Desert Rising (2 page)

“Yes,” Sulis said, and Kadar heard the gratitude in her voice for this unexpected champion. “I've known since Mother died that I would pledge.”

“Madness,” Uncle Tarik said, throwing up his hands. “Pledging will not bring your mother back. Choosing the same path and expecting it to come out differently is madness.”

“He's right, child,” Uncle Aaron said. “There's so much you could do here, where you know and trust the ­people around you. You should continue your apprenticeship, as we planned.”

Sulis shook her head, and Kadar's heart sank. He'd held out hope that she might not go through with her plan. “I can't. I know this is the right thing. It is where I'm meant to be. If I stayed here, I would not be following the path the One has set for me.”

Uncle Aaron slapped his hand on the table, the sound a dull thud. “And what will I tell your grandmother and aunt back in Shpeth? That you've gone the way of your mother? Do you really want them to go through that again? Don't be so cruel to the ­people who love you, Sulis.”

Kadar watched Sulis gather her dignity about her and stand. “Knowing Grandmother, her spies will tell her exactly when I have pledged. If she wants to stop me, she will. Tell Aunt Janis I am safe and happy and doing the things she always encouraged me to do. I love you all, but I know where I am supposed to be. I give you my blessings and hope you'll bless my path as well.”

Kadar watched her walk through the doorway back to the front of the house. He pushed his dish away, his stomach churning.

“We don't know that she'll be taken by a
feli
,” Uncle Tarik commented, his eyes still on the doorway. “There's no sense worrying unless it happens.”

Kadar stood and turned to walk after his sister. “You've seen how the
feli
act around her,” he told the other men. “Even the wild ones swarm over her. She'll be taken.”

Kadar found Sulis standing outside the house beside the dusty street, staring at the dome of the One rising above the altars of the four in the center of Illian. It seemed that his twin, from whom he'd never been separated, was already far away from him. They'd played together, racing over the dunes and exploring caves in the mountains. They'd trained in knife fighting and animal lore and run caravans to the Northern mountains and the eastern sea towns. But now she wanted something different, and it felt odd—­freeing, in a way, but lonesome, too.

“When will you go?” he asked.

“Now.”

“You can't wait until we settle in a bit? Get the lay of the town?”

She turned to him, and he saw she had tears in her eyes that matched the ones he was suppressing. “We've talked about this! Don't you turn on me, too.”

He put a hand on her shoulder. “I'm not turning on you, silly. I know it pulls you. But resist it, the way you have been. Stay a little longer.”
Don't leave me.
He was eighteen, an adult, and had to stand on his own now. But Sulis was a part of him, a living part of their mother who had died, and of their father who had never returned.

Sulis looked down at her bare feet, a lost expression on her face. “If I stay here, I don't think I'll be able to do it,” she admitted. “You heard our uncles—­they'll be relentless trying to convince me to stay home. It would be so much easier to let this pass me by. But I believe there's something important Mother left undone, something the One wants of me now, and I have to find out what it is, or I'll live in regret.”

Kadar pulled her to him in a fierce hug. “The Temple won't let me see you, you know,” he said mournfully. “At least, not the first year.”

She hugged him back, then pushed him away. “They can't keep us apart,” she told him. “They can't watch me every minute. I've read that acolytes train by the stables on the edge of town. I'm sure we can find a way to meet on the road.”

“You mean
I'll
find a way,” he complained.

She grinned, tilting her head to one side. “I know you will. I can always count on you.”

“Be safe, Sulis,” he said solemnly.

“Be safe, Kadar, and good luck,” she said. She turned and ran lightly down the road toward the Temple. In a moment, she turned a corner, and her red-­and-­orange robes disappeared from his sight.

 

Chapter 2

S
ULIS RAN UP
the street until she met with the crush of ­people on the main road leading to the Temple. She stood on the corner, watching the crowd pass for several minutes, wishing she'd thought to grab her sandals before she left and marveling at the variety of ­people all in one place. Many ­people were pale-­haired and fair-­skinned, dressed in heavy, spun clothing. The men wore long trousers and coarse woolen shirts in muddy tan colors, and the women wore the same drab cloth but in dresses with full skirts that dragged on the cobblestones. Sulis couldn't help but think that these women would expire if they spent a day in her homeland, their skin burning to red, their skirts holding the heat. They were probably from the more Northern towns.

Not many of Sulis's ­people were in the crowd though she did see some brightly robed figures in merchant stalls on the side of the road. The desert ­people followed the One's commands without the intercession of the four deities, so they did not come to the Temple for tithing. Most of her ­people went to the Temple only to pay taxes on the goods they sold in the Northern cities. The Temple would have loved to set up minor temples in the Southern towns, but only the caravan masters knew the safe routes to the various oasis villages, and they were not silly enough to share those routes with acolytes who would set up tithes and take their profits.

Sulis's own family had made its fortune gathering the silks and medicinal plants that only grew in the heat of the Southern desert and trading goods at the merchant halls they owned across the two Territories. In the North, their goods were so valued, they could mark up prices to compensate for the tithes the Temple demanded.

Sulis felt a little out of place with her vibrant robes and dark skin, but then a tall Frubian man came in sight, his head tall above the other travelers'. His robes swirled around him as he walked, in colors of deep purple, scarlet, and gold that stood out even more than Sulis's reds and oranges. He met her gaze with an amused wink, knowing that he and she were the most colorful of the travelers that day and enjoying this distinction. She fell in beside his easy stride.

“Big crowd today, eh, little sister?” his voice rumbled beside her. The crowd came to a halt down the hill from the Temple as the ­people at the front of the pack jostled to squeeze into the main Temple door.

“I've never been here before,” Sulis admitted. “What brings you so far north?”

He grinned. “My parents own a silk demesne. I come here for workers, pay the Temple for their freedom, then lead the caravan back.”

Sulis gazed enviously at his robes, which were made from even finer silk than her own. Silk demesne owners were almost royalty among Southern families, wealthier even than the caravaners who exported their products. “Why do you pay the Temple for workers? Why not pay the workers themselves?”

His smile disappeared as they took a few more steps forward with the crowd. “The Temple will not let the Forsaken travel without permits, so permits we buy, though they give us a hard time about it. After all, who will clean their chamber pots if all the
allainai
leave?”

Allainai
was the term the nomads used for slaves. Frubia, like the other desert cities, had no castes. To this man, as to Sulis, the enforcement of the caste system in the Northern cities was borderline slavery.

“And you,” he said, a flirtatious smile on his face. “What business does a good desert woman have in this stone building? Will you be here long?”

Sulis shook her head regretfully. For the first time, she regretted running to pledge so quickly after her arrival. A ­couple of nights' dalliance with a handsome Southerner would have given her some happy memories to carry her through the lonely, monastic nights ahead of her. He was quite handsome in an aristocratic, arrogant sort of way, but she was soon to be unavailable. They were almost to the entrance of the Temple, then she would be pledged to the deities.

“I go to pledge,” she told him, staring straight ahead at the door.

He grabbed her shoulder and stopped in the middle of the street, causing much grumbling from all sides as the line tried to push around them.

“Have you taken leave of your senses?” he asked her.

She shrugged his hand off, and he pushed her to one side of the crowd, against a tall stone wall, cornering her.

“Do you know how much they hate us? You will be destroyed!” he said.

She answered in kind. “Who are you to say what I should do? You know nothing about me.”

“I know that a beautiful free woman should not be caged by a lot of narrow-­minded landed folk who hold to such different ways than we do. Will you, too, enslave those unfortunate ­people?” He waved to two brown-­cloaked children begging for alms by the side of the road. “Would you betray your ­people by leading the Temple to our cities?”

“No,” Sulis spat back. “I would never betray my ­people. I come to change the Temple, not myself.”

He looked her up and down and laughed shortly. “One little snip of a woman changing the entire Temple? You must think I'm stupid.”

Sulis shoved at him, furiously trying to push him out of her way. He did not budge an inch, and she burst out, “And what do you do? What kind of change do you make when you follow their rules? I have been called here for a purpose, and change will follow with me—­I know this. I've felt it!”

He stared at her a moment, his face serious. “There was a desert woman before you; she thought she could change these barbarians. They brought her broken body back to the sand. What makes you different?”

Sulis hesitated a moment, looking to see if anyone was paying attention to their conversation. Besides a few sideways glances at their foreign tongue, the crowd was intent on reaching the Temple entrance. “That desert woman was my mother,” she admitted.

“So stupidity runs in the family?” he blurted.

Sulis did push past him this time, fury blinding her.

“Sulis, wait,” he called, and she hesitated, turning back.

“How do you know my name?” she demanded. “Did Kadar send you to find me and bring me back?”

He shook his head. “There was only one Iamar, and she only had one daughter,” he said. “Besides, my family is planning on partnering with your family's caravans—­after the Temple, I'm going to visit your uncles to work out the details.

He looked down in her eyes, his brown eyes pleading. “Sulis, you can't change these ­people. They don't want us. They call us infidels and spit on our robes. You must know this—­so why do you go to what might destroy you?”

“It's something in me . . . I don't know what. These ­people are so guided by their ignorance, by their archaic scriptures. They need to be shown a different way.”

He gazed at her and smiled ruefully. “I'd hoped to meet you this trip since I'd heard much of the strong-­willed daughter of Iamar. I certainly did not expect to meet you like this. If you have need, call for Ashraf. Just ask one of the Forsaken; they will send word to me, and I will find you. Go with the blessings of the tribes.”

Sulis hesitated, wondering why a desert man would be so intimate with the Forsaken. She mentally shrugged. It was none of her business now. “I will remember. Go with the One, Ashraf,” she said, and reached out a hand. Rather than shaking it, he kissed it. He gave her a quick smile and stepped into the crowd, disappearing among the horde entering the Temple.

Sulis stood where she was for a few moments, trying to regain her composure, as well as the determination she'd had before sighting Ashraf. His colorful silks made her long for her native town, Shpeth, with the low, long
jetal
houses made of clay and dung that kept the sand at bay and the brightly striped tents at the interior of the town, closest to the waters of the oasis. It would be many long months sequestered with the rest of the pledges before she would likely speak with any person of her own land again.

Sulis straightened her shoulders and plunged back into the crowd, letting it sweep her into the chilly darkness of the Temple. She paused as many broke off and entered doors to the right. The curved hallway she was standing in made a complete circle around the sanctuary of the One, the domed tower she had seen from a distance. Attached to the hallway were four petal-­shaped rooms, shrines dedicated to the four deities whom the One had created to rule the world in her stead. If Sulis remembered correctly, the first shrine in the hallway was dedicated to Voras, the second to Ivanha, the third to Parasu, and last was Aryn. Each shrine opened into a walled garden area that led to living quarters and classrooms for the acolytes of that deity. Supplicants coming to offer tithes went to the shrine of the appropriate deity. The sanctuary of the One was only for those pledging to the church.

It was also, Sulis realized as she watched a green-­cloaked woman duck into the center doorway, for wandering Vrishni who reported to the Counselor of the One. Vrishni were prophets who spread the message of the One but were not paired with a
feli
. Sulis had traveled many times with Vrishni in her caravan while they were in the North, and their prophetic visions had placed her here, at the Temple.

­People were beginning to look strangely at Sulis as she hesitated by the entrance, and she tried to ignore them. She realized she had to move when an acolyte from the god Voras's shrine started beckoning to her. Sulis ignored the man, took a deep breath, and stepped into the sanctuary of the One.

Compared to the halls, the sanctuary was impossibly hushed and silent. Sulis blinked in the sudden dimness of the room, willing her eyes to adjust. The corridor she'd left had windows to palely light the way for the crowds, but this room was lighted entirely by candles. She had expected it to be ornate, with gold-­gilded altars and silk hangings depicting scenes from the scriptures. In reality, the room was primitive, closer to a natural cave than a polished shrine.

A round marble altar with a long incense burner of sandstone was placed in the middle. Two candelabra of polished stone, beautifully smoothed, held five beeswax candles each, making the altar the brightest portion of the room. The Counselor of the One, recognizable by her golden cloak, stood beside the Vrishni with a hand on her shoulder. Although neither woman had looked up as Sulis stepped in the room, the Counselor's
feli
twitched its tail when it noticed her.

Sulis ducked farther into the shadows, trying to understand where the other
feli
were. Her stomach clenched in panic as she realized the only
feli
in the room was one already paired. Rumor had it that a
feli
met the person he or she would pair with at the door of the One's sanctuary. She wondered if the pilgrims she'd talked to had gotten it wrong; perhaps the
feli
were in the courtyards or shrines of the deities, kept only for the ­people of the Counselor's choosing.

Sulis was about to back out into the hallway when she noticed movement above her, in the deep shadows that rose to the dome. As she peered closer, she could make out stone ledges running the entire circle of the room above her head. A long, sinuous tail snaked down from the ledge and twitched as though the
feli
above her was engaging in a nice long bath. Sulis grinned; the tail looked like nothing more than a bellpull ready to alert residents of a visitor. She reached out her hand and grasped the furry tail, pulling once gently.

The tail withdrew itself quickly, and Sulis could hear shuffling on the ledge. The large feline leapt down lightly beside her. His purr rumbled as he bumped his head against her thigh. Scrabbling noises overhead proved that there were more
feli
above her, and they were curious to see what had made their companion so happy. Soon Sulis was surrounded by a half dozen
feli
, each with a different build and coat, attempting to push the others out of the way. Sulis realized she'd better choose quickly, or they'd be fighting over her.

She gazed at the one whose tail she had pulled. He was a big feline, with long fur that was white with black stripes. His paws were giant, obviously suited for padding across snow. He was magnificent and unlike any she'd seen, but she shook her head sadly.

“Sorry, handsome,” she told him, scratching him once behind the ears. “You'd never make it in the desert.” He yowled once, flattened his ears, and walked a distance from the others, sitting down to groom his shoulder with his back to her in affronted dignity.

A voice sounded behind her, startling her. “Pledges do not choose the
feli
; the One chooses the
feli
for them,” the woman said. The commotion must have alerted the Counselor of the One.

Sulis turned to the Counselor, who looked puzzled and a little worried at the actions of the
feli
. The Counselor's
feli
kept watch by the altar, keeping far away from something that could ruffle his pristine gray fur. The woman was much older than Sulis. The One chose her Counselor out of the elders of the four deities' acolytes.

“Do you suggest I let them fight it out?” Sulis asked the woman dryly, pointing to where one
feli
was exchanging swipes with another. Their claws were sheathed, but she wondered for how much longer. “I don't really think the One would like blood on her floor.”

“And you know better than a Counselor what the One wants?” she asked Sulis dryly. “Continue your choice, then, child,” she said, with a small smile. “It seems at least I won't have to worry about your being terrified of your
feli
. I am curious to see which one you choose.”

Sulis turned back to the
feli
. “Would you stop that already?” she snapped at them in exasperation. Five aristocratic noses swiveled around to her, and one by one, the
feli
settled down, most cleaning various limbs as though to show Sulis that they hadn't followed her orders. They'd just decided they needed a good cleaning; that was all. The Counselor sucked in her breath at the great cats' obedience but otherwise stayed still.