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 l
anguage 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.”
There was a flicker in him, something that kept plucking at the edges of Anghara’s Sight—a vision she could not quite pin down. She thanked him and entered, and it was only as he dropped the curtain back into place behind her, severing their physical contact, that she realized just what it was she had sensed. A pale flame, silvery-blue. A thin aura around the burnished hair. He had it. He had the gift himself.
The realization confounded her just enough to make her stop in her tracks for the barest instant, blinking at the implications—here, even more so than in Roisinan, the sen’en’thari, those gifted with Sight, were predominantly women. Sen’thar men were rarer than water in Kheldrin. And here was one with the unmistakable aura of the gift, not in the sen’thar ranks but serving as usher to Al’haria’s lord…But she suddenly remembered where she was, and her eyes focused on the figure of al’Jezraal, his hair lightening to gold with the passage of the years, but still supple and erect as any youth, waiting just a few paces away. She swallowed convulsively, realizing just where she was and what she was doing, not sure if ai’Jihaar would approve of this intrusion into al’Jezraal’s private quarters, alone, at this hour—but it was done. She gave him an obeisance, every bit as deep as the one she had offered in the desert two years before, and he returned it gravely.
“Welcome to Al’haria, at last,” al’Jezraal said. If he had been surprised by her appearance, he did not show it. There was respect in his mien, but not deference—she may have been a queen, but she was an exiled queen, and if he was only a lord of a desert city it was also true that she was in that city right now, and under his authority. He looked upon her as an equal—and Anghara, Queen of Roisinan, had taken enough measure of this man to take that as a compliment. “I was expecting to see you a little later this morning, though, in the hall.” There was a soft question there, couched, in ai’Jihaar’s own subtle way, in a rather obvious statement of undisputed fact.
“So you shall, my lord,” Anghara said, answering it. “But an’sen’en’thari can see you at any time—so ai’Jihaar told me.”
“That is correct,” he said, unable to hide a small smile. “I suppose that for you my part of the Confirmation ceremony is indeed little more than just that—a formality to put an official seal to something concluded long ago. Will you sit, Anghara? I have to start preparing soon for the Confirmation, but there is still time. Will you tell me why you have come?”
“Do you recall the story ai’Jihaar and I had to tell when we emerged from Khar’i’id?” said Anghara without any further preamble, after she had settled into the proffered cushions and waited for al’Jezraal to subside with a cat-like grace next to her.
“It would be a hard tale to forget,” murmured al’Jezraal.
“Then you will remember that all I brought away with me from Gul Qara at that time was the sea-scent in the wind, and the memory of a whispered word.”
His gaze sharpening, al’Jezraal nodded silently. He had passed what remained of Gul Qara not long after Anghara had left it, and it had already been difficult to believe it had ever been anything but a wretched ruin. If anything had been salvaged out of that…
“What you do not know, Sa’id,” Anghara continued, more softly, “is that it did not end there. There have been…dreams, one on the very night that you and your companions left us in the hai’r. Another, on the first anniversary of that night at Gul Qara. A third, last night…and it was two years ago today that our paths first crossed in Shod Hai’r.”
His eyes glinted, “Yes, ai’Jihaar has told me something of this.” And then, as she hesitated again, he performed one of those feats which had gained him his reputation as a mind reader. “She is at the temple,” he said, “making her own preparations for the ceremonies. Shall I have her summoned?”
And Anghara, looking up into the golden eyes of ai’Jihaar’s brother, suddenly found all her doubts falling away from her. While ai’Jihaar had taught her what she could, her work was done; Anghara had, indeed, run to her teacher for help in that first instant—but it had been her own understanding which had interpreted this dream. Anghara squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, finally sure of herself and of her vision—sure enough to take responsibility herself, for the first time, for her own decisions in this, her adopted land. “No,” she said. “It isn’t necessary. I come to you as one of the an’sen’en’thari of your House, al’Jezraal ma’Hariff, with a true dream. I dreamed of the voice of Gul Qara, and at last it spoke to me clearly. There is a new oracle in Kheldrin, waiting only for a word of power to be found, to be born; a sister oracle to vanished Gul Qara—a place near the ocean, a place which is called…or will be called…Gul Khaima. It lives, Sa’id al’Jezraal, Lord of Al’haria. Gul Qara is dead. Gul Khaima lives.”
“Change follows in your wake, Anghara of Sheriha’drin,” al’Jezraal said, after a moment of charged silence. “Gul Qara had been silent to our own invocations for centuries, yet it responded to you freely when you reached out to touch it—and then it crumbled. There have been some who held the fall of Gul Qara against you, despite the oracle’s passing of its last vision into your keeping. And now—now you come with another gift of life where they would lay a death at your door.”
Anghara flushed, looking down for a moment, but the sting of Gul Qara had long been drawn. As to Gul Khaima…“There is a danger…” she said swiftly, glancing up at al’Jezraal’s face again, but he lifted a narrow hand to forestall her.
“Of course there is. You were right to bring this to me first. We will seek this place; but I think that its finding is your task. For now it is as well that its existence is not more widely known. Not yet. There would have been those who would have gone seeking, as an adventure, and even if only one of them had gone for the wrong reasons it would have been one too many. After the Confirmation, come back to these chambers. You, ai’Jihaar, ai’Farra…” he hesitated for a moment over that name—ai’Farra ma’Sayyed was Al’haria’s own an’sen’thar, Keeper of the Records, and a hard woman of whom ai’Jihaar had already warned Anghara. To put it mildly, ai’Farra had not been pleased at ai’Jihaar’s doings; if anyone could be counted on to object violently to Anghara’s status as an’sen’thar, even now at the last, it would be ai’Farra. It was just plain bad luck that this woman, a fanatical zealot of the old school, ruled this particular sen’thar tower. But she was here, and in Al’haria she held power; in some matters, more than the city’s lord himself—al’Jezraal squared his jaw and continued. “We will speak then of what needs to be done.”
&nbs
p; It was a gentle dismissal, and Anghara rose to her feet. “I will be here, Sa’id.” Even as she turned to leave, her hand strayed to the say’yin she wore around her neck and she was abruptly transported to the desert oasis where it had been bestowed. “Sa’id,” she said softly, “Lord, you gave this once as a pledge…today you will redeem it, as you promised. The say’yin that you lent…”
“Is yours, Anghara,” he said. “You named yourself an’sen’thar of my House; I accept your vision, as coming to Al’haria, and to clan Hariff. In token of that, the pledge of the say’yin remains between us. And here, in Kheldrin, if you will bear it I will give you my clan’s name.”
“I will bring it honor,” Anghara said, her eyes unaccountably filling with tears.
“Sen’en Dayr,” said Sa’id al’Jezraal, Lord of Al’haria. Gods willing. “Until we meet again, then, Anghara ma’Hariff.”
As he held the curtain for her to pass al’Tamar’s eyes were shining; he had heard most of their last exchange, and it looked as though he approved.
“It is well,” he said to Anghara with a bow. “You need kinsfolk here, and in the desert you need a name that is of the desert. The Hariff will be proud you have chosen theirs. Sa’id Al’haria, and now two an’sen’en’thari! Hai! They will be proud!” A sudden glint of triumph tinged with a hint of gloating touched that pride in his eyes—he was Kheldrini, after all, and rivalries were everything. “But ai’Farra will not be happy!”
The Hidden Queen Page 31
