Omar and Yusuf came to the outskirts of Hamada to see me off, Omar in the black robes of a student, Yusuf in the fractal patterned grey-on-white of a master, his smile black and gleaming. They’d calculated me safe passage to the coast with a salt caravan. Travel with Sheik Malik, they told me, would not end well, though whether my downfall would have been at the sheik’s instigation, or by djinn or dead man, or perhaps through indecency with his lovely daughters, they didn’t say.
‘A gift, my friend!’ Omar jerked his head back at the three camels his man was leading behind them.
‘Oh you bastard.’
‘You’ll warm to them, Jalan! Think of the heads you’ll turn in Vermillion riding in on camelback!’
I rolled my eyes and waved the man forward to add my trio to the laden herd browsing karran grass a short way behind me. Soon all four score of them would be trekking the dunes with just me and twelve salt merchants to keep order.
‘And give the Red Queen my father’s regards,’ Omar said. ‘And my mother’s.’
Omar’s mother I liked. The second eldest of the caliph’s six wives, a tall Nuban woman from the interior, dark as ebony and mouth-wateringly attractive. Funny too. I guessed Omar’s sense of humour came from his father. Giving a man three camels after he’s been locked up for assaulting one is mean-spirited, and not at all amusing.
I turned to Yusuf. ‘So, master Yusuf, perhaps you have a prediction for me, something I can use.’ Tradition has it that nobody of consequence leaves Hamada without some numerology to guide their way. Most come from failed students who ply their trade in whatever way they can, be it as accountants, bookmakers, or mystics selling predictions on the street. A prince, however, might hope for an audit of his possibilities and probabilities to be issued by the Mathema itself. And, since I knew Yusuf from my days in Umbertide, there seemed no harm in trying to coax one from a master.
Yusuf’s smile stiffened for a moment. ‘Of course, my prince. I’m afraid our halls of calculation are occupied with … notables. But I can do a quick evaluation.’
I stood there, trying not to let my offence show, while Yusuf scratched away with startling speed on a slate taken from inside his robe. ‘One, two, thirteen.’ He looked up.
I pursed my lips. ‘Which means?’
‘Ah.’ Yusuf glanced down at the slate again as if seeking inspiration. ‘First stop, second sister, thirteenth … something.’
‘Why can’t these ever be like, on the third day of spring give the fifth man you see four coppers to avoid disaster? See, that’s simple and useful. Yours could mean anything. First stop … on my way home? An oasis? A port? And second sister? My sister, the Silent Sister? Help me out here!’
‘The calculation is done on the basis that you are told what I told you – if I wanted to tell you more I would have to do the calculation again and it would be a different answer, a different purpose. If I told you more now then it would disrupt the outcome and the numbers would no longer be true. Besides, I don’t know the answers, that’s where the magic comes in and it’s hard to pin down. You understand?’
‘So, do it again. It only took you a moment.’
Yusuf showed me his black smile. ‘Ah, my friend, you have found me out. I have been processing your variables since we first met in that Florentine bank. I may have misled you when I implied that you were not important to the shape of things to come. I thought perhaps it would have been easier for you if you didn’t know.’
‘Well … uh, that’s better.’ I wasn’t sure it was. I’d been happier being outraged about not being important enough to factor than I was knowing that my actions mattered. ‘I, uh, should be going. Allah be upon you, and all that…’ I raised my hand in farewell but Omar was too fast for me and launched himself forward into a hug that, truth be told, was pretty much a cuddle.
‘Good luck, my friend.’
‘I don’t need luck, Omar! And I have the figures to prove it … one, two, three—’
‘Thirteen.’
‘One, two, thirteen. That should see me safe. You come visit us in Red March when you’re bored with balancing equations.’
‘I will,’ he said, but I know from experience it takes practice to lie when cuddling someone, and Omar had not practised.
I disentangled myself and set off toward the front of the caravan.
‘Don’t forget your camels, Jalan!’
‘Right.’ And with reluctance I angled my way toward the rear of the group being lined up, already tensing to dodge the first barrage of camel-spit.
The desert is hot and boring. I’m sorry, but that’s pretty much all there is to it. It’s also sandy, but rocks are essentially dull things and breaking them up into really small pieces doesn’t improve matters. Some people will tell you how the desert changes character day by day, how the wind sculpts it endlessly in vast and empty spaces not meant for man. They’ll wax lyrical about the grain and shade of the sand, the majesty of bare rock rising mountainous, carved by the sand-laden breeze into exotic shapes that speak of water and flow … but for me sandy, hot, and boring covers it all.
The most important factor, once water and salt are covered, is the boredom. Some men thrive on it, but me, I try to avoid being left alone with my own imagination. The key if one wishes to avoid dwelling on unpleasant memories or inconvenient truths is to keep yourself occupied. That fact alone explains much of my youth. In any event, in the desert silence, with nobody but camels and heathens to speak to, none of them with much mastery of Empire tongue, a man is left defenceless, prey to dark thoughts.
I held out until we hit the coast, but that last trek along the narrow strip of sand between the wideness of the sea and the vast march of dunes broke me. One chill night we camped beside the skeleton of some great ocean-going ship that had floundered close enough to port for the irony to be more bitter than the seawater. I walked among its bare and salt-rimed spars rising from the beach, and setting a hand to one ancient timber I could swear I heard the screams of drowning sailors.
That night sleep proved impossible to find. Instead, beneath the bright and cold scatter of the stars, my ghosts came visiting and dragged me back to Hell.
‘Isn’t there supposed to be a bridge?’ I ask, staring out across the fast-flowing waters of the River Slidr. It’s the first water I’ve seen in Hell. The river lies at least thirty yards wide, the opposite shore is a beach of black sand sloping up to a set of crumbling black cliffs. The cliffs vault toward the dead-lit sky in a series of steps, and above them clouds gather, dark as smoke.
‘It’s the River Gjöll that has a bridge, not the Slidr. Gjallarbrú they call the bridge. Be thankful we don’t need to cross it, Módgud stands guard.’
‘Módgud?’ I don’t really want to know.
‘A giantess. The far shore of that river is corpse upon corpse. They build the Nagelfar there, the nail ship that Loki will steer to Ragnarok. And behind that bridge stand the gates of Hel, guarded by the chained hound, Garm.’
‘But don’t we need to—’
‘We’re already past the gates, Jal. The key, the door, all that took us into Hel.’
‘Just the wrong bit of it?’
‘We need to cross the river.’
Thirst rather than a lack of caution draws me on, hurrying me down those last few yards of the shore.
I advance to the shallows. ‘Yeah. That’s not going to happen.’ The riverbed shelves away rapidly and although the swift-flowing water lies unnaturally clear it soon becomes lost in darkness. Crossing a river like this would be a serious problem under any circumstances but as I kneel to drink I spot the real show-stopper. In defiance of all reason