10,000 Suns

by Michelle L. Levigne

  So, then, her father had had a vision to guide him, and he had not thought to tell her. Did that mean the vision did not concern her at all—or did it involve her so deeply Shazzur avoided telling her to keep from influencing her actions?

  Either way, she knew her path had been laid out before her. She was returning to Bainevah.

  * * * *

  "Don't worry, little bird,” Naya whispered in Challen's dreams that night.

  She sat on the edge of her daughter's bed, a glow like fire emanating from her white-gold hair and eyes the blue of the hottest part of the flame. Challen lay still, curled up on her side, content to watch her mother, content to feel the gentle touch like the sighing night breezes, as Naya stroked her hair.

  "The Prophecy moves again. Despite all that foolish men do to avert the Prophecy, it moves on. As unstoppable as the rivers in flood.” She smiled, and a glimmer like tears made her eyes shimmer with brilliance. “I warned the people, and some say I died for speaking the truth. In some ways, it could be true."

  "Will Father die?” Challen whispered. She had always believed that the portion of Prophecy about the blood of the wise meant her father. “Will the king kill him after all? Are we going home to Bainevah to die?"

  "For those who serve the Mother, death is merely a doorway,” Naya whispered. She rose to her feet with a whispering sound. Her robes the color of moonlight and shadows drifted around her like mist. “Your brother lives, and when the Prophecy is fulfilled, he will emerge from the shadows and sand in triumph.” She closed her eyes, and two diamond tears trickled down her alabaster cheeks. “Tell him I love him."

  "Mother?” Challen sat up, reaching for her—and woke.

  She trembled as her mother's dream words slid through her mind. Tell her brother? How would she even know her brother, whom she hadn't seen since he was two years old?

  CHAPTER 2

  Challen brushed stray strands of hair off her sweaty forehead and sat back against the window embrasure in search of a bit of moving air.

  Beyond the tower window that faced away from the oasis, desert stretched forever in white-gold waves, unbroken but for reddish streaks in the sand, or razor-edged spires of red-gold rock. It blended into the eastern sky without a seam.

  Challen doubted nightfall would bring relief. Another stifling night of few breezes, a hint of coolness to make her whole body ache for rain. The topmost tower room with its six windows was usually cool enough to permit her to concentrate on her studies. Not tonight, she feared. Certainly not now.

  The solstice full moon was three moon quarters gone and waxing again to full. When the king made the Sacred Marriage with the Sanctum Bride, Bainevah should have experienced a break in the summer burning. The shortening of days and the gentle decline toward fall rains might exist in the capital now, but here in the desert the summer only grew harder, hotter, drier.

  "Patience,” Shazzur said, voice soft, eyes closed. If not for the slight bobbing of his white-streaked beard, he could have been part of the dun-colored shadows on the tower walls.

  The years of voluntary exile had not been kind to Shazzur, and Challen wondered if the long days of waiting for their escort would be even crueler. His hair was short, cut close to his scalp, his beard trimmed to collar length because of the heat. It was thin, dusty, no longer kept braided and oiled, as he had done when part of the perfumed Court of King Nebazz. He wore a simple sleeveless robe in the heat, baring his thin chest; and long, loose trousers, all in coarse-woven, gray cloth that allowed supposedly cooler air to flow through.

  Challen knew her father felt none of the discomfort that worried her on his behalf. His mind was elsewhere, preparing for whatever battle of powers and politics awaited them in Bainevah. She suspected he was excited, eager to return to the contest of wits. She should be happy for him, she knew. She tried to smile, but her face felt stiff with salty sweat and dust blown through the open window. Like her father, she wore loose trousers and a sleeveless sheath slit from knees to hips. The light clothing didn't help. She wished she were a boy so she could seek coolness and comfort in a mere loincloth.

  "Talent without discipline is like leaving sharpened swords lying on the floor,” she said, knowing her father would use the opportunity to slip in another lesson. “I wish I had water talent. What I wouldn't give for a short storm."

  "Water can be as dangerous as fire, and fire as beneficial as water.” Shazzur opened his gray eyes, bright with humor despite his weariness. “Your mother maintained water was a more temperamental talent and thanked Mother Matrika often that she was gifted with fire. As you will someday, when the need arises."

  The only furniture in their workroom consisted of the trunks that now held Shazzur's entire library, Challen's wall-mounted loom, and the stone bench lining half the circular room. Reed mats covered the stone floor to keep down the inevitable dust. The mats were worn to shreds, Challen noted as she slid to her knees to find coolness in the stones of the floor. She would have to go to the trickle of river in the gorge beyond the tower and cut more reeds to weave new ones. They wouldn't use them long, but why endure the long days of waiting in discomfort?

  "It is not yet time for Mother Matrika's plans to manifest, my dear,” her father said, as if she had spoken the thoughts and questions that plagued her since the attack four days ago.

  "Father—"

  "Her plan for each of us is different. Some must wait long for her to work through us. Others are constantly open aqueducts of her power and gifts.” Shazzur sat back. “You have a high destiny waiting, Challen. I train you so when the day comes you will be able to bear the burden. You now carry only a trickle of power and you are delighted with what you can do. Someday, you will carry a torrent. Mother Matrika will act in the time which she alone knows is best."

  "Father—it's not that I doubt you—"

  A flicker of movement in the bleached sky caught her attention. Desert hawks swooped up high and dove, not at all like their afternoon games in the rising drafts of hot air. The predators never broke their routines unless they were disturbed. Intruders disturbed them.

  The next trader caravan wasn't due for two new moons; Challen had their schedules memorized, so she could place orders for her father's supplies of parchment and ink, ingredients for healing potions, and so she could reach the caravan leaders the moment they arrived. She had learned to retrieve messages for her father immediately, to prevent the curious, often unscrupulous inhabitants of the oasis from claiming the messages on the pretext of delivering them. Her father eventually did receive all his messages, but Challen lived in fear of the wrong people learning Shazzur's business, or his true identity.

  "Soldiers,” she whispered, listening to her heart rather than common sense. “But your message just left."

  "Indeed.” Shazzur nodded and stroked his beard and didn't even lean forward to see out the window that looked to the east. “Great and sorrowful events must trouble the Court, if they come for us before I send for them."

  "Father!” Challen wanted to shake him. How could he take this so calmly?

  "Come. We must prepare for them.” He rose smoothly despite the dizziness that sometimes came from the heat. Shazzur held out a hand to help her stand. “Trust in Mother Matrika. Her word always comes to pass, though it seems long to wait."

  Challen caught her breath. Now she knew for certain her father had received another vision. No wonder he was calm. It was like hearing a minstrel or Song Weaver perform, when he had already heard the last verse of the story. For Shazzur, this was simply a time of waiting to see how events unfolded to reach the ending he had already seen.

  If only her dreams of her mother could have given her some warning. Challen mouthed “Prophecy,” not daring to speak the word aloud. Shazzur nodded.

  The Three had fallen.

  Despite her mother's warnings before her death, despite all the advice her father had left when they fled the capital, nothing King Nebazz and his Council had done in the intervening year
s had prevented or delayed the Prophecy.

  Challen straightened her shoulders and tugged her hand free from her father's grip, and headed for the stairs. If her destiny was about to pounce on her, she would face it in her best clothes, with a cool bath behind her. Even if she hadn't grown up in Court, Challen knew the power of proper appearances.

  She would only be a footnote in history, but she determined she would play her part with dignity. Her mother had been a heroine in the great war with Dreva. Naya had been hated and hunted by the Drevans, and captured. Despite Shazzur's best efforts, she had indeed died at the enemy's hands, but Mother Matrika had given Naya back to the man who held her heart. As the daughter of such a heroic couple, Challen vowed to make her mother's spirit proud of her, no matter what happened this day.

  * * * *

  Elzan smiled at the sudden break in the baking heaviness of the air. A flicker of cool breeze teased his sweating face. Then the cool turned to ice in his gut. His wide shoulders prickled under his armor. His long, square face hardened and black fire lit his eyes as he sensed danger.

  Coolness in the heat of the afternoon? In a sandy canyon?

  Time froze in the middle of battle exercises, where the soldiers under his command drowned and baked inside their bronze helmets and leather breastplates. Elzan searched the broken, sky-scraping walls of stone around his two battling companies, straining his ears for sounds of danger.

  Nothing but the clash-thud of blunted practice blades colliding and smashing on wood-framed, leather shields. Nothing but the whir and rustle of archers aiming for the man-shaped targets erected on the perimeters.

  He turned, guided by the sensitivity inherited from his healer priestess mother. Toward the archers behind him.

  "Rushtan!” he roared, as a dark line arched through the air toward his blond half-brother. For a split second, black fire trailed behind the arrow that had come from nowhere.

  Elzan leaped for his black mare, even as the arrow flew down and caught Rushtan in the shoulder. The impact knocked him sprawling, skidding across the dry-baked, hard-packed ground. Andorn, Elzan's right-hand commander turned, wheeling his frothing chestnut stallion to follow.

  Anybody but Rushtan, Elzan pleaded silently, even as he nearly laughed at the irony.

  Rushtan was his left-hand commander, captain of the archers in the Host of the Ram, and the only half-brother Elzan fully trusted. He felt sick as blood blossomed from Rushtan's shoulder.

  More arrows appeared from the yellow-tinted, burning sky. Andorn shouted commands as the battle exercise disintegrated. Elzan looked back once and saw more arrows pierce the spot where he had been moments ago. He beat his horse to go faster.

  He yanked on the mare's reins and leaped before she quite stopped, to drop to the scorching ground on his knees. Two of Rushtan's men reached their commander at the same moment, but held back to let the prince tend to his brother.

  "Where did—that come from?” Rushtan gasped, gagging as pain shuddered through his body. He turned his head, staring at the arrow in his bare shoulder.

  "Told you to wear your leathers today. Brace,” Elzan ordered before he could respond. He slid his hand under Rushtan's shoulder, clutched the arrow's shaft, and helped him to sit up.

  It was long. Twice the length of the arrows the two Hosts of the army used. The arrowhead was triple barbed and the bronze had a greenish tint under the dripping blood.

  "Poison. You two—get the shaft out of him. Brother, clear your—"

  "No,” Rushtan said. “You can't. You always knock yourself senseless when you try to heal."

  "We're not in battle. We go home tomorrow.” Elzan unbuckled his sword belt and slid his wrist guards off, to divest himself of metal that would blunt the energies he summoned. “Besides, Cayeen would never let me hear the end of it if I didn't."

  Rushtan laughed, the sound breaking as his men braced him and snapped the arrow shaft close to the head. He shuddered, turning white under his tan. His full-blood sister, Princess Cayeen was called The Nightingale for her singing—but her tongue could scald when she rose to a fury.

  "Imagine what she'll say about you for letting yourself get hurt during training exercises.” Elzan lightly slapped his brother's uninjured shoulder and signaled him to quiet.

  He closed his eyes and reached with his mind for the energies of the soldiers around them. He had barely enough sensitivity to serve in the lower levels of the Healers Temple, if he weren't a prince. That sensitivity let him gather energy to heal. He envisioned it as a glowing green pool in his hands.

  His brother's skin was already hotter than sunburn when Elzan grasped his injured arm in both hands. The prince mentally flinched from that sign of virulent poison at work. A black fog seemed to try to separate them.

  Rushtan was the oddity among the King's nine sons and Elzan valued him too much as friend and confidant to let him suffer. Blond and gray-eyed, when the other eight princes were black-haired and dark-eyed; Rushtan disdained Court and etiquette and the constant power struggle through the hierarchies. He had disavowed his distant claim to the throne before he turned seventeen and went to live in the soldiers’ sector of Bainevah, between the East and Memory gates. He alone wore a beard, when all the other sons of the King went clean-shaven as a sign of their indeterminate status. Elzan envied and admired his half-brother and refused to abandon him even for the time it would take to find another healer.

  Mother Matrika, give me strength. Beseech the Unseen to spare my brother's life. Take from me to spare him, I beg you.

  Elzan gasped as the light evaporated from his hands and he went hollow inside, like wax melting in a furnace. A fog enfolded him, numbing his body, but he smiled, knowing that what emptied him went to heal his brother.

  "Not fair!” a scraping voice whined. “I won that toss."

  "The pieces are not passive, stupid things,” an oily voice responded. “They choose and move themselves."

  "I want that one to die. He is not necessary to the game."

  "Then why must he die?” another voice asked; soft and sweet and vibrating like a harp string.

  Elzan heard the voices and wondered where he was, what had happened. Gut instinct told him he didn't want to know who spoke.

  Mother Matrika, help me! he cried from his soul. Am I dying?

  Light appeared, soft and hazy and touched with red-gold, as if someone had lit a fire far off in the distance on a rainy night. Elzan tried to get up and move toward that light. He had no body. Somehow, that strangeness was easier to accept than the voices that seemed to grind at him with unrelenting acid hate.

  No, that wasn't a light. It moved like ... like hair, hanging free in a gentle breeze. Eyes appeared, gray and brilliant in a golden tanned face. Laughing eyes, and a mouth that sent a throb of hunger through Elzan. A mouth made for kissing.

  A maiden's face hung before him in the darkness, wreathed in red-gold hair that moved of its own accord, like flames in a gentle breeze.

  He wanted her. He wanted to know her name and wrap himself around her, taste her kisses and hear her whisper his name with hungry love.

  The black fog shredded inside Elzan's mind.

  "Curse you!” Andorn growled, slapping Elzan's face. “Give me that water skin!"

  Elzan opened his eyes to see a silver gush of water hit his face. Gasping, he struggled to sit up. His head wanted to split open, as it always did when he tried to heal anything more extensive than a candle burn.

  "My brother,” Rushtan whispered from somewhere behind him, “you are a fool.” A sigh. “Thank the Mother."

  Elzan grinned and let Andorn push him down onto the pallet half-soaked with water. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious. It didn't matter.

  Or did it? Where had that dream come from? Was it a dream? A hallucination, or something full of portent? He vowed to search the Scribes Hall until he found an explanation.

  "The arrows?” he said, turning to face the other two.

  Rushtan sat propped
against the center post of Elzan's tent, his shoulder bandaged but unstained by blood. He shook his head and glanced at Andorn. The other commander's dark, square face grew darker and for a moment he resembled his uncle when the commander of Bainevah's armies was at his most furious.

  "No more arrows,” he growled. “No idea who shot them. If you hadn't already been going to Rushtan..."

  What more needed to be said? Both princes knew they would be targets until the crown settled on one head.

  But why here and now? Elzan wondered. What had been going on in Bainevah for the last two moons?

  * * * *

  Challen reached out to steady herself, her entire body buzzing pleasantly.

  One moment she had been standing over the bronze basin, trying to arrange her hair by the reflection in the water. The next moment, she looked at two men on a sandy, burning plain.

  Soldiers, she supposed, judging by the armor one wore. The blond one fell with an arrow in his shoulder and the dark-haired one leaped to pluck the arrow from him. Black death writhed through the wounded man's body and the other yanked it free. It turned to a snake and the dark-haired man fought it.

  Challen reached out with her healing gift, offering her strength to the man. She flinched as her hand touched the tepid water in the bronze basin. Even as the vision flashed and died, the snake shattered into shreds of shadows and the man turned and looked at her.

  The man in her vision could see her!

  They looked into each other's eyes. Heat rushed through Challen's body and she nearly cried out from a hungry pleasure that threatened to melt her to the floor.

  Then the vision ended.

  What did it portend? Would she see that very soldier among the company approaching the tower? Would he recognize her when they met face-to-face? Would he smile and run to her side?

  Would he expect her to run to him? Had he felt what she felt, just for that moment?