Sands of the Soul s-5

by Voronica Whitney-Robinson

  "Fannah will be much safer under your constant care," he told her, and Tazi swelled a little at the compliment. "And you might find that in this journey you will need a mage you can trust."

  Cale sighed wearily. Now it was his shoulders that sagged as if under a great weight.

  "Steorf," he nearly whispered, "is a mage you can trust, Thazienne."

  With that admission, Cale turned and walked over to his chair. He stood beside it and lightly rested his hand on its arm, the same hand he had wanted to touch Tazi with earlier.

  Once again, Cale had shocked her. Tazi never thought he would've recommended Steorf for anything, let alone as a comrade on so deadly an undertaking as this. She swallowed hard and turned to face him only to discover that Cale had moved away and presented his straight back to her.

  "If you think that is the course of action to take," she finally replied, "then I'll follow it."

  "You have to do what you think is the wisest, Thazienne," he reminded her. "For in the end, you live only with yourself."

  "Thank you for everything," she told him quietly.

  Cale didn't turn, only nodded his head slowly in response. Tazi felt torn, wanting to go to him but also fearing to trust him, or herself, completely. When the awkward moment stretched out too long, she finally moved to go. She swung open the heavy door but paused in the doorway, not wanting to leave things between them like this.

  Tazi glanced back, half hoping to find him looking at her, but Cale still presented that rigid back to her. She found the sight oddly heartbreaking, the emotions he triggered in her a surprise even to Tazi. As she turned to leave, her eyes caught sight of his pine trunk. Closing the door behind her, Tazi realized that in all these years she never had found out what he kept in there-or in his heart.

  At the sound of Tazi's departure, Cale turned toward the door.

  "Safe journey, dear heart," he whispered.

  *****

  Shamur Uskevren watched for a moment longer and silently slid the viewing panel shut. Once she was certain it was sealed tight, she re-lit her lamp. She was especially cautious because she knew how observant Cale could be. If neither her daughter, Tazi, nor Cale had been aware that she had been witness to their whole conversation, she was probably safe from discovery.

  Though she was barefoot and dressed only in her silk nightclothes, Shamur ignored the chill. Her mind preoccupied with the events she had just observed, she made her way through the passage automatically. As far as Shamur knew only she and her husband, Thamalon, had any knowledge of the intricate, hidden routes that honeycombed Stormweather Towers. The spy portals had come in handy on many occasions when Shamur needed to test the loyalties of the various servants and guards the Uskevren hired from time to time. Tonight, they had revealed much more than loyalty.

  Shamur's feet were so numb with cold by the time she returned that she hardly noticed as she crossed from the stone floor to the luxurious carpeting of her private bedroom. But she was not so distracted that she didn't observe that her fire was dying. She moved over to the ornately carved fireplace and added a log to the smoldering embers. A few moments of fanning and the wood was crackling cheerfully again.

  Certain the fire was stoked, Shamur padded around her canopied bed to her wooden armoire. She let her hand slide down the left side of the chest, her delicate fingers searching the various carved figures. Using a combination known only to her, Shamur pressed several of the indentations in the designs at once. With a tiny click, a panel swung open.

  She reached into the shallow compartment and withdrew the only item that was inside. Shamur held the note carefully in her hand, as if it was some precious artifact. The faintest trace of her daughter's perfume still lingered on the parchment.

  She settled herself onto the settee near the fireplace and looked over the note with her keen gray eyes. There were only a few lines scrawled on it, and Shamur had read them so many times, she knew them by heart. Still, she read them aloud once more.

  " 'Whatever good is in me exists because of you,'" she quoted. " 'Ai armiel telere maenen hir. Cale.' "

  As she had for so many months, Shamur once again sent up a silent prayer that she had discovered the note before her daughter had.

  That night of Thazienne's grievous wounds, Shamur couldn't sleep. She had needed to see her daughter's chest rise and fall one more time to reassure herself that Tazi still lived, regardless of what the priests told her. Only then would she be able to rest. Since she didn't want to have to explain herself to anyone, let alone the servants, Shamur had quietly slipped into Thazienne's bedroom after she saw Cale depart that night.

  Walking over to her daughter's bedside, Shamur was amazed to discover the sudden, romantic confession Cale had left behind, written on her daughter's personal stationary.

  Shamur was slightly in shock from the culmination of events that evening, and the note was too much for her. She slid it into a fold of her robe and, when she returned to her chambers later on, she hid the missive in the hollow panel in her wardrobe. She felt she needed some time to decide what was best for her daughter.

  Now, a year later, she saw that some sort of divide existed between her daughter and Erevis Cale. Obviously, he had never spoken of his feelings for her except in that note.

  Perhaps he has grown tired of waiting for a sign from Thazienne, the woman who "holds his heart forever," she thought, before coming to a decision.

  Shamur looked a final time at the Elvish words of love written to her daughter from a family servant and threw the note into the fire. As the flames licked up the paper, Shamur felt certain she had done the right thing.

  She loved her daughter fiercely and would do anything to ensure Thazienne's happiness. She wouldn't have her daughter trapped in a painful union if it could be avoided. Being linked to a common servant just wasn't right for her daughter, though it had taken this sad encounter between Tazi and Cale to cement her decision. Shamur had struggled for months with what was best and took this night as a sign. With the letter destroyed, she felt certain Thazienne's long-term contentment was ensured.

  A soft knock on the door startled Shamur from her concerns.

  "Come in," she said.

  Thamalon Uskevren, wearing a maroon and gold robe, walked in.

  "I'm not disturbing you, am I?" he asked.

  For the first time that evening, Shamur smiled. With her ash-blonde hair loose about her face, she looked more her daughter's age. That fact was not lost to her husband's appreciative gaze.

  "Come sit with me," she invited, patting the cushion next to her.

  A year before, Shamur would never have extended an offer that intimate to her husband, but many things had changed over the past months, mostly for the better. She didn't have to hide behind a mask with him any longer. When all was said and done, there was no one else with whom she would rather share a moment like this.

  Thamalon sat down beside her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Shamur settled against him and let a small sigh escape her lips.

  "What keeps you awake, wife?" Thamalon asked kindly.

  "I'm just thinking of our children," she finally replied. "There are so many things that could go awry for them."

  The Old Owl, as he was known to many, kissed his wife on her head and replied, "With you guarding them, nothing horrible could ever happen."

  "I hope you're right," she answered and hugged him close.

  *****

  "How utterly perfect," Ciredor chuckled aloud as he watched Tazi step out of Cale's bedroom.

  There were very few unanswered questions in his life, but the room Ciredor was in happened to contain many of them. Sometime during the Age of Skyfire, the chamber had been hewn out of the desert mountains while the djinn, Calim and Memnon, raged against each other. The walls were carved with an ancient script that defied all his efforts at translation, but beyond that, Ciredor had very few clues as to who else might have occupied it before him.

  He had let his anger get the best
of him many years before when he discovered the sanctum and killed its former guardians too quickly. Realizing that he had lost an opportunity for knowledge, the necromancer wrote off the mistake as one of many lessons of life and vowed never to make that mistake again.

  At various points in the natural recesses of the room, glow lights winked in the darkness, but their illumination was outshone by the radiance of a multifaceted, amethyst no bigger than a man's fist. It rested on a natural rock pedestal, the focal point of the room. The eerie, purple light it emitted flickered oddly off of the jagged walls and the hollow caverns of Ciredor's cheeks. Behind him, the chamber connected to a passageway that was lined with ten figures of various sizes, all at least as large as an elf. The amethyst's brilliance played affectionately on those figures, caressing them.

  But it was Ciredor who was enraptured. With an almost loving look, he reached out to the stone again and grazed it with his thin fingers. It blazed more intensely at his touch. He gazed deeply into the stone and began to laugh once again at what he saw within.

  "My dear, dear Thazienne," he said to the gem, "how can it be that so much time has passed and you are still the same?"

  But there was no one else to answer him. Not that he needed an answer, either. He knew well enough that Tazi had simply survived this long in her life due to luck and her family's fortune. He wondered just how many times her parents had had to pay to have her resurrected, she seemed to be so careless.

  Obviously, her parents weren't all that cautious, either. They had, after all, made the mistake of letting him come into their home to "heal" their stricken whelp once. He felt he was soon to find out just how many other mistakes they had made with their daughter.

  "How completely foolish and trusting you are, little girl," he persisted, staring into the gem. "Didn't you learn anything from our last encounter? So you think you are going to bring the battle to a… how did you so quaintly put it?" He paused for a moment before continuing, "a time and place of your choosing?"

  He threw back his head and laughed again.

  "Since when has any of this ever been your choosing? Do you think the boy-mage found your elf lover by his skills alone?" he asked the stone. "Oh, Tazi-" he shook his head-"how I wish you could see me as I see you right now. It would be rather exquisite to enjoy in person the pain that all of this would cause you… but that will come soon enough."

  For a moment, Ciredor could again taste the bitter hurt Tazi had felt those years past when he revealed to her that her close confidant had been simply a hired hand. There was an undeniable sweetness to the pain she had emanated that night. Tazi had possessed a certain innocence then, despite the lifestyle she had chosen, and he had been the man to claim that innocence. More than once since then, Ciredor had found himself savoring that memory despite the hatred he harbored at losing to such a child. Finding he couldn't contain himself any longer, he began to pace around the chamber.

  "Through clues and signs, I led your would-be-mage to that tableau I carefully staged just for you, dear Thazienne. I even hoped you might recognize my signature on this without any magical assistance, but you proved yourself unworthy again. I suppose I shouldn't be too disappointed in you. After all, in the end, I will get everything I need."

  Absently, he stroked his goatee.

  "It was rather entertaining to watch that old man you hired strain and groan and sweat as he struggled to animate poor, dead Ebeian," Ciredor said. "And, finally, that corpse told you just enough to whet your appetite and send you to me, bearing gifts, no less."

  One side of his mouth turned up into a smirk.

  "And still, you don't see."

  Ciredor moved swiftly across the chamber to the gem, caught up in his own discourse.

  "I was the one who allowed Ebeian to speak, as it were. It was only the words of my choosing that passed through his battered mouth. Will you miss those tender lips, little Tazi?" he wondered.

  He kneeled before the dais where the amethyst lay. Stretching one arm across the platform, he allowed his head to rest against it and stared at the jewel as if he was watching a lover sleep.

  "Once more, I pull your strings, sweet puppet," he continued softly, "and you dance for me most obediently. I'm waiting here with open arms to welcome you to my home. When you arrive, we will settle the debts between us, Uskevren. When I'm done with you and those you hold dear," his voice dropped to a deadly whisper, "you will wish I'd killed you that first night."

  He sat up and tugged at his black tunic, as though he were readying himself for an evening out, brushing at various imagined stains and dust.

  "I really can't be bothered by worrisome details right now, though. So," he said, directing his speech back to the gem, "pack your bags quickly and bring yourself and that Calishite beauty here."

  He rose in a dignified manner and clasped his hands behind his back.

  "I appreciate the aid your butler has given you, so that I am not kept waiting too long," he acknowledged as he began to walk around the stone like a schoolmaster delivering a lesson. "And I appreciate that the gate is all Cale has given you. I would not want him to give you more. In fact," Ciredor grudgingly admitted, "I would not want to have to deal with him to get to you. There is something about him…" he trailed away thoughtfully, "something I can't read."

  Snapping himself from his trance, Ciredor studied the room and the figures beyond. Like a drill instructor inspecting his troops, he marched past each one. As if they were pieces of a puzzle, he made sure once again that each fit his needs. When he was satisfied with what he saw, the mage returned to the gem.

  "Bring the crown for my queen here, little Tazi," he ordered. "Bring the last piece to my gift. Once it is here, I need only wait until the new moon. A tenday from now and everything changes. And, of course, you are mine."

  CHAPTER 4

  PASSAGES

  "Will this rain never cease?" Tazi hissed.

  She, Steorf, and Fannah stood before a brick tallhouse on Morrow Street in the Edis quarter. It was well past night's heart, and most of the residences that lined the street were dark. A fine drizzle misted the air.

  "It doesn't really matter whether it stops or not," Steorf snapped. "It's not as though you're suffering for it."

  Tazi gave him a sharp look before turning to pace a little along the street as she ostensibly looked for guards. Steorf was correct, though. As well as having chosen the black leathers that she had spent the previous day oiling, Tazi also sported a travel cloak, as did Steorf and Fannah. From her head to her ankles, she was protected from the rain by the spell that was woven into the fabric. The precipitation rolled off her. She wasn't going to end up drenched like the other night, but Tazi felt the need to say something, and complaining about the weather was the most obvious and mundane topic of choice.

  "I'm going to climb the wall and see if there are any guards we need to know about," she offered.

  "I thought your manservant," Steorf stressed that particular title, "guaranteed that this building would be virtually empty for the night."

  "There are no guarantees that you can trust," Tazi reminded him. "You should know that by now."

  "There are a few, Thazienne," he answered quietly.

  Not having a quick retort, she moved past him and crossed the street toward the low wall that surrounded the tallhouse. In one fluid motion, Tazi swung herself onto the top of the wall and crouched low. It felt good to be in motion, even this little bit. She felt ready to jump out of her skin and had a bad taste in her mouth. Tazi knew she couldn't afford to make any mistakes for Fannah's sake, if no one else's.

  Glancing back at her two companions, Tazi studied their differences. Steorf, tall and muscular, dressed head to toe in black, looked most formidable, and, Tazi sensed, he was wound tight as a spring. Fannah, on the other hand, stood there as though she were waiting for some visitor to come calling. While she was also dressed in dark tones, with her thick hair tied back in a single, waist-length braid, Tazi noticed there was no
thing furtive about her mannerisms. Fannah just seemed to be waiting.

  Nothing disturbs her, thought Tazi.

  In fact, the only time Tazi ever recalled seeing Fannah shaken was on the night of their first meeting. Tazi, dressed in her leathers, was on her way to the Kit to plan what turned out to be the terrifying rendezvous with Ciredor when she heard shrill screams. She ducked into the alley from which the sounds originated to see that two sailors from Selgaunt Bay were accosting a beautiful foreigner. On a whim, Tazi decided to break things up when she saw how badly the foreigner was defending herself.

  In the midst of the altercation, the woman had ample time to take advantage of the "young man's" rescue attempt and slip away, but Fannah had stayed behind. Tazi's first thought had been that the woman was in shock or fearful that her rescuer might be more formidable to deal with than the two drunk fish from the bay and was afraid to move. After some brief swordplay, Tazi left the men bloodied but alive and turned her attention to the object of their drunken desires to see why she still lingered behind.

  The raven-haired woman's clothes had been torn, but other than that, she herself was free from injury. On closer scrutiny, Tazi saw that the Calishite woman had ice-white eyes, and she correctly deduced that the stranger was completely blind. Tazi had assumed at the time that Fannah had stayed in the alley while she drove off the attackers because she was sightless. She suspected that Fannah wouldn't have known where to flee. Over time, however, Tazi had been forced to reconsider that theory.

  While it was true that Fannah was blind, she was more than capable of accurate vision. It had only taken a moment for her to "see" through Tazi's disguise that night. While so many of the sighted people around her thought Tazi was a young man, a disguise she was very proud of, Fannah knew differently through smell and touch. She had been able to leave the alley at any time during the fight. However, Fannah had chosen to remain. She had given her trust and safety to Tazi's abilities.