Spiders from the Shadows

TWELVE


Mount Aatte, North of Peshawar, Pakistan


The shepherd stood atop a granite cliff, looking down on the narrow valley some two thousand feet below. Six shacks—not quite huts, with their clay walls, straw roofs and mud floors—lined the deep river that cut through the valley floor. Ancient rock walls, some of them older than Mohammed, crisscrossed the valley, segmenting the land into separate pastures. The walls hadn’t been built to acknowledge private property—earth was the great gift from God and land was held in common among the village folks—but they did make for more efficient management of the sheep and goat herds that provided the milk, meat, leather, and woolen blankets the villagers needed to survive. To to kill ing the reached the villagers, their animals were almost sacred, for they lived or died according to health of their herds. Every part of the animals was used: the internal organs cooked into stew, the blood boiled and packed into intestines to make sausages, the horns worn for adornments or hollowed out to pack tobacco, the skins tanned, the wool stretched and dyed and sewn, the hooves pounded into “medicinal” potions, the teeth ground into various concoctions, most of them unhealthy.

The old man tugged on his hairy chin as he looked out. The rock cliffs around the valley were smooth, gray and sheer, with buttress outcroppings that looked like enormous castle walls. The grass in the valley was brown now, the harvest having come and gone, and the river was running slow. Looking up, he watched the clouds sink toward him. Winter was coming early. The nights were already bitter cold, the days covered with the slate clouds that hung around the mountaintops, creating an artificial ceiling to a valley that sat very near the top of the world.

As he watched, a cold wind blew down from the mountain peaks, wet with drizzle. In a few minutes, it would rain. By nightfall there would be snow. Fall was even shorter than summer in the mountains, and the coming winter would be long. The old man’s face was beaten and deeply creased, reflecting a long, hard life. It was a harsh land that he looked out upon—unbelievably cold in winter, fire-hot and dry in summer, unforgiving, remote, brutal to outsiders, utterly unmanageable except for the few herdsmen and mountain sheep who had the courage to traverse the steep and rocky trails.

The old man watched the single road that ran into the valley from the treacherous mountain pass to the east. His eyes were not as good as they once had been, and he cocked his head to listen as the military jeep reached the highest point on the dirt road and began descending into his valley. Other military vehicles followed. In all, he counted five. They stopped outside the rock wall that surrounded the tiny village, only four feet high now, a thousand years of neglect and erosion having worn it down. Two men got out of the first vehicle and looked around, their carbines hanging under their arms, always ready.

The shepherd turned to his dear friend. Omar watched without speaking, his face tan and tense as he gazed down.

“You know them?” the shepherd questioned.

Omar thought a long time before he finally nodded.

“They came for you?”

He shook his head.

The old man glanced back at the shepherd hut set among the scraggly mountain pines near the entrance to a narrow canyon. The boy was waiting there, standing by the goatskin door that covered the small opening to the hut. Omar followed the old man’s eyes to watch the boy. They called him Larka ka aik Heera. Boy of the Diamond. Omar hated the name—it was demeaning and too descriptive—but he’d never said anything. For what his old friend had risked to protect the child, he could have called him Son of a Crusader and Omar wouldn’t have complained.

The two men watched him. The boy waited, afraid to move. But Omar could read his body language. He was taut, ready to spring if the men gave the word. “He’s a good boy,” Omar observed quietly to the shepherd.

“He’s got the spirit of a stallion, but the manners of a colt,” the old man complained.

“You gave him that, my friend.”

The old man shook his head.

Omar continued, “No, Rehnuma, that is the g thought a lot about’ fatherift you gave to him. His breeding is deep inside him, rich as blood and deep as bone. It will drive him with ambition when he gets older, that is assured, but it will destroy him if not bridled. That is one of the reasons I brought him to you. He needed the seasoning only you and the mountain could ever give him. He needed the humility of being hungry, the gratefulness of being cold, the discipline of herding stupid sheep, the faith of hanging on the mountain with only your word to guide him home.”

The old man thought, then nodded. “The manners of a colt, perhaps I nurtured that. But the stallion that runs inside him, he got that from somewhere else.”

“His father gave that to him.”

The old man’s eyes narrowed to suspicious slits and he turned back to the valley and the military vehicles down below. “They are looking for him,” he said.

Omar didn’t answer.

“You have not told me. I have not asked you. But it isn’t hard to figure out. The diamond he carries is worth more than every man, woman, and child in every village within a five days’ walk of here. His shoulders are too proud, his neck too long. He doesn’t come from Peshawar. He doesn’t come from Persia, Pakistan or anywhere even close. He’s too royal. You can see it. Young as he is, I could not hide it. If they see him, they will know.”

Omar cleared his throat and spat, then pulled out a square of brown paper, tapped in a short line of tobacco, rolled, and licked the edge with a dry tongue, taking less than thirty seconds to hand roll the cigarette. He shoved the narrow cigarette into his mouth and lit it with a paper match.

The shepherd nodded to the military vehicles again. “They’re looking for him?”

Omar pulled a drag and held it.

“They will find him,” the old man said.

“Not if we’re careful.”

“No, dost, that isn’t true. They’ll find him. They’ll take him or kill him, depending on who he really is. I can’t keep him here forever. They know too much. They’ve come back here too often now. They must know that they are close. Someone in the village—I have my own enemies, you surely know—they must be talking, and I can’t stop them.

“Listen to me, dost. I am old now. I’m not afraid to die. I would welcome a chance to sleep, but if Allah were to grant me a few more years, I would take them with great pleasure. I’d like to see my grandchildren safe before I die. I’d like to touch the sea. I’m tired of these mountain walls and winter.”

He fell silent. Omar smoked. The wind was picking up and getting wetter, blowing the first raindrops from the mountaintops over their heads.

“No,” the old man said, “I’m ready string of rag