In the marketplace, Sabit and Rayshabu traded the shelter of their wagon for the concealment of hooded robes. As Verdandi haggled with a wine merchant over the delivery of their smuggled goods, Rayshabu shook the last mists of dream from her mind. “We are here! You have done it! I am nearly home,” the young woman cried out. She seized Sabit’s arm and led her into the crush of the marketplace.
The two plunged through the throng of men and women on their daily tasks. Wives haggled over the price of a bushel of coarse grain while horse-traders bickered over the quality of cracked hooves. Children beseeched their elders for the sunny globe of an orange while the old women watched every finger that caressed caressed their beads and hair combs to ensure that no bauble went missing.
Although Sabit had no love for the crush of flesh around her, Rayshabu’s joy at her homecoming was infectious. Even though Sabit could barely make out her words over the din, the girl prattled about where her favorite stalls had been as a child, which baker offered the finest confections, and which crannies were good for hiding from a governess’s watchful eye.
Spying a tent of green and blue, Sabit stopped in her tracks. Only her grip on Rayshabu’s arm kept the girl from disappearing into the crowd. Without a word, Sabit dragged the protesting young woman and strode forward—toward the tent of the seer whose vision had returned Kehnan to her life, and led her to break her vow to Allamu.*
The booths, tents, and stalls of the marketplace were a maze, with no straight path toward anywhere. After making half a dozen wrong turns and nearly toppling a stack of cages filled with squawking fowl, Sabit finally came to the high-pointed tent, right where she had first met the seer.
The tent flaps stood wide open. Within stood no trace of the seer’s soothing tea or welcoming cushions. Instead, the space overflowed with bushels of fruits for sale. Two men quarreled bitterly among the heaps of of bright lemons and pomegranates as red as blood. On the interior tent flap, Sabit could see a faded blue spiral, the only evidence that the cryptic seer had ever sat in this space, and foretold the future of Sabit’s journey.
Stunned by the absence, Sabit followed Rayshabu’s gentle tug on her arm. Turning from the fruit stand, the two fugitives nearly collided with a man bearing the golden hyena of the king’s house upon his breast. At either side, two strong bailiffs stood ready to enforce the man’s judgements. Sabit and Rayshabu beheld a royal magistrate, instrument of the king’s justice of Bahteel.
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*-Sabit’s visit to the seer is described in Wayfarings of Sabit: Bazaar of Death
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Wayfarings of Sabit: Allies is copyright (c) 2019 by Michael S. Miller. All rights reserved. New chapters post every Thursday (and the occasional Monday). You can support this and other stories on Patreon: https://patreon.com/michaelsmiller Find more sword and sorcery fiction at http://ipressgames.com/fiction/.