The Hidden Queen (27 page)

“I confirm,” he said, and his voice was commendably steady. “Had we been in my hall in Al’haria, you would have worn
an’sen’thar
gold, and this would have been your own
say’yin.
That will still come,
Sen’en Dayr.
But, until that day, I confirm you, here and now, to the place where ai’Jihaar has raised you. Will you, in pledge, accept this
say’yin
from the hands of the Lord of Al’haria?”

She did not kneel, but bent her head to allow him to place the necklace on her neck and then stepped back—right hand touching heart, lips, brow, and then falling away into a graceful bow, an obeisance deep enough to set the necklace swinging. When she looked up again, al’Jezraal was smiling.

“But lord,” she said in a low voice, “I still don’t know what I did…or how I did it…or if I will ever be able to do it again.”

“But you have done it,” he said. “And I have seen it. The rest is with the Gods.”

A moment later, when he came to offer Anghara her supper, al’Shehyr’s eyes were opaque, twin gold mirrors. But it was al’Tamar who approached her with a deep obeisance, and begged her pardon for what he had done. And it was al’Tamar who hovered at her side, bringing her things before she asked for them—even, at last, touching her sleeve and informing her that her bed was ready just as she was finally beginning to give way to the exhaustion that was the legacy of Khar’i’id. She left the fireside, and was asleep almost before her head touched the pillow al’Tamar had prepared.

In the morning, the three men were gone; they left no trace of their passing, and if it weren’t for the
say’yin
which still hung around her neck Anghara would have been inclined to believe she had dreamt the entire encounter.

Drawn by the change in Anghara’s breathing, ai’Jihaar was suddenly beside her.

“It is late,” she said. “I did not have the heart to wake you, but it is time we were on our way.”

“Where are we going?” Anghara sat up in her bed, stretching the stiff muscles of her back. This was a question she seemed to be asking constantly.

“Home. My home. There is peace there, and quiet, and all the time you need before you face al’Jezraal again in the Great Hall at Al’haria. It is the last journey, for a while. A place to rest. None of this has been easy on you, Anghara.”

“I dreamed of the Oracle last night,” said Anghara slowly.

“And the dream?”

“Only what was, nothing more.”

There had been disappointment in her voice, but that soon quickened into something else as she saw ai’Jihaar’s expression. But all the
sen’thar
would say in response to her questions was as cryptic as anything the oracle itself might have uttered.

“It might be a beginning,” ai’Jihaar said. “Remember these dreams.”

The dream did not recur, at least not during the final lap of the journey to ai’Jihaar’s home. This proved uneventful, except for the scenery—Kadun Khajir’i’id showed itself to be infinitely versatile. The wind-shaped dunes would change form and color almost minute by minute, and as Anghara and ai’Jihaar moved north they were broken more and more often by jutting buttes and flat-topped mesas of reddish stone.

It was tucked in the lee of one of these that they finally found ai’Jihaar’s home—a small hai’r, consisting of a tiny pool hedged with a thicket of lais thorn bushes. Beneath a trio of pahria palms, a large nomad tent, rose-red like the desert, stood pitched and anchored with an air of permanence at the water’s edge. An elderly ki’thar chewed lethargically on something in a small pen at the back; and an equally elderly woman was at the tent entrance to greet them, babbling away in a torrent of guttural Kheldrin which went over Anghara’s head. Anghara’s arrival into this simple household caused relatively less upheaval than the introduction of two new ki’thar’en into the pen. The sole occupant, obviously used to having the pen to himself, proved loath to surrender his absolute sovereignty without a fight, so that by the time the three animals had been persuaded into peaceful coexistence, Anghara’s presence in ai’Jihaar’s tent was largely a fact of life. A section of the tent was curtained off for her use with a minimum of fuss, and by the time Anghara first thought to tot up the days that had passed since she had arrived there she was astonished to discover it had been almost a month.

And then the months themselves began to slip by. Riding roughshod over all the tenets of Bresse, ai’Jihaar taught Anghara how to become a part of her gift—not an empty vessel waiting to be filled, but a deep lake whose every drop was power. There was a much greater potential for disaster here than at Bresse, but together with the potential came the safeguard of total control. Never again could Sight lash from Anghara as it did in Cascin; but only here in Kheldrin did she truly receive that which Feor had hoped for from Bresse.

So deeply was Anghara into her life and training in this place that even Khar’i’id faded from her memory—Khar’i’id, and that which lay hidden in the Empty Quarter. It was with a sense of shock that she woke one morning with a memory of a dream so vivid she could still see its shape on the folds of the rose-red tent which surrounded her. And smell, as once before…the sharp, salty, vivid, well-remembered tang of the sea.

And remember something else.

“I dreamed of Gul Qara,” she told ai’Jihaar when she found her, out by the pool. “The sea again. And this time…there were two words in the wind. It was still unclear, but the first one sounded as though it might be
Gul.
And…it was a year ago last night that we were in the Empty Quarter.”

Nodding slowly, ai’Jihaar said. “The Oracle often worked in threes.”

Anghara stared at her teacher in dismay, quick to comprehend. “Three years?” she asked.

“Perhaps only two. This is the
second
dream.”

And Anghara fingered thoughtfully the
say’yin
she had been given by the Lord of Al’haria on another desert night almost a year ago, and was silent.

If she had to, she would wait.

But, in the meantime, there was something she could do to try and hurry things along. The little Standing Stone she had raised in Cascin, the talisman which had chosen her at Bresse, had not been required in ai’Jihaar’s disciplines and Anghara had not returned to it for a long time. Its chaos-raising potential was still fresh in her mind; but together with that memory came another—the visions of Bresse in flames, of Cascin spared Sif’s vengeance. True visions. The stone had shown a predilection for prophecy long before Anghara had heard of the Empty Quarter or the place called Gul Qara. Fully accepting the possible consequences, Anghara came back to her talisman and asked for another vision.

The results of this exercise were strange. The chaotic edge of the stone seemed to be dulled—there was none of the explosive welter of images and revelation Anghara had come to associate with her talisman. Perhaps ai’Jihaar’s training had given her a measure of control—either that, or her gifts had grown mature enough to deal with it on her own. Or perhaps it was simply too far away from her, the essence of Roisinan weakened by the distance between the queen and her land. Whatever the case, the stone did not take her for its usual wild ride. Instead, it offered a single image—a single Standing Stone, raised in a dimly glimpsed desolation. It was high, for that which was below it was lost in an odd, coruscating mist. And the light around it was not the bluish-green aura that clung to the Cascin Stone, but gold—the bright gold of her own soul fire.

It didn’t help. If anything, it was another mystery on top of those still-to-be-unravelled tangles which had already landed in Anghara’s lap.

Several times during this first year the flames of ai’Jihaar’s hearth had given Anghara quick and scattered glimpses of Roisinan. Once it had been a vision of the arrival of a body of Sif’s soldiers into yet another village which had offended. Unable to break away, Anghara had been forced to watch, sickened, as they took their revenge on a Sighted woman and her husband, who had defied Sif’s edicts in order to protect and hide his wife and their child. A group of mounted men had come galloping into the village while the soldiers were still finishing the job—but they were too few, and too late. Seven rode in; three survived to be taken back to Miranei. The bodies of the dead were left unburied in the village square as the soldiers rode away. Anghara had come out of this one white and shaking, crying that it was time she returned—to which ai’Jihaar could only reply, “Your time is not yet.” This the
sen’thar
knew; there would be a time, and she would recognize it, but what the signal would be she still did not know, and it was hard to watch Anghara suffer over something she was powerless to change.

On another occasion Anghara had floated unseen in Sif’s private quarters in Miranei—the same rooms that had once belonged to the king who had fathered them both. Sif was not alone; his mother, Clera, watched him from within a deep armchair by the hearth as he paced back and forth like a caged tiger.

“I can wait no longer, Mother,” he was saying. “Tath is still a thorn in my side, and a problem it is imperative I solve quickly, before the whole thing festers on me—I am not sure it hasn’t already, for that matter. And then there’s…the other campaign. I need an heir, Mother, and if Colwen cannot give me a child I must find a queen who will. It’s been almost six years. It is too long.”

“She is a loyal and loving queen, Sif. There is still no real hurry…”

“There is,” he said violently. “Anghara is still out there.”

“She is buried,” said Clera in a level voice, “in the family vault.”

Sif shot his mother a glance that was a distillation of impatience and something like pity. “You and I know she is not,” he said, “and too many others do, as well. There is the document…”

“…which you destroyed…”

Sif chopped his hand downward like an axe. “A copy. An original exists. And there is the seal. We both know that, even now, if Anghara were to walk through the gates of Miranei there would be many who would flock to her. Too many.”

“That is still no reason…”

“Mother.” Sif’s voice was flat, royal; there was no query in it, no hesitation, merely command. “I need an heir. I am putting Colwen aside; the proclamation is already drawn up. And I need you to help me find my next queen.”

Clera hesitated. “But who? There are one or two daughters of noble houses still unwed, but you passed most of them over when you chose Colwen.”

Sif stopped pacing and stood staring into the leaping flames in the great hearth, his hands gripping the mantle so tightly his knuckles stood out white and sharp. “There is one whom I have not.”

“Who?”

“Senena. Senena Shailan.”

And Anghara seemed to pass through the suddenly two-dimensional image as through a curtain even as she heard Clera’s shocked, fading voice: “But she is not fourteen yet! She is a child…”

It was Senena herself who waited beyond the curtain, gowned lavishly for her wedding, her eyes luminous with tears of terror behind the diaphanous veil Clera was adjusting for her. Somewhere in the rows of waiting dignitaries Anghara could see the bitter, resentful eyes of the queen Sif had ruthlessly discarded; and Clera’s voice was a hiss in Senena’s ear as the child stood trembling and rooted to the spot.

“Go; he waits. In a few minutes you shall be queen, child. Do not fail to remember your duty to your king and your country when the crown is put on your head.”

And then, at the last, just before the vision faded into darkness, the sight of Sif’s brown, capable hands gripping the small childish ones laid quivering within them. Anghara heard Sif’s commanding, intense voice, “I want a son, Senena…” And then, fading, fading, the heart-rending scream of a terrified child who had been crowned queen only a few hours before but who did not rule even her own bedchamber.

Another time the vision had been brief, but no less affecting. It came on the eve of Anghara’s fifteenth birthday: Kieran, sitting watchful by a campfire, surrounded by a small band of men who looked oddly similar to those who had ridden in against Sif’s
cheta
in the village she had seen before. He’d lifted his eyes to the stars, over the rim of the rough cup out of which he was drinking mulled wine, and for a heartstopping moment his eyes seemed to meet Anghara’s—but then she realized he could not see her as she saw him. There was a strange sadness in his eyes, a loss that tore at her because she knew…she felt…she was its cause.

Kieran…Kieran, I am safe…

His head turned a fraction, as though he had heard a step behind him…or a voice…and then he sighed, putting down his cup.

“Happy birthday,” he murmured, soft enough that not even his closest neighbor heard. “Wherever you are.”

A
nghara’s second year at ai’Jihaar’s hai’r was almost up when the
sen’thar
decided her pupil was at last ready to make an appearance at Al’haria. Anghara was now sixteen, and trained as far in the Way as ai’Jihaar could take her. She spoke the language as one Kheldrin-born, although with a stubborn and ineradicable accent; she knew her sacrifices, her invocations, her Gods…and her limitations. The blood sacrifices of Kheldrin sat ill with her. She had to be proficient in these, as
an’sen’thar;
she watched ai’Jihaar closely when her teacher performed them, but somehow, for a long time, she managed to avoid doing any herself. She had to, in the end—there was no escaping it. But she had wept for the thing she had slain. During her two years of training she performed the ritual of the sacrifice only twice; both times she did it flawlessly, but at a cost. This worried ai’Jihaar—but in all else her pupil was painfully ready. It was time to take her to al’Jezraal, to claim her own
say’yin
at last.

Finally ai’Jihaar had Anghara ready the two ki’thar’en which had accompanied them through Khari’i’d almost two years before, leaving ai’Jihaar’s old servant in charge of the hai’r. The two animals had since become very attached to the reigning king of their pen, the elderly ki’thar which had been there when they had first arrived. Just as, then, there had been much uproar when they had been introduced into the pen, there was mayhem now when they were taken out. Riding away, ai’Jihaar and Anghara could still hear the faint trumpeting of the old ki’thar even after the hai’r itself had vanished out of sight behind red Kadun dunes.

Anghara’s brief sojourn in Sa’alah had done nothing to prepare her for her first sight of a true desert city. Al’haria lay against a massive red mesa; the red stone of which the city had been wrought made it look as if it had not been built by mortal hands but grew there in the desert, living rock shaped by wind and sand into the semblance of dwellings and spires. It was a walled city, roofed in obsidian and glass, its low silhouette broken every so often by soaring towers which spiralled toward the wide sky. These were pierced by tiny windows, built to limit the entrance of the desert sun but facing in the direction of the prevailing night winds, so that the coolness of the night could be gathered into the rooms beyond. It was breathtaking, even more so for one who had spent months in a simple tent in the desert…

Not all of us choose to be solitary nomads,
said ai’Jihaar rather whimsically into her mind.
Remember, here we are an’sen’en’thari, chosen of the Gods.

And ai’Jihaar had made sure they dressed for it. Beneath the black djellaba that was her travelling cloak, Anghara wore a robe of gold jin’aaz silk belted with one of ai’Jihaar’s own silver belts. Except for her bright hair, braided and coiled like a crown, al’Jezraal’s necklace was her only jewellery beneath the blue burnoose. Clad in a similar gold robe but with silver bracelets on her wrists, three amber and silver
say’yin’en,
and an elaborately worked amber bead belt underneath a white djellaba, ai’Jihaar was more impressive. Anghara cast a swift appraising glance over the two of them, and smiled.

There were only five gold-robed
an’sen’en’thari
in the whole of Kheldrin, and only one of those had a
fram’man
for a pupil—they were recognized immediately. A deputation was there to meet them, bowing, almost before their ki’thar’en had passed through the city’s gate. People they passed in the street stopped to offer them obeisance as they were led at a stately, regal pace to one of the towers; at their destination, the soft voices of their guides urged the ki’thar’en to kneel. Anghara slipped off hers with what was now a practiced grace and stood waiting, staring at the huge red doors before her. She had been
an’sen’thar,
confirmed by al’Jezraal’s own hand, for almost two years, but claiming that title had been all too easy in the solitude of ai’Jihaar’s hai’r. Now, for the first time, she would meet others of ai’Jihaar’s ilk…and her own, she reminded herself forcefully. All the same, there was less of a Kheldrin God-spoken priestess in the high pride with which she held herself than a resurgence of the Kir Hama blood, quiescent for so long. She had been a gifted young student in the desert; here, within the walls of a city, she was a queen again.

It was ai’Jihaar, however, who effortlessly pushed open the massive but magnificently balanced doors and led the way inside, with Anghara at her heels. They entered a large airy hall; it was empty except for a wealth of beautiful, richly patterned carpets strewn on the floor. At the far end, a stone staircase spiralled upward out of sight, and at its foot waited a trio of Kheldrin women. All were bareheaded, the two bringing up the rear clad in white and looking very young. The one who seemed to be the leader was dressed in gray, with a simple amber
say’yin
around her neck. She bowed to the two newcomers.

“Your presence honors us,” she said. “Your rooms are ready…
an’sen’en’thari.
” She had hesitated for a fraction of a second before the title. Just long enough for Anghara to notice. But her eyes were downcast, and in all other respects she was the epitome of humility. Anghara looked at her with slaty eyes, but said nothing.

She will never attain gold,
ai’Jihaar spoke in Anghara’s mind.
She knows it. There are some who could well resent you. There are others who will be more inclined to worship you. Your name is known in the desert.

Their rooms—Anghara was given her own spacious chambers—were not opulent, but they were filled with understated comfort; mountains of soft cushions lined the walls, the floors were strewn with thick, soft rugs, and there were means to summon servants if required. Heavy curtains, desert-fashion, did the duty of doors, but Anghara had long ceased to miss them. Anghara’s had been the first doorway they had come to, and the entire group had paused there as both
an’sen’en’thari
stopped.

“Tomorrow, early,” said ai’Jihaar cryptically.
It is custom not to keep the temple waiting—or al’Jezraal. And the Great Hall will be packed.
“Rest now.”

Then ai’Jihaar waited impassively until the gray
sen’thar
had offered a small farewell bow to Anghara before leading off again. One of the two white-robed
sen’en’thari
remained at Anghara’s right hand, and bobbed her head as Anghara turned to look at her.

“By your leave,
an’sen’thar,
” she said in a high childish voice which had awe in it, and curiosity, and fear. “I am assigned to you while you stay in the tower. If there is anything you need…”

“Thank you,” murmured Anghara.

The white
sen’thar,
hearing a note of dismissal, bowed again and left her alone.

Outside it was getting dark. The little
sen’thar
had lit the lamps in the room, but Anghara doused them all except for a single small one in the corner, and stood for a long time at her window staring out into the sky. Something shimmered in the air that night, a feeling of latent power, a closing circle, but it was a feeling she could not pin down, and presently she sighed, turning away. There was al’Jezraal to face the next morning. He had confirmed her to the gold, precocious but untried, and she had a lot to prove when she came into his presence again.

Sleep claimed her almost as soon as she subsided onto the pillows that were the desert bed. But she woke, suddenly, just as the pearly light of dawn was beginning to filter into her room, and sat up wide-eyed.

“Gul Khaima…” she whispered. “
Two
oracles…”

The fresh, sharp scent of salt spray off wind-whipped ocean waves clung to the walls and the rich, soft cushions of this room high above Kheldrin’s red desert. Two years ago on this night the full moon had shone brightly on the colonnade of Gul Qara.

For a moment she sat motionless amongst her pillows, frozen, remembering every nuance of the dream which had just left her. And then, pausing only to pull on the cowled golden robe she was to wear for that morning’s Confirmation and thrust her feet into open sandals, she hurried down the corridor to ai’Jihaar’s room, her unbound hair having to do with only a cursory pass of the comb. She called softly at ai’Jihaar’s curtained doorway, but there was no reply to her hail. With the liberties allowed a student with her teacher, Anghara pushed aside the draperies and entered anyway, but ai’Jihaar was not there.

Anghara stared around the empty room, biting her lip. There were loose threads to this dream that Anghara could still not entirely weave together; she sensed its importance, but this was Kheldrin lore—much of it she had absorbed during her two years under ai’Jihaar’s wing, but she still needed ai’Jihaar’s insight when it came to fine-tuning the interpretation of a Kheldrin vision. But ai’Jihaar’s cushion bed was cold; she had left a long time ago, and she could be anywhere. But a sense of urgency was upon Anghara, and it refused to go away just because her teacher was not available to explain and assuage it. There was a second oracle, Anghara knew it as surely as she knew her own name; was, or would be…

It was suddenly clear, as though a veil had been torn from her eyes. She gripped her elbows with her hands with sudden ferocity, leaving imprints of her nails on the skin through the thin silk as she made the elusive connection. The image her talisman had given her…the Standing Stone. There was, would be, a second oracle, waiting only to be found, or raised; a new place for an old spirit to come and inhabit. Gul Khaima. Gul Khaima by the sea…

She suddenly recalled ai’Jihaar’s voice:
an’sen’en’thari
have access to al’Jezraal, always; they are his advisors in need, his confidants, his link to the land’s soul. Access to al’Jezraal. She would see him soon, anyway—ai’Jihaar had timed their arrival impeccably, with a ceremony of Confirmation scheduled for that very morning, one where Anghara’s own title, attained at al’Jezraal’s hands in a desert hai’r, would be ratified before all Al’haria as witnesses. But that would be an occasion of stiff protocol and formality; there would be no chance of private communication. And Anghara could hardly announce this in open forum, not yet—not before she had a chance to find out more, to talk about it with people she trusted. And al’Jezraal…he had not been entirely happy to accept her in the beginning, but when he had done so he had done it unreservedly. He would listen; he needed to know. An’sen’en’thari had access to al’Jezraal, always. And she was
an’sen’thar.
By his own word.

She whirled and ran out of the room, lifting the golden cowl of her robe over her hair as she did so.

She knew nothing about the city, but instinct took her across the open square before the
sen’thar
tower, where the morning was already gathering itself to fulfill the hot, brooding promise of another searing desert day. Instinct led her into a broad avenue, where the few people abroad at this hour stopped to turn and peer after the slight, alien figure garbed in gold. Another tower, more massive perhaps than even the one she had left, waited for her at the far end; she pushed open the doors without hesitation, and found herself inside a huge cool cavern of a room. On another occasion she would have stopped to stare at the paintings of red Kadun dunes on a background of pale jin’aaz silk—the material alone would have fetched a king’s ransom in Roisinan, and here they used it as a canvas—but she had not come here on a sightseeing trip. A staircase spiralled upward and out of sight at the hall’s far end, just as in her own tower, except that at the foot of this one stood an unusually tall Kheldrin man, dressed in black and carrying a naked curved blade thrust into his belt. His eyes were a warmer gold than most Anghara had yet seen—the color of the Kadun sand, red-gold, just as beautiful, and just as deadly.

She tossed back her cowl; her hair spilled free. His eyes, perhaps, narrowed infinitesimally, but not a muscle on his face moved otherwise.

“
An’sen’thar
Anghara…of Sheriha’drin,” she said, with a slight hesitation over the latter name. Not because of the unfamiliarity of the name—on the contrary, it was a pause born of a sudden realization of just how dangerously familiar it had become. “I am here to see Lord al’Jezraal.”

The red-gold eyes stared at her impassively for a moment, but it was obvious her name was not unknown to the guard. After a pause he bowed his head, his motions oddly jerky, like a puppet’s, and indicated the stairs with his hand, saying nothing.

It could have been taken as disrespect; if he had done this to ai’Jihaar, she would have flayed him—the old
an’sen’thar
could lay claim to a store of colorful language quite unexpected in one of her status and standing, and all the more potent because of this. But Anghara was not al’Jezraal’s sister. She was not even Kheldrini. What respect she commanded amongst these people was still based only on hearsay, even if some of that hearsay was al’Jezraal’s own. A gold robe alone was not enough to warrant anything but the barest minimum of attention when worn by one who, in many opinions, had no real right to it; anything further would have to be earned. Anghara passed by the black-clad guard without comment, not looking at him again.

At the top of the stairs there was another, like enough to the one below to be his twin. Anghara repeated her introduction and he bade her wait as he vanished behind a thick curtain screening a doorway some way down the corridor. He was back in less than a minute, with a bow somewhat deeper than his downstairs counterpart had offered—here, al’Jezraal’s status rubbed off on his guests, especially those he called on the guards to admit at once.

Just outside the curtained doorway waited a young man whose face was oddly familiar. Anghara hesitated, trying to place it, but the young man bowed deeply and then straightened, a half-smile softening an expression of profound respect.

“I am al’Tamar ma’Hariff,
an’sen’thar.
From Kadun Khajir’i’id’s Shod Hai’r. I was the one who demanded that you heal Sa’id al’Jezraal’s son.” He reached to lift the heavy folds of the curtain with his left hand, motioning her inside with his right. “My uncle is expecting you.”