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After dark, the ishell felt very different from the spacious, welcoming place Alyea had seen earlier in the day. Globes of oil similar to those in the passageways had been set on the floor near the walls at measured intervals, but gave off such dim light that most of the room lay in shadow.

Women in white robes, with hoods drawn forward to hide their faces, occupied every bench: sitting cross-legged and facing each other as Alyea and the ishrait had done earlier in the day. The pool looked like a black pit now, and not at all welcoming. Alyea couldn't tell where the stone ended and the water began. She stood in the doorway to the ishell, uncertain and unreasonably terrified, and waited for someone to tell her what to do.

A hand touched her shoulder from behind. Alyea stopped a frightened squeak just before it emerged from her mouth and turned to meet the dark gaze of the ishrait. In the eerie light of the room, the woman's face seemed a thing of stark and cold angles. The power she had resonated earlier in the day had shifted into something much broader and deeper, a thing of deep roots and old knowledge.

Alyea slipped out of the light robe; the woman reached out and took it from her.
“Stand at the edge of the pool.”
Alyea felt her way across the floor, wary of stubbing her toes. Past the benches, she moved even more cautiously, testing for the edge of the water with each step. At last a slight slickness and a dip in the floor warned her she'd come close; she stopped, turning to face the ishrait.
“There is a mat a step to your left,” the ishrait said. “Sit down, facing me.”
Alyea obeyed. The mat felt like a smoothly-woven blanket folded on itself to create thickness. She drew her legs up and tried to tuck her feet under herself; the room had become surprisingly cold.
“The sisters of Ishrai form a community in which the opinions of all are valued,” the ishrait said. “Therefore, the first part of the test is a series of questions, one from each sister of Ishrai gathered here. You must answer to their complete satisfaction to continue. You may take as long as you like to think about the questions, but you must answer fully and honestly. Do you accept these terms?”
Alyea swallowed. “Yes.”
The ishrait's voice became deeper and more formal. “Sisters, before us is a supplicant for the blood trial of Ishrai. I have granted her petition.
Taishell te s'a-naila
; the blood trial begins. She is open to you now. Ask her what you wish.”
A voice came from somewhere in front of her. “Supplicant, you have no name, no titles, no status in this place of Ishrai. Does that change your purpose?”
Alyea considered the question carefully. If she truly had no name, if all her titles and privileges were stripped from her, would that stop her? Would she be free to abandon Gria and Sela, and stop worrying about them and the job laid upon her by the king?
“No,” she said at last. “I will continue regardless.”
Another voice echoed through the chamber. “Supplicant, do you act for yourself or for others?”
Alyea began to answer, then stopped, frowning into the darkness around her. She had to pass the blood trials because she'd been charged with holding Scratha Fortress by the king; and she wanted to do that not for his sake, but for her own. He'd handed her a powerful position: hadn't her first thought been that she would outrank Pieas? She'd agreed to the position for her own purposes. Still, she felt genuine concern and thought for others had been involved in her decisions. She considered another moment, and finally said, “Both.”
“Do you always think of others in your decisions?”
“No,” she said. She'd expected something similar, and had an answer ready. “I have been selfish much of my life. I see that, and regret it, and wish to change that behavior.”
“Define selfish.”
Alyea bit her lip. “It's thinking first of yourself, to the harm of others,” she said, trying to keep from sounding uncertain.
“Who have you harmed, and how?”
She stared from darkness into the steady ring of light at the edges of the room, and didn't know what to say. The silence seemed to stretch forever. “I should have listened to my elders,” she said, unable to come up with anything more coherent.
The question was repeated in an eerie flat tone that echoed through the room. “Who have you harmed, and how?”
. . .how . . . how . . . hhhhwwww . . . ohh. . . .
The whispering echoes faded away to silence.
Alyea shut her eyes, feeling suddenly ill. One chance gone; only two more left, if this went by the rules the ishrait had explained earlier. A memory rose in her mind: Ethu's fixed grimace as the whips descended again and again.
“I caused the death of a good man,” she whispered. Tears spilled down her cheeks. “By not being willing to stand up for my truth, I allowed a man with more courage than I to die in my place.”
“Was his death truly your fault?”
She drew breath to insist it had been, but the words twisted in her mouth.
“No,” she heard herself say. Her voice came out hard and rough from deep in her throat. “
No
. It was them, the priests, not me. I wish I could kill them all!”
Alyea hadn't cried back then, hadn't cried during her own punishment, or afterwards; under constant watch, she hadn't dared display weakness. By the time that danger passed, grief had been pushed into a steely anger against the priests. But now that long-standing shield dissolved; tears came, unleashed with the force of a long-delayed wave. She bent over, locking her elbows around her knees, and found herself actually howling with anger and pain.
As if a ghost were in the room, she thought she heard Ethu's voice whispering
no tears
, but she couldn't seem to stop.
Her sobs were the only sound for a long time. When her breath slowed to occasional hitches, she sat back up, drawing an arm across her face. She looked around at the silent women and thought,
Well, I've failed this one for sure.
Another voice spoke, from her right this time. “What teaching do you follow?”
Still shaken by her emotional outburst, Alyea found words hard to assemble. “I . . . I don't have one,” she said. “I was taught to follow the northern s'iopes, but that was just to keep me alive.”
“Is your learning of our ways aimed only at keeping you alive?”
Alyea bit her lip. An edge to that question warned her she'd moved onto dangerous ground.
“There are people depending on me,” she said carefully. “I won't survive the trials if I don't learn your lessons, and I can't help anyone if I'm dead.” Prompted by a mad impulse, she added dryly: “Personally, as well, I'd rather stay alive.”
She saw no visible reaction to her attempt at humor. Even a flicker of a smile would have been tremendously reassuring; the constant, emotionless drone of the questions and the surrounding silence raised a cold sweat on the back of her neck.
“You are putting your own life at risk for the sake of another's orders. If you pass all the trials and become a desert lord, what then?”
Alyea started to say:
I'll do the task he sent me here to do.
She held the words, sensing a larger question. For the first time, she thought about the possibility of succeeding, of holding Scratha Fortress as an actual desert lord. What would she do?
Return to Bright Bay? Her new status would throw her entire family into disarray. No Peysimun had ever held rank as high as desert lord. They wouldn't know what to do with her. They'd be terrified.
Desert lords never stayed in Bright Bay for long. They wandered through and left again, ignoring the people scurrying out of their way. Sometimes they came to court gatherings; sometimes they just showed up for no apparent reason and left again a few days later. She wouldn't be welcome for very long; it would make people too nervous.
Dozens of small political alliances throughout the court would be disrupted by the fact that a minor family had abruptly acquired powerful connections. And what would Oruen do with her, a potentially dangerous new force in his court? He couldn't allow her to stay in Bright Bay unless she labored under a tight leash of his own making; and she knew she wouldn't stand for that. He likely knew that too, which led to unpleasant suspicions she didn't want to think about.
Stay in the desert? Where? Once Scratha returned and took possession of his fortress again, she'd have nowhere to go. It seemed doubtful that proud lord would allow her to stay, title or no title. In fact, Scratha would likely be furious at the move to make her a desert lord and place her in charge of Scratha Fortress. He might even call her out, to end in blood the possibility of another claimant for his place.
No matter which way she looked, death seemed to be waiting, and betrayal by everyone she'd ever trusted. She'd been an
idiot
to agree to Oruen's request. Why had he put her in this position? What
did
he want from her? She shut her eyes, nauseated.
“Gods only know,” she said, and meant it; she had no better answer to give the waiting silence. “I'll deal with that day when it comes.”
“Is this man who sent you here worth dying for?”
Alyea thought about when she'd first met Oruen. He'd been tall and gangly, thin and awkward, nothing to look twice at physically. He'd skirted the fringes of court life, only attending when it would have been suicidal to be seen absent.
He'd haunted the beaches of Bright Bay, stopping to pick up shells like any scruffy beachcomber, examining them carefully and setting them back down. Sometimes he threw them out into the ocean, hard, as far as they would go, or skipped flat rocks against the waves.
She'd watched him from hiding, drawn by some bitter intensity in his actions, and finally one day openly positioned herself where she knew he'd pass by on his daily ramblings. She'd been twelve at the time, he almost twice that. He'd walked by with barely a nod to her; she'd scrambled to her feet and taken up a place by his side.
He hadn't objected, hadn't said anything, and they had walked in silence for over an hour. She'd met him again the next day, and the next, and slowly they'd started to talk, far away and safe from the s'iopes and the horror of daily life.
She'd been sixteen when Oruen took her to bed, the one and only time. She always said
seduced
afterwards, but the reality was much more desperate, a day of unrivaled horror leading to a mutual need for comfort, which unfolded into the inevitable.
He'd never referred to it afterward, never approached her again; and after a few fumbling attempts of her own had been rebuffed kindly but unmistakably, she'd let the friendship resume with some distance to it. When Pieas cornered her one night, she hadn't told anyone. She'd pushed aside Oruen's questions about the bruises. She'd been afraid to bridge that distance, afraid of collapsing into his arms only for him to gently, quietly push her back with the same emotionless words he'd used before.
And now he'd gained the throne, and his return for all her help and her one-time warming of his bed had been a permanent apartment in the palace and the raising of her family back into favored status. She wasn't his concubine, nor one of his advisors. He called her a friend and allowed her to quietly visit him any time she felt the need to talk, and he still claimed to respect her judgment and observations. But she'd gained nothing significant for the risks she'd taken on his behalf. Not until he chose her, out of a court of highly qualified diplomats, to step into what she now saw as the most politically dangerous situation he'd faced in the six months he had been on the throne.
Why her? The question kept coming back. Why pick an inexperienced, relatively ignorant girl, and send her with an advisor reluctant to give out crucial information? Had he intended for her to fail? If so, if not . . . was Oruen worth dying for?
She breathed in through her nose, let the air out in a hard sigh. “Once upon a time, I would have said yes without question. He's a good man. Now . . . I don't know.”
“Is your purpose worth dying for?”
Opening her mouth to say
yes
, she found herself shocked at the words that came out instead: “
Nothing
is worth dying for. You can't help anyone or anything if you're dead.”
Wincing, Alyea shut her eyes, waiting. What she had said went against everything she had ever been taught, ever seen lived, ever believed before. But it felt like truth: a raw, harsh truth filled with anger at endless violence and pointless sacrifice. Too many men had marched to the palace to beg, to plead, to threaten and cajole for the return of their wives and families; their reward had been a chance to entertain Ninnic before their own deaths. Too many women had thrown themselves in front of their children, trying to protect them, only to be killed and the children taken anyway.
Honorable self-sacrifice be damned to the s'iopes' hells; it never achieved anything.
The ishrait finally spoke. “Stand.”
Alyea rose slowly, massaging cramps out of her legs; the cold of the stone seemed to have seeped through the blanket and into her joints. The women on the benches were turning, facing her now, their faces still shadowed beneath their deep hoods.
“The test of Comos is the test of the ego,” the ishrait said, her rich voice rolling through the room. “It asks you to set aside your own fear, your own needs, for the sake of those you protect. The test of Ishrai is the test of life. It asks you to weigh the value of living. A desert lord's life is a sacred trust and must be treated with the greatest respect. A desert lord's death weakens the entire world. The desert is harsh, and life is not fair; a reckless leader would quickly be killed and leave his people unprotected. That is why a full desert lord must have the approval of Ishrai.”
Alyea swallowed, daring to hope that she'd pulled it off after all.
“You have passed this part of the test of Ishrai,” the woman said. “
Taishell te s'a-lalien
; sisters, the supplicant is closed to you now. You may go.”
The women stood in a ragged wave, bowed deeply in Alyea's direction, and filed silently out of the room. The clicking of the bead curtain swaying back into place went on for quite some time as the ishrait moved around the room, extinguishing oil lamps until only one remained lit. She picked it up and came to stand in front of Alyea. In the tiny island of light surrounding them, the woman's face seemed drawn and worried.
“Now comes the hard part, Alyea,” she said. “Sit back down, please.”
The tall woman sat down on the floor in front of Alyea, seeming not to mind the cold stone; set the oil lamp between them and shut her eyes. She looked as if she were gathering strength for a supremely difficult task.
“Women do not usually become desert lords,” the ishrait said. “Let me assure you it has nothing to do with gender bias. There's a very harsh reality involved. I know that Juric told you he believed you could do this; I wish I could agree. If you had the full year to study with us, I believe you might pass, but this. . . .”
She blew out air through her nose in a hard sigh of her own, seeming frustrated, and directed another worried glance at the dark pool.
“Alyea, I'll be honest. I hoped you would fail the questioning. That would have been safer for all of us.”
Alyea felt the chill of the stone reaching up her spine.
“I'm committed now,” she said, hearing a brittle edge in her own voice. “Stop trying to scare me out of it.”
The ishrait smiled, a brief flash of pale teeth in a shadow-lined face. “All right. Let me tell you a story, then. Be silent, and listen.” She leaned forward, extinguished the last lamp, and began to speak, a disembodied voice in complete darkness: