Warrior of the World

by Jeffe Kennedy

  With great care, I rolled all that feeling into a shining sphere, like a pearl beyond price, and tucked it into my memory box.

  Then I curled into Ochieng, savoring the feel of his body against mine. His cock lay hard and hot against my belly and I reached for it, to relieve his need, but he stopped me with a gentle hand. Then he kissed me on my forehead, lips lingering there as if bestowing a blessing.

  “Enough for tonight,” he murmured.

  “Are you sure?” I tipped my head back a little, seeing the same effervescent pleasure in his eyes as thrummed through my body. “We could try for a little more.” It occurred to me that he hadn’t penetrated me in any way, not with fingers or tongue, even.

  “We’re not going there again.” He still looked happy and satiated, but the tone of finality in his voice gave me warning. “Besides,” he added with a smile, “I need to give you plenty of reasons to come back to me.”

  I knew he was teasing me, but I cupped his face in my hands. “There are all the reasons in the world,” I said. “I’ll be back, even if it takes me twenty years.”

  He laid a finger over my lips. “Don’t speak of such an extremity. In fact, if you’re not back in twenty days, I’m coming after you.” He shook his head when I opened my mouth to protest, then pressed a kiss to the palm of my hand. “If you haven’t returned by then, your ultimatum will no longer hold power over me. I will come after you.”

  I’d have to make sure he didn’t have to.

  ~ 24 ~

  Just before dawn, I crept out while Ochieng still slept. I dressed in my leathers, the feel of the tighter clothing both familiar and strange. Unrolling the leather case holding my knives, I took a breath, searching myself. No angry serpent flared her hood, but the quiet resolve I associated with the presence of Danu filled my mind.

  All right then. My hands remembered, strapping the knives into their places, then the sword belt. I buckled on my vambraces, not because I wished to hide my scars still, but because they reminded me of who Kaja had helped me grow to be. The rest of that would be up to me.

  I stood a moment, admiring Ochieng’s masculine beauty as he slept, so deeply and peacefully that I wanted nothing more than to undress and curl up next to him again. Only the knowledge that such peace would be doomed to a brief existence stopped me. My curse would chase me to this place and rip everything away from me again. I’d run as far and as fast as I could, but it always came after me. It was time for me to turn around and face what pursued me.

  Not to surrender this time, but to defeat it.

  Carrying my boots, I stealthily slid back the cover to the stairs just enough to slip through, pushing it back into place again. I made my way through the quiet house, nodding good morning to the other early risers. Their sharp eyes took note of my reversion, but no one said anything. Until Zalaika.

  She was coming up the stairs from the storehouse, carrying a huge basket of fruit. I couldn’t have dodged her if I tried. The brief wish that I could’ve gone down the cliff stairs flitted through my mind, quickly followed by a tinge of regret that I might never use them again. They’d be fixed, but I might not be here.

  “Good morning, Zalaika,” I said, a bit more formally than I meant to.

  “Priestess Ivariel.” She inclined her head to me, and I realized she acknowledged my return to my office and duty to Danu—and seemed totally unsurprised. “You’ll be checking on Capa, then?” she asked.

  “Yes.” I hadn’t been able to see the elephant on the beach from Ochieng’s room.

  “Good.” She nodded and moved past me.

  “Zalaika,” I said, then hesitated. I’d never learned how to express regret over loss. In Dasnaria any such words would likely be taken as a taunt. “I am so very sorry that Femi died.”

  She gave me a long look. Smudges of the crimson paint remained in the fine lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, as if she’d washed it off half-heartedly. “You’ll make sure they don’t take any more of my children.”

  “I will,” I promised, even though I had no idea how I’d do that.

  “Good,” she said, exactly as she had before, as if seeking out and killing the Chimtoans would be just another errand like checking on an injured elephant. Perhaps it was. She paused, then reached out to cup my cheek. “We shall hold the festival for your return, and then you shall marry my son and formalize this marriage you’ve already consummated, yes?”

  I blushed and she broke into a broad grin, patting my cheek. “Life goes on, Priestess. Look—the sun rises yet again, as it does every day. Go destroy your monsters and come home to us.”

  * * * *

  The sky lightened into bright pinks as I set foot on the beach at last, mist swirling over the river. Many of the elephants had already waded into the water, though Violet still stood over Capa. To my surprise, Efe was with them, too. She gamboled over when she spotted me, swinging her trunk merrily, wrapping me in a hug with it, delighted when I plucked a melon from the basket of food I’d brought for Capa and gave it to her.

  Happily munching, she accompanied me back to Capa, who lay unmoving. At first I held my breath in dread, not able to see her breath in the misty dimness. If she’d died in the night, what would that omen mean for my journey—warning that I shouldn’t go, or emphasizing that I should?

  As I approached, singing a bit of the elephant song, she opened her eye and let out a long whuff of air. “La, Capa,” I crooned. “Still abed with the sun rising? So lazy!”

  She lifted her trunk, waving it at me weakly. “I know, honey. I’ve been there and it’s terrible.” I waved a piece of fruit over the tip of her trunk, trying to tempt her. “You must be hungry.”

  But she wouldn’t take it, so I laced up the basket to keep the other curious elephants out of it, and set it aside.

  I found a clear space on the beach, and commenced my prayers to Glorianna, as Kaja had taught me to do. And I poured my self into them, hoping to communicate my supplication for Her blessing, the fervency of my hope. When I’d first fled Dasnaria, I’d found it so difficult to hope for anything. Hiding in my darkened cabin, I’d practiced with tiny, unimportant hopes, thinking of them as baby steps to carry me on to bigger ones. Thinking I might someday discover what I hoped for myself.

  Now hope had descended upon me with full-blown and blistering immediacy. I knew what I wanted: to sleep in Ochieng’s arms every night, to share pleasure with him and bear our children, to become a D’tiembo in truth and spend my life caring for the elephants, to stand as guardian for this peaceful verdant valley, and to make myself into someone powerful enough to go back and liberate my sisters someday. So many hopes and yet all the same hope.

  And the great burning desire to make that true rose in me like the fiery sun topping the hills beyond the river. Seamlessly I moved into the ducerse, drawing my sword at the moment I would’ve opened my palms to the pearls I’d once balanced there, and dancing my fealty to Danu.

  Clear mind. Clear heart. And my sword sworn to Danu’s justice, whatever it may be. And none shall harm me because Danu travels in my heart, in my mind, and in my blade.

  I finished with Danu’s salute, the goddess’s blessing coursing white-hot through me with the morning light, making me wonder how I’d ever doubted Her hand on me. Lowering myself from pointed toe, I turned to find Ochieng waiting quietly, an inscrutable expression on his face.

  “When I woke and found you gone, I thought you might’ve stolen away in the night again,” he said.

  “I promised I wouldn’t.”

  “I know.” He didn’t comment on the fact that he’d thought I’d promised before. We understood each other better now. I hoped. He stood, uncoiling himself from his seated position, then coming to kiss me. “You moved well.”

  “I feel good.”

  “Back to the terrifyingly intimidating Warrior Priestess Ivariel, ever cool and silent, scou
rge of the oasis ruffians—and all others who threaten her and those she loves.”

  I didn’t laugh, as he no doubt expected by bringing up what he’d said to me when I fell off Violet on my ass, amusing him greatly. Instead, I considered him, and how he described me. “I never felt like that inside.”

  “It must be who you are, because that’s what shines through. It’s who you are to the core of your being.”

  “I haven’t been at all sure if there’s anything at the core of my being beyond this… hurt and hatred.” That’s how it had felt, under the cloying layers of rotting memories, the familiar serpent lurking, waiting to strike.

  He ran a hand over my hair, giving me a serious smile. “I think I’ve been as close to you as one person can be to another and I can promise that there’s more to you than that.”

  “How can you know?”

  “Because you are who you were before your mother hurt you, before your late husband brutalized you. Think back to that girl. What was she like?”

  Could it be that yet another self lay beneath all that muck, somehow buried deeper still? I remembered that day in the seraglio, playing games with my brother Kral, before he grew up to be my enemy. We’d looked at the tapestry showing elephants in a parade—in what I now recognized as battle regalia, in my mind’s eye—and all I’d wanted was to know about them. As if reading my thoughts, Efe snaked her trunk through my arm tugging at me, and I hugged her back.

  She kept tugging though, so I turned to look at her. “Silly girl, what?” Then saw past her. “Ochieng,” I breathed.

  He sucked in a breath, then let it out in a whoop. And we ran, all three of us, to Capa, who was struggling to her feet.

  We helped as best we could, answering her questing trunk, reassuring her. Violet moved against Capa’s far flank, helping her find her balance. Capa wound her trunk around my head, then dusted it down over my hands, making an annoyed huff when she found them empty. Laughing, I told her to wait a moment while I fetched and unlaced the basket.

  Grinning at me with full delight, Ochieng fed Capa from the basket—and slipping something to the hopefully hovering Efe now and again. We lingered there a while, savoring at least this one happy outcome, until all the fruit was gone and Capa fell into a doze. The sun had risen high, and Ochieng caught me glancing at it.

  “It’s time for you to be going,” he said, part question, part realization.

  “Yes.” I patted Capa’s flank, feeling that this had to be a good omen. “I have to do this.”

  He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them, giving me a long look. “I know you do.”

  * * * *

  They all gathered to say goodbye, all the D’tiembos and others, and the elephants, including Efe and Bimyr. Violet had stayed with Capa down on the beach, which was right and good. Besides the traveling bags I’d arrived with, several big panniers of supplies sat at the ready. I frowned at them, turning to ask what I was supposed to do with those, when a small body hurtled herself at me.

  “La, Ayela!” I laughed, her arms tight around my waist with all the mighty fury of a kitten. “You about knocked the breath out of me.”

  She tilted her chin up, dark eyes fierce. “I’m going with you. I just need my knife back.”

  “The knife you ‘borrowed’ without asking?” I raised my brows at her, glad to see her look at least a little chagrined. I hadn’t wanted to chastise her before now, but it needed to be said. Kaja would expect that, at the very least.

  “I’m sorry, Priestess Ivariel,” Ayela said solemnly. “But only that I took it without permission, not that I had it because then you killed the bad men with it. Maybe Danu guided my hand in this.”

  “Maybe so,” I agreed with equal gravity, much as I wanted to smile at her clever borrowing of my words. Maybe Danu had reached Ayela through me. That was part of my vow to Her. And who was I to question the hand of the goddess? “And thus”—I drew that knife from my belt and presented it to her, as I wished I’d been able to do when I left before, but couldn’t because I’d snuck away—“here is your knife, as all students should receive their first from their teacher. Use it well.”

  She took it with reverence. “I can go with you?”

  “No, this is something I have to do alone, but you may keep it and stand guard over your family in my place. Will you do that for me?”

  Eyes huge in her young face, she nodded. Just a little younger than I’d been when my mother taught me the only way I’d escape her power was to marry and become empress in my own right. But I’d learned otherwise. I’d escaped her. Finally and fully. Now it only remained for me to find my own power. However I’d manage that.

  “I cannot possibly take all of this stuff,” I said to the D’tiembo family, pointing to the big panniers that only an elephant could carry, still amused and touched by their gesture.

  “You can if you ride Bimyr,” Palesa told me. “We’ve all agreed.”

  “These are supplies, for the needy and deserving of Chimto,” Thanda added. “In case you’re able to give them. If you find a way to defeat the warriors”—her gaze slid to Desta, who returned it impassively—“then we can send more.”

  It surprised me that they still wanted to help the people who’d murdered our people, attacking us without cause. Palesa read it in me and nodded. “What matters is our intention, yes? Who we wish to be in the world. Not what they try to force us to be out of their own pain and misery.”

  “We’d rather send you on Violet,” Zalaika put in, “but Capa needs her.”

  “Oh yes, Capa definitely needs Violet,” I replied, “but you cannot send Bimyr with me. You need her here to mount a defense of Nyambura, just in case.”

  “Ivariel,” Ochieng inserted in a firm voice. “You cannot think to walk all that way. Take one of the elephants.”

  “I walked all the way here from Bandari,” I pointed out to him, raising my eyebrow.

  “Not alone,” he returned in the same tone. “You need a friend with you.”

  “It’s not good to go alone,” Desta agreed, giving me a significant look, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that he agreed. Or that all of the D’tiembos considered having an elephant companion as taking a friend along. Such a generous gift and yet… how could I?

  “But you need all the fighting elephants to—” I broke off when Efe stuck her trunk through my arm, tugging at me. Danu’s sun shone down from the noon sky, making Efe shine like silver in the bright light. No mud on her at all, I realized. And I knew that Efe also had her own scars, her own wounds to reclaim. Just how smart were elephants? As wise, perhaps, as that seven-year-old girl who lay at the core of me. The girl who’d looked at an image of an elephant in wonder—and maybe somehow foresaw this day would come. “What if I take Efe?”

  Several people laughed, but Ochieng didn’t. Palesa, Thanda, and Zalaika exchanged glances. And Efe… she smiled at me, still tugging at my arm.

  “Will she let you ride her?” Ochieng asked, watching us steadily. Something about the question reminded me of the day he taught me to ride Violet. Clear heart. Clear mind. Eyes where you want to be. That was a mashing-up of his advice and Kaja’s, and yet it felt right, like something I’d made my own.

  That thought resonated through me like a gong in the quiet of Danu’s temple. Something there. I needed to take all of it, all of the pieces of me, and make them one thing all my own.

  “Yes,” I told him. “Yes, she will.” I signaled Efe to kneel, and she did, with as much perfect grace as if she’d practiced it a thousand times. She’d known what she was supposed to do; she just hadn’t had it in her to bear it before this. Or maybe—like me—not a good enough reason to push past the fear.

  I climbed up, mindful of my boot heels, and sang her a standing song, then a walking tune. We paraded in a circle, Efe with me as if of one mind. Thank Danu. Or perhaps gratitude went to Moranu, as a
nimals belonged to Her. I would have to get better at meditating, as I tended to leave the goddess of shadows out of my prayers. Just as I’d wanted to divorce myself of my own darkness.

  This new resonance made me think perhaps the path forward lay in embracing that dark serpent rather than exorcising it.

  Asking Efe to kneel again, I slid off, then helped the others load the panniers onto her. She allowed the straps and waited patiently as if she’d done this all her life. The others commented on her change, but I paid little attention to their discussion. The time to say goodbye to Ochieng had come, and I almost couldn’t bear it.

  “You’re not surprised,” I said to him, as a stalling tactic.

  He lifted his shoulder and let it fall, a very Dasnarian shrug, then grinned at me, all him. “I had a feeling. And I have something for you.” Stepping into an alcove, he returned with something large and dark in his hands. A hat, woven of dark-colored grasses, a deep purple blue that looked black until the sun shone on it. With a sense of ceremony, he set the hat on my head, settling it for me and brushing the brim with his fingers, as if to make it exactly right.

  “Beautiful,” he said.

  I blinked back tears. These felt like good tears, though, not the helpless outpouring of grief that had so seized me all these months. “When did you get this?”

  “I had someone in town make it for you, since you lost the other. I know it’s not jewels, but—”

  “But I’ve had jewels and this is better.” I kissed him. “Thank you. I love you.”

  “Come back to me,” he murmured fervently, holding on a moment longer.

  “I will,” I told him. “I promise.”

  ~ 25 ~

  At first, Efe and I traveled through the busy part of the town, people waving to us as they continued their work in making repairs from the rains—and recovering from the attack. But quickly we left the sprawling houses on stilts for the already sprouting fields. I followed the map Ochieng had given me, proud that I could read it, taking the river road, heading downstream, leaving the people and town behind.