“My ring interests you,” said Bazir al-Gallidh.
Abruptly aware that he was staring—and, considering his thoughts, staring rather fiercely—he smoothed his expression and replied, “Your pardon. I have seen several like it in the past. Taken from the northern barbarians, was it not?”
“Yes.” He held out his hand to regard the pearl. “More than a hundred years ago my great-grandfather came down from the mountains—a place much higher than Sihabbah, whence our family’s name—and fought the barbarians. Eventually they were expelled from the coast. My ancestor returned, his head golden with glory, as the old saying goes, and richer by nothing more than this ring.”
“A truly noble man,” Azzad commented.
“Such rings as these are common where you come from?”
“No. But I have seen three or four. The stones were rubies.”
“Ayia, then they were from the fingers of their nobles. Something about protection against storms and lightning, the perils of a sea voyage.”
“I didn’t know that. Is it written in one of these books?” He gestured to the wealth around them.
“In many of them. Those who dwell on the coast suffered greatly when these barbarians came, and tales of those times are of interest to me. From them, I learned that pearls such as this were worn by those pure of heart—the holy ones, the wise ones. Do you take an interest in the past?”
“Only in the future,” he said, and was unable to keep a twinge of bitterness from his voice.
“Which appears to you rather limited, here in Sihabbah.” Bazir al-Gallidh seated himself on the couch and gestured to the chadarang service. “Do you play?”
“Badly, al-Gallidh. My mother taught me, but despaired of my ever becoming a serious player.”
“This is very, very old. My father always said he could imagine that this was the service on which Acuyib and Chaydann Il-Mamnoua’a played to divide up the world into the green lands and the red.”
Azzad nodded. “My mother used to say that chadarang was part of her devotions—it’s the eternal struggle between the desert and the garden.”
Al-Gallidh picked up one of the towers, fingering a broken crenellation on the jasper. “Your mother sounds a wise woman. But I think there are things more subtle here. There are those of us who live in these, safe and stationary—” He set the tower back on its square and touched the carnelian sheyqa’s crowned head. “—and those who have not the grandest title but who rule in truth by moving among the people.” Sitting back, he regarded Azzad thoughtfully. “I am told that you are a good worker.”
“I have tried to be,” Azzad replied.
“I am further told that you are clean, conscientious, do not drink or gamble or follow women about in the marketplace, and indeed have been exemplary.”
Looking into the older man’s eyes, he felt an absurd desire to shuffle his feet and shrug like a little boy.
“How is it then,” asked the nobleman, “that this superlative servant has done my house such grievous wrong?”
Azzad blinked. “I don’t understand. What wrong have I done?”
“Perhaps I ought to say that the wrong was done not by you but by your horse.” Leaning back, he eyed Azzad with a hint of whimsy. “Five of my best mares are with foal by that spindle-legged stallion of yours.”
“Five—?”
“Yes. At about the time you arrived here, they were coming into season and had just been separated from the herd. They were to be covered by my new stud, who was taken to them as planned. But I did not know until today that Khamsin had gotten there before him.”
“But—how?”
“Our horses do not require high fences,” Bazir replied mildly.
It was true. They could sooner fly than jump anything taller than this couch. But Khamsin—faster, lighter—he’d been trying to fly since he’d tottered to his feet and taken his first steps.
“I know,” Bazir continued, “because by this time the mares should be much bigger than they are. I was afraid that I was mistaken when I bought the new stud, that he had no vigor. But—five mares, all of the best bloodlines, all bearing runtlings at the same time? Then I happened to catch sight of your Khamsin galloping across the meadow. He leaped the stream merely for the fun of it.”
Azzad nodded slowly. “I am sorry, al-Gallidh. What can I do to—”
“—rectify the problem? Nothing. I blame myself, in truth, for not recognizing that he would get to the mares any way he could. We just don’t think about horses leaping fences, you see. And so now we have a difficulty.”
Azzad tried not to gulp. This was an appalling thing Khamsin had done, potentially disastrous to the al-Gallidh horses’ reputation, not to speak of whatever profits had been expected in this year’s crop of foals—
But the nobleman did not look angry; indeed, he seemed almost merry. “I need draft animals, not racehorses. What am I to do with these half-breeds?”
Five foals, not as tall or heavy or powerful as their mothers—
“Mazzud says, and I agree, that judging by their smallness inside the womb, they will be much too frail for harnessing.”
—but as light and swift as their sire, perfect for—
“And so how can I use them?”
“Riding,” he heard himself say, and all at once the blurry idea of what seemed like years ago became as polished crystal in his mind. So did his mother’s face. And the estimable Za’avedra el-Ibrafidia stared at him with disgust for his blindness. “Saddle them and ride them,” he said, excitement rising in him the way his manhood rose at the sight of a beautiful woman.
“We ride donkeys.” A flat statement, admitting no possibility of change.
“And look ridiculous on them!” Azzad exclaimed. “Only see, al-Gallidh, the advantages! They will be bigger than Khamsin, but not so big as your horses. The terrain here demands strength, which they will have—but grace and a sweeter temper as well, and speed—not so fast as he, but much faster than—”
“You speak as if they were already born.”
“I know how they will be, I can see every one of them!” And somehow he could.
“Along with that truth charm about your neck, did the Shagara give you a spell of foreknowledge as well?”
The crystalline images shattered. “A—a spell?”
“My brother Zellim also has interests,” Bazir murmured. “It was he who pointed out to me the charm and deduced its purpose. Through my own reading, I have learned that when our people rode into battle against the barbarians, they wore amulets to protect them—things of gold and silver made by the Shagara.”
“I did not know that, either.”
“And now that you do know, you do not believe?”
Azzad opened his mouth and found he had no words. In the matter of the pregnant girl, the people of Sihabbah had believed him. So, he realized suddenly, had the shepherds in that village, who had been ready to kill him; but after he had told them he meant no harm, Abb Sharouf, standing close to him, had believed him. Believed, and let him go. For no reason whatsoever.
Except the Shagara gold around his neck.
“Al-Gallidh,” he said at last, “I do not know. The Shagara were a peculiarity to me—kind and welcoming, skilled in medicine as everyone knows, but their ways were . . . eccentric.”
“So I have heard. So I have not read—which is curious, if they were so important in driving out the invaders. Their name is mentioned in the books, and that is all. Nothing of their ways, their lands, their customs. They crafted armbands and rings, a few shields for the nobility, necklaces—and that is all anyone knows.”