One hundred men had been invited to the christening, along with their favorite wives. El Murid wanted it to be a precedent-setting ceremony. His daughter was to approach the Most Holy Altar attired in bridal white. She would both receive her name and wed herself to the Lord.
He meant it to be an inarguable declaration of his choice of successor.
"She's beautiful, isn't she?" Meryem said huskily as the girl approached the altar.
"Yes." His prayers had been answered. Meryem had come out of her coma. But her limbs were paralysed. Servants had had to clothe her and carry her here on a litter.
El Murid recalled how proud she had looked on her white camel. How bold, how beautiful, how defiant she had been that first venture into Al Rhemish! Everything went misty. He took Meryem's hand and held it tightly throughout the ceremony. The girl was nearly an adult. There was little parents could contribute. She could handle her own responses.
When the newly-appointed High Priest of the Shrine asked, "And by what name shall this child of God be called?" El Murid squeezed Meryem's hand more tightly. Only she knew the answer. This was the moment for which she had lived.
"Yasmid," Meryem replied. Her voice was strong. It rang like a carillon. El Murid felt a surge of hope. He saw another rise in Nassef. "Call her Yasmid, the Daughter of the Disciple."
She squeezed his hand in return. He felt the joy coursing through her.
Her recovery lasted only minutes more. She lapsed into coma before the ceremony's conclusion. She passed to Paradise before morning.
The end was so certain that Nassef ordered Al Rhemish dressed for mourning shortly after sundown.
El Murid had been so drained by constant concern that the event itself left him numb. He could shed no tears. The little energy he had he devoted to Yasmid, Sidi, and Nassef.
The ever-calm, self-possessed Nassef had gone to pieces.
More than to El Murid himself, Meryem had been all he had had in the world.
"She is asleep in the arms of the Lord," satisfied no one.
Nassef's response was to plunge into his work with redoubled energy, as if to take his grief out on the world. Some nights he skipped sleep altogether.
Sidi simply withdrew. And Yasmid became more like her mother at the same age. She was brash, bold, and fond of embarrassing her father's associates. She had a low tolerance for pomposity, self-importance, and inflexible conservatism. And she could argue doctrine with a skill that beggared her father's.
For that reason alone the new priesthood gradually accepted the notion of her succession.
She spent a lot of time dogging her uncle as he poured over his maps and tactical studies. She knew more about his plans than did anyone else alive. A half-serious story went the rounds, to the effect that she would succeed her uncle too.
The wave of the idealist had crested, but had not begun to recede. People still worried honestly about goals and doctrinal purity. The inevitable, post-revolutionary wave of the bureaucrat had not begun to gather.
Yasmid would not be challenged till professional administrators supplanted professional revolutionaries.
Nassef dumped the pacification of Hammad al Nakir onto el-Kader. He made a crony named el Nadim his satrap on the east coast and Throyen marches. He and Karim focused their attentions west of the Sahel, on lands El Murid was determined to restore to Imperial dominion. They spent month after month in the careful reinterpretation and reiteration of plans Nassef had nurtured for years.
Occasionally accompanied by his son, El Murid sat in on some of their staff meetings. He had his mission and his children, and nothing more. The pain in his limbs was unrelenting. He could no longer pretend, even to himself, that he was not dependent upon Esmat's drugs.
Despite a close watch, he could not resolve his increasingly ambiguous feelings toward Nassef. His brother-in-law was a chimera. Perhaps even he did not know where he stood.
Nassef's headquarters became cluttered with artwork. Years earlier he had employed several skilled artists to travel the west. He had called in their work: detailed maps, drawings and specifications of fortifications, sketches of prominent westerners with outlines of their personal strengths and weaknesses. He adjusted his master plan as information came in.
"The base plan is this," he told El Murid. "An explosion out of the Sahel, apparently without direction. Then one strong force materializing and heading toward Hellin Daimiel. When they think we're committed, we wheel and overrun Simballawein to clear our rear against our push north."
"Ipopotam... "
"Eager to please, my agents say. They'll stay neutral till it's too late. With Simballawein taken, we turn on Hellin Daimiel. But when they withdraw behind their walls we bypass them again. We push to the Scarlotti. We seize the fords and ferries so help can't get across from the north. All this time raiders will be roaming the Lesser Kingdoms, keeping them too busy to threaten our flank. In fact, after I've got everybody's attention, el Nadim will cross Throyen territory and attack Kavelin through the Savernake Gap. If he breaks through we'll have the Lesser Kingdoms in a vice. They'll collapse. If everything goes right, we'll overrun every kingdom south of the Scarlotti before summer's end."
El Murid examined the maps. "That's a lot of territory, Nassef."
"I know. It's chancy. It depends on the speed of our horses and confusion of our enemies. We can't fight them on their terms. Wadi el Kuf proved that. We have to make them fight our way."
"You're the general, Nassef. You don't have to justify to me."
"As long as I'm winning."
El Murid frowned, unsure what he meant.
Later that day he called for Mowaffak Hali, a senior officer of the Invincibles, who had been conducting an investigation for him. "Well, Mowaffak? It's getting close to the hosting. Am I in the hands of bandits?"
Hali was a fanatic, but he tried to be honest. He did not create answers in hopes they were what his master wanted to hear.
"Nothing damning, Lord. They've given up plundering their own people. I suppose that's a good sign. In private, they're excited about plundering the infidel. I couldn't trace most of the specie that went west. Some apparently went to pay spies. Some apparently bought arms. Some remains in the banks at Hellin Daimiel. And a lot has disappeared. So what can I say?"
"What's your feeling, Mowaffak?"
"I'm baffled, Lord. I lean one way one day, the other the next. I try to leave my personal feelings out."
El Murid smiled. "I've reached this point a dozen times, Mowaffak. And every time I end up doing the same thing. I let it go because Nassef is so useful. I let it go, and hope he'll eventually reveal the real Nassef. I thought an independent viewer might see something I'd missed."
"We don't punish our hands when they fail us by dropping something. I don't like the Scourge of God. I don't trust him, either. Yet he has no equal. Karim is good. El-Kader is good. And yet they are but shadows of the master. I say the Lord wrought well when he brought you two together. Let him undertake to keep you together."
"And yet... "
"The day he becomes a liability will be the last day of his life, Lord. A silver dagger will find him."
"That's a comfort, Mowaffak. I sometimes wonder if I deserve the affection of the Invincibles."
Mowaffak seemed startled. "My Lord, if you didn't you wouldn't have won our love."
"Thank you, Mowaffak. You reassure me, even if you can't ease my confusion."
Disharhun was coming again. Each day made him more nervous. The moment of no return was hurtling toward him like a falling star. It would be too late once the Children of Hammad al Nakir crossed the Sahel. The great war would continue till the Empire was restored or his people had been trampled into the dust.