The Diviner (16 page)

Acuyib help him, Azzad believed.

As Khamsin cantered toward them, Abb Shagara still securely in the saddle and even laughing, Fadhil glanced sidelong at Azzad. “Abb Shagara wanted to include wealth and many children, but Meryem said that we must leave you
something
to do on your own.”

Still stunned, Azzad saw Abb Shagara wave gaily at them, a new hazzir around his right wrist: gold, set with turquoises and a large bloodstone.

“And Leyliah said this morning that with your face, which is not even to speak of your other attributes, you were perfectly capable of getting more children than you'd know what to do with.”

Reminded through his shock of what had transpired with Leyliah, Azzad's head snapped around. “Fadhil—”

“It's all right. I don't mind, not really.” He smiled.

Whatever Azzad might have thought to reply was swept away in the wind of Khamsin's arrival. Abb Shagara was as happy as a kitten in a yarn basket.

“That was splendid! May I do it again tomorrow? Will the half-breeds be as swift as Khamsin? It was like flying!”

Azzad looked at Fadhil and swallowed hard.“I apologize,” he murmured.

“No need. Enjoy the time you have with her. She is an extraordinary woman.”

“Azzad!” Abb Shagara called. “Again tomorrow? Please?”

“Uh—yes, of course,” he said, hardly knowing to whom he spoke.

Fadhil added softly, “You shouldn't take Meryem's sternness too much to heart. She and Leyliah drew lots for you.”

And, with a wink and a grin, he went to congratulate Abb Shagara on his first riding lesson, leaving Azzad standing there with a broken lead in his hand and an expression of absolute amazement on his face.

 

By day, Azzad gave riding lessons and advice on horses. In the evenings, he had dinner with Abb Shagara, Chal Kabir, Fadhil, and the other men, discussing those things men discussed everywhere. At night, he slept with Leyliah.

One afternoon, as Azzad sat with Abb Shagara in an awning's shade playing chadarang, a rider on a donkey appeared on the horizon. Instantly the Shagara went within their tents, and the wallad izzahni counted horses and took up guard positions around the thorn fences. Abb Shagara, murmuring an apology to Azzad for abandoning their game, vanished inside his tent. Chal Kabir emerged from the dawa'an sheymma in a fresh robe the color of sand, with Fadhil at his side, to wait for the newcomer.

Azzad, squinting into the distance, thought about joining Abb Shagara, then gave a start as he realized that the man astride the donkey had come from Sihabbah. Bazir al-Gallidh often sent messengers back and forth to his brother in Hazganni; these men dressed in white robes with a thick stripe of black down each sleeve. The visitor wore such a garment. As he neared, Azzad even recognized him: Annif, younger brother of Mazzud who worked with him in the stables.

Striding swiftly to where Chal Kabir and Fadhil stood, Azzad said, “I know this boy. He comes from al-Gallidh, my employer.”

Fadhil shook his head. “It can be no good thing that brings him so far.”

And so it proved.

“Al-Gallidh is ill. He may be dead even now,” Annif reported, gulping water between sentences. “I have had a time of it, probably too long a time, finding you, Azzad—even after Mou'ammi Zellim made a map from what you told him of your route. He sent me to bring you back to Sihabbah.”

Azzad sucked in a breath, worry for Bazir clenching his chest. But before he could ask any questions, Chal Kabir spoke.

“What is the nature of his illness?”

Annif shook his head. “The tabbib doesn't know. Al-Gallidh was well in the morning, but by afternoon his breathing was bad and there was pain.”

“What kind of pain?”

“In one arm.”

Kabir sighed impatiently. “
Which
arm? The left? And
don't
ask if it matters, because it matters a great deal.”

Azzad said, “Chal Kabir is more accomplished than any tabbib you've ever heard of, Annif. Now, which arm was it?”

“The left, I think.” The boy glanced around the empty camp beyond, his eyes widening. “Is this all there is to the Shagara?”

Kabir ignored him in favor of Azzad. “You have said that Sihabbah is high in the mountains. Has he trouble breathing sometimes? Must he climb stairs slowly or grow dizzy?”

“This I do not know,” Azzad admitted. “I have never been above the ground floor of his house.”

“Is his bedchamber there?”

“I believe so—yes, right next to his maqtabba.”

“He has hundreds of books—” the boy bragged, only to be ignored once again.

“Then on purpose he does not climb stairs. How old is al-Gallidh?”

“About your age.” With the customary politeness and respect for the elderly, Azzad lopped ten years off his truest estimate. “Fifty-five or thereabouts.”

Kabir's lips thinned—with annoyance, Azzad thought in bewilderment—and Fadhil coughed behind his hand for no reason Azzad could discern.

“It is his heart,” announced Kabir. “If you leave at once, you may be in time. I will give you certain things that will help al-Gallidh.”

Annif blinked. “You can, when our own tabbib cannot?”

“Your tabbib must be a very great fool not to know the signs,” Kabir snapped and turned for the dawa'an sheymma.

When Annif was settled with food and drink in Fadhil's tent, Fadhil drew Azzad aside. “Would you like me to come with you? I could ask Abb Shagara for permission. I might be able to help al-Gallidh.”

“I would be very grateful,” Azzad said, surprised. “But surely the Shagara do not leave the tribe?”

“There's a first time for everything,” the young man said blithely. As they passed Leyliah's tent, Fadhil paused. “Besides, I have a wish to see this place in the clouds.”

Abb Shagara gave his consent to the expedition. Khamsin was saddled, and Azzad reasoned that as slim as Fadhil was, Khamsin would not be very much slowed by carrying double. Annif would follow on the donkey, leading the other two donkeys and the Shagara-bred fillies, which Abb Shagara insisted Azzad take.

“Not as payment for Haddid and the charming Farrasha,” he said, “but because I have listened to what you've said about breeding. If Khamsin's foals are so much smaller within the mares, it is more than likely that our studs would sire foals too big for his get to carry. The two colts will service our best mares when they're old enough, but I have decided that Farrasha will be my riding horse only and never bred. I am already most passionately in love with her, and it would pierce my heart to lose her.”

“In truth,” Azzad replied, “that is a wise decision. Only if you were to find another of Khamsin's breed could you be certain that Farrasha would survive. I'll send more saddles back with Fadhil, but you must promise not to ride any of them until they're full grown. And now I think we must leave. Fadhil, are you ready?”

“My things are already in Khamsin's saddlebags.” Swallowing the last of his qawah, he rose and said, “I must say farewell to Meryem and Leyliah.”

When he was gone, Azzad watched Abb Shagara over the rim of his cup. The fey, expressive golden face was solemn, almost sad, and one could see the old man he would one day be. He reached underneath the piled pillows and brought out a small, thin gold ring set with a chip of green emerald.

“It would please me if you would give this to Fadhil. I cannot do it myself.”

Azzad took the ring, knowing enough now to look on the inside, where a tiny swallow and an even smaller butterfly were engraved. “Beautiful. May I ask—?”

“I want him to find a woman he can love,” was the forthright reply. “Leyliah is lost to him, but in Sihabbah—you understand, don't you, Aqq Azzad?”

“Yes.” At least, he understood that Abb Shagara believed this ring would help Fadhil find a suitable young woman. Fadhil would believe it, too—and perhaps that was all that counted. “I'll tell him I asked you for something of the kind, because he is my friend and I worry about him.”

“Thank you. And now I think you must leave us again.” His smile returned. “If I am not too much mistaken, your Khamsin has left us with another remembrance or two.”

“If I'm not careful, you'll set yourselves up as rivals to my horse-breeding scheme,” Azzad teased.

“'Scheme'? I thought it all happened because of a mistake!”

“That's just what Jemilha said,” Azzad complained.

“Ayia, so you
have
met a girl!”

A
zzad al-Ma'aliq slouched in his chair, glaring at the ledger on his desk. The rulers of Hazganni, that celebrated city on the plain, had managed to kill every single one of the trees he'd sent from Sihabbah. Now they were demanding either repayment or a hundred more trees to replace those dead of their neglect.

“We sent them instructions,” Azzad muttered aloud. “We sent them the correct fertilizer. We even sent them hazziri to plant with the trees, Acuyib witness it! Ayia, I want to see these dead trees for myself, to see if they really are dead—and to prove that stupidity killed them.”

Fadhil looked up from a book. “So we go to Hazganni again? That's three times in two moons. Perhaps it's not the trees that draw you there.”

The entrance of an al-Gallidh servant to light the lamps kept Azzad silent. Bazir's maqtabba gradually began to glow with a golden shimmer, the paper-thin alabaster shades diffusing the tiny flames. When the servant had departed, Azzad said, “It's a pretty journey—as well as much faster, now that you've mastered riding.”

“I speak of your eagerness to visit Hazganni, not your enjoyment of the trip.”

He shrugged. “I grew up in a large city, so naturally I feel comfortable there. Especially in the zouqs—my aunts and sisters were dedicated shoppers, Acuyib delight their souls!”

“Ah, now we come to it.”

“Come to what?”

“It.”

Azzad eyed his friend. “Make sense, Fadhil, I beg. What ‘it' have we arrived at, and why did I not know we were going there?”

Fadhil grinned over at him. “Women. More particularly, ladies. Most particularly,
one
lady, who if she isn't in your thoughts ought to be.”

Azzad searched his mind and memories. In the year and a half since Bazir al-Gallidh and his family had moved permanently to Hazganni, Azzad had visited many lovely ladies, some of them more than once. A few were as beautiful as Ashiyah, but he'd found none he would gift with her pearls. And he'd found none as agreeable in bed—or as interesting to converse with, truth be told—as Bindta Feyrah up on the mountainside.

“Which lady?” he asked Fadhil, genuinely curious.

“If you don't yet know, I'm not going to tell you.”

“Ayia, I think perhaps
you
don't like leaving Sihabbah, for the sake of one lady in particular,” Azzad teased.

“Not one—four,” Fadhil replied serenely.

“Shameless,” Azzad intoned, shaking his head, secretly disappointed that the ring had not done its work.

“On the contrary. Each is so thoroughly in love with me that to choose one above the others would break their hearts.” He paused, then closed his book and went to the window. “What commotion is this?”