The Obsidian Temple (5 page)

T
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Y
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ELED ANOTHER
week, deep into the heart of the desert. The small size of their party, combined with the low weight the humpbacks were carrying, allowed them to go at a faster pace than the caravans Sulis was used to traveling in. They did not stop at many of the oases. Ava learned the sacred language fast, which made Sulis suspicious that her grandmother was intervening because Sulis herself struggled to remember the most common words. When Grandmother would have Sulis recite the desert sutras and histories, Master Anchee would draw side to side with Ava and engage her in lively discussions.

Sulis managed to get close enough to overhear Master Anchee tell Grandmother, “You are right. She is the one. I thought it would be one of our ­people, but there is no doubt it is her. Both are involved somehow, I feel it. Do we have time for this detour?”

“What could be more important than this?” her grandmother answered quietly. “What have we been waiting for our entire lives, and most likely our lives before, but this?”

“Yes,” Anchee breathed. “It is terrifying, yet a blessing, to know this is the time.”

Grandmother looked over and met Sulis's eyes, then looked back out over the desert dunes.

Sulis held her tongue on all the questions she had. She knew that her grandmother would answer them only in her time.

When they were a half day's ride from the next oasis, Anchee stopped the caravan near a rocky outcropping. Sulis could see the ridges of the rocky black mountains, which made up the interior of the desert to the west. The trade route veered east from here, around the foothills of the mountains, which were filled with boulder fields and difficult for the long-­legged humpbacks to traverse. The only ­people who traveled to the mountains were sand sifters, looking for gold in the dried streambeds at the base of the desolate black rocks and hoping their luck held out long enough for them to find a water source before they emptied their canteens.

Sulis and Ava waited on their mounts as Anchee and Grandmother spoke with the guards and beast tenders. Sulis watched with apprehension as the bulk of their group, with supply beasts, broke off and headed east, toward the next oasis. Only two guards and a beast tender remained with their group.

“There's nothing this way,” she breathlessly told her grandmother and Anchee as they headed west. “No water hole big enough for a party even this size. We should at least go to the oasis and refill before exploring out here.”

“Hush,” her grandmother ordered. “Do not disrupt the master's focus. Have faith, Sulis.”

They moved slowly through the afternoon. Master Anchee led, mostly steering his mount with his eyes closed. Sulis called Djinn over and willed him to mount in front of her, uncertain about how far they were going and reluctant to tax his recovering strength. Her humpback was so used to the great cat's coming and going that it didn't even flinch as Djinn settled in front of her. Djinn's hackles stuck up in a ridge, showing that he was sensing Sulis's unease. Sulis closed her own eyes and attempted to sense what Anchee was guiding by. She felt nothing.

“Do you feel it?” Ava whispered, and Sulis shook her head.

“It's big,” Ava whispered back. “It's really old.”

Big and old. That didn't give Sulis much to go by. Her caravan-­leader instincts were screaming for her to go back, get on the correct path leading to water or be lost forever. By the looks of the guards and beast tender, she wasn't the only one frightened by this side trip.

Her fear spiked suddenly as they came to the first of the obsidian monoliths that marked the black foothills. The guards began to turn back, and Sulis recognized the unnatural surge of fear as a strong protection, designed to keep intruders away. Djinn growled steadily, his voice rising and falling, making her mount and everyone around her even more nervous. The beast tender came and held on to the halter of her humpback.

“Stay!” Anchee ordered hoarsely, and his humpback knelt. Anchee slid off and stood with his hands on the tall black polished stone. A steady murmur came from his lips, too low for Sulis to understand the words. The fear began to abate, and Djinn stopped growling.

Anchee raised his hands from the rock and made several gestures. The air in front of Sulis wavered, as though she was seeing the scene through a wave of heat. Then it solidified into the edge of a gorge, with a trail to one side leading down into it. Any unwary traveler who continued after feeling the wave of fear, without removing the illusion as Anchee just had, would step over the cliff and fall to his death.

“The trail down is steep, but there is a plateau to make camp out of sight a little deeper in,” Grandmother ordered the party. “Master Anchee will be too exhausted to move far.”

Indeed, Master Anchee was barely able to hold on to the saddle as his humpback lurched to its feet. His dark skin had a grayish tinge of exhaustion.

The trail plateaued into a campsite just under the rim of the gorge. There was dried humpback dung already there for a fire, and a tiny spring bubbled into a smooth, hollowed stone, making it easy to refill their canteens and fill buckets for the humpbacks.

Ava ran over to help Master Anchee off his humpback, and Sulis smiled as she unpacked a bedroll, marveling at how quickly Ava's young legs had adjusted to the riding and constant travel. A guard peered uneasily over the side of the plateau, and Sulis joined him. Even in the deepening dusk, she could tell it was still quite a ways down. The bottom was hidden in shadow.

“Come rest,” Grandmother ordered. “Your questions will be answered tomorrow.”

The lines around Master Anchee's eyes were still deep when they arose at dawn. The sun did not reach them on the path as they spiraled down the cliffside. The path zigzagged back and forth endlessly as their humpbacks stumbled over rocks, which echoed as they were kicked over the side. They did not stop for midmeal, eating on the humpbacks during the slow decent. The rocks turned to a different substance deeper in the gorge, becoming shinier, black, as though they had been melted and burned by a great fire and gradually chipped away with time. The top of a large building came into view as they snaked down the winding gorge.

Finally, about the time Sulis's stomach was starting to growl for its final meal, they came to flat ground. The path ended at the bottom of the great circular gorge. The floor of the gorge was a pitted, black slag of solidified molten rock. In the center of the gorge was a large temple hewn out of the same black rock that surrounded them.

“What is this place?” Ava asked, her voice awed.

“This must be where the deities took human form,” Sulis said. “This gorge and the desert surrounding it were created in the battle between them and the One. I've heard stories, but I did not know this temple was real.”

­People in long white cloaks like Master Anchee's stood in a semicircle to greet them, with torches lighting the strange courtyard. Sulis felt sorry for her humpback, having to kneel on the hard rock.

Master Anchee embraced one of the members of the greeting party, talking and gesturing toward their group. There was much bowing when Grandmother was introduced. Guards and beast tenders were ushered to one side, leading their tired beasts out of sight behind the temple, where Sulis could see low, ordinary-­looking stone buildings. As Sulis and Ava came upon the group, a white-­robed woman intercepted them.

“Initiates this way,” she ordered, putting a hand on Ava's shoulder to guide them.

“Initiates?” Sulis said incredulously, “Wait, I'm not . . .”

“Go, Sulis,” Grandmother interrupted. “You two are what we made this side trip for.”

Sulis threw her grandmother a glare, feeling ready to explode. She glanced at Ava's and realized the girl was terrified, caught in a situation that she didn't understand and couldn't control. Sulis took a deep breath and released it slowly, calming herself.

“Let's see if they have a kitchen somewhere around here,” she said in a jovial voice, putting an arm around Ava. “I'm hungry—­aren't you, Ava? Lead on,” she told the robed woman.

Rather than looking scandalized at her irreverence, as the Temple Mother in Illian would have, the woman nodded approvingly and gave Sulis a wink.

“I think we can manage something for hungry travelers,” she said kindly.

They followed the woman to a side entrance of the temple building, but not before Sulis shot one final glare at her grandmother. The old woman's face was solemn as she looked after the girls, and she lifted the back of her hand to her forehead to send Sulis on her way.

 

Chapter 5

THE C
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the teaching story, gazing around at the group of children in the Children's Home. Rose-­cloaked women tended her little flock, which ranged from toddlers to youngsters just on the edge of adulthood, ready to be fostered to a trade. Most of the children were sons and daughters of the maidens of Ivanha though some were the children of Voras's soldiers and some were orphans. Very rarely did children of the acolytes of Parasu or Aryn live here; those parents usually chose to raise their children outside of the Temple system. The Crone read scripture stories to the children several times a week, which made it easier for her to covertly oversee the development of the children and the maidens assigned to their care.

The Crone closed the book she was reading from and bowed her head to the blessing intoned by the children. Her gaze snagged on one of her heavily pregnant maidens. The blond woman glared back at her, hostility evident in every line of her being. The Crone met her glare evenly, trying to place the women. Oh, yes—­that snip Joaquil from this year's disastrous pledge class. It seemed that she'd fooled with the Templar before he'd invited the wrath of the One by killing pledges. Joaquil was now carrying the dead man's child. The Crone drew her lip up in disgust and turned her back on the girl. That particular maiden would be reassigned after her child was born, as soon as the baby was weaned. She would not be allowed to corrupt the children of Ivanha. Maybe a position could be found for her in the Northern temples, far away from civilized company.

The Crone serenely blessed the house before leaving the front door, walking down the stone path in the front yard and out the iron gate. She walked across the street of cobblestones to the gate in Ivanha's wall, and waited with her hands folded in front of her as her retinue of maidens opened the gate and held it for her. Her maidens parted the crowd ahead of her, and she slipped into her office at the back of the altar, closing the door. Her personal assistant Asan, a young man who had become a chosen maiden several years ago, set beside her a steaming tisane that stewed with her favorite herbs. It wasn't common that men were taken as pledges by Ivanha, just as it was rare for a woman to be taken by Voras. But Asan was a good, loyal acolyte, and the Crone rewarded loyalty. She smiled her thanks, and he stood before her with her reports.

“Go on, then,” she nodded, sipping her tea.

“Voras's soldiers still have not found the Forsaken who stole from the Temple warehouse last week,” he said, handing her a sheaf of reports. “They've disappeared, with the food and without a trace.”

The Crone frowned. This was the third such “disappearance” in the past month. The locks on the door were still in place, which pointed to the thieves either having keys or having a wild talent. The warehouse had been robbed of all food, but weapons, cloaks, and other items remained in plain view, untouched. It worried her that these thieves seemed smart enough to realize the Templar would not worry too much if food were stolen but would send out all of his forces if weapons were taken.

The Crone looked up at her patiently waiting assistant. “What else?” she asked.

“The watcher you set on the Hasifel hall has reported that their heir has come back to Illian. As you'd suspected, he had accompanied his wounded sister back to the desert.”

“Is she alive?” the Crone asked.

“The watcher did not say.”

It seemed impossible, with the amount of blood left on the flagstones of the Temple after her disappearance. The Crone had assumed the Hasifel heir had gone to burn his twin in a barbaric desert burial rite. But it was rumored that there were desert witches who could heal any manner of wound, and the girl herself had shown signs of being taken by Aryn's healers. “Has the heir made any attempt to connect with anyone else in her pledge class?” she asked.

“No. He has kept mostly to the family home and the sales hall.”

The Crone nodded. “Tell our watcher to keep tracking his movements and those of the rest of the family,” she said.

He nodded, not writing anything down, just standing attentively in front of her, hands clasped behind his back. The Crone had chosen him for his perfect recall of everything he saw and heard. Before being taken by a
feli
, he'd been ridiculed and mocked for his supposed femininity. However, his gratitude and worship toward Ivanha for choosing him in the pledge ceremony was intense, and his loyalty to the Crone was implacable.

“The watcher says that Voras also has a man watching the Hall,” Asan added. “And the Templar has posted soldiers at each of the remaining warehouses to prevent more thefts.”

The Crone snorted. Locking the barn door after the horses escaped again, typical of Voras.

“Tell our watcher to also be aware of Voras's man. And make certain Voras does not take an action Ivanha would disapprove of,” the Crone ordered. “Now leave me to my prayers.”

Asan bowed deeply and turned, his fuchsia robes flaring as he turned. Quiet settled into the room as he closed the door behind him—­a peace that did not settle the Crone's mind or heart.

She rubbed a shaky hand across her forehead, then placed her hands folded on the desk, smoothing the wrinkles, studying the liver spots and the papery-­thin texture of her skin. She felt old. She
was
old, and she felt every year. She gave a slight laugh, realizing that she was at least a decade older than her own mother had been when she died and two decades older than her grandmother.

The Crone steadied her hand to take a sip of the tea. The deities had retreated after the pledge-­class disaster. The Summer Curia, the meeting between the Voices of the four deities about the state of the territory, had been canceled, and none of the deities seemed inclined to guide their Voices since the desert girl Sulis had broken the Ceremony of Initiation.

Daily, the Crone called through her
feli
for guidance from Ivanha, and got no answer. The new Templar admitted that but for the first few initial commands, he, too, was acting alone. When the Herald and Tribune sent word that they were not attending the Summer Curia, the Crone realized that all of the deities had retreated—­probably forced by the One to stay away for a time. There were records of periods of silence in the histories, when the One had intervened in fights between the deities.

Was this a silence of fortnights, or of years? Would Ivanha come back placated or vengeful? The Crone did not know but feared the answer.

A soft knock on the door brought the Crone out from her reverie, and she shook herself, preparing to give the final blessing to the waiting pilgrims at her altar. She scolded herself for woolgathering rather than praying to Ivanha as she'd told Asan she would.

“What good are prayers,” she wondered to herself, “if there's no one there to listen?”

“WHAT GOOD ARE
prayers if there's no one there to listen? You are wrong, my child; I am always listening,” Sanuri muttered, bent over some cloth she was knotting as Kadar stepped into the sitting room. It was restday, finally, and he was going to take midmeal to Farrah and enjoy the afternoon hours with his love.

Kadar raised an eyebrow at Sanuri, and Dana widened her eyes comically, looking amused.

“I'll be back late,” Kadar told her, dropping a kiss on Datura's head before hefting his basket and stepping out into the sunlight.

Kadar had visited the southern outskirts of the city a few times before, but had never entered smaller roads that made up the district where the Forsaken lived. The more prosperous of the Forsaken—­those who'd found jobs with the upper castes or desert merchants—­were in sturdy houses closer to the city streets. The most poverty-­stricken lived in the shanties at the very edge of the city, in tents and ramshackle lean-­tos.

The tiny home Farrah's family dwelled in was close to the city streets, and was almost luxurious compared to some of the run-­down houses. It was set slightly back from the road, with a yard of packed dirt. Kadar stepped into the vented front work area of the house, where a cauldron simmered over a smoky fire for washing soiled clothing. Farrah's younger brothers were hard at work wringing out the wet laundry when Kadar entered. Their eyes went wide when they saw someone in their home, but they dropped their work and gathered around his basket when they realized who he was.

As Kadar handed out meat pies, Farrah came through the doorway leading to the kitchen, frowning, her hair pulled back in a braid with damp tendrils escaping out the sides.

“Briant, where . . .” She stopped when she saw Kadar, whose heart dropped at her frown. Then his heart lifted again as her face was wreathed in a smile, a smile meant just for him. “Kadar!”

He left the basket to the boys and swept her up in a hug.

She tilted her head up and passionately kissed him. When her brothers started making puking noises, she stepped back reluctantly, with a laugh.

“What are you doing here? Is Datura ill?” she asked, her expression turning anxious.

“It's restday,” Kadar said. “We planned time together, remember?”

She sighed and looked at the piles of laundry. “I had forgotten. I remember when restday meant I could actually rest,” she said. “How is Datura?”

“Datura is happy and healthy, growing every day,” Kadar said, kissing her on the forehead. He whisked a pastry away from the boys. “Our cook made your favorite, and I wanted you to have some.”

Farrah glanced around at the undone laundry, and her brothers paused in their gluttony like they expected a scolding.

“Ah, well,” she said with a sigh. “We're almost done. Thea is in the kitchen,” she told her brothers. “Make sure you take a pastry in to her before you eat everything in the basket. Keep your sister out of trouble until we get back.” As an aside, she told Kadar, “There wasn't as much to be done today. The weather has been cooler, so the families aren't sweating through as many tunics.”

“Do you have enough to live on?” Kadar asked anxiously.

Farrah nodded as they settled down onto the steps leading into the house and took a bite. She closed her eyes blissfully, enjoying the pastry, and her cares seemed to drop away. “I do love curry,” she said.

“Come with me back to Shpeth, and you can have it all the time,” Kadar said, unable to help himself. “You'd be a desert queen.”

Farrah paused chewing and looked at him seriously. Kadar let himself feel hope for a moment, then she shook her head.

“Kadar, I'm a Northern girl,” she said regretfully. “Even if I send the rest of my family south, I belong here. It's in my blood, the way the desert is in your blood.”

“You're in my blood just as much,” Kadar said, taking her hand. “And wherever you and Datura are is home. I'll become like my uncle Tarik, a man of both countries, and we can stay together.”

Farrah's smile bloomed again, and he kissed her. Her lips were soft against his as she returned the kiss with fervor.

Gagging noises from the doorway broke them apart again, and Farrah tossed a stone at her brothers, who giggled.

“If these rascals will finish their chores, I believe we can go walking,” Farrah said with dignity. Kadar gave her a sweet fry pie as they started away from the building. He clasped her sticky hand, and they walked in silence a ways, just enjoying each other's companionship. They'd reached the corner, when Kadar remembered that he had a letter for her.

“This is for you,” he said as he stopped and fished it out of his pocket. “I ran into Severin, and he asked me to deliver it.”

She stepped away from him to open the envelope and read the contents. Then she turned back, her eyes bright, an excited flush on her cheeks.

“He's done it,” she burst out. “He's gotten some of the Northern merchants to meet with the Forsaken resistance, to offer cover for the men and space to hide in. He's set up a meeting midweek.”

Kadar frowned. “What about Ashraf's plans, and the warehouse we rented?” he asked, puzzled.

“Ashraf went south and won't be back,” Farrah said. “I had a letter from him. He wrote that Kabandha won't work for the Forsaken, but he would work on finding homes in the surrounding areas. But he said he was ‘unavoidably detained' and could not give a date for his return.“

Kadar frowned as they walked on. Kabandha had been their best hope for relocating the Forsaken. He was disappointed Ashraf would abandon their plan without much explanation.

“Besides,” Farrah continued, “I think we were wrong about migrating south. I'm a Northerner. This is my home as much as anyone in Illian. I should not have to leave to find freedom and respect. The Forsaken need to fight for freedom here, where we belong. Severin agrees.”

“How did Severin get involved with the Forsaken?” Kadar asked.

“After he saw my mother die, he protested again to his father. Who disinherited him in favor of his younger brother.”

Kadar nodded. As he'd admitted to Severin, he'd heard as much from the marketplace gossip.

“Severin was furious and started organizing the Forsaken youth to rebel.” She gave a short laugh. “He was doing more harm then good, getting kids beaten with no aim. I met with him, got him under control. Now he's got a group of trusted Forsaken under him, testing ways we can undermine the soldiers.”

“I walked right into one of those tests,” Kadar admitted. “Farrah, innocent ­people could be hurt if you do that on a busy street.”

Farrah's voice was low and intense. “None of the towns­people are innocent.”

Kadar stared at her, shocked. She glared around the marketplace they were strolling through.