The Hidden Queen (20 page)

There was a rustle of fabric. Anghara turned her head; the man had gone, and ai’Jihaar stood alone by the curtained entrance.

“There will be two ki’thar’en for us tomorrow,” said ai’Jihaar, on cue as always. “The man is called al’Sayar, and he says there is a small caravan leaving in the morning; we can travel with them until they turn south to Beku.” She crossed over to where Anghara was standing, looking out to sea. “It is a great thing that you will be doing tomorrow,” she said slowly. “It lies not in my memory when Arad Khajir’i’id was last seen by any who were not its children. It is harsh and unforgiving to those who do not know it. There are laws in the desert you must know and follow if you are to survive.”

“You have spoken of some,” said Anghara, picking up the solemn mood.

“Water is precious, and costly,” nodded ai’Jihaar. “It may be bought, but not taken. Those who live in hai’ren and in the cities guard their water fiercely. They are not vindictive, but neither are they merciful to those who make mistakes. Guarding against mistakes is your task, not theirs. But there is more. You are marked out there, a stranger of no clan—not even through my protection, for
sen’en’thari
are a clan unto themselves and you are not…
sen’thar.
” She paused, her voice thoughtful. “Not yet,” she amended at last, very softly. She raised her head slightly. If she had not been blind she would have been looking deeply into Anghara’s eyes. She softly invoked her Gods with an air of what was almost revelation, “ai’Dhya and al’Khur! Perhaps I begin to understand.”

But she would say no more on this.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Tomorrow in the desert. We shall see.”

Having only softly stirring curtains between herself and the world was only the first new and strange thing Anghara would have to learn to accept, for Kheldrin seemed never to have heard of the concept of a door. She wondered for a moment, before she fell asleep on the banked cushions that served for a bed, how people indicated a desire to enter a room without having a door to knock on. But then sleep claimed her at last and the thought fled, only to be resurrected vividly as she woke to a soft voice beyond the curtains an hour before dawn.

“Sa’hari, an’sen’thar?”

She heard ai’Jihaar reply, and the man she had called al’Sayar entered, keeping his eyes decorously down and his hands, wrapped around a small flat package, folded neatly against his stomach. Anghara propped herself up on one elbow and watched ai’Jihaar and the serai keeper—for that was what he seemed to be—talking quietly between themselves. When their business was concluded, al’Sayar bowed again and turned to leave. Just before he slipped out into the corridor he looked up and stared at Anghara dispassionately for a long moment, returning her scrutiny, and then he was gone.

“That was not very polite,” said ai’Jihaar without turning round. She seemed to be paying out a few coins into her palm from a pouch at her waist.

Anghara could not restrain a light laugh. “It probably wasn’t. I’m sorry.”

“No matter. He was hardly the epitome of courtesy and decorum himself. And there will be others who will find you equally fascinating before we go much further. He brought you something. Come, let me show you.”

The “something” was a complicated head cloth which, once in place, could be worn either thrown back or tucked across nose and mouth in such a way that only the eyes showed through a narrow opening.

“There are few things in the desert,” ai’Jihaar said, lifting a hand to rub the sides of her narrow nose reflexively with slender fingers, “but what there is comes in many different guises. What you know as sand we might name soft sand, hard sand, dune sand, quicksand—and some are to be sought, some avoided. What you know as wind we may call iri’sah, or khai’san. And when you get caught in a soft sand desert with a khai’san blowing in your face, you die.” These were harsh words, but they were truth, and truth on which lives depended. Anghara listened with careful, concentrated attention.

“We of the desert have ways of breathing through storms of sand,” said ai’Jihaar, tapping her nose again. “It is something you will have to learn—if you are able. But for a little time, at least, wear this over your face; we do not want the desert to put an end too soon to something hardly even begun. Let me show you how to put it on. You must know this instinctively, you must be able to do it in seconds when someone wakes you from a deep sleep. We have an hour yet or so before we must leave to join the caravan at the Desert Gate. Practise.”

Anghara watched ai’Jihaar deftly wrap the burnoose about her head and tried to do it herself under ai’Jihaar’s critical hands. The older woman corrected one or two errors, supervised another practice run, then left her to it while she went to arrange their animals and supplies.

It seemed as if she had been gone for hours; Anghara, alone in a strange place where everything was new and a little frightening in the intensity with which it was approached, was on edge, shying at every rustle outside the doorless room. But she practiced, as instructed, the mechanics of donning the burnoose. It was as well; the first thing ai’Jihaar did when she returned was to approach and run swift exploring hands over Anghara’s head and face. She tugged at a slightly loose fold, then nodded.

“Good. Are you ready? The ki’thar’en are waiting for us.”

Anghara followed her without a word.

They had similar beasts in Shaymir, and Kieran, when he talked to her of his home, had described them to Anghara, long ago in Cascin. Their large, ugly snouts with disconcertingly long-lashed eyes, their faintly supercilious expression, their splayed feet adapted so well to sand and the huge hump on which a rider’s saddle was perched were not entirely unexpected. The way the animals were caparisoned, though, was—Kheldrin, it seemed, enjoyed its trappings, or else it was something ai’Jihaar drew to herself. Either way, the two animals on which they were to ride were decked out as if for a royal procession. Their tack was not new, but the bridles were soft, tooled red leather. Their saddles were laid upon rugs good enough to be set in pride of place in a noble house. Anghara knew ai’Jihaar sensed her surprise, and seemed to be enjoying it.

“Hold fast when they rise,” she warned, as they were mounting the animals which knelt awaiting them. “Keep a tight grip on the pommel.”

Anghara squealed in surprise as her ki’thar began lumbering to its feet with a bored-sounding grunt, and she thought for a moment she was about to make a thoroughly ungraceful head-over-heels descent down the animal’s curving neck. She dropped the reins, but held on, and the animal stood placidly in the gray pre-dawn light, waiting for further instructions. A handler, who had been standing by as they mounted, handed her the trailing rein, his face wearing an expression with equal parts of surprise and apprehension—it was as though the spectacle of Anghara seated upon his ki’thar stirred a deep feeling of unease. Anghara wasn’t entirely insensitive to this; she would have probably felt the same if he had been mounting her father’s stallion, about to gallop off into the moors of Roisinan.

Seemingly oblivious to the undercurrents, ai’Jihaar continued with her instructions. “You urge him forward with your heel, and you make him stop, just like riding a horse, simply by pulling on the reins. But these are trained to verbal commands as well. To make him advance you call
akka;
to halt him,
sa’a.
Gently, though; if you tell him to
akka
vigorously enough, he is liable to run away with you entirely.” The diminutive woman, who looked even smaller perched on top of the ki’thar’s hump, swung the heel of a delicate chamois leather riding boot against the monster’s side and said, softly,
“Akka! Akka! Akka!”

The ki’thar began walking ponderously, with ai’Jihaar swaying in her saddle to the rhythm of his pace. “Try!” she called over her shoulder. “We have a little time. You will learn as we go, but we can take a few moments to make sure you can exercise at least a little control over your mount.”

Anghara kicked at her beast obligingly, calling
akka
in a soft voice. For a moment it looked like it would ignore her completely, wrapped in its own august thoughts. Then with a snort of what sounded suspiciously like exasperation with this idiotic rider, the animal shambled into a slow stroll, managing to give the impression its decision to move had nothing at all to do with the pesky parasite hanging onto its hump. Anghara laughed. So, after a moment, did ai’Jihaar, who nevertheless did not forget her duties as instructress.

“Now make him stop,” she called from where she had halted her own beast.

Anghara hauled at the reins, calling
“Sa’a! Sa’a!”
in a voice which, while authoritative enough, still managed to sound unconvinced that it would have any effect whatsoever. For a wonder, the animal cocked an ear and came to an obedient stop.

She would have rather died than admit it, but she had been thoroughly terrified at the prospect of having to battle wills with this animal out in the unforgiving desert. She still wasn’t sure she was equal to it, but at least she had told him what to do and he had done it without too much fuss. She might still be disgraced out amongst the desert nomads, but she would not be totally humiliated—and she would not be the utter liability she had feared she would be.

“Try it once or twice more, and then we should be on our way,” said ai’Jihaar.

It went smoothly enough, and after another few attempts at starting and stopping ai’Jihaar pronounced herself satisfied. They moved off, ai’Jihaar in the lead, toward the place she had called Desert Gate. The handler remained behind, staring after them with brooding eyes.

They were soon free of the city of Sa’alah, and riding on the road which led toward the mountains ringing the coastal plains. Anghara could not have said when it had begun to rise, but there came a moment when she looked back and the city by the sea was already behind and beneath them, presenting once again a vista of golden roofs. Up ahead, the mountains were suddenly very close; on the green meadows, some of which now had perceptible slopes, she could see sporadic groups of sheep, and occasionally a shepherd watching over his flock, standing still as a statue. And then they had arrived. A loose knot of ten or fifteen people, some mounted on dun’en every bit as beautiful as Anghara’s father’s had been and others on ki’thar’en, stood waiting for them at the point where the road plunged into the mountain pass. Six heavily laden ki’thar’en waited patiently, carrying burdens which seemed hopelessly huge and heavy. The caravan leader urged his mount forward a pace or two and bowed to ai’Jihaar from the saddle. He wore his burnoose tucked up desert-fashion, leaving only a pair of golden eyes showing in his face, and touched his fingertips to his heart, his lips beneath the concealing desert veil, and his forehead, in the graceful salute of the desert. He murmured something in his own language; ai’Jihaar responded. The leader glanced at Anghara, and, from the set of his shoulders and the sharp glint in his eyes, he seemed far from happy; then he wheeled his ki’thar and urged it to the front of the cavalcade at a shambling trot. There, he raised his right hand and brought it down, very suddenly.

“Akka! Akka! Akka!”
came softly from the riders around Anghara, and the ki’thar’en, not without a few grunting comments of their own, all began moving slowly toward the pass.

Anghara urged her ki’thar into a slow trot. She had not developed the right rhythms yet, and felt like nothing so much as a sack of loose bones, all of which were protesting furiously and unanimously at being shaken about. Except for the riders leading the beasts of burden, Anghara was last in the caravan until ai’Jihaar quietly assumed a position behind her. They plunged into a narrow, winding canyon, deep in shadow, riding silently in single file. The ki’thar’en were the only ones who grumbled loudly—at the hard stone beneath their feet, at their riders, at the acrid smell that emanated from each beast to the delicate nose of the one that followed.

But very soon the floor of the canyon began to change. First there was just an occasional flurry of pale sand disturbed by the infrequent breath of a breeze which came and went intermittently as they threaded their way through Ar’i’id Sam’mara, the Desert Gate. Then, gradually, the bare stone began to disappear beneath soft sand drifts. The sounds of the caravan’s passage grew softer and softer, even the endless litany of complaints from the ki’thar’en ceasing slowly as their feet began to find the sand for which they had been wrought. The breeze grew warmer, steadier, the breath of the desert blowing into their faces.

They began approaching the massive rib of a mountain buttress, so huge it almost spanned the width of the canyon and very nearly closed it altogether—only a narrow corridor remained, where a passing ki’thar almost scraped the towering stone on either side of him. Except for its prodigious size, it was no different from many they had already passed, but even as the leader of the caravan vanished behind the barrier of stone Anghara’s heart seemed to stop for a breathless instant. She felt poised on the brink of something extraordinary, standing at a crossroads with myriad paths unravelling from her feet. It was a moment in which she could feel her life change, become something quite different from what she had imagined it would be.

And then she was out of time, all choices cast in stone, and her own mount was edging past the last obstacle and over the threshold. Ar’i’id Sam’mara opened up with a startling suddenness, and the mountains fell away to the sides.

Ahead of them, as far as the eye could see to the flat and shimmering horizon, stretched an expanse of yellow desert, blown into smooth ridges at their feet by the ever-swirling winds of the Desert Gate.

Anghara had known it would be a flat and largely featureless ocean of sand, drifting and deadly. She had known it would be overwhelming in its silence and its immensity. But she had not known it could wring a heart, that it was beautiful.

Arad Khajir’i’id,
said the voice of ai’Jihaar in her mind. The
sen’thar
had never done this before, but somehow it was not surprising that this should be so, not in this hour, not in this place.
The Southern Desert. This is Kheldrin, Land of Twilight, not seen by alien eyes for a thousand years.