“So,” the wizard mused. “People inside Kavelin will be too close to this and not understand that things are getting better. But there it is. If the political situation doesn’t explode.”
As ever, what Kavelin needed most was freedom from the ambitions of those convinced that they ought to be in charge.
“Varth?”
He did not acknowledge her. Nepanthe touched his shoulder lightly. He started. “What?”
“You’ve been staring into that for two hours. It’s time to eat.”
“Oh.”
“You didn’t find Haroun?”
“I gave up. I went looking at Kavelin.” He needed help getting up. He had remained seated too long. “Good things are starting to happen in the Lesser Kingdoms. How good will depend on Inger and Kristen. They could ruin everything with a civil war.”
There was another potential source of despair. Michael Trebilcock.
Varthlokkur had had no success finding Michael, either.
Most people thought Trebilcock was dead. Varthlokkur was not convinced. He thought Michael had pulled his hole in on himself but was out there somewhere, watching and waiting.
Trebilcock was no sorcerer but had a personal magic unique to himself. He might be the most important man in the Lesser Kingdoms now. If he was alive.
Varthlokkur wished he knew how to get in touch.
He could find Michael. He could find Haroun. By a means as subtle as a thunderstorm. By sending Radeachar to look. The Unborn could be stealthy when the target was fixed and known but in a search it tended to attract attention.
Varthlokkur wanted to remain forgotten.
Nepanthe asked, “Why is that? Have Radeachar tow a banner across the sky warning Michael.” She had a soft spot for Trebilcock. He had spent months of his life, risking a cruel death, in order to effect her rescue, once upon a time. “Or whoever took over for Michael if he’s dead.”
“Aral Dantice.” The response was instantaneous. “Dantice is protecting Kristen and her children. That’s worth a closer look.” Then he asked, “What do you think about my putting risers under the legs of my chairs so I don’t have to work so hard to get up?”
…
The conjure man moved to Souk el Arba but did not stay there long. He established his existence in a few hundred memories. He did not render himself notorious. He seemed too honest to succeed.
Soon he began to drift westward, spending a few days in each foothill town, moving ever deeper into the mountains. He came to al-Khafra. That village marked the limit where the law prevailed. It would not be reasonable to proceed into the higher mountains alone.
Rootless men waited around al-Khafra, hoping for work as drovers or guards on caravans crossing the mountains. Master caravaneers did their hiring there so they did not have to pay men not needed in the peaceful country farther east.
Haroun found the youngest fellow he could, one Muma al-Iki, hired him to look out for his goats and donkey. Then he shed his tattoos and got himself work as a caravan guard. The master was happy to acquire what looked to be a skilled sword arm. He was escorting someone or something of high value. Haroun made a point of showing no curiosity.
He made himself accepted amongst the guards and drovers through his entertainment value instead of his skills with sharp steel. He had no opportunity to demonstrate those. No wickedness rolled down out of a shadowed side canyon intent on taking plunder and slaves.
The caravan master bemoaned his wasted protection expenses.
An Invincible called al-Souki had been teaching harsh lessons to the little tribes scrabbling for survival in the high range.
The traveler recalled having seen a few high-range people when he was a boy. They were small and wiry and darker than the peoples of the desert and the coast. Their languages, related to one another, were linked to none outside the mountains-unless, remotely, to those of the Marena Dimura in the Kapenrung Mountains.
The conjurer’s first view of Sebil el Selib, from a crotch between tall, round-backed foothills still a day away, struck him dumb.
A camel drover asked, “First time here?”
“No. I came once when I was a boy,” he lied. “It was different then.” There had been no sprawl of farmland, no eye-searing green miles of pasture. No flocks so vast they looked like gulls on their nesting islands. In those days there had been little more than a couple of ugly stone fortresses that he had not seen with his own eyes. He had been too young to join in the raids.
“It’s changed a lot in my lifetime. And I’m way younger than you.”
“I’m not older than you, I’m just married.”
Which made the drover laugh so hard his comrades came to investigate.
“He said it so deadpan!” The others were amused but nothing more. “I guess you had to be there.”
“It’s all about the timing,” the traveler said. “And the unexpected. I caught Isak by surprise. You all came to find out what was so funny. You had expectations.”
Isak was impressed. “Man, you got some kind of brain in your head.”
“When you have a wife like mine you get a lot of time to think.”
Someone asked, “If you’re married what’re you doing out here?”
“Taking time off to do some thinking.”
That amused the drovers. One observed, “I know. You married your cousin. Now you can’t get out.” A reasonable explanation. The desert peoples typically married closely. But none of these men really believed that. They knew about his sketchy career before he joined the caravan. Muma liked to talk.
No one cared.
The traveler might be a rogue but he was a rogue who did his share. He had undertaken dangerous assignments without quibble. He had helped the injured when the hazards of travel overtook someone. He had a way with animals. Horses, in particular, were nervous in the thin, electric air of the high Jebal but they calmed down when he was around.
Oddly, not once did he hear anyone wonder if he was a spy. That would have been his own first suspicion of someone like himself.
Maybe that was because, in some way he did not recognize, he made it clear that he was something else.
“We need to get back to work,” one of the drovers said. “The Pig has noticed us lollygagging.”
The Pig was the lead drover, a partner in the enterprise. He was neither a bad man nor a harsh boss but he did have expectations. And was cursed with a face reminiscent of a porker.
Haroun looked for his own boss, the partner in charge of defense. He did not see the man. In any case, guards were free to wander and dillydally so long as they did not collect in one place.
Still, it was time to start doing things in a way that would leave no outstanding memories once the caravan broke up.
The enterprise would reform in a new shape, leaving some behind and gathering others, before it moved on into the desert. Haroun told some folks he meant to stay at Sebil el Selib. Others he told he would move on after he visited the holy places.
He hoped for confusion-or that no one would care.
There was no reason anyone should. He was just another traveler.
Muma accepted the balance of his pay. “What will you do now, Aza?” Aza being the name Haroun had worn while crossing the mountains.
“I don’t know. All I ever thought about, till now, was how to get here. This is the place where things begin. This is God’s home. This is the goal. I never thought about what to do next.”
The boy was surprised. “I always thought you knew exactly what you were doing. You seem like you’re more than just you.”