The Hidden Queen (30 page)

When ai’Farra arrived before al’Jezraal it was al’Tamar, golden eyes studiously blank, who showed her in, and then withdrew with alacrity. If there were to be fireworks between the
an’sen’en’thari,
he did not want to be close enough to feel the heat.

She stood for a moment, staring at Anghara with smoldering eyes. “It could be said,” she said softly at last, ominously rephrasing her earlier words, “that things weren’t done according to tradition today, and you were never confirmed. The dissenting voices have been allowed into the Hall Ceremony with good reason. It could be said you wear the gold robe by the word of an
an’sen’thar
alone—and that has never been enough.”

“After what you tried to do at the temple,” ai’Jihaar said cuttingly, “had you tried to raise a dissenting voice your own tower would have shouted you down.”

“We had not met before today,” said Anghara calmly. The golden glow of her soul fire kindled and wreathed her form like a cloak, striking sparks from the burnished hair confined by the silver circlet. She rose, offering the most graceful desert salute she could muster, the golden flame of her power rippling from her fingers and leaving starbursts where she touched the aura over her heart, her lips, her brow. Her voice was still serene, as though she was completely unaware of what she was doing, and tinged with subtle irony. “I am happy to make your acquaintance at last, Keeper of the Records. I have heard much about you.”

Taken by surprise as she turned to answer ai’Jihaar, to her great credit, ai’Farra recovered quickly. Her own aura, the crimson of newly spilled blood to ai’Jihaar’s white and Anghara’s own gold, blossomed to meet theirs even before Anghara had a chance to straighten from her bow.

“Very well,” ai’Farra said tightly, “you have the power. I hardly doubted that, not after…Still, you are
fram’man
before anything else. They should never have even considered…” Her voice dropped for a moment, sounding silky and dangerous. “Do you know what happens to strangers who stray into Kheldrin unasked?” she said, her long fingers stroking the haft of a dagger in her belt, twin to the ones ai’Jihaar and now Anghara herself wore.

“Who strays into Kheldrin?” asked Anghara. “This is hardly a country for stumbling into unawares.”

“Oh, but they come,” said ai’Farra. “There are, after all, riches here of a kind, enough to tempt a few beyond prudence. They come from Shaymir—there are paths through the mountains, if one cares to look for them; or they brave the Se’thara by night. They come.” She drew the dagger, and within her red aura the blade seemed immersed in blood. “They never return. And they had not even dreamed of crossing the Empty Quarter with their profane feet, nor bringing down a holy shrine with a sacrilegious touch.”

“That is enough, ai’Farra. You speak of what you do not know,” said ai’Jihaar sharply.

“It is done, ai’Farra ma’Sayyed.” The new voice at the door heralded the arrival of al’Jezraal, and, in ai’Farra’s case only very reluctantly, the three women allowed the flame of their auras to flicker out and die. Slipping the scarlet cloak from his shoulders, al’Jezraal strode in and tossed it aside. “We need your knowledge, and your help,” he said levelly, staring directly at ai’Farra, “and I will have your word,
an’sen’thar,
that you will work with us on this. What we seek will be a gift to all of Kheldrin’s people.”

“All of
Kheldrin’s
people,
Sa’id?
” ai’Farra said softly, her eyes flicking once again in Anghara’s direction; al’Jezraal could not fail to notice this. His mouth tightened.

“Here, she is Hariff. In Sheriha’drin, she is Kir Hama, and royal. In the temple, she is confirmed amongst the highest of the God-spoken. I will have an end to this, ai’Farra.”

Finally ai’Farra dropped her eyes. She was still far from happy, but her support base in Al’haria, at least on this issue, was not big enough for her to pursue the matter at this time—there were never many Sayyed here, and her own tower was divided, with too many on ai’Jihaar’s side, and Anghara’s.

“Very well,” she said coldly.

That would hold for only as long as there were three powerful Hariff ranged here against her, and enough
sen’en’thari
held out against her prejudices—unless something extraordinary happened to change her mind.

And al’Jezraal held something extraordinary to offer her.

He nodded, now, as though her words sufficed, and then, while she was still braced against this grudging acceptance which had been forced from her, he flanked her and changed the subject, exploiting the vulnerability.

“Keeper of the Records,” he said formally, but his voice was intense, “we seek a place called…Gul Khaima.”

Whatever her faults, ai’Farra had the gift of power in no mean magnitude. There was no way in which she could have learned of this name, or of its meaning, but she stiffened in sudden reaction.

“I do not know of such a place,” she said after a pause. “And yet…why do I feel as though I should? What is Gul Khaima,
Sa’id
al’Jezraal?”

“Anghara,” said al’Jezraal, inviting her to take over by voice and gesture.

Anghara told once again of her encounter with Gul Qara in the Empty Quarter, the full story of which ai’Farra had never heard from the source; ai’Farra’s hands clenched tightly in the folds of her robe, but she heard the story in silence. And then Anghara told of the dreams, of the talisman-given vision, and of the interpretation.

“A second oracle,” she said. “A new oracle. It exists, or will exist, in a place called Gul Khaima, somewhere close to the sea. Is it possible there might be a trace of this somewhere…would the Records speak of it? Did Gul Qara never mention this place before?”

“The last recorded prophecy of Gul Qara,” said ai’Farra with some bitterness, “took place almost three hundred years ago. I knew this name when you said it…but I do not think I learned of it in the Records.”

“May I…see what the Records say about Gul Qara?” Anghara’s question was a request, although as full
an’sen’thar
she had the right to demand access to Records and ai’Farra could not refuse. But she had chosen to bow to ai’Farra’s standing as the Keeper; in some ways ai’Farra had the right of it. There might be things in the catacombs not meant to be seen by
fram’man
eyes. The Kheldrini woman straightened, lifting her chin, her eyes meeting Anghara’s with defiance, resentment, a grudging respect.

“We can go now,” she said. The words were heavy, like stones, but her interest had been kindled, and the very speed of her assent, despite the tone in which it had been uttered, was proof of piqued curiosity.

“Thank you.” Again, the courtesy, from supplicant to Keeper; ai’Farra could not but respond to it. It was far from acceptance—but perhaps it was a beginning.

They all went in the end—ai’Farra in front, with a massive key black with age, unlocking a great door whose carvings had all but vanished into blank oblivion over the passage of uncounted years; al’Jezraal only a step behind her, a smoking torch in his hand; ai’Jihaar, holding onto Anghara’s arm. They passed along a corridor hewn into the mesa at the city’s back and down endless spiraling stairs into the bowels of the catacombs. These opened up with almost no warning, a vast darkness swallowing the guttering torchlight at the foot of the stairs, but there were cressets here, and unlit torches prepared against a Keeper’s need. When al’Jezraal lit three or four, suddenly there was light enough. Stone archways revealed themselves, leading off in various directions, darkness beyond them; two or three were barred with great doors, similar to the ones at the top of the stairwell, bearing seals of various clans—Anghara recognized only Hariff, from a hanging in al’Jezraal’s chambers which al’Tamar had pointed out to her earlier. A great stone table stood in the middle of the small amphitheater, which opened out from the stairwell.

“Stay here,” said ai’Farra, her words a warning but her tone almost a regret that she was issuing it at all. “This place is a labyrinth; my predecessor took years to teach me how to find my way around. I will fetch what is needful.”

She took one of the torches, and moved into the darkness of one of the side corridors. For a brief while they could see the flickering light, and then it abruptly vanished, perhaps as ai’Farra turned a corner. Or simply disappeared.

His eyes darting amongst the shadows as though he expected every one to spawn a demon, al’Jezraal stood tense and ready to fight. He started as ai’Jihaar reached out to lay a delicate hand on his arm, then had the grace to smile sheepishly at the sound of her silvery laughter.

“I have never liked this black dungeon,” he admitted. “I was born to the light.”

Dungeon
…

The word leapt out of the dark, and the vision was upon Anghara before she could draw another breath.

Roisinan’s princess-heir had had little to do with dungeons—there would be time enough to consign miscreants and traitors to them when she was grown and crowned. And yet…the dank gray walls that abruptly reared about her were as familiar to Anghara as the banks of Cascin’s wells—these were the dungeons of Miranei, which she had never seen with living eyes. Somewhere, a long, long way away, she could hear the ominous clang of a closing door—and she was on the wrong side. The darkness rushed in upon her, and she heard a long, drawn-out cry, dimly aware it was her own. When she opened her eyes, blinking furiously at a welling of tears, she found herself lying on the cold stone floor of Al’haria’s Catacombs of the Records, with ai’Jihaar kneeling beside her and al’Jezraal’s worried face, shadowed from the flickering torch, bending over.

“What was it that he said?” demanded ai’Jihaar, who had spent enough time with her young charge to recognize these occasional visions for what they were.

But the memory was scrubbed from her mind, shredded into trails of dark mist. “I don’t know,” Anghara said. “I can’t remember. And…it was…important…”

“Can you stand?” asked al’Jezraal.

“Yes,” Anghara said, scrambling to her feet. Her face was set. Perhaps Sif had the right of it, after all—a fine queen she would make, with an unexpected word or an unguarded glance into the fire enough to pitch her into these uncontrollable fits of vision. But she knew better than to start philosophizing about that here, and it was only just given to her to return to some kind of order before a flickering of torchlight announced ai’Farra’s imminent return.

The Keeper, who appeared to have been out of earshot during the drama of Anghara’s brief vision, came staggering back with a mammoth pile of book rolls under her arm, piling them with care and a sigh of relief on top of the stone table in the hallway.

“That is most of it,” she said. “There are more, but a lot of them are in a language or an alphabet too archaic even for me to understand.”

“Then we will start with these,” said al’Jezraal. “I think we should begin with the oldest.”

“This one,” said ai’Farra, extracting a scroll delicately from underneath the others. “This is the oldest comprehensible one.”

As she ran gentle fingers across the parchment, ai’Jihaar said, “It is beginning to crumble.” There was deep regret in her voice.

“It is almost eight hundred years old,” ai’Farra said cryptically. Her eyes gleamed oddly in the torchlight and it was hard to gauge whether she meant it as a boast or a gentle rebuke. “Here, let me see. I am probably the only one who can still understand the half of this tongue.”

They relinquished the parchment and al’Jezraal held the torch high as she began to read.

They lost all track of time in the darkness, tracing the life of a vanished oracle over the centuries. When ai’Farra closed the last book roll she had brought, they were all conscious of a deep weariness, and a pang or two of hunger. While al’Jezraal had taken time for breakfast that morning, none of the
sen’en’thari
had eaten anything since dawn, and it felt as though it was time for the sun to rise again.

They had found nothing.

For some reason not one of them, not even ai’Farra, took that as proof the vision from Anghara’s dream was at fault—if anything, the contrary. This was the last vision of Gul Qara, almost a kind of farewell; it was hardly to be expected they would find prior references to it scattered freely through the Records. But the absence of any clue left them adrift; they would have to try finding Gul Khaima the hard way.

“Put them away, ai’Farra,” said al’Jezraal, gathering the rolls together. “The answer lies elsewhere. We will not find the place in here, not today.”

“It would not have been that easy,” murmured ai’Farra, hoisting her load back under her arm.

They waited in silence while she vanished again into the mysterious dark with her books, and presently reappeared again empty-handed to lead them back up the stairs and through the ancient door, locking it behind. A glance through a nearby window showed the reddish light of imminent sunset.

“I will have a repast brought to my chambers,” said al’Jezraal. “Please join me…”

For a moment the thought of food excised Gul Khaima from their minds. They climbed the stairs to al’Jezraal’s rooms, his guards bowing deeply enough now to the approaching company. Once again it was al’Tamar who handed them into the inner chamber, and he who brought them the trays of food al’Jezraal ordered.

“…anything to go on?” al’Tamar heard as he entered the room, trailed by another, junior servant carrying the trays he did not have enough hands to bear himself. “You saw a stone, and there is not much stone on Kheldrin’s shores, but what there is lies scattered facing three different seas. It would take months to explore everything, especially if you were to go to every place yourself.”

“Gul Khaima,” muttered ai’Farra, tapping her nose with one long finger, once again deeply into the mystery, oblivious to al’Tamar’s presence. “Why do I know that name?”

Even before al’Tamar’s silvery-blue aura flickered in surprise at the overheard words Anghara had felt his reaction, and was on her feet.

“Where?” she said, very low, gazing at him steadily.