The Hidden Queen (33 page)

They passed under the archway suddenly, as though it had reached out to swallow them—which it had, in a sense, as they discovered they were in a low, gullet-like tunnel. Black as pitch, the tunnel seemed to curve slightly to the left; al’Tamar steered by touch.

“We should have brought a lamp,” he murmured, fending off the tunnel wall with the paddle yet again.

Then, with equal suddenness, they were out of it, and al’Tamar’s comment became obsolete. They found themselves in a high-domed cavern filled with a strange half-light, a pearly, faintly luminescent glow which seemed to be emanating from nowhere in particular and yet surrounded them. For a moment al’Tamar froze, with the paddle just touching the still water; but a stray eddy tugged at the boat, and that was enough for him to come to his senses. He dug the paddle into the luminous water with a gesture that was almost savage. The boat righted itself and glided further into the cave.

Anghara had seen such light before. The black hills of Khari’i’d had glowed with it on the night she heard the voice of Gul Qara in the hidden valley in the Empty Quarter. There it might have seemed to be no more than moonlight, but now, here, she recognized it once more, and there was no moon in this cavern. She sat quiet, very still, a slow exhilaration beginning to build within her; her fingertips tingled with the memory of the touch of Gul Qara’s smooth gray stone.

“What now,
an’sen’thar?
” asked al’Tamar in a low voice. The boat hovered in the midst of the pearly waters, almost the precise color of al’Tamar’s soul fire. His words raised a small echo, and his hands tightened involuntarily on the paddle. Anghara laughed, softly, and the echo threw that back as well.

“You said you didn’t believe in demons,” she said.

“I said nothing of the kind,” he said, collecting himself. “I merely said I did not believe there was one here. But this…this is beyond my understanding.”

“And mine,” she said. “I do not understand it, but I know it. Can you get me up near that ledge?”

When al’Tamar guided the boat toward the flat stone shelf she indicated, she scrambled up onto it as he steadied the small craft against the rock.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Up,” she said, and only now did he notice there was a cleft in the rock beyond the sill, and something hewn by no human hand but nevertheless a rough kind of a staircase spiraling upward out of sight. For a long moment he could only sit and stare.

“Well?” Anghara said, poised almost on the first step. “Are you coming?”

His head jerked up. “I? Is this for me?”

“For this night’s work,” she said, and again al’Tamar heard cadences of prophecy scintillate in her words like light on a knife’s edge, “you may yet find yourself wearing the gold.”

She was
an’sen’thar,
it lay within her hand to give that gift. And there was deep truth in her voice. Quickly al’Tamar dropped his eyes, made the boat fast, and followed her without another word.

The staircase was wickedly uneven, with one step nearly on a level with its predecessor and the very next necessitating almost a scramble; but at least the light was with them still. The staircase seemed to go on for so long that al’Tamar almost gave up hope of ever seeing again the freedom of the open skies. But then, quite suddenly, the walls simply fell away beside him. He stepped out onto a broad, flat plateau whose edges plunged sheer toward the sea on three sides, with a low escarpment falling away into the reddish expanses of Kadun Khajir’i’id on the fourth. It was empty except for a large stone lying on its side almost across the middle of the plateau. With silver-blue Sight al’Tamar could see the edges of the great stone shimmer in the night.

“Is this it?” he asked, awed.

“This will be Gul Khaima,” Anghara said, breathing deeply of the salty tang of spray-spiced air. “All we need to do is raise the stone.”

His initial exhilaration turned almost to dismay as he surveyed the massive stone lying before them.

“How?” he said. “Can you do it, with…Sight? With the gift?”

“I must not,” she said, turning to him, and her eyes were luminous. “This is a place of the Gods, but this oracle is mortal-born. Look, there is the base which will hold it—but it must be set to stand there by mortal hands, with ropes, with willpower.”

“We cannot do it,” al’Tamar said, bending to gaze at the depression Anghara had named as the stones base. “It will never hold.”

“It will,” said Anghara.
“I have seen it.”

I
t had seemed such a small place in the night, but morning saw many people on the plateau at the top of the cliff—al’Jezraal, al’Tamar, a handful of the villagers led by wiry old al’Talip ma’Shadir, and all the
sen’en’thari
. Yet somehow it was big enough to hold them all with space to spare. It felt as though the plateau had grown to accommodate the number who climbed upon it.

Anghara had insisted the oracle stone be raised the hard way, and they had brought ropes, with the villagers providing the muscle and al’Jezraal himself pitching in with a will. This was yet another face to the man—his council at Al’haria would not have recognized him. Stripped to the waist, chest and shoulders gleaming with sweat, heaving with the rest of them to Anghara’s directions, he found one of his sweet, grave, fleeting smiles for her whenever he looked up from beneath his burden and their eyes happened to meet.

He would have been far more recognizable to his council in the early hours of that morning, two or three hours after midnight, when al’Tamar, whom Anghara had sent back alone to the village, roused him at al’Talip’s house. Then al’Jezraal had been haughty and angry. Stoically al’Tamar had borne the brunt of his anger since Anghara was conveniently out of reach. And yet—alone up there with the stone that was about to be reborn as the oracle of Gul Khaima, Anghara had been as present at that meeting as if she had physically stood beside him.

“Uncle,” al’Tamar had said, desperation driving him to try and squirm out from under the lash of al’Jezraal’s ire by playing the kinship card, “it was hardly my idea! But it is not as though hundreds of village boys have not been doing it for years. And she seemed so insistent…so sure…you know how she can be…”

The young wretch,
Anghara thought, up on her perch, grinning despite herself.
All injured innocence.

But it seemed to work.

“It was dangerous and foolhardy,” al’Jezraal snapped in reply to al’Tamar’s admittedly lame excuse. But then al’Jezraal’s anger seemed to leave him all at once to be replaced by an eager enthusiasm. Although he realized that going to Anghara was absolutely useless until morning—there was nothing he or anyone could do before it was light—al’Tamar had been forced to do an abrupt about-turn in mid-argument and try and restrain his uncle from leaving for the grotto there and then.

By this time half the village had roused, and both ai’Farra and ai’Jihaar, who had inevitably missed Anghara’s presence given the cramped living quarters, had naturally arrived at al’Talip’s house almost before al’Tamar had finished the first telling of his tale. They had difficulty restraining the entire village from coming to the grotto at the crack of dawn. Eventually most of those not invited to climb up on the spire were bobbing about in their boats out in the bay, peering upward into the sun and trying to figure out what was going on from a distance.

Those who came brought rope, and ten men now labored to hoist the great stone into the depression Anghara had pointed out. It was not easy. A sharp edge frayed a rope to such an extent that it gave way, and the stone almost went over the edge into the ocean. Another time they thought they had it poised, but the base of the stone slithered on the smooth rock of the plateau and it crashed back down into its horizontal position with such force al’Tamar could not believe it had not cracked in half. The morning was half gone and still they struggled; and perhaps they would have given up already if it hadn’t been for Anghara’s words, relayed to the rapt village by al’Tamar the night before:
It will stand. I have seen it.

It was ai’Jihaar, the blind one, who “saw” it first—she cried out as the apex of the stone, guided carefully by panting men, finally slid into the cavity for which, ages before, it had been made. The stone trembled for a moment and then stood upright, poised, the ropes still wrapped around it like some bizarre decoration. Everyone felt it—the moment resonated like a bell, and hackles rose on even the most insensitive of the villagers—but the
sen’en’thari
could see cold fires bubble from underneath and spiral around the great stone. Only now, seeing it standing for the first time, did Anghara realize why it had looked so familiar. It was much bigger, of course, and the color was all wrong, but the shape of the Gul Khaima Stone bore an uncanny resemblance to the small sharp pebble she had planted with her own hand into soft moss on the bank of the well at Cascin. For a moment she wondered which talisman had done the choosing in Bresse. Seeing the power of the one they had just raised, it was hard to believe the little Cascin Stone had ever borne any power that had been its own and not drawn from this primal rock, toward which her steps now seemed to have led all along. Already, watching the stone, it was difficult to recall what the plateau had looked like before—the stone looked as if it had always stood thus, with no visible seam between it and the flat rock on which it stood.

First to break the stasis was ai’Farra, who stepped forward to touch the stone. “It is cool,” she said wonderingly. “As though it had not lain in the hot sun all morning.”

“What do you think we should do now,
an’sen’thar?
” asked al’Jezraal, himself completely unaware his hands had folded automatically into a gesture of prayer.

“It has been sealed into place,” said Anghara. “Thus far I have seen; where the stone takes us from here, I do not yet know.”

“Will it speak,
an’sen’thar,
as Gul Qara did?” Beneath the edge of wonder which would not leave it, ai’Farra’s voice was as coolly analytical as ever.

But when Anghara turned to face her, the Al’hariani
an’sen’thar
’s eyes were blazing with something that had never been there before—ai’Farra had gone in the space of a few hours from tolerance past acceptance into something that was almost adoration. Anghara had spoken of her vision, and the vision had come to pass. Kheldrin had a new oracle where the old one was dust and ashes, and had been dead and silent for a long time before it met its fate. That, finally, was enough—ai’Farra claimed Anghara as
an’sen’thar
here, now, daring anyone to counterclaim—Anghara was of the Al’haria tower, ai’Farra’s tower, and it was Anghara who had raised the oracle.

“I don’t know,” said Anghara in answer to her question, deliberately introducing a note of uncertainty to dampen the other’s naked, possessive pride. “But this is an oracle raised by mortal sweat, by mortal hands, which I am not so sure Gul Qara ever was. It might happen that this oracle will need to speak with mortal tongue.”

As though to corroborate this, the gray
sen’thar
ai’Farra had brought with her from Al’haria suddenly moaned. Her eyes rolled back into their sockets, the whites impossibly pale against her bronze skin, as some kind of trance took hold of her, shaking her slender body. A young fisherman who stood beside her scrambled away so fast he almost went over into the chasm and had to be retrieved bodily by a quick-thinking friend. The village
sen’thar,
the old gray who was sharing her house with the visiting
sen’en’thari,
stepped forward to try and help but Anghara stayed her. “No. Wait. I think…”

The young gray, whose name was ai’Raisa, shuddered violently once or twice, inarticulate sounds coming from her throat. It looked as though she were going to fall to her knees, but, as the others watched in rapt silence, she staggered forward until she touched the stone with her outstretched hands.

The touch seemed to galvanize her, and for a long moment she stood rigid, her throat arched and her head thrown back, the palms of her hands pressed flat against the stone. Then, very suddenly, she seemed to come back to herself. Her eyes rolled back, wide and gold, and there was almost a smile on her face. Only the
sen’en’thari
could sense her soul fire had changed, deepened, to resonate with the flames wreathing the stone, and only they could see the cobweb of thin strands which now bound oracle and seer together. For seer was what ai’Raisa had become. Even her voice was different when she spoke, darker, richer, more resonant, ringing like a bell with the truth of oracle-wrapped prophecy. And when she did speak, it was looking directly at Anghara, one hand still touching the stone, one stretched out toward the Roisinani princess.

“With mortal tongue,” said Anghara, who, for the moment, had been carried away from the message so obviously meant for her by the self-fulfillment of her own small prophecy.

“In threes,” murmured ai’Jihaar, listening to the cadences. “Gul Qara often worked in threes. Now this…”

“There’s three gold
sen’en’thari here,
and a mere gray…” muttered one of the Al’haria servants who had come with the caravan and who, bred in the shadow of a
sen’thar
tower, knew the hierarchy was wrong here. But ai’Farra heard, and her chin came up firmly.

“Not a gray,” said ai’Farra. “For this, ai’Raisa, I raise you to the gold…”

“I have no color any more,” said ai’Raisa, perfectly calmly, “unless I take the red of these cliffs to which I am now so irrevocably bound. I think…I think I am no longer truly
sen’thar,
ai’Farra ma’Sayyed. I am not sure if I am even ai’Raisa any more. I am the Voice of Gul Khaima…I
am
Gul Khaima.”

This announcement was received by a moment of sepulchral silence; then ai’Farra, stubborn and unquenchable, set her jaw. “But when you come back to Al’haria…” she began.

“I will not return,” said ai’Raisa, very softly. “I think I will never return. This place holds my life; I think that, if I left it, the stone would crumble…and I would die.”

“A mortal oracle,” said the gray
sen’thar
from the village, echoing Anghara’s earlier words.

“This place is vulnerable as Gul Qara never was,” said al’Jezraal thoughtfully, seeing the whole thing from quite a different perspective.

“We will protect it,” old al’Talip spoke up unexpectedly, standing very straight. “My people will be the threshold to the oracle of Gul Khaima; none will come here who mean harm.”

At his words, al’Jezraal favored him with a long, measured golden glance. “That is well,” he said finally, nodding gravely. “I think you will be needed.”

“
Salih’al’dayan
must be done,” said ai’Farra, accepting the situation abruptly and then suddenly changing tack in her own inimitable way. Her eyes blazed once again with pride and joy as she glanced up at the stone, and its seer—also one of her own, of the Al’haria tower. “We must thank the Gods. Something suitable…al’Talip, do your folk have a ki’thar lamb to…”

“No,” said Anghara, and although her voice was very low it froze every person on the plateau into stillness, as all eyes swivelled to rest on her. “No blood. Not here. Not ever.”

At this ai’Farra drew herself up to her full height. “The Kheldrini Gods have always…”

“No blood,” said Anghara, meeting the rebellious golden eyes with a gaze that was gray steel. “Not here. This oracle will not accept death as payment for its truth.”

Not for death.
The words spun in ai’Jihaar’s mind as she remembered Gul Qara’s fall; and now, here, at another oracle, death raised its head once again and once more Anghara stood in its path.

“She is right,” said ai’Raisa suddenly, breaking a brittle silence which hung between ai’Farra and Anghara like ice.

The color in her cheeks high, ai’Farra swung to face her. “What do you mean?”

But ai’Raisa had turned to face Anghara. “This place…is not of the old Gods, is it,
an’sen’thar?
” she said hesitantly; her eyes were clouded, but if there was a trace of incomprehension there, there was none at all of doubt.

It is yours,
said ai’Jihaar, into Anghara’s mind.
It is yours, isn’t it? You were led to find this stone, you were told how to raise it, and it is your rules it stands by.

“No blood,” Anghara said again, and her words were in answer to all the questions channelled her way. “Make your sacrifice down in the village, ai’Farra, if
salih’al’dayan
must have blood flowing to make your thanks acceptable to the Gods.” She turned, held al’Talip’s eye. “Your folk must be the threshold to Gul Khaima in more ways than just standing between her and harm,” she said to the old man. “The blood stops at the edge of the water. It must not touch the rock from which the stone draws its truth. Do you understand?”

“We will make it so,” said al’Talip.

“Leave me now,” said ai’Raisa after a beat of silence, and her voice rang with the power of the oracle.

As he took his leave al’Talip bowed to the young
sen’thar
deeply, in desert-fashion. “My people will see you have all you need,” he said, his voice full of reverence. “You have but to ask, and it shall be given to you.”

One hand still curled tenderly around the stone, as though she were cradling a lover or a child, ai’Raisa gave al’Talip the other, together with a smile which had something immortal in it. “I am content,” she said, and she who had been a simple nomad girl before she had come into Al’haria’s tower spoke now as a queen. Her simple sentence was blessing, acceptance and dismissal all in one. As al’Talip walked away his face was transfigured, as though he had just seen a vision.

In stubborn silence ai’Farra went about preparing for the rites of
salih’al’dayan
once they had all regained the village shore. She sent the local
sen’thar
to procure the necessary sacrifice; no ki’thar’en could be spared from the village, and ai’Farra had to be content with a single scrawny chicken from al’Talip’s own yard. As with many
sen’thar
ceremonies, this one had always been done in secret, away from
non-sen’thar
eyes, and the village gray had a private place for such occasions. Anghara withdrew into an odd solitude on the journey back from the stone, and the three remaining
sen’en’thari
had all gone there, with their doomed chicken, by the time she came to follow them. But to her vision no place was secret, and the three gathered there showed no surprise when she suddenly materialized amongst them just as ai’Farra was beginning the rite.