‘Well, I don’t understand it either. I’m as frustrated as you are with all these damned riddles.’
‘Like why Warkannan’s trying to kill you?’
‘That, too.’
Ammadin’s mouth twisted as if she disbelieved him, but she turned her head and looked over his shoulder, as if something behind him had distracted her. ‘I’ve got to talk with Apanador,’ she said. ‘We can discuss this later.’
She stepped around him and walked off. He waited, letting her get well ahead of him, then went slowly back to camp. He reminded himself that he needed to act the part of a servant, that screaming in rage at a spirit rider would get him kicked out of the comnee at the very least. As soon as you’re across, he told himself, you’ll be leaving her behind.
The sun had risen well above the horizon by the time the comnee rode out. Zayn had always imagined the Rift as a deep gorge, narrow, craggy, perhaps even forbidding, but when they reached it, the reality shocked him. He stood for a long time staring down at the ribbon of orange foliage far below, laced with the gleam of water, at the mists that hid the far wall, at the vast length of the thing, and remembered Ammadin’s remark, that here the earth was tearing apart. He could no longer argue the point.
‘Zayn?’ Ammadin walked up beside him and handed him a rag, damp and faintly sticky with plant sap. ‘Rub this on your face and neck, your hands, too, or the rebbuhs will eat you alive.’
‘Thanks.’ Zayn took the rag and began rubbing. ‘What about the horses?’
‘The rebbuhs won’t bother them. They only like the taste of H’mai.’ She paused, glancing down into the Rift. ‘It’s quite a sight, isn’t it?’
‘It’s amazing. I’m glad I’ve seen it. The descriptions I’ve read don’t do it justice.’
‘I thought your wise men would have drawn pictures of it.’
‘No, they never do that. The Prophets forbid making images of God’s creations.’
‘You and your prophets! Your people are always looking backwards, aren’t they? The first prophet, the second – they all lived hundreds of years ago.’
‘The laws are eternal.’
‘That sounds like something from one of your father’s books.’
‘It is.’ Zayn gave her a rueful smile. ‘It goes on: the laws are eternal and universal, for God is everywhere in time and space.’
‘He must be busy, then, running around everywhere with no one to help him.’
Zayn thought at first that she was teasing him, but she looked solemn, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she stared down into the Rift. She had uncoiled her long blonde braids and let them hang down her back. Uneven wisps of hair stuck to her sweaty face. He found himself wanting to reach out with his fingertips and smooth them away, but she looked up and considered him so coldly that he wondered if she’d read his mind.
‘It’s time to get moving,’ Ammadin said. ‘I consulted my crystals earlier, and the earth is going to stay quiet for the trip down. Can you imagine what would happen if there was an earthquake when we were on the Riftgate?’
‘I can, yes,’ Zayn said, and he shuddered. ‘Are you going to be riding at the head of the line?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘Isn’t that dangerous? You don’t even have an armour shirt.’
‘The ChaMeech are just as likely to attack from the rear.’
‘Maybe more likely, yes. I should have thought of that.’
The Tribal horses knew the Riftgate, and his pair of charges showed not the least concern when it came to taking the slab road down. Zayn was glad of their calm company. The possibility of a ChaMeech ambush had made him alert to a preternatural degree. All the colours brightened; the striping of the canyon walls seemed precisely etched. The sounds of the horses’ hooves, the voices of the comnee’s members, calling back and forth, seemed both loud and isolated, each a stroke of noise on the bell of the swamp air that rose to meet them. Slowly the air grew warmer, turned humid, until Zayn was sweating so hard his shirt was soaked through. The swamp stench, a compound of mud and rotting things, nearly made him retch.
When they reached the bottom of the Rift, Ammadin and Apanador paused their horses on the strip of rocky ground directly beside the cliff but some yards away from the last step down. As the others arrived, they fanned out behind them with the orderly ease of people who had been making this difficult manoeuvre all their lives. While they gave the horses a few minutes’ rest, Zayn studied the swamp. He could find no clear view between the thick scaly trunks of the fern trees, the red horsetails, and the tangles of vines. No more could he hear anything but the hum and hiss of insects, the calls of turquoise chirpers and the many frogs. A perfect place for an ambush, he thought. Four of the armed men, spears at the ready, jogged forward and joined the chief. Much to Zayn’s relief, Ammadin let the warriors have her place at the head of the line and dropped back to ride just in front of him and the wagon horses.
With a yell and a wave of his hand, Apanador signalled to the comnee to move out. They walked their horses slowly along the water’s edge, and once the line spread out, Zayn saw their destination, the smooth grey road and the pylons of a bridge, threading its way through trees. Rebbuhs swarmed around the caravan, hovered over bare hands and faces, then flew off fast when they smelled the plant-juice repellent.
‘Ammadin,’ Zayn called out. ‘Who made this road?’
She turned in the saddle and glanced back at him. ‘The Ancients,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know how.’
The horses stepped up onto the road eagerly, and as soon as he followed, Zayn understood why. The grey surface seemed soft yet firm at the same time, far easier underfoot than stone or the orange muck at the edge of the water. On either side of the wide roadbed stood a railing, held up by supports some three feet high. Once, no doubt, these supports had stood straight, but the long centuries of earthquakes had pulled them off true and left them twisted. Here and there cracks ran across the roadbed, most the mere thickness of a blade of grass but ominous nonetheless. No one in the khanate could mend this material, Zayn knew, much less replace it. Some hundred yards in, the road began to rise on squat pylons. A few yards more, and it became a bridge. Here too cracks laced the edges, and some of the supports for the railing had disappeared, leaving broken stumps behind.
At the high point of the bridge, Apanador turned in his saddle and called out an order. ‘Everyone move over to the right.’
In a murmur of voices the order travelled along the line of march. Zayn urged his horses over, glanced back, and saw everyone doing the same to clear a space to the left, wide enough for armed riders to pass. If the ChaMeech attacked at either head or rear of the line, reinforcements could join the battle. And yet the comnee crossed safely. At the far end of the bridge the road debouched onto another long expanse of dusty stone. The comnee once again spread out behind Apanador. As soon as everyone had got into position, Apanador set off again, leading the comnee south, parallel to the cliff towering above them.
The horses tossed up their heads, sniffed the air, and walked faster. In a short while Zayn saw what they had smelled: fresh water, bubbling up from springs at the base of the cliff. Here, Zayn realized, was the danger point. With so many horses, the comnee would have to water them in pairs, a long slow process, but the horses needed to drink in the clammy heat.
The line of march had just halted near the springs when Zayn heard the sound, a deep vibration of the air, a thrum or hum, he supposed he could call it, something like distant thunder. Out in the swamp the animals fell silent.
‘Ammadin?’ Zayn called out. ‘What’s that noise?’
‘ChaMeech, damn it!’ Ammadin dismounted fast. She led her dun gelding back to Zayn and handed him the reins. ‘Hold him, will you?’ she said. ‘I’m going to scan.’
The spectral thunder again rolled down the Rift. Ammadin rummaged in her saddlebags and came out with a pair of pouched crystals; he could hear one of them chiming like a Kazraki clock. Ammadin carried t
hem to a spot where sunlight broke through the forest cover, then turned her back on the comnee and knelt on the ground. Everyone else, Zayn noticed, was pointedly looking away to give the Spirit Rider what privacy they could. Although he watched, fascinated, he realized soon enough that he wasn’t going to see any peculiar act of magic, just Ammadin crouching over a crystal sphere, unmoving, speaking now and then in a language he couldn’t understand. Finally she stood up and walked back, shaking her head.
‘I don’t see any ChaMeech,’ she called out. ‘They could be hiding in caves or out in the water, but then again, the thrumming we heard sounded pretty far away, and it was even fainter the second time.’
Apanador turned in the saddle and called for Dallador, who trotted his horse up the line to join him. While they sat on horseback together and discussed how to dispose the armed guards, Ammadin walked back to Zayn and her gelding. She put the crystals away in her saddlebags, then laced the flap down.
‘I’m really surprised,’ Zayn said, ‘that you’d work magic where everyone can see you.’
‘There’s no reason not to,’ Ammadin said. ‘No one can just mimic what I do and work the magic. You’ve got to know the spirit language and all the correct command words, and the right way to say them. The only way to learn those is to become a spirit rider.’ She paused, suddenly distant.
Zayn waited.
‘I’m sorry,’ Ammadin said at length. ‘I was just thinking of something else.’
‘What? Well, if I can ask.’
‘Why not? I was wondering who would teach a ChaMeech how to use a crystal.’ She paused, smiling. ‘There. Now you know, but you’re none the wiser.’
By the time the horses were all watered, and the comnee on its way again, long shadows filled the canyon. The sunlight gilded the edge of the south-west rim, then slowly faded. Out on the plains the ChaMeech would have attacked at just this time, when the dark was beginning to gather for the night. The comnee, however, reached the road up without hearing the bubbling yip of a war cry. An ambush at the top, maybe – but Ammadin would have seen them in her crystals. They’d crossed safely, Zayn realized, and he devoted what was left of his energy to the long hard climb up.
In the long light of afternoon the comnee travelled a bare half-mile from the Rift to set up camp between a fast-running stream and a strange rock formation. Eight large boulders, placed a few feet apart, sat in a straight line; at one end, three smaller rocks formed an arrowhead pointing east. About five feet apart, two shallow trenches, thick with moss, ran parallel to the rocks; they looked like the ruts left by some gigantic and gigantically heavy wagon.
As Zayn followed these marks along the line of boulders, something caught his eye, and he squatted down for a closer look. A ring of ashes and spent charcoal, a few spilled grains of wheatian, lay on grass that had been beaten down, probably by feet walking back and forth – Warkannan’s camp, most likely. Zayn stood up, looking off to the east. He felt personally betrayed that Idres of all people would somehow turn against the Great Khan and force them to become enemies. And what, Zayn asked himself, will you do if your duty to the Great Khan demands you kill him? He realized that he could give no answer. With a toss of his head, he hurried back to camp.
Zayn put the two wagon horses on tether ropes and took them out to the herd. Maradin brought him two pairs of leather hobbles.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Zayn said. ‘This Bane about the horses eating Canton grass on the way home. Dallo told me about the Bane on bringing seeds to the plains, but why would that be forbidden?’
‘No one really knows,’ Maradin said. ‘My mother tried to find out. She asked every spirit rider she ever met until they got sick of her asking. Mama was a stubborn woman, just like me.’ She paused for a smile. ‘Finally she met one old woman who told her that the problem was the green grass, not the normal kind, and the other green plants the Cantonneurs have in their gardens. It’s part of the Bane against having green things growing on the plains. Ammi told you about that, right?’
‘Yes, she did, but I don’t understand that Bane either.’
‘Don’t try to understand Banes. They never make sense.’
‘That’s good advice, I suppose. Whose comnee does your mother ride with?’
‘Oh.’ Maradin looked away. ‘Of course, you wouldn’t know. She’s dead.’
‘Forgive me! I shouldn’t have –’
‘There was a grass fire last summer.’ Maradin went on as if she hadn’t heard. ‘You’ve not seen one yet, and I hope to the gods none of us ever do again. When the grass is dry, fire travels fast, like a wall moving across the plains, and all you can do is get into water. We’d almost made it to safety, some of the comnee was already in the Great River, I mean, but Mama looked back and saw her favourite mare panicking. She turned back to try to save her. The fire took them both.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Zayn realized he was whispering. ‘What a horrible thing. You saw it?’
Maradin nodded, her eyes stark with remembered horror, an expression that reminded Zayn of his father’s when he spoke of the death of Zayn’s mother. Then Maradin shrugged, again as his father used to do, to bring herself back to the present moment. ‘Well, it’s not safe out here, you know. People die all the time, especially the men. You need to know that.’
‘Yes, yes, I do. I’m still sorry about your mother.’
‘So am I. I’ll miss her always.’
The awkward silence hung between them. Zayn began glancing around for Ammadin in the hopes of finding an excuse to leave.
‘You’re looking for Ammi, aren’t you?’ Maradin said.
‘Not particularly.’
She raised one eyebrow and grinned at him, back to her usual teasing self.
‘Well,’ Zayn said, ‘I need to know if those ChaMeech are going to attack. Did the Spirit Rider say anything about that?’
‘She told Apanador that they were long gone.’
‘Good. But we’d better mount a guard over the horses anyway.’
Late that evening, when the Spider lay silver at zenith and flooded the sky with pale light, Zayn took his turn at riding herd. As he sat on horseback, a comnee spear tucked under one arm, he found himself thinking about Idres. He remembered the first time they’d met, the raw recruit of a trooper and the accomplished officer, newly appointed captain of their company. Why did you enlist so young? Warkannan had asked him. Zayn had mumbled something about wanting to serve the Great Khan and see distant lands. How could he have told his captain the truth?
‘I joined up to get myself killed,’ he said to his sorrel gelding. ‘That was the real answer. It nearly worked, too. Twice.’
The horse stamped and snorted. Zayn clucked to it, and they ambled off, making a half-circuit of the drowsing herd, then turning and ambling back. He rose in his stirrups and looked off to the east. Where was Idres tonight? he wondered. Camping somewhere miles ahead on the road to Bredanee, most likely, and I’m here, right behind him on guild business.
‘I joined the Chosen to get myself killed, too.’
The sorrel tossed its head with a long ripple of mane. The real question, Zayn knew, the one that tormented him, was whether or not he had started wanting to live.
That night the ChaMeech came again to Warkannan’s camp. The Spider had passed zenith when Warkannan heard the horses whinny an alarm. At the same moment the unmistakable acrid stench of male ChaMeech reached him. He jumped to his feet, picked up his scabbard from the ground and drew his sabre, then yelled at Arkazo and Soutan.
‘Come on! ChaMeech are after the horses!’
Arkazo scrambled up, reaching for his sword, but Soutan yawned and stayed sitting.
‘Calm down, Captain,’ Soutan said. ‘The horses are hobbled, and they’re in no danger. Despite the stink.’
Soutan leaned back, grabbed his saddlebags and pulled them over, then took out the lightwand. Yips, bubbling shrieks, a ghastly sound like a parody of human laughter – the ChaMeech were coming close
r.
‘Soutan,’ Warkannan snapped. ‘Get on your feet and ready.’
‘Don’t you give me orders.’ Slowly, amazingly slowly, Soutan stood up.
For a moment he fiddled with the loose ring around the wand; then at last he raised it and chanted. As before, a fountain of light sprang into the sky. The glare trapped the warband of six ChaMeech, but tonight they were crouching in a wedge-shaped formation behind their leader. With a toss of his huge head, the amulet-bedecked ChaMeech ambled forward a few steps, then bent his front legs and bowed to Soutan while his pseudo-arms flapped and fluttered. He whined and lowered his head still further; his throat sac filled and throbbed.
‘It’s the same one,’ Arkazo muttered. ‘Look at those tunics he’s wearing.’
‘I see them,’ Warkannan said. ‘And I see something else, too.’
Once again Soutan’s lips moved silently as he stared at the ChaMeech leader. Once again the ChaMeech suddenly howled, swung himself around, and bounded away. His men followed, yipping softly on a single high-pitched note.
‘I know that sound,’ Warkannan said to Arkazo. ‘It means they accept defeat.’
Soutan chanted another incomprehensible word. The glare dimmed to a pleasant glow, and he lowered the wand, holding it point down, to send a crisp circle of light over the ground around him. Warkannan could feel himself trembling with rage. He sheathed his sabre, took a deep breath, and crossed his arms over his chest to keep his fists under control.
‘All right, sorcerer,’ Warkannan growled. ‘You’re colluding with the ChaMeech, aren’t you?’
‘It would be more accurate, my dear Captain, to say that they’re colluding with me.’ Soutan paused to draw his lips back in a toothy grin. ‘Most of their people don’t approve of their helping me, no, not at all.’
The last thing Warkannan had expected was a confession.
‘For all the good they were, damn them!’ Soutan went on. ‘I wanted them to attack the comnee and rid us of our spy and that wretched witchwoman both. They had the gall to tell me that they’d been ordered off by a true Chiri Michi – as if females would be running around out here! The real reason, I suppose, is plain cowardice. The comnee has too many fighting men for their taste.’