Changer of Days (17 page)

“Give me Anghara’s hand,” ai’Jihaar said. Kieran relinquished it, with sudden misgivings; ai’Jihaar felt his fingers tremble and sensed his hesitation. She spared a final smile for him. “It will be all right. Go.”

Suddenly ai’Daileh’s strong voice rose in a strange chant, and Kieran retreated hastily until he felt the rough bole of one of the palm trees behind his back. He saw the young priestess raise a black dagger, eerily similar to the one he had himself held in his hands; so many things were coming clear now, as he watched for the first time the ritual in which the blade belonged. He watched the young gray lift the white lamb onto the altar; he saw ai’Daileh’s grimly gleaming blade descend, and rise gory from the sacrificial altar, the priestess’s golden robe bearing no mark from the Gods’ blood.

There is blood on my sleeve
…

He saw Anghara flinch, heard her cry out something, stretch out a hand toward the altar, and then stagger, almost fall; it was all ai’Jihaar could do to keep her standing. There was no letup in the drums and ai’Daileh went across to Anghara, lifted her head and stared intently into her eyes—what she saw didn’t appear to please her. She went into a huddle with ai’Jihaar, bracing Anghara upright between them. Kieran’s head ached fiercely; the drums throbbed in a cloud of pungent, muddled scents of
khaf,
lais and exotic incense they had begun burning. The resulting ferment found a dark and quiet place just behind his temples and hissed there like a nest of adders. His eyes had begun to water; he closed them for a moment, drawing deep breaths, leaning the back of his head against the rough bark.

When he looked again, Anghara had been passed to two of the grays to support her, and both the golds, the old and the young, had gone to the altar. The gray with the birdcage had gone with them. The birds within were oddly quiet, sitting still, as though understanding their fate and resigned to it. They made no protest as each
an’sen’thar
reached out and chose one to hold between her hands.

Kieran didn’t understand the words being spoken. He didn’t have to. All around him the air was growing still and solid, much as he remembered it from the Shaymir desert. There was power here—but it was dark, and none of it belonged to Anghara, who stood swaying imperceptibly to the beat of the black drums, oblivious…except inasmuch as she appeared to have shaken off the support of the gray sisters and stood unaided beside the altar stone.

Was it working, then? Was her strength beginning to be restored to her?

At the altar, the two broken-winged birds were brought together upon the stone, breast to breast. First ai’Daileh spoke over them, voice low and smoky, then ai’Jihaar responded, slowly, softly; holding their birds with one hand, both lifted a black dagger high in the other, and then both daggers came flashing down in concert, piercing both birds. Blood, looking black and viscous in the firelight, welled out through the white and gold feathers; the daggers pinned the two birds together, touching at the place where the blade entered the hilt, like a cross.

The fires exploded into sparks. A smile crept onto Anghara’s face, but her eyes were still empty, glassy, and the smile was unpleasant. The air thickened unbearably; Kieran thought he could see it coalescing into long white streamers before his eyes, like mist, or the ragged remnants of ghosts. He was breathing in gasps; something heavy crushed down on his shoulders, bowing them, buckling his knees. He resisted, clenching his fists, lifting his head defiantly to stare up at the star-strewn sky.
You are not my Gods. I do not bend my knees to you.

But others had. One of the grays was down; another buckled to one knee even as Kieran’s eyes swept past her; and then, very slowly, ai’Jihaar seemed to crumple into herself as though her robe was suddenly hanging on empty air. She folded soundlessly, like a wraith; Kieran heard someone cry out in anguish, and was dimly aware that it had been himself. Anghara did not react.

But ai’Daileh did. She knelt beside the old
sen’thar,
a slim, long-fingered hand coming to rest upon ai’Jihaar’s closed eyes. Then she rose. A step across to Anghara, who seemed to turn and laugh; and then, slow motion, in time to the driving beat of the drums and through the slow, thick air, came the sound of ai’Daileh’s voice.

Once again Kieran couldn’t understand her words, but the darkness of her voice woke the knowledge of death that slept within him and he felt the coldness of it freeze his bones. He could read it in ai’Daileh’s eyes, across the space which divided them, as she turned to face him. She had offered sacrifice to the Kheldrini Gods, but it was death itself she had called into this circle, not al’Khur, its Lord.

Kieran’s death.

“S
he means to kill you.”

The words were so precisely an echo of Kieran’s own thought he believed for a moment he had himself uttered aloud what was in his mind. But then the real identity of the soft, urgent voice was gradually borne in upon him—al’Tamar. He had the presence of mind not to turn. He remainedstill, eyes locked with the Kheldrini priestess; only his lips moved, all the shock of the moment in his voice.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came when I saw who was to lead the caravan,” said the other swiftly from the deeper shadow of the lais bushes just beyond the palm trees. “Kieran…”

“I won’t lie down and die,” Kieran whispered fiercely. “Not easily. Kerun and Avanna! I am no ki’thar lamb to feed the Kheldrini Gods’ bloodlust!”

A stray thought returned to taunt him—he remembered vowing to himself, not so long ago, that he would be willing to lay down his life for Anghara, who was his queen, whom he loved. Was this not, in fact, what ai’Daileh would ask from him?

No. Not like this. Fighting for her, yes, gladly, offering his strength and power, all that he was, to what she could become. Not this. Not this useless spending of a life not yet done, a meaningless spilling of blood into an empty wilderness. There was still so much to do…

And yet…if he could be sure her life would be bought back for Roisinan…

No.

It had all taken a fraction of a second, all the arguments, counter-arguments, justification, denial—it all streamed through his mind, fell into place, and was locked in. No.

A fraction of a second was all ai’Daileh needed. When Kieran looked toward the altar again, it was to see two of the remaining gray sisters, attended by two of the servants who had accompanied the caravan, making their way steadily toward him. He straightened, loosening his blade.

Am I to fight women?
he thought, appalled at the prospect.

“I will stand with you,” came the desperate, whispered voice of al’Tamar.

“No,” Kieran said quickly. “Don’t throw your own life away here tonight. What of your Rami?”

And there was no time for more, for they were upon him, and he saw that one of the two women carried, rather gingerly, a large pottery jar and the other bore a thin, night-colored net. The servants came empty-handed, and were somehow all the more menacing for that.

“Beware of the pot!” hissed the disembodied voice from behind Kieran, and then it was too late for anything except fighting for his life. The one with the pot had opened it and hurled its contents in Kieran’s direction even as al’Tamar had uttered his warning. The two large yellow scorpions that had been inside, each almost the length of Kieran’s forearm, were not pleased; their temper was dangerous, and they were poised to strike at the first thing that stood in their path.

Kieran twisted out of the way. One of the scorpions landed softly beside his foot. It righted itself quickly, planting all its feet squarely in the sand, and paused for a moment, its venomous tail lifted and waving slowly over its back as it waited to get its bearings. The gray
sen’thar
with the net was flanking Kieran dangerously, with the servant at her heels, but even as he turned to glance around, the scuffle of his foot on the sand decided the scorpion and it lunged in his direction.

Kieran had his dagger out, stalking the killer who was stalking him. As the scorpion moved so did he, leaping aside and turning to stab the dagger, with a wet sucking noise, into the sand at his feet squarely through the scorpion’s broad yellow back, snatching his hand away as the poisonous tail whipped back and forth in its frenzied death throes.

He felt the net fall about him like a whisper of night even as he straightened, looking around frantically for the second scorpion.

The net was thin, but inhumanly strong, made of material which looked uncannily like jin’aaz silk. If this was so, then this was the stuff of a spider’s web, turned back to serve its original function—catching prey. His hands were tangled in it, and it twisted around him even as he struggled to free himself, biting into his skin with unexpected viciousness. But it seemed to be a weapon of capture, not captivity; having served its purpose, it was removed once the servant had pinioned Kieran’s arms behind his back with a more conventional cord. There were plenty of hands lent to this work; if some of them were soft and female that didn’t mean they lacked strength or power, and Kieran’s struggles went for naught. Someone had also removed his sword-belt; he felt curiously naked without it. He had been quite successfully distracted; now, the struggle done, Kieran took a moment to wonder dispassionately what had become of the second scorpion.

Now that her prey was safely confined, ai’Daileh, who had taken no part in his capture, approached him, a sardonic smile on her face.

“You gave your word to ai’Jihaar,” Kieran muttered in his own tongue, not expecting her to understand, but it was not in him to go in acquiescent silence into the darkness.

“I swore not to harm her,” said ai’Daileh softly and quickly, in Roisinani. She nodded her head in Anghara’s direction, without allowing her eyes to leave Kieran’s face. “I also swore to do my utmost to help restore a lost sister to the Way from which she had strayed—or been pushed. So far, the Gods have not responded to our offerings. We need more.”

For a moment Kieran was too stunned to reply, and then recovered with a sense of bleak inevitability. “I am not,” he said, “o serpent of the desert, a wandering interloper who is fitting fodder for your Gods. I came with a queen who is also of your
an’sen’en’thari,
to seek help in your land. I am friend and servant to the very one in whose name you would kill me. And while I would willingly give my life for her, I will not let you spend it like this. Anghara would not will it and ai’Jihaar would not have permitted what you intend.”

“She is an empty vessel waiting for the Gods to fill her,” said ai’Daileh, her voice dark and mystic.

“And I am what is left of her power!” Kieran said.

“You do not know of what you speak,” she said loftily, from the full height of the pride and the arrogance of her lineage and calling.

“Are you so sure that you do?” Kieran asked bitterly.

If only his head wasn’t aching…half the thoughts that filled his mind were hardly his own, full as he was of Anghara’s pain and confusion, and he had to concentrate. There was no knowing what had hit ai’Jihaar, a simple surfeit of lais which had finally caught up with her or some backlash of the power which surrounded them, or how long she would remain out of this game—ai’Daileh’s senior, Kieran’s ally. In the meantime, he was on his own—and if ai’Daileh succeeded in destroying him, anything might still happen. Even with al’Tamar in the shadows, waiting to see if he needed to show, at the bitter end, his own hand, and perhaps throw into dust and ashes the carefully cultivated illusions with which he had so far been protected from ai’Daileh’s ilk.

Despite her command of his language, ai’Daileh had neither the patience nor the inclination to converse with an eastern barbarian she would rather see under her knife. She turned her back, imperious as any queen, not even deigning to answer.

“Bring him,” she said briefly.

And then there was no hope. Kieran lifted his eyes to Anghara’s face, still flushed with fever; she was standing alone, swaying gently to the rhythm of the
Rab’bat Rah’honim,
the black drums which had kept up their inexorable beat. He remembered her laughter; the bright spark of life and the deep pools of gentleness within her gray eyes, legacy of Rima, the girl from Cascin who had married the King Under the Mountain. And later, the gray-blue madness Sif had put into those same eyes, the madness which was there now—laughing, yes, but laughing as Anghara Kir Hama had never laughed. With gloating, not joy; with fury, not passion. Destructively.

“Anghara,” he said, his voice low.

It was as though she couldn’t hear him, as though he didn’t exist.

Her sharp white teeth bared in a feral smile, ai’Daileh turned. “Do you begin to see at last?” she said. “You are nothing, until you are the sacrifice.”

“I am what was in her,” he said, suddenly utterly certain of the truth of ai’Jihaar’s interpretation—which she had not conveyed, had not had the time to convey, to ai’Daileh.

Because now, in this moment of truth, he remembered the instant in which it had happened.

On the walls of Miranei at dawn, when Kieran had faced Sif’s Chancellor, Fodrun, once Dynan’s Second General whom now many knew by the whispered title of Kingmaker. Fodrun, Anghara’s jailor in Sif’s name, had taken her and held her as a hostage and a shield against the naked sword of his enemy. Kieran now recalled the scene with a preter-natural clarity. Pain had washed across Anghara’s face as she had tried to reach for Sight, pain which had stabbed his own soul. He had raised his sword and brought it down upon Fodrun, cleaving through the older man’s defenses as though they had been made by a greenstick boy, not a master of the blade. A blow of pure power, owing nothing to training or prowess gained through practice—and the power had not been his. It had poured into him from without, from that place which Anghara had tried to touch in her blindness and could not, and which he, because of his love for her, could. Did.

He remembered coming to himself afterward, almost dazed, gazing at Fodrun’s corpse as though unsure who had killed the man at his feet. He remembered this was the hour in which Anghara had finally admitted she was blind, neither realizing that she had found another set of eyes through which she could See.

He looked upon her again, this girl whom he loved, who now looked so little like the captive who had walked the battlements of Miranei.

It was Midsummer’s Eve back in Roisinan, the festivities of Cerdiad probably well into their swing. On another night like this, years ago, a little girl had broken the spell which had guarded her own existence because a bright blade had been raised over one whom she loved. That little girl filled Kieran’s eyes, his heart.

“Anghara,” he said again, meeting with little response. And then, desperately, forced to bend over the altarstone under the pressure of many hands and seeing the shadow of the black dagger rise above him, unable to fend this knife off as he had once tried to do with another lifted against him by Ansen of Cascin, he put his heart and soul into a final cry. A name, long forgotten. “Brynna.
Brynna!
”

The effect, although totally unexpected, was all Kieran could have hoped for. A sibilant sigh swept through his captors; hands dropped off him,
sen’en’thari
backed away. The drums faltered in their beating, stopped. And in the silence, three things. A whisper, whirling from mouth to mouth like an invocation—
ai’Bre’hinnah, ai’Bre’hinnah.
The God-thick atmosphere in the hai’r breaking with a sound like a bell, the air within cold and sharp with something like pain, sorrow, or regret at inevitable partings. Anghara, her head coming round with an audible snap, staring at him for a long moment—a long, completely lucid moment—before lifting her hands to her suddenly bloodless cheeks and uttering “I remember!” before her knees buckled underneath her. For a brief instant Kieran thought he could see someone—something—else like an after-image in the bright air above her: a creature of golden light spreading enormous white wings, and her face was Anghara’s.

An unseen hand—it might well have been al’Tamar’s, because the rest seemed paralyzed by the name of a girl who had never really existed, except as a mask for an imperilled young queen—sliced through Kieran’s bonds. He took a moment to glance at the round-mouthed faces surrounding him. He didn’t understand what had just happened, but knew he had been handed a chance which would not be repeated. He might have been costing Anghara her immortal soul, but she was in far more peril with ai’Daileh and her treacherous oaths. Without hesitating for longer than it took for a moment of regret, and another of violent self-blame (without his ministrations ai’Jihaar might have been better able to withstand the rigors of this night), Kieran scooped Anghara into his arms and raced toward the ki’thar pen.

The gate was open—ai’Tamar, again—but none of the ki’thar’en were saddled. Perhaps they could be ridden thus by someone who knew how. Kieran had neither the skill nor the time to look for ki’thar tackle, but ai’Daileh’s dun was another matter.

“I’m sorry,” Kieran murmured as he reached to rub the soft nose before rigging a makeshift rein from the animal’s halter and somehow clambering, with Anghara still in his arms, upon the dun’s bare back. He wasn’t sure to whom he was apologizing—to Anghara, for taking her from what was perhaps her only chance of salvation; to the dun, for the inevitability of a slow death in the open desert; perhaps, even to ai’Daileh herself, whose treasure he was stealing. The dun snorted, wary of the sudden double weight on its back and the strange riders it was being asked to bear. But Kieran had always had a way with horses and these exotic Kheldrini dun’en were no different from the animals he had ridden in Roisinan in one respect—ai’Daileh’s dun trusted the gentle hands which guided it, and obeyed. The animal and its two riders passed silently through the gate of the ki’thar pen and vanished into the desert night, the dun’s blond mane gleaming in the bright starlight.

Kieran was bitterly aware he might very well have killed them both. Unless Anghara, who knew more about this desert than he, came to herself properly—and soon—they were in desperate trouble. It was unlikely that passing nomads would be as proficient in Roisinani as the
sen’en’thari,
even if they could be persuaded to listen to
fram’man
without bolting; and if they were unable to ask for help, they were truly on their own. Kieran didn’t know where to look for water. He would only have been digging them deeper if by some chance he did stumble upon it, for he was blissfully unaware of the guiding principle that here in the desert water always belonged to someone and permission to use it had to be asked and paid for. Even if he had thought to try and make it back to the mountains, there was no al’Khur to ride at their back. They had no supplies, nothing except a dun whose strength would give out before they were halfway and a girl still weak in the eddies of power woven around her. Even Kieran’s sword belt was still in the camp—their only weapon was the small dagger he carried concealed in his boot, and without burnouses they would be easy prey for the desert sun.