Shadows of Destiny

by Rachel Lee

  “And so you came to me,” Ratha said.

  Tom nodded. “I would have come regardless. I sense there is much that we can learn from each other.”

  Ratha smiled. “I am no prophet, Tom Downey.”

  “Perhaps not,” Tom said. “But you can be much more than a mere prophet. You can be a priest.”

  Ratha paused for a moment, then laughed. “Unless much has changed since last I undressed, I am not eligible to join the ranks of the priesthood. Or have you forgotten that all Anari priests are women?”

  “I have not,” Tom said. “But not all priests serve at the temple. Your women, bless them, know less of war than you. And in these ill times, the fate of the Anari, indeed the fate of the world, lies on the field of battle. But the war will end, my friend. And what then?”

  “If we are defeated, nothing,” Ratha said.

  Tom nodded. “Aye, but if we are not? Must there not be those who can create peace in hearts hardened for war? Who can be among men who have shed blood, who have swum in anger and fear, and coax them to the shores of forgiveness and hope? Your men have followed you into battle, Ratha Monabi. More will follow you into battle again. Will you not lead them into peace when the battle is over?”

  Ratha shook his head. “That is too heavy a burden for any man, my friend.”

  “Yes,” Tom said. “It is not the burden of a warrior. It is the burden of a priest. But will men who have walked with a warrior suddenly turn to a priest who has not known their pain and horror, of one who has not seen in the night the faces of those he has slain? They will not, friend. They cannot. They will need a priest who has borne their burdens and who carries their scars.”

  Ratha felt the truth in Tom’s words, even as he doubted his strength to fulfill them. This war would not, could not last forever. And if the gods should bless them with victory, then he and his men would have to return to their homes, to the stones of their Telner, and find again the beauty and joy in the simpler things of life. They would have to bear the daily trials of life with the warmth of husbands and fathers, and not with the cold hearts of warriors. They would have to step out from under the dark cloud of war into the sunlight of peace.

  Could he lead them thus? How could he himself emerge from that darkness and be a man of peace, when he had never known the life of hearth and home, of wife and child, of sowing seed, nurturing field and gathering harvest? It was as if Tom were asking a blind man to teach color to those who had shut their eyes from too much.

  “I am not the priest you seek,” Ratha said. “Call instead upon Jenah, who at least has lived among the Anari all of his days.”

  “Had this war ended in the canyon, that might be,” Tom said. “For that was Jenah’s war, the war of the Anari to shake off their shackles and live as free men. But this war to come is more than that. It is a clash of brothers, of Annuvil and Ardred. The Anari will look to you, because you have walked beside Annuvil longer than any among us. You must be that priest of peace, my friend. For if you cannot, I fear the Anari can never again be as they were.”

  “And how would I do this?” Ratha asked. “It is not enough to be willing. I doubt that I am able.”

  “The power of one is the power of many,” Tom said. “And the power of many is the power of one. Begin with the one, my friend. Begin with yourself.”

  When Tess emerged into the morning sunlight surrounded by her sisters and the clan mothers, she felt a lightness of spirit that had long been missing. It was as if spending the night surrounded by protectors had lifted her out of the dark place into which she had been steadily slipping since her battle with Elanor.

  The sunlight seemed particularly clear and bright this day, paining her eyes until they adjusted. It seemed to her that she was seeing the beauty of Anahar afresh, almost as if she had never seen it before. Everything looked cleansed, almost purified, as if by a heavy rain.

  Yet it had not rained.

  She lifted her gaze to the cloudless skies, feeling the touch of Cilla’s and Sara’s shoulders against her own, and waited to see if anything would happen.

  Something had changed. She felt it now in the chilly air. It was not only as if the darkness within her had vanished, but as if it had been driven out of this part of the world. Only in its absence did she realize how much Ardred had overshadowed everything.

  She turned to look at the clan mothers who were arrayed behind her. Their dark, aging faces revealed fatigue, but a kind of shining joy as well.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you all.”

  As one, they bowed to her. Then, as they straightened, Jahila, the youngest of them, spoke.

  “Long have we awaited you, my lady. Your burdens are heavy and many, and what little we can do to help is gladly given.”

  Tess returned the bow, but could feel her cheeks heating with embarrassment. Despite all that had happened, she didn’t believe she was even half what these people believed of her. She was certainly no savior, although they seemed to think otherwise.

  “I am,” she said quietly, “only a woman like all of you. I hope I will not disappoint your hopes.”

  She turned to walk away with Cilla and Sara. Behind them, the clan mothers drew bells from within their robes and shook them. A tinkle of almost unearthly music followed the three Ilduins’ departure.

  “You look ever so much better, Tess,” Cilla commented. “I did not at all care for how you looked when I arrived yesterday.”

  “Nor I,” Sara agreed.

  Tess felt herself smile for the first time since the wedding. “Something has changed. Can you not feel it? Anahar is cleansed of his presence.”

  Her sisters paused, closing their eyes as if sensing their surroundings. Then they, too, smiled and linked arms with Tess.

  “If it be for only a short time, still will I enjoy it,” Sara said. “For tomorrow the armies march, and we with them.”

  “And our most important task at the outset,” Cilla said, her voice tinged with foreboding, “will be to keep the peace among them.”

  “We shall,” Tess said, feeling more positive than any time in a long while. “We shall.”

  That night Cilla and Sara disappeared with Ratha and Tom. Tess sat outdoors in the gardens of Gewindi Tel, deeply wrapped in her cloak, entranced by the stars above. So many stars, more stars than one could count in a lifetime, she thought. In the cold air they shone brightly, illuminating the bare branches of the trees around her, silvering them with light. No moon filled the sky tonight, but the stars were beauty enough.

  Ordinarily at this time of year, Cilla had told her, this garden would be full of blooming flowers and shaded by a leafy bower of trees. But the evil winter had browned everything, and what it had not been content to brown, it had killed.

  But tonight Tess had no thought for that. Instead she lifted her head to the beauty that the Enemy could not smite, and drank it in. It was almost as if the pale light from so far away filled her and illuminated her within.

  She felt as if a transformation were taking place, a transformation that had begun with the protective circle the clan mothers had created around her yesterday. The feeling was a good one, so she let it happen.

  But she also found herself thinking absently of the gods. There were how many? Nine? Twelve? For some reason she could not remember the children’s poem that she had heard months ago, a poem that listed the gods.

  But their number did not matter, she supposed. What mattered was that if Elanor was helping her, then Ardred probably had a god helping him.

  Playthings of the gods. An apt description. Dragged into some inscrutable diversion as if they were but chits on a game board. An answer, perhaps, to an eternity that would otherwise be intolerably boring. Or even pawns in a power struggle of some kind.

  But how could a mere mortal ever know? All a mortal could know was that the survival of this world and all that was good in it depended on the outcome of their struggles over the next few weeks or months. The gods could always create anot
her world for their own amusement. The people of this one could not.

  A small sigh escaped her, but her spirits did not diminish. The shift taking place deep within her was filling her with something warm and good, something hopeful, and she wanted to cling to it.

  A sound alerted her and she looked quickly to her left. Archer was approaching, clad in his usual black from head to toe. He looked tired, and very much worried.

  “My lady,” he said, approaching on swift, light feet. “How do you?”

  “Much better.” She smiled, and was glad to see an answering smile appear on his weathered features. “For a little while I have been granted peace.”

  “It pleases me to hear so.” He sat on the stone bench beside her. “Are you not cold?”

  “The cold cannot touch me tonight. Little can. I wish this would last.”

  “As do we all. You know we march on the morrow?”

  “Aye. Thus begins another stage in a journey that seemed so small when first we left Whitewater in pursuit of a few thieves who had slaughtered a caravan. Did you guess this awaited us?”

  “I am not so prescient. Yet with each step, this moment has drawn closer.”

  “So it has.” She tilted her head back again and looked up at the stars. “Have they changed much since your youth?”

  “What?”

  “The stars?”

  He looked upward. “A bit. The constellations have slowly shifted, but only someone who studies them would note it.”

  “Or someone who has lived as long as you.”

  “Aye.”

  She looked at him, saw that he was studying the diamond-studded sky above. “I am sorry your life has been so hard.”

  He turned toward her. “I earned such a life. Perhaps now I can finish paying my debt.”

  Impulsively, she reached out and clasped his hand. “I think you have already paid a thousand times over.”

  “I doubt it.” He shook his head once, quickly, and squeezed her hand. “But you are enjoying a respite, so let us speak of happier things. I would not destroy your mood, my lady. Tomorrow will bring us enough difficulty.”

  “Aye, that it will.”

  Once again she tipped her head back to look at the stars. “I have been thinking, Archer, and it seems to me that the gods would be bored if we were perfect. I think they enjoy making a game of us, and part of that game is for us to make mistakes.”

  “You may be right.”

  She glanced at him with a smile. “Can you think of any other reason?”

  At that he chuckled. “It makes sense in our terms, but who can know what gods think?”

  “Or perhaps we know better than we think. You were made to be immortal. How can you think you are so different than they? You even helped create the race of Anari.”

  “It was that which brought about the fall,” he reminded her. “It was the sin the gods would not forgive.”

  “Or perhaps it was the sin the gods provoked.”

  He turned his body so that he faced her directly. “What do you mean?”

  “You had warred, and wanted to create a race that would never war. Instead you created a race that became enslaved until they learned how to fight. Now the Anari will be free, but through the horror of war.”

  “Do you say the gods think war is good?”

  She shook her head. “No. But I think they will not abide perfection.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Ratha sought out Cilla in the wee hours, well before dawn, while most slept. He could not sleep, nor could she, evidently, for he found her sitting in the gardens of the Monabi Tel, wrapped warmly in cloak and blankets. He joined her on the stone bench and stared at the blackened stumps of frost-slain shrubs.

  “It begins,” he said.

  “Aye.” She sighed and leaned into him. He felt no urge to draw away. “I hope our children will not know such evil times.”

  He squeezed her and let out a small laugh. “You leap ahead of me, cousin. You have me fathering children with you, and we have not yet even kissed.”

  A little chuckle escaped her. “I spoke in general, cousin, not in specifics. Although I cannot say that I have not often thought of such things with you.”

  Ratha smiled. “I would that we could focus only on such dreams, cousin.”

  Cilla nodded. “Yet without such dreams, how have we the courage to press on? Without a dream of the dawn, how would we endure the night?”

  “You are right as always, cousin,” Ratha said. He winked impishly. “It seems that I must grow accustomed to being wrong.”

  “But of course,” Cilla said. “It is the way of things that men must learn to be wrong in the presence of their women. The gods have decreed that your fate in life.”

  Ratha burst into quiet laughter. “What cruelties they work on us.”

  “Yes,” Cilla said, smiling. “But tender cruelties they are, my cousin dear.”

  “Unlike the greater cruelties we face.”

  Cilla nodded. “Yes. I will say again, we must make the world better for all children.”

  “’Tis an honorable task.”

  “Aye, but a pity we must go about it this way.”

  Ratha nodded. “The cost will be high.”

  “I have decided, cousin, that the cost of anything we hold dear is high. Else we would not hold it dear. What we purchase in blood will be the dearest of all.”

  “You sound like Tom Downey,” Ratha said.

  “I am a priest,” Cilla said. “Not a prophet.”

  “And I am neither priest nor prophet, but rather a warrior. Yet Tom tells me that I must become a priest.” He saw the look of surprise in her face, and quickly continued. “He said that not all priests serve in the temple, and that I must be as ready to lead my men into peace as I have been to lead them into war.”

  “He speaks the truth,” Cilla said.

  Ratha shook his head. “How can I do this, Cilla Monabi? How can I soften the hearts of men who have known war, and lead them back to their hearths, when I have known nothing but struggle and war in my life?”

  Cilla seemed to consider this for a long moment before she replied. “Do you know what it is to kiss a woman?”

  “No,” Ratha said. “I do not.”

  Cilla leaned in and pressed her lips to his. Ratha fought down the urge to flinch, and let her lips linger for an instant. When she broke the kiss, she looked into his eyes. “Now, cousin, you know of something more than struggle and war.”

  To Ratha, lost in the sensations and wanting more, her words seemed jarring. In the instant of that kiss, he had put thoughts of battle out of his mind. Now she not only revived those thoughts, but reminded him of the task that Tom—and apparently she as well—had set for him.

  “One kiss cannot a priest make,” he said.

  “Would you like another?”

  The divergent streams of desire and inadequacy swirled through him. “No…I mean, yes, but…”

  “But?” Cilla asked, smiling, her face nearly touching his, her deep eyes holding his gaze without flinching.

  “I do not know if…”

  She kissed him again, just for a moment, then held his face in her hands. “Ratha Monabi, I am sorry, for I know it must seem that I toy with you. And yes, I am. But also I am not. For yes, I long to kiss you, and for no other reason than that your lips taste of morning dew in my heart and stoke a longing in my loins. Yet I am also trying to show you that what you have known of life need not be all that you ever know. It is our challenge to learn from each day the lessons it offers us. Your lessons can change, my cousin. Your past is not your fate, but only what brings you to this moment.”

  She kissed him again. “And it is in this moment that you must live, Ratha. That is all we have.”

  Her words danced lightly through his mind. His lips like morning dew? Her loins longing? Her other words, however true, melted into the background as he felt his own stirring, and drew to mind the taste of her lips. Was this what love felt like?
>
  “Speak no more,” he heard himself say. “Only kiss me again, please.”

  Again their lips touched, and this time all thoughts of duty and destiny were lost in the soft contact, the taste and scent of her, the sound of her quiet sigh, the brush of her fingertips on his cheek. His arms drew her closer and he felt the softness of her breasts pressed to his chest, the gentle hollow of her waist, the fullness of her hip, the warmth of her, spreading through him, filling him, as if the entire world were reduced to tingling nerve endings and an urge deeper than any he had ever known.

  Somewhere in the kiss their lips had parted, oh so slightly at first, but then more, as tongue sought tongue and that graceful, gliding dance began. He heard a moan, whether hers or his he could not tell, for in this moment it was as if they were one being. Her fingers tightened against the back of his neck, her body turned even more into his, the blanket having found its way around them both as if by its own strength. When finally she paused to draw breath, he saw the pinpoints of starlight reflected in her eyes, the entire universe living in her, offered to him.

  “Oh, my,” she whispered softly.

  Ratha moaned softly. “More…”

  But Cilla touched a fingertip to his lips. Her soft eyes and tender smile cushioned him as he felt himself tumbling back to earth.

  “I tease you not, love,” she said. “I wish for nothing more than to lie in your arms and kiss you until the end of days. But we cannot, and that pains me more than any hurt we have borne so far.”

  Ratha felt the sting of tears in his eyes as he saw them grow in hers. He knew the truth of what she said, and the hurt as well. “Promise me, Cilla Monabi, that we will find a time that is ours.”

  “I promise you that,” she said. “On my heart do I swear that we will find that time.”

  In that moment, in her eyes, he saw the faintest glimmer of hope that life could bring beauty. He saw the hope of dawn.

  Leagues away in the capital city of the empire, Bozandar, a slave named Mihabi slipped silently through an elegant house. He had come from the slave quarters in the rear yard, but the high walls with their many spikes could not be climbed, and the only gates from the yard were barred and bolted. He could not open them without waking everyone.