The World Weavers

by Kelley Grant

  “We will serve,” Evan said, adding sourly, “if that is truly what the One wants.”

  “Oh, it is,” Tori assured him. “Three Counselors could not be mistaken.”

  No matter how much you wish them to be, Tori thought as he turned away.

  Sulis had warned her friends about the fear they would feel as they approached the waymarker for the Obsidian Temple, but she could see the sweat on Dani’s brow as he fought the urge to turn back. Ramia was not affected by the illusions.

  When they reached the stones, Lasha stood behind Master Anchee with her hands on his back as he spoke the words to break the wards hiding the path to the Obsidian Temple.

  “How does she know to send energy without the training Ashraf and I went through at Kabandha?” Sulis murmured to Alannah.

  Alannah smiled. “Lasha is a fully trained healer now. Sending energy is what healers do. She has a strong connection with your teacher, which makes it easier.”

  “Guardians,” Sulis said, glancing over at Ashraf on his humpback. “Do you feel your connection that strongly with Sanuri?”

  “No. I don’t believe any but the deities will feel an energetic connection with her,” Alannah said. “She is not all of this world.”

  Sulis looked at her sharply, about to ask what she meant, but the illusion came down and the path was revealed. Master Anchee smiled at Lasha in approval and they remounted.

  “Guide Ramia has gotten us here early enough that we can make it to the bottom before dusk,” Master Anchee told them.

  “You aren’t too weary?” Grandmother asked.

  “Thanks to my Guardian, I feel full of energy,” Master Anchee said.

  Ramia refused to go farther with them. “My task is done,” she said. “You know the way. I do not wish to walk in the valley of the One. I am returning to my ­people.”

  She left with their remaining supply humpbacks as payment, and they loaded their packs on the front of their saddles.

  “The way is steep, and the footing is uncertain for your humpbacks,” Sulis advised her Northern friends. “Don’t tug at the nose leads and throw them off balance. They will place their feet carefully if you don’t distract them.”

  Sulis watched her friends as they descended into the chasm. It was clear Dani did not like being at the edge of the chasm on the winding switchbacks down the side. He grasped his saddle convulsively. Lasha and Alannah gazed around themselves as much as possible, awe showing as the rock changed from shale to glossy black obsidian.

  “Beautiful,” Lasha breathed as the Obsidian Temple came into sight.

  Unlike their last visit, where a crowd met them, only three ­people came out of the temple at their approach. Sulis recognized the temple master Sari, but not the other two. Sari greeted them with a bow.

  “Your humpbacks will shelter here, behind the dormitories, for the night,” Sari told them. “The first dormitory is open to you. We have a late meal set up for you in the dining hall.”

  “I am Amon, Descendant of the Prophet,” Amon introduced himself. “I will need to access your archives and to view the site of the great Sundering.”

  “Yes, I was warned you were coming,” Sari said. Sulis wondered what else she’d been warned about him. “Most of the archives are at Kabandha, but you can view any scrolls we have here. I will introduce you to the Obsidian Guards tomorrow, and they will judge your intent and decide whether to allow you access to the temple.”

  Amon frowned at her but seemed too tired to protest.

  “We youngsters can stable the humpbacks,” Sulis told her grandmother and Palou. “Why don’t you grab the bags and settle us in the dorms, and we’ll catch up at late meal.”

  It was a measure of how weary her grandmother was that she did not protest. She gathered Clay and Master Anchee, as Palou and Sari helped them carry the bags. Palou guided Ava and Sanuri, who were asleep on their feet, to the dining hall.

  Sulis supervised the unharnessing and rubdown of the humpbacks as they settled them in a rocky corral spread thickly with dried grasses. The small stream that usually trickled into a basin for the animals had dried and they had to carry buckets of water to fill it for the thirsty beasts. They dragged themselves to the dining hall and found the elders already settled in and apprising Sari of the most recent events.

  “Where are the girls?” Sulis asked as she slid onto the bench beside Clay and began filling a plate with flatbread, bean spread, and cured meat.

  “They were too tired to eat much, so we settled them in the dorm. Sanuri insisted on sleeping right beside Ava, and I left them and Nuisance snuggled in together.”

  “Good,” Sulis said, sighing in relief. “I was afraid being back here would unsettle Ava.”

  Sulis glanced around and realized Djinn and the other feli weren’t in the dining hall. She hadn’t seen them all day. “I wonder where our feli are,” she mused. “Hope they can find their way through the waymarker.”

  “Feli aren’t affected by illusions,” Alannah said mildly. “They’re probably waiting until the day cools and will join us later.”

  “Djinn felt the fear illusion that usually repels travelers,” Sulis told her.

  “He was probably feeling the fear of everyone around him,” Alannah said. “Elida told me that feli aren’t tricked by the same things we are and can find their way through illusions. That’s why they’re so valuable as scouts and energy givers.”

  Master Anchee yawned and stood. “It was a long journey, so we will rest tomorrow and learn how we must adjust to living here in the summer. After so many nights traveling, we need to readjust our sleep schedules.”

  “I want to begin at the Obsidian Temple tomorrow, working with the energy,” Amon said with a frown.

  “You are very welcome to, if approved by the guards,” Master Anchee said firmly. “That way you can understand what the temple truly contains. The rest of us will recover and join you when you have a plan of action.”

  Sulis hid a grin by stuffing some meat in her mouth. Amon was finding out that he was deep in Southern Territory now. Temple master Sari would not follow the arrogant man’s orders if Master Anchee gainsaid him.

  The dorms were built in the shadow of the cliffs rising on each side of the chasm, so Sulis had little idea of time when she rose the next morning. Half the beds were still occupied, and Sulis quietly dressed and made her way to the dining hall. She was surprised to find the sun directly overhead and a midmeal set out. Clay greeted her with a smile, pushing a carafe of tash her way.

  “Ava and Sanuri are with Sari and Dani, exploring the chasm,” he told her.

  “Is Amon in the temple already?” Sulis asked.

  “No, for all his eagerness, he has not yet awakened,” Clay said, a twinkle in his eye. “I felt it would be good for his temperament if we let him sleep. Ashraf stumbled to the latrine a short time ago, but the remainder of our group are still resting.”

  Ashraf entered, and Sulis poured him a cup of tash. They sat in silence as they ate, still groggy.

  “Ava and Sanuri are giggling and playing a game outside,” Ashraf said after they’d finished eating. “They both seemed like normal girls.”

  “Sanuri is good for Ava,” Clay said. “And Sanuri seems to stay present when Ava is around instead of becoming lost in the deities’ thoughts. I don’t know what to do with either of them. I can’t see how to bring everyone together.”

  “Have you had any visions recently?” Sulis asked.

  He shook his head. “Only the one telling us to come here. I feel that Amon has supplanted my role as teacher. You will have to look for guidance from him.”

  Sulis grimaced comically and Clay laughed. She patted him on the arm.

  “He will never supplant you in our hearts. We still need you. I think you’ll end up showing Amon a thing or two.”

  “Speak of a sand
devil, and he comes,” Ashraf muttered as Amon entered the hall, looking harassed. Clay winked and rose, and then sauntered off, whistling cheerfully as Amon came over to the table. Sulis quickly gulped down the last of her drink as he sat.

  “You should have woken me,” he said accusingly. “I have much to do.”

  Sulis piled her plate on Ashraf’s and they stood. “Sorry, Amon, I just woke myself. I didn’t realize you were still snoozing,” she told him brightly. “Must go report to Sari.”

  She shoved Ashraf to get him moving and they deposited their trays and walked outside.

  “Let’s wake Lasha and Alannah and see what kind of trouble we can get into,” Sulis suggested.

  “How much trouble can there be in a hole in the ground?” Ashraf asked.

  Sulis grinned. “Don’t worry. The three of us can always find some excitement.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Kadar focused his energy and will on the Tigu horses as the patrol of twenty fighters from Voras’s army rode by the ambush point the Tigus had set up. The Tigu horses were lying in the desert sand, not ten feet from where the fighters passed. They were restive, but obeyed his silent command. He’d spent his first few ten-­days working with the horses, teaching them to trust him, and it paid off in ambushes like these. He could feel other energy, the magic of the Tigu nomads mounted on those horses, swirling around him as well. His will kept their mounts lying down and quiet—­the Tigus’ will made the ambush invisible against the sand dunes around them. Desert magic.

  Kadar and the ambush party were behind enemy lines, in the Northern Territory. Their party was only fifteen strong, but Voras’s fighters rode with their swords sheathed, bows unstrung—­unaware of their presence in what should have been safe territory. The shock of the nomads appearing behind them out of dunes would cost the fighters precious moments. The last of Voras’s troops passed by the ambush.

  “Hai!” Jaiden shrilled.

  Kadar released his control and the horses heaved up out of the sand, riders screaming desert war whoops. The fighters in front of them froze as the desert came alive behind them with their bloodcurdling cries. Their mounts bucked and shied in surprise.

  Kadar notched an arrow, staying to the rear, but his help wasn’t needed. The troops barely had time to draw their swords before the Tigus were upon them. The battle was brief, but bloody. Kadar focused on summoning the now riderless horses, rather than on the Tigus dispatching wounded troops. He called the beasts to him, making encouraging noises. They were frightened and wanted a herd leader, and he convinced them that Asfar was their lead mare. He tried to ignore the blood on their saddles as they gathered around Asfar.

  “Come,” Onyeka called, wiping her sword off on a dead fighter. She swung up on her mount. “We are too close to their camp. They will be alerted by the noise. We must disappear.”

  They streamed back into the desert, the dead fighters’ horses following Kadar like chicks follow a hen. He didn’t hear anything behind them but knew it wouldn’t be long before the bodies were discovered. This was the closest to the base camp they’d ever taken down a patrol.

  They thundered into camp late in the day and Kadar leapt down from Asfar. Onyeka and Jaiden checked the saddlebags of the horses and Kadar murmured to the horses, keeping them still. A new warrior unsaddled Asfar for Kadar, rubbing her down as she lipped her grains.

  “Hai,” Jaiden said, flipping through some papers she pulled out of a bag. “Ard trinoka.”

  Here. Found the orders, Kadar translated. His grasp of the Tigu language was improving, though it was still hard for him to follow a full conversation unless the speakers slowed down for him.

  Onyeka grinned and slapped Kadar on the back. One of their spies had told the elders that that cohort of Voras’s troops would ride in today with special information they were delivering to the army. The Tigus had risked capture in the Northern Territory to ambush those troops and see if they could find out what the orders were. Kadar was relieved they’d ambushed the right group of Voras’s fighters.

  The Northern army would retaliate for the Tigu ambush today. They would send troops over the border to kill any Tigu nomad they could find.

  The Tigus were stripping down their opponents’ horses, piling the saddlebags and personal items off to one side. The horses themselves would be divided—­the healthy, strong ones would be taken to the caravan routes and traded for more supplies for their ­people. The others, well, Kadar tried not to think about what went into his cookpot every evening. It was hard thinking that he’d lured these beasts into trusting him, only to send them to their deaths.

  “We must survive, too,” Onyeka said from beside him, interpreting his thoughts. “We would have captured them, or driven them away if we couldn’t catch them. You saved them from a slow death in the desert. And your powers saved us—­only one of our warriors got a wound, and that a minor cut.” Her voice was full of satisfaction.

  “Onyeka, Kadar.” Jaiden motioned for them to follow her to the larger tent that housed their leaders. Onyeka and Kadar worked well together, translating Northern writing into the Tigu tongue. Kadar read the Northern tongue like it was his own. He would read the document out loud in Sanisk to Onyeka, and she would transcribe the Sanisk to the Tigu tongue for the leaders.

  They had time to transcribe only two pages before evening fell and Jaiden told them to continue in the morning. The little they’d translated had been bad news, which Kadar had reported to the warriors of the One.

  “This is exactly what Uncle Aaron feared would happen,” Kadar said, shaking the tension out of his shoulders as they walked toward the cook fire and the warriors celebrating the day’s victory. “The deities now know how to release the wards on the waymarkers at the oases. But the caravan leaders the Templar questioned didn’t know the routes through the heart of the desert. Just the route from Illian to Tsangia. That puts my family in Shpeth and Tsangia, and anyone along the route, in danger if the deities decide to detour that direction.”

  “The caravan leaders were cowards to reveal so much,” Onyeka said angrily. “Giving the Northerners the words of power to release the wards over the oases is treason.”

  “I’m not certain they had a choice,” Kadar said. “Not to excuse them, but if Voras broke their minds, he could wring anything from them.”

  “You uncle died rather than reveal what he knew,” Onyeka said.

  Kadar shook his head grimly. “Because he was trained by my grandmother to create barriers in his mind that would resist a deity to the death. Most Southerners did not have such a formidable teacher.”

  Onyeka grinned at the understatement. They hushed as they approached the other warriors.

  “Suma! Onyeka-­sal!” their cohort roared as they caught sight of the pair. Grinning, they let themselves be pushed and patted along to the fire.

  “Suma.” A warrior handed Kadar a plate and bowed to him. Kadar inclined his head, and a woman handed him a flask. He and Onyeka commanded a seat by the cook fire.

  It was a new feeling, the warrior’s respect for Kadar. He hated the fighting, hated the bloodshed. But he knew he was saving warriors’ lives and protecting his family deeper in the desert. He was finally using his powers to their fullest—­both his abilities with the hooved beasts and his farspeaking. Both abilities had grown tremendously with use. Kadar wasn’t permitted to lift a sword in battle, but the warriors respected how his abilities made their warfare more effective and they had fewer injuries because of him. Even Onyeka looked at him with respect—­and she was in training under Jaiden to become a battle leader.

  Kadar listened to the other warriors talk and watched across the fire as Turo flirted with one of the men Kadar had ridden with. Though the Tigus did not marry, they did form attachments of a sort, and Turo had been sharing his tent with this warrior since he arrived. Onyeka hadn’t shared hers with anyone. He wondered if she was worried about
showing preference toward one warrior over another.

  “You look so pensive,” Onyeka laughed, gazing sideways at him. “What deep thoughts are going on in your head? Are you worrying about the caravans?”

  “Nothing so serious,” Kadar said. He gestured as Turo and his mate left the fire together. “I was noticing that your father has paired off.” The beer in his flask made him daring, and he smiled at her. “I noticed that you haven’t since we arrived. Are you trying to stay impartial with the other warriors, so they’ll respect your leadership?”

  Onyeka was silent a moment. “No. No, that is not why I haven’t paired off,” Onyeka said.

  Kadar looked directly at her, looking in her eyes. “Yet many warriors would like to spend time in your tent.”

  Onyeka laughed softly, a sound Kadar found very attractive. “The one who I would have, felt it was too soon. So I wait.”

  “So it isn’t true that Tigus do not form attachments,” Kadar teased.

  “It is not true. But we do not allow those attachments to get in the way of our duty to the One,” Onyeka said. She stood and reached out, taking his plate from him, setting it down beside the fire. She grasped his hand and drew him up.

  “Will you share my tent with me tonight, Kadar?” Onyeka asked him softly.

  “Yes,” Kadar said, letting her lead him away from the fire.

  He’d seen the inside of her tent before, so he was not surprised by the riot of colors of the many pillows and rugs she had surrounded herself with. She had an artist’s love for bold colors, and since as a warrior she could not wear them, she displayed them in her abode. Her friends loved to gift her with new ones.

  “What would you do with all these, if we had to pack and run?” Kadar asked as he took off his boots before stepping inside.

  She shrugged. “I will leave what doesn’t fit in my saddlebags,” she said. “They are beautiful but easily replaced. We have not had to move in a great while, so they gather like tumbleweeds before a sandstorm scatters them.”