She shook the carpenter off, stumbled backward, looked out over the city shehated, then leaped from the parapet.
Live a fool, die one, Azel thought. She'd defeated herself. She'd lost toherself.
No one was watching him. It was an effort of herculean proportion but hemanaged to move one hand from his waist to his mouth. He began to chew.
He could've stopped her, he thought as the shadows closed in. He could'veshouted. They would've killed him but he could've warned her before she tookthat step. He could've given her Nakar ... The last thing in his sight wasthe boy. Nakar was looking out of those young eyes, looking at him, and Nakarknew. By holding his tongue he had destroyed them both, Witch and wizardalike.
Azel used his last ounce of strength to force a mocking smile and a farewellwink.
Aaron tried to grab the Witch as she backed off the parapet. In the lastinstant she changed her mind, reached for his outstretched hand. But thedistance separating them was too great. Down she plunged, vanishing in thedarkness, trailing a scream in which he heard Nakar's name and a curse uponQushmarrah.
Chance? Curse? Whim of the gods? At the moment the Witch struck stone theearth shook. The tremor was barely discernible but it was enough.
A lightning crack appeared in the leaky wall in the home of that otherwiseinsignificant woman in the Shu. Plaster chipped away. A hair of water squirtedthrough. The stream expanded swiftly.
The wall came apart.
The surge destroyed the next wall it encountered.
In minutes the hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of water trapped in themaze were in motion.
It would have been an awesome sight from the harbor had anyone been out thereto watch the avalanche of water and rubble and bodies roar down and hit the bay.
They got Yoseh up out of the shaft. Mo'atabar and the others followed. Soonthey had ropes over the side. Fa'tad had men waiting below.
They lowered the Herodian sorceress first, so she would be down there whenArif and the injured arrived. Already she had done something to put Arifasleep. Already Aaron understood that when Arif awakened he would not recallthe threat that had come so close to devouring him. He would not forget hisimprisonment completely but the worst horrors would be cleansed from his mind.
He would remember that his father had, indeed, come to his rescue.
They lowered Aaron right after Yoseh. When he reached the cobblestones hefound Laella and Mish and Stafa and even old Raheb waiting. Only Mish hadglances to spare for anyone but him and Arif. She had a few for Yoseh, whoseemed more embarrassed than pained now that the sorceress had seen to him.
His brothers had proclaimed him a hero.
Laella clung to Aaron and Arif and wept as she had not done since the day hehad come home from the Herodian captivity, releasing all her fears andtensions in the form of tears.
Aaron said, "It's all right now. It's all right. It's all over now." Heglanced at the sky. Once frenzied clouds had gone drowsy already.
"What about this one?" Medjhah asked Mo'atabar, kicking the child-taker.
"What about him? He's dead, isn't he?"
"Bled to death, looks like."
"Leave him lie. Fa'tad will send a cleanup gang in tomorrow. Let them worryabout it. I'm too damned tired. All I want to do is get down and lie down."
Medjhah shrugged. He nudged the dead man with his toe. "He was a toughbastard. For a veydeen."
"Wonderful epitaph, Medjhah. A real Dartar eulogy. It's your turn on the rope.
Mind the slick."
Those who were sent into the citadel to take prisoners and loot and dispose ofthe dead failed to find a corpse atop the tower. The disappearance was a greatpuzzle but no one worried it long.
Aaron had said it was over. That was not quite true. History is the wholeloaf, not just a slice. History is a river flowing, events its tributaries.
The end of Aaron Habid's tale was but an event in other stories.
Epilog One: Immediate Events Six days after the fall of the citadel Cretius Marco met the Turok raiders inbattle. He slew or captured all but a handful. The same day, a hundred mileseast, Diro Lucillo received word of events in Qushmarrah. He turned on hisDartar auxiliaries. Joab extricated his men, fled eastward, seized control ofthe fortified bridges behind the expeditionary force. Four days later, in alightning strike, his men captured the Seven Towers. Qushmarrah could not beapproached from the west.
Earlier, the Herodian fleet had made harbor in Qushmarrah and been capturedintact.
Eight days after the fall, after intense discussions with Colonel Sisu bel- Sidek, Fa'tad al-Akla proclaimed the Dartar kingdom of Qushmarrah. Bel-Sidekserved as his grand vizier the rest of his days.
Several senior officers of the Living did not survive to see the founding ofthe new estate.
Fa'tad sent to the Khadatqa Mountains for the rest of his people. Thus did heovercome the relentless drought.
Eighteen days after the fall, encouraged by the Herodian disaster to the west, Chorhkni of Aquira marched. He and his allies scored several early successes, but one too many when they captured the commanding Herodian general. Therefugee general Lentello Cado replaced him. He ruined Aquiran ambitions atAlgedo, where, when the allies withdrew, Chorhkni and all his sons remaineddead upon the field.
Epilog Two: A Longer View The Dartar Kings of Qushmarrah were five: Fa'tad, who ruled eighteen years; Joab, who reigned six months; Moamar, who lived three years; Faruk, whosurvived nine; and Juba. Juba ruled for twenty-nine years and was at war everyminute of the final twenty-eight.
Aaron Habid remained a shipbuilder all his days. From his yard came the swiftgalleys that held Herod's fleets at bay. His son Arif followed in hisfootsteps. But his son Stafa became a famous privateer, one of those fearlessshipmasters whose predations so incensed Herod that the Imperial Senatedeclared the Third Qushmarrahan War. His sister-in-law, Tamisa, dedicatedherself to Aram and so died childless.
Naszif bar bel-Abek pursued a distinguished career in Hero-dian service, attaining the proconsular rank and governing three different eastern provincesbefore his retirement to a villa in Carenia. His son, Zouki (Succo), became afamous jurist and philosopher. A grandson, Probio, elevated the family tosenatorial rank.
Lentello Cado died an old and bitter man, still in exile on the nether shore.
None of his magnificent efforts to illustrate the Herodian name earned theforgiveness of his enemies in Herod.
The brothers Nogah, Medjhah, and Yoseh inherited the wild mantle of Fa'tad al- Akla. On land and sea they harried the Herodian lion wherever it appeared.
In the fourth year of the Third Qushmarrahan War, Yoseh led a fleet into theharbor of Utium, the port of Herod. He burned the city and the unpreparedHerodian fleet, then ravaged the suburbs of Herod itself but failed topenetrate the city wall.
In the eleventh year of the war the brothers landed an army in Edria, north ofHerod, and sustained it there fourteen years, devouring everything Herod sentagainst them, twice besieging Herod itself. They fought boldly and valiantlybut in the end the superior stubbornness and vaster resources of Herodprevailed.
The Third Qushmarrahan War lasted twenty-eight years. Qushmarrah won everymajor battle but the last, before the city wall.
Herod's legions razed Qushmarrah to the last stone. Two centuries later theemperor Petia Magna ordered a new city built upon the site. It took the nameQushmarrah but was Herodian to the bone.
Qushmarrah fell in Yoseh's seventy-fourth year. He survived thirteen more, anactive pirate till the day he succumbed to a stray arrow sped by a Herodianmarine.
An old hermit in the sinkhole country lived nearly as long, hunting andfishing and occasionally visiting one of the nearer villages to amuse himselfwith news of the latest foibles of the world. He never looked back, never had any regrets.