Book 4 - The Fire in His Hands Read Online Free PDF Page B

quiet way, he was as excited as the children.
    He had taken the teaching position in order to study the primitive political processes going
    on behind the Sahel. The unprecedented challenge of a messianic type like El Murid promised an interesting study of a culture under stress. His field was the study of the evolution of ideals in government, especially the monolithic state trying to survive by adapting to the changing
    perceptions of subjects believed to be politically disenfranchised. It was a subtle and tricky area of study, and one’s conclusions were always subject to attack.
    His deal with Yousif had been accounted a great coup at his college, the Rebsamen. The
    secretive people of Hammad al Nakir were a virgin territory for academic exploitation. Radetic had begun to doubt the opportunity was worth the pain.
    Only little Haroun remained attentive. The others jostled Ali for vantage points.
    “Oh, go on,” Radetic told his one remaining pupil.
    Haroun was the sole intellectual candle Radetic had found in this benighted wasteland.
    Haroun was the only reason Radetic did not tell Yousif to pack up his prejudices and head for Hell. The child had shown tremendous promise.
    The rest? Haroun’s brothers and cousins, and the children of Yousif’s favored followers?
    Doomed. They would become copies of their fathers. Ignorant, superstitious, bloodthirsty
    savages. New swordbearers in the endless pavane of raid and skirmish these wild men accounted a worthy life.
    Radetic would have confessed it to no man, and least of all himself. He loved the imp called
    Haroun. He followed the boy and for the thousandth time pondered the mystery of the Wahlig.
    Yousif’s station roughly equated with that of a duke. He was a cousin of King Aboud. He had
    every reason to defend the status quo, and much to lose by change. Yet he dreamed of ending the old killing ways, the traditional desert ways, at least in his own demense. In his quieter, less abrasive way, he was as revolutionary as El Murid.
    One of the older boys boosted Haroun to the top of the wall. He stared as if smitten by some
    great wonder.
    Radetic’s favorite was slight, dusky, dark-eyed, and hawk-nosed, a child-image of his sire.
    Even at six he knew his station.
    Because he was only a fourth son, Haroun was fated to become his province’s chief shaghûn, the commander of the handful of sorcerer-soldiers serving with the family cavalry.
    Yousif’s Wahligate was vast. His forces were numerous, for they nominally included every
    man able to bear arms. Haroun’s responsibilities would be large, his immersion in wizardry
    deep.
    Already Radetic had to share his pupil with witch-teachers from Jebal al Alf Dhulquarneni,
    the appropriately named Mountains of a Thousand Sorcerers. The great adepts almost always
    began their studies at the time they were learning to talk, yet seldom came into the fullness of their power till they had passed their prime mating years. The young years were critical to the learning of self-discipline, which had to be attained before the onset of puberty and
    accompanying distractions.
    Radetic wriggled his way into the pack of children. “I’ll be damned!”
    Fuad pulled him back. “Of that there’s no doubt.” He assumed Radetic’s place. “Holy! . . . A
    bare-faced woman! Teacher, you might as well turn them loose. They’ll never settle down now.
    I’d better go tell Yousif that they’re here.” Fuad’s face had taken on the glassy look of a man in rut. Radetic did not doubt that he had an erection.
    The ways of the desert were strange, he thought.
    Speculation had haunted the Royal Compound for days. Would El Murid really dare come to
    the Shrines?
    Radetic shoved himself into the gap again, staring.
    The woman was younger than he had expected. She rode a tall white camel. The fact of her
    facial nakedness completely eclipsed the presence of the wild-eyed youth on the white mare.
    El Murid was, for that matter, overshadowed by the man