I nodded. “I know.”
“There is no guarantee that he will emerge victorious in tomorrow’s duel,” she mused.
“No.”
“And if he does, he means to stand for Kagan at next year’s tourney,” she continued. “There is no guarantee that he will win that battle, either. I could find myself a widow in a year’s time.”
“You could,” I agreed.
“To be young and widowed in Granth…” Zariya shuddered. “I am not too proud to admit that the prospect terrifies me.”
It did me, too. Zariya was right, I could not stand against an entire realm.
“You needn’t choose yet,” I said to her. “There’s no point in it. You can wait until after the duel.”
She shook her head. “Yesterday, the duel was a pointless, bloody exercise I must endure for the sake of diplomacy. Today, it is different. I need to know my own mind, my shadow.”
I understood. “If Sandrath the Quiet is victorious, will you consider his suit in earnest?”
Zariya was silent for a moment, then nodded. “I will.”
Granthians were not known for wasting time; the duel took place the following morning before the heat of the day became too oppressive.
It was held in an arena on the grounds of the palace, where in happier times, Zariya told me, theatrical performances were staged. There was even a special box for the royal women, fitted with curtains of gauze that were easier to see through than the fretted screen in the throne room. The mood among the royal women was a blend of resolve and disdain. I daresay they would have been mortified if they knew Zariya was willing to entertain the notion of wedding a Granthian if Sandrath were to win; and to be honest, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted him to or not.
I leaned forward on my seat, peering through the gauze as two men clad in steel armor entered the arena.
A vast shadow passed over the sandy ground of the arena and a harsh, shrill cry sounded overhead. It was a stink-lizard, bigger than the one I’d seen at the harbor. It descended to perch on the lip of the far edge of the arena, folding its leathery wings.
Zariya caught her breath. “Did Father agree to its presence?” she asked no one in particular.
Looking pale, Queen Adinah shook her head. “I don’t believe so, my dearest.”
Save for the poison sac pulsing at the base of its throat, filled with the foul-smelling bile for which the stink-lizards were named, it was motionless, powerful talons gripping the stone rim. It was here, I thought, to observe; and I remembered Brother Yarit telling me that the stink-lizards were the offspring of Droth the Great Thunder, the dragon under whose aegis Granth lay. They may have been the Kagan’s to command, but they belonged to the god. Moving in unison, Varkas Long-Arm and Sandrath the Quiet turned to offer the perched lizard a salute, raising clenched fists above their heads.
In that moment, I understood that the Granthians did not duel out of sheer bloody-mindedness.
No; for them, this was a sacrament.
The knowledge made my skin prickle, and I felt the beginning of Pahrkun’s wind stirring within me.
The Granthian suitors offered a salute in the direction of the royal boxes and the duel commenced.
They fought with two-handed longswords, steel clashing and sparks skittering at the force of the blows exchanged. Both men were strong, skilled fighters. As I had guessed, Varkas’s long-armed reach gave him an advantage, but Sandrath’s footwork was superior, deft and evasive. The royal women winced and exclaimed at the violence, averting their eyes. Zariya clutched my hand, breathing in short gasps, her nails digging into my skin. On and on it went, the Granthians going back and forth across the arena, battling each other in a state of grim exultation, both of them bleeding from half a dozen nonfatal blows.
As the battle wore on, I saw Sandrath the Quiet’s steps begin to drag and Varkas Long-Arm taste victory.
When the end came, it was swift. Parrying a slow overhead blow with ease, Varkas Long-Arm dropped to one knee and drove his longsword upward at an angle beneath Sandrath’s breastplate. Standing, he withdrew the blade, the length of it slick and red with blood. Sandrath the Quiet crumpled and lay motionless in the final silence of death. Zariya let out a low sound of dismay.
Behind the faceplate of his helm, Varkas’s eyes were shining and wild. “Behold, people of Zarkhoum!” he shouted, opening his arms wide. “I am victorious! Who here is man enough to stand against me? Therin? Barakhar? Or are you but fearful weaklings?” He pointed the tip of his bloodstained sword at the royal women’s box. “Princess Zariya, will you truly accept a lesser suitor?”
Oh, Pahrkun’s wind was rising within me.
“Name me your champion,” I murmured to Zariya. “Send me into the arena against him.”
She gave me a stricken look. “Are you sure, my darling?”
I nodded.
Grasping her canes, Zariya pulled herself upright. “Varkas Long-Arm of Granth!” she cried in a clear, carrying voice. “I will acknowledge your claim if you are able to defeat my champion!”
Varkas Long-Arm laughed deep in his chest. “Gladly! Does His Majesty King Azarkal consent to this?” he called into the stands.
The king hesitated, glanced toward our curtained box. Clenching my fists, I willed King Azarkal to feel Pahrkun’s wind stirring and grant his permission. “Yes,” he said at length. “Let it be so.”
There was a susurrus of murmurs, comments, dissent; I paid heed to none of it, parting the gauze curtains to vault over the edge of the royal women’s box and make my way to the arena. I felt light and lithe and keen, a hawk unchained. I was glad I’d worn my desert woolens.
This was what I was.
This was what I had trained for. I pressed my thumbs to my brow in salute. “Well met, Varkas of Granth.”
For a moment, the battle-fever dimmed and he looked confused. “You’re a mere stripling.”
I angled my head so that the sun caught on the marks of Pahrkun etched on my cheekbones. “I am Khai of the Fortress of the Winds,” I said to him. “The chosen of Pahrkun the Scouring Wind and shadow to the Sun-Blessed Princess Zariya of the House of the Ageless. Do you refuse my challenge?”
“I refuse no challenge,” Varkas said grimly. “What little challenge you present, I accept.”
“So be it.” I turned to offer a salute to King Azarkal in the greater of the two royal boxes. The king gave me a grave nod and returned it.
It was the wind on the back of my neck that warned me; the shouts of alarm would have come too late. Varkas favored his right hand, so I dove to my left, somersaulting beneath the level sweep of his longsword that would have parted my head from my shoulders.
In the stands of the arena, the crowd shouted their indignation and disapproval.
“Would you have slain me from behind as I yet stood unarmed?” Bounding to my feet, I drew my yakhan and kopar. “I did not think to find you a dishonorable fighter, Granthian.”
Behind the faceplate, his gaze was hard and ruthless. “I would have given you a swift, merciful death. Instead it seems I have given you a lesson. Never turn your back on a Granthian on the battlefield.”
I inclined my head to him. “I will not do so a second time.”
Until the duel began in earnest, I do not think Varkas Long-Arm imagined that he might lose. When I parried his first blow with ease, he looked incredulous. He had the height and reach of me; his forearms and shins and torso were covered in steel armor, and a steel helm protected his head. But his armor was heavy, the sun was rising high overhead, and he had already fought one difficult battle today and sustained minor injuries in it. And I had a lifetime of training and Pahrkun’s wind coursing through my veins, showing me the spaces between; between the powerful blows he leveled at me and the time it took him to resume his guard; between the gaps in his armor and the leather straps and buckles that held his breast- and back-plates in place; between the surety of an easy victory and a rising awareness that he was fighting for his life.<
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In the stands, someone began chanting my name—I never learned who—and others took it up.
“Khai, Khai, Khai!”
If I had needed buoying, it would have buoyed me, but I needed no encouragement today.
Today, I fought for Zariya’s honor and the honor of Zarkhoum.
I will not say it was an easy bout, for Varkas Long-Arm was the premier warrior of his generation, and I had never fought an armor-clad opponent. Knowing that Zariya was watching, I was more cautious than was my wont, taking no risks that might cause her undue alarm. Still, Varkas did not press me as hard as Vironesh had in our many hours of training. Growing desperate, he attempted a mighty overhanded blow. I caught his blade in the tines of my kopar, stepped inside his guard, and drove the point of my yakhan into his unprotected armpit.
The Granthian staggered backward with a grimace and dropped his blade, and I was reminded of the last battle I’d fought in the Hall of Proving. That, too, had ended with a disabling injury.
That man, I had killed in accordance with Pahrkun’s will. I was not sure whether or not I ought to kill this one.
Varkas Long-Arm fumbled left-handed with his helm, prying it loose and flinging it from him. It bounced on the sandy soil of the arena, landing near the lifeless form of Sandrath the Quiet. Beneath the helm, Varkas’s short-cropped black hair was soaked with sweat. Blood coursed the length of his right arm, dripping from the fingertips of his gauntlet. Lifting his chin with a jerk, he nodded at me. “Kill me. You’ve earned it.”
The stands had gone quiet. In his royal box, King Azarkal leaned forward and steepled his fingers. On the far side of the arena, the motionless stink-lizard watched with yellow eyes.
I hesitated, then shook my head. “I am Princess Zariya’s champion. That decision belongs to her.”
The Granthian’s gaze burned. “Then ask.”
I addressed the royal women’s box. “Shall Varkas Long-Arm of Granth live or die, Your Highness?”
The gauze curtains twitched.
“Let him live, my shadow.” Once again, Zariya’s voice rang out strong and clear; I knew what an effort it was for her to project it so. “Let Varkas Long-Arm live to tell the tale, so that all the realms beneath the starless skies might know that the hand of one of the Sun-Blessed is not to be won by mere strength of arms.”
I sheathed my weapons. “You live.”
I cannot say he evinced any particular gratitude for the gift of his life; indeed, it may be that the culture of Granth was such that it would have been preferable to have perished than to return defeated and disgraced. But the thing was done and it could not be undone. The remainder of the Granthian retinue were escorted into the arena by the Royal Guard, accompanied by one of the palace physicians. I kept a wary eye on them, as well as the stink-lizard. If the Granthians sought to avenge their countryman’s death, it would be an ugly battle.
If the stink-lizard attacked … well, that would be another matter altogether. I eyed it thoughtfully, trying to determine if its wingspan was too great to be taken down by a heshkrat.
Probably, yes.
But no, it seemed the Granthians had only come to retrieve their dead. Varkas Long-Arm shook off the physician’s offer of assistance and stalked from the arena, leaving a trail of blood-drops behind him. His comrades lifted the fallen figure of Sandrath the Quiet and followed him. A strong breeze skirled around the arena, raising small dust devils, a reminder that this was the realm of Pahrkun the Scouring Wind. With a raucous cry, the stink-lizard launched itself into the sky, flapping away toward the harbor.
I let out a sigh of relief.
It was over.
The Granthians wasted no more time in delaying than they did in dueling. By the time the midday rest was over and the royal women were convened in the baths, we learned that their ship had set sail within the hour.
“And good riddance to them,” Queen Rashina said distastefully; with the ascendance of her son Dozaren, she was enjoying her role in the women’s quarter as the mother of the king’s heir. “Tell us, dearest, now that the chaff has been winnowed, who will you choose?” she said to Zariya.
“I have not decided,” Zariya murmured.
Her mother blinked at her. “Oh, but Prince Heshari … my darling, you cannot be unmoved by his beauty!”
“I am not unmoved, Mother,” she said in a sharp tone. “Any more than I am unmoved by the fact that a man died today seeking my hand in marriage. Will you not allow me a moment of peace to consider that fact?”
Queen Sanala made a dismissive gesture. “Merely a Granthian brute, my heart. Anyway, they are all here for the promise of rhamanthus seeds. Why not choose the most pleasing suitor?”
“Any one of your sisters would have been grateful for the opportunity to have such a voice in the decision,” Queen Adinah observed.
Zariya said nothing.
“It was his choice,” I said softly to her. “Mourn for him if you will, but know it was not your fault.”
She shot me a grateful look. “Did I mention that you were absolutely splendid and terrible in the arena today, my shadow?”
I smiled at her. “Several times.”
That night, Zariya was restless and unable to sleep, tossing and turning on her bed. I lay sleepless on my pallet before the door to her bedchamber, watching her through half-lidded eyes. At length she rose and grasped her canes, hobbling through the doors into the garden.
I followed her.
In the starless sky, all three moons were visible overhead in differing states of fullness, shedding their varied radiance; silvery, bloody, bluish and dappled. Seated on a low bench, Zariya craned her neck to gaze at them. “Father expects a decision from me on the morrow,” she mused. “We might live a pleasant life together in Barakhar, might we not? Filled with song and music and dance?”
I sat cross-legged on the flagstones before her. “It’s possible. If the rhamanthus heals you, it may even be likely. Is that what you want?”
Setting her canes aside, she clasped her hands together. “What I want? Oh, but this has all happened so fast. I feel as though I’m standing on the corner of a precipice with no idea which way to jump. Barakhar or Therin? What of the matter of Dozaren? Once the decision is made, do I continue to maintain my silence? Do I wait to see if Anamuht will in truth come to quicken the rhamanthus? And the rhamanthus … what if it does heal me? What if it doesn’t?”
“You have but one decision to make tonight,” I said to her. “It is a very large one, but the rest can wait. What does your heart tell you?”
“After today, I fear my heart has little to say,” Zariya murmured. “And so I find myself thinking instead, and there is one thought to which I keep returning. Prince Heshari gave me a bolt of silk; admittedly, a very fine one. But Lord Rygil gave me a fate-changer, a tear shed by Therin’s own god, Ilharis the Two-Faced. Why?”
I shook my head. “You know I’ve no more idea than you do. But whatever you choose, I will stand beside you.”
“Yes, of course.” She met my gaze in the moonlight. “I belong to you, and you to me. We have known this since first we laid eyes on each other. Therefore I beg you, do not offer me platitudes, dearest. Speak plainly to me and say what is in your heart.”
I hesitated.
“Say it!” she repeated.
“Therin,” I said quietly. “I don’t wish to speak of the possibility that the rhamanthus may fail, but it is there nonetheless, Zariya. And I fear that if it does, these grace-touched Barakhani who are so very nice to look at might hold you in poor regard when they learned of your affliction.”
“But it might not fail,” Zariya said, and there was a plaintive note in her voice that made my chest ache.
“And I pray with all my heart that it doesn’t,” I said. “But whether it does or not, to my mind, a royal court that values grace over character is undeserving of your presence in it.” Clearing my throat, I repeated myself. “And that is why I think you should choose Therin and Lo
rd Rygil’s suit.”
Zariya sighed, and I sensed she was letting go of some pleasant vision. “Although they are a confounding folk, I suspect that you’re right, my darling.” Leaning forward, she brushed my cheek with her fingertips. “And I thank you for your honesty.”
I nodded, wishing her touch would linger. “Always.”
THIRTY-FOUR
On the morrow, Zariya gave voice to her decision in the throne hall in the presence of both embassies.
She had consulted with her father prior to the audience and he had approved her choice, but he permitted her to announce it herself from behind the fretted screen. The Therinian embassy cheered and let out great gales of laughter, as though Zariya had just uttered the cleverest witticism one could imagine. Lord Rygil offered a sweeping bow in our direction.
“A choice you shall no doubt come to regret, Your Highness,” he called out gaily. “Still, we shall endeavor to make the best of it!”
“I pray I don’t come to regret it,” Zariya whispered to me. “For I fear attempting to parse his meaning makes my head ache.”
“No doubt we will become accustomed to it,” I replied with an assurance I did not feel.
Lady Onesha of the Barakhan embassy wasn’t willing to accept Zariya’s decision as final. She offered a graceful Zarkhoumi salute and took a few respectful steps toward the throne, the folds of her robes swaying around her, then extended both hands palms-outward in a gesture of supplication. Inclining her head, then lifting her chin in a manner that bared the length of her throat, she addressed the king. “Your Majesty, might I not be granted leave to speak privately with the young princess?” she inquired in a tone of humility and eminent reason. “Woman to woman?”
On his throne, King Azarkal hesitated, and I saw his uncertainty reflected in Zariya’s expression.
It was difficult to say what made Lady Onesha’s request so compelling; one only knew that it was. Her stance, her tone, the elegance of her pale palms and fingers, the vulnerable line of her throat … somehow all these things combined to instill in one a powerful desire to accede to her wishes.
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