The Hidden Queen (29 page)

Anghara had been drilled in the ceremonial procedures. Together with the other three candidates, still cowled, still silent, she moved away to the right of the altar while the two
an’sen’en’thari
went up to the carved plinth, bowed and touched their foreheads to the red stone.

“We bring you life, al’Zaan, Sa’id-ma’sihai; al’Khur; ai’Lan; ai’Dhya. We bring you life,” said ai’Farra, her voice ringing with authority as the lady of this tower.

She and ai’Jihaar both unsheathed the thin daggers they wore about their waist, the same which Anghara had once seen ai’Jihaar use to draw her own blood in absence of other sacrifice, and laid them upon the altar. Then ai’Farra nodded to the doorkeeper, and the gray unlocked the door of the stone cube and plunged into the shadowed darkness inside, to emerge almost immediately with a white ki’thar lamb. Its legs were hobbled about the knees; it let out one pitiful bleat as it was carried out, a pathetic parody of the endless complaining grunts its elders never ceased uttering, and was then miraculously silent as it was lifted and laid on its side upon the altar. The gray
sen’thar
took her black-handled knife and offered it to ai’Farra, hilt first. The
an’sen’thar
took it, and lifted it so that its wickedly sharp edge glinted in the sun.

“We call your eyes down upon us, your blessing upon our works; we bring you life!”

Anghara made herself watch as the knife plunged downward, a clean slash across the lamb’s jugular; only now did she notice the blood pooling into a shallow bowl scooped into the one end of the altar. The god-presence, the same one she once felt in a desert hai’r was back, surrounding her, as though all the Kheldrin Gods were reaching for her soul—and yet her eyes were full of unbidden tears.

There was a God’s hand in these sacrifices, because no matter how the blood leapt from the cut the sacrificing priestess remained pristine, with not a mark on her. Once again ai’Farra nodded to the gray, and she came to the altar bearing a scarlet silk shroud which she cast over the lamb. Wrapping it around the small corpse she lifted it very gently, as if it were a sleeping child, and, bowing to both priestesses, bore it away, back into the cube.

The two young white circle initiates now stepped forward, with their own invocations—an oath to their Gods, and the gray
sen’thar,
the cube guardian, produced two young chicks whose blood was to seal it. One of the young priestesses performed the feat flawlessly, as ai’Farra had done, effortlessly avoiding the spurting blood; the other, who from her size and build was really little more than a child, was not so lucky. When her dagger was withdrawn, it was seen that the edge of her sleeve was bespattered with three scarlet drops. A swift sigh like a sudden wind ran along the silent ranks of the assembled
sen’en’thari.

Her face set in an expression that was both sorrow and cold anger at once, ai’Farra stepped forward and took the dagger; from the hunch of the young one’s shoulders, it looked as though she was crying quietly.

“You are not yet ready,” ai’Farra said. “Return to the novice chambers. You will not serve the Gods again until you are a year older than this day.”

The girl withdrew through the stone doorway; gathering what scraps of dignity she could, she walked while in the sight of her sisters, but Anghara could hear the swift patter of her feet as she broke into a run as soon as she stepped onto the landing. The disaster was swift, the tragedy ruthless, and Anghara was left breathless. The other white, now proved into her circle, stood with her mouth open and her fingers clenched tightly around her dagger. Gently ai’Farra pried her hand open and removed her sacrificial blade, leaning forward to give her a ceremonial kiss on the brow.

“Welcome, sister,” she said. “Go, take your place.”

The white gathered her wits, and, bowing, withdrew into the waiting ranks which opened to receive her.

The gray now stepped forward, with her own oath, and was presented with her sacrificial beast by her sister at the cube door. Anghara could sense her aura—blue and cold, effortless, ruthless. No blood touched this one. The sacrifice was perfect, and yet…Anghara felt the Gods turning from this servant just consecrated to them. She had power, unleavened by pity. She was proud, but she would never gain the gold. The Gods would not let her.

And then it was her turn.

It was ai’Jihaar who called her up to the altar, her teacher and guide.

Courage, child,
she said beneath the ritual words.
Remember, you have healed, you have raised from the dead…

But not killed,
Anghara returned as she stepped up to the bloody altar.
Not willingly. Not willingly, ever. Not for death, ai’Jihaar, remember? Not for death.

Suddenly ai’Jihaar woke to an odd note of determination in Anghara’s voice.
Bow to tradition, at least here! Anghara, what are you thinking?

The animal keeper had made her foray into the animal house, and emerged with a bird. Its back and wings were burnished gold, its breast soft white, its feet coral like the Kadun sand. Silkseeker. One of the most precious living things in Kheldrin, leading men to lairs where wild jin’aaz spiders endlessly spun their soft, strong silk. Wild silkseekers had long, thin beaks with which they dug the spiders’ silk-cocooned larvae from their lairs; tame birds had their beaks docked, so they could find the spiders but not reach them to feed. Tame ones were sometimes offered to the temple, usually when they were wounded, crippled or old. But the one which was handed to Anghara had the terrified eyes and the long beak of a wild silkseeker. This was no sacrificial animal.

Anghara heard ai’Jihaar, who suddenly seemed to have picked up the threads of some malevolent plan from ai’Farra’s mind, draw in her breath sharply; looking up, she saw the tense, expectant expression on ai’Farra’s face. Her own jaw set.

Holding the bird very gently, Anghara lifted her arm and bared it to her elbow; with her free hand she picked up ai’Jihaar’s own slim sacrificial dagger.

“This is not the Gods’ blood,” she said, her voice low but carrying. “This is captive sacrifice. I give blood to the Gods, but if they wish to take this bird it is for them to call its hour, not I.”

With a swift, sure motion she drew the dagger up along her forearm from the elbow toward the wrist in a long, shallow cut. The blood welled out even as she opened her hand and threw the bird up into the hot, high sky. The assembled
sen’en’thari
gasped, and then the sound rose into a murmur, into a cry. Above their heads the small bird had vanished into the blue but high above it, where nothing had been a moment before, they could suddenly see the massive open wings of a circling desert vulture, and the God-presence thickened around them on the roof. One white
sen’thar
—Anghara thought it might be the one newly initiated that morning—collapsed into a dead faint at her sisters’ feet; ai’Farra’s face was cold and set.

The door-warder gray came hurrying up with another scarlet cloth, and Anghara took it and laid it on her arm. When she took it away, there was no sign of a scratch or a scar on the white skin; there was no blood on her golden robe.

While ai’Jihaar could not see these things, she felt the power Anghara had drawn down.

“The sacrifice has been accepted,” she said, stepping around the altar to Anghara, who suddenly felt drained, weak. With her own hands ai’Jihaar bound a narrow scabbard on Anghara’s belt, and slid her own dagger into it.

But this is…

Mine no longer. Do you think I could have done with it what you did?
“Welcome, sister,” she said. “Come, take your place.”

In stony silence ai’Farra came to stand on her other side—a new gold had been called to serve. But her face was closed.

“She broke tradition, ai’Jihaar,” was all ai’Farra said as the three of them walked from that place side by side.

But ai’Jihaar did not even turn her head, and her voice, if anything, was even more implacable than ai’Farra’s own. “And you set a trap in a holy ceremony, ai’Farra; you mocked the Gods themselves today. She broke tradition?” ai’Jihaar paused, a pause which lasted less than a heartbeat and an eternity all at once. “So did you, my sister. So did you.”

C
learly ai’Jihaar had been right in her prediction of the night before—the Great Hall of Al’haria was packed to the rafters as Anghara entered. Perhaps for the last time she walked at ai’Jihaar’s heels, much as ai’Farra’s new gray and the surviving white trailed their own
an’sen’thar
sponsor into the hall. The cowl of her robe was still raised over her hair.

Al’haria was a city of scholars, where the Records were kept, where the biggest
sen’thar
tower and the oldest temple were. It was also a city of artisans and craftsmen, a center for the production of artifacts and jewellery, both secular and sacred, from sea-amber gathered on Kadun Khajir’i’id’s coastline and silver from the northern mines. It was easy to tell the two castes apart in the Great Hall that morning, even closing one’s eyes. The bulk of the
sen’en’thari,
fresh from the roof of the temple, had come into the hall well in advance of their two
an’sen’en’thari
to take up their positions in the
sen’thar
galleries. They fixed their attention as one on the slight girl who walked behind
an’sen’thar
ai’Jihaar, making Anghara the center of a widening circle of spreading silence. The rest, those Al’hariani who came here to work with their hands, had their attention fixed on much the same spot, but for different reasons. From the stories that had filtered down to them, they knew a different Anghara to the one the
sen’en’thari
had just seen in the Confirmation Service; they gazed and murmured to their neighbors behind concealing hands, leaving a wash of whispering which lapped at the edges of the pool of
sen’thar
silence.

There were others there, too, not of the city—nomads who lived in tents in the desert hai’r’en tending their livestock, hardly ever venturing into the cities. Unused to these gatherings, they alternated between awed silence at their surroundings, the red stone pillars of the Great Hall so very different from their tents, and being the loudest of all, excited by the atmosphere, the crowd, the occasion. It was these people who, by means that were almost magical, obtained news of everything that went on in the desert—it was as though they could listen to the sand, and hear conversations taking place a thousand miles away. They were the ones who had picked up and blazed Anghara’s story across Kheldrin; it was the nomads to whom ai’Jihaar had been referring when she told Anghara her name was “known in the desert.” They knew of her, and what she was supposed to have done, and in their hands the story had already gained momentum—Anghara was already larger than life in many a campfire tale. They believed every word, utterly; to them, the Gods were real beings who walked the land, and the desert tribes were ready to fall at the feet of one who was said to have spoken with one, demanded something, and won it. If anyone had roused to speak against Anghara in that hour, they would quite possibly have revolted—and, by the set face of ai’Farra as she walked beside ai’Jihaar, she was aware of it.

Except for the fact that Anghara had not envisaged so many of the colorfully clad nomads, the scene was not entirely unexpected—ai’Jihaar had described many times, in great detail, what this morning would be like. She looked for the confirmation seat, a long stone bench apart from the galleries set aside for the
sen’en’thari;
ai’Jihaar and ai’Farra walked up to it, leading their three new initiates, leaving them seated there as the two older women turned away smoothly to make their way toward the galleries and their own seats.

For you, this is a formality,
ai’Jihaar’s caressing thought lingered.
Especially now. Especially after the temple.

As though the arrival of the confirmation candidates had been the signal for the ceremonies to begin, a conch shell was blown invisibly somewhere above them, followed by the deeper, brassier note of a ram’s horn. There was a rustle of silk and homespun as the assembled people rose to their feet. Even the chattering craftsmen had fallen silent, and into this silence, resplendent and almost unrecognizable as the man who had sat across from Anghara at a desert campfire, walked al’Jezraal, Lord of Al’haria. He wore scarlet, robes of jin’aaz silk under a flowing cloak, his pale gold hair held back with a wide circlet of beaten silver set with a yellow stone at his brow. The belt around his waist, which occasionally gleamed free through the scarlet billows, and the handle of the dagger it held, looked as though they had been wrought from solid gold.

He sat down on a massive chair, carved from the city’s own red stone, set at the far end of the Hall, against a stone wall draped with woven hangings. The three men and two women who had entered the Hall behind him, the council of Al’haria, disposed themselves comfortably in lesser seats set in a semicircle around al’Jezraal’s great chair. One chair remained, empty—ai’Farra’s usual seat; on this day she sat amongst her own. A gray-robed
sen’thar,
carrying a copper box, so highly polished it was almost painful to look upon, glided into the Hall in the wake of the council, taking up position at al’Jezraal’s right hand.

“We are here,” al’Jezraal said into the absolute silence which still wrapped the Hall, “to Confirm the Circles. One enters the white circle of the
sen’en’thari
today; one enters the gray; one is raised to the gold.” There was a low murmur at that last; it rose, and then burst like a bubble into silence again. This particular gold was the reason most of them had come.

The
sen’en’thari
had done all the work here. They had chosen and trained their candidates, and what the criteria were for passing from one circle to the next no one outside the
sen’thar
tower knew. It was the temple which conferred the passage, and the temple confirmed it, by its own laws, with such services as had been performed on the temple roof that morning. But it was the secular lord’s law which had to confirm the initiate’s new status—only once he had done so did the promotion become irrevocable. This is where, for Anghara, danger could lurk.

“The lord will ask if anyone contests the confirmation,” ai’Jihaar had told Anghara when they had discussed the outline of the ceremony. “In the Hall, anyone with a valid reason can raise an objection. It very rarely happens, but I recall an instance where al’Jezraal himself raised a voice of dissent, for the candidate had murdered in cold blood and al’Jezraal would not, for all her gifts, countenance her raising into the
sen’en’thari.
”

It did not happen often, but when it did it always involved circumstances that were highly dramatic—at the time al’Jezraal had refused confirmation, the ceremony had been spiced with murder. Anghara was no murderess, but her own particular circumstances were unprecedented in the history of these ceremonies; the people scented major drama in Anghara’s case. They were here to watch.

The form of the ceremony itself was simple enough—al’Jezraal called upon the
an’sen’thar
directly responsible for promoting the respective candidates to name them before the witnesses of council and Great Hall. This always started from the lowest rank, and so it was ai’Farra who rose and called first the white, then the gray
sen’thar
from the Confirmation Seat. Bidding the candidates themselves to approach, al’Jezraal asked for dissenting voices to their confirmation and waited a few beats for the silence that was his usual reply, then conferred upon each the appropriate amber and silver
say’yin
from the copper box held by the gray-robed
sen’thar
at his side. Each in her turn, they bowed their thanks and retreated to the
sen’thar
galleries to take their places there, sanctioned by both their Gods and their secular lord.

The murmur arose again as the gray candidate received her
say’yin
and drew back, leaving only Anghara, her cowl still covering her hair and shadowing her face, on the Confirmation Seat. The protocol should have been the same—call upon the patron
an’sen’thar,
ask for dissenting voices, confer the
say’yin
—but al’Jezraal remained silent for an instant longer than was necessary, and it was obvious protocol was going to be left by the wayside. The anticipation bore fruit as al’Jezraal rose and took a few paces into the hall. There was a long, drawn-out sigh from the nomads’ ranks.

“Two years ago,” he said, and his voice had little of ceremony in it but was rich in memory and wonder, “I met
an’sen’thar
ai’Jihaar ma’Hariff in Shod Hai’r at the edge of Rah’honim Ar’i’id. I met a sister who had died in the Khar’i’id, for I saw the marks of diamondskin teeth upon her—and who lived again. And I met one whom she had raised to
an’sen’thar
gold; a
fram’man,
a stranger from a land we hold holy, who was able to defy al’Khur in his hour and take back a life he had claimed. I saw the signs of death, and the truth of life where life should have been extinct; I did not ask for dissenting voices, for there could have been none. I confirmed ai’Jihaar’s word in Kadun Khajir’i’id Shod Hai’r.”

He lifted a hand and suddenly held a
say’yin,
heavy and complex, with large amber beads interspersed with globes of tarnished silver and what looked like gold—it was ancient, not one from the copper box of the gray
sen’thar
but something else, something bestowed for a great work. He was giving it for something not yet happened, for a vision still to be born—and the gift of it was a sign of his faith that what Anghara had spoken of would come to pass. To ai’Farra, who still did not know about Anghara’s dream, it must have seemed as though al’Jezraal had already heard about the Service at the temple, and was rewarding the way Anghara had slipped her trap.

“I ask for no dissenting voices again today,” al’Jezraal said firmly, and his eyes locked briefly with those of ai’Farra, up in the stands. Anghara could not see the Al’hariani
an’sen’thar’s
face, sitting as she was with her back to the stands, but she could sense the gathering thunder in ai’Farra’s soul fire; however, the
an’sen’thar
kept her peace under this challenging look. Once again al’Jezraal’s gaze swept outward over the galleries. “I know there would be some; perhaps many. I also know already all the reasons they would put forward. It is true that Kheldrin has been hidden from strangers’ eyes for hundreds of years; it is true that Kheldrin’s newest
an’sen’thar
should never have seen the desert, had tradition been followed. But this is a stranger who speaks to our Gods, and can rule them; a stranger who heard the last words of Gul Qara before the oracle succumbed to the weight of its centuries; a stranger who walks in our holiest places and takes from them miracles forbidden to their own children. This is a stranger no longer. Today she took clan Hariff as her own, and even though she wears the gold and thus has no clan, my kin will accept her as one born amongst us, and take pride in what she has done, and will yet do. I confirm you
an’sen’thar,
Anghara Kir Hama ma’Hariff of Sheriha’drin and Kheldrin, child of two lands; may the Gods look upon you with favor, and smile upon your life.”

Anghara came and stood before him, tears once again bright in her eyes; he pushed down the golden cowl, and there was a low murmur as the light caught the silver circlet, now revealed for the first time, with which ai’Jihaar had bound her brow that morning. It was a statement—no other wore such insignia save al’Jezraal himself, but no one else in that hall bore both royal blood and the gifts of the Gods. Lifting the heavy old
say’yin
over her head, al’Jezraal laid it beside the other he had placed there in the desert two years before. Their eyes held for a moment, and then she bowed to him and walked, as the other two had done before her, toward the galleries where ai’Jihaar and ai’Farra sat on either side of an empty seat left for her. While ai’Jihaar’s face was disciplined, her thoughts were smiling; ai’Farra stared at Anghara for a long moment, her eyes almost hostile, before she looked down at the folded hands in her lap. Anghara sat down carefully, still trembling with the emotion of the last few minutes; in the interval, still in the cocoon of silence he had raised, al’Jezraal had returned to his own great chair and reclaimed it. The gray
sen’thar
with the copper box, having concluded her duties, had unobtrusively retired. And now, a woman from the nomad ranks raised a reedy, high-pitched ululating cry into the hush in the Hall, taken up by several more in the next instant; it was a signal of great joy and approval, and the nomad ranks were agleam with broad, white-toothed smiles.

The rest of the morning was anticlimactic—ai’Farra descended from the galleries to reclaim her seat in the council semicircle as a handful of cases were brought to the lord and his council for judgment by the city folk. Most of them revolved in one way or another around issues concerning real or imagined transgressions of clan or family honor. Many of the
sen’en’thari
left before the end, as did the nomads, who settled their own disputes the hard way and had no patience with this kind of protocol. Touching Anghara’s elbow lightly, ai’Jihaar motioned for them to slip out also, although it was asking too much for them to do so unobserved.

“Nothing you do from this time on will ever be done unobserved,” said ai’Jihaar, sounding amused, answering Anghara’s never-quite-uttered thoughts as usual. “If you plan on doing any plotting, Anghara ma’Hariff, you may as well do it sitting out in the square in broad daylight and calling all your secret orders out loud.”

An image of ai’Farra’s hooded golden eyes rose in Anghara’s memory. “That does not stop others from plotting against me,” she said, giving ai’Jihaar the image as well as the words.

“She can do little, now,” said ai’Jihaar, dismissing ai’Farra with a wave of her hand. “She could have been trouble in the Confirmation, even after the temple—but between us, al’Jezraal and I handled that. But now you have been accepted into the
sen’en’thari
and into the Hariff—
hai,
I still do not know what made you do that, but it was well done! In either there will be those who would take it amiss if anything ill should befall you, and who would know from whom the ill had come. The Sayyed are a rich clan, and powerful—they breed the best dun’en, and get good prices for them—but they could not stand alone against a clan alliance if they tried to cross the Hariff here in our own country. Speaking of the Sayyed—ai’Farra still does not know about the other oracle. Let us go to the
Sa’id
tower and wait for the meeting, al’Jezraal will be there as soon as he can escape.”