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Chapter Sixteen

" . . . on all the tribes, all the people of the black tents!" Aisha was shouting. "Disgrace, shame, shame and eternal shame that we submit to the Lidless Eye!"

She's certainly overcame her shyness, Chaya thought ironically.

Seeing the tall figure of the woman who strode back and forth on the rock ledge like a hungry cliff lioness, the former Judge was caught up in it despite herself. Byers' Sun was down, but two great fires burned on either hand, and behind her the vast red arch of Cat's Eye rose from the horizon. The stars above were many and harshly bright, three of the sister moons floating among them like silver ghosts. Breath steamed up from the multitude.

The Seven were grouped around the foot of the rock; beyond them shaggy ranks of the warriors carpeted the steppe, like a lumpy garment of felt and sheepskin and leather and wool caps. Narrow black eyes gleamed, and the men of the nomad clans leaped up to scream their approval and hammer dagger-pommels on shields or swordblades. Beyond them the women sent up their high ululating trill. Aisha raised her hands for silence, and it fell.

Power, Chaya thought, looking up at her sister/niece's flushed face. So alone for so long, and now they hang on your words. But you'll discover power is a fickle lover, always asking for more.

"What do you give the Saurons, the sons of Iblis, the servants of Shaitan?" Aisha said. She made a broad gesture of mockery. "Nothing—nothing but the pick of your herds, your bowed heads and humble words, your women."

A long, low growl at that. "How many men die without sons, their yurts empty, as the girls who should have been theirs go to the beds of your enemies? How many of us have they slain—how many lie unavenged? How many hungry ghosts wail on the steppes of Haven?"

She paused. "And what do they keep from you, the pork-eating infidel? Why, they keep nothing—nothing but the rich lands of the world, the lowlands of the Shangri-La where your wives and your flocks could bear in safety and your herds eat their fill of fat grass. Yes, the Saurons do nothing—nothing but imprison you in these lands of hunger, where your children beg for a scrap of jerked muskylope from their fathers' empty hands. Their feet are on the bones of your dead, their treasuries bulge with your wealth—and your fairest daughters' bellies swell with their spawn. They sit in their power and they laugh at you!"

"What can we do?" growled a chief whose gray moustaches fell past his chin. "Juchi was a great warrior, however kismet cursed him—and Juchi is dead."

"Yes, my father is dead," Aisha hurled back the words. "But before he died, he cast down Angband Base. Before he died, Glorund the Cyborg—Glorund the very Battlemaster of the Citadel—was dead. Dead by this hand"—her arm flew up, a knife flashing in it—"as they admit themselves."

A low murmur swept through the crowd at that, below the trilling of the women. Cyborg was another word for demon on the steppe. Chaya could feel their anger, their shame—that a woman, even one out of legend, did what they could not—and the stirrings of hope. Hope, the most dangerous and deadly of all emotions.

"To ride against the Citadel is death, you say," she went on, pointing out this man and that. "You—Ilderim Khan of the Dongala Khel—Raman Qul Khan of the Ak Djelga—Yakub Bey whom they call the Gray Tamerlane—do you not face death every season, saber in hand, fighting your own kinsmen, men as poor as yourselves, for half a dozen mangy sheep, for a waterhole of stinking black slime, for enough land to graze one camel?

"The Saurons," she went on, "call you cattle. Are you cattle? Are the people of the black tents cattle to the accursed of Allah, the servants of the Lidless Eye?"

Shouts of "No!" erupted. Aisha overrode them. "Or are you of the blood of the great khans, of Temujin, of Kubilai, of the Iron Limper? Are you the sons of the Kalmuk, the Kipchak, the Tatar, and the Krim? Or are you cattle?"

A young chief leapt to his feet, shaking off the hands that would have held him back. His sword flashed out, the crescent of his faith against the ruddy glow of Cat's Eye.

"North, south, east, west—where shall you find the Kirghiz?" he shouted exultantly. "By the Silver Hand of Iskander—we are here!" And he cast the blade down at Aisha's feet. She caught it up, touched it to her lips and returned it to him.

"Eternal glory and the opened gates of Paradise to him who falls in the Holy War," she cried, her voice the chilling screech of a stooping ice-eagle. "Fame and wealth beyond the dreams of men to the conquerors of the Citadel!"

The warriors erupted in riotous acclaim. The chiefs were sober of spirit, stroking their beards and the hilts of their sabers; they glanced at the Seven out of the corners of their narrow eyes, appraising.

Seeing the Pale behind this thing, because I am here, Chaya knew. The Bandari were not loved among the steppe peoples, but they were respected. Seeing Barak my son as a promise that the armies of the People will follow. Seeing Kemal, a prince of his tribe. And seeing that their young men will ride over whoever tries to stop them.

What had they done?

Aisha's hand caught her wrist. She swallowed against a tight throat, looking out over the eager lion eyes. Imagining . . . how many? Sprawled sightless, with the stobor ripping at their flesh, and the weeping of the women and children.

Now she must speak. "Aisha's blood is my blood," she said. "Juchi was my brother. That the Saurons slew him is the way of things, for he was a warrior and struck many a blow against them. For them to dishonor his corpse—to set it out to terrify us into submission—is a thing not to be borne."

She fell silent for a long moment, a wave of unaccustomed dizziness coming over her.

"Fire," she said. Then louder: "Fire! The Citadel will burn!"

 

"What was the bit about fire in aid of?" Barak murmured to her, as they rode out of the nomad camp. "You setting up as a prophet in your old age, ama?"

The trilling and the shouts and the occasional musket fired into the air followed them, until all sound faded into distant dun-colored rolling horizon. All sound save the clump of hooves, and the silver bells on the harness of their camels. The Seven were more than seven now, as they headed down the final stretch to the oasis of Cliff Lion Springs. A solid little kammando of Bandari followed them, and nearly five hundred warriors of Tarik's tribe, wild young men, but showing the effects of a generation under the Pale's tutelage in their order and fine weapons.

"If I were a prophet, I'd prophesy peace," Chaya said, shaking her head. "I . . . just thought I smelled fire, that's all."

If there is ever peace, anywhere on Haven, she thought. Haven. Refuge. Yeweh's little joke.

These days more than ever, Chaya was hardly on good terms with fate. The long trueday rocked on; they stopped, ate, watered their stock, rode again. Dozed in the saddle, took turns riding scout. The cluster of humans and animals was lost in the vastness, like ants crawling across a sheet of crumpled linen. No wonder, she thought, that so many prophets came out of the steppe, the desert, the wilderness. In the solitude, it was easy to dream dreams and see visions.

Her head came up. Once again, she smelled smoke. Smoke on the steppe. She could imagine the acrid stinks of burning grass, of fear, of trampled beasts or those left behind to burn as flames swept across the grasslands, driving before it tamerlanes and cliff lions and all creatures with a hope of survival, while the great ice-eagles soared high overhead, trusting instincts to escape the downdrafts that would snatch them into the fire's jaws. Fire, devouring all, as the God-bloody Saurons had engulfed Haven during the Wasting . . .

Someone slapped her horse's flanks. She jolted back to attention.

"You were drifting," Kemal warned her. He too could blame fate. Prince no longer; exile instead.

"I was thinking," she replied. They wound slowly up a saddleback between two eroded volcanoes, then down to the plateau once more. Faint in the distance was a patch of darker green, with a mist of fog above it.

"You were drifting."

How had Kemal managed to come up behind her like that? After all these years, were her senses finally dulling? Had some recessive finally emerged that was known only to fate and Grima, the unmourned Breedmaster everyone assumed was a fool? Sixty T-years. Saurons did not live long lives, most of them.

She would run her own risks. But six rode with her from the Pale in the wake of the most disastrous Ruth's Day in Bandari history . . . Kemal. Ihsan. Karl, here for love of Aisha. Aisha, exile once more. Sannie, following Barak—and Barak, my son, my son . . .

"Do you smell smoke?" she asked Kemal and Ihsan. Their heads came up and they sniffed. Under the impassivity their schooling required of warriors in the presence of women—even an aged, disgraced Judge—she sensed their alarm. It was high summer; the shin-high reddish bunchgrass of the steppe was nutritious, but dry.

Not they. She glanced at Barak riding up ahead, Sannie by his side. Girl, you were not my choice as a daughter-in-law. But you'd have lied or killed for my son. Welcome to the family.

Aisha, then, riding somewhat to the side under Karl's watchful eye. Too proud to shake after a speech to warriors who might have offered bride price to her in the days she had been a princess in her tribe, or stoned her and Juchi out of an encampment.

The poor girl, Chaya thought. Girl. I am getting old, you must be nearly thirty-five T-years now. I wanted to promise you a home, rest . . . I owe you. I owe you all.

The two tribesmen, satisfied she would not fall from her horse, galloped off. They cast long double shadows in the bunchgrass under the angry glare of the Cat's Eye and the pinpoint of Byers' Sun. The followers spread out instinctively in the way of those used to the steppe, not wanting to eat each other's dust or miss a chance at forage for their beasts. There were others travelling along: the first spray of those attracted by Aisha's preaching and the rumor that ran like grassfire over the plains. Galandat and fuqara and malamati among them—the Sufi dervishes and holy fools and travelling preachers, a few saffron-robed Buddhist lamas and a wild bone-clanking shaman as well. They came for a few cycles, listening, black intent eyes drinking in the words, then drifted away. Some in repudiation: this was not an orthodox movement. More to scatter and spread the word to their fellows and the tribes, in a chain-reaction like sparks dropped in trails of gunpowder.

Chaya settled herself more comfortably in the saddle, but there was no comfort for her. Old bones, she thought. Instinct brought her mount's head up, nostrils flaring. Water. Chaya's nose wrinkled as she too scented water and sulfur, too. At the same moment, Lightning's hand flickered at Sannie and they rode point to the other five. They were approaching one of the rare hot springs oases that made the high steppes survivable, even in the winter. Aisha might be able to speak with the warriors and merchants who found haven in such a place along their road. There was no appeal from the beasts whom the warmth, the water and the easy prey might attract.

Rumbling began deep in the ground and built up. The pack-muskylopes tossed their heads, frightened. How did you explain geysers to the beasts, anyhow? Geysers meant warmth, if the oasis's guardians admitted the Seven to its safety.

Which of the tribes controlled this oasis? No one could own such a treasure; a hundred blood feuds in the past had proved the truth of that. Still, one did not willingly stop at an oasis controlled by a tribe actively hostile to one's own. Which one? Time had been when Chaya remembered all the tribes, their rulers, their heirs, and the principal khatuns and warriors in each. Time had been when she was Judge and not an exile, call it what nobler terms some might. And never mind this nonsense about a deputy. Yeweh, but she was weary! She was too old for this.

Karl turned his horse and rode toward her and the two Turkic warriors.

"Cliff Lion Springs!" he cried. "I came to this oasis once when I was a boy."

Chaya raised an eyebrow.

"Three tribes have farmers here. They're peaceful. They're too busy working their fields and the caravans that pass through to feud."

Until now, Chaya thought. Rumor travelled even faster than fire on the steppe.

"How long, khatun?" Kemal asked her. They had to stay for a while, since they'd been telling people to rally here.

"In!" Karl said. "For at least five cycles."

"What! So long?"

"Are you mad?"

"Who put you in charge?" All three shouts burst out just as the rumbling in the earth exploded. At Cliff Lion Springs, a geyser burst from a brilliant, bubbling spring, lavishing warmth on the chill, thin air. Kemal's horse reared, and all seven riders laughed, somewhat shamefacedly.

"We've been on the trail and pushing hard for ten cycles," Karl repeated. He could be stubborn even by the People's legendary standards. "We're bone-tired."

Aisha and I are bone-tired, Chaya translated. True enough for me.

There would be caravans in that oasis. Men to whom Aisha might preach her jihad, assuming they had not heard of it already. Merchants might pass the word still further. And Lion's Rock was well known on the trade routes. Every nomad camp they had stopped at would spread the word. Here they might rest while an army gathered about them. Assuming the pr'knz found them worthy of assembling such an army.

Once again Chaya smelled smoke. The unwelcome vision of earlier that day flashed through her mind: this time wave upon wave of armed warriors, until the waves crested and washed them up by Nûrnen and, please God, into victory.

The men's voices went on, bickering with Bandari persistence.

"What makes you think you're in charge, fan Haller?"

"If it's a matter of people's health, bar Heber, I am in charge. Some of us don't have Sauron blood and need the rest. And even those of you who do could use it."

Not too tactful, are you, Karl, my friend? Better, I suppose, than saying Chaya's too old to ride hard. For that, I'd probably have to whip your butt.

"And if you don't like it," Haller added, "you can just shove it."

Chaya barely managed not to snort. Barak, bless his heart, didn't want to be kapetein . . . but he had a ruler's reflexes.

Kemal snapped a salute far more appropriate to a khakhan. Barak grinned and copied him, extravagantly humble.

"We can decide who's in charge once we're settled," Karl bar Edgar said. Reasonable behavior, for once: Chaya decided she had heard a wonder.

 

Tribes had emblems: the White Sheep; the Ice-Eagle; the Black Horse. Razziah, or raiding parties, had banners. The Seven had nothing but their own reputation and a few hundred followers to herald them as they rode into Cliff Lion Springs. The ground trembled slightly from the hot springs that bubbled up from some volcanic fastness. Overhead loomed the distinctive, lion-shaped rock formation from which the oasis took its name. It mostly looked like jaws from which depended huge fangs, the result of boiling, mineral-laden water dripping down the cliff for untold years.

Channels took the purer water out to fields of ryticale and amaranth and fodder; there were thickets of clownfruit and tennis-fruit and Finnegan's fig. Veiled women and men in long ragged coats and turbans looked up from the fields. They were still gathering in the last of the grain, squatting to reap it with sickles and glean every kernel, every stalk. Other women carried food packed in clay jugs on their heads, walking up to the hot springs—living here, they never had to burn precious fuel for cooking. Square flat-roofed mudbrick and fieldstone huts stood in clumps, tethered muskylopes and donkeys—no horses—with chickens and children running between them, and rounds of yak and muskylope dung drying on the roofs.

The light of the Cat's Eye picked out eerie shadows from the rock face and made it seem as if the Cliff Lion's fangs dripped blood. Not the best of omens, by any means. Chaya saw Kemal and Ihsan make signs against ill fortune and reach for the blue glass eye each wore about his neck.

Silently, the Seven rode into the oasis at the head of their party. With long practice, Chaya refused to look to left or right. A few yurts, pulled to one side, marked a family party of nomads, a minor sept, perhaps, of a smaller clan. More tents and staked-out Bactrians marked a merchants' caravan. Even the fearless boychildren who usually ran wild under the light of the Cat's Eye shrank back—or were snatched up by their mothers.

One lad, close to manhood by his size and by the weapons he carried, herded the others, swatting one on the backside. "Stand proud!" he ordered. A little girl laughed.

"Farmers," muttered Ihsan to Kemal.

"And not the best of the breed," said his lord.

Whispers rose. Chaya could hear them, and she knew that Barak and Aisha must also hear buzzing about "the old blind man." At the whisper of "some say she's his daughter, or his sister, or both . . ." Aisha stiffened, then whirled to face the men who were talking. Her black eyes made nothing of the growing darkness as she studied their features.

Ghazi, she could hear them murmur. Warriors of the Faith.

They fumbled for their amulets. Baraka, one whispered.

Ruach, Chaya translated into Bandarit. The gift of spirit. Of prophecy. Sometimes, when she was very tired, the veil between past and future seemed to part for her too, and she saw strange sights and knew stranger things to be true. Such a mood had been on her the night she had conceived Lightning. At such times, she knew, the person as she was and the person she was in spirit moved apart; and madness was very near.

It would be hard if, after all Aisha had suffered, she must run the risk of madness as well. Prophecy, charisma, madness, magic—Aisha's words were painfully close to all of them. She moved men out of themselves. And one who moved men, moved the whole world.

A young man, one of the peasants the nomad tribes had settled at the oasis, approached Kemal. Though the evening was cold, he wore no jacket. His eyes slid soon enough from the warriors to the women who accompanied them: he saluted respectfully and with more formal courtesy than Chaya would have expected of a farmer.

Kemal accepted his respects like the prince he was, but waved him—with a sardonic grin at Karl bar Edgar—to Chaya.

He was too young, perhaps, to be the headman in this place. Probably the headman was holding aloof, lest the seven newcomers prove to be seven bandits, not seven ghazi. Still, he had courage to come out. With a minimum of words and a few gestures of surprising courtesy, he pointed out where the Seven and their entourage might picket their beasts, where to get fresh fodder (for a very reasonable fee), and what springs to use. The man's eyes flickered at Sannie and Aisha.

I must warn them to be circumspect. She had no fears for Aisha and Karl; Aisha, for all her age, was still virgin, and Karl wooed her with the care a wise man would have accorded a maid scarcely out of her mother's tent. But she knew perfectly well that once they had set up camp, Sannie and Barak would soak out their aches and their sorrows in one of the heated pools.

Chaya dismounted more rapidly than she intended. When no one was looking, she sniffed. Sulfur. Smoke, from the cooking fires of everyone in the oasis.

For a moment, the Seven stood indecisive. Aisha was used to setting up her own spare camp; just as clearly, Kemal and Ihsan were accustomed to their women and servants doing so, unless they were sleeping hunter fashion against their saddles beneath a hobbled horse. The two tribal nobles solved the problem by deciding that organizing their new-found followers was their work. Barak did the same with the Bandari present. Aisha looked a little lost as a tent sprang up and fires lit themselves as if by magic. Village women came to show the newcomers how to boil water and cook food in the baking-hot volcanic sand around the fumaroles.

"You come with me," said Karl. "The comedian."

"Where?" Barak asked with very little enthusiasm.

"I'm for checking the sanitary arrangements. If the trenches aren't long enough . . ." He limped over to the pack animals and pulled out a shovel, which he handed to Barak.

"Karl, Yeweh dammit, these people know how to run an oasis. Get that boy who greeted us to dig. Or these odds-and-sods we've picked up."

"My guess is his people want as little to do as possible with us. Besides, more people are going to be coming in," Haller said. "We've got to get things organized."

Once again, the smoke Chaya had smelled all day wreathed about her. Visions formed in it: tribes chanting under banners, a h'gana of Bandari screaming HA-BAN-DAR! and herself, always herself looking into the sweaty face of a fearful man and raising a pistol . . . no!

Please God, we can keep the losses to the Seven of us. Even as she thought, she knew the hope was worse than futile. Let Karl be wrong.

"Khatun, you let your physicians rule you?" Kemal asked.

"Right now, sir, he is the only one who has made any constructive suggestions."

 

Settling, digging, cooking, and collapsing into sodden sleep stole what energy they had left.

 . . . blood exploding from what had been a face . . . the gun, hot in her hand . . . she hurled it from her . . . people recoiling from the stink of the powder and the blood, though they bathed in it . . . and the smoke, choking her . . . .

"God, no!" She sat up, the sweat of her worst fears drying. Sannie was gone; Aisha slept. The Sauron genes, the God-bloody Sauron genes. She couldn't even wake screaming and have people comfort her. She laughed as soundlessly as she had prayed. Old as she was, hadn't she outlived the need for comfort? Lost it on the steppe? Comfort was for other people. Even now, she must comfort them by denying her worst fears: that as she grew old, the madness that was the worst of Sauron tampering with genes and body would claim her and destroy what she loved best.

She could sense the sky lightening. Byers' Star was rising, sharing the sky with Cat's Eye. She sniffed, reached for awareness. Many of the caravans had left, muffling the bells on their beasts' harness to slink away in the long darkness. Even in her sleep, she perceived them as cowards and no threat, so she had not waked herself.

Moving deftly, softly, she rose. In a far part of the space allotted to them, Kemal and Ihsan washed hands and feet, then prostrated themselves to pray. They had become particularly observant since leaving the Pale. Karl strode toward her.

"What makes you think people will come?" Chaya asked, without even a greeting.

"You know as well as I do," he said. He nodded out toward the clusters of tents, the ones who had joined them on the journey here. "These are just the fastest. Haven't you watched their eyes as Aisha speaks—as you speak? They'll come; for hatred, for glory, for loot, some because they must. Because the army will pass, and it will ride over them unless they ride with it. And many will come to follow the Bandari Judge who pledges to unite Pale and tribes against the Citadel."

"I do not want to lead."

"Who else is there?"

It is Aisha's fight. The words, contemptible as they were, quivered on her tongue. She forced them back. Aisha was her sister and her niece; and Aisha, for all her years, was a girl in some ways. She lacked experience to lead, not to mention having no talent for treachery.

Chaya ran her eyes over the physician, who seemed to be gagging on words of his own. Like I won't have it about Aisha and leadership. At any other time, she might have rejoiced. Now the fan Haller's love for Juchi's daughter—which had healed him even as it led him into danger—was just another reason to fear pain.

You will lead. After prayers, Kemal and Ihsan joined her and Haller over their small cookfire. This smoke was familiar, the smells wholesome. Chaya busied herself heating water for tea. "I thought Bandari women did not serve men." Kemal accepted a cup of tea, some flatbread, and some dates, lovingly grown under glass in the Pale; another gift from well-wishers as they left.

"It is written," Chaya replied, "that long ago, before the Bandari came to Haven, the Judge Golda would serve breakfast to her generals before they went off to war. And the only shame accorded her was that she was not a better cook."

Karl all but choked on his egg tea. Covering his discomfort, Chaya greeted her son and Sannie and waved away an offer of help from Aisha. "So, tomorrow, it will be someone else's turn."

The others nodded, reassured by the pattern she had established: matriarch nourishing her tribe. She sighed. Trying to resign her Judgeship did not mean she could lay down her power. She didn't envy the "deputy" old Oom Barak had appointed, back home—the job was tough enough with all the symbolic authority behind you. She glanced up into the sky. Even though it was overcast, the glare hurt her eyes.

Ihsan looked around the oasis. The earth rumbled; a plume of water and scalding steam shot aloft. "This is a rich place," he said. "Usually, though, the farmers come to sell fruit, handcrafts, jewelry to the caravans."

"We are haram," Aisha said. Outcast; unclean. Then her hand shot before her mouth.

"Are you abashed at speaking truth or speaking before a man?" Chaya snapped. This bashfulness must cease—and now, before these armies that Karl prophesied came to pass. "You are certainly quick enough to speak to Karl or Barak. Or to a crowd of a thousand warriors more drunk on glory than they could get on arrack or hemp."

Aisha glared at her. "Well, we are."

"He doesn't think so." Barak pointed at the young man who had met them the night before. "He looks different," Sannie observed. "Dressed differently," Kemal agreed. "Like a warrior, not a farmer." A world of contempt rode in his voice. On the steppes of Haven, pockets of farmers existed on the sufferance of the wandering tribes. What little wealth there was dwelt in the yurts of the nomad khans and noyons, not among the tillers of the soil.

The young man wore the leathers and silks not just of a warrior, but of a prince. Or princeling, rather; his wrists stuck out of the jacket, and boots and breeches barely met. The silks were shabby, faded, and frayed in places, but they were very clean.

"Why would he dress up to sell us clownfruit?" Chaya asked. She saw the others' hands and eyes locate weapons. "He doesn't look like he's peddling anything," Karl said. Instead, the young man bore what looked like a roll of carpeting. "If he knows what we are, he ought to know we can't buy housegoods," Ihsan said. "Shall I send him away?"

Outside the circle of their fire, the young man paused.

"Khatun." The young man met Chaya's eyes. No cringing, no elaborate, self-abasing honorifics, and no fear.

Ihsan swung to his feet, hand out to wave him off.

"Wait," Chaya said. Again, the smoke wreathed her about. Send him away, she told herself, but she knew she would not. "Let him approach."

The young farmer walked past Kemal and Ihsan. The tribesmen glowered, but he met their eyes as if used to staring down warriors. His glance went to Aisha and seemed to soften. She gasped and set down the bread she was eating. Karl Haller's hand reached out to touch her shoulder, then dropped away.

He bowed with more polish than Chaya had ever seen in a farmer, and dropped down at a respectful distance.

"Your pardon, khatun, for not greeting you properly last night. The people were afraid."

Interesting: not "my people."

"But you are not."

"No," said the man. "I am not." Like a merchant about to display prize wares, he set down the carpet he bore and unrolled it. On it rested a shamshir, hilt and scabbard so richly tooled and inlaid with silver wire that they could belong only to a tribal chief. He drew blade from sheath just far enough to show that the weapon had been lovingly tended. Calligraphy gleamed on the blade. Chaya did not need to pick it up to see the maker's mark. How strange after more than a lifetime to see a fine blade and know it to be the work of her husband Heber, fallen in the taking of Angband from the Saurons. Her hands itched to touch it, as if to touch her husband's hand.

Aisha's eyes widened. Her lips formed a name. The farmer smiled.

"Our father always said you had his sharp eyes, my sister. Yes, khatun. I am Dagor. Son of Juchi. And I welcome my kinswomen to—such as it is—my home."

"My hawk, my brother, my little prince . . ." The words tumbled from Aisha's lips as her hands went out to her brother. At the moment she would have touched him, he pushed their father's sword into her hands. Wonderingly, her fingers traced the fine calligraphy. Tears spilled over her cheeks, then dried.

"Where have you been all these years?" she asked.

"Going to and fro upon Haven and walking up and down on it," he replied. "Actually, that has been your lot, hasn't it?"

"But what . . .?"

"What did I do?"

"You were so close to manhood; I thought, surely he will be a warrior, his place is safe in the tribe . . . ."

"Safe? My father's son, and you thought I would be safe in the tribe he led?" Dagor glared at Ihsan and Kemal. "Oh, I was safe enough. I was fed. I was cared for, as long as I might stay among the women. But I felt myself a man, and they—your father, Kemal—feared my father's son. So he sent me to the encampments of Ay din . . . that set of traitors. 'Treat him with honor. Remember he is the son of a khan,' they were told. Honor? When they came into control of this oasis and needed to add to the numbers of men who farmed it, they left me here. They all but sold me, me, who had been heir to my father's tribe."

Kemal rose, hand on his dagger. Ihsan whispered urgently in his ear. "How do you expect us to believe you?" Ihsan asked.

Dagor reached out and took his father's blade from his sister. "Only blood and oil should touch the blade once it has been quenched, my sister. Not tears." His voice was curiously gentle; Chaya's trained ears could hear hints of the accent of the tribes around Tallinn.

"You think I want your place as heir?" Dagor laughed bitterly. "Nothing would persuade me to go back, not if every man in that tribe begged on his knees. Would Tarik Shukkur Khan welcome me? Yes, I heard you. I can hear anything you whisper. I have Sauron blood, remember? Lots and lots of it. I say your father threw me away to a tribe he could trust to make sure I would be no trouble to him, then lost his power and the tribe's birthright because he could not see that his ally was a stobor among the flock. And those two-legged stobor sold me so the tribe would not be dishonored by the presence of an accursed man's son.

"They have treated me well enough here. They even forget my father's sins, they are so grateful—proud in a way—that I can speak to warriors and merchants not as a slave but as a man of honor."

He spat. "Little did they know how little honor is mine. They know now. They may not wish me to stay, and I have no place to go. Walking up and down on Haven," he repeated. "I saw my mother defamed and dead, my father disgraced, my sister torn from her tents to wander Haven with no protection but a blind man, no home, no other kin . . . ."

"If it comes to your sister's care . . ." Karl bar Edgar cut in. He rested a hand on Aisha's shoulder. Chaya smiled as her niece leaned her cheek gratefully against it.

"You seem a decent man," said Dagor. "Ask me, and I will consent. But I ask as my sister's bride price, man of the Pale, that you return my honor to me. You have come here and snatched the life I made from me. The people I live among could endure me as long as Juchi, my father, was a distant horror, a matter of stories around the fire. But now that curses walk among them, my place here will be gone. Give me another life—and permission to ride with you."

Chaya poured another cup of tea and set it in Dagor's hand. He nodded thanks, one of the graces of his early life, drank, and belched politely.

"You take much upon yourself, nephew," she said. "And you ask much—and of the wrong person. I decide who rides with us and who bides at home. And I say: you shall stay here."

Aisha's instinctive protest, coupled with Kemal's and Ihsan's instant agreement, hurt Chaya's ears.

"Please," she said, prying the sword from Aisha and wrapping it in the tiny carpet. "Take this back. Keep it in honor, in memory of your father—and of my husband, who forged this blade for him. But, in the name of Allah, put this thought out of your mind. Give away the old garments that no longer fit—in any sense. You have been granted chances most men pray for: a chance to live clean of blood and blood feud. An escape from the curse of your father's and mother's blood. It is a gift, a grace. Take it!"

"I remember when we were boys. You were a good fighter and a brave one. But you are a farmer now," Kemal said. "You would hold us back."

As if signifying that Dagor disrupted important business, Kemal bent to his task of repairing a bridle.

"Let me," said Dagor. The leather was old, tangled and rigid and cracked; the metal buckles were twisted, as if a horse had pulled against restraint in a fit, or stepped on the piece of tack while it lay on the ground. The young man's fingers moved on the dirt-fused straps, careful and delicate. The iron buckles straightened into usefulness, shedding rust.

Kemal took it back with a grunt of thanks. Then he swore under his breath as he tried to bend one of the buckles himself; he could not, and the torsion heat in the metal was enough to scorch fingers callused hard by rein and bow and sword.

Dagor bowed himself before Chaya. "Chaya Khatun, I beg you."

She shook her head to clear it of the sounds of bells, the reeks of burning flesh and grasslands that she knew were only in her mind. She bent to stir the campfire, then drew from it a stick the flames had only charred, not devoured. She showed the wood to him.

"I beg you, Dagor. Listen to me. We are death-sworn. I have dreamed . . . I have seen . . . We carry destruction with us; for the Saurons, but few who ride with us will see their homes again. There is no room for glory in the grave. Let me save one brand, at least, from the burning. Your duty is to keep the blood alive, not spend yourself on vengeance—shall Juchi and Badri perish as if they had never been, shall the Breedmaster's malice triumph in the end? So, no. Marry. Have children. Prosper here, and become a khan among those who serve the caravans."

Dagor's face set in pure rejection. "Am I to have less honor than the women among you? You, my sister, do you say this as well?"

Aisha reached out to embrace him. He shook her off with a vehemence that would have hurt a woman who lacked Sauron blood. She went pale and still.

"It's no great blessing for any of us, Dagor," Chaya said. "For God's sake, man, it is a gift I am offering you. Not to have to be a warrior. Not to pour your blood out on the ground. Hear me, Dagor. I am offering you peace."

"No! If I am unworthy to ride with you, I will ride alone. Or walk alone. And when I can no longer walk, I will crawl . . . ."

Was the ground shuddering from a worse tremor than she had felt here, or was she shaking that hard? Steam bubbled from the nearer fumaroles like low-lying clouds. Her head came up. At the very edge of her awareness came the sound of harness bells.

Aisha, Dagor, and Lightning had also cocked their heads. None of the others had heard yet.

Dagor rose. "They are coming here, and I must prepare for them. 'Fresh fruit, hotsprings oyster pearls for the great lords.' " He hunched over, a terrible parody of the way a farmer might cringe before warriors as likely to take as to buy.

Aisha cried out in wordless protest.

"Why, what else has been left me, sister? It is not you whom I blame. May Allah light your way."

He bowed, prince again, not lout, and left their fireside.

"So be it." Chaya sighed and let the branch drop into the flames.

"Aisha?" Karl Haller asked.

Aisha had been listening to the approach of the caravan. At the sound of the physician's voice, she turned toward him, her face lightening. Karl had called her back to life before, Chaya knew, and found renewed life for himself. A pity he could not have won over Dagor, too.

"We have no time to grieve," Aisha said. But she brought her hand up to touch the physician's face in front of all of them; and the hurt in the air lightened a little.

"I will speak to your brother later," he promised.

"You will not find him."

Karl rose to his feet. "Will he walk out alone onto the steppe?" Except for Saurons, that was suicide.

Aisha shook her head mournfully. "Not as long as there is someone he can kill." She let him pull her up to stand beside him. "I am sorry, Karl. For everything but this."

 

Men arrived as the Seven rested. A few scarred dusty warriors one day; a noble's following the next, with a hall of embossed leather for their liege and knock-down dome tents for themselves. A whole clan, with their women and children in yurts on wheeled carts. Khans sent the eager youngsters who turned a ruler's hair white with worry over feuds and razziah and sword-backed intrigues over successions; Tarik was not the only one to think of that trick. Merchants of Ashkabad and Tsharburdjak sent horses, draught-muskies, bundles of arrows, sacks of dried meat, gunpowder and muskylope lard and leather and cracked grain. Their contributions to the Holy War.

Aisha preached to gatherings whose screams of exultation shook the stony face of the Cliff Lion, then wept and shivered in the privacy of her tent, in the comfort of her aunt's arms. Chaya judged and soothed, keeping peace among violent young men with old hatreds. Barak and Kemal assigned campgrounds and set the riders to exercise and competition; Karl swore and pleaded and bullied the growing horde into Bandari notions of sanitation, and almost wept with relief when half a dozen men and women with the twined-snake-and-staff emblem on the backs of their leather jackets rode in, their pack-train carrying camel-loads of medicines and tools.

 

Barak pressed an ear to the ground. "It's a big one," he said. "I don't think it's traders, either. They're moving fast, and they're moving light. They wouldn't if they had yurts." He rose. "Ama, it is an army they bring you. Are you ready to be a general once more?"

If he had put his hand into her chest and squeezed her heart, it could not have hurt more. "I am ready to receive them."

She pulled her clothes straight and let the younger men and women put their camp in order. Kemal brought her the bags from his horse and camels.

"Sit against these, khatun. To be a prince, you must also look like one."

Her back straight, her eyes dry, Chaya watched the riders approach, meet the scouts, deploy. Lightning's hearing had been right, of course. Dust billowed across the darkling hills, a mist of blood under Cat's Eye. Steel sparked within it, and the hooves were an endless thunder. Not a caravan, not even a raiding party, but a veritable army approached. Old Barak had trained her; she selected a section, counted, multiplied. And swallowed hard.

I expected hundreds. Not this.

"Ihsan, tell me. Who bears a tamerlane's skull as a standard?"

Kemal's blood-brother raised his eyebrows. "Does it glitter?"

Chaya nodded.

"So? The Gold Tamerlanes come from the east. They are a rich tribe, very fine fighters. The Citadel's hand lies heavy on them. Do any ride with them?"

"I see an ice-eagle, mounted on a spear as if in flight," Barak told him.

"Those are Kurds! I would not have thought they would hear this much or come this far to fight," Kemal said.

"They are mighty haters, my prince," Ihsan said. "And the tribes who dwell in the cliffs by Dyer Base have reason to hate. We can expect more of them to join us as we near Nûrnen."

"They are, I have heard, a blade that cuts both ways," Chaya said. "They have no friends but the mountains."

Aisha shook her head. "All blades do. I wonder what my brother will do with my father's sword."

With a snap of fabric as the wind caught them, the tribes' banners flared out. Tamerlanes, eagles, swords and stars danced on the wind, wreathed by lettering. God is great. In the name of Allah the merciful, the lovingkind. The warriors rode toward the oasis. They swept past Dagor's upright, lonely figure: he was a farmer, not worthy of notice when battle was at hand. Seeing seven people awaiting them, they screamed war cries. On either side, young men on the stocky, blood-red horses that were the steppes' pride broke from the army and rode in circles, pulling up sharply to make their horses rear in greeting.

Steam from the hot springs wreathed up before the approaching riders. They looked like a mirage now: an endless army.

What have I wrought? Chaya asked, and knew it for the wrong question. She had not wrought it, any more than she had wrought her brother's sword or her own. But here it was, hers to command—if she could.

Her son had turned to face the south. With the Gold Tamerlanes in sight, he dared not lose his dignity by casting himself upon the ground to listen for hoofbeats. "We will have other company soon."

 

Since the Cat's Eye rose, the oasis had bubbled and seethed like the fumaroles that surrounded it. From campsites ringing the central area, cookfires reeked of meat and dung. The complaints of camels and the whinnies of high-bred uncut horses, too closely picketed together because of their numbers, rose above the shouts of men escaped from the constraints of their lives into the release, as they thought, of war.

The farmers never stopped scuttling from fire to fire, backs bent, voices perpetually raised in pathetic whines. Without Dagor to lead them, they seemed no more than serfs of the tribes. Over Kemal's protests, Chaya sent him to see they were not robbed blind. An old man, his skullcap leathery with the sweat of T-years, flung himself before her. "Food they demand, great khatun, but they will eat us bare! And then what will they do? What shall we do when they leave?"

She flung him silver. It was not money the farmers needed, but a chance to recover from this curse in the form of too much trade. Money could not buy more than the land would yield; it would vanish like spring ice in bringing grain from elsewhere. The food that would have lasted until second harvest and on through winter was gone already. This growing army would have to keep moving, lest, like a fire, it burn itself to the ground and scorch forever any place where it remained too long.

"Like a plague of locusts in the old stories," Sannie muttered.

"Just so, Sannie-girl," Barak said, throwing an arm about her shoulders. "But they're our locusts."

Chaya's back ached as if claws of fire had raked it. She had spent the day greeting khans and heirs and notable warriors, in getting tribes and patronymics right, in joining men's hands and forcing them to at least temporary truce.

That much was statecraft. That much she could do. The management of an army? She had plotted the downfall of Angband Base. She had ridden with one tribe, perhaps two. But men and weapons kept pouring in, more than even she had ever seen. She shut her eyes, hoping, for once, for the visions that plagued her. But they came when they would, not at her need. Perhaps, if she could rest . . .

Aisha can lash them into frenzy. I can keep them from cutting each other's throats. The rest . . .

 

The tumult around the waterholes had subsided. Truenight settled, freezing even in summer, and very dark. Nothing but starlight, one of the sister moons, and, to Sauron eyes, the diffuse heat-glow of the hot springs. Chaya sat in the opened flap of her domed tent nursing a mug of tea when Barak raised his head. "Company coming," he announced.

"At truenight?"

"They must be very good. Or crazy," he replied.

"One of us had better watch for them, or the tribes will be sure it's bandits."

"Make it two," said Barak.

Chaya rose, groaning inwardly at the effort it took to make her movements look unforced.

"Let me come," said Karl bar Edgar. He had changed into leathers bearing the twined-snakes insignia that anyone who had ever known Bandari would revere and spare. He let her set the pace.

"Stop watching me," she snapped.

Behind her, he chuckled.

Chaya and Barak saw the warmth of bodies moving against hoarfrosted steppe long before Karl's binoculars caught the glint of starlight on metal. Fine horses, sturdy muskylopes, heavy wagons—

"They're ours!" Karl exclaimed.

"Barak, you bastard." Chaya blinked furiously. The old kapetein had been so angry at his election that he had refused even to see the Seven off. And now . . .

"I don't believe it," Karl fan Haller said. "I don't believe it."

The Bandari rode into the oasis. Theirs was not a caravan or a raiding party, but a combination of both. Heavy-armed riders guarded wagons that bore the mark of the fan Reenan and fan Gimbutas clans, or the Pale's symbol from the armories.

"Some of that's from Ashkabad," Karl muttered. "Why is Yigal fan Reenan sending it to us?"

Some wagons rode especially low on their axles. Chaya would have bet they contained weapons and tools. When she saw the man who drove the lead wagon, she was certain.

"He's sent us engineers, too. That's Sapper, remember? The one who built that dam?"

"I don't like it, I don't like it at all," Karl muttered. "There's enough here for a good-sized war."

"Then it may even be enough," Chaya said. "Let's greet our friends."

"Ho, chaverim!" came a shout hailing them. A couple of riders trotted forward, then dismounted before any of the tribesmen watching—fully armed despite the restraining oaths that seemed now to have all the power of lullabies—could decide they were raiders.

 

"I don't believe it," Chaya said flatly.

"Neither do I," said the mediko. "My least-favorite patient Hammer-of-God, why the hell did they let you out of your cage?"

Ignoring Karl, the newcomer came forward. Tall, with the sandy coloring and light hair of the Edenites, he wore leathers and felts like a tribesman and more weapons than any other man she had ever seen. He had a limp so slight that it could have been no more than cramps from riding all day. Stubbornness. She had seen that wound when he was brought in on a litter raving with fever, after the journey up the southern escarpment. Fungus-infested wound deep enough to push a fist into. Madness. That was still there in the pale cold eyes.

The eyes. She always remembered the eyes, as she had seen them so long ago, the night Heber died and Barak was begotten.

Still mad—though the years had tempered the madness with experience and sharpened it with caution. Still doing the Lord's work with hammer blows. It was an irony, that she had tried to follow the path of forgiveness, and the Christian soldier worshiped the God of Joshua. Jesus forgives; Hammer doesn't, went the joke in the h'gana, the army of the Pale.

He came to stand before her. No, before the Judge.

"Your Honor," he greeted her. Bandari did not go in much for what old Piet's books called "spit and polish." Just as well, or Chaya would have had to learn how to respond to it.

"Hammer-of-God, I am no longer 'Your Honor.' "

"Let anyone say that in front of me," he said. "Kapetein Barak doesn't think so either."

Chaya paused. "I always thought," she said frankly—it was a relief to be able to do that, as an exile—"you didn't like me."

Hammer's lined face split in a grin. "I didn't. You drove me to sinful rage many a time. But I always respected you, which is more important . . . Your Honor."

"What are you doing here?" Karl's demand broke the moment, much to Chaya's relief.

"Oom Yigal and Barak damned well drafted me!" The Edenite braced hands on hips and shook his head. "After you medikos took all the cash I had in payment for telling me I was old and tired, I was minding my own business and my own fields, when the old man rode out and made me an offer I couldn't refuse."

"Stubborn," she said. "How long did it take your arm to heal after fan Reenan twisted it?"

He laughed. "Where do you want us, ama?"

"You really want to know? I wish to hell you had never come out."

"So do I," Hammer-of-God said. "So does Oom Yigal. And so will those two no-goods, his son Karl and that Shulamit of his. I hope you've got them tied up good. Bring them back if you can, Yigal said. He didn't say anything about tanning their butts."

"Karl, Shulamit—here?" Chaya asked. "We haven't seen them." Not another cousin! she thought. This was turning into quite the family outing. A real mishpocha. I'm sorry, Miriam, Dvora.

"Shaysse!" Karl and Hammer-of-God swore simultaneously.

"You're telling me they ran off to join us, is that it?" she demanded.

"Them and half the young fools in the Pale."

"We don't have them. Karl and Shulamit, that is. Plenty of the young fools, and more every cycle."

She spoke to the Edenite's back, as he gestured his people in. "Sapper, you're going to take over. They say they haven't seen our two runaways. I'm going to pick out a few horses and a couple riders and go . . ." He started forward, his limp noticeably worse.

"Your leg!" Chaya exclaimed.

"Stop worrying, ama. I figure I have one more campaign left in me."

"You're going nowhere!" the mediko said. "Except, maybe the hot springs over there. Just what the doctor ordered. How's Yigal doing?"

"Best thing about being a civilian was getting away from you bloodsuckers," Hammer-of-God retorted. "He's holding up, so far. The fan Reenans don't live the longest lives on Haven, lucky bastards."

She motioned him toward their fire, letting him set the pace. "You don't have to tell them what to do or even watch them. They know how to make camp all by themselves." It got a laugh from him.

"Was getting rid of the medikos the best thing about civilian life?" Chaya asked.

"Second best. First best was not having to fight. Working my own land. Watching my sisters' boys grow up—not like me, thank God, Whose judgments are just and righteous altogether. Chaya, we've seen eye to eye, haven't we? On occasion?"

She looked up at the Edenite. "Flattery—Yigal didn't pay you enough, so you want to borrow money from me?"

He snorted. "I'm asking for the truth. Kapetein's been calling this a crusade. He was of half a mind to send out the artillery. Damned near broke Sapper's heart when he decided against it." He lowered his voice. "Ties in very well indeed with the plan for you-know-what. More than a distraction, he says. Is it?"

"That bad? It's worse. We've never lied to each other. Not in the years you were our best general when it came to the tribes, not when we disagreed, either. You know how they feel about feuds, or working out a curse. Well, we've got both."

Hammer sighed and sank down on his saddlebags, rubbing at his leg.

"Hammer-of-God." Kemal's shadow covered the newcomer. Ihsan stood nearby, his hand on his swordhilt. "Tell me, to what do we owe this pleasure—a pleasure I have long awaited?"

There were a number of ways of interpreting that; one was that this was outside the bounds of the peace treaty between Kemal's tribe and the Pale. The nomad's face was full of fierce gladness.

"The blessings of Allah upon you and your house," Hammer said courteously. "Come, sit, we will talk." He could speak half a dozen tribal dialects perfectly, and Kemal's native tongue was the first he had learned.

"Shall I sit and break bread with the slayer of my father?" Kemal said in the same level tone. His voice was calm, but a hand's-breath of bright metal showed between his hand and the chape of his sword-scabbard.

"Shall we make war on each other, Kemal Mustafoglu?" Hammer-of-God said. "Did those valiant warriors"—he signed to where the men of Tarik's tribe were picketed—"come this far to fight mine? Or are we at war with the Saurons, each of us?"

Sweat broke out on Kemal's face. "My father's blood—"

"—will wait for vengeance. If you break your oath to the others of the Seven, will the jihad against the accursed of God be ready to pick up once more when we are done with each other? I see many warriors here, many banners, many tribes. Which of them does not see the faces of the slayers of their fathers, their brothers, among the others here?"

"Oh, you are a serpent, and your tongue is sharper than your sword," Kemal whispered. Ihsan waited behind him, tensed like a cliff lion waiting for its prey.

"The kapetein sent me to see the Saurons suffer as much as possible. Yigal fan Reenan sent me, because his son Karl has run off to join you."

"They made a bad choice of errand boy," Kemal said, with ominous slowness. "And I think there are many ghazis here, many warriors of the Faith, who will agree with me."

Hammer-of-God chuckled into a silence that stretched. "You have a lot of tribes here. A lot of tribes mean a lot of feuds. There's one thing all of you agree on. You all hate Saurons. But we're a long way from any Saurons. So you need something else to agree on to hate. And here I am. So focus on that, and keep your knives off each other."

"I will kill any man who touches you," said Kemal, soft and fervent. "Oh, such a man I would slay as one who snatched my beloved bride from the bed of our wedding night."

The Edenite nodded in complete understanding. "I give you my word. I'd rather kill Saurons than any of you."

The pause lasted past the time when knives might have been drawn. Kemal laughed harshly. "Allies. Your word is good, as all men know. But when we are not, when the Saurons are cast down and my oath fulfilled . . ."

"I'll let you have a head start," said Hammer-of-God. He waited. "Well?"

Kemal snapped his fingers at Ihsan, who went to the fire and returned with bread and salt. The older man shared it out, and the nomads ate as if every bite were gall.

"In the name of Allah the merciful, the lovingkind, be welcome," Kemal muttered. Ihsan echoed him. Both men walked off.

Please God, to explain things to the other leaders, Chaya thought. Now that Hammer-of-God was their guest, anyone who harmed him must answer to their swords. And vice versa, of course.

Hammer-of-God nodded to the others of the Seven, politely averting his eyes from Aisha, who actually dared a smile for him. As they stood there, his own people came up. "Sayeret," he said: Scouts. Several quiet, weathered-looking fighters with armor the color of the steppe rose and left.

"You think you'll be all right?" Chaya asked.

Hammer-of-God shrugged, munching away on the ritual hospitality. It looked very dry. "No point wasting it."

"We can feed you better than that."

"We brought our own supplies."

"Tonight, save them. We can't manage a wedding feast, but there'll be enough."

 

The last whisper died from around the cookfires. The tribes, like the Bandari, were great gossips; and to the usual fare about Juchi's curse and the Seven they added scandal about the Bandari caravan, the Bandari women warriors and the unwelcome presence of the one among the Bandari whom they hated above all others, but must greet as an ally. All in all, a very pleasant night at the beginning of what looked like a very promising war.

Chaya had to restrain herself from blurting that out in front of Kemal and Ihsan. Long after the other fires had been banked, the Seven sat around theirs, talking with the newcomers until shoulders sagged and voices turned drowsy. Barak and Sannie slipped away, hand in hand. Kemal bowed formally, on his most oppressively good behavior before the general he distrusted most. Hammer-of-God waved off Karl bar Edgar's offer of help and limped toward the hotsprings.

Aisha and Chaya sat gazing into the fire. "There's no sleep for me tonight, child," the older woman said. "I'm going to walk about the camp."

"Will you be safe?" Tribes-bred Aisha still found the idea of a woman unaccompanied somewhat shocking—except for herself, of course, and she had always walked with her father.

"At my age? What about you?" Girl, I could wish you and Karl would simply sneak off like my son and Sannie. Be a little happy for as long as you can.

Aisha laughed. "I am who I am. Who would touch me?"

"You could find a place among the other Bandari."

To Chaya's astonishment, Aisha leaned over and kissed her cheek. "Our mother would have loved you," she said. "Loved you as a daughter, if she had known."

Chaya almost jerked away. "I . . . knew Badri. From the destruction of Angband. Before she . . ." Before she married my brother and her son. "We were friends."

Aisha looked down humbly. "I'm sorry."

"For what? Treating me like the family we are? I knew our mother. I liked and respected her. Remember this, girl. She was the property of a Sauron, yet she destroyed him and all his kind. Think of that instead of . . . of the other things. And be proud of her for once."

Chaya made her voice harsh, forcing the words out past a lump in her throat. "You sure you won't bed down with the others? They'd welcome you."

Aisha sighed. Then she gathered up her packs. "If you'll be all right, I guess I will." She moved off into the darkness between fires, her steps unerring. Chaya heard her voice explaining, heard another woman's voice rise in welcome, and turned her attention back to her own thoughts.

Needing silence, she wandered away from the camps, away from the fields (soon to be stripped bare) and the huts where the farmers no doubt cowered. A map pyrographed on leather—Dagor's work, perhaps—nailed up at the beginning of the trail warned her which springs and pools to avoid. A glance locked it in her memory. Then she entered a place so blasted it made the rest of Haven seem like a garden.

The Cat's Eye shone on a landscape straight out of some nightmare of Gehenna. On one side of her, bubbles plopped and broke stinking in mud pools. Beyond them, the land was sere. Stubs of trees thrust upward, coated by minerals from centuries upon centuries of geysers. Their cones jutted upward; one spouted a thin plume of steam and white water.

Sprays burst from a grotto of squat, rounded rocks. Chaya's skin tightened, sensing the violent heat of that water and the power locked far underfoot. Would it explode one day, peeling this entire place off the face of Haven? Would peace come only with death?

She shuddered. The water falling back into the pools sounded like bells. The sulfur smell grew strong.

Some of the pools came in tiers, a pleasant place to relax at the end of the day or to soak out aches. She was sure her son and Sannie had found one such place. Perhaps Hammer-of-God, looking for a pool to soak his leg, had quite literally stumbled in on them. She grinned. Well, if she hadn't heard any shouting . . . She went on, past a pool in which luminous blue and red bubbles flickered, as if fire had been contained in glass and sunk beneath the water.

How quiet it was here, except for the steam and the water. The ground was warm, even through her boots. When she rested a hand on a rock, it was warm and slick with salty water. This pool before her looked inviting. Her thoughts flashed back to the leather map.

Warm water. Safe water. Heavy with salts, it would buoy her. Soon, she promised herself. First, she needed to think. Sighing, she sank down. What was the line? By the waters of Babylon we sat and wept as we remembered Zion . . . Time was when she remembered all of the psalms. Time was . . . time was . . .

She let her head sag back against the rock. Go to the rock for comfort? No, that came from somewhere else. That was right. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

Her mind raced backward in time, counting over her mother and her mother's mother to Ruth, the first Judge on Haven, to all the other Judges there were. Only that dawn, she had spoken of Judge Golda who had cooked for her warriors, then sent them off. Judge Golda, it was, who had faced a need to bring the Wasting down upon her enemies, who longed to kill herself to avoid it—and then found another way.

Ama, sister, help me! she pleaded.

There was no help for the likes of her. It was in her blood, in her blood, in her blood. Overhead the Cat's Eye glared redly on the pool. A moment ago, it had looked so tempting. Now, if she entered the water, she would be bathing in blood.

The ground and the rock supporting her back and head trembled. Somewhere, a geyser erupted. Her nose protested the stink of minerals. Her head whirled and her ears rang. Warm fluid bathed her face. She clawed at it, and shut her eyes lest she see her fingers come away red. The reek made her gag.

She remembered the psalm again, the terrible lines: Happy are they who dash the heads of their enemies' children against the stones.

She remembered too well. Shocked, she heard herself whimper. Then her mind was seized, thrust to look upon a vision of a child, casually thrown from a wall, falling, falling, falling. Children crying, children bleeding, children falling and dying—and all of them somehow her own, as banners thrust like lances about her and the flash of blades blinded her. Riders charged behind her, their teeth and the teeth of their horses grinning like the jaws of skulls, forcing her forward.

A huge roaring came—the guns that could hurl death over Sauron walls—but they were aimed at her.

She screamed hoarsely and fell, spasming, then going rigid. Smoke engulfed her, and the clamor of the bells and the child's scream thrust her down.

 

For a long moment, Chaya stared into the Cat's Eye, and it stared back. So had it been her whole life. She watched the Cat's Eye, and the Cat's Eye watched her. She yawned, like a great cat herself. It would be good to rest here, where the mists of hot water rose up to comfort her. So good.

She drowsed. But the Cat's Eye stared at her as a hungry animal stares at its mistress. Shaking her head a little, she tried to rise. It was hard work. She gave it up.

No one was around whom she could ask, "What happened?" Just as well. She could draw her own conclusions. At least, she had no need to ask, "Where am I?" She knew that perfectly. She was in Cliff Lion Springs, by a hot pool; and she had clearly suffered a seizure. She remembered smoke and crying out and falling, but nothing more. She remembered hearing that sometimes, after a fit, you lost memory.

She had lost more. Not just a belief so deeply buried that she had only now begun to realize how strong it was: that, with her Sauron blood, she was invulnerable to anything but violence. She was vulnerable now to the worst of the Sauron bloodlines: recessives coming out to betray her, body and soul. Would she collapse first, or would she plummet into the chasm between madness and true vision?

She moaned and spat out the wadded cloth she found, in surprise and a stab of shame, between her jaws. She lay straightened out on her side, as if someone had come along while she was unconscious, kept her from rolling into the pool or crashing into the rocks as she convulsed, then laid her out in the most comfort that could be afforded.

"Laid her out." Not yet, Chaya, she told herself. Not yet.

She smelled, not smoke, but the acrid reek of her own urine. The humiliation brought her back to full awareness. Now she found herself able to move. She must cleanse herself, soak away the sickness and the fear. She stripped off the fouled clothes and lowered herself into the pool. The water, heavy with minerals, was soft to her skin. She floated easily. She could have lain like that forever, but when her head began to loll to one side, she knew she must sleep.

Reluctantly she climbed from the pool. Even more reluctantly, she picked up the clothes her body's weakness had soiled. She hated the idea of seeing them, let alone touching or wearing them. Fabrics caught her eye, neatly draped over a nearby rock. She snatched them up; the suppleness of clean leather, wool and linen caught on her roughened hands. She found herself shivering, and dressed fast. Even for one of tainted Sauron blood, the night was cold.

She wadded up her other clothes, buried them under a flat rock, and headed back to the camp of the Seven. She wanted to sleep, but she did not want to be alone. Perhaps someone was there, someone who could tell her who had nursed her through her fit, then vanished so she would not have to feel shame when she awoke.

Someone knew she had betrayed herself. She hoped that knowledge would not cost her more than she could pay.

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Framed