“No, Ishak.” She said it gently, knowing she was disappointing him. “You aren’t ready for what you’re asking. I’m sorry.”
“I think I am ready!” he retorted, his temper surfacing. He bit his lip, then went on more quietly. “Will you at least let me handle your sword? I could use its magic—”
Alanna shook her head. “No one handles it but me.”
“I want something exciting to do!” he cried. “You won’t let me handle your sword; you won’t teach me advanced magic—”
“The spells you’re talking about are strong and delicate. You don’t have the discipline to proceed slowly. Ishak, listen to me!” she went on as he turned away. “Don’t you know what happens when you attempt magic you aren’t ready for? If you’re lucky, the spell won’t work. If you’re unlucky, it will get out of hand and burn you up. If you tried to use the sword, it would consume you. You’d die, and nothing could bring you back. Learn to be patient. Stop trying to skip steps as you’ve been doing with the ritual spells—yes, I’ve seen you! With magic you must be careful.”
“You’re as bad as Akhnan Ibn Nazzir!” he burst out. “You have a cat that’s supernatural, a token from the Goddess, a magic sword, the Gift—and you want to keep it all for yourself! You don’t want anyone else to have fun!” He turned and ran out.
Alanna shook her head, troubled. “It’s not ’fun,’” she murmured, more to herself than to Faithful or the girls. She looked at her other anxiously watching apprentices and forced a smile. Ishak would cool off and find something new to be excited about in the morning—she hoped. “Does that thing work?” she asked Kourrem.
Eager to change the subject, the girl nodded. “I’m glad you let me set it up. I don’t feel right, just sitting here in the evening when I could be weaving.”
“Are you any good at it?” Alanna wanted to know.
Kourrem shook her head. “No, but I want to learn.” She squinted at the threads. “I know a little.”
“She knows more than a little,” Kara announced. “She’s a good weaver. It’s important for a woman to do something well, so she can bring honor and good fortune into the tent of her husband,” she added wisely.
“Are you two looking for husbands?” Alanna wanted to know.
“I’m not sure,” Kara admitted, sitting and wrapping her arms around her knees. “While we were outcasts in the tribe, there was still a chance that a man from another tribe might want one of us as a wife. But now that we are shamans, it’s hard to say. The shaman before Akhnan Ibn Nazzir had a wife, but Ibn Nazzir didn’t—he was too dirty. Would a man want to marry a woman who is a shaman?”
Alanna remembered that Jonathan had asked her to marry him. “As much as a man will want to marry a woman who is a warrior,” she said reassuringly. “And I personally know two who wanted to marry me.”
Kara’s face lit up. “Kourrem, did you hear that?” she cried happily. “Two men wanted to marry Alanna! Perhaps we have a chance!”
“Um,” Kourrem replied, checking to see that she had threaded the loom properly. “I don’t want to be married yet. I have too much to learn.”
Alanna laughed outright at this. “And I thought I was the only one who felt that way!”
Ishak returned before the girls left, looking contrite. “I have acted badly,” he told Alanna softly. “I will try to slow down. I will listen and do as you say.” Overcome with the effort of apologizing to a woman, even if she was the Woman Who Rides Like a Man, he turned and fled. Alanna frowned, wondering if his show of humility was just that—a show. She fingered the ember-stone at her throat and sighed as the clacking of Kourrem’s loom began. She could only wait for Ishak’s next outbreak and hope that he learned self-control soon.
five
Apprentices
Every night Kourrem took time to work on her loom. Even Alanna, who knew nothing of weaving, could see that she spent as much time unraveling mistakes as she did weaving.
“I just don’t know enough,” she told Alanna one night, as Kara and Ishak argued nearby over the use of a scroll of spells. “I was little when I was taught, and I haven’t practiced for a long time.” She sighed, looking discouraged. “You remember Hakim Fahrar, the man you fought?” Alanna nodded. “His mother is the best weaver in the tribe. I’d ask her to teach me, but—” She made a face. “The women think Kara and I have forgotten our place because we sit with the men.”
“And it doesn’t help that I wounded Mistress Fahrar’s son,” Alanna said shrewdly. Kourrem nodded; Alanna tousled the girl’s hair. “I’d give anything to help you, but I don’t know how to weave.”
All three apprentices—even Ishak—stared at her. Finally Kara whispered, “You don’t know how to weave?”
“Warriors don’t learn such things,” Ishak told the girls scornfully.