The Prophet of Akhran by Margaret Weis; Tracy Hickman

Author:Margaret Weis; Tracy Hickman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 0553281437
Publisher: Bantam Spectra
Published: 1989-09-04T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

The council convened shortly after Majiid left Khardan’s tent, or at least Mathew assumed that this was the reason for a loud burst of raised voices and vehement arguing that carried clearly in the still night air. When he had first begun working on his scroll, he feared they might not have enough time to complete the work. But gradually, as the hours passed and the haranguing continued, Mathew relaxed. From the occasional shout, he gathered that the Sheykhs were fighting over whose side of the camp should hold the judgment and which Sheykh and whose akasul should preside.

Zeid claimed that since he was not near kin to any of the parties involved, he should be the one who sat in judgment. This precipitated an hour’s shouting match over whether a father’s mother’s sister’s seventh son’s brother’s son related to Majiid on the father’s side was considered near kin. By the time this dispute was resolved (Mathew never did find out how), the argument over the site began again with an entirely new set of issues involved.

But though the bickering bought them time, Mathew found his feeling of ease seeping away. The yelling and the clamoring rasped on his nerves like a wood mason’s file going across the grain. He found it increasingly hard to concentrate, and when he had ruined his second scroll by misspelling a word he had known how to spell since the age of six, he tossed down the quill in exasperation.

“After all, why should we hurry?” he said abruptly, startling Zohra. “They’re not going to decide anything for a week! They couldn’t agree on the number of suns in the sky! Jaafar would say it was one, Majiid would swear it was two and one was invisible, and Zeid would claim them both wrong and state that there were no suns in the sky and he would slit the throat of anyone who accused him of lying!”

“All will be determined by morning,” returned Zohra softly. She knelt upon the floor, bent nearly double to trace the letters upon the goatskin. Her lips slowly and deliberately formed the sound of each letter she drew, as though this would somehow aid her hand in executing the symbol.

Executing. The word made Mathew’s hand tremble, and he hastily clasped one over the other. “How do you know?” he asked irritably.

“Because they have it all decided in their minds already,” Zohra returned, shrugging. She glanced up at Mathew, her eyes dark pools in the lamplight. “This is a serious matter. How would it look to the people if they made a decision in only a few hours?”

A sudden clashing of steel made Mathew jump and almost spring to his feet, thinking that they were coming for them. Zohra went on writing, however, and Mathew—realizing the sound was confined to the council tent—supposed bitterly that this matter of putting to death their Calif and his wife was so serious that the Sheykhs needed to shed some of their own blood first.

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