Challen rather hoped the sensitivity would stay, even at the price of discomfort. She felt safer knowing someone watched her, rather than the illusion of obscurity.
While she busied herself finding their bags and drawing water to wash, the soldiers set up camp. Challen gratefully slid into the warm darkness of her little tent to wash and change into clothes that didn't smell of horse and sweat. She brought her robes outside to dry and air in the breezes flowing through the oasis. She gloried in the feel of moss and grass, cool under her bare feet as she went to the cook fire to fetch bowls for herself, her father, and Asqual.
Shazzur and the commander were already deep into their morning game of Draktan when Challen brought lukewarm stew and greasy bread to the base of the tree where they sat. They smiled and nodded thanks, said not a word and bent their heads over the map drawn on an old, worn hide. Challen sat where she could see the playing field and ate in silence.
Draktan was a game of strategy, sometimes played with pebbles on a field drawn on a skin, sometimes with carved semi-precious stones on an ornately inlaid wooden board. Shazzur had taught Challen the game, but she had never cared for it. The only part of Draktan that fascinated her was how the playing pieces did not retain the ranks they held at the start of the game. Low-ranked pieces could be forced into actions, moving in patterns that did not benefit them but aided the larger, more powerful pieces. That made sense. However, weak pieces could manipulate conditions so strong pieces were forced to act and sometimes lose rank. Keeping the current rank of each piece straight in her head was a challenge she enjoyed, and a skill Shazzur insisted she learn.
"Tonight we will leave the desert,” Asqual said as he paused to wipe spicy gravy from his bowl with the last of his bread. He grinned at Challen. “Not that you could tell the change, with the drought, but our going will be swifter."
"We should reach the walls of Bainevah before the moon darkness,” Shazzur said, nodding.
"Is that important, Father?” Challen said.
"The fewer chances our enemies have to strike at us, the better I feel."
"Enemies?” Asqual sighed. “Is there something you're not telling me, old friend?"
"The Sacred Marriage has failed and the Three have vanished.” Shazzur examined each pebble as he put away the game. “As Bainevah has enemies among other nations, Mother Matrika has enemies among the demi-gods. The heresy of the Three has perhaps helped her enemies against her. Is it not logical they wish to keep us from mending our ways, so she remains vulnerable?"
"I thought I was glad to have you returned to your old place.” The commander mustered a grin and shook his head. “Has he talked in riddles like this all your life, Sweetmeat?"
"No.” Challen picked up their bowls and took them back to the cook fire, where another soldier set grains to soak for their evening porridge.
How could Commander Asqual accuse her father of speaking in riddles? What Shazzur had said made too much sense, and Challen mentally kicked herself for not realizing it earlier.
Mother Matrika's power lay in the moon fullness. During the two nights of fullness, the people celebrated; marriages and betrothals were performed and children named. Children born during the fullness were considered lucky. Solstice and equinox festivals were always during the nights of fullness.
Conversely, people stayed home during the nights of moon darkness when the moon hid its face in the night sky. Expectant mothers tried to slow their labor, if it appeared their child would be born in those days.
When would be the most propitious time for an enemy to strike? During the moon dark nights, of course.
* * * *
Challen blamed the heat, the spices in the stew, and Shazzur's words for her restless day's sleep. She could not blame them for her dreams, however. She had been dreaming of the bull-horned shadow-man for moons now, it seemed. He stood at the edges of her dreams, watching her, his clawed hands open like a child waiting to catch a ball.
After all this time, Challen had grown adept at escaping her dreams the moment she sensed his dry, cold presence. She did so now, irked that she had lost what little sleep she had found. If only her vision-soldier could come and drive away the shadow-man. Ah, but such wishing was for frightened children. She had been trained by Shazzur the Seer and knew better.
Challen whispered a prayer to Matrika to guard her and silently recited the most boring historical ballad she knew to drive herself back into sleep. It usually worked wonderfully.
It didn't work now, in the hissing silence of the oasis.
She finally gave up and crept out of her little tent when the sun still hovered two hands’ width above the horizon. There were two soldiers on watch, one on either side of the oblong oasis. She studied them to determine the pattern they walked to watch the horizon and stay within the shade. Then, she went back to her tent and peeled off all but her sleeveless sheath and padded barefoot and silent to the spring.
Using a cooking bucket, she dipped up water and poured it over herself, always careful the runoff did not go back into the water but filtered through the soil. There was the courtesy of the waterhole to maintain. She couldn't pollute the only drinking water within a day's journey.
In the warm, thick air the drenching wasn't as refreshing as she hoped, but Challen still sighed for pure pleasure. She stood a long while, luxuriating in the decadent sensation of her hair dripping wet and heavy down her back and her clothes sticking to her skin without sweat salt.
If only she could sit with her clothes nearly sheer with water and wait until they dried. But that would encourage those idiot soldiers. No, it was time to head back to her tent.
A thread of ice ran down her back. Challen turned to find the cooler air and follow it.
The chill air wove through the oasis like a snake's undulation through the sand. Challen frowned after the sixth crooked step and the chill crept through her middle instead of simply raising goosebumps on her flesh.
This did not make sense.
"Uncle?” Challen yanked aside the door curtain of the tent Commander Asqual and her father shared. “Father? Something is wrong.” Quickly, she told them of the chill breeze that did not follow a straight path, unaffected by trees or other obstacles.
Shazzur was on his feet and outside, hands outstretched and eyes half-closed before Challen had finished. He pointed from the midpoint of the oasis, straight north. A jagged lump sitting on the horizon was the shattered feet of the mountains. He intoned a prayer and held out his hands. Challen gripped his hand and immediately the glare of sun on sand changed hue. Distant features appeared clear in gray, black, and poison green.
"There!” She pointed with her free hand and turned to see Asqual had done the same.
The dark line on the horizon wavered and broke into black dots and those dots grew larger with every heartbeat. Something moved toward the oasis in the considerable heat of the afternoon; moving with unnatural speed.
Commander Asqual shouted orders. He strode off across the oasis as his men leaped from their watch posts or shelters and fell into battle readiness.
"Father?"
"The enemy is desperate to have us, my dear.” Shazzur caught her elbow in his hand and directed her back toward her tent. “The timing is bad for them, but good for us.” He looked her over with a crooked smile. “You had better change your clothes. Something you won't mind staining with blood and ointments,” he added before Challen could blush. “Thank the Mother you have Naya's healing gift in full portion."
The hard part was the waiting. Despite the speed of the enemy bearing down on them, it was nearly twenty minutes before those waiting in the oasis heard the thud of feet on hot sand, the jingle of harnesses, the scream of the rising wind across spear points and arrowheads and sharp-crested helmets.
The soldiers moved with dream-like quiet efficiency and speed. They collapsed the tents, herded the animals into the middle of the oasis and wove a makeshift pen of ropes among the trees. Challen and Shazzur fed the cook
ing fire and spread out the contents of the healer's chest. Challen took three knives and two spears from the stock of weapons. She could defend herself and her father, and she would. As she prepared, she sent up a prayer that her skills would meet the challenge.
The rumble of the oncoming attackers burst on them, like a glass bubble of perfume shattering, spreading sound and a poisonous chill across the oasis. Challen held her breath, crouched next to her father, fearing the air had turned deadly.
"They use magic to disguise their presence,” Shazzur murmured. “Comforting to know it takes little to disperse it."
"We were warned."
"Yes. We were.” He cast a measuring glance at her and smiled. “Your gifts emerge as they are needed."
Challen bit her lip against her usual complaint that not knowing was the worst part. As her father constantly told her, she had to trust Mother Matrika to know best.
A hoarse shout rolled across the oasis. Not human or any animal Challen could imagine. She gagged as a noxious stink filled the air. It smelled like a wound gone gangrenous, wrapped up in filthy bandages in scorching heat. A drover had been injured and neglected his wound until he was too ill to move, when Challen was ten. He had lost his leg, and she would never forget the stink that made her empty her stomach.
"So it begins,” Asqual said, joining them. He wore a silver browband just visible under his helmet; studded with turquoise, emeralds, and sapphires sacred to Mother Matrika. “They do not outnumber us, and that worries me.” He held out a hand and Shazzur sprang to his feet to clasp it.
Challen stayed silent. She knew the band let him see through his soldiers’ eyes and speak guidance to their minds. The nineteen young men ranged around the oasis formed a living fence with their bodies and swords, shields, spears, and arrows.
The enemy did not outnumber the Host of the Ram, so how many were there?
Another unnatural scream slashed the air. The sound of clashing metal shrieked along her nerves. A dull thud resounded as bodies met with speed and force.
If the enemy did not depend on numbers for victory, they depended on dark powers. Commander Asqual needed Shazzur's extra strength to guide his soldiers. Challen paused only a moment to consider, then clasped her father's free hand.
Well done, my dear, Shazzur thought to her. Float, as I taught you. Listen and watch, but do not even think.
She fought not to even nod acknowledgement of his order. Challen was in the link to give strength, and nothing else.
Through one soldier's eyes, she saw a black, undulating cloud with armored arms and legs, flashing two swords. He thought of his crippled musician father before leaping forward and swinging at the place where the head belonged.
Another soldier lunged into the saddle of a creature with a horse's head, snake's fangs, six legs with claws like an eagle's, and a tail with a scorpion's sting. The soldier hung on with his legs and stabbed long knives into the neck and belly and head with both hands, while the monstrosity shrieked and reared and stumbled across the churned sand. Blood geysered greenish-black and glistening in the unrelenting sun.
The blond soldier who had licked his lips thrust his spear into a man twice his height and as the giant staggered, fumbling at the shaft in his chest, drew his sword and hewed at his legs. The sword rang against leg scales like a bronze axe on stone. The blade spat sparks and snapped with an ear-piercing shriek. The giant plucked the spear from his chest, dripping orange blood, and flung it at the soldier.
He ducked, but the steaming spearhead scored his arm, sending fire through his body. He went down as paralysis ate at his limbs.
To him! Asqual commanded, and instantly three soldiers leaped to shield their comrade.
Challen drew back from the link when the images came in multiples. She clung to her father's hand as the oasis spun around her; as if she stood in the tower room and twirled on her toes, seeing through all the windows at once.
"Enough, child,” Shazzur whispered, and released her hand. Challen staggered backwards, a protest creaking from her lips. “We have won. It is time to heal."
The blond soldier was the only one seriously injured, poisoned by the enemy's blood. The others were bruised, their armor dented, their bodies caked with dust turned to mud by their sweat. They smiled grimly as they gathered up the fragments left behind by their fleeing enemies and made a pile at the eastern edge of the oasis.
Challen moved in a daze, carrying hot water to wash scrapes, mixing potions, dipping out energizing brews for the soldiers to drink and cleanse their blood. After giving so much in the link with Commander Asqual and Shazzur, her father refused to let her touch-heal, and she was grateful. She tried not to think, leaving that for the long nighttime ride.
The soldiers all washed vigorously. Their lives depended on cleansing themselves of any poison left by their enemies. They passed the metal pieces of armor through the cleansing fire Shazzur built outside the oasis. They scrubbed the leather and cloth pieces with a dry mixture of holy herbs.
There were only four enemy monster warriors and their unnatural mounts. Four, against twenty from the Host of the Ram. Why so few? Challen thought about the magic that had enfolded the approaching enemy, keeping them silent and unseen. They had come in the heat of the day, when travelers would be muddle-headed if not asleep.
"They were too arrogant,” she said in a voice full of pottery shards.
"Hmm. Yes.” Shazzur tipped a healing brew down the throat of the blond soldier, who had regained control of his limbs, but shivered too much to hold a cup. “They will not be so again."
"Father, they were after you. They know you can help the King and return the Three."
"I hope so.” He stood and held out the empty cup to her. When she reached to take it, he stopped her with a hand cupping her cheek. “When they strike at you, then I may falter."
"But I am useless.” She almost laughed. “I am your student, an extra pair of hands and eyes and ears. Nothing more."
"Pray our enemy believes so. It will keep you alive and invisible.” Her father smiled, caressed her cheek with his rough thumb, then yanked her tangled, unbound hair. “Come, it is time to leave."
Challen swallowed a groan of pure frustration. Her father talked in riddles. What irked her was the sense she should understand him, and he spoke to confuse strangers.
She turned as a crackling sound filled the air, and saw a fire leap from the center of the enemy's leavings. The aftertaste of rot in the air began to dissipate. Challen welcomed the heat, feeling the cleansing in it. Strange, how brightly the flames leaped, casting a pure white light outlined by black shadows as the fragments of cloth and broken spears and even sand tainted with poisonous blood went up in flames.
A chill ran down her back as the events of the afternoon galloped through her memory.
"Father?” She dropped the cup. “They had no shadows!"
"Hmm?” Shazzur's quizzical frown was almost comical.
He pressed his fingertips to his temples and she knew he cast back in his memory to the battle they had witnessed through the soldiers’ eyes. After a few heartbeats, he stiffened and nodded. Something in his measuring gaze made her uncomfortable, as if she had changed the color of her hair or skin.
"You are right. I could not see it except through your eyes in the link of our minds. How strange that such a clear sign evades me. Well, once I am able to confer with Cho'Mat again, we will find a way to see more clearly. In the meantime, we must rely on you as our watchguard.” He nodded sharply and smiled. “The Mother does have an ironic sense of humor, does she not?"
* * * *
"Mother, you sent for me?” Elzan nodded to Jushta as the eunuch closed the door to his mother's suite of rooms. He grinned at the aromas of pheasant stuffed with peaches and the tang of bogberries in heavy sweetbread. His mouth watered as he crossed the reception chamber and opened the door into the room where Lady Mayar entertained guests at meals. “Mother?"
"She'll return in a moment.” Kin
g Nebazz stood from the long bench covered with cushions between the table and the wall.
"Majesty."
Elzan felt that jolt he had always hated since he was young and realized he was different from other boys. He could not run to his father to share adventures and secrets or ask advice; he could not address him as Father, or hear his familiar name spoken except in rare, private moments, for the King was always the king and could not show favoritism even to the lone child of his favorite concubine.
That jolt, Elzan had learned long ago, was part regret, part resentment, part aching confusion over his beloved mother's uncertain status.
"Welcome, Doni'Mayar.” He crossed to the table where jugs of wine and trays of delicacies waited to tempt the appetite.
"May I serve you, Majesty?” Elzan looked but saw no one else in the room; not even a lone bodyguard or scribe. A faint evening breeze shifted the sheer green curtains covering the open windows that filled one long wall.
"We are both your mother's guests tonight.” He smiled and shook his head and hefted a pale green jug of the watered wine Mayar preferred. Bits of berries and lemons countered the tang of the wine with sweet perfume.
Elzan waited until the King had filled his goblet before he served himself. He took a half serving of new wine, barely allowed to ferment, and added water scented with apple blossoms. Never in his life could he remember a private meal shared with his mother and the King. He knew better than to believe this was some last-gasp effort at familial closeness. He knew better than to hope the King would tell him he was to be named Crown Prince.
"Majesty, does this have to do with the return of the Seer, Doni'Hobad—” he began.
"Yes, this has much to do with my faithful Shazzur's return.” The King sipped at his wine and studied Elzan, who remained standing with half the length of the room between them.
"Don't look so stunned, my hawk,” Lady Mayar said, coming into the room.
Elzan had no idea how he could be more stunned. His mother carried a tray with their first course of the dinner—bowls of cold fruit stew and long fingers of dark, bitter bread. Why would his mother serve them, unless there were no servants present? This evening, he suspected, was to be far more momentous than a rare family meal together.
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