Bonfires burned in the plazas. Amid the dancing and music, a small crowd carried a crude wicker platform on their shoulders. On it crouched a man in the mask of a monkey, naked except for an elaborate, garishly colorful wrapping that enlarged his penis to elephantine size. Revelers tossed handfuls of flower petals and garlands of ribbons at him, and he replied with chittering cries and obscene suggestions. City patrol nodded tolerantly at the antics.
The air was filled with the mingled, heady smells of wine and sex, of perfume and burning torches. Here and there, couples embraced openly, fumbling with each other’s clothing, some of them pairs of men. Tsorreh stared, caught between fascination and embarrassment at the public display. She had heard of such things, but never before found herself amidst frankly orgiastic abandon.
Tsorreh felt an instant of apprehension as a party of men in ragged clothes, laughing and guzzling from wineskins, gestured for her to join them. She tossed her head as Astreya did and went on her way with no greater harm than a few blurred compliments. From time to time, she peered into the shadows, fearful that she might spy a cloaked figure gliding after her. If there were such a lurker, however, the confusion of the festival disguised him well.
The merrymaking diminished as Tsorreh approached Bathar Hill, but did not end. Even in the usually quiet neighborhood, singers and dancers caroused here and there.
When she arrived at Marvenion’s house, his daughter, Rebah, welcomed her with a shy smile. Instead of conducting Tsorreh inside, Rebah asked her to wait in the antechamber.
The chamber was decorated in a subdued style, yet every strand of the woven wall hangings, every detail of the little side table, reminded Tsorreh of home. She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath, savoring the quiet and the faint odors of fragrant wood and incense.
A few moments later, Marvenion came through the inner door. Concern furrowed his brow, so Tsorreh quickly reassured him that Lord Jaxar was well enough. “I have come on quite a different matter. Our people are in danger—”
“Yes, I know. Come inside.” Marvenion led her not to the room he used as his clinical office and study, but to a more intimate chamber. Passing through the door was like stepping into the past and across many miles. If the antechamber had suggested home, this room was saturated with memory. Tsorreh drank in the colors of the cushions and carpet, even the enamel plate of dates rolled in crushed almonds. She wanted to cradle the round-bellied oil lamp, to stroke the plush fur of the gray tabby cat that yawned and stretched on its cushion, to sink to her knees and weep.
As her eyes adjusted to the soft orange light from the lamp, she made out two men on the far side of the room, now rising from the low couch. Bearded and dressed as prosperous Meklavaran traders, they could have stepped right off the
meklat.
“This is Tsorreh, a countrywoman.” Marvenion’s voice carried an edge of warning.
Before she could say anything, one of the visitors moved closer. “Tsorreh…Tsorreh
san-Khored
? Can it be?”
“I know you,” she said, searching her memory for names. “I know both of you. Your father—no, both your fathers—counseled my husband. You are Harellon, of the trading house of Deneroth.” She paused, remembering how Harellon’s father had disapproved of her half-Isarran blood.
Courtesies between them had been chilly and polite. To the other man, she said, “I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name. Your father is Viridon san-Cassarod, is he not?”
“
Te-ravah
.” The second of the visitors bowed to her, followed an instant later by his companion and a deeply astonished Marvenion.
Tsorreh wanted to scream at them to stop this obsequious nonsense. She was an exile, cut off from her city, her people, her only son, desperately lonely and often terrified, subject to the same whims of the Ar-King as the lowest of them.
The words choked in her throat. She could never be solely who she was. These men
needed
her to be something else—a queen, a rock, a beacon. So she waited while they finished their reverences and her aching heart went numb. Then she persuaded them all to sit down while Marvenion’s daughter, more shy than ever, served them mint-infused tea and honey-nut pastries.
Harellon, she knew slightly from some courtly event or another. She remembered him as being younger, but the fall of Meklavar and hard travel had weathered his face. The other named himself Setherod, the younger of two remaining sons of Viridon.
“You have not heard, then?” Setherod said in response to her inquiry. “My father died shortly after we surrendered.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “I didn’t know. I have had so little news from home. It must have been very difficult for you.”
Setherod lowered his eyes, but not before she read the flash of anger. “Yes, you might say
difficult
. The city was in chaos. The
te-ravot
was dead, and
ravot
Shorrenon as well. You and
ravot
Zevaron had disappeared, slain for all we knew. Every day, there were new reports about Ar-Thessar-Gelon. Half of them said he was dying, the other that he had recovered and was preparing lists of names for execution. His soldiers were everywhere. There were hangings and floggings on every corner. The
meklat
was empty. People
were terrified to leave their homes. But,” he paused, glanced at her, and then quickly looked away, “life must go on.”
“Yes, it must.” Her lips formed the words while images dissolved behind her eyes. She remembered her city the last time she had seen it, the massive gates in ruin, streaked with oil and soot, and the slow procession of soldiers bearing Maharrad’s white-shrouded body. Shorrenon on the throne that had been his father’s, sitting tall and straight, his sword bare across his knees. The long dark flight through the tunnels into the Sand Lands and beyond.
Marvenion shifted, uneasy. “We heard rumors, of course, but could not believe things were really that bad in Meklavar.”
Harellon said to Tsorreh, “You left the city in the chaos of the early days.” His words were perfectly polite yet carried a hint of censure. “The general was taking no chances on an uprising, and no one knew if Thessar would live or…”
Or what Cinath would do if his son died
, Tsorreh finished silently.
Setherod shot a hard look at his companion. “I didn’t desert my people, if that’s what you’re implying! It wasn’t my choice to leave. After my father died and my brother took up the leadership of Cassarod, it became imperative that one of us remain free in case the worst happened.”
Tsorreh remembered what Shorrenon had said in the war council, that the Gelon would execute or exile all the noble houses.
“When I left, there had been a certain amount of confusion, of displacement,” Harellon said. “Some people were trying to leave Meklavar, others from the outlying areas were trying to get in, Gelonian forces were putting down outbreaks of rebellion. Of course, the heads of all the important families were closely watched.” He paused, pressing his lips together with an expression of disapproval that reminded Tsorreh very much of his father. “With the royal family dead or disappeared, who knew where, and the
Council in disarray, the Gelon suspected anyone who might be able to raise a following.”
Tsorreh caught the flicker of hostility between the two men. Each saw himself as the man destined to lead a Meklavaran uprising. They would never agree, that much was clear. Setherod would not give up the privilege of rank granted by his Cassarod lineage, descended from one of Khored’s own brothers. Harellon lacked the personal charisma that might make up for his more common origins. Behind their rivalry, she sensed their yearning, the shared dream of a free Meklavar. If Shorrenon were alive, they would have followed him without question.
The discussion continued, recounting the struggles of a city under occupation, the cycles of revenge and retaliation, of fear and power and grief. The Gelon did not mean to destroy Meklavar, at least they had not at first, not like the Isarran city that a previous Ar-King had ordered burned to the ground and the charred earth sown with salt. Meklavar had too much value as a fortress along the trade route to Denariya. Cinath could not replace its entire population. He needed merchants and bankers, crafts people and caravaneers. Most of all, he needed a secure and peaceful city. A city bowed but still productive, not in ruins.
The Gelon were not mere brutes; they had centuries of experience in governing conquered lands. If the only thing at stake were the welfare of her city, Tsorreh might have conceded the throne to the Gelon. It held no attraction for her. She had seen what the long years of responsibility had done to Maharrad, how leadership had turned Shorrenon into a martyr, how Zevaron could never have led a normal life. Was it worth so many lives to elevate one man in place of another? Was it not better to have order and peace and justice, even if the laws were made elsewhere? The people of Aidon, what she had seen of them, were not oppressed, nor were they monsters.
But ever since Tenereth had placed the
te-alvar
within her body, since its power had brought her visions of the past, she no longer thought of the Book of Khored as a
poetic legend. Now she knew there was more at stake than the comfort and security of one city. Invisible forces moved in Gelon, the shadowy reach of the Scorpion god. Images sprang to her mind:
Ashes and frost, things ancient beyond imagining, things subtle and patient.
As Setherod talked, Tsorreh studied him, not only with her eyes but with the strange senses of the
te-alvar
. Cassarod was one of the lineages of the Shield, the red gem that embodied courage. Yet she could sense nothing of its presence in him. He was no coward, but his bravery was personal, not the transcendent incarnation of the virtue. It must be his older brother, Ganneron, who bore the
alvar
. And Ganneron was still in Meklavar.
“We have no leader to unite us,” Marvenion was saying. “We are scattered, adrift. The Gelon pick us off at their whim.”
“For the moment,” Setherod conceded. “But it’s early yet. Order is being restored in Meklavar. Surely, when the Gelon see there is no effective resistance, they will relax their hold. Eventually, it will be safe to return.”
“There is the Prophet,” Harellon said thoughtfully. “Under the right circumstances, the people would rally to him.”
“The Prophet? I have not heard of him,” Marvenion said.
“Cinath has,” Tsorreh murmured.
“He is hearsay, a legend,” Setherod said. “I doubt he even exists.”
“He exists,” Harellon insisted, “but I fear he cannot help us. One story is that he fled the city just before the fall, moving like smoke through the lines. Another is that he walked out of the Sand Lands one day, preaching about the return of Khored and the end of times. He says we must prepare for a battle even greater than defeating the Gelon.”
A battle even greater. Ashes and frost
…
subtle, patient, coming closer.
“Understandably, the Gelon do not like this kind of talk,” Harellon continued. “Even less so because when they send soldiers after him, he vanishes.”
Setherod shook his head. “That only proves my point. How can such a man be anything but a fabrication? For all we know, Cinath’s ministers invented him as an excuse to oppress us even further.”
“Do you accuse me of lying? Or of being stupid?” Harellon said, plainly angry.
In Tsorreh’s memory, she relived the moment during the war council when accusations of treason had burst forth. Maharrad had quelled them, saying,
“Shall we do the work of the Gelon for them?”
“Enough!” she exclaimed. “How can we stand against our enemies if we turn on each other? If we let our differences become more important than what we hold in common? If we lash out at the friend in front of us, instead of the enemy we cannot reach?”
Suddenly, Tsorreh could not contain the energy that surged up in her. She sprang to her feet. In the corner, Marvenion’s daughter lifted her head and watched, her eyes shining.
“What is truly important? What will it take to stand against a conqueror who is both powerful and disciplined? If we are to succeed, I tell you, then Meklavar will need
all
of us. Working together, not at each other’s throats like savage beasts!”
As one, they turned to look at her. She raked them with her glare.
For a long moment, they sat as if stunned. No one moved. They seemed not even to breathe. Tsorreh wondered if she had said something foolish, or if they simply had not expected such zeal from a woman.
Let them think what they like, so long as they listen!
Harellon lowered his eyes, his shoulders sagging. Setherod stared at her, as if she were no merely human woman who had just lectured him, but something more.
The next moment
, she thought in disgust,
they will start treating me like a hero out of legend and forget all about what I just said.
Slowly, reverently, Setherod knelt at her feet. His voice
rasped with emotion. “
You
will lead our people to freedom.”
Tsorreh did not want such adulation. She had never seen herself as a leader, rebel or otherwise, certainly not a ruler in her own right. She had been the inexperienced second wife, the mother, the comforter of an old man—
The woman who stormed off to preserve the library, she reminded herself.
The woman who had gotten Zevaron out of Meklavar, kept him alive and free.
The one who had taken Lycian’s blow, meant for a helpless servant girl. The one who had found a way to save Jaxar, regardless of the risk.
The one who now bore the heart of the Shield, the clear glowing petal of unity. The only one.
Tsorreh laid her fingertips on the back of his bowed neck. “I thank you for your loyalty. I—”
She broke off at a sudden rush of energy from the
te-alvar
. It came alive, hot enough to sear her from the inside. Its power stole her breath for a moment. Then, as if she had passed from shadow into daylight, her inner vision cleared. She sensed the distinctive presence of the minions of Qr, that hint of frozen fire.