The Diviner

It was a puzzle he wasn’t likely to solve until he was up and about. But had not Chal Kabir said there would be many tests before he was allowed to leave this tent? Wondering what these tests might be, Azzad shrugged, relaxed into the carpets, and slept.

If there were tests, Azzad was unaware of them. Over the next few days he saw Fadhil many times, Chal Kabir twice, and no one else at all. The food was bland but nourishing and plentiful, the water remarkably sweet. He wondered what herbs they put in their storage jars, or what nearby spring they drew it from. He asked Fadhil about it, but the young man merely shrugged and said, “That is women’s business, not men’s.”

Azzad couldn’t decide whether he meant that domestic responsibilities were beneath masculine notice or that fresh water was a thing much too important to be left for men to argue about.

Fadhil was politely curious, asking questions in roundabout ways, but communicated little about the tribe. Azzad answered honestly enough, speaking of the great city and the mighty land of his birth. But Fadhil had never heard of Rimmal Madar, much less of Dayira Azreyq. From this, Azzad deduced in some shock that in the days since he’d fled home, he’d somehow managed to travel beyond the routes of even the most adventurous caravans.

Unless the young man was lying, as Chal Kabir had done.

“Is Chal Kabir really your uncle?” Azzad asked one afternoon as he practiced walking on increasingly steady legs and feet that didn’t hurt too much anymore. “You don’t look very alike.”

Fadhil was tidying medicines on a low table. “’Chal’ is the title given our healers.”

“Ah. Then Lady Meryem is a healer also, for I heard Leyliah call her ‘Challa.’”

Fadhil, being even younger than Azzad, was less guarded than Kabir. “You heard nothing of the kind,” he snapped, much too quickly. “Neither Meryem nor Leyliah has been in this tent.”

Azzad smiled. “Then how do I know their names and the rule of the qufaz?”

Fadhil’s dark eyes went wide in his golden-skinned face. After a struggle to speak, he managed, “You—you know nothing of such things. You may know nothing. Speak of this to no one else, do you understand?”

“It is forbidden for me to know the ladies’ names?”

“Everything is forbidden!”

“Ayia,” Azzad said cheerfully, seating himself on his bed of carpets, “you’d best tell me all about this ‘everything’ of yours, so I don’t offend again.”

Recovering himself, Fadhil stood over Azzad—trying to dominate him physically, which really was rather funny. Even wasted with illness, Azzad was half again the boy’s size. Sternly, in obvious imitation of his teacher, Fadhil intoned, “Do you value your life, gharribeh? If so, comport yourself as befits a guest—and one whose bones would be whitening in the sun even now if not for the Shagara.”

Azzad considered intimidating the boy—easy, with his greater size and al-Ma’aliq arrogance—but decided that the scornful gharribeh indicated Fadhil felt threatened. Not in all the days Azzad had been awake and aware had the boy called him by that term—and with the inflection that meant not just foreigner but unwelcome. It was a deliberate insult and a warning.

Accordingly, Azzad bowed his head. “My life is yours,” he said in the ancient form.

“It is,” Fadhil agreed pointedly, and left the tent.

The Shagara, were they? The word meant tree—a singularly inappropriate name for desert nomads. But upon consideration, Azzad thought he understood. The tree was a sacred thing that meant life and water and growth and greenery, and for people wandering a wasteland, a single tree could mean salvation. By extension, the wounds of the desert could be healed by this Tree of Life.

And they allowed their women to learn the healing arts. That was interesting. In his world, clever highborn women were taught to rule families, not sickrooms. They supervised the concerns of a business or farm, an extended kin network, and sometimes—as in his own mother’s case—a whole tribe. Or, as Sheyqa Nizzira did, an entire country. But healing was a traditionally masculine art in Rimmal Madar. Long years of study and training interfered with a woman’s real work: to choose a husband and bear the children that would establish her dominance, for many daughters and sons ensured the survival of the family and extension of its influence, while managing the household’s wealth. Because the men took care of the children, healing was more naturally their concern.

But that was the world Azzad had left behind, the world he could not think about again until he was ready to exact his revenge.

The next night Fadhil entered the darkened tent just as Azzad was ready to shove the flap aside and go where he pleased, damn the consequences.

“You’re out of bed,” the young healer observed. “Good. Abb Shagara wishes to speak to you.”

“May Acuyib bless him for not coming here to me!” Azzad said, reaching eagerly for the black wool cloak Fadhil had brought. “I was starting to believe there was nothing to the world at all except the inside of this tent!”

“Abb Shagara goes to no one. All come to him.”

“I would have it no other way.” Wrapping himself in the rough garment against the night chill, Azzad gestured to the tent flap. “Lead me, Fadhil, to Abb Shagara.”

He knew why they took him from the tent by darkness. They didn’t trust him—especially now that he’d regained most of his strength. He wondered what they thought he’d do: seize one of their maidens, leap onto Khamsin’s unsaddled back, and gallop off into the desert?

There certainly weren’t any maidens around—nor matrons, nor men, nor children, nor even a stray sheep. A couple of rangy yellow-brown dogs lay beside a tent, gnawing on bones; a cat was teaching her six brindled kittens to hunt, but these were the only living things he saw. Pale tents and glowing fire pits, at least fifty of them, studded the landscape; presumably everyone had been ordered to hide from him. It was confirmed when a tent flap twitched, and a small, round-eyed face peered out, and a women’s beringed hand grabbed a braid of black hair and tugged the child back inside.

He knew where Khamsin was by the scent on the wind. Good clean horse-smell; they took care of their animals, at any rate, not allowing them to mill around in their own droppings. There was a difference to the aroma, however—something he could only describe as a wildness not found in a civilized stable. Perhaps it was due to diet. He’d demand to see Khamsin tomorrow and get a look at these cart-drawing horses for himself.

Abb Shagara’s tent was no larger than the rest, and it was the same pale sandy color. All that distinguished it from the others was the size of the wind chime hanging from a carved pole outside. The breeze toyed with finger-sized brass and tin plaques hammered with designs. Fadhil bent nearly double as he opened the flap, bowing to whoever was inside. Azzad considered it polite to incline his body the precise degree due his own venerable grandfather—but when his eyes adjusted to the brightness of a score of lamps within, he felt his jaw drop. Abb Shagara was no grandfather. He was scarcely old enough to grow a beard.

Was this some sort of joke? Did they mock him by sending him to this stripling youth rather than the true head of the tribe?

The boy—perhaps eighteen, perhaps not—tilted his head to one side, a smile quirking his full lips. Long- limbed, slender beneath flowing silvery-gray robes, he sat erect and casually self-confident on a high-piled rainbow of cushions. His jewelry was all of gold. A broad cuff caught his long black curls at the left shoulder. His left ear was decorated by an earring in the shape of an ibis holding a sapphire in its beak. At his breast rested a small plaque crowded with a whirl of colored gems. He was more regal, Azzad thought suddenly, than Sheyqa Nizzira el- Ammarizzad had ever looked in full regalia on the Moonrise Throne.

Azzad bowed once more, thinking that this must be Abb Shagara’s favorite son, or his heir, or something of the sort, that this was a preliminary encounter that would lead to a meeting with the real power in this tribe. Certainly the most important of the Shagara would not receive a stranger alone, with no guards but one skinny apprentice healer who carried only his surgical knives. Chal Kabir had said there would be many tests. Perhaps this was one of politeness.

“I am pleased,” the young man said, “to see you recovered.”

“By your graciousness,” Azzad replied, “and the skill of your healers.”