Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [247]
It didn't matter. With each day that passed, we drew nearer.
Once again, we mounted the green heights, wending our way through forests. It was beautiful, untrammeled country, devoid of human inhabitation; too far, Tifari said, from the cities, and too hard to build roads. To be sure, it was hard going, but there were trails carved out by wildlife and these we followed.
"Who do the Sabaeans trade with, then?" I asked Tifari as we rode.
"No one, now." He was silent for a few minutes. "There are other tribes—Zenoë, Shamsun—in this area who owe allegiance to neither Jebe-Barkal nor Saba. But they are hunters, mostly, and bandits. Saba— the Melehakim—have been isolated for a long time, Lady, many hundreds of years. I do not know what you expect, but you may find them otherwise."
I didn't answer. In truth, I had no idea what to expect.
After some days of travel, we reached the Great Falls.
Tifari Amu had described them to me, but he knew them only by legend and nothing could have prepared me for the sight of them. There is nothing in Terre d'Ange to match it; no, nor anywhere else in the world I have travelled.
It was the Nahar river we had regained, and here, near to its source, it was broad and placid once more—until it reached the Falls. Long before we saw them, we heard the tremendous sound. At last we came upon them from above and stood at the edge of the tree-lined gorge, staring in open-mouthed awe; eagles must feel thusly, gazing down from on high. The Falls were as wide as the river itself, far too wide to bridge, and formed a sheer drop of a hundred feet or better. Water cascaded off the edge in a solid sheet, churned white as foam, plunging impossibly far, down and down and farther still, until it plunged into the greenish waters of the basin below with such force as to raise a constant mist, sun-shot and shimmering with rainbows.
"Name of Elua!" Joscelin whispered.
I swallowed and pulled Imriel back from the edge, as he clambered over moss-covered rocks for a better view.
'Tis a poor description I have given of the Great Falls, but it is not something words can compass. The raw force and beauty of it are too great. And so we stood for a time, all of us, drinking in the sight of it, the roar of the falling water filling our ears. Even at this height, windblown spray dampened our faces.
I daresay if the Falls had not been so stunning, we would have heard the hunting-party.
They were Shamsun, although I did not know it at the time; Tifari Amu told me, after. There were ten of them, armed with crude bows and javelins; agile and strong to a man, with skin the color of ripening olives and hair braided close to their skulls. Hunters—and bandits. It needed no one to tell me that. I saw it in the way the leader's gaze flicked over our laden mounts and donkeys.
And the way it flicked over me, astonished and avid, his tongue wetting his lips. In a swift motion, he nocked an arrow and drew his bow, aiming at Joscelin, who made the tallest target. The others followed suit, and I drew Imriel behind me.
"Hold," the Shamsun leader said in a recognizable dialect of Jeb'ez, addressing Tifari Amu and Bizan, who'd already begun to fan out. "Let us take what we will, and no one will die."
"What will you have?" Tifari called, his sword half-drawn.
"Your goods. Your weapons. Whatever you have," the Shamsun replied. Let it be that, I prayed; let it only be that. We are near enough now that it makes no difference. There is water, and fish, if we can catch them—surely