Priestess of the White

  Danjin considered, then shook his head. “My involvement would complicate the arrangement unnecessarily.”

  “Very well.” He turned toward the door, then paused. “What do you know of Sennon, Adviser?”

  “Sennon?” Danjin shrugged. “I have visited the land several times. Mostly by sea, but I have crossed the desert twice. I speak Sennonian. I have a few contacts there.”

  “The Sennon emperor signed a treaty of alliance with the Pentadrians yesterday.”

  Once again, Danjin found himself staring at Rian, this time in dismay. He recalled Auraya’s first meeting with the Sennon ambassador. The man had invited her to visit. It had been ridiculous to expect a new White, untrained and not yet familiar with her position, to travel all the way to Sennon. Perhaps one of the other White should have gone. Reminding the emperor that a powerful alliance backed by the gods lay beyond the mountains to the west might have prevented him from signing an alliance with the Pentadrians.

  “You think we should have made greater efforts to befriend the Sennon emperor and his people,” Rian said, frowning.

  Danjin smiled wryly. “Yes, but what can you do? There are only five of you—only four until recently. You’ve only just allied with Somrey, and now Auraya is working on Si. You didn’t have the time or resources to woo Sennon as well.”

  The corner of Rian’s mouth twitched. “No, we didn’t. Control of time is not one of the Gifts the gods have bestowed on us.”

  “Perhaps the emperor will not like his new friends and change his mind. I imagine he will be as thrilled to meet those black vorns as the Torens were.”

  Rian’s expression darkened. “Unless he desires his own hunt to train. He has advised all Circlian priests to leave, claiming it is for their own safety.”

  Danjin grimaced. “Oh.” He shook his head. “The emperor has always maintained that he does not want to favor one religion over another.” Abruptly, Danjin thought of the Dreamweavers. He felt a pang of guilt. Auraya had asked him to visit Leiard, but he had been too busy hunting rumors of Pentadrians to do so. “Do you think I should warn Dreamweaver Adviser Leiard?”

  Rian shrugged. “If you wish. All reports I have received suggest that Pentadrians are tolerant of the followers of small heathen cults. It is only Circlians they despise, no doubt because they know our gods are real.”

  Jealous, eh? Danjin smiled grimly. If this all led to a conflict, at least the Circlians had this one advantage: their gods were real and would protect them. He only feared the damage these Pentadrians might do in the process. In war there were always casualties.

  A light had entered Rian’s eyes. He regarded Danjin with approval.

  “Thank you for your assistance, Adviser.”

  Danjin inclined his head and made the gesture of the circle. “I am glad to be of help.”

  He followed Rian to the door and opened it. The White stepped through, then paused and looked back.

  “When I speak to your family, I will not mention I consulted you.”

  Danjin nodded in gratitude. He watched Rian walk away, then closed the door. Mischief looked up at him, blinking sleepily.

  “That,” he told the veez, “was very interesting.”

  Auraya opened her eyes. The room was dark, and she could barely make out the walls around her. Had something woken her?

  Well, it hasn’t done a good job. I still feel like I’m mostly asleep…

  She opened her eyes a second time. This time the darkness was absolute. Except…a familiar figure wearing Dreamweaver robes appeared.

  :Leiard?

  :Hello, lover of dreamers; dreamer of love.

  His lips moved as the words came to her.

  :Is…is this a memory? It feels like it is you, speaking to me now, and yet it doesn’t.

  :Yes and no. It is me speaking to you, dressed in your memory of me. My mind given a form by yours. You are learning fast. It seems you have a natural flair for this.

  :Perhaps I should have been a Dreamweaver.

  :But your heart is the gods’.

  :My soul is the gods’; my heart is yours.

  Leiard smiled—a sly, secretive smile. It was an expression she had never seen him wear before. Was this just her mind embellishing the mood she sensed from him?

  :I’ve always suspected souls were a concept the gods invented to encourage people to serve them. In fact, I once had a conversation with a god in which he admitted that—

  She jolted awake and found herself staring at the roof of the bower. Daylight filtered through the walls.

  “Auraya?”

  The voice came from the entranceway. She rose, wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and moved into the main room. Opening the flap that covered the doorway she found Speaker Sirri standing outside.

  “Yes, Speaker?”

  The woman smiled. “Sorry to wake you so early. We have just received a message that we feel we must urgently discuss with you.”

  Auraya nodded. “Come in. I will be with you in a moment.”

  She hurried to her room and closed the hanging divider. Undressing, she splashed water from a large wooden basin over herself and quickly dried off with magic. Once she had dressed again she ran a comb through her hair and began plaiting it as she returned to the main room.

  Speaker Sirri stood beside the entrance, tapping her forefinger against the frame of the bower. Auraya would never have guessed the woman’s mood from her face, but this small sign of impatience made her look closer. At once she sensed that the Speaker was resisting a growing alarm at the news of a landwalker woman seen in Si. The woman had apologized for the attack on a tribe by black birds that Sirri had told Auraya of.

  “There will be food at the meeting,” Sirri said as Auraya stepped outside.

  The Speaker took to the air and Auraya followed. Sirri caught an updraft and glided up to the top of the Open, where she landed neatly. The forest was cluttered with undergrowth here, keeping the bower hidden from view.

  Auraya had visited the Speakers’ Bower several times already, but she was sure she had been led down a different forest path each time. She resisted the temptation to read the Speaker’s mind, sensing that Sirri wanted to wait until they joined the other Speakers before revealing the contents of the message that had so disturbed her.

  I trust her, she mused. Or perhaps it’s just that I know she is not keeping something from me, and has her reasons for waiting.

  They reached the bower. Sirri said nothing as she stepped up to the entrance and pulled the flap aside. Inside, the Speakers of the other fourteen tribes waited. They stood to greet her and she sensed a new caution in the way they regarded her. Sirri ushered her to one of the short stools then took her place. She glanced at the other tribe leaders before she turned her attention back to Auraya.

  “Auraya of the White,” she began. “Do you remember me telling you of the large black birds that attacked the Sun Ridge tribe a month ago?”

  “Yes. One of the hunters claimed to have glimpsed a landwalker nearby.”

  Sirri nodded. “The birds have not been seen since, though some of us have looked for them cautiously, but the woman has been seen again recently.” She glanced at the leader of the Twin Mountain tribe. “By a child. We have no reason to doubt this girl’s story; she is not prone to making up fanciful tales.

  “She says she encountered the woman close to her village. The woman asked her to deliver a message. It contained an apology for the attack on the hunters. She claimed it was an accident, that she did not know what her birds were doing until it was too late. Her true intentions were to befriend us.

  “Then she saw you fly past,” Sirri met Auraya’s eyes levelly, “and changed her mind. She decided to leave Si, after telling the child to give her tribal leader a different message. She said if the Siyee ally themselves with Circlians they will gain an enemy even stronger.”

  Auraya felt a chill. “What did this landwalker look like?”

  “Her skin was dark. She looked young
and strong.”

  “Her clothing?”

  “She was dressed in black and wore a silver pendant.”

  The chill became a shiver of cold that ran down Auraya’s spine.

  “Ah.”

  “Have you heard of this woman before?”

  Auraya shook her head. “No, but I have encountered people like her. She may be a member of a cult from Southern Ithania. I must tell Juran about this.”

  Closing her eyes, she called out Juran’s name.

  :Yes? he replied.

  :I think a Pentadrian has been snooping around in Si. She told him what she had learned.

  :A woman with birds; a man with vorns. The five leaders our spies named include two women.

  :Yes. What shall I tell the Siyee?

  :Everything. All of Northern Ithania will know of these sorcerers soon enough. This might nudge them into signing an alliance.

  Auraya smothered a sigh and opened her eyes. What am I getting these people into? she asked herself, yet again. What would I be abandoning them to, if I didn’t try to persuade them to seek our protection? She looked around at the anxious faces of the Speakers.

  “Juran and I believe we know what she is, just as she recognized what I am. She is a Pentadrian sorcerer,” she told the Speakers. “We have encountered two others. The first entered Toren with a hunt of vorns. The creatures were larger and darker in color than their wild relations and appeared to obey mental orders. Their master’s only intention in entering Toren appeared to be to cause terror and death. Rian found and confronted the man, who fled when it was clear he could not win the fight.

  “The second sorcerer was not accompanied by vorns,” she continued. A memory of being pinned against a wall by the black sorcerer’s power brought an echo of fear. Auraya drew in a deep breath, pushing aside both the memory and the dread that came with it. “Or any other creature but an ordinary reyer. He did not harm anyone as far as we know. I was sent to help Dyara find him but he, too, escaped us.”

  “What do these sorcerers want?” a Speaker asked.

  Auraya grimaced. “I don’t know. One thing is sure, they hate Circlians. They call us heretics.”

  “What do they worship?”

  “Five gods, as we do, but theirs are not real gods.”

  “Perhaps this is why they defend their beliefs so ferociously,” Dryss murmured.

  “Why did this sorceress enter Si?” another Speaker asked.

  “For the same reason Auraya has: to seek an alliance,” someone replied.

  “By attacking us?”

  “She said it was a mistake. She said she wanted to befriend us.”

  “Until she saw Auraya.”

  Several of the Speakers glanced at Auraya. She met their eyes, hoping she looked more confident than she felt.

  “She threatened us,” Dryss reminded them. He grimaced. “I fear we are being forced to choose between two great powers. No matter what we do, we face changes we can’t avoid.”

  “You don’t have to choose either,” Auraya pointed out. “You can choose to remain as you are.”

  “And be slowly starved and hunted out of existence by these landwalker settlers?” another replied. “That is no choice.”

  “We can fight the invaders now,” a younger Speaker declared. “Using this dart-thrower. We don’t need to ally with anyone!”

  Voices joined in argument. Auraya raised her hands and the Speakers quietened again. “If you wish it, I will leave Si. Once I am gone you can invite this sorceress to return. Find out what she wants from you and what she offers in return. But please be cautious. Perhaps she did not mean to harm your hunters, but I do know that one of her fellow Pentadrians is a cruel man, who deals out death and pain for the sheer enjoyment of it. I would hate to see the Siyee suffer at his hands.”

  “Maybe he was an outlaw. Maybe he came to Northern Ithania because he had been thrown out of Pentadrian lands,” the young Speaker argued.

  “At least these Pentadrians have never taken our land from us,” someone else murmured.

  “That may only be because they do not have a border with our lands,” Sirri pointed out.

  Auraya winced. “They do now.”

  The Speakers turned to frown at her.

  “What do you mean?” Dryss asked.

  “The Sennon emperor signed a treaty of alliance with the Pentadrians yesterday. Sennon shares a border with you, albeit a small one.”

  “On their side there is only desert.”

  “Except where the desert ends and the mountains begin.” This came from a Speaker who had not joined the debate so far. “There are several landwalker settlements along the coast.”

  The Speakers fell silent. Their gazes dropped to the floor. Auraya felt a pang of sympathy as she sensed them struggling with their fears.

  “Good people of Si,” she said quietly. “I wish that you were not facing such hard times and such difficult choices. I cannot make these decisions for you. I cannot tell you who to trust. I would never dream of forcing you to choose one way or another. I believe that when the gods asked me and my fellow White to seek allies throughout Ithania they simply wished to see us all united in peace. Perhaps they foresaw some future conflict. I don’t know. I do know that we would be honored to have the people of Si standing beside us, in times of conflict or peace.”

  She rose, nodded once, then left. As she walked from the bower she heard muffled voices. She could not distinguish the words, but her Gifts told her what was said.

  “We are caught up in this—whatever it is—whether we like it or not. I say we choose a side, because on our own we are sure to perish.”

  There was a pause, then: “If we must choose who to trust, then will it be the one who came in secret, bringing dangerous birds, or the one who waited to be invited?”

  And finally: “Huan made us. Do these Pentadrians worship Huan? No. I choose the White.”

  25

  In the shadows around Leiard and Jayim only the faint shapes of trees and plants could be made out. They might have been in the middle of a forest. It was the lack of familiar noises that ruined the illusion, telling Leiard plainly that they were on the roof of the Bakers’ house.

  I miss the forest, he realized suddenly. I miss being calm. Being undisturbed in heart and mind. Safe.

  Then go back, fool.

  Leiard ignored the tart words in his mind. This voice in my head is merely an echo of a long-dead sorcerer, he reminded himself. If I ignore him, he’ll go away. He looked at Jayim. The boy was waiting patiently, used to Leiard’s long pauses.

  “Magic can be used for healing in many ways,” Leiard said. “The Gifts that I will teach you are divided into three levels of difficulty. The first level involves simple actions: the pinching of a blood tube to stop bleeding; cauterization; the realignment of broken bones. The second involves more complex interventions: encouraging or discouraging blood flow; stimulation and guidance of the body’s healing processes; blocking pain.

  “The third level involves using Gifts so difficult they take years to learn, if that is at all possible—as only one or two Dreamweavers in every generation has the ability to achieve this level. These Gifts require a trance of concentration and a sure knowledge of all the processes of the body. If you learn them, you will be able to realign any tissue within a body. You will be able to make a wound disappear, leaving no scar. You will be able to give a blind man sight and make a barren woman fertile.”

  “Can I revive the dead?”

  “No. Not those who are truly dead.”

  Jayim frowned. “Can someone be dead, but not truly dead?”

  “There are ways to…”

  Leiard stopped, then turned toward the stairway. He could hear faint footsteps drawing closer. Two sets. A lamp appeared and light flooded out. Tanara climbed out, followed by a familiar, well-dressed man.

  “Leiard?” Tanara called tentatively. “You have a visitor.”

  “Danjin Spear.” Leiard stood. “What brin
gs you—”

  “Before you get talking, come inside,” Tanara interrupted. “It is too cold out here for entertaining guests.”

  Leiard nodded. “Indeed, you are right.”

  Tanara ushered them down the staircase into the communal room, where braziers provided warmth, then dragged Jayim away with her to help prepare hot drinks. Danjin settled into a chair with a sigh.

  “You look tired, Adviser,” Leiard observed.

  “I am,” Danjin admitted. “My wife and I hoped I would have more free time while Auraya was in Si, but I’m afraid the situation has been quite the opposite. How have you been?”

  “I spend all my time teaching Jayim.”

  Except for at night, when you indulge in illegal erotic dream links with one of the White, Mirar whispered. Wonder what he’d think of that? The mistress he loves like a daughter lying with a Dreamweaver…

  Tanara entered the room again, carrying two steaming mugs of hot spiced tintra. Danjin took a sip and smiled.

  “Ah, thank you, Ma-Baker. This is most welcome. It is cold outside.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” she replied, sending Leiard a meaningful look. “Especially on a day too cold for anybody to be sitting on a roof.”

  “Mother!” Jayim’s protest echoed through the doorway. “I’ve told you a hundred times already: he taught me how to keep myself warm with magic.”

  She sniffed, then smiled at Danjin. “Just call out if you need anything.”

  When the door had closed behind her, Leiard turned to regard Danjin. Mirar’s comment had reminded him that he knew little about how Auraya’s work was progressing. Little of the dream links had involved any discussion of her work in Siyee. Their attention had been on…other matters.

  “So how is Auraya?” he asked.

  Danjin smiled. “She is enjoying herself immensely. As for whether she will be successful at her task,” he shook his head, “that is unsure. Their leaders, the Speakers, want all tribes to agree to an alliance before they sign anything, and during the first Gathering a few tribes spoke against it. She hopes that new revelations will change their mind. The threat of war is one. The other is a fortunate coincidence. One of the Siyee has created a new weapon that will allow them to strike at the enemy while in flight, making them an effective force in battle. They will hold another Gathering in a week to decide.”