Changer of Days

by Alma Alexander

  “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 dag
ger he carried concealed in his boot, and without burnouses they would be easy prey for the desert sun.

  “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 s
en’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.