Snare. Katharine Kerr
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‘What’s that?’ Warkannan said.
‘The oracle.’ Soutan smiled with a flash of tooth. ‘I see no harm in showing it to you. It requires no particular magic to cast.’
Warkannan leaned forward for a look. He could see the title, stamped in black on a pale leather cover, but he found it incomprehensible.
‘It’s written in the old language of the Cantons,’ Soutan said. ‘Which was, in fact, its original language, but a Kazraki translation exists. It’s The Sibylline Prophecies.’
‘Shaitan! But I don’t know why I’m surprised. It seems logical, using heresy to work sorcery.’
Soutan laughed, then opened the pouch and shook out six bronze discs. ‘Ordinary coins,’ he remarked. ‘Heads count one, tails two, and there’s a way of adding them up.’
Warkannan watched while he shook the coins in both hands, then strewed them on the ground. In the firelight the sorcerer leaned forward, peering at them, muttering to himself. He repeated the throw six times, then opened the book, flipped through the pale pink pages, and finally laid one finger on a passage.
‘Could you put a bit more fuel onto that fire?’ Soutan said. ‘This print is large, but still –’
‘What? I thought you sorcerers could make light when you needed it.’
Soutan ignored him. Warkannan added more dried horse dung and blew on the fire to bring up the flames. Soutan hunched close, his lips working as he read over the passage the coins had indicated. Finally he swore – in the language of the Cantons, but Warkannan could guess his frame of mind well enough.
‘Bad news?’ Warkannan said.
‘No, merely completely irrelevant. I must be too tired.’ He shut the book with a snap. ‘Or else I misread the coins in the bad light. I’ll try again after sunrise.’
‘What did it say?’
‘Oh, some rambling drivel about the Fourth Prophet being close at hand. Do you know about that? No, I see you don’t, pious soul that you are. The oracle claims that a fourth prophet will come to the people of Kazrajistan just as the others did, arising out of humble circumstances amid signs from God and so on in the usual way of prophets.’
‘Well, I suppose it could happen. Prophets do appear now and then.’ Warkannan held up one hand and ticked the names off on his fingers. ‘Mohammed, blessed be he, who wrote the true faith into a book. Agvar, who led us out of our bondage in the demon-lands. Kaleel Mahmet, who carved a khanate in our new home with the cavalry for his knife.’ He lowered his hand. ‘And there have been plenty of minor prophets over the years, too many to count, really.’
‘Indeed, whenever the khanate found it convenient to be prophesied at.’ Soutan paused for an unpleasant smile. ‘But this one is supposed to be a major prophet, the final fulfilment of the law, and a woman as well.’
‘Oh. It’s nonsense, then. Drivel, as you said.’
‘You’re sure of that? Your women pray, they read the holy books.’
Warkannan hesitated, thinking. ‘That’s true,’ he said at last. ‘But it strikes me wrong. Men aren’t going to listen to a female prophet. Why would God waste His time?’
‘You Kazraks are amazing, really amazing.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘The things you attribute to God, such as worrying about wasted time. Do you think he’s always winding his clocks like you people do?’
Warkannan caught himself on the verge of bad temper. ‘Ah well,’ he said instead. ‘You’re right, if you mean that ordinary men can’t understand what God may do or what He’s like. But the true prophets –’
‘– may be just as wrong. Consider Hajji Agvar and this business of living as the First Prophet lived, for instance. You don’t do anything of the sort. The First Prophet lived what? just over thirty-six hundred years ago, by your reckoning, when H’mai lived disgustingly primitive lives. Do you think his tribe had printing presses and carriages and all those other fancy things you people use every day?’
‘What do carriages have to do with it? I can’t imagine that God cares if our women ride in carriages.’
‘Oh, indubitably. Then what were your ancestors fleeing when they chose to come here? What did they want?’
At first Warkannan thought the sorcerer was merely baiting him, but Soutan was waiting for the answer, his head cocked a little to one side, his eyes perfectly serious.
‘Well, a simpler life than we had back in the Homelands,’ Warkannan said. ‘Huh, I begin to see your point about those carriages. But it wasn’t just the luxuries that drove us out. It was the evil magicks and pollutions of the blood.’
‘Magicks like what? Your books do mention “unspeakable practices”, but since they never speak about them, I don’t have the slightest idea what the authors mean.’
At that Warkannan had to laugh. ‘I had the same reaction when I was a boy,’ he said. ‘One explanation I heard was the infidels back in the Homelands bred demons.’
‘Bred demons?’
‘Yes, they learned how to mingle the blood of men and animals, somehow, to produce new creatures. The mullahs called these demons.’
‘I see.’ Soutan thought for a long moment. ‘I wonder what that really means?’
‘What it says, I suppose. The mullahs don’t lie.’
Soutan shook his head in mock despair.
‘Well,’ Warkannan snapped. ‘Do you think they’re lying?’
‘No. I merely think that they don’t know what they’re talking about.’
‘Now here! You’re getting close to blasphemy.’
‘Oh, no doubt, no doubt. I’ll stop. God forbid I make you think!’ Soutan rolled his eyes, a gesture that Warkannan was beginning to hate. The sorcerer stood up, then looked across the fire and out to Arkazo’s silent back. ‘Will he be all right?’
‘Eventually. He’s never seen a dead man before.’
‘Ah.’ Soutan considered this for a moment. ‘Well, if we do bring Jezro back to Kazrajistan, he’d better get used to it.’
The sorcerer walked over to his gear and squatted down to put his book away. Warkannan reminded himself several times that he needed Soutan to get across the Rift. Strangling the irritating little bastard would be counter-productive.
That night Warkannan dreamt of Tareev’s body, floating to the surface of the shallow Mistlands lake. He and Kareem stood together and watched as it drifted out of sight, and Kareem wept as bitterly as a woman. When Warkannan woke, he felt as exhausted as if he’d not slept at all.
Zayn woke from a long dream of the Mistlands to a light so cold and grey that for a moment he thought himself still dreaming. He rolled over onto his side and lifted the tent wall a few inches for a look out. Over the patchwork tents and orange wagons the fog lay thick. He sat up, pushing his blankets back, and glanced around. Ammadin’s bedroll lay neatly rolled under her tent bags. From outside the noise of the camp filtered in – dogs barking, children laughing and calling, adult voices passing by. He had slept late, then. He got up, pulled on his trousers, and noticed the rag stuck on the ridge pole where Ammadin had left it the night before. In the morning light he could see the reddish-brown streaks of sap, congealed and dry, their phosphorescence long gone.
The night before. Ammadin. The memory of their talk came back like a slap in the face; he tossed his head as if to shake off the blow. He had told her everything. He had been an utter fool. He started to shiver, grabbed his shirt and put it on, still felt the gooseflesh run down his back. You’re not in the khanate, he reminded himself. You’re