The Diviner

The wisdom of my great-great grandfather Azzad al-Ma’aliq was to bring green to the land of Tza’ab Rih. Thus the name by which he is known: Il-Kadiri. It was his thought, guided by Acuyib, to care for and enrich the land that had saved his life and given him family, friends, wealth, knowledge. His was the first impulse: to give to the land.

The life of my grandfather Alessid al-Ma’aliq was spent in winning back that which had been taken away, not only from him but from the people of Tza’ab Rih. Thus the name by which he is known: Il-Nazzari. But even beyond the victories, Acuyib guided his thoughts as He had guided Azzad’s, and the results may be seen even today in the groves, originally planted by Azzad, restored by Alessid. More, he ordered gardens also, places of beauty and peace where all the people might walk at their leisure and contemplate the small victories in the never-ending chadarang game that pits Acuyib against Chaydann al-Mamnoua’a, green against red, living soil against dead sand. The replanting of Azzad’s trees and the planting of gardens accomplished by Alessid, this was the second impulse: to replenish the land.

For Alessid understood the mutual hallowing of the land and the people. He had glimpsed the balance that must obtain between them. He knew that when that balance is overset, when the sanctity of either is polluted, all life becomes anxiety and conflict. And when this happens, Acuyib sorrows in His Realm of Splendor. And Chaydann al-Mamnoua’a laughs.

A further thought, guided by Acuyib, completes the understanding: that the sanctity must be achieved with blood. The rivers and wells, the soil and the plants that grow therefrom, the air, the very rhythm of the seasons: these things fill and hallow each generation until the land and the people are as one.

This is the yearning that caused Azzad to enrich the land with green. This is the craving that caused Alessid to replenish the land as symbol of his victory over those who would destroy it and its people. It is for further generations, bred and born of the land, drinking of its waters and nourished by its bounty, breathing its air and taking unto themselves the awareness of a place from leaf to fruit to dying leaf, to possess that which must first possess them.

To those who would conquer, be warned: there is no belonging, not until the third or fourth or perhaps even fifth generation, not until the blood had been changed, claimed, hallowed.

You must give. If you come only to take, you will lose.

Thus it was during those last anxious days in the mountains that Acuyib guided Qamar’s thoughts, and he understood, and wrote swiftly of that understanding in the book we revere as the Kita’ab. The original, written in his own hand, has long been lost. The first copies of the original have vanished as well. But the words remain, and by their truths he became known as Il-Ma’anzuri, The Divinely Aided. More simply, The Diviner.

The greatest of these truths that came to him is this: The blood hallows the land.

This means that when a barbarian land is sanctified with blood, when the previously corrupt and wicked waters run red, the land is changed, the waters are changed, and forever after they belong to those whose blood was spilled in consecration.

For as the Diviner wrote: There is no belonging, not even unto the fourth and fifth generation, until the land has been changed, claimed, and hallowed by blood.

This is the Diviner’s message. Any accounting of his life that asserts otherwise is a lie.

—HAZZIN AL-JOHARRA, Deeds of Il-Ma’anzuri, 813

25

It was as Solanna had seen it.

The army of tents and carpets, white horses and red banners, encamped on the floodplain. The red and gold of autumn trees. The second army behind a hill to the north, made up of Tza’ab and Cazdeyyan, Ibrayanzan, Qayshi, Andaluz, even Joharran. For Sheyqir Allil had at last realized his mistake and sent his troops to join the fight against Rimmal Madar. Or so he said. But whether they had been ordered there by their commander or came of their own accord, the Joharrans were indeed present.

The Sheyqa’s forces now included many who, having learned what it was to be conquered, joined with her rather than be slaughtered. Some probably hoped that this would earn them the right to be left alone; others, that they might even enlarge what they owned, as Allil had done. All of them were afraid. It was their fear that Solanna proposed to exploit.

“Letters,” she told her husband as they left their little valley and rode south. “You can send them letters, permeated with magic, that would—”

“No. I’m sorry, qarassia, but I cannot.”

“But you don’t have to harm them—just make them afraid. Didn’t your uncles suggest that very thing to your grandfather? Didn’t they offer to make hazziri to terrify the al-Ammarad?”

“They did, but he decided otherwise.”

“Eiha, it sounds to me like a very good way to accomplish—”

“No, Solanna.”

“It isn’t as if you were making them ill, or physically hurting them, causing them pain—it would only be to enhance what they already feel, the fear and tension they must be feeling, to be in the army of the Sheyqa. We know their names,” she coaxed. “All that need happen is that they touch the letters —”

He shook his head.

“Would your mother hesitate?”

It was the first time she had ever acknowledged that his mother and the Empress of Tza’ab Rih were one and the same woman, but he had no inclination to exclaim upon it now. “If the Shagara could choose to die rather than betray their beliefs, I cannot dishonor them.”

“But this is different! You’d be using their knowledge to stop people from fighting!”

“A meticulous distinction,” he admitted. “I will think about it.”

They rode on in silence for a little while. Then she said, “I know where your thoughts take you, Qamar. Even if their qabda’ans are taken ill, the soldiers will fight anyway—and die. But if they withdraw—or try to—”

“The Sheyqa, and especially her Qoundi Ammar, will kill them. There are so many reasons not to do as you suggest. But in the end there is only one that matters. How could I have made this book, and then do this? How could I write these things, and then use them to kill? Because people will die, Solanna, we both know it. I cannot shame those Shagara who sacrificed their lives to keep us safe.”

She had said nothing more about it, not during all the long journey to the broad plain where the two armies would meet.

Miqelo’s hawk, gift from the King of Cazdeyya, soared sometimes overhead, and to Qamar it was yet another sign from Acuyib. He had rarely believed in such things before, but now it seemed that every turn of his head, every thought that occurred to him, held in it something of destiny. It seemed a hundred years ago that Challa Leyliah had told him the story Azzad had told about a hawk in the desert—ayia, how Ab’ya Alessid had rolled his eyes, and reminded her that the tale had grown more and more elaborate through the years about the hawk that had warned him about the gazelle and led him through the desert to the Shagara. Eventually the tale came to be that the hawk had alighted on his shoulder and guided him with cries and flapping wings to the rockslide; eventually, too, the very same hawk had flown ahead of him and Khamsin, dropping a feather here and there to make sure he reached the Shagara camp.

Qamar knew that this hawk was the very same one Solanna had seen flying over the opposing armies. And after they reached the hills above the plain, and Miqelo had found acquaintances among the Cazdeyyans, Qamar