Changer of Days

by Alma Alexander

  After a moment’s hesitation, as al’Tamar contented himself with a final long and painful look at Anghara’s face, he turned abruptly and ducked out of the tent.

  Kieran followed him. The old servant was nowhere in sight. On his way to where his ki’thar stood tethered in the shade, al’Tamar paused by the edge of ai’Jihaar’s well to draw a gourd of water, offering it first to Kieran, a wordless acknowledgment of his presence; Kieran accepted it, took a sip, and passed it back.

  “Who is she?” Kieran asked, his eyes drawn back to the tent as though magnetized. “She looks impossibly old…as if she’s well past her ninetieth year…”

  For a brief moment al’Tamar permitted a smile to dance in his golden eyes. “We are a long-lived race. An’sen’thar ai’Jihaar has seen almost two hundred summers.”

  Kieran, who had received the water gourd back for another sip, choked and went into a paroxysm of coughing. Quickly rescuing the gourd from spilling its contents onto the hungry sands, al’Tamar thumped Kieran on the back.

  “She was Anghara’s teacher,” al’Tamar said. “She is the oldest of the an’sen’en’thari, and very wise. Anghara knew well where to seek for help. Only…” al’Tamar’s own glance kept sliding back to the tent. “I mislike this illness of ai’Jihaar’s. It would have been better if this matter had been kept from the tower—especially with ai’Farra not…” He paused, and his face twisted into an eloquent grimace. “There are…always politics,” he added.

  “Do you think someone might wish to harm her?” Kieran asked quickly, and the pronoun had shifted; he was no longer talking of ai’Jihaar. This was more in his own sphere; if there was anyone who wished Anghara harm, they’d have to go through him first—and he was more than willing to lay down his life for her. He had been willing in Roisinan; and he was even more so here, in this place, where everything was unknown and all seemed strange and treacherous.

  “Not in that way,” al’Tamar said, having noticed Kieran’s hand come to rest on the hilt of his blade. “And should anyone try to do her physical harm, it is to my uncle the Sa’id they would have to answer. And Anghara is dear to the Sa’id. She healed his son of a careless wound in the desert; she raised him an oracle; and she bought his sister back from al’Khur…with what price, we do not know.”

  Kieran’s head spun. “Then that…was true?” he whispered. “Back there in the mountains…she spoke of meeting al’Khur…of wresting…” He hadn’t believed Anghara, had thought her story of resurrection in the Black Desert no more than a dream, just as her seeing the towers of Miranei in the shape of the mountain peaks had been. But now he was hearing it from a different quarter, and it gave the story the solidity of truth. Anghara had met and bargained with a God—the same God whose strength, if al’Tamar was to be believed, had sustained Kieran and Anghara on their journey through the mountains between worlds.

  “True,” al’Tamar agreed. “Now go back; ai’Jihaar had not dismissed you. I am the one with an errand and a duty.”

  He was about to mount his ki’thar when Kieran’s hand on his arm stopped him. Again, as once before, the eyes locked for a moment, blue and gold; Kieran’s face was oddly gentle.

  A duty. The betrothal ceremonies that waited for al’Tamar; the girl called Rami who “understood.” “Do you love her?” Kieran asked, aware he was crossing a boundary into something deeper than a casual companionship, knowing he would not be rebuffed. It was a double-edged question, leaving itself open for al’Tamar to answer as he chose.

  The narrow, bronze-skinned face of his betrothed swam vividly into al’Tamar’s consciousness for a moment; then faded, transmuting into a white, alien countenance with a pair of wide-set gray eyes. “Rami is a good girl,” he said carefully, deliberately sidestepping and closing his eyes for a moment to chase the vision away. “I will learn to.”

  There was an unspoken “but” which hung in the air between them, and it was Kieran, at the last, who gave it voice.

  “But your queen haval’la will always come first with you,” he said, the phraseology of the desert coming more easily to his lips than he would have believed.

  At his words al’Tamar’s head came up sharply, as though a dagger had been thrust into his side. His nostrils flared, and then he laughed, a sharp, brittle laugh. “And you said you did not have the Sight of Sheriha’drin. For one who is blind, you are far too at home in other people’s minds.” He drew a ragged breath, looking away at the horizon, then climbed into his ki’thar’s saddle, clucking for it to rise. From the height of this perch he looked down, and his soul was in his golden eyes. “Take care of her,” he said; there was iron control in his voice, and still Kieran heard it tremble as it put this renunciation into the spoken word, made it real. With a slow movement carved from dignity and pain he laid the reins of the ki’thar across the saddle and reached up with both hands to remove the say’yin he had made for Anghara and carried faithfully for so long. With a last look, he held it out to Kieran. “This passes on,” he said. “When the sen’en’thari come…the Gods alone know where I will be. And this is hers. Will you give it to her for me?”

  There was much that Kieran could have said, but there was something in the clear air of the desert that made platitudes hard to utter. Truths were harsh out here, but truth was all there was. Kieran accepted the gift, because there was nothing else he could have done. “I will,” he said.

  With a high and almost royal pride, al’Tamar bowed to him from the saddle, giving the graceful desert salute. Then he dropped his gaze down to the ki’thar’s reins. “Akka!” he cried softly; the lumbering beast rolled its long-lashed eyes in disdain and broke into a shambling trot as its rider wheeled it about.

  Kieran watched him until he was only a mirage, a shimmering speck on the heat-trembling horizon. Then he turned abruptly, slipping the say’yin around his own neck and tucking it away out of sight, before ducking back inside the tent.

  “So,” ai’Jihaar said softly, even as he let the flap fall. “You are her Kieran.” Hers was a disembodied voice in that first instant in which his sun-dazzled eyes adjusted once again to the cool dimness of the tent. When he could see again, it was to find the white-filmed eyes now focused on him, just as disconcertingly as they had been on al’Tamar moments ago. “Come closer.”

  Kieran did, for the simple words had the force of a command; ai’Jihaar reached out one frail hand and ran her thin fingers over his face as gently as a butterfly’s touch.

  “You have a strong face,” she said. “And the strength to stand against unknown Gods. Yes, al’Tamar has told me,” she said, feeling him flinch beneath her hand. “You do not know it, but there are few who could have done what you did. Her contact with the Gods has been severed…and yet a bridge has been cast between them over the chasm. You. You took a live diamondskin in your hand for the sake of one whom you loved…and its poison could not touch you.” She paused, her hand lingering on his cheek in an oddly maternal manner, and then she allowed it to drop back into her lap, leaning back against her cushions. “There are things I need to know from you. Anghara’s mind is a cauldron of confusion and pain. You must tell me.”

  “Tell you what, lady?” Kieran asked, confused by the breadth of the command.

  “Everything,” ai’Jihaar said, refusing to help him. “Start from the beginning, from the moment she returned to Sheriha’drin and her path crossed with yours.”

  Kieran ran a tired hand through his hair. “That will take forever,” he said.

  “We have two days,” said ai’Jihaar. “On what you say her healing may depend. Omit nothing; let me be the judge of what is important. Begin.”

  There was a gift in this, too. The images which flowed into Kieran’s mind as he started talking were too vivid to be mere memories; it was as though ai’Jihaar was listening to him with only a small part of her concentration. With the rest, she was reaching out and taking the story he was telling straight from his mind. There was a part of Kieran which knew that, only a short
while ago, he would have gibbered at this flagrant invasion of his thoughts. But now he accepted without demur; there was another part which was aghast at the ease with which he accepted this alien touch. Kheldrin was working its insidious magic.

  Except for one instance when she bade him pause and called for the old servant to bring food and refreshments, ai’Jihaar did not interrupt. After he had eaten she nodded wordlessly at Kieran to continue. Finally, exhausted and surprised to find lamps lit around him and the tent full of dancing shadows, he allowed his voice to fade into silence, having reached the point in his tale where he’d helped Anghara off her camel. Only then did ai’Jihaar draw a deep sigh.

  She asked for his hand, the one which had given the blood sacrifice in the pathless mountains, and fingered his smooth, unmarked skin. “It is as I thought,” she said pensively. “You are a channel…and because what you give is her offering, it is accepted. The Gods took your sacrifice, from one who was never marked as their own. Perhaps it is as well that you do not know what dangers you courted there. But perhaps it is best if you let me hold the dagger for her now.”

  “I will bring it to you,” Kieran said, not without some relief.

  “It was well done,” ai’Jihaar said, her voice a vindication of the action he had taken out of desperation. She had asked him for the black dagger where she could have commanded; this was kindness, and trust. “I will guard it for her; she shall have it back from your hand if you so wish, if…when…she is restored to her power. But that dagger is not a thing to be left alone too long; it needs close contact with life. What you do not give freely, it might well choose to take by itself.”

  That he already knew. There had been a dark dream or two since he rode with the dagger in his baggage; dark dreams, tinged with the blood for which the knife of sacrifice was asking.

  Kieran emerged into the coolness of the desert night. He didn’t need light—the contents of his packs had been lived with for so long now he could have found his way through them blindfolded. He found the black dagger more by touch and a sense of velvet darkness than by sight, his hands oddly twitchy as his fingers closed around it as though the blade was eager to be let loose to do its work.

  “This place is getting to me,” Kieran muttered, wrapping the black handle with a handful of his cloak to break the contact between the dagger and his bare skin.

  Anghara stirred as he returned to the tent, but ai’Jihaar quelled her with a touch and reached out a hand for that which Kieran carried. “Quickly,” she said, and Kieran let go, not unwillingly. The blade changed hands; ai’Jihaar frowned down at it. “I am not sure,” she said slowly, “what could happen when we try to break this bond of yours. Anghara knew when you held her blade. I hope you are not already in too deep…”

  Kieran had a dull feeling that those words ought to have conveyed a sense of dire peril, but the immense fatigue he had felt at the foot of the sundering mountains had returned a hundredfold. He surprised himself with a jaw-cracking yawn and ai’Jihaar raised her head swiftly from contemplating the black dagger. “Forgive me,” she said. Her soft voice had lost all harshness and command. “I have been selfish. I have asked much, and offered little in return—but I am grateful beyond words that you found yourself at Anghara’s side when she needed someone. My servant has prepared your bed; if there is anything you find you still require, you have but to ask.”

  “A bed will be welcome,” Kieran said slowly. “I can’t seem to recall when last I had the luxury of one.”

  “It has been a long while,” she agreed. “Perhaps it is even longer than you realize. Do you have any idea what day it is?”

  “I knew when we left Shaymir,” Kieran said after a short pause in which he tried fruitlessly to calculate the time gone by since they left Keda’s husband at the singing stone. “After that…things blur a little. I had no real way of keeping track.”

  “The day after tomorrow,” ai’Jihaar said, “is celebrated as the eve of the festival of Cerdiad in Sheriha’drin. It is almost midsummer.”

  “That is impossible!” Kieran gasped, caught thoroughly off guard. “We couldn’t have spent a month…more than a month…in those mountains. We would never have survived! It’s not possible…”

  “You forget,” ai’Jihaar said, “you had a God who walked at your back.”

  “But al’Tamar said al’Khur helped us,” said Kieran helplessly. “A month…”

  “He helped you,” ai’Jihaar said. “You would not be here if he had not. But helping you does not mean he let you lightly into his realm.”

  “Others crossed those mountains before us,” Kieran said stubbornly.

  “That is true. But consider—more have tried than have succeeded, a great many more; and those who did succeed almost always fared badly here. There are people in Kheldrin who consider the mere presence of fram’man’en sacrilege, and are ready to act in accordance with this belief. And while there are a few of our folk who have been across those mountains and returned, even they prefer to keep their own counsel, and they are the Gods’ own children.” Her thin hands closed over the black dagger, hiding it from Kieran’s sight under a fold of the coverlet and a welter of silver bracelets. It seemed to restore him to himself; he blinked, looked away, down at Anghara.

  “Worry no longer about her,” said ai’Jihaar in her unusual syntax, guessing his thoughts with an uncanny ability. “Everything that can be done, I will do. She was right in one thing—in no other place could she begin to be healed. But whether we prove able to fulfill our charge remains to be seen. Her brother may well have done worse than kill her.”

  “Can you heal her?” Kieran asked huskily.

  “She once healed, without knowing how, or why,” ai’Jihaar said softly, and her gaze was brooding, turned inward. It was an old memory she was dusting off and holding to the light. “More than that—she conquered death itself. For such a one…we will dare much.”

  Kieran bowed to her in silence and left her.

  After, he was never able to tell if it had been real or a dream; but he remembered, much later, looking outside into the dark, moonless night and seeing ai’Jihaar standing by the pool before her tent. But it was none of the ai’Jihaars of that day’s audience—not the old woman weakened by her illness, nor the imperious an’sen’thar, nor the gentle teacher, nor the teasing, bantering aunt sending her truant nephew back to his betrothal celebrations. This was a creature of power, wreathed in a column of white fire, her arms out to the dark sky full of those huge, impossible desert stars. Give me the strength, she seemed to be saying. Whatever her bargain with you, Sa’id al’Khur, surely it was for this that she took me from you—whatever her bargain, I will fulfill it. Only give me strength. She asked you once for my life; I ask for hers.

  The bargain we made between us is almost complete, a’sen’thar, a disembodied voice from the stars seemed to reply. She has forgotten, as I bid her; in one day she will remember it all. And when she does…her life is no longer in my hands.

  9

  There should have been little in that first encounter with ai’Jihaar to reassure Kieran on anything at all—yet he slept the sleep of the innocent, and the trusting. When he woke the next morning, left undisturbed in the curtained corner of the tent which had been given over to his use, it was closer to lunch than breakfast, and Kieran’s stomach soon reminded him that the previous night’s supper was hours away. He was ravenous.

  He was also alone. He had always had the facility of knowing when he was sharing air with someone, and when at last he made himself presentable and peered into the tent from his enclosure, it didn’t surprise him to find it empty.

  Anghara…What had they done with Anghara…

  Even as trust began to flee and all his apprehensions come flying to his shoulders like waiting vultures, Anghara pushed open the tent flap and ducked inside. Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes bright.

  “Well! So you’re awake at last! I was about to defy ai’Jihaar and come and roust you out. The
day is half done already.”

  “You look well,” Kieran said, leaving a hundred things he might have wished to tell her unsaid. It was all there in his silence, had Anghara wanted or been able to read between his words.

  But she chose not to look past the obvious. “I feel much better,” she said, “although ai’Jihaar tells me I’m nowhere near mended.” She managed to make it sound facetious; Kieran didn’t know whether to thank ai’Jihaar, or to rail at her for playing with Anghara’s feelings.

  “Where is she…ai’Jihaar?” he asked instead.

  Anghara giggled like a young girl, which, after all, she still was. “Much against ai’Fatmah’s sensibilities, ai’Jihaar decided to perform her daily ablutions at the well instead of having water brought in to her. She’s almost done; and then she’s asked ai’Fatmah to put together a midday snack. And after that,” she laughed again, “you might as well go straight back to bed, because it will be time for the afternoon rest.”

  “And you?”

  “Oh, ai’Jihaar might want to grill me again—she has been asking an unconscionable amount of questions since I got here.”

  “Don’t I know,” Kieran said, unable to keep it back.

  “You, too?” Anghara said, eyes twinkling. “It might be your turn, then. I’ll find ways to amuse myself. Besides, we’re to have company before long. If ai’Jihaar knows her brother and her fellow sen’en’thari at the Al’haria tower, those whom she has sent al’Tamar to summon should be here tomorrow, if not even late tonight.”

  “You know about all that?” Kieran said abruptly. “You were fast asleep when it was being discussed.”

  “No sen’thar is ever truly asleep, I think I heard much of it myself, although ai’Jihaar also told me.”