Changer of Days (16 page)

“What is the trouble?” ai’Daileh asked delicately.

“You have read of the
an’sen’thar
who raised an oracle,” ai’Jihaar said. “Look, and tell me if you sense her here with us today!”

It shook the self-possessed young priestess to find the wreckage that she did—shook her to such a degree that her face actually softened for a moment as she gazed at the silent, motionless Anghara. But it was gone by the time she lifted her head to look at ai’Jihaar again. “There is something odd here,” she murmured.

“The first thing we need to do is to forge again the bridges that were broken,” ai’Jihaar said, choosing to ignore her remark, not wishing to take the first bite out of the subject of Kieran just yet.

“Is that possible?” ai’Daileh said thoughtfully.

“We will find out. Have you come prepared?”

The younger woman nodded. “A white ki’thar lamb, not yet four full moons old. Two of the wounded silkseekers brought in to us…although I still cannot understand how you knew we had two with the precise hurts you wanted.”

“I do not have to be at the tower to know what passes there,” said ai’Jihaar calmly, folding her hands serenely in her lap. “You have the silkseekers. The rest?”

“I have brought the
Rab’bat Rah’honim.
”

“It is well.”

After a moment of silence, while she regarded Anghara with curious eyes, ai’Daileh said, “Perhaps there is after all little we can do.”

In response ai’Jihaar raised an eloquent eyebrow and ai’Daileh crossed her arms, a little defensively, but ai’Jihaar could not see this, and ai’Daileh’s voice, when she spoke, was cool and distant. “Perhaps this is no more than the price she pays for taking the Way—she,
fram’man,
to whom the desert should have been forbidden…”

Tension crackled in the air; Kieran didn’t have to understand the words to gather a sense of looming danger. There was something in ai’Daileh’s face and in the way she looked on Anghara that outraged him, a dismissiveness, a speculation…He stiffened in the shadows; keeping his peace seemed for a moment to be beyond his powers. Who did she think she was, this gold-robed…Khelsie? To slight thus one who had,
fram’man
or no, spoken face to face with ai’Daileh’s own Gods? The words formed in his mind, incandescent, ready to burst forth—
have you ever looked al’Khur in the face and lived, desert priestess
—but ai’Jihaar was a quiet flame in the darkness, a still white light which reached out and quenched Kieran’s anger, delicately, gently.

“I was afraid of this,” ai’Jihaar said out loud, as though her mind had not, for an instant, been focused elsewhere.

The voice was flawlessly controlled—a little resigned, a little regretful, yet shot through with a solid resolve which found its mark. Even Kieran caught the tone of those words; ai’Daileh herself jumped as though the words had been a dagger pointing at her throat.

“Even ai’Farra has grown past this,” said ai’Jihaar. “You…you have never known Anghara of Sheriha’drin, or what she did, apart from that which you have read and which has been relegated for all eternity to the dust of the cata-combs. There, perhaps, she was as great as her achievements. Here, all you see is a helpless
fram’man
girl-child with a wounded soul. Tell me now, ai’Daileh: are you able to rise above what you see and reach for what you know? If not…I will not allow you near enough to do her harm unless I have your sworn word that you came here to heal, not sacrifice.”

No, her eyes were not ice. They smoldered now in the angled, chiselled face; ai’Daileh’s hands were balled into tight fists at her side. Kieran wished passionately that he could understand what was transpiring here—he had been holding his breath, watching the face ai’Jihaar couldn’t see. He exhaled in a long, quiet sigh even as ai’Daileh lifted her chin in what was part pride, part defiance.

“I would not harm one who has been confirmed to gold as I have,” she said slowly. “I may not have liked to see it done—but it was done, and it stands. She is
an’sen’thar,
the same as I.”

“Your sworn word,” said ai’Jihaar, implacable.

“If you believe it necessary, you have it. I am here; I will do what I can to heal a sister in the Way. I will work no harm upon her. May I have leave to withdraw,
an’sen’thar?
I assume you would want us to begin as soon as everything has been made ready.”

“You may leave.”

With that ai’Daileh bowed lightly and turned to leave. She paused at the entrance, glancing back, taking in Anghara’s wide and unseeing gray eyes, Kieran standing tense and ready in the shadows, ai’Jihaar bent over Anghara’s bright head—and Kieran reeled as he heard unspoken words echo distinctly inside his head:
You are getting old, venerable one. There was a time you would not have needed an oath to know a sister’s heart.
A little regret, perhaps; but more of triumph, of satisfaction, perhaps even a little malice.

Then ai’Daileh was gone; and, shock on shock, ai’Jihaar’s own voice, quite physical and substantial, but frailer by far than the chance thought he had just caught. “That one,” ai’Jihaar said in Roisinani, almost in a whisper, “she would have taxed me even were I not as weak as this…Curse this affliction! Where is ai’Fatmah?”

“Shall I look for her?” Kieran said, coming closer.

“No time…There is a vial in the chest there at the back, blue glass…”

Kieran was already there, throwing open the lid, searching with frantic hands. There were two blue vials, damn it. He hesitated, and his eye was caught by a glint of metal. The edge of a blade—Anghara’s dagger. A memory of honey-thick air…eyes in the desert…blood…

“Kieran…”

He snapped out of it with a start, aware he had been sitting entranced for some minutes, while ai’Jihaar’s voice behind him was softer still, fading…He snatched at a blue vial at random. Where ai’Jihaar had seemed to be bending anxiously over Anghara, it was now all too obvious that Anghara was the support ai’Jihaar slumped against.

Kieran thumped down on his knees on the cushions beside ai’Jihaar, lifting the lid of the vial as he did so. “Here it is,” he said, lifting one of her hands and folding it around the blue glass. Unstoppered, it smelled familiar, oddly familiar in a land where everything was strange to him, but he had no time to wonder, and ai’Jihaar had taken a swallow or two before either of them gathered their thoughts.

It hit them both at once.

“Lais,” Kieran whispered, staring at the vial in horror. “That’s lais…”

“Concentrated essence,” ai’Jihaar said, allowing her hand to fall to her lap. “Kieran, what have you done? It is in the hands of the Gods, perhaps, even now…bring me the other vial. Perhaps there is time.”

Kieran flew to the open chest, keeping his eyes averted from the fatal dagger gleaming within and retrieved the second vial, which ai’Jihaar received from his shaking fingers. She opened it herself and tasted a few drops.

“See if they are ready outside,” ai’Jihaar commanded softly, her eyes closed. Kieran left her reluctantly to peer through the tent flaps. Already the little hai’r looked different—ai’Daileh had taken charge.

One of the servants who had arrived with the small caravan was reverently unwrapping the great black drums, the
Rab’bat Rah’honim.
One was already free, standing upright in the sand, polished black wood drinking in the clear golden light of a desert afternoon and wrapping it in the mystery of impending darkness. The smooth, tanned skin stretched taut upon it had once been a white ki’thar. The great drum’s mate, still only half divested of its wrappings of soft wool and red and gold jin’aaz silks, showed black where the other showed white. Black ki’thar’en were even rarer than white; this second skin had been a gift from the Gods. Beside the drums, each almost the height of the
sen’en’thari
who were to play them, stood one of the gray sisters, her small hands dwarfed by two massive drumsticks made of the same black wood as the drums.

Two more of the grays were busy with what looked like housekeeping duties around three black desert tents which had mushroomed on the other side of ai’Jihaar’s pool. A third, at the doorway of one of the tents, was folding up a large piece of scarlet silk while keeping up a soft conversation with somebody within.

And ai’Daileh herself presided over the preparation of a crude altar within the shelter of the palm trees. It was still early for the ceremony. She was explaining something to a companion out of Kieran’s line of vision, and stood with her arms raised, the sleeves of her golden robe baring her arms almost to the elbow in what looked too much like an invocation for Kieran’s taste. He drew back.

“I don’t think they’re ready,” he said, glancing back to answer ai’Jihaar’s question. The old
an’sen’thar’s
eyes were drooping. “Soon though,” he hastened to add, “ai’Daileh looks as if she is almost done. The drums are still…”

But even as he spoke a deep, reverberating boom echoed through the hai’r. Kieran’s head snapped around. The two drums were both standing free, the servant scurrying away with the neatly folded cloths, silk and wools that had been their travel garb. There was something elemental about the black drums, a feeling enhanced by the two gray sisters who stood behind them, each armed with a single great drumstick. It was the one at the white drum who had struck first; even as Kieran watched, the other brought her stick down on the black ki’thar skin. The drum responded, its tone a shade deeper and darker than its twin. The white drumstick descended again; the black; the white; the black…the rhythm was almost too slow to bear, slumberous, lulling.

“She won’t start till nightfall now,” said ai’Jihaar distantly, startling Kieran into remembering she was there. “Call ai’Fatmah; I need her to brew me something potent…
khaf,
black, sweet, strong. I have to stay awake until the ceremony begins.”

Obeying her meant leaving the tent, going out into the full sight of those strangers who had yet to see him. Kieran gave himself no time to think about it. He pushed the flap and stepped outside.

He was the immediate focus of at least three pairs of eyes. Four. He turned at the doorway of the smaller tent which ai’Jihaar’s servant occupied to meet again the smoldering golden gaze of ai’Daileh, watchful, calculating. Kieran held it for a moment, and then slowly and deliberately offered her a courtly bow springing from the centuries of tradition that were part of old Roisinan, before turning his back on her and slipping inside ai’Fatmah’s tent. He could sense a ripple of the golden priestess’s amusement follow him inside. The black drums were still beating slow time.

The hours are slow to pass when watched. The minutes of those still to elapse before nightfall dripped with agonizing deliberation; each one might have been a perfect replica of the hour of which it was a part, carved in miniature by a master craftsman. Drinking
khaf
in quantities that would have kept a ki’thar awake for a month, ai’Jihaar waited, hoping the lais she had swallowed wouldn’t slow her too much, that the
khaf
would neutralize it quickly enough for her to be able to watch over ai’Daileh’s ritual. Anghara seemed to have been pushed deeper than ever into a trance by the relentless boom of the black drums, and sat dreaming. Kieran simply waited. For nightfall. For truth. For salvation.

It was fully dark when ai’Daileh finally came for them, but three great fires had been lit and the hai’r glowed with ruddy light. It pushed past ai’Daileh into the tent, making of her a dark silhouette, the night lurid behind her.

“We are ready to begin,
an’sen’thar.
Come. Bring the daughter of Sheriha’drin.”

“She is Anghara ma’Hariff in this land,” ai’Jihaar said as Kieran helped her rise to her feet. Her voice was steadier, more absolute, than her physical body. Kieran could feel her sway as she leaned on his arm.

“Of course. May I be of assistance?”

“Thank you. There is no need.” Kieran had raised Anghara also to her feet and now stood between them, ai’Jihaar on one arm, Anghara on the other, as if in some bizarre courtly dance, waiting for instructions. Now ai’Jihaar turned her head in his direction and smiled, dropping into Roisinani. “If you will conduct us to the altar…”

“Wait,” said ai’Daileh quickly. “For her who chose the Hariff and who raised the oracle in Kheldrin…but to allow a true
fram’man
to witness
sen’en’thari
ceremonies…”

All Kieran understood was an implacable challenge to his presence; his hands tightened involuntarily on both Anghara’s arm and ai’Jihaar’s. The old
an’sen’thar
had turned away from him to gaze steadily on ai’Daileh’s face; reassurance came only in a gentle return of pressure. As the drums beat inexorably outside, ai’Jihaar did not flinch. “Perhaps, afterward,” she said to ai’Daileh as she urged Kieran forward, “I will tell you just how much this particular
fram’man
already knows. Lead the way, ai’Daileh.”

The younger priestess hesitated for a long moment, eyes on Kieran, and then whirled, a quick, almost angry motion. Kieran, leading the two remaining gold-robed women, followed in silence, far from certain if ai’Jihaar had successfully defended his right to stand with Anghara, or signed his death warrant.

The drums seemed to speed up as they emerged and followed ai’Daileh along the edge of the hai’r’s small pool toward an altar raised amongst the palm trees. Kieran saw the remaining five grays ranged around this; one held a plaited leather leash, on the other end of which stood a quiescent white ki’thar lamb. At the feet of another rested a small cage with two white and gold birds, both of whom seemed to have one broken wing.

“Take us to the altar,” ai’Jihaar said softly, “and then step back beyond the palms.”

“Are you all right?” Kieran asked—ai’Jihaar felt curiously insubstantial underneath his supporting arm, as though she was no more than an illusion, or a spirit.

“I will be,” the old
an’sen’thar
said.

Kieran halted a bare pace away from the stone plinth ai’Daileh had raised for an altar and pressed ai’Jihaar’s fingers again. “We’re there,” he said.