The Woman Who Rides Like a Man (6 page)

You're not alone,
Faithful remarked.
You have me still.

Alanna picked the cat up and hugged him tightly. She wasn't crying simply because she felt lost without Coram: the gruff manservant would be with Jonathan soon, and she wouldn't.

*

The ordeal.
She dropped through endless stretches of water, her lungs bursting for lack of air. She fought and fought, but she couldn't find her way to the surface. She opened her mouth to scream
—

She jerked awake, her mouth clamped shut so tightly that her jaws ached. She was forbidden to scream in the Chamber of the Ordeal!

Faithful fell to the ground from her chest. It had been his weight that made her sleeping mind remember that awful moment. About to yell her fury, she realized Faithful's tail and fur were erect. Keeping silent for a moment, she heard a rustle of movement, the soft click of hard objects striking each other gently.

Carefully Alanna lifted her battle-axe from her weapons rack and—moving soundlessly—she slid out the back of the tent. With Faithful behind, she circled her home, a shadow among the camp's other shadows.

A huddled figure was drawing designs before her door. She suddenly knew who it was, and could guess what he was up to. Hefting the axe, she hurled it into the sand at Akhnan Ibn Nazzir's feet, then strode forward, the violet fire of her Gift turning the scene into purple daylight.

"Demon, I adjure thee, harm me not!" the old man screeched. "In the name of Mithros—"

"Be quiet!" Alanna snapped as people ran out of their tents, armed with swords and spears. "Now you've awakened everyone!"

Recognizing her at last, Ibn Nazzir gasped in fury. "I will cast you out!" he yelled. "I will cleanse our tribe of you and send you back into the Darkness where you belong!"

Examining the design the shaman had been working on, Alanna felt sick. It was called a Gate of Idramm: she had learned of it from Duke Roger, who had taught her and Jonathan sorcery when they were young.

"There are many kinds of creatures in our world," the Duke of Conté had explained. "Call them demons, elementals, spirits—their variety is infinite. Some serve that force we call Good, some that called Evil. A Gate of Idramm summons all such entities within a certain range. The result—" He had shrugged his broad shoulders. "Is disastrous. Only fools construct a Gate without putting limits on it."

This one was almost complete. Alanna shuddered. There were no limiting spells in the symbols of the design. "You stupid, ignorant, vicious old man!" she cried, scuffing it out with her bare foot. "You could have destroyed the entire village! Or didn't you care as long as you took me with you?"

Ali Mukhtab had come to the fore of the watching people; she snapped at him, "He was doing a Gate of Idramm!"

The Voice turned white. "Are you mad?" he demanded of Akhnan Ibn Nazzir. "How dare you use sorcery you do not understand?"

"She is corrupting our people," the shaman whined. "She has corrupted you, Ali Mukhtab. I wished only to rid the desert of her evil—"

"You would have rid the desert of us all!" hissed Mukhtab furiously. "Go to your tent, shaman! Remain there until I have chosen a fitting punishment for you!" As the old man fled, he turned to Alanna. "You have saved us all," he told her.

Alanna pointed to Faithful, who blinked sleepily. "Thank my cat," she said. "He woke me up."

*

Then she left her bed the next morning, Ishak, Kara, and Kourrem awaited her, vying for Faithful's purrs. "You'll spoil him," Alanna said gruffly as she dressed. "And I'm the one who'll have to live with a spoiled cat."

"The men of the tribe do not believe he is a cat," Ishak told her. "Some think he is a god. Some think he is a demon."

"He's neither," Alanna informed him. She picked up Lightning. "Why doesn't one of you show me where the blacksmith is?"

The blacksmith was Gammal, her large friend from Persopolis. He grinned at the chance to do her a service, scowled at the girls until they backed out of the way, and handed a bellows to Ishak. "Use it well, boy," he advised as he turned to find his tongs.

Ishak looked at Alanna, terrified. "I've never done this," he whispered.

When Gammal returned, Alanna was busily pumping the bellows, bringing the fire to a white heat. The large Bazhir shook his head and picked up the long portion of Lightning's blade with his tongs, thrusting the metal into the fire until he judged it hot enough. Alanna thought she heard an ugly hum, but Gammal distracted her, booming, "Where did you learn to use the bellows, Woman Who Rides Like a Man?"

"From the King's weapons-masters," she shouted over the roar of the fire and the wheezing bellows. "We were at war with Tusaine. I was crippled with a wound, so I went to them to keep busy."

"Could you mend the sword yourself?" the smith wanted to know. Even he had to raise his voice to be heard over the noise from the forge.

Alanna shook her head. "I could mend an ordinary sword," she called, "but not one so well-made."

Gammal pulled the length of metal from the forge and she put up the bellows. Without the wheezing, she could clearly hear the humming sound from Lightning's sheared-off blade. "Gammal, don't—" she began, but the smith was striking. His hammer met the glowing metal; everyone was knocked down by the resulting explosion. When Alanna struggled to her feet, the fire was out, the anvil was cracked down the center, and Gammal was unconscious. She brought him around quickly with water fetched by Kourrem, and the Bazhir grinned.

That was a mistake,
Faithful commented from a safe distance away.
Look at the blade.

Lightning still lay on the anvil. After a moment Alanna touched it; the broken piece was as cold as the forge. "It was not meant to be struck by a hammer," Ali Mukhtab's voice said unexpectedly. Alanna spun, startled because she had not heard the Voice come up behind her. "You must find some other way to repair it, Alanna of Trebond." He smiled suddenly, his white teeth flashing. "The people of this tribe lived very quietly before you came," he commented, before turning and walking away.

Alanna scowled at the Voice's retreating back, before she realized that Kara, Ishak, and Kourrem were giggling. "He is right," Kara said. "But we are glad you came."

With a sigh Alanna slid the broken length of sword back into its sheath, strapping the hilt into place once more. She would have to find some other way to repair it. Her lessons in sorcery had not included sword-smithing. And what was she to do for a sword until then? She felt unprepared without Lightning in her hand.

"Those three should be glad that you have come among us," Gammal commented softly. Alanna looked sharply around for her attendants: they were some distance away, trying to interest Faithful in a brightly colored ball. "Before they had little status. Come into my tent, and my woman will give you something cool to drink," he added. "The young ones can look after your cat, and each other, for now."

Alanna followed the smith into his living quarters, gnawing thoughtfully at her thumb. Gammal's wife served them, her eyes nervous behind her veil. "Why?" Alanna finally asked. "They're intelligent, alert, quick—I like them. Why would they have little status?"

Gammal lit a pipe, drawing on it thoughtfully before answering. "The boy Ishak claimed he saw pictures in the fire when he was only six," he replied.

"Of course," Alanna said, puzzled. "He told me himself he has the Gift. He hasn't had much instruction for someone his age—"

Gammal waved this aside. "Balls of brightly colored fire hung over Kourrem's bed, and she played with them. Kara throws things without touching them when she is angry. The shaman says they are cursed. Ishak's family left their son to the teaching of his grandfather, but the families of the girls cast them out as soon as they could fend for themselves."

Alanna could not believe she had heard correctly. "But—all those things are signs of the Gift—of magic," she whispered. "And Ibn Nazzir said they were
cursed?"

Gammal nodded. "Some in the tribe think the shaman has made a mistake. They look after the three, clothing them and feeding them. Halef Seif is one such."

"I suppose you're another," Alanna guessed shrewdly.

Gammal ducked his head in acknowledgment as she turned her mind to another problem. "Does this mean the girls have never been trained? They don't know how to use their power?" Gammal shook his head. "Great Merciful Mother," Alanna breathed. "I'd rather live in a pit of snakes than in the same village with two girls who don't know how to control their sorcery! Doesn't anyone realize what could happen? They must have learned
some
control, or none of you would be here. But haven't you noticed anything peculiar, when one of them is angry or sick?"

Gammal nodded, unperturbed. "Once lightning came out of the sky and almost struck the shaman," he said. "And there are always great winds and strange storms. The shaman says we should kill them at such times, but Halef Seif will not permit it. The Voice will not permit it. And so they live here, until the Balance shifts in their favor."

Soon after this Alanna took her leave. The Bazhir were very willing simply to let things happen, which was strange in such an energetic people. Didn't they realize that the only way to change things was to act? She tried to express her confusion to Ali Mukhtab, to his amusement.

"We believe in the Great Balance," he told her. "All will right itself in the end. The Balance shifts—it cannot be predicted. It is like the desert, you see. The sands drift always, yet the desert remains the same. Man cannot change the desert, and man cannot affect the Balance."

Alanna shook her head with exasperation. "I don't believe in waiting for things to just
happen,"
she growled. "If I waited for your Balance to right itself, I'd be some lord's wife right now, not knowing anything more than my home and my lands."

"And perhaps you are an instrument of the Balance," Mukhtab suggested. "By your very presence, you cause the scales to shift."

"Nonsense," Alanna replied, fingering the ember-stone at her throat.

*

Her three friends were on Alanna's mind for several days. They weren't bitter or depressed about their lot, and their endless questions spoke for a willingness to learn. She would have tried to teach them herself, just for her own peace of mind, but Bazhir custom was very strict about such things. Instruction in magic was done by the shaman: only in this tribe, where the shaman was uncertain of what little magic he
did
have, was no one instructed at all. Not even Ali Mukhtab would defend her if she broke all Bazhir customs.

The wistful look in Kourrem's eyes tugged at Alanna's heart. Ishak never stopped trying to show her his magic. And Kara was Kara, anxious, ready to please, expecting a curt word or a blow rather than Alanna's gruff thanks. The knight had been something of an outcast since the day she had revealed her secret; she didn't like that life for her young shadows. Although her southern exile was voluntary, she had few illusions about the welcome that would be hers if she returned to the palace too soon.

She fretted over it for nearly a week as she learned about her new tribe: meeting its men with Halef Seif, discussing the constant war with the hillmen and the need for new forage for their many herds of sheep and goats; meeting a few women with Kara; hunting with the young men; discovering the rich history of the Bazhir with Ali Mukhtab.

Alanna was still considering what to do when she was summoned to the headman's tent one night. The Voice of the Tribes was there, enthroned on pillows and smoking his long pipe. Halef Seif, looking stern, was at his side. Gammal and another man stood over two bound and kneeling strangers while other men of the tribe looked on.

Alanna hesitated in the doorway, resettling Faithful on her left shoulder. "You sent for me?" she asked Halef. Everyone but the two kneeling men had turned to stare at her.

The headman beckoned her forward. "These two came yesterday to our brothers in the Tribe of the Sleeping Lion," he explained. "They tried to pass as desertmen, when it is plain they are northerners."