The Fire in His Hands Read online

  Haroun looked back. He paused when he noticed Radetic watching him. But the urge to impress his brothers overcame good sense. He seized his rudimentary shaghûn’s kit and joined their rush into the street.

  Radetic followed. He would not be able to prevent their prank, but might finally penetrate the veil of mystery that surrounded the collapse of the negotiations with Sabbah i Hassan.

  Its simplicity was frightening.

  A shaghûn was as much stage magician as true sorcerer. Haroun spent an hour a day practicing sleight of hand that would awe the credulous one day. Among his simple tools was a peashooter. He could conceal it within a fist and, with a faked cough, blow a pellet into a campfire or a dart at an unsuspecting enemy.

  Haroun chose a dart, and put it into the white horse’s flank.

  She reared and screamed. El Murid fell at Haroun’s feet. They locked gazes. El Murid looked puzzled. When he tried to stand, he fell. He had broken an ankle.

  Haroun’s brothers and cousins began mocking the injured youth.

  A quick-witted priest shouted, “An omen! False prophets inevitably fall.”

  Others took it up. They had been lying in wait, hoping for a chance to embarrass El Murid. Pushing and shoving started between factions.

  Haroun and El Murid still stared at one another, as if seeing the future, and seeing it grim.

  Nassef spied the peashooter. His sword rang as it cleared his scabbard. Its tip cut a shallow slice an inch above Haroun’s right eye. The boy would have died but for Radetic’s quick action.

  Royalist partisans roared. Weapons materialized. “It’s going to get ugly. You little fool. Come up here.” Radetic yanked Haroun off the ground and threw him over his shoulder, then hurried toward his employer’s tent. During Disharhun everyone, whether making the pilgrimage to Al Rhemish or not, lived the week in tents.

  Fuad met them in the street. He had heard a swift-winged rumor of murder. He was angry. A huge man with a savage reputation, Fuad in a rage was a ferocious spectacle. He had his war blade in hand. It looked big enough to behead an ox with a single blow.

  “What happened, teacher? Is he all right?”

  “Mostly scared. I’d better talk to Yousif.” He tried hiding the bleeding. Fuad had less self-control than the usual volatile native.

  “He’s waiting.”

  “I should find an injured child every time I want to talk to him.”

  Fuad gave him a poisonous look.

  The shouting and blade waving around El Murid had turned ugly. Fighting was forbidden during Disharhun, but the Children of Hammad al Nakir were not ones to let laws restrict their emotions.

  Horsemen bearing round black shields emblazoned with the crude red eagle of the Royal Household descended on the trouble spot.

  Radetic hurried on to his employer’s quarters.

  “What happened?” Yousif demanded as soon as he had determined that Haroun’s wound was minor. He had cleared his tent of the usual hangers-on. “Haroun, you tell it first.”

  The boy was too frightened to stretch the truth. “I... I used my blow tube. To hit his horse. I didn’t know he would get hurt.”

  “Megelin?”

  “That’s the gist of it. A practical joke, in poor taste. I’d blame the examples set by his elders. I did, however, hear mention of Sabbah i Hassan beforehand.”

  “How so?”

  “In the context, I believe, of a similar stunt. Your children, you know, are even more primitive and literal-minded than the rest of you.”

  “Haroun? Is that true?”

  “Huh?”

  “Did you do the same thing to Sabbah i Hassan?”

  Radetic smiled thinly as he watched the boy struggle with the lie trying to break out of the prison of his mouth. “Yes, Father.”

  Fuad returned to the tent. He seemed to have calmed down.

  “Teacher?”

  “Wahlig?”

  “What the hell were they doing running the streets? They were supposed to be in class.”

  “Be serious, Yousif,” Fuad interjected. “Don’t tell me you’re already too old to remember being young.” The Wahlig was forty-one. “It’s Disharhun. The woman wore no veil. You think the man is a miracle worker?”

  Radetic was amazed. Fuad had made it plain that he thought any teacher who did not teach the use of weapons was superfluous. A warrior chieftain needed no other education. Scribes and accountants could be enslaved.

  Moreover, he disliked Radetic personally.

  What had put him into so good a mood? It worried Radetic.

  “Haroun.”

  The boy approached his father reluctantly, took his spanking without crying. And without contrition.

  Yousif was angry. He never punished his children before outsiders. And yet... Radetic suspected that his employer was not entirely displeased.

  “Now go find your brothers. Tell them to get back here and stay out of trouble.”

  The boy ran out. Yousif looked at Fuad. “Bold little brat, isn’t he?”

  “His father’s son, I think. You were the same.”

  Haroun was Yousif’s favorite, though the Wahlig hid it well. Radetic suspected that he had been hired specifically for the benefit of the one boy. The others had been tossed into his classes in a vain hope that a patina of wisdom might stick.

  Haroun would have preferred a scholarly life. When away from older brothers he showed the temperament. In fact, he had told Radetic that he wanted to be like him when he grew up. Megelin had been pleased and embarrassed.

  For a six-year-old Haroun showed remarkable determination to pursue the mission decreed for him by an accident of birth. He acted twice his age. He was possessed of a stern, stolid fatalism seldom seen in anyone under thirty.

  Megelin Radetic hurt a lot for the fated child.

  Fuad bubbled over. “Yousif, this is the break we’ve been waiting for. This time he’s given us a good, rock-hard excuse.”

  Radetic was startled when he suddenly realized that Fuad was talking about El Murid. It was a revelation. He had not suspected that powerful men were actually afraid of the Disciple. Afraid of a fifteen-year-old who, like themselves, had come to Al Rhemish for the rites of Disharhun, and to see his infant daughter christened before the Most Holy Mrazkin Shrines.

  They had been lying to him. And to themselves, probably. Just plain old-fashioned whistling in the dark.

  All this fuss over religious nonsense.

  “Wahlig, this is ridiculous. Barbarous,” Radetic grumbled. “Even pathetic. The boy is a madman. He crucifies himself every time he preaches. You don’t have to trump up charges. Let him have his High Holy Week. Let him talk. They’ll laugh him out of Al Rhemish.”

  “Let me boot this fish-faced pimp,” Fuad growled.

  Yousif raised a silencing hand. “Calm down. He has a right to an opinion. Even a wrong one.”

  Fuad shut up.

  Yousif virtually owned his younger brother. Fuad seemed to have no imagination or aspirations of his own. He was a mirror of Yousif, the Wahlig’s far-reaching right hand, a sledge used to hammer out another’s dreams. Which was not to say that he always agreed. He and Yousif sometimes argued bitterly, especially when the latter was pushing an innovation. Sometimes Fuad won his point. But once a decision had been handed down he would support it to the death.

  “Wahlig —”

  “Be silent a moment, Megelin. Let me tell you where you’re wrong.” Yousif rearranged his cushions. “This is going to be long-winded. Get comfortable.”

  Radetic considered Yousif’s tent to be furnished in garish, barbarous taste. The Children of Hammad al Nakir, when they could afford it, surrounded themselves with intense color. The reds, greens, yellows and blues around Yousif so clashed that Radetic could almost hear their conflict.

  “Fuad, see if you can find some refreshments while I start to educate our educator. Megelin, you’re wrong because you’re too convinced of the correctness of your own viewpoint. When you look around here
you don’t see a culture. You see barbarians. You hear our religious arguments and can’t believe we take them seriously because you can’t. I grant you, a lot of my people don’t either. But the majority do.

  “As for El Murid and his henchman, you see only a deranged boy and a bandit. I see a huge problem. The boy is saying things everyone wants to hear. And believe. And Nassef just might have the genius to carve out El Murid’s new Empire. The two together might have an overpowering attraction for our children. Our children, otherwise, have no other hope than to relive our yesterdays.

  “You see Nassef as a bandit because he has raided caravans. What makes him remarkable and dangerous isn’t the fact of his crimes, but the skill with which he committed them. If he ever rises above theft in God’s name to making war in God’s name, then God help us. Because he’ll probably destroy us.

  “Megelin, nobody is going to laugh if El Murid speaks. Nobody. And as a speaker he is as dangerous as Nassef is as a fighter. His speeches are creating the weapons Nassef needs to rise above banditry.

  “The boy’s movement is at a crossroads. And he knows it. That’s why he came to Al Rhemish this year. After Disharhun he’ll either be discredited and fade away, or he’ll begin sweeping the desert like a sandstorm. If we have to trump up charges to stop that, we will.”

  Fuad returned with a lemonade-like drink. Megelin and Yousif accepted their portions. Fuad seated himself quietly, out of the way.

  Radetic, squatting on a scarlet pillow, took a sip, then said, “And Fuad wonders why I think you a barbarous people.”

  “My brother has never visited Hellin Daimiel. I have. I can believe that your people would laugh a messiah out of business. You’re all cynics. And you don’t need that kind of leader.

  “We do, Megelin. The heart of me craves an El Murid. He’s telling me exactly what my heart wants to hear. I want to believe that we’re the Chosen People. I want to believe that it’s our destiny to master the world. I want something, anything, to make the centuries since the Fall worthwhile.

  “I want to believe that the Fall itself was the work of an Evil One. Fuad wants to believe. My cousin the King would like to believe. Unfortunately, we’re old enough to recognize gossamer on the wind. A deadly gossamer.

  “Megelin, that boy is a death merchant. He’s put it in pretty packages, but he’s selling another Fall. If we turn to him, if we break out of Hammad al Nakir in order to convert the pagan and resurrect the Empire, we’ll be destroyed. Those of us who have been across the Sahel realize that the world out there isn’t the one conquered by Ilkazar.

  “We don’t have the numbers, the resources, the arms, or the discipline of the western kingdoms.”

  Radetic nodded. These people would be hopelessly overmatched in any war with the west. Warfare, like everything else, evolved. The style of the Children of Hammad al Nakir had evolved in a direction suited only to the desert.

  “But his jihad doesn’t terrify me yet. That’s a long way off,” Yousif continued. “The struggle here is what frightens me. He has to win his homeland first. And to do that he will have to tear the belly out of Hammad al Nakir. So. I want to draw his fangs now. By fair means or foul.”

  “You live by different rules,” Radetic observed. It was becoming a favorite saying. “I have to go think about what you’ve said.” He finished his drink, rose, nodded to Fuad, and departed. He seated himself outside the tent flap, in the position for meditation. He listened while Yousif instructed Fuad how to approach King Aboud with news of this opportunity. Embittered by the foolishness of it, the injustice of it, he sealed them out, contemplated his surroundings.

  The Royal Compound occupied five acres bordering the southwest flank of the Mrazkim Shrines, which were the religious heart of Hammad al Nakir. Today, because it was Disharhun, the compound was infested with royal relatives, favor seekers and sycophants. Most of the captains, sheiyeks and wahligs had brought their entire households. Traders and artisans, hoping to achieve some small advantage over their competitors, virtually besieged the Compound’s boundaries. Ambassadors and foreign mercantile factors roamed everywhere. The smells were overwhelming. Men, animals, machines, and insects made noises which melded into an overpowering din.

  And beyond the mad anthill of the Compound lay vast encampments of ordinary pilgrims. Their tents swept up the sides of the bowl-shaped valley containing the capital and Shrines. Thousands upon thousands more than customary had made the journey this year — because El Murid’s visit had been rumored for months. They had come because they did not want to miss the inevitable collision between dissidence and authority.

  Yousif was playing with fire, Radetic reflected as he watched Fuad stride toward Aboud’s palatial tent. This monarchy, unlike its predecessor in Ilkazar, did not have the power to rule by decree. Today even the most obnoxious rabble-rouser could not be denied his hour in court, his opportunity to speak in his own defense.

  A shy Haroun came to sit with his teacher. He put his hand into Radetic’s.

  “Sometimes, Haroun, you’re too crafty for your own good.” There was no rancor in Radetic’s voice, though. The gesture touched him, genuine or not.

  “I did wrong, Megelin?”

  “There’s some disagreement.” Radetic surveyed the human panorama briefly. “You should think, Haroun. You can’t simply act. That is your people’s biggest handicap. They yield to impulse without ever considering the consequences.”

  “I’m sorry, Megelin.”

  “The hell you are. You’re sorry you got caught. You don’t care a whit how much you hurt that man.”

  “He’s our enemy.”

  “How do you know? You never saw him before. You’ve never talked to him. He’s never hurt you.”

  “Ali said —”

  “Ali is like your uncle Fuad. He says a lot. His mouth is always open. And because of that, someday somebody else who doesn’t think is going to shove his fist down Ali’s throat. How often is he right? How often does pure foolishness come out of that open mouth?”

  Radetic was letting his frustrations run wild. He had never encountered a student more unyieldingly unteachable than Ali bin Yousif.

  “Then he isn’t our enemy?”

  “I didn’t say that. Of course he is. He’s your bitterest enemy. But not because Ali says he is. El Murid is an enemy in his ideals. I don’t think he’d harm you physically if he had the chance. He’d just rob you of everything that’s important to you. Someday, I hope, you’ll understand just how gross a mistake your prank was.”

  “Fuad’s coming.”

  “So he is. And he looks like an old cat licking cream off her whiskers. It went well, Fuad?”

  “Beautifully, teacher. Old Aboud isn’t as stupid as I thought. He saw the chance right away.” Fuad’s grin vanished. “You may be called to testify.”

  “Then, perhaps, we may be friends no more. I am of the Rebsamen, Fuad. I cannot lie.”

  “Were we ever friends?” Fuad demanded as he entered the tent.

  A chill stalked down Radetic’s spine. He was not a brave man.

  He was disgusted with himself. He knew that he would lie if Yousif pressed him hard enough.

  The court was convened as the traditional Disharhun Court of Nine, the supreme court of Hammad al Nakir. Three jurists were provided by the Royal Household, and another three by the Shrine priests. A final three were common pilgrims selected at random from among the hosts come for the High Holy Days.

  It was a stacked court. El Murid was down eight votes before a shred of evidence had been presented.

  Someone had bandanged Haroun heavily. He had been coached quickly and well. He lied with a straight face and defiantly traded stares with El Murid and Nassef.

  Radetic nearly shrieked in protest when the Court voted to deny a request for permission to cross-examine.

  A parade of pilgrims testified after Haroun stepped down. Their testimony bore little relation to the truth of what had happened. It seemed, instead, to follow rel
igious predilection. No one mentioned seeing a peashooter or dart.

  Radetic already knew this phase of desert justice well. He had reviewed judicial sessions at el Aswad. The disposition of most cases seemed to depend on which adversary could muster the most relatives to lie for him.

  Megelin dreaded having to give his own testimony. His conscience had been ragging him mercilessly. He feared he would not be able to lie.

  He was spared the final crisis of conscience. Yousif had passed the word. He was not called. He sat restlessly, and seethed. Such a travesty! The outcome was never in doubt. The decision had been made before the judges heard the charges....

  What were the charges? Radetic suddenly realized that they had not been formally declared.

  They were trying El Murid. Charges did not matter.

  El Murid rose. “A petition, my lord judges.”

  The chief judge, one of Aboud’s brothers, looked bored. “What is it this time?”

  “Permission to call additional witnesses.”

  The judge sighed and rubbed his forehead with the heel of his left hand. “This could go on all day.” He was speaking to himself, but half the audience heard him plainly. “Who?”

  “My wife.”

  “A woman?”

  A murmur of amazement ran through the gallery.

  “She is the daughter of a chieftain. She is of the el Habib, who are of the same blood as the Quesan.”

  “Nevertheless, a woman. And one disowned by her family. Do you mock this Court? Do you compound your crimes by trying to make a farce of the administration of justice? Your request is denied.”

  Radetic’s disgust neared the explosive point. And yet... to his amazement, he saw that even the El Murid factionalists in the audience were appalled by their prophet’s suggestion.

  Megelin shook his head sadly. There was no hope for these savages.

  Fuad pushed a stiffened finger into his ribs. “Keep still, teacher.”

  The chief judge rose less than two hours after the trial’s commencement. Without consulting his fellows privately, he announced, “Micah al Rhami. Nassef, once ibn Mustaf el Habib. It is the judgment of this Court that you are guilty. Therefore, this Court of Nine orders that you be banned forever from all Royal lands and protection, all holy places and protection, and from the Grace of God — unless a future Court of Nine shall find cause for commutation or pardon.”