want to avenge Tareev, but you won’t do his memory any good if you’re dead.’

Arkazo threw the bow on the ground and strode off to tend to the horses. Warkannan shook his head and turned to Soutan.

‘He’s young,’ Warkannan said in a near-whisper. ‘But he’ll learn.’

‘This is true,’ Soutan said. ‘Well, now what? If Zayn’s going to go everywhere in a pack of Tribesmen, we’re not going to have much of a chance at him.’

‘Yes, I have to agree.’ Warkannan paused, thinking, but no clever ideas occurred to him. ‘We may have to leave him be and ride on ahead. He doesn’t know about Jezro, after all, so if we reach the khan first, we can give him the slip and head back to Andjaro by a different route.’

‘Maybe, but that sounds risky to me. Risky and extremely stupid.’

‘Oh, does it? Suppose you tell me why.’

Soutan merely smirked. Warkannan took one step forward. Soutan squeaked and flinched.

‘Oh very well,’ Soutan said. ‘This Zayn, suppose he finds out about Jezro. Will he try to kill him?’

‘Mostly likely, yes. Do you think he will find out?’

‘If he asks the right questions of the right people, he could. That’s why it would be better to dispose of him now.’

‘Of course it would be better. The question is, can we? If not, we’ve got to reach the khan before Zayn does.’

‘Well, yes.’ Soutan hesitated, his eyes rolling like a spooked horse’s. ‘But –’

‘We can’t leave the khan unguarded.’ Warkannan interrupted him. ‘Now, if you figure out a better way to kill our spy, just let me know. I’ll give you one more day. If you can’t think of anything, then we’re leaving the comnee behind.’

Zayn had been working at learning the language of the Cantons with a zeal that surprised everyone in the comnee. All the adults and older children knew some of the trade talk; many had picked up words and phrases beyond those necessary for the selling of horses. Veradin, who had travelled east often in her long life, spoke it very well indeed. Zayn went from one person to another, learning what they knew and badgering everyone to let him practise. Finally Ammadin asked him why he was putting so much effort into learning Vranz.

‘I hate to be in a strange country and not understand a damned word,’ Zayn told her. ‘A man could be insulting you, and here you wouldn’t even know.’

‘It sounds like you travelled a lot before you joined us.’

‘The Great Khan’s business keeps his cavalry on the move.’

‘Oh? How many languages do people speak along the border?’

Caught – Zayn gave her a sickly sort of smile. ‘Ah well,’ he said at last. ‘I was just speaking generally.’

‘I see.’

He arranged a fake smile, she waited. At length he muttered something about helping Dallador prepare jerky and walked away fast. If I only hadn’t given him my damned word I wouldn’t pry! Ammadin thought. With a growl of irritation she got up and fetched her saddlebags.

Ammadin left the camp and found a quiet spot near a stream, where she could sit in the cover of a pair of frond-trees to wait for the Riders. Lately she’d had no luck scanning for Zayn’s enemies. Every time she focused the crystal upon them, the sorcerer would chant command words that clouded her crystal. She had, however, managed to hear his chant of power several times, a strange triad of words in the ancient spirit tongue.

It was time, Ammadin decided, that she tried using her new magic against him. She opened her saddlebags and took out not only the spirit crystals, but four brass cases. Each held a wand about a foot long, carved from Kazraki oak, wound round with red and gold threads, and decorated with two hawk feathers and three golden spirit beads. She left the shade and cleared a place to work out in the full sun. While she chanted a prayer to the six gods, she stuck the plain ends of the wands into the ground to mark a square, roughly four feet on a side. In the middle she laid Long Voice and Spirit Eyes close together, each on top of their pouches, to let them feed while they waited. She laid the other crystals out in the sun, too, but beyond the wand-marked square so they could feed in peace.

Exposed to the sun the spirit beads began to glow. At first they merely glittered as any gold would in sunlight, but after a few minutes they seemed to catch fire. A pale blue spirit danced upon the surface of each one like a flame fanned by some hidden breeze.