Some of the men in the comnee had sighted ChaMeech a few days past, but only three females.
‘Three females without any males?’ Soutan said. ‘That’s really peculiar.’
Their informant, a beefy young comnee man, nodded his agreement. ‘We left them alone,’ he went on. ‘They weren’t likely to give anyone any trouble.’
‘They wouldn’t, no, not females,’ Soutan said. ‘And travelling this time of year? Odd. Very odd.’
The comnee man drifted away, and Warkannan glanced around – no one within earshot. There was also no sign of either Arkazo or Tareev.
‘We need to talk about things,’ Warkannan whispered in Kazraki. ‘I’ll just collect our young colts.’
‘They can find our camp on their own,’ Soutan said. ‘I have no doubt that those girls are satisfying their curiosity.’
‘Their what?’
‘I finally heard what the little sluts were giggling about. Both of our boys have big noses. The girls were wondering if other –er – features are commensurately large. You know, the old folk superstition about organ size.’
‘Shaitan!’ Warkannan felt himself blushing. ‘Of all the immodest –! Their mothers should beat them within an inch of their lives.’
‘I quite agree. The mothers wouldn’t. Shall we go? The boys will come staggering back at dawn, most likely.’
Warkannan led the way downriver to their little camp, which he’d set up out of earshot of the comnee. While Soutan lounged on the grass, Warkannan built and lit a tiny fire of dried horse dung around a few pieces of oak charcoal, then sat down near it for the light.
‘There’s one good thing,’ Warkannan said. ‘If Zayn’s still with this comnee, he’s not off in the east, stumbling over Jezro Khan.’
‘If he really is the spy from the Chosen. We can’t be sure.’
Warkannan was about to answer when he heard footsteps crackle in the grass. He was expecting Arkazo, but the comnee man with the bruised face stepped into the pool of firelight.
‘Come walk with me,’ he said to Warkannan. ‘I can’t risk being seen here.’
Warkannan followed him through the dark night to the fern trees along the river. The comnee man leaned close to whisper.
‘My name is Palindor. Why do you want to find Zayn? The Spirit Rider says you’re lying when you say he’s your friend, so don’t tell me that again.’
When Warkannan hesitated, Palindor laughed, a cold mutter under his breath.
‘I hate him, and I think you do, too.’
The venom in his voice rang so true that Warkannan decided to trust him.
‘Yes, I do. The woman he dishonoured was my sister. I’m going to kill him when I find him.’
Palindor laughed. ‘He’s about twenty miles south of here, and riding this way. Look, he’s going to make a vision quest out in the Mistlands. Do you know what that means?’
‘Oh yes. He’ll be alone out there, in a place where it’s damned hard to see someone coming. Huh – if his comnee’s riding upriver, it’ll camp on the southern edge.’
‘Where the river flows out. The quests always start there.’
‘Good.’ Warkannan laid his hand on his coin pouch. ‘A hundred thanks. Can I give –’
‘Keep your money, Kazrak. Just help me kill him.’
In the middle of the grasslands lay a vast swamp, a semi-earth of bog and stream nearly eighty miles across, fed by underground springs. The Kazraki scholars taught that God had created the Mistlands to provide water for the horses no matter how hot the summer. When Zayn repeated this theory to Ammadin, she laughed, much to his annoyance.
‘I guess that means you don’t believe me,’ he said.
‘You’re not the person to believe or disbelieve,’ Ammadin said. ‘You’re only repeating what you’ve been told.’
‘Who do you think created them, then?’
‘I don’t have the slightest idea, myself. Now, in the Cantons some of their sorcerers are called loremasters. One of them came to buy a horse from me some years back. When we talked, she told me that in the Mistlands, the earth’s beginning to tear apart. There’s water underneath, and it comes up through the holes.’
‘That’s ridiculous!’
‘Is it? Consider the earthquakes. The ground moves then, doesn’t it?’
‘Well, yes, but –’ Zayn paused, thinking. ‘Well, I hadn’t thought of it that way before.’
Whatever their origins, and Zayn was by then thoroughly caught between the conflicting theories, the Mistlands breathed an aura of the holy. Not the comfortable holiness of a gilded mosque, but the stomach-wrenching trembling holiness that bespoke the left hand of God – or the dark gods, if the Tribes had the right of it. On the day that the comnee reached the Mistlands, Zayn saw the fog from miles away, a grey brooding, blending into the purple horizon to the north. The closer they rode, the more the air turned damp, and the dampness became a smell, a foetid coolness of mud and rotting things. Like clouds piling up for a storm, the grey canopy grew larger and larger as the riders approached. At the place where the comnee stopped to make camp, the canopy seemed to arch over half the sky. With sundown it grew larger still, spreading grey tendrils like reaching fingers into the twilight.
Since he was fasting, Zayn walked to the edge of the camp while the others ate. When he looked into the mist, he saw points of bluish light drifting close to the ground – spirits, or so the mullahs would call them, gennies and evil spirits. Ammadin called them spirits but nothing evil, just spirits, who existed as men and animals did, with neither malice nor good will. She had been teaching him the ways of her gods, to prepare him for his quest. In the darkening swirls of mist, it seemed he saw vast figures striding and drifting: Ty-Onar, the god of the swamps, all green and crested like a lizard; Hirrel of the high places, slender and black, with bright pink gills along his sides. Deep within the mists other figures seemed to gather, but never close enough for him to identify. Tomorrow he would be among them, asking for a vision.
Sharply Zayn reminded himself that he was a Kazrak and a follower of the one true god. He was only undergoing this ordeal to keep the confidence of the comnee, because if he lost that confidence, he would have a hard time reaching the Cantons. To a fifteen-year-old boy, he supposed, the quest would be terrifying, the first and likely the only time in his life that a comnee boy would be alone. Doubtless the terror blended with the fasting and the simple pride of becoming a man to produce the visions they were supposed to see out there. Thanks to his studies of Tribal customs, Zayn could make up a convincing vision to tell Ammadin, something that would satisfy these primitive people. That was all there was to it. Superstitious nonsense. Of course. But out in the mists the blue lights danced, brighter in the thickening night. He felt a cold seep into his heart that had little to do with the dampness of the air.
Zayn hurried back to Dallador’s fire, but since he was fasting he refused the usual keese.
