Lion's Blood Page 7

  Nessa dug her feet into the ground, but to no avail. She was simply dragged toward the tall woman. She fought and bit and clawed and then was cuffed on the side of the head. She slumped, and they dragged her the rest of the way, then chained her to the other girls.

  Deirdre's heart raced, breaking. Despite her prayers, her fears of death on the ocean, she had always known that this moment might come, that Aidan or her precious girl-child might be torn away, sent down hell's own road to an unknown fate. Eyes wide with terror, somehow Deirdre managed to raise her voice. "Nessa! Nessa! Be strong, darling." Then grief seemed to close her throat, and she could only cry, her hands reaching out, clawing for her daughter, body pulling against the chain until her neck shackle cut off her air and she sagged sobbing to her knees.

  The hands were closing in on them, separating them. Forever. Aidan had risen to all fours, trembling. "Nessa!" he called. "Remember what I promised you."

  "What?" Nessa's single word could barely force its way through a throat filled with tears.

  "That I'll find you. I swear it."

  Her eyes were locked on his. To Deirdre, drinking in the sight of her children's yellow hair, their round pale faces and bright blue eyes, they seemed more alike than on the day of their birth. A single bright soul trapped in two captured bodies. "You swear?"

  Somehow, Aidan managed to sound certain. "I swear on our father's life."

  She nodded, tried to smile, her golden hair ragged and dirty around her shoulders. "I believe you, Aidan. I'll wait for you. I'll—"

  Deirdre would never forget her last view of her daughter, Nessa's arms extended, face distorted, stretched taut like a skin across a coracle frame. "Ma! Aidan!" she cried. "Oh, God! I love—"

  She was shoved away, and Deirdre lost sight of her. Deirdre and her son were stunned into silence, and before they could gather their senses were herded along a narrow row between stacks of wooden crates to a wider spot far from the market. There Oko met them and passed money to their guard.

  Deirdre babbled out words. "My family was supposed to stay together," she wept. "Please. There's been a mistake—"

  Without a word in answer, they were prodded and shoved through a bustling black mob into a waiting cart crowded with several other slaves. Although in her heart Deirdre knew her efforts would mean nothing, still she had to try. "It's a mistake!" she called. "Oh God, oh Mother Mary, won't someone help us? Please, please, it's a . . . mistake . . ."

  But no answer emerged from the sea of alien black faces. Deirdre sank weeping to her knees, could not be made to stand. All of her strength was gone, and sobs wracked her with such violence that she could barely breathe, and had to be lifted up just so her chains could be fastened to the inside of the cart.

  Aidan stood over his mother, teeth bared and eyes wide, struggling not to remember his last view of Nessa, dragged off to heaven knew what fate. Slavery? Rape?

  Worse?

  He squeezed his lids so tightly shut that lines of light and color erupted through the darkness. He bit his lip to drive the images from his mind. That way lay madness, and it was not a distant journey.

  Nessa would live. He would live. And somehow, he would keep his promise.

  The cart began to roll away. He watched the slave block and market square recede, then vanish in a maze of stalls and shops and clay-roofed buildings tall enough to blot out the sun.

  Chapter Eight

  The cart rolled out of the market onto a hard-packed clay road and began a slow and steady journey to the northeast. The intervening territory was mostly sandy soil and scrub brush. From time to time they passed rows of white slaves laboring in the sun, under the watchful eye of white and black overseers. Aidan did not recognize the crops being worked: strange plants in neat rows that extended almost to the horizon. Little dusky woolen-haired children ran alongside the cart, yelling and jeering at them. Aidan longed to jump down from the cart and beat the little boys into the ground. He was as good as them. Better! He would show them!

  By the time the sun was a hand's-breadth above the western horizon, they reached a river. There they were unloaded onto a boat similar to the one that had taken them across the ocean, only smaller. A single chimney belched clouds of white smoke. The rear of it was another mighty screw-shaped device. Even now it turned lazily, shucking waves of water into the river.

  They were marched aboard and anchored to bolts set in the inside walls. Aidan watched everything, missed nothing, and saw that despite the apparent casualness with which they were treated, there was no moment at which escape was possible. They were chained, or escorted in small groups, under the threat of whips and fire-sticks at every moment. This thing that had happened to his family had been going on for a very long time, and their captors knew far more about it than he could possibly imagine. Captivity was their very trade, and they knew it as Mahon had known fishing. A time would come—Aidan had to believe it. But that time was not now.

  Before the sun had vanished completely, the boat finally pulled away from the dock and began its journey north.

  Besides the captives, there was only one other white face on the ship: an elderly man, all bone and gristle, tufts of gray hair sprouting from his ears. He mopped the deck with slow, measured strokes, as if he had all night to complete his task.

  Deirdre watched him for some minutes before venturing an attempt at conversation. "Do you know where they're taking us?"

  He never looked at them, and spoke without moving his lips. "It's inland you're going," he whispered. "Dar Kush. Now let me work."

  He turned away from them. Aidan tested his chains. He could not budge them, and knew there was no chance of breaking them. He watched the water flow.

  The river was wider, flatter than the Lady. Unknowable. Somehow, watching it, the sheer irreversibility of his situation seemed to settle about him. Even the waters here are alien, he thought. He had half a mind to free himself, leap overboard and drown. But it would not be the Lady's waters that filled his lungs, not her cool and crystalline arms that welcomed him, and without them, he could not find his way home.

  PART TWO

  The New World

  "In the universe," said the Master, "there are three forces: affirming, denying, and reconciling."

  "How does this manifest in the world?" asked the student.

  "In many ways. For instance: there is Life, there is Death, and there is the Transcendent."

  "I do not understand. Can you tell me how these forces manifest in the affairs of men?"

  "Yes, and from your own experience. There is Master."

  "Yes."

  "There is Slave."

  "Yes."

  "And there is Friend."

  The student paused, then said, "Yes. I see."

  Chapter Nine

  22 Shawwal 1280

  (March 31, 1864)

  You cannot escape God. You will meet Him in foreign lands.

  Namibian proverb

  In the sprawling torchlit fields adjacent to the Wakil's castle, six horses thundered toward a red flag posted at a mile-distant stand of juniper. Their hooves tore clods of grass and dirt from the pasture as with crop and heel their riders urged them to ultimate effort.

  On the sidelines laughing, bearded nobles and highborn in brilliant raiment raised their fists to the night sky, waving clutches of tan banknotes and rectangular gold coins. They hailed from Abyssinia, from Zululand and Moorish Almagrib. There were even a few aquiline visitors from great Alexandria herself. Their skin shaded from blackest black to a creamy coffee, but they were one people in their appreciation of the evening's sport.

  The Wakil himself, Abu Ali Jallaleddin ibn Rashid al Kushi, pushed his way to the fence as the lead horses rounded the trees and flag torch and headed back toward the main house. He was the tallest in the crowd, and wide to proportion. His nose was broad and regal, the whites of his eyes so clear they seemed to sparkle. The Wakil's skin was so dark and shining it was almost bluish. Although his waist was thicker than it
had been in youth, he moved with the authority and dignity of a born warrior and leader. He was in his vigorous fifties, his chest still as massive and imposing as that of the champion wrestler he had been in his youth.

  Now bound to his desk by duty and scholarship, the Wakil was perhaps the second most powerful man in all New Djibouti, responsible only to the governor, who in turn answered only to the Caliph himself in New Alexandria. The Wakil's name literally sang the song of three generations: "Jalal father of Ali, son of Rashid the Kushite."

  Although his people were of the Aderi tribe, originally from Harar in the province of Hararghe, it pleased Abu Ali to wear a Magribi djebba, a simple dark robe of Egyptian cotton, decorated with vertical stripes. The djebba was suited equally to hot, dry days and cool nights.

  His keen eyes measured the action as the two lead horses, a gray Zulu stallion and a white Egyptian mare, raced neck and neck, so evenly matched they might have been yoked. The Egyptian was on the far side, and Abu Ali had to watch carefully to spy his elder son, bent low and forward, Iraqi-style flowing pants clamped around the flanks of his mount, jacket fluttering in the wind, his flowered shirt stained with sweat. Ali's handsome face corded with the strain of his effort.

  The Wakil raised his fist and called "Ali! Hail" across the field sharply, fully aware how unlikely it was that his principal heir would hear his voice above the din of hooves.

  Ali ibn Jallaleddin ibn Rashid was a striking, athletic lad of sixteen, all wiry muscle and fine bone, high Abyssinian cheeks and eyes like black diamonds. At times still quite playful, at others he radiated sufficient intensity to frighten boys his own age. Girls tended to react to him with cautious curiosity, and giggled behind their veils. Ali spurred his mighty white mare Qaldanna to greater effort, and the pureblood obeyed as if they were of a single mind.

  Abu Ali's attention wavered for a moment as he heard a voice that he recognized. He searched the crowd of laughing faces to his right and spied his younger son: Kai ibn Jallaleddin ibn Rashid. Twelve years old, thinner and less confident by far than whipcord Ali, Kai was almost too beautiful to be a boy. His eyes were soft brown and long-lashed, his cheeks round, neck long and gracefully poised. Kai's muscles were stringy, and the boy spent too much time in the book stacks, entirely too little practicing sword strokes.

  Beside him, Kai's sister, Elenya bint Jallaleddin ibn Rashid, was but ten. Her hair was braided in tight, precise oiled rows, her skin so shining and flawless that he often called her his teqit tequr lul, his little black pearl. Elenya was the flower of Abu Ali's existence. Her mother Kessie (Allah protect her name!) had been sorely wounded in her birthing and died three years later, yet Ar-Rahman, the Most Merciful, had given her beauty back to the world in Elenya, like a flowered spring following a killing frost. Life, the Wakil knew, turned in cycles. Thus had it ever been, and would ever be.

  When all was measured in the scales of Paradise, despite the long and lonely years, Allah had been good to Abu Ali. "All praises unto His name," he whispered.

  "Ali! Ali!" young Kai shrieked. His eyes were so bright, his lips red, his thin body animated beneath princely robes. He was a mischief maker, his hair worn in the plaited rows of a young scholar, not close-cropped as was his brother's.

  Abu Ali sighed. Praise Al-Hakim the Wise that this boy was born second, spared the pressures and obligations accorded the first. Ali would inherit most of the estate and the Senate seat; Kai would study law and business and help his brother administrate. At times Abu Ali felt he had married plump little Kessie too late in life, that he had not enough years left to guide his family. Times when he felt the snows of the coming winter already settling upon his broad shoulders. But he had confidence that these lands his father and grandfather had earned, that he and his brother, Malik, had fought for, would ultimately rest in safe and capable hands.

  The rider on the Zulu mare challenged Ali all the way but the Wakil's son snatched the final flag from the pole with an arm's length to spare.

  He wheeled his mount about, letting her slow to a trot as he raised his fisted arms to the cheering crowd and crowed an exultant "Yes!"

  As the other contestants sulked, Ali walked his horse over to his father's station. The mare knelt, and Ali slipped off. He lowered his head.

  "Father," he said.

  Abu Ali smiled. "Well done." He reached into his robe and extracted a gilt-edged scroll. "You make me proud." He handed his son the parchment.

  Makur, heavy with muscle, his face showing the flat, strong lines of his Dahomy ancestors, jumped off his horse with surprising lightness for his size. He pretended to glower. "Next year, Ali."

  "Only if you learn to ride." The boys grabbed each other behind the neck, banged foreheads hard enough to make their eyes water, and then laughed.

  As onlookers spanked their palms together in appreciation, Ali opened the scroll. In a cursive Arabic script it read: THE BEARER IS PROCLAIMED THE WINNER OF THE IDD-EL-FITR FEAST DAY CELEBRATION.

  Kai and Elenya had pushed their way up behind their older, taller brother, trying to read the scroll. Ali teased them, holding it out of their range, making them jump about like fleas just to catch a glimpse. It was an old, fond game, one Abu Ali watched tolerantly. At last, deciding that

  there had been enough of such mischief, Abu Ali took his son aside. Then he pulled his sacred knife, his jambaya, Nasab Asad—Lion's Blood—from its scabbard.

  Nasab Asad's three debens of weight and fourteen digits of sleek, curving, razor-sharp steel and bone was his most precious personal possession. Its hilt was crafted of black rhino horn, bolted to the tang with six heavy steel rivets. Legend held that the steel blade was smelted from a fallen meteorite by Benin smiths, its white-hot length quenched in the living blood of a lion.

  Men of the Wakil's line had carried Nasab Asad into battle for ten generations. It had seen more war and death than any dozen men, and it was said that its wisdom and strength flowed into he who held it. Nasab Asad had protected life, and taken life, until the blade had come to symbolize the power of the family it protected, and the fury of its warriors.

  "It will be yours one day," said Abu Ali. "Feel it now."

  "The Lion, Father?" He barely seemed willing to touch it, as if it might awaken and claw him.

  "Why not? Of all my possessions, my children are most precious. The Lion," he said, twisting it so that the polished blade caught the firelight, "is merely steel."

  "Merely . . . ?" Ali's eyes sparkled. The blade was beyond magnificent, bordered on divine, almost as fabled as Zul al Fikr, Lord of Cleaving, the sword of the Prophet's son-in-law and faithful follower, he for whom Ali had been named.

  Ali's fingers dug into the black bone handle. This was a deadly scepter. Whoever held such a blade need fear no man. He made a few dexterous cuts in the air, then respectfully handed it back to his father.

  Ali made a shallow bow. "I pray I will one day prove worthy of the Lion." He grinned. "One very distant day."

  Abu Ali smiled proudly. "Insh'Allah," he said. "If it is the will of God."

  Oko Istihqar, the plantation's head overseer, approached with his customary gliding strut. "Sir," he said, "we need your attention at the main gate. Shaka and his men have been sighted."

  Abu Ali sighed. "Well," he said. "The great man himself. Honor indeed. At once. Again, well done, Ali."

  As their father left, Kai dashed to his brother, pretending to cut and thrust at him with a slender branch.

  "Great warrior!" he cried. "I'll show you!"

  Ali defended effortlessly, then deliberately left a gap in his defenses. Kai "stabbed" him in the side, and Ali reeled against a tree, holding the imaginary wound.

  "Ah," he moaned. "You have slain me! Ahh . . ."

  Elenya shook her finger in Kai's face. "You qattâl! Father will skin you—"

  "—and roll me in salt," Kai finished for her. "A threat like that, and it might make sense for me to finish what I started!"

  Kai stalked toward her. Shrieking,
Elenya hid behind her eldest brother, seeking safety.

  Ali grabbed both scamps and spun them like little tops, then hugged them hard enough to creak ribs. Then they returned to the festivities.

  Their father's estate was the grandest of all in New Djibouti, the southernmost of Bilalistan's four provinces. Today, its rolling hills, forests, and fields were crowded with guests celebrating Idd-el-Fitr, the most important Muslim festival of the year.

  Idd-el-Fitr celebrated the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting. For a month, the Muslim faithful had gone from dawn to dusk without food or water passing their lips, and all eyes had watched the horizon for sight of a new moon.

  Now, a thousand happy celebrants filled the grounds.

  As the three siblings crossed the lawn the crowd parted respectfully and they were feted by musicians, tumblers, and magicians. The performers displayed skills of voice and agility and sleight of hand sufficient to resurrect memories of the old sultans, of djinn and flying carpets, of Persian wedding celebrations or Alexandrian holidays.

  The estate was one of two sharing the waters of Lake A’zam, famous for boating and fishing, with tributary streams running all the way south to the Azteca gulf. Some said the Wakil's manor was the wealthiest in all New Djibouti.

  Banners fluttered from the turrets of Dar Kush, the main house, which had been disassembled and shipped stone by stone from Andulus fifty years before. Its hundred rooms, Moorish vaulted ceilings, six fountained gardens lined with roses, miniature date palms and thousand-pillared hallways were the envy of Djiboutis New and Old. It was rumored that the Ayatollah himself had demanded his carpenters and architects specifically trump Dar Kush's gilded inlay in his own masta, his winter home.