Hegira Read Free

foul pockets many times on the March.
    Barthel returned with a small, seam-faced doctor a half hour later. The man said his name was Luigi, examined the penitent quickly, and expressed his reluctance to treat him. “He's one of God's own,” he said. “God will take care of him.”
    “You will take care of him, or he'll die,” said Bar-Woten. “You wouldn't want to be charged with malpractice, would you? I can take you before a deputato if you wish.”
    The little doctor shrugged and set his bag down. “You cleaned him?” he asked. Bar-Woten nodded. “I'll have to do it over again,” the doctor complained. “He's whipped himself into a fine fever.”
    An hour later the penitent was bandaged and sleeping fitfully. “He'll be weak for a day, maybe longer. Why do you want to help a penitent? Did he ask for help?”
    Bar-Woten didn't answer. Barthel thanked the doctor and paid him a gold piece. They sat in silence and fell asleep before morning.
    Bar-Woten stood by the skylight on a rickety stool, lifting the stained blanket and peering out across the smoke-tracked foggy rooftops at the wan morning light. The slate and tile roofs glistened with an oily sheen of dew and reflected the golden zenith. The horizon was still deep blue. The zenith light expanded and turned yellowish, then green. In a wink the green accomplished its magical transformation into blue. A steam can hissed and rattled in an alley below.
    “Won't the master Sulay miss us, Bey?” Barthel asked sleepily from his blanket on the floor.
    “Not for a while,” Bar-Woten answered. He turned to look at the man on the bed. His breathing was light and regular. His pale face had taken on a better color during the night. He looked almost healthy.
    Bar-Woten checked his pulse and pinched his fingernails, and still the man slept. Barthel said pounding rocks together wouldn't wake a healing man before his body was ready.
    “You told me your mother knew stories about Kristians,” Bar-Woten said. “Do you remember any of them?”
    For the briefest of moments the boy's face clouded and his eyes narrowed. Then it was clear again and he smiled. “Not too well, Bey. Mostly derogatory stories about their customs, which I am no longer qualified to criticize since I share them with you very often. The eating of unclean foods, the drinking of wine and other forbidden beverages.”
    “Nothing about why a man would drive himself to illness to meet his god?”
    “No, Bey.”
    It was perhaps the same reason two million men had once left the beautiful land of Ibis to cross the Atlasade range into Barthel's land, Khem. Or why they had tortured themselves by crossing the Pais Vermagne, a thousand kilometers of swamp and pestilence and deadly reptiles, instead of taking an easier route — all to investigate legends in Khem of the City of the First-born. They had found a monotonous grassland and a central range of hills as barren and dusty as the deserts west of Ibis. No treasure, no fabled city.
    The penitent was also searching for treasure, and his trek was just as rugged. Bar-Woten questioned his own sanity in feeling sympathy, but he did. Sympathy and warmth. Welcome, fellow traveler. How many souls have you killed inside yourself trying to find the right one to present to God, saying, Look — pure!
    Surely not as many souls as I have killed, he thought, mostly in the bodies of others.
    “Hello,” the penitent said. Bar-Woten started from his reverie and looked at the man sternly. The pale face returned the stare like a statue. The lips were fever-cracked, the nostrils red with broken vessels. “You've put me up for the night?”
    “Nothing honorable,” Bar-Woten said. “You nearly killed yourself. Most people's gods resent suicide.”
    “Where am I?”
    “A hostel.”
    “I have to leave.” The penitent's watery green eyes filled with enormous black pupils. The corners of his mouth turned up perpetually, and his eyes crinkled at their edges as though, like a