by Rachel Lee
Sara paused at a corner and closed her eyes. Reaching out with her senses, she at last found what it was she had been feeling since they had passed through the gates. “This is an eternal city,” she murmured. “Do you feel it, Tess? This city will fall only if the mountains fall, and within its walls there is such a sense of serenity and peace.”
She looked at Tess to find the older woman nodding. “This is holy ground,” Tess agreed. “Yes, I can feel it. How could anyone not? It permeates everything.”
“Then perhaps we really will learn to use our powers here. And perhaps tomorrow we should bring Tom….” Her voice trailed away, and she averted her face.
“Oh, Sara,” Tess said, reaching out to embrace her friend. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I knew not what I was doing. It was as if the force took me over. I never meant to hurt Tom in any way.”
Sara blinked and looked up. Her lower lashes sparkled with tears. “You saved his life,” she whispered fiercely. “Never think I blame you for anything.”
“His eyes…”
“Yes, his eyes.” Sara gave her a squeeze. “’Tis discomforting, but he is not dead. And it may be that having been kissed by Ilduin fire he will now come to be all that he was meant to be. For I know one thing for certain, Tess Birdsong.”
“And that is?”
“That my Tom was never meant to be a gatekeeper like his father. He was born to other things. Why he was left in the snow in the woods—”
“Wait a minute. What do you mean?”
“Tom was an orphan. Jem Downey and his wife found him as a babe and raised him. Everyone in Whitewater knows of this, but I forget sometimes that you are not from Whitewater.”
Tess smiled, gave Sara another quick hug and stepped back. “Since I can remember no other place from which my life started, I would be proud to call Whitewater home…if you have no objection.”
“Now why ever would I mind?” Sara asked with a smile, and looped her arm through Tess’s. “When you come to know Whitewater better, you will understand why such a question is folly.” She giggled a moment, then added, “Besides, we have become sisters. If you’re very nice to me, I will even share my father with you.”
At that Tess laughed, and the laughter seemed to fill her with light. The sound even brought smiles from passersby.
At last they stood in the plaza before the temple. Its dome rose higher than anything around, towering as if it were a mountain itself. It had the exact shape of the temple at Gewindi-Telner, but its vast size hinted at the much larger mysteries within.
Slowly they approached a closed door.
“Do you suppose,” Sara said, “that we will break some rule if we enter uninvited?”
“I do not know. But have we not been told that the temple was built to preserve the secrets of the Ilduin? And are we not Ilduin?”
“I would rather not have to prove that to an angry crowd.”
Sara turned, looking for assistance. Finally she spied a woman who was striding down the street with a bow and quiver on her back.
“Pardon me,” Sara called out. “Can you help us?”
At once the woman changed direction and came toward them. “Are you lost?”
“No,” Sara said. “We have arrived with Gewindi-Tel. We wish to enter the temple. Is that permitted?”
The woman smiled at them, her teeth white against her dark, iridescent skin. “Well, travelers, I will tell you what every Anari knows, since clearly you are not Anari.”
“Neither are we Bozandari,” Sara hastened to explain. “We come from the village of Whitewater, far to the north, on the caravan route over the mountains to the western lands.”
“I have heard of that village. Welcome to Anahar.” The woman bowed briefly. “Now I will tell you. The temple is opened only for festivals and important meetings. Apart from such times, only a few guardians are allowed to enter to maintain it and clean it.”
“Oh.” Sara’s face fell.
The dark woman leaned a little closer. “There is one other way in, however.”
“Yes?”
Again the beautiful smile. “The doors are always open to an Ilduin.”
Tess reached out and lightly touched the woman’s upper arm. “You, too, are Ilduin blood.”
The woman studied them for a moment, then nodded. “Aye, I am. My name is Cilla of Monabi-Tel.”
“I’m Sara Deepwell, and this is Tess Birdsong,” Sara answered. “We are very happy to meet you.”
But Cilla was looking at Tess, and finally reached out to touch her lightly. “I have heard your call.”
“And I yours.”
Cilla nodded. “It is good. I have been wondering how we would meet.”
Tess paused a moment as she recalled what Cilla had said. “You are of Monabi-Tel. Do you know the brothers Ratha and Giri?”
A wide smile graced Cilla’s face. “Indeed I do! They are my cousins. I thought they were dead, or lost forever in slavery. Where are they?”
“They came along with Gewindi-Tel,” Sara told her. “They were freed long ago by our friend Archer and have been traveling with him since.”
“Oh, thank the gods! In our childhood, we three were the worst rapscallions in the Tel. Many stories are still told of our mischief. I must see them. But first I will take you into the temple.”
She gave a little bow and gestured for them to follow her. “In these days, great trouble stirs on a bitter wind. Long have we sisters been isolated and ignorant. Now that at least we three are no longer isolated, perhaps we can learn that which we will need to defeat that bitter wind.”
“How many of us are there?” Sara asked.
Cilla shook her head. “I wish I knew for certain. I feel them out there, but I have met no others besides you. Some, I sense, have been perverted, and for that reason I feared to delve too deeply when I would stand alone.”
There was a stone bench in the plaza, not far from the door they approached, and Sara sank abruptly onto it, quivering with sobs too strong to be contained. Her heart was breaking in so many ways that she wondered if she would ever be able to put all the splinters back together. But one thing she knew for certain: the innkeeper’s daughter was a thing of the past.
“I’m sorry,” she said, biting her lip. “I’m sorry.”
“Is she ill?” Cilla asked.
“No,” Tess answered, “but she has suffered much. When you spoke of our sisters being perverted…Her mother was taken by a servant of the Enemy, long years ago. A few weeks past we found her, twisted and tortured so that the enemy’s servant could control his evil hive.”
“I have heard of those hives,” Cilla said, her voice dropping. “Is an Ilduin at the center of each?”
“I do not know,” Tess answered candidly. “I only know that we found Sara’s poor mother in the worst straits imaginable, and we were unable to save her.”
“My poor sister,” Cilla said, her sympathy quick and real. At once she sat beside Sara and took her hand.
“I’ll be all right,” Sara said, her voice wobbly. “Truly I will. It’s just that so much has happened…and sometimes I realize that I have not truly comprehended it all yet.”
“There has been very little time to grieve,” Tess said kindly. Then she briefly described all that had happened since their departure from Whitewater.
With each word, the sorrow reflected on Cilla’s face deepened. “We have heard that matters are bad up north, but as yet we know very little of them. In any event, we are scarcely able to post what is left of our boundaries for fear of being set upon by the Bozandari. We must rely on travelers such as yourself.”
Sara dashed at her eyes. “Gewindi-Tel has come to join a rebellion.”
Cilla nodded. “It is that for which I am preparing also. Many of us are. We must be free of this boot on our necks and on our lives.”
“We want to help,” Sara told her. “But as yet we know very little about what we can do.”
Cilla nodded. “None of us ha
s discovered all the secrets of our heritage. Few have even tried as yet. But come, let the three of us enter the temple. I will guide you along the path. The three of us can learn together. But first let us beseech Dalenar for guidance.”
“I do not remember the prayers,” Tess said, “if ever I knew them.”
Cilla smiled. “Then simply join your hand in mine. Lady Sara and I shall say them, for I know an Ilduin mother would have taught her such things in earliest childhood.”
Sara felt her heart clench yet again, for Cilla spoke the truth. Oft had they sat in the kitchen, looking into the cooking fire, softly repeating rhymes together to pass what few idle moments there were. It had always been a quiet time for just the two of them, sometimes the only private time they could squeeze into a busy day. Now, she realized, those moments had been like tiny diamonds found among the dust of life, treasures to be cherished forever.
She smiled as she took Cilla’s hand. “It has been many years, but the words have not left me. Aye, let us say them together.”
Oh Dalenar of rising light,
Wisdom gained with gaining sight,
Hope of seeing in the night,
Guide our journey to the right.
13
Once they had seen to accommodations for their companions, in lodgings among the people of Gewindi-Tel, Ratha and Giri bade their leave and went to find their own kinsmen.
For Ratha, the journey through the winding streets of Anahar was one of both joy and trepidation. To be once again in this most holy of places was a dream he had thought would never come true. And yet he could not forget how he and his brother had been taken.
Or perhaps given.
Unlike the other Anari Tels, the Monabi had always been nomads. While they, too, had a telner, it was buried deep in a remote mountain valley, and it served mainly as a base from which to wander among the jagged, crystal-laden boulders that sang a constant and irresistible melody as old as the stones themselves. The barren, stony terrain south and west of Anahar provided little for a would-be farmer but offered a life-sustaining bounty to those who listened to and followed after that ancient song.
Thus had Ratha’s kinsmen been better able to avoid the plundering Bozandari, and for many years his Tel had been able to maintain a stable existence, bringing jewels into Anahar on occasion and following the music of the stones otherwise. That wandering existence had given rise to the Monabi talent for wit and tale, skills that had come to be valued among the other Anari as much as the gems the Monabi offered at the yearly rites of sharing. Many were the nights he had sat around a campfire, listening to the elders fashion stories around the music that filled their hearts, his muscles quivering with the pleasant burn of a day spent in travel and good work.
All of that had ended twelve summers ago, when he and Giri had been sitting in the temple at Anahar, listening to the final sharing rites. A cousin had whispered to them, talking of a hunt that many of the young men were about to undertake.
“They are going to kill a boar for the evening feast,” his cousin had said. “That has to be more fun than sitting here listening to the Mothers drone on and on.”
Ratha and Giri had been of an age where such a proposition was indeed enticing. Moreover, there was Tel honor to be had, for the Tel that brought down the first feast night boar would be celebrated for the coming year. So they had slipped out of the temple and joined the other young men, the most skillful hunters from each Tel, and set out into the night. They had barely left the city when they were set upon and captured.
Ratha had noted at the time that the cousin who had invited them to the hunt had not been among the hunting party. In the time since, he had not lost the bitter taste of that night, or the feeling that he and the other Anari had been led into a trap. For years, there had been whispered rumors of Anari who were delivering their kinsmen into slavery for the Bozandari. But they had been merely whispered rumors, for to speak of such things openly would be a mortal offense to Anari honor.
As he was led in chains toward Bozandar, Ratha had found himself wishing that Anari honor could bear such accusations openly. For he had no doubt—then or now—that he had been betrayed. While Lord Archer had freed him and his brother, too many others remained in bondage.
Thus was his mood darkened by the memory of his last visit to Anahar, and while its glories could still awe him, his thoughts continually returned to what had happened and whether that cousin would be found among the Monabi-Tel who lived in the city.
“He probably is here,” Giri said quietly, his thoughts evidently running along the same line. “A traitor among our kin, traveling with them among the hills, would be too soon discovered. But in a city, where there are always opportunities to slip away to a meeting in a quiet alley, such a man could long stay hidden and secure.”
“No more,” Ratha said. “If he is here, I will find him. And when I do…”
He didn’t have to finish the sentence. There would be no gathering of the Mothers to hear the case, no defense to flow from a tongue long accustomed to treachery and deceit. The man would die on Ratha’s sword, or Giri’s.
“We are changed, my brother,” Giri said, sadness in his voice. “In past times, when we lived among our own, such thoughts would have flown as quickly as they arose. Now…”
“Now we are soldiers,” Ratha said. “For better or for worse, we have faced death and dealt death. A part of my soul is sickened by the thought that it gets easier each time, but only because that part of my soul dies a little each time. What remains…”
“Is the soul of a soldier,” Giri agreed. “It is a soul that some must have so that others need not. I regret that many more will need to find that soul for our people to be free. But it is not a war we chose, for an enslaved soul bears greater scars than ours.”
They walked on in silence, each carrying the weight of his own thoughts and the scars of his own soul, until they reached the streets of their kin.
We have come home, Ratha thought. We have come home to kill.
The temple seemed to embrace them as they entered. There was no other way to describe it, Tess realized. In stepping through the temple doors, they had stepped into an embrace as powerful and tender, as warm and boundlessly joyful, as the arms of a mother with newborn a child. It was as if the walls whispered, Welcome to the world, little one.
As if in greeting, torches sprang to blazing life on all the walls, illuminating the sanctuary, adding to the sense of welcome.
Almost as if echoing the feeling, Cilla said quietly, “This is the womb of the Ilduin, the place where each sister is truly born. The mysteries are many, and so far none of us has learned more than bits of what the first Ilduin knew.”
Tess nodded and moved slowly to the center of the circle of high stone walls beneath the huge dome. Everywhere her eyes fell, even in such flickering light, there seemed to be symbols and drawings and carvings.
Then she noticed the statues, twelve of them, circling the edges of the sanctuary, appearing to move as the torchlight danced.
“These are the Twelve,” Cilla explained. “The eleven who cursed Dederand, and the same eleven who built this temple to preserve the mysteries for the times when they would once again be needed. And there,” she added, pointing, “is Theriel, the Twelfth and the First among them. When she was killed by Ardred, the remaining eleven rained fire upon the city he ruled. Some say it was necessary. Those of us who share the Ilduin blood, however…”
Sara spoke in a hushed voice. “We feel the stain.”
“Aye,” said Cilla. “Theriel was pure of heart, the gift of the gods. It was she who helped bring the Anari into being, so that a better people might occupy this world. We are no better, of course. And then she was killed.”
“Out of jealousy,” Sara said, whispering what she had learned from the old tales.
“Not only,” Tess said, surprising them by speaking. “Not only out of jealousy. She lost the protection the goddess Elanor had given her when she dare
d to midwife the creation of a new race. She overstepped.”
Cilla and Sara both stared at her. “How do you know this?” Cilla asked. “I have never before heard it.”
Tess blinked, almost as if waking. “I…know not how I learned this. I just know it.”
After a moment, Cilla nodded. “’Tis said this place can awaken memories that reside in the blood.”
“Perhaps.” Slowly Tess walked toward the statue of Theriel, the woman around whom so much of the history of this world seemed to revolve, even centuries after her death. “Why was she so special?”
Cilla shrugged. “I know only that she was. She seemed to be at the crux of many matters in her time. It may have been her power. Or it may have been because of her protector, Elanor. None now know the answers to these questions.”
“But they may be found within these walls.”
“So it is said.”
Tess drew a sharp breath and felt as if the floor tilted beneath her. Reaching out, she touched the item that the statue held in her hands: a white rose.
“What is this?” she asked, her voice thick.
“The white rose. ’Tis the symbol of Theriel.”
The world tilted even more, and Tess sank to the floor, trying to hold herself up on one hand. “The white rose,” she murmured.
Then Sara gasped, too.
“What is it?” Cilla demanded. “What is wrong?”
Mutely Sara knelt by Tess and tugged the soft leather of the boot down Tess’s leg until the tattoo was revealed. A white rose.
Cilla fell to her knees, too. “By the gods, where did you get that, Tess?”
“I have no memory.” The words were squeezed out.
But the tattoo was identical to the rose in the statue’s hand, and all the three women could do was stare.
Finally Tess spoke, yanking the boot up to cover the tattoo once more. “I have been marked,” she said tautly. “Branded. And I fear it means no good.”
Word of Archer’s arrival in Anahar spread on the wind, almost faster than feet could travel. The Anari knew him and knew of him, and his arrival spurred the hopes of those who would rebel against Bozandar.