“By harvest time, Your Majesty, you shall be using the throne of Torunna as a footstool. I stake my life upon it.”
“You have, Shahr Johor—believe me, you have. This is very well. I like this plan. The Torunnan army numbers no more than thirty thousand. If we can pin them down in the open and launch the Ferinai into their rear, I cannot see how they will survive. If Batak’s magicks do not put paid to him first, I shall have this Torunnan general in a capture-yoke. I will walk him to Orkhan, where he will be crucified.” Aurungzeb chuckled. “Having said that, if he meets his fate upon the field of battle, I shall not be unduly displeased.”
A rustle of laughter flitted about the room.
“That will do for now. You will all leave, but for Mehr Jirah and his urgent errand. Ahara, my sweet, seat yourself. Shahr Baraz, are you a complete boor? Find my Queen a chair.”
The Merduk officers filed out, bowing in turn to Aurungzeb and Ahara. The door clicked shut behind them.
“Well, Mehr Jirah. What is so urgent that you must enter an indaba unannounced and, though I am not one to prate about protocol, why is my Queen at your side?”
“Forgive me, Sultan. But when something momentous occurs which impinges upon the very faith of our people and the manner of their belief, then I deem it necessary to bring it to your attention at once.”
“You intrigue and alarm me. Go on.”
“You recall the Ramusian monk who has come to us from Torunn?”
“That madman. What about him?”
“Sultan, I believe he is not mad.” Mehr Jirah’s face grew stern and he rose to his full height as though bracing himself. “I believe he speaks the truth.”
Aurungzeb blinked. “What? What are you telling me?”
“I have been conducting researches in our archives for the last two months, and I have had access—which you so graciously granted—to all the documents that were saved from the ecclesiastical and historical sections of the Library of Gadorian Hagus in Aekir. They tally with a tradition that my own Hraib hold to be true. In short, the Prophet Ahrimuz, blest be his name, came to us out of the west, and it now seems certain that he was none other than the western Saint Ramusio—”
“Mehr Jirah!”
“Sultan, the Saint and the Prophet are the same person. Our religion and that of the westerners are products of one mind, worshipping the same God and venerating the same man as His emissary.”
Aurungzeb’s swarthy face had gone pale. “Mehr Jirah, you are mistaken,” he barked hoarsely. “The idea is absurd.”
“I wish it were, truly. This knowledge has shaken me to the very core. The monk whom we deemed a madman is in fact a scholar of profound learning, and a man of great faith. He did not come to us out of a whim—he came to tell us the truth, and he bore with him the copy of an ancient document which confirms it, having fled with it from Charibon itself. The Ramusian Church has suppressed this knowledge for centuries, but God has seen fit to pass it on to us.”
There was a pause. Finally Aurungzeb spoke, unwillingly it seemed.
“Ahara, what part have you in this?”
“I acted as interpreter for Mehr Jirah in his conversations with the monk Albrec, my lord. I am able to confirm what Mehr Jirah says.”
“Do you not think, Sultan,” the mullah continued, “that it is a strange twist of fate which has brought a western queen and a Ramusian scholar to you at this time? I see the hand of God at work. His word has been corrupted and hidden for long enough. Now is the time to finally let it see the light of day.”
Aurungzeb’s eyes flashed. He began pacing about the room like a restless bear. “This is all a trick—some ruse of the Ramusians to divide us and mislead us in the very hour of our final victory. My Queen: she was once a Ramusian. I can see how she was taken in, wishing to reconcile the faith of her past and the true faith which she has had the fortune to be reborn into. But you, Mehr Jirah: you are a holy man, a man of learning and shrewdness. How can you bring yourself to believe such lies? Such a blasphemous falsehood?”
“I know the truth when I hear it,” Mehr Jirah retorted icily. “I am not a fool, nor yet some manner of wishful thinker. I have spent my life pondering the words of the Prophet and reviling the teachings of the western imposter-saint. Imagine my shock when I look more closely at these teachings, and find in some cases the same phrases uttered by Ramusio and Ahrimuz, blest be his name, the same parables… even the mannerisms of the two men are the same! If this is a Ramusian trick, then it is one that was conceived centuries ago. Besides, the Ramusian texts I studied antedated the arrivall of our own Prophet. Ahrimuz was there! Before he ever crossed the Jafrar and taught the Merduk peoples, he was there, in Normannia, and he was a westerner. His name, my Sultan, was Ramusio.”
Aurungzeb was manageing to look both frightened and furious at the same time.
“Who else knows of this discovery of yours?”
“I have taken the liberty of gathering together the mullahs of several of the closest Hraib. They agree with me—albeit reluctantly. Our concern now is in what manner we should disseminate this knowledge amongst the tribes and sultanates.”
“All this was done without my knowledge. On whose authority—?”
Mehr Jirah thumped a fist on the table, making the map of Torunna quiver. “I am not answerable to you or anyone else on this earth for my actions or the dictates of my conscience! I am answerable to God alone. We do not ask your permission to do what we know to be right, Sultan. We are merely keeping you informed. We will not sit on the truth, as the Ramusians have for the past five centuries. Their current version of their faith is a stench in the very nostrils of God. Would you genuinely have me commit the same blasphemy?”
Aurungzeb seemed to shrink. He pulled himself up a chair and sat down heavily. “This will affect the outlook of the army—you realise that. Some of the Minhraib are unwilling to fight as it is. If it gets out that the Ramusians are some kind of—of co-religionists, why then—”
“I prefer to think of them as brothers in faith,” Mehr Jirah interrupted grimly. “According to the Prophet, it is a heinous crime to attack one whose beliefs are the same as one’s own. Eventually, Sultan, we may have to see the Ramusians as such. They may be riven with discord, but they revere the same Prophet as we do.”
“Belief in the same God has not stopped men from killing one another. It never will. Take a close look at your brothers in faith, Mehr Jirah. They are busy cutting one another’s throats as we speak. In Hebrion and Astarac—and even Torunna—they have been fighting civil wars incessantly, even while we hammer at their eastern frontier.”
“I am not näıve, Sultan. I know the war cannot be halted in its tracks. But all I ask is that when the time comes to make peace—as it will—you keep in your mind what you have been told here.”
“I will do so, Mehr Jirah. You have my word on it. When we have taken Torunn I will be merciful. There will be no sack, I assure you.”
Mehr Jirah looked long and hard at his Sultan for several tense seconds, and then bowed. “I can ask no more. And now, with your permission, I will leave.”
“Are you intent on disseminating this news amongst the troops, Mehr Jirah?”
“Not quite yet. There are many points of doctrine which remain to be clarified. I would ask you one favour though, my Sultan.”
“Ask away.”
“I would like the Ramusian monk released into my custody. I tyre of skulking around this fortress’s dungeons.”
“By all means, Mehr Jirah. You shall have your little maniac if you please. Tell Akran I said he was to be freed. Now you may leave me. Shahr Baraz, you also.”