time I saw you there was a chance you might not even live. Did I leave then?'
Inwardly I winced. Well, yes, I had left; but that hadn't been my fault.
'You are not what you were,' Del said after a moment. 'Not as you were when we first met in that cantina.'
I had a vivid memory of that cantina, and that meeting. 'Well, no.'
'You were a Southron pig.'
'So you've told me. Many times.'
'Tiger—' She stopped walking. Stared up into my face as I turned to her. 'You are not what you were.'
I had the feeling that wasn't what she meant to say. But nothing more crowded her lips, even as I waited. Finally I cradled her head in my hands, bent close, said, 'Neither are you,' and kissed her gently on the forehead.
For a moment she leaned into me, clearly exhausted. I considered scooping her up and carrying her to the hyort, but that would play havoc with Del's dignity. She already felt uncomfortable enough about being tired and sick, judging by her comments; I knew better than to abet that belief. I prodded her onward with a hand placed in the center of her spine, and walked with her to the hyort.
There a warrior waited, standing quietly before the doorflap. He looked at me. 'Oziri will see you.'
It was the first mention I'd heard of the man we'd met a couple of weeks before. I exchanged a baffled glance with Del, who seemed to know no more than I did, then saw her brief nod of acceptance. She ducked into the hyort and dropped the doorflap.
I accompanied the warrior to another hyort some distance away, the entrance lighted by stave torches. There I was left, with no word spoken to the hyort's inhabitant. I paused a moment, aware of the call of nightbirds, the flickering of campfires, the low'pitched murmuring of conversations throughout the village. It was incredibly peaceful here. I turned my face up to the stars. The night skies were ablaze.
A hand pulled the doorflap aside. 'Come in,' Oziri said. 'You have hidden long enough.'
The Vashni ignored my startled demand for an explanation. He gestured me to a place on a woven rug covered by skins, fur side up, and took his own seat across from me. A small fire burned between us, dying from flames to coals. Herbs had been strewn across it; pungency stung my eyes. I squinted at him through the thin wisp of smoke. At the best of times, Vashni stank of grease, but all I could smell now was burning herbs.
Seated, I looked at Oziri. No one had mentioned him, and I hadn't asked, but here he was, and here I was. He wasn't chieftain or bodyguard, but obviously he was something more than warrior. A quick glance around the interior of the hyort showed me herbs hanging upside down, dried gourds, painted sticks, small clay pots stoppered with wax, a parade of tiny pottery bowls arranged in front of Oziri's crossed legs. I began to get a sick feeling in the pit of my belly. Vashni were unrelated to the Salset, the desert nomads I'd grown up among, but the accoutrements, despite differences, were eerily similar.
I looked at Oziri suspiciously. 'You're a shukar.'
Oziri smiled.
I drew in a breath, hoping I was wrong. 'Among the Salset, the shukar doesn't hunt.'
'Among the Vashni, he does. We are not a lazy people. Priests work also.'
I wanted to wave away the thread of smoke drifting toward me but knew it would be rude. And I'd been trained from birth to respect, even fear, shukars. It had been years since I'd seen the old man who'd made my life a living hoolies, but I couldn't suppress a familiar apprehension.
I reminded myself I was a grown man now, no longer a helpless chula. The old shukar was dead. I cleared my throat and tried again. 'You said I was hidden. Hidden from what?'
'Stillness,' Oziri said simply.
I waited. When nothing more was forthcoming, I asked him what he meant.
'You are never still,' Oziri replied. 'Even if your body is quiet, your thoughts are not. They are tangled and sticky, like a broken spider web. Until you learn to be still, you will not find the answer.'
'Answer to what?'
'Your dreams.'
Apprehension increased. 'What do you know about my dreams?'
Oziri took a pinch of something from one of the bowls and tossed it onto the fire with an eloquent gesture. Flames blazed briefly, then died away. Yet another scent threatened my lungs. It was all I could do not to cough.
'You must learn to be still,' he told me.
'I'm kind of a busy man,' I said. 'You know—me being the jhihadi. There's much to think about. It's hard to find time to be still.'
Another gesture, another pinch of herbs drifted onto the coals. Smoke rose. The back of my throat felt numb. This time I couldn't suppress a cough. I wanted very much to open the door-flap, or retreat outdoors altogether, but I had a feeling that among the Vashni, rudeness might be a death sentence.
Oziri smiled, handed me a bota.
I unstoppered it, smelled the sharp tang of Vashni liquor. Just what I needed. But I drank it to wash away the taste of the herbs, nodded my thanks, handed it back. Oziri drank as well, then set it aside.
'What—' I cleared my throat, swallowed down the tingle of another cough. 'What exactly are the herbs for?'
'Stillness.'
'So I can understand my dreams.' I couldn't help it; I scowled at him. 'What is it with you priests? Why do all of you speak so thrice-cursed obscurely? Can't you ever just say anything straight out? Don't you get sick of all this melodramatic babbling?'
'Of course,' Oziri said, nodding, 'but people tend not to listen to plain words. Stories, they hear. They remember. The way a warrior learns—and remembers—a lesson by experiencing pain.'
It was true I recalled sword-dancing lessons more clearly when coupled with a thump on the head or a thwack on the shin. I'd just never thought of it in terms of priests before. 'So, how is you know about my dreams?'
'It is not a difficult guess.' Oziri's expression was ironic. 'Everyone dreams.'
'But why do my dreams matter?'
His dark brows rose slightly. 'You're the jhihadi.'
I gazed at him. 'You don't really believe it, do you?'
'I do.'
'Because the Oracle said so?'
'Because the Oracle said so when he had no tongue.'
'But—there must have been some kind of logical explanation for that.'
'He had no tongue,' Oziri said plainly. 'He could make sounds but no words. I examined his empty mouth, the mutilation. Yet when we brought him down from Beit al'Shahar, he could speak as clearly as you or I. He told us about the jhihadi. He told us a man would change the sand to grass.' His smile was faint. 'Have you not shown us how?'
He meant the water-filled line in the dirt, with greenery stuck in the end of it. I'd done it twice before various Vashni. 'It's just an idea,' I explained lamely. 'Anyone could have come up with it. You take water from where it is, and put it where's it not. Things grow.' I shrugged. 'Nothing magical about that. You could have come up with it.'
'But I am just a humble priest,' Oziri said with a glint of amusement in his eyes.
'And I'm just a sword-dancer,' I told him. 'At least, I was. There is some objection to me using the term, now.'
'Among other things.' Oziri took up another pinch of herb, tossed it onto the coals with a wave of supple fingers. 'The jhihadi is a man of many parts. But he is not a god, and thus he is not omniscient. Therefore he must be taught.'
Be taught what? I opened my mouth to tell him I didn't understand. Couldn't. Because no more was I seated across the fire from Oziri but had somehow come to be lying flat on my back, staring up at the smoke hole. The closed smoke hole. No wonder it was so thick inside the hyort.
