The Hidden Queen

by Alma Alexander

  “I’ll have us down one of the smaller streets in a moment,” murmured ai’Jihaar very softly, so that Anghara barely heard her. “It should be easier then. There should be…oh, al’Khur!” The sudden recoil came an instant before something slammed at Anghara’s own mind, a dark madness which pulsed in their direction from somewhere…somewhere above them. Anghara echoed ai’Jihaar’s gasp of pain, snapping her watering eyes upward.

  It was bad. Very bad—ai’Jihaar felt the black silence of shock as it descended like night on Anghara’s bright presence beside her, even if it hadn’t been for the sudden tight, bone-crushing grip in which the girl had her arm. But it was something that escaped ai’Jihaar’s own senses, blurred them into dangerous fuzziness. For a moment she had known what real blindness meant.

  “Go,” urged ai’Jihaar softly, for they had stopped dead in their tracks. “Take the next turning. Get us out of here.”

  Anghara obeyed, but she moved jerkily, slowly, her breathing uneven and harsh. In the quieter atmosphere of the side street ai’Jihaar recaptured some of her composure, but under her hand Anghara was still rigid. Reaching up toward Anghara’s face, ai’Jihaar touched her cheek very gently.

  “Tell me,” the Kheldrini woman said, and although the voice was very gentle the words were a command.

  “A cage,” said Anghara, expressionlessly. “They have strung up a cage above the street. There are three women inside. One may be dead, or unconscious—she lies there, unmoving, and the other two trample her in their madness. And they are mad…” She shuddered violently, and then again.

  Taking both of Anghara’s hands into her own small-boned ones, ai’Jihaar squeezed them with unexpected strength. “There is more,” she said. “Tell me.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then ai’Jihaar became aware that Anghara was weeping. “They had no eyes,” she said at last, and ai’Jihaar understood.

  “They were Sighted,” she said flatly.

  Anghara’s hands were cold, her palms clammy. “Sif,” she forced out through stiff lips.

  “Come,” ai’Jihaar said, taking charge. “I know a place of safety where we can rest. Tomorrow, we look for a ship to bear us across the sea.”

  She felt Anghara grow very still. “We?” she asked softly.

  There was no more doubt in her mind—ai’Jihaar’s Gods had spoken. Her voice was very gentle when she spoke again.

  “Sheriha’drin cannot shelter you any longer,” she said. “There is no place in this land strong enough to offer you sanctuary in this hour. Sometimes love alone is not enough.”

  15

  It was a Kheldrini ship they boarded in the morning. It stood out from the other ships in the harbor in much the same way a Kheldrini face would stand out in a crowd of Roisinani. The ship from the desert country was smaller and narrower than its Roisinan counterparts, built, much as everything else from that land seemed to be, for endurance and speed. It was crewed by a handful of Kheldrini men, clad in narrow sand-colored trousers that fitted them like a second skin, their bronze torsos bare, their long hair tied back out of their way with thongs while they grappled with the complexities of wind and sail. Still, for creatures born and bred in oceans of sand, they seemed to be quietly efficient upon the water. The ship, with its cargo of grain from Roisinan and two passengers, glided out of Calabra at mid-morning.

  Anghara had spent most of the previous night weeping quietly and, it seemed, quite inconsolably for the sight she had seen in Calabra’s street. Things were worse even than this; in the place where ai’Jihaar had taken them they received other news, and it seemed that the cage was only a small part of the whole. All over the land the countryside had been scoured, helpless Sighted women run to ground by armed men demanding they renounce Sight. Often, the wretched women could not do so. How could they renounce something they had been born with? They would be killed on the spot, spitted on lances or laid open with a sword or, if they were really unlucky, they died slowly under torture, before witnesses, so that Sif’s message could be brought home. Sif, or his advisors, had concocted a brew which his inquisitors and his soldiers administered to their victims, too often by force, that purported to “purge” the Sight from a mind which harbored it. That it had an effect was without doubt; it was very seldom, however, the effect that had been anticipated. Not a few of those who took it died. They were the lucky ones. Those who lived sometimes lost their minds, becoming less than idiots; some found its dulling effects were temporary, and were fed more and more until they became bitterly addicted. Others, like the ones in Calabra, had been senselessly maimed and exhibited as an example. Concealing a Sighted woman, or helping one flee Sif’s avenging soldiers, was a crime almost as great as Sight itself, and scores of husbands, fathers or brothers paid for their women’s gift with their own heads.

  Something wild was riding Sif. He had unleashed a pogrom, made all the more horrifying because it was unexpected. Sight had been a part of Roisinan for hundreds of years—now Sif seemed intent on rooting it out within a single generation. He would rule human, as he had vowed, but more than that—he would rule a human people.

  Anghara, to whom Sight meant so much more than her own wild gift, who had grown up with her gentle mother, venerable Feor and the Sisters at Bresse, could not comprehend so much hate. Sif could not hate an entire people this much, it was impossible, it was insane, and in her anguish Anghara even asked, lapsing into a childish logic which tore at ai’Jihaar’s heart, whether he would stop if she surrendered herself to him.

  “He would not stop, dear heart,” murmured the Kheldrini woman compassionately, sitting by the bed where her young companion lay, stroking her hair with a gentle hand. “This has gone past the search for one girl, although he may hope to crush her together with the rest.”

  “But the babies, ai’Jihaar, the babies…”

  And that, perhaps, was the worst. The babies of Sighted women, children who had the possibility of Sight in their future, were dealt with just as ruthlessly. The tale of one particular village in the north, which had more than its fair share of Sighted women and to which this had been a source of some pride, had filtered southward, spoken of in fearful whispers. Soldiers had scourged the place; infants had been torn from their mothers’ arms and slain before their eyes. Children barely toddling had tasted the sword. When Sif’s men left, the place which had been so proud was left weeping, its streets red with innocent blood. The land reeled from the blows the king dealt them, noble and commoner alike. They had not yet had time to recover or react.

  “But they will,” ai’Jihaar had said, with quiet certainty. “Sif believes he has started a crusade, but he has only sowed the seeds of his own end. Now they are afraid—but soon, very soon, they will start to hate him.”

  Anghara had thought her tears cried out at last, boarding the foreign ship of her exile, her dry eyes red and swollen. And yet it was still not over, for more tears came, salty as the ocean which was widening between her and the shore of her land, as she felt herself physically torn from Roisinan. Her heart was breaking, but she stood straight and proud, her gray eyes locked on the shore until it faded from her sight.

  “I will come back,” she murmured as the shape of her land sank beneath the sea, and it was not, after all, a vow of revenge. But it was a vow nonetheless. I will return. I will not abandon you.

  By the time she returned to where ai’Jihaar had been installed in one of the small cabins, the Kheldrini woman had undergone a remarkable transformation. The travelling cloak and the mask were gone; there was no further need. Instead, she wore a loose robe of gold jin’aaz silk and over it a white djellaba; a necklace of yellow amber set in silver lay around her neck. Her hair was gathered in a delicate net, sprinkled with amber beads.

  She seemed completely unaware that anything was different, sitting cross-legged on cushions before a small table bearing a tray with tea things. In that uncanny way she had, she turned toward the door as Anghara opened it, and smiled. “Tea?”


  Anghara wrinkled her nose at the unfamiliar, rather pungent aroma that arose from ai’Jihaar’s small handleless cup. “That is tea?”

  “Lais,” said ai’Jihaar, gesturing at the small teapot on the tray. “Try some.”

  Anghara poured out a small measure into a second cup and came to sit beside ai’Jihaar. Her face was disciplined, but her gray eyes were swimming with loss. Once again, impossibly, ai’Jihaar responded to things she could not have known.

  “Do not think of it as exile,” she said unexpectedly, as though answering the unspoken thoughts that roiled inside Anghara’s mind.

  But Anghara was becoming used to these sallies, and simply continued the conversation from that point, without pausing to wonder anew at ai’Jihaar’s sharp perceptions.

  “I am grateful,” she murmured, “but it is exile…and it’s hard…” She swallowed convulsively. She would not, would not, start crying again. “Why did you show yourself at the Dance?” she asked, a question she had asked before. “You could have let me go and I would never have known that you were there.”

  “I could not,” said ai’Jihaar, patiently repeating an answer she had already given. She was indulgent in this, because she was herself intrigued by their meeting. “Do you not remember? It was you who sensed my presence, before I spoke. Never before has a Sheriha’drini known me, as you did then. The choice was taken from me in that moment.”

  “Have you been to…to Roisinan often before?” It was deliberate, that; the land was not Sheriha’drin, not to Anghara.

  “Many times.”

  It was suddenly very important to Anghara that she find out. “Why?”

  “I am sen’thar,” said ai’Jihaar simply, as though that explained everything. And it would have, had Anghara been of Kheldrin. But there was much still for her to learn, and ai’Jihaar knew it; she went on smoothly, “There are those amongst us who are bound to our Gods. It is not with us as it is in your land, where a priest serves one God alone. Sen’en’thari know every God, serve every God, and when a voice speaks to us we obey. There are many reasons for making a pilgrimage.”

  “And this time?”

  Turning her uncanny eyes on Anghara, ai’Jihaar said, “This time…this time it was different. I was sent to seek for something.”

  “For me?”

  “Your Gods and mine, how can we mortals fully know their minds?” she said slowly. “It was only in Calabra that I was sure. And after that, it would have been a hard God who would have me leave you in Sif’s path. If you want to know why I was sent to seek for you, the answer is that I do not know. Yet. Certainly it was to spare you from the holocaust; but I do not think the Gods of Kheldrin would have sent me on a mission whose purpose was only that. This is why I tell you: do not think of it as exile. You were meant to come to Kheldrin; that was written before you were born, else you would not be on this ship. The true reasons will become clear to us in time.”

  The cabin door opened softly and one of the crew bowed low in ai’Jihaar’s direction from the threshold.

  “The winds are good, an’sen’thar. We make good speed. Is there anything you require?”

  Lifting a slender arm weighted with silver bracelets, ai’Jihaar gestured gracefully. “No, that is all. Thank you.”

  He bowed again and withdrew.

  The lais tea was making Anghara drowsy, her eyelids drooping already as her gaze, drawn to the visitor, came back to ai’Jihaar—but she had a quick ear, and she could not fail to note the deep deference shown to her companion by the Kheldrini crew. “An’sen’thar?” she murmured, her eye still bright. “What are you, ai’Jihaar?”

  “The chosen of the Gods,” said ai’Jihaar, “their instrument and their servant. A vessel for their visions, a seer, a dreamer of true dreams. And now, your teacher, and your friend.” Anghara’s eyes closed at the last word, as though ai’Jihaar had spoken an invocation, and she lay back, asleep. Producing a woollen coverlet, ai’Jihaar laid it over her, very gently. “Sleep, my child,” she whispered. “May ai’Shahn bring you good dreams.”

  If the messenger of the Kheldrin Gods obeyed, Anghara could not say—she remembered no dreams when she woke. But she rose refreshed, and although her heart was still heavy at what had transpired during the last day or so she was in better spirits and seemed to have retreated from the narrow edge she had walked in Calabra. While ai’Jihaar had named herself Anghara’s teacher, she made no move in that direction on the voyage to Kheldrin, other than occasional information about the place where they were headed, leaving space for Anghara to find her equilibrium again, to calm her soul. When land appeared on the horizon before them, and the captain announced imminent landfall, Anghara was looking forward to setting foot in Kheldrin. Dressed in a white robe which the Kheldrini woman had procured for her, Anghara stood on the ship’s prow and eagerly awaited her first sight of ai’Jihaar’s country.

  Which, when it came, was not at all what she had expected. “It looks much like the land around Calabra,” Anghara said, strangely disappointed at the pastures she could glimpse beyond the harbor. “I was somehow expecting…”

  “You will see plenty of desert soon enough,” said ai’Jihaar, who had come to stand beside her, in mild rebuke. “There is very little green in Kheldrin once you go beyond those mountains. We treasure these grasslands; they are all we have.”

  A glint of sunshine on water that was not the ocean drew Anghara’s eye, and seemed to find an echo somewhere in ai’Jihaar’s own exotic senses. She made a gesture that was at once a ritual of obeisance and a sign of pure, quiet love. “Sa’ila,” she said. “Our one river. The only flowing water west of Sheriha’drin.” And then her head turned a fraction, toward a city of slender spires amongst a profusion of low roofs tiled with oddly golden stone. “And that,” said ai’Jihaar, “is Sa’alah. Look closely; I do not think you will find much that will remind you of Calabra there.” There was both light teasing and an unexpected compassion in ai’Jihaar’s voice. She understood that in spite of the anticipation of her arrival in Kheldrin, Anghara must be feeling bereft of everything familiar. There had been disappointment in her voice a moment before—and the disappointment was deeper than even she knew, deeper than surface frustration at not seeing what she had expected to see. Yes, parts of the coastal plain near Sa’alah did look like the land around Calabra in Roisinan—and there was a part of her which would have been happier if it had not.

  The captain himself handed ai’Jihaar down from his ship when it tied up at the main dock; Anghara followed, feeling not unlike her father’s stallion amongst dun’en. Less so than most Roisinani, perhaps—she was, after all slight and small boned, and her hair was bright enough to match any in Sa’alah, even if it didn’t have their pure shade of copper. But her face was pale-skinned, her cheekbones too high, her lips too full, her eyes gray and wide. This was a trade city, though, and people from Roisinan were not entirely unknown. There were a few bemused stares, but not enough to make her feel uncomfortable.

  “Come,” said ai’Jihaar, adjusting her djellaba to her satisfaction and reaching a hand out to her young charge. “Tomorrow will be soon enough. It would be best if we stayed this night at the serai and tomorrow I will procure ki’thar’en.”

  “Where will we be going?” asked Anghara, falling into step beside ai’Jihaar, finally asking a question she could not believe she had not asked before.

  “Home,” said ai’Jihaar, not looking around.

  Anghara recognized the following silence from the long days they had spent walking the plains to Calabra, and kept her peace as they walked down the pier. When that abruptly ended, ai’Jihaar turned into the city’s narrow streets, moving with the same singular assurance which had threaded her through Calabra. The serai, much like what Anghara would have called a han, was a low, rambling building on the outskirts of Sa’alah, fronting onto a narrow white beach. The man who came to meet them bowed from behind a brightly woven curtain hung in the doorway, as ai’Jihaar spoke to him in her g
uttural native tongue. He ushered them inside and along a small corridor, then through another set of curtains into a low, wide room full of soft pillows in shades of red and gold. Another curtained doorway, from which the curtains had been drawn back, opened onto a short stretch of lawn, which dropped away abruptly into the white sand and the ocean. Anghara crossed over to look outside.

  “Dhim ki’thar’en ka’hailam, an’sen’thar?”

  “Dai, saliha.”

  There was a rustle of fabric. Anghara turned her head; the man had gone, and ai’Jihaar stood alone by the curtained entrance.

  “There will be two ki’thar’en for us tomorrow,” said ai’Jihaar, on cue as always. “The man is called al’Sayar, and he says there is a small caravan leaving in the morning; we can travel with them until they turn south to Beku.” She crossed over to where Anghara was standing, looking out to sea. “It is a great thing that you will be doing tomorrow,” she said slowly. “It lies not in my memory when Arad Khajir’i’id was last seen by any who were not its children. It is harsh and unforgiving to those who do not know it. There are laws in the desert you must know and follow if you are to survive.”

  “You have spoken of some,” said Anghara, picking up the solemn mood.

  “Water is precious, and costly,” nodded ai’Jihaar. “It may be bought, but not taken. Those who live in hai’ren and in the cities guard their water fiercely. They are not vindictive, but neither are they merciful to those who make mistakes. Guarding against mistakes is your task, not theirs. But there is more. You are marked out there, a stranger of no clan—not even through my protection, for sen’en’thari are a clan unto themselves and you are not…sen’thar.” She paused, her voice thoughtful. “Not yet,” she amended at last, very softly. She raised her head slightly. If she had not been blind she would have been looking deeply into Anghara’s eyes. She softly invoked her Gods with an air of what was almost revelation, “ai’Dhya and al’Khur! Perhaps I begin to understand.”