Changer of Days

by Alma Alexander

  He’d got the meaning right, but the words were out of context, and al’Tamar smiled again—first with indulgence, then gratitude.

  “I thank you,” he said quietly. “You cannot know how much being able to do this means to me.”

  “Oh, but I do,” murmured Kieran as al’Tamar turned away, say’yin in hand. “More than you know.”

  As al’Tamar knelt beside Anghara, speaking softly in his own language, Kieran, swallowing the last sip of khaf left in his cup, struggled to his feet without being noticed and slipped outside into the moonlight. If anyone had asked why he had chosen to leave the cave in, what was essentially a moment of triumph, he would have found it hard to explain—his reasons were completely irrational. There was a part of him which knew the scene about to be played—knew it with a bitter clarity. He could see it all—the offering, Anghara’s tears gleaming in the firelight. There was an entire world they shared, Anghara and her desert paladin, a world which utterly excluded Kieran—and he felt reluctant to witness this exchange, steeped as it was in things completely beyond his comprehension. There were many feelings mixed up in this, but its roots lay in the deepest and the most irrational of them all—jealousy. He’d had the greatness of spirit to offer them the gift which had been in his power to give. That didn’t mean he had the strength to watch its consummation, even knowing, as he did, that there could never be anything between al’Tamar and Anghara except shared memories. But those, by all the vanished Gods, were potent enough.

  The horse blanket had somehow migrated to Kieran’s shoulders, and he was glad of it now as the desert night nipped at him. There was a faint wail in the air, a distant banshee—what was it that Anghara had called this? A song of the spirits…el’lah afrit? He’d forgotten those half-heard words of explanation, comprehensively submerged in the shock of ai’Jihaar and al’Tamar’s subsequent arrival. How the spirits returned, vividly, a lost memory seeking a home. Anghara had said something…something about the weather changing. Recalling this, Kieran instinctively glanced up at the sky; but here in the desert clouds were rarely harbingers of change. The recollection of the instant in which he’d first heard of the phenomenon was so potent, that for a long moment Kieran failed to register that the sounds of an approaching ki’thar were real, not conjured from his memory. And finding himself face to face with a veiled golden-eyed rider who stared at him impassively from her high perch atop the ki’thar saddle took his breath away.

  A soft command broke the silence. The ki’thar knelt, and its rider slipped off. Beneath a travelling djellaba gleamed gold; a long black-hafted dagger was in the newcomer’s hand; but it was not ai’Daileh who stood before him. Another an’sen’thar, then.

  Kieran regained enough presence of mind to move first. He remembered the desert greeting, brought his hand up to heart, lips, brow, bowed deeply. The dagger dropped a little.

  “Knowing of our ways,” said the woman, who had still not removed her veil, “makes you no less a fram’man. Are you, then, the one they are seeking?”

  Kieran straightened, lifting his chin. “I am.”

  His sword was still in the cave; but even if he had had it he doubted if he could have raised it. His fingers felt like jelly. But his avowal, instead of bringing the an’sen’thar’s dagger up and sliding between his ribs, made her drop her hand to her side, “Anghara’s, then.”

  Kieran blinked, surprised, and then assented to this as well, a curt nod.

  “These, I presume, belong to ai’Jihaar and her escort,” said the woman, reaching up to unfasten the burnouse. “Where are they?”

  Kieran’s eyes flicked to the cave behind him, back; the an’sen’thar smiled, a little sardonically.

  “Do not worry. I mean them no harm—ai’Daileh is a bigger fool than I would have believed,” she said acerbically. “By rights I should have been the one summoned from the tower to deal with this; we would not have this mess on our hands. But the Gods willed it differently…”

  Kieran knew he ought to have done something to stop this unexpected visitor barging in unannounced, but he was at a loss to know exactly what that could have been. She gave him little chance, she simply gathered her djellaba up like a cloak and swept into the small cave with a regal air Anghara herself would have not been ashamed to claim. All Kieran could do was follow, swearing that this would be the last time he would allow himself to be taken by surprise. Keeping company with Anghara might explain events constantly catching him unawares, but certainly didn’t justify anything. He should have anticipated surprise, been on his guard.

  He almost ran her down, the subject of his vehement vows; the an’sen’thar had stopped abruptly at the cave’s entrance and was staring at the three beside the fire. Kieran could see nothing amiss, but al’Tamar looked stricken, and ai’Jihaar resigned. Anghara alone was smiling, the great amber and silver say’yin that had been al’Tamar’s gift still lying across her upturned palms.

  “How long?” the strange an’sen’thar said, her voice oddly brittle. She was still speaking, as she had done with Kieran outside, in Roisinani. “No, do not tell me. Too long, whatever the answer. He is old enough to have walked in the Way for years. Why? Why did you veil it from me?”

  “There are always too many claimants for any place which looks as if it might become vacant,” said ai’Jihaar cryptically. “This at least you ought to understand, ai’Farra—you took steps of your own to make sure the next Keeper in the tower at Al’haria is also Sayyed.”

  “The mine,” ai’Farra said, nodding. “Of course.”

  Rising to his feet, al’Tamar faced ai’Farra across the fire with no small measure of defiance. She studied him intently, cupping her chin in her hand.

  “So,” she said, and her voice was deceptively mild. “We have a new sen’thar. What shall we do with you now, al’Tamar ma’Hariff?”

  “Nothing has changed,” said al’Tamar. “Not until I beget an heir to take my place.”

  “I seem to recall something about a betrothal, yes,” ai’Farra said. “I would have thought that was where you should have been, instead of spending your nights wandering the desert.”

  “The tower cannot have him,” said ai’Jihaar.

  “Not the tower,” said Anghara unexpectedly. “But he has been too important a part of too many things. There was a time, in the grotto below Gul Khaima, that I promised him an’sen’thar gold. I fulfill that tonight.” She turned, slipping the say’yin she still held over her head, and reached to hold al’Tamar’s hands between her own. “I grant you the gold, an’sen’thar al’Tamar ma’Hariff—for this night’s work, and for all the nights that came before it.”

  “He is untrained,” snapped ai’Farra. “It lies not in your power to do this.”

  “It does,” said Anghara. “You yourself raised me to the gold—and from the moment you did so you gave me the power to grant it to another when I deem it fit. As for being untrained…I, too, knew nothing when I accepted gold from ai’Jihaar’s hands. It was two years before I came to Al’haria to claim it by right—al’Tamar can be given the same chance.”

  “And who will train him as you were trained?” ai’Farra demanded. “Out of a tower? And how may an an’sen’thar hold secular title? How may he make sacrifice to the Gods when he cannot…”

  “If you knew about me, then you know everything,” Kieran said quietly, standing just behind her. “You must also know that the sacrifice you speak of will never be made again to the Gods you knew.”

  She turned her head, a small, fierce motion; whatever he had expected it was not this, the glint of tears. The first thing that stirred in him was pity, but it didn’t last, killed by the harsh voice so at odds with her face. “All evil comes from across those mountains,” she said. “I knew that. I knew when she came that everything I believed in was in danger, I didn’t know she would live to be called ai’Bre’hinnah, not here, not in my lifetime. If I had known…perhaps it would have been the lesser sin to have destroyed her then.”

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nbsp; “You could not have done it, ai’Farra,” said ai’Jihaar from within the pool of silence which flowed out of these words and spread around them. “You could not spare those who were doomed. Their hour had come.”

  “Then is it now mine?”

  “I said, no more blood,” said Anghara, her voice at once ringing with command and steeped in deepest compassion. After a last lingering look at Kieran’s face, ai’Farra turned back toward Anghara, baring her teeth in what could have been a smile.

  “You have left me nothing else.”

  “There are the Records. Would you still leave them to ai’Daileh? And there is al’Tamar. I look to you.”

  “What could I teach him?” said ai’Farra, with a brittle laugh. “The world I knew is lost.”

  “There will come a time,” said Anghara, “when he may well come to me.” At this al’Tamar drew in his breath with a sharp hiss, but Anghara ignored him, her eyes still locked with those of ai’Farra. “But until then…you hold yourself too cheaply, ai’Farra. I do not. I never have.”

  For a long moment ai’Farra held her gaze, then her golden lashes swept down onto her cheeks. “Why?” she asked, very softly, as though she was merely speaking thoughts aloud. “Why is it that I can never find the words to overcome you—even now, when I see you holding the torch which has left my world in ashes?”

  “Because you also see the same torch lighting the dark places which have been lost to you for so long,” ai’Jihaar said after a beat.

  While ai’Farra hadn’t said she would accept anything Anghara offered, not in so many words, she hadn’t needed to. She knew all too well that her choices had narrowed down to one. It was too late to destroy, she was left with the option of bending before the wind howling through the land of her birth, or breaking. And ai’Farra, for all her brittleness and rigidity, had not forgotten how to bend.

  The change of subject, when it came, was so abrupt that Kieran, despite all his vows to the contrary, was once again caught off guard.

  “You cannot go back over the mountains,” ai’Farra said.

  Nobody had said anything about going back, but Anghara took it in her stride. “Why not?”

  You have to ask? Kieran thought with something like appalled astonishment, memories of their brush with the mountain passes rousing to haunt his mind.

  But ai’Farra had something far more practical in mind. “There is ai’Daileh in the way, for one. She can be dealt with—but what you do not yet know is that there has been word from Roisinan while you have sought salvation here in the Kadun.”

  Anghara was shaken. There was a hesitation, so brief as to be almost unnoticeable, but it was there—all who witnessed it knew her well enough to recognize it. “What news?”

  “Sif Kir Hama knows where you are,” ai’Farra said, her eyes lifting to finally rest once again on Anghara’s face. “He has demanded your return, or he will lead an army into Kheldrin.”

  “He couldn’t even lead one into Tath,” Kieran said, unable to hold it back.

  But for Anghara the news was just the first step of a familiar nightmare. Cascin, Bresse…now Kheldrin. Yet again, a place which had sheltered her, protected her, was threatened with Sif’s bloody retribution. Kieran saw the memory wake, old wounds, scars long faded standing out livid in her eyes.

  He saw it; the rest sensed it in different ways; ai’Farra caught her lower lip in her small teeth as though she were in sudden pain; ai’Jihaar reached out for Anghara’s hand; and al’Tamar gently laid his own on her arm.

  “Ah, no, child,” ai’Jihaar murmured. “It is not the same thing, not at all…”

  “He gave us a month,” ai’Farra said. “But there are men in Shaymir waiting for his command. If you try going back that way, you will be going straight into his arms.” She smiled, and the smile was savage. “And I would not have it said that Kheldrin broke its faith.”

  It could have been an easy way out for her, a way to destroy the viper in Kheldrin’s heart without bringing any guilt onto her own head. But ai’Farra knew the Changer was already named, the Change already begun, and such a gesture would have been worse than pointless—it would have been a futile waste.

  Kieran, however, was looking beyond the immediate problems and found something almost unbelievable. “He named you,” he said slowly. “That means he has finally had to acknowledge you are alive. I told my men to proclaim it on every village green when I left to try and snatch you from Miranei. We left quite a trail when we took you; Sif would have had to come up with something solid to explain Fodrun and Senena’s deaths.” Something else occurred to him, and he frowned in fierce concentration. “If he comes…he brings everything he’s got. He has to. He’s coming to destroy you. And he leaves it all wide open behind him—Roisinan, Miranei. For Favrin, if he is sharp enough to grab his chance…For you. To claim it.”

  Anghara turned to him, and her eyes were almost accusing. “And this land?” she questioned quietly. “Is Kheldrin to be hostage to my freedom and the price of my crown?”

  At this, ai’Jihaar squeezed Anghara’s hand lightly in support, and then let go, stepping away. But it was al’Tamar who spoke first, his eyes blazing.

  “No hostage,” he said proudly, his head high. “Sif Kir Hama will find out the hard way. This prize is beyond him.”

  “He has an army…an army willing to die for him,” Anghara whispered.

  “They may well be called upon to do that,” ai’Jihaar said. “We have been invaded before…and none have stayed long enough to leave more than a few lines in the Records. Sif knows nothing about Kheldrin. He may not yet realize he has a foe in this land which could well prove too large a bite even for him to swallow.”

  “What foe?” said Anghara, her voice still soft—but her eyes had kindled quietly, and now glowed almost silver in the firelight.

  “The desert,” ai’Jihaar said, then laughed unexpectedly, laughter which fell into the expectant silence like shards of glass. “The desert fights for us.”

  PART 2

  Anghara

  12

  There was little in the lush shore the small Kheldrini sailboat had been hugging for the past week that reminded Kieran of the desert country—but every time he looked across the narrow stretch of water between the boat and the shore Kheldrin rose up to haunt him. The parting words with which Kheldrin’s an’sen’en’thari had seen them off on Sa’alah’s quays, the words which had put an idea in Anghara’s mind—an idea which had never occurred to her before.

  “I have a message for you from Gul Khaima,” ai’Farra had said, “I have been carrying it for months. I knew you were coming back.”

  “Another long set of incomprehensible triads?” Anghara had asked, rather flippantly. “I’ve still to find the meaning of parts of the first prophecy.”

  “No, nothing like that. Something ai’Raisa told me when I was last at the Stone. A single sentence.”

  “Well, what is it?” Anghara had said after a moment of expectant silence.

  “Just this: Let the lost queen take care in the Crystal City.”

  Kieran had been watching Anghara’s face, and it had been completely blank as ai’Farra uttered her words—but it hadn’t stayed that way for long. Anghara’s eyes became curiously speculative.

  “Does it mean anything?” ai’Farra had asked; her tone had been diffident, but Kieran wasn’t fooled.

  “It might,” Anghara had said, keeping her own counsel.

  If ai’Farra had hoped Anghara would reveal any meaning before she left Kheldrin’s shores, the an’sen’thar was disappointed—even Kieran, who should really have guessed right away, had been taken by surprise, yet again and in spite of all his vows. Upon leaving the port of Sa’alah, Anghara had turned the small sailboat’s prow more south than east.

  The Crystal City. Algira. Tath.

  “You’re not thinking of walking straight into Duerin Rashin’s parlor?” Kieran had demanded incredulously.

  “No,” said Anghara sweetly.
“Not Duerin. For a long time Duerin has reigned in Tath while someone else rules.”

  “Favrin? You plan to beard Favrin?”

  “Don’t you remember what Feor said in Cascin?” Tears sparkled for a moment in her eyes. “Favrin, he said, was the dangerous one—clever, and strong. When Favrin comes into his own, Roisinan will have to choose: war to the hilt or some sort of treaty.” She smiled. “I’m going to offer him a treaty,” she said. “Before he realizes what Sif is planning and chooses the war. A war he can win.”

  “It’s madness,” Kieran said. “Alone?”

  “I have you, don’t I?” she said. The words somehow managed to be both a wry barb and a clean avowal of trust and confidence; Kieran could find no response quickly enough for it to be effective. “Besides,” Anghara added, “it’s not as though this was my own idea. The oracle told me to be careful in the Crystal City long before I thought of going there.”

  “You don’t know anything about the place,” Kieran said mutinously.

  “I don’t need to,” said Anghara. “I’m being led; that means I will be shown what I need to know.”

  There was a sharp brilliance about her, ever since winged ai’Bre’hinnah had restored her power in the red desert of Kheldrin—the fearless and thoughtless arrogance of an adamant crafted to adorn a royal crown. She had felt reborn; and because she believed nothing foul could touch her again, nothing could. Never had Kieran felt less necessary—she looked as though she would be quite happy to undertake this wild quest by herself. Another moment such as the one they had wasted in the Kadun cavern had not presented itself. Now that all she had lost had been restored to her, it seemed to Kieran as if she was somehow further removed from him. It was as if the closest image he had of her had been snatched away; even the childhood name of Brynna now belonged more to a winged goddess than to the small girl Kieran had found it so easy to love.