Snow, Fire, Sword Read online

  The hantumu sat staring at them for an instant; then slowly one of them got off his bike and approached them, holding his sword in his hand. Dewi could see him closely now; he had thin, pale brown skin, with deep, cruel lines under the mask that hid his eyes, and he wore a long mustache. It was hard to tell his age, but he walked like a young man, with a swaggering gait. He stopped a few paces from them, his sword held out in front of him. “Why do you wish to do this? You sound mortally afraid,” he said. His voice had no inflection or expression, and it sent a shiver down Dewi’s spine.

  Trying to keep her voice steady, she said, “That is not for you to know. We do not give our reasons to servants.”

  The hantumu’s hand moved imperceptibly. Instantly, the tip of his sword was under Dewi’s chin. “What if I killed you right now, you scum?” he spat. “Don’t think I wouldn’t, just because you’re a female—I’ve killed girls and women before now.”

  “I am sure you have,” said Dewi, trying to sound calm, though she was so frightened she felt paralyzed, her very limbs turned to ice, her tongue over the claw heavy as a lump of wood.

  By her side, Husam growled at the hantumu, “Your master would not be happy with you if you killed her or me. You know he has been seeking us.”

  The hantumu flicked his head toward him, like a snake. For a moment, it looked as if he would attack Husam. Then he lowered his sword and shrugged. “You won’t be talking like that soon, old man,” he said, and motioned to the other three hantumu. “Check they have no concealed weapons or magic talismans.”

  “We told you we were unarmed,” said Husam quickly.

  The hantumu sneered, “You don’t expect us to take your word for it, do you?”

  They checked them thoroughly, but did not look in their mouths. Why should they? When the check was finished, the leading hantumu turned to his companions and said, “The girl will ride on the back of my bike, the old man on that one over there. They are to be blindfolded, gagged, and bound until we get to our master’s place.”

  Dewi put a hand to her mouth, as if to suppress a gasp of fear, but in reality to take the tiger’s claw from under her tongue and palm it into her shirt pocket. Husam, knowing this, diverted the hantumu’s attention by blustering, “Don’t think you can trick us…” but the hantumu cut him off.

  “Shut up. You are going to our master’s realm.”

  SIXTEEN

  THIS IS HOW Paradise must look, thought Adi as he walked with the Shayk through the perfumed garden. There were small bright birds darting in and out of low fragrant herb bushes, and fountains playing, and a peace and quietness such as Adi had never before experienced. The Shayk had listened carefully to Adi’s story but, instead of commenting directly on it, had taken him on a tour of the enclosed garden. Adi had been taken aback by this at first, for more than anything now, he knew he needed the kindly wisdom of the Shayk to help him understand his predicament and what he must do next. He waited impatiently at first as the Shayk walked calmly down each path, stopping to smell flowers, to gently touch small growing things, to comment on the wealth of insect and bird life that filled the garden with busy activity. But after a short time, the peace of the garden, the gentleness of its master, began to steal into Adi’s spirit, washing away the tension and fear and unhappiness of the last few days. By the time they reemerged from the heart of the garden, to a little rotunda that had been set with all the appertunances for a light meal, he was feeling quite relaxed and almost happy. Though he still worried about the fate of his friends and how he was going to get back to Kotabunga, somehow the experience of being in the Shayk’s garden had made him feel almost reconciled to all that had happened. Things could be bad, but they could also be good. He had come to a good place, a place where, at the very least, his bruised spirit could know some peace, some repair.

  But his mood began to change again when they came to the rotunda, for Sadik and Ibrahim were both there, waiting. Ibrahim’s glance at Adi was no more friendly than it had been earlier—in fact, the suspicion in his eyes seemed to have sharpened. And Sadik—well, the young man was standing there submissively, a towel over his arm, obviously ready to serve not only his beloved master but also his master’s guest. This made Adi feel exceedingly uncomfortable, though the Shayk seemed not to notice. Sadik knelt before his master and, taking up a bowl of rosewater, washed and dried the Shayk’s hands, then turned to Adi to do the same.

  “Please.” Adi could not help flinching. “It is not necessary…. I…”

  “You are eating with the Shayk,” said Ibrahim gruffly. “You are his guest.” Implicit in his glare was not only that Adi was being rude, but that he did not deserve the honor that was being given to him.

  But the Shayk smiled and, waving a hand at Sadik, said, “My son, it is not true zeal to embarrass your fellows. Leave it.”

  “Of course, Master,” said Sadik, but his eyes were full of hurt, and Adi felt worse than ever. Meanwhile, a still-suspicious Ibrahim looked daggers at him, his gaze seemingly trying to pierce Adi’s very soul. If only the man would go away. If only he could be alone with the Shayk again.

  The Shayk seemed to be in no hurry to send either of them away, though. He gestured at the food on the table—exotic preserved fruit such as dates and figs, sweetmeats of various kinds, slices of fresh local fruit—and said, “I am homesick sometimes for my own land, and my people here are kind enough to make sure I am supplied with such things as come from there. Have you ever been to the Great Desert, Adi?”

  “No, sir. I have never been.”

  “Well, this is the next best thing,” said the Shayk, picking up a fig and biting it delicately in two. “Ah, the perfume! We have tried to grow figs and dates here, and have had some success, isn’t that so, Ibrahim? But they do not taste the same as they do in the desert. Go on, Adi, eat. Tell me if you think the fruits of the desert are better than those of the great green expanses of Jayangan.” He winked. “But I presume that as a son of Jayangan, you would not agree?”

  Adi, mouth full of sticky fig and date, said indistinctly, “These are good, sir. Very good.”

  Ibrahim snorted, as if in derision, but the Shayk took no notice. He smiled and handed Adi a slice of fresh mangosteen. “This is from your country. Now you tell me.”

  Adi felt three pairs of eyes on him. He bit into the mangosteen, and its juicy citrus freshness cleared his mouth. He said uneasily, “Both are good, sir. But different.”

  “Ah! A good answer, and diplomatic, my son!”

  Ibrahim’s glare had not changed at all. No matter what I do or say, thought Adi, Ibrahim will not change his mind about me. Does he know I wear the heart symbol? And does he despise me for it, or distrust me? Adi had not told the Shayk he was a Nashranee, but he felt sure it would not matter to that good old man. But I should have told him straightaway, he thought, obscurely discomforted that he hadn’t, that he was here on false pretences, that the Shayk was talking to him as if he thought he was a Mujisal like themselves.

  “Now, Sadik, where is the tea I ordered? I believe Adi must be thirsty, and we cannot let our friends go from us without quenching their thirst, is that not so?”

  “Oh yes, Master,” said Sadik, bowing. He went swiftly to a corner of the rotunda, returned with a tray of tea things, and poured fragrant mint tea into small glass cups.

  “So, Adi, you wish to leave us so soon and journey to Kotabunga to find your friends?”

  “I have to go there,” said Adi, flushing at the implication. “But I am most grateful and honored for your hospitality, Shayk Rasheed al-Jabal. I will never forget your kindness.”

  “It is I who am grateful,” said the Shayk, “for what you have told me. It is clear to me the Demons’ Army is gaining in strength, and we must all unite to fight it. And so I propose this, if you will allow me: You and I will travel to Kotabunga tomorrow morning, go to the palace of the Sultan, and apprise him of the full situation. His son, the Crown Prince Yanto, is a great supporter of ours and will pers
uade his father of the truth of all that has happened. When we find your friends, we will tell them this: that they will be welcome here and will be safe from harm, while we all consider, together, what it is best to do. A great conflict is coming, a great battle that will decide once and for all whether the Demons’ Army can permanently be routed from the land by the Army of Light.”

  Adi looked at the old man. His vision misted and he saw the strength of the Shayk, the purity of heart that was symbolized by the whiteness of his clothes and his hair. He whispered, “Oh, Shayk Rasheed, do you remember what I told you in the garden? Do you remember that I told you who our three companions must be—Snow, Fire, and Sword?”

  “I remember,” said the Shayk with a little smile, “but I remember also that you had not yet found any of them. Is that not so?”

  “Oh, Shayk Rasheed al-Jabal,” said Adi, turning a gaze full of joy and excitement on the old man, forgetting about Sadik and Ibrahim in his pleasure, “I must dare to put something to you: Could it be…could it be that in you, who are so kind and good and brave, I have found one of our greatest companions? That I have found Snow?”

  There was a suppressed exclamation from Sadik, and Ibrahim started forward, with a hand to his sword, but the Shayk waved them both away. “You do me great honor,” he murmured. “You do me great honor, little son. But how can this be? Was not Snow, Fire, Sword some talisman of power invoked by the powers of the otherworld, by the Jinn, as my people would call them? Stories have been written of such things before—magic lamps and boxes and rings and so on—and you know these stories are not true. Talismans cannot help to fight the demons, for they are but merely things in stories.”

  Adi’s scalp crept with a mixture of fear and hope. “Your Eminence, Your Greatness,” he gabbled, forgetting how to address a Pumujisal chief, “we had thought at first that was so, that we must look for objects. Then we were told they were to be our companions. I believe that they refer to a quality of heart and soul in a person. So Snow could be great purity; and Fire great strength; and Sword great truth.”

  “Yes,” said the Shayk, “there are those who speak of the sword of truth, and the strength of fire, and how the purity of snow can cleanse away sins. I do not know if I can truthfully take this on, for it seems to me sheer arrogance to claim for myself such a thing.”

  “But it is not you who claim it, sir,” said Adi eagerly.

  “No, indeed!” The words had burst out from Sadik, and everyone turned to him.

  The Shayk said quietly, “What is it, Sadik?”

  Sadik blushed fiercely and bent his head. “Forgive me, Master, I spoke out of turn.”

  “I asked you what it was you wanted to say, Sadik,” said the Shayk, still as quietly, but with a little more steel in his voice. “I will be the judge of whether you spoke out of turn.”

  “Yes, of course, Master.” Sadik looked up, wringing his hands. “I was only going to say, Master, that it would seem to me that if ever anyone deserved the appellation of Snow as a symbol of purity of heart, it would be you. We would all say so, all of us here in the Community of Light. And my friend Adi, who is not yet one of us but who I think loves and understands what we do, also believes so. Oh, my master, it seems to me this is a sign, a sign that the great work you have been doing here will be taken to other parts of this unhappy world.”

  There was a silence, while Sadik bent his head again and shuffled his feet miserably. Ibrahim’s face had frozen into utter impassivity. Adi watched the Shayk with wary hope. The latter appeared to be deep in thought. Everything about him suggested calm and repose, except for the fact that he had taken his glasses off and was absentmindedly polishing them on his robe, over and over and over.

  After what seemed like an age, the Shayk stopped polishing his glasses and put them back on his nose. He raised his head, and Adi saw that his dark eyes were shining. “Well, Adi,” he said at last, “if you truly think that may be so, and if it pleases God that I should help in this task, in whichever way I am destined to, then I will admit that I may well be he whom you are looking for. Please do not overwhelm me with thanks and homage, Adi, Sadik,” he went on quickly, “and do not say anything of this to the other people in the community, not yet. It would seem to me that if there is too much fuss and bother and roaring, it will come to the ears of the demons and alert them to the notion that here may be one of the weapons in the fight against them. What we have to do is try to discover the identity of Fire, and of Sword, and thus together may we join forces against the demons. Adi, I shall accompany you to Kotabunga with my two best men, Sadik and Ibrahim. Together we will forge a new destiny for the world, and confound the demons.”

  “Pray God we will not be too late,” growled Ibrahim.

  The Shayk smiled at him. “God will protect his true servants,” he said. “You should know that, Ibrahim.” He looked mischievously at Adi. “Now then, will you not have another date? A fig perhaps? Or do you still prefer the mangosteen?”

  SEVENTEEN

  HOURS PASSED. Blind, dumb, helpless on the back of the hantumu’s bike—Dewi could feel only the sharp wind on her face, as the rest of her bound body had grown numb. She had no idea how Husam was faring. She could hear the roar of the other engines preceding and following her, and could only assume he must still be on another hantumu’s bike. She thought they must be going through back roads now, because there were jolts and bumps at irregular intervals. Beyond that, she had no idea where the hantumu were taking them.

  Tiredness began to steal over her, softly at first, then more insistently. She resisted it hard, not only because she wanted to have her wits about her when they arrived, but also because she was afraid of falling off. Her eyes kept trying to close, only to jerk open again under the dark blindfold. Disconnected images kept jumping into her brain; it seemed to her she rocked uneasily on an ocean full of dark waves and hidden shoals of rock, suspended over a pit of bottomless darkness. An evil thing waited there, a thing worse than the worst hantumu, worse than the most powerful afreet, a human thing that had no mercy in its heart for the whole wide world, but wished only for power, absolute power. Its eyes were on her as she sped over the dark sea; its evil eyes watched her every move as she rocked toward what would be her death. The eyes grew wider, searching into every nook and cranny of her soul. In her half dreams, she knew she had done a mad, foolish thing. The Sorcerer would take her in, chew her up, spit her out, in a moment. She would be dead, just as the afreet had promised her in the vision in the Water Gardens; she would soon be dead, like poor Anda Mangil.

  She jerked fully awake. The air was rushing past her nose in a wild stream; the sound of the bikes’ engines had changed. She felt herself falling forward, as the bike plunged down, down a steep slope. She cried out in fear, but the gag swallowed her scream. Then came a bone-shaking thud as the bike came to a sudden stop; and Dewi, caught unawares, slipped half off the bike, her bound arm flung out against the hot engine, burning her through her clothes. Her vision swam red and black, and she screamed again. She felt herself roughly dragged free of the bike, her bonds loosened. There was sand under her body, sand that smelled dank and felt cold. There was another horrible smell—old bones, old blood, as in the den of a carnivore.

  She heard the hantumu’s voice in her ear. “I will take off your blindfold now, and the gag. But you will be quiet, and not struggle. Do you understand?”

  Battered, bruised, weary, and frightened, Dewi could only just barely manage a nod. The gag was the first to go; the suddenness with which it was ripped away made her retch. The hantumu murmured, “Dirty scum.” His fingers ripped at her blindfold, scratching her face as they did so. Light burst in on her eyelids; for an instant, it was too painful to look, so long had she been in the blackness. But she cautiously opened one eye, then the other.

  She was in a large cave, flickeringly lit by rush lights set against the walls. In the light of the flares, she saw that on one of the cave walls was a huge black painting, extraordinarily v
ivid, of a twisted, big-bellied beast that looked something like a huge lizard. She trembled.

  Where was Husam? At the moment she thought it, two more hantumu came into view, dragging Husam along with them. The poor old man looked half dead; his blindfold and gag were off, but one eye was half closed over a purpling bruise, there was blood at the corners of his mouth, and his face was the color of ash. Dewi tried to fight down the wild rage that rose in her at the sight. What cowards and brutes these creatures were.

  The hantumu flung the unconscious Husam down like a sack of rice in a corner of the cave, not far from Dewi. “The old fool thinks he’s still a fighter,” one of them remarked.

  The first hantumu smiled. “Well, we’ll see how he fares later, eh?” They all laughed, a terrible, cold sound without any human sympathy in it whatsoever. These men might not be demons like the afreet, but they had become something less than men, giving over their wills and hearts to the service of evil.

  The first hantumu caught her expression. He bent over her and said, very softly, “So, how do you like being in our master’s realm, little girl? Does it please you?” He put a hand on her chin, stroking it softly. Dewi felt her very bones creep at the touch. But she looked steadily at his masked face, saying, between clenched teeth, “I do not have to talk to slaves and servants.”

  He slapped her so hard, her head jerked backward. Jumping up, he said menacingly, “You’re caught like a rat. Caught like the dirty, worthless rat you are. You wanted an audience with our master—well, you’ll get it right enough. And you’ll soon realize just what a fool you were to think you could stand for even one second against him.”

  He jerked a thumb at his silent, smirking companions. “What are you waiting for? Tell Kerapi she’s in such a hurry to meet our master.”

  The other hantumu laughed uproariously, as if he’d made a wonderful joke, and left. Their leader bent down to her again. “Don’t even think you can escape from here. The cave is sealed from the outside world and demons guard its passages.” He took a rushlight and followed his companions.