Changer of Days (18 page)

“I’ll have to go back,” Kieran murmured, even as ai’Jihaar’s hai’r sank out of sight behind its sheltering red rock.

But first, they needed a place to hole up in. And quickly, before dawn, before the sun came out to weigh them down with inexorable desert heat. But the Gods, it seemed, had not entirely left them—or else blind luck rode at their heels. In the hour when the sky began to lighten, Kieran saw a narrow black slit yawn in a pillar of red stone. Hardly able to believe the possibility of a reprieve when he had already begun to despair, Kieran urged the dun closer and found the slit led to a cool, shallow hollow in the rock. It was just broad enough at the base for the dun to squeeze past; the animal wasn’t happy but entered nonetheless, although not without a couple of protesting snorts.

“You learn that from the ki’thar’en?” Kieran asked the dun lightly, rubbing its nose with an affectionate hand once it had entered the cavern. The dun lipped at him hopefully, and Kieran smiled sadly. “Sorry, friend. Nothing. I’d share if we had anything at all. We’ll go back later, you and I, and then, maybe, if we’re lucky, we can both get what we need.”

The one thing Kieran had managed to appropriate in his haste to escape was a horse-blanket which had been flung across the fence of the ki’thar pen. Now he laid this down on the cool sand for Anghara. Watching her shiver uncontrollably in the grip of whatever had claimed her in those last few minutes of the aborted ritual, Kieran tasted defeat, the bitter pill of utter helplessness. The choices, ai’Jihaar had said, all lay with Anghara, or with the Gods to whom the appeal had been made; but it had been ai’Daileh who had made the choices in the end, not Anghara. And in the aftermath, for one who had once sensed those same Gods riding the winds at his back, the Kheidrini desert was ominously empty. Kieran felt as though all the Kheidrini Gods had simply been wiped out last night, as though they had never been; there had been an instant during the ceremony when he was sure he had sensed a cool and immortal farewell, and he wondered at it. But that was a question for the scholars and desert philosophers to ponder in years to come; what was important now was Anghara, and survival.

Her hands were icy when he took them into his own to chafe some life into them, her nails blue with cold, all the more frightening when Kieran could feel the solid, almost palpable heat beginning to beat through the crack and into the cavern. Anghara kept muttering things under her breath but she used Kheidrini and her own language arbitrarily— Kieran was unable to make sense of it. He heard, “No blood, not up here, not ever; but he hadn’t been to Gul Khaima and didn’t know of Anghara’s edict. Later, she would murmur, “I remember…I remember it all…” and then she would go into what sounded like a long, broken dialogue in Kheidrini from which Kieran was able to glean only ai’Jihaar’s name.

One thing was constant. “Cold,” she moaned, returning to this again and again in between long dark silences and all the other things she had been saying, “so cold…” But the brightly woven horse blanket was all they had. When not even wrapping Anghara into a cocoon seemed to help Kieran stretched out beside her and took her in his arms, sharing the warmth of his own body.

And because he was Kieran, and she was Anghara, and this was the first time he had held her in his arms since that day in the mountains on which he had learned from his deepest soul that he loved her, he embraced her gently. He stroked the bright hair away from her flushed face and murmured soft words of love and encouragement. “It’s all right,” he whispered, willing himself to believe it, trying not to think of possible pursuit searching for them even now, of the dun tracks in the sand which could lead pursuers straight to this sanctuary. “It will be all right.” And it seemed to work, because she quietened down and settled first into a doze and then into a deeper sleep. And Kieran, on whose heart her small hand rested, lay very still and wondered that she didn’t wake at the hammering of it beneath her fingers.

He couldn’t rest for watching her sleep in his arms; his head still ached impossibly, and a day without water didn’t help matters any. He had ample time to think, though, and the one conundrum he was unable to solve was how to halve himself when night fell. He knew he had to ride back to the hai’r but that would force him to leave Anghara alone. Taking her back with him was unthinkable, and not going himself for at least some necessities of survival, if not to seek out ai’Jihaar or al’Tamar and ask for help, would be suicide.

His arm soon went numb, where Anghara’s weight rested on it, but he wouldn’t move, and perhaps wake her, for the world; eventually he drifted off into a shallow doze. When he “woke,” it was hours later, the light filtering in through the crack much more golden, shading already into the ruddiness of a desert sunset. He was hungry, and his mouth was furry from lack of moisture. The dun seemed to have the same problem; it was the animal which had woken him, crossing over to push at him with a long aristocratic snout, managing to look at the same time both imperiously demanding and somehow pathetic. Glancing down at Anghara Kieran saw she was awake, and watching him in much the same way.

“Are you all right?” he asked, instinctively drawing her closer, reaching out to touch a cheek of waxy pallor.

“I will be,” she said, “I think.” The weakness of her voice smote him to the heart; she gave him a smile. “I couldn’t bring myself to wake you, but I’ve been lying here watching you for some time. My poor Kieran, what I’ve put you through…”

“I won’t say it’s been easy,” he said, his mouth quirking at the corners; now, in retrospect, some of their troubles had been leavened with lighter moments which made the memories bearable. “And it just got harder. I have to go back, Anghara—for something. For
anything
! When I ran from that place I ran with you alone; they had stripped me of my blade, and even that is still in the hai’r. We need waterskins; we desperately need water. I don’t know if they’ve been looking for us, but if they have it’s only a matter of time before they find us…”

“And you escaped sacrifice, a dedicated offering— ai’Daileh will not let it go at that.”

“I have to go back,” he repeated. “You…I hate leaving you…”

“Go, do what you must. I shall be here.”

They had to wait until the very threshold of the twilight before Kieran would ride out; the night would, in any case, be lighter, tonight there would be a sliver of moon gleaming amongst the stars, and Anghara, at least, knew how the clear desert air could amplify moonlight. It would make Kieran’s task both easier and much harder—easier to find the hai’r in the wide country empty of familiar landmarks, but also easier for him to be observed by anyone who might be looking. Anghara worried about it; if she had possessed her full faculties she would have been able to blur Kieran so that he would be harder to see. But she could not, and Kieran, whose constant and nagging headache was a legacy of the power she had poured into him, didn’t know how to tap into it.

Anghara felt strong enough to walk with him when he roused himself to leave. She looked so much like a wraith in the wash of moonlight, still pale with a residue of day which lingered in the air, that Kieran was almost moved not to go, he was far from certain he could count on finding her waiting when he returned. Almost. But he knew he had no choice, none at all—unless it were to stay here and die with her.

“I’ll leave you the dagger…”

“Take it,” she said, closing his fingers around the weapon he held out to her. “If anyone finds me—I wouldn’t have the strength to wield it. And it would make me feel better to know you had it. You might need it more. And I…I am in the hand of the Gods.”

“I’m not sure…” Kieran began, frowning, after a beat of silence.

She understood his unfinished sentence instantly. Her fingers, surprisingly strong for their transparent appearance, closed on his hand. “What?” she demanded. “I felt something, also…I thought I heard…you called me Brynna last night…”

“Yes…and the
sen’en’thari
seemed to know more about the name than I realized. That was what gave me a chance to run. But you—you looked at me as I said it, you said you remembered…what did you remember, Anghara?”

“Everything,” she said, and tears welled into her eyes. “The name…al’Khur gave it to me, a long time ago.”

“How could he? It was your name in Cascin, long before you knew what Gods walked these sands…”

“But he did. My mother chose my identity for Cascin; I don’t know what made her choose that name, but I think hers was the Sight of prophecy and power. All I know is, al’Khur knew the meaning of that name when our paths crossed in the Khar’i’id. He then put a geas on me that I should forget it until the time came for me to claim it. And last night…last night I remembered everything that passed between us when I faced al’Khur for ai’Jihaar’s life. Do you know what he called me then, Kieran?
Little Sister.
The Lord of Death called me his little sister.”

“He called you Brynna?” Kieran said, still bewildered by this new piece of the puzzle.

“Not quite,” said Anghara. “It was a far older name.”

“What name?”

“Changer,” said Anghara. “That is what
bre’hin
means. Change. And at the end of every Age a Changer of Days comes to Kheldrin, and the land is broken, and made anew. And the old Gods are broken also, and put aside, and the Changer is the harbinger of those who are to rule thereafter.” She smiled, and the smile this time was distant, remote, oddly alien. “Do you remember how I told you, back on the moors, that I was not quite human any more?”

“I remember,” Kieran said. “And I remember telling you that you were. You
are.
Whatever else you might be.”

“I don’t deserve you,” she said after a pause, her voice changed again—lighter, full of a gentle teasing, yet brimful of gratitude and appreciation.

Kieran, halfway through reaching his hand to touch her cheek and offer a response to that last remark, froze suddenly and the caress turned into a warning brush of his fingers on her shoulder.

“What is it?” she asked, picking up his unease.

“I thought I heard…it’s almost like a song.”

She relaxed. A little.
“El’lah afrit,”
she said. “The sand sings. It sometimes happens in the evenings; perhaps the weather is due to change.”

He was almost ready to accept this, but then stiffened again, peering out across the sand. “No. Wait. Listen.”

A tense moment passed; and in the silence which followed they both heard clearly the sound which had warned Kieran—a soft disgruntled grumble which could only have come from a ki’thar. It was close. Too close. Kieran’s right hand flew to where his sword customarily hung, and found empty air; it clenched into a fist, and then dropped helplessly to his side.

“Kerun!” he whispered, invoking the God who presided over disasters in Roisinan. “Too late…”

The dagger was in his hand, at the ready, but it was pitifully inadequate as a weapon and Kieran knew it. And if they managed to entangle him in their accursed spider web again…

But the voice which came floating out just before its owner emerged from behind the red mesa which held Kieran’s little cavern was familiar; and so were its words. “Peace,” it said. “I am unarmed.”

Kieran’s arm dropped; he observed distantly that his hand was shaking. “Are you a
jinn
of the desert, al’Tamar ma’Hariff, that you come bringing salvation every time I believe there is nothing beyond the next moment but death?”

“I go where the Gods send me,” al’Tamar said, smiling.

“And where I lead him,” said another familiar but thoroughly unexpected voice.

“Y
ou shouldn’t be riding,” Anghara said gently, coming forward to help ai’Jihaar off the ki’thar whom the old an’sen’thar had just made to kneel.

“I am the best judge of that,” ai’Jihaar said haughtily. “While ai’Daileh has gone, she has left one of the gray sisters in the hai’r. I knew one or both of you would have to return sooner or later but I needed to see you at once, and it was hardly practicable to bring you and Kieran back to the hai’r while ai’Daileh’s minion remains.”

“We brought water,” said al’Tamar more practically, approaching with a waterskin. Kieran was the closer, but he indicated Anghara with an almost imperceptible nod of his head and al’Tamar passed the waterskin to her first.

“We need to talk,” said ai’Jihaar as Anghara tilted the waterskin and took a deep draft.

Kieran’s head came round as though ai’Jihaar had slapped a lead rein on him. She had, in a way. Even as he fled from the stone altar, the guilt of having caused the failure of Anghara’s healing had quietly begun gnawing at him. But ai’Ji-haar knew this, of course. She knew everything. Even now, as Kieran turned to look at her, she reached for a muffled package hanging from the saddle of her ki’thar. “I believe you left this behind, Kieran,” she said, passing the long, slim shape to him with a sure hand.

He accepted the parcel and unwrapped it to discover he was holding his own sword. It was set, however, into a new belt, one made from soft but strong ki’thar skin. A gift from the desert; a subtle way of telling him no blame attached to him, at least not from this quarter. And ai’Jihaar was still a powerful friend in this hostile land.

His hand closed over the gift. “I cheated your Gods,” he said evenly.

“Have you?” ai’Jihaar asked. “There was a time you used to be able to sense their presence. Can you now?”

“Not for some time,” Kieran said, his voice low. “But I am no measure of…”

“I sensed them,” al’Tamar said. “I sensed them for the last time when you called Anghara…by that other name. After that…the desert has been empty; except for a faint and distant echo of al’Zaan who is Lord of the Desert and remains so for as long as it endures, whatever comes to pass. But the rest…they are gone.”

“He is right,” said Anghara, who had drunk her fill and now handed the waterskin to Kieran. He accepted it mechanically with one hand, the other still occupied by the ki’thar belt and his sword. “They are gone. There are too many things I haven’t been able to see or feel of late—but I felt that. I felt the instant of their going.”

“Yes, ai’Bre’hinnah,” said ai’Jihaar. “Now you are the only God of the Twilight Country…until you raise others for us.”

“The Changer is not a God,” Anghara said quickly, turning her head to stare out into the desert. “You always told me the Changer is more like ai’Shahn, a spirit, a messenger…”

“Yes. But God, also, because in the void of the Changer’s coming, until new Gods are born, there are no other. It is of you and al’Zaan that the new Kheldrini Gods will be made; it has always been so when a Changer comes. But because you are who you are…I think you are also Changer for your own land, Anghara of Roisinan. You may well find that the Gods you raise here will supplant your Kerun and Avanna. There will be many things transfigured when you return to your land.”

Kieran suddenly remembered a disembodied voice he thought he had dreamed in the palm-fringed hai’r only a few nights ago—the distant cold voice of the stars, al’Khur’s reply to ai’Jihaar’s prayer.
She has forgotten, as I bid her; in one day she will remember it all,
the disembodied voice had answered.
And when she does…her life is no longer in my hands.

It had been the truth. It had not been Anghara’s existence which had been at stake here, after all; it had been al’Khur’s own.

“But if they are gone,” Ahghara said slowly, turning back, with tears sparkling in her eyes, “does that mean I have forfeited every chance of gaining back that which I lost?”

“No,” said ai’Jihaar gently. “Just the opposite. It would have taken strength I did not have to reach out to the Gods and demand your healing from them. Now, now that I know what you are…
hai,
but you never mentioned that name to me, in our years together! But I should have known it was no accident, that meeting in the Dance…Now that I know what you truly are, there is no need to go further than yourself for help. You are all that is left.”

It was Kieran who reacted first. “Wait,” he said quickly. “She cannot. There is little left in her but heart. What do you mean to do?”

“You are right,” said ai’Jihaar. “It is to ai’Bre’hinnah to whom the appeal will be made. It is you who will be called upon to pay the price—to give back all you have been carrying for her for so long.”

So. It was to be no different from before—sacrifice, and to alien Gods. But this time Kieran saw his path clear, and there were no shadows upon it. He bowed his head in the moonlight before the old desert priestess, submitting. “I’m ready,” he said.

He had been standing very close to the
an’sen’thar;
quite unexpectedly, ai’Jihaar reached out and traced his jaw with a delicate, blue-veined hand. “Yes,” she murmured, her voice thoughtful. “I think you are. Come, let us go inside.”

No one questioned how she knew of the cave behind them as she led the way in, leaving al’Tamar to hobble the ki’thar’en and follow her and the two young Roisinani inside. Her nephew seemed to have been briefed in advance, because he entered the small cave in silence and immediately began a series of preparations. The only time he spoke was when Kieran would have risen to help him as he began to kindle a small fire in the center of the cave; al’Tamar’s voice had been no more than a whisper, but it was enough to send the other back to his place. “It is not your turn yet. Wait.”

When his fire was ready, they sat down in a circle, leaving a space for al’Tamar to claim when he was done, as if this had been rehearsed many times. A sweet incense stick was lit, and Kieran’s eyes stung with unexpected tears as he was reminded of the pungent perfume of desert sage, a scent with special meaning for him. It had never failed to prod memories into wakefulness, sharp as a dagger, bright as a flame. He would have asked, but already there was a tension in the air, a sense of ritual, something too vast and brooding to be disturbed with insignificant questions.

Her voice quite changed from her usual cadences ai’Jihaar said, “ai’Bre’hinnah, Changer of Days who walks Kheldrin again, woken by Khar’i’id, blessed by al’Khur, we come to you to ask your aid. Grant us the gift of your power.”

And Kieran, in whose hand Anghara’s own cold, small hand rested, felt its skin grow warm. The flickering shadows in the cave parted, as if a curtain had been drawn from the face of a sun; and in the midst of this flamed the creature Kieran thought he had seen when he first uttered the fateful name in ai’Jihaar’s hai’r. Bright and golden, cool fire flowing over great white wings, shining from painfully familiar soft gray eyes which were looking directly at him, with compassion, with understanding. Bereft of words, sharply aware that somehow, in an earthly plane, he was holding this winged goddess’s hand in his own, Kieran could only gaze mutely at the apparition.

It, too, was silent for the space of a few heartbeats—and then it spoke. Its voice was high and distant, Anghara’s, and yet not. A voice which only al’Khur had heard until this moment—heard, and recognized, and bowed to its right to demand back a life already taken.

“I must first accept it back from the place where it has been given for safekeeping,” the goddess said. “Will its keeper return it?”

Kieran found his voice, “Willingly.”

“That promise may mean more than you can know in the hour in which you give it. I ask you again, will you give up the power?”

“It was never mine, to claim or not,” said Kieran. “If I carried something, for a while, which another found too great a burden, I am content. Ask what you will of me, for it has always been yours.”

“So be it,” said the goddess, echoing his own words of long ago.

Kieran had been linked to al’Tamar on his other side, as Anghara had been to ai’Jihaar in her turn, and the two Kheldrini to one another, completing the circle. Now he found the circle broken without being able to remember how it had happened. Both his hands were held fast in small fingers, as a pair of great white wings whispered down through the air and folded around him, cutting out the play of shadows on the cavern walls, the leaping flames, the sight of al’Tamar to his left. What came was darkness, darkness studded with a million points of bright golden light, like an expanse of desert sky. It was a painful beauty, and it fell upon him like a cloak, settled on his shoulders, into him, through him. Something that had been within him surged to meet it, feeding the golden lights, pouring light like lava into the darkness and obliterating it until everything blazed white and gold, lancing Kieran’s eyes with physical pain even through closed eyelids. And the light was like a knife. Yes, there was sacrifice, because it came cutting down upon him, piercing him, cleaving him apart and prising him open, carving channels down which the golden glory that was power ran like water and collected in great deep pools in the heart of him. And in the shelter of the vast white wings Anghara drank back what had been taken from her, and Kieran could feel the light leaving him as though it had been lifeblood, draining away, fading. It was an exquisite pain—a white agony delicately balanced with the joy of watching Anghara’s eyes grow brighter until there was nothing in the world except the light of her power—a white and golden face framed with a cloud of burnished hair, and a gentle touch of immense white wings.

At one point he felt a sharp pain in his hand where once he had laid it open with a slim black dagger, asking the now vanished Gods not to claim their sacrifice from one who was not strong enough to give it. He felt something warm and liquid run down his fingers. Without looking down he knew the old Kheldrini Gods were claiming one last sacrifice—and this, after all, was blood which had already been freely offered. But Anghara had tightened her hands around his, and the light blazed more golden than ever.
No. No blood. Not ever again. Not for death.

It was hers to demand, now. Hers to state what sacrifices would be accepted. Hers, finally, to honor the conviction on the basis of which she had once, years ago, refused to become
an’sen’thar.
The same basis on which she had given Kheldrin its second oracle, forbidding the ancient Gods to approach without also surrendering the very rites and rituals which made them what they were. And here in the desert cavern ai’Bre’hinnah chose to heal as Anghara Kir Hama had once healed in a hai’r on the edge of Beit el’Sihaya—cleanly, instinctively, thinking the hurt whole and making it so through force of will. Of power. The pain disappeared; even the trickle of blood on Kieran’s fingers was gone in the time it took for him to draw a breath. And then, without warning, he was adrift, released; the white wings were lifted, the golden light drained from him. For a moment he was blind, seeing nothing but darkness, much as he might have done had he walked into a dark room after staring directly into the sun; he was aware of a supporting hand, and that it was far too delicate and fine-boned to belong to Anghara.

“I’m all right,” he whispered, and his voice sounded strange even to his own ears. With a gentle pressure of his hand, al’Tamar signalled he had heard and understood, but showed no signs of moving away. Kieran’s assurances were obviously not enough to disprove the physical evidence.

As his sight came blurring back Kieran could see that the Goddess they called ai’Bre’hinnah was still with them—but now she was a discrete entity in her own right, far more solid than a beautiful vision, her hands held out over her earthly twin. Anghara, looking small and curiously crippled beside this vast winged incarnation of herself, raised her own hands to meet the palms of the Goddess. They touched; Anghara cried out, whether in pain or in joy it was hard to tell. The air outside trembled with pearly light, rang with an echo of distant bells, a memory of a land far from these red sands. And then it was over—the fire guttering, the incense stick burned down to a smoldering nub, a thin wash of moonlight pencilled on the floor of the cavern, sharp and slender like a silver
tei’han.
She whom they called the Changer was gone; there was only Anghara, kneeling beside the remnants of the fire. Just for a moment Kieran glimpsed the nimbus of gold, which wreathed her head—a final, parting gift from the goddess—then he was back into his own body, his own senses, and the auras that were the soul fire of the Sighted were once again hidden from his dull human sight.

He had been strong for so long, when Anghara could not be; now, it seemed, the situation was reversed. It took a major effort of will for Kieran to straighten up and sit back, with every bone, nerve and sinew in his body screaming protest. Anghara, on the other hand, was transformed. She sat with her head high, her shoulders back; this was the first time Kieran had seen the queen for whom he had dared so much in the full glory of her power. In this moment, she was Kir Hama, and royal. And then, as she turned, she reached out to him, and the wave of sudden weakness in his bones had little to with the ordeal he had just been through and everything to do with the blaze of love and concern in her eyes. She looked at him for a moment, mutely—just looked at him, for some things are best said with silence. And then he smiled, and held out his hand, and she took it, and laid it against her cheek.

It could have been a moment for many truths to be revealed, for they had been alone within it, oblivious of their companions; but ai’Jihaar, with unaccustomed bad timing, shattered it with an artlessness which, in her, seemed coldly deliberate. Because Anghara was too full of the joy of her newly regained senses, and Kieran too drained from the damage to his own, they let it go—and the moment faded, was lost. Then al’Tamar was at Kieran’s elbow with a cup of steaming
khaf
which had been inexplicably brewed in the midst of all the drama, and ai’Jihaar claimed Anghara’s attention.