His face was clear of any struggle or anger, but again Isika thought about what it meant that he stayed with the World Whisperer. He had left his family—not a small thing. She couldn’t imagine what would ever cause her to live far from Benayeem. The pain wouldn’t be worth it.
“So the prophecy is important, you see. If you are the sisters, what does it mean?”
“It doesn’t exactly give instructions,” Brigid said.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if it did?” Olumi said, smiling. “But it does seem to imply that Isika needs to be close to Aria.”
“Yes!” Isika exclaimed, sitting forward. “That’s what I’ve been saying!”
“But first you need to learn to hide yourself from her,” Olumi said. He turned to the king.
“Aria can sense where Isika is.”
“That’s not safe,” the king said immediately, gesturing to the servants for more tea. “You can learn how to block that. Asafar is the one who should teach you.”
“But I thought he wasn’t well,” Isika said.
“The day that Asafar is not well enough to teach a lesson is the day he is no longer with us,” the king said, and though his words were light, his face grew sad.
* * *
Later that day, Isika went to Asafar’s tent with the mother cat trailing her and Keethior flying overhead.
What is your name? Isika asked the cat as they walked, realizing she should probably stop calling her “the mother cat” in her head.
Heeeeeerrrra, the cat replied.
Isika stopped and stared at her.
“Hera?” she asked aloud.
If that is all your human mouth can say, it will do.
It’s more like Heerrrrrra, Keethior added helpfully from above, rolling the r’s until they sounded like the ripple of waves on a shore.
“Hera,” Isika said again, this time rolling the r. She scowled as the pair of them laughed at her.
Hera walked with Isika into the tent this time, and Isika turned and narrowed her eyes at the cat, but Asafar gestured with a weak hand.
“I don’t mind her,” he said. “I’m rather tickled that I get to see a mystical being I only ever thought was a myth.”
Isika smiled at him. She regarded him as he lay back on his cushions. He didn’t look well enough to teach. But the king had said he would do it. She hated to ask him but gritted her teeth and thought of Aria.
“Uncle, can you teach me to guard my mind?”
“Of course. Come closer.”
She settled herself on the cushions. Hera stretched to her full length against Isika’s side and began purring. The vibrations were so strong that Isika felt them in her teeth, but she did her best to ignore the cat, and Keethior also, who was standing to one side, lifting his wings idly every so often.
“Hiding from someone who can sense you is like finding a secret place inside yourself. You put your presence there, so people can’t simply reach out and grab pieces of you. Let’s try this. Imagine a room, a beautiful one. We’ll call this your soul. And you merely have to go inside this space and shut the door.”
Isika looked back at him. The old man had gentle eyes and a soothing presence, almost like an Othra.
“It sounds a lot like what Ben does in his mind to block the music, only he shuts the music in a room.”
“Ah, but he would find it easier to put himself in the room.”
“Will I still be able to focus on the world around me?” Isika asked.
“Try it and see,” the old healer said.
Isika envisioned a room that looked very much like her bedroom at home, with white walls and a wooden ceiling, a simple bed and a mat on the floor. Then she went into the room and shut the door, sitting on the bed. As she did so, she opened her eyes. Everything around her looked the same, but she felt protected. It wasn’t that she couldn’t see, it was more that she wasn’t flailing in the wind, ready for anything to pick her up and carry her off.
She blinked and suddenly she was back outside the room.
Asafar smiled and lifted a hand, but it was so weak that it fell back against his chest.
“Very good, young one,” he said. “It will get easier in time, so that you won’t be forced out of the room. You’ll learn to live there, to practice everything there rather than living out in the open. You can invite Nenyi there, but no one else gets to come . . . into the room.”
He was growing breathless, and his wife came forward. Isika nodded and stood to go, but something had been bothering her, itching just under her skin. It was a little like the feeling she had just before she found a wall to pull down. What was it? She had learned to listen to this sense, but it often took its sweet time to show her what it needed.
Hera raised her giant head and looked directly at Isika, and Keethior gave a long, low cry.
Isika knew then.
“Can I touch you?” she asked Asafar.
He looked at her from weary dark eyes and shrugged. “All the best healers have failed,” he said. “Many more skilled than you. No one knows what this thing is.”
But the feeling was very strong now, and Isika moved toward the healer as though she was in a trance. She fell to her knees beside him and tucked her feet under her, placing her hands on either side of his head, cupping his forehead gently.
His eyes flew open and then she couldn’t see anymore, because she was following the sickness, deep inside, to the very center, where she found a deep poison that attacked him so he would be too weak to stop the kidnapping of his people. This was malevolent magic, from the bowels of the Great Waste, targeting the powerful healer to take his strength and eventually kill him. And it was strong because of betrayal magic. She pulled it, all of it, sending it deep inside her and smothering it with her pure water. It couldn’t live within her. She drew it out slowly, without mercy, refusing to feel its panic, pulling and pulling until she opened her eyes to discover that she was on her feet, holding onto the healer’s forehead, while he stood strong and impossibly tall in front of her, fire in his eyes, and now he had his hands on her elbows and he was holding her up.
She opened her mouth. “There is a spy in the camp,” was all she could say before she fainted.
Chapter 22
From a long way off, Ben heard Isika’s music suddenly change, so he broke into a run, searching for her. It grew poisonous, then soft and like her again, and he realized she had performed a healing. A big one. Her music was wispy and pale, as though she was barely alive. He ran faster.
He found her with the healer Asafar in his tent. Asafar look completely well, while Isika lay curled on the floor of the tent.
“Wow,” Ben breathed, taking in the size and scope of what his sister had just done.
Asafar looked at him and nodded.
“What do we do?” Ben asked. “She’s normally okay after some sleep, but this time her music is weak, too weak.”
“The magic grows angrier,” Asafar murmured. “It fights her in a different way, targeting her as though it has instructions to hurt her if it finds her.”
“I think Mugunta is becoming wise to the fact that she will heal what she finds.”
“I am trying to help, but I do not know what to do,” Asafar said.
Ben thought, feeling frantic.
“Is there a tree in this desert?”
“A tree?” the healer looked at him with astonishment. “Yes, there are a few. There is a small grove of orange trees with precious fruit.”
Abbas ran into the tent, Keethior directly behind him.
“The stream,” he said. “We need to lay her in the stream.”
“The stream is no more, young Abbas,” the healer said. “At the same time that the well was poisoned, the stream dried up. Things are bad here.”
“We’ll go to the trees,” Ben said.
Asafar turned to Abbas. “I’ll carry her. I feel stronger than I have in years. But, Abbas, she said there is a spy here. We must find him.”
He picked Isika up as
though she weighed nothing. He was tall, like Abbas, with long silvery hair and a dark beard. He had rings in his ears and his nose, and his skin was almost as dark as Isika’s but his hair was long, straight, and swinging free. He stooped to get through the tent opening, and then Ben had to stop staring and hurry to catch up as Abbas went after him. They moved swiftly through the camp, people staring and calling out as they passed by.
“Asafar!” the people called out. “Healer! You have come back to us!”
“Yes,” the healer responded to their calls. “But my own healer is sick and I must help her.” And then the people noticed Isika in his arms, and they cried out in fear. Ben was listening intently from behind, his heart beating quickly.
“Uncle, I can barely hear her!” he called, and Asafar began to run.
They ran into the desert, and the heat beat down on them until Ben was parched and exhausted, but as they ran he saw a low-lying mass on the horizon that grew larger as they drew closer. The mass became a stand of trees, then finally they were in a grove of stocky orange trees, fruit heavy on their branches. Ben could hear only the quietest strains of Isika’s music and his heart was tight with fear.
Asafar turned to ask where he should put Isika, and Ben gestured to the ground at the foot of one of the trees. The healer laid her gently down and Ben placed her hands on the tree, while Abbas swung her knees so she was curled all the way around the tree, in its shade. Her music lifted and Ben heaved a sigh.
“We are in time,” he said. “She will be okay, but I think she will sleep for a long while.”
The three of them settled in a circle to wait, and Abbas retrieved a piece of fruit from one of the trees and pulled a knife from his belt. He removed a cloth and a few packages from the pack he always wore on his back. Inside was a chunk of goat cheese from the camp, a skin of water, and a few pieces of flat bread. He cut chunks of fruit, layered them with thin slices of goat cheese, and offered them to Asafar and Ben. Ben relaxed in the company of these men, reassured now about Isika and ready to lay down his fear for a time. The fruit was spicy and sweet and the cheese mellow and creamy, with that slight taste of goat that reminded him of traveling the desert with his mother, asking for milk from wandering goatherds.
He sat and listened for a while. He could hear the earth responding to Isika, and the sound of the tree finding her and lending her strength. He had never heard that before, and when Asafar asked him, he told the healer about what he heard.
“How far have you tried to send your hearing?” the healer asked.
“Across the city,” Ben told him, “back in Azariyah.”
Asafar took a bite of flatbread, then a bite of fruit and cheese, and watched Ben as he chewed. When he was finished, he sat forward and offered Ben one of his hands.
“Can I listen with you for a moment?” he asked.
“Listen with me?”
“One of my gifts allows me to experience the gifts of others with them. And I am a listener also, although I hear things other than music. I am fascinated by your own gift.”
Ben felt stunned. He had never heard of a person who could hear the gifts of others, and suddenly he longed to share what he heard, to have someone else hear it. He put his hand between the two hands of the healer, and Asafar drew in a sharp breath.
“You hear this all the time?” he asked. Ben listened, becoming aware of what he heard. He heard Abbas and Asafar. He heard Isika’s song and the way it mingled now with the song of the desert and the grove of orange trees. He heard the wild song of the Palipa, and turned to see that the mother cat had followed them and was lying not far away.
“Yes,” he said, “though I have learned ways not to hear everything all the time, only when I want to pay attention.” He grimaced. “Mostly.”
“Yes,” Asafar said. “I can see why you would have to. Try to send your hearing farther.”
“Farther.”
“Yes, you are looking for your sister, yes? And her music will be familiar to you? Try to find her.”
Ben closed his eyes and listened. As he opened his hearing up rather than blocking it, he could hear a cacophony of sounds. Throughout the desert there were people rejoicing at the healer’s return. He heard the desperate sounds of the sick. He listened harder, farther, skimming over the deep waves of music and all the threads of song until he found a spark that sounded familiar. It was Aria. He gasped and almost lost her, but quickly found her again and listened. Her music was deeply familiar to him. He had known it since she was born, but he heard unfamiliar and sorrowful music within hers now. The poison of the arrow. And the Desert King’s music, woven into hers now, nearly drowning her out. And even in her own music, something new: an anthem, almost, so different from the shy, quiet Aria that he knew.
He was listening so hard for Aria that he almost missed other, familiar music coming closer and closer until Asafar shook him. His eyes flew open. His hands were still held between the hands of the healer.
“What is that?” the healer whispered, and Ben smiled with relief.
“That is Eemia, the Othra,” he said, and soon she swept into the grove of trees, purple lights flickering within the deep black of her feathers, bringing her distinctive, sweet, wild song.
“Eemia,” Abbas said, bowing his head slightly, and Ben followed suit. The bird drew close and looked at Asafar, her bright eyes flashing as she cocked her head to look at him.
“Well,” she said, “that is an ancient one. Honor be on your head, ancient one.”
“And yours,” Asafar said, dropping Ben’s hands and sitting straighter.
Ben looked at the bird, sure she had something important to tell them about Gavi and Aria, but not wanting to interrupt her conversation with Asafar. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to see the mother cat moving closer, stretching out close to Isika and giving Eemia her full attention.
“Is the cat safe for you?” Abbas asked, his voice wry but nervous.
Eemia gave the squawk that was an Othra laugh. “Ancient ones don’t eat each other, don’t worry,” she said. “But I have news for you, Abbas and Benayeem.”
“What is your news, Eemia?” Ben asked.
“Aria will be crowned heir within the week,” Eemia said. “The king is naming her as next in line. She will be queen of Gariah one day.”
“What?” Ben said. “What does that mean?”
“It means she will be tied to the magic of the city and the king, woven into it in a way that will be very hard to fix later. If we are going to help her, we must do it now.”
* * *
The shock of Eemia’s news took time to sink in. Ben asked himself over and over what it meant and what they could do. He finally agreed with Isika. They needed to go to Aria quickly. Isika needed to learn to hide herself, and soon. He looked at her, sleeping peacefully under the tree. He heard her coming back, her wild earth gift strong and powerful. He heard her song of worship, her link to Nenyi, the song so beautiful it made him want to get up and sing it out.
Ben, Abbas, and Asafar talked into the night, and when Isika didn’t wake, they finally lay down and slept there in the orange grove, covering themselves with the thin blankets that Abbas had carried with him. A messenger came from the king at one point, asking if all was well, and when Asafar told him yes, and that they would be back in the morning, the messenger bowed low before Asafar and stood up with tears in his eyes. He laid a flower at Isika’s side and went.
The healer smiled softly as he settled himself down to sleep.
“She will find it interesting to deal with my people’s gratitude,” he said. “Without their healer they felt lost. She has returned me to them and they will be loyal to her forever.”
Ben laughed, and drifted off to sleep, his heart tangled between fear and grief for Aria and love and happiness for Isika.
* * *
At first he didn’t know what had woken him. The sky was dark, the moon had set, and the stars were like brilliant sparks. The air
was chilly. Why was he awake? Then he sat up. Music. Harsh, discordant, wailing music that hurt his inner ears and made him want to run far away. Isika, under the tree, sat up suddenly, the mother cat at her side. Their eyes met.
“Hera says there is danger in the camp,” Isika said.
“I hear it,” Ben answered. They woke Abbas and Asafar, and Isika assured them she was well. They ran back toward the camp together, spotting the flames while they were still far away. Abbas cried out, his steps growing faster as he pulled ahead. Out of the distance, the three other cats joined them and ran on either side of Ben and Isika, flanking them.
The music was horrible, and Ben tried to protect himself from it so it wouldn’t overwhelm him. He knew what he was hearing. It was betrayal.
* * *
There were four of them. Three young men and one woman. They had set fire to the tent where Isika, Olumi, Brigid, and Ben slept. Olumi and Brigid stood outside, shaking but unharmed, as fighting broke out between the Karee and the betrayers. Spies.
One of the men had a bow and arrow, and as Ben and Isika ran into the camp, he turned and sighted the arrow on Isika, a mad gleam in his eye, his lips curled back over bared teeth. He pulled back his arm to let an arrow fly and Ben was helpless, useless, but then four shapes tore toward the man, leaping like silver lightning to knock the arrow out of the air and leap on the man. He was dead before anyone else reached him, Hera standing on his chest, blood on her muzzle. There was smoke and confusion and when things cleared up, they discovered that the other three spies were gone.
* * *
Isika was sitting with the mother cat, stroking her between the shoulders, when Ben finally reached her.
“Well,” she said. “Olumi was right about the cats, although they may have terrified the Karee beyond repair. But no wonder they couldn’t heal Asafar, with so many spies right here, sending waves of betrayal magic.”
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