Eternal Sky 01(71)

‘The ghost of my father beckons

But in his left hand conceals a bloody sword.…’

“Well, the scansion is better in the original, but you get the point. And sword might be knife, just as easily—”

“That’s what I saw on the steppe. Ghosts that could mutilate humans at will, but only be hurt by salted weapons.”

“And something broke through every roof in Qeshqer,” Samarkar added.

“According to this,” said Hong-la, “al-Rachīd was known to dress himself in the flesh and skin of his victims, and go out so disguised.”

Temur’s teacup rattled when he set it down. Samarkar was staring at him; quickly, as he noticed, she lowered her eyes.

“I saw that in a dream,” Temur said around the ice in his heart. “It was terrible. But Hrahima said that one of the Rahazeen murder cults—al-Sepehr, she said, a leader of the Nameless—”

“They need another name,” Hong-la said dryly. “They take that title, al-Sepehr, from the proper name of al-Rachīd.”

Temur snorted. “Hrahima thinks the necromancy is his doing. She thinks, or her patron thinks, I suppose.”

Hong-la contemplated his food for a moment before poking morsels into his mouth and chewing slowly and steadily, swallowing before he spoke again. “This al-Sepehr you mention is, as you say, the leader of an outlawed Rahazeen splinter group. One of the murder cults. One of the doctrines of the Nameless is that the Carrion-King was the true prophet of their Scholar-God, not Ysmat of the Beads or her Daughter. This is the same Scholar-God the Uthmans and the Aezin worship, though each tribe proclaims its own prophets. The Nameless believe that one day al-Rachīd will rise from the grave. As you can imagine, that doesn’t make them … popular with less-radical sects.”

A bit of the white meat found its way into Hong-la’s mouth, followed by a sip of tea. Temur found himself spindling his fingers together, one over the other.

But it was Samarkar who answered. “I can’t imagine why.”

* * *



This time, it was al-Sepehr who summoned Saadet. The young woman came at a run, her slippered feet scuffing on stone, the skirts of her robes trailing about her. She had been in the women’s quarters, al-Sepehr thought, because she held an unpinned veil before her face in a hand still stained with turmeric.

Al-Sepehr still held a broken stone in his hand, rapidly cooling, the blood that linked it to its mate all but worn away. He slipped it into his pocket and regarded the young woman’s eyes. “Your brother,” he said, with less ceremony than he might have normally offered her.

“He can hear you,” she said.

Not for the first time, he wondered what it was like—for two bodies, two minds, two persons to share one set of knowledge and sensations and memories. When he’d made them, he hadn’t thought of Shahruz and Saadet as people. They had been infants, twins exposed in the desert because twins were unlucky. Especially fraternal twins: It was too easy to work magic through them, and the nomadic tribes wouldn’t suffer them to live.

It wasn’t much better in towns. Al-Sepehr never had much expense securing twins for his spell casting. Sometimes the greatest trouble was finding a set alive.

“I have spoken with my ally in Tsarepheth,” al-Sepehr said. “Re Temur is there, in the company of a wizard. He is being kept at the Citadel.”

Saadet exhaled softly and said in Shahruz’s clipped tones, “Do you wish him dead?”

“I can bring his woman and unborn heir against Qori Buqa as easily,” al-Sepehr said. “And Re Temur is … troublingly lucky. Yes. Be rid of him.”

Saadet pressed a fist across her chest with warrior crispness. “It shall be as you command,” she said.





11



Samarkar watched Temur groping his way around the edges of his nightmare for the second time, and found it no easier than the first. Hong-la, however, watched intently, nodding encouragement now and again when Temur faltered. When the last faltering stretched into silence, Hong-la picked up the teacup that Samarkar had refilled yet again and cupped it before his face. He glanced at Samarkar, and Samarkar followed with a brief description of what Hrahima had told them about Qori Buqa and the tiger’s patron, Ato Tesefahun—just to confirm that it jibed with what she’d revealed to the elder wizards.

The last name drew a blink, perhaps the most surprise she’d ever seen Hong-la register.

“Well,” he said, “that makes things even more interesting. Master Tesefahun, as you may or may not know, is a wizard in his own right. A well-respected one. I have some of his works here. It would be interesting to speak with him in person regarding this issue, but if he has seen fit to warn us”—Hong-la sighed—“we must take that warning seriously.