The Lions of Al-Rassan Read online

  The Lions of Al-Rassan

  Guy Gavriel Kay

  Dedication

  For Harry Karlinsky and Mayer Hoffer,

  after thirty-five years

  Epigraph

  The evening is deep inside me forever.

  Many a blond, northern moonrise,

  like a muted reflection, will softly

  remind me and remind me again and again.

  It will be my bride, my alter ego.

  An incentive to find myself. I myself

  am the moonrise of the south.

  PAUL KLEE

  The Tunisian Diaries

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Principal Characters

  Prologue

  Part I

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Part II

  Five

  Six

  Part III

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Part IV

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Part V

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Critical Acclaim for Guy Gavriel Kay and The Lions of Al-Rassan

  The Works of Guy Gavriel Kay

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Principal Characters

  In Al-Rassan

  (All these are Asharite, worshippers of the stars of Ashar, except where noted)

  King Almalik of Cartada (“The Lion of Cartada”)

  Almalik, his eldest son and heir

  Hazem, his second son

  Zabira, his favored courtesan

  Ammar ibn Khairan of Aljais, his principal advisor, guardian of the king’s heir

  King Badir of Ragosa

  Mazur ben Avren, his chancellor, of the Kindath faith

  Tarif ibn Hassan of Arbastro, an outlaw

  His Sons

  Idar

  Abir

  Husari ibn Musa of Fezana, a silk merchant

  Jehane bet Ishak, a physician in Fezana, of the Kindath faith

  Ishak ben Yonannon, her father

  Eliane bet Danel, her mother

  Velaz, their servant

  In the Three Kingdoms of Esperaña

  (All these are Jaddites, worshippers of the sun-god, Jad)

  King Sancho the Fat of Esperaña, now deceased

  King Raimundo of Valledo, Sancho’s eldest son, now deceased

  In the Kingdom of Valledo (royal city: Esteren)

  King Ramiro, son to Sancho the Fat

  Queen Ines, his wife, daughter of the king of Ferrieres

  Count Gonzalez de Rada, constable of Valledo

  Garcia de Rada, his brother

  Rodrigo Belmonte (“The Captain”), soldier and rancher, once constable of Valledo

  Miranda Belmonte d’Alveda, his wife

  His Sons

  Fernan

  Diego

  Ibero, a cleric, tutor to the sons of Rodrigo Belmonte

  Members of Ser Rodrigo’s Company

  Laín Nunez

  Martín

  Ludus

  Alvar de Pellino

  In the Kingdom of Jaloña

  King Bermudo, brother to Sancho the Fat

  Queen Fruela, his wife

  Count Nino di Carrera, the king’s (and the queen’s) most-favored courtier

  In the Kingdom of Ruenda

  King Sanchez, youngest son of Sancho the Fat, brother

  to Ramiro of Valledo

  Queen Bearte, his wife

  In the Majriti Desert

  (Across the southern straits; home of the Muwardi tribes)

  Yazir ibn Q’arif, of the Zuhrite Tribe, Lord of the Majriti

  Ghalib, his brother, war leader of the tribes

  In Countries East

  Geraud de Chervalles, a High Cleric of Jad, from Ferrieres

  Rezzoni ben Corli, a Kindath physician and teacher; of the city of Sorenica, in Batiara

  Prologue

  It was just past midday, not long before the third summons to prayer, that Ammar ibn Khairan passed through the Gate of the Bells and entered the palace of Al-Fontina in Silvenes to kill the last of the khalifs of Al-Rassan.

  Passing into the Court of Lions he came to the three sets of double doors and paused before those that led to the gardens. There were eunuchs guarding the doors. He knew them by name. They had been dealt with. One of them nodded slightly to him; the other kept his gaze averted. He preferred the second man. They opened the heavy doors and he went through. He heard them swing closed behind him.

  In the heat of the day the gardens were deserted. All those still left within the dissolving magnificence of the Al-Fontina would have sought the shade of the innermost rooms. They would be sipping cool sweet wines or using the elaborately long spoons designed by Ziryani to taste sherbets kept frozen in the deep cellars by snow brought down from the mountains. Luxuries from another age, meant for very different men and women from those who dwelt here now.

  Thinking such thoughts, ibn Khairan walked noiselessly through the Garden of Oranges and, passing through the horseshoe arch, into the Almond Garden and then, beneath another arch, into the Cypress Garden with its one tall, perfect tree reflected in three pools. Each garden was smaller than the one before, each heartbreaking in its loveliness. The Al-Fontina, a poet once had said, had been built to break the heart.

  At the end of the long progression he came to the Garden of Desire, smallest and most jewel-like of all. And there, sitting quietly and alone on the broad rim of the fountain, clad in white, was Muzafar, as had been prearranged.

  Ibn Khairan bowed in the archway, a habit deeply ingrained. The old, blind man could not see his obeisance. After a moment he moved forward, stepping deliberately on the pathway that led to the fountain.

  “Ammar?” Muzafar said, hearing the sound. “They told me you would be here. Is it you? Have you come to lead me away from here? Is it you, Ammar?”

  There were many things that could be said.

  “It is,” said ibn Khairan, walking up. He drew his dagger from its sheath. The old man’s head lifted suddenly at that, as if he knew the sound. “I have, indeed, come to set you free of this place of ghosts and echoes.”

  With the words he slid the blade smoothly to the hilt in the old man’s heart. Muzafar made no sound. It had been swift and sure. He could tell the wadjis in their temples, if it ever came to such a thing, that he had made it an easy end.

  He laid the body down on the fountain rim, ordering the limbs within the white robe to allow the dead man as much dignity as could be. He cleaned his blade in the fountain, watching the waters swirl briefly red. In the teachings of his people, for hundreds and hundreds of years, going back and away to the deserts of the east where the faith of the Asharites had begun, it was a crime without possibility of assuaging to slay one of the god’s anointed khalifs. He looked down at Muzafar, at the round, wrinkled face, sadly irresolute even in death.

  He has not been truly anointed, Almalik had said, back in Cartada. All men know this.

  There had been four puppet khalifs this year alone, one other here in Silvenes before Muzafar, one in Tudesca, and the poor child in Salos. It was not a situation that could have been allowed to continue. The other three were already dead. Muzafar was only the last.

  Only the last. There had been lions once in Al-Rassan, lions upon the dais in this palace that had been built to make men fall to their knees upon marble and ala
baster before the dazzling evidence of a glory beyond their grasp.

  Muzafar had, indeed, never been properly anointed, just as Almalik of Cartada had said. But the thought came to Ammar ibn Khairan as he stood in his twentieth year in the Garden of Desire of the Al-Fontina of Silvenes, cleansing his blade of a man’s red blood, that whatever else he did with his life, in the days and nights Ashar and the god saw fit to grant him under the holy circling of their stars, he might ever after be known as the man who slew the last khalif of Al-Rassan.

  “You are best with the god among the stars. It will be a time of wolves now,” he said to the dead man on the fountain rim before drying and sheathing his blade and walking back through the four perfect, empty gardens to the doors where the bribed eunuchs waited to let him out. On the way he heard one foolish bird singing in the fierce white light of midday, and then he heard the bells begin, summoning all good men to holy prayer.

  Part I

  One

  Always remember that they come from the desert.

  Back in the days before Jehane had begun her own practice, in that time when her father could still talk to her, and teach, he had offered those words to her over and again, speaking of the ruling Asharites among whom they dwelt on sufferance, and labored—as the scattered tribes of the Kindath did everywhere—to create a small space in the world of safety and a measure of repose.

  “But we have the desert in our own history, don’t we?” she could remember asking once, the question thrown back as a challenge. She had never been an easy pupil, not for him, not for anyone.

  “We passed through,” Ishak had replied in the beautifully modulated voice. “We sojourned for a time, on our way. We were never truly a people of the dunes. They are. Even here in Al-Rassan, amid gardens and water and trees, the Star-born are never sure of the permanence of such things. They remain in their hearts what they were when they first accepted the teachings of Ashar among the sands. When you are in doubt as to how to understand one of them, remind yourself of this and your way will likely be made clear.”

  In those days, despite her fractiousness, Jehane’s father’s words had been as text and holy guide for her. On another occasion, after she had complained for the third time during a tedious morning preparing powders and infusions, Ishak had mildly cautioned that a doctor’s life might often be dull, but was not invariably so, and there would be times when she found herself longing for quiet routine.

  She was to sharply call to mind both of these teachings before she finally fell asleep at the end of the day that would long afterwards be known in Fezana—with curses, and black candles burned in memory—as The Day of the Moat.

  It was a day that would be remembered all her life by Jehane bet Ishak, the physician, for reasons over and above those of her fellow citizens in that proud, notoriously rebellious town: she lost her urine flask in the afternoon, and a part of her heart forever before the moons had set.

  The flask, for reasons of family history, was not a trivial matter.

  The day had begun at the weekly market by the Cartada Gate. Just past sunrise, Jehane was in the booth by the fountain that had been her father’s before her, in time to see the last of the farmers coming in from the countryside with their produce-laden mules. In a white linen robe beneath the physician’s green and white awning, she settled in, cross-legged on her cushion, for a morning of seeing patients. Velaz hovered, as ever, behind her in the booth, ready to measure and dispense remedies as she requested them, and to ward off any difficulties a young woman might encounter in a place as tumultuous as the market. Trouble was unlikely, however; Jehane was well-known by now.

  A morning at the Cartada Gate involved prescribing mostly for farmers from beyond the walls but there were also city servants, artisans, women bargaining for staples at the market and, not infrequently, those among the high-born too frugal to pay for a private visit, or too proud to be treated at home by one of the Kindath. Such patients never came in person; they would send a household woman bearing a urine flask for diagnosis, and sometimes a script spelled out by a scribe outlining symptoms and complaints.

  Jehane’s own urine flask, which had been her father’s, was prominently visible on the counter beneath the awning. It was a family signature, an announcement. A magnificent example of the glassblower’s art, the flask was etched with images of the two moons the Kindath worshipped and the Higher Stars of divination.

  In some ways it was an object too beautiful for everyday use, given the unglamorous function it was meant to serve. The flask had been made by an artisan in Lonza six years ago, commissioned by King Almalik of Cartada after Ishak had guided the midwives—from the far side of the birthing screen—through the difficult but successful delivery of Almalik’s third son.

  When the time had come for the delivery of a fourth son, an even more difficult birth, but also, ultimately, a successful one, Ishak of Fezana, the celebrated Kindath physician, had been given a different, controversial gift by Cartada’s king. A more generous offering in its way, but awareness of that did nothing to touch the core of bitterness Jehane felt to this day, four years after. It was not a bitterness that would pass; she knew that with certainty.

  She gave a prescription for sleeplessness and another for stomach troubles. Several people stopped to buy her father’s remedy for headache. It was a simple compound, though closely guarded, as all physicians’ private mixtures were: cloves, myrrh and aloes. Jehane’s mother was kept busy preparing that one all week long in the treatment rooms at the front of their home.

  The morning passed. Velaz quietly and steadily filled clay pots and vials at the back of the booth as Jehane issued her directions. A flask of urine clear at the bottom but thin and pale at the top told its tale of chest congestion. Jehane prescribed fennel and told the woman to return the next week with another sample.

  Ser Rezzoni of Sorenica, a sardonic man, had taught that the essence of the successful physician’s practice lay in inducing patients to return. The dead ones, he’d noted, seldom did. Jehane could remember laughing; she had laughed often in those days, studying in far-off Batiara, before the fourth son of Cartada’s king had been born.

  Velaz dealt with all payments, most often in small coin, sometimes otherwise. One woman from a hamlet nearby, troubled by a variety of recurring ailments, brought a dozen brown eggs every week.

  The market was unusually crowded. Stretching her arms and shoulders as she glanced up briefly from steady work, Jehane noted with satisfaction the respectable line of patients in front of her. In the first months after she’d taken over her father’s weekly booth here and the treatment rooms at home the patients had been slow to come; now it seemed she was doing almost as well as Ishak had.

  The noise level this morning was really quite extraordinary. There had to be some cause for this bustling excitement but Jehane couldn’t think what it might be. It was only when she saw three blond and bearded foreign mercenaries arrogantly shouldering their way through the market that she remembered. The new wing of the castle was being consecrated by the wadjis today, and the young prince of Cartada, Almalik’s eldest son, who bore his name, was here to receive selected dignitaries of subjugated Fezana. Even in a town notorious for its rebels, social status mattered; those who had received a coveted invitation to the ceremony had been preening for weeks.

  Jehane paid little attention to this sort of thing, or to any other nuances of diplomacy and war most of the time. There was a saying among her people: Whichever way the wind blows, it will rain upon the Kindath. That pretty well summed up her feelings.

  Since the thunderous, echoing fall of the Khalifate in Silvenes fifteen years ago, allegiances and alignments in Al-Rassan had shifted interminably, often several times a year, as petty-kings rose and fell in the cities with numbing regularity. Nor were affairs any clearer in the north, beyond the no-man’s-land, where the Jaddite kings of Valledo and Ruenda and Jaloña—the two surviving sons and the brother of Sancho the Fat—schemed and warred against
each other. It was a waste of time, Jehane had long ago decided, to try to keep track of what former slave had gained an ascendancy here, or what king had poisoned his brother there.

  It was becoming warmer in the marketplace as the sun climbed upwards in a blue sky. Not a great surprise; midsummer in Fezana was always hot. Jehane dabbed at her forehead with a square of muslin and brought her mind back to the business at hand. Medicine was her training and her love, her refuge from chaos, and it was her link to her father, now and as long as she lived.

  A leather worker she did not recognize stood shyly at the front of the line. He carried a chipped earthenware beaker to serve as a flask. Placing a grimy coin on the counter beside her he grimaced apologetically as he proffered the beaker. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, barely audible amid the tumult. “It is all we have. This is from my son. He is eight years old. He is not well.”

  Velaz, behind her, unobtrusively picked up the coin; it was considered bad form, Ser Rezzoni had taught, for doctors to actually touch their remuneration. That, he had said waspishly, is what servants are for. He had been her first lover as well as her teacher, during her time living and studying abroad in Batiara. He slept with almost all his women students, and a few of the men it had been rumored. He had a wife and three young daughters who doted upon him. A complex, brilliant, angry man, Ser Rezzoni. Kind enough to her, however, after his fashion, out of respect for Ishak.