32
MINOR miracles were accomplished in five days. The lake had proved abundant; each day men and women sat on the riverbanks gutting and scaling fish, then leaving them on racks to dry. As it came closer to the day of our departure, more fish were either smoked overnight, or baked with grain to form nutritious fish cakes that could be eaten without need for further cooking.
Others wove tight reed panniers for the mules and camels, or to be carried on the backs of the strong. And most of us were strong. There were no children among us, nor pregnant women (save Neuf), for the slave camp had tolerated neither of those. The baskets were packed with the fish or grain, and what fruits, cheeses and herbs the estate could provide. Anything else we would have to forage for on our journey.
Isphet had told us that the Lagamaal Plain was arid, but not a desert. It would be hot during the day, cold at night. Sandals were repaired, and some new ones made. Few had clothes apart from the simple wraps allotted to slaves, so Zabrze ordered that the river boats be stripped of their drapes and banners, and these be used to provide everyone with flowing robes and cloths to wrap about our heads and necks to keep the sun from us. I smiled as I thought what Chad-Nezzar would think to see former slaves arrayed in such finery, but then the smile died as I remembered what Chad-Nezzar had become himself.
Nzame’s ability to see and speak to us so far to his south had appalled everyone. Zabrze, once told, paled and sent yet more scouts scurrying east and west with pleas for assistance. He sent none northwards.
Zabrze had debated whether we should start our journey a day or so earlier than he’d planned, but decided not to. Nzame might have the ability to see great distances, and he might have an army of stone men, but they may yet be busy in Setkoth, and Zabrze thought that few boats would be able to carry great numbers of them.
He decided we should begin our journey well prepared rather than flee into the night and starve within the fortnight.
Neuf had been very quiet, and Isphet was worried about her, for she was fading emotionally and physically. No-one, not even Zabrze, knew quite what to do. Neuf had been vibrant and healthy when she’d alighted from the boat after her journey from Setkoth to Threshold, but I felt that the shock of Consecration Day, together with her worry over her children’s fate, had sapped her will to live. She was not the unfeeling mother Zabrze had intimated.
She carried within her what was likely Zabrze’s only heir. Isphet told me the baby was healthy, but privately she worried about the birth.
“Neuf says the babe is not due for another five or six weeks. I pray that she is right, and I pray that we are not still on the trail when she goes into labour.”
We left early one morning as the Juit birds rose flame-like into the sky and the frogs croaked their dawn chorus. Zabrze had asked Memmon to come with us – many of the estate workers had decided to accompany us to safety – but Memmon had refused. He said he would stay and keep the estate in order for when either Boaz or Zabrze returned, and nothing would change his mind.
As we stepped onto the path east I turned and looked behind me. The house was so beautiful, and the river, lake and marshes even more so. I hoped that somehow Lake Juit would escape Nzame’s feeding frenzy. I tried to picture this beauty turned to stone, and my eyes blurred with tears.
“Come,” Boaz said. “Come on, Tirzah. Let us look to the future and not the past.”
“I was hoping that house would somehow be my future, Boaz. Will you bring me here to live if somehow we survive the next months and years?”
“Assuredly, my love,” he said, and kissed my brow.
Isphet, Zabrze, Boaz, Azam, myself, and two or three others led the trek. Sometimes Yaqob joined us, but he generally kept to the mid-section of the column.
Neuf sat on a mule directly behind us where Isphet could keep an eye on her. She smiled whenever someone turned to check on her progress, but otherwise I think she just stared listlessly.
Most on foot had panniers strapped to their backs, even Zabrze walked with a load of grain and fish cakes. Boaz’s load was lighter than mine – in the dark hours before we set out I’d loaded some of the grain he carried into my pannier. I still distrusted the strength of the scar on his belly, and I did not want it to split and re-infect so far from the healing slime of the Lhyl. I had several pots of the powder with me, and others stored in sundry panniers throughout the column. But I would prefer that Boaz stay healthy and not in need of saving a second time.
For the first day, and well into the second, we walked through the fields on the estate. It was pleasant, and not overly hard, even in the heat, for the robes and wraps about our heads kept us cool, and a light breeze came up from the river.
On the third day we moved into uncultivated land. Isphet angled us north-east, and said that if we kept to an easterly direction we should pick up the first of the markers on the trail to the mountains.
“Markers?” Zabrze asked, striding by her side.
“Few of us would ever leave the mountains to come to what we called the low river lands,” Isphet explained. “Perhaps four or five people a year. The trail is hard, and it is even harder should anyone become lost. So our people constructed markers through the Lagamaal to guide us between the river and hills.”
“Will they still be there? It has been many years since you passed this way.”
“The markers have been there for hundreds of years, Zabrze. I doubt they have given up and died in the ten or eleven years since I left.”
Given up and died? Isphet would not explain, but as the day passed I noticed worry lines crease her forehead, and their depth only increased as we walked into our fourth day.
There was no trail now, only that provided by the sun and stars, and I hoped Isphet knew what she was doing. The ground was hard and littered with shards of rock and small pebbles. Every so often a stand of larger rocks appeared, some four or five paces high, and Isphet said they were the remnants of mountains so old they had worn down to these crags.
I smiled at that.
Low, twisted trees with dark green spiky leaves provided us with little shade but did give us good fuel for our fires, and tufts of tough, wizened grass poked out from between the stones.
“If we run out of food,” Isphet said, “we can survive for some time on the tubers at the base of those grasses, although if a person eats them for longer than a week they risk death from their slow poisons.”
There were creatures about, too, which we normally only saw at dawn and dusk. Hares, thin and rangy, and the snakes and beetles that Isphet had spoken about. They did not bother us, for we were very many thousands of feet trampling through their plains, but we checked our blanket rolls at night and our robes in the morning, fearful lest some cold-skinned reptile had snuggled into their warmth.
As noon approached, Isphet stood and muttered, peering into the distance as she shaded her eyes.
“There it is!” she cried, although none of us could see anything out of the ordinary. “There!” And she hurried through the grass and over the stones.
We followed at a more leisurely pace, relieved that Isphet had found whatever it was she looked for.
Some forty or fifty paces on, Isphet knelt before a low mound of rocks. I looked at it curiously, but could see nothing that set it apart from the many other mounds we’d passed. Isphet was slowly running her hands over the rocks, then stopped about midway down the eastern face of the mound.
“Ah,” she breathed, scrabbled about a little, then drew out a small, dull grey metal ball.
She rubbed it between her hands, warming it, and whispered to it. She listened, her head cocked, then her face creased in a broad smile.
“The ball tells me who has passed and what has happened in the immediate vicinity over past months. Boaz, you feel. Listen.”
She handed him the ball. He concentrated, then smiled. “The hares have been mischievous, but not much else.”
“Yes.” Isphet handed the ball to me, and then to Yaqob who had wandered up.
“Can any Elemental hear it?” he asked.
“Not at first. It must be awoken by one who is already of the mountain community, otherwise it will remain mute, even to an Elemental.”
Not only did I hope we didn’t get lost, I prayed we didn’t lose Isphet along the way.
“And the trail,” Boaz said. “It spoke of many things, but not of the trail.”
“Ah,” Isphet replied. “Again, the ball will only respond to me in this.”
She stood and tossed the ball high in the air. It sparkled momentarily, then hit the ground with a greater thud than I would have expected for a ball of its size.
Instantly the loose soil, gravel and small stones before us began to writhe.
Save Isphet, we all stepped back in horror, Zabrze cursing and stumbling in his haste, and I heard Neuf cry out some paces behind us.
“Be still,” Isphet said. “Look.”
A narrow path of rock and soil writhed to the east.
“It will lead us to the next marker. Come now, don’t fret. The soil will cease moving the moment a foot is set upon it.” She secreted the ball amid the marker stones again.
Zabrze swallowed, looked at Boaz and Azam, then waved us forward.
And so we followed a snake of soil and stone through the plain, the five thousand trailing in a long line behind us.
We travelled throughout that day and the next two. Each night we camped at one of the markers, then in the morning Isphet would retrieve the dull metal ball, listen to what it had to say, then toss it in the air to set off the next pathway of shifting soil and pebbles.
Despite the aridity of the landscape and the foot-wearing march, few seemed despondent. Nzame had not spoken again, and Boaz said that he hoped the creature’s sight and voice had only extended as far as the lake. Boaz himself relaxed into such light-heartedness that he often had our entire lead group laughing as he made up humorous stories about the communities of hares and beetles that we passed.
His hair he cut even shorter, and he let a light beard grow. It was his way of sloughing off the outward appearance of the Magus, but I thought it made him look like a bandit. When I told him this he grinned, and said that we were nothing but bandits, travelling through the plains in such fashion.
Once we’d reached a marker in the late afternoon Zabrze ordered a halt, and we would spread about in a vast camp. Isphet showed us how to search for water in the deep depressions scattered about. If four or five men dug until they reached damp soil, then lined the hole with stones, water would seep through until, by the morning, it was a clear pool, and we could fill our flasks and splash the sleep from our faces.
As dusk fell campfires would twinkle cheerily. We would cook grain, or reheat the fish cakes, and occasionally someone would catch a hare, and then the campfire to whom she or he belonged would have fresh meat. The smell of cooking meat drifting across from a neighbouring campfire one night made Zabrze and Azam swear they would catch a hare for us, but the hares were swift and the two men were not in the first flush of youth. We laughed so much the next day when Zabrze tripped and tumbled both himself and Azam to the ground that they grumbled and said we’d have to make do with the scents wafting and not the meat cooking.
Yaqob would usually join us once he’d eaten with his group, and then the discussion would invariably turn to that dawn rite on the lake. We would also discuss Nzame, who and what he was, but we got nowhere with that.
Boaz questioned Isphet closely about the Graces, but she knew little.
“We revere them greatly,” she said, “and try not to disrupt their contemplations.”
During these discussions Zabrze would remain silent, his dark eyes flitting about the group, Neuf dozing in his arms. I thought they had become closer over the past few days, as if it had been the confines and schemes of court that had kept them at such emotional distance for so many years.
And yet I wondered, remembering that fleeting caress of Isphet’s cheek.
Twice I read from the Book of the Soulenai. Isphet and Yaqob were enthralled by the stories, and both admitted that perhaps the skills of reading and writing were not entirely bad.
“Except when manipulated and ensorcelled by the Magi,” Isphet could not resist saying, shooting Boaz a dark look.
“Perhaps you would like me to teach you to read, Isphet,” he replied. “And you, too, Yaqob. It is a skill that is only dangerous, as Isphet said, when misused. And any skill can be misused.”
I expected Isphet and Yaqob to refuse, but they surprised me. Isphet sat turning a pebble over and over in her hand.
“Among the Graces there are those who have mastered the skills of reading and writing,” she admitted. “And there are stores of scrolls and books that have been laid down over the centuries. I think that I might like to be able to read them. If you don’t mind, Boaz,” she finished hastily.
“It would be my pleasure,” he said. “Yaqob?”
“That book is a wondrous thing,” he said slowly, looking at it, then he raised his eyes to Boaz. I always tensed at these moments. Yaqob could be so unreadable when he chose, and I wondered whether his seeming acceptance of Boaz was pretence or artifice. “Perhaps I will watch when you give Isphet her first lessons.”
Boaz smiled. “Then we will begin tomorrow night.”
But that night, the third since Isphet found her first marker, gave us other things to worry about.
Several hours after I had gone to sleep, I was shaken awake by Isphet.
“Tirzah. Tirzah!”
“Mmm?”
“What’s wrong?” Boaz said, waking more quickly than me.
“It’s Neuf. She’s gone into labour.”
Boaz and I sprang into instant wakefulness. “What can we do?” he asked.
“You can do nothing, Boaz,” Isphet said. “But Tirzah will be a help.”
“Neuf has always borne her children with ease,” Boaz said, but his voice was strained.
“Maybe so, but in a comfortable and secluded birthing pavilion, and not after the stress she’s gone through over the past few weeks. Tirzah, will you hurry up?”
“Call if you need me,” Boaz said, and then Isphet led me to a small stand of rocks protected by two stubby trees. Kiath was there, hanging a small lamp on a low branch. Blankets had been strung between trees and rock to give Neuf some privacy. She lay, supported by Zabrze, his face more strained and worried than that of his wife.
“Really, Zabrze,” she said. “This is women’s business only.”
“You are my business, Neuf,” he replied. “I’m staying.”
And so he did.
The labour progressed rapidly. Isphet relaxed after an hour; despite Neuf’s physical weakness she appeared to be doing well.
Close to dawn, Zabrze helped Neuf to squat in the birthing position. Isphet rolled up her sleeves and prepared to assist as best she could. “Bear down,” she said, and Neuf glared at her.
“I’m considerably more experienced at this than you,” she snapped, and Zabrze grinned weakly over the top of Neuf’s head at Isphet. I’m not sure if he was apologetic at her words, or relieved at her spirit.
But bear down Neuf did, and with the ease that Boaz had promised the babe slipped clean and sweet from her womb. Isphet cleaned his face and mouth and then lifted him to Neuf’s arms.
“A boy,” she said, and this time I knew that the look on Zabrze’s face was one of sheer relief.
“Small, but strong,” Isphet commented.
At that moment Neuf gave a small gasp of surprise, one of her hands fluttering to snatch at Isphet’s. “Oh!”
“Isphet!” I said, “quick!” Blood was gushing from Neuf’s womb, and I could actually see Neuf’s face pale in the dawn light as her life ebbed from her. She collapsed back into Zabrze’s arms, and Isphet snatched the baby and handed him to Kiath before Neuf dropped him.
“Isphet!” Zabrze yelled, and his arms tightened about his wife. “Do something!”
We put pressure on the womb, but that was all we could do.
Neuf, feeling herself dying, sobbed, and snatched at Isphet’s hand again. “Boaz,” she whispered.
“Get him!” Zabrze shouted at me, and I almost tripped as I scrambled to my feet and lifted aside the curtains.
But he was already there, having heard Zabrze shout the first time.
“What’s wrong?” Then he saw my bloodied arms. “Oh, no…no…”
He ducked inside the enclosure and knelt by Neuf’s side. Zabrze was huddled over his wife’s form, crooning her name over and over.
“Boaz,” Neuf’s eyes fluttered open. “Boaz, this is not where I planned to die. Please…please…will you bury me according to the Way of the One?”
I remembered that Zabrze had said Neuf had many friends among the Magi, but I had not realised how committed she was to the Way of the One until this moment.
“Please, Boaz, I beg you, don’t let me die without knowing that I will have the rites I wish.”
“Boaz…” Zabrze muttered.
Boaz looked more than distressed. He started to shake his head, but Zabrze shouted at his brother. “Boaz, don’t deny her what she wants!”
Boaz sighed. “I will do as you ask, Neuf. You will be farewelled according to the Way of the One.”
“I thank you,” she whispered, and died.
None of us knew what to say or do next. The baby whimpered, as if he realised that his mother had passed on. Zabrze bent over his wife’s bloodied form and wept, still crooning brokenly to her.
“I tried,” Isphet said. “But…there was nothing…”
I knelt beside her and put my arms about her, then Boaz spoke.
“She will have to be washed, and she should be dressed in a combination of blue and white.”
“Boaz,” I said, “surely you’re not really going to –
I was stopped by the fierce look I received from both brothers.
“I promised her,” Boaz said, “and I cannot go back on that promise.”
We did the best we could. Isphet was distraught, so I sent her to sit with the baby while Zabrze, Kiath and I washed Neuf’s body and dressed her in a blue and white robe given us by one of the other women.
But before we called Boaz back I leaned forward and snipped away a lock of her hair.
“We can have our own rite one day, Kiath,” I said, and she nodded.
“Alive, Neuf did not know the wonders of the Place Beyond. In death she will.”
Boaz had shaved, and his expression was almost that of the cold Magus once more, but his eyes as he raised them to mine were full of emotion, and I knew this mask would not last.
“Her face will need to be painted with her blood,” he said, and I felt my stomach lurch over.
“It is the Way of the One,” he said, and I took a deep breath and did as he asked.
That macabre face-painting was not the worst of the ceremony. We kept it behind the cover of the blankets, and only Kiath, Isphet, Zabrze, the baby and I witnessed Boaz farewell Neuf in the manner she wished.
It left a sourness clinging to the back of all our throats.
When it was done Zabrze said a few words; his way, I think, not only of farewelling Neuf, but of grieving for her.
“We shared a marriage for twenty-one years,” he said. “It was not passionate, but Neuf and I were a good pairing and we made a companionable couple. She had all that I could give her, except my love…”
That was a brutal admission, I thought.
“…but she had all that she wanted. I wish I could have provided a better death for her. I wish I had not led her to this fate.”
Then he turned aside, took the baby from Isphet, and went and sat under a distant tree.
We did not move that day.
Neuf’s death cast a pall over the entire column. She had not been well liked, certainly not well known, but any death was sad, especially that of a woman in childbirth, so many people grieved for her.
And she had left such a tiny, helpless baby.
No-one else among us had a baby or was even pregnant. Within hours of Neuf’s death Isphet was fretting over her pot, trying to concoct something that would be palatable and nourishing.
To lose the baby because there was no milk to feed him would be more than a double tragedy.
“Perhaps if I boil some grain to broth,” Isphet said, wiping sweat away from her brow. “No, no, that won’t do. Perhaps honey-sweetened water. Tirzah, do you have some honey in your pack? It will keep his stomach full, at least.”
Uselessly so. I shook my head.
Zabrze paced to and fro behind Isphet, cradling his son. The baby was wailing softly, and that helped no-one.
“Isphet?” Zabrze asked. As he had pleaded with her to save Neuf’s life, now he pleaded for his son.
“I can’t –” she began, then stopped as a shadow fell over the campfire.
“Masters and mistresses,” said a wizened but exquisitely spotless old man, “I crave your forgiveness for this interruption. But I have heard of your problem, and –”
“And what?” Zabrze snapped.
“And…” the old man held a pot in his hand, and now he took the lid off. It was filled with frothy, white milk.
Isphet squeaked and reached with both hands.
“Where did you get that?” I asked. I think I was the only one left with a voice.
“My Zsasa gave birth last night…as well, good lady. She has much milk. But –”
“Zsasa?” Zabrze asked.
“My camel, Great Lord.”
“Your camel lived and my wife died?” Zabrze said incredulously. “How is it that a camel –”
“We thank you, good cameleer,” I said hastily. “This milk will surely save the babe’s life,” and I stared Zabrze hard in the eye.
“Yes, yes,” he said. “I thank you with my soul for this gift. Excuse my words, I…”
“I understand, Great Lord,” the old man said, then looked at Isphet. “The milk is very rich. Too rich for a baby. Dilute it with water, half and half, and it will do.”
Isphet was already reaching for a bowl, and within minutes she’d mixed the milk.
Still embarrassed by his words, Zabrze asked the old man to join us, and all sat silently about the fire as Isphet took the baby from Zabrze’s arms and fed him using a moistened cloth for him to suck from. He was hungry, and eager for life, and he took all that he was given.
“How will you name him, Zabrze?” Isphet asked eventually, wiping the boy’s mouth as he lay sleeping in her arms.
Zabrze thought for some minutes. “I will name him Zhabroah,” he said eventually. “It means survivor.”
That night was the first Isphet went to Zabrze’s bed, and that was good, for it was a night he should not have been alone.
Even so, I think the love had been growing between them for a very long time, even before they had met.