Changer of Days (15 page)

“Do you think someone might wish to harm her?” Kieran asked quickly, and the pronoun had shifted; he was no longer talking of ai’Jihaar. This was more in his own sphere; if there was anyone who wished Anghara harm, they’d have to go through him first—and he was more than willing to lay down his life for her. He had been willing in Roisinan; and he was even more so here, in this place, where everything was unknown and all seemed strange and treacherous.

“Not in that way,” al’Tamar said, having noticed Kieran’s hand come to rest on the hilt of his blade. “And should anyone try to do her physical harm, it is to my uncle the
Sa’id
they would have to answer. And Anghara is dear to the
Sa’id
. She healed his son of a careless wound in the desert; she raised him an oracle; and she bought his sister back from al’Khur…with what price, we do not know.”

Kieran’s head spun. “Then that…was true?” he whispered. “Back there in the mountains…she spoke of meeting al’Khur…of wresting…” He hadn’t believed Anghara, had thought her story of resurrection in the Black Desert no more than a dream, just as her seeing the towers of Miranei in the shape of the mountain peaks had been. But now he was hearing it from a different quarter, and it gave the story the solidity of truth. Anghara had met and bargained with a God—the same God whose strength, if al’Tamar was to be believed, had sustained Kieran and Anghara on their journey through the mountains between worlds.

“True,” al’Tamar agreed. “Now go back; ai’Jihaar had not dismissed you. I am the one with an errand and a duty.”

He was about to mount his ki’thar when Kieran’s hand on his arm stopped him. Again, as once before, the eyes locked for a moment, blue and gold; Kieran’s face was oddly gentle.

A duty. The betrothal ceremonies that waited for al’Tamar; the girl called Rami who “understood.” “Do you love her?” Kieran asked, aware he was crossing a boundary into something deeper than a casual companionship, knowing he would not be rebuffed. It was a double-edged question, leaving itself open for al’Tamar to answer as he chose.

The narrow, bronze-skinned face of his betrothed swam vividly into al’Tamar’s consciousness for a moment; then faded, transmuting into a white, alien countenance with a pair of wide-set gray eyes. “Rami is a good girl,” he said carefully, deliberately sidestepping and closing his eyes for a moment to chase the vision away. “I will learn to.”

There was an unspoken “but” which hung in the air between them, and it was Kieran, at the last, who gave it voice.

“But your queen
haval’la
will always come first with you,” he said, the phraseology of the desert coming more easily to his lips than he would have believed.

At his words al’Tamar’s head came up sharply, as though a dagger had been thrust into his side. His nostrils flared, and then he laughed, a sharp, brittle laugh. “And you said you did not have the Sight of Sheriha’drin. For one who is blind, you are far too at home in other people’s minds.” He drew a ragged breath, looking away at the horizon, then climbed into his ki’thar’s saddle, clucking for it to rise. From the height of this perch he looked down, and his soul was in his golden eyes. “Take care of her,” he said; there was iron control in his voice, and still Kieran heard it tremble as it put this renunciation into the spoken word, made it real. With a slow movement carved from dignity and pain he laid the reins of the ki’thar across the saddle and reached up with both hands to remove the
say’yin
he had made for Anghara and carried faithfully for so long. With a last look, he held it out to Kieran. “This passes on,” he said. “When the
sen’en’thari
come…the Gods alone know where I will be. And this is hers. Will you give it to her for me?”

There was much that Kieran could have said, but there was something in the clear air of the desert that made platitudes hard to utter. Truths were harsh out here, but truth was all there was. Kieran accepted the gift, because there was nothing else he could have done. “I will,” he said.

With a high and almost royal pride, al’Tamar bowed to him from the saddle, giving the graceful desert salute. Then he dropped his gaze down to the ki’thar’s reins.
“Akka!”
he cried softly; the lumbering beast rolled its long-lashed eyes in disdain and broke into a shambling trot as its rider wheeled it about.

Kieran watched him until he was only a mirage, a shimmering speck on the heat-trembling horizon. Then he turned abruptly, slipping the
say’yin
around his own neck and tucking it away out of sight, before ducking back inside the tent.

“So,” ai’Jihaar said softly, even as he let the flap fall. “You are her Kieran.” Hers was a disembodied voice in that first instant in which his sun-dazzled eyes adjusted once again to the cool dimness of the tent. When he could see again, it was to find the white-filmed eyes now focused on him, just as disconcertingly as they had been on al’Tamar moments ago. “Come closer.”

Kieran did, for the simple words had the force of a command; ai’Jihaar reached out one frail hand and ran her thin fingers over his face as gently as a butterfly’s touch.

“You have a strong face,” she said. “And the strength to stand against unknown Gods. Yes, al’Tamar has told me,” she said, feeling him flinch beneath her hand. “You do not know it, but there are few who could have done what you did. Her contact with the Gods has been severed…and yet a bridge has been cast between them over the chasm. You. You took a live diamondskin in your hand for the sake of one whom you loved…and its poison could not touch you.” She paused, her hand lingering on his cheek in an oddly maternal manner, and then she allowed it to drop back into her lap, leaning back against her cushions. “There are things I need to know from you. Anghara’s mind is a cauldron of confusion and pain. You must tell me.”

“Tell you what, lady?” Kieran asked, confused by the breadth of the command.

“Everything,” ai’Jihaar said, refusing to help him. “Start from the beginning, from the moment she returned to Sheriha’drin and her path crossed with yours.”

Kieran ran a tired hand through his hair. “That will take forever,” he said.

“We have two days,” said ai’Jihaar. “On what you say her healing may depend. Omit nothing; let me be the judge of what is important. Begin.”

There was a gift in this, too. The images which flowed into Kieran’s mind as he started talking were too vivid to be mere memories; it was as though ai’Jihaar was listening to him with only a small part of her concentration. With the rest, she was reaching out and taking the story he was telling straight from his mind. There was a part of Kieran which knew that, only a short while ago, he would have gibbered at this flagrant invasion of his thoughts. But now he accepted without demur; there was another part which was aghast at the ease with which he accepted this alien touch. Kheldrin was working its insidious magic.

Except for one instance when she bade him pause and called for the old servant to bring food and refreshments, ai’Jihaar did not interrupt. After he had eaten she nodded wordlessly at Kieran to continue. Finally, exhausted and surprised to find lamps lit around him and the tent full of dancing shadows, he allowed his voice to fade into silence, having reached the point in his tale where he’d helped Anghara off her camel. Only then did ai’Jihaar draw a deep sigh.

She asked for his hand, the one which had given the blood sacrifice in the pathless mountains, and fingered his smooth, unmarked skin. “It is as I thought,” she said pensively. “You are a channel…and because what you give is her offering, it is accepted. The Gods took your sacrifice, from one who was never marked as their own. Perhaps it is as well that you do not know what dangers you courted there. But perhaps it is best if you let me hold the dagger for her now.”

“I will bring it to you,” Kieran said, not without some relief.

“It was well done,” ai’Jihaar said, her voice a vindication of the action he had taken out of desperation. She had asked him for the black dagger where she could have commanded; this was kindness, and trust. “I will guard it for her; she shall have it back from your hand if you so wish, if…when…she is restored to her power. But that dagger is not a thing to be left alone too long; it needs close contact with life. What you do not give freely, it might well choose to take by itself.”

That he already knew. There had been a dark dream or two since he rode with the dagger in his baggage; dark dreams, tinged with the blood for which the knife of sacrifice was asking.

Kieran emerged into the coolness of the desert night. He didn’t need light—the contents of his packs had been lived with for so long now he could have found his way through them blindfolded. He found the black dagger more by touch and a sense of velvet darkness than by sight, his hands oddly twitchy as his fingers closed around it as though the blade was eager to be let loose to do its work.

“This place is getting to me,” Kieran muttered, wrapping the black handle with a handful of his cloak to break the contact between the dagger and his bare skin.

Anghara stirred as he returned to the tent, but ai’Jihaar quelled her with a touch and reached out a hand for that which Kieran carried. “Quickly,” she said, and Kieran let go, not unwillingly. The blade changed hands; ai’Jihaar frowned down at it. “I am not sure,” she said slowly, “what could happen when we try to break this bond of yours. Anghara knew when you held her blade. I hope you are not already in too deep…”

Kieran had a dull feeling that those words ought to have conveyed a sense of dire peril, but the immense fatigue he had felt at the foot of the sundering mountains had returned a hundredfold. He surprised himself with a jaw-cracking yawn and ai’Jihaar raised her head swiftly from contemplating the black dagger. “Forgive me,” she said. Her soft voice had lost all harshness and command. “I have been selfish. I have asked much, and offered little in return—but I am grateful beyond words that you found yourself at Anghara’s side when she needed someone. My servant has prepared your bed; if there is anything you find you still require, you have but to ask.”

“A bed will be welcome,” Kieran said slowly. “I can’t seem to recall when last I had the luxury of one.”

“It has been a long while,” she agreed. “Perhaps it is even longer than you realize. Do you have any idea what day it is?”

“I knew when we left Shaymir,” Kieran said after a short pause in which he tried fruitlessly to calculate the time gone by since they left Keda’s husband at the singing stone. “After that…things blur a little. I had no real way of keeping track.”

“The day after tomorrow,” ai’Jihaar said, “is celebrated as the eve of the festival of Cerdiad in Sheriha’drin. It is almost midsummer.”

“That is impossible!” Kieran gasped, caught thoroughly off guard. “We couldn’t have spent a month…more than a month…in those mountains. We would never have survived! It’s not possible…”

“You forget,” ai’Jihaar said, “you had a God who walked at your back.”

“But al’Tamar said al’Khur helped us,” said Kieran helplessly. “A month…”

“He helped you,” ai’Jihaar said. “You would not be here if he had not. But helping you does not mean he let you lightly into his realm.”

“Others crossed those mountains before us,” Kieran said stubbornly.

“That is true. But consider—more have tried than have succeeded, a great many more; and those who did succeed almost always fared badly here. There are people in Kheldrin who consider the mere presence of
fram’man’en
sacrilege, and are ready to act in accordance with this belief. And while there are a few of our folk who have been across those mountains and returned, even they prefer to keep their own counsel, and they are the Gods’ own children.” Her thin hands closed over the black dagger, hiding it from Kieran’s sight under a fold of the coverlet and a welter of silver bracelets. It seemed to restore him to himself; he blinked, looked away, down at Anghara.

“Worry no longer about her,” said ai’Jihaar in her unusual syntax, guessing his thoughts with an uncanny ability. “Everything that can be done, I will do. She was right in one thing—in no other place could she begin to be healed. But whether we prove able to fulfill our charge remains to be seen. Her brother may well have done worse than kill her.”

“Can you heal her?” Kieran asked huskily.

“She once healed, without knowing how, or why,” ai’Jihaar said softly, and her gaze was brooding, turned inward. It was an old memory she was dusting off and holding to the light. “More than that—she conquered death itself. For such a one…we will dare much.”

Kieran bowed to her in silence and left her.

After, he was never able to tell if it had been real or a dream; but he remembered, much later, looking outside into the dark, moonless night and seeing ai’Jihaar standing by the pool before her tent. But it was none of the ai’Jihaars of that day’s audience—not the old woman weakened by her illness, nor the imperious
an’sen’thar,
nor the gentle teacher, nor the teasing, bantering aunt sending her truant nephew back to his betrothal celebrations. This was a creature of power, wreathed in a column of white fire, her arms out to the dark sky full of those huge, impossible desert stars.
Give
me the strength,
she seemed to be saying.
Whatever her bargain with you, Sa’id al’Khur, surely it was for this that she took me from you—whatever her bargain, I will fulfill it. Only give me strength. She asked you once for my life; I ask for hers.

The bargain we made between us is almost complete, a’sen’thar,
a disembodied voice from the stars seemed to reply.
She has forgotten, as I bid her; in one day she will remember it all. And when she does…her life is no longer in my hands.

T
here should have been little in that first encounter with ai’Jihaar to reassure Kieran on anything at all—yet he slept the sleep of the innocent, and the trusting. When he woke the next morning, left undisturbed in the curtained corner of the tent which had been given over to his use, it was closer to lunch than breakfast, and Kieran’s stomach soon reminded him that the previous night’s supper was hours away. He was ravenous.

He was also alone. He had always had the facility of knowing when he was sharing air with someone, and when at last he made himself presentable and peered into the tent from his enclosure, it didn’t surprise him to find it empty.

Anghara…What had they done with Anghara…

Even as trust began to flee and all his apprehensions come flying to his shoulders like waiting vultures, Anghara pushed open the tent flap and ducked inside. Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes bright.

“Well! So you’re awake at last! I was about to defy ai’Jihaar and come and roust you out. The day is half done already.”

“You look well,” Kieran said, leaving a hundred things he might have wished to tell her unsaid. It was all there in his silence, had Anghara wanted or been able to read between his words.

But she chose not to look past the obvious. “I feel much better,” she said, “although ai’Jihaar tells me I’m nowhere near mended.” She managed to make it sound facetious; Kieran didn’t know whether to thank ai’Jihaar, or to rail at her for playing with Anghara’s feelings.

“Where is she…ai’Jihaar?” he asked instead.

Anghara giggled like a young girl, which, after all, she still was. “Much against ai’Fatmah’s sensibilities, ai’Jihaar decided to perform her daily ablutions at the well instead of having water brought in to her. She’s almost done; and then she’s asked ai’Fatmah to put together a midday snack. And after that,” she laughed again, “you might as well go straight back to bed, because it will be time for the afternoon rest.”

“And you?”

“Oh, ai’Jihaar might want to grill me again—she has been asking an unconscionable amount of questions since I got here.”

“Don’t I know,” Kieran said, unable to keep it back.

“You, too?” Anghara said, eyes twinkling. “It might be your turn, then. I’ll find ways to amuse myself. Besides, we’re to have company before long. If ai’Jihaar knows her brother and her fellow
sen’en’thari
at the Al’haria tower, those whom she has sent al’Tamar to summon should be here tomorrow, if not even late tonight.”

“You know about all that?” Kieran said abruptly. “You were fast asleep when it was being discussed.”

“No
sen’thar
is ever truly asleep, I think I heard much of it myself, although ai’Jihaar also told me.”

“But you said you were blind…”

The smile slipped a little. “So I am. But here in the Kadun…I don’t know. Things seep through. Here, and…well…it’s like when I felt the Standing Stones on the moor when we were running from Sif.”

He’d destroyed her mood, and was sorry for it. But she was none the less luminous for having her spark quenched, merely banking to the glow of yellow embers. Yes, she was blind, but ai’Jihaar had held out a ray of hope, and Anghara was clinging to it like a drowning man might cling to a spar. There would be a chance for her. She waited for it with a hunger that yawned visible in her gray eyes in unguarded moments. A hunger in which there was no room for anything else—not for Roisinan that was her inheritance, and certainly not for…how had ai’Jihaar put it to al’Tamar just before he left? For a
qu’mar
of this world, still less one who had not, in so many words, declared himself and of whose true feelings, hidden beneath so many layers laid down over the passing years, he could hardly expect her to be aware.

These thoughts were less than helpful. Kieran smothered them, ruthlessly, and offered a sharp, deliberate smile, part of whose dazzle was pure pain. “So you expect them tonight?”

“It’s possible,” Anghara said, responding, once again, only to the obvious, as if to a few dry autumn leaves upon the mirrored surface of a black, cold depth of water below.

“I wonder what they will make of me?” he said with a grimace, raking his dark hair back from his brow with long fingers.

“They…” Anghara stopped abruptly, frowning delicately as if she had just allowed a stray thought to trickle away irretrievably, like sand through fingers. But when Kieran lifted a quizzical eyebrow she made a self-conscious wave of her hand. “I forget what I wanted to say.” She glanced back over her shoulder as the tent flap lifted again to reveal ai’Fatmah with a laden tray, closely followed by her mistress. Today ai’Jihaar was clad in her gold robes, with the full
say’yin’en
due her rank; once again Kieran bowed before the subtle power which coursed through this small, frail woman, disregarding the inescapable fact that his gesture would go entirely unnoticed.

As it would have done, if ai’Jihaar had been anyone other than who she was. The old
an’sen’thar,
however, smiled eerily at something she couldn’t possibly have seen and met it with a studied and appropriate response.

“I am friend to you, as I have ever been friend and teacher to Anghara,” ai’Jihaar said. “There is nothing which requires obeisance between us. Come, sit by me; we have so very little time before the others arrive and we must be about doing…what must be done. But while we are still alone, come, and tell one who loves your land about green Sheriha’drin.”

“Alas, it has not been a pleasant country these last few years,” Kieran said.

“The bleeding land,” ai’Jihaar said, nodding.

“The oracle,” Anghara offered, at Kieran’s slight frown. “
Reaching from the dark, the bleeding land waits.
That’s what Gul Khaima told me when I left her.”

“The bleeding land,” echoed Kieran. “Yes.” He glanced at Anghara out of smoldering eyes. “I have always believed,” he said softly, “that you…”

“Not yet, Kieran,” Anghara said, raising a hand to forestall him. “Not yet. Perhaps not ever. So much depends on what…happens in this place.”

“But you are ours whatever the outcome. You have always been that. And we, yours. That was all written long before Sif snatched the Book of Hours to write his bloody reign into it.”

“Your feelings do you credit,” said ai’Jihaar. “Without you Anghara would never have been in a position to choose. And yet it is still she in whose hands the choice remains…as the power to grant lies in the hands of the Gods. Remember that.”

“Nothing changes for me, whether she is Sighted or blind,” said Kieran desperately, turning to face ai’Jihaar. “I don’t understand the first and cannot pity the second; for me she remains Anghara, once foster sister, now my rightful queen.”

“Peace, Kieran,” Anghara said, reaching out to lay a small cool hand on his arm. It was all he could do not to snatch it up and kiss it, but with a great shuddering sigh he controlled himself and once again let much of what he would have blurted out remain unsaid. Now was not the time, if the right time could ever exist for all that was buried within him to be brought into the light of day. Restive fingers fluttered up; touched the hard curved surface of a
say’yin
made with love he now wore hidden against an auspicious hour. And it was al’Tamar’s peace that welled up through his hot palm, giving strength to his silence. He bowed his head.

“Tomorrow,” Anghara said, giving his arm a gentle squeeze. “Tomorrow we will know everything.”

They were expected in the morning of the following day, but it was late afternoon when emissaries from the
sen’thar
tower of Al’haria arrived—seven women wearing gray beneath cowled black djellabas and blue burnouses, and one, riding a magnificent blond-maned dark dun, whose robe gleamed gold. Behind them plodded a pair of ki’thar’en bearing a clutch of sleepy-looking servants, and another who carried a load carefully bundled and muffled in corded layers of padded woollen wrappings with the occasional gleam of rich jin’aaz silk.

Feeling unwell that morning, ai’Jihaar had not emerged to greet her guests. It made little difference, for her they were as visible from the inside of her tent as if she had risen to wait for them outside.

“A gold,” she murmured. “But not ai’Farra…
Chud,
now that we need her, now she visits her mother in Say’ar’dun…”

Anghara, too, had chosen not to emerge from the tent, but, lacking ai’Jihaar’s unearthly senses, she was reduced to peering through a slit in the entrance flaps. “There is just the one gold,” Anghara said. “She’s veiled, but I don’t think I know her.”

“Hai!”
breathed ai’Jihaar. “She has a cold soul fire, that one—the color of shadows in the hollow eye sockets of a desert-bleached skull. Her name is ai’Daileh; she was raised to the gold after you left, in the Beku tower, down in the Arad, and ai’Farra had her brought to Al’haria. She is strong, this young one, but hard, too hard…She kills cleanly, but I wonder if she has it in her to heal?”

“You say ai’Farra brought her? But aren’t you also…”

“It is not for such as I to question the Keeper of the Records’ choice of successor. And ai’Farra is…ai’Farra. When you forced her hand by choosing Hariff, she declared herself in other ways. I suspect one of the greatest seals on ai’Daileh’s suitability had roots in the fact that she, too, is Sayyed. It changes the balance of power in Al’haria. And ai’Farra was never one to allow the chance of power to slip through her fingers.”

“Should I disappear?” Kieran asked. He had been standing back, arms crossed almost defensively across his chest. Whether from the old, ingrained wariness of “Khelsies” or from something newer, deeper, to do with Anghara and her own gifts, Kieran’s scalp was crawling; never before had he been prey to a premonition this strong. Trouble was brewing, that much was certain.

“No,” said ai’Jihaar. “It’s not as though they don’t know you are here. But leave the talking to me.”

Kieran was more than happy to oblige. He merely withdrew a step or two, deeper into the filtered reddish half-light which pervaded the tent and from which his eyes glittered like sapphires.

At the entrance, Anghara’s narrow, silk-sheathed back suddenly stiffened, and her hands dropped from the tent flaps to fly to the sides of her head.

“Are you all right?” ai’Jihaar said instantly, even as Kieran’s own arms uncrossed, his right hand seeking its instinctive position on the pommel of his sword.

“The pain…” Anghara moaned, backing away from the tent entrance.

“Stay,” ai’Jihaar said to Kieran, who had already tensed to leap forward, without turning her head. “This is not something where you can be of help. Come, Anghara.”

Even as Anghara staggered toward the pile of silk cushions where ai’Jihaar reclined, the hail came from outside.
“Sa’hari, an’sen’thar?”

“Iman’et?”
ai’Jihaar said, and then glanced down at the tight mask of pain which still rode the features of the girl who had collapsed at her feet.
“Dan’ah,”
she added. Inadvertently al’Tamar had extended Kieran’s Kheldrini vocabulary during the journey from the mountains—Kieran knew what
sa’hari
meant. And the response—
iman’et,
enter. The third word he hadn’t come across, but its import was obvious as the tent flaps lifted to divulge a single representative of the small caravan which had just arrived.
Dan’ah.
Alone.

The voice asking admission had been cool, assured, and the imperiously gold-robed figure which ducked into ai’Jihaar’s tent suited it well. Now free of its burnouse, ai’Daileh’s face was chiselled rather than sculpted—all sharp angles and no curves. The line of her jaw could cut, and her eyes were golden ice. They flicked to Kieran briefly, taking his measure, then turned away as though he had been no more than an interesting and mildly distasteful piece of furniture. Kieran was dismissed, left to smolder in silence while the two gold-robed Kheldrini priestesses, who held Anghara’s future in their hands, proceeded to have a conversation of which he understood not a word.

“You sent for us,
an’sen’thar?
” said ai’Daileh ma’Sayyed. The tone was formal, correct, polite; no less deference than required between a senior
an’sen’thar
and a junior sister who, nonetheless, herself wore gold—and not a grain of sand more. All too aware of death and of mortality, ai’Daileh’s approach was that of coiled power, content to wait a little—for it would not be long—before ai’Jihaar’s world passed into the keeping of hands such as her own, younger, stronger, chosen by ai’Jihaar’s own Gods. “I am here, together with seven gray sisters. They wait without for your word, as you commanded.
Sa’id
al’Jezraal was not completely forthcoming; he merely said you would tell us why we were required.”

“She is the reason,” ai’Jihaar said, very softly.

At last ai’Daileh’s eyes slid down to Anghara. Her lip curled—a little. It might have been the beginning of a smile. “The
fram’man an’sen’thar.
I have read of this one, in the records ai’Farra has made of the raising of Gul Khaima. She has returned from Sheriha’drin?”

Beneath ai’Jihaar’s soothing touch Anghara’s face had cleared a little, but her cheeks were scarlet, and her eyes…Kieran had seen those haunted eyes before, back on the bare gray slopes of the mountain across which they had struggled to gain this land. Anghara was back in a place he thought they had long since left behind. His heart sank; there was a twinge, almost instantly gone, in the hand which had tasted the black dagger on her behalf.

“She is back,” ai’Jihaar said, “and she needs our help.” She had to stop, draw breath. She suddenly looked all of her age and more, beside this dangerous young priestess she had invited into her home. But it was for Anghara she was fighting, child of her heart, and so she gathered her strength and power and straightened. “I have been ill,” ai’Jihaar said stiffly, as though making the admission galled her. “And that which ails our sister is beyond the strength of one, were I ten times younger and my health as sound as it was when I was your age.” It was a subtle reminder, and ai’Daileh did not miss it. The golden eyes swept down briefly, veiled by spiky copper eyelashes. “Therefore I have summoned you, and those whom you bring. She has returned from the brink in the day or so she has been here with me, but now, when you arrived…I did not think that all this power in one place might well prove to be too much for her.”