The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay
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 Esperaña 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 traveled 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. “. . . turbulent this summer. Fernan and the king have taken the last three cities of Al-Rassan. I don’t know the details, I never ask, but in two of them the slaughter was bad, it seems. I know this can bring you no joy, not even Alvar, and I know it will be a great grief for Ammar. Does he believe I bear him no ill-will, even now? Will he accept that I have an understanding of his sorrow, and that Rodrigo would have understood it as well?
I do not think Fernan does, though Diego might. I’m not sure. I don’t see them very much any more, of course. Diego and his wife have had a boy by Jad’s grace, my first grandson, and the mother is well. He is named Rodrigo, but you would know that. Diego has been honored by the king with a new title, created for him: he is the first chancellor of united Esperaña. The people are saying that Fernan will win our wars and Diego will guide us in peace. I am proud of them both, of course, though could wish, as a mother, for more kindness in Fernan. I suppose we all know where he lost his gentleness, but I may be the only one who remembers when he had it.
I sound old, don’t I? I have a grandchild. I am old. Most of the time I don’t think I’ve changed so much, but I probably have. You wouldn’t recognize the king, by the way—he’s grown enormously fat, like his father.
They moved Rodrigo’s bones this spring, before the summer campaign began. I didn’t want him to leave the ranch, but both boys and the king thought he ought to be honored in Esteren and I didn’t have the heart to fight them all. I used to be better at fighting. I did insist on one thing, and Diego and King Ramiro, to my surprise, agreed. The words above him are from the ones Ammar sent me so long ago.
I thought I would be the only one who felt that was proper but I wasn’t. I went there for the ceremony. Esteren is greatly changed, of course—Alvar, you wouldn’t know it at all. Rodrigo lies now in a bay to one side of the god disk in the royal chapel. There’s a statue, in marble, done by one of Ramiro’s new sculpto
He did it like this:
Know, all who see these lines,
That this man, by his appetite for honor,
By his steadfastness,
By his love for his country,
By his courage,
Was one of the miracles of the god.
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:
Ask Fezana what has become of Fibaz,
And where is Ardeño, or where Lonza?
Where is Ragosa, the seat of great learning,
How many wise men remain there?
Where is Cartada, city of towers,
In the red valley of its power?
Or Seria where the silk was spun?
Where are Tudesca, Elvira, Aljais,
And where, in this twilight, is Silvenes?
The streams, the perfect gardens,
The many-arched courtyards of the Al-Fontina?
The wells and the fountains weep for sorrow,
As a lover does when dawn comes
To take him away from his desire.
They mourn for the passing of lions,
For the ending of Al-Rassan the Beloved,
Which is gone.
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 Esperaña. 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.
Acknowledgments
Those of us with the temerity to walk a line—or create one—between history and the imagined are profoundly in the debt of the historians, whose delving among the fragmentary records of our past becomes a more creatively challenging labor the further back they go.
For the groundwork and the inspiration o
In the verses and songs herein, those familiar with the period that serves as my source will find motifs derived from some of the most eloquent voices of the peninsula. It is appropriate that I pay tribute here to the art of al-Mu’tamid, ar-Rundi, ibn ’Ammar and ibn Bassam, among others.
My first introduction to the complexities and the power of the Iberian Peninsula came by way of two people who have embodied, for much of my life, the idea of a civilized existence: Gladys and David Bruser. It is a great pleasure to be able to acknowledge them here.
I continue to be the beneficiary of the talent and experience of a number of people. Dr. Rex Kay, always of assistance, was more so than ever in helping to research the medical elements of this book, and in carefully reviewing the manuscript in progress. Sue Reynolds offered another lucid, necessary map. In France I was abetted by the friendship and stimulation of Stan Rodbell and Cynthia Foster, and of Mary and Bruno Grawitz. In Toronto, my old friend Andy Patton continues to offer me the benefits of an uncompromising intelligence and an equally unflagging support. And finally, both at home and abroad, I am sustained by three people I love: my mother, my son, and my wife.
About the Author
GUY GAVRIEL KAY is the author of nine internationally celebrated novels: The Summer Tree, The Wandering Fire, and The Darkest Road (which make up The Fionavar Tapestry), Tigana, A Song for Arbonne, The Lions of Al-Rassan, Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors (which comprise The Sarantine Mosaic), and most recently, The Last Light of the Sun. He is also the author of the acclaimed collection of poetry Beyond This Dark House. His work has been translated into twenty-two languages. He has twice won the Aurora prize, is a three-time World Fantasy Award nominee, and is the recipient of the International Goliardos Prize for his contributions to the literature of the fantastic. He lives in Toronto.