Shadows of Destiny

by Rachel Lee

  She stared at her arm, then looked at him. “Do you want me to leave?”

  He shook his head, fighting the tears that threatened his eyes. “I do not. But to stay or to leave is your decision. As it should always have been.”

  She straightened, leaving the plate, and reached for a towel to press against her bleeding arm. Then she kissed his forehead. “I will stay, my son. I fear you will need a mother in the times ahead.”

  Near Anahar, a hawk soared on the morning’s rising thermals. The armies reached the mouth of the pass where they had fought each other so bitterly only weeks before, and it was as if a lurch passed through the columns. The memories of these soldiers, men and women alike, was still fresh with memories of comrades slain, of ugly killing and maiming done.

  In an instant the air began crackling with tension. Not a soldier, not even an officer, failed to feel a thirst for revenge. There was no one in either army who had not seen his fellows fall, no one who could honestly deny a desire to turn on his former enemy and exact retribution.

  The Ilduin were the first to pick up on the change. Where at the outset the troops had been joking among themselves to avoid thinking about the dark journey ahead of them—to avoid thinking that they might never return from it—now all thoughts grew dark with memory.

  None of the three women failed to notice the encroaching darkness or the feeling of barely restrained violence. At once they brought it to the attention of the commanders.

  “We must take care,” Tess said. “There may be trouble at any moment.”

  Archer rubbed his jaw. “I feared this. The wounds are still too fresh, and passing through this canyon will only rip barely formed scars.”

  “Is there no other way?” Sara asked.

  Cilla shook her head. “Not for an army that wants to leave the valley.”

  “Then we must find a way to separate the two columns or distract everyone.”

  “Or a way to keep control,” Archer said, looking at Tuzza and Ratha. “If we lose control now, ’twould be best to abandon the campaign, for there will be no hope.”

  The two officers nodded, and without further discussion spurred their mounts back toward their separate armies.

  “And that is the problem,” Archer said. “Making one of two.”

  “’Twill be easier once we have passed through the canyon,” Sara suggested hopefully.

  “The entire route to Bozandar is littered with the slain, buried though they be. These men will never forget. We can only urge them to overlook anger for the greater good.”

  “They understand that,” Sara said. “Have they not sworn fealty to Tess?”

  Cilla viewed matters far less positively. “Half of them previously swore fealty to the Emperor of Bozandar. I fear they are remembering that even now.”

  Archer looked around. “Where is Tom?”

  Sara answered. “He said he would ride in the rear for a while. I asked why, but he did not answer. Mayhap he felt an omen. But what could he do?”

  Tess spoke. “All of the men of both sides know Tom is a prophet. Word of that spread swiftly. Mayhap he can do more than any of us might think.”

  Archer caught her eye. “You can do something, my lady.”

  Tess raised a brow, suspecting she would not like what he was about to say. “Do not ask me to use my powers. They are wild and I cannot guarantee the outcome.”

  “They are less wild than you think. But no, I do not ask it. I ask only that you ride up to that cliff.” He nodded toward a promontory that would be easily visible to the marching columns. “Take a standard bearer with you. Let them see you. It will remind them.”

  Tess felt quite certain that she was not the sort who liked to stage a show, certainly not one that placed her at its heart. But she had long since realized that events moved her as much as she moved them, perhaps more. If this would help prevent trouble, then she would do it.

  Archer signaled to the nearest standard bearer, one carrying a flag diagonally divided into the red of Bozandar and the gray the Anari had chosen for their color. Atop the triangles a white wolf with golden eyes looked down on the world.

  Tess nodded to her companions, then with the standard bearer, an Anari of very few years, headed up to the cliff Archer had chosen. When she reached the crest, she looked down into the valley below. The awful memories of that last morning of battle flashed through her mind. The heaps of dead, lying in windrows where they had been cut down. The cries of Bozandari who had fallen into the Anari pit traps, pit traps that later became mass graves and still showed as freshly turned earth.

  The magnitude of their mission hammered her with renewed force. “Raise the standard,” she said.

  “Yes, m’lady,” the boy said.

  The boy planted the butt of the staff in the ground, using his foot to brace it, and held it upright. Tess knew what she needed to do, and almost in the thought of it, a gentle breeze came across the crest, lifting the pennant to its full length.

  “Look upon me, Snow Wolves!” Tess cried in a voice that rolled down the slope and cut through the valley like rushing water. “Look upon your new standard! Fail it not, or Ilduin blood will judge!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mihabi found his older brother, Kelano, in a darkened wood that lay within a huge city park. Normally a place for Bozandari children to play with their mothers, the park had been all but empty since the bitter winter had fallen upon them. Now its winding paths and secret hollows were an ideal base for the Anari rebels.

  “It is good to see you again, brother,” Mihabi said, grasping Kelano in an embrace. “I feared we would never again meet face-to-face.”

  “It would be a cold fate that we should not,” Kelano said. “A fate the gods have spared us. How is mother?”

  “She is well,” Mihabi said, “though she remains in Ezinha’s house. I did not tell her that I was leaving.”

  Kelano nodded. “We must get her out. Ezinha will kill her, as many other masters are doing to the families of those who leave. As if by spilling the blood of our mothers and sons and brothers, they can break our will.”

  Mihabi considered that prospect. He had heard that some Bozandari were exacting reprisals, but strangely he had not considered that possibility when he had made his decision to leave. Surely Ezinha would not kill the woman who had nursed him? Yet he had sold Kelano, had he not?

  “You are unsure,” Kelano said, reading his eyes. “Have no doubt of the evil of slave owners, brother. You may have played with Ezinha in your youth, but he is no better a man than any Bozandari. We must get mother out of his house, and quickly.”

  “I cannot believe Ezinha would kill mother,” Mihabi said, trying to imagine his former owner’s arm falling, the glint of a blade plunging into his mother’s throat. He could not force the image into focus. “He could not.”

  “He would and he will,” Kelano said. “He is his father’s son, and his father was a cruel man. Cruel to his wife. Cruel to his children. Would his son not show the same cruelty to a mere slave?”

  Mihabi remembered the stern warning Ezinha had issued before he left. If he returned to Ezinha’s house, he would be treated as a thief in the night. While Ezinha had freed him, there had indeed been a hardness in his eyes. Perhaps Kelano was right. Perhaps even now his mother lay dead, her body flung through the doorway of the servants’ house as a brutally plain message to any of the others who might consider leaving.

  Kelano held Mihabi’s gaze until finally Mihabi nodded.

  “You see the truth of my words,” Kelano said. He put a hand on Mihabi’s shoulder. “Come, brother, and quickly. We must gather a company of our brethren and forge a plan. You know Ezinha’s house and grounds better than any, and we owe our mother a debt that only this can repay.”

  Tess had watched the army’s march through the valley with a mixed sense of sorrow and hope. Each company, both Anari and Bozandari, had saluted her standard as it passed. But the anger still simmered as they made camp north of
the valley that night. More than a few fights had broken out, the largest because a group of Anari had wanted to return to the valley to offer prayers at the graves of the fallen, while the Bozandari had no desire to see Anari both in front of and behind them in that valley of death. While the senior men quickly quelled the disturbances, the sense of fracture was imminent.

  It was Cilla who had come to Tess with the germ of an idea, although Cilla had known that she lacked the means to make it happen. Now, as Tess approached Ratha’s tent, she wondered if her powers of persuasion would be any better.

  “Come in,” Ratha said when she announced her presence.

  “Hello, my friend,” Tess said.

  Ratha quickly gathered maps and other papers, tucking them into his knapsack, then invited her to sit on the low bench that functioned both as his cot and his map table. He sat beside her, the strain of the day evident in his dark eyes.

  “What can I do for Lady Tess?” he asked.

  The formality of the question left little doubt that he had some inkling of the reason for her visit. She chose not to evade the issue. “There is trouble in the camp.”

  He nodded. “Yes, I know. I cannot say that I am surprised. These men slaughtered one another in this same valley only a few weeks ago. Such memories burn deeply in the belly, m’lady.”

  “Both Anari and Bozandari look to Archer, and to me, to make peace between them.”

  “I envy you not that task. I know in my head that we must march together or fall to the Enemy. I think both of our peoples understand this.” Ratha pointed to his chest. “But here, in our hearts, there are wounds that cannot be ignored. And the chasm between what we know and what we feel is…all the wider as we see each other arrayed as for battle.”

  Ratha knotted his hands together and Tess reached out to cover them. “I am so sorry, Ratha. But unfortunately it seems the gods will not give us time to grieve and lick our wounds. We must bring this army together swiftly.”

  His face tightened yet more, then with visible effort he relaxed. “Aye. What would you have me do?”

  “There must be some way you and Tuzza can be seen by everyone to unite and put aside your past wounds. Everyone knows Tuzza killed Giri, and everyone knows that he did so because Giri killed an officer for whom Tuzza felt a great deal of affection. You have both suffered grievous harm…but pray do not misunderstand me, Ratha. I do not seek to minimize the loss of Giri. It is still a knife in my heart as well.”

  “I believe you.” He closed his eyes tightly, as if to deny his eyes access to the world. Or to memory. “I can still see him killing my brother. It is etched in my brain with acid. The sword swinging, glittering in the sunlight, and my brother’s head…” He shuddered, keeping his eyes closed. “You have no idea what you ask of me. Ask me to make peace with any other. But with Tuzza…” He shook his head.

  “I understand, Ratha. Believe me, I understand. All our minds are filled with horror since the battle. Not a person among us escaped the loss of someone we loved. But the future demands that we ignore our hurts for now, else there will be endless war.”

  Her gaze grew distant and she rocked a little, as if she were caught in a vision. “Few of us have any idea,” she said in a voice barely above a murmur, “how awful it can be. And it can be so much worse than anything you have yet seen, Ratha.”

  He stared at her, tugged from the sorrow that angered him as much as it hurt him. An eerie feeling settled over him, as if he could sense that the woman beside him was bridging the veil somehow. As if she were seeing beyond this world.

  Then she looked at him, and her blue eyes were dark. “You can make peace with any man you choose, but only peace with Tuzza will make a difference.”

  A chill crept along his spine, reminding him that there were far greater forces at work in this world, and in these events, than he had allowed himself to think of since Giri’s death. The rightness of what she said filled him as much as his grief. Still, the internal struggle continued. It was a time before he could bring himself to make the promise.

  “Much as I am loathe to make amends with Tuzza, it must be done for the greater good of all. So give me a while, my lady. A while to think on this. Then I will go to Tuzza and we shall make a plan.”

  “Thank you, Ratha.” Tess squeezed his hands. “These times demand so much of us, my friend. I fear that in the end our hearts will be nothing but worn-out husks.” She spoke as if she knew, as if she had seen.

  Slightly unnerved and worried about the way she looked, Ratha unknotted his hands and clasped hers. Yet still she rocked, as if caught in the grip of something beyond herself. “If that passes, then the Enemy will win. We must keep heart. We must always care. Even if we must at times numb our pain so we may do all that is needed, we must never sacrifice it. Armies will fight in the next weeks, but our spirits will wage war also.”

  “You speak wisely, Ratha. Very wisely. And only with unity can we sustain each other.”

  He sighed. “I will think of something, my lady. The stakes are far too high to allow hatred to rule us. I have buried Giri. Now we all must bury our dead.”

  Outside Ratha’s tent, Tess sagged on legs that didn’t want to hold her. She had seen, and what she had seen had shaken her to her very core. She did not know if she had glimpsed the future, or glimpsed the past, but either way horror gripped her.

  She steadied herself against a tent pole, trying to clear her head enough to think. She needed to be alone, to absorb what she had just seen in her mind’s eye, but finding solitude had become ever more difficult. Her sisters were very often with her, and since both armies had sworn fealty toward her banner—to her—everywhere she went someone wished to speak to her.

  Strange how it was that the wounded hearts of these men seemed to want a few words from her, or a moment of her time to mention someone who had died. She understood their need, but she felt wholly inadequate to the task. She was the Weaver, but she was no healer of wounded hearts. The only gift she had lay in healing flesh, and causing terrible death.

  Finding some strength, she headed for the edge of camp, thinking that somewhere in the no-man’s-land between the farthest tent and the sentries who had been placed as a screen to alert them before any attack could come near, she would find a place of solitude.

  She was wrong. No sooner did she leave the edge of camp when the phalanx of Bozandari who had first sworn themselves to protect her, surrounded her. Since she had been moving through the Anari camp, she was even more surprised.

  “Odetta,” she said to their commander.

  He bowed deeply.

  “I need solitude.”

  “We will ensure you have it, my lady. We will position ourselves far enough away that you shall not know we are there.”

  As he spoke, he made a gesture with his hand. At once the men around her melted into the darkness. “You have only to lift your voice, m’lady,” Odetta said. He saluted her smartly, then also vanished into the night.

  In spite of herself, Tess smiled. Alone but not alone. It was undoubtedly the best she could hope for now, when they were two days’ march from another Bozandari legion, one more likely to attack them than to talk first. Their scouts would likely be ranging out well ahead, and contact could be made at any moment.

  She found a flattened rock of just the right height to serve as a seat. Her trembling legs were glad of the relief, but it only seemed the anxiety she felt moved from them into the rest of her.

  She was not accustomed to having visions outside the temple, yet this one had seemed exactly like those she saw within the temple walls. Even with her eyes open and the stars casting their silvery light everywhere, giving the rocky desert a beautiful argent sheen, she could still see the horrific images.

  Weapons that flew and sprayed fire, bodies hewn open in ways no sword could accomplish, in ways the mind could scarcely believe. A screaming roar, and then earth erupting around her, scattering men and women and children in parts around her, torn remains sticki
ng to her clothes and her face and her soul.

  Was this her past or her future?

  Perhaps solitude had not been a wise choice. There was no answer to her vision, nothing that she could pick out of it to point a way to either her forgotten past or the dreaded future.

  Rising, she started back toward the camp. Moments later the phalanx surrounded her again. This time she found them comforting.

  Past or future, what difference did it make? she wondered finally as they approached the nearest tents. One way or the other, it was part of her.

  Much as he hated the company of the crone he kept secreted in his fortress, Ardred needed, at times, to avail himself of her powers directly. He entered the Ilduin’s small cell and tried to ignore the odor of decay that hovered in the air. The woman was nearly a walking corpse, yet she seemed unable to die, much as she might wish it.

  Or perhaps, he thought grimly, she was afraid to die. The punishments of the gods, as he himself knew, could be as diabolical as their games. The quarrel between Elanor and Sarduk played out here in this world, and for all they were the cause of everything, they freely punished those who displeased them.

  Elanor’s punishment of both Ardred and Annuvil had been harsh, but Sarduk had saved Ardred from the worst of it. And so he should have, Ardred had always believed. After all, it was the creation of the Anari that had so infuriated the gods. The war that led to it, between Annuvil and Ardred, had merely been a part of the game.

  But the creation of a new race…that had been treading into territory the gods reserved for themselves. And Annuvil had been part of that, while Ardred had not.

  Ardred’s lip curled as he thought of his older brother. The folly, the sheer arrogance, of thinking any being could escape the wiles of the gods only showed Annuvil’s failings. And as a result of those failings, the world had been rent asunder, Annuvil left here on this plane to wander like the lost sheep he was, and Ardred on another plane under Sarduk’s protection. Ardred had used the time to learn what he must do to reunite the world.