The Hidden Queen

by Alma Alexander

  It was only now, without the concealing burnooses, that Anghara was able to discern there were women in the group with which they travelled. One of the women kept glancing toward her with an expression that was difficult to read. It might have been curious fascination and, perhaps not entirely unexpectedly, much the same instinctive wariness and mistrust with which Roisinani stared at “Khelsies” when they crossed the sea in the other direction. But at length curiosity seemed to win, the woman left her task by the fireside and disappeared briefly into one of the tents. When she came out carrying something in her hand, she made directly for Anghara. She squatted down beside her, reaching out hesitantly to touch the bright rope of hair, and then smiled, taking Anghara’s hand in her own small warm one and pressing something into her palm with a murmur. Anghara looked down, far from sure what to expect, and saw a small, carved bone comb.

  She was momentarily nonplussed, but then she smiled with real pleasure and nodded her thanks. But the woman seemed to want something else, and kept on darting a timid hand toward the bright braid. Anghara glanced around for ai’Jihaar, but she was still missing; the woman who had made her the gift of the comb murmured something, and Anghara grimaced her frustration.

  “I don’t understand,” she said helplessly. She picked up the end of her braid in one hand and stared at it for inspiration. It seemed to have been an enlightened move, for the woman nodded eagerly, her lips curling into one of those odd, narrow-lipped Kheldrini smiles. Understanding suddenly dawned. Anghara lifted her hair in one hand and the comb in the other. “Now? You want me to comb it now?”

  The golden eyes were bright. Anghara felt a little self-conscious; it was one thing to quietly remove her burnoose, quite another to perform an act which was so intimate in the focus of several interested pairs of eyes. By this time others had been drawn to the strange encounter by the fire. But it was such a little thing, after all. She hesitated for another brief moment, and then slid off the knotted thong holding the braid, and began unweaving the strands of hair. When it was done, she shook her hair loose and it spilled over her back and shoulders like a cloak; she ran her fingers through it, tugging gently at one or two tangles.

  “Hai haddari!” breathed the woman who began it all, sounding impressed. Anghara smiled at her—vanity was not one of her faults, but it was hard not to preen a little in the light of the open admiration in the other’s eyes. She reached for the comb, but the woman, suddenly shy, said something else, making a motion toward the comb herself.

  Either Anghara was learning the language fast, or it was just a question of being able to extrapolate the meaning of this new question from what had gone before. The request was more than humble—it was clear, from the set of the narrow shoulders and the downcast eyes, that the woman almost expected the reply to be a blistering reprimand, and not necessarily from Anghara but from her own people. She had evidently not been able to help herself, but this was a breach of both etiquette and privacy; and Anghara was a stranger of whom none of them knew what to expect. Anghara hesitated, this time because up until that moment only a select few had been allowed the privilege and duty of caring for her hair. When she had been very young, it had been her mother; later, it had been her nursemaid, then Catlin. Since that first morning at Cascin, she had dressed her hair herself. And the last time it had known the touch of anyone else’s hand had been in Cascin, a few days before the terrible events of Cerdiad which would cast her out. And that had been Kieran…He had come upon her in the garden, combing her wet hair in the sun. He had taken the comb from her, untangling with a gentle hand the damp knots which she had been furiously yanking at, spinning for her a tale of his own childhood, of the times he had done just that for Keda, back in Shaymir.

  It was an oddly potent memory, Kieran’s voice echoing in her head as though he was close to her, speaking to her in this strange place from which he was so desperately far away. Anghara sat very still, but part of her wanted to run alone into the desert, leaving the camp and its bustle behind and going into the silence of empty desolation under the stars. There she would be better able to hear the remembered words of one whom she had loved. Instead, and the move was so rooted in pure instinct that it took even Anghara herself by surprise, she held out the bone comb to the one who had given it. The woman took it almost reverently, hesitating now that her request had been granted. Then she sank its bone teeth gently into Anghara’s curls and drew it downward, very slowly, along the length of her bright hair.

  But Anghara was already far from that place. She was sitting very straight, legs crossed beneath the demure folds of her robe and the woollen djellaba, hands folded in her lap; her gray eyes, wide and unblinking, pupils dilated and fixed with vision, were staring into the campfire which blazed before her. And the voice in her ears was still Kieran’s…

  He was white and troubled, blue eyes bleary with fatigue, dismay and apprehension. Anghara did not recognize the room he was in, nor the old man upon the edge of whose bed he was sitting…but no, she knew him, it was Feor, Feor broken by his own grim burdens into a premature old age…Feor, whose transparent white hand trembled as he reached out toward the young man at his side…

  “It’s been almost two months since Bresse was razed,” Kieran was saying, voice a little unsteady with sheer desperation. “And she’s vanished, Feor. Vanished. I found a boat captain or two who think they may remember taking her down the Tanassa, and one who is equally convinced he took her up the river; and then there is one who says a young girl travelling on his ship simply disappeared in one of the villages they stopped at for repairs—swallowed by the night. They even organized a search party—but there was no trace…Feor…I don’t know where to look any more.”

  “But she is alive,” Feor said.

  Kieran’s head came up fiercely. “Yes, I believe that. I have to believe that. But she is out in that chaos, and Sif could already have killed her without even realizing he had done so. Or worse…” he shuddered convulsively, looking away. “I saw one woman after Sif’s inquisitors had finished with her, purged her…she had been lovely once. And when I think that could happen to Anghara…I…I almost rather wish…”

  He glanced at Feor, met the other’s eyes, and quickly looked away again, clenching his teeth. “No. No, never that.” He paused. “Adamo is back,” he said, his tone quite changed. “We may not have found Anghara, but he’s found Ansen. Or, at the least, his grave.”

  Feor’s eyes closed briefly, and a grimace of pain and what might have been regret crossed his face. “That, I expected,” he said quietly. “He went hurtling headlong to his own destruction, ignorant to the last of what he was getting into. I wonder if he ever truly realized what he was precipitating?”

  “He was hanged, so the people say,” said Kieran, leaping to his feet to prowl the room restlessly like a young wolf caged for too long in a confined space. Ansen, whatever his sins, had once been closer than a true-born brother.

  “Sif?”

  “Yes. It was at the han, and Sif was still there.”

  “Do they know why?”

  “They guess,” Kieran said. “There is nothing else left for them to do. But they took him down, and buried him, although the stone they put on his grave bears no name.”

  “Perhaps,” said Feor, and the words were wrung from him, “it is best so.”

  Kieran gave him a bitter, strange look, half rebellious, half compassionate. He bit back whatever he had been wanting to say and simply nodded. “Perhaps.”

  Feor raised himself in bed on both elbows and turned toward Kieran, catching the younger man’s eyes with an intense gaze. Kieran crossed back to the bed in two long strides and laid him back down onto the pillows with an extraordinary gentleness.

  “Do not exhaust yourself,” he said.

  But Feor was still looking at him with eyes far too bright, a world of pride, sorrow, trust and anguish in his gaze. “What now?”

  Kieran straightened. “I go back,” he said. The words were plain, sh
orn of every embellishment or frill; this was the iron from which a sword is yet to be forged, all latent strength and power. But within, already, it was possible to glimpse the flames in which that sword would be made. He was young, but already, perhaps, he had seen too much of a tragedy which should never have been; at the beginning of this conversation his spirits had been flagging—but he was through the valley now, and out on the other side, and he was the stronger for it. “As long as Sif searches, so do I. And there are many back in Roisinan now who know that she lives. I will find her, Feor. However long it takes.”

  “What do you see, sen’thar?”

  And suddenly, too suddenly, there was nothing there in front of her except the leaping flames of a campfire in the desert, and she looked up too fast, and the stars swayed in their moorings, falling, falling around her in a shower of bright sparks which vanished as they fell…

  I will find her…and then nothing…nothing…emptiness…

  Anghara choked suddenly, her vision swimming; overcome with a wave of nausea she retched with a dry, gagging reflex which brought nothing up from her empty stomach. A small hand pushed gently but authoritatively at a point midway between her shoulder blades, making her bend forward over her lap, laying her cheek against one of her knees.

  “Anghara.”

  A familiar voice; a sudden smell of lais tea. Anghara opened her eyes again; a bowl of it was set on the ground beside her, and familiar hands, ai’Jihaar’s, rested one on the nape of her neck over her foaming hair and one gently on her forehead.

  “It will be all right,” murmured ai’Jihaar. “Drink the tea.”

  Anghara tried to turn her head away, but it was as though her muscles had ceased to obey her. The thought of taking anything at all into her mouth made her stomach turn dangerously. But ai’Jihaar, who had felt the tensing underneath her hands, was inexorable.

  “Drink the tea,” she repeated firmly. “Trust me.”

  Anghara struggled to sit up and ai’Jihaar let her, but not too fast. She was beginning to come round, but still felt very weak; her stomach was starting to settle, slowly. The thought of the tea became marginally more welcome. She sighed deeply, pushing back the curtain of tangled bright hair, and reached for the lais cup as ai’Jihaar passed it over. The older woman sat back on her heels beside Anghara. The expression on her face was ambivalent.

  “There was something in the fire,” she said levelly, in a voice of knowledge.

  Anghara, color beginning to flood back into her white face, glanced up from her tea—first at ai’Jihaar and then at the woman who had brought the bowl, the same one who had made her the gift of the comb. If the bronze skins of Kheldrin could be said to go pale, then this woman’s face was ashen, terrified at the turn of events. She crouched close by, tensely, balanced on the balls of her feet so that she could flee at a moment’s notice if necessary. Anghara lowered the cup and gave her a wan little smile.

  “Please tell her,” she said to ai’Jihaar, “that it wasn’t her fault.”

  “I already have,” said ai’Jihaar, her voice brittle, but it was only after Anghara’s smile that the nameless woman from the caravan had relaxed a little, lowering a knee onto the sand. “The fire,” ai’Jihaar prompted, unusually insistent. Reflections of the firelight danced in her blind white eyes.

  What do you see, sen’thar?

  “But I am not,” breathed Anghara, seemingly entirely arbitrarily.

  “I am raised to the gold,” said ai’Jihaar without missing a beat, very softly. “That, you are not. But sen’thar you are, Anghara. And no longer novice. Any of us who saw what you did tonight would raise you to the white circle without a single qualm. But after…why does it sap you so?”

  “I don’t know,” said Anghara frankly. “Unless…unless it was that it came unasked, that I did not seek it, did not center, did not try first for the talisman—and then you spoke to me and I came out of it too fast…if that was Sight…”

  But ai’Jihaar frowned at her words. “What is this talisman you speak of?”

  Anghara drained the lais cup and put it down, steeling herself. This was going to be hard. Talisman lore belonged to Morgan, to Bresse, and they were both gone. She had never given ai’Jihaar a complete account of her life before she had met her, and now that came home to roost. Any point where she began to explain came either too early in the tale or too late. It took a while to circle round to the subject at hand.

  At first ai’Jihaar seemed to find the concept hard to grasp.

  “Everyone uses this to control the Sight? Everyone? Who teaches the technique to those who would never come to a place like Bresse? From what you say, and from what I know, Sight is common enough in your land, found in croft and hold as well as great halls—and somehow all these women manage their Sight—have they all a talisman of their own?”

  “I…don’t know,” said Anghara. “I don’t, really. The reason I was sent to Bresse was twofold—because they needed a place for me to hide, after…after what happened at Cascin…and the second was…exactly that, exactly what happened. Feor thought it best that I be taught to control what had slipped from me that night, before I did…any more damage.”

  “And that is all they did,” snapped ai’Jihaar. And relented, when she saw Anghara bristle at this harsh judgment against Castle Bresse, which had been martyred at Sif’s hands. “Child. Sight is more than control. All they have ever done in that place is learn to open their minds to their power—and then close them again as soon as they have finished using it.”

  “It worked,” said Anghara defiantly.

  “Of course it worked,” ai’Jihaar’s voice was infinitely gentle. “But it is not enough, and they never—not one of them—ever knew the true potential of what they were. And if these were the best in Sheriha’drin, then there are none who can stand against what Sif is doing to them now.”

  “None of them can!” said Anghara, and her voice was a lash, shaped by her guilt and sorrow. “It was a gentle art…although Morgan said…” The name was a white pain. “Morgan said that there were things done with me in Sight that were done in power.”

  “They managed to hide you from Sif and his own Sighted cohort whom he gathered to look for you,” ai’Jihaar agreed. “That was a bright deed, and woven of many strands—your mother, Feor, Morgan of Bresse. But even that…even that was done with half the power, and it was only because they sought you with half the power that you slipped through their fingers for so long.”

  “Then,” said Anghara, throwing back at ai’Jihaar the first question with which Morgan had tested her at Bresse, “what is Sight?”

  “If it is indeed the same well from which we are all drinking…glory,” said ai’Jihaar softly, answering with a promptness and certainty which the young Anghara would have given worlds to have been able to control years ago in Morgan’s chambers. “Power and glory.” She reached out with a small hand and Anghara laid her own in it, mesmerized by the vibrancy and intensity of ai’Jihaar’s voice in that moment.

  The touch was electric, a shaft of lightning; Anghara heard herself cry out, her own voice sounding very far away, and then ai’Jihaar was in her mind again, passionate and powerful, just as she had been at the Desert Gate.

  No! You are stronger than this! Do not turn away from your birthright!

  And ai’Jihaar’s soul was a pillar of white fire, and something in Anghara leapt to meet it. She knew that, by all the tenets of Bresse, she should have been writhing on the ground in agony, victim of one of those wild visions triggered by the touch of Cascin’s little Standing Stone that Morgan could do nothing about but offer comfort and her own strength which, often, had not been enough to keep Anghara from paying for the experience in dizziness, disorientation, sometimes racking pain. But a bridge had been forged across a gulf which Anghara had not known how to cross before; and her own soul fire was gold to ai’Jihaar’s white, the same fierce aura which had blazed from her on that Cerdiad night of grievous memory. If Feor could have seen h
er he would have recognized it for what it was—and he would also have believed that, for once, Bresse had failed in what it had set out to do.

  But there was nothing deadly, nothing uncontrolled, in the golden flame of Anghara’s mind.

  This, said ai’Jihaar’s voice, white flame weaving with gold, is Sight. True Sight. And I name you sen’thar, here, tonight. I name you to the white circle, Anghara of Roisinan, stranger of Sheriha’drin, first to walk on the sands of Arad Khajir’i’id in a thousand years. May the Gods walk by your side.

  When ai’Jihaar released Anghara’s hand the flames died, first the white, then, a fraction of a second later, the gold. There was no trace of sickness this time; on the contrary, Anghara still tingled with the molten power which had coursed through her veins. Somewhere in her mind echoed a lost voice of Morgan of Bresse, and Anghara saw, for a fleeting moment, an image of her old teacher and gazed upon it with love and respect, and, finally and at last, with pity. Then it was gone, and she was looking upon ai’Jihaar instead—ai’Jihaar, who sat smiling inscrutably and looking straight back at her through eyes which could not see. The woman who had brought the tea was still crouching nearby, her expression unchanged, and Anghara realized that nothing of what she had just experienced could have been visible in the physical plane, else the entire camp would have been in uproar by now.

  “Eat something, and then you should sleep,” said ai’Jihaar gently, naming what seemed such an utter impossibility that Anghara wanted to laugh out loud. Sleep? After this night? But ai’Jihaar, as usual, was quick to respond to the unspoken. “We ride again in only a few hours, Anghara. Try. You will find it easier than you think. Remember what I said about being responsible for your own mistakes in the desert. Lose your chance of rest tonight, and tomorrow will be a day of endless suffering for you. And you will need all your strength.” The smile widened imperceptibly. “I named you to the white circle, because you are more than deserving to be there—but your peers are much advanced in their knowledge of the Way, and there is a great deal for you to learn before you can call yourself their equal. And tomorrow, we begin.”