Quibble, 77. Uhn-qah
Quibble, Alnasl, and Lurah face hard partings. Bent on revenge, Luht follows them into the desert.
77. Uhn-qah @Quibble
Shaken awake where I lay by a fire now cinders, I gazed up in predawn light into the dark, tattooed face of Lurah.
“Qeht, I know you can ride a horse,” she whispered, “but how well?”
“Well enough!” I groaned, rolling over.
Lurah shook me again. “Come with me,” she insisted.
I had been enjoying a dreamless sleep, untroubled by Unity’s control. Huffing in annoyance, I threw off the deerskin blanket and wrapped myself in my gray protégé’s cloak. I begged the sah’s patience for me to visit the privy – only a small tent with a box set over a hole – and when that errand was accomplished, she led me away not out of the box canyon but deeper in. We came to the pond, walked a trail through the cattails, and arrived at a low portion of the wall where horses had gathered, their heads down. I heard slurping: the horses were at breakfast.
Lurah stopped before one of them and whistled a tune of four notes. The horse lifted his head and stepped back a pace to regard her. A stallion, he bore a bay coat that shimmered to a burnished gold even in the canyon’s faint morning light. In no way did he resemble Moth, only a plodding draft horse. This was a warhorse, built for speed.
“Sehlim-sehl,” the sah said seriously, “this is Quibble, the Qeht-uhn-far-jah-im-li-djer. She will ride you.”
I almost laughed at such an earnest introduction, but Sehlim-sehl turned his head slightly as if to appraise me and I found myself silenced by his gaze. I stepped forward, feeling awkward, wishing I had Nish’s way with horses. Sehlim-sehl stamped the earth once and bent again to his breakfast.
“On second thought,” I admitted, “I’m not sure I can ride this horse.”
Lurah chuckled. “By the time we leave the Sen-an-dah, you will ride Sehlim-sehl well. He is Sehlim-aht-jah-salah’s gift. You will need his speed and strength.”
“I must thank Salah,” I said.
“She could not see you, Qeht. She has become the Sehlim-jah, and moreover, the nah appointed her and Sen-sah-aht-ri-yahn to oversee the Sen’s restitution to the Wahn. Salah is much too busy now for thanks and farewells.”
“Wait! By the time we leave the Sen-an-dah? Then you’re coming after all?”
“Obviously, yes.” Last night, strangely, Lurah had been quick to anger, but now she was grim, resigned. She shook her head as if dismissing a thought and said, “Only I have seen Ahnk-nuh-qah-say, though that was from a distance. I must take you there, if anyone. And I believe Sah-uhn-say-luht will seek vengeance on you in the desert.”
“On me?”
“Your ploy robbed him of Lapi’s war – spoils, hel in battle. He swore to see me in Ayn-qesh, but he was also threatening you.”
“Have you told the nah you’re going?” I asked.
“She knew before I did. She said there is no way out but through. It grieves me to leave her facing such a game of bones. I owe the Wahn more than this. Nefri made me a Wahn in all but name. Now they need me and I am forsaking them. I am becoming uhn-say again. I hope you appreciate that, Quibble.”
Now, understanding why it had provoked Lurah’s wrath, I truly regretted what I said about reuniting with her sister and looking for her children. As a sah, she wore her mask of equanimity well. I’d never suspected she and Asreh were family to each other.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Let me tell you something I’ve left out of my tale, something I’m ashamed of. To look for my mother, I left my father alone. In pain. To protect him, I didn’t tell him where I was going. For all Quandary must know, I’m dead.”
Lurah nodded. “So you are uhn-say, too,” she said.
We never spoke of it again.
Though perhaps hardest for Lurah, saying goodbye was hard for everyone. Only three days of journeying together, as the Far put it, had drawn us close – just how close became clear as, mid-morning on the second touching at the hottest, Lurah, Alnasl, and I led our mounts out of the box canyon.
Whereas the Aht once looked on me and Alnasl with suspicion, now they gazed at us with gratitude and, it seemed, embarrassment. They all gave us im. Several people presented us with parting gifts – bags of food, camel-hide canteens of water, a magical device which turned out to be a compass, and so forth. I realized these gifts were their way of making amends for snubbing us. At last, with copious gifts stuffed in packs and dangling from our saddles, we had to refuse any more.
When Yahn approached, trailed by a girl – shabbily dressed, about Index’s age – and a camel with two large, canvas-covered packs balanced on either side of his hump, I cried out in Far, “Really, this is too much! We cannot accept!”
“But you must!” the girl objected with an anxious frown. “It is a tent for traveling through Ayn-qesh. A sandstorm tent.”
“We give what we ought,” the sah-ri said gravely, seconding her insistence and looking at Lurah in appeal.
“But—” I began.
“We accept,” Lurah interrupted. “It is a very thoughtful gift. Sen-sah-aht-ri-yahn, thank you. Aht-nahli-yuni, thank you. Ef-suhl. May you who are water find the sea.”
Once we were traversing the canyon mouth, having left the swarm of Aht behind us, Lurah leaned close to me and said, “We could not refuse.”
I skanced her. A smirk, there and gone. “Who’s Yuni?” I asked.
“The right question! Quibble, how is it you always ask the right question?”
“It’s in my name! I just put a few things together. The way I heard Yahn speak of Yuni yesterday, I assumed she was his daughter, but you called her nahli. What’s more, there’s no qah in Yahn’s name. He never married.”
“No, he did not, and Yuni is not his child, but she has adopted him as a father of sorts,” Lurah explained. “Their gift is a demonstration of im. You should see the absurd gifts that go around when girls compete to become nahli-qah!”
“So, the nah must choose a nahli-qah,” I guessed, “and Yuni—”
“—is a natural choice,” said Lurah. “For the nahli-qah of a Wahn, at least, who is unlikely to bear children of her own.”
“That’s rather devious of Yahn, isn’t it?”
“He is Sen.”
Already, the Sen had struck their tents and moved into the canyon, and the Aht-sah had drawn the semicircle of small guard tents closer in, forming a tight ring around the canyon mouth that offered better protection against the roving sah-uhn-say. We met Asreh, Qahf, and an Aht-sah contingent led by Hnefn in the semicircle of tents. Hnefn and the other sah sat horses. A large black bird perched on Asreh’s shoulder.
“I wish you were staying,” she said, looking at the three of us sadly.
“I wish you were not going into a pit of death!” grumbled Qahf. “That ahnk-say is terrible. Make speed through it to the door you seek. The deeper you go into the heart of the ahnk-say, where there is glass, the greater your danger. If you go so deep that the glass is everywhere, you must find the door of night – or you will be uhn-qah!”
“We will find it, ri,” Alnasl said, giving im-li-im to his father in qah. As he turned to face Asreh, the vision looked pained. “May you who are water find the sea.”
The nah held her head high and stiffly repeated the words of farewell. Her stare was heartbreaking. She looked away momentarily, at a loss, and when she looked at her father again, her eyes brimmed with tears. Her voice cracked.
“We do not really know one another.”
“No, daughter, we do not. But believe me, one day I will return, and then we will put that to rights.”
Asreh only nodded. Then, finally turning to me, she stroked the downy, jet-black head feathers of the bird on her shoulder. “This is my raven, Qeht-zil,” she told me. “It’s a pity you’re only meeting him now. I don’t know just where he’s been all this time!”
I blinked. “Asreh! You know my language!”
“You’ve given me quite the lesson on contractions, Quibble. Far scholars know they exist in Djer but not how they work. I’ll issue a scroll on it.”
“Why didn’t you ever say you speak Djer?”
Now Asreh smiled conspiratorially. “But who would’ve journeyed with us then? Qeht-zil, qeht: Aht-jah.”
“Aaaah-jaaah,” the raven croaked, picking at her hair with his beak.
“I haven’t yet taught him to say tuhn, and now I have to teach him nuhn! Thank you, Quibble, thank you for my life. You’re my qahli. Never forget it.”
Asreh seemed strangely ill at ease, as if she neither knew what more to say to me nor how to turn away. A storm of mixed feelings clouded her face. She clasped my arm, squeezed, and as if it was a cue – much to my own shock – I grabbed her by the back of her neck, pulled her close, and kissed her. Qeht-zil fluttered, and Asreh shuddered as if chilled by my embrace, but she didn’t pull away. Even after I let her go, she hugged me. We lingered in the spell of the kiss.
“If I didn’t have someone—”
“But you do, Quibble,” said Asreh with a sigh. “How I envy her! But I hope she’s alive. I hope you find her.”
When the Aht-nah let me go, at her encouragement I stroked Qeht-zil’s breast.
Accompanied by Hnefn and his contingent, we rode northeast into the mouth of the Sen-an-dah. Every bit in her element now that we’d left camp, Lurah rode her camel Qeht-qahlif with gusto, the pack camel Yahn gave us in tow. Rather more warily at first, I rode Sehlim-sehl, who showed himself perfectly amenable to me. Lurah gave me some instruction, and by dusk, I’d grown so comfortable with him that we sped off at a gallop out into the salt pan and back again – an exhilarating spurt of speed, though by then my backside was sore from the day’s riding. Alnasl rode a dappled gray mare who spooked when she got too close to the camels.
At Lurah’s insistence, we camped that night next to a patch of baked sand where I imagined water once stood. The Far called it say-uhn-qah: some Far had died there, unconsecrated, not finding the sea. The Aht-sah were unhappy with the choice of camp, feeling it invited bad luck. They pitched tents and made their fire uphill of us.
“Superstition!” Lurah retorted when Hnefn bore their complaint to her. “You are all too used to traveling with the tribe. Trust me, this is the right place. The sah-uhn-say will keep their distance. They are superstitious, too.”
