“We do. But the story I told you earlier was true. We have cities, built into the mountains above the canyon’s floodplain. There are also lakes deep within the caves. We channel those lakes to water our fields.”
She looked into his eyes. “The priestesses never told me that.”
He reached over and traced the faded ink lines on her hand. “They don’t know, and I’ll ask you not to tell them. It is not knowledge we like outsiders to have.”
“Then why are you telling me?”
Instead of answering, he reached into his robes and pulled out a cylinder. He lengthened out the spherical compartments and handed it to her.
She pushed it open and closed a few times to see how it worked. “A telescope. I’ve seen these before.” The Immortal commanders had them. She lay back on his stomach and peered at the stars, noting they were not all white as she’d once assumed, but red, gold, and even blue.
She swung the telescope across the starry sky, finding the Goddess Staff again and wondering what a city built into canyon walls looked like.
Rycus showed her more constellations—the Winter Star, the Hag, Wings of Fire, and Sky Mountain. Nelay knew many of them, most by the same or a similar name. But she learned new ones as well. After a while, she handed the telescope back to him. “You should probably go. I’m not doing a very good job of keeping watch.”
He was silent for a moment, then said, “Tomorrow, I’ll take first watch. I could show you some more then.”
She looked away, searching the darkness for any sign of something amiss. “You might get yourself killed,” she remarked with a touch of mockery, echoing what Scand had said the night before.
“I already took care of Scand.” Rycus pushed himself up and went back to the tent.
Later, she woke Cinab so he could take his turn. He rubbed sleep from his eyes and shuffled outside. Nelay climbed into his warm blankets and fell straight asleep and into her recurring dream of the fairies tearing at her as she searched for her parents, only to find them murdered by Clansmen with puppet strings.
Before dawn the next day, the travelers were on the camels, riding away from the cistern. Nelay learned it was possible, although not recommended, to sleep in the saddle.
When they stopped for the evening, she dropped down, wincing as she rubbed the crick in her neck. Rycus took the watch after dinner and rubbed at the knots in her neck while quizzing her on the constellations, playfully mocking her when she got them wrong.
“Let me ask you something,” he said.
Nelay blinked her eyes open and looked at him.
“Is there really a luminash mine under the palace?”
She rested her chin back on her folded hands. “Not under the palace—no one would build a palace on top of a mine. It’s below the southern gardens.”
“Why mine anywhere near the palace?”
She smiled as she remembered Jezzel catching her hair on fire with a torch the first time they’d explored the mines. High Priestess Suka had caught them sneaking back in to the temple. She’d taken one look at Jezzel’s singed hair and made them both run on the hot sand for a full day. Jezzel had been more upset about her hair taking over a year to grow back in. And that had been nothing compared to the time they’d brought an elephant to the temple.
“The mine was there first,” Nelay said finally. “It was the most prolific one in all of Idara. The priestesses of old built their temple there. After the mine was tapped out, the Winter Palace was built beside the temple.”
“Could you sneak into the palace through the mine?”
“No. The Immortals were very thorough about destroying any tunnels out of the mine.” Which is unfortunate, she added silently.
“You sound awfully certain of that.”
“Well, Jezzel and I searched them. We were caught.” Once.
Rycus fell silent and she glanced up at him. “Aren’t you going to ask the question everyone wants to know?”
“The ingredients of luminash?”
She nodded.
He shrugged. “It’s the priestesses’ most guarded secret. I doubt you know. I doubt more than a handful of priestesses know.”
He was right. All Nelay knew was that different types of luminash took different ingredients. Relieved he wasn’t trying to wrangle more secrets out of her, she fell asleep with the sound of his voice naming the stars, the feel of his fingers still thrumming through her body.
Midday next, the flat ground gradually rose up, turning to flat table mountains. Telescope against her eye, Nelay studied the landscape. She’d traversed these lands hundreds of times as a child. A vague sense of familiarity washed over her, but she couldn’t be sure she was seeing home until the twisted, ancient juniper tree come into view. She pointed it out to Rycus. “My home is about three leagues from here.”
“Our camels are no match against the speed of the Clansmen’s horses. Our best chance now is to slip in and out unnoticed.”
Nelay reached into her packs and removed her scale armor. While the men turned their backs, she stripped down to her underthings and buckled on her breastplate, leather scale skirt, bracers, and greaves and made sure they were all invisible beneath her robes. She checked her baldrics and throwing knives and then braided her hair back, showing off the tattoos barely visible through the hair now touching the tops of her ears.
Rycus looked her up and down as if he had never seen her before. He wore his own armor, though none of it was as fine or as complete as hers. “From now on, you must lead the way, High Priestess.”
They left Cinab to guard the camels and started out, Nelay in the lead.
The landscape continued to change. The flat plains of the desert became interspersed with table mountains, so named because of their steep sides and flat, barren tops. Between these mountains were dry riverbeds choking with brush, some as high as Nelay’s waist, others as tall as two men. As she pushed through it, many of the brittle branches broke, giving off the medicinal scent she remembered well.
Suddenly she recognized the terrain from her nightmare. With every step she took, fear reared up inside her. She found herself looking for the fairies she could no longer see. Every bird became a fairy with black, depthless eyes. Every insect, a fairy with stingers. And every snake . . . every snake became Siseth, the fairy Nelay had made her horrible bargain with.
Hunching over, she braced her arms on her knees and pinched her eyes shut in an effort to banish the fear and the memories.
“Nelay?” Rycus said. When she didn’t answer, he turned to the others. “Get her some water.”
She barely heard him. She was remembering the promise she’d made the fairy all those years ago—that someday she would perform a service, any service the fairy required. Nelay also thought of what the fairy had revealed to her—that as a child, her mother had made a similar bargain. Only Mandana had bargained for an elice petal to save Nelay’s life.
The magic in that petal had changed Nelay’s body. She’d never been sick, not even so much as a stomachache, but it had also changed the course of her life. An overwhelming sense of doom nearly choked her. Whatever the fairies had done to her, they weren’t finished yet.
Bahar pushed the water into her hands and crouched in front of her. She looked into his eyes and something passed between them. She knew he could see the pain her past had brought up. She knew he had similar pain. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.
He rose and held out his hand to her. “We’re with you.”
Taking a deep breath to steel her courage, Nelay started out again. At the sound of bleating, she veered off course, slipping through the taller brush. She found a flock not far away, next to a spring.
Their wool was shaggy, much too long for this time of year, and full of briars. There were only a dozen or so animals, but she recognized the marking in their ears. These were her family’s sheep, though surely only a fraction of the original flock. There was no shepherd, only the huge white dogs that protected the she
ep. All three of those dogs stared at her, but none moved to attack, for she was no threat to their charges. One of the dogs was limping. Another was missing its right ear, brown blood matting its fur. All were scarred and starving.
Nelay’s heart sank. Without the shepherd to tend the flock and dogs, the lions and hyenas would pick them apart in a matter of days. Her father would never let the flock come to this. During her childhood, she and her brother had gone with him for weeks at a time, traveling with the flock as they grazed for food over the arid ground.
She closed her eyes as memories reared up to strike her from the pit where she’d buried them. Of the day her father had almost died. The day her infant brother hadn’t been so lucky. Nelay could still hear her mother’s keening—a high-pitched wail that haunted her sleepless nights. Mostly, Nelay blamed herself. Whatever blame was left she laid on the fairies.
Rycus came to stand beside her. Some of her turmoil must have shown on her face, for he rested a reassuring hand on her shoulder and his voice dropped to a whisper. “You do not have to do this, Nelay. You could come back with me to our cities. We have need of priestesses for our own temples. And women who can fight.”
“Perhaps my family has already fled.” But a voice inside her whispered that her father would have never abandoned the flock. He would have taken them with him. She imagined herself violently crushing that voice beneath her heel.
She steeled herself and continued on toward her home, crossing the lands that had been in her family for generations. Abandoned luminash mines riddled the mountains, for though the ingredients for it were abundant in the province, none had ever been found on her father’s land. Her life would have been entirely different if it had.
Nelay wove through fields of grain, their heads heavy and drooping, and the grove. She finally slipped through the last of the trees and saw her home, with its broken tile roof and pitted mud-brick walls. It was so much smaller and shabbier than she remembered. Why hadn’t they used any of the money she’d sent them to fix it up? When she closed her eyes, more memories attacked her from where they should have stayed dead and buried.
Nelay was eight. It was a year before the priestesses would come for her. Two years into the drought that had lasted for five. She remembered the hollow, carved feeling of her stomach. Her father and brother had gone in search of a lost lamb, leaving her alone. One of the dogs had suddenly stiffened, his hackles rising. He’d let out a low growl that had sent her spinning for her spear.
Her heart beat like a fist against her ribs, the carvings her father had etched into the spear leaving patterns across her palms. The sheep milled, turning useless circles around each other. She needed to keep them from bolting. Keep them together. She tried to whistle for help, but her mouth was so dry barely any sound came out.
She worked her pasty tongue against her lips and tried again. A weak whistle left her lips just as one of the dogs lunged. A sleek, golden form exploded from the brush not ten steps from her. Snarling, the dogs took off after it. Nelay shouted for the dogs, her tone brooking no argument, but they were beyond hearing. The predator was running, and they gave chase.
She did not follow them, did not leave her charges, for she knew the first lion had been a decoy to lure the dogs away. She didn’t have to wait long. Blurred forms exploded from the brush. The sheep scattered like a burst water skin, running and bleating in terror. Screaming, Nelay stabbed at the closest lion, but the beast did not divert, did not even slow as the spear punctured its flesh.
They streaked past her, so close she could feel the wind stirred up by their passing. She jabbed her spear after them, screaming, tears of fear and frustration blurring her vision. The lions stayed away from her, for she had a spear. The sheep had nothing—nothing but her. She pulled out her sling and lobbed stone after stone at the lions. When they finally retreated, each had its teeth locked around the throat of a sheep, some of them still kicking uselessly.
Nelay had watched the lions take her only friends and her family’s livelihood with them, knowing she couldn’t go after them, that she had to gather what was left of the flock. Her father and brother had found her that way, with tears streaming down her face, her spear in hand. They’d started running when they’d heard her screams, but they had been too late. They had never seen the dogs again. Nor could they afford to purchase new ones.
Nelay started at a sudden touch to her arm. She hadn’t realized she’d been crossing the yard, that the stench of death wasn’t in her memories, but before her. All around her.
Rycus held her gently, his gaze full of pity. “Nelay, don’t go in there.”
She swung her gaze back to her house. The yard was deserted. There were no clucking chickens. No barking dogs. No slinking cats. But there were prints that didn’t belong—jackals. My family fled to Sopora and from there to Dalarta, she told herself. They were safe and well. She just had to find them and bring them back to Thanjavar.
A breeze pushed past her, playing with the unruly strands of hair that had escaped her braid. The door shifted a little, revealing that it was partially open. And Nelay knew. She knew without stepping inside, because her mother had been fastidious to a fault, sweeping their dirt floor a dozen times a day. Even if they had fled in too much of a hurry to take the flock, she would have latched the door.
Nelay jerked free and darted forward.
“No, Nelay! Don’t!”
But it was already too late. She’d already pushed open the door. And her world stopped.
There were two bodies, their flesh picked to the bone by scavengers. The smaller one would have been her mother. She lay in the far corner, a cooking knife beside her.
Her father was by the door, his carved cane beside him. Nelay remembered him carving that cane, long curls of wood littering his feet, the smell of sap. Both her parents wore the remnants of their nightclothes as if they’d been startled from sleep.
King Zatal had been right. It was too late. Too late and too little.
Rycus was behind her, his hands on her upper arms. He tried to pull her away. To spare her or to comfort her, she didn’t know. She dropped to her knees, her clenched fists holding her glass idol. Her eyes shut tight as the tears burned her throat.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat crumpled like that. How long the sobs ravaged her. But when she finally finished, she felt empty, dead but for the fact that she still breathed.
Holding her sleeve to her mouth, she moved past the threshold and pried off the loose bit of mud brick under her parents’ bed. She retrieved the thin ring her father had bought her mother for their wedding. It was far more than a shepherd could afford, and the only piece of jewelry her mother had ever owned. Then she took her father’s shamshirs. They were her grandfather’s, who’d used them in the war against the Tribesmen decades ago. A thick band of silver circled the hilt—a gift from the old Noble Keef—and the runes for her grandfather’s name stamped in the pommel.
Nelay sprinkled the last of her luminash on her parents’ remains. The funeral luminash was better—it burned hot and fast—but she didn’t have any. The ceremonial kind would have to do. She took her flint and knife and coaxed an ember to life in some kindling, then lit the roof beams on fire. She went outside to look for the burial herbs, but Bahar had already gathered them.
He passed them to her without a word, tears filling his eyes. “It won’t break you if you don’t let it.”
“I am already broken,” she said without looking at him.
“No, you’re not. Only battered.”
She took the herbs and tossed them onto the flames. Her voice broke as she sang the song to set her parents’ spirits free. Her feet felt too heavy for the dance. She took her father’s cane when Scand held it out to her. She stared at it a long time. It wasn’t as long as the flaming poles they used in the dance. Her family could have never afforded the priestesses’ rites—especially one so powerful as Nelay.
But her parents deserved the best. She spun the cane above her he
ad and slammed the end down in a clap. She pounded her foot in rhythm with her song. She commanded the flames to char the bones to ash. Commanded those ashes to spin with the wind, spinning through the world. Become part of all things—part of her. She breathed in the smoky air, taking her mother and father deep into her lungs. And she spun the spear about her. Speaking of the battle of life—it was all jabs and spins.
As her dance ebbed, her voice softened. Into wind. Into ash.
When she was done, she turned to find the Tribesmen watching her in awe and sorrow. Her gaze caught on the tears streaming down Rycus’s cheeks. Nelay turned back to the fire. She considered keeping her father’s cane. But he would need it with him. She tossed it into the flames.
With her hands empty of her family and her mouth empty of words, she walked away. She turned back only once, when the roof collapsed with a roar of flames. She watched as they licked away the evidence of her past. The bowls and utensils her father had carved from scratch. The blankets and clothes her mother had woven from their wool.
Rycus was still beside her. “We need to keep moving. The smoke might draw the Clansmen.”
“I had to.” Her parents deserved to have their ashes dance with the wind.
“I know,” was his only response.
“My brother’s body wasn’t with them.” Nelay took a deep breath, forcing her mind to take the players she had and form a plan. “There are dozens of mines, some sealed up after a cave-in or the minerals ran out, and only a local would know where to look.” She crouched down on the packed dirt, using her knife to draw in the silt. “There are seven he might have gone to. There are six of us. If we each check one, we can meet up tomorrow and slip back into the desert.”
Rycus shook his head. “It’s safer if we stay together.”
“Is it? If we all go together, it will take us three days to check them. And any Clansmen we meet with surely outnumber us. You said it yourself—our biggest advantages are stealth and speed, not numbers.”