Shadows of Prophecy

by Rachel Lee

  “Not yet. But at last I have the chance to become one.”

  * * * *

  The night finally grew so still and deep that the susurration of the waves on the beaches of the Great South Sea carried across miles of desert, bringing the scent of water and the scent of the shore. The air grew soft with the moisture from the sea until it felt almost like a lover’s caress. Tess drew deep lungfuls of it, enjoying the relief from the parched days just past.

  “Nothing smells quite like the sea,” Otteda remarked. “It always seems to call to me.”

  “I have never smelled it before,” Tom said. “It is wonderful.”

  Tess knew she had smelled it before, and for an instant the coppery tang of blood seemed to mingle with it, nearly jarring free yet another memory. But the moment passed, and only the gentle, moist breeze remained.

  She looked up at the stars, gauging the hour as Archer had been teaching her. “Soon.”

  “Aye,” Tom said. “Blood will flow heavily this night, and the waters of the sea will turn red near the shore. But out of this will grow a new rose….”

  His voice trailed off as if he were seeing something, and Tess waited patiently for his next words. In the meantime she could sense from Cilla that Giri was on the move, hoping to protect Ratha’s rear to the north. And Jenah was marching down toward them, seeking any others who might attempt to approach Anahar.

  So far, so good. If such a night could be called good.

  The attacks fell like twin hammer blows, first with arrows whistling down out of the night, then with the deep hiss of the Anari battle cry and the thunder of footfalls across hard ground. Soon that, too, was swallowed into the clang of metal upon metal, and the screams of wounded and dying men. Tom could see it in his mind as if the armies were groups of pebbles being pushed around on a table. From the north, Ratha’s men were pushing relentlessly into the Bozandari lines, fissures turning to fractures and then into gaping holes to be exploited. From the south, Archer’s column kept a slow, steady pace, not allowing the Bozandari before him to turn and move to the aid of their shattered comrades. It was a ruthless, brutal, efficient attack, and Tom once again found himself sickened by the thought that he could not do more for the Anari, for his companions, for Sara.

  “Why do you feel the need to shed blood?” Tess asked, her voice almost silent against the sounds of battle.

  He turned to her, wondering how she had gained access to his thoughts. She glanced down at his hand, which was clutching the hilt of the sword his father had given him. A sword he had raised only once.

  “We are outnumbered,” he said. “Every able-bodied hand should be at service.”

  “There are enough hands to shed blood,” Tess said, “and too few eyes to see why. Your service is in your vision, Tom. Not in killing.”

  “I was given a sword, Lady Tess.”

  “And in time we will know why,” she said. “There is no honor in killing, Tom. No glory. There is only pain and heartache and hatred and loss. There are no winners in battle. There are only the dead and the living. And even the living die a little.”

  For an instant he had a glimpse into the cacophony of her memory. An inhuman scream came down out of the sky and burst into flames, scattering men and parts of men around a desert town. Tess had to wipe blood from her eyes before she could go to the aid of those for whom hope remained.

  “You did not choose this war, Lady Tess. Just as you did not choose the strange wars of your past. I do not know what evil mind could devise the weapons I see in your memories. Weapons that tear men apart without even having to see the victims. I do not know why you were drawn into those battles. But I know you, Lady, and you would not have chosen them of your free will.”

  “What did you see?” she asked.

  He described the scene as best he could, although words failed him more than once. When he was finished, tears trickled from her eyes.

  “I wish I had happy memories,” she said.

  “Are all of them thus, Lady?”

  She sighed and nodded. “Most that I have been able to recover. It seems that I have spent my life in the company of death.”

  He sat in silence for a moment, watching her distant eyes grow even more distant. Sara would have known what to say to make her feel better. But Sara was not here, and he found himself at a loss for words.

  Tess looked at her hands, then at him. “I have touched so much blood. My hands have been in parts of a body that no man was meant to touch. I’ve held a dying heart in my hand, squeezing gently, trying to wrest a last few minutes of life from it, hoping help would come in time. I’ve watched the light go out of so many eyes, Tom. So many eyes.”

  “And I would wager that you killed almost none of them,” Tom said. “You were trying to heal them.”

  “Trying and failing, Tom. So many will die tonight, are dying right now. I will do what I can for as many as I can, but too many will die anyway. Too many mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, will weep in the morning. I have spent my life watching it, it seems. Steeped in the blood of human hate and anger and distrust.”

  “You weren’t just watching, Lady Tess. You were trying to heal. You were trying to find some tiny measure of humanity in the inhumanity of war. And if you have seen too many eyes fade into death, ask yourself this. How many of those dying men saw your kind eyes as their last memory? How many were eased into the arms of the gods by your kindness and compassion? How many felt cared for in their last moments, rather than lost and in pain, afraid and alone?”

  She smiled stiffly. “You are a kind man, Tom Downey. If your heart were enough to heal the world, no man would ever make war again.”

  “But my heart is not,” he said, grasping her hand so that she could not retreat into her own thoughts. “Yours is. I have watched you work miracles that men will tell of to the end of days. Perhaps they were born of Ilduin blood. But it was Ilduin blood that pumped through your heart, propelled by your kindness, by your love for us all, even the enemies who are dying out there on that field tonight. And if that love hurts you, Lady, know that it fills the rest of us with awe and wonder, and a belief that even we could be more than what we have been, love more than we have loved, give more than we have given, and trust more than we have trusted.”

  “I am no god,” she said bitterly.

  “No, you are not. If you were, your love would be easy to dismiss. We could simply tell a story, let the priests in the temples wave their arms and burn incense, and walk away knowing we are not gods and cannot expect so much of ourselves.”

  He squeezed her hand. “Instead we make camp with you. We watch you sleep. We see your tears. We see you slump in exhaustion at the end of a day’s march. We see you live among us, facing the same aches and trials that we face. And yet you love—more than any of us would have imagined possible. And we cannot tell ourselves that it is impossible for us to love as you love. We can only try to be worthy of what we see in you.”

  Tess pulled her hand away. “Place me not on too high a pedestal, Tom. I will only disappoint you.”

  “Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps you will. But it is the journey that purifies us, not the destination. And if we are to walk this road, at least we are walking it with you. For better or for worse, we will walk as one. And if we fail, we will have failed trying for the best that was within us.”

  Tess smiled. “I shall never again call you Young Tom, for you are far too wise for such a name. And if you can find it in your heart to strengthen me in times like this, then your heart will heal this world as surely as mine.”

  He bowed his head. “It would be my honor, Lady.”

  For a moment she considered drawing him into a hug, for it felt wrong for him to bow to her. But then, seeing the eyes of her guards, she simply returned the gesture with a bow of her own.

  “There will be honor enough in the morning, Tom,” she said. “For now, let us do what we can to save the dying.”

  Ratha watched as his men moved amo
ng the wounded, offering water and comfort to friend and foe alike. The battle, such as it had been, was decided long before he or anyone caught up in it had known. Like a fire in dry desert tinder, it had burst into a roaring conflagration, and only slowly had died out. Now its last embers had been consumed, and what remained was the ash and ruin of human hatred.

  Before his sojourn into the desert, he would have looked upon this scene with swelling pride, confident that he had dealt death to the deserving, confident that only their blood, flowing in rivers, could heal the wounds of his people.

  Now he knew that it would not be Bozandari blood that healed his people. The men around him were acquiring scars that would haunt them in the night for years to come. It hurt to watch, even while Ratha realized that there was no other way. But while it was a necessary thing, that did not make it an easy one.

  What they were doing now, tending to those whose lives could be saved, giving comfort, showing mercy…he hoped these would be the memories his men would carry long after the nightmares eased. For these actions were not merely necessary, they were right, and it was in doing them that the Anari would find healing and peace.

  “We caught them by surprise,” Archer said, walking beside him. “We were fortunate this time.”

  Ratha nodded. “There will be no more easy battles, Lord Archer. But the Anari were not born for easy things. We are a people of sand and stone and scrub ground that yields only what we need even in times of plenty. We are a strong people. Stronger than even our creators realized.”

  “It pains me to see your people fight,” Archer said. “You were to be the ones who would never know war.”

  Ratha looked at him and nodded. “But those who do not know war also do not know peace, my Lord. And perhaps wiser minds than yours guided you in that time. My people will heal. And a thousand years from now, people will tell stories of these days and speak of them as the time in which the Anari were no longer children of the desert but men of the mountains.”

  “But at what cost?” Archer asked, looking at Lady Tess as she moved among the wounded.

  Ratha, too, watched as she moved from one man to the next, closing her eyes and placing her hands over wounds that were beyond description, leaving healing and peace in her wake, but a mounting weight of fatigue in her face.

  “The cost is grave, Lord,” Ratha said. “But do we not owe this to the Anari who have suffered, to those whom we watched freeze and die in Derda, to the butchered traders in that caravan? If we bear not this cost, we shame their suffering. So let us bear it and make their sacrifices worthy of their courage.”

  Archer smiled and put a hand on Ratha’s shoulder. “Perhaps I, too, should take a sojourn in the desert, my friend. I hardly know the man who stands with me, save to say I am grateful and honored to stand beside you.”

  “Then perhaps you should take that sojourn, my Lord,” Ratha said, the faintest flicker of a smile in his eyes despite his exhaustion. “Perhaps if more of us spent time in the company of the stones and their songs, none of this would be necessary.”

  “It is a shame that only Anari women can be priests,” Archer said, chuckling.

  Ratha shook his head. “I am no priest. I am only a warrior who has learned that war must serve something greater than itself, lest we all become nothing but fodder in its hungry maw.”

  “And those,” Archer said, “are words worthy of a priest. Perhaps when this war is over.”

  “I will worry about that time when it comes,” Ratha said. “There is still much to be done.”

  Tess suddenly stood and walked up to them, her face pale and strained. “We must hurry. Giri has found the enemy. Even now they are nearing the frontier.”

  “But how?” Ratha asked. Not even the Bozandari, with all of their vaunted organization, could move this quickly. “We are not ready.”

  “Then we must get ready,” Tess said. “And we must do it with haste. The Enemy’s hive is among us, and we will get no pause from his evil.”

  31

  Topmark Tuzza rode south at the head of his column, pushing the men past their daily limit in order to reach the side of the legion that was under attack by the Anari. He had been dispatched two days ago when a seer at the court had reported the defeat of the camp near Anahar. Now he was sure the camp at the Great South Sea would soon be under attack if it was not already.

  Tuzza felt little fear. He knew his position in the world, scion of the titled house of Ousa, cousin to the royal Bozan family, twenty-second in line for the throne. He had been raised to fearlessness and a sense of duty that made it impossible for him to indulge himself in even the smallest of ways.

  As he rode his large black horse, his heavy cloth-of-gold cloak hung neatly from his shoulders, announcing his rank, both among soldiers and in his society. It was a beacon intended to keep the attention of his legionnaires, to guide them through a fight and to keep them right behind him. It was for this reason he was known as the topmark. Into battle he always went first.

  It was growing late in the day, and little light was left, but ignoring the suggestions of some of his rearmarks and foremarks, he pressed on.

  “Our comrades sorely need us,” was his only response. Their encounter just the day before with prisoners who had been released by the Anari at the border had caused him mixed feelings. On the one hand, the prisoners had been well-treated and spoke of healing at the hands of Ilduin. On the other hand, they spoke of a savage battle that had defeated them.

  The peaceful Anari, it seemed, had learned the ways of war. Bozandar could not tolerate this insurrection.

  He had sent scouts ahead to alert him before they walked into the Anari army. Just as the last light was fading from the day, he came upon two of those scouts. They lay in the open, as if in warning, as if whoever had killed them wished to leave a message. And they had been brutally mutilated.

  “Gods!” said one of his officers nearby. “Gods!”

  It was not as if the Bozandari themselves had never done such a thing. Tuzza was no youth to believe in the purity of the hearts of soldiers. He recognized rage when he saw it.

  But still, it sickened him and made him furious, the more so because one of the bodies belonged to his young cousin Xuro. His fists clenched around his reins and sword hilt, and breathing became difficult. If he ever found the Anari who had done this…

  “Bury them,” he said shortly, to conceal his feelings.

  “But…”

  He turned to the protesting overmark, controlling himself because he must. “We have no time to take the dead with us. More will die while we dally. Get to it!”

  The overmark’s lips compressed, but he nodded and passed the order along.

  No need, thought Tuzza, for either of the slain men’s families to know what had been done to them. Better to claim expedience and bury them here. But even as his trained mind clicked with well-oiled precision, the man in him felt a hot thirst for vengeance.

  Overmark Thul drew his horse close and spoke in a low voice. “These people have always been peaceable. I would not have expected such from them.”

  Tuzza slowly turned his head and looked straight at the overmark. “Perhaps, Thul, generations of slavery change men. Perhaps it teaches them cruelty.”

  Thul frowned. “That could be interpreted as treason.”

  “Or as common sense.”

  As a rule, Tuzza ignored the entire issue of slavery, because it was out of his hands. But now he was facing the population that unwillingly provided those slaves, and he wasn’t about to underestimate their rage or cunning. Underestimation was a commander’s deadliest foe.

  And right before him lay the evidence of the Anari rage. No, he would not underestimate them. Nor would he allow his own fury to overcome him. Instead, he would use their rage against them.

  With a deliberate effort of will, he crushed his feelings to dust and forced his attention to the dangers those bodies might signify.

  Giri looked out from behind the rocks and
nodded. Good. Let that man be angry. Let him feel just the smallest inkling of the horrors that had been visited upon the Anari people. Then, when what passed for his soul went to meet its maker, perhaps he might understand why that god was angry.

  And the gods were doubtless angry with men like this. Haughty, imperial men like that owned his brothers and sisters. Bought them. Sold them. Used them. Killed them. Well, now the circle turned. This man’s own kin would be wary to venture into Anari lands and would pay in blood for every league of their advance. That would buy Archer and the rest time to plan the final ambush. But it might also slake the rage in Giri’s soul.

  “We go,” he said, whispering to the Anari beside him. “It is a four-hour walk to our next ambush point.”

  They slid silently down the reverse slope of the ridge, slipping through the deepening shadows of falling night, negotiating the path of songs in the stones that led them back through Giri’s own screen of scouts. Soon he had joined Cilla and his chief lieutenants at a low campfire, and gave his report.

  “The Bozandari will grow more cautious now,” he concluded. “They will need to send out larger teams of scouts, and their scout teams will have to be more careful about procedure. We will not get easy pickings again, but pick we must. What we harvest in blood here, our cousins will not face later.”

  Giri gave final instructions to his lieutenants, then made his way to his tent, contemplating the events of the day. His ambush had worked here, in the broken area of the frontier. Soon they would be into the low, rolling hills of the northern Anari lands, and there would be fewer ambush sites for a time. But he wouldn’t be able to simply melt away and let the Bozandari column march unmolested. He had to steer them toward Archer’s force and report on their progress.

  Much would depend on the next two days, when he would gain a sense of how the arrogant Bozandari commander reacted to the pinpricks that Giri inflicted. If the man’s response was to turn toward the ambushes, hoping to trap and destroy the Anari force, then Giri’s task would be easier. He could simply strike and withdraw along the path he wanted the Bozandari to follow. But if the man’s response was to seek the path of least resistance, Giri would have to keep his force dispersed, picking away at the flanks and channeling the Bozandari.