Desert Rising (11 page)

Ava looked crestfallen but nodded her understanding.

“I'll buy it,” Kadar said, fumbling in his pocket for a ­couple of coins. Ava grinned, her eyes dancing.

“Oooh, Kadar wants a picture of Farrah,” she teased. “Are you going to put it under your pillow and kiss it every night?”

Kadar shook a warning finger at her. “Don't you dare tell Farrah I bought it,” he said, then handed her the money.

“I wouldn't,” she said unrepentantly, hiding the coins in her apron pocket. “She hates being teased. You're more fun.”

“Your first sale,” Tarik said. “That certainly deserves a piece of sweet cake.”

Kadar heard Farrah's footsteps in the hall and tucked the drawing under another piece of paper, so she wouldn't see it.

“Ava, you greedy glut!” Farrah sighed when she came into the room and saw her sister eating cake. “You'll ruin your appetite for dinner!” Her sister grinned and shrugged.

“Oh, don't fuss, Farrah. It's good to feed a girl,” Aunt Raella told her, patting Ava on the shoulder.

Ava finished her cake and curtsied her thank-­you as Farrah took the market basket. Kadar smiled as they left together, enjoying the sight of the tall woman, head bent to catch every word that her chatterbox little sister, skipping beside her, said.

“Such good girls,” Aunt Raella said, looking wistfully after them.

“We could try for one,” Uncle Tarik said, putting an arm around her waist and kissing her.

She swatted him away. “We already tried! And look at what it got me—­four boys,” she said with a laugh.

Kadar excused himself and went up to his room. He sat on the bed, looking for a place to tack up Farrah's picture. He shook his head. There was always a chance Farrah would duck into his room for a quick cleaning, and he didn't want her to see the picture. He'd been able to catch a few quick kisses with her in the past ­couple months, but he wasn't sure she wanted more than that. He grinned to himself, and, taking his cue from Ava, tucked it under his pillow.

He had work to do to get Severin and the upper social circle to trust him, but there were some definite benefits to living in Illian. Things were starting to fall into place.

 

Chapter 7

S
ULIS FOLLOWED THE
acolyte out of Parasu's courtyard, still dwelling on Kadar's warning that she was being watched by Voras. She worried that his Templar knew about the rebellious ideas she was discussing with the other paired students. She didn't know what he could do to her if he knew, and she didn't think she wanted to find out.

In the main hallway, she felt something brush against her thigh and looked down to see Djinn pacing beside her. He yawned at her look, as though she'd roused him from a good midmorning nap, somehow sensing her need.

They passed through the crowd into Voras's altar, with Sulis looking around distastefully at the clashing reds of the tapestries. The acolyte led her to a door on one side of the room and knocked sharply. At a command Sulis did not hear, he entered, then stiffened himself into a salute. Sulis followed more cautiously after.

The man standing behind the desk was no taller than Sulis, but he wore an air of importance that made him loom. He dismissed the acolyte with a wave of his hand and turned his attention on Sulis. He frowned at the sight of the Djinn at her heels. His own
feli
sat beside the desk, more statue than cat.

“So this is the flower from the desert,” he said, a smile back on his face, his voice low and engaging. “I am the Templar of Voras.”

Sulis was startled at the heat that swept through her body at the sound of his voice. She bowed to him to hide her flush of embarrassment. He was an attractive man, more so than Jonas or even Ashraf, but she'd never before felt such instant attraction.

“I hear you were bothered by the Forsaken today,” he said, coming out from behind his desk.

His closer proximity made her mind wander from the conversation. “It . . . it was nothing. He meant no harm, just tripped over my cloak,” she stuttered, her brain still present enough to not give Kadar away.

Get a grip on yourself, she thought and gave herself a slight shake, straightening to a proud height, trying to banish her attraction. This man could be her enemy.

“Why, you are shaking,” the Templar said, his voice full of concern. He took another step and cupped her cheek. “Tell me they haven't hurt you. I am here to protect you, care for you.”

She couldn't tell him anything at that moment. His touch awoke such longing that she swayed into him. His other arm curled around her waist, pulling her against his hard, lithe body. He tipped her chin up and closed his mouth on hers. Her mouth opened to his probing tongue, lost in a wave of heat and desire.

The kiss ended, and his hand moved down her cheek, a light touch on her neck, down to her cloak and disappeared to caress her breast. He pushed her back so she was half sitting on his desk. He nibbled on her ear, and she felt hot and cold at once.

“Just empty your mind of everything but me,” he whispered into her ear, a hint of command in his voice.

A part of her brain struggled then. Her will no longer seemed to be her own, as the Templar reached down to the fastenings on her robe. While her brain rejected him fiercely, warning her to run, her body melted.

With a cry of pain, the Templar suddenly jerked away from her. Immediately, the heat in Sulis's body dimmed. He clutched his leg. “Blasted
feli
.”

Sulis backed away from him, refastening her cloak. Djinn moved to stand between them, his tail puffed to twice its normal size, the fur on his spine rising. He growled as the Templar stood. There was blood on Djinn's claws. Sulis backed to the door.

The Templar looked up from his bleeding leg and saw her behind Djinn. He smiled crookedly, and Sulis's body reacted immediately, wanting to step forward into his arms. Her brain screamed for her to run.

“Maybe not today, my flower,” he told her, his voice an obscene caress. “But soon. I will be here to care for you when you let Voras into your heart and come back.”

Sulis felt behind her for the doorknob and let herself out. Djinn darted out behind her, his fur still ruffled. They got a few startled looks from pilgrims at his agitation and her dishevelment. But Voras's acolytes taking tithes gave her amused, knowing glances, which made Sulis think she wasn't the first pledge the Templar had brought into his office.

Her face flushed again at the thought of the Templar, his kisses . . . She brought her brain back on track.

“I need a dip in a cold lake,” she told Djinn as she walked to her dormitory. He yowled as though in agreement, and she laughed and paused in Ivanha's courtyard to adjust her cloak and pet Djinn's fur smooth. He looked extremely pleased with himself.

“Thank you,” she told him. “You get first choice of my plate at midmeal.”

Lasha and Alannah were waiting for her in the common room.

“What happened?” Lasha asked.

Sulis glanced around and noticed two others from her pledge group. They were preoccupied, changing from their riding breeches and gossiping.

“Let's just say I now know the touch of Voras, and I'm not likely to ever forget it,” she said lightly. Lasha's eyes widened.

“What do you mean?” Alannah whispered. “He asked me to meet him in his office after meditation tomorrow. What did he do?”

The bell cut off any answer Sulis might have made, and Sulis followed the rest of the women to the dining hall, hoping the rest of the day's classes would distract her from the insidious touch she could still feel.

They didn't. She went through her classes in a daze, her mind drifting back to the Templar and the resulting heat in her body. She spent most of the day aroused and trying not to meet the gaze of her new friends as they asked her worried questions. It was shaming, this need for someone she actually despised. This was a forced taking of her will, a brutal twisting of what should be a wonderful gift. Djinn was equally disturbed, hugging close to her side and even taking a swipe at Lasha's
feli
when she approached.

Sulis went to bed early, feeling exhausted. Another day of this, and she would be running to the Templar, crawling on her knees for him to take her.

With that image in her mind, she fell asleep, only to awaken herself with her own moans as her dreams graphically showed her what she and the Templar could do with her on her knees. The rest of the night was no different, and she was relieved when the morning bell allowed her to get up out of her sweat-­soaked bed. Djinn lay beside her cot, kicked out by her thrashing. He made little growling noises as he followed her out into the dewy courtyard.

She trailed behind her classmates as they filed into the Temple of the One for Counselor Elida's lesson on focusing their minds.

As soon as Sulis stepped into the coolness of the Temple, a weight lifted off her shoulders. She could feel the desire, somewhere in the back of her mind, but it was no longer urgent or unbearable. She gratefully sank down cross-­legged in the shadows of the room, behind her fellow students, and sent thanks to the One. Djinn set his heavy head on her knee with a sigh equaling her own.

The Counselor's voice brought her back to the present.

“These lessons are important, not just for channeling and learning the deities' will, but for defense, as we can be attacked by others of evil intent with channeling abilities. And we may not even know we are under attack if we do not control our own minds at all times.”

The Counselor met Sulis's gaze. “We can have a thing called a
geas
put upon us. In that case, our body reacts in a way our brain does not agree with. We can also be fooled by illusion or forced to tell information we know.”

Jonas raised his hand. “How can you break a
geas
once it has been put on you?” he asked. At dinner, Sulis had confided in him that the Templar had stuck some sort of compulsion on her when he'd noticed how distracted she was. She was touched by Jonas's interest in protecting her.

The Counselor switched her gaze to Jonas. “You must isolate the feeling. Study it. Find what it is connected to. All
geases
have a beginning point: the person or creature who set it. Once you know the beginning point, you must fight it off by directing it back to its creator.” She met Sulis's gaze again. “Sometimes a
geas
is too strong. There is no shame in asking a Counselor for help breaking a
geas
. It is part of what we are trained for. At this moment, I am the only Counselor of the One, but in the past there have been up to ten Counselors called to serve the One in this capacity.”

She turned her attention to the whole class. “Now we will meditate. Clear your mind and lose yourself in the stillness of your being. Achieving and holding this quiet is the key to channeling your deity through your
feli
. It is the key to knowing your own being so well that any evil influence stands out like a beacon. At this point in your lessons, it will be difficult to get to that state. Practice helps, as does trusting in your own mind. All of you have both the ability and the potential to achieve stillness and use it, or you would not be paired. This time I will use the singing bowl as a focus. Eventually, you will not have to use a focus but will be able to bring yourself to an open mind with just your own breaths to guide you.”

The Counselor lifted a wooden stick and ran it around the lip of a beaten copper bowl the size of a serving crock. A tone sang out, full and rich in the echoes of the One's altar. Sulis gasped at the clarity.

“Still your mind,” Counselor Elida advised. “Bring it back to the music. If your mind wanders, don't give up; just bring it back to the note, letting it fill the space with clarity, with light. Allow your mind to be free of the distractions of the world around it.”

Sulis closed her eyes, refraining from looking around at the other students. She knew from the past few mornings what they would look like, since she'd studied them while pretending to focus her jittery brain. Jonas would be sitting stiff with his eyes closed, his face strained as though with the heavy effort of forcing his mind to obey. Lasha and most of the others were more like Sulis, shifting in seated positions that got more uncomfortable as they sat still, their brains untamed by their will—­all except Alannah. She alone looked like she understood. Her body seemed loose, her face wiped of emotion yet peaceful instead of blank. And at the end of the session, she alone looked brilliant, as though she'd communed with gods, rather than irritable and hungry as the rest of them appeared. Sulis worried what the Templar would do to Alannah when he got her alone in his office. Would she be able to resist him as Sulis had?

Sulis tried to wipe her mind clean of her classmates, bringing her whole attention back to the singing note that rang in the dome. She wondered if the resonance of the room was why the Counselor taught the class there; then she dismissed the thought, bringing herself back to the resonance itself, focusing only on the ringing note. She felt something like an echo where there used to be thoughts, and her breathing smoothed. This time, she waited for the silence to approach her rather than reaching out and trying to grasp it, as she usually did.

The sense of wrongness came at the same time as the silence, and Sulis jumped for it, wanting to trace and get rid of the onus. She fell out of her trance with a thump that was audible to her. She opened her eyes, but none of her classmates had noticed.

Djinn's tongue rasped her arm as she took a deep breath, disappointed. She'd almost seen it, almost gotten to the point—­but diving for it just pushed it farther away. Once she left this room, the
geas
would be waiting for her, and being this close to Voras's altar, it would be hard not to run straight to the Templar's arms. With the need dimmed in her mind, she was able to wonder why he'd placed the
geas
on her. The Counselor said a
geas
could pry secrets from a pledge, and she wondered if he wanted what she knew about the desert. Or if he knew about her mother.

Or maybe he just thought her pretty and wanted her for his use. Was this why her mother had fled the Temple? To escape being used by powerful men with no scruples?

The ringing of the bowl stopped. The Counselor allowed a few moments of silence for them to refocus on the present moment.

“This session is over,” she said softly. “I could see that many of you were able to find peace for at least a few moments. That is excellent for this early in your training. Those of you who did not, try to practice stilling your mind each day, perhaps after vespers when you can use the silence to count your breath. Sulis, please stay after. The rest of you are dismissed for breakfast.”

Sulis remained seated, glad to stay in the peace a few more moments. She watched Jonas file out, his gray
feli
at his heels. He looked triumphant and flashed her a smile. Lasha was also flushed with pleasure, following her
feli
. Sulis wondered if the presence of their
feli
had made a difference. This was the first time she'd seen either show up to morning lessons with a
feli
. Today was the first time Djinn had bothered to come with her as well, and she, too, had almost gotten to a clearer state.

Alannah started to walk out, glancing worriedly at Sulis as she did, and Sulis felt a stab of fear, wondering if the woman was going into the same trap she had with the Templar.

“Alannah, stay, you need to know about this,” Sulis blurted out, standing and reaching out a hand to the other woman.

“I can't, I'm supposed to meet the Templar,” Alannah said, obviously torn.

“You can't go.” Tears blurred Sulis's eyes. “You can't let him get you alone.”

The Counselor gave them both a sharp glance. “If Sulis wants you here, I'll send a note, letting the Templar know you are taking extra training,” Elida said. She raised an eyebrow at Sulis, who nodded.