A JOURNEY TO THE BURNT LANDS
The city of Aghiras was all white and gold, the domes and spires
floating out of the sea mist as the galleys of the Southland drew near. The men and women of the special escort had been underway for ten days, with the long river journey from Pfolben to the Sea of Ara, but no one felt weary. They plunged into the teeming life of the wharves and the bazaars. Camels, by the Goddess, bobbing and sneering everywhere, and strange faces under turban and tarboosh. There was a desert warrior, white robed, and there three women, jet black, with huge baskets on their proud heads. There strode the much-vaunted palace guards of the Dhey, the Gaura, in bronze helmets.
Florus, Captain-General of Blayn’s escort, drew his men together and consulted with Captain Verreker of the kedran. Where were the marvelous horses, the steeds bred to outrun the winds of the desert, the coursers of the sun? He began to parley with the detail of the Gaura sent to meet them. Gael Maddoc, at his side, was able to tell him that the horses were waiting behind the palace, beyond the pleasure gardens. So they marched off, sixty strong, and Gael, with the rank of acting captain, after
only just short of four years’ service, went in a silken litter to be near her lord.
Blayn was as happy and as well behaved as she had ever known him. He did not set much store by the glamor of the Burnt Lands, their magic and mystery, but he loved to hunt. The opportunity to test himself against the other princes: Lalmed, son of the Dhey; Meed-al-Mool, called the Red Prince, from Ferss; Kirris Paldo of Eildon, his distant cousin; not to mention Noulith, the warrior queen of the Valfutta … this was the sort of competition that truly excited him.
As Blayn leaned back on the silken cushions, Gael Maddoc watched the sights of the bazaar through a gap in the curtains. In the curve of a doorway outlined in raw turquoise, she saw a man watching them: he was very tall, hawk faced, in a straight black robe embroidered in gold. On his neat white turban he wore a single emerald that flamed suddenly as if the sun had caught it.
Her ring sent out a little dart of fire onto the curtain of the litter and the sword.
Ishkar
moved in its sheath under Blayn’s hand.
“What the devil … ?” he said.
“See, my lord!” said Gael. “The tall man yonder, could it be … ?”
“Yes,” he said, rising and peering through the curtains, “it might be Zallibar, the Swordmaker. I glimpsed him once in the Dhey’s train when they came to Pfolben four years past. When I received my sword.”
“He is surely a great magician as well as a craftsman,” she said. “He watches us.”
“Have no fear, Maddoc,” laughed Blayn. “He serves the Dhey, and old Lalmed the Fat still has hopes that I will wed his daughter Farzia.”
Gael gave him a questioning look, although she had heard the tale before. Blayn shook his head.
“One day you must come to it,” she said, smiling.
“Maddoc, stop talking like my mother!”
Gael Maddoc glanced again into the streets of Aghiras and caught sight of a poor woman carrying a waterskin and a slender, curly-headed lad who ran after her on dusty feet. She
thought of her own childhood; she seemed to see her brother Bress following as her mother did the chores and drew water from the well. She held fast to the moment and the memories it conjured. Through all the ceremonies in the palace of the Dhey, she remembered who she was, Gael Maddoc, from Holywell Croft on the Chyrian coast of Mel’Nir.
Later she saw the Dhey himself, overflowing his jeweled throne; she saw the silken luxury of the palace, where even the kedran were housed in perfumed splendor. Beyond the pleasure gardens with their fountains and groves of tamarisk, she went with the other men and women of the escort to choose a horse, one of the coursers of the sun, from the Dhey’s stable.
It was here that she first met Jazeel. She examined a black mare in its box and knew that two of the Gaura and a woman house servant stood behind her in the shadow of a palm tree. One voice said in the language of Aghiras:
“That is the one … tall as an afreet with fox-red hair.”
“Walks like a man. You know what they say about women warriors.”
“Find out!” ordered the old woman. “Find out her secret heart … .”
Then he was before her, bowing gravely as he said his name.
“Madame Captain,” he said in the common speech. “Let me show you the horse I would choose …”
“My thanks, good Jazeel.”
Gael Maddoc laughed to herself and thought of the night back at home in Pfolben when she would be telling the tale to her friends Amarah and the light-laughing Mev Arun. The man sent to gain her favor was tall and strong; he had a rugged face and a ready smile. She knew why he was sent to her and could guess who had sent him. The Princess Farzia, a languorous, dark beauty, still cherished hopes of a match with Blayn of Pfolben. She wished to know his heart.
It had all happened before: she had been offered presents of one kind or another, she had been courted. So far she had proved incorruptible. She asked no favors of her lord Hem Blayn, and she told none of his secrets. There were times when she wished she
had
put in a word to her master. Sergeant Witt had said that the kedran escort for the Royal Hunt were showy
and lightweight; they needed a leaven of experienced soldiers. The desert held uncalculated dangers, and everyone had heard of hunting accidents.
Now, far from her friends in Kestrel Company, Gael Maddoc did not put off Jazeel.
If Hem Blayn kept the poor princess dangling, why shouldn’t she do the same with this guardsman? The voluptuous air of Aghiras worked its magic upon all the visitors … a month spent by the Lakes of Dawn was bound to be a month of pleasure. She allowed Jazeel to lead her to an inner stall where there was a fine-boned brown mare with a burnishing of black along her spine and on her delicate muzzle, mane, legs, and tail. He waved away a groom who said the visitors must all choose from the loose boxes. The mare was called Azarel, which was a name of the Goddess in the hunting field.
The caravan moved southeast from the city to the sound of flutes; the outriders, two hundred strong, were bowmen of Sarcassir, who ringed the caravan by day and by night. The palace guard rode next, then a long train of snow-white oxen with gilded hooves, who pulled the wheeled carriage of Dhey Lalmed. Under the wide canopy of cloth of gold, the Dhey rode with a few chosen men and women of his court.
Next came racing camels, led by Young Lalmed and his friend, the Red Prince, Meed-al-Mool. Then, behind his escort, all finely dressed and well mounted, came Blayn of Pfolben, fretting because the Red Prince was placed before him. Kirris of Eildon came up to ride with his cousin and grumble about roughing it in foreign lands. The baggage train of the expedition, with silken bails of provender, with furled tents and carpet rolls, with coffers of precious herbs and donkey loads of kitchenware, trailed behind like the tail of a kite.
By day and by night, as Gael rode in her place near Hem Blayn, Jazeel came by with a basket of figs, a jar of honey, a coral amulet. They talked most companionably together and strolled about in the twilight after the camp had been set down. The low tents were spread out, first among the fields, then upon the sand. The cold air from the desert was full of music and voices. Gael kept watch for the Swordmaker and thought she saw him more than once. He descended from the Dhey’s carriage;
he lurked, in a different guise, among the horse pickets. He stood in a field, drawing water from an old well, as the caravan went by.
So they came at dawn to the Lakes of Dawn; in the light of the rising sun, the sheets of water seemed to hover like a vast mirage, just above the horizon. There, in the tender green of the reed forests, rose the pavilions of Noulith, the warrior queen, and the hunting platforms of the Dhey. The unearthly beauty of the place troubled Gael Maddoc; the lakes would vanish away, she knew that, but she would remember them always—they would remain in her dreams. The hunt began and she was more than ever troubled, though the killing of wildfowl and antelope had always been the sport of princes.
“Nay, come,” said her friend Jazeel, “I know you do not like to see the trophies spread out, the feather carpet, but these birds must be culled. They are an overgrowth like the lakes themselves. Come the season’s end, they will flock to the sown land and spoil the planting.”
They sat in the reeds, and round about there were other men and women, drinking a little wine, strumming upon a lute, then growing quieter in their own green bowers. Gael Maddoc let her head rest upon Jazeel’s shoulder and thought of nothing but the shimmer of the lovely lakes, so soon to pass away. So they made love, but before dawn she always slipped away and returned to the door of the tent where Blayn of Pfolben had his bed. The young noblemen had their own diversions; every night there was a feast, with music and dancing.
Blayn was having a marvelous hunt. He outran with the number of his trophies all but Meed-al-Mool, the Red Prince. There were one or two of those unfortunate incidents that seemed to pursue the young Lord of the Southland. A beater of the Valfutta was shot with one of Blayn’s arrows; there was a disagreement over the count of blue antelope: Young Lalmed swore he had been robbed.
Every morning when she saw Blayn ride out or step into his boat Gael Maddoc felt the same wonder and pride … she served this noble lord, she was his kedran. In the evening when they trailed back from the hunt she was relieved if things had gone well. Slowly, slowly the weather grew hotter, the reeds withered
and turned brown, the lakes became more shallow. At last, before the season was quite ended, the caravan packed up and took to the desert road to return to Aghiras.
Gael Maddoc had passed the time of the hunt in a dream, and now, one day from the lakes, the dream became a nightmare. She was riding with Jazeel behind Blayn and Captain-General Florus; the trumpeters of the Dhey had just sounded the call to make camp for the night. Then a brace of camels came racing, stiff legged, through the ranks, horses reared and shrieked. Gael saw a camel boy she knew, his face a mask of fear. He cried out:
“Afreet! Afreet!”
Jazeel uttered a curse and pointed off to the west Something moved like a cloud of oily smoke, blue and black against the pale sand. Lightning crackled at the edges of this strange cloud as it came rolling swiftly into the midst of the caravan. For a moment, holding her brown mare steady, Gael saw the cloud take shape. It reared high above the mounted columns: a blue cloud giant with a fearsome grinning face, blazing red eyes, and mighty arms, outstretched to grasp its prey.
Then she was struck to the ground, together with her mount; she saw nothing but flailing hooves. She dragged herself free of the poor struggling mare and was surrounded by howling blue darkness. The shapes of weapons, harness, pieces of cloth whirled upward and she heard a terrible voice, the voice of the Afreet, speaking in a strange tongue.
She lunged forward to the place where she knew Blayn had been riding, fell across his splendid white horse and found her lord unhurt. She dragged him upright and together they raised the horse and pressed away to the east, bent low. She heard Florus shouting and saw him still mounted beyond the cloud, with a few of the Southland escort gathering about him. She came to him with Blayn, and they all ran together, hardly looking back, and came round the shoulder of a dune.
No one could speak; they stood in darkness. The desert night had come down, and pandemonium still raged beyond the dune. It lasted only a short time, then there was an uneasy silence broken by a series of thunderclaps. A voice whispered at Gael’s elbow:
“That is the Afreet moving away!”
She peered and saw it was Ali, the camel boy. Her eyes became accustomed to the darkness; she saw Blayn, unharmed, and his white horse, clearly visible in the night. She saw a crowd of fugitives, most of them men and women of the Southland. They began asking questions and Ali answered them as best he could in the common speech. The Afreet was an evil spirit that attacked caravans. An Afreet could buffet human beings in this way, could lift things up, like the whirlwind. An Afreet could be called up by a magician, and it could be put down if one knew the right words.
One of the guardsmen had torches, which were lit with a tinderbox.
Captain-General Florus said uneasily:
“Hem Blayn, I must go back and see what damage has been done.”
“Go along,” said Blayn. “You, boy, will the demon come back?”
“Afreet sometimes come back,” said Ali. “Stay here, lord. Make camp here. Go back in daylight. The caravan will halt.”
Florus and two other guardsmen still had their horses; he numbered off five more to follow him. Gael thought of Jazeel, parted from her between one word and the next. A pair of Eildon kedran, an archer of the Sarcassir, an old servant woman, all followed the guardsmen to return to the caravan. The rest made camp where they were, sharing their cloaks and eating cold lamb and oranges.
Gael remained standing by the white horse and a second horse that had come by riderless. She thought guiltily of her good mare Azarel that she had left in order to find her lord. It had been her duty to bring him to safety. Perhaps for this sad loss, the Goddess had come to her aid. At last she moved up the dune a little and settled down to sleep.