The decision at the fork seemed to be the last rational one Anghara made. The next time she told Kieran to choose one fork over another, they lost two days while they extricated themselves from a pathless stony wilderness; and the time after that, she chose a trail which led them to an unequivocal dead end, where a massive cliff face stared them down. After that, she left it to Kieran; and even if she did offer an opinion Kieran took it reservedly, going with his own judgment. He was worried—he had believed, somehow, that her mind would begin clearing as they drew closer to Kheldrin. Not that he was a competent judge, but it seemed to him that, if anything, she was getting worse. Her arm wasn’t healing; and, driven by something stronger than herself, she had tried again to commune with her Gods through a blood offering. This time Kieran had been on his guard, and prevented her from doing major damage, but he had felt the agitation in the air around him even as he pulled the black dagger from her hand. Suddenly afraid at what Gods cheated of a sacrifice could do to them, so vulnerable and exposed on the mountain, he had pricked his own thumb with the tip of the dagger and offered the blood welling up from the puncture into the swirling wind. Take it…take it…but let her be…she is not strong enough to stand against you…
He’d had to turn back and calm a distraught Anghara, and in the chaos he had forgotten his action. Later, remembering what he had done and curious as to the total absence of any pain or discomfort, he’d looked for the small self-inflicted wound—and was thoroughly terrified to discover no trace of it. Just to be on the safe side, he packed the black dagger away amongst his own things, keeping it out of Anghara’s hands. The next time he might not be watching; she could kill herself. Still, an odd uneasiness persisted at the back of his mind. He wished he didn’t feel as though he had just burned Kerun’s holy incense in a profane place.
But all this Kieran could rationalize on some level, and accept—it was devotion due to different Gods. The first real shock, the first sense of how deeply Anghara had been changed by her Kheldrini years, came when she rose one morning and donned the golden robe and the two say’yin’en. For a moment, Kieran could only stare. He was well aware of what Khelsies looked like, and there was nothing in Anghara of that narrow face and golden eyes—and yet, and yet…The soul that looked out of Anghara’s familiar wide gray eyes belonged to a stranger. She said something, her tone imperial, her language the harsh guttural syllables of an alien land.
“Come back,” Kieran said simply, and, for a wonder, it seemed to work. She blinked, lifted an arm as though suddenly curious about the golden silk of the sleeve in which it was encased. When she looked his way again she was Anghara again—his Anghara, her eyes soft and troubled. “I don’t remember…” she began, and then her voice petered out into silence.
“It’s all right,” he said gently. Coming closer, he peered curiously at the great globes of yellow amber around her neck. “What do these mean?”
He seemed to have grasped intuitively that they meant something—he had never even considered the possibility they were mere ornaments. Anghara, with a pensive half-smile, stroked the massive old say’yin al’Jezraal had given her during the Confirmation Ceremony, and told Kieran of Al’haria, its Sa’id, and the Hariff clan which had taken her as one of its own. This went on, in fits and starts, during the entire day; Anghara would begin something, lapse into silence, and finish that story (or, as like as not, begin another) at some later stage. All kinds of things Kieran hadn’t known about emerged during these confused tales, even that which she thought she could never tell him—the black desert called Khar’i’id, known as the Empty Quarter, and the oracle which lived there; the death of Gul Qara, and its testament; the raising of a new oracle by the sea. Even, finally, about the touch of a God’s wing, and the gift al’Khur had given her. The gift of resurrection. Much of this came out in tangled and convoluted ways, leaving Kieran to piece it together as best he could—but one thing was immediately obvious. Kheldrin had been far from a simple sanctuary for a deposed queen. It was built into Anghara now, a part of her. Kieran began to understand how her inability to sense those whom she had, in spite of herself, called to her, would wound her bright spirit. Rendered powerless through ignorance and lack of skill when it came to Sight, he was unable to do anything except stand back and watch it bleed.
The mountains were bleak and harsh. Little grew there, other than a few hardy lichens, the same lifeless gray as the stone on which they were anchored. There was the occasional brave attempt of a tree to gain a foothold, but all were twisted and stunted and if they had ever been green, it was only a memory. And it all seemed to go on forever; once, on a pinnacle from which he had a clear view to all sides, Kieran felt his heart sink when he could see nothing but more broken, empty gray ridges unfolding in any direction he looked. He hadn’t wanted Anghara to see, and he hurried them from that place—but she knew, somehow. It was one of her good days, lucid and clear, and she smiled at him from her camel with the sweetness he remembered of old.
“Are you sure that anything exists beyond these mountains?” he asked, offering a tired, slow smile in return.
“We’ll make it,” she said, gazing at him with steadfast trust. “And the Kadun…is beautiful.”
Their mounts were also beginning to suffer. They were vociferous in their complaints, and one of them, although Kieran could discover no physical reason, began to limp badly—it seemed, out of protest. Their pace slowed to a crawl. Their water supplies dwindled, and they came across no more friendly springs hidden in the shadows—only, once, a weeping cliff with a thin film of moisture upon the bare stone. The camels discovered that, and stood licking at the cliff face; Kieran called a halt, and spent a few frustrating hours trying to rig a way to collect enough of the precious fluid to fill at least one of their empty water bags. That he succeeded was a tribute to ingenuity and perseverance, and Anghara had been herself for long enough to tell him so. But the next morning she seemed to have forgotten, withdrawing from him, muttering incomprehensible invocations to alien Gods in a language Kieran didn’t understand.
As they drew closer to their destination, Anghara was plagued with odd hallucinations—visions conjured up before her by her churning mind. Once she stopped Kieran and pointed with a shaking hand to a bare rock peak, wailing that she could see the towers of Miranei and they must have gone around in a huge circle. Another time she stared into the distance, speaking softly of sea-sculpted red rock, a fishing village nestled against the cliffs, and a great Standing Stone upon a tall pillar above the ocean. All she could see in reality was more tumbled and broken lifeless gray stone; but such were the words she chose, even Kieran thought he could smell distant salt in the air and hear the sound of breakers upon the foot of the oracle’s pillar. And it seemed as though there had been a touch of Sight in that particular instance, because by evening Anghara was racked with pain and fever, incoherent, completely unable to continue her journey the following morning. Kieran could do little other than make her comfortable and wait it out.
By this stage they were already descending, their path following a decided downward slope. Kieran expected no miracles from the Kheldrini desert when they reached it—at least not until they found someone qualified to deal with Anghara’s plight—but at least they would be out of these bare, soul-numbing mountains, and in the land of country Anghara, at least, knew tolerably well. It would make the burden lighter if they could find someone with the knowledge to help. His very helplessness drove Kieran, even if he was heading for the one place he would never have wished to see under ordinary circumstances. But he could see Anghara was suffering, and he could feel that pain in himself. By now he would have done almost anything if he knew it would help.
The end came unexpectedly, and Kieran, who was so used to seeing gray rock on every side, was slow to realize what his eyes were showing him. They emerged from under a huge overhanging rock and found themselves on a narrow plateau, whose horizon was a distant line where sky met smooth coral dunes, with the o
ccasional wind-sculpted spire of red stone.
The hesitation was all Anghara needed. She urged her camel forward with a glad cry, seemingly completely unaware of the hundred-foot sheer drop separating her from her beloved desert. Kieran shouted an incoherent wanting and leapt from his saddle; he landed with all his weight on one ankle and felt it buckle as he rolled with the fall, staggering to his feet with a grimace of pain to throw himself after her camel’s dangling rein.
The space before the edge of the plateau was narrow; ordinarily, Kieran would have stood no chance. It was something superhuman that drove him, a sense of outrage. Was it for this that we struggled and suffered through these wretched mountain passes? But even that would hardly have been enough. As his fingers closed hard on the rein he was aware that something else had halted the beast, moments before he had reached it. And, gazing with a shiver down the precipice into which Anghara would have tumbled, he could see what it had been.
Or, rather, who.
At this distance the figure was tiny, but there was no mistaking the bronze gleam of the skin, the bright copper hair revealed by a thrown-back cowl…burnouse, Anghara had called them. The stray fact swam into Kieran’s mind as he stood transfixed and staring down at the Khelsie who had, somehow, stopped Anghara from hurling herself into oblivion in her joy at seeing the red desert again.
The distance separating them was too great for any communication Kieran understood, but still he received the clear impression that a path to the right of the plateau would lead him to the desert…and that his unexpected ally would wait below while Kieran and Anghara descended. Kieran glanced at Anghara, who sat very still on her quivering animal—he couldn’t tell if she had felt anything, but she didn’t react at all when he softly called her name. Some force had certainly touched the camel; the animal stood in uncharacteristic silence, showing the whites of its eyes. At last Kieran fastened the rein of his animal to the back of Anghara’s saddle, took her own beast’s reins, and began leading the small cavalcade down the desert path on foot.
It was a hot and uncomfortable journey, made in silence—here, about to come face to face with something he didn’t know and still mistrusted, Kieran was alone. But he set his jaw in a determined line, his blue eyes hard. This was what they had come for. There was never any guarantee Anghara would reach this place—she had come for help, and, glancing back at her rigid figure and wide, staring eyes, it was more obvious than ever that she needed any help these people could give her.
The desert met them slowly, subtly, drifts of red sand piling up against the mountain buttresses. At the bottom the path began to twist and meander, doubling back on itself, at least once leading Kieran into a blind alley out of which, backed as he was by three camels, he had the greatest difficulty in extricating himself. Seriously considering the possibility that now, here, at the end of the line, he could become completely lost in the maze into which the path had unexpectedly turned, Kieran stopped for a breather and to take his bearings. He could smell the desert, a sharper, hotter scent in the air brought to him by the occasional gust of a warm breeze, but it was hidden from him by what seemed to be a continuous wall of rock. Did the Khelsie lure him here for a slow death? Kieran cursed under his breath, rubbing his sleeve against a forehead damp with sweat. When he looked up again, it was with a start that he saw the Khelsie’s slight figure standing before him, as though Kieran had conjured him up with the ignoble thought. His hand jerked instinctively toward his blade, and the other put up both of his own, palms toward Kieran.
“Peace! I am unarmed.”
He had spoken in Roisinani; accented and colored by the Shaymir dialect, but it had unmistakably been Kieran’s own language. Kieran dropped his hand, torn between feelings of resentment toward this creature speaking his tongue and immense relief. With Anghara incapacitated, the problem of communicating with anyone they met in this alien desert had loomed large in his mind.
“I am al’Tamar ma’Hariff,” the man continued. “In this country, she whom you accompany is of my family and my clan. Although…she looks little like the Anghara Kir Hama who accepted the name of Hariff…” He had glanced at Anghara while he spoke, but she was still wrapped in her silence and solitude. The man’s golden eyes came back to Kieran’s face. They were deeply concerned. “Something is wrong,” he said, very quietly. “Something is deeply wrong.”
Kieran swallowed. “She is…ill. I don’t understand what the matter is…I don’t have Sight. But she was captured by Sif Kir Hama, who rules in Roisinan, and something done to her in captivity has affected her mind…her Sight. She believes somebody here in Kheldrin can help her.”
“What happened?” al’Tamar asked. He took a step closer, and suddenly swayed. “Hai!” he whispered, closing his eyes. “Was it she that called al’Khur to ride at her back?”
Kieran felt his hackles rise. “She did. She doesn’t know how well she succeeded, though. She can’t sense them.”
Again the piercing golden gaze. “And you could.” It was not a question; it was a statement of certain knowledge. The eyes, however, were troubled. “And yet you are right, you do not carry what they call Sight in Sheriha’drin. How, then, is it possible that you can sense the presence of the God when an an’sen’thar cannot?”
“Can you help her?” Kieran asked, steadying himself against the neck of the nearest camel against a wave of sudden and absolute fatigue, as al’Tamar watched him intently.
“He is gone,” al Tamar said unexpectedly, “back into the desert from which he had been summoned. It was al’Khur’s strength that sustained you. You felt him go?”
Kieran, whose head was spinning with exhaustion and strain, could only nod soundlessly.
“No,” al’Tamar said, in answer to an earlier question, “I cannot help her. But she was right—there are those who may be able to. Her old teacher—ai’Jihaar—has a tent in a hai’r south of here. That is where I think we should take her. Can you ride?”
“Yes,” Kieran said through clenched teeth.
“I have one or two spare burnouses back on my ki’thar,” al’Tamar said, tugging out a piece of material tucked into his waistband, “but until we get there, use this. She can have mine.”
“What about you?” Kieran asked, accepting the strip of cloth automatically.
“I was born here,” said the other. “And it is not far.” With a soft word he made Anghara’s camel kneel, and came up to wrap the desert veil about the girl’s head and face with deft fingers. Kieran stared at the bronze hands, so gentle, so loving; a profound, powerful reeling stirred somewhere in the depths of him at the sight, something that should have been familiar, easily identifiable, if only he wasn’t so desperately tired…
When he had finished, al’Tamar stepped back—and then looked Kieran’s way, aware of his scrutiny. There was an odd expression on his face. Bare now of its cowl, he looked strangely young and vulnerable underneath copper hair drawn back from his high forehead. The two pairs of eyes, blue and gold, locked together for a long moment across the bowed and hooded head of the girl between them. And then al’Tamar dropped his gaze. “Are you…her qu’mar?” he asked softly.
Kieran, about to answer that he didn’t know what that meant, caught himself—he did. Of course he did. Even if the word was unfamiliar, the tone in which the question was asked left no room for doubt—al’Tamar wanted to know if he was Anghara’s husband, her mate, and Kieran was stunned at the strength of a sudden, desperate wish to be able to say yes.
Just when had his protective love for a young and vulnerable little foster sister turned into the passion of a man for a woman? Kieran couldn’t say. All he knew was that in the space of an instant he was gazing at Anghara with different eyes, suddenly able to understand with blinding clarity exactly why he had never been able to stop searching for her. Why he had been desperate enough to snatch her from Miranei to gamble the lives of men who trusted him; why, on this last journey, he had suffered when he had seen her pain. And why, lacking Si
ght, he had been able to sense the Gods she had called. Something tied them together, something with roots deep in the past—even Feor had known, choosing Kieran to seek Anghara when she vanished during the dark years of Sif’s purges—but it had flowered only now, and Kieran was suddenly struck by the power and beauty of the flower.
And knew he might have realized everything too late.
“No,” he said in answer to al’Tamar’s question. His voice was very soft, but raw with so many things that al’Tamar flinched. After a beat of silence he clucked at Anghara’s camel, which rose with a creaky complaint.
“You ride the other,” he said to Kieran, his level voice giving no indication of what had been revealed.
“And you?”
“I will lead, to my ki’thar. We can rest in my camp; I have lais tea, and at least she will sleep. Tomorrow, we go to ai’Jihaar—she will know what to do.”
It would have been false heroics to insist on walking—Kieran’s ankle throbbed savagely, but even if he had been fit he knew he could not measure himself in these deserts with one who had walked them since childhood. He wearily mounted his camel, head drooping, and surrendered the rein to al’Tamar, who paused briefly at the camel’s head, gathering the reins in his hand—as though waiting for something.
And that, too, Kieran felt without the need for words, as though the thought had been inserted in his mind. He straightened for a moment, groping for dignity. “I don’t think I returned the courtesy of introducing myself,” he said. “I am Kieran Cullen of Shaymir.”
“I might have known,” al’Tamar said, nodding to himself, a slight movement, almost imperceptible. “She often spoke of you.”
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