The Waters Of Eternity Part 12

"We delayed for two days so we could have an 'expert' who's useless! I've lost two men, her hakim, and Lina's nurse. Now you tell me you don't even know medicines!"

"You will watch your tone," I told him, and rested my hand upon my sword pommel.

The captain snarled and placed a large knuckled hand on his own hilt.

"Stop!"

As one, Dabir, Sarsour, and myself turned to the girl.

Lina's eyes blazed with fever or fury. Her voice rose as she gasped out a question. "Four lie dead and you would duel?"

"This is men's talk," the captain said gruffly.

"Am I not the governor's daughter? Am I not your charge?" Lina swung a hand to indicate my friend. "He is no hakim, but Dabir has pledged to aid me, and I accept his offer. Captain, I treasure your bravery, but save it for your foes." She paused again to gather her strength. Her breath came rapidly. Yet her words made sense. "Dabir could not have guessed a monster would attack us any more than you could."

Sarsour frowned, saying nothing, but the tension was broken as Dabir bent to a pack beside him that I recognized for the hakim's.

Dabir prepared a potion for the girl from the healer's notes and bedded down near her. I kept watch next to him, trusting neither Sarsour nor the dark gra.s.slands, which might vomit up another horror at any time. The girl pa.s.sed soon into sleep, and I thought Dabir had as well, but after a time I heard him whisper my name.

"Asim."

"What is it?" I answered softly.

"I am certain now we should not have come," he said quietly. "I think Ahmed has lost the final days he might have spent with Lina. A better friend than I would have talked him out of this quest. Now folk have died. Ari's was a good soul."

To this I nodded. "But we have seen some of the map's landmarks already. It is no fake. And you have mastered the hakim's medicines."

"I do not recognize all of the medicines." His voice was softer even than the nearby crickets. "Many of them are unknown to me, and even though some are labeled, I do not understand their use." He paused briefly. "Even if I can induce her to live another few days...there is something awry, Asim. If such waters existed, surely the ancient map would not have been left rotting in the governor's archives. Would not the world overrun with immortals? Would not the fountain be fortified behind great walls and manned by the caliph's finest?"

Dabir's words were wise, and troubled me. I thought on them for a long moment before responding. "Are not G.o.d's miracles unknowable? It may be that such a thing shall come to pa.s.s."

"It may be so," said Dabir. But his voice did not betray hope.

I woke late, to hear Dabir in conversation with Lina. A short distance away, Sarsour, Fadil, and Tarik had set to grave digging.

"No, I shall not," Lina was saying, as emphatically as she could, though her voice betrayed her fatigue. She coughed then.

Dabir did not give up. "The bhang would help ease your sorrow, and any pain-"

"No." Her voice was suddenly sharp. "No more bhang. I'm dying." Once more she coughed, a deep racking cough. She leaned over and coughed more, then spit blood. Her look was bleak as she faced us, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand like a hardened soldier. "No more," she said softly. "It makes a fool of me, and if I am to die this day it will not be as a fool."

The steady chunk of spade into dirt paused for a moment, before Sarsour mouthed a low curse at the finding of a rock. The spade work resumed. Why, I wondered, did they have spades at hand on this journey in the first place? And then I realized that they must have been packed for the girl.

At that grim thought I sat up and stretched my arms.

"I would have done things a little differently," Lina said, seemingly to herself, "had I known all this would happen. Been kinder to my cousins. Paid more heed to the words of the holy men-"

Dabir showed no indication of his own fears when next he spoke to her. "There's still hope, Lady."

"Do you think?" she asked, and her eyes were bright.

"There is still hope," I echoed. "Allah's ways are unknowable, and your fate is surely written, but do not presume to guess the end of your thread."

She hugged her knees to her chest. "This was all Father's idea. I didn't want to come out here. I wanted to spend my...last days in the palace. And I certainly didn't mean for anyone to die because of me and some stupid old map."

"Lina." Dabir stared at her until she met his eyes. "That wasn't your fault."

She shook her head wearily. "No one would be out here if it weren't for me."

"Each of us volunteered, for we love you and your father."

"You love me?" she asked doubtfully. She did not sound skeptical so much as curious, as the young do when love is mentioned.

"I love all that is wise and beautiful." Dabir's voice was gentle. "I would see you come into your years. I would see your beauty flower and watch the poets wrestle one another with couplets of praise for your intellect and charming gaze." He bowed his head.

She smiled then, and despite the disheveled locks of her hair and her tired eyes she was lovely. Aye, the sickness had thinned her, but as a gardener can name a perfect rose when a bulb is only a quarter open, I could see the beauty she might one day be.

III.

Lina hunched forward in Dabir's saddle, clutching her cloak tight despite warmth that streamed from the sun. Her carriage, too, had been destroyed; thus I had lifted her into the saddle before him, and she was light as a small child. During midday prayers her forehead was damp and her breathing shallow. I knew little of healing, but had seen enough injuries to sense that she'd tapped her last keg of strength.

Dabir was concerned enough that he sent me to confer with Sarsour, riding point with the governor's map. It was afternoon by then and there was little wind. Each of us was masked by dust broken with rivulets of sweat.

Sarsour's eyebrows rose when I reined in beside him.

"She's failing," I told him quietly. "How much farther?"

"We've pa.s.sed all but one marker now," he said. "The cliffs back there, and the three rounded boulders two hours back."

"How much farther?" I asked again, for he had given me no good answer.

"It won't be too much longer," he said gruffly.

He was wrong.

The afternoon wore on and we descended into a narrow valley where small purple flowers with yellow throats bloomed cheerily. Wild hares bounded between low bushes and a small herd of gazelles bent to drink from a bubbling creek. The scene was improbably lovely and it looked a fine place to dig a grave.

Lina did not die there, though. She dozed in Dabir's arms as evening came, her breath shallow and quick. Our shadows stretched around us as the trail twisted once more into the heights. All conversation had ceased. We pushed on, each of us resolved to reach the waters this day, for it took no hakim to realize the girl would not last the night.

And then Sarsour halted and threw up his hand. He urged his grunting horse closer, peered at the rocks beneath an overhang, then let out a triumphant little laugh. "This is it!"

"Where's the fountain?" Fadil asked.

"This is the final landmark. This trail here will take us up to the valley!" And he urged his horse up a sandy, nearly vertical slope.

Trail was a grand term. Goat path described it better, and I have seen goats that might have bypa.s.sed it for easier climbs. Sarsour didn't get too far before turning back and dismounting. "We'll have to go it on foot," he said. "I will carry Lina-"

"I shall carry her," I said.

"No." He lifted his chin in challenge. "You have said your job is to guard your master. I shall carry the girl."

I did not correct him as to my station. He pulled the girl from Dabir into his arms even as my friend protested. I swung down from my mount, ready to argue, but Dabir was there to put a hand on my arm before it reached my hilt.

Sarsour bestowed a final glare upon us, then turned with the limp young woman. He motioned to Fadil and Tarik, who followed.

"He lacks manners," I said to Dabir, who shushed me.

Some word had pa.s.sed between Sarsour and the soldiers, and they turned to face us. Fadil drew first, then Tarik, and suddenly we confronted two bared blades. Sarsour continued up the path beyond them.

Now my hand found my hilt and I drew my weapon in a flash of steel. "You betray us?" I asked the soldiers. I was astonished, for we had broken bread together.

Dabir did not speak. I would have liked to gauge his thoughts from his expression, but my eyes did not waver from the blades of those against me. They, in turn, eyed me. Both were calm and capable. Broad, quiet Fadil had especially impressed me, so his challenge filled me with bitterness.

"The captain gave orders that he advance to the fountain first."

"It seems to me that Asim raised his sword with you," Dabir said. "Are you not sword brothers?"

Fadil's eyes flicked down at his sword, then up again. Tarik watched him. "We are sworn to obey the captain."

"You are both honorable men," Dabir said. "I have seen it. I would not see your blood shed. The governor needs such men as you; as Asim and myself. Tell me, which action will please him less? That you stepped aside, or that the four of us shed our blood?"

Fadil breathed deeply.

"Dabir is the governor's friend; he sat at the caliph's right hand," Tarik said to his companion. His dark eyes were narrowed tensely.

"I know," Fadil snapped. Another moment pa.s.sed. Finally Fadil straightened and slid his sword home into his sheathe. Tarik put up his own with a loud sigh of relief.

"The captain said only that he was to reach the fountain first," Fadil declared. "He has surely done so." He stepped aside.

"Come, Asim!" Dabir dashed past them. I scowled and followed.

"You too, fools!" I said in pa.s.sing. "If there are more dangers, can Sarsour wield his sword with the girl in hand?"

Their footsteps scuffed the dirt behind us.

We cleared the top and looked down into a tiny bowl-shaped valley. The roofless building in its center resembled a caravanserai more than any pagan temple. Thick-leafed ivy smothered its walls. The girl stood hunched by Sarsour, drinking from a flask at the structure's far end.

"Wait!" Dabir cried.

We ran down from the height. Long strands of ivy hung like a curtain from the arched entryway and I saw as we closed that the plants writhed.

"Dabir!" My blood thinned and the icy breath of djinn fell upon my neck. "The plants live!"

"Nay," said Dabir, but did not stop to explain.

It was not until we ran through the threshold that I saw the greenery did not move of its own accord, but in response to the mouse-size red and brown bugs that burrowed among its leaves, their antennae twitching-insects that might well have been brothers to the monster we had fought, for they were identical in all but bulk. Farther off I spied a larger one the length of my arm. Might there be others nearby grown to match that we had battled? Had that one begun its life as small as these?

Sarsour waited with drawn blade and snarled at us as he pushed Lina back. She called for him to stop.

There was no place for larger monsters to hide. The courtyard was bare save for slim greenery-choked lumps that might have been benches and some rusted helms and weapons beside the pool and the fountain that rose from it.

The fountain was no grand construction, but an old, man-high cylinder of stone surrounded by a plain pool beside the far wall. Dark liquid trickling from its height had stained the stone along its path an ugly greenish-black.

A fetid odor reached my nostrils and grew stronger as we closed on the water.

"Fadil!" Sarsour roared. "I told you to keep them back!"

"You said to make sure you reached the fountain first," I heard Fadil answer from behind me.

Sarsour spat. "You shave meaning like a miser with his coins."

"Hold," Dabir told me. His breath came swiftly. We stopped two spear lengths from the captain. I watched Sarsour carefully.

"Did you drink the water?" Dabir demanded of Lina.

"I did," she said weakly. "It was foul."

"We both drank!" Sarsour said. "If it tasted like honey, immortals would stride everywhere. Fadil, Tarik, these two never meant us to find this."

"What?" Dabir asked. He could not keep astonishment from his voice.

"You are a fine actor! Look, Tarik-do you not see his eyes roll as he lies?"

"You are a braying a.s.s," I said.

"Nay, I am more clever than you think. Tarik, do you not see how they blocked us at every hand? How they delayed in coming? How they scoffed at the tale? How they kept knowledge of perils from us? They would keep this secret only for the caliph!"

Dabir's voice rang with contempt. "You are a fool, Sarsour!"

"It can be our secret," Sarsour implored to the men behind us. "We can sell the water for the wealth of kingdoms!"

"What of the governor's daughter?" Dabir asked.

"She shall be the first of my wives."

Enough madness had pa.s.sed his lips. I charged him. He swung up his blade in time to parry. Sparks flew. I turned him so that I might see both Fadil and Tarik, but they watched to the side of Dabir, arms folded.

Dabir had circled around to Lina, and sheltered her protectively with one arm. "Asim!" she cried. "Do not kill him!"

But I do not take orders from children. Do I hesitate to slay a frothing dog?