The Hidden Queen (32 page)

“You could wear gold,” she said. He was strong. Stronger than many in ai’Farra’s tower. Stronger, perhaps, than most.

His eyes glittered. “One day, perhaps,” he murmured. “When I have produced a son of my own, and the line of succession is secure. If they accept a grown man into the novice school.”

“The Gods will take you,” Anghara said with conviction. “Even if those in the temple balk, the Gods will take you. You are close to them.”

“Sen’en dayr,”
he said with a smile, “but do not put it quite like that. In Kheldrin, when people speak of the Gods taking someone, it usually means death.”

She reached out impulsively to squeeze his shoulder. “You won’t die,” she said. “There are too many important things left for you to do.”

She did not hear the echo of prophecy in her voice, but al’Tamar did, and shivered. He had told her she carried Gul Qara within her, and she had just allowed a glimpse of the oracle’s light to escape. There was a vision in her words—a vision of a life that was much more than taking over a silver mine from his father and holding it for his clan. There were many things to which al’Tamar had felt he had no claim; this slim hope of unspoken promise he hugged to himself like a talisman, carrying it like a charm of brightness against the dark of everything that had been impossible for so long.

They left the ocean then, and returned to the caravan camp. Everything that could have been said had been said, and it was back onto the desert trail in the morning.

But they were no longer far from their destination. They now rode a narrow band between the sea on the one side and rising ramparts of Kadun’s red stone on the other; sometimes seabirds swooped down on them from their nests on the cliff face with shrill cries. The occasional red rock rose from the sea, carved by the waves into fantastic shapes; one, sculpted into a massive arch, caught al’Tamar’s eye.

“The First Gate,” he said, pointing it out to Anghara with whom he was riding, as usual, at the front of the caravan. “The Second lies closer to the shore; the Last is part of the mainland, and it is there that Ul’khari’ma is.”

“It’s beautiful,” Anghara said.

“And treacherous,” said al’Tamar. “The currents are strong here. They carved rocks, after all. It is very easy for an unwary fisher to become caught and be dashed against the Gates. Three young men died that way while I was here.”

He was pragmatic about it—the desert folk were all pragmatic about death, especially when it came by accident, unlooked for, out of the dark. They would simply shrug it off—
al’Khur knows his hour,
they would mutter, and carry on with their own lives. But Anghara stared at the sculpted red stone gate as they rode past, thinking of the lives it might have taken. In some things she was still of Roisinan, and there every life cut short prematurely was a tragedy. There were times she despaired of ever being whole again, fitting seamlessly into one country or the other—every time she thought she understood, something else would leap up to tear at the fragile equilibrium. Here, now, so taken up was she with thoughts of Roisinan she could almost smell the damp green grass and the wet, salty spray as the sea broke on the rocks around the bay of Calabra…

She blinked, stiffening. She’d thought herself in Calabra, but the memory of the scent of sea spray was of much more recent vintage. Even as she cast out for it, it vanished again, leaving behind only the murmur of lapping ocean.

“What is it?” asked al’Tamar quietly. He had noticed something was going on, but he had waited until her eyes had regained their focus before he ventured to break the silence.

“The scent,” she said. “The scent Gul Qara gave me. It is only now that I have smelled it again. We’re close. You were right; this is the place. Ul’khari’ma…you said the place was so named by those who live there. Why? What does it mean?”

“It is corrupted now, but I think the original meaning was the Place of the Stone,” said al’Tamar.

Anghara’s hands tightened on her reins, and then she laughed, tilting her head as though in acknowledgment of some kind of failure. “I should have known,” she said. “How far still, al’Tamar?”

“We should be there before noon tomorrow,” he said.

They could smell it before they saw it. A pervasive aroma of fish met them some way from the village, and it was soon obvious why—they passed the great flat stones where the fishers laid out their catch to dry in the sun some hours before the caravan actually laid eyes on the village itself. The spot had been chosen, al’Tamar told them, because the winds usually carried the smell away from the village when the catch was brought here—else it would have been impossible to inhabit the village unless it was with cauterized noses. While ai’Farra was seen to wrinkle her own aristocratic nose once or twice, she made no complaints—and once they were past the drying grounds it really did get better.

Ul’khari’ma was an untidy cluster of huts nestled in a protective horseshoe of rock. The cliffs at the village’s back did a ponderous turn and waded out into the ocean, petering out into a tangle of rocky teeth around which the water seethed and foamed, breaking up into spectacular fans of white spume. Here at last was the source of the spray scent Gul Qara had given Anghara as her guide. But before the cliffs broke up into the rocks of the reef they reared into the most spectacular of all, the Last Gate of al’Tamar’s description. It was actually a double gate. One had simply been driven through the cliff, a great reddish stone arch, broad at the bottom, narrowing at the top into an elegant pointed lintel which would not have looked out of place as a gateway in one of the exotic palaces of Algira, paintings of which Anghara had seen in Miranei. The other, more squat and dumpy, led into a cavern within the cliff itself, the darkness within broken up into a luminescent sparkle where sunlight touched the still waters just inside the gateway, sheltered from the open ocean as if in a womb.

“What is that place?” Anghara asked al’Tamar as they approached the village, unable to take her eyes from this second gate. It was as though the sparkle of light upon the hidden waters had hypnotized her.

“The grotto,” said al’Tamar. “Boys are usually sent there on a dare; at least once is mandatory, before they are counted as men. The tale goes that a demon lives in there.”

“Did you go?” asked Anghara.

If it had been given to Kheldrini to blush, Anghara was almost certain al’Tamar did. He hung his head.

“Almost,” he admitted at last. “But I put it off, and put it off, and then I left, and never went at all.”

“Do you believe in the demon?”

He shrugged. “Anything is possible,” he said. “I do not think there is one in there, though. Those who did go spoke of it to me, but there is probably just the echo, and perhaps a strange light, and the water, they say, is very deep.”

“So why didn’t you go, then?”

“And what if I was wrong?” He was grinning now, teasing himself. “Still, I am back. Perhaps now is the time for me to enter the grotto.”

“Perhaps,” said Anghara slowly, her eyes still on the grotto gate. “Perhaps you might have to take me there.”

“But it is only the young men…” he began, and then caught a glimpse of the gray eyes in the face bared of its burnoose. His own changed, a glimmer of understanding lighting the gold. “I see,” he said. “I think it could be arranged. But perhaps it might be best to speak of it to no one of Ul’khari’ma for now. Leave it to me.”

By this time they had been spotted, and a welcoming delegation waited for them in the midst of the village. It consisted, officially, of a handful of the more senior fishermen led by al’Talip, al’Tamar’s great-uncle and the village headman, and an elderly and dignified gray-robed
sen’thar
woman whose skin the sun and the sea had baked into a brown, wrinkled mask. But the delegation was something of a technicality, with the entire village hanging curiously about, hovering in doorways, peering around the corners of houses, finding urgent business that necessitated the immediate crossing of the village square. When her glance crossed with that of a chubby, round-faced girl who stared at her with undisguised astonishment, Anghara had to smile. It was obvious they knew whom they were facing, and the presence of
Sa’id
Al’haria and no less than two other
an’sen’en’thari
faded into insignificance when they realized the
fram’man
from Sheriha’drin was also in their midst. Perhaps she should have had the presence of mind to keep her burnoose fastened until al’Jezraal was done with the formalities.

Such as they were, these did not take long. The new arrivals were greeted, their animals taken into care, and al’Jezraal and al’Tamar ushered into what looked like al’Talip’s own house while the
sen’en’thari
were whisked away to the local
sen’thar’s
quarters. Anghara did not know how the men fared, but as far as the
sen’en’thari
were concerned the place was adequate, if a little cramped—ai’Jihaar and Anghara were given one tiny room, ai’Farra and her gray went into another, and the gray
sen’thar
to whom the house belonged slept on a makeshift pallet in a nook by the hearth which usually harbored a servant. The servant herself was banished to her own family’s house for the duration of the visit, the little house being simply too small to contain all six women.

The villagers’ curiosity was extraordinary, even stifling; al’Jezraal had said not to speak of the purpose of their visit until he had had a chance to talk with al’Talip, but that did not prevent the locals from speculating furiously. Even the
sen’thar,
who was trained to respect her superiors’ silence for as long as they chose to keep it, could not stop her eyes filling with conjecture and deliberation every time she looked at this unprecedented number of
an’sen’en’thari
under her humble roof. The atmosphere was charged, and
sen’en’thari
were by nature more sensitive to it than anyone else. Anghara felt it wrapping around her, heavy and close, reminding her of the air in Khar’i’id. Her mind was still full of the scent of the sea spray and the sight of the gate to the grotto, but she could not seem to marshal her thoughts into any sort of coherent order inside the house. Waiting until everyone was otherwise occupied, she threw her djellaba around her shoulders, drawing up the concealing hood, and slipped out into the night. It was as much to escape the constant sideways glances of the local
sen’thar
as to grab a chance to think, alone, about how to unravel the puzzle Gul Qara had left her.

She had half-expected to find the entire village gathered outside the
sen’thar
’s house, but for a wonder nobody was there at all; it was as if the Gods themselves were keeping her path clear. Anghara wandered down to the small harbor, with the fishing coracles drawn up and upended over the sand above the high tide mark. The entrance to the grotto was a yawning hole full of darkness, and the breaking waters on the reef rose ghostly white into the air and then fell back to vanish once again into the inky sea.

The stone…the sea…the smell of spray…

Almost without thinking she sent out a tendril of gold, imperceptible to most—even, perhaps, to
sen’en’thari
who weren’t really looking—seeking a specific soul fire, silver upon blue, like the moon on the waters.
Come. Come to me.

And he came, stumbling dazedly on the sand, rubbing at his temples, the sea breeze tangling his long, loose copper hair. “You called me?” al’Tamar whispered, coming to a stop as he saw her standing by the boats. “You
called
me?”

“You heard me,” she replied.

The silver-blue light rippled, settled, died into a low glow around his brow, like a circlet of royalty.

“What is it, Anghara?”

“The grotto,” she said. “Will you take me?”

“Now?” he said, taken aback. “Tonight?”

“Tonight,” she said. Her voice was quiet, even, low; she was speaking to a friend, but there was Kir Hama command embedded somewhere within, and he heard it.

He rubbed his temple again, and then straightened. “We will need a paddle,” he said. “Wait here.”

He wore a dark djellaba and would have vanished into the night as he turned away had it not been for the faint aura of light which clung to him. It was still a source of endless astonishment to Anghara that ai’Farra was unable to sense this. Before long he was back, carrying a broad flat paddle in one hand, undoing the clasp of his djellaba as he walked.

“Leave yours,” he said. “They are only a hindrance in the boat. If I had it, I would don my fishing breechclout. It might not go so well with your robe.”

“It will go well enough,” Anghara said, laying her own djellaba in a pile on the sand, next to where al’Tamar had let his drop. “Which boat?”

“A small one. That one will do. Big ones do not seem to like the grotto very much, at least two of my acquaintance came back in splinters. Hold this.”

He handed her the paddle and hoisted the light, small boat onto his shoulder, laying it into the surf as they reached the ocean. Handing her inside, he waded into the water, pushing the boat out, and scrambled up into it when it floated in deeper water. He took the paddle and steered the small craft away from the angry breakers of the reef, toward the grotto’s low entrance.

He did not ask questions, and Anghara was grateful; she was in the grip of something similar to that which led her to seek the Tanassa Dance in Roisinan years ago, leading in turn to her first meeting with ai’Jihaar. Pressed for explanations, she could give none—she went where the Gods took her.

The darkness of the grotto yawned ever deeper and more solid as they drew closer. Anghara could see al’Tamar’s lips folded tight, his expression at odds with itself, exhilaration and dread warring on his features. This was a sort of proving he had never done while he was here. But it was certain he had never imagined doing it like this, with Anghara in the prow of the small boat, a film of gold clinging to her hair and hands much as silver-blue still hovered at al’Tamar’s own brow. If there was an unwritten code governing the grotto, it was more than certain they were breaking it.