A Path to Coldness of Heart Read Online Free PDF

who was the maddest and possibly most powerful sorcerer in the west.
    Megelin. Her son. The King of Hammad al Nakir.
    What insane whim had driven Haroun to pass power to the boy? He had known that Megelin was unfit.
    Three men shared Yasmid’s vantage. The nearest, physically and emotionally, was old Habibullah, who had been her bodyguard when she was a child and was her closest conspirator as an adult. He had helped purge the Faithful of the worst lapses of her father and his fellow founders. Habibullah’s clarity of vision had become the foundation of her rule. Without Habibullah, she feared, she would be lost.
    A second man was an enigma.
    Elwas bin Farout al-Souki was a self-made champion. His mother had been a prostitute in the foreign quarter of Souk el Arba, beyond the Jebal, on the coast of the Sea of Kotsüm. Elwas had risen from recruit to commander of ten thousand by acclamation of the men with whom he rode. He won battles and brought his followers home. That overrode all else with the war fighters.
    Yasmid knew little about Elwas. His rise had occurred while she was elsewhere. He was a solid Believer. His coloring and shape said that his father was a black man. Other characteristics suggested that his mother had been a refugee from over the Sea of Kotsüm. Those things mattered little in the forest of swords. They did matter at court, where men of old families felt slighted if an outsider received honors.
    Yasmid refused to be distracted by pettiness, nor did she tolerate it.
    The third man, able to stand only with assistance, unable to communicate rationally, was El Murid, the Disciple, Yasmid’s father, the salt trader’s son whose calling had set the west awash in blood. Whose inspiration, invoked, could send thousands to the slaughter even now.
    El Murid was old before his time. He was crippled. He was partly blind. Incessant pain had led him to opiate addiction. He was so enslaved by the drug he could no longer be drawn into the real world long enough to generate a useful thought. He had no say anymore but remained a powerful symbol. He could be shown and men would gallop to their deaths screaming his name.
    That the Disciple was in bad health was no secret. But his appearances were staged to leave fanatic rank and file convinced that their prophet could not be overcome by mundane evils.
    The warriors looking on today had not yet recuperated from the Throyen campaign. They had not had enough time with their families. They were tired of war but war was not tired of them. They were pulling themselves together for one more campaign. If they did not, war would devour them and theirs.
    The King, Megelin, son of Haroun, son of Yousif, would show his mother and grandfather no mercy. He would attack till he ended the long contest between Royalist and Believer.
    Yasmid prayed that her son’s followers were more war-weary than her own.
    In an introspective moment she wondered how much responsibility for the state of the world lay with her family. Of late, every people, every nation, every kingdom seemed to be at war all the time, indulging in civil strife when no other war was available.
    Warfare had been much less common before El Murid began to preach.

    †

CHAPTER THREE
    WINTER, 1017 AFE:
    SCATTERED VIEWS
    I nger had schooled herself to be cruel when that was appropriate. Her attempt to produce a fierce face for her regime failed. Most supporters still thought she was too soft toward her opponents and too entangled in her husband’s reforms.
    Her enemies called her a tyrant determined to eradicate all the good that Bragi had done.
    She had support amongst the Wessons, regionally. That largest ethnic group had liberated themselves from feudal concepts in place since the Nordmen imposed themselves as the ruling class.
    The Siluro were almost extinct. They played no significant political role anymore. The Marena Dimura had abandoned the cities after Bragi went down. They ruled the forests and mountains and made