Changer of Days (13 page)

The hesitation was all Anghara needed. She urged her camel forward with a glad cry, seemingly completely unaware of the hundred-foot sheer drop separating her from her beloved desert. Kieran shouted an incoherent wanting and leapt from his saddle; he landed with all his weight on one ankle and felt it buckle as he rolled with the fall, staggering to his feet with a grimace of pain to throw himself after her camel’s dangling rein.

The space before the edge of the plateau was narrow; ordinarily, Kieran would have stood no chance. It was something superhuman that drove him, a sense of outrage.
Was it for this that we struggled and suffered through these wretched mountain passes?
But even that would hardly have been enough. As his fingers closed hard on the rein he was aware that something else had halted the beast, moments before he had reached it. And, gazing with a shiver down the precipice into which Anghara would have tumbled, he could see what it had been.

Or, rather, who.

At this distance the figure was tiny, but there was no mistaking the bronze gleam of the skin, the bright copper hair revealed by a thrown-back cowl…burnouse, Anghara had called them. The stray fact swam into Kieran’s mind as he stood transfixed and staring down at the Khelsie who had, somehow, stopped Anghara from hurling herself into oblivion in her joy at seeing the red desert again.

The distance separating them was too great for any communication Kieran understood, but still he received the clear impression that a path to the right of the plateau would lead him to the desert…and that his unexpected ally would wait below while Kieran and Anghara descended. Kieran glanced at Anghara, who sat very still on her quivering animal—he couldn’t tell if she had felt anything, but she didn’t react at all when he softly called her name. Some force had certainly touched the camel; the animal stood in uncharacteristic silence, showing the whites of its eyes. At last Kieran fastened the rein of his animal to the back of Anghara’s saddle, took her own beast’s reins, and began leading the small cavalcade down the desert path on foot.

It was a hot and uncomfortable journey, made in silence—here, about to come face to face with something he didn’t know and still mistrusted, Kieran was alone. But he set his jaw in a determined line, his blue eyes hard. This was what they had come for. There was never any guarantee Anghara would reach this place—she had come for help, and, glancing back at her rigid figure and wide, staring eyes, it was more obvious than ever that she needed any help these people could give her.

The desert met them slowly, subtly, drifts of red sand piling up against the mountain buttresses. At the bottom the path began to twist and meander, doubling back on itself, at least once leading Kieran into a blind alley out of which, backed as he was by three camels, he had the greatest difficulty in extricating himself. Seriously considering the possibility that now, here, at the end of the line, he could become completely lost in the maze into which the path had unexpectedly turned, Kieran stopped for a breather and to take his bearings. He could smell the desert, a sharper, hotter scent in the air brought to him by the occasional gust of a warm breeze, but it was hidden from him by what seemed to be a continuous wall of rock. Did the Khelsie lure him here for a slow death? Kieran cursed under his breath, rubbing his sleeve against a forehead damp with sweat. When he looked up again, it was with a start that he saw the Khelsie’s slight figure standing before him, as though Kieran had conjured him up with the ignoble thought. His hand jerked instinctively toward his blade, and the other put up both of his own, palms toward Kieran.

“Peace! I am unarmed.”

He had spoken in Roisinani; accented and colored by the Shaymir dialect, but it had unmistakably been Kieran’s own language. Kieran dropped his hand, torn between feelings of resentment toward this creature speaking his tongue and immense relief. With Anghara incapacitated, the problem of communicating with anyone they met in this alien desert had loomed large in his mind.

“I am al’Tamar ma’Hariff,” the man continued. “In this country, she whom you accompany is of my family and my clan. Although…she looks little like the Anghara Kir Hama who accepted the name of Hariff…” He had glanced at Anghara while he spoke, but she was still wrapped in her silence and solitude. The man’s golden eyes came back to Kieran’s face. They were deeply concerned. “Something is wrong,” he said, very quietly. “Something is deeply wrong.”

Kieran swallowed. “She is…ill. I don’t understand what the matter is…I don’t have Sight. But she was captured by Sif Kir Hama, who rules in Roisinan, and something done to her in captivity has affected her mind…her Sight. She believes somebody here in Kheldrin can help her.”

“What happened?” al’Tamar asked. He took a step closer, and suddenly swayed.
“Hai!”
he whispered, closing his eyes. “Was it she that called al’Khur to ride at her back?”

Kieran felt his hackles rise. “She did. She doesn’t know how well she succeeded, though. She can’t sense them.”

Again the piercing golden gaze. “And you could.” It was not a question; it was a statement of certain knowledge. The eyes, however, were troubled. “And yet you are right, you do not carry what they call Sight in Sheriha’drin. How, then, is it possible that you can sense the presence of the God when an
an’sen’thar
cannot?”

“Can you help her?” Kieran asked, steadying himself against the neck of the nearest camel against a wave of sudden and absolute fatigue, as al’Tamar watched him intently.

“He is gone,” al Tamar said unexpectedly, “back into the desert from which he had been summoned. It was al’Khur’s strength that sustained you. You felt him go?”

Kieran, whose head was spinning with exhaustion and strain, could only nod soundlessly.

“No,” al’Tamar said, in answer to an earlier question, “I cannot help her. But she was right—there are those who may be able to. Her old teacher—ai’Jihaar—has a tent in a hai’r south of here. That is where I think we should take her. Can you ride?”

“Yes,” Kieran said through clenched teeth.

“I have one or two spare burnouses back on my ki’thar,” al’Tamar said, tugging out a piece of material tucked into his waistband, “but until we get there, use this. She can have mine.”

“What about you?” Kieran asked, accepting the strip of cloth automatically.

“I was born here,” said the other. “And it is not far.” With a soft word he made Anghara’s camel kneel, and came up to wrap the desert veil about the girl’s head and face with deft fingers. Kieran stared at the bronze hands, so gentle, so loving; a profound, powerful reeling stirred somewhere in the depths of him at the sight, something that should have been familiar, easily identifiable, if only he wasn’t so desperately tired…

When he had finished, al’Tamar stepped back—and then looked Kieran’s way, aware of his scrutiny. There was an odd expression on his face. Bare now of its cowl, he looked strangely young and vulnerable underneath copper hair drawn back from his high forehead. The two pairs of eyes, blue and gold, locked together for a long moment across the bowed and hooded head of the girl between them. And then al’Tamar dropped his gaze. “Are you…her
qu’mar
?” he asked softly.

Kieran, about to answer that he didn’t know what that meant, caught himself—he did. Of course he did. Even if the word was unfamiliar, the tone in which the question was asked left no room for doubt—al’Tamar wanted to know if he was Anghara’s husband, her mate, and Kieran was stunned at the strength of a sudden, desperate wish to be able to say yes.

Just when had his protective love for a young and vulnerable little foster sister turned into the passion of a man for a woman? Kieran couldn’t say. All he knew was that in the space of an instant he was gazing at Anghara with different eyes, suddenly able to understand with blinding clarity exactly why he had never been able to stop searching for her. Why he had been desperate enough to snatch her from Miranei to gamble the lives of men who trusted him; why, on this last journey, he had suffered when he had seen her pain. And why, lacking Sight, he had been able to sense the Gods she had called. Something tied them together, something with roots deep in the past—even Feor had known, choosing Kieran to seek Anghara when she vanished during the dark years of Sif’s purges—but it had flowered only now, and Kieran was suddenly struck by the power and beauty of the flower.

And knew he might have realized everything too late.

“No,” he said in answer to al’Tamar’s question. His voice was very soft, but raw with so many things that al’Tamar flinched. After a beat of silence he clucked at Anghara’s camel, which rose with a creaky complaint.

“You ride the other,” he said to Kieran, his level voice giving no indication of what had been revealed.

“And you?”

“I will lead, to my ki’thar. We can rest in my camp; I have lais tea, and at least she will sleep. Tomorrow, we go to ai’Jihaar—she will know what to do.”

It would have been false heroics to insist on walking—Kieran’s ankle throbbed savagely, but even if he had been fit he knew he could not measure himself in these deserts with one who had walked them since childhood. He wearily mounted his camel, head drooping, and surrendered the rein to al’Tamar, who paused briefly at the camel’s head, gathering the reins in his hand—as though waiting for something.

And that, too, Kieran felt without the need for words, as though the thought had been inserted in his mind. He straightened for a moment, groping for dignity. “I don’t think I returned the courtesy of introducing myself,” he said. “I am Kieran Cullen of Shaymir.”

“I might have known,” al’Tamar said, nodding to himself, a slight movement, almost imperceptible. “She often spoke of you.”

“I think…I remember your name, from when she spoke of Kheldrin on this journey,” Kieran said.

“She is my friend,” al’Tamar said, “and I honor her for the things she has done. It grieves me to see her like this. Tell me…how did it happen that she fell into her brother’s hands so soon after she left us?”

“Bad luck,” Kieran said, “and bad timing.”

“Then I do not understand why ai’Dhya would have stopped us coming this way. Surely if trouble lay ahead for her in your harbor city…”

“The Goddess?” Kieran was slower than usual, blunted by his fatigue. “What has ai’Dhya to do with this?”

“Anghara and I came this way when she set out for her country. We wanted to find a way through the mountains and save her the long journey south—and ai’Dhya sent storms to head us off. Anghara said the Goddess told her there was nothing but useless death waiting for her on this path. But if the south was just as dangerous…”

“But someone was there to see,” Kieran said slowly, fighting to understand. “To see, and to know she had been taken. And Sif was away from Miranei. Her life was bought by circumstances. Taken in Shaymir, under Sif’s hand, she would have died and nobody would have been any the wiser. This way there were friends ready to try anything to save her…who knew she was immured in Miranei…”

“The oracle,” murmured al’Tamar.

Kieran raised an unsteady hand to rub his eyes. “What oracle?”

“I remember to this day what Gul Khaima told her on the morning she raised the Stone,” al’Tamar said. “
A friend and a foe await at return.
So it proved.
Hai!
The Gods are great!”

They lapsed into silence, gaining al’Tamar’s camp half an hour later, where his ki’thar stood tethered in the shadow of an outcrop of red rock. Kieran found he wasn’t too tired to help Anghara from her camel, and to carry her into the small black tent al’Tamar had pitched. But once he had laid her gently on the nest of blankets and tried to straighten up, the world twisted into a sudden whirlpool of heat and color; he swayed, and sank beside her on the red sand.

He didn’t know how long he slept, but when he woke it was dark and cool, and a light coverlet had been spread over him. Anghara was still where he had laid her, her breathing deep and even with sleep, a long strand of red-gold hair curled across her cheek and under her chin. Kieran stared at it for a long moment, as if hypnotized; his fingers, of their own volition, reached to smooth away the errant curl.

A sound at the tent flap made him snatch his hand back as though her bright hair had burned him. Turning, he saw al’Tamar silhouetted against what looked like firelight.

“I thought I heard you rouse,” al’Tamar said equably. “Would you like something to eat?” He intercepted Kieran’s instinctive glance back at Anghara, and Kieran could see a sudden flash of teeth as the young Kheldrini man smiled in the half-light. “She will not wake soon,” he said. “That is good; she needs to heal, and sleep heals better than anything. You…the God has ridden you hard. Come, eat.”

Kieran obeyed, flinging back the coverlet and emerging from the low tent in a half-crouch. The stars were bright and low, almost close enough to touch; for a moment he allowed himself to stand and simply gaze at them, enchanted by this vivid night sky. After a while he sensed al’Tamar coming to stand beside him.

“You said you came from Shaymir,” al’Tamar said. “Do they not have stars in your desert?” It was a laconic question, full of an odd humor. Kieran realized his feelings must have been written plainly on his face.

“I have not been in Shaymir—the true desert—since I was a child,” he said, tearing his eyes from the sparkling sky with an effort, aware of a strange feeling of kinship for this young man. “In Roisinan, unless you are high up on a mountain top or, sometimes, upon the seashore…the stars are higher, further away. The only thing you can touch is their reflection in the water.”

Kieran saw a curious yearning pass briefly through al’Tamar’s eyes before he cast them down to the red sand at his feet. “You delight in our sky,” he said. “And I…I would give much to touch the reflection of a star in the water.”

It was a moment of deep sharing—but then it was gone, and al’Tamar gestured toward the fire. “Supper,” he said. “Come.”

Kieran followed obediently, and sat cross-legged beside the fire. And then, as his host bent to retrieve the flat unleavened bread he’d left to bake in the embers, something slipped from inside his robe and hung swaying over the fire. A
say’yin,
much like the ones Anghara had worn. But this one was massive, heavy amber globes interspersed with solid silver spheres etched with spiral patterns. And at the end of it…