Changer of Days

by Alma Alexander

  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.

  11

  “You 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, brig
ht 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.

  “You look as if you wrestled with an army of afrit’in,” al’Tamar said with a sympathetic grin. “There was an instant when you were gone, completely lost to us; I was not at all sure you would survive the touch of this one of all the Gods. But then—you are no stranger to this, I forget that you carried al�
��Khur himself through the mountains.”

  “You told me then that he carried me,” said Kieran laconically, keeping his eyes on the steaming mug of khaf between his hands.

  “Perhaps,” said al’Tamar, laughing, “a little of both. If you are sure you are all right…”

  There were other chores to be done. Courtesy, and more than a little affection, had kept al’Tamar in attendance on Kieran. But the call of other, waiting duties was obvious in the way that al’Tamar crouched lightly on the balls of his feet beside his charge, ready to whirl away as soon as he had satisfied himself as to Kieran’s well-being.

  Kieran released him. “Go,” he said. “I’ll live.”

  And then, even as al’Tamar straightened with a smile still dancing in his eyes, Kieran remembered something. “Wait,” he said, stretching out an arm. “What gifts were mine to give in this hour, I gave. But I still carry something you left in my keeping. Perhaps this is the hour in which you, too, can give back something you guarded for her. It is for you, al’Tamar, to do this.”

  Setting down the khaf he fumbled for the say’yin with the Royal Seal, drawing it over his head, gathering it between his fingers, holding it out. As al’Tamar bent down to take it, his expression was thoughtful. “I did not even think of this, back at the hai’r,” he said. “But it would have gone hard with you if ai’Daileh had found this on you. Say’yin’en are a secret of the Way…you, fram’man, should never even have seen one, let alone worn it. How is it that she missed it? She had you ready for the sacrifice…”

  Kieran shivered despite himself, recalling many small hands tying the knots on the cords around his wrists, struggling to undo the unfamiliar ones on the laces which held his shirt at his throat. It was that which had saved him—their ignorance, ai’Daileh’s impatience, the name of ai’Bre’hinnah thrown into the night like an invocation. It would have taken another second—less—for them to find the say’yin. If there was a hand of the Gods anywhere in this whole situation, Kieran saw it in that moment—when they had almost frozen time, allowing him to claim back his life, allowing many secrets better left unsaid to remain so. “Sen’en dayr,” Kieran said, quoting a phrase he had picked up from al’Tamar himself.