Harshini

by Jennifer Fallon

  With infinite care, R’shiel wove the glamour Shananara had taught her, sending the threads of power over and around Sanctuary. In the background, she could feel Brak linked to her, guiding her hand. He had the training to help her envelop Sanctuary, but only she and Shananara had the strength to fling it beyond the reach of mortals.

  When she was certain she had wrapped every part of the settlement in her magical cocoon, she hesitated. She felt Brak sever the link that joined them as he let go of his power. What she was about to do would destroy him if he stayed coupled to her.

  She glanced at him, saw his eyes had returned to their usual faded blue and then gathered her strength. With a mighty push, she flung every ounce of power she was holding towards Sanctuary. It shimmered for a moment, almost as if it was fighting to stay put, and then, with a boom that rolled over the mountains like a distant thunderstorm, Sanctuary disappeared from sight.

  R’shiel was sagging from the effort, but Brak caught her before she could fall. She let go of the power with relief.

  “Did I do it right?”

  “I guess we won’t know that until you try to bring it back.”

  She smiled wanly. “You’re a real comfort.”

  “I do my best.”

  Suddenly she laughed. Whether from relief or amusement she didn’t know. There was a lightness in her that came from more than just the knowledge that she had successfully hidden Sanctuary. It came from somewhere inside her. It was as if she had stepped over an invisible wall that she had not known was holding her back.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I think that for the first time in my life, I’m actually happy to be alive.”

  Brak smiled slowly. “So am I.”

  Sitting close together for warmth, they settled down with their backs to a large pine tree and waited in companionable silence for the dragons to return.

  CHAPTER 52

  “Oh Tarja, they’re beautiful!” Mandah breathed reverently.

  He glanced at her and smiled. She was staring up at the sky as though seeing something from her dreams. He had allowed her to come to greet their new guests because he could think of no way to stop her. And besides, of all the people in the Citadel, Mandah was the least likely to offend the Harshini when they arrived.

  Tarja watched the dragons settling on the sandy floor of the amphitheatre, almost as awestruck as Mandah and the Defenders who stood behind him. He hadn’t expected there to be so many of them. Or so many dragons. Garet Warner studied the swarming sky with a frown, then turned to him with a shake of his head.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing, Tarja,” he murmured.

  “My Lord! Sir!”

  Tarja turned towards the urgent voice. A cadet was running towards him across the sand. Garet had pulled all the Cadets out of training and was using them as messengers and for minor administrative tasks to free up as many Defenders as possible. The lad was no more than fourteen and seemed torn between fear and pride that he had been chosen for such an important task as he skidded to a halt in front of the Lord Defender.

  “What’s wrong?” Tarja asked.

  “It’s the Kariens, sir. Captain Symin sent me to fetch you.”

  “What are they up to now?” Garet asked.

  “It’s the dragons, sir. Ever since they appeared the Kariens have been going wild. Some of them are even fleeing the field.”

  Garet glanced at Tarja in surprise. “Well, that’s an unexpected bonus. I’ll check out what’s happening at the gate. You’d better stay here and keep your new friends under control.”

  Garet followed the boy back to the tunnel entrance, as a tall Harshini with dark red hair slid gracefully from the back of the dragon that looked like the one who had accosted Tarja at the vineyard near Testra. He walked forward to greet her, pushing back a momentary wave of apprehension. She looked so much like R’shiel.

  “Hello, Tarja.”

  “Shananara.”

  “Thank you for letting us come home.”

  “You may not thank me in a few days. We’re under siege, and you’re not exactly welcome here. This isn’t going to be easy.”

  “I know.” She noticed Mandah, who had followed Tarja cautiously, and smiled at the young woman. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”

  “Of course. Shananara, this is Mandah Rodak. Mandah, this is Her Highness, Princess Shananara té Ortyn.”

  “I’m Queen Shananara now, but we can talk about that later. The gods’ blessing on you, Mandah.”

  “Your Majesty. Divine One,” she gushed, falling to her knees in the sand. The young pagan woman looked set to faint with happiness.

  Shananara smiled indulgently. “Arise, child. We have no time to stand on ceremony.” She looked at Tarja then, and her smile broadened mischievously. “I fear I have an apology to make, my Lord Defender. Childish and petty as it may seem, I’m afraid I could not resist taunting your besiegers. We strafed the fields surrounding the Citadel on our approach. I fear I’ve caused something of a panic among the Kariens.”

  Tarja tried without success to hide his amusement. “I’m sure I can find it in myself to forgive you.”

  “I thought you might.”

  He glanced over her shoulder at the other Harshini, who were climbing down from their dragons and looking about them with expressions ranging from happiness to rapture. There were no children among them, which surprised him a little.

  “I’ve made arrangements for you to be accommodated in the dormitories. As we’ve no Sisterhood any longer, there didn’t seem any point keeping the Novices and the Probates.”

  “What did you do with them?” Shananara asked with a hint of concern.

  He was tempted to tell her he’d murdered them all in their beds, just to see what her reaction would be, but thought better of it. “We sent them home.”

  “May we visit the Temple of the Gods?” When Tarja looked at her blankly, she smiled. “I believe you call it your Great Hall.”

  “Tomorrow, perhaps, and I’d prefer you did it in small groups. Hundreds of Harshini marching through the streets of the Citadel might cause a riot.”

  “We shall be discreet, my Lord.”

  “Thank you. Mandah will act as liaison between us. She’s a pagan, and a number of her people are here. I thought you might be more comfortable dealing with them, rather than the Defenders.”

  “Your consideration of our feelings is both unexpected and appreciated, Tarja,” she told him with a slight bow. “It seems R’shiel was correct when she said you could be trusted.”

  “She’s not with you?”

  “She and Brak had something else to take care of, but they should be back by nightfall. Which brings me to a rather delicate matter. I cannot ask the demons to stay melded in dragon form, and you have nowhere to accommodate them in any case. But if I dissolve them, I cannot guarantee their good behaviour.”

  Tarja groaned silently. He hadn’t thought about that when he’d told R’shiel the Harshini could return. On the other hand, she had conveniently neglected to mention the demons were a part of the deal.

  “Can’t you just…disappear them, or something?”

  Shananara laughed. “A demon you can’t see is likely to cause a lot more trouble than one you can keep an eye on, Tarja. I’ll do what I can, but I really should dissolve the melds.”

  “Just try to keep them out of trouble.”

  “I will. And now, if you would be so kind as to let us find our accommodation, we’d like to settle in. It has been a long night.”

  “Mandah will show you the way.”

  Shananara looked at him with a sad little smile. “We know the way, Tarja.”

  Tarja refused to acknowledge the unspoken accusation. “These men will escort you.”

  “Are we prisoners?”

  “They are for your protection, Shananara. I’m not worried about what you’ll do to the citizens of the Citadel; I’m worried about what they�
��ll do to you.”

  “Then once again I thank you for your consideration. Will we meet again later? There are things we need to discuss.”

  “Of course.”

  Shananara bowed and returned to her people, who had patiently gathered behind her, waiting for their queen to finish her discussion. Mandah followed her, still wearing that same look of awe that she had acquired when the dragons first appeared over the Citadel this morning. Tarja called over the lieutenant in command of the escort, gave him his orders and then headed for the tunnel.

  As he entered the cool darkness he felt the ground tremble faintly under his feet. He stopped, curious, waiting for it to happen again, but when no further tremors eventuated, he shrugged and kept on walking, certain that he must have imagined it.

  “The Kariens are frantic,” Garet informed him later that day.

  “Shananara did more than just fly over them, Garet,” Tarja told him with a grin. “She strafed them. They must be having quite a crisis of faith at the moment. How many priests do you think they have left out there?”

  “Not many. The priests liked their creature comforts. Most of them were billeted in the Citadel.”

  “Then they lack spiritual guidance as well as leadership. How many fled?”

  “A few thousand at least,” Garet informed him. “Any word from King Jasnoff yet?” Their demands had been sent in a carefully worded message to the Karien king. They’d dispatched a dozen birds carrying the same message, to ensure that at least one got through.

  Tarja shook his head. “It’s far too early to expect a response. The birds we sent may not have reached Yarnarrow yet.”

  “What about our relief forces?”

  “Maybe R’shiel will be able to tell us something when she gets back.”

  Garet nodded and took a seat on the other side of the desk. Tarja was too restless to sit. There was too much to be done.

  “I’ve had the lads check the stores. We’ve enough here to hold out for years. Mathen was looting the countryside, but he was rather considerately storing it all here in the Citadel. He was expecting to use it for the troops outside.”

  “Which means they’ll get hungry soon.”

  “That’ll thin their numbers some more. Desertions are always a problem when your army isn’t being fed.”

  “Well, between the Harshini scaring the wits out of them and their bellies grumbling, hopefully, by the time help arrives they’ll be down to a manageable number. Has there been any trouble in the city?”

  “No more than usual. Once again, thanks to Squire Mathen, the people are getting quite used to living under martial law. And we reopened the court’esa houses, so that’s eased the tension, somewhat.” Garet smiled faintly. “I did it in your name, of course. You’re very popular at the moment.”

  “I wonder how long that will last?”

  The walls trembled faintly again before Garet could answer. The tremor he had felt in the tunnel under the amphitheatre had not been his imagination. They had been going on all day, growing steadily stronger and more frequent. He frowned and glanced at Garet, who looked just as concerned.

  “That’s all we need,” he muttered. “First a siege, then the Harshini, and now a bloody earthquake.”

  “It’s not an earthquake, Tarja,” Shananara informed him, stepping into the office as Mandah opened the door for her. “It is the Citadel awakening from his slumber.”

  “You talk as if the Citadel is alive.”

  “The Citadel may not be ‘alive’, by your definition, Tarja. But it is sentient by ours.”

  “This is where I leave,” Garet announced, rising to his feet. “You can sit here and swap pagan fairytales with the Harshini, Tarja. I have better things to do.”

  Shananara turned her regal gaze on the commandant. “You are Garet Warner?”

  “You’ve heard of me?”

  “Brakandaran speaks quite highly of you, sir. For a human.”

  “Does he now?”

  Tarja recognised the dangerous edge to Garet’s soft-spoken reply and inwardly cringed. This could get very ugly if he didn’t head it off, and quickly.

  “Are your people settled in, Your Majesty?”

  “Yes, thank you, although we took the liberty of removing the tapestries and other…impediments, that you have used to disguise the Citadel’s origins. I hope you don’t mind. It looks almost like home again, now.”

  As far as Tarja was aware, most of the dormitories had been whitewashed to conceal the Harshini frescoes that had once decorated the walls. He sighed; they had been here barely more than a few hours and already they were redecorating.

  “You didn’t do any structural damage, I hope?”

  “The Citadel is not that easy to harm, my Lord.”

  He wasn’t sure what she meant by that and decided he really didn’t want to know. “Garet was just telling me that your rather dramatic entrance this morning has caused quite a stir among the Kariens.”

  She shrugged. “We cannot fight with you, my Lord, but we help where we can. Xaphista’s believers either deny our existence or consider us the essence of pure evil. Either way, they do not know how to react when they see us.”

  “We deny your existence, too,” Garet pointed out. “Yet our people aren’t panicking.”

  “No, Commandant, you have never denied our existence. You tried to eradicate us and thought you had succeeded. There’s a distinct difference.”

  Garet glared at her, but made no further comment. The building trembled again, hard enough that Tarja clutched at the desk for support. Shananara looked around the room thoughtfully for a moment then turned to Tarja.

  “I really should do something about that, I suppose.”

  “Exactly what did you have in mind?”

  “I need to speak to the Citadel. It can feel our presence, but the humans here are disturbing it. Once I’ve reassured it that you mean us no harm, things should settle down.”

  Garet muttered something that sounded suspiciously like a curse.

  “How can you speak to…it…him…whatever the hell it is?”

  “It will have to be in the Temple of the Gods. The Citadel’s presence is strongest there.”

  “I’ll have someone escort you.”

  “Founders, Tarja! You don’t seriously think sending this woman down to talk to a building is going to stop an earthquake, do you?”

  Shananara turned to Garet with a serene smile. “Perhaps you and the Lord Defender would like to accompany me, Commandant?”

  “Why? So we can watch you talking to the walls?”

  “No, Commandant,” the Harshini queen replied with solemn dignity. “You should come because you and your people have occupied our home for two hundred years. You have vandalised and defiled it, with no thought to the consequences. It is time you understood what you have done.”

  CHAPTER 53

  Like R’shiel, Tarja had never been able to refer to the Great Hall as Francil’s Hall without choking on the words. At least now he could change that, if nothing else. The Great Hall would be known as the Great Hall once again, although, as he escorted Shananara up the broad steps with Garet, he wondered how long it would be before the Harshini convinced everyone to refer to it by its original name: the Temple of the Gods. If they were as determined to do that as they were to return the dormitories to their original condition, he figured it would only be a matter of days.

  It was almost sunset and the chill of the coming evening was settling rapidly over the Citadel. A score of Defenders stood on guard outside the Hall, causing Tarja to glance questioningly at Garet. He’d ordered no detail to guard the Great Hall, and there was no need he knew of to protect it. Shananara strode on ahead, anxious to do whatever it was she was planning. The ground trembled under their feet.

  “Why the guards?” he asked the commandant curiously.

  “We’ve confined the priests in there. Couldn’t think of anywhere else to put them.”

  Tarja cursed softly and hurried afte
r the Harshini queen. The guards on the doors, seeing the Lord Defender and Commandant Warner were escorting the Harshini, made no effort to prevent her from entering. She disappeared inside before Tarja could stop her.

  He pushed open the door to find Shananara frozen in shock. She was as pale as the whitewashed walls and looked as if she had forgotten how to breathe. More Defenders lined the walls, watching the Karien priests warily. The hall itself was littered with bedrolls and the milling priests who had been confined within. They were still dressed in their dull brown cassocks and all but a few had stubbled heads and the beginnings of scraggly beards.

  Nobody was foolish enough to give these men a razor.

  Robbed of their staffs and their dignity, they were a sorry lot. The priests turned at the sound of the doors opening, showing no interest in the new arrivals, until someone noticed Shananara’s eyes.

  And then all hell broke loose.

  The priests began shouting hysterically. Some of them rushed towards the Harshini queen while others backed away in fear. The building trembled, as if in outrage. Shananara cried out, but it was a cry of despair, rather than a scream. The Defenders reacted immediately, calling for the guards outside to reinforce their numbers as they drove the priests back. Tarja drew his sword and stepped in between Shananara and the oncoming priests, whose eyes burned with fanatical hatred.

  He felt, rather than saw, Garet take a stand beside him, just as ready to carve a few priests up as he was. The priests who had thought to attack the Harshini backed off sullenly, as wary of the dangerous look in Tarja’s eyes as they were of the blades he and Garet wielded.

  Once the other Defenders were inside the Hall, the ruckus was put down quickly. The Kariens were no match for the armed Defenders, particularly men who were itching for any excuse to cause them harm. Garet Warner issued his orders with a few hand signals and the priests were herded into a loose circle in the centre of the Hall, surrounded by the Defenders. Tarja studied them warily for a moment then slowly sheathed his blade before turning to face Shananara. She was shaking all over, and although he had no ability to detect it, he had a strong feeling that she was channelling her power. For a moment he was very glad it wasn’t R’shiel standing there. The priests would be splattered all over the walls if it had been Shananara’s half-breed cousin under attack.