The Diviner

A nod, a graceful gesture to be seated on a plump green pillow. Azzad sat, glancing at Fadhil, who stood with lowered head and folded hands.

“Will you drink?” asked his host. “What is your pleasure? There is wine, qawah, the juice of various fruits. . . .”

“Whatever is most agreeable to yourself.”

“Qawah, then.” The boy leaned forward and confided with a grin, “I must warn you, I prefer it very strong and very sweet and tinged with cardamom.”

Azzad was about to speak a polite lie—that this was how he liked it, too—but what came out of his mouth was, “I am partial to strong qawah but without that flavoring.”

“Ayia, but you must try it this way. Most stimulating.”

Fadhil busied himself preparing what turned out to be a viscous black fluid that tasted like honeyed tar. Azzad sipped the required three times, sternly controlling his expression. Then, resting one elbow on a drawn-up knee, the rim of the silver cup balanced delicately between his thumb and the tip of his middle finger (his father, a stickler for elegant manners in his children, would have been proud of him), he regarded his host with raised brows.

“Ayia, you have many questions,” the boy said. “Before you ask them, I have one of my own. May we know your name?”

He could answer with the “Zaqir” he’d used before, but he suddenly found he had no wish to lie to these people. “Azzad al-Ma’aliq.”

The boy seemed to be waiting for something else. An explanation, perhaps. At length he asked, “Why do you say this as if all should know the name?”

“You have not heard of me?” Ayia, that was rude—there was such a thing as too blatant an honesty.

But the young man only laughed softly and sipped qawah, rocking lightly back and forth on his throne of cushions. “You come from some faraway place where your name is renowned. For what reason, I could not say; you may be a famous musician, or a great warlord, or a notorious criminal. You will find, Azzad al-Ma’aliq, that such things as are vitally significant in other lands have less than no meaning here. Where do you come from?”

“My country is called Rimmal Madar. You have never heard of it?”

“Should I have? A land of sand and rain sounds both dangerous and pleasant.” After a slight pause: “ ‘King of Lions’—that is your name, yes?”

“My mother’s choice,” Azzad replied, embarrassed as he had not been since his first days in the play yard of the madraza, when all the other boys had teased him.

“But it is a noble name,” came the protest. “Mine, on the other hand—” He laughed once more, light as a starling’s flight through clear blue sky. “My own beloved mother afflicted me with—I hope you are ready—‘Akkil Akkem Akkim Akkar,’ by which one assumes she meant ‘intelligent ruler whose wisdom flows like water.’” With a smile, he concluded, “You are invited to laugh, Friend Lion. Luckily, now that I am Abb Shagara, I need hear none of these names anymore—except from my mother when she is furious with me!”

Azzad choked. This child really was the leader of his whole tribe?

“No strangers to us believe it,” mourned Abb Shagara, correctly reading his expression. “They look at me, then look around for my father or elder brother. But I assure you it is true. Perhaps one day you will come to know why a boy of my scant years rules so many. But for now, I see you grow tired. And, as my mother would say, it is long past my own bedtime!”

“If I grow weary, it is not of Abb Shagara’s company.” This, too, was the truth.

The boy nodded approvingly. “Wherever you come from, Friend Lion, you were taught manners.”

“Thus I have hesitated to ask, but I must. When may I see my horse?”

“Ayia, that spindle-legged stud that causes so much trouble? Tomorrow, I think. Yes. And perhaps you can calm him. None of our boys are able to do more than stare at him—and run very fast when he glares right back!”

“Khamsin frets if I am not close by. I regret any difficulties he has caused. I thank Abb Shagara.”

Fadhil came to his side and, after more bowing, they left the tent. When they were inside the healing tent, Fadhil turned a wry look on him.

“I told you that you would go to Abb Shagara. I can’t help it if you didn’t believe me.”

“It’s a strange tribe, your Shagara,” Azzad retorted. “A youth of no more than eighteen leading all your people, women learning the healing arts—”

The humor died in Fadhil’s black eyes. “I also said you were never to speak of that. Do you want to die?”

“It’s that forbidden, is it?” He decided to change directions. “Why does Abb Shagara have no guards?”

This restored Fadhil’s good humor for reasons Azzad didn’t begin to understand. “He needs no guard.”

“Everyone needs protection.”

“Did I say he had none?”

“But there was no guard,” Azzad maintained stubbornly.

“No,” Fadhil agreed. “No guard.”

“Then how—?”

“He wears the ways of the Abb Shagara at his heart. They are all the protection he needs.”

Sheyqa Nizzira sent to the winter camp of her kinsmen, the Ammarad, her two eldest sons, three of the Qoundi Ammar, and a wagon of gifts. But so long ago had her foremothers left the desert that she had no notion of what was valued by the ancestral tribe. The Ammarad stared as the Qoundi Ammar unloaded fine wooden tables inlaid with marble, silken tapestries, and great pottery vessels filled with honey and wine and oil.

Abb Ammarad informed the Sheyqa’s sons that the gifts were unnecessary. Azzad al-Ma’aliq would be hunted down and killed for the honor of their tribe. Then he commanded a feast, which was laid out on the tapestries and used up much of the honey and oil and all of the wine. And during the feast, when he admired the fine, fast horses of the Sheyqa, the sons instantly comprehended. Thus it was that one proud sheyqir and three even prouder Qoundi Ammar rode back to Dayira Azreyq on unsaddled brown donkeys.

The Ammarad had use of the Sheyqa’s horses for less than a season, and their insistence that the mare ridden by one of her sons be included in the “gift” was a tragic error. Two stallions died in battle over

the Ammarad mare, one of the bite of a poisonous snake. Such was the size of the half- Ammarad foal inside her that the mare was ripped apart, and her get died with her.

The soldiers of the Qoundi Ammar—forced by the Sheyqa’s sons to ride home on donkeys, deprived of the horses that were more beloved than their wives—never forgave the loss and the insult.

—FERRHAN MUALEEF, Deeds of Il-Kadiri, 654

3

The following morning Azzad was allowed outside. He immediately went to see Khamsin. Along the way, he got his first good look at the Shagara. They were a handsome, black-eyed people, slim and long-legged, dressed in various desert shades of fawn and ivory and cream. But not all of them were Shagara by birth, or at least not wholly Shagara; Azzad was able to distinguish outsiders very easily by their skin tone. The merciless sun did not darken the Shagara; they looked as if gilded, and the contrast of black eyes and black hair with golden skin was fascinating.

He seemed to fascinate them as well. Some glanced sidelong, others openly stared, but no one ignored him. When he passed by, children stopped playing, and whispered and giggled and pointed—until the old men watching them scolded their rudeness. The Shagara went about their tasks of fetching water and cooking, braiding new ropes