Guy Gavriel Kay - The Lions of Al-Rassan

The Lions of Al-Rassan

Guy Gavriel Kay

[26 may 2002—proofed for #bookz]

The evening is deep inside me forever.

Many a blond, northern moonrise,

like a muted reflection, will softly

remind me and remind me again and again.

It will be my bride, my alter ego.

An incentive to find myself. I myself

am the moonrise of the south.

—Paul Klee,The Tunisian Diaries

Prologue

It was just past midday, not long before the third summons to prayer, that Ammar ibn Khairan

passed through the Gate of the Bells and entered the palace of Al-Fontina in Silvenes to kill the last of

the khalifs of Al-Rassan.

Passing into the Court of Lions he came to the three sets of double doors and paused before those

that led to the gardens. There were eunuchs guarding the doors. He knew them by name. They had been

dealt with. One of them nodded slightly to him; the other kept his gaze averted. He preferred the second

man. They opened the heavy doors and he went through. He heard them swing closed behind him.

In the heat of the day the gardens were deserted. All those still left within the dissolving

magnificence of the Al-Fontina would have sought the shade of the innermost rooms. They would be

sipping cool sweet wines or using the elaborately long spoons designed by Ziryani to taste sherbets kept

frozen in the deep cel-lars by snow brought down from the mountains. Luxuries from another age, meant

for very different men and women from those who dwelt here now.

Thinking such thoughts, ibn Khairan walked noiselessly through the Garden of Oranges and, passing

through the horseshoe arch, into the Almond Garden and then, beneath another arch, into the Cypress

Garden with its one tall, perfect tree reflected in three pools. Each garden was smaller than the one

before, each heartbreaking in its loveliness. The Al-Fontina, a poet once had said, had been built to

break the heart.

At the end of the long progression he came to the Garden of Desire, smallest and most jewel-like of

all. And there, sitting qui-etly and alone on the broad rim of the fountain, clad in white, was Muzafar, as

had been prearranged.

Ibn Khairan bowed in the archway, a habit deeply ingrained. The old, blind man could not see his

obeisance. After a moment he moved forward, stepping deliberately on the pathway that led to the

fountain.

"Ammar?" Muzafar said, hearing the sound. "They told me you would be here. Is it you? Have you

come to lead me away from here? Is it you, Ammar?"

There were many things that could be said. "It is," said ibn Khairan, walking up. He drew his dagger

from its sheath. The old man's head lifted suddenly at that, as if he knew the sound. "I have, indeed,

come to set you free of this place of ghosts and echoes."

With the words he slid the blade smoothly to the hilt in the old man's heart. Muzafar made no

sound. It had been swift and sure. He could tell the wadjis in their temples, if it ever came to such a

thing, that he had made it an easy end.

He laid the body down on the fountain rim, ordering the limbs within the white robe to allow the

dead man as much dig-nity as could be. He cleaned his blade in the fountain, watching the waters swirl

briefly red. In the teachings of his people, for hundreds and hundreds of years, going back and away to

the deserts of the east where the faith of the Asharites had begun, it was a crime without possibility of

assuaging to slay one of the god's anointed khalifs. He looked down at Muzafar, at the round, wrinkled

face, sadly irresolute even in death.

He has not been truly anointed,Almalik had said, back in Cartada.Allmen know this.

There had been four puppet khalifs this year alone, one other here in Silvenes before Muzafar, one

in Tudesca, and the poor child in Salos. It was not a situation that could have been allowed to continue.

The other three were already dead. Muzafar was only the last.

Only the last. There had been lions once in Al-Rassan, lions upon the dais in this palace that had

been built to make men fall to their knees upon marble and alabaster before the dazzling evi-dence of a

glory beyond their grasp.

Muzafar had, indeed, never been properly anointed, just as Almalik of Cartada had said. But the

thought came to Ammar ibn Khairan as he stood in his twentieth year in the Garden of Desire of the

Al-Fontina of Silvenes, cleansing his blade of a man's red blood, that whatever else he did with his life, in

the days and nights Ashar and the god saw fit to grant him under the holy circling of their stars, he might

ever after be known as the man who slew the last khalif of Al-Rassan.

"You are best with the god among the stars. It will be a time of wolves now," he said to the dead

man on the fountain rim before drying and sheathing his blade and walking back through the four perfect,

empty gardens to the doors where the bribed eunuchs waited to let him out. On the way he heard one

foolish bird singing in the fierce white light of midday, and then he heard the bells begin, summoning all

good men to holy prayer.

Part I

One

Always remember that they come from the desert.

Back in the days before Jehane had begun her own practice, in that time when her father could still

talk to her, and teach, he had offered those words to her over and again, speaking of the ruling Asharites

among whom they dwelt on sufferance, and labored—as the scattered tribes of the Kindath did

everywhere—to create a small space in the world of safety and a measure of repose.

"But we have the desert in our own history, don't we?" she could remember asking once, the

question thrown back as a challenge. She had never been an easy pupil, not for him, not for anyone.

"We passed through," Ishak had replied in the beautifully modulated voice. "We sojourned for a

time, on our way. We were never truly a people of the dunes. They are. Even here in Al-Rassan, amid

gardens and water and trees, the Star-born are never sure of the permanence of such things. They

remain in their hearts what they were when they first accepted the teachings of Ashar among the sands.

When you are in doubt as to how to understand one of them, remind yourself of this and your way will

likely be made clear."

In those days, despite her fractiousness, Jehane's father's words had been as text and holy guide for

her. On another occa-sion, after she had complained for the third time during a tedious morning preparing

powders and infusions, Ishak had mildly cau-tioned that a doctor's life might often be dull, but was not

invari-ably so, and there would be times when she found herself longing for quiet routine.

She was to sharply call to mind both of these teachings before she finally fell asleep at the end of the

day that would long after-wards be known in Fezana—with curses, and black candles burned in memory

—as The Day of the Moat.

It was a day that would be remembered all her life by Jehane bet Ishak, the physician, for reasons

over and above those of her fellow citizens in that proud, notoriously rebellious town: she lost her urine

flask in the afternoon, and a part of her heart forever before the moons had set.

The flask, for reasons of family history, was not a trivial matter.

The day had begun at the weekly market by the Cartada Gate. Just past sunrise, Jehane was in the

booth by the fountain that had been her father's before her, in time to see the last of the farmers coming

in from the countryside with their produce-laden mules. In a white linen robe beneath the physician's

green and white awning, she settled in, cross-legged on her cushion, for a morning of seeing patients.

Velaz hovered, as ever, behind her in the booth, ready to measure and dispense remedies as she

requested them, and to ward off any difficulties a young woman might encounter in a place as tumultuous

as the market. Trouble was unlikely, however; Jehane was well-known by now.

A morning at the Cartada Gate involved prescribing mostly for farmers from beyond the walls but

there were also city servants, artisans, women bargaining for staples at the market and, not infre-quently,

those among the high-born too frugal to pay for a private visit, or too proud to be treated at home by

one of the Kindath. Such patients never came in person; they would send a household woman bearing a

urine flask for diagnosis, and sometimes a script spelled out by a scribe outlining symptoms and

complaints.

Jehane's own urine flask, which had been her father's, was prominently visible on the counter

beneath the awning. It was a family signature, an announcement. A magnificent example of the

glassblower's art, the flask was etched with images of the two moons the Kindath worshipped and the

Higher Stars of divination.

In some ways it was an object too beautiful for everyday use, given the unglamorous function it was

meant to serve. The flask had been made by an artisan in Lonza six years ago, commis-sioned by King

Almalik of Cartada after Ishak had guided the midwives—from the far side of the birthing screen—

through the difficult but successful delivery of Almalik's third son.

When the time had come for the delivery of a fourth son, an even more difficult birth, but also,

ultimately, a successful one, Ishak of Fezana, the celebrated Kindath physician, had been given a

different, controversial gift by Cartada's king. A more generous offering in its way, but awareness of that

did nothing to touch the core of bitterness Jehane felt to this day, four years after. It was not a bitterness

that would pass; she knew that with certainty.

She gave a prescription for sleeplessness and another for stomach troubles. Several people stopped

to buy her father's rem-edy for headache. It was a simple compound, though closely guarded, as all

physicians' private mixtures were: cloves, myrrh and aloes. Jehane's mother was kept busy preparing

that one all week long in the treatment rooms at the front of their home.

The morning passed. Velaz quietly and steadily filled clay pots and vials at the back of the booth as

Jehane issued her directions. A flask of urine clear at the bottom but thin and pale at the top told its tale

of chest congestion. Jehane prescribed fennel and told the woman to return the next week with another

sample.

Ser Rezzoni of Sorenica, a sardonic man, had taught that the essence of the successful physician's

practice lay in inducing patients to return. The dead ones, he'd noted, seldom did. Jehane could

remember laughing; she had laughed often in those days, studying in far-off Batiara, before the fourth son

of Cartada's king had been born.

Velaz dealt with all payments, most often in small coin, some-times otherwise. One woman from a

hamlet nearby, troubled by a variety of recurring ailments, brought a dozen brown eggs every week.

The market was unusually crowded. Stretching her arms and shoulders as she glanced up briefly

from steady work, Jehane noted with satisfaction the respectable line of patients in front of her. In the

first months after she'd taken over her father's weekly booth here and the treatment rooms at home the

patients had been slow to come; now it seemed she was doing almost as well as Ishak had.

The noise level this morning was really quite extraordinary. There had to be some cause for this

bustling excitement but Jehane couldn't think what it might be. It was only when she saw three blond and

bearded foreign mercenaries arrogantly shoulder-ing their way through the market that she remembered.

The new wing of the castle was being consecrated by the wadjis today, and the young prince of

Cartada, Almalik's eldest son, who bore his name, was here to receive selected dignitaries of subjugated

Fezana. Even in a town notorious for its rebels, social status mat-tered; those who had received a

coveted invitation to the cere-mony had been preening for weeks.

Jehane paid little attention to this sort of thing, or to any other nuances of diplomacy and war most

of the time. There was a saying among her people:Whichever way the wind blows, it will rain upon

the Kindath. That pretty well summed up her feelings.

Since the thunderous, echoing fall of the Khalifate in Silvenes fifteen years ago, allegiances and

alignments in Al-Rassan had shifted interminably, often several times a year, as petty-kings rose and fell

in the cities with numbing regularity. Nor were affairs any clearer in the north, beyond the no-man's-land,

where the Jaddite kings of Valledo and Ruenda and Jalona—the two surviving sons and the brother of

Sancho the Fat—schemed and warred against each other. It was a waste of time, Jehane had long ago

decided, to try to keep track of what former slave had gained an ascendancy here, or what king had

poisoned his brother there.

It was becoming warmer in the marketplace as the sun climbed upwards in a blue sky. Not a great

surprise; midsummer in Fezana was always hot. Jehane dabbed at her forehead with a square of muslin

and brought her mind back to the business at hand. Medicine was her training and her love, her refuge

from chaos, and it was her link to her father, now and as long as she lived.

A leather worker she did not recognize stood shyly at the front of the line. He carried a chipped

earthenware beaker to serve as a flask. Placing a grimy coin on the counter beside her he grimaced

apologetically as he proffered the beaker. "I'm sorry," he whispered, barely audible amid the tumult. "It is

all we have. This is from my son. He is eight years old. He is not well."

Velaz, behind her, unobtrusively picked up the coin; it was considered bad form, Ser Rezzoni had

taught, for doctors to actu-ally touch their remuneration. That, he had said waspishly, is what servants are

for. He had been her first lover as well as her teacher, during her time living and studying abroad in

Batiara. He slept with almost all his women students, and a few of the men it had been rumored. He had

a wife and three young daughters who doted upon him. A complex, brilliant, angry man, Ser Rezzoni.

Kind enough to her, however, after his fashion, out of respect for Ishak.

Jehane smiled up at the leather worker reassuringly. "It does-n't matter what container you bring a

sample in. Don't apologize."

By his coloring he appeared to be a Jaddite from the north, living here because the work for skilled

artisans was better in Al-Rassan, most probably a convert. The Asharites didn't demand conversions,

but the tax burden on Kindath and Jaddite made for a keen incentive to embrace the desert visions of

Ashar the Sage.

She transferred the urine sample from the chipped beaker to her father's gorgeous flask, gift of the

grateful king whose name-sake heir was here today to celebrate an event that further ensured Cartadan

dominance of proud Fezana. On a bustling mar-ket morning Jehane had little time to ponder ironies, but

they tended to surface nonetheless; her mind worked that way.

As the sample settled in the flask she saw that the urine of the leather worker's son was distinctly

rose-colored. She tilted the flask back and forth in the light; in fact, the color was too close to red for

comfort. The child had a fever; what else he had was hard to judge.

"Velaz," she murmured, "dilute the absinthe with a quarter of mint. A drop of the cordial for taste."

She heard her servant with-draw into the booth to prepare the prescription.

To the leather worker she said, "He is warm to the touch?"

He nodded anxiously. "And dry. He is very dry, doctor. He has difficulty swallowing food."

Briskly, she said, "That is understandable. Give him the rem-edy we are preparing. Half when you

arrive home, half at sun-down. Do you understand that?" The man nodded. It was important to ask; some

of them, especially the Jaddites from the countryside in the north, didn't understand the concept of frac-

tions. Velaz would make up two separate vials for them.

"Feed him hot soups only today, a little at a time, and the juice of apples if you can. Make him take

these things, even if he does not want to. He may vomit later today. That is not alarming unless there is

blood with it. If there is blood, send to my house immediately. Otherwise, continue with the soup and the

juice until nightfall. If he is dry and hot he needs these things, you understand?" Again the man nodded,

his brow furrowed with concentration. "Before you go, give Velaz directions to your home. I will come

in the morning tomorrow to see him."

The man's relief was evident, but then a familiar hesitation appeared. "Doctor, forgive me. We have

no money to spare for a private consultation."

Jehane grimaced. Probably not a convert then, sorely bur-dened by the taxes but refusing to

surrender his worship of the sun-god, Jad. Who was she, however, to question religious scru-ples?

Nearly a third of her own earnings went to the Kindath tax, and she would never have called herself

religious. Few doctors were. Pride, on the other hand, was another matter. The Kindath were the

Wanderers, named for the two moons traversing the night sky among the stars, and as far as Jehane was

concerned, they had not travelled so far, through so many centuries, only to surrender their long history

here in Al-Rassan. If a Jaddite felt the same about his god, she could understand.

"We will deal with the matter of payment when the time comes. For the moment, the question is

whether the child will need to be bled, and I cannot very well do that here in the market-place."

She heard a ripple of laughter from someone standing by the booth. She ignored that, made her

voice more gentle. Kindath physicians were known to be the most expensive in the penin-sula. As well

we should be, Jehane thought. We are the only ones whoknow anything. It was wrong of her, though, to

chide people for concerns about cost. "Never fear." She smiled up at the leather worker. "I will not

bleed both you and the boy."

More general laughter this time. Her father had always said that half the task of doctors was to

make the patientbelieve in them. A certain kind of laughter helped, Jehane had found. It conveyed a

sense of confidence. "Be sure you know both the moons and the Higher Stars of his birth hour. If I am

going to draw blood I'll want to work out a time."

"My wife will know," the man whispered. "Thank you. Thank you, doctor."

"Tomorrow," she said crisply.

Velaz reappeared from the back with the medicine, gave it to the man, and took away her flask to

empty it into the pail beside the counter. The leather worker paused beside him, nervously giving

directions for the morrow.

"Who's next?" Jehane asked, looking up again.

There were a great many of King Almalik's mercenaries in the market now. The blond northern

giants from far-off Karch or Waleska and, even more oppressively, Muwardi tribesmen ferried across

the straits from the Majriti sands, their faces half-veiled, dark eyes unreadable, except when contempt

showed clearly.

Almost certainly this was a deliberate public display by Cartada. There were probably soldiers

strolling all through town, under orders to be seen. She belatedly remembered hearing that the prince

had arrived two days ago with five hundred men. Far too many soldiers for a ceremonial visit. You could

take a small city or launch a major raid across thetagra —the no-man's-land—with five hundred good

men.

They needed soldiers here. The current governor of Fezana was a puppet of Almalik's, supported

by a standing army. The mercenary troops were here ostensibly to guard against incursions from the

Jaddite kingdoms, or brigands troubling the countryside. In reality their presence was the only thing that

kept the city from rising in revolt again. And now, of course, with a new-built wing in the castle there

would be more of them.

Fezana had been a free city from the fall of the Khalifate until seven years ago. Freedom was a

memory, anger a reality now; they had been taken in Cartada's second wave of expansion. The siege

had lasted half a year, then someone had opened the Salos Gate to the army outside one night as winter

was coming, with its enforced end to the siege. They never learned who the traitor was. Jehane

remembered hiding with her mother in the innermost room of their home in the Kindath Quarter, hearing

screams and the shouts of battle and the crackle of fire. Her father had been on the other side of the

walls, hired by the Cartadans a year before to serve as physician to Almalik's army; such was a doctor's

life. Ironies again.

Human corpses, crawling with flies, had hung from the walls above this gate and the other five for

weeks after the taking of the city, the smell hovering over fruit and vegetable stalls like a pesti-lence.

Fezana became part of the rapidly growing kingdom of Cartada. So, already, had Lonza, and

Aljais, even Silvenes itself, with the sad, plundered ruins of the Al-Fontina. So, later, did Seria and

Ardeno. Now even proud Ragosa on the shores of Lake Serrana was under threat, as were Elvira and

Tudesca to the south and southwest. In the fragmented Al-Rassan of the petty-kings, Almalik of Cartada

was named the Lion by the poets of his court.

Of all the conquered cities, it was Fezana that rebelled most vio-lently: three times in seven years.

Each time Almalik's mercenaries had come back, the blond ones and the veiled ones, and each time flies

and carrion birds had feasted on corpses spread-eagled on the city walls.

But there were other ironies, keener ones, of late. The fierce Lion of Cartada was being forced to

acknowledge the presence of beasts equally dangerous. The Jaddites of the north might be fewer in

number and torn amongst themselves, but they were not blind to opportunity. For two years now Fezana

had been paying tribute money to King Ramiro of Valledo. Almalik had been unable to refuse, not if he

wanted to avoid the risk of war with the strongest of the Jaddite kings while policing the cities of his frac

-tious realm, dealing with the outlaw bands that roamed the southern hills, and with King Badir of Ragosa

wealthy enough to hire his own mercenaries.

Ramiro of Valledo might rule a rough society of herdsmen and primitive villagers, but it was also a

society organized for war, and the Horsemen of Jad were not to be trifled with. Only the might of the

khalifs of Al-Rassan, supreme in Silvenes for three hundred years, had sufficed to conquer most of the

peninsula and confine the Jaddites to the north—and that confining had demanded raid after raid through

the high plateaus of the no-man's-land, and not every raid had been successful.

If the three Jaddite kings ever stopped warring amongst each other, brother against uncle against

brother, Jehane thought, Cartada's conquering Lion—along with all the lesser kings of Al-Rassan—might

be muzzled and gelded soon enough.

Which would not necessarily be a good thing at all.

One more irony, bitterness in the taste of it. It seemed she had to hope for the survival of the man

she hated as no other. All winds might bring rain for the Kindath, but here among the Asharites of

Al-Rassan they had acceptance and a place. After centuries of wandering the earth like their moons

through heaven, that meant a great deal. Taxed heavily, bound by restrictive laws, they could nonetheless

live freely, seek their fortunes, worship as they wished, both the god and his sisters. And some among

the Kindath had risen high indeed among the courts of the petty-kings.

No Kindath were high in the counsels of the Children of Jad in this peninsula. Hardly any of them

were left in the north. History—and they had a long history—had taught the Kindath that they might be

tolerated and even welcomed among the Jaddites when times were prosperous and peaceful, but when

the skies darkened, when the rain winds came, the Kindath became Wanderers again. They were exiled,

or forcibly converted, or they died in the lands where the sun-god held sway.

Tribute—theparias —was collected by a party of northern horsemen twice a year. Fezana was

expensively engaged in paying the price of being too near to the tagra lands.

The poets were calling the three hundred years of the Khalifate a Golden Age now. Jehane had

heard the songs and the spoken verses. In those vanished days, however people might have chafed at

the absolute power or the extravagant splendor of the court at Silvenes, with the wadjis in their temples

bemoaning decadence and sacrilege, in the raiding season the ancient roads to the north had witnessed

the passage of the massed armies of Al-Rassan, and then their return with plunder and slaves.

No unified army went north into the no-man's-land now, and if the steppes of those empty places

saw soldiers in numbers any time soon it was more likely to be the Horsemen of Jad the sun-god. Jehane

could almost convince herself that even those last, impo-tent khalifs of her childhood had been symbols of

a golden time.

She shook her head and turned from watching the mercenar-ies. A quarry laborer was next in line;

she read his occupation in the chalk-white dust coating his clothing and hands. She also read,

unexpectedly, gout in his pinched features and the awkward tilt of his stance, even before she glanced at

the thick, milky sample of urine he held out to her. It was odd for a laborer to have gout; in the quarries

the usual problems were with throat and lungs. With real curiosity she looked from the flask back up at

the man.

As it happened, the quarryman was a patient Jehane never did treat. So, too, in fact, was the

leather worker's child.

A sizable purse dropped onto the counter before her.

"Do forgive this intrusion, doctor," a voice said. "May I be permitted to impose upon your time?"

The light tones and court diction were incongruous in the marketplace. Jehane looked up. This was, she

realized, the man who had laughed before.

The rising sun was behind him, so her first image was haloed against the light and imprecise: a

smooth-shaven face in the cur-rent court fashion, brown hair. She couldn't see his eyes clearly. He

smelled of perfume and he wore a sword. Which meant he was from Cartada. Swords were forbidden

the citizens of Fezana, even within their own walls.

On the other hand, she was a free woman going about her lawful affairs in her own place of

business, and because of Almalik's gifts to her father she had no need to snatch at a purse, even a large

purse—as this one manifestly was.

Irritated, she breached protocol sufficiently to pick it up and flip it back to him. "If your need is for a

physician's assistance you are not intruding. That is why I am here. But there are, as you will have noted,

people ahead of you. When you have, in due course, arrived at the front of this line I shall be pleased to

assist, if I can." Had she been less vexed she might have been amused at how for-mal her own language

had become. She still couldn't see him clearly. The quarryman had sidled nervously to one side.

"I greatly fear I have not the time for either alternative," the Cartadan murmured. "I will have to take

you from your patients here, which is why I offer a purse for compensation."

"Takeme?" Jehane snapped. She rose to her feet. Irritation had given way to anger. Several of the

Muwardis, she realized, were now strolling over towards her stall. She was aware of Velaz directly

behind her. She would have to be careful; he would chal-lenge anyone for her.

The courtier smiled placatingly and quickly held up a gloved hand. "Escort you, I ought rather to

have said. I entreat forgive-ness. I had almost forgotten I was in Fezana, where such niceties matter

greatly." He seemed amused more than anything else, which angered her further.

She could see him clearly now that she was standing. His eyes were blue, like her own—as unusual

in the Asharites as it was among the Kindath. The hair was thick, curling in the heat. He wasvery

expensively dressed, rings on several of his gloved fingers and a single pearl earring which was certainly

worth more than the collective worldly goods of everyone in the line in front of her. More gems studded

his belt and sword hilt; some were even sewn into the leather of the slippers on his feet. A dandy, Jehane

thought, a mincing court dandy from Cartada.

The sword was a real one though, not a symbol, and his eyes, now that she was looking into them,

were unsettlingly direct.

Jehane had been raised, by her mother and father both, to show deference where it was due and

earned, and not otherwise.

"Such 'niceties,' as you prefer to call simple courtesy, ought to matter in Cartada as much as they do

here," she said levelly. She pushed a strand of hair back from her eyes with the back of her hand. "I am

here in the market until the midday bells have rung. If you have genuine need of a private consultation I

will refer to my afternoon appointments and see when I am available."

He shook his head politely. Two of the veiled soldiers had come up to them. "As I believe I did

mention, we have not time for that." There still seemed to be something amusing him. "I should perhaps

say that I am not here for an affliction of my own, much as it might gratify any man to be subject to your

care." There was a ripple of laughter.

Jehane was not amused. This sort of thing she knew how to deal with, and was about to, but the

Cartadan went on without pausing: "I have just come from the house of a patient of yours. Husari ibn

Musa is ill. He begs you to come to him this morning, before the consecration ceremony begins at the

castle, that he might not be forced to miss being presented to the prince."

"Oh," Jehane said.

Ibn Musa had kidney stones, recurring ones. He had been her father's patient and one of the very

first to accept her as Ishak's successor. He was wealthy, soft as the silk in which he traded, and he

enjoyed rich foods far too much for his own good. He was also kind, surprisingly unpretentious,

intelligent, and his early patron-age had meant a great deal to her practice. Jehane liked him, and worried

about him.

It was certain, given his wealth, that the silk merchant would have been on the list of citizens

honored with an invitation to meet the prince of Cartada. Some things were becoming clear. Not all.

"Why did he send you? I know most of his people."

"But he didn't send me," the man demurred, with easy grace. "I offered to come. He warned me of

your weekly market routine. Would you have left this booth at the behest of a servant? Even one you

knew?"

Jehane had to shake her head. "Only for a birth or an acci-dent."

The Cartadan smiled, showing white teeth against the tanned, smooth features. "Ibn Musa is, Ashar

and the holy stars be thanked, not presently with child. Nor has any untoward acci-dent befallen him. His

condition is the one for which I under-stand you have treated him before. He swears no one else in

Fezana knows how to alleviate his sufferings. And today, of course, is an ... exceptional day. Will you

not deviate from your custom this one time and permit me the honor of escorting you to him?"

Had he offered the purse again she would have refused. Had he not looked calm and very serious

as he awaited her reply, she would have refused. Had it been anyone other than Husari ibn Musa

entreating her presence ...

Looking back, afterwards, Jehane was acutely aware that the smallest of gestures in that moment

could have changed every-thing. She might so easily have told the smooth, polished Cartadan that she'd

attend upon ibn Musa later that day. If so—the thought was inescapable—she would have had a very

different life.

Better or worse? No man or woman could answer that. The winds blew, bringing rain, yes, but

sometimes also sweeping away the low, obscuring clouds to allow the flourishes of sunrise or sun-set

seen from a high place, or those bright, hard, clear nights when the blue moon and the white seemed to

ride like queens across a sky strewn with stars in glittering array.

Jehane instructed Velaz to close and lock the booth and fol-low her. She told all those left in the line

to give their names to Velaz, that she would see them free of charge in her treatment rooms or at the next

week's market. Then she took her urine flask and let the stranger take her off to ibn Musa's house.

The stranger.

The stranger was Ammar ibn Khairan of Aljais. The poet, the diplomat, the soldier. The man who

had killed the last khalif of Al-Rassan. She learned his name when they arrived at her patient's house. It

was the first great shock of that day. Not the last. She could never decide if she would have gone with

him, had she known.

A different life, if she hadn't gone. Less wind, less rain. Perhaps none of the visions offered those

who stand in the high, windy places of the world.

Ibn Musa's steward had briskly admitted her and then greeted her escort unctuously by name,

almost scraping the floor with his forehead in obeisance, strewing phrases of gratitude like rose petals.

The Cartadan had managed to interpose a quiet apology for not introducing himself, and then sketched a

court bow of his own to her. It was not customary to bow to Kindath infidels. In fact, according to the

wadjis, it was forbidden to Asharites, sub-ject to a public lashing.

The bejewelled man bowing to her was not likely to be lashed any time soon. Jehane knew who he

was as soon as she heard the name. Depending upon one's views, Ammar ibn Khairan was one of the

most celebrated men or one of the most notorious in the peninsula.

It was said, and sung, that when scarcely come to manhood he had single-handedly scaled the walls

of the Al-Fontina in Silvenes, slain a dozen guards within, fought through to the Cypress Garden to kill

the khalif, then battled his way out again, alone, dead bodies strewn about him. For this service, the grate

-ful, newly proclaimed king in Cartada had rewarded ibn Khairan with immediate wealth and increasing

power through the years, including, of late, the formal role of guardian and advisor to the prince.

A status which brought a different sort of power. Too much so, some had been whispering. Almalik

of Cartada was an impul-sive, subtle, jealous man and was not said, in truth, to be particu-larly fond of his

eldest son. Nor was the prince reputed to dote upon his father. It made for a volatile situation. The

rumors sur-rounding the dissolute, flamboyant Ammar ibn Khairan—and there were always rumors

surrounding him—had been of a some-what altered sort in the past year.

Though none of them came remotely close to explaining why this man should have personally

offered to summon a physician for a Fezanan silk merchant, just so the merchant could be enabled to

attend a courtly reception. As to that, Jehane had only the thinly veiled hint of amusement in ibn

Khairan's face to offer a clue—and it wasn't much of a clue.

In any event, she stopped thinking about such things, includ-ing the unsettling presence of the man

beside her, when she entered the bedchamber and saw her longtime patient. One glance was enough.

Husari ibn Musa was lying in bed, propped on many pillows. A slave was energetically beating a

fan in the air, trying to cool the room and its suffering occupant. Ibn Musa could not have been called a

courageous man. He was white-faced, there were tears on his cheeks, he was whimpering with pain and

the antic-ipation of worse to come.

Her father had taught her that it was not only the brave or the resolute who were deserving of a

doctor's sympathy. Suffering came and was real, however one's constitution and nature responded to it.

A glance at her afflicted patient served to focus Jehane abruptly and ease her own agitation.

Moving briskly to the bedside, Jehane adopted her most deci-sive tones. "Husari ibn Musa, you are

not going anywhere today. You know these symptoms by now as well as I do. What were you thinking?

That you would bound from bed, straddle a mule and ride off to a reception?"

The portly man on the bed groaned piteously at the very thought of such exertion and reached for

her hand. They had known each other a long time; she allowed him to do that. "But Jehane, Imust go!

This is the event of the year in Fezana. How can I not be present? What can I do?"

"You can send your most fulsome regrets and advise that your physician has ordered you to remain

in bed. If you wish, for some perverse reason, to offer details, you may have your steward say that you

are about to pass a stone this afternoon or this evening in extreme pain, controlled only by such

medications as leave you unable to stand upright or speak coherently. If, anticipating such a condition,

you still wish to attend a Cartadan function I can only assume your mind has already been disjointed by

your suffer-ing. If you wish to be the first person to collapse and die in the new wing of the castle you will

have to do so against my instructions."

She used this tone with him much of the time. With many of her patients, in truth. In a female

physician men, even powerful ones, often seemed to want to hear their mothers giving orders. Ishak had

induced obedience to his treatments by the gravity of his manner and the weight of his sonorous,

beautiful voice. Jehane—a woman, and still young—had had to evolve her own methods.

Ibn Musa turned a despairing face towards the Cartadan courtier. "You see?" he said plaintively.

"What can I do with such a doctor?"

Ammar ibn Khairan seemed amused again. Jehane found that irritation was helping her deal with the

earlier feeling of being over-whelmed by his identity. She still had no idea what the man found so diverting

about all of this, unless this was simply the habitual pose and manner of a cynical courtier. Perhaps he

was bored by the usual court routine; the god's sisters knew,she would have been.

"You could consult another physician, I suppose," ibn Khairan said, thoughtfully stroking his chin.

"But my guess, based on all-too-brief experience, is that this exquisite young woman knows exactly what

she is doing." He favored her with another of the brilliant smiles. "You will have to tell me where you

were trained, when we have greater leisure."

Jehane didn't like being treated as a woman when she was functioning as a doctor. "Little to tell,"

she said briefly. "Abroad at the university of Sorenica in Batiara, with Ser Rezzoni, for two years. Then

with my father here."

"Your father?" he asked politely.

"Ishak ben Yonannon," Jehane said, and was deeply pleased to see this elicit a reaction he could

not mask. From a courtier in the service of Almalik of Cartada there would almost have to be a

response to Ishak's name. It was no secret, the story of what had happened.

"Ah," said Ammar ibn Khairan quietly, arching his eyebrows. He regarded her for a moment. "I see

the resemblance now. You have your father's eyes and mouth. I ought to have made the asso-ciation

before. You will have been even better trained here than in Sorenica."

"I am pleased that I seem to meet your standards," Jehane said drily. He grinned again, unfazed,

rather too clearly enjoying her attempted sallies. Behind him, Jehane saw the steward's mouth gape at

her impertinence. They were awed by the Cartadan, of course. Jehane supposed she should be, as well.

In truth, she was, more than a little. No one needed toknow that, however.

"The lord ibn Khairan has been most generous with his time on my behalf," Husari murmured faintly

from the bed. "He came this morning, by appointment, to examine some silks for purchase and found me

... as you see. When he learned I feared not being able to attend the reception this afternoon he insisted

that my presence was important"—there was pride in the voice, audible through the pain—"and he

offered to try to lure my stubborn physician to my side."

"And now she is here, and would stubbornly request that all those in this room save the slave and

your steward be so kind as to leave us." Jehane turned to the Cartadan. "I'm sure one of ibn Musa's

factors can assist you in the matter of silk."

"Doubtless," the man said calmly. "I take it, then, that you are of the view that your patient ought not

to attend upon the prince this afternoon?"

"He could die there," Jehane said bluntly. It was unlikely, but certainly possible, and sometimes

people needed to be shocked into accepting a physician's orders.

The Cartadan was not shocked. If anything, he seemed once more to be in the grip of his private

source of diversion. Jehane heard a sound from beyond the door. Velaz had arrived, with her

medications.

Ammar ibn Khairan heard it too. "You have work to do. I will take my leave, as requested. Failing

an ailment that would allow me to spend the day in your care I am afraid I must attend this con-secration

Guy Gavriel Kay - The Lions of Al-Rassan

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