Haroun did not run into it himself but there were veteran minds less fixed in attitude, a few old men who had been around for ages who recognized the possibilities of deeper concerns.
The amateur yammer smiths never plugged the Star Rider into their calculations. Nor did they consider the fact that the King Without a Throne had a wife who actually meant something to him.
No one expected to see Haroun in Al Rhemish so no one saw him.
An old hero named Beloul lived in Al Rhemish, amongst other retired heroes. Once a general, Beloul’s pitiful pension and the bile of the current king forced him to live in an adobe hovel shared with an equally decrepit former aide and that man’s middle-aged illegitimate daughter. Beloul had been one of Haroun’s most devoted and brilliant commanders. He had been the same for Haroun’s father before him. Haroun was amazed to see how poorly Beloul was treated but more amazed to find him still alive. He suppressed the urge to contact Beloul immediately.
There were few rootless men around Al Rhemish. The current regime discouraged the presence of the crippled of mind, body, or soul. Megelin found those people distasteful. Those who pandered to the king drove off anyone so dim or ill-starred as to have become disfigured in service to his cause.
Haroun liked his offspring less every day but not once did it ever occur to him to put the boy aside.
He made quite sure that neither Megelin nor his henchmen were watching before he went to visit Beloul.
Trouble was, he could not shake the fear that he was being watched himself. He suffered this constant, creepy paranoid certainty that never discovered a fleck of sustenance. It went way back. Random and seldom during his flight from Lioantung, lately it had become a fixture, and much more aggressive. It had to be a product of his insecurities, grown fatter after the Norath incident and his wastrel spending of good luck during the sojourn at Sebil el Selib. Not once, even employing all his shaghun skills in the privacy of the erg, had he apprehended any genuine observer.
In bleak humor he wondered if God Himself was not the watcher.
Reason suggested that a genuine observer would have to be Old Meddler but the sense of being watched antedated that point-the encounter with Magden Norath-when the revenant would have garnered the interest of that old devil. Before that Haroun bin Yousif was dead to the world.
One cool evening, while street traffic was heavy, bin Yousif went to the general’s door. A woman answered, which rattled him totally. Women did not do such things. They did not show themselves to strangers. Their men folk did not allow it. But… Here she was just another fellow in the household?
Beloul and El Mehduari must have been poisoned by outside ways while they were in exile.
The woman looked him straight in the eye, bold as any warrior confident of his prowess. She intimidated him. He was amazed.
“Well? Can you speak? No?” She began to close the door.
“Wait. I’ve come to consult the general.”
“The general is retired. He doesn’t contribute anymore. He isn’t allowed to contribute. In return for his silence we are provided a stipend sufficient to hold starvation at bay. I will not jeopardize that. Go away. Consult someone else.”
“Beloul ed-Adirl! Present yourself!”
She had rattled him that much. And now she was about to make him hurt.
“Admit him, Lalla,” came from the gloom beyond the woman, in a voice like dead insects being rubbed across one another.
The woman did as instructed, eyes locked with Haroun’s, assuring him that he faced plenty of pain if he gave her an excuse.
Wow. Never had he encountered anyone whom he knew, instantly, was as hard as this woman. She might be as hard as him.
The setting sun had been in Haroun’s eyes. He entered the house as good as blind, but eventually did make out an amorphous shape amongst cushions against a far wall, too small to be Beloul or El Mehduari- though, at this remove, he surely remembered them larger than life.
That shape extended a pseudopod, gestured, suggesting he take a seat. “I have heard your voice before. Who are you?”
Beloul became more clear as Haroun’s eye adapted. He did not like what he saw. Beloul in his mind was Beloul thirty years ago, powerful, confident, a champion fit to contend with the Scourge of God. This Beloul… “You do not know me?”
“I cannot see you. These eyes betray me.”
That might explain the darkness, some, though not for the fierce woman.
“You rode with my father. You were too indulgent with me and my brothers when we were boys. You’re still too indulgent toward my son.”
“Do you have a name?” There was an edge to the general’s voice, now, as the old steel surfaced.
The woman rested a hand on the hilt of the curved dagger at her left hip. Haroun was sure she knew how to use it.
“I do. I won’t say it here, in this city.”
“Now I know you. Come closer. I have never conversed with a ghost.”
That did not reassure Haroun. Did Beloul want him inside grabbing range? It would take but an instant for the woman to… He stepped forward. The old man swept a hand at him, hard, sure it would meet no resistance. “Ouch!” He began massaging his wrist.
“Damned solid for a spook,” the woman observed. “He must be a demon instead.”
Beloul chuckled, a dry old man’s laugh. “You aren’t far wrong.”
“Would this be who I think it must be, then, Uncle?”
“Yes, Lalla. The revenant who untangled the curse of Magden Norath. Be seated, youngster. Tell me tales of the years. Tell me what brings you here in my end times.”
The woman asked, “Is there anyone I should inform? Someone I should summon here?”
“That will wait. Let’s hear his story first.”
Haroun settled onto a ragged reed mat. Nothing lay beneath that but dirt, which would become mud during any persistent rain. He faced Beloul. The man had been a personal hero when Haroun was a boy. He was saddened by the way time and Megelin had treated Beloul.
Haroun did note that Beloul offered him no honor as king.
He was just another man, possibly not in good odor-though Beloul was not one to be seduced away from the grand Royalist strategy by side issues. Beloul owned a conscience that was unique.
Had Beloul been making ultimate decisions back when, today’s world might wear a different face-though that would in no way resemble the world that Beloul had hoped to see. Old Meddler, the Pracchia, and Shinsan would have sucked the blood out of Hammad al Nakir and the West despite Beloul. The Disciple had been just another torment.
That water had sunk into the sands. The world that existed now was the world in which everyone had to struggle, including every survivor on the other side.
After some silence the general asked, “Well? Why are you here?”
“Honestly? I don’t know. It was a destination. I was looking for something that I can’t name. I have these grand ideas, but…” He paused to collect himself. “I vanished when I did because the Dread Empire imprisoned me. They got caught up in a huge war with a revenant devil and forgot me. I escaped. I made my way across the entirety of Shinsan. Getting back drove me obsessively. But once I got through I had no idea what to do. All that time buried alive changed me. I am no longer the man that I was.”
“It has been a while since Norath went down.”
“Yes. And that just happened. It was an unexpected opportunity. I didn’t think. I acted. Afterward, I still had no plan, for a long time, till I thought that I might find what I needed in Al Rhemish. I’m here, now, and now I wonder, what next?”
“Uhm.”
“I’m a lost soul, Beloul. I’m alive. I’m very good at staying alive. Barring Old Meddler, I’m maybe the best there ever was at that. But what do I do with the life I’ve so devoutly preserved? Choices I made, that led to my becoming an unwilling guest of the Tervola, cost me my claims on most everything else. I can’t be king again. Megelin is king. I made him king so I could run off on my own.”