Snare

A novel of the far future

Katharine Kerr

Copyright

Voyager

An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

77–85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Voyager 2003

Copyright © Katharine Kerr 2003

Katharine Kerr asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780006480396

Ebook Edition © JULY 2014 ISBN: 9780007387229

Version: 2014-08-18

Dedication

For Howard, again and always

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One: The Faithful

Part Two: The Lost

Part Three: The Damned

Epilogue: The Fourth Prophet

Keep Reading

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Author’s Note

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

Part One
The Faithful

The great king Chursavva of the Chiri Michi said to the leaders of the Humai, ‘You have broken taboo. You have come to the forbidden country. Your power shall be deadened forever, and your trinkets smashed and broken.’ Thus said Chursavva on the first day of the council, and all the Humai wept and wailed in terror. Then the captain of the Humai rose and spoke boldly to the king’s face. ‘We did not mean to break taboo. Yet we will accept your terms, as proof of our kind hearts and pure minds.’

And the great king Chursavva of the Chiri Michi said to the leaders of the Humai, ‘You keep the spirits of many animals bound into the crystals in the jars and cabinets of your flying boat. You may choose two large ones and two small ones and two winged ones to accompany you into your long exile.’ Thus said Chursavva on the second day of the council, and all the Humai moaned in confusion. Then the captain of the Humai rose and led his chiefs apart into their fort so that they might choose the animals.

Over the two small animals there was no dissension, for all loved the beasts known as the eeka and the cat. Over the two winged animals there was no dissension, for all loved to eat plump fowl and to see hawks fly. Over the first large animal there was no dissension, for all agreed that the sheep would provide clothing as well as meat. But over the second large animal there was dissension. Some wished for a beast known as the cow, which gave much milk and meat, but which required much land on which to live. Some wished for a beast called the goat, which gave some milk and some meat, but which could live in the waste places of the wild lands. And so they argued, until an old woman rose and called for silence.

‘It is truly said that the cow and the goat, and yes, even the unclean pig, will give us food and give us skins for our clothes. But you are all forgetting the beast known as the horse.’

Many of the council members jeered, saying that the horse was tough and stringy and would give little food. The old woman called again for silence and continued her speaking.

‘Little food, yes, but it will give us something greater, something that Chursavva can never foresee.’

‘Indeed?’ said the captain of the Humai. ‘And what is this marvellous gift?’

‘Speed.’ The old woman paused and smiled. ‘And eventually, freedom.’

And the council members fell silent, thinking about ancient wars in the history of the Humai, until one by one they smiled, too, and pronounced the old woman wise beyond belief. And because a woman chose the horse, to this day among the Tribes women alone may own them …

From the Histories of Ahmed, the Last Hajji

In the warm night, the scent of true-roses hung over the palace gardens. Among the red spear trees and the obsidian statuary, water splashed in fountains and murmured in artificial streams. In a cluster of orange bamboid two persons sat side by side in the lush true-grass, one a young slender woman, shamelessly bareheaded, and the other a heavy-set soldier with a touch of grey in his dark curly hair. Anyone who saw them would have known that they were lovers, but Captain Idres Warkannan was hoping that this truth would hide another, that they were also plotting high treason. Lubahva Shiraz acted her part by giggling in the most vapid way she could manage. Her gold bangles chimed as she laid a slender, dark-skinned hand on Warkannan’s arm.

‘Do you see why I thought you needed to hear this?’ she whispered. ‘Right away?’

‘I certainly do. Send me another note if you hear more.’

‘I will. We’ll be doing the dinner music tomorrow for the same officials. They forget about us once we’re behind that brass screen.’

Lubahva kissed him goodbye, then got up and trotted off, hurrying back to the musicians’ quarters. Alone, hand on the hilt of his sabre, Warkannan made his way through the palace grounds. As an officer of the Mounted Urban Guard, he had every right to be in the Great Khan’s gardens, but he hurried nonetheless, cursing when he found himself in a dead-end, striding along fast when he could see his way clear.

The palace buildings rarely stood more than a single storey high, but they dotted the gardens in an oddly random pattern. Beautiful structures of carved true-wood housed palace ministers and high-ranking officials. Squat huts of pillar reed and bamboid sufficed for servants. In the warm night windows stood open; he could hear talk, laughter, the occasional wail of a tired child, but no matter how domestic the sounds, he knew there might be spies behind a hundred different curtains.

Beyond the buildings, low walls of filigree moss and high walls of braided vines transformed the hillside into a maze made up of mazes. Down some turnings, the cold pale light of star moss edged broad paths that ended in thickets of bamboid. Down others, fern trees rose out of artificial ponds and towered over him, their fronds nodding and rasping in the evening breeze. Among their branches, the golden-furred eekas whistled and sang; now and then two or three dropped suddenly down to dash in front of him on their spidery legs. Once Warkannan took a wrong turn and ended up caught in an angle of mossy walls, where half-a-dozen eekas surrounded him. They joined their little green hands and danced around him in a circle, squeaking and mocking. When he swore at them, they darted away.

The outer wall at last – he’d reached it without being challenged. Gates of gilded true-wood stood open in the living walls of thorn vine, woven into bronze mesh, that guarded the compound. Two guards in the white tunics over black trousers of the infantry stood at attention on either side. When Warkannan held up his hand in salute, one stepped out to talk with him: Med, an old friend, smiling at him.

‘I thought you were on long leave,’ Med remarked.

‘I am. Just came by to see one of the palace girls and pick up my salary.’

‘Those girls don’t come cheap, do they?’

‘No. She’s got her heart set on a necklace she saw in town, she tells me. God only knows how much that’s going to set me back! It’s a good thing I’m doing some investing these days.’

‘Well, good luck with it, then.’

‘Thanks. I’m going to need it.’

Warkannan sauntered through the gates while he wondered if his excuse would hold. Would someone high up in the chain of command learn that he’d returned to the palace in the middle of his leave?

‘Charity, sir, oh charity?’ A crowd of ragged children rushed forward and surrounded him. In the lamplight Warkannan could see their pinched little faces, their bony hands, the rags flapping around prominent ribs. ‘Oh please sir!’

Warkannan dug into the pocket of his uniform trousers; he’d taken to carrying small coins, these days. The children waited, staring at him. There was only one way to give charity without being followed and mobbed. He held up the handful of deenahs, glanced around, and saw a patch of well-lit grass.

‘Here.’ Warkannan tossed the coins into the grass. ‘Go get them!’

The children dove for the coins, and he hurried downhill, jogging fast till the street curved and hid him from their sight. Every day, more beggars, he thought. When is this going to end?

The Great Khan’s compound lay on the highest hill of Haz Kazrak, a city of hills. Far below to the west lay a sea-harbour, embraced by stone breakwaters where red warning torches glowed and fluttered, staining the water with reflections. In the cloudless sky the Spider was just rising in the east. This time of year the entire spiral would be visible by midnight as a swirl of silver light covering a tenth of the sky. Already it loomed over the eastern hills like the head and shoulders of a giant. Over the open ocean the two Flies, small glowing clouds, were scurrying to the horizon ahead of their eternal enemy. The rest of the sky stretched dark.

As Warkannan walked on, the Spider and its light disappeared behind a hill, but the soft glow of oil lamps bloomed in the twisting streets. The neighbourhood around the palace was safe enough. The compounds of the rich lined the wide streets, and most had lanterns at their gates and a doorman or two as well, standing around with a long staff to keep beggars and thieves away. Further down, though, the private lamps disappeared; the streets narrowed as they wound along the slopes. The squat little houses, made of bundled reeds or bamboid, stood dark and sullen behind kitchen gardens that smelled of night soil and chicken coops. Warkannan stayed out in the middle of the street, where the public lamps shone, and kept his hand close to the hilt of his sabre.

Down by the harbour the way broadened and brightened again. Here among the shops and warehouses people stood talking or strode along, finishing up the day’s business or drawing water from the public wells. A good crowd sat drinking with friends in the cool of the evening at one or another of the sidewalk cafés. In the centre of the harbour district lay a large public square, and in its centre stood a six-sided stone pillar, plastered with public notices and religious dictates from the Council of Mullahs. Whores lounged on its steps or strutted back and forth nearby, calling out to prospective customers. Warkannan noticed one girl, barely more than a child, hanging back terrified. She’d been forced onto the streets to help feed her family, most likely. It happened more and more these days.

Warkannan crossed the square, then paused to look up at the velvet-dark night sky. In the north he saw the Phalanx, as the Kazraks called them: six bright stars zipping along from north to south, tracing a path between the Flies and the Spider. Since they appeared every night at regular intervals, he could get a rough idea of the time, enough to figure that he was late. In the light of a street lamp he took out his pocket watch. Yes, a good twenty minutes late. He put the watch away and hurried.

Fortunately his destination lay close at hand, where the street dead-ended at a merchant’s compound. Over the woven thorn walls, the fern trees rustled as the breeze picked up from the ocean. The outer gate was locked, but a brass bell hung from a chain on the fence. When Warkannan rang, the doorman called out, ‘Who is it?’

‘Captain Warkannan.’

‘Just a minute, just a minute.’

Warkannan heard snufflings and the snapping of teeth, low curses from the doorman, and a collection of animal whines and hisses. Finally the gate swung open, and he walked in cautiously, glancing around. Huge black lizards lunged on their chains and hissed open-mouthed as they tried to reach his legs. When the doorman waved his staff in their direction, they cringed.

‘They can’t get at you,’ he said, grinning. ‘Just stay on the path.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that.’ Warkannan fished in his pocket and found a silver deenah to tip him. ‘Thanks.’

The gravelled path led through the fern trees to an open space around the house, a rambling structure, all one storey, woven of bundled rushes and vines in the usual style, but overlaid with a small fortune’s worth of true-wood shingles. At the door, Nehzaym Wahud herself greeted Warkannan and ushered him inside the warehouse. Although she never told anyone her age, she must have been in her late forties. On her dark brown face she wore the purrahs, two black ribbons tied around her head. The one between her nose and upper lip marked her as a decent woman who observed the Third Prophet’s laws of modesty; the other, around her forehead, proclaimed her a widow.

‘How pleasant to see you, Captain,’ Nehzaym said. ‘I’m glad you could join us tonight.’

‘My pleasure, I’m sure. I’m extremely interested in this venture of yours.’

‘If the Lord allows, it could make us all quite rich, yes.’

Warkannan followed her across the room. Against the walls, covered with a maroon felt made of dried moss, stood a few lonely bales and sacks of merchandise left over from the winter trading season, a big desk littered with documents, some battered cabinets, and a tall clock, ticking to the rhythm of its brass pendulum. Nearby a bamboid door led into Nehzaym’s apartment. She ushered him through, then followed. In the middle of the blue and green sitting room a marble fountain bubbled, pale orange ferns in bright pots stood along the walls, and polished brass screens hung at every window. Just in front of the fountain stood a low table, spread with maps of pale pink rushi, where other members of their circle sat waiting for him.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ Warkannan said.

Sitting on a heap of purple cushions, Councillor Indan Alwazir looked up. The old man kept his long white robes gathered round him as if he were afraid he’d be polluted by the incense-laden air. Warkannan’s nephew, Arkazo Benjamil, a young man with a beaky nose and a thin-lipped grin, was sitting cross-legged on the floor and holding a good-sized glass of arak between thumb and forefinger. When Warkannan frowned at him, Arkazo put the glass down on the floor and shoved it under the table in one smooth gesture.

Standing by the marble fountain was the most important man in their venture. Tall and slender, Yarl Soutan was wearing the white shirt and loose white trousers of a Kazrak citizen, but his blue eyes, long blond hair caught back in a jewelled headband, and his pale skin marked him for the infidel stranger he was, a renegade from the Cantons far to the east of the khanate. Although he looked Arkazo’s age, his eyes seemed as old and suspicious as Indan’s, squinting at the world from a great distance. As always, Warkannan wondered just how far they could trust a man who claimed to be a sorcerer.

‘We have been waiting,’ Indan said to Warkannan. ‘For some while, actually.’

‘I had to go up to the palace. You’re about to hear why.’

Indan raised an eyebrow. With a demure smile for the men, Nehzaym barred the door behind her, then perched on a cushioned stool near the councillor.

‘All right,’ Warkannan said. ‘Someone’s laid an information against us with the Great Khan’s Chosen Ones.’

Arkazo swore. Indan went pale, his lips working. With a little laugh, Soutan turned from the fountain.

‘I told you I saw danger approaching. These things always send omens ahead of them.’

‘You were right,’ Warkannan said. ‘This once, anyway.’

‘May God preserve!’ Indan was trembling so badly that he could hardly speak. ‘Do they know our names?’

‘Calm down, Councillor,’ Warkannan snapped. ‘Of course they do, or we wouldn’t have anything to worry about. They’re wondering if we’re really going to prospect for blackstone.’

‘Is this anything special?’ Arkazo broke in. ‘As far as I can see, the Chosen are suspicious of everything and everyone all the time.’

‘I don’t know what they know,’ Warkannan said. ‘All that Lubahva heard was that someone bragged about our investment group. He implied it might be more important than it looked. The Chosen don’t ignore that kind of rumour.’

‘Indeed,’ Indan said. ‘Who was it?’

‘Lubahva doesn’t know yet.’ Warkannan paused to glance at each member of the group in turn. ‘I’m not doubting anyone here, mind, but our circle’s grown larger recently. I knew we’d reach a danger point.’

The suspicion in the room hung as heavy as the incense. Everyone looked at Yarl Soutan, who strolled over and sat down.

‘And would I run to the Chosen after throwing in my lot with you? The Great Khan wouldn’t give me a pardon for spilling your secrets. He’d have me killed in some slow painful way for having come here in the first place.’ Soutan laid a hand on the maps. ‘I wonder – someone must suspect that I brought you something besides those old maps.’

‘That’s my worst fear,’ Warkannan said. ‘If they do, they’ll send a man east to the Cantons just to see what he can learn about you.’

‘Oh good god!’ Soutan snarled. ‘That could ruin everything.’

‘Exactly,’ Indan said. ‘Why do you think I’m terrified?’

Soutan nodded. For a long moment they all looked at each other, as if the information they so desperately needed could be read from the empty air.

The Crescent Throne of Kazrajistan ruled these days by the sword and terror. Gemet Great Khan had gained the throne by sending his Chosen Ones to kill everyone in his own extended family with a good claim to be a khan, a word that had come to mean a man fit to be the supreme leader by blood and so sanctified by the mullahs. Now Gemet lived in fear of revenge, and with good reason. His brothers and half-brothers had married into the best families in the khanate, and with their murders and the confiscation of their lands, those families had lost sons and property both. Since he knew that any more confiscations would make the armed aristocracy rebel, he’d turned on the common people with taxes for teeth.

The last heir, young Jezro Khan, had been serving on the border, an officer in the regular cavalry. The assassins came for him, as they had for all the others, but no one ever found his body. With his assumed death, the khanate had settled into ten years of paranoid peace. Just recently, however, Soutan had ridden into Haz Kazrak and brought Councillor Indan a letter in Jezro’s handwriting. Jezro Khan was alive, living as a humble exile far to the east. After some weeks of weighing risks, Indan had contacted Warkannan, who’d served with Jezro in the cavalry. Warkannan could still feel his shock, could taste his tears as he looked over the familiar writing of a friend he’d given up for dead. Together he and Indan had gathered a few trustworthy men and made contacts among those families who’d suffered at the current emperor’s hands. Soon they had pledges of soldiers and coin to support the khan’s cause if he returned. Things had been going very well indeed – until now.

‘If we’re going to prevent disaster, we have to move fast,’ Indan said. ‘We need to shelter Soutan above all else.’

‘Just so,’ Warkannan said. ‘And we’d better do it tonight. Councillor, you have a country villa, don’t you?’

‘Oh yes, and my servants there are most trustworthy.’

‘Good. You and Soutan get yourselves there. I’ll stay in the city and keep in touch with Lubahva. If we all bolt at once, the Chosen are likely to draw some conclusions.’

Indan’s face went ashy-grey.

‘I’ll be sending you word as soon as I can,’ Warkannan said. ‘Lubahva’s group plays for every important man in the palace, and she hears plenty.’ All at once he smiled. ‘She’s always complaining that they treat the musicians like furniture. It’s a damn good thing, too. We’ll find this traitor yet.’

‘So we may hope.’ Indan sighed, looking suddenly very old and very tired. ‘But I see ruin ahead of us all.’

‘Oh come now, don’t give up so soon.’ Soutan turned to the councillor. ‘You forget that you have powerful magic on your side.’

‘Indeed?’ Indan said with some asperity. ‘But if it can’t read the minds of the Chosen, it’s not much good to us.’

‘Perhaps it can.’ Soutan gave him a thin-lipped smile. ‘Don’t mock what you don’t understand.’

When Indan started to snarl an answer, Warkannan leaned forward and cut him off.

‘Patience, Councillor,’ Warkannan said. ‘We don’t know what the Chosen are going to do. They may look us over and decide we pass muster.’

‘They might,’ Indan said. ‘Or they may have sent one of their spies east already. Or a dozen of them, for that matter.’

‘It should be an easy thing to find out.’ Nehzaym glanced around the circle. ‘Most of our allies are on the border. If we warn them, they’ll keep watch.’

‘The Chosen are very good at what they do.’ Indan’s voice seemed on the edge of fading away. ‘Doubtless, when they send off their man, no one will suspect a thing.’

‘Don’t be so sure.’ Warkannan got up with a nod for Arkazo. ‘Let’s go. Gentlemen, I suggest you leave with us. We’ll walk into the town square together and talk about our maps and our profits. Remember, we want to be noticed doing ordinary things.’

Warkannan, with Arkazo in tow, headed for the door, but when he glanced back, he noticed that Soutan stood whispering with Nehzaym near the fountain. What was the charlatan up to now? Indan joined him, followed his glance, and raised an eyebrow.

‘Soutan?’ Indan called out. ‘We’d best be on our way.’

‘Of course.’ Soutan strolled over to join them at the door. ‘Of course. Our lovely widow was merely asking my advice about a small matter.’

Nehzaym glanced at Warkannan as if inviting comment. He merely shrugged, then turned and led the men out.

The Spider hung at the zenith on her thread of stars by the time that Soutan returned to the compound. Nehzaym was reading in the sitting room when she heard the lizards outside hiss and the chains clank. She took a lamp, hurried into the warehouse, and crossed to the door just as the sorcerer opened it. With a little bow he stepped inside, then turned to shut the door behind him.

‘Well, that was a waste of time,’ Soutan said. ‘Warkannan’s idea of acting normally is to sit around in a café and argue about anything and everything.’

‘Don’t underestimate him,’ Nehzaym said. ‘He’s quite intelligent whether he acts it or not.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. Shall we go in?’

‘By all means. I’m anxious to see this treasure of yours.’

‘I just hope you can tell me what it is.’

She led the way back into the apartment. They walked down a short hallway to her tiny widow’s room, which sported a window on one wall, a narrow bed at one end, a small threadbare rug on the floor, and little else. Out of habit she still kept her clothes, her jewellery, the chests of bed linens, and the like in the large room she’d shared with her husband. One of the treasures he’d given her, however, she kept here, where a thief would never bother to look for anything valuable. She set the lamp down on a wooden stand. Soutan sat on the floor, cross-legged, while she knelt by the rug and rolled it back to expose the sliding panel under it.

Inside the hide-hole lay a book, bound in purple cloth, and what appeared to be a thin oblong of grey slate, about twelve inches by nine, lying on a black scarf. As she was taking the slate and scarf out, Soutan craned his neck to look inside the hole; she slid the panel shut fast. He laughed.

‘By all means,’ Soutan said, ‘you’d best keep that book hidden. The Sibylline Prophecies, isn’t it?’

Nehzaym shrugged, then laid the slate down between them on the scarf. It hummed three musical notes and began to glow.

‘God is great,’ Nehzaym sang out. ‘The Lord our God is one, and Mohammed, Agvar, and Kaleel are His prophets. In their names may all evil things be far away!’

‘Amen.’ Soutan leaned forward, staring.

In the centre of the panel the glow brightened to a pale blue square, which slowly coagulated into the image of a round room with a high ceiling. Floors, walls, the dais in the middle, the steps leading up to that dais – they all glittered silver in a mysterious light falling from above.

‘Whenever I take it out, I see that picture,’ Nehzaym said.

‘Does it show you others?’ Soutan said.

‘Only this one. And look!’ Nehzaym pointed to a narrow red bar of light, pulsing at one side of the slate. ‘When this light flashes, a minute or two later the image fades.’

Already, in fact, the room was dissolving back into the pale blue glow. The red light died, leaving the slate only a slate. Soutan made a hissing sound and shook his head. ‘Where did your husband get this?’

‘In Bariza. He bought it in the marketplace from a man who dealt in curios.’

‘Curios? Well, I suppose the ignorant would see it that way. Do you know anything about it?’

‘Only that you have to feed it sunlight every day. I take it to the garden. In the rainy season it doesn’t work very well.’

‘No, it wouldn’t. Our ancestors knew how to bind spirits into their magicks. They feed on sunlight. When they’re hungry, they refuse to do their job.’

‘I can’t say I blame them. Are the spirits immortal?’

‘What a strange question!’ Soutan smiled, drawing back thin lips from large teeth. ‘Everything alive must die, sooner or later.’

‘And when all the spirits die?’

‘There won’t be any more magic, just like your Third Prophet said. No doubt you Kazraks will celebrate.’

‘We’ve chosen to live as the First Prophet wanted us to live, yes.’ She paused, choosing her words carefully. ‘And how will your people feel about losing their magic?’

Soutan shrugged, his smile gone. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t happen for a good long while, a thousand years, say.’ He pointed at the panel. ‘What do you think that room is?’

‘I was hoping you could tell me.’

‘I can’t, not for certain, but I’ll make a guess. You have a copy of the Sibyl’s book. Have you read the part about the empty shrine?’

Nehzaym felt her clasped hands tighten.

‘I see you have,’ Soutan said. ‘One of these days you might see the Fourth Prophet standing on that dais.’

‘If God would only allow, I’d happily die.’

‘You’d be happier if you stayed around to see what happened next. Now. Let me see if I can show you something interesting. May I pick it up?’

‘Certainly.’

Soutan took the slate and peered at it in the dancing lamplight. He ran one long finger down the side, paused, fingered the back of it, then suddenly smiled. He took a full breath, and when he spoke, the sound seemed to come from deep inside his body and buzz like an insect. The words made no sense to her at all. The spirit in the slate, however, must have understood them, because the panel chimed a long note in answer.

Soutan laid the slate back down on the floor. A new picture was forming of a different room, inlaid with blue and white quartz in a diamond pattern.

‘Another shrine?’ Nehzaym whispered.

‘Perhaps. Wait and see.’

Slowly the room became clear – a half round, this time, and just in front of the flat wall stood two slender pillars, one grey, one white. Between them hung what appeared to be a gauzy veil, yet it shimmered and sparked with bluish light. Nehzaym twined her hands round each other. A pale blue thing shaped like a man appeared in the centre of the room. He waved his hands and seemed to be speaking, but she could hear nothing. Suddenly the thing’s face filled the image. Its eyes were mere pools of darker blue; its purple lips mouthed soundless words.

Nehzaym shrieked, a sound that must have frightened the spirit inside the slate. Once again the red light began to flash. The image disappeared.

‘May the Lord preserve!’ Nehzaym said. ‘A ghost!’

‘Do you think so?’ Soutan looked at the panel for a long silent moment. ‘If I had gold and jewels to give, I’d heap them all in your lap in return for it. Unfortunately, I don’t.’ His voice dropped. ‘Unfortunate for you, perhaps.’

Nehzaym started to speak, but her voice caught and trembled. Soutan rose to his knees and considered her narrow-eyed, his hands hanging loose at his sides, his fists clenched.

‘Take it,’ Nehzaym said.

‘What?’

‘If you want the nasty thing, it’s yours. I work and pray for the coming of the Fourth Prophet, but this is evil sorcery. I don’t want it in my house.’

Soutan sat back on his heels and stared at her slack-mouthed.

‘I suppose I must look superstitious to you,’ Nehzaym said. ‘I don’t care. Take it. It’s unclean.’

‘Who am I to turn down such a generous gift?’ Soutan scooped up the slate.

‘Take the scarf, too. I don’t want it, either. It’s touched something unclean.’

With a shrug he picked up the length of black cloth and began wrapping up the slate.

‘May the Lord forgive!’ Nehzaym said. ‘I’ll have to do penance. Necromancy! In my own house, too!’

‘Oh for god’s sake!’ Soutan snapped. ‘It was only an image of a ghost, not the thing itself.’ Soutan cradled the wrapped slate in the crook of one arm. ‘I’ll have to look through the books in Indan’s library. I wonder just whose ghost that was?’

‘I don’t care. You shouldn’t either.’

Soutan laughed. ‘I’ve learned so much from your scholars that it’s a pity I can’t stay in Haz Kazrak. But all the knowledge in the world won’t do me any good if I’m dead.’

‘If you bring Jezro home, you’ll have an army of scholars to fetch your impious books.’

‘Oh, stop worrying about impiety! You’re too old to shriek and giggle like a girl.’

‘I what? That’s a rude little remark.’

‘You deserve it. I must say that you Kazraks have the right idea about one thing, the way you train your girls to stay out of sight. But you’re an old woman, and it’s time you learned some sense.’

‘I beg your pardon!’

‘You should, yes.’ Soutan shrugged one shoulder. ‘I’d better get back to Indan’s townhouse. He wants to leave early.’

After she showed Soutan out, Nehzaym told the gatekeeper to loose the lizards for the night. Before she went back to her apartment, she stopped in the warehouse to wind the floor clock with its big brass key. As she stood there, listening to the clock’s ticking in the silent room, she suddenly remembered Soutan, talking about wanting the slate and looking at her in that peculiar way. She’d been so upset at the time that she’d barely noticed his change of mood. Now, she felt herself turn cold.

He might have murdered her for that slate.

‘Oh don’t be silly!’ she said aloud. ‘He’s a friend of Jezro Khan’s. He wouldn’t do any such thing.’

But yet – she was glad, she realized, very glad, that she’d seen the last of him.

Beyond the Great Khan’s city, true-roses rarely bloomed, and the grass grew purple, not green. All the vegetation native to the planet depended for photosynthesis on a pair of complex molecules similar to Old Earth carotenoids, producing colours ranging from orange to magenta and purple to a maroon verging on black. At the Kazraki universities, scholars taught that the plant they called grass should have another name and that the spear trees were no true trees at all, but the ordinary people no longer cared about such things, any more than they cared about their lost homeland, which lay, supposedly, far beyond the western seas.

Not far south of Haz Kazrak, on a pleasant stretch of seacoast, where grass grew green in a few gardens but purple in most other places, stood a rambling sort of town where rich men built summer villas. Fortunately, Councillor Indan’s lands were somewhat isolated; graceful russet fern trees hid his hillside villa. Behind the orange thorn walls of his compound lay a small garden and a rambling house of some thirty rooms – just a little country place, or so Indan called it – arranged on three floors. When Warkannan rode up, the gatekeeper swung the doors wide and looked over the party: Warkannan and Arkazo on horseback, and behind them, a small cart driven by a servant from Indan’s townhouse.

‘I’ve brought the councillor a present,’ Warkannan said. ‘A carved chest from the north.’

Since wood hard enough to be carved meant true-oak, an expensive rarity, Indan’s servants saw nothing suspicious about the way Warkannan hovered over the well-wrapped chest and insisted that he and Arkazo carry it themselves. All smiles, Indan greeted them and suggested they take the chest directly upstairs. Soutan helped them haul the six-foot-long and surprisingly heavy bundle up to a third-floor storage room.

The sorcerer watched as Warkannan and Arkazo unwrapped the rags and untied the rope holding the chest closed. It was indeed a beautiful piece of true-wood, sporting an intricate geometrical pattern, but someone had spoiled it by drilling a pair of holes in one narrow end. When Warkannan opened the lid, he found his prisoner nicely alive, still bleary from the drugs, but unsmothered.

‘Hazro!’ Indan whispered. ‘I would have never suspected him. One of the Mustavas – unthinkable!’

‘He bragged to someone, saying he was more important than he looked, the usual crap. Somehow it got back to the Chosen. We need to know how and who.’

‘Lies,’ Hazro mumbled.

Warkannan and Arkazo pulled him out of the chest. When he tried to stand, he sagged and nearly fell. When Warkannan shoved him back against the wall, he whimpered and glanced around with half-closed eyes.

‘I tried to reason with him,’ Warkannan said. ‘Hazro, come on! One last chance. Tell us the truth. That’s all I’m asking you. Just tell us the truth.’

‘Nothing to tell.’ Hazro tried to stand straight and defiant, but he nearly fell. ‘You – how dare you – your family started out as a bunch of blacksmiths.’

Warkannan glanced at the councillor. ‘This is what I’ve been up against. He won’t tell me a thing.’

‘May the Lord forgive us all!’ Indan said. ‘By the way, I’ve figured out a way to blame the Chosen for his death. We’ve got to keep his father on our side.’

Hazro whimpered and let tears run.

‘He’s still drugged,’ Warkannan said. ‘I’ll question him later.’

‘Good.’ But Indan looked queasy with anticipation. ‘This room has thick walls, and no one will hear a thing.’

That night they dined in a room with a splendid view of the ocean. Servants brought fresh seabuh, a spikey, six-armed creature in a purple carapace, a mixed vegetable salad, and ammonites dressed with sheep butter. As they ate, Warkannan told them what Lubahva had learned.

‘The Chosen suspect Soutan of being up to no good, but they’re not sure what.’ Warkannan nodded at the self-proclaimed sorcerer, who was stuffing his mouth with as much ammonite as it could hold. ‘They’re making inquiries all over the city.’

Soutan shuddered and wiped his mouth on a napkin.

‘Let’s assume the worst,’ Indan said. ‘If they’re making inquiries here, they must have sent a man east.’

‘Probably so,’ Warkannan said. ‘But it’s going to be damned hard for him to make his way east alone.’

‘Who says he’ll go alone?’ Arkazo asked.

‘The Chosen always do,’ Warkannan said.

‘Not that this makes life easier for their enemies.’ Indan glanced away slack-mouthed. ‘For us, that is.’

‘Oh yes.’ Warkannan leaned back in his chair and considered him. ‘If the Chosen find out that the khan’s still alive, we have no cause, gentlemen. They’ll find a way to kill him no matter where he is. So we’d better make sure this spy doesn’t find him. I’m going after him.’

‘You can’t do that,’ Indan said. ‘Your leave from the Guard’s almost up.’

‘I sent in my letter of resignation before we left the city. I’ve put in my twenty years, and I told them that this investment venture looked too good to pass up.’

For a long moment Indan studied Warkannan’s face; then he sighed. ‘That’s quite a sacrifice,’ Indan said. ‘The cavalry means everything to you.’

‘The cavalry I joined did. In the past few years –’ Warkannan shrugged. ‘Gemet’s paranoia is going to poison the whole khanate, sooner or later.’

‘Unless we supply the antidote?’ Indan smiled, a wry twist of his mouth.

‘Just that. It’s a tall order, but if God wills, we’ll succeed. If He doesn’t, well, then, who am I to argue?’

Outside the sunset was darkening into twilight. A servant slipped in and began lighting the oil in silver lamps. While he waited for the man to leave, Warkannan looked round the table at his allies, at the luxurious room, at all the comforts of life that he might never see again. As the lamp flames grew, they sparkled on silver, on crystal, on the enormous ruby at the centre of Soutan’s headband. The fitful light seemed to be illuminating not just the room but the moment, a point of history upon which the destiny of the khanate would turn. The servant bowed and left the room.

‘Warkannan,’ Indan hissed. ‘If the Chosen find any evidence at all to back up their suspicions, leaving the Guard will brand you as a traitor. You’ll never be able to ride back to Kazrajistan.’

‘Oh yes I will. At the head of an army.’ Warkannan turned to Soutan. ‘It’s time Jezro’s letter got an answer.’

Soutan considered him with a thin smile. His puzzling old man’s eyes were unreadable in the shadows.

‘I always intended to take someone back to Jezro,’ Soutan said at last. ‘And you’ll never make it across the Rift alone, so I’d better go with you.’

‘Someday you’ll be the vizier of a Great Khan in return for all this.’

‘If your God allows. But there’s nothing left for an exile but one gamble after another, is there? We might as well deal the cards.’ Soutan took a slice of pickled blakbuh from a silver tray and nibbled on it. ‘The omens say the time is ripe for a change in the Great Khan’s fortunes, and it’s not a good one. A malefic current is forming a vortex around his personal symbols – a time of budding danger for him.’

Arkazo laughed. ‘Then let’s help the malefic along.’

Soutan favoured him with a look of contempt. ‘That, my dear child, is my point and not an occasion for bad jokes.’

Indan leaned forward before Arkazo could reply. ‘And what about your nephew, Captain? You’d better send him back to his father’s estate before you leave.’

‘No!’ Arkazo slammed his hand down on the table and made the oil dance dangerously in the lamps. ‘All my life I’ve been shut up, either on Father’s lousy estate or at university. Now I’ve finally got a chance at some excitement.’

‘My dear young fellow,’ Indan began.

Warkannan raised a hand and interrupted him. ‘He’ll have to come with me, Councillor. He’s been staying in my bungalow. If the Chosen decide we don’t pass muster, he’s the first one they’ll arrest.’

Arkazo laughed with a toss of his head.

‘Listen, Kaz,’ Warkannan said. ‘This isn’t any joke. It’s going to be dangerous, and your mother’s going to curse my very name for this.’

‘Not once she’s got the favour of the new Great Khan’s wife. Mama’s always been the practical sort.’ Arkazo turned abruptly sour. ‘Why else would she have married my father?’

‘This is no place to bring that up.’ Warkannan took the silver flagon and poured them both more rose-scented water – Indan kept a pious table. ‘I wish to God I’d kept you out of this.’

‘You tried. It didn’t work.’

‘It’s too late now, anyway. The dice are thrown, and if it weren’t for you, I’d be glad of it. I’m sick to my gut of all this creeping round and worrying about spies.’

‘Spies, indeed,’ Indan said. ‘Which reminds me –’

‘Just so. We’d better get this over with.’

Everyone pushed their chairs back and stood, suddenly grim, suddenly quiet, even Arkazo.

Warkannan fetched a bucket of hot coals from the kitchen – he told the cook that he wanted to take the chill off his room – then followed the others up to the attic. As stiff as a rolled-up rug, Hazro lay on the floor. When Warkannan set the bucket of coals down, he whimpered and twisted in his ropes. Warkannan knelt beside him and pulled him up to a sitting position, propping him against the wall. Hazro’s dark eyes flicked this way and that.

‘Arkazo?’ Warkannan said. ‘You can leave. You don’t have to watch this.’

‘What are you going to do to him?’ Arkazo was staring at Hazro.

‘You don’t need to know that.’

‘But I –’

Warkannan got up and took one long stride to come face to face with his nephew. His own disgust with what he would have to do in this room turned to cold rage. ‘Get out of here,’ he snapped. ‘Now.’

‘Yes sir.’ Arkazo stepped back sharply. ‘I’m on my way.’

Warkannan waited to ensure that Arkazo was following his orders; then he closed the door and locked it. Indan stuffed a threadbare bit of carpet into the crack at the bottom of the door. When Warkannan knelt down next to him, Hazro moaned under his breath, then steadied himself, forcing defiance into a tight tremulous smile. Warkannan drew his dagger and looked at him over the blade.

‘Listen, boy. This is your last chance. You wouldn’t be refusing to tell me unless you had something to hide.’

Hazro said nothing.

‘Why?’ Indan stepped forward. ‘Why won’t you tell us?’

‘There’s nothing to tell,’ Hazro said.

‘Yes, there is,’ Warkannan said. ‘You’ve been giving information to someone. Who?’

‘No one.’

‘Then why do the Chosen suspect us?’

‘They suspect everyone.’

‘You told them about us.’

‘Never. I didn’t betray Jezro.’

Warkannan made a cut on his cheek, just under his eye. ‘I’m going to keep doing this till you tell me. If your face isn’t sensitive enough, I’ll work on your balls.’

Sweat glazed Hazro’s forehead. ‘I didn’t tell anyone anything.’

Warkannan made another nick, then another till Hazro’s face was sheeting blood. When Warkannan took the lid off the bucket of glowing charcoal, Hazro fainted. Warkannan slapped and shook him to bring him round while he fought his own honest revulsion. He hated extracting information this way, but if he didn’t, what then? The Chosen might well gather them all in, and worse things would happen to his friends, his mistress, his allies, his nephew, down in some hidden room under the Great Khan’s palace. Indan pulled over a wooden storage box and sat down, his eyes weary.

‘Now,’ Warkannan said to Hazro. ‘Who did you tell?’

Hazro shut his bloody lips tight. Warkannan pulled up Hazro’s tunic and made a nick on his scrotum. Hazro screamed.

‘I’ll put a bit of charcoal on that cut next,’ Warkannan said. ‘That’s the procedure – a nick, then a bit of fire, all the way up your cock.’

When Hazro hesitated, Warkannan took the small tongs and fished a glowing coal out of the bucket.

‘It was Lev Rashad. Rashad of the Wazrekej Fifth Mounted. I didn’t realize at first he was one of the Chosen.’

Warkannan felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. He knew Rashad, just distantly, but he knew him. You never think it’s going to be someone you know, he told himself.

‘What do you think he was going to do?’ Warkannan said. ‘Announce it in the regimental mess?’

‘I – I –’

‘Wait!’ Indan looked up. ‘You said you didn’t know he was one of them at first. This must mean you realized it later. How?’

‘He must have been the one.’ Hazro started gasping for breath. ‘It couldn’t have been anyone else.’

‘Oh?’ Indan said. ‘He must have dropped some hint. Why didn’t you come straight to us then? You were dangling us like bait in front of him, weren’t you? You were using us to try to buy your way into the Chosen.’

Hazro made a small choking sound deep in his throat.

‘How much did you tell him?’ Warkannan said. ‘Did you mention Jezro?’

‘No, never, I swear it! All I said was that I was on to a good thing with this investment group. I thought he’d join us. We’d been drinking, and I –’

‘You stupid little bastard!’ Warkannan raised the knife. ‘What did you tell him about Jezro?’

‘Nothing!’

‘Why did you want to join the Chosen?’

‘I didn’t. I didn’t.’

Warkannan kept working on him until the smell of charred flesh hung in the room and Hazro was gibbering, not speaking. A bit at a time, Warkannan extracted the information that Hazro had mentioned Soutan, come from the east with ancient maps that might show deposits of blackstone. He admitted bragging, hinting that perhaps he was a man who knew important things.

‘But not Jezro, never Jezro.’ He was sobbing, twitching when his tears touched the open cuts on his face.

‘Indeed? Are you sure of that?’

Over and over he denied having mentioned the name, even when he was at the point of shrieking and writhing at the very sight of a piece of charcoal. Warkannan finally laid down the tongs and sat back on his heels.

‘I believe him. A man in this state tells the truth.’

‘So do I,’ Indan said. ‘As for this business about his wanting to join the Chosen –’

‘I didn’t!’ Hazro tried to shout, but he was gagging on his own blood. ‘I just thought –’

‘What?’ Indan said. ‘What were you thinking?’

‘Insurance.’ Hazro started to cough, then gagged again and spat up bloody rheum. ‘If –’

‘If they were on to us, you were going to turn informer.’ Warkannan finished the thought for him. ‘That’s why you wouldn’t tell us.’

Hazro slumped back against the wall, his bloody lips working.

‘Yes,’ Indan said. ‘I think we finally understand.’

Soutan stepped closer to stare at Hazro’s mutilated manhood, what was left of it. ‘What are you going to do with him now?’

‘Put him out of his misery.’

Hazro screamed, choked again, and tried to speak, but Warkannan grabbed his hair, forced his head back, and slit his throat in one quick stroke. When he looked up, he saw Soutan smiling, his eyes bright, as if from a fever. Soutan nudged the dead body with the toe of his sandal.

‘Do we throw him in the ocean?’

‘No. The Chosen have recognizable ways of torturing a man, and this was one of them. The councillor is going to find something big enough to hide the body. We’ll take it back to Haz Kazrak, and I’ll dump the corpse over the wall of Hazro’s father’s garden at night for the slaves to find. His father won’t suspect us. He’ll think that the Chosen have killed his son, and then he’ll be more loyal to Jezro than ever.’

They left the body in the attic. Warkannan stayed out of sight while Indan ordered the servants to bring up a tub of hot water for his guest room. Once the tub was ready and they were gone, Warkannan could at last bathe away the stench and the gore. He only wished he could wash away his revulsion as easily.

Hazro had been a stupid young fool, a snob and apparently a coward as well. But to think that Lev Rashad – Warkannan shook his head. The very curse of the Chosen was simply that they were secret and very good at staying that way. An army within an army, they existed to spy on their fellow soldiers as well as do the Great Khan’s dirty work among civilians. They lived in the same barracks, ate at the same mess, carried the same insignia as the other members of their regiments, but somewhere in their career, they’d been taken aside and initiated into a brotherhood with rules of its own.

And they force the rest of us to sink to their level, Warkannan told himself. Maybe that’s the worst evil of all.

In the morning, when they set off for Haz Kazrak, one of Indan’s servants followed them in the cart which was laden with an enormous woven basket filled with dried fruit and other delicacies, or so the servant thought. Certainly it smelled of rich spices and rose petals. Once they reached the city, the servant and the cart both headed for Indan’s townhouse, while Warkannan and Arkazo went openly to Warkannan’s cottage, which he kept as a relief from officers’ quarters when off-duty.

Down on one of the lower hills in town lay a district full of these places, decent accommodations, complete with stables, for aristocratic officers like Warkannan, who had income from property but who weren’t wealthy enough to keep townhouses with a full staff. Warkannan’s little bungalow sat at the back of the communal garden, six irregular rooms bound together by vines and furnished with shabby wicker chairs and old rugs. When he and Arkazo walked in, his only servant, Lazzo, met him with a letter.

‘It’s from headquarters, sir.’

‘Ah. I wonder if they’re taking my resignation?’

Warkannan took the sheet of pale pink rushi over to the window. The letter read exactly as he’d hoped, a bland official statement of regret at losing such a good officer. He was to report one last time to determine his pension settlement.

‘So that’s that,’ Warkannan said. ‘If they’re so sorry to lose me they might have promoted me.’

‘I’m glad now I never enlisted.’ Arkazo flopped onto a wicker sofa.

‘Oh, I don’t know. The discipline’s good for a man. I don’t regret –’

One sharp jolt like the slap of a giant hand made the room sway. The flexible walls creaked and chafed against their binding vines as they rippled in the shock. Warkannan braced himself and glanced at the wall. A long strand of blue beads hung on a leather thong attached to a plaque of true-wood, marked out in numbered, concentric circles. The beads swung back and forth against the gauge. As he watched, the quake died out in a long shiver. The beads quieted and hung steady.

‘Just about a five,’ Warkannan said.

‘It didn’t feel like much, no,’ Arkazo said. ‘Anyway, you’ve always talked about the discipline. That’s one reason I don’t want to join up.’

‘Huh! Well, you’re going to learn about discipline now. You follow my orders, or you stay at home.’

Lounging on overstuffed cushions Arkazo raised one hand in salute. ‘Yes sir!’ he said and grinned. ‘At your service!’

‘All right. For starters, you can pack my clothes as well as yours.’

They went into Warkannan’s bedroom, where, in a chest woven of pale orange reeds, Warkannan kept what few civilian clothes he owned – khaki trousers, shirts to match, a broad-brimmed riding hat, worn brown boots. He dumped the lot on the bed, then looked away, startled at a feeling much like grief. Civilian clothes. Tonight he would be taking off the Great Khan’s uniform for the last time. As an honourable retiree he would be allowed to keep his sabre - but I’m a traitor, he thought. I have no honour. They just don’t know it yet.

‘Uncle?’ Arkazo laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘No, no, nothing. I’ll just go report in to settle my pension. I want our gear properly packed when I get back. Make sure you have a hat with you. The sun’s fierce out on the plains.’

Just after sunset, Warkannan and Arkazo were sharing some smuggled wine in the study when Lubahva arrived from the palace. Normally she wore modest dresses and a headscarf when she left the palace grounds, but that evening she’d draped herself with the grey veils of the ultra-orthodox, which turned her into a pious bundle indistinguishable from a thousand other women. Her behaviour, however, was far from restrained. She giggled while she tipped the old servant and made a show of lifting her veil to give Warkannan a kiss. Once the servant was gone, Lubahva sat down on a divan and pulled the veil off to reveal her black hair, done up in rows of beaded braids.

‘Are you sure this is safe?’ Warkannan said.

‘Why not?’ She smiled briefly. ‘I told them I was on my way to a women’s prayer service, and I am. I’ve just stopped by for a minute with news. A Kazrak rode out from one of the northern border forts, a merchant saying he was going to take his goods out to the Tribes.’

‘Oh really? With the chance of running into prowling ChaMeech? That I don’t believe. We’ll leave from the north and try to catch up with him.’

‘You’re really going to go through with this?’

‘I don’t have any choice. Arkazo and I are leaving tomorrow. The sorcerer’s joining us on the road.’

‘Ah, Soutan!’ Lubahva said with a sigh. ‘Well, even fake magicians can carry letters. All right. I’ll keep in touch with Indan while you’re gone.’

As they walked to the door, she veiled herself, but she left the panel over her face down for one last kiss.

‘Idres?’ she said. ‘Will I ever see you again?’

‘That’s up to God, isn’t it? I hope so.’

‘I suppose it is, yes. I’ll miss you.’

‘I’ll miss you, too. Remember me in your prayers.’

‘Every day. I promise.’

Lubahva pulled up the veil, turned fast and started off down the path to the street. Watching her shoulders tremble, Warkannan realized that she was weeping. He was honestly surprised.

Deep in the night, after Arkazo had gone to bed, Warkannan put on his civilian khakis, hid a dagger in his shirt and took a stout walking stick as well, then hurried through the dark streets to Indan’s townhouse, some five blocks uphill from the compound owned by Hazro’s family, the Mustava clan. At the back gate Indan’s mayordomo, a man with years of loyalty behind him, met him in the darkness. Together they rolled the wicker basket down the silent mews to the Mustava garden. The white wall stood too high for the pair of them to lift or throw the grisly contents over. A porter’s little hut at the back gate, however, stood empty. Warkannan rolled the basket inside, tipped the mayordomo, then hurried away, trotting through back alleys, keeping out of the occasional pool of lantern light. He met no one and returned to his bungalow without waking Arkazo.

Warkannan lingered in the city the next morning to hear the news about Hazro’s corpse. It reached him early in the person of a light-skinned eunuch, Aiwaz, the supervisor of the court musicians, who knew both the Mustavas and the Warkannans. Swathed in white gauze robes he waddled into Warkannan’s living room and stood shaking his head, his face deathly pale, while he repeatedly wiped his mouth with a yellow handkerchief.

‘It was horrible,’ Aiwaz said. ‘Hazro’s father found the body. He went down to unlock the back gates, and there it was.’

‘What?’ Warkannan did his best to look shocked. ‘Just thrown onto the street?’

‘No. Here’s the fiendish part. There was a basket there, smelling of spice, just as if someone had left some sort of gift. Inside was the body.’ Aiwaz paused, swallowing heavily. ‘Mutilated. Cut and burned in the cuts. The poor old man fainted. Just let out one sob and fainted.’

Warkannan looked away fast. His memory of that night in Indan’s attic rose up and sickened him. He had never thought that Hazro’s father would find the thing himself.

‘Yes, the poor old man.’ Warkannan could hear his voice choking on the words. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘So are we all.’ Aiwaz dabbed his mouth again. ‘Of course, none of the Mustavas could possibly know who did this.’ He raised a plucked eyebrow significantly. ‘But the boy’s uncle swears he’ll have his revenge. He seems to know whom he’d choose for a suspect.’

‘Ah, yes, I see what you mean.’

They shared a grim smile. Warkannan turned away to find Arkazo, wearing only a pair of white trousers, standing in the hall that led back to the bedrooms. From a window sunlight fell across his pale brown chest in a stripe and left his face in shadow. The boy stood with his back against the door jamb as if he thought someone might attack him from behind.

‘It’s a horrible thing,’ Aiwaz repeated. ‘I’d best be on my way. A couple of other families need to hear the news.’

Warkannan showed him out, then turned back to his nephew. Arkazo took a couple of uncertain steps into the room, staring at Warkannan as if at a stranger.

‘You’re wondering how I could do such a thing,’ Warkannan said.

Arkazo nodded.

‘Because all our lives depended on it. Because our khan’s life depends on it.’

Arkazo looked away, his shoulders high as if he feared a blow. Warkannan could hear Lazzo clattering dishes in the kitchen. The sound seemed to ring as loud as gongs.

‘Do you still want to go along on this ride?’ Warkannan said at last.

‘Yes.’ Arkazo turned back to him. ‘I just –’ He paused for a long moment. ‘I didn’t realize it was – well – real before. I mean, the whole idea of riding east and all that. It seemed like one of those stories they tell in the coffee houses.’ He forced a twisted smile. ‘It sure as hell doesn’t feel like that any more.’

‘Good. This is going to be the hardest ride of your life. Remember that.’

‘I will, sir.’

‘Good. Now get something to eat and get dressed. We’ve got to get on the road.’

Arkazo nodded and trotted back down the hall to his room.

Once they were ready to leave, Warkannan attended to one last detail while Arkazo went to fetch their horses. He wrote a letter to Indan asking him to take care of Lazzo and gave it to the old servant to carry out to the villa.

‘It’ll be a long walk for you, Lazzo, but you don’t dare stay here once I’m gone. Indan will tell you why.’

Lazzo’s pouchy eyes widened in fear.

‘Don’t linger, no,’ Warkannan said. ‘Leave before sunset, just in case. Don’t worry about the furniture. The Chosen are welcome to it if they want it.’

Warkannan gave him a small bag of coins for the trip, then slung his saddlebags over his shoulder and strode out. Soon, if the Lord allowed, by bringing Jezro home he would be freeing Haz Kazrak from a madman.

Nehzaym heard about their departure later that same day. She was working on her payroll accounts out in the warehouse office when Lubahva arrived, her arms full of bags and boxes from the shops. She laid them down on the floor, dropped her grey veils on top of them, and pulled a high stool over to Nehzaym’s desk. She perched on it with a sigh and wiggled her feet as if her sandals pained her.

‘Idres and Arkazo are leaving today,’ Lubahva announced. ‘They wanted to get an early start, so I suppose they’re gone.’

‘Well, it’s a good bit after noon now,’ Nehzaym said. ‘I was beginning to worry about you.’

‘I know, I’m sorry. I had a lot of shopping to do for the secluded girls.’

‘All right.’ Nehzaym laid down her pen. ‘I’m glad that things are finally moving. The longer Soutan stayed in Haz Kazrak, the more anxious I got.’

‘I hope the Chosen don’t suspect Idres, is all. He’d never break under torture, but I bet he’d tell them everything to save his nephew from it.’

Nehzaym felt her stomach clench. There was so much to fear, and all the time. ‘That’s true. Kaz has always been more like Idres’ son than his nephew.’ Nehzaym turned her palms upward. ‘Inshallah.’

‘Yes, whatever the Lord wills.’ Lubahva paused, thinking. ‘Are we meeting again tonight? I don’t have a rehearsal, so I could come.’

‘I don’t think it’s wise. You came here last night, and you’ve been out of the palace all morning. The eunuchs might wonder about you if you stay out for the evening as well.’

‘I can tell them the truth. They know we meet for women’s prayers. I don’t have to tell them what we’re praying for.’

‘Yes, but the Chosen also know that Soutan’s part of my new business venture. I don’t want anyone adding things up.’

‘You’re right about that.’ Lubahva considered, sucking on her lower lip. ‘The Fourth Prophet. Do you truly think she’ll be female?’

‘That’s what the Sibyl’s prophecies tell us.’

‘But what if the mullahs are right, and she’s a demon?’

‘The mullahs condemn anything they don’t understand. Now remember: we can’t tell if the Fourth Prophet’s meant to come in our lifetime. All we can do is watch and wait.’

‘But – no, you’re right. I won’t carp any more. If she comes to us, she comes. Inshallah.’

‘Oh yes. Inshallah.’ Nehzaym suddenly smiled. ‘But if she does come, she’ll find us waiting.’

On their second day out of Haz Kazrak, Warkannan and Arkazo met up with Soutan in the little resort town of Samahgan, famous for its hot springs. So many people flowed into and out of its spas and medical clinics that no one would question why a retired cavalry officer and his ward would turn up at the same hotel as a foreigner like Soutan. Still, all three of them pretended to great surprise when they met in the dining room. Soutan made a show of insisting they eat with him.

‘It’s good to see a familiar face,’ Soutan said. ‘I’m leaving tomorrow, though.’ He paused, letting a waiter get within earshot. ‘I have to be back in Haz Kazrak to meet with the bankers.’

‘We’re moving on ourselves.’ Warkannan spoke clearly for the benefit of a passing group of customers. ‘Now that I’m retired, I’m going to visit my sister, Arkazo’s mother, that is. She lives up in Merrok.’

‘Give me the address. When I know how much working capital we can raise, I’ll send you a letter.’

The waiter, young and shiny clean in his loose white pants and white tunic, showed them to a low table surrounded by velvet cushions. Soutan had chosen an expensive establishment. The dining room held a good fifty tables placed on fine carpets. True-wood panels hung from the reed and bamboid walls. The men all sat, arranging themselves while a young servant girl dressed in a white shift brought warm water, towels, and a large basin. The waiter rattled off the evening’s menu as they washed their hands, then helped the girl carry the utensils away. Soutan leaned close to Warkannan and spoke quietly.

‘We’ve had great luck, or else the Great Khan has had very bad luck. Either might be possible.’

‘I suppose so, if you want to split hairs,’ Warkannan said. ‘What was it?’

‘I was in the marketplace yesterday when I saw two cavalrymen ride in. They were official messengers from the look of their saddlebags, and they rode straight to the fort here in town.’ Soutan paused, glancing around him. ‘I have ways of learning things. They were carrying messages to Blosk.’

‘I’m sure they would have told anyone who asked them that.’

‘Indeed? Would they and their fort commander tell anyone who asked what the messages said?’ Soutan paused for another look round. ‘One of my spirits followed them into the post. They were discussing a certain officer down on the border who’s about to get cashiered and turned out of the cavalry. Both of them thought the situation was odd for some reason.’

‘So?’ Arkazo leaned forward to interrupt. ‘What does that have to do –’

The waiter came back, bowing and smiling. They ordered, he bowed again, three, four times, then strode away at last.

‘If the Chosen are sending a man east,’ Soutan said to Arkazo, ‘he’d never make it across the Rift alone. This time of year the Tribes come to the border, and he might well be able to travel with one of them.’

Arkazo’s mouth framed an ‘oh’. The waiter came back with a large brass tray of appetizers and set them down with a flourish.

‘Your first course, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Shall I bring coffee?’

‘No, not yet,’ Warkannan said. ‘At the end of the meal.’

With narrow eyes Soutan watched the waiter leave. ‘I wonder if that boy is just a waiter,’ he remarked. ‘Probably so.’

‘Probably.’ Warkannan allowed himself a brief smile. ‘We’ll talk more once we’re in our cottage. You can see what it’s like, Soutan, to live with the threat of the Chosen.’

‘Yes, I can. I can’t say I like it.’

After the meal they left the dining room and walked outside, heading for the gardens and their guest cottage. Beside the outer doors crouched a woman, her face bound with the black ribbons of widowhood. Two small children clung to her.

‘Charity, sirs?’ she whispered and held out trembling hands. ‘Charity, oh please?’

The others hurried past, but Warkannan stopped. Beggars here, in wealthy Samahgan, even here! He fished a couple of silver deenahs out of his pocket and pressed them into her hand.

‘May God provide better,’ he said. ‘And soon.’

Out to the east of the khanate, all of the grass grew purple. No one kept a garden or tilled a field on the other side of the sunset-coloured hills that marked the khanate’s border. A treaty dating back to Landfall forbade it, a pact so sacred that not even the ambitions of the Third Prophet could force the Kazraks to break it. Besides, without the open grasslands, there would be no horse-herds, and without a large number of horses the Kazraks would have no cavalry. All ambitions would become empty, then.

On the night that Warkannan was dining in Samahgan, the Tribes brought their stock into the border town of Blosk for the spring horse fair. The comnees, as the travelling groups were called, came out of the lavender grasslands, herding their horses ahead of them. Most rode, but some of the women drove rickety orange wagons, made of lashed-together bamboid, heaped with their possessions. Down by the river that flowed near town, they set up round tents stitched together in a patchwork of coloured saurskins and grey horsehair felt. In the meadows they tethered their horses with tasselled halters and drew the gaudy wagons into a circle. By the third day over a hundred tents stood in clusters out on the grass.

Children ran and played in the impromptu village while their parents brought out hoards of dried horse dung to fuel cooking fires or walked from tent to tent to greet old friends. Everyone talked about the trading ahead. The Great Khan’s gold bought the necessities that only farmers could supply, such as grain, soap, and lamp oil, as well as trinkets like brightly coloured cloth and gold jewellery. Men and women both wore gaudy belt buckles, brooches, and clasps for cloaks, cast or hammered into the shapes of mythological beasts, such as the stag, the wolf, and the lion.

Ammadin picked the spot for her maroon and grey tent on the edge of the encampment, a good distance from all this convivial chaos. In silent respect, the members of her comnee, sixteen extended families in all, raised her tent, carried her possessions over from the communal wagons, then left her alone. Inside she arranged her belongings: her roll of blankets, her leather-and-wood folding stool, her two cooking pots, and the four big grey-and-blue woven tent bags that held her clothes and tools. Her most precious belongings never travelled in the wagons. In saddlebags of purple leather she carried her spirit crystals, her silver talismans, and her feathered spirit wands. The god figures of her tribe had their own pair of saddlebags, lined in fine white cloth from the Cantons far to the east.

Ammadin was arranging the god figures on their red-and-white striped rug when Maradin crawled through the tent flap. A blonde, handsome woman with skin the colour of gold, Maradin was the only person who dared enter Ammadin’s tent uninvited. She pressed her palms together and bowed to the god figures, squat stone carvings, wrapped in coloured thread and decorated with feathers and precious stones. Only then did she speak.

‘Dallador bought some mutton, and he’s making stew. Do you want to come eat with us?’

‘Yes, thanks. Have the Kazraks got here yet?’

‘A couple of their officers rode up a few minutes ago. Apanador’s taken them into his tent for some keese.’

In front of Maradin’s tent, pieced together from mottled purple and white skins, her husband Dallador was cutting chunks of meat from a haunch and putting them into an iron kettle. Their three-year-old son sat on the ground nearby and watched him. A good-looking fellow with hair so pale it was almost white, Dallador was dressed in the usual leather trousers of the Tribes and a red-and-blue cloth shirt; his belt had a palm-sized gold buckle in the shape of a horse, its legs tucked up, its head turned as if it were looking behind it.

‘I hear the Kazraks are in the mood to buy,’ Dallador said. ‘Are you going to sell that pair of greys?’

‘If they’re stupid enough to take them,’ Maradin said. ‘I’ll give them a dose of herbs before I bring them over.’

While Dallador tended the stew pot, Maradin brought out wooden drinking bowls and a leather skin of keese, a liquor made of fermented mare’s milk. She was pouring it round when Palindor strolled up to the fire. A handsome, almost pretty young man with strikingly large blue eyes and coppery skin, Palindor smiled once at Ammadin, then squatted down beside Dallador.

‘I invited Palindor to eat with us,’ Maradin announced.

Ammadin felt like kicking her – she was match-making again, damn her! Palindor accepted a bowl of keese with a murmured ‘thank you’ and looked at the ground. As an unmarried man, he had no standing in the comnee and no horses but the one his mother had given him to ride. He did, however, have a fine reputation as a warrior in the endless squabbles and raids that went on between the comnees. One of the bravest of the brave, men said of him, and as good with the long knife as he was with the bow. For the sake of that, Ammadin did her best to be pleasant to him during the meal.

By the time they were done eating, the skin of keese was empty, and Dallador brought out another. As he was refilling Palindor’s bowl, he splashed keese on the back of his unsteady hand.

‘Dallo?’ Maradin said.

‘I know. I’ve had enough.’ Dallador handed the skin to Palindor, then began licking the spilled keese off his hand while he smiled, heavy-lidded, at Maradin, who smiled back as languidly as if she were drunk herself.

All through the camp, fires glowed like golden blossoms among the tents. Here and there, men began to sing to the dahsimmer, a three-stringed instrument, one for the melody, two for the drone. Every time he had a sip of keese, Palindor would look at Ammadin so longingly that she realized that he was in love with her, not merely greedy for the horses a wife would bring him. Ye gods! she thought. What’s he doing, taking lessons from Dallo? She got up, excused herself, and went to her tent. Before she closed the flap, she listened for a moment to the clear strong voices of the men, singing of the two things they loved above all else: the hunt and war.

About an hour after dawn, the Kazrak officers rode down from the fort in Blosk to start the day’s haggling. The women and girls cut the horses they wanted to sell out of the herds and brought them down to the riverbank in a snorting, prancing procession. Their husbands and brothers stood nearby to make sure the Kazraks treated their women with the proper respect. Every man had the short curved bow slung over his back and in his belt, the leaf-blades steel knife, about eighteen inches long, that marked a man as an adult. In their red tunics, buttoned tight with silver pegs, and grey wool trousers, the Kazrak officers moved stiffly, their backs as straight as arrows.

When Ammadin brought down two bay geldings from her herd, the comnee women fell back to let her have the first place in line. A dark young officer introduced himself to her as Brison and began to examine the bays. He ran practised hands down their legs and over their chests, then looked into their mouths.

‘Four-year-olds, huh?’

‘Yes, and halter-broken.’

‘Very well. A gold imperial each.’

‘Two each.’

Brison hesitated, looking at her cloak, the entire black and purple mottled skin of a slasher saur, and a big specimen at that. Even for a comnee woman Ammadin was tall, but although she had the saur’s front paws clasped at her neck, the middle feet hung well below her belt and the hind set trailed behind her on the ground. Apparently Brison had been on the border long enough to know what the cloak signified.

‘Very well.’ He motioned to another officer. ‘Give the Holy One what she asked for.’

The assistant counted four gold imperials out of a cloth sack and handed them over. Ammadin put them in the pocket of her leather trousers and walked away without another word.

During the day, other comnees rode up to join the camp. The fair would go on for weeks, though it would migrate as the horses ate down the grass. Outside the town, which lay across the only hill for miles in this part of the grasslands, booths built of bundled rushes stood side by side with peddlers who spread their goods out on old blankets and shepherds selling raw fleeces and baskets of rough-spun yarn. Women hawking food in baskets mingled with the crowd; here and there, a juggler or story-teller performed for a clot of onlookers. Round it all swarmed the tiny flying yellabuhs, scavenging on scraps and spills.

That afternoon Ammadin and Maradin strolled through the market, looked everything over before they bought anything, and stopped every now and then for a cup of Borderland wine, which tasted as light as water for someone used to keese. Since their First Prophet had specifically forbidden wine, the Kazraks weren’t supposed to drink it, of course, but here and there a drunken cavalryman staggered through the fair. Ammadin bought fine coloured threads, glass beads, and dyed hen’s feathers to use in making magic charms. Maradin bought lengths of striped cloth, woven from the fine light thread spun in the water-powered mills of Kazrajistan. She lingered over a tray of brass buttons.

‘I should get some of these for Dallador,’ she said.

‘Why?’ Ammadin said. ‘You spoil him, you know, always fussing over him, always buying him things.’

‘Well, I happen to love him.’ Maradin hesitated, then turned away from the button seller’s booth.

‘What’s wrong?’ Ammadin said. ‘Something is.’

Maradin shrugged, and they walked a few steps on. ‘I just get so jealous when women look at him,’ she said at last. ‘I remember when I asked him to marry me, and Mama warned me that watching other women chase him would break my heart. She was right. He’s not the most handsome man in the world, but there’s just something about him. Women do flirt with him. You must have noticed.’

‘It would be hard not to.’

‘After all, you –’

‘That was before you were married.’

‘I know, just teasing.’ Maradin paused for one of her wicked grins. ‘It’s odd, isn’t it? If you looked at him and Palindor together, you’d think, oh, Palino’s so handsome, Dallo’s not. But there’s something cold about Palindor.’

‘Yes, cold and hard, like a face on a Kazraki coin.’

‘But my husband –’ Maradin hesitated, biting her lower lip. ‘My husband’s as warm as a winter fire. I was so proud when he said he’d marry me. Now, I worry all the time.’

‘Has he ever taken any of these women up on their offer?’

‘No. I just keep thinking he’ll meet someone with more horses.’

‘Maddi! Do you honestly think he’d leave you?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I just get so jealous and sulky. And then I say things.’

‘Things you regret?’

Maradin nodded, looking away.

‘What about the men?’ Ammadin said. ‘There was that fellow the last time we rode to Nannes –’

‘Oh, that doesn’t bother me. He can’t get them pregnant, and they don’t have any horses.’

Ammadin knew two kinds of spells and charms, those that worked because they had magic, and those that worked because the wearer thought they did. Love charms fell into the latter category, but usually they did their job.

‘I’ll bind you a charm,’ Ammadin said. ‘You can wear it on a thong under your shirt. When you feel jealous, take it out and hold it in your hand, and it will soak up the jealousy.’

‘Thank you!’ Maradin turned to her with a brilliant smile. ‘I should have brought this to you earlier.’

Before heading back to the encampment they stopped for a last cup of wine. Nearby a juggler sent four saur eggs spinning through the air, but the crowd at the wine booth was talking about a different kind of show to be held that afternoon. One of the officers in the fort was going to be publicly cashiered.

‘I’ll bet they waited until the fair to do it,’ a local weaver told them. ‘What’s the good of shaming a man if there’s no one to watch it, eh?’

‘Well, true, I suppose,’ Maradin said. ‘What’s he done?’

‘I wouldn’t know. They flog a man for any little thing out here on the border.’

When the weaver drifted away, Maradin turned to Ammadin.

‘Let’s go back to camp. I don’t have the stomach for things like that.’

‘Well, you can go back. I’m going to stay and watch.’

‘Ammi! Ugh! How can you?’

‘I’m curious, that’s all. I don’t understand the Kazraks, I never have, but I should, you know. We all should. They’re dangerous.’

At that Maradin hesitated, but in the end she left, taking Ammadin’s purchases back for her. Ammadin followed the crowd up to the town itself.

Out in front of the thorn walls of the big square fort lay the typical Kazraki public square, a bleak gravelled ground with a stone pillar standing in the centre. Already onlookers lined three sides, jostling for the best view. Things were dull in Blosk. To the sound of a silver horn, the true-wood gates swung open. A contingent of a dozen men marched a young Kazrak officer out to the six-sided pillar while others ordered the pressing crowd to stay back. Ammadin, who was caught against the wall of a house, climbed up on a trash barrel so she could see over the crowd.

Marked by the golden scabbard at his side and the narrow gold stripe down the sleeves of his tunic, the fort commander marched over to the unfortunate officer. At his barked orders, two of the troopers bound the officer’s wrists together with one end of a long rope, then tossed the other end over an iron hook embedded halfway up the pillar. When they pulled, they strung him up like a saur carcass hung to bleed so that his feet barely touched the ground. To steady himself the officer had to stretch himself out into a perfect target. Ammadin was close enough to get a good look at him: a handsome man for a Kazrak, with dark curly hair and black eyes above prominent cheekbones. His skin was a rich brown, darker than most of his people. While the commander conferred with the troopers, he stared out in front of him, his face utterly expressionless.

When she heard someone call her name, Ammadin looked round to see Brison, walking up to her unsteady perch on the barrel. He raised his hand palm out in the Kazrak gesture of respect.

‘So, the Holy One has come to watch?’ Brison said.

‘The show was here, so I thought I’d see it. What’s he done?’

‘It’s a strange story. When it was time for my unit to ride here for the fair, we were told to take him with us. He’d volunteered for the horse-buying unit, and I couldn’t figure out why anyone would. But a message came in that explained it all. Bad news for poor old Zayn. He’d been sleeping with the wife of this high-and-mighty court official back home, you see, and he figured he had to get out of the hot water before it boiled.’ Brison paused to give Ammadin a wink. ‘He didn’t jump quick enough. Her husband knew about it already, and he pulled strings.’

‘What? You’ll flog a man for that?’

‘Adultery’s against the laws of the Prophets.’ Brison paused for a sly grin. ‘Besides, this old boy has favours to give away, like a reassignment off this damned border.’

Out in the square, the commander yelled for silence. He ceremoniously pulled the sabre, inlaid with the golden crescent, from Zayn’s scabbard and threw it on the ground. Zayn set his lips tight and stared out at nothing while the commander unbuckled the sword belt and threw it after the sabre. He took a dagger from his belt, grabbed the hem of Zayn’s tunic, and slit it up the back and across the sleeves so that he could pull off the last trace of the khanate’s insignia and leave Zayn half-naked where he hung.

‘The man who disgraces his regiment disgraces the Great Khan,’ the commander said. ‘A man who dishonours the reputation of the cavalry will have no honour in any man’s eyes.’

Zayn allowed himself a small bitter smile. The commander stepped back and motioned to a trooper. As the trooper unrolled his long leather whip, the crowd pressed closer.

‘Begin,’ the commander said.

The braided leather thongs uncoiled and hissed through the air to snake across Zayn’s bare back. Blood welled up in a thin, precise stripe. Zayn’s eyes flickered briefly. Over and over the whip struck, lacing his back with lines of blood. Once he winced; once he made a stifled grunt; slowly his face turned from brown to a muddy grey. Other than that, the bloody stripes might have been no more than the slap of a gloved hand. At the tenth blow, Brison swore and turned away with a shake of his head, but Ammadin watched fascinated. The Tribes admired a man able to bear this kind of pain.

The whip uncurled and flew to him again and again – eleven, twelve, thirteen. Zayn’s dark eyes stared fixedly at some distant point, but his face was so pale that Ammadin was afraid that he’d break yet. His back was nothing but blood; the whip bit into old wounds each time it fell. Nineteen, twenty – Zayn tossed his head and grunted under his breath.

‘Enough!’ the commander barked. ‘The Great Khan’s justice is done.’

Zayn gathered his breath in a long gulp. ‘Is it?’ His voice cracked and wavered, but he spoke again. ‘You hypocrite!’

The commander snarled like an animal. He raised his arm and turned to the trooper, as if he was going to order a few more stripes, but Ammadin laughed loudly enough for him to hear. He shot a black look her way and said nothing. The panting trooper stepped back and began to clean the blood-soaked whip on a bit of rag. Two others stepped forward. One threw a bucket of water over Zayn’s back; the other cut him down. Zayn staggered, stumbled, then pulled himself upright by an effort of will. He even managed to smile at the two troopers when one caught his arm to steady him, a cold bitter smile of blazing hatred that made them step back and leave him alone. At the commander’s order, the other troopers came forward and dumped a bedroll and a pair of saddlebags at Zayn’s feet. The commander shoved a tiny pouch of what looked like coins into his hand.

‘There’s your exile’s wages,’ the commander said. ‘Walk wherever you want, but get out of my sight. You have three days to leave Blosk.’

Zayn looked at him, then bent over to pick up the gear on the ground. Ammadin caught her breath; she was expecting him to fall and faint, but slowly and carefully he straightened up again with the load in his arms. With the blood still running on his back, he turned and staggered off. The crowd began to jeer, yelling insults as they moved out of his way, but he held his head high and walked on. Ammadin jumped off her barrel and followed him. When she passed, the crowd fell silent.

Slowly, one painful step at a time, Zayn made his way out of the public square and turned down a narrow alley. He began panting for breath, and at times he staggered, but he kept walking until he’d left the crowd behind. He dropped his gear on the dusty street and leaned against the wall of a house.

‘Zayn?’ Ammadin said.

When he turned his head to look at her, he moved too fast and fell to his knees. Ammadin squatted down in front of him and spoke in the Kazraki language.

‘That’s your name, isn’t it? Zayn?’

For a moment he merely stared at her; then his mouth twitched as if he wanted to smile. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Zayn Hassan.’

‘Do you have anywhere to go?’

‘No.’

‘Come with me if you want. I can use a man like you to tend my horses.’

He reached out a hand twined round with a runnel of blood and touched the edge of her saurskin cloak. ‘A witchwoman. Why would you bother helping the likes of me?’

‘Because you’ve got guts. And it seems a little harsh to be treated this way for bedding a woman who wanted you.’

Zayn managed a thin smile.

‘I thought so.’

He fainted, falling at her feet. Ammadin got up and went to the mouth of the alley. Out in the street four young comnee men hurried along, heading for the centre of town. She recognized none of them.

‘You!’ Ammadin called. ‘Come over here!’

They stopped, scowling, turned, hands on knife hilts. The tallest of them suddenly smiled.

‘It’s a spirit rider,’ he said. ‘We’re coming, Holy One. What do you want us to do?’

‘Carry this man and his gear back to my camp.’

The four trotted over and did what she asked.

Ammadin had them lay Zayn face-down in the grass behind her tent, then sent for Orador, the man who knew wound lore. He was a portly man, Orador, with a long drooping moustache, mostly grey, and a round face to match his belly. A young apprentice brewed herb-water at Ammadin’s fire while the master looked over Zayn’s wounds. Carefully he washed the blood off Zayn’s back with the herb-water, then poured keese over the stripes. When the liquor hit, Zayn’s fingers dug into the grass like a saur’s claws, but he made no noise at all.

‘That’ll keep the evil spirits away,’ Orador said cheerfully. ‘No bandages for you, boy. Air’s the best thing for these shallow wounds, and the bleeding’s stopped already.’

With a long sigh, Zayn turned his head and looked at Ammadin, hunkered down near him in the grass. His eyes were as distant from his pain as if he were merely taking the sun.

‘How soon can he ride?’ Ammadin said.

‘Today if I have to,’ Zayn whispered.

Orador laughed under his breath. ‘I like your guts, but you’ll need to rest for a couple of days, at least.’

‘Easy enough,’ Ammadin said. ‘The comnee won’t be riding for a while. When we do leave, Zayn, we’ll be heading east.’

‘Good.’ Zayn smiled briefly. ‘I’ve always been curious about the east.’

All at once, Ammadin felt danger, an odd intuition that seemed to rise out of no particular cause. For a moment she considered Zayn, lying utterly still in his exhaustion, his back as raw as a piece of freshly butchered meat. The warning came to her as the scent of anger. Puzzled, she stood up and found Palindor standing nearby with his arms crossed tightly over his chest. When he caught her glance, he turned on his heel and strode off. So that’s it! Ammadin thought. Well, I can handle a jealous young colt like him easy enough. She left Zayn under Orador’s care and went to find Apanador to tell him that she had a servant and the comnee a new rider.

After they left Samahgan, Warkannan led his men north rather than straight east, just as if he were indeed going to visit Arkazo’s family in their country villa. In this province, Zerribir, the larder of Kazrajistan, the land stretched out flat in a broad valley, all gold and red with crops – wheatian, oil beans, breadmoss, vegetables – tended by farmers who lived in white-washed cottages set among the rosy fields.

Graceful mosques, built of white-washed true-oak and adorned with minarets, rose out of the magenta view. Five times a day they heard the call to prayer, either carried on the wind from a distant spire or close at hand from a wayside shrine. They would dismount and stand in the road, holding their horses’ reins in one hand while they raised the other to point towards the sky, just as the Second Prophet had taught his people to pray when they were outside. Soutan would stand to one side, watching. One late afternoon Warkannan had enough of seeing him sneer.

‘And just what are you smirking about?’ Warkannan said.

‘Nothing.’ Soutan wiped the smile off his face. ‘Tell me something, Captain. Do you know what you’re pointing at?’

‘Of course. The holy city of Mekka.’

‘Which exists up in the air, floating along?’

‘Don’t be stupid! It’s a symbol of Paradise, where Mohammed’s soul went when he died.’

‘Ah. What would you say if I told you it was a real city, made of wood and vines like any other?’

Warkannan considered a number of blunt insults but discarded them. ‘Of course it was,’ he said instead. ‘Back in the Homelands somewhere. In a desert, if I remember rightly. That doesn’t mean it can’t have some sort of symbolic meaning as well.’

‘Yes, it was in a desert.’ Arkazo joined in. ‘And it was made of stones and mortar, not vines. They didn’t have as many earthquakes back in the Homelands.’

‘Very good.’ Soutan favoured him with a small smile. ‘There may be more to your mind than I thought.’

Arkazo’s face brightened with rage, but Warkannan cut him off. ‘Let’s get going,’ he snapped. ‘I want to make a few more miles before sunset.’

In this flat country the well-kept roads made travelling easy. Warkannan and his men managed a good twenty-five miles a day at a smooth, steady walk. Now and again they pulled their horses to the side of the road to allow a closed carriage to clatter past, drawn by four matched horses, carrying the womenfolk of some rich man behind its curtained windows. More often the roads ran beside canals, where they saw horse-drawn narrowboats glide by, piled high with produce.

‘It’s peaceful here,’ Soutan remarked one morning. ‘Peaceful and prosperous.’

‘For now it is,’ Warkannan said. ‘If there’s another round of new taxes, I don’t know what people are going to eat. The salt tax has damn near broken the farmers as it is. They have to work out in the sun, and salt’s no luxury to them. That’s something that Gemet will never understand, the greedy bastard – hard work and what it does to a man.’

‘Unfortunately, you’re quite right. I have no doubt that Jezro will take a very different view of the matter.’

‘Neither do I. God blessed us when He spared Jezro.’

‘As he damn well should, considering all the trouble you people have gone to for his sake.’

‘Now just what do you mean by that?’

‘Only that you left the Homelands to come here. Haven’t you ever wondered about those Homelands, Captain?’

Warkannan considered as they rode past a long maroon field of vegetables. Out among the rows farmers were harvesting, cutting leaves and piling them high in baskets. He could hear them singing as they worked.

‘From what I understand,’ Warkannan said at last, ‘we’re a lot better off here. The Homelands were filled with infidels and evil magic. It was so bad that the great Mullah Agvar was afraid the true faith would be lost.’

Soutan rolled his eyes heavenward. ‘No doubt that’s what you’ve been taught. Don’t you ever wonder if it’s true?’

‘No. Why would I? The mullahs are the ones who have all the old books and such. They’d know the truth.’

‘Maybe. What if they’re not telling the truth, though?’

‘Why wouldn’t they?’

‘To keep you from regretting what you’ve lost, the Homelands, I mean.’

‘Why would I regret a pack of filthy infidels and their tame demons?’

Soutan looked at him for a long moment, eyes wide in exaggerated amazement. ‘You belong in a museum, Captain,’ he said finally. ‘A pure example of a pure type.’

‘Now, watch it, Soutan!’

Soutan flinched as if he expected a blow. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to be insulting.’

Warkannan snorted, then changed the subject.

As they travelled north, they stopped now and then at a cavalry fort to see if they could pick up gossip or news that might point them to the Chosen’s spy. Warkannan’s twenty years of service had left him with plenty of friends, many of them stationed at one or the other of the chain of cavalry forts that bound the khanate together. It was at Haz Anjilar that he heard more about the officer cashiered out at Blosk.

Warkannan had left Soutan and Arkazo at the inn and gone alone to pay a courtesy call upon the commander, a colonel named Hikko who had once shared a border posting with him. Over glasses of arak, they agreed that the cavalry wasn’t what it used to be, that the young officers nowadays were slack and ill-educated, and that the enlisted men lacked a proper respect for authority.

‘What we need,’ Hikko said, ‘is a war. A good long campaign against the ChaMeech – now that would weed out the unfit. There’d be none of this lying around the barracks and arguing with the sergeants then.’

‘Can’t blame the men, I suppose,’ Warkannan said. ‘When you consider what they’ve got for officers.’

‘Now that’s true.’ Hikko shook his bald head sadly. ‘I’ve got a story along those lines. A fellow named Zayn Hassan. Everyone said he had a brilliant career ahead of him. He was stationed in Bariza, on his way up, but he couldn’t keep his hands off of some official’s wife.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘He ended up cashiered, that’s what. Down in Blosk, they flogged him and turned him out. A comnee took him in, apparently. But you know what’s damned odd? No one knows the name of this very important cuckold or his wife. You’d think the womenfolk would have spread the gossip over half the khanate.’

Warkannan found himself very sober very fast. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’d think so. How many lashes did this Hassan get?’

‘Twenty.’

While Hikko poured himself more arak, Warkannan considered the matter. Twenty stripes – the thought made him wince. Would the Chosen inflict them on one of their own just to make his story more convincing? Possibly, considering what they were, but not likely. When Hikko offered him the bottle, Warkannan shook his head.

‘I’ve had plenty, thanks. You know, the husband in the Hassan case could have spread money around to keep his name out of it. Who wants to be known as a cuckold?’

‘Now that’s true. And the fellow must have been rich as a khan to get the cavalry to take his revenge for him.’

‘Rich or well-connected.’

‘That too. Damned poor way to run an army, letting civilians meddle with discipline, but there you are.’

Warkannan found himself thinking about Zayn Hassan as he walked back to the inn. Something about the story nagged at him. He kept coming back to the lack of names and realized that the tale required more detail to be fully convincing as juicy gossip. Still, Blosk lay nearly four hundred miles to the south, while Haz Evol, where their other suspect had turned up, stood only a hundred and eighty to the east. Warkannan decided they’d best stick with their original plan.

On the morrow they left Haz Anjilar early. Some five miles along the khan’s highway they rode up to an intersection where a square-cut stone pillar stood in a little island at the cross of the roads. Carved arrows pointed north to Merrok, west to Kazrikki-on-Sea, south back the way they’d come, and east to Haz Evol and the border. They paused their horses beside the pillar, and Warkannan pointed to the north road.

‘All right, Arkazo,’ he said. ‘What do you say you keep riding north and take some letters to your mother for me?’

‘No!’ Arkazo’s face flushed scarlet. ‘You said I could come! I mean, with all due respect, Uncle.’

Warkannan laughed. ‘Respect, huh? All right, Nephew. I wanted to give you one last chance to stay out of this.’

Arkazo shook his head, glaring at him all the while.

‘All right,’ Warkannan said. ‘I’ll just have to pray that your mother forgives me.’

They reined their horses to the east and rode off, heading for the border. Not far along the east-running road the land began rising in a long slope. Ahead a ripple of purple hills stood at the horizon like a fort wall, guarding the civilized life they were about to leave behind.

‘And beyond them lie the plains,’ Warkannan said to Arkazo. ‘And the ChaMeech. It’s a damned shame the Third Prophet didn’t wipe them out when he had the chance. Kaleel Mahmet, blessed be his name of course, but I can’t help wishing he’d driven them across the plains and slaughtered the lot.’

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

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

‘Horseshit! Do they ever attack the Tribes?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Thanks. I won’t, don’t worry.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘My mistake!’ Zayn said. ‘I’m sorry.’

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

‘Your mothers were sisters?’ Zayn said.

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

‘Oh, doesn’t matter.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Never would I offend you, Holy One.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Will there be lightning?’ Dallador said.

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

Dallador bowed to her and left.

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

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

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

‘Ah. All right, I’m done now.’

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

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

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

‘You killed it yourself?’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Not that I ever heard of.’

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

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

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

‘When do you make a decision like that?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Good. I’ll make sure you do.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Can the spirits answer questions?’

‘Oh yes, but only certain kinds.’

‘Can they tell me why Palindor hates me?’

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

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

‘I can sleep outside under a wagon.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No.’

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

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

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

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

‘What?’

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

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

‘Yes. I certainly did.’

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

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

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

‘Hear spirits? How?’

‘How would I know?’ Dallador smiled briefly, then laid his knife down and considered the little heap of horn pegs. ‘That’s enough to last us a while. Now let me show you how to shell land-shrimp. I found a whole nest of them this morning, and if they’re cooked right, they’re pretty tasty.’

When Zayn returned to Ammadin’s tent, he brought her a skewer of grilled land-shrimp and some salted breadmoss in a polished stone bowl. He found her sitting cross-legged on her blankets with her saddlebags nearby.

‘That smells good,’ Ammadin remarked.

‘Dallador’s teaching me how to cook.’

He handed her the food, then laid his palms together and greeted the god figures before sitting down opposite her. She plucked a shrimp off the skewer, bit into it, and smiled.

‘Very good.’

While she ate, Zayn considered the god figures, sitting on a multi-coloured rug opposite the tent flap. There were six of them in all, most about a foot high, carved of different coloured stones, then decorated and dressed with cloth and feathers. One figure was obviously human, but the others – he’d never seen creatures like them before. Two were roughly human in shape, but the green one had scales and a wedge-shaped head like a ruffled lizard’s, and the small black one had what appeared to be fish’s gills pasted on either side of its chest. Another seemed to be only half-finished: a torso, studded with bits of gold to represent what might have been eyes, rose from an ill-defined mass of grey stone. The fifth had furled wings of stiffened cloth, huge in relation to its frail, many-legged body, and the sixth, the largest of them all, resembled a worm with leather tentacles at one end and paddle-shaped chips of shell stuck at the other.

‘What do you think those are?’ Ammadin said abruptly.

‘Well, your gods. Or representations of them, I should say. I know you don’t worship the bits of stone, of course.’

‘Of course.’ She smiled, but only faintly. ‘Why do you think our gods look so strange?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Neither do we.’

He waited for her to say more, but she merely finished her meal. When she handed him the dirty bowl he went to wash it out in the stream. Night had fallen, and the storm clouds had broken up. He could see the last of them off to the north, a lighter smudge on a dark horizon. When he turned to the east he saw the Spider glittering in the sky, a huge spiral of distant light, but the Flies had already set.

Zayn hunkered down at the stream bed and scrubbed the remnants of food out of the bowl with the side of his hand. Little flashes of blue light in the water greeted this gift from the heavens – tiny fish, dotted with luminescence, snapped at the crumbs as they sank. As a boy he’d wondered if the animals in grass and stream believed that their gods were the humans, those baffling beings who fed them or killed them according to some whim. We’d look just as strange to them as those bizarre little fetishes do to me, he thought. And what of Ammadin’s remark? Neither do we. Somehow, he knew, it held a challenge.

With the rising of the pale sun the comnee struck camp and moved on. Since the day promised heat, Ammadin folded up her saurskin cloak and put it away in its special tent bag. She had Zayn saddle her grey gelding, then rode out ahead, where she could think away from the noise and dust of the herds and wagons. No one, of course, questioned her leaving. Her people assumed that on her lonely rides Ammadin worked magic for the good of the comnee, perhaps invoking spirits to gain hidden knowledge or maybe driving away evil with powerful spells. In one way she was riding alone for their good, she supposed. How would it affect her people if they knew that their spirit rider, the guardian of their gods, their defender from dark forces, their healer and spiritual leader, was rapidly losing her faith in gods and magic both? Better that she take herself away than let her doubts show.

All around her the lavender grasslands stretched out to an endless horizon. As she rode, the grass crackled under her horse’s hooves. Yellabuhs swarmed but never bit. Now and again turquoise-blue winged lizards leapt from the grass and flew off, buzzing furiously at these huge intruders. Otherwise, nothing moved in the summer heat, nothing made a sound. Here and there she saw a cluster of blood-red pillars rising from the grass that meant distant spear trees and thus water. Eventually, when the sun was reaching its zenith, she headed for one of the groves to give her horse and herself some relief from the sun.

Along a violet stream bank, the red spears leapt from the earth and towered, far taller than a rider on horseback. Close up they appeared to have grown as a single leaf, wound around and around on itself to the thickness of a child’s waist, but down at the base, hidden by a clutter of mosses and ferns, were the traces of old leaves that had died back and withered. The spears grew in clumps from long tuberous roots, spiralling out from a mother plant. How the mother plants got their start, no one knew.

Ammadin unsaddled her gelding and let him roll, then led him to the stream to drink. When he finished she got a tin cup from her saddlebags and scooped up water for herself. She drank, then took off her floppy leather hat and poured a couple of cups of water over her head. While the horse grazed she sat on the bank in the blessed shade and gazed into the stream, running clear over pale sand. In a little eddy grew skinny reddish-brown leaves, trailing in the current, and among the leaves lay a clutch of spirit pearls, milky-white spheres about the size of a closed fist, that were absolute Bane for anyone, even a spirit rider, to harm in any way. Rarely did one find them in a stream this small and this far west of the Great River.

Ammadin ached to know what lay inside them. Something alive, like a lizard chick in its egg? It seemed a good guess. The name, spirit pearl, made no sense. Down at the southern seacoast there were Kazraks who dove to bring up shells with pearls inside – hard little things, no bigger than a fingernail. But since spirits had no bodies, they could never lay eggs, no matter how much like eggs these seemed. At times, when the sun struck the water very late or very early in the day, and a spirit pearl sat in just the right place, the light would seem to flow through it, and then she would see the faint shadow of something that might have been a curled chick. If she could only lift one out and hold it up to the light of a lamp, like the farmers on the Kazrak side of the border did with the eggs of their chickens and meat lizards, she would be able to settle the question once and for all, but the Bane upon them stopped her.

Bane ruled the life of the plains. This plant must never be eaten, that stream must never be forded. If anyone found a pure white stone, he had to leave it in place. Spirits lived in certain fern trees and might offer a shaman help. Other spirits in other trees were pure evil and had to be avoided at all costs. If anyone found a green plant, whether grass or flower, growing outside of Kazraki gardens, she had to pull it up immediately and throw it onto the next fire she saw. For years as a child she had memorized lists of these Banes and learned how to place them into her memory in such an organized way that she could sort through them at need. She remembered the boredom of those years so well that she felt like weeping still.

Why not just write them down, as the Kazraks wrote their lore? That, too, was Bane. The lists of Banes existed only in the spirit language, which could never be written down.

And why did that particular Bane exist? Her teacher had told her that the spirits disliked having their language frozen into letters, something that made no sense to Ammadin, not that she would have dared to say so. After all, the spirits never minded that shamans spoke their language to talk together about the most mundane things; some even used it to tell funny stories about Kazraks. Still, Bane was Bane, beyond argument.

Who laid down the Banes? The gods, of course. Of course. She remembered Zayn, making a clumsy attempt to hide his bad manners. At least he’d tried. Every other Kazrak she’d ever met had dismissed the tribal gods as stones and sticks and nothing more. Idols, they called them. But what if they were right? Just whom, or what, did those figures represent, then?

Ammadin got to her feet and looked out over the purple grass, shimmering under the summer sun. If there were no gods, then there were no spirits. If there were no spirits, then how could there be magic? Yet the magic worked. The Tribes people rarely fell ill, the spirit crystals told her things she needed to know, the holy herbs had exactly the effects they were supposed to have. How could there not be spirits and gods?

Or so thought every other shaman out on the grass. None of them shared her doubts, and yet her doubts remained. She could think of only one remedy – to find another spirit rider to watch over her comnee while she herself rode off alone on a spirit quest similar to those she had undertaken as part of her training. If she suffered enough, if she mounted a vigil for long enough, if she had the right dreams, if she saw the right visions, perhaps they would answer the question that had come to consume her life: who were the gods? why did they give us magic?

If she could see them, if they would come to her in vision, once again she could believe. But if they didn’t? If she discovered that her doubts were true? Fear clotted in her throat like dried moss.

By late afternoon the heat had grown so bad that the women began to worry about the pregnant mares and new foals. Along a good-sized stream they made an early camp. While the men raised the tents, the women drove the herd into the shade of a stand of spear trees. After the herd had drunk its fill, they tethered the vulnerable mares and foals in the shade and the rest of the herd, as usual, out in the grass. When Zayn offered to help, they laughed at him and sent him back to Dallador’s fire.

In a few minutes Apanador joined them, and Dallador brought out a skin of keese and three bowls. In daylight it was allowable to talk over drink, and Dallador and Apanador discussed the long summer ahead while Zayn merely listened.

‘When we reach the Great River,’ Apanador said, ‘we’ll have to be careful. We can’t turn directly south. Ricador’s comnee will be coming up from the coast about then.’

‘They’ll want another fight, that’s for sure,’ Dallador said. ‘We beat the shit out of them last time.’ He glanced at Zayn. ‘They tried to steal some of our women’s horses.’

‘Ah.’ Zayn had heard of the feuding out on the plains. ‘Do they always ride north the same way?’

‘Yes, they have a Bane on them.’ Apanador hesitated, then shrugged. ‘You don’t need to know more.’

‘Whatever you say.’ Zayn bobbed his head in the chief’s direction.

‘The hunting should be good this summer.’ Apanador changed the subject. ‘We’ll have to teach you how to handle a bow from horseback.’

‘I’d like that,’ Zayn said. ‘I’ve always loved hunting.’

‘The wild saurs came with us from the spirit country at the birth of the world,’ Apanador went on. ‘In time you’ll learn all about them, Zayn. The gods gave horses to women, and the saurs to us. Horses are fit for women, because they come when they’re called. But a man has to hunt his gifts, with the bow we received from the Father of Arrows, back in the dawn of time.’

‘I’ve heard a little about him. He’s not a god, is he?’

‘No. He was the first comnee man, and his wife was the first comnee woman – Lisadin, Mother of Horses. So you see, there’s a lot for you to learn.’

‘I’m just grateful you’ll teach me.’

‘You’re the first Kazrak I’ve ever met who admitted he had things to learn.’

‘Well, the only people you’ve come across are the cavalry. I’ll admit it: we’re an arrogant lot. Or I was, until I learned what it means to own nothing but dishonour and the charity of strangers.’

Apanador nodded in silent sympathy.

‘Ah, you can’t judge a herd by the geldings,’ Dallador remarked. ‘You can’t all be like that. I’ve heard about Kazraki poets, and wise men who write in books, and beautiful women.’

‘But they don’t come to the border. Come to think of it, I don’t suppose any other Kazrak has ever ridden with a comnee before.’ Zayn was only speaking idly, but the answer he got sent his mind racing.

‘There was one once,’ Apanador said. ‘I can’t remember his name, because he rode with another comnee in the south grazing, and he only stayed with them one summer.’ He glanced Dallador’s way. ‘You were still a boy then.’

‘If I heard the story, I don’t remember it.’

‘Kind of interesting, though,’ Zayn remarked. ‘What kind of man was he? Another cashiered officer?’

‘No.’ Apanador thought for a moment. ‘Stranger than that. A hunting party found a half-dead Kazrak, just lying there bleeding in the grass. His wounds looked like they’d been made with a ChaMeech spear, but when they took him back to the tents, he told them that he was an enemy of your great chief, and the chief’s assassins had tried to kill him. He kept saying that he wanted to die because he had nothing to live for, but they bound his wounds and told him he’d change his mind later. So then, some of the young men found his horse. It must have fled when its rider fell, you see, and it was wandering around half-starved thanks to those metal bits you people use. Once he had the horse back, this Kazrak suddenly decided he wanted to live after all, because there was a piece of jewellery in his saddlebags that meant the world to him. If he ever said what it was, I never heard.’

‘That’s a damned strange story. Was he a travelling merchant, then?’

‘Oh no, one of your cavalry officers, which makes it even stranger.’ Apanador paused for a rueful sort of smile. ‘He was still afraid, though, that the great chief’s men would find him and finish their botched job, so when the comnee went east to trade, he found a patron in the Cantons and stayed behind.’

‘Well, let’s hope the poor bastard’s happy. He’s a long way from his enemies now.’

Unless of course one of them was, all unwittingly, coming after him. His superiors would want to know about this Kazrak, Zayn figured: someone who’d angered the Great Khan, someone who should have been killed, but a clumsy paid murderer had let him get away – and then there was that mysterious piece of jewellery.

‘Apanador?’ Zayn said. ‘Do you remember when that happened?’

‘When Dallador was still a boy.’

‘I know, but what year?’

Apanador blinked at him.

‘Sorry,’ Zayn said. ‘How big a boy?’

‘Let me think.’ Apanador did just that for a long moment. ‘It would have been right before he gained his rightful name.’

Dallador laughed. ‘Ask the Spirit Rider,’ he said. ‘She’s the only person I know, anyway, who can reckon years the way you Kazraks do.’

As soon as Ammadin returned to camp, Zayn jogged out to meet her, catching up to her when she was turning her horse into the herd. She listened patiently while he explained.

‘I heard that story at the time,’ Ammadin said. ‘When was it in years, you want to know?’

‘Well, if it’s not too much trouble. I’m curious about this fellow.’

‘I can’t blame you for that. Carry my saddle back to camp for me.’

He picked it up, but she took the saddlebags herself. As they strolled back to the tents, she suddenly spoke.

‘Ten of your years ago, that’s when.’

‘Ah! Thank you. It would have nagged at me, not knowing.’

‘Really?’ She stopped walking and turned to consider him.

‘Well, yes. I like to get things straight, that’s all. In my mind, I mean.’

She smiled, shrugged, and resumed walking. As he trailed after, Zayn was considering the date. Ten years ago Gemet Great Khan was purging his bloodlines to remove any disputes about his right to rule. That piece of jewellery might well have been the zalet khanej, the medallion that proved a man had been sanctified as a khan and thus as a rival for the Crescent Throne. Maybe. He knew nothing for certain, but that simple date shone like one of Ammadin’s crystals: hold it up, and it sent light sparkling in all directions.

When Warkannan and his men had turned east, they had left all of their plausible reasons for being on the road behind. They also traded the public roads for narrow dirt paths, and the constant rise of the land slowed them down as well. As long as they travelled through Kazrajistan proper, they rode at night and by day either camped well off the road or bribed some farmer to let them sleep in his barn. They avoided every town that was more than a village and kept clear of the military posts and courier stations that stood along the Darzet River.

After some days of this slow riding, they reached Andjaro, a province that had gone from being ChaMeech territory to an independent nation until, a mere hundred years ago, the khanate had decided that an independent nation on its border was a threat. The low hills angled from the north-east towards the south-west, so soft and regular that they reminded Warkannan of the folds a carpet forms when pushed and rumpled by a careless foot. Among these rolling purple downs, Warkannan had allies, and the allies, large landowners all, had private armies. Each night Warkannan and his party stayed in compounds surrounded by thousands of acres of purple grass, dotted with flocks of sheep. At each, Warkannan received coin for the journey, supplies of food and fuel, pack horses when he mentioned needing them, and the assurance that Jezro would have a place to hide when he came home.

Early on their third day in Andjaro, they crested a down and saw, stretching below them, a valley filled with green, billowing in the wind like clouds. Arkazo reined in his horse and stared, his mouth half-open.

‘What is that?’ he stammered. ‘Water?’

‘No,’ Warkannan said, grinning. ‘Trees.’

‘I’ve never seen so many in one place. All that green! And they grow so close together.’

‘How observant of you,’ Soutan drawled. ‘The word for a lot of them in one place is forest. That university of yours seems to have taught you little of value.’

‘We studied the works of the Three Prophets,’ Arkazo said. ‘Nothing’s of greater value. Not that an infidel like you would understand why.’

They had reached the tax forests, stand after stand of true-oak, planted in regular rows and watched over by foresters. As part of their most solemn duty to the Great Khan, the border landowners put as many acres into the slow-growing forests as they could afford – more, in some cases. Although in the volcanic mountains every metal imaginable lay close to the surface in rich veins, fuel for the smelting of it was another thing entirely. So far at least, no one had ever found any of the fabled blackstone or blackwater that were supposed to burn twice as hot as true-oak charcoal. As a result, while any peasant could pan the easily-melted gold from a stream and work it, it took a lot of that gold to buy a little steel.

‘It’s a pity about our prospecting venture,’ Soutan remarked. ‘If we’d actually found blackstone we could have been as rich as a khan ourselves.’

‘If,’ Warkannan said, grinning. ‘Those maps of yours show likely spots, not sure things.’

‘Ah, but they’re copies of ancient maps – spirit maps, the Tribes would call them.’

‘Well, Nehzaym will take good care of them. As far as I’m concerned, we’ll have better odds backing Jezro Khan than looking for blackstone.’

Soutan turned in the saddle and considered him for a moment.

‘I’m inclined to agree with you,’ Soutan said at last. ‘Ancient writings exist that present strangely disturbing implications concerning the black marvels.’

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Your manners are painfully bad, Captain. I see no reason to speak further and be mocked.’

Soutan kicked his horse to walk, passed Warkannan, and headed downhill. For a moment Warkannan considered returning the insult, then shrugged the matter away. Most likely the sorcerer thought talking in riddles impressed people. Damned if he’d encourage him in it.

Entering the forest felt like plunging into the ocean, all cool air and deep green light. All along the narrow road grew ancient trees, twining their branches overhead. In a few minutes Soutan paused his horse in the dappled shade and let them catch up. They set off again, riding three abreast with the sorcerer in the middle.

‘A question for you, Captain,’ Soutan said. ‘Arkazo says that nothing’s more important than the books of the Prophets. Do you agree?’

‘Well, it seems extreme, I know, but actually I do.’

‘I suppose it’s a question of following the laws of God. But other prophets have written books of those laws for other peoples, after all.’

‘True. But our books, our way – that’s what makes us who we are. We follow the Three Prophets, and that sets us apart from people who follow other religious leaders. If I stopped following the laws, I wouldn’t know who I was any more.’

Soutan frankly stared. ‘You must love your god a great deal,’ he said at last.

‘I don’t know if I’d call it love, not like love for your family or for a woman. It’s more like – well, what?’ Warkannan thought for a moment. ‘More like a sense of mutual obligation. I have a duty to serve God but in return, that duty gives me a place in His universe.’

‘God as the supreme commander of a celestial cavalry?’ Soutan drawled. ‘It would make sense to you, I suppose.’

‘I don’t like your tone of voice.’

‘Sorry.’ Soutan shrugged. ‘Just a figure of speech.’

Two nights later they arrived at the last Kazraki villa. Kareem Alvado’s compound stretched out like a small town, with his mansion and gardens, the cottages of the craftsmen, the barracks for his private troops, and the dormitories for the workmen who tended the flocks and the tax forests. Since Warkannan had served on the border with Kareem, and Kareem’s son Tareev and Arkazo had attended university together, they stayed for two full days.

On their last evening, the men sat finishing their dinner around the true-oak table in the dining-hall, a long room with walls of purplish-red horsetail reeds, twined together with pale yellow vines. At regular intervals ChaMeech skulls, bleached white and bulbous, hung as trophies. The older men had been reminiscing about Jezro Khan when Tareev interrupted. Like many Andjaro families, Kareem’s had some comnee blood that gave father and son both pale grey eyes and dark, straight hair, and they turned to each other with the same tilt of the head, the same crook of a hand.

‘A favour to beg you, sir,’ Tareev said. ‘The captain’s going to have a hard time guarding our khan with just a couple of men. Let me go with them.’

Kareem’s heavy-set face turned unnaturally calm.

‘Why should Arkazo get all the glory?’ Tareev went on. ‘It’s unfair. Let me go and invite the khan here personally.’

‘Now listen, boy,’ Warkannan broke in. ‘This isn’t going to be some pleasant little ride.’

‘I know that, Captain,’ Tareev said, still grinning. ‘That’s why you need me along.’

‘It’s up to your father. There’ll be plenty for you to do once the war starts.’

Kareem had a sip of wine, his calloused fingers tight on the goblet.

‘What about that girl you promised to marry?’ Kareem said at last.

‘What would her father want with a coward?’

Kareem smiled, a weary twitch of his mouth. ‘Very well, then. But you’re riding under Warkannan’s orders. What he says, you do. Understand me?’

‘Yes sir, I do.’

Warkannan glanced around the table. Arkazo was leaning onto the table on his elbows, watching, unusually solemn, while Soutan lounged back in his chair.

‘This might be a good time to make something clear to everybody,’ Warkannan said. ‘It’s dangerous out on the grass. I spent fifteen years of my life there, and I know. When we ride out, I’m the officer in charge of this little venture. Understood?’

‘Of course, sir,’ Arkazo said.

Soutan sighed, long and dramatically. ‘I was waiting for this,’ he remarked to the air, then looked Warkannan’s way. ‘Someone needs to be in charge of the boys – oh, excuse me, our young men, I mean – but no one orders me around, Captain. Understood? If not, you can try to find Jezro on your own.’

Warkannan took a long breath and let his anger ebb.

‘Let’s hope we don’t get ourselves into the kind of trouble where orders are necessary,’ Warkannan said at last. ‘But if there is trouble, sorcerer, then I’ll have to put the safety of the other men first, Jezro or not.’

Soutan got up, bowed to Kareem, and strode out of the room. He slammed the door behind him so hard that the wall bounced. Kareem let out his breath in a long whistle.

‘I don’t envy you this ride,’ Kareem said.

‘Thanks.’ Warkannan managed a smile. ‘The Cantons aren’t that large. If worse comes to worst, we should be able to track the khan down sooner or later.’

‘Well, inshallah.’ Kareem spread his hands wide. ‘All right, Tareev and Arkazo. You’d better have weapons with you. Let’s go to the armoury and see what’s there.’

Later that evening Kareem invited Warkannan to his study for a glass of arak. They settled themselves in comfortable chairs while servants lit oil lamps and bowed themselves out of the room. Once they were alone, Warkannan asked Kareem if he regretted putting his son in danger. Kareem shook his head no.

‘If he’d wanted to stay home safe, I’d have had some harsh words for my wife. I’d have known he wasn’t mine.’

‘I’ll do my best to keep him out of trouble.’

‘Let’s pray you can. If the Chosen have taken a hand in this –’ Kareem shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

‘That’s true, unfortunately. That reminds me, I’ve got something I want to leave with you. Suppose the Chosen decide to eliminate me and Soutan – I don’t want them getting their ugly paws on this.’

From his shirt pocket Warkannan took out a roll of rushi, protected by a leather cover stamped with a design of two crossed swords below a crescent: Jezro Khan’s crest. Kareem kissed it, then slid the rushi free with a snap of his wrist that unrolled the letter. The sheet had one long torn edge, as if the khan had ripped a blank page from a book in his haste.

‘It’s Jezro’s handwriting, sure enough,’ Kareem said. ‘Thanks be to God, merciful as well as mighty!’

Warkannan had read it so many times that he knew every word by heart.

‘To Indan, Warkannan, and all my friends in Kazrajistan,’ the letter began. ‘That is, of course, assuming I have any friends left. I wonder what you’ll say when you find out I’m alive. Will you celebrate, or will I only be seen as a damned nuisance, a ghost who should have stayed dead? I don’t even know what things are like in the khanate now. Warkannan, do you remember me? Consider this an invitation to come have a couple of drinks with me. I have some interesting things to tell you. I don’t dare say where I am, but Yarl Soutan has agreed to help me. All I can do is pray to God that he’ll bring you back with him without my brother finding out. Maybe a couple of men can slip over the border unseen. Yours as always, Jezro.’

The signature had touched Warkannan deeply, just a simple name, no longer the honourable and regal titles, just Jezro. With a sigh, Kareem finished the letter and began rolling it up.

‘Well, he’s going to find out what loyalty means, isn’t he? From what you’ve been telling me, Warkannan, we can count on four thousand men the minute he crosses the border.’

‘At least. And there’ll be plenty more as soon as we start marching.’

‘Should pick the khan’s spirits right up. I never thought to see the day when he’d sound so dispirited.’ Kareem tapped the roll on his palm. ‘But exile’s hard on a man.’

‘So it is,’ Soutan said. ‘And Jezro loves his homeland.’

Warkannan stifled a yelp and turned to see the sorcerer standing by the door. Soutan had a way of gliding into a room that set Warkannan’s teeth on edge.

‘The last time I saw the khan,’ Soutan went on, ‘he talked about Haz Kazrak as if it were Paradise.’

‘Well, there’s something about the place a man’s born in.’ Kareem glanced at the letter in his hand. ‘But it’s a shock to see him so hopeless. Especially since you were going to deliver his letter.’

‘He thought I’d never reach the khanate alive.’

‘I wouldn’t have bet good money on it, either.’ Kareem smiled, then turned thoughtful. ‘Ah God! When we were all young and on the border, if someone had told me that I’d end up a traitor to the Great Khan I’d have slit his throat!’

‘I’d have done the same,’ Warkannan said.

Soutan stood hesitating, then found a chair and sat down uninvited. Warkannan decided that the only way to smooth over the incident at dinner was to pretend it hadn’t happened; he handed the sorcerer a glass and the bottle of arak. Soutan smiled in what seemed to be a conciliatory manner and poured himself a drink.

‘I take it you served with our khan, too?’ Soutan said.

‘I did, and proudly,’ Kareem said. ‘The stories we could tell, huh, Warkannan?’

Perhaps it was the arak, or the shadows dancing around the ChaMeech skulls on the wall, but they ended up telling a lot of those stories that night. Soutan sat unspeaking, seemingly profoundly interested in tales of too much fighting, drinking, whoring, and the resultant hang-overs or disciplinary actions.

‘What surprises me,’ Soutan said at length, ‘is that the khan seems to have been treated just like any other officer.’

‘Exactly like,’ Kareem said. ‘When you’re riding down a pack of screaming ChaMeech, there’s no time for giving yourself airs.’

‘Imph, no doubt.’ Soutan tented his long pale fingers and considered Kareem over them. ‘Back in the Cantons we tend to think of the Kazraks as rigidly hierarchical – everyone knowing their place, everyone afraid to leave it, that sort of thing. What I’ve seen and heard while I’ve been here makes me think we’re wrong.’

‘Well, yes and no.’ Warkannan waggled a hand in the air. ‘The cavalry is one place a man can rise above his birth.’

‘And the university,’ Kareem put in. ‘Get a good religious education, and the faith will take you far.’

‘True,’ Warkannan said. ‘In the cavalry you get your education the hard way. At the end of a spear.’

The pair of them laughed while Soutan smiled, thinly but politely.

‘Jezro told me once,’ Soutan said, ‘that a man can rise from an ordinary trooper, get himself commissioned, and then be accepted as an officer.’

‘He can, yes,’ Kareem said. ‘And you can start off as an officer and get yourself broken down to the ranks, too, if you don’t obey orders. What counts in the cavalry is whether or not you meld with your unit. There’s no room for individual heroics or individual slackers, either. A lot of young aristocrats can’t seem to understand that.’

‘Quite so.’ Warkannan glanced at Kareem. ‘Men from the ranks – they know they live or die together. If they’re smart and capable, they can rise far. Remember what’s his name? The sergeant from First Company.’

‘Yes, I do, the man with only three fingers on one hand.’ Kareem looked exasperated. ‘Damn my memory! His name’s gone right out of it. And then there was Zahir Benumar. A damn good sergeant who made an even better officer.’

‘Ah,’ Soutan put in. ‘That name rings a bell. I think the khan may have mentioned him.’

‘Probably he did.’ Kareem turned in his chair to speak to Soutan. ‘Now if Zahir were drinking with us tonight, we wouldn’t be having all this trouble with people’s names. He had a phenomenal memory, Zahir.’

‘He certainly did,’ Warkannan said. ‘Unlike mine. Do you know where he is now, Kareem? He was transferred off the border, of course.’

‘Suddenly, too, now that you mention it. To the Bariza Second Lancers, wasn’t it? I lost track of him about then.’

‘So did I, and I’m sorry I did.’ Warkannan considered for a moment. ‘I did write him care of his new unit. Either they didn’t forward it, or he wasn’t interested in answering me.’

‘Don’t be an idiot!’ Kareem snapped. ‘The letter must have got lost somewhere along the way. Men who endure what you two went through together don’t forget each other that easily.’

‘I’d like to think so. When Soutan first turned up, I had thoughts of trying to find Benumar, to let him know the good news if nothing else. Zahir, Jezro – the three of us. We were a good team as officers. Worked well together.’

‘That’s one way of putting it.’ Kareem paused for a smile. ‘Well, if you bring Jezro back, Zahir’s bound to hear of it quickly enough. I did hear he was transferred again, out of Bariza, I mean. I can’t remember where. Must be the arak. Can’t be middle age.’

They shared another laugh, but Warkannan set his glass down. ‘I’ve got to get up before dawn,’ he said, ‘I think I’ll call it a night.’

‘Yes, tomorrow it starts.’ Kareem turned solemn. ‘And may the Lord guide you every mile of your journey.’

Just at dawn, they assembled in front of the villa, Warkannan, Soutan, the two young men, all holding the reins of their riding horses, who stamped and snorted as if they too knew that the journey ahead promised great things. After a last handshake all round, they mounted, took the lead ropes of the pack horses from the servants, and headed for the gates. When Warkannan glanced back at the house, he saw figures at the windows of the women’s quarters. Curtains fell, and the figures disappeared. Tareev turned in his saddle once to wave farewell to his father, but Warkannan never saw him look back again.

The road brought them free of the oak forest by noon, and by mid-afternoon they rode up to the crest of the last high hill. In front of them the downs of the north border fell away. Beyond, the view faded to a lavender haze, spreading endlessly, it seemed, under a harsh sun.

‘There they are,’ Soutan remarked. ‘The plains.’

‘Yes indeed,’ Warkannan said. ‘I started hating them after I’d been on the border for maybe a week.’ He turned in the saddle to glance at Arkazo and Tareev. ‘Very well, gentlemen. Let’s ride.’

The road dropped down through waist-high vegetation, purple and orange, red and russet, a tangled mass of thorns and fleshy leaves fighting over sun and air. Here and there hill trees – thick fleshy trunks topped by huge flabby pink leaves – rose above the chaparral and sparkled with beads of resinous sap. Over them insects swarmed like pillars of smoke. As the men rode through, they now and then heard the rustle or squeal of small animals fleeing the noise of their passing. Occasionally a chirper, a lizard about the size of two clasped hands, broke from cover and flew on a whir of turquoise wings.

The road would settle into shallow valleys, then rise again to another hill crest, but each stood lower than the last. Just at sunset they climbed the last rise and saw below them Haz Evol, a straggle of town along the reed-choked banks of a stream. The fort, a tidy square of thorn walls, stood just beyond.

‘Is it safe to ride in?’ Arkazo asked. ‘What if someone recognizes you?’

‘It’s a chance I’ll have to take. We need information.’ Warkannan ran his hand over his burgeoning black beard. ‘The last time I was on the border, I was clean-shaven and in uniform. It’s funny, but when you’re in uniform, no one much looks at your face. I’ll bet I can slip through.’

Haz Evol, a small rambling town, existed to serve the military and little more. Warkannan hired quarters for his party at a shabby little inn, made of stacked trunks of spear trees bound together with vines. He went immediately to their cottage while the others tended the horses and brought in the gear. They ate in, rather than risk letting someone get a good look at them in the public common room.

‘Now tomorrow, if anyone asks you why I don’t come out, tell them I’ve got some kind of a fever,’ Warkannan said. ‘That’ll keep people away.’

‘Just so,’ Soutan said. ‘We need to buy gift goods – charcoal, wheatian, matches, things like that. The Tribes are hospitable, but it’s very rude to not have gifts to give them in return. Besides, spending money will get the townsfolk feeling friendly towards us.’ He glanced at Arkazo and Tareev. ‘Let me do the talking. Neither of you has impressed me with his subtlety.’

When Tareev opened his mouth to snarl, Warkannan waved him silent. ‘Soutan’s right.’ He turned back to the sorcerer. ‘Go on.’

Soutan did so. ‘We need to find out if anyone remembers anything about this merchant we’re tracking. I consulted the oracle last night, and it said that we’re in grave danger of being deceived.’

Tareev and Arkazo snickered.

‘I wish the oracle had told us this earlier,’ Warkannan said.

‘So do I,’ Soutan said. ‘It has its little ways.’

‘Well, let’s hope we’re not on the wrong trail. If one of the Chosen’s already heading east, time’s short.’

‘Oh, there’s plenty of time. I don’t care how dedicated or highly trained this spy is. He can’t get across the Rift alone. He’ll have to talk a comnee into escorting him. Have you forgotten about the ChaMeech?’

‘I never forget the ChaMeech. Let’s hope they eat him.’

‘They will, if he tries to ride alone. There’s only one thing the ChaMeech fear, and that’s magic. A spirit rider can scare them off, and I’ve no doubt this Chosen One knows it as well as I do.’

‘And what about us?’ Arkazo said. ‘Do we have to attach ourselves to the stinking barbarians, too?’

‘Of course not,’ Soutan snapped. ‘You have me.’

All the next day Warkannan paced back and forth or sat near the window to keep watch. Now and then he would try to read – he carried a copy of The Mirror of the Qur’an everywhere with him – but doubts distracted him, even from the beloved teachings of the First Prophet. Fortunately, Arkazo and Tareev returned early in the afternoon with their armloads of supplies.

‘No one seemed to be following us, sir,’ Arkazo reported. ‘No one told us much, either. Soutan sent us back. He had the gall to say that we talked too much and got in the way.’

‘Ah.’ Warkannan thought that for once, the sorcerer was probably right. ‘Well, why don’t you two go out and get our horses some water? I’ll pack these supplies.’

Soutan came back late, bringing with him a skin of keese and a girl, a mousy little thing whose clothes reeked of grease and strong soap. Warkannan wondered about Soutan’s taste in women until the sorcerer announced that Vorika knew things of interest. At that, Warkannan sat her down in the best chair and poured her a cup of keese. Vorika, it turned out, worked as a kitchen girl in a local caravanserai that served the merchant trade. She was also flattered enough by all this unaccustomed attention to giggle, hiding her stained teeth behind one hand.

‘Well, I saw this merchant, but I didn’t know him. Everyone talked about him for days. He was crazy. I mean, just absolutely everyone said he was crazy, because he went out onto the grass with only a couple of men along.’

‘A merchant, huh?’ Warkannan said. ‘What kind of goods?’

‘Oh, axes and swords, stuff like that. Just absolutely everyone told him he was carrying ChaMeech bait – that’s what they called it, ChaMeech bait – but he wouldn’t listen.’

Warkannan and Arkazo exchanged a significant smile.

‘Come now, girl,’ Soutan said. ‘Tell them what happened to this merchant.’

‘Oh yes, sir. Well, you see, about a week after he left – I think it was a week, anyway – no, I tell a lie – it was ten days after he left, but anyway, he came back. His men said they were going to leave him out there alone if he didn’t. So he rode south somewhere for the next horse fair. A couple of the men who stay regular-like in our inn saw him there, you see, and they say they teased him ever so much about it.’

Warkannan swore so vilely that the girl flinched. He apologized, soothed her feelings with a couple of silver deenahs, and ushered her out. He returned to an uncomfortable silence. Tareev and Arkazo sat on the floor, looking at the carpet. Soutan had flopped into an armchair, and his smile carried barbs.

‘The oracle may be ambiguous at times,’ Soutan remarked to the empty air, ‘but it never outright lies.’

‘It doesn’t, huh?’ Warkannan sat down on the divan. ‘Well, I wonder if the Chosen sent this merchant as a deliberate false trail.’

‘Maybe they didn’t have to.’ Soutan glanced at Arkazo and Tareev. ‘Fools abound, after all.’

Arkazo started to speak.

‘Shut up,’ Warkannan said. ‘Now let me think. It’s possible that our spy’s slipped over the border without anyone knowing, of course, but that possibility gets us nowhere.’

‘There’s that cavalry officer,’ Arkazo said. ‘The one who was cashiered.’

‘Yes.’ Soutan drawled the word. ‘How providential, wasn’t it, that a comnee took him in? Are we going to ride along the border and ask about him?’

‘No,’ Warkannan said. ‘We’re heading out tomorrow. Sooner or later, we’ll find a comnee. If one of the comnees has taken in a Kazrak, the news will spread. They’re like that, passing things along. We’ll track him down.’

‘And what then? Ask him ever so politely if he’s one of the Chosen?’

‘No. We’re going to kill him. If he’s not the right man, well, I’m sorry for the poor bastard, but I don’t dare take any chances, not with Jezro Khan’s life.’

‘The Chosen aren’t so easy to kill, from what I hear.’

‘No, they’re not. We’re going to have to try, though. If God wills it, it’ll get done.’

Soutan rolled his eyes, then laid a hand on the copy of The Mirror that Warkannan had set down on the table.

‘What is this?’ Soutan said. ‘Not the Qur’an itself?’

‘No. No one can touch the holy book unless they’re ritually pure, so you can’t carry it around in your saddlebags with you. That would be sacrilege. This is just a translation into Kazraki.’

‘So it is a Qur’an.’

‘No, because it’s not in the old language.’

‘But the thoughts are surely the same.’

‘Maybe, but God spoke in the old language, not in Kazraki. That’s why the real Qur’an is so holy.’

Soutan raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘What do you think would happen if you touched a copy when you weren’t pure, whatever that means? Fire from heaven?’

‘Of course not! The law’s just a sign of respect.’

Soutan had the decency to look abashed. Warkannan changed the subject.

They rode out from Haz Evol in the cool of dawn. Warkannan led his small caravan of four mounted men and four pack horses due east, heading for the Great River, where the comnees congregated during the summer. The last of the downs dwindled behind them until the plains stretched ahead, mile after mile of grass, turning from lavender to a deep purple here at the end of the spring rains. The grassland ran to a horizon as straight as a bowstring. Here and there a few orange and magenta fern trees or a stand of blood-red spears rose up to point at the sky; otherwise, there was only grass.

By their first night’s camp, the plains were beginning to get on Tareev and Arkazo’s nerves. It happened to men, their first time out; the cavalry called it border fever, a twitchy way of riding, a certain way of turning the head, staring this way and that, a certain slackness about the mouth as men realized that there was simply nothing and nobody out in the grass but the wandering comnees. Tareev and Arkazo had all the symptoms. At night, they hugged the pitiful excuse for a campfire, flinched at every strange sound, and talked much too loudly when they talked at all. In the heat of summer, raiding parties of ChaMeech rarely travelled any distance from the Rift, but still Warkannan kept a careful watch as they rode. Thanks to the Tribes, the big predatory saurs – the longtooths, the slashers, the grey giants – who once had ruled the plains were scarce these days, at least in the Tribal lands, a huge area from the northern headwaters of the river system south to the seacoast.

‘You never know, though,’ Warkannan told Tareev and Arkazo, ‘when you’ll run across one of the meat-eaters. The Tribes haven’t wiped them out by any means.’

‘They can be scared off,’ Soutan put in. ‘It takes several men to do it, but shrieking and clashing sabres together gives the saurs something to think about. They’ve learned they can find easier meals than H’mai.’

‘Good,’ Arkazo said. ‘But I wouldn’t mind seeing one.’

‘From a distance, I wouldn’t either,’ Soutan said. ‘The greater the distance, the better the view.’

They did regularly see the six-legged grassars, the herds of grazing saurs who provided meat to the Tribes and the predators both. The females stood about four feet high at the shoulder, the males as much as six, and where the bright red female heads were slender, the piebald males had broad skulls crowned with three long horns. Both sexes had thick pebbled hides and long tails ending in a spike of bone. Whenever they smelled the horsemen, the males would raise their massive heads, snort a warning, and slam their tails against the earth. In answer the females shrieked to call their young hatchlings back to the safety of the herd.

Warkannan would always halt his little caravan and let the grassars lumber away. Despite their solid size, their six legs gave them a surprising agility; they could begin a turn on the forelegs, stabilize on the middle pair, and swing the hind legs around to follow while the spike on their tails slashed any predator close behind them.

‘How do the Tribes kill them, anyway?’ Tareev asked.

‘With arrows and spears,’ Warkannan said. ‘They weaken them with arrows, then move in with the spears for the final kill.’

Tareev rose in his stirrups to watch the herd trotting off. He was grinning as he sat back down. ‘I’d love to join one of those hunts,’ he said. ‘Kaz, are you game?’

‘You bet,’ Arkazo said. ‘If we find a tribe that’ll let us ride along.’

‘The point of this trip,’ Warkannan broke in, ‘is to reach Jezro safely and get him home the same way. Charging around hunting saurs isn’t in the itinerary, gentlemen.’

‘Yes sir,’ Tareev said with a martyred sigh. ‘The way we’re going, we might not ever see any Tribesmen anyway.’

‘Oh we will,’ Soutan said. ‘I’m keeping a good look out. We need information.’

Every time they stopped to rest the horses or to camp, Soutan took a strangely-wrapped object from his saddlebags and walked off alone to stare into it. When one morning Warkannan asked about it, Soutan unwrapped the silk pieces to reveal a polished sphere of heavy glass, engraved with numbers and strange marks around its equator.

‘It’s a scanning crystal,’ Soutan said.

‘What do you see in it?’ Arkazo said, grinning. ‘Spirits and demons?’

Tareev snickered.

‘That’s enough, gentlemen,’ Warkannan snapped.

‘Thank you, Captain.’ Soutan looked the two young men over, then shrugged. ‘I see your university didn’t teach you good manners.’ With that he stalked off into the grass.

Warkannan turned to Arkazo and Tareev. ‘Front and centre, you two,’ he growled. ‘Soutan believes in his damned sorcery. We need his help. Hell, without him, we’ll get nowhere. I want you two to treat this magic business with every show of respect. Do you hear me?’

‘Yes sir,’ Tareev said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It just goes against the grain, somehow,’ Arkazo muttered. ‘But of course, sir. Whatever you say.’

When Soutan returned, Tareev and Arkazo apologized.

‘Accepted,’ Soutan said. ‘By the way, there’s a comnee some ten miles ahead of us.’

‘You’re sure?’ Arkazo said.

‘If I hadn’t been sure, you young lout, I would never have mentioned it.’

‘I’m sorry. It’s just hard to believe that bit of glass is magic.’

Warkannan started to intervene, but Soutan smiled.

‘Why?’ the sorcerer said.

‘Because of the engraved numbers, I think,’ Arkazo said. ‘It makes it look like a tool or something.’

‘Very good! It does, yes. Think about that.’

Soutan walked over to his saddlebags and knelt down to put the crystal away. Tareev leaned close to Arkazo and muttered, ‘Huh! We’ll just see if this comnee ever shows up.’ If Soutan heard, he never responded.

All three Kazraks were in for a surprise when, after some hours of riding, they saw the comnee right where Soutan had said it would be. Warkannan and his men saw the horses first, and only then the sprawl of tents along a stream. Against the brightly coloured trees and the wild grass, the tents, so gaudy in themselves, blended in so well they almost disappeared. The comnee insisted that they eat the evening meal with them and brought out skins of keese to drink with the guests. When Warkannan asked his carefully prepared questions, he found that several of the men had indeed heard of a Kazrak exile who rode with a comnee. Somewhere to the south, they told Warkannan, and a spirit rider was the one who took him in. When Warkannan and his men were ready to ride out the following morning, Warkannan gifted their hosts with a sack of grain and received warm thanks in return.

‘No, no, I should be thanking you,’ Warkannan said. ‘For your company.’

And for your information, Warkannan thought. And yet, as they rode away, he felt heavy-hearted, to be hunting a man down like a saur. He’s one of the Chosen, he reminded himself. They’re more vicious than any beast alive.

In summer every comnee travelled to the Great River, which flowed, wide but shallow, from the north through the heart of the Tribal lands all the way to the distant southern sea. Apanador’s comnee arrived in the middle of a sunny day. Once the tents were set up and every scrap of fuel in the area scrounged and set drying, the men put out snares for small game. Along the riverbanks grew fern trees, spear trees, brushy shrubs, and mosses in a riot of orange fronds and yellow threads. In this thick vegetation lived the turquoise chirpers, the purple and grey spotted snappers, red-boys, and a dozen other kinds of meaty reptiles. They’d supply meat until the grassars came to the river to drink.

Ammadin had never thought of Kazraks as hunters, but Zayn had brought with him a perfect weapon for snaring tree lizards –three brass balls connected with leather thongs. Down by the river she saw him stalking a redboy. It scrambled up a fern tree, then made the mistake of shimmying out onto a frond, where it stood squawking on its six skinny legs. Zayn swung the balls around his head and made them sing like a giant insect, then let them fly from his open hand. The balls wrapped the cords around two pairs of the redboy’s legs and dragged it writhing from the tree. Zayn scooped it up with both hands and snapped its neck.

‘That’s amazing,’ Ammadin said. ‘You’ve got a good eye.’

‘For this kind of thing, maybe. I hope I can do as well with comnee weapons and bigger game.’

Handling a spear came to him easily, because he knew the lance from his time in the cavalry, but the bow was another matter. In the morning Ammadin rode out to watch him practise with the short bow, made of layers of horn and wood. Dallador had stuffed an old saurskin with grass and set it up as a target. Ammadin sat on her horse and watched as Zayn galloped by, guiding the horse with his knees and nocking an arrow into the bow. Zayn twisted easily in the saddle and shot three fast arrows next to, above, and beyond the target. With a whoop of laughter, he turned his horse and trotted back to Dallador. When he dismounted, Ammadin joined them.

‘There’s nothing wrong with the way you ride,’ Dallador said. ‘But you’re going to have to practise shooting dismounted for a while. You know, one step at a time.’

‘All right,’ Zayn said. ‘At home we hunt with a longer bow, and you hold it vertically, not across your body like this.’

On the morrow, the men rode out early. The women began their part of the food work: milking their mares, churning butter, setting yogurt to cure and keese to ferment. Ammadin saddled her grey gelding and rode out alone in the opposite direction from the men. Spirit rider or not, a woman would bring bad luck to the men’s hunt if she tagged along. She ambled south until she found, some miles from camp, a place where a shallow stream joined the river. She watered her horse, then tethered it out to graze.

On foot she pushed her way through the tangle of trees and ferns to the riverbank, where yellabuhs swarmed. Now and then a slender brown fish would leap open-mouthed from the water and scoop some of them up before falling back. The survivors would fly madly around for a few moments, then resume their swarm, only to fall prey to the next leaper. Ammadin knelt down and peered into the water to look for spirit pearls. Sure enough, they lay thick among the orange mosses and the red-brown river weeds, but it seemed to her that there were fewer this year than she was used to seeing in the Great River.

She sat on the bank and for a long while watched the pearls. Most lay inert on the river bottom; then suddenly and inexplicably one would float free and catch the current, only to sink again farther downstream. As she watched, most of the clutch jerked itself into the current and floated out of sight. Two, however, never moved, and they seemed wrinkled as well. Could they be dead? If so, there’d be no harm in her taking one out of the water, would there? She got up and considered the underbrush around her. Nearby she found a poker tree, so-called because its skinny orange branches stuck straight out from its fleshy squat trunk. She cut off a pair, then stuck them into the mossy bank next to the shrivelled pearls as a marker. If they hadn’t moved on by morning, she promised herself, she would consider examining one.

When Ammadin returned to camp, she found the men back already; they’d had splendid luck and surprised a herd of grassars as it left a stream. Out behind the tents they hunkered down to skin and clean the two kills, both of them fat from the summer forage and a good seven feet long from nose to the base of the tail. The children clustered round to watch with eager eyes for the fresh-roasted dinner ahead of them. Three of the men had already skinned one saur and were butchering the meat with their long knives.

Off to one side Zayn was kneeling beside a three-horned male with a skinning knife in his hand. Orador was standing over him and telling him how to separate the red-and-purple striped hide from its previous owner. Ammadin strolled over to join them.

‘What’s this?’ she said. ‘Did Zayn make his first kill?’

‘More or less,’ Orador said, smiling. ‘Someone else’s arrows crippled it – Grenidor, I think it was – but Zayn’s the one whose spear finished it off. Took some doing, too, so we awarded the kill to him.’

Zayn looked up, and she noticed the left side of his face, swollen maroon and purple around a bruise in the shape of a grassar hoof.

‘His first kill is an important point in a man’s life.’ Ammadin dabbled her forefinger in the bull’s dark blood and marked a cross on Zayn’s forehead. ‘You’ve brought home food for the comnee. The gods will honour you.’

‘Thank you.’ Zayn ducked his head in acknowledgment. ‘The Wise One honours me as well, and I’m pleased I could help feed us all.’

He’d answered as nicely as any comnee boy. Ammadin suddenly wondered just how and why he knew so much about Tribal ways.

While Orador taught him how to draw the carcass, Ammadin hung around and watched. Zayn was starting to attract her, with his exotic Kazrak features and lean well-muscled body. Years before, she’d taken a few casual lovers, just as any girl of the Tribes would do, but she’d always found them irritating after the first few nights. They followed her around, they got in the way of her spirit journeys, they begged her to marry them, they wanted sons. Dallador had been different, but she’d felt that having sex with him was like eating a good meal – fine while it lasted, but ultimately meaningless. He was so sensual that he could attract anyone, but when it came to keeping them, Maradin was the only person who’d ever really loved him. Ammadin only hoped that Dallo knew it.

Zayn, on the other hand: the easy set of his shoulders, the slow way he smiled, the sense of privacy, the reserve in his dark eyes – they intrigued her. She had to remind herself that he’d only be a nuisance during the day. As if he were aware of her study, Zayn looked up and smiled at her.

‘Do you want these horns? I’ve noticed that you people use them for all sorts of things.’

Orador laughed, a little whoop of mockery that made Zayn blush. So. Here was one bit of Tribal lore the Kazrak didn’t know.

‘I don’t think you understand what you’re offering,’ Ammadin said. ‘A man gives a woman the horns of his kill after she asks him to marry her.’

Zayn sat back on his heels and looked at her in pleasant speculation, as if he wouldn’t mind receiving such a proposal. Orador made a great show of cleaning his skinning knife on the grass. Ammadin turned and strode away, annoyed with herself far more than with Zayn for allowing this embarrassment to develop. He was only a man, after all, and men were always angling for a good marriage and the horses it would bring them.

That night the camp feasted. The men dug a pit and used some of the charcoal bought on the border to roast half of Zayn’s bull grassar. All afternoon the comnee smelled it baking, and by the time it was finished, a hungry crowd milled around the pit. In the gathering twilight the men hauled the meat up and laid it on the tailgate of a wagon. With his long knife Apanador set about cutting it up; the slow-roasted meat fell apart into rich brown chunks. He fed Ammadin first, then the other women, then the children, and finally the men. The keese flowed as everyone sat down in the grass to eat. Zayn brought his share over to Ammadin and sat down next to her. They were just finishing when Apanador and Dallador joined them, hunkering down in the grass.

‘Your servant’s going to be a good hunter, Holy One,’ Apanador said. ‘He can stay on a horse like a comnee man, too. It’s time for him to think about the future. I’ll offer him a place in the comnee if you agree.’

Zayn caught his breath.

‘What do you say, Zayn?’ Apanador said. ‘Do you want to return to your khanate and live as a shamed man?’

Zayn hesitated, thinking hard. ‘I’d rather ride with you,’ he said at last. ‘If you truly think I’m worthy.’

Apanador looked at Ammadin for her opinion.

‘You’re welcome to stay,’ she said to Zayn. ‘But only if you’re willing to become a man. I know you’re a man among your people, but to us, you’re still a boy. You haven’t gone on your vision quest and learned your true name.’

‘I’ve heard about that. Will the Spirit Rider tell me what to do?’

‘Of course. It’s one of my duties.’ She glanced at Apanador. ‘I’ll consult the spirits and find an auspicious day.’

‘Good,’ Apanador said. ‘Then we’ll head to the Mistlands when we break camp.’ He turned back to Zayn. ‘Our boys go to the Mistlands for their vision quests. Do you know about them?’

‘Every officer on the border has heard of them, but I’ve never had a chance to see them.’

‘You’re going to now,’ Ammadin said. ‘Boys vigil there in the summer.’

‘What about the girls?’

‘Girls quest in the winter, down in the swamp-forests by the ocean.’

‘That’s interesting. May I ask why there’s a difference? Did the gods –’

‘No.’ Ammadin paused for a smile. ‘It’s just not safe to go into the Mistlands in the winter. The lakes are swarming with ChaMeech then. They must come from all over.’

‘Why?’

‘I haven’t the slightest idea. Maybe they send their children on vigils, too.’

‘You can talk later,’ Apanador broke in. ‘Let’s put this matter to the comnee.’

Near the smothered fire-pit Apanador gathered the comnee together and put forward his proposal. Every adult had the right to speak out, either for or against allowing Zayn into the comnee; the majority vote would decide. One at a time, everyone agreed to allow him in, until Apanador turned to Palindor. Ammadin was far from surprised when Palindor spat out a futile no.

‘And what do you have against Zayn?’ Apanador said.

‘He’s a Kazrak. Isn’t that enough?’

‘No, it isn’t. He’s a Kazrak smart enough to leave his bizarre khanate and come to us.’

When the rest of the comnee laughed, Palindor rested his hand on the hilt of his long knife. ‘He’s also a man who offended the great chiefs of his country. He broke his own laws. Who’s to say that he won’t do the same to ours someday?’ Palindor looked around, appealing to the crowd. ‘Do you really want to ride with a man who’d lie to a chief?’

‘I never lied.’ Zayn stepped forward. ‘He never even asked me if I was sleeping with his wife, and by God Himself, if he had, I would have told him to his face. She was that beautiful.’

When this drew a good laugh, Palindor’s hand went tight on his knife’s hilt.

‘Palindor, the comnee’s already agreed,’ Apanador said. ‘If someday Zayn betrays us, well, then, you’ll have the wonderful satisfaction of saying I-told-you-so to all of us. You’ll have to be content with that.’

‘And if I’m not?’ Palindor snapped.

Some of the women gasped.

‘Then you’ll have to go back to your mother’s comnee,’ Apanador said. ‘Maybe your sister will let you guard her horses.’

Blushing a furious scarlet, Palindor strode off into the darkness. When Dallador started after him, Apanador caught his arm.

‘Talking to him right now won’t do any good. After he’s had a chance to think, I’ll take him aside. Zayn, let’s go drink in my tent. There’s a lot you need to know.’

In a group the men surrounded Zayn and led him off. All sly smiles, Maradin hurried over to join Ammadin.

‘Now isn’t this interesting? So you want to have Zayn riding with us, do you?’

‘You’re being tedious. It doesn’t take the spirit power to know what you’re thinking, Maddi, and no, I have no intention of marrying him.’

‘Hah!’

‘Oh, shut up! Why are you always trying to get me to marry some lout?’

‘Well, for the children, of course.’ Maradin seemed honestly surprised that she’d ask. ‘What are you going to do when you’re old, and you don’t have any granddaughters? Who are you going to leave your horses to?’

‘Your granddaughters, probably. You don’t understand. The spirit knowledge is all I’ve ever wanted, and it’ll be more comfort than a hundred daughters when I’m old.’

Maradin thought this over. ‘Well, maybe so – for you,’ she said at last. ‘But come on, you’ve got to admit that Zayn’s a handsome man.’

‘Take him as a lover if you like him so much. I’m not going to.’

‘Hah!’

‘Oh, stop saying hah!’

Ammadin turned her back on Maradin and strode away. She was beginning to regret ever picking Zayn up off the streets of Blosk.

Out away from the camp, in the quiet, her anger ebbed away. She lay down on her back in the crackling grass and considered the night sky. Just overhead hung the Herd, as the Tribes called the spiral of light that the Kazraks had named the Spider. Galloping down fast from the north came the Six Riders, silver and bright against the dead, dark sky. Shamans like Ammadin knew lore lost to the Kazraks, that there were actually sixty riders, ten groups of six apiece, that galloped in formations whose return and permutations were as predictable as the rising of the sun. These flying lamps – or maybe they were tiny worlds; opinions differed – controlled the spirits of the crystals.

And just what, she wondered, was the Herd? She sat up, considering. Her teacher had told her that powerful spirits had gashed the heavenly sphere to allow light from the spirit world to shine through and give the Tribes light in the darkness. Loremasters in the Cantons claimed that suns, thousands and thousands of them altogether, had clustered together to form the Herd. The points of light looked so small only because they lay at some unimaginable distance in the sky. Why would spirits perform such a mighty act of magic just to help the lowly H’mai? Or, if there were other suns, did other worlds circle them? Wouldn’t they bump into each other, in that case? Neither theory made sense.

In the morning, while the rest of the comnee packed the wagons, Ammadin rode back to the stream to check her spirit pearls. She found the sticks, and when she knelt on the bank she saw the two shrivelled pearls still lying where they’d been the day before. They had definitely grown smaller and more wizened overnight. The smooth spherical pearls that had lain near them had disappeared, twitching themselves downstream, she assumed. Why would the gods object if she took a dead thing out of the water? Despite the logic of her own argument, she had to summon courage before she could reach into the stream and pick up one of the dead pearls.

The surface felt like a saur’s eyeball, cold gel in a membrane. She brought it up and laid it on the flattened leaves of a red fern, but as soon as the air touched it, it began to shrink and pucker. She drew her knife and slashed it in half. The interior liquid spilled and ran, leaving thin milky husks to shrivel in the air. In the centre lay something as small as a bead. She slid the point of her knife under a little clot of tissue, touched with pale orange blood.

‘Exactly like the lizard eggs!’

Ammadin used her free hand to dig a tiny grave on the bank, then laid both embryos inside and covered them. She washed the blade of her knife clean, dried it on her tunic, and sheathed it. Apparently the spirit pearls were nothing but the eggs of some animal – a fish, perhaps?

‘But why would they be Bane?’

Witchwoman, help me! Our gods they leave us. Our children they die.

The voice rasped and hissed. She heard it not with her ears, but with the bone of her skull just behind her left ear – or so it seemed. A spirit voice, then. She crouched on the bank and listened.

Witchwoman, please hear me.

‘I do hear you.’ Ammadin spoke aloud. ‘Can you hear me?’

Please hear me. Please help me. I be Water Woman.

The voice disintegrated into a long hiss and crackle, then faded away. Ammadin sat back onto her heels.

‘Her children? Does she mean the pearls?’

It was possible that spirits were trying to be born into this world, and that the eggs were their means of taking on bodies. The theory struck her as clumsy. Questions, more questions, and the cold bite of doubt – the spirit’s voice made them urgent.

‘Water Woman!’ she called out. ‘Water Woman, can you hear me?’

No answer came, not even the hissing. Ammadin got up, rubbing her arms, chilly with gooseflesh still. She decided that she would supervise Zayn’s vision quest, then start looking for another spirit rider to tend her comnee. The questions would give her no peace until she tried to answer them. Besides, if she left on a quest of her own, her absence would keep Palindor from Zayn’s throat. But the trouble came too fast, flaring up like a spark in dry grass when she returned to camp. Most of the wagons stood packed and ready to move out, but the men were still breaking down the last few tents and stowing a few last pieces of gear where they could find room. Ammadin was putting her bedroll into a wagon when she heard someone shout in alarm. As she ran towards the sound, she saw Dallador and Grenidor grabbing Palindor by the arms and hauling him back. Zayn faced him, his hands on his hips. Just as Ammadin reached them, Apanador ran up. She stepped back and let him settle this men’s matter.

‘And what’s all this?’ Apanador growled. ‘How did it start?’

‘Over something really stupid,’ Dallador said. ‘Palindor said Zayn shoved him when they were loading the wagon.’

‘I won’t have this kind of trouble in the comnee.’ Apanador looked back and forth at Palindor and Zayn. ‘I can see that we need to do some hard talking.’

Palindor’s handsome face twisted. He shook free of the restraining hands, but he sheathed his knife.

‘I’m willing to settle this once and for all,’ Zayn said. ‘Let’s have our fight but with bare hands. The one who loses leaves the comnee.’

Apanador turned Palindor’s way and raised an eyebrow.

‘I’ll agree to that,’ Palindor said. ‘But you won’t have a horse and a sabre on your side, Kazrak.’

Zayn merely smiled.

The entire comnee came to witness the fight, held on a stretch of ground where the horses had cropped the grass down to good footing. Palindor handed his long knife and Zayn his Kazrak dagger over to Apanador. Ammadin was furious with both men; no matter what the rest of the comnee might think, she knew they were fighting over her like studs over a mare in heat. Apanador left the two standing about three feet apart and carried the weapons back to the waiting comnee.

‘Very well,’ the chief called out. ‘Begin.’

They dropped to a fighting crouch and began to circle round each other, hands raised, eyes narrowed. Zayn kept his hands open, not in fists, and moved as smoothly as a cat. They feinted in, testing each other, dancing back fast; then Palindor charged, swinging both fists. Zayn ducked, feinted, dodged, then landed a solid punch. The comnee shouted as Palindor staggered back with his mouth bleeding. Zayn closed in and landed a quick series of blows. When Palindor tried to dodge, his foot slipped, and he went down to one knee. Zayn waited as Palindor got up, gasping for breath, his face so dark with rage and blood that he looked like a demon.

The fall taught Palindor something. This time, he feinted in cautiously, keeping his hands low, aiming for Zayn’s stomach, not his head. Zayn danced in, slapped him across the face, and danced back before Palindor could hit in return. With a howl of rage, Palindor charged. Zayn let him close, then struck with half-closed hands, punching him in the face, blocking Palindor’s every blow while Palindor struggled and fought, swaying where he stood but still game. Suddenly Ammadin realized that Zayn could kill him with his bare hands if he wanted. She ran to Apanador and grabbed his arm.

‘Stop it! It’s gone far enough.’

With a nod of agreement, Apanador trotted out and yelled at them to stop. When Zayn stepped back at the order, Palindor threw one last punch. Zayn grabbed his wrist and swung him around, pulling him back against his chest with Palindor’s arm twisted in his grip. Palindor dropped to his knees and bit his lower lip so hard that it bled again.

‘He said stop.’ Zayn let him go with a shove.

Gasping for breath, rubbing his arm, Palindor refused to look up when Apanador walked over.

‘All right, saddle your horse,’ Apanador said. ‘Ride out.’

Palindor nodded, then staggered off, heading for the wagons to retrieve the few things he owned. For a few minutes Zayn stood alone, rubbing his bloody, swelling knuckles, until Orador brought him some herb paste to treat them. Together they went back to loading the wagons as if nothing had happened.

Ammadin waited until Palindor was ready to ride. When he led his bay gelding out, loaded with saddlebags, she joined him at the edge of the camp. He refused to look at her, merely twisted his reins round and round his bruised fingers while the horse snorted and tossed its head.

‘Find a woman who wants you,’ she said. ‘You’re too good a man to demean yourself this way.’

Palindor shrugged and twisted the leather tight. ‘When he betrays you, remember that I love you.’

He turned away and swung into the saddle. Ammadin watched him till he rode out of sight, a tiny figure, disappearing into the purple grasslands like a stone dropping into the sea.

When they were still some two days’ ride away from the Great River, Warkannan and his men came across another Tribal camp, an unusually small comnee led by a chief named Sammador. They rode in, dismounted, and found themselves in the middle of a swarm of young children, who stared at them silently with solemn eyes.

‘Where are your fathers?’ Warkannan said in Hirl-Onglay. ‘Hunting?’

The children said nothing. From one of the tents someone shouted; from another an older girl crawled out. When she called, the camp came alive, and adults surrounded the Kazraks. The girl, or young woman, really – Warkannan judged her to be fifteen or so – hooked her thumbs into the waist of her saurskin trousers and stood off to one side, staring at Tareev and Arkazo with undisguised interest.

Warkannan addressed himself to the young chief. After the usual greetings, Warkannan asked if anyone knew a Kazrak travelling with a spirit rider to the south. Luck favoured him. Sammador’s comnee had travelled to the Blosk horse fair, and they gave him names: Zayn was the Kazrak, and Ammadin, who rode with old Apanador’s comnee, the spirit rider. With this information, however, came ominous news.

‘Ammadin is a really powerful woman,’ Sammador told him. ‘All the other spirit riders say so.’

‘Really? Well, I’ll count myself honoured if I ever meet her.’

‘Good, good.’ Sammador glanced around at his people. ‘But I’m forgetting my manners. Will you join our camp for the night?’

‘Thanks, but no,’ Warkannan said. ‘I was hoping to make a few more miles before sunset.’

With a wave of his arm, Warkannan gathered up his men, mounted, and led them back out into the grass. When they’d gone about a mile, he stopped his small caravan; the other men guided their horses up to his.

‘Listen,’ Warkannan said. ‘We’re going to have to plan Zayn’s death carefully. If we kill the servant of a witchwoman, the Tribes will take it as an insult, and they’ll be crying for our blood. The Tribes practically worship their witches.’

‘It’s much more likely that she’d take her vengeance on her own,’ Soutan said. ‘This is a damned nuisance, Captain. I’ve never met a witchwoman yet who didn’t have the greatest power. They look primitive, these people, but their magic isn’t.’

‘I take it you know something about it, then,’ Warkannan said. ‘Their kind of magic, that is.’

‘There’s only one kind of magic.’ Soutan paused for one of his teeth-baring smiles. ‘The kind that works.’

That afternoon they made camp by a stream deep enough for bathing. The three Kazraks stripped off their clothes and waded in, passing a bar of soap back and forth. Soutan sat on the bank, however, and read a book he’d been carrying in his saddlebags.

‘Don’t you want to come in?’ Warkannan called to him.

‘Later perhaps.’ Soutan kept his nose in his book. ‘Not right now.’

His choice, Warkannan supposed. When Tareev and Arkazo lapsed into horseplay, threatening to drown one another and yelling mock insults, Warkannan left the water. Still naked he knelt on the bank and washed out his undershirt and shorts, then put them on wet. In the heat of late afternoon, they’d dry fast enough. He washed his socks and shirt, too, and laid them onto the grass to dry. Soutan looked up and shut his book.

‘Where did you get that scar?’ Soutan said. ‘The long one on the back of your leg.’

‘From a ChaMeech spear.’

‘It looks like you’re lucky to be alive. A few inches higher, and you’d have bled to death.’

‘Yes, that’s certainly true.’ Warkannan reflexively reached down and rubbed the scar. ‘But that’s not the worst thing they ever did to me.’

‘Oh?’ Soutan cocked an eyebrow.

‘I was taken prisoner by the slimy bastards – me and Zahir Benumar. Kareem and I mentioned him, if you remember. He was one of my sergeants, then; he was commissioned later. Anyway, we caught a pack of them trying to steal our horses, and they outnumbered us.’

Soutan winced. ‘That must have been unpleasant.’

‘You could call it that. They tied leather thongs around our wrists, tied ropes to those, then took off at a lope in the hot sun.’ Warkannan held up his hands so Soutan could see the scars, thick as bracelets, around each wrist. ‘Benumar has a set to match these.’ He lowered his hands again. ‘They dragged us along when we couldn’t run any more. Now and then they’d stop, let us rest, then take off again.’ Warkannan shook his head to clear it of the memory. ‘If it weren’t for Jezro Khan, we’d have been killed for their amusement. Very slowly.’

Soutan winced again, then put the book down on the grass beside him. ‘Jezro was an acknowledged heir then, yes?’

‘Acknowledged and sanctified. He had the zalet khanej around his neck.’

‘Ah yes, the medallion. He showed it to me once. He seemed quite proud of it, but it ended up being his death warrant.’

‘Once the old khan – his father – died, yes.’ Warkannan felt his rage, rising sharp in his blood. ‘Gemet turned out to be a murderous little swine.’

‘Indan told me that it wasn’t technically murder, that the oldest son has some sort of legal right to clear away excess heirs.’

‘That’s true, but it’s a very old law. Most great khans find positions at the palace or in the army for their brothers, or at least for the ones who are willing to swear loyalty. The recalcitrant ones are usually just castrated. Gemet had every single one of them killed, loyal or not, even the bastards.’

‘Except Jezro.’

‘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.

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