Rose of the Prophet Omnibus by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman

Author:Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Bantam Spectra
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 3

Bruised and aching, Khardan was content for the moment to catch his breath and consider the situation. His attack on Auda ibn Jad had not been as rash and ill considered as it appeared to Mathew. The Calif knew that the fall of a leader can never fail to throw even the best disciplined army into confusion and disarray. There was every possibility this slave trader ruled by fear alone and his followers might be exceedingly grateful to the man who removed the sword from their throats.

That man is not likely to be me—at least not at this moment, Khardan thought, glancing at ibn Jad with grudging respect. The slave trader had tossed him around with the ease of a father playing with his children! Looking at the long, curved sword ibn Jad wore at his side, the Calif guessed that the man was undoubtedly equally skilled with it, as well. And the longer Khardan watched Kiber and his goums, the more obvious it became to him that they served ibn Jad with unshakable, unswerving loyalty—the type of loyalty that is not and never can be generated by fear.

What I need now are answers, Khardan thought upon reflection. Of course, these had to come from the redhaired youth, the one whose life he had saved. The Calif had recognized the slave trader as the man in the white palanquin who had stared at Khardan with such malevolence in the city of Kich. More than once Khardan had wakened in the night, sweating and shaking, remembering the dreadful promise of revenge in those cold, flat eyes—the eyes of a snake.

Khardan could understand ibn Jad’s anger—the Calif had stolen one of his salves, after all. But Khardan had known at the time, when those deadly eyes first pierced his soul, that there was more to it than that. It was as if the Calif had snatched up the one thing in this world that gave ibn Jad reason to live. And Auda had promised, in that look, that he would have it back.

What was the young man’s name, anyway? Khardan tried to remember through the haze of pain and confusion. Mathew. Something like that. He’d heard Zohra pronounce it. Thinking of his wife, who wasn’t a wife to him any more than the young man was a wife to him, Khardan glanced at her. Zohra sat on the other side of Mathew, and unlike the young man, who was looking at him with a worried expression, she didn’t appear to be the least interested in Khardan’s welfare.

He couldn’t see her face; the black hair, blown by the wind, covered it like a veil. Nursing her sore ankle, rubbing it with her hand, she stared straight out to sea and was seemingly lost in her thoughts.

Khardan wondered what she knew about the young man. It was too late to ask. Bitterly he regretted not questioning this man about his past, about where he’d come from, why he had chosen to hide his sex from the world in women’s clothes.

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