Rhenna cursed. “Tahvo, do you sense anything of these enemies, anything we can use to fight them?”
Tahvo pushed aside her fear and spread her hands on the sand before her. She emptied her mind of all thoughts and images save one: water. Water more rare and precious than the purest gold. Water deep under the sands, hidden from sight and touch and smell.
Her palms began to burn. She pressed them flat, gasping with pain. “Cian!”
“I’m here. What do you need?”
“Help me.”
She knew he understood when he grasped her hand and plunged his arm into the sand. He drew her down, down into earth that resisted with every grain, clawing and scraping flesh. Faces sprang into her mind, snarling masks of unrelenting hatred. One of them was her brother’s.
She almost withdrew then, almost surrendered. There was no Slahtti to help her, no spirits to lend her their strength. But Cian was there. His courage flowed into her. She lay on her belly, breath mingling with Cian’s. Her fingers extended nearly to breaking.
And she found it. Water, leagues away in the South, across the dry wasteland. Water that flowed freely in wide rivers, fell out of the sky to make the earth green and fruitful. Spirits untouched by the Stone, hundreds upon hundreds, voices uncounted.
She chanted and sang to the spirits, begging their favor, drawing upon the water as like calls to like. One presence broke away from the rest. Ancient power gushed through her hand.
Who are you? it demanded.
Tahvo answered with all her being, withholding nothing. Half-familiar coolness lapped at her fingertips. Abundant life sang in her ears.
Hat-T-Her, Tahvo said, hearing a name that had not been spoken for a thousand years. You have slept long. It is time to awaken.
The spirit entered her, sifted her mind, examined her soul. You are not of my people.
Enemies have taken the water from your people, Tahvo replied. The long silence is ended.
The goddess stretched, testing the limits of Tahvo’s mortal consciousness. Let me see, she said.
Tahvo opened her eyes. Brilliant, blessed light overwhelmed perpetual darkness. She saw Cian’s worried face a hand’s-breadth from her own, Rhenna and Nyx beyond, Madele with her sun-bronzed features. She remembered what it was to know that her life had meaning and purpose.
Then the goddess swept her away.
She woke cradled in Cian’s arms, Rhenna’s cool palm resting on her forehead. The darkness had returned. She felt across Cian’s arms to the ground beside him, and her fingers found moisture.
“You did it,” Rhenna said, stroking her damp hair from her forehead. “You brought the water back. The amda is filled.”
Tahvo closed her fist around wet sand. “It was not me,” she whispered. “The goddess…”
“Hat-T-Her,” Cian said. “She spoke through you, Tahvo.”
Tahvo tried to sit up and slumped again, exhausted. “She is…one of the lost spirits of the Imaziren.”
“So Madele told us,” Rhenna said. “‘Queen of the West,’ she called her.”
“Madele…”
“Has gone with Nyx to speak to her elders. You’ve done more than call the water back, Tahvo. You’ve restored one of their gods.”
Tahvo shook her head. “It was not—”
“I know,” Cian said, laughing and sighing at once. “It wasn’t your doing.”
“You helped me to reach her,” Tahvo said. “She was very far away.”
“I could never have found her alone.” Cian eased Tahvo down onto a blanket. “Did you hear what this Hat-T-Her said?”
“No. I…went away.”
There was a long moment of silence, and Tahvo imagined Rhenna and Cian exchanging troubled glances. “She said that all the waterholes from here to the Southland have been sucked dry by the same sorcery,” Cian said. “Your goddess was very angry.”
Tahvo nodded weakly and listened to the commotion of men and women gathering on the bank of the amda, filling waterskins to overflowing. Rhenna bathed her face with cloth soaked in cool water.
“I don’t know why their gods abandoned the Imaziren,” Rhenna said, “but this one was not eager to relinquish your body. She—” Rhenna paused as footsteps approached. “Nyx and Madele,” she said.
Madele crouched before Tahvo. “Wise one,” she said, her voice soft with respect, “the elders would speak with you.”
Tahvo took Cian’s offered arm and got to her feet. Rhenna fell in at her other side, and the five of them made for the bustle of the main camp. Madele led the way into the cool shelter of a spacious tent. Cian and Rhenna sat with Tahvo safely tucked between them. The very air sang with tension.
“The elders thank you for coming,” Madele said. “Zamra asks if it is true that you understand our words.”
“I do,” Tahvo said.
“To comprehend many tongues is a great gift of the gods,” Zamra said. “We did not know that one so favored walked among us until Berkan arrived with his message. We hope you will forgive our neglect, wise one.”
“There was no neglect.”
Bodies shifted uneasily. The elder cleared her throat. “Hat-T-Her has spoken with your voice, wise one. This is of great significance to my people.”
“I understand.”
“The Queen of the West has said that the servants of the Stone have drained our water supplies from here to the desert’s edge.”
“But Hat-T-Her has the power of the waters,” Tahvo said. “She can restore what has been taken.”
“Yes. With the Divine Cow’s favor we may continue to aid the Guardian and those who share his burden. You understand what must be done?”
Nyx offered a belated translation, and Rhenna jumped to her feet. “Tahvo knows nothing of this,” she said.
All the Imaziren began to talk at once. Cian placed a firm hand on Tahvo’s back.
“This is not the first time a god has possessed our friend,” he said, waiting for Nyx to relay his words. “What more do you expect of her?”
“Only what the goddess demands,” Zamra said. “A mortal shape in which Hat-T-Her may walk the earth again, and advise her people. The wise one must remain with us.”
“No!” Rhenna cried.
Tahvo closed her eyes, remembering the warning Slahtti had laid upon her in Karchedon. If you agree to accept this trial, you will become the voice and the body of the spirits whose primal powers may decide the course of this war. You will not die, and yet you will surrender your life. You will sleep long and wake in places you do not know. You will be feared by many and loved for what you can never be.
“You will have great honor among the Imaziren, wise one,” the elder said. “Nothing will be denied you, and your companions will have all they need to complete their journey.”
“This is not possible,” Cian said.
“Out of the question,” Rhenna snapped.
Iron blades hissed in their sheathes. Tahvo reached for Rhenna’s boot and held on with all her strength.
“You wish me to become the living incarnation of the spirit,” she said to the Imaziren.
“It is what the goddess requires,” the elder said. “If we do not do as she asks, our people will suffer.”
“Tahvo is not of your people,” Cian protested.
“We will continue alone,” Rhenna said. “If you fear the Stone so much, let us go.”
“But the goddess has said—”
“Stop.” Madele’s voice rang clear over the cries of outrage. “We fight the Stone because we would not be slaves like the men of the cities. Is this the answer, my people, to steal the very freedom from one we honor? Must a stranger be the only acceptable offering?” She knelt before Tahvo, pushing past the barrier of Rhenna’s body. “Wise one, is it true that other gods have spoken with your mouth?”
“It is true,” Tahvo said. “Other gods, of other lands.”
“Then your companions will need you in the days ahead. Tell me what I must do to take your place.”
>
Tahvo touched Madele’s face, tracing the long bones and muscle under weathered skin, finding the wetness of tears. “Do you know what you say?”
“Your gift is too great to remain with my people alone,” Madele said. “I have no skill in magic, but if the goddess will have me…” She bowed her head. “Only show me the way.”
Tahvo tucked her head between her shoulders. Madele was prepared to make a great sacrifice…to surrender her very being with no true comprehension of what she might lose. In that respect she was very much like Rhenna. But if the goddess accepted such a substitution, Madele would see as none of her people had done in millennia. She would become more than anything a simple warrior could imagine.
And Tahvo would once again be blind. Until the spirits found another use for her.
She clasped Madele’s chapped hand. “Take me to the water.”
“Tahvo?” Rhenna asked. “What is happening?”
Nyx repeated the conversation to Rhenna and Cian while Madele guided Tahvo from the tent. The elders and other warriors followed. Tahvo cleared her mind and waded into the amda, stopping when the water lapped around her waist. She gripped Madele’s fingers. “Do not let go,” she said, “no matter what you feel.” Then she called the goddess.
Hat-T-Her came swiftly, entering Tahvo with no warning. Tahvo fought to keep her mind clear, balanced precariously between the will of the Amazi spirit and her own determination. She saw herself and Madele standing in the water—a plain, short woman with silver hair beside a warrior lean and tall—and offered her hand to the beautiful goddess whose arching horns cupped a disk that shone as brightly as the desert sun. The goddess’s power surged through her. She felt it pass into Madele, shared the moment when Hat-T-Her examined the warrior’s soul and found it worthy.
Tahvo fell to her knees. Water flooded her mouth. Cian and Rhenna lifted her from the amda and carried her to the bank. For a moment longer she could see, clinging to the last remnants of the spirit’s power.
Madele was Madele no longer. She shone with an inner luminescence, the very essence of life itself, and above her head rose Hat-T-Her’s horns and sun disk. She lifted her arms in a gesture of benediction. The Imaziren bowed to the ground.
Darkness came. The mouth of a waterskin pressed to Tahvo’s lips. She drank, pushed the skin away and felt Rhenna’s face.
“Madele?” she croaked.
“She changed,” Rhenna said. “Your goddess took her, for a time. But she is herself again.”
“The Imaziren have no need of you now,” Cian said. “You’re free, Tahvo.”
Free. Free to be weak and blind and uncertain. Free to be alone and apart. But in the South there were other spirits, other voices, other eyes with which to see. And they would demand everything Tahvo had to give.
The sacrifice had only just begun.
Part II
Emergence
Chapter Thirteen
“O ne journey ends,” Nyx said, “and another begins.”
She stood with Rhenna, Cabh’a and Immeghar on the river’s edge, watching the brown water slide between the muddy banks. To the north, fifty Imaziren and their horses were only a column of dust rising up from the scrublands, tracing a path toward the sand hills a hundred leagues beyond. On every side lay a rolling steppe thick with new shoots of green grass and stands of broad-canopied trees. Rhenna could see herds of deer or antelope to the east and west, fearless of the strange men and beasts in their midst.
Cian broke off his conversation with Immeghar and came to join the women. “How far?” he asked, gazing across the river.
Nyx grinned. She had been smiling constantly since she, the three Northerners and four Imaziren warriors had reached the plain. Rhenna couldn’t blame her. After three long months of walking and riding over endless sand hills, gravel plateaus and salt pans, she was profoundly grateful to have seen the last of the desert.
“In a hundred leagues we shall be home,” Nyx said. “In fifty we reach the border of my people’s country.”
Cabh’a crouched on the bank and tossed a stone into the current. “I have never seen a river,” she said carefully in her newly-mastered Hellenish. “Is it true there are many where we go?”
“Many,” Nyx said in the same tongue. “And before two full moons have passed, you will see water fall out of the sky.”
“Rain,” Immeghar said dismissively. “I have seen it.”
“You are an old man,” Cabh’a said, pitching a smaller pebble in his direction. “But I’ll wager my best mare that even you will see things you have never imagined.”
“Of course. Why else would I have come?”
A laugh rose from the water. Tamallat and Mezwar splashed each other in the shallows, uninhibited as children. They had proven no more loquacious since they had volunteered to join the outlanders on their travels to the South, but it was clear that the young lovers relished their freedom from the curious eyes of their fellow tribesfolk.
Rhenna would as soon have left them behind. She wanted no reminders of such bonds between male and female, nor any distraction from the dangers ahead.
She cast a covert glance at Cian. He had been increasingly restless, pacing the perimeter of each night’s camp, sometimes disappearing for hours at a time when the moon rose high. Perhaps the change had started when Rhenna had shown him the big cat print at the dry amda; perhaps it was simply because they drew ever nearer to their destination. But she worried for him, as she never ceased worrying for Tahvo. And she wondered if he had finally given his seed to the Imaziren.
She climbed down the bank, well away from the noisy lovers, and found Tahvo sitting with her bare feet in the warm water. Rhenna sat beside her.
“I feel them,” Tahvo said softly. “There are so many.”
Rhenna didn’t have to ask what Tahvo meant. Deaf though she was to most devas’ voices, even Rhenna could almost hear the spirits of this land. They were like the wild devas from the borders of the Northern steppes, bound to no human’s bidding, answering to no prayer. The wind spoke to her in some half-understood language; even the sky hummed, as if with the buzzing of countless invisible insects.
“Do they disturb you?” Rhenna asked.
Tahvo shook her head. “I cannot yet sort them out, and their essence is strange to me. They are not like Hat-T-Her or any of the spirits I knew in the North. Some, I think, have never been named by men.”
Rhenna squeezed Tahvo’s shoulder. “Don’t demand too much of yourself, my friend. I wouldn’t see you lost to some nameless god.”
“You will not lose me. Are we to camp here?”
“It is not wise to stop too close to the river,” Nyx said. “The ònì live in such waters.”
“Ònì?” Cian echoed, dangling his legs over the bank above them.
“A creature as long as three or four men, with scaly skin, long tail and great toothed jaws,” Nyx said. “A single beast could break the neck of a horse.”
Cian snatched his legs away from the water. Nyx laughed. “I see no ònì now,” she said, “but we must be wary when we cross. There is a low place a little way to the east, and a circle of rocks two leagues to the South. We will spend the night there, and follow the river’s course to my people’s home.” She glanced at Rhenna. “That is, of course, if you agree.”
“This is your country.” Rhenna got up and stretched her arms over her head. “Is there anything else besides these ònì we should watch for?”
“We may see ìkàrikò…like spotted dogs, but low in the hindquarters…and lions—”
“I have seen a lion in the hills south of Karchedon,” Immeghar said. “Sometimes the city folk venture out from behind their walls with spears and chariots to hunt them.”
“They would not kill our animals so easily,” Nyx said, “but even lions of the South are no match for an Ailu.”
Cian’s nostrils flared, and Rhenna could almost see the hair standing up on the back of his neck. “Let us hope it doesn’t come to such
a battle,” he said dryly.
“They will not attack a large party unless they or their young are threatened,” Nyx said. She arched a brow at Immeghar. “Have you seen an elephas, warrior?”
“I have heard of them. Large gray creatures with long noses.”
“Very large. My people name them àjànànkú. We will stay away from them, and from the fat water-beasts we call akáko. We will find enough game without disturbing the lords of this land.”
“And what of men?” Rhenna asked.
Nyx met her gaze. “The people of the South have had little reason to fear those who walk on two legs,” she said. “They have been as innocent as children. We, who bring tidings of the Stone, will be the worst enemies they have ever known.”
That evening the travelers camped at the circle of tall rocks. Nyx saw to the horses, and Rhenna and Cabh’a went hunting. They returned with an antelope that had been too slow to escape their spears. Tamallat and Mezwar, still laughing and whispering together, gathered wood from the nearest stand of trees and made a fire, while Immeghar skinned the carcass and dressed the meat for cooking. Dog-sized beasts emerged from the darkness to yelp and giggle as they skirted the fire’s light, eyes gleaming red. Cian got up once to chase the animals away. They didn’t return.
The next day Rhenna got her first glimpse of the creatures Nyx called àjànànkú, monstrous beasts with curving tusks and snakelike proboscises that could snatch leaves from high branches as neatly as any human hand. The animals watched the humans’ passage with small, intelligent eyes, and the biggest male trumpeted a warning. Rhenna was more than willing to give him a wide berth. On the second river crossing Cabh’a spotted the ònì, which snapped at the horses’ hooves but were driven away by Imaziren spears. The broad, brown heads of akáko pushed out of the water, flicking tiny ears.
Everywhere was an abundance of game, vast herds of antelope ranging in size from delicate, deerlike creatures to horse-sized beasts with sweeping horns. Raptors and scavenger birds circled the sky, searching for prey or carrion. Dry grasses rustled with the constant movement of snakes and rodents. Save for the peculiar nature of Nyx’s beasts, Rhenna almost felt as if she were home on the steppes.
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