Shahr Johor backed away, bowing as he went. Aurungzeb stood motionless long after he had gone, then: “Sit up!” he said abruptly.
Heria straightened, the silk sliding like water from her shoulders.
“Raise your head.”
She did so, staring at a point on the ornate ceiling.
Aurungzeb sidled over to her. He was as silent as a cat in his movements, despite being a big man on the edge of corpulence. His eyes drank her in. One brown ring-encrusted hand slid along her torso. She remained as motionless as marble, a lovely statue sculpted by some genius.
“I shall give you a name,” the Sultan breathed. “You must have a name. I know. I shall call you Ahara. It is the old name for the wind that every year sweeps westward across the steppes of Kambaksk and Kurasan. My people followed that wind, and with them went the Faith. Ahara. Say it.”
She stared at him dumbly. He cursed and began speaking in the halting Normannic that was the common language of the western kingdoms.
“Your name is Ahara. Say it.”
“
He grinned hugely, his teeth a white gleam in his beard.
“I will have you taught our tongue, Ahara. I want to hear you speak it to me on our wedding night.”
Still her eyes revealed nothing. He laughed.
“I talk to myself, do I not? You Ramusians. . . You will have to be consecrated into the Prophet’s worship, of course. And you are too thin, the marks of the journey are upon you yet. I will feed you up, put flesh on those bones of yours. You will bear me fine sons in the time to come, and they will spend so much time killing each other that their sire will be left in peace in his old age.” He pulled the sheet up around her. “Wife number twenty-six, you will be. I should have had more, but I am an abstemious man.”
He flung an arm out towards the doorway. “Go,” he said in Normannic.
She scampered from the chamber, the silk billowing from her shoulders like a pair of wings. Her feet could be heard pattering on the marble and porphyry of the floors beyond. Aurungzeb smiled into the empty room. He was in a good mood. He had found himself a superb new wife—he would marry her, despite the inevitable objections. She was too rare a jewel to keep as a mere concubine.
And he had rid himself of that relic from the past, Shahr Baraz. The orders had gone out by special courier, a picked squad of the palace guard journeying with them to carry them out. Soon the old man’s head would be carted towards Orkhan in a jar, pickled in vinegar. He had been a faithful servant, a superb soldier, but now that Aekir had fallen and the impossible had been achieved, he was no longer needed. And besides, he was growing dangerously insubordinate. Shahr Johor was different. He was forward-looking for one thing, and after the example of Baraz he would know better than to disobey his Sultan.
Aurungzeb lay back on the rumpled, sex-smelling bed.
A pity they would not take the dyke in the same campaigning season as they had taken Aekir. That would have been a feat indeed. But it was of no great import that they would have to wait out the winter. It would give him a chance to cement the new alliances with Nalbeni and Danrimir.
The Ramusians, he knew, mostly thought of the Seven Sultanates as one Merduk power-bloc, but the reality was different. There were rivalries and intrigues, even minor wars between this sultanate and that Danrimir was virtually an Ostrabarian client state, so closely tied to Orkhan had she become in the last months, but Nalbeni was a different matter.
The oldest of the Merduk countries, Nalbeni had been founded before even the Fimbrian-Hegemony had fallen. It was primarily a sea power and its capital, Nalben, was supposed to be the largest port in the world, save perhaps for Abrusio of Hebrion in the west. It did not trust this upstart state from the north of the Kardian Sea, so naturally had allied with it to keep a closer eye on its progress. It was a good way of insinuating Nalbenic diplomats into Aurungzeb’s court. Diplomats with flapping ears and heavy purses. But such was the way of the world. Ostrabar needed Nalbeni to keep up the pressure on Torunna from a different direction, so that when Shahr Johor moved against the dyke in the spring he would not find it manned by all the armies of Torunna.
This war was not coming to a close; it was only beginning. Before I am done, Aurungzeb thought, I will have all the Seven Sultanates doing my bidding, and Merduk armies will be marching to the very brim of the Western Ocean. Charibon I will set afire, and its black priests I shall crucify by the thousands. Temples of the True Faith shall be reared up over the whole continent. If the Prophet wills it.
A shadow fell through the doorway. Aurungzeb sat up at once.
“Akran?”
“No, Sultan. It is I, Orkh.”
“You were not announced.”
“I was not seen.”
The shadow glided into the room and was nothing more than that: an absence of light, a mere shape.
“What do you want?”
“To speak with you.”
“Speak, then. And let me see you. I am sick of this ghost business.”
“You might not like what you see, Sultan.”
“Show yourself. I command it.”
The shadow took on substance, another dimension. In a moment a man stood there in long dun-coloured robes. Or what had once been a man.
“Beard of the Prophet!” Aurungzeb breathed.
The thing smiled, and the lights that were its eyes became two glowing slots.
“Is this what happened to you when—?”
“When Baraz slew my homunculus? Yes. I was relaying your own voice through it, acting as a conductor; thus I could not defend myself against the . . . consequences until it was too late.”
“But why has it done this to you?”
“The surge of power was like the explosion of a gun when the barrel is blocked. Something of the Dweomer that went into making the homunculus was blasted back through me, and I had no barriers up because of my role in the communication. It changed me. I am working on a remedy for the unfortunate effects.”
“I see now why you haunt the palace like a shadow.”
“I have no wish to frighten your concubines—especially one so delicious as just passed me in the corridor.”
“What did you want, Orkh? I am meeting the Nalbenic ambassadors soon.”
“I am your eyes and ears, Majesty, despite the malady which afflicts me. I have agents in every city in the west. It is partly because of my network of information gatherers that this sultanate has risen to the prominence it now enjoys. Is that not true?”
“There may be something in what you say,” Aurungzeb admitted, scowling. He did not like to be reminded of his reliance on the sorcerer, or on anyone else for that matter.
“Well, I have a very interesting piece of information I would like to impart to you. It does not concern the present war, but an occurrence much further west in one of the Ramusian states.”
“Go on.”
“It seems there is a purge in progress in the kingdom of Hebrion, which seeks to rid the land of its exotic elements. I lost two of my best agents to their damned pyres, but the chief targets of the purge seem to be oldwives, herbalists, weather-workers, thaumaturgists and cantrimers—in short, anyone who has an inkling of the Dweomer.”
“Interesting.”
“My sources—those who survived—tell me, however, that this purge was initiated by the accursed Inceptines—the Black Priests of the west—and has not found favour with King Abeleyn.”
“Why does he not command it stopped then?” Aurungzeb asked gruffly. “Is a king not King in his own land?”
“Not in the west, sire. Their Church has a great say in the running of every kingdom.”
“Fools! What kind of rulers are they? But I interrupt. Continue, Orkh.”
“Abeleyn hired a small fleet, I am told, filled it to the brim with fleeing sorcerers and the like and
