Shadows of Prophecy

by Rachel Lee

  Tears welled in Tess’s eyes, for now she experienced that moment through her mother’s heart. I’m sorry.

  It is I who should be sorry, Tess. Sorry I was too afraid to face what would happen, sorry I had extracted a promise that it would happen without warning, and instantly. Sorry that I thought of myself and my own pain, rather than of you and yours.

  I couldn’t have…

  Perhaps not, dear. But I had to. And my only regret is that, knowing I would have to, I did not choose to do it better. For you.

  Oh…mom…

  Tess sobbed, shaking, and felt the steadying arms of Cilla and Sara slip around her, even as their thoughts wrapped her spirit in a comfort that, if not enough, was more than she could have imagined before this day.

  And then she felt her mother’s hug, as real as if she were standing there. Tess fought the urge to open her eyes, lest she see her.

  I have always been with you, my dear. Always. Even from beyond this veil, I could see you and send my heart to you. You know you felt it.

  Yes, she had felt it. So many times. The night her first lover had left her and she had wept into her pillow, her mother had been there. The day she had enlisted in the Army, so frightened of what lay ahead, her mother had been there. The first time she had treated a wounded man, his eyes filled with terror, as she took his hand, her mother had been there to ease her own terror, so that she could comfort him. Again and again, her mother’s spirit had come to her, quieting her fears, celebrating her joys, soothing her pains.

  Yes, my dear. And those were only the times you felt me. There were so many others. I wanted to be with you every moment, to feel with you every moment. But in the way of things, it would have been selfish of me. I had to stand at a distance, just beyond your perception, to let you grow and think and learn on your own.

  A day ago, Tess would not have understood. But this morning, with Sara, she, too, had stepped back. Yes, her mother would have done the same. Painful as it would have been, she would have done it. A thought niggled at the fringes of her mind until she remembered her mother’s first words.

  What did you mean…‘it means more than that’?

  Finally, her mother thought, you come back to the present.

  Mother…

  Tess heard her mother’s laugh, if only for an instant. Then her mother’s thoughts darkened.

  Trey-sah not only means dead, but also death.

  You mean…?

  I mean, dear, that the spirit within you has enormous power. The choice will be yours, moment by moment, which you will bring.

  Help. Or death.

  21

  Erkiah and Tom sat before the fire in the main room of the lodging. Both sipped on mugs of Anari ale, potent and delightful on the tongue, although, Tom thought, nowhere near Bandylegs Deepwell’s ale. A shaft of homesickness speared him, and he wished he and Sara were at home, sitting in the public room of Sara’s father’s inn, drinking his ale and listening to the tall stories that wiled the winter away.

  But he was here, in Anahar, far from home and among strangers. Wishing it were not so would change nothing. And, he thought, when they did return to Whitewater, what tales they could tell.

  “Losing your sight is not such a bad thing,” Erkiah said, dragging Tom back to the present. “Many a prophet has been misguided by his eyes. No, you will turn inward to where the truth lies.”

  “What truth?” Tom demanded. Anger over his condition was bubbling like a slow-cooking pot. He knew he would be dead without Tess’s intervention, but the price had been a high one. Sara might still love him now, but he was certain that with time she would grow weary of his disability.

  “The truth you were born to speak,” Erkiah answered simply. “A prophet’s lot is never an easy one, lad. Never. But no one’s lot will be easy in the coming days. War and worse broods on the horizon.”

  “And only by passing through it will we find ourselves.”

  Erkiah cocked one white bushy eyebrow at him. “You prophesy even now.”

  Tom shook his head and set his mug on the stone table beside him. “Anyone could have said that.”

  Erkiah snorted.

  “What is the importance of the Foundling?” Tom asked. He hoped that somewhere in the morass his life had become, he could see some thread of purpose other than his love for Sara.

  “The Foundling is the harbinger. Your arrival marks the beginning of the fulfillment of the old prophecies. But there is more than that, Tom. The words that you speak will guide those who must fight the evil that faces us.”

  Erkiah must have seen the distress on Tom’s face, for he reached out and touched the young man’s arm. “Fear not, Tom. Yours will not be the only wisdom. There are others. But in the most essential moments, they will turn to you, a blind man, to help them see. That is the prophecy of the Foundling.”

  This was far from the adventure Tom had always dreamed of, far removed from his untutored visions of battle. What he had seen of battle had been supreme horror and ugliness. Perhaps he was lucky that would not be his role, even if he felt he was letting down his friends.

  “You are sure?” he asked Erkiah.

  “I am sure of who you are, aye,” Erkiah answered. “Now close your eyes and look inward, for there you will find your truth.”

  Behind the leather mask Lady Tess had given him, Tom obediently closed his eyes. At first he could think only of how life had betrayed him, leaving him virtually blind in the act of saving him. But gradually his anger eased. He was not one to pity himself, and only a few mental steps away from his anger was the realization that he had been saved by Ilduin power from certain death. And that he was fortunate Lady Tess had known how to make it possible for him to see. It was not the hawkeye vision he had once enjoyed, but he could see whatever he looked directly at without the light hurting his eyes.

  And at night, by starlight, he could see as well as any predator.

  But he was not to be a predator. Oddly his thoughts drifted to the snow wolf that had come to bow to the Lady Tess, and he wondered if that wolf and its kin were still in the northern woods. Or if the unnatural coldness of the winter had forced them farther south in order to eat.

  Thinking of the wolf’s eyes, he felt almost as if he were falling into those golden orbs, so not human, yet so strangely expressive. He had never seen the like. Few humans ever saw the snow wolves, for they were shy of people and hid deep in the forests.

  But this one had bowed to Tess, an act that flew in the face of everything Tom thought he knew. And those golden eyes, so strangely intelligent…

  He was falling toward them in his mind, and as he fell, he seemed to be passing through a door.

  Tess sat on the floor with Cilla and Sara huddled around her, trying to comfort her. Although it was odd, even as grief tore at her, she felt little need of comfort. It was as if she needed to let herself shatter with the pain in order to find peace with who she was.

  For she knew now that she came not from this world. Cilla and Sara had seen her world with her. She had been a healer. She had come from a very different place, where carriages didn’t need horses and armies fought with weapons this world could not imagine.

  But this world, too, had weapons and threats, ones she had never dreamed of as a child. And somehow, somewhere, there must be a link, because she was here.

  Shaking, she remembered her mother’s warning not to look into the past, and bit by bit she understood why. The things she knew about her birth world were of little use here. Worse, memory would have made her initial transition all the harder. Now this world seemed the more real to her.

  And deep within, she understood that she had been hidden in that world until it was time for her to come here.

  Finally her shaking stopped. For the first time she realized that huge tears had tumbled down her cheeks and dampened her tunic. At last she could feel the loving comfort her sisters offered her.

  Sniffling, she wiped away her tears with her sleeve. “I’m sorr
y,” she began to say, but was interrupted.

  “I don’t know how I would have borne such news,” Cilla said. “Please don’t apologize.”

  “You heard?”

  “All of it,” Sara said. “Including that you are not from this world, and that the veil was rent between life and death to allow you to pass. You must be important, Tess.”

  Tess shook her head, wiping away another tear. “No more important than either of you. It is together that we become a force.”

  “But the decision your mother had to make…” Cilla said. “This was planned.”

  Tess looked at her. “How are we to know that the same plan wasn’t made for you? For all of us?”

  Sara’s eyes clouded. “It was made for me, Tess. But not by any force of Theriel. My mother, too, had to die so I could emerge.”

  “Oh…” Tess said, further words dying in her throat. She had not even considered how her mother’s revelation would affect Sara. “Oh, my sister Ilduin…”

  “It is a cruel gift,” Sara said, “that requires mother and daughter to be torn apart for the gift to be opened. If the choice had been offered me, I would have rejected it.”

  “But it was not offered,” Cilla said. “To any of us. My mother’s passing was twelve years ago. After Ratha and Giri were taken, Monabi-Tel set off as one in their wake. It was our first, and to now our last, experience of battle. We came upon a Bozandari force near the coast, and they fell upon us with brutal skill that none among us had the knowledge to match. We knew the fight was hopeless almost from the start. Many of our kinsmen died that day, and greatly diminished was the soul of our Tel. For in the last group fighting, as the rest were drawing away, was my mother. And there she fell, the victim of her own son’s betrayal.”

  “Oh, Cilla,” Tess said, reaching out to squeeze her hand. “I am so sorry.”

  “It is but a memory now,” Cilla said. “I have shed my tears for her. And I have seen her death avenged.”

  “Your brother?” Sara asked.

  “Slain,” Cilla said, an icy hardness in her voice. “Last night. Do not ask me to speak more of it, for I cannot. But his death was just.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, their thoughts clouded and cloaked, each in her own grief. Finally Tess spoke.

  “So we have all suffered, and for the plans of the same Enemy. For have no doubt, Cilla, it is he that we face as we ride off to battle Bozandar.”

  Cilla nodded. “We truly are one.”

  “Not entirely,” Sara said. “The snow wolf didn’t bow to me.”

  Cilla picked up the images immediately from Sara’s mind. “My word,” she breathed. “That is…a portent. In legend, the snow wolves bowed only to Theriel.”

  As soon as the name was spoken, the walls of the temple began to dance with light and a quiet tone sounded.

  “The name has power,” Sara murmured.

  “Yes,” Cilla said. “But never has the temple answered to her name before.”

  Cilla closed her eyes and tried to remember every word her mother had ever spoken about the temple. There was a song, a song her mother had sung to her only once, on the day her womanhood had begun. The memories of the day were vivid, for the women of her Tel had gathered her into their midst, each passing along some secret known only among the adult women. Some of those secrets had made her smile. Others had made her blush. All had been important, in one way or another, in her life.

  But the song her mother had sung, that alone had grown dusty in her memory, for never before had she heard it, and never again since. How had it begun? She tried to float back to that day, to her mother’s comforting scent beside her, the lilt of her voice, the touch of her hand….

  Elehoheh Tehrel onandar, am dahnen ahnommen

  Al Tehrel dahnen Anahar, ir sahn geloreten.

  Elehoheh Tehrel onandar, am noyen farloteeg

  An Tehrel dahnen Anahar, ir shahtellan ahseeg.

  She opened her eyes and realized she had sung the words. But not she alone. The temple had sung them with her, for she could still hear the echoes of its voice in the silence.

  “What was that?” Tess asked, her eyes wide.

  “I do not know its name,” Cilla said. “It is a song of the Anari, though I heard it only once. My mother sang it to me on my blessing day…the day I became a woman. We have a ritual for such things. The older women pass on the elder secrets then. This was the secret my mother passed to me. I had forgotten it until this moment.”

  “What does it mean?” Sara asked. “I fear that, despite our sojourn with Gewindi-Tel, I have learned only the barest few words of your language.”

  “The translation is poor in your speech,” Cilla said. “Great mother Theriel’s heart, given in her name, Theriel’s gift to Anahar, residing within us. Great mother Theriel’s heart, her life renewed, Theriel’s gift to Anahar, victory in her struggle.”

  “The temple sings to her name,” Sara said, “because she has returned.”

  “Yes,” Cilla said, turning to Tess. “‘Great mother Theriel’s heart, her life renewed.’ That was the pinprick of which your mother spoke. Theriel’s heart, given to you, at the moment you were conceived.”

  “If the legends are true,” Tess said, shaking her head, “the world was torn apart over Theriel’s heart. And now the Enemy seeks it once more. I carry the heart of a dead princess into a land that was destroyed for her love. I cannot bear this weight.”

  “My mother’s sister, the mother of Ratha and Giri, also whispered a secret to me on that day.”

  “Yes?” Tess asked, looking at her.

  Cilla took her hand. “Sometimes the weight of life asks not if we are able but only if we are willing. For it is in the will that our ability lies.”

  Tess let out a bitter laugh. “We had a similar thought in my world, though we expressed it with less beauty than in yours. Ruck up, suck up and press on.”

  “I do not understand the words,” Cilla said, “but the meaning is clear enough.”

  “Yes,” Tess said. “But saying it makes it no easier to do.”

  “If it helps,” Sara said, squeezing Tess’s hand, “you do not walk alone. We will…how did you say?…ruck up, suck up and press on with you.”

  Tess gave her a bleak smile.

  “And that may be all the hope we have.”

  22

  Three days had passed since Archer had sent the young Anari lad to Tess with word of his decision. The boy had returned that same day to tell Archer he had delivered the message as promised. But Archer had not seen Tess or her Ilduin sisters since. Even at night, when he had returned to the city to rest, he had found her chambers empty. Tom said that the women had gone to the temple, and there they had stayed. For three days.

  Time, he thought, looking at the map spread on a table before him. If the map was accurate, and he had no cause to doubt the Anari scouts who had drawn it, his greatest enemy was time. He had no way to know whether Bozandari patrols had heard the song of Anahar, nor whether they would understand its import. Hour by hour, day by day, the ranks of the Anari in the valley below him swelled as more Tels answered the call. Eleven of the twelve Tels were here already, and runners from the twelfth had said they would arrive tomorrow.

  How long had it been since the twelve houses of the Anari came together like this? Even on feast days, only a relative handful from each Tel came to Anahar for the celebrations. The rest were needed at their telners to care for children, tend to crops and see to the other day-to-day matters of life. This was a time beyond all memory, even a memory that stretched as far as Archer’s.

  “We will number perhaps eight thousand in our ranks,” Archer said, looking up from the map. “We must keep many behind, to protect the children and our trains. And the temple.”

  “Fear not for the temple, Lord Archer,” Giri said. “She can protect herself.”

  “Aye,” Jenah nodded in agreement. “Still, there are many who are too young, too old or too injured to fight in the ranks.
They can protect each other and our supplies. Our needs will not be great, so we can keep our trains small.”

  “No,” Archer said, shaking his head. “We know not what our needs will be in full. It is better to have and not need than to need and not have. When the hour of decision falls upon us, I do not want our people scattered in the hills, searching for food.

  “Our advantage,” he continued, “lies in the Bozandari not knowing our numbers. Never have they encountered more than a few hundred of us. They take us for sheep who will not band together as wolves, and thus their forces are but a fraction of what we could face. A dozen legions guard the realm of Bozandar. But that realm is vast.”

  He pointed to the map. “Only two legions are near the Anari lands, and but one of those actively in our midst. A Bozandari legion numbers six thousand strong. And this one is broken into four camps—now three, if they have abandoned the one near Gewindi-Tel. Six thousand men are the boot of Bozandar on the neck of the Anari. They have been enough.”

  “But no more,” Jenah said. “Now we have the greater numbers.”

  “Numbers, yes, for the moment,” Archer agreed. “But we have not yet their skills. And our numbers will only be the greater until Bozandar realizes that we have united. If we cannot secure our border by then, this other legion will march south. And another after that. And yet another after that. We must crush those within our lands and make ourselves secure before they can bring the full weight of Bozandar upon us. We battle not Bozandar but time.”

  “Aye,” Giri agreed, his dark eyes seeming to create living stone from the markings on the map. “Time indeed. The enemy may speak to each other through their captive Ilduin, but they cannot transport their numbers by thought alone. As soon as we fall upon one camp in strength, the others will know, as will their masters in Bozandar. The hourglass is then turned against us.”

  Jenah nodded. “We must choose our line of advance carefully. The other two camps will rally toward the one we strike. We must be sure we lure them onto ground that favors us and limits them.”