The Lions of Al-Rassan

Epilogue

The rapid resettlement of the Kindath community of Sorenica in Batiara was something that could be regarded in a number of different ways. Burned to the ground nearly twenty years before, on the eve of the disastrous Jaddite campaign against the Asharite homelands in the east, Sorenica had been rebuilt and was thriving again.

Some viewed this as a sad demonstration of the Kindaths' desperate desire for roots and a home—any kind of home, however precarious. Others saw the speedy restoration of a devastated city as emblematic of endurance in the face of hardships that would have destroyed a people with a lesser heritage to sustain them.

The Kindath physician Alvar ben Pellino, who had been one of the first to settle here in his youth—he had completed his studies at the newly re-established university—had a different perspective from most, and a more pragmatic view.

Men and women of all faiths struggled to find ways to shape a life for themselves and their children. When opportunities emerged they were grasped. Sorenica's revival was simply such an opportunity being seized.

In the aftermath of their army's destruction twenty years ago, the Jaddite princes of several kingdoms had been informed by their spiritual advisors that the god had not been pleased by the brutal attack on Sorenica before the fleet sailed. The Kindath had not been the real targets of that holy war, the clerics solemnly decreed, conveniently forgetting their own role in the massacre. Sorenica's destruction, they decided, had represented a failure of piety, a deviation from proper awareness of the holy mission that lay ahead.

Jad had sent his punishments: storm winds at sea, sickness, murder among princes, deaths in battle in far-off, inhospitable lands.

Those leaders and their followers who finally came home two long years later had wearily agreed to make atonement for the Sorenica massacre. The Kindath had been invited back, royal monies were allocated for the rebuilding of their sanctuaries, markets, houses, the university, the harbor, warehouses, city walls. Taxes were remitted for all who agreed to settle there in those first years. The highest lords of Batiara—many of them the sons of men who had died in the Asharite homelands—put their seals to a long, clerkly document drawn up to attest to the assured safety of Sorenica and its inhabitants.

One did not have to believe such things, Alvar ben Pellino thought, striding quickly past the stalls of the market towards the harbor, to have decided that in an uncertain, violent world, Sorenica offered no more risks than anywhere else and a few benefits not otherwise available.

In his case, more than a few benefits, in that long-ago year when they'd escaped the savagery that was consuming Esperana and Al-Rassan, tearing the peninsula apart the way wild beasts shred a carcass.

Ben Pellino was well-known and well-loved in Sorenica. Hasten as he might, his progress towards the harbor was slow. Every few steps he was forced to stop and exchange pleasantries with someone or another. A surprising number of men and women wished him the moons' blessing on his fortieth birth day. The Kindath, with their charts of birth, paid more attention to such days than his own people had: a small adjustment among larger ones.

It was his daughters, Alvar gradually understood, who had been busily informing everyone. Ruefully smiling, he acknowledged all the good wishes, agreeing with cheerful suggestions that his youth was now behind him.

He'd had a highly dramatic life in his early years and people knew something of that. He'd been a Horseman and even a royal herald in Valledo, before coming away from that peninsula, adopting the Kindath faith and beginning his training in medicine.

He was much sought after and trusted as a physician: calm, learned, reassuring. A steady hand and eye in surgery. His services had once been in demand among the mercenary armies of Batiara but he had never gone with the soldiers, ever. A season's summons to a princely court he would accept—to deliver children, attend to gout, couch cataracts—but never a position with an army in the field. Had he wanted to tread or ride a battlefield, ben Pellino said calmly to all who asked, he would still be a Horseman in the army of Ramiro the Great of Esperana.

He was a doctor, he said, and his labor was preserving and easing life. He would not, given a choice, freely venture into death's own domain of war.

His wife did so, however. Also a physician—an even better one in the view of some, since she'd been trained from childhood by her celebrated father—she was not averse to a campaign or two among the armies. One saw injuries and ailments in the field that could only serve to broaden and deepen a doctor's knowledge. Her father had done the same thing in his day.

Alvar, disengaging from yet another well-wisher, made a mental note to chastise his daughters when he returned home. They'd no business proclaiming his advancing years to the whole community! He didn't look forty; everyone said as much. He wasn't ready to be venerable and sage; unless it helped in disciplining two girls hovering precariously on the brink of womanhood. In the case of his daughters Alvar rather doubted anything would greatly help.

On the other hand, they were the ones who had decided to have a celebration today, and who'd been busy all week preparing it. They'd ordered the cook out of the kitchen. They had been making the confections themselves. His wife, more sympathetic to his desire to pass the day quietly, had tried to deter them—to no avail. When the two girls acted in tandem, the idea of deterrence was naive.

Knowing he was expected home by now for the celebration, Alvar hurried along the slip where ships from all over the world were loading or off-loading cargoes. He looked for and found the one with an Esperanan flag: yellow sun on a pale blue field, Queen Vasca's crown above it.

A boy from the docks had run a message to their treatment rooms. A letter was waiting for them, entrusted to the captain. Alvar had finished with his patients first and had come to collect it.

He didn't recognize the captain who granted him permission to board the ship. They exchanged pleasantries.

He did know the writing and the seal, and he took a deep breath when he accepted the salt-stained packet from the man. It was addressed to him and Jehane both, so after offering his thanks and a silver coin and striding back down to the wooden planks of the wharf, Alvar opened it. Normally he let Jehane read their mail from Esperana first, but today was his birth day, after all, and he allowed himself this much luxury. He was immediately sorry.

My dear Jehane, my dear Alvar, he read, may the god and his sisters guard and preserve you and all your loved ones. We are well, though events, as you will have heard from others by now, have been turbulent this summer ...

Alvar stopped reading, his heart thudding. They hadn't heard anything from others. He turned back to the ship. He called out. The captain turned at the rail to look down at him.

"What's happened in the peninsula?" Alvar shouted up. He spoke in Esperanan. Heads turned towards him.

"You don't know?" the captain cried.

"You're the first Esperanan ship here in a month."

"Then I can be tale teller!" the captain said, visibly pleased. He brought his two hands together above his eyes, making the sign of the god's disk. "Belmonte took Cartada and Aljais this summer, and then Tudesca surrendered to him! Ramiro the Great has ridden his black horse into the sea at the mouth of the Guadiara. Jad has reconquered Al-Rassan! The peninsula belongs to Esperana again!"

There was a babble of noise along the harbor. The news would be all over Sorenica by the time Alvar got home if he didn't hurry.

He began moving quickly, almost running, barely pausing to throw a thank you over his shoulder. He didn't want this news to come from the street. There were those at his house today who would need a warning, some shelter from this.

He needed that himself, in truth.

Even as he hurried back through the market, Alvar was remembering a long-ago night north of Fezana, when King Ramiro had told him and Ser Rodrigo of his firm intent to ride into the seas surrounding Al-Rassan and claim all the lands that touched them for his own.

He'd done it now. Ramiro the Great. Nearly twenty years after, but he'd done it. He was king of Esperana. Of Valledo, Ruenda, Jalofia. Of Al-Rassan, though that name would be gone now. From this summer forward, that name was a word for poets and historians.

Clutching the letter, Alvar broke into a run. People looked at him curiously, but there were other running figures in the street now, carrying the same tidings. He cut along a laneway and past their treatment rooms. Closed. Everyone would be at his house by now. For the party. His happy celebration.

Alvar was aware that he would need to weep before this day was done. He wouldn't be the only one.

The outer doors of the house were open. He walked in. No one to be seen. They would all be in the courtyard, waiting for him. He paused before the looking glass, startled by his reflection. A brown-haired man, unfashionably bearded, beginning to grey. White-faced, just now. So much so that were he his own patient, Alvar would have ordered immediate rest. He'd had a blow. An extreme one.

He heard sounds from the kitchen and turned that way. In the doorway he stopped. His wife was there, still dressed for work, checking on the small cakes and pies the girls had been making. Even now, even with what had just happened to him, Alvar offered his prayer of thanksgiving to the god and the moons that he had been vouchsafed this gift of love, so unexpectedly, so profoundly undeserved.

He cleared his throat. She turned to look at him.

"You're late," she said lightly. "Dina, your darling little girl, has been threatening to—" She stopped. "What has happened?"

How did one say this?

"Al-Rassan has fallen." He heard himself speaking the words as in a place that echoed, like the valley of the Emin ha'Nazar. "This summer. All of the peninsula is Jaddite now."

His wife leaned back, her hands behind her, against the table by the hearth. Then, pushing herself forward, she took three steps across the stone floor and wrapped her arms around him, her head against his chest.

"Oh, my love," she said. "Oh, Alvar, this must be so hard for you. What can I say?"

"Is everyone here?"

"Almost. Oh, my dear," said Marisa bet Rezzoni, his wife, his colleague and Jehane's, daughter of his teacher, mother of his children, light of his days and nights. "Oh, Alvar, how are you going to tell them?"

"Tell them what?" Jehane asked, coming into the kitchen. "What is it? One of the children?"

"No. No, not that," Alvar said, and fell silent.

He looked at the first woman he had ever loved. He knew he would love her and in more than a way of speaking until he died. She was still, with silver in her hair and a softening to her features now, the same astonishing, courageous woman with whom he had ridden across the Serrana Range to King Badir's Ragosa all those years ago.

Another known footfall in the hallway outside. "We're in here," Alvar said, lifting his voice. "In the kitchen." In a way it was better like this.

Ammar, hardly using his stick today, paused in the doorway and then came to stand beside his wife. He looked at Jehane, at Marisa, at Alvar. He laid a hand on Jehane's shoulder and said, in his beautiful voice, "Alvar has had the same tidings I have. He is trying to think of how to shelter us. Me, mostly, I suppose."

"You, mostly," Alvar agreed quietly. "Ammar, I'm so sorry."

"Please!" Jehane said. "What is it?"

Her husband released her and she turned to look at him. "I was going to wait until Alvar's celebration was done, but there is no point now. A ship from Esperana is in, my love. Fernan Belmonte took Cartada, and my own Aljais of the nightingales this summer. Tudesca opened her gates immediately after. They were the last, those three."

Alvar saw that his wife, who alone of the four of them had never even been in that beloved, tormented peninsula, was weeping. Marisa could feel for the pain she saw, could almost take it into herself. It was a part of her physician's gift, and it frightened him sometimes.

Jehane had gone white, much as he himself had appeared in the looking glass. She did not cry. She said, after a moment, "It was going to happen. There was no one to turn the tide back, and Fernan ... "

"Appears to have become something close to what his father was," Ammar finished for her. "It was going to happen, yes." He smiled, the smile they had all come to know and need over the years here in Sorenica. "Have I not been trying to write a history and an elegy for Al-Rassan all this time? Would it not have been a cruel jest upon me, if—"

"Don't!" Jehane said, and stepping forward, put her arms around her husband. Ammar stopped. He closed his eyes.

Alvar swallowed, near to weeping, for reasons too complex for words. The Star-born were not his people. He was Jaddite born, Kindath by choice—even before he'd met and wooed Ser Rezzoni's youngest daughter. He had made that decision, along with a resolve to pursue a doctor's life, by the time he left Esteren, escorting Ishak ben Yonannon and his wife to their daughter on behalf of the king and queen of Valledo.

Jehane had already been in Sorenica, having come with ibn Khairan when the Muwardi tribesmen in Al-Rassan threatened revolt if Ammar continued to lead their armies. Yazir ibn Q'arif had been urged to execute him—a man, the wadjis cried, who had slain a khalif. A man more offensive in Ashar's sight than even the Jaddites were.

Yazir had yielded to the first pressure but resisted the second, surprisingly. He had exiled ibn Khairan but allowed him his life. Partly for what he had achieved as ka'id, but mostly for one evening's single combat as the named, holy, sword arm of Ashar.

Had he not defeated the man no one could defeat? Had he not granted them victory by Silvenes when he killed Rodrigo Belmonte, the Scourge of Al-Rassan?

And more: had he not—above all else—thereby taken blood revenge for Ghalib? Yazir ibn Q'arif, who had travelled the sands for the past twenty years with his brother at his side, would not destroy the man who had done that for him. Ibn Khairan had been permitted to leave, with his Kindath concubine.

"We've a letter from Miranda," Alvar said, clearing his throat.

Jehane looked at ibn Khairan and, reassured by what she saw, let him go. "You've read it?" she asked Alvar.

"I started. Go ahead." He handed her the envelope.

Jehane took it, unfolded the paper and began reading. Alvar walked to a sideboard and poured himself a glass of wine. He glanced at Marisa who shook her head, and at Ammar who nodded. He poured for the other man, his dearest friend in the world, and carried it over, unmixed.

Jehane was reading aloud.

Jehane stopped reading, struggling visibly. At times Alvar thought she would do better if she let herself cry. Marisa had said the same thing, more than once. Jehane had wept when her father died, and when her third child—her daughter—was stillborn, but Alvar couldn't remember any other times, not since a twilit hill by Silvenes.

Even now she controlled herself, laid the letter aside and said, in a thin voice, "Perhaps I ought to finish this after the celebration?"

As if to reinforce that, a girl's impatient voice was heard calling from the courtyard: "Will you come on! We're all waiting!"

"Let's go," Alvar said, allowing himself to take charge. "Dina's likely to assault me if I make her wait any longer."

They went out to the courtyard. His friends were there—quite a few of them. Eliane bet Danel, Jehane's mother, had come to honor him and he saluted her first of all. His daughters skittered about like a pair of long-legged colts putting everyone in their proper places before they bolted for the kitchen, giggling.

"You are all," said Marisa, as soon as they were out of earshot, "on your oaths not to mention that the cakes are burnt."

There was laughter. Alvar looked for ibn Khairan. He had taken a chair in one corner of the garden where he could stretch out his leg.

Dina and Razel came back, more decorously, bearing their enterprise on silver trays. No one said a word about the cakes. Alvar, who thought his daughters embodied all the graces of both moons, thought they were delicious and said so. Marisa made sure his wine glass was always full.

He was toasted several times, made a few wry jests in the speech they demanded: about being ready to settle by the fire now but not being able to afford to do so until his burdens had been properly married off. The girls made faces at him.

Ammar, from his corner, declared that he and Eliane were in no way ready to surrender their places by the fire. Alvar would have to wait his turn.

The afternoon passed. When his friends rose to go, Alvar was touched and a little surprised by the warmth with which they embraced him. It still came as a source of wonder to him that he was a man with nearly grown daughters and a loving wife and that so many people seemed to regard him with affection. In his own mind, much of the time, he was still the same person, barely come to manhood, who had ridden from Carcasia, stirrups comically high, with Rodrigo Belmonte one morning long ago.

He seemed to have had a great deal to drink, much more than usual. Marisa's doing. She'd evidently decided it would be good for him today. He remembered kissing Eliane goodbye, holding her gently as she reached up and patted his cheek. That, too, had been a source of wonder, years ago, when he had realized that she approved of him. He looked around. The girls were gone, and Jehane and Ammar's twins. Somewhere upstairs, causing mischief almost certainly. They would probably hear a scream in due course.

It was quiet in the courtyard now, and a little cold. Marisa had brought out a shawl for herself and one for Jehane who had taken her mother home and returned. Jehane was lighting candles. Alvar made as if to rise and help, but she motioned him back to his chair.

He sat back dutifully, but then, as a strong impulse overtook him, stood up and made his way, carrying his glass and the flask, to the seat beside Ammar. Ibn Khairan was nursing the last of his wine; Alvar filled his glass.

"Fare gently in the god, old friend," Ammar said to him, smiling gravely. "My love and good wishes, today and all days."

Alvar nodded his head. "Will you do something for me?" he asked. "I know this is a celebration. It has been. But the girls are upstairs with your boys, we needn't worry about disappointing them."

"A good thing," Ammar said, with a straight face.

Alvar snorted. Everyone teased him on the subject of his daughters. "But truthfully, the day will be wrong for me if we pretend nothing has happened, or changed. I can't pretend. Ammar, you've improvised for kings and khalifs, will you honor my birth day by doing so for me? Or is it too much to ask?"

Ammar's expression had changed. He set down his wine. "The honor will be mine," he said quietly. "Have you a theme?"

"You know the theme."

The two women had come nearer, and now they sat down next to each other, wrapped in their shawls, on a stone bench.

There was a silence. They watched ibn Khairan, and waited. From upstairs the sound of their childrens' laughter carried down to the garden through an open window.

Ammar said:

The measured, beautiful voice fell silent. Alvar looked up at the sky. The first stars were out. The white moon would be rising soon above Sorenica. Would it shine on that peninsula west of them?

Time lay upon him like a weight. Rodrigo's two sons were grown men. They were constable and chancellor of Esperana. Serving King Ramiro the Great. And Rodrigo lay in Esteren, under a statue, under stone.

Alvar filled his glass again, and set it down untouched, a libation, on the bench beside him. He stood up, extending a hand to Ammar, whose leg had never been the same since that other twilight by Silvenes.

"Come," he said. "It is dark and cold. I think we all need light, and the children."

He saw Jehane set her own glass down, as he had done, on the table near her. Marisa led them in. She spoke a quiet word with the servants. They dined that evening, together, in a bright room with two fires amid the laughter of their sons and daughters. It was very late when Ammar and Jehane and their children took their leave and walked the short distance to their own home.

Alvar listened to Marisa and the nurse settling two overly stimulated young women. He went up to say good night to his daughters and then he and his wife went along the corridor to their own room and closed the door and drew the curtains against the night. Outside, white moonlight shone down upon the courtyard where the day's celebration had taken place. It fell upon the water and the small, quick fish in the water. It silvered the olive and fig trees, the tall cypress by the ivy-covered wall and the late-season shrubs. And it cast its pale light upon the three glasses of wine that had each been left deliberately behind, brim-full, on a stone table, a stone bench, on the rim of the fountain there.