The Hidden Queen (35 page)

A soft step sounded behind her, and Anghara spoke without turning her head. “I think it is time I went home,” she said quietly but steadily.

The old
an’sen’thar’
s voice bore a world of sorrows, but also pride, knowledge and understanding. “Yes,” she said. “I know.”

P
erhaps the Kheldrini were all endowed with more gifts than they knew, or maybe it was just a combination of sharp intelligence with the proverbial ability of the desert nomads to glean news from the whispering of the sand at twilight, but Anghara’s decision to leave was no sooner made there on the shore than almost the entire village seemed to be aware of it. Although al’Tamar was not there when Anghara and ai’Jihaar returned, al’Jezraal met them on the beach with an offer of sturdy ki’thar’en and supplies, as well as an escort as large as Anghara wanted and the promise of a safe sea passage once in Sa’alah. With both her customary stubbornness and a blunt affection she had no other way of expressing, ai’Farra said she would attend to the necessary ceremonies to ask the Gods to look kindly on Anghara’s journey. And when her eye locked with Anghara’s, it held a wry amusement of which Anghara would hardly have believed her capable.

When al’Tamar returned, toward sunset, he sought out Anghara where she sat outside the village
sen’thar’s
house with ai’Jihaar; it seemed that he alone had not had the news, or, at the very least, he made no reference to Anghara’s leaving.

“I have a present for you,” he said instead, cradling a package. The outer wrapping looked suspiciously like his own burnoose. “Have you ever seen raw sea amber?”

Anghara shook her head, and al’Tamar emptied the burnoose onto her lap. Six or seven large, creamy yellow globes tumbled out, gleaming dully and ai’Jihaar reached out to draw the tip of a sensitive finger along one.

“These are deep sea,” she said, and her voice had the edge of accusation on it. “What have you been doing, al’Tamar?”

“Deep sea?” asked Anghara, staring down into her lap with fascination. She lifted one globe; it was oval, smooth, and very heavy. “Are there other kinds?”

“There is the kind that washes onto the shoreline,” said ai’Jihaar, a little grimly, “but those are smaller, rougher, often irregularly shaped. These, they had to be dived for—and diving for sea amber is not the kind of prank untutored boys who have not seen the sea for years should be attempting.”

Anghara looked up. The silvery-blue soul fire was kindled, the aura bristling defensively; al’Tamar was guilty as charged. More; he knew of her leaving. He must have known even before she did. When he heard ai’Raisa speak the oracle’s words, he had known at once. And the knowledge was there in his eyes.

“Thank you,” she said simply.

“If you bring them back to Al’haria,” he said, “I can make them into a
say’yin
for you.”

“You?”
asked Anghara in surprise. “You know how?”

“My uncle is generous with free time, and my duties are often light,” al’Tamar said. “I learn that which is offered. Yes, I know how.”

Anghara gathered the amber into a fold of her robe. “I would treasure such a
say’yin,
” she said.

“Making a
say’yin
takes time,” said ai’Jihaar laconically. “How long did you mean to stay at Al’haria, then?”

Anghara bit her lip, closing her hand over the amber. Now that the decision to go had been made, it burned in her like a slow fire. “I meant to pass through, because it lies in my way,” she said. “I had no wish to linger…”

But ai’Jihaar suddenly seemed to regret her sharpness. She reached out to cover Anghara’s hand with her own. “There is time still, child. You are not yet seventeen…”

“Sif was only three years older when he took Miranei,” said Anghara after a pause, with an edge of defiance.

“And he was a trained warrior,” said ai’Jihaar, “a knight in all but name.”

Anghara laughed, lifting her arms to show off the gold robe she wore. “And so am I,” she said, her voice silky. “Perhaps not quite a knight, but thanks to you, I am also trained. I am not one of those poor Sighted wretches in the villages who have nothing to raise against him. I am Sighted, I am
an’sen’thar,
I am queen by right of blood.”

“Using your gifts as a weapon…”

“I would not, and you know it. But it is time I returned, ai’Jihaar. It is past time,” Anghara said, more gently. “And time…I do not have.” She glanced up at al’Tamar, and then stood and pressed the handful of amber back into his hand. “Guard them for me; make the
say’yin.
One day,
sen’en dayr,
I will be back to claim it.”

He accepted them almost mechanically. “Wait,” he said. “You need speed?”

“Yes,” Anghara said. “As much as I can muster.”

“And you really mean to go all the way back to Sa’alah to return to Sheriha’drin?”

Anghara blinked at him, startled. “There is a choice?”

He scuffed the sand with the toe of his sandal, looking down. “The mountains,” he said, almost inaudibly. “Shaymir.”

Even as Anghara opened her mouth to speak, ai’Jihaar was on her feet but Anghara’s hand on her shoulder silenced her. The old
an’sen’thar
waited, tense, as Anghara gazed thoughtfully at the young man before her.

“You know the way?”

“Paths can be found,” he said.

“There is death in those mountains,” said ai’Jihaar at last, unable to hold back. “That is the only thing that can be found there. And if you stray onto the Se’thara while the sun is still in the sky, you will find it swiftly; if you blunder in the mountains until you fall off a cliff or run out of supplies in some dead end, you will find it slowly, and agonizingly.”

“There have been those who have lived to tell the tale, ai’Jihaar.”

“He is right,” said Anghara. “I remember, the day of the Confirmation, ai’Farra telling me what became of those who crossed from Shaymir into Kheldrin.”

“And there have been those who went the other way,” said al’Tamar, “and returned.”

Anghara suddenly connected the
Sa’id’
s Shaymiraccented Roisinani with the road through the mountains; “al’Jezraal,” she said.

“He has been,” ai’Jihaar admitted. “Often. He trades with some of the far-flung outposts. Some of those who dwell in your desert…they are not so very different from us.”

“And I went with him, once,” said al’Tamar. “Nobody will be expecting you to return that way, the mountains will not be watched. And we are so much closer to Se’thara than to Sa’alah here.”

“Nobody is likely to be keeping an eye out for me anyway,” said Anghara with a laugh, forgetting for a moment the warning in the oracle’s words. “For most in Roisinan, I have been buried in the family vaults these many years. But the time I would save…”

“Do not tell ai’Farra I know the way,” said al’Tamar hastily. “She would flay me, and my uncle too would know the lash of her wrath,
Sa’id
or no
Sa’id.
She seems to have put aside her obsession with keeping Kheldrin from prying eyes where you are concerned, but that does not change her edicts—not every
fram’man
comes with the power to raise oracles for the Kheldrini, and everyone except you is still an intruder. She has never liked the idea of the mountain passes; the Sayyed patrol them, and they are not kind to anyone who falls into their clutches.”

“Then it is a dangerous gamble…”

“Of course it is a dangerous gamble,” said ai’Jihaar, latching on to the words gratefully. “Between the Sayyed and the mountains…”

But al’Tamar was smiling, and there was an echo of that smile in Anghara’s own eyes as she looked at him.

“We can leave before tomorrow morning,” al’Tamar said quietly.

“Anghara!”

Anghara closed both her hands over ai’Jihaar’s, lifting the other’s close against her breast and leaning over to plant a kiss on her brow. “I will be all right, ai’Jihaar. Remember, I will be home in the time it would take me just to reach Sa’alah…I will be home…” She drew a ragged breath. “Don’t tell them,” she said, pleading now. “I’m truly grateful for all al’Jezraal’s offers of help, but you know that while he would think it perfectly all right for himself to brave the mountain passes, I would be quite a different matter. And ai’Farra…well, she seems to be a law unto herself.”

“But to go alone like this into danger…”

“Hama dan ar’i’id,”
Anghara reminded her. “You are never alone in the desert, or so everyone has been telling me ever since I got here. And I won’t be alone. There’s al’Tamar.”

“The whelp,” ai’Jihaar laughed sharply. “He’d better take care of you, else he will have me to answer to.”

Anghara’s smile widened. “So you’ll let us get away?”

“If you say you need to get home quickly…” said ai’Jihaar. “Still, I would have preferred you went properly escorted…”

“I have to go alone into Roisinan anyway,” said Anghara gently. “I can hardly march in at the head of a Kheldrini caravan.”

“I will miss you,” said ai’Jihaar. “But I always said I would know when it was your time, and I think it is now. Go, child, with my blessing; and one day…one day, come back to us.” Anghara dropped onto one knee before her, suddenly overcome with emotion, and ai’Jihaar reached out with a gesture of blessing which quickly turned into a gentle caress of her bright hair. And then the old, practical ai’Jihaar emerged once again. “Do not come back to the house,” she said. “I will pack for you. When everything is ready I will leave your gear beneath one of the fishing boats.” She paused, and then, even as she was turning to go, held on to one of Anghara’s hands. “I will perform the ceremonies for you myself,” she said. “May the Gods watch over you both.”

With no further farewell, she was gone. Anghara stood up, gazing after her for a long moment, and then turned to al’Tamar. “When do you think we should start?”

“She will have things ready by the time it is dark,” he said. “I will prepare a few supplies, and bring out the ki’thar’en. We can leave as soon as we have everything.”

They rode out into the gathering twilight on two ki’thar’en and with a third pack-animal on lead rein—all three with burnooses tied around their muzzles to ensure silence at least until they were out of earshot of the village. There was no way of climbing the cliffs behind the village to reach the dunes of Kadun, and they had to retrace much of their original path, riding at a steady pace back along the same caravan trail beside the ocean. But al’Tamar cut into the red desert a lot sooner than al’Jezraal’s caravan had dropped down to the ocean, through a barely visible gap in the cliffs, and they were quickly plunged into one of Kadun Khajir’i’id’s more improbable landscapes, coral dunes streaked with yellow, gold, and occasional black stripes. Tall buttes of red rock reared around them every so often, and they had to pick a meandering path around their roots; al’Tamar bowed to the necessity of this, but kept them moving steadily east and south. They rode fast—there was no time on this trip to linger and follow silkseekers to jin’aaz lairs, or to pause to admire the scenery. This time they rode a race, yet al’Tamar managed to pass a nugget of information every now and again.

“This is silver country,” he said. “We will be passing quite close to my family’s mine. They will have good silver for your
say’yin.
”

“They would no doubt be astonished to see you,” said Anghara, unable to repress a quick grin.

“They would chew me out as an ignorant pup who cannot be trusted out of his elders’ sight, and probably send me straight back to Al’haria under guard,” he admitted without a trace of remorse at this unsanctioned adventure. “Perhaps it is best if I went back for the silver after you are safely through the passes.”

The weather held for them for almost a week, and then, without warning, everything changed. Anghara, shaken awake out of a dream where she was slowly suffocating, with two faceless men holding her down and another pouring sand down her throat with sadistic slowness as though it were wine, found that aside from the fancy of the three torturers, it had been no dream. Sitting up with a paroxysm of coughing, she reached instinctively for the burnoose which was always laid within arm’s reach by her bed. There was still grit between her teeth even after she fastened it, and she stared at al’Tamar, whose own desert veil was up, across the rim of her own with eyes which stung with the granular atmosphere. It was dark, but it was an oddly amorphous darkness—Anghara couldn’t tell if it was midnight, or simply mid-afternoon smothered in gales of flying sand.

“What in the name of all the Gods…” she managed to croak.

“Sandstorm,” he said. “Bad one. But it is too fierce to last long; I think it is best we wait it out.”

There was little time to talk. Anghara merely nodded. “The animals?” she asked.

“I took care of them.”

It was not a boast, simply a flat statement of fact, but he had accomplished a task which would have taxed two grown men. The walls of their tent flapped violently in the gusts of wind, and the scouring sand was merciless, even inside.

“Lie down,” he said, “it is best to move as little as possible.”

She nodded; he quickly followed his own advice, padding over to his own camp bed and dropping down full-length onto his stomach, drawing a fold of his blanket across his face for additional protection against the elements.

They survived, although the storm held them pinned to the camp for almost two days. They managed to gain a hai’r, and recuperated there for a whole precious day before they could go on again.

“Odd thing, this storm,” the nomad chieftain whose base the hai’r was remarked to them, as he gravely accepted the water-price from al’Tamar and then stood watching while they watered the animals and filled their waterskins. “They are not common this time of year. This one, it came out of nowhere. Like you two. Where are you bound?”

It was discourteous to lie to those whose water one drank in the desert, but then, this was hardly a pleasure trip. “Home,” said al’Tamar after mulling over the possibilities for a moment. That wasn’t quite a lie. Anghara was indeed going home, and there was every possibility he would visit his own on his way back to Al’haria.

But it was useless—these were nomads, and already they knew everything before it happened, as usual. The chieftain chuckled.

“Your prudence does you credit, youngling,” he said. “This can only be she who raised the oracle at Gul Khaima; my people mean to make a pilgrimage there soon. And ‘home,’ then, means a great deal more than you would have cared to admit. But I will not pry,” he added, drawing his djellaba over his substantial stomach with a dignified gesture. “You are welcome to stay as long as you wish; and all our good wishes upon you when you choose to depart. Will you give us a blessing before you leave,
an’sen’thar?
”